Is it now time for 4* time-outs?

jackstar0

I was just remembering how they used to take some 3*s out of rotation/packs for certain amounts of time.

Would players be against seeing some of the older 4*s being taken out of rotation for potential tweaking and then rotated back in?


Harm: some characters out of rotation is always messing with someone's progress.

Benefit: increased chance to progress new characters


Overall board hatred index estimate: 6

Chrono_Tata

jackstar0 wrote:

I was just remembering how they used to take some 3*s out of rotation/packs for certain amounts of time.

Would players be against seeing some of the older 4*s being taken out of rotation for potential tweaking and then rotated back in?


Harm: some characters out of rotation is always messing with someone's progress.

Benefit: increased chance to progress new characters


Overall board hatred index estimate: 6

First off, the whole "taken out of rotation for tweaking" thing was a huge lie. Most of the characters that were taken off rotation didn't see any changes and when they need to tweak characters, they can and have done that while they are in rotation. MPQ characters aren't buses or trains that need to be taken off service to be maintained. They are literally just lines of codes that they can change any time they like and then push out to us.

Anyway, I don't think the whole rotation thing was ever a good idea. It would be better to just spilt the characters into groups that are in different tokens, somewhat like they are doing right now with the legendary tokens.

Phumade

The only reason they rotated was because they couldn't fit the all the 3* on a token and still maintain reasonable drawing odds. The real downside was that it created the mythical unicorn where we went close to 6 seasons before black panther ever reappeared in token draws and events (and of course when he did reappear, RNGesus ensured that his black cover was the top 5 cover.

It was an awful experience knowing you could never "finish" the character. The vault system was eye opening, because it was a gut punch realizing that they didn't have a coherent growth plan for the game (besides flooding variant characters).

Nick441234

Chrono_Tata wrote:

Anyway, I don't think the whole rotation thing was ever a good idea. It would be better to just spilt the characters into groups that are in different tokens, somewhat like they are doing right now with the legendary tokens.

I would love that! You could then target packs that had characters in that you really wanted. Sure, theres still a big chance you will get one of the other characters in that pack rather than the one you want, but it still gives you a better chance of getting covers for the characters you are actually trying to finish off.

fmftint

No, they need to stop being stingy with the draw rate. Lower 2/3☆ rate, greatly increase 4☆ rate
On a heroic token you have
70% 2☆ (5.5% individual character)
25% 3☆ (.6% individual character)
5% 4☆ (.2% individual character)

IamTheDanger

I'm still trying to figure out why the "Latest" packs for leg tokens, ( 25cp for the most recent 5 ) still contain characters like XFW and IW. If I'm paying an extra 5cp at a chance for the newest, I shouldn't be stuck pulling the oldest. I know it refers to 5 characters, but that's just ridiculous. It should be the latest 4 as well. As rare and hard to get as cp is, paying the extra 5 should get me something. They need to forget rotations and just take all 4 before Kingpin out of the latest packs and have them in classic packs ONLY.

I'm one of those that tends to defend Demiurge on here. I understand that this game is there job. I don't believe that every decision is based on greed. MPQ is just how the devs make a living and pay their bills. But when I cash in a Latest leg token and get IW, I start to question my way of thinking about greed.

aesthetocyst

Vaulting wouldnt be so bad if it was done right. Vaulted characters shouldnt be featured or required for anything while vaulted.

A better solution....allow players some influence, based on their roster, on their pulls:

Reconciling RNG and Player Progress

.

Eddiemon

Prior to championing, sure. But now many of the older characters feed a champion rather than being wasted.

Plus with DDQ you're blocking the progression of developing players from the first rounds of 4star battles where they might have stood a chance.

Dragon_Nexus

Chrono_Tata wrote:

First off, the whole "taken out of rotation for tweaking" thing was a huge lie. Most of the characters that were taken off rotation didn't see any changes and when they need to tweak characters, they can and have done that while they are in rotation. MPQ characters aren't buses or trains that need to be taken off service to be maintained. They are literally just lines of codes that they can change any time they like and then push out to us.

Anyway, I don't think the whole rotation thing was ever a good idea. It would be better to just spilt the characters into groups that are in different tokens, somewhat like they are doing right now with the legendary tokens.

I...don't recall them ever saying they were taken out of rotation for updates, fixes or changes.
They were taken out of rotation to improve the odds of other characters dropping. So out of all the 3*s they'd remove some so you'd know whether it was a good time to use tokens or not. "Oh, there's only one character in this rotation I need. I'll wait until the one I want comes around".

Vhailorx

fmftint wrote:

No, they need to stop being stingy with the draw rate. Lower 2/3☆ rate, greatly increase 4☆ rate
On a heroic token you have
70% 2☆ (5.5% individual character)
25% 3☆ (.6% individual character)
5% 4☆ (.2% individual character)

check your rates fmf! 4*s now round down to 0.1%, so the true rate is probably closer to 0.14%.

And yes, vaulting was a bad idea. The solution is for deimurge to realize that they don't need to cap 4* rates so aggressively.

When there are only a few 4*s, then suppressing the token rates makes sense, because you need to keep people interested in the game. But with 30ish 4*s now, the sheer number of covers needed will keep people playing (to the extent that they were ever going to be interested enough to play long term) and rates need to bump up. a <5% chance of drawing the end-game meta characters when earning theoretically valuable heroic tokens is pathetic. It completely devalues heroric and event tokens. They appear to be nothing more than bait to induce players to buy 40 packs.

HaywireII

Taking any character out of the rotation is going to hurt someone. I'm a newer player compared to most people here (day 188) and the volume of 4* characters now available combined with the availability of drops and just plain old random numbers is making it hard to complete a 4* character. I have gotten a few of them up to 8 to 10 covers but my invisible woman only has two covers. Strangely my Punisher Max and my Drax both have 5 covers each.

Realistically I'm moving a number of my 4 stars into a good position for Crash of the Titans but to get them to the point where they are usable in PvP is going to take dozens and dozens of draws until I get a handful of them at or close to 13 covers. If one of the few that was actually close to usable now suddenly wan't available in the tokens that would be too depressing.

Crowl

At this point in the game's lifespan, the non-vault event tokens should be a step up from heroics and only include 3* and 4* tokens, you could have 1% chance for each specific character with a few % left over for a boosted rate on essentials and/or reward covers.

In the vaults you could have a spread covers that include the essential, one from a newer character, one from a recognised top tier character and some random ones to ensure people don't get stuck with a vault of dregs.

Chrono_Tata

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

Chrono_Tata wrote:

First off, the whole "taken out of rotation for tweaking" thing was a huge lie. Most of the characters that were taken off rotation didn't see any changes and when they need to tweak characters, they can and have done that while they are in rotation. MPQ characters aren't buses or trains that need to be taken off service to be maintained. They are literally just lines of codes that they can change any time they like and then push out to us.

Anyway, I don't think the whole rotation thing was ever a good idea. It would be better to just spilt the characters into groups that are in different tokens, somewhat like they are doing right now with the legendary tokens.

I...don't recall them ever saying they were taken out of rotation for updates, fixes or changes.
They were taken out of rotation to improve the odds of other characters dropping. So out of all the 3*s they'd remove some so you'd know whether it was a good time to use tokens or not. "Oh, there's only one character in this rotation I need. I'll wait until the one I want comes around".

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=19074&p=249365

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=17494&p=232022

"This will put the latest characters into the packs sooner and allow us to work on the characters that are out of the spotlight."

SnowcaTT

33 4*'s.

That's the number of 3*'s that were in DDQ when it started. I don't think we need to rotate 4*'s in tokens - I think D3 needs to accept 4* is the new 3*. They need to be rewarded in DDQ, put everywhere that 3*'s were, and ISO needs to be adjusted so you can max a 4* in a couple of weeks (since that is their release rate anyway).

Ducky

I remember a post by Ice saying they didn't want to split tiers into separate tokens because it would mess with ppl's progress and cause them to pull from one pile as it was the optimal way to progress. But then they went ahead and did it anyway.

If I wasn't so lazy, I'd look up the post, but alas I am.

BearVenger

Chrono_Tata wrote:

Anyway, I don't think the whole rotation thing was ever a good idea. It would be better to just spilt the characters into groups that are in different tokens, somewhat like they are doing right now with the legendary tokens.

This is not targeted to you at all, Chrono, but back in the day (about a year ago), "vaulting" was the ONE SIMPLE SOLUTION that would FIX EVERYTHING. If only the devs would just listen...

I was on hiatus for most of the vaulting era, and once they inolemented it, it wasn't the panacea we had hoped.

I agree with you that the transition from 3* to 4* is iffy and frustrating. I've hit a skid where 5 of my last 7 CL token pulls have been duplicates, and only 20 of the possible 105 covers could do that. It's fricking frustrating, and the ability to direct-whale a 4* cover I want isn't what it was a year ago when I could have done that.

There are no ONE SIMPLE SOLUTION!s without unintended consequences, here or in real life. Where there are, they've already been implemented.

Along those lines, I see the "ISO shortage" as a regulator on those with large rosters. Right meow, the game favors rosters with high-leveled characters. If we suddenly had the ISO faucet turned up, then the game would favor those with multiple high-leveled characters who can hot-swap when their A-team goes down. Or it will favor those with underlevelled 5*s who can push their OMLs and Iron Man Supremes into championship territory.

If I had any say in ONE SIMPLE FIX, it would be to allow more segregation in opponents, so I didn't have to be shredded by better players than me, and (as a bonus), a slowdown in 4*-5* releases.

Dragon_Nexus

Chrono_Tata wrote:

https://d3go.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=19074&p=249365

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=17494&p=232022

"This will put the latest characters into the packs sooner and allow us to work on the characters that are out of the spotlight."

Well shut my mouth.
That was a quite incredible piece of nonsense coming from the announcement.

Chrono_Tata

BearVenger wrote:

Chrono_Tata wrote:

Anyway, I don't think the whole rotation thing was ever a good idea. It would be better to just spilt the characters into groups that are in different tokens, somewhat like they are doing right now with the legendary tokens.

This is not targeted to you at all, Chrono, but back in the day (about a year ago), "vaulting" was the ONE SIMPLE SOLUTION that would FIX EVERYTHING. If only the devs would just listen...

I was on hiatus for most of the vaulting era, and once they inolemented it, it wasn't the panacea we had hoped.

I think the main problem was that characters were vaulted for waaay too long. I remember that was the main complaint with the system. If the turnover rate were higher (say once a week:, maybe it would have worked out better. But it's still a convoluted way of trying to solve a problem which has much simpler solutions.

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

Chrono_Tata wrote:

https://d3go.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=19074&p=249365

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=17494&p=232022

"This will put the latest characters into the packs sooner and allow us to work on the characters that are out of the spotlight."

Well shut my mouth.
That was a quite incredible piece of nonsense coming from the announcement.

Yeah it made no sense. I gave them the benefits of the doubt at the time as I wasn't gonna complain if they were actually gonna rework all those old characters. But now looking back on it it was pretty disappointing how few characters actually got reworked. The only characters I think got reworked during the vaulting period were the 3-stars that originally only had 2 powers. Loki and Doom turned out pretty well, but we all remember what happened to Ragnarok.

amusingfoo1

JCTthe3rd81 wrote:

I'm still trying to figure out why the "Latest" packs for leg tokens, ( 25cp for the most recent 5 ) still contain characters like XFW and IW. If I'm paying an extra 5cp at a chance for the newest, I shouldn't be stuck pulling the oldest. I know it refers to 5 characters, but that's just ridiculous. It should be the latest 4 as well. As rare and hard to get as cp is, paying the extra 5 should get me something. They need to forget rotations and just take all 4 before Kingpin out of the latest packs and have them in classic packs ONLY.

I really like this idea. I don't get latests, other than when I have tokens (mostly from 4* DDQ and champion progression), and this would get me to purchase them at least some of the time.

TxMoose

yeah, I think vaulting screws someone. I'm ok with splitting tokens but not vaulting. I hated that panther was vaulted so long. I had just started playing when he went in and it took me forever to finish him (although not as long as some others...looking at you hulk).

CaptainFreaky

I'm all for permanently vaulting Starlord, Cho and Mr F - probably a few others, but we can start with those