Civil War rewards

Vhailorx

I am frequently someone who ends up criticizing (hopefully in a polite and constructive fashion) the dev team for various issues (from the lack of sufficient 4* cover rewards, to the new pve scoring system, to the overpriced iso). But I can only sort of do that today.

While I do think the game continues to have problems, I think that this first run of civil war has been a step in the right direction. I think this is the first pve event with multiple 4* prog rewards since imhb was released at this time last year. That's a huge improvement and should be ported to other events as soon as possible. 4*s need to be more readily available in the game. Otherwise the end game is locked much too far away from new players.

So kudos to demiurge for the event rewards (though flaptain v. Imhb is a pretty huge disparity in quality). Moreover thrones-event communication was pretty good. And launchtime server issues were very manageable. Best new content release in at least a year!

But since I remain a cynic, I would also caution people not to get their hopes up. When eots launched it had one event Token in each survival node. When ultron released it had 6 premium covers plus enhanced token odds. When the anniversary event debuted it had 14% drop rates for dino and tokens were distributed liberally. In every single case cited above, subsequent runs of the events saw significantly reduced rewards (ultron run 2 was incredibly hard and only 40 people finished it; andbgalactus had much worse token odds, anniversary year 2 was a much publicized catastrophe, only 1 survival node per sub in eots has tokens now). Rewards typically do not get any better than the first time an event runs. I would caution players to expect the same here (and I would urge demiurge NOT to do that. The game is starving for iso and achievable fixed 4* cover rewards.)

Vhailorx

Another thing to remember: in the first few runs of ultron the boss node and 2 sub-nodes had event tokens and hp.

Now the boss token has 1cp. Nothing else. Seems like a small step backwards for players. Is the because they switched to vaults and don't want us to get too many tokens (so we have to buy 40 packs)?

dr tinykittylove

Not to detract from your points about rewards getting poorer (i didn't count how many crit boosts I got from CW because it would make me sad, and the locked nodes mean I can't even farm it for iso like a normal pve), but Galactus gave out 4cyc and rhulk covers.

hodayathink

dr tinykittylove wrote:

Not to detract from your points about rewards getting poorer (i didn't count how many crit boosts I got from CW because it would make me sad, and the locked nodes mean I can't even farm it for iso like a normal pve), but Galactus gave out 4cyc and rhulk covers.

And the most recent Galactus run gave out 3 IMHB covers.

SnowcaTT

There is a reason I covered Cyc a few seasons back and RHulk last season, while the character released before them (IceMan) I still don't have covered. That reason is those are the rewards they gave out in Galactus runs, so I started out 1/1/1 in both of them.

That's how seasons used to be and I still think should be. Each time a 4* was released, you had a chance to get three covers in season rewards before they released the next one. Now you get one cover of the -two- characters that are released that season!

I do like the Ultron/Galactus/Civil War style releases. Although I do wish Civil War would have given out Winter Soldier rewards - rather than one of the first 10 4*'s released (HB) and one of the worst five 4*'s released (FalCap)

Phumade

I really like the split nature of this event. They did something really smart for the elite alliances and I'm not entirely sure they realized it.

The better alliances are now switching over to the opposite side to work on the other progression ladder!!!! This was a great move because it lets advance player to keep engaged with the event even through they've accomplished the main prize.

From a design perspective, probably no alliance (maybe 1 or 2?) can unlock both 5*, yet every alliance thinks they accomplished something meaningful in completing 1/2 of the event, and the ability to restart a new progression ladder feels like bonus play.

This is an ideal situation for every event!!! All alliances at every level have stretch goals to work for, yet no one feels shorted or short changed.

stowaway

Cover rewards are very generous compared to what we're used to in this game. And I appreciate it. But Iso and HP rewards are stingier than ever. The progression reward between a recruit token and a 3* cover is 140 iso? And with node fights that are harder than the boss battles, I'm finding the critical boost reward more frustrating than ever.

But this is their way. They're incredibly conservative about making changes, and their "step forward" allotment has a "step back" mandate.

rkd80

To echo above posters the net rewards have gotten worse, not better.

However this is the first time a 5* was a guaranteed reward so perhaps d3 tempered the rewards for that reason.

But my jaded cynical self simply sees this as another grab for HP via roster slots. Most of us who had alliances reach the 5* prog will just have spent 1k hp for ostensibly a useless character. For me personally, I now have 5k worth of HP used by 5* that i cannot play, use or have any hopes of covering. It is rather insidious and surely a business decision on their part as I believe their best source of revenue comes by way of roster slots.

wymtime

From a progression standpoint if you have a strong alliance you can kill one of the 2 and probably round 6 of the other. That would get you five 4* one 5* and 3 LT. That is a large number of 4* to be won.

The issue is there is very little HP, and ISO to be gained in the event. As the scaling goes through the roof you really need to boost and use health packs. Normal PVE for new release you have to grind and have some good luck to get top 10 for 4 covers and top 2 is brutal to win. You get more HP and ISO through sub events though.

It will be interesting to see the rewards for the next civil war. Progression seems fine but the nodes should give out a lot more ISO and or HP and no more critical boosts

Vhailorx

hodayathink wrote:

dr tinykittylove wrote:

Not to detract from your points about rewards getting poorer (i didn't count how many crit boosts I got from CW because it would make me sad, and the locked nodes mean I can't even farm it for iso like a normal pve), but Galactus gave out 4cyc and rhulk covers.

And the most recent Galactus run gave out 3 IMHB covers.

Yup, the boss battles generally have pretty good alliance prog rewards. That's a big part of why people like them. But almost of the secondary rewards have gotten worse. Remember that the second Ultron run had IMHB at 3 or 4% in the event tokens. And every refresh afforded an opportunity to get up to 3 such tokens (or HP, which was the premium currency at the time). That was a huge feature for me as I pulled 2 IMHB Reds from those tokens and was able to get him up to 5 red the very next season after he was released. Subsequent boss battles have seen lower token rates (1.25% in the current vaults for featured characters) and the vault mechanic that prevents pulling multiple covers without spending HP, and no more HP rewards or featured tokens as node rewards.

There's just a very clear pattern than whenever event rewards are actually useful for players, subsequent runs of the events have worse rewards. (huh, it's almost like Demiurge tracks how many digital goods go out the door, and whenever players are pleased, demiurge sees lost revenue).

So I applaud demiurge for the Civil War event, which has been a great mix of challenging, rewarding, and collaborative. But I also expect that this is the only time we will see rewards that feel this "good" (I use quotation marks because even good rewards are well short of what would actually be needed to keep pace with the character release schedule).

Vhailorx

And right on cue, The Gauntlet apparently has the new PVE scaling system in place (without any prior notice I think), so the previously trivial first sub is now packed with level 300 'easy' nodes, and the the final Sub (i.e. the one with the Iceman cover that everyone really wants) will presumably be filled with 400 and 500 opponents.

Let's see, 28000 deadpool points for whales, and 20 nodes in global domination. That's 560,000 deadpool points for that Iceman cover (assuming there are no DP nodes). Glad i saved up!