Other Initial Thoughts

[Thalan]

So, I figured I'd chime in with my feedback after the first weekend of playing.

The grind: Oh boy, the grind. So, understanding there was this massive nerf to experience from story mode and all, I feel like this grind is punishing for players that simply don't luck out with gold draws by putting them further behind with evolving. I would think the evolution system is in place as a bad luck protection or to ensure that if you like a certain skin, you can play it at the highest level, but with the insane grinding it takes to work a character all the way into gold it seems really far fetched. Which brings me to my second point.

Evolution: I may be wrong here, but what is the point of lowering the FS of characters that do not start out as golds as compared to those that do? I feel like not normalizing the stats at the highest levels makes the game heavily favor rng pulls over... well, playing the game. I understand there's a profit to consider, but this is a little steep. The whales will come, I assure you.

Gold bracket: This one should be self explanatory. People who were a part of the "soft launch" are able to start with months worth of unrestrained exp from pre-nerf and characters that can stomp most players out of oblivion. People will catch up, sure, but in the downtime this keeps most players at the bottom of the barrel and out when it comes to rewards. Is there not a way to increase or decrease percentages earned depending on a players' level to award skilled play?

AI: I hate Cerebella. That is all.

TL;DR: The little people need love, IMO. Thoughts?

 

[ThanatosDK]

Soft Launch started in mid April right?

I agree that it does suck to start on the official launch day only to find out the top ranking players have had months of experience, pulls and leveling that will almost guarantee them to rank each week making it easier for them to rank in future weeklies.

I've seen it happen in so many Mobage before and I'm really hoping that insane snowballing wouldn't happen here but it's to be expected of free to play games with a ranking system.

 

[Mai Waifu]

Well, the storyline exp nerf only applies to re-doing an already completed mission. Other than that, prize fight mode is a much more efficient method of grinding exp. Although, newer players are struggling with the new AI, which is hindering their ability to grind exp. I've decided to try to do my part by taking notes on the mannerisms of the AI so players could understand them better. Once you get used to the AI, it's smooth sailing from there. Contrary to what you'd expect, the difficulty of fights in prize fight mode, if you were to graph it somehow, would be like an arch that eventually plateaus. It increases then decreases then finally plateaus.This is because once you reach a streak where your multiplier is 4x, the AI generated opponents stop using blockbusters, which is most likely the cause of many broken streaks.

As for evolution, I'm not too sure why evolved gold fighters generally have lower fighter score than natural golds. However, if I had to guess, I'd say it might be for balance purposes. Some of the bronze fighters have abilities that are extraordinarily powerful by the game's standards (some even more powerful than their naturally gold counterparts) like Beatbox Big Band and Heavy Rain Parasoul, which have abilities that allow you fill up your blockbusters at a stupidly fast rate. Abilities that charge blockbusters, in my opinion, are some of the most powerful in the game. Yeah, unflinching is a pain in the butt, but you can still play around it by turtling until it wears off. However, you cannot play around things like 8-cost blockbusters, at best all you can do is hopefully switch out into a character your comfortable with losing.

I'll admit that I am a soft launch player, and I've made top 10 for every prize fight released so far, so I probably apply to your "Gold Bracket." Despite this, I am probably a bit behind a lot of other soft launch players since I couldn't play the game for a month for personal reasons. While everyone's top characters have between 6k-10k fight score, mine have between 3k-5k fight score and once I have understood how the AI works, I have never had a problem with being disadvantaged. Mostly because, from what I've noticed, your fighter's offensive capabilities scale much faster than their defensive capabilities. To put things into perspective, a single combo from my 4k Peacock has the ability to annihilate any Cerebella that has more than double her fighter score, regardless of if I have an element bonus or otherwise. With that being said, the game, in my opinion, does favour skill and know-how rather than the fighter you use. On a final note, getting top 10 in prize fights is more of a time-sink issue than a "equip 3 of your strongest fighters and go to town" issue because chances are, the people who are getting top 10 use incredibly unbalanced teams by using 1 of their strongest fighters and two extremely weak fighters and spend hours just grinding levels for them, despite being extremely disadvantaged, albeit willingly.

 

[Cellsai]

Gold bracket: This one should be self explanatory. People who were a part of the "soft launch" are able to start with months worth of unrestrained exp from pre-nerf and characters that can stomp most players out of oblivion. People will catch up, sure, but in the downtime this keeps most players at the bottom of the barrel and out when it comes to rewards. Is there not a way to increase or decrease percentages earned depending on a players' level to award skilled play?

I was part of the soft launch and like you say I'm leagues ahead of new players. I would love if there were different versions of the Prize Fights for different ranks. People who are levels 1-30 in one ranking bracket and everyone above that in a separate bracket.
Dunno how tricky that would be to implement though.

 

[ThanatosDK]

Separate bracket might work and would probably be the most likely solution. It's doubtful exp rates would ever return to "soft launch" rates.

 

[Osterus]

Soft launch DID have a HUGE advantage based on 1 thing and 1 thing only:

It's called "Quick Fight". 2 Blue energy fights for no gold but lots of EXP.

i.e. EXP based on your fighters score. So I can easily get 3k-4k exp per fight if I had a decent gold team x 5 per full energy bar.

This is how a lot of us trained our golds. This system REALLY needs to be placed back in the game because the EXP grind right now is shocking, abysmal and frankly a huge money grab that may not pay off due to the intensity of it.

Right now, "Prize Event" serves a similar purpose to Quick Fight. You can still get a TONNE of exp if you have the right team. But obviously, newer players will struggle due to no team available for Gold Prize Event.

 

[Cellsai]

Soft launch DID have a HUGE advantage based on 1 thing and 1 thing only:

It's called "Quick Fight".

(And repeatable Story Mode fights for full XP, easier AI, more plentiful Theonite rewards...)

 

[ThanatosDK]

Darn, "official release" players really missed out this time...

 

[Cellsai]

I make it sound bad, but honestly, this problem will even itself out. Once players get over that initial hump and learn how to game the AI, the leveling process smooths out tremendously. Once you start to get reliable 20-30 streaks in Prize Fights your characters will explode in levels at all ranks.
The main thing stopping me from going even higher than the ludicrous ranks I have in Prize Fights at the moment is time - I have more than enough Gold characters to keep playing Prize Fights over and over, but not enough time, or I get bored. Eventually others will catch up.

In a month or two the issues with Soft launch folks having an advantage will totally disappear.

 

[Thalan]

Personally, I don't mind waiting it out as it is just part of the game. The biggest issue I keep seeing then becomes the players who aren't. Casual players staring down a massive disadvantage, AI that dumpsters their fighting score (my lower fs fighters can combo the AI into oblivion and still not kill them in all 3 mins of wailing on them), and a mountain worth of exp grinding will most likely just quit. This will obviously take away from the game, in my opinion. Considering more players = more money, I think some shoring up is due. At least for non-gold units.

 

[fatfursatan]

I will say that as someone who only came in after launch? I find the EXP gain rate great for a mobile game.

It DOES bother me that bronze characters have lower FS when evolved than natural golds, butuh... how much is it? Anyone have a maxed out bronze-to-gold character to compare? How drastic is it?

While SOME characters have wild abilities, MOST of them have pretty crap ones, far as I can tell. Seems like it should be on a case-by-case basis?

 

[Alex V]

Oh man that cerebella AI. She is rage inducing.