tldr; I hate slow games. I hate too random games. I hate balance that can be destroyed by paying. I hate how the attrition meter is being turned up to 11. I’m a whiner (also, a shameless plagiarizer)
Long version:
In a vacuum, most of these changes would not really be that bad, and may even be justified, however all of them just keep piling on top of each other, making each mistake snowball out on top of each other. With every single patch seeming like 1 step forward and at least 2 back, I’ve gone ahead and uninstalled it, to resist any temptation to start playing again, like I should have done after the writing was on the wall from the Rag nerf, or more specifically, the quickly redacted justification for it. Thinking a move that did 1k damage was worth 12 AP, really?
It wasn’t just the Rag nerf. Or the matchmaking changes resulting in nuclear strikes being called in as soon as you unshielded. It wasn’t the ridiculous 20 event locations that you clear 6 times a day, all of them at level 230 with a tanking trick that I could never get to work as well as everyone else. It wasn’t even the overtly pay to win change of the stockpile boost costing HP, even though that was the straw that broke the camels back.
In a vacuum, most of these changes might have been fine. Maybe they’re even better for the long term balance of the game. The thorverine nerfs were actually not nearly as bad as Rag’s bagmaning: thor’s new yellow was a ton of fun, even though it was fundamentally different role than the nuke it used to be, and even though wolvie’s strike tiles are probably the worst there is now, his red seems fairly powerful (though I still sold him in a heartblink at the raised price). Hell, even if I fundamentally disagree with every single point phantron et al is trying to make about how people shouldn’t be able to beat certain things that they could otherwise, due to the availability of the stockpile boost, I could see how restricting access to it could follow logically thereof.
Every single patch has seemed like 1 step forward and at least 2 steps back. And those steps backwards are largely not actually included in the patchnotes, forcing the forum to make guessing games about what else changed wrt matchmaking. I will applaud IceIX for making the effort, and more importantly, sticking around to try to corral this whole tiny kit and caboodle. He has the patience of a saint for doing it, doubly so since it’s not actually part of his job description.
However, I just cannot find it in myself to keep faith with the direction this game is going in. Shields were okay when they were just a means to protect your points and eat up some of the retaliations, allowing you to sleep or work or what have you, even if I don’t think they really fixed their stated goal of helping with the matchmaking. But these recent changes have not only made the matchmaking islands of not being able to actually find a decent game worse, but they’ve exponentially increased the problem of being constantly eaten by piranhas who take big gulps of your points, with your option of retaliating and giving them a 2nd go at your points, even worse. Thank goodness I didn’t need any of the covers from the latest tourneys, because you really do need a shield now in order to have a chance at securing even one of the 3* covers. Maybe even multiple shields depending on when you make your push.
The kicker, for me, was the way every single one of these changes comes back to the core of their attrition game. Powers that deal damage to yourself, or make you take more damage; an across the board redesign so that powers that take 6 AP is considered spammable, leading to longer games (with more hits from incidental damage and exponentially more chances for cascades you have no way of preventing); making the stockpile boosts that could ameliorate the former HP only, giving the whales a distinct advantage.
If their goal is, as phantron keeps trying to assert, a game where every fight is critical and you should have a fair chance of losing, then they need to redesign the format of their events. Because having to fight other people with full 141 teams for a mere 10 points, if even that, while trying to do it before you’re hit for 50, may be fun the first time, but it really isn’t the 20th. Neither is trying to grind out level 230 PvE missions where an enemy getting a single move off means instant death for at least one of your team members, 20 times. Like I said, the challenge may be fun the first time, but the attrition makes it less so, both in terms of eating 3 of your 5 health packs an hour for messing up once, but also in time. They talk about making it less grindy, but having to retry because of failures just makes it more so, especially with matches lasting 3-4 times as long.
Good luck and goodspeed to Nemek and misguided, and any other OG members who are still around at this point, the numbers sure seem to be dwindling
