Hero Up! Super Hero Squad Online Discussion (Fantastic 4th)!!

[Astral Tornado Mariner]

UPDATE - The Beast Is Back!

The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. I was just undergoing a lengthy secondary mutation which required a break from Super Hero Squad Online and now I have returned bright-eyed and bushy-tailed... wait, I've got a tail now? Oh my stars and garters. In addition to real life, I've also been busy Beta Testing Marvel Heroes. But I missed the casual fun of Super Hero Squad Online. So I figured I may as well return and get things updated for the upcoming New Year.

The biggest news from the game since my vacation was the fact that Gazillion retired 12 heroes from the store. 13 including the limited time availability of Werewolf By Night. While a couple of them have made limited reappearances in the store, there's no guarantee if and when we'll see all of them available again. So if you need/want them... best to jump when you see them. Because just like in the comics, you never know when a character will return from limbo!

We also saw the final group of Challenges released to allow us to unlock that final "Reward Hero", for me... Elektra. Some of these are very difficult to complete, unless you've bought every incarnation of Iron Man and Spider-Man available. So hopefully the community can help those of us, such as myself, who are behind on filling out their full rosters with every available character. I really don't want to spend all my gold right now on them. Heh. So advance thanks for that!

I'll update the rest of the information after I jump back in game and grab the info that's available. Thanks for your patience!

Welcome Back, Beast! We all thought you went MIA and were never seen again :P

[spider-prime]

I said more Q&A was coming and here it is!

Q. I think we were all a bit disappointed that we didn’t get anything new at the NYCC despite the original statement on the description of the panel. Especially with the timeframe starting to creep so close up on Halloween and the planned content for that. Can we get any hints as to when those Halloween themed changes are going to go into place? Plus how long are the Halloween themes planned to stick around?
A. While this question was partially addressed, we wanted to take a bit of time to explain what happened for NYCC. Our team found out about the Marvel panel description from your posts about it here on these forums. The team discussed if we could pull something together in time, but did not feel that we could make the commitment to do it right. Instead, we have worked on improving communication with our player base by adding Dev play events, Dev blogs, and having Angela take over as the new Community Coordinator. We felt that improving communication long term was better than focusing on NYCC specifically.

Q. Upper Deck had some fun at GenCon in Indiana back in August that I know about. We also so the release of real cards with the Hero’s Destiny set. What current plans are there for expanding the card game online? New cards? New quests?
A. Similar to the HQ, the team is currently discussing ways to make the Card Game more viable overall. While those users who play the Card Game play it A LOT, overall it is an under utilized area of the game. We will keep you updated as the team’s discussions progress as we know this is a feature near and dear to the hearts of many CBR Team members.

Q. With the influx of new players from EU now onto the servers is there a chance the friends list might be expanded beyond its current number limit?
A. You got it! SHIELD members can now have 200 friends! If the subscription is cancelled, players retain their increased friend list, but cannot add more.

Q. Is there a chance that a function could be added to deny all requests to avoid constant pop-ups?
A. Not easily. The code for requests is scattered around many systems. As such, blocking these popups is not something that is feasible to do.

Q. New characters outside of the teasers we know already? (Still a few from the animated show that haven’t made an appearance, amongst countless other fan requests) I know characters like Songbird, Hercules, and Quicksilver are among my own wishlist of characters that haven’t gotten any mention.
A. We encourage you to stay tuned to the Dev Blogs over the coming months as we give more hints and previews of upcoming content.

Q. New zones? (Atlantis? X-Mansion? Avengers Mansion)
A. The team is working on the plan for 2013 right now. In addition to talking about new zones, they have been discussing ways to refresh the current zones with new content.

I have a new question, will we ever be able to get the unique heroes from the card sets other than from buying the cards? Some of us have a really hard time getting them cause of Upper Deck's selling policies, that isn't also a contest that is locked to the US, not very many stores have them in Canada and if they do, low stock and high prices. Like, could we have them unlockable by playing the card game by buying the in game card packs and it unlocks them if we get their card like it would if we got the card in the packs? Or even by more higher up Challenges.

[Charles LePage]

I have a new question, will we ever be able to get the unique heroes from the card sets other than from buying the cards? Some of us have a really hard time getting them cause of Upper Deck's selling policies, that isn't also a contest that is locked to the US, not very many stores have them in Canada and if they do, low stock and high prices. Like, could we have them unlockable by playing the card game by buying the in game card packs and it unlocks them if we get their card like it would if we got the card in the packs? Or even by more higher up Challenges.

Or make them a super high amount of gold. Or make them a combination of gold and silver.

[Invisible Martian Archer]

I said more Q&A was coming and here it is!

Q. Upper Deck had some fun at GenCon in Indiana back in August that I know about. We also so the release of real cards with the Hero’s Destiny set. What current plans are there for expanding the card game online? New cards? New quests?
A. Similar to the HQ, the team is currently discussing ways to make the Card Game more viable overall. While those users who play the Card Game play it A LOT, overall it is an under utilized area of the game. We will keep you updated as the team’s discussions progress as we know this is a feature near and dear to the hearts of many CBR Team members.

Mysteria, thank you so much for this update. It is a glass of water in the desert! Here's a follow-up question I'd like to have answered: Any chance of having some die-hard card game players involved in the discussions your team is having? There would be nothing than getting feedback directly from your highest-end users like Fighting Raven, Shocking-Techno Girl, Juggler Emperor, or several others (including myself). I think we all have really great ideas not only for individual cards and card mechanics but also for the overall direction of the card game in the bigger picture of the entire game.

Ready for some ideas? How about these...

One of the reasons I think that the card game is underutilized is because you can only invite a single person to a card game at a time. If you could invite multiple people simultaneously then that would greatly increase the chances of finding a match while decreasing the amount of time it takes to find someone to play against.

Increasing the rewards for a player vs player card game so that they're comparable to that of a mission (perhaps scaled to the strength of your victory) would also incentivize players to play the card game more.

I would like to see individual rare cards for sale. Perhaps a different card could be offered each week like a featured sale hero. I would think 50 gold for one rare card would be a fair price. Players would be able to buy four copies of the card for 200 gold.

A ranking system giving each player a card rank based upon their performance in player vs player matches would elevate the card game's status in the overall game. Even making each squad's "Collection Score" publicly viewable would add a status factor to having a lot of cards.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg, trust me!

[suedehead]

Mysteria, thank you so much for this update. It is a glass of water in the desert! Here's a follow-up question I'd like to have answered: Any chance of having some die-hard card game players involved in the discussions your team is having? There would be nothing than getting feedback directly from your highest-end users like Fighting Raven, Shocking-Techno Girl, Juggler Emperor, or several others (including myself). I think we all have really great ideas not only for individual cards and card mechanics but also for the overall direction of the card game in the bigger picture of the entire game.

Ready for some ideas? How about these...

One of the reasons I think that the card game is underutilized is because you can only invite a single person to a card game at a time. If you could invite multiple people simultaneously then that would greatly increase the chances of finding a match while decreasing the amount of time it takes to find someone to play against.

Increasing the rewards for a player vs player card game so that they're comparable to that of a mission (perhaps scaled to the strength of your victory) would also incentivize players to play the card game more.

I would like to see individual rare cards for sale. Perhaps a different card could be offered each week like a featured sale hero. I would think 50 gold for one rare card would be a fair price. Players would be able to buy four copies of the card for 200 gold.

A ranking system giving each player a card rank based upon their performance in player vs player matches would elevate the card game's status in the overall game. Even making each squad's "Collection Score" publicly viewable would add a status factor to having a lot of cards.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg, trust me!

Ditto to all the above plus something fundamental to a trading card game: the ability to trade cards between players!

[spider-prime]

Or make them a super high amount of gold. Or make them a combination of gold and silver.

exactly, I don't mind them being hard to get still, I just want more chances to get them.

[Invisible Martian Archer]

exactly, I don't mind them being hard to get still, I just want more chances to get them.

Actually, long-time players with a ton of gold might like them being, say, 20,000 gold or so... it would give them something to do with all that extra gold laying around.

[Thennary Nak]

Actually, long-time players with a ton of gold might like them being, say, 20,000 gold or so... it would give them something to do with all that extra gold laying around.

I would rather see them be something like 500,000 silver or something. Silver is really what sits around, especially once you have all the silver sinks and are up to date with having all the heroes. Or as someone else mentioned have their price be a mix of gold and silver.

[badsaj]

Mysteria, thank you so much for this update. It is a glass of water in the desert! Here's a follow-up question I'd like to have answered: Any chance of having some die-hard card game players involved in the discussions your team is having? There would be nothing than getting feedback directly from your highest-end users like Fighting Raven, Shocking-Techno Girl, Juggler Emperor, or several others (including myself). I think we all have really great ideas not only for individual cards and card mechanics but also for the overall direction of the card game in the bigger picture of the entire game.

Ready for some ideas? How about these...

One of the reasons I think that the card game is underutilized is because you can only invite a single person to a card game at a time. If you could invite multiple people simultaneously then that would greatly increase the chances of finding a match while decreasing the amount of time it takes to find someone to play against.

Increasing the rewards for a player vs player card game so that they're comparable to that of a mission (perhaps scaled to the strength of your victory) would also incentivize players to play the card game more.

I would like to see individual rare cards for sale. Perhaps a different card could be offered each week like a featured sale hero. I would think 50 gold for one rare card would be a fair price. Players would be able to buy four copies of the card for 200 gold.

A ranking system giving each player a card rank based upon their performance in player vs player matches would elevate the card game's status in the overall game. Even making each squad's "Collection Score" publicly viewable would add a status factor to having a lot of cards.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg, trust me!

I do have an idea for the card game, I may be asking way to much, but here goes. I don't want to advertise another web site on here, but I've been playing a billiards game on a popular free-to-play game site and the set-up of that would be really cool for the card game in SHSO. When you go to "play with anyone" you would have the option of PvP-practice, PvP, or tournament. PvP-practice would be just like the current "play with anyone" winner gets a couple of tickets and a "rise of heroes" card, PvP would require you to put up 25 or 50 silver and the winner gets the silver and maybe 5 tickets and an "unleashed" card. Tournament would take the next 8 people who join in and put them in a bracket, winners advance, and the tournamant winner would get some silver, or maybe a few gold, and 10 or 15 tickets and an "unleashed" or "villains fury" rare card. The game would also keep track of your "level", everyone starts at level 1, each win would get you points, after a certain number of points you go up to level 2, etc. As an example a PvP-practice match would get you 5 points, a PvP match 25, tournament rounds 25, 50 and 100.
The only major flaw I see in this is the obvious gap between agents and non-agents. With gold so hard to come by, you are just not going to get many non-agents to spend gold on the card game, so more content would have to be available for silver, but if you could get non-agents hooked on the game maybe they'll be more likely to subscribe to get the really good stuff. Like I said, maybe I'm asking way too much, but I just think there is so much more that can be done to make the card game appealing to a greater number of players.

[suedehead]

I do have an idea for the card game, I may be asking way to much, but here goes. I don't want to advertise another web site on here, but I've been playing a billiards game on a popular free-to-play game site and the set-up of that would be really cool for the card game in SHSO. When you go to "play with anyone" you would have the option of PvP-practice, PvP, or tournament. PvP-practice would be just like the current "play with anyone" winner gets a couple of tickets and a "rise of heroes" card, PvP would require you to put up 25 or 50 silver and the winner gets the silver and maybe 5 tickets and an "unleashed" card. Tournament would take the next 8 people who join in and put them in a bracket, winners advance, and the tournamant winner would get some silver, or maybe a few gold, and 10 or 15 tickets and an "unleashed" or "villains fury" rare card. The game would also keep track of your "level", everyone starts at level 1, each win would get you points, after a certain number of points you go up to level 2, etc. As an example a PvP-practice match would get you 5 points, a PvP match 25, tournament rounds 25, 50 and 100.
The only major flaw I see in this is the obvious gap between agents and non-agents. With gold so hard to come by, you are just not going to get many non-agents to spend gold on the card game, so more content would have to be available for silver, but if you could get non-agents hooked on the game maybe they'll be more likely to subscribe to get the really good stuff. Like I said, maybe I'm asking way too much, but I just think there is so much more that can be done to make the card game appealing to a greater number of players.

I like it personally, but it seems like wagering which I'm not sure is something that fits the game's target demographic (or that I'd necessarily want my son involved with). The other problem is that players can create multiple accounts and will exploit that by PVP'ing themselves, Gazillion would have to start monitoring MAC addresses or something to block that.

[Mysteria]

These are great ideas guys! I will make sure to pass them on to the team for discussion.

[CaptainMarvell]

I would rather see them be something like 500,000 silver or something. Silver is really what sits around, especially once you have all the silver sinks and are up to date with having all the heroes. Or as someone else mentioned have their price be a mix of gold and silver.

I agree except, I'd say make them like 200,000 silver. Give people a reason to want to get silver. Its not like these characters are dominating and unique. They're just repaints of characters that are easily attainable. I can tell you, I played this game like it was my second job for a month to get Silver Surfer when I first started out and he was just 25,000 silver.

[Wailing Crusader Gargoyle]

The only major flaw I see in this is the obvious gap between agents and non-agents...

I am a non-agent and have managed to get the upper hand against agents a few times. Strategy and luck are such a big part of the card game. It is a tricky balance for Gazillion to make enough nice content available for silver that non-agents can win (keeping them playing), while making those memberships enticing.

I teach music lessons as a part-time job and can only imagine how difficult it would be to have some free students, and to give them some content or shorter lessons or something, while subtly enticing them to become paying students. Kudos to Gazillion for making as much content FTP as they do... it is really quite generous when you think about it.

[And in case anyone was wondering why I am not ponying up the cash to be an agent... there you have it. I'm a musician. With kids. ]

[Hobbkito]

These are great ideas guys! I will make sure to pass them on to the team for discussion.

I said before, there are lots of good ideas here.

I really do think this is a great idea for a membership benefit, however have zero idea of the technical ramifications as to it being possible or not. But a way to access already created alternate zones, like a Negative Zone portal in the Baxter Zone. A doorway to the Loki Infected zones, Halloween/Autumn Zones, Winter/Holiday Zones, and "Regular" Zones etc.

I just think it would be an interesting option for members, if its technically possible... just having the extra zones to visit and farm tickets in would be cool... and again if technically possible would not be a huge increase in extra work for your developers since they are zones that have been created already. Even if it was access to just ONE extra zone a day that would rotate between zones, depending on the limitations, I know there must be some if I farm all zones for bots then try to play cards or go to the shop I crash a lot more often so I am sure there are some difficulties.

[suedehead]

Seen as we seem to be on a bit of "wish list" theme... I'd like to see some benefit/reward for achieving all adamantium medals with a hero. I pretty much max each new hero in a few days and find my interest in playing them drops off hugely afterwards, sure there are all the medals to achieve but for what? Getting all adamantium is a much longer process than maxing a hero's levels and if it unlocked a 4th emote or anything, it would prolong the life of the product (hero) immensely, possibly alleviating the constant screams for frequent new hero releases.