Character Rotations For Season VIII

David [Hi-Fi] Moore

Greetings MPQ Community,

Last month we announced a Character Rotation plan for adding new characters to comic packs. (viewtopic.php?f=7&t=17495). We wanted to provide you with news on the latest round of rotations set to go live with the start of Season VIII on Friday, November 14th.

In: Blade, Mystique, (also Ms. Marvel (2*) will be added to packs at this time)
Out: Thor (Modern), Magneto (Classic)

Characters that are taken out of packs will start rotating back in during Season 9. We'll always communicate in advance which characters will be rotating out.

Reminder: This allows us to work on the characters that are out of the spotlight.

Thanks!

Unknown

so are the characters that were rotated out back in, or are they going to be available at a later date, or are they gone forever?

TazFTW

So the characters that were "vaulted" last season are still going to be vaulted?

[edit]Re-reading. That would be yes.

Unknown

I still need a red mags for respec and you've made that the hardest to get cover since the Mags nerf (it should have been yellow, which no one respeccing needs). Not thrilled about this.

dkffiv

While the change is good for me as I've completed all those characters, this is absolutely terrible for new players. Thor/Patch/Torch/Punisher/CMag are some of the best characters for transitioning players and yet you leave in IM40/Spider-Man and to a lesser extent Falcon/Psylocke/Hulk. My first covered 3* was IM40 back in the day and at least we had true healing to make him serviceable. I would hate to be a new player with my first fully covered 3* being Captain Marvel or Beast.

Unknown

I need to wait at least a month more to pull Punisher

Pylgrim

I don't understand.... Thor is taken out but not Sentry? With Magneto going away too, joining Punisher who is already vaulted.... the only high-profile characters left will be... oh yes, Sentry, Daken, Hood and Black Panther. Because we weren't seeing enough of those already.

David [Hi-Fi] Moore

Archimedes1902 wrote:

so are the characters that were rotated out back in, or are they going to be available at a later date, or are they gone forever?

Characters rotated out will be back at a later date. They are not gone forever.

(*Merged threads for clarity.)

Mawtful

When Johnny Storm, the 2* Human Torch, was added to the game, Bag-Man was vaulted. The reasoning given was that the additional character was going to "dilute the token pool too much". Now that Ms. Marvel is being added, which 2* will be vaulted next to Bag-Man?

Also, for the benefit of everyone, here's the quote from the original announcement about vaulting which I think we all remembered incorrectly:

The first characters that are taken out of packs will start rotating back in during Season 8.

That's actually nicely ambiguous - the last hour of the season is still "during Season 8". If possible, is there a timeline for those first characters being subbed back in?

SunCrusher

... So... about the removed/vaulted characters.

This means that they CAN'T become Essential characters, right?

Just asking because I know we have at least one PvE event that features Modern 3* Thor as as Essential and I know we sometimes get recycled/reused events.

... I don't think that I'm liking this whole character rotations business much as a transitioning 2-3* player, David.

I don't have much of a shot at collecting more than 2 covers of any new character when they're first released and all my older 3* characters who I'm trying to collect covers for and who are building up to be stronger than the new characters (who can only level to 43 with two separate color covers) are now disappearing.

If this continues, I'll be having a whole roster full of partially covered 3* characters and nobody who's fully-covered and in any way, shape, or form competitive.

I'm ALREADY 6+ months into transition. How much longer are you guys expecting for me to stay here in this position of having partially covered and partially leveled 3*s after 6+ months and be happy?

Who's next after Modern Thor? I need to start preparing for the disappearing act WAY faster than just a month in advance. The guys and gals who can either win, pull, or outright buy their covers can use a month in advance; at the rate I'm going, I'm going to need at least 3 months to plan!

ClydeFrog76

Ben Grimm wrote:

I still need a red mags for respec and you've made that the hardest to get cover since the Mags nerf (it should have been yellow, which no one respeccing needs). Not thrilled about this.

Ditto, and ditto.

stevenbrule

Gotta admit I was almost certain Sentry would be on the "out" list for this season. Ah well.

Unknown

So, Hi-Fi, could we have a sticky list of who's in and who's out?

As the character list grows, keeping track of ins/outs will be a bit burdensome for the non-obsessives...(as he posts on the game's forums)

Lystrata

Mawtful wrote:

Also, for the benefit of everyone, here's the quote from the original announcement about vaulting which I think we all remembered incorrectly:

The first characters that are taken out of packs will start rotating back in during Season 8.

That's actually nicely ambiguous - the last hour of the season is still "during Season 8". If possible, is there a timeline for those first characters being subbed back in?

This. I think the impression that you gave initially was that characters taken out last season would be returned at the start of Season 8. Not sure people would've been so accepting if we actually thought it'd be months before characters got returned. Having Patch/Punisher/Thor/Human Torch all out at once is going to mess with a lot of transitioning players, as they seemed to be the 3*s that were most common to obtain.

Could you clarify when the previously removed characters will be returned? (If it's been done so elsewhere, by all means let me know - so many threads popping up today, argh!)

EDIT: Also, if this is suggesting that LThor is going to get 'worked on' before Sentry... I'm baffled.

Pylgrim

Also please clarify if "vaulted" characters will be gone for two months, as it seems to be the case. We were lead to believe they'd only be out for one month.

DrStrange-616

Taking away LThor is like taking away bread from the sandwich of transitioning players.

yogi_

Ok, my Lightning Round theory is completely trashed. Oh well.

What this means for characters still out (and characters that should be out) is now totally randomly thrown up in the air and can't even be speculated over - we just have to wait.

The original statement that one or more of the previously removed characters would be returning is obviously not going to happen - this is a bit slack.

Pwuz_

Grrrr...and here my L.Thor sits at 3/4/5. Well, I COULD spend 1250 HP of my Alliance slot refund on his Yellow...or I could make room in my roster for all the 1* & 2* characters I tossed away while trying to grow my alliance.

Bah! L.Thor will be back next season, I can't stand not having Bagman on my bench!

Unknown

Why Thor and Mags as opposed to Sentry, IM40, Spidey, Beast, or any other character which is broken in an exploitable way or a "they suck" way?

Mags, in particular, already got a major change and wasn't available as a reward for long periods because those changes were in the pipe.


Also, when did you decide to hold out all those characters for an additional month? The original announced plan implied a one month vaulting.

yogi_

No Daredevil, Doctor Doom, 3* Human Torch, Loki, 3* Magento, Ragnarok, 3* Thor, 3* Wolverine and Punisher appearing as featured characters in events next season, I imagine - not that it matters, I guess - one (questionably mind numbing) PvP is similar to the next. But one or more characters are now ripe for a balance, which I dare say we'll hear more about in the coming weeks. But again, there is no justification given about these decisions.

Also for the people above, they were never bringing all the characters back this season, but it was going to be gradual, so the expecation was that we would receive one or more, but not none.

And still my conspiracy theory of the direction of not supporting or promoting non-Marvel film owned characters holds tight.

In a sense, removed characters essentially do not exist in the game world - this is bad news for transitioning players, indifferent news to veterans and probably doesn't make any difference to new players who will just build whoever they get.

Overall though, this still doesn't resolve the long term issue of tokens, but this is expected. Is there always going to be approx. a third of the 3* roster out? This is a very legitimate concern. How are you supposed to build characters when they might go from tokens and therefore all events the following season? That's almost a whole collection of 1 or 2*s - enough for another ranking. Devs, would you consider a redo of the star ratings? I have some ideas.

mohio

yogi_ wrote:

I have some ideas.

Lol

Since the vaulted characters from this past season left the LR rotation, I assume the same will be true for cMags? Who will be taking his place? Or is that still to be decided?