Please provide an "out" for endless loops in Dark Side TB
June 22, 2018 4:48PM
edited June 2018
Players have reported bugs where in the Dark Side TB, you can get stuck in an endless loop with teams such as Nightsisters, where a stealthed Acolyte plus a zombie can never die, and never kill the Rebel enemies.
In these situations, players are forced to force-close the app, and lose all progress from the first 3 waves. These "endless loops" are apparently working as intended, but have this unfortunate side-effect.
Devs - can you come up with a creative solution to this problem? Something like a hidden timer, or a skill counter, such that if 30+ skills have fired with no deaths, the game will pause and prompt you whether you would like to forfeit, and get credit for the combat to that point?
In these situations, players are forced to force-close the app, and lose all progress from the first 3 waves. These "endless loops" are apparently working as intended, but have this unfortunate side-effect.
Devs - can you come up with a creative solution to this problem? Something like a hidden timer, or a skill counter, such that if 30+ skills have fired with no deaths, the game will pause and prompt you whether you would like to forfeit, and get credit for the combat to that point?
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But yes the ability to forfeit, which would give you all points up to that point would be nice.
The other option is to pick a team that wont land you there.
I believe if you close the app you still get points for the previous waves.
The back button on an android device also opens the menu.
Learn something new every day
How is it a poor team choice?! That's how they are SUPPOSED to work! The simple point is, you should get credit for the waves you've completed one way or another. The issue is that the Rebels will just keep using their random abilities, this has caused my members problems too. It's as simple as that. If you stall out in a wave, then you should be able to retreat with credit for the waves you did beat.
It's a poor team choice because the ability is stated for both side and can be a foreseeable interaction by the player.
Much like people taking the wrong team in against a zeta kylo and saying they cant kill him, because they have a bunch of low damage healing toons.
Loops like this can be avoided.
The player who reported this on the bug forum said he never got a turn, because the Zombie would die, and then die again before getting to take a turn, and each time it resets its turn meter. If you never get a turn, you cannot access the menu to forfeit a match.
And Kyno, yes, good players should be able to avoid this sort of loop by anticipating this, but in my opinion good game design will help all players, not just the good ones. Offering players an "out" besides force-closing the app would fall in this category, imo.
That’s pretty harsh, calling it poor team choice.
NS are a great team to use in DS TB, and I would consider using them a great choice.
I’ll remember to use that phrase next time it’s appropriate. For example, “That was a poor choice on CG’s part to allow ST Han an infinite TM loop in the initial release of HSR” or “That was a poor choice on CG’s part to allow a Gear Tier 6 character and 2 members to solo a phase on Heroic tier.”
I used to have similar loops with a lone Biggs in LS TB though I think they would eventually resolve one way or another after 20 minutes on auto.
NS 100%, but going into a situation where its actually getting hard and toons may die means you are opening this door up and if you want to use a paper zombie vs a geared one, that is a choice that can land you in the loop we are seeing here.
I agree they should have a better method, but we are also doing something that "they didnt intend" which is what gets us into this situation. A properly gear zombie is in a better position to deal with this and avoid the loop.
Perhaps the initial design didn't anticipate the paper zombies, but it's a very common setup these days. Since we are "breaking" it, I believe they should provide some sort of alternate out.
This Feedback forum is the appropriate place for suggestions (according to the Bug Forums), so I was posting my idea, in an attempt to reduce player frustrations. This type of endless loop gets reported as a bug pretty much every time Dark Side TB rolls around.
Just trying to follow the appropriate channels!
My daughter just hit this: she doesn't read every single TB opponents abilities (and honestly I don't know where to tell her to read these things. The details are there for raids, but for TB? Where exactly would this be?), the game went to infinite loop and she couldn't close the game.
EA/CG must include code that recognizes the infinite loop and ends the battle, giving credit for territory points gained. Anything else is simply being cruel to 13 year olds who enjoy their game but haven't read every single possible opponents every single power. The current inability of the game to handle this without rebooting android is ridiculous.
No: closing the app results in zero points earned.
It's not a poor team choice, it's bad programming, pure & simple.
There's a few teams out there that can cause endless loops, to allow it to happen, in any game, is very bad judgement in my opinion & it shouldn't even be possible.
That's the worst part of this game & the most frustrating part too.
10 Print "I can't get out ";:Goto10
Run
A lot of f2p players (especially newer ones) are going to be limited in what teams they can use during TB and a night sister team may be all that's viable for them to use to help their guild get points (if that is a dark side team they focused).
Could you elaborate on how we are doing something "that wasn't intended? That would insinuate that the developers either overlooked or didn't contemplate the way in which the general game mechanics and the mechanics of two specific characters e.g. NS Acolyte & Zombie would interact in certain situations. Which is a mistake on their part. If you're referring to zombie being used as a "paper" tank as not being what they intended, than they really did not put much thought into that character when designing it. If zombie was meant to be a hardcore resilient tank like Shoretrooper or KRU than it wouldn't have been designed to infinitely ressurect itself. That mechanic alone indicates that it wasn't meant to be a typical shield wall tank capable of surviving for long periods of time, because if it was than NS teams would be impossible to beat. "Paper" zombie is if anything a player strategy (one which is pretty predictable based on its mechanics) and they should have foreseen that it would be used in this way.
Also, shifting the blame to the player by saying it is a result of "poor team choice" for something that is clearly the result of poor game design or a mistake made on the developers part isn't cool. The forums, especially sections literally named "Feedback" are a place players are supposed to be able to go to report bugs and give their feedback whether it be positive or negative. The developers need feedback to improve the game and keep players.
And not for anything, but insinuating that players who recognize the loop and know better to avoid it are better players is a bit of a stretch. Most players are going to assume that the developers took game mechanics into consideration when designing new characters and would assume that what is live has been quality tested and well designed. Therefore they most likely aren't going to even think about the possibility of something like this infinite loop before selecting their team. In my opinion good players would see this for what it is, poor game design and mechanics that don't work well together and they would report it to developers so that they can fix it.
best joke ever, most players assume that the developers can't do anything and trying to make stuff like critolyte and paper zombie working claiming that everything is working as intended as it is part of the mechanics and whatever.
fact is, using a paper zombie against any opponent that get's TM on a kill should be a no-brainer for everyone.
btw, a fix would be to add an AOE attack to those rebel teams, they kill zombie, gain tm, kill zombie, gain tm, throw grenade and repeat until every ns is oblitterated, loop solved.
No one is asking for a free/easy victory against a squad designed to kill just the type of troops you brought into the battle. We're asking for the game to prevent infinite loops so that it doesn't stress out kids just trying to play a game or cause anyone to lose the Territory Points they've already earned. Giving some toons an AoE that starts the battle on a long cooldown works just fine to end the infinite loop that results from the current sloppy programming.
but this:
assumes that you know going in to the battle exactly how many enemies of each type will be in each encounter. If you have 1 of the rebels that gain 50% TM on a kill, you don't have an infinite loop. It's only because there are 3 or 4 of them that the loop results.
So please, if you will, rattle off from memory all the opponents in every squad in TB and the exact wording of all of their abilities. And then when you're done with that, tell me why my 13-year-old daughter should be penalized by losing all her Territory Points earned for the earlier encounters because she didn't remember that the 4th encounter of the battle was going to have more than 2 enemies with +50% TM gain.
Personally, I'd prefer my daughter not spend time memorizing the TB order of battle when she could be, oh, I don't know, reading a book or maybe even playing the game for fun and earning Territory Points for her guild.
There are always players who get in this situation during each Dark Side TB - it should be easy enough to modify the Rebel kit to include a small AoE to kill the acolyte, and prevent players from ever reaching this situation.
People coming here to get feedback and advice, to report, to help others, to get help, and the first response is a mod telling you that you are bad at the game and its your fault, lol, not the obvious games fault for the fights being designed this way, to cause loops. Maul loops, NS loops, Vader lead loops, its actually quite bad.
I guess Critolyte wasn’t a bug. Instead Traya was a poor team choice by CG. CG should have picked a team that wouldn’t land them there.
Wow, now that I think of it there is a whole list of CG’s “Poor Team Choice”, it’s in Patch Notes: Fixes.
You can also submit CG’s Poor Team Choices to answers.ea.com
Anyone who does this once is not bad at the game and it's not their fault.
But it's pretty clear it won't ever be changed, so after the first time, use a different team. Problem solved.
Should put an in-game flag over the loopers "btw, don't use this team/toon for tb" maybe that's a good enough fix that doesn't need much effort? lol
Any system that is setup where your only escape is to force-close the app is not well-designed, in my opinion. These players have clearly "lost" the battle, but since there is no time limit and the rebels have no splash damage or way to permanently kill zombie, the NPCs can't win either.