5-Star Rarity & Silver Surfer Announcement! (In-Depth)

dr tinykittylove

Quebbster wrote:

Seanossi wrote:

My main concern is the starting level of 255 and the impact upon PVE scaling. Has this been taken into account? I'm mid transition with most characters at lv94. How much impact would one Silver Surfer cover have on my scaling?

It would be ideal if you could store the covers indefinitely and only add them to your roster when the roster can cope. It seems ridiculous to have to consider selling the cover.

In your situation I'd probably just hold off opening the Legendary tokens until you have a higher level roster. It seems (and I am well aware I may be wrong) that you won't have much use for either 4* or 5* covers at this point.

I was in early-mid 3* transition when XF got his original buff. By chance I had 5/4/2 covers for him and it helped move things along considerably. It helped even more that he was quite usable as a pretend-3*. I think anyone who has been lucky enough to get covers for upper-tier characters should be able to enjoy them rather than worry about the impact on their game.

(Getting a scarlet witch at level 40 and noticing the impact in pvp when you're still working on your level 15 1*s was a little disconcerting. I can only imagine getting a HB cover would be even more so, and now the chance of getting a surfer...)

Bowgentle

GurlBYE wrote:

It may be a better idea to either lower 5 power a bit, or raise 3 along with 4.

3 stars still make up 50% of the games roster. Not a huge leap, but a little something.

People would do 3 vs 5 for story if 5 is featured in the future ( like how I used 2's against 4 stars during deadpool pve and in DDQ when Shethor is on final round of last node), or for pvp when a handful eventually break in and boosted 3 stars are still better then an underleveled 4 star.

Ice has just stated that 3*s are not meant to compete with 4*s, just as 2*s are not meant to compete with 4*s.
3*s just got a buff that lets them hold their ground against 4*s, they don't need another buff.

GurlBYE

^ And I'm pretty sure i just fully explained why i disagreed with examples?

If anything after hearing about making 5's use-able, I'm guessing it really shouldn't be super hard to re algorithm how the power scales by levels and by covers for 3 and 4 at some point, not changing much full cover and full levels just making it a bit less exponential.

GothicKratos

I think I am the only person looking forward to fighting Silver Surfer.

Bowgentle

GurlBYE wrote:

^ And I'm pretty sure i just fully explained why i disagreed with examples?

I was just stating that even though you disagree, it probably won't change a thing because the devs view is different

Flare808

Bowgentle wrote:

GurlBYE wrote:

It may be a better idea to either lower 5 power a bit, or raise 3 along with 4.

3 stars still make up 50% of the games roster. Not a huge leap, but a little something.

People would do 3 vs 5 for story if 5 is featured in the future ( like how I used 2's against 4 stars during deadpool pve and in DDQ when Shethor is on final round of last node), or for pvp when a handful eventually break in and boosted 3 stars are still better then an underleveled 4 star.

Ice has just stated that 3*s are not meant to compete with 4*s, just as 2*s are not meant to compete with 4*s.
3*s just got a buff that lets them hold their ground against 4*s, they don't need another buff.

Additionally, Ice said that 4*s will receive a (weekly) buff that will put them closer to the power level of 5*s, much like how the top 3*s can hold their own against 4*s when buffed. This won't happen until 5*s are more common and getting near maxed or it'll throw the current balance off.

Source: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=32578&start=160#p406096

GothicKratos wrote:

I think I am the only person looking forward to fighting Silver Surfer.

I think you very well might be Let's look at the facts:

-60K HP, triple even the next closest competitor, Devil Dino. 4 times the average 4* health
-Think you started chipping away at SS? Think again! 16K (true?) healing. Again-that's the average 4* health.
-Unstunnable
-8K damage for 7 AP. 'Nuff said
-Obvious Hulkbuster/Cyke pairing feeding reds
-1500 match damage on strong colors

Not saying it wouldn't be a challenge to face, but holy hell does it look like a pain in the **** to take down atm.

GothicKratos

Side Topic: Potential other 5*s; Thanos, Galactus, Dormammu, In-Betweener, Phoenix Force, The Watcher, Shuma-Gorath, Apocalypse?

Moon Roach

GothicKratos wrote:

Side Topic: Potential other 5*s; Thanos, Galactus, Dormammu, In-Betweener, Phoenix Force, The Watcher, Shuma-Gorath, Apocalypse?

The Watcher - 3 passives?

Dunno why, but I'm thinking of Molecule Man. Or Ego The Living Planet. Where would Adam Warlock fit into this, I wonder.

Lemminkäinen

Mawtful wrote:

IceIX wrote:

Mawtful wrote:

Probably first week.
Even though it's a 5% chance, any 5* cover they pull will be for Surfer, so this is the one time that there's less RNG to fight against.

True, but when you hit 5 in any given color, any newly pulled cover is "wasted" for purposes of full covering. And you need the correct ones for your build. So that's an additional unknown number you'd have to pull.

Let's look at the best-worst case scenario;
best: you get the covers for your ideal build and none wasted
worst: you get them at exactly 5% draw rate (1 per 20 tokens)

20 tokens opened for each of 13 covers = 260 tokens
260 tokens at 16,000 HP per token = 4160000 HP
4160000 HP in 20,000 HP bundles = 208 Stark Salaries = ~$20,800

(FWIW, best-best case of getting the right 13 covers from 13 tokens means you only need to buy 11 Stark Salaries. Get your prayers into RNGsus now!)

Yeah, I still think there'll be one covered in the first week. By comparison, it's only ~$1,400 to cover max a 4* during their release event. I think most of the Super Whales won't go in for it - however it does provide a nice bonus when they do buy token packs to cover a character before release. But there's bound to be someone out there for whom $20k is a small price to pay to be the first person with Silver Surfer.

To get more accurate results (taking into account that your best scenario is very unlikely) I ran a simulation - with a million iterations and ran several times the result was always 307 packs needed on average to get a 13-cover Silver Surfer. So that's ~$24,600.

theo199

When is coming the real-time PvP game mod?

SnagglePuss

GothicKratos wrote:

I think I am the only person looking forward to fighting Silver Surfer.

I didn't think anyone else was into sadomasochism

Raffoon

IceIX wrote:

Players will not be facing off against 450 Silver Surfers very soon. By the time that's any kind of regularity, 4*s will be buffed to be closer to a 5*s max power. We don't want to do 4* buffs quite so soon though since 5*s aren't really a "thing" yet. All that overbuffing them would do now would be to further blast 3*s and underdeveloped 4* rosters into dust. That's fun for the tippy top that are there, but for the *vast* majority of the player base, that's bad.

Maybe it's just because I haven't played with it, but rebalancing the power level of all the 4*s to make them able to compete with the new 5* level seems a lot harder than just making the power level on the 5* characters match the expected difference in power level. Changing 16 characters, vs changing 1 that isn't even released yet? Again, I do realize that it's incredibly hard to offer valid feedback on this, given that it's not out yet.

IceIX wrote:

Interesting idea on the Vault. We're talking about ways to improve it in general, that's a helpful suggestion. One thing we're worried about with a Legendary Vault though is that it would either have to be static (so new 4/5*s wouldn't enter it, boo), or way too dynamic (so you have 2 weeks to pull a 5* before it updates). There's no way currently that we can have user customizable Vaults that'll stay static until user updated when they pull down the new config. Obviously, that's solveable. But it'd take quite a bit of work on the backend.

For most use cases, I think a 1-2 week vault rotation on the legendary vault wouldn't be a bad option.

You're going to have one group of people that just open up a small batch of 1-5 tokens all at once. They're basically saying "OK, I know it's a vault, but whatever, I want my prizes now". For them, yes a short vault would be a bit worse overall than a long vault, but that's a choice they can make to open tokens immediately. It's also still a slightly better option for them than no vault at all, as long as they open more than 1 token at once. Worst case is that the odds are equal to non-vault, so this is a strict improvement over non-vault even for this group.

You're going to have another group of people that hoard the full 20 tokens. If you're opening 20 at once, then it doesn't matter if the vault is 10 days, 10 weeks, or 10 minutes. They'll open until they get what they want and then wait for the next time they're full.

The only real downside I can see would be if you're locked into a vault that you don't want. That seems like another point for the 1-2 week vault so that people aren't stuck with a potentially bad vault for too long. Or maybe to solve that, everyone could get a free refresh before they start drawing from the vault?

Anyway, besides all that, thanks for taking the time to answer all these questions about the new feature. All this new information, communication, and clarification offered directly following the announcement is much appreciated.

jimstarooney

slidecage wrote:

IceIX wrote:

mindsuckr wrote:

What is the progression level going to be for PVE event's reward token? 2 times current top progression? 3x? 4x? 5x?

Depends largely on the PVE. 2x progression in some is simple, really hard in others.

ummm i have yet to meet any PVE that 2x progression was not doable.. I will admit this good way to force people who dont want to play PVE to play..

This token is given out in every PVE

am i really interested not really. then again 4 months ago i could not see deadpool lasting so maybe in 4 months i will be intersted.

I do see major problems with this though. So this is coming a pay to win. those who can get 10k in season or 1300 or whatever in PVP gets a token. Meaning if they get lucky and can stockpile the 5 stars they can then just walk on the smaller fries in PVP...

PVP is going to have to change and change super fast i mean Whats the point in playing PVP in 2 to 3 months when your going to be facing nothing but max out 4 stars.

maybe make 2 PVPS one where nothing higher then a 3 star can be used and another one where you can use up to 5 stars . Sorry but if in a few months the PVP turns into nothing but max out 4 star teams Im done with PVP.

unless there are new PVP and PVE features ( nothing higher in 3 stars can be used) i can see this becoming a major problem in a few months..

Just think someone new comes into this game in DEC before they would only have to put up with people with max 2 and 3 stars and a few covers in 4 stars... Now they will face MAX 4 stars and 5 stars sorry but that is going to scare a lot of people away very very quicly

might as well Kill rewards for PVE i mean fight fight fight fight for 4 star for days and maybe get lucky and win, or just fight to progession and get the 4 star from the pack.. Somthing makes me think this is the start of the end of rewards in PVE

again maybe after i start playing it i will love it but how it sounds its going to crush the newbies

pve has long been a training ground for noobs that cant compete,giving them a chance.imagine if 1 gets lucky and gets a 5 star?they'll be able to compete almost straight away.
added to the 4 stars they have earnt through pve and the new dpd you aren't looking at the bigger picture

Doc L

Moon Roach wrote:

GothicKratos wrote:

Side Topic: Potential other 5*s; Thanos, Galactus, Dormammu, In-Betweener, Phoenix Force, The Watcher, Shuma-Gorath, Apocalypse?

The Watcher - 3 passives?

Dunno why, but I'm thinking of Molecule Man. Or Ego The Living Planet. Where would Adam Warlock fit into this, I wonder.

Adam Warlock is a good call, he should be right up there with the other 5*, especially when he has the Infinity Stones.

What I am hoping for is more storylines associated with fighting these new high powered 5* - The Arrival of the Silver Surfer for example. The overall 5* release looks promising, much better than I was thinking it would be, which is great news. Attainable, but slowly attainable, and a good shock to the 4* collection system as well.

nwman

So I assume this is nerf proof?

What reaction will a theoretic whale have that spends 20k plus to max SS, that is nerfed?


I'd be hoping for a chargeback at best. Hiring extra security at the least.


We get lawyer threats and worse for $30 charges at my work.

CrookedKnight

Thinking about what this will do to the rate of 4* cover acquisition:

DPD: One cover per five days, assuming you have every 4* in roughly-usable condition (or just on your roster and can burn some beefy teamups to win the fight).
Taco tokens: Wash. Replacing one 4* cover in a taco vault with a Legendary token gives players a new chance at a 5* but does not raise the odds for pulling a 4*.
PvE: One cover per 3-7 days, depending on the length of the event, if you're willing to grind it out.
PvP: Per-event, this is a wash, since the guaranteed 4* at 1300 is being replaced with a 4*-or-better Legendary token.
PvP season: One cover per month, at 10,000 season points. The Legendary token in the season alliance reward is a wash since it replaces a guaranteed 4* cover.

So an average transitioning player is probably looking at an extra 1-2 4* covers per week, more if you're grinding every PvE into powder. Nice, but not a huge difference in the speed of transition, especially if new 4*s keep showing up regularly.

Lemminkäinen

nwman wrote:

So I assume this is nerf proof?

What reaction will a theoretic whale have that spends 20k plus to max SS, that is nerfed?

I'm sure that D3 would give them the possibility of selling Silver Surfer for 5000HP or so.

Punisher5784

Sooooo since 5*'s can level up to 450, can we expect a Level-Up button?! It's silly that we are still holding down the button.

Dayv

Punisher5784 wrote:

Sooooo since 5*'s can level up to 450, can we expect a Level-Up button?! It's silly that we are still holding down the button.

For five-star characters, the leveling button will be replaced with a circular gesture you make on the screen or with your mouse. Each circle adds 100 ISO.

Isay_Isay

Will Devil Dino be a part of the 4* Deadpool Dailies or are they still limited to anniversary events?