[Feedback/Anniversary]: Friendship System Refresh 1 year anniversary, our players thoughts 1 year later

[Kira]

Today on the 6th of October it has been 1 year since the Friendship System Refresh happened, both improving aspects of the Friendship System and worsened aspects of the Friendship System.

Given that it is 1 year now since the Friendship System Refresh I thought I make a poll post to gather feedback for PerBlue and for us players to see and discuss.

The original Friendship System Overview post by Polaris: Friendship Refresh Overview.
The original Friendship System Refresh feedback post: 2020 Friendship System refresh post.
_

Now after 1 year, how much do you feel the Friendship Refresh has helped you? 10 best, 1 worst.

• 10
• 9
• 8
• 7
• 6
• 5
• 4
• 3
• 2
• 1

_

Refreshed Mission System: What do you all think about the new Friendship Mission system in terms of resource gain and convenience?

• Yes, the new Mission System helped.
• It helped, but I miss the story content.
• Unsure
• Indifferent
• The resource gain are lower now for me.
• Do not care, just want the mission story content back.

Green Friendship Power-Ups: Have the Green Friendship Power Ups(GFP-Us) been more of a help or frustration in you view?

• GFP-Us have been a great help for me!
• Mostly helpful, but they take too long to gain.
• Unsure
• Indifferent
• They don’t help enough per stack, may often need 20/30+ GFP-Us.
• Definitely frustrating, I often get stuck on due to Disables and GFP-Us don’t help!
• Don’t care, no point in wasting mental energy/stamina on 150+ leveled enemies in Friend Campaigns if they aren’t main team characters.

Friendship Campaign enemies: Out of these comments which one do you agree the most with in terms of priority?

• The enemy FC’s level should be reduced to the maximum of level 120-150.
• General FC enemies’s level should not be higher than level 150, weaker disk under level 80.
• Lower FC enemies level, or at least for newer servers. (Now: Level higher than server maximum).
• The enemy levels should stay as they are, however newer servers should have the FC levels be at their own server level.

_

Mission Story Content: Do you miss the Mission Story content and if so would you like to have have the Mission Story content come back?

• Yes!!! Miss them tons!
• Yes, it would be nice to have them back
• Unsure
• Indifferent
• Not interested, but happy for story lovers
• Don’t care personally

Friendship System or Guild Perks: If you had to pick, would you like to PerBlue to focus on polishing the Friendship System or focus on making new or update Guild Perks?

• Friendship System polish first!
• Friendship System polish first, but Guild Perks second
• Friendship System polish first, something else second
• Unsure
• Indifferent
• Guild Perks first!
• Guild Perks first, but Friendship System polish second
• Guild Perks first, something else second
• Something else should be priority first

I hope this poll can be a good post in terms of feedback and a discussion place for us players, so yeah thank you for voting if you did, or just if you came in and checked as well :-).

And yeah, it is strange to think about that it has already been a year since the Friendship System refresh, and while it is something I have gotten used to I personally miss the Friendship Mission Story content.
Will be interesting to see what the future hold for the Friendship system, and yeah guess we will have to wait and see what that might end up being.

[Jody_Caviness]

I’d have to say that, on the whole, the changes to the Friendship System have improved it; however, there are still some quibbles I have with it, some that are matters of opinion, some which can (and, I think, should) be addressed, and some that are just inherent in the system. Breaking it down a bit:

The Friendship Campaigns underwent very little change in the refresh; probably the biggest change was the addition of the Power-Ups. While those have been useful in many of the campaigns I’ve worked on since the refresh, there are some campaigns where you’ll run into a roadblock caused by an enemy (e.g., Coldsnapper, Minnie, Simba & Nala) disabling one or more of your heroes, and because the Power-Ups don’t affect Evasion or Tenacity, the only way to continue is to level up one or more heroes that you didn’t want to spend resources on. Other than that, I’m happy with the way the campaigns are now; being able to get the disk after just the first chapter, in particular, is a great benefit that doesn’t get talked about enough, IMHO.

I have slightly more mixed feelings about the changes to the Missions; while it is great that our rewards get auto-harvested, which helps me get more resources for the disks I’m working on than the old system, the limits on the number of missions we can run are pretty constraining, forcing me to work on fewer disks than I used to be able to. A year ago we were told that as the number of heroes increased, PerBlue would look into increasing the number of missions we could run; I hope that’s being worked on, but I have my doubts. The new system is also clearly inferior for those who want to focus on farming disk power or who want to get memories without spending hero chips.

Personally, my biggest complaint with the refresh is the loss of story content; even though most of the writing ranged between passable to mildly entertaining, it still added to the atmosphere of the game, helping it stand apart from the many generic autobattlers on the market. I understand that the friendship writing was sacrificed so they could spend more time on writing the main campaign story, and that writing has definitely improved, but it’s hard for me to get engaged with a story that I know is open-ended and designed to last as long as PerBlue needs it to last. And of course, there were times the writing in the friendships perfectly captured the characters and gave us some marvelous interactions, particularly in the brief conversations we used to get at certain friendship levels. When PerBlue said they were working on bringing the existing content back into the game, I was grateful, although I knew even then that it would be a low enough priority that we were unlikely to see it before the second half of 2022.

Changes I’d like to see:

1. Increase the number of friendship missions; at the least, keep the base number of missions at the same 1:8 ratio of missions to heroes that we had when the refresh took place.
2. Increase the speed of the various missions, by about 15% for disk power and memories, and about 30% for power-ups.
3. Make the skill levels of the enemies in friendship campaigns follow the same X/X/X-20/X-40 pattern that player heroes are limited to.
4. Allow power-ups to increase Tenacity and Evasion.
5. Add a mission that allows players to collect memories without spending hero chips, at the cost of a longer wait time (probably at least twice as long).
6. Add a guild perk that would speed up members’ missions by up to 4% in 1% increments.

[Mister_Toon]

The new friendship system helps alot no complaints. Everything in a friendship is all gift wrapped and given to you no strings attached.

Of course, there is the matter of the difficulty of the enemies. Alot of us are hitting roadblock after roadblock because of a certain enemy. Said enemies varies with the player.

During the Q&A, I have brought up this issue and do want to know what they said?

“Just level up your heroes and use power-ups if your having a hard time.”

We ask for them for help and they won’t even consider the issue. @Captain_C said that they used 101 power-ups in a friendship campaign and still nothing.

So, when you use over 100 power-ups and you still can’t win, something needs to be done about this.

[Kira]

Glad to hear the refresh to the Friendship System mostly helped you, but yeah understandable if you still have some quibbles with it as I would say the same as well.
A polish to the Friendship System after the Friendship System refresh is needed in order to make it feel like good system even if currently helpful it isn’t a good feeling system in my view.

In my view in regards to the Friendship Campaign enemies I think they should be lower leveled as in that new players having more of a chance to actually defeat those enemies.
I understand if level 150 and level 80 sounds low for us, but for a new player they aren’t really and while it probably won’t take too long for them to get around level 80, that first period is crucial for capturing the new player’s attention and enjoyment in terms of Disney Heroes. So my biggest reasoning for lowering the Friendship Campaign enemies’s levels are for the new players so that they can more easily get to take fully part in Disney Heroes. (GFP-Us take extremely long at low levels).

While we who are higher leveled could have the Friendship Campaign enemies with higher levels as in them being more scaled, but new Friendship Campaign enemies being over level 250 is way too high for most players to be feasible to achieve. As a F2P it would either take too much stamina or too long mental wait, the only reason for going that far would be if the new character are a character for my main team.
In my view there could be a “Story Mode” option and a “Challenge mode” option, as in the “Story Mode” option being easier, but you can’t earn more than 1-3(?) stars on the Disk while for the “Challange Mode” you have the typical high enemy level and can get the full Disk.
Would be a decent compromise in my view, should satisfy both F2Ps and P2Ws a fair amount.
.

In terms of the Friendship Mission situation I am not sure how much the changes pure resource wise have helped me, but yeah we are more limited in terms of how many Friendships we can have up at once. While I do know VIP can have more missions, still not sure why PerBlue make a limit for how many Friendship Missions we can have going at once other than trying to keep resources more in check. Given how the Friendship Disk costs in terms of Disk Power have increased so much I think PerBlue should either add more missions or increase the 100 Disk Power gain per Friendship Mission to 200 or 300 Disk Power at least.
I see, yeah if PerBlue promised us more Friendship Mission slots later as the character amount increased, then yes PerBlue should increase the amount of Friendship Mission slots available.
.

Yes, truly miss the Friendship Mission Stories a tons even if used to it now, it just isn’t the same.
I regard story content in general as one of Disney Heroes biggest strengths or at least was at the time before the Friendship System Refresh came. Truly a loss as likely for many the story content were a part of the main reason why they played Disney Heroes and why they enjoy Disney Heroes so much. So yeah now after Friendship Mission Story content is gone and the new Friendship Campaign seem to just have 1 story line per chapter rather than for each chapter, I have to say that Disney Heroes has become a more grey experience compared to how vibrant and enjoyable Disney Heroes was before.

While I can’t say for sure I think the reason for the decline in story content overall including the new Friendship Campaigns are due to the staff shortage PerBlue currently seem to have.
By that I mean PerBlue likely have to hire 1 or 2 more story writers before we see the same amount of story content like we did a year ago and especially 2 years ago.
I haven’t noticed PerBlue having a job posting for story related content as far as I can see, but I think it should definitely be added there even if it is just to get the old Friendship Mission stories back in the game and Friendship Campaign going back to being 1 story line per stage and not just 1 line per chapter.
.

As for changes you mentioned I all agree with them and think they are good :-).

[Kira]

I agree that the added convenience of the Friendship Refresh is nice as well as getting the Friendship disks after having cleared chapter 1, but yeah a story lover here so slightly harder for me to enjoy the added convenience fully.

In terms of PerBlue’s response in terms of the Friendship Campaign enemies’s level/difficulty, I do think it isn’t right to just ask players to level up their characters and/or use Friendship Power-Ups when such require tons of resources or a very long wait that isn’t fun to go through at all.

This is the actual message:

I get the logic of saying that we players just need to level up our characters or gather Friendship Power-Ups, but I do at the same time feel it is a bit of way to avoid responsibilities that they the company have to fix. As far as PerBlue currently have the staff power right now I don’t know, but I imagine lowering the Friendship Campaign enemies’s levels shouldn’t be too complex.

But yeah, like Jody_Caviness suggested Friendship Power-Ups adding Evasion and Tenacity I think is at the very least is a good start comprise if the Friendship Campaign enemies’s levels aren’t lowered.
Right now it seems like it isn’t power purely that’s the main issue in Friendship Campaigns, rather it is Crowd Control which I agree is something that should be handled in order to create a better and more enjoyable Friendship Campaign experience.

One definitely shouldn’t have to need 100 Friendship Power-Ups or more to clear a Friendship Campaign stage, so yeah something that should be handled and experience wise polished.

[Mister_Toon]

But, what can we do? They’re not going to listen to us and clearly their advice is not working on some of these friendships.

How are we going to convince them that the difficulty of the enemies and the power-up’s ineffectiveness to defeat said enemies is a problem?

[Master_Goofy]

@Mister_Toon

Of course, there is the matter of the difficulty of the enemies. Alot of us are hitting roadblock after roadblock because of a certain enemy. Said enemies varies with the player.

This is definitely an issue, though the certain enemies vary widely depending on who’s available in the friendship campaign. Frequent offenders (especially in older friend campaigns) include a lot of refreshed heros such as Shank, Mr. Incredible, and Simba/Nala. Once they received a refresh they became out of balance with the heros available to use in many cases.
Now the easy answer would be to level up said heros past the point where the opposing lines aren’t an issue, but of course at that point you might as well forget it. Stamina and gold costs to level up so many heros are getting out of hand.

The powerups do help, and on the bright side they’re free with a bit of patience. However in a lot of cases you frequently need quite a few to successfully complete the campaign.

Personally my biggest frustration with friend campaigns is the difficulty increase in each new hero’s campaigns. To get a disk on say Ariel or Gadget requires that you level them quite a lot, even if you happen to have one or two members already leveled. For the sheer cost to do that, it’s not worth it unless the hero is reasonably good. It’s not a problem for the big spenders and those who put a lot of effort in each day, but for a lot of people it’s a real grind that’s constantly getting worse.

[Kira]

As for what you can do Monster_Toon, my best tip would be to make the choice of if you want to to care or to not care in terms of dealing with the hassles in terms of the current Friendship System setup.

Overall, if the character isn’t a main character of mine as in trying to get the Disks, I don’t really care about new character’s Friend Campaigns given the high enemy levels and overall difficulty in terms of defeating them. (The newest Friendship Campaigns seem to have cut down on story as well as in just 1 line per chapter rather than per stage, so yeah less of a reason to go after non-main character Friendship Stories as well).

As a F2P I have limited resources and as such not able to rank up every character I want even if now helped by Badge Booster Crates by being able to more so keep up with the ranks for my main characters, it is unreasonable by PerBlue to tell us to just level up and invest in all characters we want to beat the Friend Campaign for the story content.
While the Friendship Power-Ups do help in terms of the Friendship Campaigns, in my view they more so promote frustration and agony due to how long and little effective they are against Crowd Control like Freeze and Charm. You actually need to have invested in the characters some to have a decent mission speed as well, which doesn’t exactly create an enjoyable dynamic.

So yeah, unless the characters are lower leveled unlocks like under level 100 if not 150 and under I don’t really care about their Friendship Campaigns even if I would like to play through the story, the enemy difficulty and both resource and time investment just isn’t something I am interested in making myself have frustrations in terms of.
It is kind of a self-defense, as in like protecting my own enjoyment in terms of Disney Heroes by making sure I don’t inflict more frustrations on to myself than what I can’t avoid.
.

With all this I am trying to say that the current Friendship System dynamic doesn’t work optimally for the player, the Friendship System isn’t as enjoyable as it optimally should be.
In my view the newest character’s Friendship Disks can be at the released server level for about 1 or 2 months, then afterwards have their levels reduced to like at least level 150, but I think level 120-130 is ideal given that’s when we get the Red skills. I would say that I do believe that 1 of the disks should be under level 100 and like between level 60-80 in order to have the Friendship disks be more accessible to new players.

The easiest fix would probably be to add Evasion and Tenacity to Friendship Power-Ups as a minimum.
The medium difficulty fix would be to change the enemy levels and the formula in terms of how long the Mission wait times are.
The harder fix would likely be to program the system in terms of the Friendship Disks being made more accessible after 2 months, but I don’t think such would be impossible even if taking at least some days if not a few weeks to get up.
.

What I think would be the most optimal now after the update with the new Trial events in 3.4.10 and stat increases in 3.5, I think PerBlue should either focus on polishing the Friendship System and/or the creation of new Guild Perks or at least update the existing perks to have more levels.
Along with the game economy rebalancing I believe the polishing of the Friendship System or Guild Perk adding or updating should be the main priories now for PerBlue optimally.

This would be my take on all of this.
(A bit long text maybe, but I do think all of this is important to discuss in regards to Disney Heroes’s health in terms of us players enjoyment in terms of Disney Heroes).

[Kira]

In regards to whether the polishing of the Friendship System or the Guild Perks gets new perks or updated older perks should come first, I am actually not sure about.

I think I am fine with either order in terms of them, like both of them are really valuable in terms of positive impact for the players :-).

I think Evasion and Tenacity could be added to the Friendship Power-Ups as a start even if not adding more improvements in the next 3 months, but yeah I think improving already implemented modes/systems is more important than adding new systems in the long run.
While adding new things are important as well of course, I do think after the adding of the Event Trials to look towards the older modes and polish them to create better game experiences.

Will be interesting to see how it goes and hopefully we will see some improvements before New Year/2022 :-).

[Baby_Yoda_S22]

At this point I don’t even really remember the old mission system I just feel like missions are brutally slow sometimes like even at 150% it takes like 12 hours to get 2 memory disk pieces.

To max a friendship disk you need 310 pieces. You get 12 or so from the campaign but the rest you need to get from missions or the shops. 310-12= 298 / 2 pieces per mission = 149 missions needed x 12 hours =1,788 hours or 74.5 days to finish one mission.

More than 2 months to finish one disk via missions is a bit ludicrous, especially when Perblue releases 3 or more heroes each month.

[Jody_Caviness]

@Baby_Yoda_S22

I just feel like missions are brutally slow sometimes like even at 150% it takes like 12 hours to get 2 memory disk pieces.

True, but IIRC in the old system, the fastest mission for memories gave two every 10 hours, and you couldn’t start running that one until you had put in several weeks leveling up the friendship to unlock that particular mission. Overall, for heroes at or near the S1-S5 server max, I suspect it takes a bit less time to five-star a disk in the new system. However, if you’re working on a disk for which one or both heroes are underleveled, it’s probably significantly slower than the old system.

[Baby_Yoda_S22]

On server 22, my max speed is 178% for two maxed out heroes and it still takes 10 hours and 58 minutes, which is unfortunate. I don’t know what percentages the older servers reach but in my experience they are far too slow on server 22.

I don’t get many deals for mission speed ups and they’re rarely in my mega mart, there should be more ways to get them because some heroes are useless without friendships.

[Mister_Toon]

There is also the matter of certain red skills that have proven to be very annoying as well as very hard such as Darkwing gaining a reflect buff after his invisibility is up, Hades going invincible when he’s at the last bit of his health and Sally and her infamous poison cloud.

I have gotten to the point where battle badges are present, but I can imagine there they make some character hard to beat.