jffdougan wrote: El Satanno wrote: CrookedKnight wrote: Yeah, you can buy a 40-pack and get ONE. Or clear out a taco vault. That's for a single one-in-twenty chance at an epic. I sincerely hope nobody's that nuts. What are you, joking? I guarantee you see a maxed Surfer within a month of his release. And I'm not talking about a sandbox account. Just you watch. I'm trying to think of suitable stakes to wager you for that.
El Satanno wrote: CrookedKnight wrote: Yeah, you can buy a 40-pack and get ONE. Or clear out a taco vault. That's for a single one-in-twenty chance at an epic. I sincerely hope nobody's that nuts. What are you, joking? I guarantee you see a maxed Surfer within a month of his release. And I'm not talking about a sandbox account. Just you watch.
CrookedKnight wrote: Yeah, you can buy a 40-pack and get ONE. Or clear out a taco vault. That's for a single one-in-twenty chance at an epic. I sincerely hope nobody's that nuts.
morph3us wrote: Is anyone who's cleverer at maths than me able to figure out what ungodly amount of money you'd need to spend on 40 packs in order to have a reasonable statistical chance of getting a maxed Surfer? My mind boggles.
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.
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.
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.
Vhailorx wrote: If I can gloat briefly: this change was pretty clearly necessary months ago. And I am mocking everyone who scoffed at me for saying so in July (viewtopic.php?style=1&f=7&t=31601&hilit=observations+5%2A). More on topic: 5* seems to be an indicate an interesting change in design philosophy for demiurge: (1) no more direct buy covers prevents whales from maxing out characters on day 1 and thereby lengthen their interest in the game. Clearly demiurge has recognized that it's impossible to serve the majority of the player community and simultaneously serve the super-whales who max a new 4* every 2 weeks. (though there will undoubtedly still be some uber-whales who buy 40 packs endlessly to max surfer in the first week after release. Seems like truly ridiculous waste of thousands of dollars to me, but there is probably someone who will try it) (2) 5* characters are intended to be usable almost immediately, rather than requiring 8-10 covers (and usually 5 in at least 1 key power). Clearly Demiurge has recognized that forcing players to carry 8-15 completely useless characters with just 1 or 2 covers for endless months is a big turn off for players. having usable characters during transition should make the transition process more fun, but it may make the end-game feel even more stale for some. (3) 4*s are going to remain fairly difficult to build. No news about adding 4*s as placement rewards for pvp or pve (other than the 1/1-2 slot). So a maximum of 1 cover for any given 4* will remain the best possible outcome for any event. the ddq legendaries will help, as will the pve progs and 1300 tokens. But I don't know if that will even keep pace with the current 4* release rate (unless the release rate slows down). (4) I will be curious to see what the "natural" build rate for 5*s will be (i.e. the rate without buying 40 packs). the super hardcore players will get 1-2 legendaries from pve every seven days, 3 from PVP 1300 rewards, and 1-2 from ddq. that's 5-7 legendary tokens per week. Meaning about 5 legendary covers every 4 months. there will be 39 5* covers (Assuming they all need 13 like everyone else) by the end of 2015. So it seems like even the very hardcore f2p players will take more than a year to cover any 5* (assuming no more are introduced). It's good that people will presumably get some use out of undercovered 5*s, but this seems like a pretty clear attempt to incentivize 40-pack purchases (since they are the only other way to get legendary tokens). That's disheartening as the 40 pack prices are, frankly, grotesque and the high-end of the freemium business model always seems rather predatory. (5) this announcement was all about the high-end (the 3*-->4* transitioners). I expect that there will have to be subsequent changes to speed up the 3* transition. And the game should probably also do something to trim back the 3* roster requirements for new players (maybe take the weakest 10 3*s out of the essential rotation, a la bagman). It's a pretty big ask of new players to require that they slowly build all 40 3*s when there are still two tiers above them. I certainly wouldn't have wanted to wade through 40 2*s back when 3* was main field for end-game play.
Vhailorx wrote: (2) 5* characters are intended to be usable almost immediately, rather than requiring 8-10 covers (and usually 5 in at least 1 key power). Clearly Demiurge has recognized that forcing players to carry 8-15 completely useless characters with just 1 or 2 covers for endless months is a big turn off for players. having usable characters during transition should make the transition process more fun, but it may make the end-game feel even more stale for some.
IceIX wrote: Buret0 wrote: Any plans to address the billion ISO shortfall we already have with the current 4*s? Concepts and ideas, yes. Nothing ready to go right this second. It's most definitely on our radar though.
Buret0 wrote: Any plans to address the billion ISO shortfall we already have with the current 4*s?
IceIX wrote: Match damage is as written, those aren't typos. 5*s start around 4* power at 255 and go up from there. Protect tiles are a thing you may want to think about.
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.
Mawtful wrote: ~60k health and ~520 per tile match damage? For 7 AP, Cosmic Beam deals 8k damage, which effectively negates about half the 3* tier or lower. For 14 AP, you can double tap Cosmic Beam to take care of anyone not called Iron Man (Hulkbuster).