As a transitioning 2*->3* I can't wait for the next season

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edited December 2014 in MPQ General Discussion
http://i.imgur.com/EA6wQ2O.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/ZFRbj7Q.jpg

Did I miss any vaulted heroes? With some luck, maybe next season they can rotate hulk/spiderman/Lcap.

Why does whatever little progress I can get into the 3* land get tinykitty on every other season? Pile on the ever increasing hero pool, and the horrid token %s (I've gotten one useful cover out of the last 19 heroic tokens and whatever event token was given in that period, be it pvp or pve (progression or otherwise), and it was an ares cover, which I still haven't gotten covered after over a month and a half of it just sitting there with 3/2/3, because the pool is so tinykitty diluted and yet I keep getting the same ones over and over again (cstorm, hawkeye, captain america).

I've read all the guides and whatnot, planned out my rosters, what to invest in, how I should be saving ISO til I can get a proper covered 3* if my current 2* lineup allows me to get covers from events on a regular basis, and yet I'm seeing little to no progress whatsoever, and I'm stuck playing the same roster again and again.

Your tokens are too diluted to be of any use, even for the people who paid an absurd price for that one time mistake known as a 40-cover pack.
The current matchmaking system is strangling any transitioning players in pvp, because we start to hit "the wall" at 500-600, even lower for some, depending on your shard. For the people who claim that achieving top 100 is still possible with a 2* roster, I totally agree. However, how many 2* teams actually get there? There's an increasing number of "veterans" as they're refered to around here, while the transitioning players get screwed more and more often, with the ever increasing hero pool, rotations, etc. Every time I get a mile closer to the finish line, you change the rules of the race and make it 10 miles longer.

New players have little to no motivation to keep on playing your game, once they hit the imense gap that is the 2*->3* inferno.

Mod Note: express yourself, but please avoid profanity.
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Comments

  • Nellobee
    Nellobee Posts: 457 Mover and Shaker
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    Wow, you got Lilliputian-feline'd worse than I did.

    Seriously, D3 as to realize that this is an imperfect/temporary solution at best. I am hoping they are working on a better long-term fix for the transition problem.
  • Token rotation is one of the worst ideas ever. It was cool at first, it sucks donkey balls now. I just haven't given up yet because I want to feel the "glory" of being in 3* land and call my 200+ days played in this game a success.
  • Look on the bright side, it's not like anyone ever pulls a gold cover anyways icon_e_wink.gif

    Seriously though I can think of no reason whatsoever that rotation shouldn't be done weekly
  • Look on the bright side, it's not like anyone ever pulls a gold cover anyways icon_e_wink.gif

    Seriously though I can think of no reason whatsoever that rotation shouldn't be done weekly
  • One possible solution for this, or at least a better temporary fix, is to shorten seasons thus increasing the rotation. In theory the rotation is fine, all aiming at random targets anyway, all cycling in and out, but the time frame is too long. Shorter seasons increases the pace at which characters move in and out, meaning you can focus the characters you want more quickly.

    Another option is to go all the way through the looking glass on the vaulting, and limit the possible pulls of 3*s to "Heroes that will be used this season". 10 possible 3*s with 1.4% draw odds instead of 20 with 0.7%.

    A third option, and the one I think best worth considering, increase the frequency a character is handed out. The reason I transitioned so quickly was because when they released 3* Captain America he was awarded in like 5 events in short time period. I went from 0 covers to 13 covers in that time, leveled him up, and haven't looked back. Nowadays the variety is killing the transitioning player. It's months before characters come around in rewards again. There needs to be better options for transitioning players to land that coveted 13 cover 3* character. And it has to take into consideration a 2* player isn't going to earn 8 covers of a new hero like some of the "veterans" are between PvE/PvP/Alliance rewards.

    Also, I have no idea why Thor, Patch, or C.Magneto are in the vault, other than "most high level players already have them". They are staples in PvP, practically necessary to survival. And you can bet they aren't being "tweaked". C.Mags got his tweak on already.
  • xequalsy
    xequalsy Posts: 231
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    I fully sympathize with your situation. I feel the issue is somewhat compounded by the fact that D3 have to give out the covers they are vaulting in a recent PvP (or it will go 2/3 months further than however long it had already been for that character), so if you worked hard to get that extra cover from top100 (which personally I find quite difficult, and I have to be around for the final hour or so - much easier recently with end times but way harder before in EU) for that PvP it feels worse when they end up vaulting the character anyway. At least this PvP season it was relatively clear that IM40 et. al. were getting vaulting with the string of fairly old character PvPs, but people were definitely shocked about cMags and Thor last season for example.

    Keep at it for the 2* Ares covers, I had a very similar scenario where my mnMags was stuck on 5/3/3 for what seemed like forever, but recently (day 75-80) I finally managed to get a string of pink and red covers to take him to 3/5/5. icon_e_smile.gif

    I think my view point about rotation is slightly biased I guess (if you think I'm not getting angry enough or whatever), as my most covered 3*s are IM40 (currently 5/3/0 icon_rolleyes.gif ), LCap (3/2/3), Falcon (2/4/1) and Blade (3/2/2). I'm not exactly too anxious yet about getting past the 2-3* transition (currently day 85), but I guess that's because I see it as a long way off yet anyway since I'll only likely get more than 1 cover from a PvE, and LCap and Falcon covers were only (recently) given out in PvE. I mean I can definitely see LCap and Falcon rotating out season 10 if they continue this scheme, but hopefully I can manage to snag some more Blade covers somewhere.

    I haven't been too hardly hit by the rotations so far:
    DD(2 covers), Doom (1 cover), Loki (0 covers), Rags (0 covers), Patch (1 cover), Punisher (4 covers), Thor(3 covers), cMags(2 covers)

    But it is definitely a little depressing that they'll just sit there in my roster, unlikely to be powered up, definitely won't be essentials in PvE or have a boosted PvP and they're all in states where I can't really play with them anyway. Guess I'll have to see how this rotation feels like since I have 3/4 covers of each other character being rotated out this time and it's definitely starting to feel like half of my roster will just sit there for a long time now (2-3 months I guess at the minimum).
  • I would love being able to choose reward. Simply any event rewarding covers for placement having new-old switch when you get to choose between new reward or (preset) vaulted Hero. Like for example this PvE you could choose whether you want Marvel or Punisher covers for placement. This wouldn't change progression reward so you could still get that single cover for next required nodes. This would require more heroes sitting in 'time out' corner to make vault:avaible closer to 1:1, but it's something that will happen if they keep adding chars and not increase odds of tokens.
  • If they keep going down the vaulting path, eventually they need some kind of cover converter. Really, they just need to bring back imcoin.png for 3* and 4* cover sales. If you got 50 imcoin.png a cover, then you can convert 25 unwanted 3*s into any 3* cover you wanted.
  • There's already a method to convert covers, by using your HP for cover upgrades instead of using it for say shields on 3 3*s that you never needed in the first place.

    The timing of the vaulting wouldn't matter because it's not like you'll go 'oh Daken is back this week better buy 42 tokens!' because if you can do that you'd be better off just upgrading covers (assuming you had 1/1/1 at some point) not to mention this is a rather ridiculous scenario in terms of expenditure power to begin with.

    The vaulting of characters should also phase the characters out. Not having Daken or Thor is a pretty significant disadvantage, but it's not as bad if no one else gets to use them during at least some events. For that matter the 4*s should be on a rotation as well, with Nick Fury/Thor/X Force rotating each month and themed so that each 4* would dominate their month. Well, you wouldn't need anything special for Thor/X Force (Thor would easily be the top without X Force). Nick Fury would need to have quite a few characters rotated out of 3* (great green users + The Hood) to be the most powerful but it's definitely doable and it'd also give people a reason to level up other 4*s.
  • Phantron wrote:
    There's already a method to convert covers, by using your HP for cover upgrades instead of using it for say shields on 3 3*s that you never needed in the first place.

    The timing of the vaulting wouldn't matter because it's not like you'll go 'oh Daken is back this week better buy 42 tokens!' because if you can do that you'd be better off just upgrading covers (assuming you had 1/1/1 at some point) not to mention this is a rather ridiculous scenario in terms of expenditure power to begin with.
    "Two weeks ago only had one 3* I'm trying to build and last week had none but this week has four of the 3*s I'm trying to build, so I'll splurge the heroics and standards I've been saving for the past three weeks" is EXACTLY how it would go, what are you on about

    Again not that it's a significant difference because "pulling golds from tokens lol lol" but the effect on how "fun" it feels to play the token lottery would be tremendous
  • Phantron wrote:
    The vaulting of characters should also phase the characters out. Not having Daken or Thor is a pretty significant disadvantage, but it's not as bad if no one else gets to use them during at least some events. For that matter the 4*s should be on a rotation as well, with Nick Fury/Thor/X Force rotating each month and themed so that each 4* would dominate their month. Well, you wouldn't need anything special for Thor/X Force (Thor would easily be the top without X Force). Nick Fury would need to have quite a few characters rotated out of 3* (great green users + The Hood) to be the most powerful but it's definitely doable and it'd also give people a reason to level up other 4*s.
    That means that for people who only have one or two characters in a usable state, when they can't use that character they're going to say "well I guess I won't play for a month until my characters come back" and incentivizing players to not play for a month and kick their addiction is the worst thing d3p could possibly do
  • GrumpySmurf1002
    GrumpySmurf1002 Posts: 3,511 Chairperson of the Boards
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    This is probably going to sound mean, but I'm not trying to be.

    I understand your general frustration, but this is not the roster of a transitioning player. You're a 2* player who has a few 3* covers. Even if every characater was available, you're months away from even beginning the transition. You haven't maxed either the best offensive character (Ares) or the best offensive team (Mags-cStorm, add Hawkeye for Sim) in 2* land. You have limited to no covers of the important 3* characters available (Hood, XForce, LCap, Patch, among others).

    You're right, there is no obvious progress to be made at this stage, but this stage is not about transitioning. This stage is about hoarding resources. Play as much PvE as you can, collect as much of the progression and Iso/HP/tokens/cover drops as you can. Do what you can in PvP, and make every effort to at minimum collect the free 3* at 3k and the 10-pack at 4k. Even if they aren't great rewards and the tokens don't have great drops, you can overcome that quickly that through sheer volume.

    That's probably a frustrating answer and might be a turn off to continuing in the game, but reality is that every day that goes by, the transition becomes a couple days longer. If you're not ready to invest 4-6 months into the game and slog through the grind that is just getting from 2* land to the 3* transition, better to cut bait now and not waste your time.
  • You're right, there is no obvious progress to be made at this stage, but this stage is not about transitioning. This stage is about hoarding resources. Play as much PvE as you can, collect as much of the progression and Iso/HP/tokens/cover drops as you can. Do what you can in PvP, and make every effort to at minimum collect the free 3* at 3k and the 10-pack at 4k. Even if they aren't great rewards and the tokens don't have great drops, you can overcome that quickly that through sheer volume.
    Very much so. Use HP only for roster slots and prioritize pve, and if you can't place well - don't waste time on thin game.
    Be prepared for months mindless grinding icon_mrgreen.gif
  • gamar wrote:
    Phantron wrote:
    There's already a method to convert covers, by using your HP for cover upgrades instead of using it for say shields on 3 3*s that you never needed in the first place.

    The timing of the vaulting wouldn't matter because it's not like you'll go 'oh Daken is back this week better buy 42 tokens!' because if you can do that you'd be better off just upgrading covers (assuming you had 1/1/1 at some point) not to mention this is a rather ridiculous scenario in terms of expenditure power to begin with.
    "Two weeks ago only had one 3* I'm trying to build and last week had none but this week has four of the 3*s I'm trying to build, so I'll splurge the heroics and standards I've been saving for the past three weeks" is EXACTLY how it would go, what are you on about

    Again not that it's a significant difference because "pulling golds from tokens lol lol" but the effect on how "fun" it feels to play the token lottery would be tremendous

    If there are 10 3*s in the pack and 1/6 chance of getting a 3* and you had 100 heroic tokens saved up, you'll pull 1.66 cover of any particular 3* you're looking for.

    While it's good to have hopes it's hardly going to have any meaningful impact on building any character unless you regularly find yourself sitting on 100 heroic tokens, and even then that's not even close to enough to get to 1/1/1 from scratch.
  • This is probably going to sound mean, but I'm not trying to be.

    I understand your general frustration, but this is not the roster of a transitioning player. You're a 2* player who has a few 3* covers. Even if every characater was available, you're months away from even beginning the transition. You haven't maxed either the best offensive character (Ares) or the best offensive team (Mags-cStorm, add Hawkeye for Sim) in 2* land. You have limited to no covers of the important 3* characters available (Hood, XForce, LCap, Patch, among others).

    You're right, there is no obvious progress to be made at this stage, but this stage is not about transitioning. This stage is about hoarding resources. Play as much PvE as you can, collect as much of the progression and Iso/HP/tokens/cover drops as you can. Do what you can in PvP, and make every effort to at minimum collect the free 3* at 3k and the 10-pack at 4k. Even if they aren't great rewards and the tokens don't have great drops, you can overcome that quickly that through sheer volume.

    That's probably a frustrating answer and might be a turn off to continuing in the game, but reality is that every day that goes by, the transition becomes a couple days longer. If you're not ready to invest 4-6 months into the game and slog through the grind that is just getting from 2* land to the 3* transition, better to cut bait now and not waste your time.

    While I agree with some of this, allow me to share a few thoughts aswell.
    Regarding Ares, I do believe he's a pretty strong overall character, although I'd argue he's a better defensive character than offensive, but nevertheless, I'd still put him down as a must-have. Sadly, I've had him sitting there for as long as everyone else, but the RNG gods hate me I guess, because his covers are incredibly rare for me. On the other hand, cStorm would've cost me around 42k ISO, for a boost of about 500 damage on her blue power, and I don't really care about her yellow as its not a viable spell on the offensive, and if she's defending, she's pretty moot and dead in a few hits anyway. While the combo you mentioned does have its perks, I still do just fine with my current roster, which, as you said, should be all about gathering resources and whatnot, and for that purpose is fine as it is (I'll still level hawkeye and ares though, cstorm will remain at her current level til those two are complete, at the very least. I feel that the small boost in her blue doesn't warrant 42k ISO, and her HP is sufficient to win the matches I bring her into).

    On the PVP/Season front, I average around 550~600 points per pvp, and a season score of around 6.5k~ with some ease. I've no problems beating whatever comes my way, as long as it falls within reasonable parameters. However once I get to the "wall", there's not really a lot I can do, since it's usually 2 fully covered 3-star heroes + whatever hero is boosted to oblivion, which I probably don't have, or on the small chance that I do, only a few covers in and not really helpful. Same goes for the SIM, I can usually get around 1500~1600 points fighting full 2* teams, even some mixed 2* and 3*/4*, til it once again falls beyond my "possible" winning range.

    In spite of all that, I'm confident I'm still doing pretty well for the game time/resources I have at my disposal. But it's hard to stack up on covers when the characters keep getting rotated for no good reason (LThor, CMags, BP, Punisher, Patch), and those "few" covers you said I have, they still ammount to 27 covers total, which are now just frozen in time. Getting them was hard, as the tokens are horrid and feel extremely unrewarding most of the time, and it would be foolish to just discard them and focus on getting whatever else is currently in rotation.
    Raising covers with HP isn't viable with the current price of 1250 HP per cover, because these don't come as often as you'd expect. And when they do, they usually go toward roster space so you can use whatever hero they deem essential in the next pve, because if you don't, you'll always be at a major disadvantage.

    There's countless ways to improve the game, and they don't seem to take any steps in order to accomodate newer players. There's no logic reason to make the game feel like a never-ending chore for months on end (and it takes longer and longer with every new hero release / season rotation), which is a shame because they really look like they put effort into making a ton of diversified, fun, and *sometimes* balanced 3* heroes.
  • chaos01
    chaos01 Posts: 316 Mover and Shaker
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    I think Grumpy nailed this one. It is frustrating because the three star pool is so diluted now. So getting useable covers is terrible.
  • SnowcaTT
    SnowcaTT Posts: 3,486 Chairperson of the Boards
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    This is probably going to sound mean, but I'm not trying to be.

    I understand your general frustration, but this is not the roster of a transitioning player. You're a 2* player who has a few 3* covers. Even if every characater was available, you're months away from even beginning the transition. You haven't maxed either the best offensive character (Ares) or the best offensive team (Mags-cStorm, add Hawkeye for Sim) in 2* land. You have limited to no covers of the important 3* characters available (Hood, XForce, LCap, Patch, among others).

    You're right, there is no obvious progress to be made at this stage, but this stage is not about transitioning. This stage is about hoarding resources. Play as much PvE as you can, collect as much of the progression and Iso/HP/tokens/cover drops as you can. Do what you can in PvP, and make every effort to at minimum collect the free 3* at 3k and the 10-pack at 4k. Even if they aren't great rewards and the tokens don't have great drops, you can overcome that quickly that through sheer volume.

    That's probably a frustrating answer and might be a turn off to continuing in the game, but reality is that every day that goes by, the transition becomes a couple days longer. If you're not ready to invest 4-6 months into the game and slog through the grind that is just getting from 2* land to the 3* transition, better to cut bait now and not waste your time.

    As a transtioner (10 3* characters with 13 covers, most not "ideally covered" yet, zero at level 166) I can put in two cents in agreement with OP, the extra covers (and rotations) make it nearly impossible to transition anymore. Characters really aren't usable without a 4 or 5 in your better abilities. The length to get them grows quite a bit with each new character, since now the covers you need are either rotated out (so impossible to get) or just as unlikely as ever - but now you are covering the new characters, which ALSO don't get you any closer to transition since you are getting them their first few...

    All covers should be in, and drop rate from tokens should be increased with each new character - retroactively from when characters began being added. The drop rate is ridiculous and I feel your pain, I haven't seen a 3* from a token for two or three weeks - this while PVE's were running that gave tokens as personal and alliance rewards.

    Two seasons in a row where over half of the PVP events I haven't needed the cover, but often I needed the characters cover in another color. Moving alliance/personal cover to the same color has made transition time even longer. Looking forward to next season, as eventually the colors given out must be rotated to the ones I need.
  • GrumpySmurf1002
    GrumpySmurf1002 Posts: 3,511 Chairperson of the Boards
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    SnowcaTT wrote:
    As a transtioner (10 3* characters with 13 covers, most not "ideally covered" yet, zero at level 166)

    This isn't a transitioner roster. You're done, unless you're still saving the Iso and they're still level 90-100, in which case you're almost done. You don't need a 166 to finish the transition (I have zero as well).

    I got in just in time it seems, because I was at the 'save iso and dump 300k into my 3*s' stage just before the wall started shifting, so I was able to get to 800 occasionally with my 2* roster. So I know it's considerably harder now, but half the battle with the transition is understanding where you're at and how to allocate time/resources correctly, especially if HP is a F2P restriction for you.
  • Finally patch is coming back! Only need like 2 more covers for him to be useful! I agree with weekly rotations though because I have over 1/2 a dozen characters that i need more covers for (pun, daredevil(coming back!), ht) all my best 3 stars have never been vaulted though so score me. I got a fully covered hero after 135 days but its spiderman and i got really lucky (placed 2nd in his recent pvp!). Dont agree with current vaulting situation even though it doesn't effect me a whole lot.
  • Skillsxz wrote:
    cStorm would've cost me around 42k ISO, for a boost of about 500 damage on her blue power, and I don't really care about her yellow as its not a viable spell on the offensive, and if she's defending, she's pretty moot and dead in a few hits anyway. While the combo you mentioned does have its perks, I still do just fine with my current roster, which, as you said, should be all about gathering resources and whatnot, and for that purpose is fine as it is (I'll still level hawkeye and ares though, cstorm will remain at her current level til those two are complete, at the very least. I feel that the small boost in her blue doesn't warrant 42k ISO, and her HP is sufficient to win the matches I bring her into).

    This could not be more wrong. In 2* land you will win matches from the sheer force of Raging Tempest alone. The 2k AoE damage for team <50% can be a huge lifesaver, and even an offensive tactic if you go into a match with <50% to begin with. While I can agree her HP is viable for a single fight, the more HP you have the more prolonged fighting you can be doing.

    Also that 500 damage is actually 1500 damage since it's AoE.