April 2017 Tuning Discussion - PRELIMINARY

[tex-0775]

Thanks for the update/info

Correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't the problem in the arena, chars with passives? So instead of constantly nerfing/crappyfying chars, wouldn't it be better to make the arena a big "passive remover"? That way noone will enter the arena with an advantage and buffs will only kick in when an attack/tallis effect triggers. This way chars will also still be usefull in campaign.

Btw, i'm also for the idea of returning skillshards from those chars that are nerfed, ss's are not easy to come by, and this would be the decent thing to do.

tex

[surfingwithdje]

Hi Sparton, very happy to see that the discussion is possible with you
As i said prisoner is strong only because of some passives are overpowered, if you use a team without passives he isn't a problem...
I think it's a good way to make adjustement for the siege passive, actually it brokes too many things in the game (shields, immunity, talismants, etc...).
That is the only one passive who obliged you to have a prisoner in your team if you have one...

[Liebhild]

A funny addition to the ranking list would be a new tab, where you could see how much money/ironite a player invested.

[Caretaker]

I haven't been replying to specific comments in this thread for a bit, but I'd like to chime in on the reactions to the character tuning in broad strokes:

• Reception to changes to the Prisoner is fairly divisive (unsurprisingly), but it does appear that the general sentiment is that the proposed change is going too far. We are reviewing alternatives posted here and may change the adjustment when the tuning update goes live. That said, no character in PVP should feel like they're almost always someone you should use for every team (PVP attack or PVP defense), and no character should only have itself as a consistent counter, and that is clearly where he is right now.
• We do not want to go about situationally banning characters from certain game modes. This obviously comes with the drawback that characters occasionally necessitate changes to not be overpowered in particular game modes, but that is the direction we are taking. That said, we aren't going to round the edges off every popular character until usage rates are flat... we merely don't want certain characters to have substantially more usage than others, or for certain high-rarity characters to basically have no usage.

Basicly, what you've 'that said' said, compiled with your previous statements, you DO NOT WANT diversity. You want 'rare' toones to be the same top teams. And with that you are inforcing limits to peoples creativity and workarrounds if a player was not rewarded with 'premium' toons. So basicly you are making the winners. I throw hate on that standing of yours. Pure unfairness. Whatever you say without real arguments means nothing but that. You can say, 'people wanted it' and I will say 'ufcorse, those who spoke they have it good as is. What about all the others?'

Edit: and we wouldn't be discussing this if people did not ask for it.

The originally proposed Prisoner nerf DOES NOT go too far. Currently the Prisoner has the most powerful passive in the game, he has one of the most powerful basic attacks with the highest consistent damage I've seen AND a good chance at stunning an enemy for TWO turns, he has high enough defense/health that he's hard to kill depending on talismans, and his power move easily disables healers/revivers. There is literally not a single weak point to the Prisoner and that is why if you have him you will always use him. Even if his passive gets reduced to a chance to disable passives and can be blocked he will still be the best or one of the best characters. If his passive was completely removed he will have some of the highest damage, he will be able to stun for 2 turns, and he can disable healers/revivers. You've stated multiple times that your goal is to balance the characters enough so that there is no character you will always use if you have him. The original proposed nerf might satisfy that goal, but anything less and he will still be used 100% of the time.

Btw I've done a lot of complaining on these forums and I want to say I've seen steady improvement and am very happy with the direction this game has taken. Thanks.

What this man said.

@devs, do not stir it up now that you've finally done something good. And nerf the SSD. Poore mummy whose power smash sure did not stun with 30% declared so fix that up while at it.

In the revenge tab add a counter how many is made or still left and make them shop-able. My 2 c what needs to be done now.

[Kamuz24z]

Prisoner is going to get nerf or castrate well dealing with current prisoner is not problem for many of us but I want to see different teams with the new update there are so many toons to choose but we can't use many of them because of prisoner and void shields also the point system need a fix the more we play the more attacks we get I understand that to get to the top you really need to spend ironites and a lot of time but maybe just spand the good rewards to more players I'll try the arena with the new update I really want to see different teams new talismans.

[Lord Schmeb]

I'm late to the party, but count me in as an anti-nerf of the Prisoner. I don't have one, I don't want one, and I hate using the two that end up as troopers (Sag and Alex &#128512. I used to loathe fighting him in the arena, but not anymore; it isn't hard to counter/beat him with a little outside-the-box thinking. No need for RNG luck either, as I haven't had much (although my last pull DID get me a Red Bat... Nice timing!).

Nerfing sucks, period.

Off topic, sorta, if GRE falls under the knife, I may just die of disappointment. (Although I don't use him much -- again, he is easily countered by folks who THINK instead of just piss and moan.)

[scott-5496]

I haven't been replying to specific comments in this thread for a bit, but I'd like to chime in on the reactions to the character tuning in broad strokes:

• Reception to changes to the Prisoner is fairly divisive (unsurprisingly), but it does appear that the general sentiment is that the proposed change is going too far. We are reviewing alternatives posted here and may change the adjustment when the tuning update goes live. That said, no character in PVP should feel like they're almost always someone you should use for every team (PVP attack or PVP defense), and no character should only have itself as a consistent counter, and that is clearly where he is right now.
• We do not want to go about situationally banning characters from certain game modes. This obviously comes with the drawback that characters occasionally necessitate changes to not be overpowered in particular game modes, but that is the direction we are taking. That said, we aren't going to round the edges off every popular character until usage rates are flat... we merely don't want certain characters to have substantially more usage than others, or for certain high-rarity characters to basically have no usage.
• We are not currently considering allowing the removal of skill shards from characters. Our stance continues to be that these are permanent, long term investments to specific characters, especially due to the nature of how they are earned, their increased availability as the game matures, and how they are assigned into skills. As the game evolves, some characters will become more or less valuable for a variety of factors, and direct character tuning is only one of them.
• We are reviewing the work it would take to change logic for PVP point calculations relative to other initiatives we have. That said, points gained when you win and lose are the values they are after accounting for sand recharge time, expected attack win percentage, expected defense win percentage, etc, so reducing losses in certain situations means we'd need to also make changes to how many points you win, or what the requirements are for divisions (otherwise, everyone would blow well past 2100 and then the VP requirements for divisions below Warlord will become largely meaningless). We do not expect that everyone will get rewards for the top divisions, and that many less-competitive players will be fighting just for daily challenges/iron coins, which continues to hold true.
• We are still looking at making adjustments to PVP matchmaking. That said, activity from the player base shows that a greater percentage of players are playing PVP, and more are competing for the higher divisions. Recent changes to matchmaking appear to have removed the most extreme cases where players were attacked very few times and able to rank highly, and we believe we can make further adjustments to further reduce discrepancies that are still reported.

This would be a step in the right direction and I am pleased that the devs are listening. Nice one NF team and looking forward to my Prisoner having his testicles intact after the update...poor fella was gonna be singing soprano...maybe that was it make him the LOTB 'Air Raid Siren'!

[Sag7272]

I'm late to the party, but count me in as an anti-nerf of the Prisoner. I don't have one, I don't want one, and I hate using the two that end up as troopers (Sag and Alex &#128512. I used to loathe fighting him in the arena, but not anymore; it isn't hard to counter/beat him with a little outside-the-box thinking. No need for RNG luck either, as I haven't had much (although my last pull DID get me a Red Bat... Nice timing!).
Nerfing sucks, period.
Off topic, sorta, if GRE falls under the knife, I may just die of disappointment. (Although I don't use him much -- again, he is easily countered by folks who THINK instead of just piss and moan.)

Loll... No worries, he's mostly there to show support t'll nerf after I was planning something else..

[Nicko]

Basicly, what you've 'that said' said, compiled with your previous statements, you DO NOT WANT diversity. You want 'rare' toones to be the same top teams. And with that you are inforcing limits to peoples creativity and workarrounds if a player was not rewarded with 'premium' toons. So basicly you are making the winners. I throw hate on that standing of yours. Pure unfairness. Whatever you say without real arguments means nothing but that. You can say, 'people wanted it' and I will say 'ufcorse, those who spoke they have it good as is. What about all the others?'

Edit: and we wouldn't be discussing this if people did not ask for it.

Caretaker - I have to say I'm not seeing the same thing from Sparton's comments. I'm reading

1) He doesn't want monotonous repetition in every team we face (ex Mummy, Blue Bat, SSD)

2) We SHOULD see more rare toons - they're rare because they're 5* - and currently we don't. Take Assassin CotD for example. Supposedly a great toon - and we never see him in PvP. I'm glad he's getting a buff. I'd rather see this than nerforama, and I think many feel the same way.

So I don't read this as "we're making it so you need 5* toons". I'm reading it as "now you can actually USE some of these 5* toons that were previously worthless."

Big difference

[Patrice-1201]

Caretaker - I have to say I'm not seeing the same thing from Sparton's comments. I'm reading

1) He doesn't want monotonous repetition in every team we face (ex Mummy, Blue Bat, SSD)

2) We SHOULD see more rare toons - they're rare because they're 5* - and currently we don't. Take Assassin CotD for example. Supposedly a great toon - and we never see him in PvP. I'm glad he's getting a buff. I'd rather see this than nerforama, and I think many feel the same way.

So I don't read this as "we're making it so you need 5* toons". I'm reading it as "now you can actually USE some of these 5* toons that were previously worthless."

Big difference

Yes fully agree with Nicko, what's the point of jumping of join when a soul spits out a 5* but we cannot use him ;-) This will give us satisfaction that our hard earned or luck earned 5* are worth something ;-)