Dauthi's Token Journal - Legendary Tokens Don't Work

ammenell

Xenoberyll wrote:

OneLastGambit wrote:

I'm gonna play a little devils advocate here, I'm not entering the debate on randomness here that's been done enough. Why should the devs change the system? As a player it feels totally unfair, but as a business watching all those dollars roll in must be insanely satisfying.

D3 already has a rep for being a noob developer that struck gold with a great license. The bad rep for being greedy will only grow the more the balance between frustration and love for the game tips. For now it works for them but... a devil's advocate probably sees the potential for disaster.

why is that?

OneLastGambit

Xenoberyll wrote:

OneLastGambit wrote:

I'm gonna play a little devils advocate here, I'm not entering the debate on randomness here that's been done enough. Why should the devs change the system? As a player it feels totally unfair, but as a business watching all those dollars roll in must be insanely satisfying.

D3 already has a rep for being a noob developer that struck gold with a great license. The bad rep for being greedy will only grow the more the balance between frustration and love for the game tips. For now it works for them but... a devil's advocate probably sees the potential for disaster.

Hey Donald Trump has been skinning the sheep instead of shearing it for years and he is still rich, still able to obtain credit and still able to attract people to his hairbrained schemes. In a sensible world yes a greedy D3 would suffer as a result of greed, in this one they will not. Many many many other mobile developers simply pull the plug on the game when they've had enough even if their userbase has invested a lot of money in it. Why would this one be any different? Those same developers will then make another game and do the same and people will still play that new game (if it's good) despite the developers bad rep. Case in point EA and Battlefield 4 - how many people decided not to buy anymore EA games because of that? I'd wager zero.

Malcrof

Ok, this thread has gotten off track, please keep posts relevant to the OP, or the thread will be locked

Pylgrim

OneLastGambit wrote:

Pylgrim wrote:

Mawtful wrote:

I don't mean to belittle your efforts or anything but we've known that Tokens don't work for a while now; Legendary or otherwise.

Legendary tokens probably provide the best odds for the player, it's just that a roster that's mature enough to be earning Legendary Tokens regularly is likely to be already past the point where 50% of the possible pulls are "worthwhile". In this perspective, the problem then becomes: once you've got the "right" 13 covers for a character, any additional covers are useless. There are plenty of ways to resolve this, but I really can't be bothered suggesting anything anymore.

The problem with LTs is their scarcity. When you get a run of bad luck with say 20 heroic (or similar value) tokens, you can make up those 20 tokens in matter of days, if you luck turns. 20 bad draws from LTs will take you months to overturn (if it happens at all). Yeah, odds are good, but there will still be a significant amount of people screwed by luck. For all the effort necessary to get a single LT, this shouldn't happen.

Malcrof wrote:

Think everyone is missing a key piece of information.. the legendary token pull rates are in no way cumulative. Each token is a separate entity. You have the same odds of pulling 5 starlords in a row, as you do in pulling 5 iceman's in a row.

There is no guarantee, nothing was ever promised..

As I keep saying, no one here is misunderstanding chance or futilely believing that every single person should have good luck. The point is that the difference in progression allowed by a difference of LT pulls between someone experiencing a good luck run vs someone experiencing a bad luck run is devastating. Something as four 4* covers of difference more could make a big difference, especially on the long term. For someone with really bad luck as yours truly, I'm something around 14, FOURTEEN, 4* covers behind someone with average luck, let alone those with good luck. Can you imagine the difference in our progression?

From 23 LTs, I have drawn 6 IWs and 5 XFs, plus 7 other assorted covers that I didn't need. The cinch? I actually need over 80% of the total amount of existing 4* covers. I've basically been rolling a 6-sided die 23 times, and getting a 1, 18 times. Is it freak, bizarre luck that doesn't properly reflect the given odds? For sure. But, is it a horrible, horrible, embittering, but more importantly, avoidable player experience that impedes progression for 2-year loyal players? Tinykitty yeah.

rdvargas1 wrote:

How many times do people need to be told how statistics work? The draw rates are clearly listed in the legendary token section. Your extremely limited sample size proves nothing except what you have drawn. Yes it sucks to get duplicates but that's what happens with rngs and all token pulls operate with the same mechanic. Think of all the 1 2 and 3* star duplicates you pull, the same thing logically happens with 4*s as you earn more.

How many times do pompous know-it-alls need to be told that this is not about statistics but about fairness? That the scarcity and difficulty to acquire of LTs make them completely incomparable to any other token?

I'm gonna play a little devils advocate here, I'm not entering the debate on randomness here that's been done enough. Why should the devs change the system? As a player it feels totally unfair, but as a business watching all those dollars roll in must be insanely satisfying. Here's the worst part - despite the complaints people carry on paying and playing. The only way you change anything in a world driven entirely by money (and not satisfaction) is to stop that flow of money. Why should devs change something when people are still paying or playing? They shouldn't. No change is necessary (from their perspective) until it is forced by a lack of usage. Want to make a statement and enforce change? Do it how they do in real industry - stage a strike.

I know the devs are also players (and enjoy their own product) but you are a tad delusional if you believe they will choose the product over the money they make from it.

As a player (or consumer) you have only two choices really - 1. play and accept the game as it is and also accept that any changes will only happen when the devs feel it benefits the business. Or 2. assume that the game will never be as you wish it to be and find something else.

It sounds tinykitty and I know the statement is a bit tinykittyish but its the unfortunate truth, I have abandoned many games in the past once I realised it did not meet my expectations and should this one do the same I will do the same again. At the minute I can accept it's drawbacks but then I'm only 125 days in yet.

I understand this, but tell me, how is precisely the feature that I'm railing against something that would decrease profit if changed? Right now I'd never, ever buy a Legendary Token or several with money as empirical evidence suggests that it would be self-loathing inducing waste of money. I have spent money in the game in average every 6 months (around the times of HP sales) and next time I do it, the shape of my expenditure will be exactly the same than it has always been: buying covers outright and leaving some loose change for roster slots. The addition of Legendary Tokens has impacted my purchase desire or habits exactly by 0, and I expect most of the smart non-whale players will feel similarly, even the ones that have experienced good luck with LTs so far.

On the other hand, take my suggestion, a small, fast rotating vault for LTs that gives me the power of choosing the best times to use my hoarded LTs. If I draw, say 10 out of 20 and I can see that the 10 remaining are mostly covers that I need, you can bet that for the first time ever, I'll consider spending money on tokens instead of outright covers. And since these vaults would be short-lived, it would add a sense of urgency that may encourage me to spend money even if there's not an HP sale going on. Moreover, if I still decided to only keep buying covers directly, well, I cannot buy additional copies for covers of which I have 0, right? Which of there are many (while I keep drawing XF and IW). So there you have another way how improving my chances of drawing stuff that I need may encourage expenditure.

aesthetocyst wrote:

lukewin wrote:

My Legendary Tokens work. I tap on it and it gives me a cover of one of the characters listed in the odds table.

Dang it, Luke, I clicked on this thread to post something precisely along those lines

Glad i took my own advice and read before posting, heh.

To the OP .... Legendaries are absolutely working, working as the devs intended (hardehar), but also working to grease transitioning.

Random is random and sometimes it REALLY blows. I've had at least five "runs" on my token luck on Legendaries already:

1. Started pulling awesome stuff for a week, then ...
2. I got a 2-week case of the IWs ...
3. Then about another week of awesome stuff...
4. Followed by an impressive (and infuriating!) month-long case of the "yellows" (managed to rug that off on Malcrof, heh), and ...
5. Now now back on the good stuff! (Long may it last)

Of course, runs are purely in our imagination, seeing patterns where none exist (read The Believing Brain by Shermer, 2011).

But during these good runs, I see my number of 4* covers needed drop like a rock (don't worry, new releases get it right back up again).

Just in the past week, I have made progress on covering and leveling OML, Kingpin, Jean Grey, Xpool, X23, 4clops, Iceman, and Carnage*, and of course Ghost Rider. It wasn't all from Legendaries, but they helped. And the Legendaries I opened came from PVP, PVE, and CP. It was a good week.

And I have three, count'em Thuh-ruh-eeee, 5* covers, would have zero without Legendaries. Whoo-hooo!

________________________

* Woulda finished Carnage long ago, but was in no hurry to roster him. And why you no give me Rulk, MPQ?

I'm glad that your experience was defined by short, almost non-existing "runs" of good and bad luck that self-corrected themselves and in the end came off as a net positive, but you'll have to repeat to my face, the face of someone who has lost 18 out of 23 draws at an expected 80% success rate, and who will need full 2-3 months of straight awesome luck with LTs to just get back to what would have been an even point 3 months ago, that this bad luck run "exists purely in my imagination" and I'm only "seeing patterns where none exist".

Buret0

I've pulled zero 5*s in over a month. I was having better pull rates when it was only a 5% chance of drawing a 5*.

I've won every 4* DDQ so far and my reward has been 1,000 ISO on a maxed out 4* every single time. I've gotten a few tokens from teammates buying the 7 Command Point packs, but those haven't been a 5* either. The only 4*s I still need are Ghost Rider and Red Hulk, so if the reward isn't the 1/10 5*, my legendary tokens are worthless.

One of the reasons I've stopped playing competitive for awhile... let some new releases come out to give me something to play for.

OneLastGambit

I wonder if the people who are unhappy with how tokens work (because they are in bad runs - no matter what level of bad they are) would still be shouting for change if they had pulled 50 needed tokens out of 50? If you had just completed OML with your next 13 pulls would you still be unhappy and asking for it to change?

This is not a 'dig' at anyone who is unhappy I am genuinely curious if they are unhappy with the token system or unhappy with their token system

Salgy

aesthetocyst wrote:

Pylgrim wrote:

I'm glad that your experience was defined by short, almost non-existing "runs" of good and bad luck that self-corrected themselves and in the end came off as a net positive, but you'll have to repeat to my face, the face of someone who has lost 18 out of 23 draws at an expected 80% success rate, and who will need full 2-3 months of straight awesome luck with LTs to just get back to what would have been an even point 3 months ago, that this bad luck run "exists purely in my imagination" and I'm only "seeing patterns where none exist".

Happy to. PM to arrange.

I'd love to hear what you would say to me aesthetocyst... as of last night, i have opened 225 legendary tokens: 6x 5* covers...

i said it before & i will say it again: letting the 5* transition be determined by luck, and nothing else is just tinykitty...

woopie wrote:

this is a strictly P2W game.

nope... tried that too...

GrumpySmurf1002

Salgy wrote:

I'd love to hear what you would say to me aesthetocyst... as of last night, i have opened 225 legendary tokens: 6x 5* covers...

dunno which is more flabbergasting - 225 LTs so far, or only 6/225 pulls

BlackSheep101

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

dunno which is more flabbergasting - 225 LTs so far, or only 6/225 pulls

Seriously! I've only opened a fifth as many tokens, and have five 5* covers. Sounds like a lot of money spent. Maybe it was a mistake to prevent people from buying 5* covers directly?

Salgy

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

dunno which is more flabbergasting - 225 LTs so far, or only 6/225 pulls

BlackSheep101 wrote:

Seriously! I've only opened a fifth as many tokens, and have five 5* covers. Sounds like a lot of money spent. Maybe it was a mistake to prevent people from buying 5* covers directly?

and the best part? i waited until OML dropped in the tokens so i could have a better chance (10% as opposed to the initial 5% or the current 3.33%) of pulling a 5*...

Unknown

They should change the token name to imaginary token. Why do you think there will come a 5 * or a good 4 * it has not, but has only repeated or cover with little use.

BlackSheep101

Salgy wrote:

and the best part? i waited until OML dropped in the tokens so i could have a better chance (10% as opposed to the initial 5% or the current 3.33%) of pulling a 5*...

I did the same and my first pull was OML , go figure. I do agree that having no avenue for progression other than a random pull is frustrating. I tend to stay out of these threads, though, because I don't know how to fix the problem. Also, my roster is such that I've yet to open an unusable LT, so I can't even commiserate.

BlackSheep101

aesthetocyst wrote:

BlackSheep101 wrote:

... my first pull was OML , go figure.

Yellow is his best cover to start with. Makes him a durable meat bag right from the start. Black is an OK start but kinda ho-hum. Red is a fun power, but if you have red and no yellow, he's almost useless.

I pulled a yellow and he was immediately useful (versus seeds ), and just got a red, which has given him more punch (and 15 more levels, heh)

Agreed, I found that the one cover immediately lived up to the "we want 5*s to be useful right away" statement that came along with their release. I also didn't find that my scaling was destroyed as some have. I guess I'm just in the sweet spot right now. Everything's not sunshine and rainbows, but I definitely don't experience the abject misery described by many on here.

Salgy

aesthetocyst wrote:

Salgy wrote:

I'd love to hear what you would say to me aesthetocyst... as of last night, i have opened 225 legendary tokens: 6x 5* covers...

i said it before & i will say it again: letting the 5* transition be determined by luck, and nothing else is just tinykitty...

Well since you asked ...

appreciate it aesthetocyst... i will address some of your comments...

aesthetocyst wrote:

I'd say congrats on getting and opening so many so quickly!

thanks... some bought, some through others command points, some earned... i only have really been keeping track since my pull rate has been abysmal

aesthetocyst wrote:

I'd say the thread was about 4* transition. It seems premature (to me) to talk about a 5* transition yet.

nope... the thread was about legendary tokens... and how they don't work...

aesthetocyst wrote:

... and also plenty of players who have only opened a handful and received like 50% 5*s. Sigh.

i hate those guys... tell them they're welcome for the better than advertised odds they have been receiving...

aesthetocyst wrote:

I'd say opened nearly 30 LTs before pulling a Surfer. That sucked.

what's a surfer? is that one of these new 5* characters they said were coming soon? wonder when those will start being available in tokens?!?

aesthetocyst wrote:

I'd say having the 5*s being initially token only IS rough, but not sure what else could be done. We both know what lengths players will go to win—and help others win —a mediocre new 4*. If they offered 5*s as a fixed reward ... in the prevailing event structures MPQ offers ... yikes. Divorce rates would spike.

it's tinykitty is what it is... veterans who have been in the game for years are basically tinykitty'd on... my roster is basically useless now... can't keep up and can't compete at a level that i want to... just sucks...

oh, and they are releasing mediocre 4*'s... ghost rider... animations are cool, but i'm not sold on him...

aesthetocyst wrote:

I'd say check out my last post in suggestions. It's a fantasy idea about ameliorating the reign of RNG by giving players (some) control over their own personal odds. A way to keep distribution as a whole under the devs control, while also allowing players to have a check against the miserable tyranny of "individual results".

i did read through this... interesting concept, but where i am confused is a player like me... i need only ghost rider covers... besides the 6x 5*'s that i have pulled, the other 219 tokens yielded 211,000 iso, i have managed pulled one measly green JBJ cover for my dupe (that now sits at 5/4/4), and kept the 4 green and 3 blue icecreep covers that i pulled (almost in a row... it was 7/10 in a batch of legendary pulls)...

wait! but if i add those "useable" covers to my legendary pul....

oh...

wait...

that would only bringing my average up to 6.2%...

rats...

aesthetocyst wrote:

Lastly, I'd say I absolutely hope you hit a mad run of 5* luck, and soon. RNGesus "owes" you about 20 more covers, and he better keep the dupes to a minimum!

let's hope i go on a run and hit 5*'s for 19 of my next 25 tokens... RNGesus & i will be even...

aesthetocyst wrote:

(Good luck, Salgy, you deserve it!)

thanks aesthetocyst!

smkspy

Seems LTS only benefit then those of us with barely covered 4 stars, but that means we're most likely still in the 3 star transition phase, so the chances of pulling a 5 star is scary.

I'm only missing 3 4 stars so LT pulls are a must for me at this point. Yet people say that LT and 4 ddq is not for me.

TxMoose

they introduced LTs mid-September. LTs have been in play about 2.5 months.

in mid-September I had 14 4*s (I think all of them at the time). 1 had 7 covers, 3 had 6 and 1 had 5. all the rest had 4 covers or less. i totaled 62 4* covers.

i have since added 115 4* covers. this is subtracting the 3 i bought with hp. additionally, I've added 6 - 5* covers. LTs have worked for me. i have 2 fully covered 4* characters (jean/hb) and 4 others that are completely usable as-is (xf, px, starlord, kp) with their current covers (even though one is starlord). still need a ton of iso.

i consider myself fortunate to be in the sweet spot that LTs helped the most. i needed 4* covers across the board and had my 3*s mostly done (9 maxed and 11 at 140) and was using them to score well. i was just starting to hit 1K on occasion. I've since progressed to hitting 1K every pvp and hitting 1300 half the time or more. add in some pve LTs and some token pulls and and season awards (and 2 galactus runs) that's how I've made it half way through the 4* transition. i think they were to help with the actual 3* -> 4* transition. they really aren't for finishing out a 4* roster and they're pretty ineffective at a 5* transition. to me they are specifically to help high-mid to high performers add 4* covers across the board.

for those ahead of me in the game i can completely see your frustration that they added a feature that really helped those behind you catch up to where you are, but did very little to help you improve (or even keep) your position in the game. i agree that rng progression only helps up to a point. case in point - the 3 covers i added = 1 hb red, 1 jean purple, 1 jean green. finishing out the character likely is intended to need hp if rng isn't kind enough to you. for those done with 4*s, good LUCK because it all boils down to how many times can you get that 10% chance to hit. not a fan of the system for that level of player - i have ideas that could make it better (i.e. every 10th token = 5*), but our ideas rarely matter.

dauthi and salgy - LTs work, but not very effective for your level of player unfortunately. and its unfortunate that they created such a great tool for a small (but growing) sliver of the game and did little for those above them. now your ranks are filling out and you feel like you aren't progressing, at no fault of your own. that sucks. hope there's a remedy coming because moving forward i will have more and more unneeded pulls from LTs too. only been 3 so far but I'm sure I'm not far away from having a dupe run.

Dauthi

TxMoose wrote:

dauthi and salgy - LTs work, but not very effective for your level of player unfortunately. and its unfortunate that they created such a great tool for a small (but growing) sliver of the game and did little for those above them. now your ranks are filling out and you feel like you aren't progressing, at no fault of your own. that sucks. hope there's a remedy coming because moving forward i will have more and more unneeded pulls from LTs too. only been 3 so far but I'm sure I'm not far away from having a dupe run.

Thanks. The major problem is sample size. With a large sample size of Legendary Tokens you will hit your average pull rate, however there isn't a practical amount of Tokens available at the mid 4* level to have one. With our current small sample size you may get unlucky, and it will echo for months in your roster until you hit that lucky streak to even it out.

This is why they are not working for a 4* transition, in order for it to work it has to work for everyone.

Pylgrim

aesthetocyst wrote:

Pylgrim wrote:

I'm glad that your experience was defined by short, almost non-existing "runs" of good and bad luck that self-corrected themselves and in the end came off as a net positive, but you'll have to repeat to my face, the face of someone who has lost 18 out of 23 draws at an expected 80% success rate, and who will need full 2-3 months of straight awesome luck with LTs to just get back to what would have been an even point 3 months ago, that this bad luck run "exists purely in my imagination" and I'm only "seeing patterns where none exist".

Happy to. PM to arrange.

I wouldn't call "runs" of "bad luck" measured in weeks or months "short". Seemed pretty awful at the time.

And I know my luck will (seem to) change for the worse, and soon.

Each draw is random, but our minds desperately try to piece together patterns ... and overvalues the negative over the positive. Sucks, but these mental tendencies are what keeps us alive.

And endlessly fooled by our own abstractions!

Wait..."2-3 months of good luck to get back to what would have been an even point" ... sounds like you were/are counting on unhatched chickens?

So you are comparing your longest "run" of 2 weeks to mine of 3 months. Totally legit. Anyway, the whole thing here is not about patterns, I'm not trying to establish them, merely recording what has happened and suggesting that people putting this kind of effort at this level of competition just shouldn't be allowed to be crapped on by luck. I keep repeating this and I don't get why it seems so hard to understand. The problem are not odds, the problem is the amount of chance involved in arbitrarily allowing significantly different speeds of progression for players that are putting the same amount of effort. I'm not counting on unhatched eggs or I'd be demanding compensation, which is ridiculous. I'm merely keeping count of how much luck has screwed me to try to make people understand the huge impact that luck can have in progression thanks to LTs. I don't want things changed to benefit specifically me... it would benefit you, as well, to iron out even your shorter runs of a kind of luck. The only reason you have to antagonise me is the fact that your comparatively better luck allows you to see me as a whiner that demands seemingly unnecessary change, because you are not experiencing the things I am talking about.

TxMoose wrote:

dauthi and salgy - LTs work, but not very effective for your level of player unfortunately. and its unfortunate that they created such a great tool for a small (but growing) sliver of the game and did little for those above them. now your ranks are filling out and you feel like you aren't progressing, at no fault of your own. that sucks. hope there's a remedy coming because moving forward i will have more and more unneeded pulls from LTs too. only been 3 so far but I'm sure I'm not far away from having a dupe run.

While it is true that the further you advance, the lower odds that you have of opening stuff that you need and it is a big failure, consider someone closer to your position (i.e. the beginning of transition) whom, because of extremely bad luck keeps opening the very few covers that he has maxed. That is the other failure of LTs that I keep addressing: even the people who theoretically should benefit the most from LTs may arbitrarily be screwed by luck. A vault system would help players at every stage of the transition minimise the impact of luck.

rkd80

Not to defend the randomness of Legendary tokens, but there are other progression mechanisms in the game that people seem to be completely ignoring. There are three to be precise.

First is the 1k progression in PVP. Concrete and highly attainable cover.
Second is first place award in PvP. Concrete and much harder to attain cover, but still there for you.
Finally, PvE 1st place cover - which if you commit enough time will also net you a concrete 4* cover.

So there are these three options, plus the legendary tokens from all PvP and PVE and finally the extra little bonus of buying Legendaries through command points.

In time 4* PvP will probably start and this whole discussion will turn into "why am I not getting enough 5*" covers, but until that time there are ways to compete and be successful using time and almost no money.

That being said, I have only reliably hit the 1k prog and almost never place first anywhere - I just know it is possible and wanted to point that out.

Der_Lex

The issue with the 'set' 4* cover rewards is that with over 20 4* characters, you'll only be able to get 1-3 guaranteed covers for any particular 4* a month, and those odds will only get worse as the 4* pool increases (and let's face it, 1st place placement is not going to be something you'll be able to consistently hit without spending a lot of grind time in PvE and/or HP on shields in pvp). It's there, but it's insufficient, at least as long as the only other avenue is random chance.