Next step: Tokens need to change

Polares
Polares Posts: 2,643 Chairperson of the Boards
edited July 2015 in MPQ General Discussion
This game has improved A LOT in the last few months, it really has, 10 health packs, 1000 and 1300 progression, better scores, no community scaling, 1 simultaneous sub for PvE, etc. so kudos to devs, but there is still one thing that needs to change, and that is tokens, and yeah I have seen the vault, but it is not enough in its current form.

First of all tokens. Devs have improved chances, and that is great, but it is still not enough, why? Because chance is still the most important factor. Have you thought why in a magic booster (or any other card game) there is ALWAYS one rare card? Because it needs to be, if there wasnt at least one players would feel cheated all the time. All of us have opened 10tokens and won nothing, more than once in fact. In the past all 10pack had at least one gold, and this is how it should be. I think tokens need to change, maybe like in other games, tokens should be a pack of 3, where there is a gold (a 3 or 4), and two silvers (it could also be health, iso or a silver char). Before, that type of booster was not feasible because there was a very small number of 3s and 4s but now it is different, the number of 3s and 4 covers is so big, that you can give a golden reward in this booster without breaking the game.

The vault is not a bad idea, but I think the execution is still a miss. For DDQ is not that bad, but 300 it is two much, more If we think that we have two different vaults. Maybe 100 would be a better number. Then Independence Day Vault IS A COMPLETE DISASTER and I hope they never do something like this again. Why? Because what you can win depends just on chance again, only chance. In my case I needed 0 4s and 0 3s, 0 not even one (and I have a lot of uncovered 4s and some 3s), at least in regular choices you can win any character. So or you let people have some resets for free or you look into each player not max covered chars and you build the vault based at leasr in part on that, but you cant have a reward that has 0 utility for a given player. Why play this event If I can win nothing?

So, recap, thing is you cant let chance decide completely what a player can win, tokens need to change, and the vault too. If we can fix these this game can be really great.

Comments

  • CrookedKnight
    CrookedKnight Posts: 2,579 Chairperson of the Boards
    The problem is that your vault complaints, while both valid, are contradictory -- 300 is too many because the odds don't improve substantially as stuff gets pulled out, but 50-100 is too few because it's easy for all the 3* and 4* slots to get taken up by stuff you don't need in the first place.

    Solution: smaller vaults, but make "Refresh the Vault" free as long as the vault is full. Only after a token pull does it cost HP. There's already a glitch(?) making it work this way in practice -- until you get a token to use in a vault, you can refresh it just by switching screens. Make that official and everybody's happy.
  • Polares
    Polares Posts: 2,643 Chairperson of the Boards
    The problem is that your vault complaints, while both valid, are contradictory -- 300 is too many because the odds don't improve substantially as stuff gets pulled out, but 50-100 is too few because it's easy for all the 3* and 4* slots to get taken up by stuff you don't need in the first place.

    Solution: smaller vaults, but make "Refresh the Vault" free as long as the vault is full. Only after a token pull does it cost HP. There's already a glitch(?) making it work this way in practice -- until you get a token to use in a vault, you can refresh it just by switching screens. Make that official and everybody's happy.

    It is not contradictory at all, because DDQ vault has the property of resetting itself each 5 days, so it can be smaller AND not locked with any given rewards for more than 5 days.

    They are not going to give an infinite number of resets, because then you would have the possibility of creating the perfect vault (for you). But give like 5 resets while the vault is full could be a big improvement.
  • DaveR4470
    DaveR4470 Posts: 931 Critical Contributor
    Guaranteed 3*-4* pulls from token packs greatly increase the Pay-To-Win factor of the game. You may (legitimately) not like the odds on the playing field, but you know that everyone else faces those exact same odds, and your "luck" is not determined by how much money you're willing to spend. Which is a good thing in the long run.
  • Punisher5784
    Punisher5784 Posts: 3,845 Chairperson of the Boards
    Love the idea of a 3-character booster pack. When you mentioned Magic the Gathering as an example I was thinking the exact same thing. This way we can finally call tokens, packs! They can make the packs much harder to get because at least we are guaranteed a Gold (T250 in sub-event). I also would not mind if the 2* pull also yielded Health packs, ISO, HP, boosts, etc. It would definitely be more interesting this way as opposed to the long Vault animation.

    I also agree on the free Vault reset. It's silly for us to see our Vault and not have anything we can win. That definitely needs to change.
  • I definitely think the guaranteed character is a good idea.

    I'll go further with it.

    On the feature character packs, 10pack or 40pack should included a guaranteed cover of the featured character. Why don't they? How much sense does it make to buy the Storm feature pack (40x EXPENSIVE) and not get a Storm? It doesn't. there should be a 100% chance for at LEAST 1 Storm.
  • Polares
    Polares Posts: 2,643 Chairperson of the Boards
    I definitely think the guaranteed character is a good idea.

    I'll go further with it.

    On the feature character packs, 10pack or 40pack should included a guaranteed cover of the featured character. Why don't they? How much sense does it make to buy the Storm feature pack (40x EXPENSIVE) and not get a Storm? It doesn't. there should be a 100% chance for at LEAST 1 Storm.

    Before, it was like that. When you bought a 10pack token for any given featured char it always had at least one cover of this char. I dont know why decided to change it (well I suppose it was to make people spend more money to win the featured char).
  • they aren't gonna change tokens tokens are $$$$$

    I read every 4* event how ppl buy 40 packs to get 4* characters hell someone bought 3 40 packs in order to get 1 carnage cover

    look at all the token changes and the vault and how everything in game has a token attached to it
  • slidecage
    slidecage Posts: 3,401 Chairperson of the Boards
    Polares wrote:
    This game has improved A LOT in the last few months, it really has, 10 health packs, 1000 and 1300 progression, better scores, no community scaling, 1 simultaneous sub for PvE, etc. so kudos to devs, but there is still one thing that needs to change, and that is tokens, and yeah I have seen the vault, but it is not enough in its current form.

    First of all tokens. Devs have improved chances, and that is great, but it is still not enough, why? Because chance is still the most important factor. Have you thought why in a magic booster (or any other card game) there is ALWAYS one rare card? Because it needs to be, if there wasnt at least one players would feel cheated all the time. All of us have opened 10tokens and won nothing, more than once in fact. In the past all 10pack had at least one gold, and this is how it should be. I think tokens need to change, maybe like in other games, tokens should be a pack of 3, where there is a gold (a 3 or 4), and two silvers (it could also be health, iso or a silver char). Before, that type of booster was not feasible because there was a very small number of 3s and 4s but now it is different, the number of 3s and 4 covers is so big, that you can give a golden reward in this booster without breaking the game.

    The vault is not a bad idea, but I think the execution is still a miss. For DDQ is not that bad, but 300 it is two much, more If we think that we have two different vaults. Maybe 100 would be a better number. Then Independence Day Vault IS A COMPLETE DISASTER and I hope they never do something like this again. Why? Because what you can win depends just on chance again, only chance. In my case I needed 0 4s and 0 3s, 0 not even one (and I have a lot of uncovered 4s and some 3s), at least in regular choices you can win any character. So or you let people have some resets for free or you look into each player not max covered chars and you build the vault based at leasr in part on that, but you cant have a reward that has 0 utility for a given player. Why play this event If I can win nothing?

    So, recap, thing is you cant let chance decide completely what a player can win, tokens need to change, and the vault too. If we can fix these this game can be really great.

    played the july 4 vault... one token in, won 1000 HP so its not **** for me
  • puppychow
    puppychow Posts: 1,453
    For featured cover packs, the pull for a featured character used to be 10%. So a 10 pack is usually enough to get the essential character you need. Of course, D3 decided to reduce the draw rate in order to get players missing the character to buy more cover packs. This is why the draw rate is so low, to get desperate whales to buy more packs. Once they get the cover/color, the whales will simply buy more covers directly. Thus, it's not unusual for a whale to buy several 42 packs to unlock the covers/color for the new character, as someone else has pointed out here.

    I view the change in DDQ vault as a way to increase sales, by using visual stimulation to do so. icon_lol.gif

    I don't think D3 wants to make token changes, not if they want to maintain their sales.
  • TheOncomingStorm
    TheOncomingStorm Posts: 489 Mover and Shaker
    I keep saying this, but doesn't look like I'll be able to stop any time soon. People are confusing tokens with covers.

    Tokens are supposed to be a lottery, not a guarantee. Moreover, just like a real money lottery, while poorer ppl get excited when they win $2 or $100 (2* or 3*), rich people are just meh with the same rewards. For richer folks, they're not happy unless they get at least $10,000 (a great 3*cover they're missing or a 4*).

    In other words, it's not the token system that is broken, it's people's expectations of that system. Saying the lottery doesn't let you win enough is ignoring the fact it's a lottery.

    Covers on the other hand are certain if you meet certain requirements aka beat a certain node, reach a certain ranking, or obtain a certain score.

    I really don't see how this is so complicated. Some ppl seem to be staving off the cognitive dissonance on this one for some reason. If they wanted to have incredible odds of ppl getting covers from tokens, theyd just give covers, not tokens. They give tokens precisely because they want a feature (separate from the other cover distribution devices) that does not have outstanding odds of getting great rewards. The vault is set up for better odds (better relatively speaking). It's still a token system, it is not intended to (nor will it ever) give great odds. It is set up for the house to win (by any definition).

    I'm sure we'd all like casinos to put the odds in the players' favor. However, for the same reasons as the token system, that's not going to happen.
  • j0nats
    j0nats Posts: 149 Tile Toppler
    raisinbman wrote:
    they aren't gonna change tokens tokens are $$$$$

    I read every 4* event how ppl buy 40 packs to get 4* characters hell someone bought 3 40 packs in order to get 1 carnage cover

    look at all the token changes and the vault and how everything in game has a token attached to it

    Wow with all the hp needed to buy 3 40packs, u should be able to shield hop foreverü better way to get ur 4* in my opinion
  • j0nats wrote:
    raisinbman wrote:
    they aren't gonna change tokens tokens are $$$$$

    I read every 4* event how ppl buy 40 packs to get 4* characters hell someone bought 3 40 packs in order to get 1 carnage cover

    look at all the token changes and the vault and how everything in game has a token attached to it

    Wow with all the hp needed to buy 3 40packs, u should be able to shield hop foreverü better way to get ur 4* in my opinion
    it wasn't me, some person i think they even posted in the carnage event thread they bought 3 42 packs trying to get carnage...that sh**p is wild.

    Happens for every 4* character though

    and I'm sure there's lots of people who aren't on the forums who buy 42 packs...d3 said tokens were one of their biggest sources of incomes, much like Magic the Gathering sells booster packs like crazy
  • atomzed
    atomzed Posts: 1,753 Chairperson of the Boards
    j0nats wrote:
    raisinbman wrote:
    they aren't gonna change tokens tokens are $$$$$

    I read every 4* event how ppl buy 40 packs to get 4* characters hell someone bought 3 40 packs in order to get 1 carnage cover

    look at all the token changes and the vault and how everything in game has a token attached to it

    Wow with all the hp needed to buy 3 40packs, u should be able to shield hop foreverü better way to get ur 4* in my opinion

    Indeed, it's not economically efficient to buy packs for a SPECIFIC type of cover. You end up spending more money.

    As the oncomingstorm stated, the tokens are meant to be lower odds. The purpose is 2fold, it increase scarcity and then increase the desirability of the cover rewards in events.

    Instead of asking for an increase of the token odds, I would rather get more ways of getting confirmed covers. Something like a month long gauntlet, with specific 4* covers released.