A Look at Red Skills

With update 1.12.2, Server 1 is getting Red Skills for some heroes. Link here if you want the details.

Pros:

  • Potential added usefulness for old heroes (practically void of meaning)
  • CW is slightly less meaningless now

Cons:

  • CW is already difficult, playing through with 2 wards is too much for anyone without cutting-edge meta (Whales)
  • Most older heroes are now at a further disadvantage
  • Something else to drain gold when everyone other than whales doesn’t have enough
  • Absolutely Insane Costs

This is entirely stupid, but let’s go over the pros first.

Potential added usefulness for old heroes

Finally, Zurg, Flynn, and Skellington are getting a much-needed buff that improves their core strengths.
That’s cool and all, but you have to actually use these outdated heroes to unlock their skill. Good luck trying to get anywhere with fragile ol’ Zurg. Is PB blind to the massive power gap, or what?

CW is slightly less meaningless now

CW now has a reason to exist besides being a source of chips and cash, which is ok.

And then the cons!

CW is difficult enough without wards

The fact that players are going to have to pass through Super Hard CW’s to gain access to an even harder difficulty just so they can stay competitive is ridiculous. F2P’s are barely able to play normal CW.

Most older heroes are at a further disadvantage

While the new skills offer possible redemption to a few old heroes, the ones that didn’t get any (Ralph, Felix, etc) are going to experience a further increase to the already MASSIVE power gap. I understand that they’ll get one eventually, but the skills shouldn’t have been distributed 50% old heroes and 50% new heroes that don’t need it in any way.

Another Gold Drain

There has already been a debacle over the raise in skill prices because players “were earning too much gold”. When that statement was debunked by @Jack_Bauer in the Invasion Rewards scandel, there wasn’t any response whatsoever. Now players will be stretched even thinner for gold- except the ones that spend hundreds of dollars.

Insane Pricing

200 chips to unlock the skill. PerBlue, what do you thing you’re doing? Have you lost your mind? I’ll be damned if you so much as admit your mistake, this is a shameful grab for money.


It would’ve saved you a lot of work to just flip us the bird, PerBlue. Here’s hoping that, for the first time ever, you make a change based on player feedback (without later reverting it, like the Invasion Rewards). Whatever the fabled “roadmap” you guys are using is, it’s leading into a ditch.

22 Likes

Ah wait, maybe I was wrong and the confusing way to unlock the skills/cw is not incorrect.

It states you need a red skill to play epic cw, so I thought that had to be wrong.

But you’re right… I imagine the chips will be available in deals, too.

Will this be the very first genuinely pay-to-play game mode/feature?!

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Also, they’ve provided a genius solution to this - only red heroes can be used there! Rather than making it too difficult for the F2P, let’s make it literally impossible to even attempt

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And who wants to bet money that they’ll be a part of contest rewards as PerBlue’s way of trying to forcefully extract our resources? :slight_smile:

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The idea of new skills is cool, but this seems too difficult. Especially given how hard it is to bring characters up to red, and how hard CW is even on normal difficulty. Should’ve gone for orange skills first. All they need to do now is add another star and this game is done for.

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I’m wondering (hoping) if they just have poor wording for what it takes to start an Epic City Watch and earn the Red Skill Chips.

Then, to start an Epic Mode City Watch, you’ll need to a team of heroes of red rank or higher, at least one of which has a Red Skill. Only red heroes can be used in Epic City Watch!

Does this mean

(A) One of your heroes of red rank or higher needs to already have their red skill unlocked before you can start an Epic City Watch?

Or does it just mean

(B) One of your red heroes needs to have a red skill that can be unlocked?

I can imagine that players with only a few heroes at the red rank may not have any of those heroes be one of the few that have a red skill to unlock. This would another way to “encourage” players to spend resources on the heroes that have red skills available.

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I’m also curious about the wording, and hopefully @Polaris can clear it up. You have to have a hero with a red skill (unlocked?) in order to do the new CW, but you need to beat the new CW to get what you need to unlock the red skill? :thinking:

I also agree that CW has gotten too difficult to do on super hard mode on a regular basis, and I’ve spent money on the game. An even harder mode with more limited heroes? Ouch. :pensive:

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Yes, I wonder if knows how many heroes can a F2P upgrade to max. Skills are now getting more expensive, and now this? :expressionless:

Yes, a huge gap of power between P2Ps and F2Ps. This may result to a decline of player base again.

OP heroes will get a Red skill eventually if it becomes successful. I hate to say this but, I wish the Red skills would flop.


I agree with the OP. More F2Ps will quit with this kind of update. :zipper_mouth_face:

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The F2P playerbase is going to entirely dissolve with this update is my prediction. @Polaris please don’t do this.

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Personally, I…

I think the idea is not a good one.

so unless I missed something, you need tp play epic coty watch to get the red skill chips you need, but in order to play that, you need a hero with a red skill unlocked?

Secondly, adding this feature in only for five of the fifty plus heroes is imo, a bad idea.

I get that it is a massive undertaking, but this gives certain heroes an unfair advantage against others, thankfully, the red skills may not be OP seeing as how they are not on OP heroes -yet.

I guess, maybe this will work out well, but I fell like they are putting so much on their plates, what with bug fixes, additional server merges, hero refreshes, new heroes, and who knows what else, I just am not sure they will be able to juggle all this, and if they drop it, (I hope they don’t) alot of people will not be happy…

Fingers crossed, this will work out for the better of DHBM, but I wonder if they will pull it all off.

course I love surpruses so if you can keep all this going, I will be happy! :grin:

3 Likes

This is an update that I’m genuinely looking forward to, though I do have some reservations alongside my genuine appreciation for this update. I think there are some good qualities to this update, some parts that would benefit from improvements, and to end all this, I have a few ideas for potential Red Skills that could add quite a bit of fun to the game and cause a bit of chaos in team making for a bit (which is a good thing as it spices up the game).

Now, onto The Good.

THE GOOD

  1. RED SKILLS: Having Red skills in general is a good thing. A lot of the older characters have no way to keep up with the newer characters being released. Just for instance from today, my older gen team of Judy, Nick, Robin Hood, Bogo and Quorra, all level Red0 and 134 with maxed skills, memorys and stars and is at a team power level of 409,189, was wrecked by a team of Ducky, Merlin, Baymax, Alladin and Barbossa of power level 286k, all below 5 stars.

So including new Red Skills can balance out that overwhelming power of newer characters, bringing more balance to the game, depending on what the Red Skills will be.

  1. UNLOCKING RED SKILLS: I think that this can be a plus to having Red Skills, as it allows a player to work towards unlocking something that can be game changing and extremely helpful. Something like Zurg’s skill which beefs up his Ion Blaster, can help players in other modes as well, so it can make it a priority to play those new modes to unlock them. New challenges can be fun, if properly balanced.

Now to the issues…

ISSUES

  1. CITY WATCH EPIC MODE: I was at first excited for this, however, my excitement dimmed when I realized one thing…

…I still have yet to be able to beat City Watch on Super Hard mode.

For me, a player that will buy a deal once or twice a month when he can afford to and has been playing since the Beta of the game, to have this much of an issue with beating one mode, then to need to beat the even harder mode to unlock the new skills, is something that will be out of my reach. So this update will feel like an aspect to the game I can’t unlock or play. And that, takes a bit of fun out of the update to say the least.

  1. EPIC KEYS: I know it says that we can get 15 epic keys per day for beating Super Hard mode, but for most of us who struggle to get and completel the second level of Super Hard mode, that’s only three to maybe six keys a day. That means once every two to four days most of us would be able to make one attempt at earning these keys. Again, this puts most players at a huge disadvantage and further hurts their morale with this new mode.

Now for what can be improved.

IMPROVEMENTS

  1. CITY WATCH: If we will need keys from Super Hard mode to unlock Epic Mode, and then have to beat Epic mode to get red skill chips, then City Watch needs to be overhauled and its difficulty lowered. The more new heroes that come out, the harder and harder City Watch becomes to beat, as older teams (which are our only good teams as we’ve had the time to level them up), get wrecked by the newer characters by stage 2 or 3.

The difficulty of City Watch needs to be reduced for this new game mode to work.

If the difficulty is lowered, then more people would play that mode, meaning more people would try to get heroes up to Red. More people attempting that, means they will more than likely buy more packs to get there as they view a chance at compeating now. That means more money for PerBlue, more happy customers, and more people playing the game. A win win for all involved.

  1. OLD HEROES GET PRIORITY: I understand the fact that releases new heroes with the red skill already embedded in the coding is easier than releasing them now and updating later. HOWEVER, this does make the vast difference in gameplay for all of us who have been playing since the beginning.

We can’t compete with whales, and whales are what make City Watch so difficult.

Making older Heroes, such as those from Zootopia, Wreck-it Ralph, The Incredibles, and, Pirates, etc, would give the ability to attempt at getting Red Skills possible for us older players who have been around since the beginning. It gives those heroes purpose again, and mixes/refreshes up ALL game modes because of it.

So my suggestions…

SUGGESTIONS

Heroes to update and potential Red Skills, and I’ll just go down the list of Heroes from my most powerful to least powerful for Zootopia, Wreck-it Ralph and Incredibles. I’ll list the character, their skill name to be buffed by the new Red Skill, and what the new Red Skill should do, alongside the reason behind it.

  • JUDY HOPPS: Bunny Hop - Changes damage from “Normal” to “True”. Judy only targets front line enemies, which is bad, as the only enemies immune to normal damage are…front line enemies. So Judy’s “Bunny Hop” skill is useless in any mode which includes Cricket bat enemies. Giving her a Red Skill boost from “Normal” damage to “True”, gives her that extra oomph, especially in Invasion mode, where bosses ALWAYS have cricket bat enemies in front of them, rendering Judy completely useless in that mode.

  • NICK WILDE: Shuriken Pops - Adds 1-2 more Shuriken pops and ups damage. Nick’s lemmings are amazing, and so are his shuriken pops. I was debating between adding more lemmings or more SP, and the SP won out. Either would be a HUGE asset to Nick Wilde in dealing damage.

  • CHIEF BOGO: Blinding Jusice - Increases Blind time to 10 seconds from 5. This allows Bogo to keep his “Tankiness”, without turning him into a damage character. Most new characters have stuns, or other disables around 10 seconds, so this would put Bogo on par with newer characters for this skill.

  • YAX: Flower Power - Adds a stun for 7 seconds. Yax as a support character can do two things; heal and get knocked out. His Chill Vibes disk with Finnick helps, but having a Stun would benefit him and his team immensely. Again, it would put him a bit behind newer characters, but would make him useful again.

  • FINNICK: Jumbo Slam - Adds a stun for 7 seconds. If the description says, “sending out a shockwave”, then a stun would be appropriate here, and with that slow from his Sticky Pop skill on there for 14 seconds, would add a layering effect which would be a huge game changer for teams. A good skill to change to mix things up.

  • SERGEANT CALHOUN: All moves - Increases Damage. Looking at Calhoun’s specials, she does lackluster damage. Her Violet Disk is her only good factor, so giving her more damage gives her a purpose for those who have leveled her up.

  • MR INCREDIBLE: Pound Quake - Dizzy effect. A bit like a stun/charm, but will make the enemy attack any character randomly while dizzy. This could create a truly random effect that could make taking on a team with Mr Inc quite a crazy fun experience.

  • FELIX: Honey Glow - Increases blind from 4 seconds to 8. Again, this ramps him up comprable to heroes released a few months ago and spices him up.

  • RALPH: Wreck It - Increases damage of Wreck it by x amount. Ralph is like Calhoun in which he doesn’t do much of anything in the game. He gets knocked out usually before his healing even takes effect, which makes him generally useless in any mode. Making him do more damage before he goes out would improve him quite a lot.

I’d do more heroes, but this has taken over a half hour to write, so I will call it quits here. But these are a few suggestions that could improve this feature before its released, increase server player happiness, iron out bugs before they occur, and get people spending more who otherwise wouldn’t, or continue spending a little.

Again, these are just a few ideas I came up with, so hopefully they help out @Polaris . This update looks good, and with a few modifications, it can be made great, I believe. :slight_smile:

3 Likes

The red skills seem interesting, but like others I’m a bit confused. You need to do epic CW to get red skills but you need red skills to do epic CW?
But I’ll pass more judgement next week.

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The best thing that Perblue should do is give those weak heroes a refresh and nerf those with insane stats

It’s also a minus because the power gap between F2P and P2P will be much greater.

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The problem with CW isn’t that it’s inherently too difficult - CW has never been ‘difficult’ as such.

The problem, like many others, stems from the ever increasing overpowered-ness of new heroes, and CW pulling from arena.

5-6 Jafar teams in a run and you’re done for…

A simple improvement would be to have CW pull from Coli lines instead, which is something we’ve been asking for in all PB games for over 3 years… :roll_eyes:

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City Watch used to be fun to play and I used to be able to clear hard mode easily everytime. But since the increased level cap increases and the new overpowered heroes I’m struggling daily to finish even on normal mode. Most of the time when I reach the final wave I’m up against a fully maxed out lv 135 Red0 team of the newest characters, while my strongest are O7 lv 130 characters. I never even bothered with the super hard difficulty, so red skills might actually become a pipe dream for me.

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I’ve just run into one of those Jafar teams. The second fight in Super Hard mode on Level 3 has a team of…
Bo Peep: Lvl 135, 6 starred, Red0
Ducky/Bunny: Lvl 135, 6 starred, Red0
Timon/Pumbaa: Lvl 135, 6 starred, Red0
Joy: Lvl 135, 6 starred, Red0
Jafar: Lvl 135, 6 starred, Red0

I couldn’t even damage that team, let alone have a chance at winning. Now I get to restart Super Hard again as I got wiped cleanly…

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It’s why PerBlue really needs to find that balance and make Red Skills not something that only whales can get. Right now, City Watch has become a mode for Whales to enjoy, while dolphins and F2P folks stare idly on and wish they could take part in it.

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The only way I see it make sense is if the hero has a Red skill regardless of it being locked/unlocked since the point of epic cw is to get the skill chips needed for unlocking a red skill.

Polaris has clarified on another thread that you need a hero that has a red skill, whether or not it’s unlocked is irrelevant.

However!

There is this. The only actual pro is now nullified. I was convinced the only way to go was up, but PerBlue proves me wrong. :slightly_frowning_face:

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@Polaris
When you say “tied to a specific hero” how does that work?
When we do a Epic CW, all the chips for that CW is for a certain hero and when we refresh it tomorrow for another Epic CW the chips will be for a new hero?

Or can someone from S1 answer this?

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