New Feature: Bonus Heroes! *Updated (3/1/17)

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Brigby
Brigby ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 7,757 Site Admin
edited April 2017 in MPQ General Discussion
Bonus Heroes
We are excited to announce that starting today, Bonus Heroes is available to all players who are at S.H.I.E.L.D. Rank 8 or higher! Bonus Heroes offers players additional covers for characters that they have chosen as their favorite characters. Also, starting with Bonus Heroes, we will be removing some characters from packs to help players build stronger rosters faster.
Every time you open a pack, you will have a chance (5% for single packs and 8% per draw of a 10x/40x pack) to get a Bonus Hero. When you get a Bonus Hero, you will receive a cover of a favorite character you have chosen in rarity of the cover that you drew. For example, if you draw an Iron Man (Hulk Buster) and receive a Bonus Hero, you will get a cover from any 4-Stars you have marked as your favorite.

*New Update* How did we arrive at 5% for single packs? Here's Anthony from Demiurge with an exclusive drop rate breakdown, using Heroic Packs as an example:
Anthony, Demiurge wrote:
Let's take the Heroic Pack. You have a ~71% chance to get a 2-Star, a ~23% chance to get a 3-Star and a ~6% chance to get a 4-Star. When you open a pack, you have an overall 5% chance to get a Bonus Hero. The way we get to that math is to set the chance to get a Bonus Hero per rarity that you draw. When you draw a 3-Star or 4-Star, you have roughly a 17% chance to get a Bonus Hero. When you multiply the chance to get a cover of that rarity with the chance to get a Bonus Hero, you get the [percent] chance to get a Bonus Hero from any one pull from a Heroic pack (~4% for 3-Stars and ~1% for 4-Stars).
In other words, because 2-Stars don’t have Bonus Heroes available, the Bonus Hero drop rate is actually 17% for 3-Star and 4-Star pulls, and factoring the 2-Stars into the equation is what drops it down to 5%

Stop by our YouTube channel if you want to hear Demiurge talk about Bonus Heroes even more: Marvel Puzzle Quest Community Video - March 2017

Newest Characters in Packs:
Also, starting with Bonus Heroes, packs will contain the newest characters. In packs that have 4-Stars, you will be able to get the 12 latest 4-Stars that have been released. For 3-Stars, you will be able to get 20 3-Stars chosen by the Design team at Demiurge Studios. Whenever a new character is introduced into these packs, the oldest character will be rotated out of the pack.

Latest Legends packs will continue to have the latest three released 5-Stars, and Classic Legendary packs will have all 5-Stars except the three most recently released.



Additional Changes to Cover Stores:
Standard packs can only be redeemed from tokens earned and are no longer purchasable with Iso-8. There will be two Legendary Cover stores going forward: Latest Legendary and Classic Legendary cover store.
Frequently Asked Questions!

What Stores are Bonus Heroes Available In?
Bonus Heroes are available in any cover store. Bonus Heroes are not available in Vaults.

What Characters are Available?
Packs that contain 3-Star and 4-Star characters contain a subset of them (packs that contain 1-Star and 2-Stars will continue to include all 1-Stars and 2-Stars). Packs that contain 3-Stars will only include twenty characters. These characters are initially comprised of characters that the Design team has chosen. Packs that contain 4-Stars include the twelve latest released characters. New characters will be added to the packs shortly after they are released (see the section What is the New Character Tag? below for more information). When a new character is added to the packs, the character released the earliest is removed from the pack.

What are the Odds of Getting a Character?
At the time of this feature being added, a single 3-Star character has had their drop rate increased by more than 2X and a single 4-Star has had their drop rate increased by more than 3X! There’s an increased chance to get 4-Stars in 10x and 40x packs. Featured characters are highlighted and have an increased chance to be drawn.

How do Legendary Stores Work with Bonus Heroes?
There will be two cover stores: Latest Legendary and Classic Legendary Cover Stores. Each store contains the latest twelve 4-Stars. Latest Legendary Packs contain the 3 latest 5-Stars and cost 25 Command Points per draw. Classic Legendary Stores contain all but the three latest 5-Stars and cost 20 Command Points per draw.



What is the Chance to Get a Bonus Hero?
Each single cover pack has a 5% chance to get a Bonus Hero. Each draw from a 10x and 40x cover pack has a 8% chance to get Bonus Hero. Every time you pull a 3-Star from a Standard Pack you will get an additional 3-Star Bonus Hero.

What Characters Will I Get When I Get a Bonus Hero?
You can get 3-Star, 4-Star, and 5-Star characters from Bonus Heroes. Whenever you draw a Bonus Hero, you will get one of the characters you chose as your favorite character in that rarity. For example, if you draw a 4-Star character and get a Bonus Hero, you will receive one of your favorite 4-Star characters.

How do I Select Favorite Characters?
You select your favorite characters from the Roster screen or when you are viewing the character from the Roster screen. Characters you have not rostered yet will appear in your roster so that you can favorite characters you have not collected yet.



Can I Change My Favorite Characters?
Yes! You can change your favorite characters at any time.

What if I do not Choose any Favorite Characters?
If you get a Bonus Hero and you have not chosen a Favorite character for that rarity you will receive a random character from that rarity as your Bonus Hero.

What is the Limited Character Tag?
Limited characters are special characters like Howard the Duck and Devil Dinosaur. They are excluded from Bonus Heroes.

What is the New Character Tag?
New characters are also excluded from Bonus Heroes. 3-Star and 4-Star characters have the New tag until the season after they are launched. 5-Star Characters will have the New tag until they have been in the game for two weeks.

When do I unlock Bonus Heroes?
Bonus Heroes unlocks at S.H.I.E.L.D. Rank 8
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Comments

  • Stax the Foyer
    Stax the Foyer Posts: 941 Critical Contributor
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    The Bonus Heroes feature sounds great.

    The vaulting that for some reason came along with it, is significantly less great. Building up a robust championed roster was the main draw of the game to me at this point. My ability to build large numbers of 4*s to a usable level looks to have been severely undercut.
  • Bondidude
    Bondidude Posts: 46 Just Dropped In
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    Brigby wrote:
    Classic and Latest Legends packs will remain unchanged.

    How do Legendary Stores Work with Bonus Heroes?
    There will be two cover stores: Latest Legendary and Classic Legendary Cover Stores. Each store contains the latest twelve 4-Stars. Latest Legendary Packs contain the 3 latest 5-Stars and cost 25 Command Points per draw. Classic Legendary Stores contain all but the three latest 5-Stars and cost 20 Command Points per draw.

    These two things feel contradictory.
  • GrumpySmurf1002
    GrumpySmurf1002 Posts: 3,511 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Definitely didn't see this coming.

    This looks like a decent aid for 3/4* characters, but I don't think this helps getting 5s much. I'd have liked to see a 10% bonus rather than 5%.

    Good on the devs though for trying something though. Hopefully we'll see improvements on the system as data comes in.

    Having 1/2 the 3* removed from tokens seems like an unnecessary addition, however.
  • JablesMc
    JablesMc Posts: 235 Tile Toppler
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    Stax the Foyer wrote:
    The Bonus Heroes feature sounds great.

    The vaulting that for some reason came along with it, is significantly less great. Building up a robust championed roster was the main draw of the game to me at this point. My ability to build large numbers of 4*s to a usable level looks to have been severely undercut.
    I get the feeling this is intended to be alleviated by choosing older characters as bonus heroes.

    Still not sure how I feel about that.
  • deadtaco
    deadtaco Posts: 409 Mover and Shaker
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    Does this go into effect tonight? Post says today, but not seeing anything in-game
  • fmftint
    fmftint Posts: 3,653 Chairperson of the Boards
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    So much potential





    Ruined by needless restrictions
  • whycantwesyncpc
    whycantwesyncpc Posts: 188 Tile Toppler
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    Figures, I finally get all my 3*'s champed and they take a lot of them out of rotation. Not sure I like this
  • Jarvind
    Jarvind Posts: 1,684 Chairperson of the Boards
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    So, wait, heroic tokens just won't have, for instance, Hulkbuster in them? Like, at all? If I'm reading that correctly, that's incredibly stupid.
  • bobby_2613
    bobby_2613 Posts: 83 Match Maker
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    First thought: I'm feeling very lucky to already have 25 x 4* champions. Removing all but 12 from every pack would greatly discourage me to ever get the oldest top tier 4*. New players seem tinykittied, even if they can choose those to be their favorite. (On first sight, at least)
  • Daiches
    Daiches Posts: 1,252 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Nothing seeing this in game yet. Will it be activated with the data push in 3 or so hours?
  • Ludaa
    Ludaa Posts: 542
    edited March 2017
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    Gee thanks for the heads up, lol.

    How do we get covers for the characters not in these new packs? Only progression prizes? Only as bonuses?

    Data Push and it's live, and all my champed 4's screamed out at once NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
  • WelcomeDeath
    WelcomeDeath Posts: 349 Mover and Shaker
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    GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:
    Definitely didn't see this coming.

    This looks like a decent aid for 3/4* characters, but I don't think this helps getting 5s much. I'd have liked to see a 10% bonus rather than 5%.

    Good on the devs though for trying something though. Hopefully we'll see improvements on the system as data comes in.

    Having 1/2 the 3* removed from tokens seems like an unnecessary addition, however.

    It's not really a 5% bonus for pulling 5s, either. Its 5% of the 15% in store, if I'm reading this right. 15% chance of pulling a 5, but 5% chance that pull also has a bonus hero, so its 0.75% chance of getting a bonus 5*. Spend about 2600 cp and you might get one.

    Good for 3s in heroics and 4s in LTs if you pick one at a time, sure. Nothing for 5s, really...probably why theyre not mentioned in the OP for improved odds.
  • nonnel
    nonnel Posts: 128 Tile Toppler
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    What about event tokens, will
    They have a limited character set as well?
  • Brigby
    Brigby ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 7,757 Site Admin
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    Bondidude wrote:
    Brigby wrote:
    Classic and Latest Legends packs will remain unchanged.
    How do Legendary Stores Work with Bonus Heroes?
    There will be two cover stores: Latest Legendary and Classic Legendary Cover Stores. Each store contains the latest twelve 4-Stars. Latest Legendary Packs contain the 3 latest 5-Stars and cost 25 Command Points per draw. Classic Legendary Stores contain all but the three latest 5-Stars and cost 20 Command Points per draw.

    These two things feel contradictory.
    Edit: Apologies for the confusion. This is what that line actually meant: Latest Legends packs will continue to have the latest three released 5-Stars and Classic Legendary packs will have all 5-Stars except that last three that have been released.

    I have updated the original post to reflect this.
  • Bowgentle
    Bowgentle Posts: 7,926 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Brigby wrote:
    Bondidude wrote:
    Brigby wrote:
    Classic and Latest Legends packs will remain unchanged.
    How do Legendary Stores Work with Bonus Heroes?
    There will be two cover stores: Latest Legendary and Classic Legendary Cover Stores. Each store contains the latest twelve 4-Stars. Latest Legendary Packs contain the 3 latest 5-Stars and cost 25 Command Points per draw. Classic Legendary Stores contain all but the three latest 5-Stars and cost 20 Command Points per draw.

    These two things feel contradictory.
    Classic and Latest Legends have always followed this rule, hence why it says they are unchanged. I believe the only pack that will be affected are the Heroic tokens.
    Both classics and latest currently contain ALL the 4* characters.
  • CrookedKnight
    CrookedKnight Posts: 2,579 Chairperson of the Boards
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    This sounds great for me personally, because I've been reasonably lucky in picking up covers for new 4* characters and am done building everybody older than Agent Venom. This way tokens will feed me more covers for characters I still need to build up, and the older covers I draw are guaranteed to be for characters I have champed.

    I'm not nearly as confident that it helps people who are coming in late and still need to build up a roster.

    Also, Brigby, "Classic and Latest Legends packs will remain unchanged" seems to indicate that they still contain all 4* characters, is the problem.
  • hesjingixen
    hesjingixen Posts: 215 Tile Toppler
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    A) When?

    B) The thing I like the most is that this helps take the sting out of "unusable" covers a bit more: Sure, I got my 8th purple Star-Lord cover, but I also got a "free" Gwen-pool cover. Cool. Of course it opens up the possibility for double "unusable" covers, but hey, it's 1000 more iso than I would have gotten otherwise. I just wish I hadn't spent like 300 CP opening covers 2 weeks ago. Oh well, still like it.

    *thumbs up*
  • Wjohnson992
    Wjohnson992 Posts: 175 Tile Toppler
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    I read. Still dont quite understand. What happens to the likes of Iceman/Teen Jean/Hulkbuster? Where the heck am I meant to get him?

    Same with these 3* that have been dumped into the abyss.
  • Xenoberyll
    Xenoberyll Posts: 647 Critical Contributor
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    Can i pull a 5star Bonus Hero from a Legendary pack even when i don't get a 5star from the usual 15%? If not, that will only increase aggravation for those who pull below average and won't be much help at all.
  • M C K
    M C K Posts: 96 Match Maker
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    Aaaaaaaaannd I already cashed in my 10-pack from this season. Definitely would not have done that if I knew what I know now.

    Ah well, c'est la vie, mon ami

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