The game keeps moving the ball

Tarheelmax

Bowgentle wrote:

Tarheelmax wrote:

It's time investment. And playing competitively. And selectively using resources (Especially as a free player).

It's 100% luck.

I've been in a competitive alliance since before seasons started.
I've opened about 350 legendary tokens.
My draw rate for 5*s is below 5%, so I'm sitting on a grand total of 20 5* covers, only 17 of which have been pulled (rest daily reward).

Yes, putting in time and/or money, being in a competitive alliance, hitting 1300, etc is necessary.
But thanks to RNG there's a layer above that which you can't influence, and that is the problem with the game.
No matter how much effort I put into it, I can't change the fact that 350 LTs have produced only 17 5* covers.

It is not 100% luck.

Did you play the game to obtain those 350 legendary tokens or did you luck into them? What do your 4*s look like? Did you obtain a ton of them by hitting 1000 and 1300 in PVP or did you open the game and hope the server screwed up and gifted you all of them? When you were building your 3* roster, did it happen by luck or was it mostly time and effort to gain tokens and place well in events?

Luck is playing a small role in differentiating top tier players based on 5* draw rate, but it's not 100% luck, it's maybe 1%-5% luck.

PeterGibbons316

Tarheelmax wrote:

Bowgentle wrote:

Tarheelmax wrote:

It's time investment. And playing competitively. And selectively using resources (Especially as a free player).

It's 100% luck.

I've been in a competitive alliance since before seasons started.
I've opened about 350 legendary tokens.
My draw rate for 5*s is below 5%, so I'm sitting on a grand total of 20 5* covers, only 17 of which have been pulled (rest daily reward).

Yes, putting in time and/or money, being in a competitive alliance, hitting 1300, etc is necessary.
But thanks to RNG there's a layer above that which you can't influence, and that is the problem with the game.
No matter how much effort I put into it, I can't change the fact that 350 LTs have produced only 17 5* covers.

It is not 100% luck.

Did you play the game to obtain those 350 legendary tokens or did you luck into them? What do your 4*s look like? Did you obtain a ton of them by hitting 1000 and 1300 in PVP or did you open the game and hope the server screwed up and gifted you all of them? When you were building your 3* roster, did it happen by luck or was it mostly time and effort to gain tokens and place well in events?

Luck is playing a small role in differentiating top tier players based on 5* draw rate, but it's not 100% luck, it's maybe 1%-5% luck.

It's similar to the point I was making earlier in that your speed of progress is mostly determined by either luck or how much you are willing to spend. Two people with similar levels of competitiveness and play style can have very different rosters due primarily to luck.

I've spent on this game. I whaled IMHB when he first game out and used him to boost myself to getting 1k rewards MUCH quicker than I otherwise would have. I excelled in PvE VERY early due to spending on Mystique before they nerfed her winfinite combo with Magneto. So my progress has been very fast because I intentionally spent money to speed it up in this manner. For someone to have the same speed of progression without spending would have required A LOT of lucky pulls to get high tier characters to a playable level sooner than the masses.

Dragon_Nexus

TxMoose wrote:

just wait until 1900 isn't good enough for t50....

I actually like the sound of that. Makes hitting 1000 easier for 4* covers I might need.

Nellobee

Tarheelmax wrote:

Luck is playing a small role in differentiating top tier players based on 5* draw rate, but it's not 100% luck, it's maybe 1%-5% luck.

Yes, but it is supposed to be 10%. *drops mic*

stowaway

AXP_isme wrote:

I'm not very good at sports but, isn't the ball supposed to move? A game where the ball stays in the same place is the kind of participation I could see myself enjoying.

Ha, yes, it's the goalpost that keeps moving. Unless he's talking about Lucy yanking the ball out from under Charlie Brown.

Tarheelmax wrote:

I don't think the game keeps moving the ball. It has always been about selectively using your resources.

I'm day 525, I haven't spent on the game, and have a 375 OML, 6 Champed 4*s and 17 champed 3*s. Putting in all that iso to champ almost all the 3*s isn't the way to go if you are trying to progress. You need to champ top tier 3*s and 4*s so you can consistently hit 1300 in PVP. Then, play PVE casually to hit the 25 CP progression. This will lead to those precious 5* covers you need. Champing 3* Falcon or Spiderman is not going to get you there.

I agree with your advice, but not with the conclusion that the goalposts aren't moving. I used to feel like I was one tier behind the top-FtPers, and two tiers behind the whales. Now it feels like there are three separate tiers of whales ahead of me (mini, regular, and mega?). I'm still doing fine relative to the player base as a whole, but I'm farther than ever from the very top players.

mpqr7

A lot of it depends upon your goal. I'm no longer that concerned about having all the latest characters, because even if I win a few covers when they're released, I'll never actually use them until they've been championed, so that won't be for at least another year. So it doesn't matter.. there's no reason to rush. Now that I have a decent oml and some good champ'd 4*s, it'll happen eventually.

It's actually making me less excited about trying to hit 1300 at each pvp. I can do it every time, but I don't always have the time.. sometimes I want to spend my Friday and Sunday nights (and Wednesday mornings) not worrying about it.

JVReal

Nellobee wrote:

Tarheelmax wrote:

Luck is playing a small role in differentiating top tier players based on 5* draw rate, but it's not 100% luck, it's maybe 1%-5% luck.

Yes, but it is supposed to be 10%. *drops mic*

I have 90 roster spots, with 4 5* characters, that's 4.4% of my roster that was determined by luck, even less if you are going to actually count individual covers. That is not the same as a 10% drop rate... 10% drop rate does not indicate 10% of your roster will be 5*...

fmftint

Tarheelmax wrote:

I don't think the game keeps moving the ball. It has always been about selectively using your resources.

I'm day 525, I haven't spent on the game, and have a 375 OML, 6 Champed 4*s and 17 champed 3*s. Putting in all that iso to champ almost all the 3*s isn't the way to go if you are trying to progress. You need to champ top tier 3*s and 4*s so you can consistently hit 1300 in PVP. Then, play PVE casually to hit the 25 CP progression. This will lead to those precious 5* covers you need. Champing 3* Falcon or Spiderman is not going to get you there.

I agree with this. Just today some in my alliance were discussing who's worth rostering, leveling, championing and of course several say level and champion all 3☆s. That's fine if you want to stay in the 3☆ tier indefinitely, total cost to max/champion the entire 3☆ tier, 5,096,760 iso!

Use your iso wisely, spreading it around isn't helpful

carrion_pigeons

Tarheelmax wrote:

I don't think the game keeps moving the ball. It has always been about selectively using your resources.

I'm day 525, I haven't spent on the game, and have a 375 OML, 6 Champed 4*s and 17 champed 3*s. Putting in all that iso to champ almost all the 3*s isn't the way to go if you are trying to progress. You need to champ top tier 3*s and 4*s so you can consistently hit 1300 in PVP. Then, play PVE casually to hit the 25 CP progression. This will lead to those precious 5* covers you need. Champing 3* Falcon or Spiderman is not going to get you there.

In what way is grinding PvE for multiple hours per day for multiple days in a row playing casually?

I play the game for maybe 5 hours a week and feel like it's a lot of commitment, but it isn't close to what's necessary to hit PvE progression.

Tarheelmax

carrion pigeons wrote:

Tarheelmax wrote:

I don't think the game keeps moving the ball. It has always been about selectively using your resources.

I'm day 525, I haven't spent on the game, and have a 375 OML, 6 Champed 4*s and 17 champed 3*s. Putting in all that iso to champ almost all the 3*s isn't the way to go if you are trying to progress. You need to champ top tier 3*s and 4*s so you can consistently hit 1300 in PVP. Then, play PVE casually to hit the 25 CP progression. This will lead to those precious 5* covers you need. Champing 3* Falcon or Spiderman is not going to get you there.

In what way is grinding PvE for multiple hours per day for multiple days in a row playing casually?

I play the game for maybe 5 hours a week and feel like it's a lot of commitment, but it isn't close to what's necessary to hit PvE progression.

Fair enough. I may have a skewed view of "casual" since I was a top 10 PVE player for a long time. Compared to that, hitting final progression feels casual to me.

mpqr7

I have to say if I had not won an OML Yellow, I would have been at a much, much much lower level than I am now. I'd probably still be struggling to win 800+ in PVP. So that was a lot of luck. When my OML was red/black only, it was very frustrating, because scaling was high, but he died within a few turns each match.

TxMoose

mpqr7 wrote:

...if I had not won an OML Yellow....

can't happen. you can luck into pulling an oml yellow. can't win one. yes I'm slightly bitter about my 2/-/5.

Tarheelmax

TxMoose wrote:

mpqr7 wrote:

...if I had not won an OML Yellow....

can't happen. you can luck into pulling an oml yellow. can't win one. yes I'm slightly bitter about my 2/-/5.

As you should be, you don't have an OML, you have a Captain Suicide...

dsds

Tarheelmax wrote:

TxMoose wrote:

mpqr7 wrote:

...if I had not won an OML Yellow....

can't happen. you can luck into pulling an oml yellow. can't win one. yes I'm slightly bitter about my 2/-/5.

As you should be, you don't have an OML, you have a Captain Suicide...

That should be the name of the next joke hero!
It's almost like he is the 5* equivalent of sentry.

BumpoTheClown

Tarheelmax wrote:

carrion pigeons wrote:

Tarheelmax wrote:

I play the game for maybe 5 hours a week and feel like it's a lot of commitment, but it isn't close to what's necessary to hit PvE progression.

Fair enough. I may have a skewed view of "casual" since I was a top 10 PVE player for a long time. Compared to that, hitting final progression feels casual to me.

Ultimately the term "casual", just like every other adjective used in discussions like this, is 100% relative. Nearly everybody makes the mistake occasionally of imagining that their own situation is typical or represents the bulk of the playerbase. It's why threads like this occasionally get so heated. There are no definitions of terms, and everyone uses their own experience as a guide to what's normal. Only the developers have the full picture of the distribution of the player base. Maybe 90% of the people who play this game only do it for a couple of hours a week. Maybe 50% only play for an hour on Saturday mornings. Or maybe 75% grind to full progression on every PvE.

It's impossible for any one person to tell, and if their only knowledge comes from their own playstyle and from talking to people in their alliance (who likely are at around the same level of dedication as them) or from reading the forums (which almost certainly skew to the higher end of the playerbase) then it's easy to walk away thinking that they're somewhere near the middle, with an equal population above and below them. Which obviously can't be true for everyone.

I suspect that if the developers published a few statistics they'd be real eye-openers. Things like:
- What % of people have no 5* covers at all?
- What % of people have never champed a 3*?
- What % of people have never completed the Big Enchilada?
- How many minutes (not hours) a day does the 'average' person play? How many days out of the week?

After all, by definition 80% of the player base isn't hitting T100 on PvP, right? But they're still logging in and trying, or those brackets wouldn't be full.

So kudos to you, Tarheelmax, for recognizing that your own view might be skewed here. I wish more people had that insight.

Arphaxad

It's a simple matter of you get what you pay for. If you want to compete at the top, you have to spend the money. If you don't want to spend the money, you have to settle for middle of the pack. This is true for any freemium game I've played.

bobbyfish

TxMoose wrote:

bobbyfish wrote:

This is definitely the most frustrating part of the game for me. Now I don't think scaling as a whole is wrong, but there needs to be some point in building a strong roster. Surely you should be able to use your strength over lower levelled rosters at some point?

I'm at around day 400, I have 2 maxed 4* and around 20 champed 3*, plenty of 4* at around 170ish, but I have still never hit 1300 on PVP and therefore cannot keep a really strong flow of CP coming in. Fistbuster makes hitting 1000 easier, but beyond that it hasn't made a difference.

my experience is that hitting 1300 is more about committing the hp (and skip iso) and avoiding bad slices. and generally, the stronger the roster, the less number of shields it costs. I'm assuming your 2 champs are rulk and hb (might want to update your roster). so when I originally fielded a 4* team my first shield was usually in the 900s, sometimes low 1000s. that usually took 2-3 hops to get past 1300, depending on slice activity and team strength and quality of matches I lined up. if you can't commit to 3-4 shields per pvp, you might have trouble hitting 1300 consistently. currently I have 8 champs and usually can field a team that puts up first shield somewhere around 1100 and i'll usually be right around 1300 after my first hop. because of how schedules line up I usually have 1-2 hops after that to finish the event and end up with anywhere between 1450 and 1800. the main keys are shield management and managing the slice (the right slice and cycling your nodes at the right times to line stuff up).

Thanks for the feedback, I've updated my roster now, my second champ is actually X23, who is semi-useful but not game-changing, it's just the way the covers are falling and I had the ISO to do it. Rulk covers I've pulled currently stand at 2/8/3 so I just can't champ him yet.

PVP I usually have to shield at 6-700, but this is probably more to do with my work schedule and stuff. getting 1000 probably takes an average of 300HP shielding, and as a (mostly) FTP player I can't commit much more than that consistently. Maybe 1300 is a way off, especially as the few times I have got to the 1150 range I completely run out of targets worth more than about 9 points!

herm1978

Tarheelmax wrote:

Then, play PVE casually to hit the 25 CP progression.

Seriously, that is not playing "casually", takes quite a bit of time investement. Not something I can do regularly playing on steam while having a job and family (and wanting to do DDQ + 300 PVP).

Edit: Seems you've already adressed that