Princess Fizzbang change & hotfix

Official News
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Her story is that she is good at exploding things, but now she sucks at it and just makes her allies stronger. I’ve cast close to 45 times and only had 2 explosions, where the AI casts and gets explosions more than 90% of the time.

The devs just love to f with us. Now I’m gonna F with them, goodbye game.

Funny thing is the last 2 games I played before this I rode with the game all the way to the end, when they shut down the game servers. Monster Match and Battle Nations. Now Gems of War is the first game I’ve abandoned after spending thousands to get to VIP13. And this is because the devs keep making the worst possible decisions.

Why does this get a nerf when for almost a year the fastest team in my arsenal is Mercy/Alchemist/Hellcat/Gards Avatar. This is still king and nothing has replaced it as an invasion team. Which says something with the fact there are an average of 2 new troops a week(averaging across new kingdoms) and none of these new troops are compelling. I have yet to see someone using the Guild Wars troops, which shows that even for special, rare troops they can’d design anything worthwhile.

I feel like the devs that started this game used up their mojo and they’re like the Rolling Stones trying to bang out music nowadays when their brains are no longer creative thanks to age and drugs.

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184

Just remember what is new for you concerning exploders is normal for there console player base.
Lost count how many extra turns I had or the computer had on the old adobe mobile version. Plenty of static boards also. Love me some exploder action.

Stop trying to turn the new unity version into the old easy version please. Just saying. :roll_eyes:
Adapt, adjust and conquer.

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Considering the controversy about this change (read: almost unanimous agreement it was terrible and poorly thought out), can we get some response from the devs that they’re at least looking into this?

Fizzbang needs to be 'splodey. Without explosions, her character makes no sense. And the buff on its own is a truly wasted skill because it usually targets pointless attributes on the wrong troops.

Fizzbang needs the extra turn. This is central to the goblin mechanic.

The buff I can grudgingly live without, but I’d prefer some form of it were kept.

The very best options for fixing Fizzbang, starting from her original premise, are these: 1) Limit the number of green gems she explodes, and/or 2) limit her buff in some reasonable way. I say and/or because while the “and” option would weaken her quite a bit from her original inception, it would at least keep her spirit intact and accomplish what the nerf set out to do in the first place: make her less overpowered. But any of the “or” options would also accomplish that. It would have been better to pick one of those options first, and then if she was still overpowered, also try the other.

I’m quite okay with her only exploding a fixed number green gems, unaffected by magic–but of course she has to do so every time. 5 might be too few. 6 would be nicer, but I could live with 5.

One option for slightly nerfing her buff, if it stays with the explosions, is to change “random ally” to “other random ally”, so she can’t buff her own magic unless you put two of her in play. But nerfing the amount of the buff is probably the very easiest way to go.

Now to address the minority of folks who complain she’s still overpowered if she can explode every time: These people are wrong, and ridiculously so. The RNG is really messing up the luck as to whether she explodes or not currently, so she’s more broken now than she was before. And besides which, most of the problems from defense teams going off over and over and over are because the Unity codebase apparently has a completely broken combo breaker (or a lack of one entirely, which is unacceptable). With the combo breaker repaired, defense teams shouldn’t be able to have the run of the board forever. So demanding she not be allowed to explode all the time is wrong, because you’re treating a single symptom rather than the disease. Fixing the engine will obviously fix the main problems inherent with looping defense teams, and will still allow those teams to be tough without being the game breakers they are now.

And the suggestion to change the AI back to predictable is, I think, a complete non-starter. Much as I liked that the computer was always predictable before, its unpredictability is much more satisfying to play against. Frankly we should be glad the AI doesn’t look to advanced strategies that would be relatively easy to implement. But the combo breaker still needs to be fixed, or put back if it was foolishly removed.

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I like most of what you wrote, but I want to call attention to your point about the combo breaker.

People have called for its removal, repeatedly, since it became widely known. The idea of a black-box algorithm tipping the scales for the player sounds nice, until you realize that a bugged version of the same algorithm would be awful. At the very least, without the combo breaker we know that our fate is up to the RNG. It might be streakier, but it should be completely fair.

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Given how much people are complaining about the current state of RNG, and the fact that it feels like many matches are decided by a coin toss, making it more random sounds like a terrible idea right now. I know everyone was on a “truly random” crusade a while back, but it’s clearly a terrible idea. Less random please.

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I really enjoyed playing Fizzbang for the few days… and it wasn’t because of the wins… there is something really satisfying about clearing most of the board over and over…

The sad thing is… the tried and tested defence/looping teams are killing the game for me, but again not because of win/lose scenarios as the attack team I play can often win against them. I AM getting really bored of being up against the same three or four team variants over and over again because they are the only really reliable defence teams. Most of the weekly events if they only involve killing specific classes of troops in PVP are unobtainable without 24/7 playing just because there are no defence teams with the appropriate types. A large group of friends started playing about 3 months ago but the activity of our group really tailed off after a couple of months for this reason.

Yet nothing is being done to make the tried and tested teams less effective, and any time some other viable defence strategy/troop pops up giving much needed variety, it gets nerfed.

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The (apparently broken) combo breaker has nothing to do with exploders “having the run of the board forever”. The combo breaker only has to do with “GEM-CREATION FROM SPELLS”. So it’s meant to curb things like Justice, not Fizzbang. And while I agree about the generral issues that need to be addressed, I disagree about Fizzbang being a “single symptom”. You don’t have the same issues with other exploders (TDS, Rag, etc.) that you do with Fizz, the combination of explode and extra turn IS a special case (although how to fix her is a bigger conversation, well covered already).

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You’re incorrect. I don’t know what effect the combo breaker had on gem creation when it worked, but its main purpose was to control what replacement gems fell after a match. The point was to avoid lucky skulls or 4-of-a-kind from falling for the defender to use, or in a defender cascade. And it did those things veey well.

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The combo breaker was added in the first place because people called for it. At the time I was skeptical, but before it was added, goblin defense teams were nearly unbeatable in PVP. It was a good addition and we still need it now.

The RNG is, let’s face it, broken. If anything, something is stacking it against attackers. Note how infrequently Fizzbang explodes for attackers now, while practically always doing so for the defender. Also even if the RNG weren’t obviously cheating, the new AI is less predictable (in a vacuum that’s a good thing). In the past, players could use predictability as a defense against the vagaries of the RNG. So I say leave the AI in its new state for the challenge, but bring back the combo breaker that kept game-breaking defenders in check.

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Well, I’d be interested in what you’re basing that belief on. Source? For me, I’m basing my comments on:

There are things in place to manage how the cascades work, normally referred to by the devs as the “luck” settings. But that is not the combo breaker, which has no effect on gem creation (cascades) and only on conversion, that’s a different thing.

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The “combo breaker” as originally defined was entirely to do with how things dropped into the board, always described as only affecting the AI, only negatively, to occasionally prevent them from getting a “lucky” sky drop as the player if the player had not already been as “lucky” (defined vaguely, but most likely based on the amount of match 4/5s taken). There are a bunch of posts about it around when 2.0 landed, since they adjusted it for PvP then. Then, they had to go and throw the term “combo breaker” to describe the behavior of gem spawners being manipulated after their fifth cast on the same turn, for both sides. Two different “combo breakers”. I always call the former “AI combo breaker”, and the later “gem spawner streak breaker” for clarity.

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Good distinction. Probably the confusion is that all the recent posts seem to refer to the AI one as “luck” now, and the convert one as the “combo breaker”, which is how I’m trying to refer to them.

Not trying to not-pick too much, but the terms used can be very important to avoid confusion, as evidenced by the recent “console sky drops” debates (which was clarified as a convert issue, once looked at more closely, especially by guys like you and @Stan). My goal is simply to make sure that when the devs look at our complaints, that they don’t misinterpret them as something different and then just ignore it.

I agree with the overall goal and concern, and I really want the AI/luck side fixed too!

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my 5cents. Make it:
extra turn
explode 1 random green gem boosted by allied goblins 1:1
Increase a skill on a random ally by [Magic + 1] (doubled if it’s a Goblin) (like before)

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196

Love this.

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or maybe 1 green gem and additional random green gems boosted by allied goblins :confused:
but then again you dont need to choose the gem for 4 match as you get extra turn anyways so no need for this…

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Maybe to be like Mommy: “…boosted by all goblins 1:1”

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that would be good actually.

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The 1 random + 1:1 for all goblins suggestion works for me. That fits with the 5 gems suggestion when not facing goblin teams.

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I still go back to the thought how many people are going to be using her next week.

I just want her FizzBang Bang part back -100% not a 50% not a gem specif count… limit the ability skill…that is what really pissed off most people is that ungodly numbers that can be reached.

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I think she’s actually more annoying on Defense now. She still can be a really good filler, but now that’s it’s more RNG-dependent that just makes her more frustrating. Especially when she chains together 3-4 turns.

Edit: And I’m still able to breeze through all dungeons with her. Just took down Eternal Stonehammer no problem.

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