June 2017 Tuning Discussion - PRELIMINARY

[Ian]

Here's a thought on something that might improve PVP...

The option to set a defensive move order.

When it comes my turn in the game, it checks to see how much power I have. Then it runs down the list and hits the first item it’s able to hit. If I don’t have enough power to execute the first item, it tries the second item. And so on, trying from the top of the list each time (and removing moves from players that have already been used).

Attachment 3233

It might be a step in the right direction but only a small step - e.g. you'll still have to rely on the AI targeting sensibly with single hit characters, and there are so many varied teams an attacker can bring, that for it to be useful you would need some very in-depth scripting. I would bet only a handful of committed players would have the time and inclination to use it if it's as complex as it would need to be, therefore it's likely to be massive time sink for little benefit. The majority of us probably want time spent on tidying bugs and finishing the PvE content first.

[JJJ428]

I think I would be happy with AI being smart enough to not attack invisible or invincible characters unless they have an ability that debuffs.

[Askora]

Two things that would probably help the defense immensely in pvp, probably wouldn't be too hard to implement.

#1 - Probably best if this one were implemented when there are far fewer bugs plaguing the game. Quit showing the attacker my talisman setup. It makes it much easier for the attacker to identify which toon poses the greatest threat based on talismans. You'd still need to show the buffs that are applied, so some would be obvious, but for the ones that don't apply a buff you'd only find out after that toon attacked and it triggered.

#2 - This one might be easier and shouldn't keep people from being able to tell if something is a bug or not. Don't show what toons I have on defense. When the attacker goes to the battle screen, show them something like a relative strength for defense instead of what toons I have on defense. They'll find out what they have to fight once they go into battle. I know it was mentioned that NF is working on being able to show what team your defense faced, but that will always be after the battle is over. Offenses and defenses are not always the same. So, a revenge becomes a much greater risk and tailoring an offense to a particular defense can only be done after you've battled them at least once. Then switching up defenses makes a lot of sense because you don't want people to always know what you have.

Nice part about these is there is no scripting, only changes to the display. I think it would make pvp a lot more challenging.

[Demoonchild]

Just wanted to give my vote on FIX the Gunner CR Passive Shield(the thing is broken guys c'mon!!).
Is soooo, but SO unfair that even with 3 characters (with no removal skills) you just can't kill the f'n b$%tch, and in the next round, voila!!! she revives GRE which revives everyone with his fury and you lost a match just because the f'n shield is broken.....
I also support the idea of give CG some action, after immunity talismans, the poor general is just collecting dust in the bench, he can't stunt, he can't deal decent damage, he can't even survive 2 hits from a Nomad which is counter affinity, so please!!! dont tell me that he cannot hit hardest just because you dont want to, and leave a Nomad or a Harpy dealing 18k in one hit, 4k AOE would be ok since the green harpy who also silence and cnnot be stunned, taunted, frozzen or raped can hit aoe for 7k.
Also like any idea that make defensive teams act a little less retard that usual, as someone else wrote before, I will be happy just if the mofos stop attackin' invisible or healing when there's no reason...

...Finally, RELEASE BNW for God's SAKE!!!

[EnricoPalazzo]

My two cents for the nerf on MCR and the Newborns:
Why not limit the steal/removal of beneficial effects so that you cannot steal or remove if the opposing toon has immunity?
You would not need to nerf and still have a way to counter the threat.
This behaviour was listed as a bug (I think before the May update), but it actually played quite well.
Also, I agree with most in here: nerfing the NBOL immediately after the event to make it available for everyone is a bad joke.

[konstifik]

This is definitely a cool idea; reminds me a bit of the gambit system from Final Fantasy XII. However, there's a couple things to keep in mind with this approach:

• This approach loses all situational awareness that the current AI has. Yes, it's easy to make fun of the AI for doing something stupid, but it knows to do things like Cleanse if you have lots of debuffs, or heal if you're low HP, or not to use your Endure skill if you just used it last turn, etc.
• A completely predictive defense could arguably be easier to defeat, not harder. While our current measures that try to enforce some degree of not fighting the same person over and over will still have you see the same person after a few dozen battles in your attack list, if you know how someone's defense will act, you can that much more easily know how to counter it. Or if you want to make your defense less predictable, you need to constantly maintain and adjust your defense team's AI throughout the week, every week ad nauseum.
• While I absolutely love the idea of more players (hell, more of the general populous) getting their hands into what is basically entry-level AI scripting, this kind of thing is going to be baffling to a lot of people, and makes it so that if they can't grok it, they'll be at even more of a disadvantage when being stuck with the default "poor man's" AI.

While there's definitely aspects of this that I like (and we may try to implement something like this in the future), unfortunately, I'm really leery of the risks and potential bugs that could arise from that level of customization.

While it might be best to leave this out of PvP, something similar would be great for autoplay in PvE. Would be great to forbid my Assassin Golden Son from casting Endure instead of attacking and telling my Nomad that he shouldn't use Mirage if there is only one enemy left, and so on and so forth.

[konstifik]

To be a little more constructive about the MCR nerf, I think the worst part about is that she was just buffed just two tunings ago and with that tuning she turned out to be a character that was very worthwile to invest 8 skill shards in. As a player, you should be able to expect that a character that was buffed won't be nerfed in the two very next tunings and thus feel a little safer in your skill shard investment. Players will always be upset when characters they invested in gets nerfed, but it hurts even more when it's on a character we shouldn't reasonably expect a nerf for (what happened to those "suspect"-threads by the way?). It feels a bit like you tricked us into spending skill shards on a character to be honest.

Again, all this would be easier to stomach if there was some way to remove skill shards.

[DaveMurray]

So i finally found some time and read the update notes and all the replies.
I only got 3 things to say:
-Stop the nerfs and fix the bugs!
-Return all the skillshards from nerfed characters immediately or make it like a one time thing to remove all skillshards from toons and we can use it when we want. I am bored of sharding toons and see them getting nerfed 10-30 days l8r.
-Why can't you guys do smaller updates? I need to wait for one more month for this ridiculously OP toon(Wrath) to get nerfed? So you are basically telling me that i have to endure 1 more month of taunt/revive fest in pvp. Really businesslike..

[slauki]

Two things that would probably help the defense immensely in pvp, probably wouldn't be too hard to implement.

#1 - Probably best if this one were implemented when there are far fewer bugs plaguing the game. Quit showing the attacker my talisman setup. It makes it much easier for the attacker to identify which toon poses the greatest threat based on talismans. You'd still need to show the buffs that are applied, so some would be obvious, but for the ones that don't apply a buff you'd only find out after that toon attacked and it triggered.

#2 - This one might be easier and shouldn't keep people from being able to tell if something is a bug or not. Don't show what toons I have on defense. When the attacker goes to the battle screen, show them something like a relative strength for defense instead of what toons I have on defense. They'll find out what they have to fight once they go into battle. I know it was mentioned that NF is working on being able to show what team your defense faced, but that will always be after the battle is over. Offenses and defenses are not always the same. So, a revenge becomes a much greater risk and tailoring an offense to a particular defense can only be done after you've battled them at least once. Then switching up defenses makes a lot of sense because you don't want people to always know what you have.

Nice part about these is there is no scripting, only changes to the display. I think it would make pvp a lot more challenging.

not a fan of those ideas, because it would make strategy less important. you cannot go in in the dark and setup a teams vs unknown opponents. this would make the fight unpredictable and we would need even more time to finish the fights. i think we have to live with defenses between 5% and 25%.

My two cents for the nerf on MCR and the Newborns:
Why not limit the steal/removal of beneficial effects so that you cannot steal or remove if the opposing toon has immunity?
You would not need to nerf and still have a way to counter the threat.
This behaviour was listed as a bug (I think before the May update), but it actually played quite well.
Also, I agree with most in here: nerfing the NBOL immediately after the event to make it available for everyone is a bad joke.

i like the idea very much maybe this would be a great compromise. because i dislike the game being more rng dependent. if we want full RNG we can go to the casino and loose
if we want some strategy we need things like ensured buffremovel from ONE char (not aoe like wrath). so i think it would be cool if immunity could prevent you from stealing/removing for one round. blue CR didn't steal from chars with immunity some time ago and actually i think this was a good system...

While it might be best to leave this out of PvP, something similar would be great for autoplay in PvE. Would be great to forbid my Assassin Golden Son from casting Endure instead of attacking and telling my Nomad that he shouldn't use Mirage if there is only one enemy left, and so on and so forth.

agree something like this would be great for PVE. maybe just a set order of acting would be great for each stage or a deny skill checkbox would be nice so that red nobl doesn't use his useless skill for example

[Askora]

not a fan of those ideas, because it would make strategy less important. you cannot go in in the dark and setup a teams vs unknown opponents. this would make the fight unpredictable and we would need even more time to finish the fights. i think we have to live with defenses between 5% and 25%.

I have to disagree about it making strategy less important, I think it makes strategy extremely important. It requires a more balanced offense since you don't know what you'll be facing. We already face that with defense, and that's really the only place real strategy needs to be used. Battles probably would take longer, but then overall points would probably be lower, so it would balance out.

Your words, "you cannot go in the dark and set up a team vs. unknown opponents." Yet, that's exactly what we have to do with our defense. Why not give that same advantage to defense? Then the strategy becomes more intelligence vs. AI.

Could make it to where it changes at a certain rank. Below 250 in rank (as in ranks 1-250) and you lose the advantage of seeing the defense before you attack.