Phantron wrote: A viable path doesn't mean get all the best characters maxed out in 2 months
Phantron wrote: At any rate there is a viable path to get anywhere as long as you have 1/1/1, by stockpiling HP, which can later be converted to covers directly, or used for shields when whatever you're looking for is offered. The game gives you more than enough HP to work with but people waste HP on stuff like shields chasing heroes that they'd never use.
DrNitroman wrote: Phantron wrote: A viable path doesn't mean get all the best characters maxed out in 2 months Certainly not all the best characters maxed out in 2 months but the insurance that one character will be. A mechanism that would work only for the first 3* and only for new player. How? No clue Maybe a reserved tournament or a special solo chapter? Phantron wrote: At any rate there is a viable path to get anywhere as long as you have 1/1/1, by stockpiling HP, which can later be converted to covers directly, or used for shields when whatever you're looking for is offered. The game gives you more than enough HP to work with but people waste HP on stuff like shields chasing heroes that they'd never use. You're right this is a viable path that I often forget. However, I'm not sure that the HP is flowing so generously for a new player without 3* char who don't manage to rank top 100 in pve or pvp For some players, earning cover is the reason to play the game and buying them may appear less appealing
Phantron wrote: DrNitroman wrote: Phantron wrote: A viable path doesn't mean get all the best characters maxed out in 2 months Certainly not all the best characters maxed out in 2 months but the insurance that one character will be. A mechanism that would work only for the first 3* and only for new player. How? No clue Maybe a reserved tournament or a special solo chapter? Phantron wrote: At any rate there is a viable path to get anywhere as long as you have 1/1/1, by stockpiling HP, which can later be converted to covers directly, or used for shields when whatever you're looking for is offered. The game gives you more than enough HP to work with but people waste HP on stuff like shields chasing heroes that they'd never use. You're right this is a viable path that I often forget. However, I'm not sure that the HP is flowing so generously for a new player without 3* char who don't manage to rank top 100 in pve or pvp For some players, earning cover is the reason to play the game and buying them may appear less appealing What good does it do if you're guaranteed to max out a weak hero like Dr. Octopus? PvE scaling and PvP MMR is supposed to ensure that you get matched up with opponents appropriate for your roster strength, and even if not, having a freebie weak 3* hero isn't going to help you. If anything you might get plowed even more in both PvE and PvP for having a high level but weak 3*. While the HP you get isn't a lot, it adds up over time and the easiest way to see this is looking at your roster. Even at a small roster 10 slots is likely to cost significantly more than 2500 HP. That's enough to get 2 covers and on a powerful 3*, adding 2 covers matters a lot. For example going from 3 blue to 5 blue on The Hood is game changing. Even for weaker characters having 5 in certain skill makes a big difference. Now if all you got is Punisher is it really worth to put 2 more into Judgment to hit 5 green? Maybe not, but if you have someone like Punisher you at least shouldn't have to be wasting HP on any events that features experimental characters (like Mystique). Yes 10 slots is a lot of room, but again you should ask yourself why are you collecting random 3* that don't really help you unless you're planning to play for a very long haul? But other than for purposes of collecting there's really not much reason why a 1/0/0 Dr. Octopus won't work for anything you might possibly do. Now Dr. Ocotpus is an exceptionally weak hero, but you can still only use 3 guys for every format in this game. I have 2 level 270 and 11 level 166 characters, and not counting any required characters only 5 of them sees 99% of the action (X Force, The Hood, Daken, Falcon, and Captain America), and 3 of those guys are PvE specialists which probably doesn't concern most people who are transitioning since transition tend to have it quite well in PvE due to scaling.
Lerysh wrote: It scares me when I agree with Phantron, but he makes some good points there. The OP's guesswork on covers doesn't take into account: Token Pulls, Time Slices, or PvE. Almost assuredly the first 3* you have 13 covers for is the one you pulled 4 tokens of. It just happens that way. With token valulting now, it's even more likely to pull given heroes. Also, given the current time slice meta, a 2* roster can place top 25 by joining one of the top 2 slices. Less points, less competition, more covers handed out to low scores. I have personally witnessed this phenomenon where my 2* transition friend gets top 5 in the 1st slice with 600 points. If you want 2 covers, join one of those games. Also Also, typical patern currently has been to have the featured PvE characters run concurrent PvPs (for some reason) so you should be winning at least 1 cover from a PvE event and 1 cover from a PvP event for any hero you are actively interested in building every month (by OP original estimation). Not to mention the easily obtainable progression cover for anyone willing to put forth the effort. Given all these factors, I'd estimate a new account could have a 13 cover 3* in roughly 4-6 months, with maybe another month of ISO grind to level them up. When featured characters come up, you should be getting 3-4 covers of them from PvE, progression, and tokens combined. 3.5 covers, 4 months, 13 cover character. I am on day 278, and I have 9 166's, and an additional 8 fully covered 3*s (including Dr Doom and Ragnarok). A year is extremely pessimistic view. Will their first 166 be Thor, Magneto or Patch? Probably not. But it's not outside the possibilities for a day 150 player to swing a 13 cover Blade or Daken.
Lerysh wrote: And you are just going to assume your experience and POV represent 80% of the player base? You are as guilty of filtered perceptions as we are. If you want to play a casual game, then you get the game you play. You aren't "missing" 80% of the game, you are choosing to play the way you want to. Instead of ramping up your game to get the covers you are trying to get, as suggested by some in this thread, you choose to complain that your way of playing doesn't result in instantly maxed 166s. Anyone who has made it though the transition worked for it, it wasn't handed to them.
Nivrax wrote: Saving HP as viable means to max character is... yeah, not really feasible. Low tier players really don't get that much HP as you think they do. Currently you're looking at: 25 per pvp, maybe some get super easy brackets but for me 500+ is already wall and I can't play fast enough to not drop Nothing for placement since once again, I couldn't get myself in that range, with easier brackets it is possible but would most likely req shield which wipes savings 50 for t250 alliance PvE differs, but if you lack essentials (because you thrown cover out of window), this pve could yield max 50 for placement + 50 for alliance. Majority of HP usually comes with placing high in subs. Actually, vast majority of my rewards comes from being able to do PvEs well. That's (75 * 3 + 100) = 1300 HP per month. Hey, it adds up! I can just barely manage 2 roster slots for 2 chars per week with occasional third. That's one cover per month while throwing every new hero they add. That's year of playing going from 1/1/1. That's also year if going from 7 cover start for 2 character. That hardly seems better. And year later, you will have at very least 20 characters vaulted. You're guaranteed nearly every character you started with year before is in vault, and nearly every hero offered as reward (which you hopefully can reach now easily) will be a new hero and there will be no way you can earn enough HP for slots, you will end up throwing rewards (or older characters you won with few covers) for next months. Difference of vet that can get 700 and top100 w/o shield and alliance handing him top100 or top50s really vastly differs from low tier players who only reach 500 and have at the very best top250 ally, both from HP and covers perspective. I'm at day 140 or so and best I have is 4/4/4 BP (which is pretty nice), but every other hero is at 6-7 covers and ALL of them are vaulted. Maybe I'll move forward when they finally come out but holy hell, it pisses me off so much that even when I pull from token it's something that doesn't help me for months if not year.
gamar wrote: So in four months you have one 3* almost maxxed and a few more halfway developed, even though you're spending money on roster slots for chars that won't help you instead of covers for ones who will And you think that's an argument in FAVOR of "it takes a year to transition"?
Digitalman959 wrote: gamar wrote: The game is barely a year old. I'm prettttttty confident the 2-->3* transition does not take a year. I agree that for the ones who started playing in the first 6 months it has not taken a year, but for the ones who started playing on the second half of the game's first year, it's been and it's still a painful transition. It's a complete hassle to make 600 on PvP because at 500 I start to hit the ***166 wall. If I manage to reach that high it still doesn't guarantee I'll make top 100. At that point I have to work hard to win a fight only to finish it and see I've been attacked twice and lost. Top tier characters are taken out of rotation making it harder to maximize the character that most people use on PvP events. Because no matter how many cool characters are introduced, it's still Xforce, Cmags, Sentry, Hood, LThor, etc. Developers might want to promote new characters used by making this but people who already have them maximized won't stop using them. The *** pool is pretty diluted now I'm not complaining for having to work for my progression because even if I managed to get useful *** covers frequently I'd still have to work for the ISO to maximized them. I just wish that the chance to get the covers wasn't that difficult now.
gamar wrote: The game is barely a year old. I'm prettttttty confident the 2-->3* transition does not take a year.