June 2017 Tuning Discussion - PRELIMINARY

[Shaolin85london]

There was that one time where the devs created the game... I thought that was pretty useful!

When the game was run by RoadHouse was definitely better than now.

[Mizrael]

it's selling food to a starving man. really dislike this approach, as mentioned before. hope they will learn from it next time. it's no coincidence that the most hardcore guys are leaving right now or swiching to another game...

Well,Slauki, i thought this old strategy was clear to the both of us:
NF (or anyone pulling the strings) doesn't give a Flying dunk about the fanboys,haters,hardcore players,veterans or any other one of us. There exists only "a paying customer" in their vocabulary.

Looking at it from a marketing perspective-hardcore players are a burden...
-they have everything,hence they don't spend money.
Just like someone on these forums talked about talisman prices: it's easier to sell 10 for 5$ than 1 for 50$.
1 starving noob spends more money than 10 HC players...and there are 100x more noobs than HC players. you just need to starve them right.

so why bother with HC players and their constant ranting about the state of this game?! they don't bring $$$$

[Sparton_LOTB]

While I appreciate that a lot of people would like to hear about other fixes and improvements for the next update, we are still working on the core of that update, so I do not have any specifics to share about that yet (things that have been resolved fixed may have knock-ons that require us to pull it out, or things we may want to fix may not be fixed yet, but could be by the time the update ships). My responses will primarily focus on the preliminary tuning notes in this thread.

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[Aces High Eddie Tuning?]

We haven't done any tuning to Aces High Eddie for this pass because we want to take more time to figure out how to best adjust his skills. Kaz has told me he's "on the list along with Run to the Hills Eddie for some improvements next time."

As for the General... I didn't say that he wasn't useful in some situations. He is (and shouldn't he be? Kinda seems like a no-brainer, for a 5*). Are you honestly going to tell me though that his damage output seems fine to you for a 5*, especially his basic attack? And how does lots of people using him change the fact that he does 3k damage AoE after 14 shards? You advertise this guy, man! He used to be a star, and you nerfed him twice for the stun... with as much immunity as is in play these days, wouldn't it make sense to restore some of his damage? I have a feeling most players are behind slauki and I on this one... especially if as many are using him as you say.

5 star characters should not unilaterally hit like trucks, because then the volume of damage isn't a meaningful differenciator between other 5 stars.

The Corrupt General has high stun chance with an AoE basic, and in a meta which includes a lot of status removal, the data bears out that this is sufficiently powerful. His lower damage is an important consideration for team building.

-The only reason I leveled Burning Mummy Dog to 100 was for the chance to Mark using his power skill. Why is this being changed, especially when so few characters have a chance to mark? Shouldn't more characters be given the mark skill instead of reducing the number of characters who can mark? Makes it tough to find allies for rainmaker/vampire hunter.
-Will more characters be given the doom or seal skills? Doom is especially rare which makes synergizing with mystic eddie hard.
[...]
-Will there be more characters added who have attacks that scale with either DEF or MR? Viking Eddie in particular has MR charge and no allies that have MR scaling attacks (unless you count possessed hourglass, good luck using that one in PvP)

I prodded Kaz for his thoughts specifically, and he relayed this:

• The Mummy Dogs were changed to smooth out the early game for new players and to provide more general utility for players. Mark is a more specific and mid-to-late game effect. That being said, we will make Mark more available on some ally characters in the future.
• Yes. Also Brave New World features the Zone Eater Talisman Set, which has a chance to cast AOE Doom
• Yes, there are more characters that will have DEF and MR Charge.

As opposed to looking at the playerbase as a whole i'd love to know his use among the top 100. When I'm facing the "power players" - those who rank top 50 in PvP (many who contribute to this forum) - I'm more likely to spot a Yeti than a Corrupt General. Perhaps he's used on offense and I'm just not aware of it.

He's not popular on defense, we know that, but that leads to a perception of a lack of use more than anything.

I'll need more time to work with our programmers to do queries that'll give us something more refined to looking at just the top 100 or whatever, but we need to be very careful with that, because while that is important, it would be problematic to tune something to see "acceptable" usage within the top 100 that then plagues everything below it. We'd just see the Prisoner issue all over again, but for the silent majority.

Questions:
• If you’re working on the Magus CotD, would you please look at its Blizzard Shield? I do not believe there is any way its freezing at the 30% stated rate. On offence in PvP, my experience is that it’s much lower.
• Why nerf the Warrior & Assassin NBoL?
• If you’re working on the Wickerman, is there any chance you’ll be showing love to the poor Wickerman Eddie?

• Looking at the data, it looks like it should be 30%. It seems like the skill description isn't clear with how the freezing rate occurs, though, and that the freezing chance only happens when the shield explodes as the duration runs out.
• This was brought up by Kaz before when people were realizing that the high damage and high removal rate of Wrath was a bit nuts (which also brought up the subject of why use characters like Visions Eddie when high damage + high removal rate characters like the Newborns exist), but basically we want to have stronger-damaging characters not have super high (or guaranteed) beneficial effect removal/stealing, unless that is their main or only selling point. The Newborns of Light fall into the category of having many selling points, so we didn't want to take removal away from them, but felt that guaranteed is just too much.
• Wickerman Eddie is another character with a deceptively high attack usage/win rate (even if we only account for people using him at 5 star, so not counting early players at all). I don't want to get into too many details, but there's definitely some interesting things you can do with this Eddie that other characters wish they could do.

I have a NBoL with counterstrike and explosion talisman. when Counter attacking and having the luck of spreading the explosion effects on all enemies and one of these enemies also can counterstrike (so not the enemy directly hit by my counter), then there is a chance that my NBoL gets counterstriked, which is a bug. Will that be fixed as well?

Well, the general rule is that revenges/counters should not be able to be revenged/countered (partially for balance reasons, and partially to ensure we don't get into infinite loop/combat hang situations), so I'll pass this along to our QA to double check. If this is still bugged in the next release, I don't think we'll have time to fix it for that next update, but we'll have it in our system for a subsequent one. Thanks for the info.

[scott-5496]

Like others I am not thrilled by much of this tuning update. If things are broken that makes sense to fix. But nerfs are painful if shards have been spent on neutered toons.

So why no hit on Gunner CR? Is she not the OP pain in the ass toon?

I keep playing but my interest and commitment is waining. We do need some proper new content.

There seems to be little positive feedback on this thread but I do get that there are likely thousand playing who are not on the board so maybe most players are indeed ok with what goes on?

[gmac]

Well,

Took a quick look at the notes, kind of like it, and as same as all other patches, don't really care, I just wish we could rearrange our skill shards.

Oh, and get the bugs fixed!!!

MCR nerfed? Just wish it steals GCR on first try (don't know if that is fixed or not) NB nerf? Wish It did not revenge a different toon sometimes... Prisoner passive fixed yet? SSD counter loop? The list would be long...

Of course I agree with everybody else, game needs (or needed) new stuff asap, shame on those talis deals... Very frustrating.

Btw I have 85k iron coins I can't use... way to repay a loyal player.

To be honest I liked a lot the Eddie event, NB event and sparton 500, I get better stability than before too, but this do not compensate the lack of transparency regarding new content, absurd changes and prices at store, infinite bugs, no new in game features (like in game chat), unavailability of key toons and so on.

Sparton, Kaz, this is not directed to you, I like that you (used) to talk to us. Please tell NF management this game is dying. We, as players and fans of the band, deserve a better game. And the band deserves it too.

Cheers
gmac

[Peppoah]

Hi Sparton,
Is it really so hard to show the defense increase of Iron and stone talismans in the stats? It's well known since when, that it doesn't show? I first read about it in November, I think and the post was old then.

What's the use of three green talisman spots on Beelzebub? To give him blind talismans? One green spot would be enough in my opinion.
The same is with AOS, since the last update. What's the use of the yellow spot? He doesn't deal with special. The blue harpy had the yellow spot, which was interesting and you changed it to blue???

Thank you for letting us know the changes you plan, so I can leave my talismans, where I think, they're good.

[JJJ428]

Are the devs aware that roulette is causing the opponents counter strike to activate?

[Sparton_LOTB]

Are the devs aware that roulette is causing the opponents counter strike to activate?

I've seen a report of that, but we tried to reproduce that and could not make that happen. Without more information to the teams/situation that can make that happen, we cannot make a fix.

[Monte47]

I've seen a report of that, but we tried to reproduce that and could not make that happen. Without more information to the teams/situation that can make that happen, we cannot make a fix.

Please don't nerf MCR. It's becoming increasingly more disappointing to Shard characters. She got buffed, she's more difficult to fight for some, now she's going to be scaled back. Thing is, though, if the thought is to make it better for new players, then leave her. She is a fairly common drop, that way they have a boon in their team. Idk. Who cares what I think, but it doesn't follow for me.

[Silentknight]

I've seen a report of that, but we tried to reproduce that and could not make that happen. Without more information to the teams/situation that can make that happen, we cannot make a fix.

Have had Vision's equilibrium do the same. Not always & way less than counterstrike procs. 3 or 4 times in a few months.