Impossible 5*

Clyve

simonsez wrote:

Clyve wrote:

Can I ask if there's a consensus better idea to propose?

It's hard to get consensus on anything around here, but 5*s should never have been random. They should've been awarded via something like a CP counter. Hit 100 (or whatever) and trade them in for a 5* cover. Or if they insist on sticking with tokens, they should've been drawn from a no-reset vault.

I guess a vault would be a pretty straight-forward way of mitigating randomness. By no reset, you mean you have to get everything in it before it resets? I don't think that's a good idea. You're gonna be hating it when you get to the point of just IWs and TA Hulks being left. Anyway, as far as spending points, they basically have that, though it requires having one cover already. It's just that 720CP is sort of a ridiculous sum.

Edit: Just an idea for the vault thing, maybe they could make it fairly large (300 like DDQ? Maybe less), and then every week fill it back up with some proportion of 4 and 5*s. For instance, 100 size vault with 10 5*s in there and the rest 4*. You make 10 pulls in a given week (for 20 CP or whatever), and say you got all 4*s. At the end of the week, they fill it back up at the 10% 5* proportion (so they add 9 4*s and 1 5*). So now there are 11 5*s and 99 4*s. Obviously the numbers could be tweaked (make the vault smaller/larger, change the duration before refilling), but it could be cool maybe.

Clyve

Building further on that vault idea, you could have a mechanic similar to vaults, maybe call it a Showcase or something, where there are 100 covers (10 5* and 90 4*) and each time you make a pull, a new random cover is added following a sequence of 1 5* and 9 4*s. This would help balance out luck while still allowing for some randomness.

simonsez

Clyve wrote:

I guess a vault would be a pretty straight-forward way of mitigating randomness. By no reset, you mean you have to get everything in it before it resets? I don't think that's a good idea.

Then it's still random, so don't bother changing it. Yeah, it'd help your own personal pull rate, but it'd do nothing to address the disparity between players expending equal effort. I could care less what my pull rate is. What I care about is that it's half the rate of lots of other players, for no good reason.

Clyve

simonsez wrote:

Clyve wrote:

I guess a vault would be a pretty straight-forward way of mitigating randomness. By no reset, you mean you have to get everything in it before it resets? I don't think that's a good idea.

Then it's still random, so don't bother changing it. Yeah, it'd help your own personal pull rate, but it'd do nothing to address the disparity between players expending equal effort. I could care less what my pull rate is. What I care about is that it's half the rate of lots of other players, for no good reason.

My later idea about the Showcase would help address bad luck where the showcase would saturate with 5 stars the worse your pull rate is.

If you want a direct effort to reward correlation, you could make CP not a currency but a progression reward system so at 20, 40, 60, 80 CP you get a 4* and at 100 you get a 5* (or whatever ratio they want to use), but I don't think D3 wants to remove the randomness entirely and would agree that that would be bad for the game.

TxMoose

I think a slumpbuster at 15 or 18 or 20 pulls would help the long, extended bad streaks. having such a huge increase in character strength and then make the very tip top of the game's progression based solely on rng luck is extremely short-sighted. slumpbuster wouldn't solve everything, but would help. I'd almost prefer a guaranteed 5* every 12th pull over a 10% rng.

Clyve

TxMoose wrote:

I think a slumpbuster at 15 or 18 or 20 pulls would help the long, extended bad streaks. having such a huge increase in character strength and then make the very tip top of the game's progression based solely on rng luck is extremely short-sighted. slumpbuster wouldn't solve everything, but would help. I'd almost prefer a guaranteed 5* every 12th pull over a 10% rng.

I could see a counter that goes up every time a 4* is pulled from an LT and once it hits 15 (or 20 or whatever), you get a random 5* cover. The counter would reset at that point or any time you naturally pull a 5* from an LT. Pretty straight-forward idea, good thinking

Raffoon

I'm pretty sure that I made posts in this thread that aren't here any more. I might just be crazy, though. This is the "official 5* concern thread", isn't it?

Clyve

Raffoon wrote:

I'm pretty sure that I made posts in this thread that aren't here any more. I might just be crazy, though. This is the "official 5* concern thread", isn't it?

Yeah, I'm pretty sure you made the most recent post just a day or two ago here...that I'm not seeing now

PorkBelly

simonsez wrote:

Or if they insist on sticking with tokens, they should've been drawn from a no-reset vault.

This is a great idea but I assume you mean that the vault won't reset unless reset (via hp) by the player?

carrion_pigeons

What they should do to fix endgame progression is kind of involved. But let's assume that the current (average) rate of progression per hour of playtime is what is considered ideal by the developer, and the problem is in the variance alone.

That's easy to fix. Just lower the odds of 5*s slightly and implement a streakbreaker at 20 covers (or wherever). That kind of code can be easily implemented behind the scenes with minimal effort and no impact on players. It wouldn't stop all complaining about bad luck, but it would stop players in the endgame from being trapped in undesirable matchmaking scenarios without any recourse beyond waiting for their bad luck to break.

That is the least they could do. A half day's worth of coding, and it would perceptibly even out progression to the point where players who want to compete actually always have the option to do so.

I don't see that as being remotely the only problem with the endgame, but it's an easy fix with minimal downside.

kitaru

The flip side to this discussion are people like myself who end up with the "worst best luck ever". For example, near the end of January I opened up 3 legendary tokens and got Phoenix Purple, OML Red and then BiB Spidey Purple. My next highest character at the time was Ares at ~105. Needless to say this brought any chance I had of competing in PvP to a grinding halt as well as making me unable to actually complete the PvE events (for the first time I was unable to clear the main paths and instead started getting stymied about midway). Grinding lightning rounds has brought Ares (still my next highest level character) up to 135 now but scaling is still untenable.

The reason I bring this up is because, as mentioned, due to the luck based acquisition of these characters if I get rid of them who knows if I would be able to get them again when I actually am able to handle the scaling?

TxMoose

kitaru wrote:

The flip side to this discussion are people like myself who end up with the "worst best luck ever". For example, near the end of January I opened up 3 legendary tokens and got Phoenix Purple, OML Red and then BiB Spidey Purple. My next highest character at the time was Ares at ~105. Needless to say this brought any chance I had of competing in PvP to a grinding halt as well as making me unable to actually complete the PvE events (for the first time I was unable to clear the main paths and instead started getting stymied about midway). Grinding lightning rounds has brought Ares (still my next highest level character) up to 135 now but scaling is still untenable.

The reason I bring this up is because, as mentioned, due to the luck based acquisition of these characters if I get rid of them who knows if I would be able to get them again when I actually am able to handle the scaling?

I wish the game explained things better, but nobody with top characters at 105 should be opening any LTs at all. there's absolutely no benefit and only risk of ruining your game experience. the LTs aren't going anywhere. they'll still be there when your roster is better equipped to handle them.

Azoth658

TxMoose wrote:

kitaru wrote:

The flip side to this discussion are people like myself who end up with the "worst best luck ever". For example, near the end of January I opened up 3 legendary tokens and got Phoenix Purple, OML Red and then BiB Spidey Purple. My next highest character at the time was Ares at ~105. Needless to say this brought any chance I had of competing in PvP to a grinding halt as well as making me unable to actually complete the PvE events (for the first time I was unable to clear the main paths and instead started getting stymied about midway). Grinding lightning rounds has brought Ares (still my next highest level character) up to 135 now but scaling is still untenable.

The reason I bring this up is because, as mentioned, due to the luck based acquisition of these characters if I get rid of them who knows if I would be able to get them again when I actually am able to handle the scaling?

I wish the game explained things better, but nobody with top characters at 105 should be opening any LTs at all. there's absolutely no benefit and only risk of ruining your game experience. the LTs aren't going anywhere. they'll still be there when your roster is better equipped to handle them.

Could not agree more.

Simple fix would be a message that pops up if you don't have any championed 3* characters and try an open a legendary token that doesn't stop you from opening it but warns you that Legendary Tokens contain only the most advanced characters and are recommended for players with rosters featuring characters of level 166 and upwards.

Raffoon

I really like the streak-breaker idea. It's simple and should be easy to implement.

If you go 19 pulls without a 5*, your 20th pull is guaranteed to be a 5*.

It would do a lot to take out the random cases where people did much worse than average (NOT FUN), while still keeping the ability and the hope that people could do better than average (that's the fun part of randomness)

avs962

Azoth658 wrote:

TxMoose wrote:

kitaru wrote:

The flip side to this discussion are people like myself who end up with the "worst best luck ever". For example, near the end of January I opened up 3 legendary tokens and got Phoenix Purple, OML Red and then BiB Spidey Purple. My next highest character at the time was Ares at ~105. Needless to say this brought any chance I had of competing in PvP to a grinding halt as well as making me unable to actually complete the PvE events (for the first time I was unable to clear the main paths and instead started getting stymied about midway). Grinding lightning rounds has brought Ares (still my next highest level character) up to 135 now but scaling is still untenable.

The reason I bring this up is because, as mentioned, due to the luck based acquisition of these characters if I get rid of them who knows if I would be able to get them again when I actually am able to handle the scaling?

I wish the game explained things better, but nobody with top characters at 105 should be opening any LTs at all. there's absolutely no benefit and only risk of ruining your game experience. the LTs aren't going anywhere. they'll still be there when your roster is better equipped to handle them.

Could not agree more.

Simple fix would be a message that pops up if you don't have any championed 3* characters and try an open a legendary token that doesn't stop you from opening it but warns you that Legendary Tokens contain only the most advanced characters and are recommended for players with rosters featuring characters of level 166 and upwards.

For them to put this message in would mean that the devs actually care about the players' experiences in the game. That would be a foolish thing to believe

Raffoon

avs962 wrote:

Azoth658 wrote:

TxMoose wrote:

kitaru wrote:

The flip side to this discussion are people like myself who end up with the "worst best luck ever". For example, near the end of January I opened up 3 legendary tokens and got Phoenix Purple, OML Red and then BiB Spidey Purple. My next highest character at the time was Ares at ~105. Needless to say this brought any chance I had of competing in PvP to a grinding halt as well as making me unable to actually complete the PvE events (for the first time I was unable to clear the main paths and instead started getting stymied about midway). Grinding lightning rounds has brought Ares (still my next highest level character) up to 135 now but scaling is still untenable.

The reason I bring this up is because, as mentioned, due to the luck based acquisition of these characters if I get rid of them who knows if I would be able to get them again when I actually am able to handle the scaling?

I wish the game explained things better, but nobody with top characters at 105 should be opening any LTs at all. there's absolutely no benefit and only risk of ruining your game experience. the LTs aren't going anywhere. they'll still be there when your roster is better equipped to handle them.

Could not agree more.

Simple fix would be a message that pops up if you don't have any championed 3* characters and try an open a legendary token that doesn't stop you from opening it but warns you that Legendary Tokens contain only the most advanced characters and are recommended for players with rosters featuring characters of level 166 and upwards.

For them to put this message in would mean that the devs actually care about the players' experiences in the game. That would be a foolish thing to believe

Careful now. Saying the developers don't care about the players' experience is almost an insult.

Pentagoon

I have solved this concern by making the decision a the end of last season to stop participating in buy clubs anymore. The past 2 resulted in a 0.0% 5* pull rate for a $196 investment (Google Opinions took the $4 sting out of 200 bucks). Sure, I got a Nova cover I wanted and added to my champed 4* roster in a few spots, but the real payoff for investments are 5*s and this is a fickle RNG. I'm a day 855 player, and I've got a few decent 5* built up, but going 0/45 pulls at the moment freakin' hurts. I'm done paying for zero benefit - bring back HP for covers, make command points more ubiquitous, lower the CP cost for 5* covers, anything but stay the same and I might buy again one day.

Raffoon

Someone should count up the weeks that it's been since 5* were released. (I'm in too much of a hurry at the moment)

How many months has it been since people identified this problem, and it still has yet to even be ACKNOWLEDGED.

More of the same terrible communication from D3/Demiurge. Somehow they always seem to take something that should be a great idea/experience and ruin it through poor implementation decisions.

Raffoon

So..... this is still a problem. Any plans to address this, devs?

Gregore

I think the key component here is whether or not you actually want 5*.

I am currently in the 3 star build up phase but got impatient and wanted to get a start on some 4* covers. I had enough CP and tokens to open 20x.
I got 4 5*. Phoenix, SSx2 and Spiderman.
Was hoping I did not get any, and I think that was the key.

Also why do they start at 255. Way off the progression of every other level. they really should start at level 100 and have cheap early level progression like 3 and 4 * did. This would alleviate all this scaling **** that comes with them starting at level 255.