How is it possible to max legendary levels of 5* chars???

Cioper

There are A LOT of players having not only maxed all 5-star characters, but often even all legendary levels for them! And my question is, how is it possible? Are those guys just cheating, or maybe spend some ridiculous amount of real money? But as far as I know, even this don't guarantee you such fast progress, because you can't just buy legendary tokens, and even if you have them, it's pure luck to get 5-star cover. You can also buy any cover with command points, but those also can't be bought with real money, besides you need ridiculous amount of them for one 5-star cover. (and as far as I know, you can't raise legendary levels this way)

The only way to buy unlimited amount of legendary tokens that I know, is to buy 40x cover packs - then you get one legendary token as bonus, but those packs are not cheap. So let's do some math: in PvE/PvP events 40x packs usually cost 16000 hero points, 40x heroic tokens cost 11400 hero points, and sometimes like in current Combined Arms event such pack cost "only" 10000 hero points. So let's say someone is buying those cheapest ones, so 10000 hero points for each legendary token. 20000 hero points cost 100$, so this way you can buy one legendary token for 50$.

Now lets take a look for example at this player:


He has maxed 5-star Doctor Strange. To made him, he needed 113 covers. 3 newest 5-star characters are "latest legend tokens" and you have 5% chances to get such specific 5-star character. So statistically he needed to use 20 legendary tokens to get one cover of Doctor Strange. 113 x 20 legendary tokens = 2260 - this is amount of legendary tokens he need to have to statistically roll enough Doctor Strange covers to max his legendary levels. 2260 x 50$ = 113 000$. So you'd have to spend 113 000$ to statistically max 5-star character! Is anyone seriously spending such crazy amount of real money for this game? Because other options I can think of is either such players are cheaters, or there is some good way to max 5-star character that I'm not aware of.

I've been playing this game for over 900 days. I'm also spending some real money for this game, for almost 3 years I have spent about 500$. Best 5-star character I have is 4/2/2 Old Man Logan. And I have no idea how to max him, as the only way to get his covers is mere 1,7% chance from classic legendary token (and is constantly dropping with every new 5-star character in game), which with my bad luck (no 5-star cover from like 50 last legendary tokens) is like impossible to max. 720 command points for one cover is also crazy amount for me, especially that I need 5 more covers.

Spiritclaw

If you aren't accusing that specific player of cheating, you might want to crop his identity out of the screen shot. I'd want to review the forum rules before making a post like this, myself.

Cioper

I'm not accusing anyone of cheating, that was just a sample rooster, there are many such players. But I get your point, so I modified this picture to not show players name.

Piro_plock

Cioper wrote:

Are those guys just cheating, or maybe spend some ridiculous amount of real money?

They are spending ridiculous amounts of real money. I know some people that put many, many thousands of $$$ to get their rosters to where they are now.

The best way to get legendary tokens is by participating in so called buy clubs. You gather 20 people, each willing to buy a bigger resorce bundle (let's say one Stark Salary/Mother Lode, but there are groups that buy multiple $100 bundles at once). For one hundred dollars each of them gets 20k HP (enough to buy at least one 40-pack with a LT) plus 20x7CP. That's up to eight legendary pulls (6.6 if only Latest are pulled). Repeat few times a month/week... voilà, you've became a whale.
Of course there's also all that CP you get from regular play (PVE, PVP, intercepts, champion rewards) and you have a lot of chances to pull those shiny

elwhiteninja

Piro_plock wrote:

Cioper wrote:

Are those guys just cheating, or maybe spend some ridiculous amount of real money?

They are spending ridiculous amounts of real money. I know some people that put many, many thousands of $$$ to get their rosters to where they are now.

The best way to get legendary tokens is by participating in so called buy clubs. You gather 20 people, each willing to buy a bigger resorce bundle (let's say one Stark Salary/Mother Lode, but there are groups that buy multiple $100 bundles at once). For one hundred dollars each of them gets 20k HP (enough to buy at least one 40-pack with a LT) plus 20x7CP. That's up to eight legendary pulls (6.6 if only Latest are pulled). Repeat few times a month/week... voilà, you've became a whale.
Of course there's also all that CP you get from regular play (PVE, PVP, intercepts, champion rewards) and you have a lot of chances to pull those shiny

113 covers for a 5 star is ridiculous though, I have been playing every day for over 3 years and I am not even close to getting 13 covers granted i think my RNG for 5 stars has been really low. 113 covers is way more than sinking $1000 even in whale groups. lets say he pulled during the dr strange event that is a 10% pull rate @ 25 cp each lets assume that he really got a 10% rate that is 25,000 cp or a combined $360,000 spent or 18000 per person. I find it really hard to believe that anyone would spend $18,000 on a video game. Granted they could be working google play or the app store somehow to got get free money but even that seems crazy to me. And the whole idea of making trade club also seems like its against the spirit of the cp share thing.

I fully support D3 making money but that is a crazy thing to charge someone more than a car to get a digital character.

bigsmooth

elwhiteninja wrote:

I find it really hard to believe that anyone would spend $18,000 on a video game.

Believe it. There are many people out there who have more disposable income than us "mere mortals" can comprehend. Someone out there buys cars that cost $350,000+ or even yachts that cost into the tens of millions... if that same person happens to play match-three games in their spare time, what's to stop them from dropping $20K on it?

Vhailorx

Some people have spent a lot of money on thr game. Probably hundreds of thousands of dollars. Definitely tens if thousands if dollars.

Others may have hacked the game and just not been sandboxed yet, but thatis probably a smaller group, since sandboxing seems fairly aggressive.

Lots of people maintain a secibd, sandbixed account that they can use for experimentation or video recording.

vinsensual

TBH I came in here thinking you were gonna ask about the millions of ISO needed to max 5*s.

OneLastGambit

Some whales drop a lot of money on this game. I've personally seen it happen.

Also your calculations are not entirely accurate, you've neglected to factor in all the non 5* covers will be applied to 4* champ levels providing even more resources.

There's quite a lot of genuine whales who play honestly and spend heavily.

Finances are relative remember, to me spending 18k on a mobile game is ludicrous but that's because 18k is large amount for me. To an F2P player the £8 a month I spend on VIP is a lot since they spend nothing and to a whale with near infinite resources 18k is nothing at all.

OneLungDave

I find it laughable that people are defending and explaining the highly improbable possibility of multiple people spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a game.

You've all done the math on how much it would cost (in real money) to obtain the covers and iso needed to max a 5*. But has anyone done the math on the percentage of people who actually have that kind of money readily available? You anecdotally affirm their existence - "I've seen people spend the money with my own eyes." As if those kind of people are the majority. And as if those kind of people spend their disposable income on items with zero return on investment. Yes, they but yachts and mansions and cars. But mostly for tax breaks/incentives or investment purposes. People who have hundreds of thousands of dollars laying around aren't just lighting it on fire. Only the Joker does that.

I'm sure the fully maxed 5* rosters are still a much smaller percentage of rosters in comparison to "average" rosters. But to unequivocally assure that real people are spending that amount of money is not only naive, but patronizing.

TxMoose

OneLungDave wrote:

I find it laughable that people are defending and explaining the highly improbable possibility of multiple people spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a game.

You've all done the math on how much it would cost (in real money) to obtain the covers and iso needed to max a 5*. But has anyone done the math on the percentage of people who actually have that kind of money readily available? You anecdotally affirm their existence - "I've seen people spend the money with my own eyes." As if those kind of people are the majority. And as if those kind of people spend their disposable income on items with zero return on investment. Yes, they but yachts and mansions and cars. But mostly for tax breaks/incentives or investment purposes. People who have hundreds of thousands of dollars laying around aren't just lighting it on fire. Only the Joker does that.

I'm sure the fully maxed 5* rosters are still a much smaller percentage of rosters in comparison to "average" rosters. But to unequivocally assure that real people are spending that amount of money is not only naive, but patronizing.

to assume that a handful of people are cheating rather than spending is a little assuming and short-sighted. I only do a couple starks a year, but I know the buy club alliance names and a handful of guys are in every. single. one. buying multiple starks a month. some clubs are 2 and 3 stark minimum. these are not one time events. they happen often and members are required to provide screenshots of their purchase. yes there are some big spenders in the game. and a handful of VERY big spenders. they pay for the game you play. you might want to thank them instead of accuse them of cheating....

edit: this doesn't mean cheaters don't exist. I'm sure they do. some are dumb and break out several maxed 5s without having any maxed 4s. those are pretty obvious. others could be cheating but just doing it slowly - that wouldn't be nearly as noticeable on our end but the game has checks. and I think most all accusations are looked into. if you think someone is cheating, report them and let the devs to their testing. there are ways to find them out. unless devs confirm, careful with baseless accusations.

Vhailorx

OneLungDave wrote:

I find it laughable that people are defending and explaining the highly improbable possibility of multiple people spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a game.

You've all done the math on how much it would cost (in real money) to obtain the covers and iso needed to max a 5*. But has anyone done the math on the percentage of people who actually have that kind of money readily available? You anecdotally affirm their existence - "I've seen people spend the money with my own eyes." As if those kind of people are the majority. And as if those kind of people spend their disposable income on items with zero return on investment. Yes, they but yachts and mansions and cars. But mostly for tax breaks/incentives or investment purposes. People who have hundreds of thousands of dollars laying around aren't just lighting it on fire. Only the Joker does that.

I'm sure the fully maxed 5* rosters are still a much smaller percentage of rosters in comparison to "average" rosters. But to unequivocally assure that real people are spending that amount of money is not only naive, but patronizing.

There are very few people who spend tens of thousands on the game or more. Perhaps a dozen or two at most.

But as txmoose says, if you watch the buy clubs on line you will see a handful of names who are in almost every single buy (and often do multiple stark buys in between the more frequently 1 stark buys). There is a 1 stark buy almost every day. All year long. There might be 2 or 3 buys each day during sales. Do the math.

Personally, i have a hard time imagining that even the very wealthy have nothing better to do with their money. And i would hate to think that someone might bankrupt themselves or their family buying mpq token packs. But that's just my opinion. The clear fact is that a small group of people ARE spending that much money. If the checks were bouncing, or if d3 suspected some other sort of cheating then they would certainly havr sandboxed some of these well known accounts.

GrumpySmurf1002

Cioper wrote:

The only way to buy unlimited amount of legendary tokens that I know, is to buy 40x cover packs - then you get one legendary token as bonus, but those packs are not cheap. So let's do some math: in PvE/PvP events 40x packs usually cost 16000 hero points, 40x heroic tokens cost 11400 hero points, and sometimes like in current Combined Arms event such pack cost "only" 10000 hero points. So let's say someone is buying those cheapest ones, so 10000 hero points for each legendary token. 20000 hero points cost 100$, so this way you can buy one legendary token for 50$.
He has maxed 5-star Doctor Strange. To made him, he needed 113 covers. 3 newest 5-star characters are "latest legend tokens" and you have 5% chances to get such specific 5-star character. So statistically he needed to use 20 legendary tokens to get one cover of Doctor Strange. 113 x 20 legendary tokens = 2260 - this is amount of legendary tokens he need to have to statistically roll enough Doctor Strange covers to max his legendary levels. 2260 x 50$ = 113 000$. So you'd have to spend 113 000$ to statistically max 5-star character! Is anyone seriously spending such crazy amount of real money for this game? Because other options I can think of is either such players are cheaters, or there is some good way to max 5-star character that I'm not aware of.

CP via buy club can be bought at 140CP for $100. And yes, the HP is often turned into 40 packs (which is why these guys also have the 2/3/4 capped quickly). Getting to a nice even number, that's 28 CP + 10 40-pack tokens pulls for $500, or a hair over $13 per token.

That reduces the $113k down to $29,380. Now also remember that 5* champs give 25CP/token every other level, so that will reduce the number down even further, not to mention the tokens from the 3/4* champs.

Is it crazy to spend $20k to max a character? In my world yes, but not for the 20-30 mega-whales out there. Good for them.

Quebbster

Vhailorx wrote:

Personally, i have a hard time imagining that even the very wealthy have nothing better to do with their money. And i would hate to think that someone might bankrupt themselves or their family buying mpq token packs. But that's just my opinion. The clear fact is that a small group of people ARE spending that much money. If the checks were bouncing, or if d3 suspected some other sort of cheating then they would certainly havr sandboxed some of these well known accounts.

This depends quite a bit on how their Life situation looks like. I have several friends who work in a mine in a small Town. Job pays extremely well, but quite frankly there's not a whole lot to spend it on, so they have A LOT of disposable income. Perhaps not enough to become a megawhale in a game like this, but still way more Money to burn than I could ever Dream of. Some are just fortunate enough to have a high income and not a whole lot of expenses, and if they want to spend that extra Money on a game I see no reason to not let them.

Zyrook

Quebbster wrote:

This depends quite a bit on how their Life situation looks like. I have several friends who work in a mine in a small Town. Job pays extremely well, but quite frankly there's not a whole lot to spend it on, so they have A LOT of disposable income. Perhaps not enough to become a megawhale in a game like this, but still way more Money to burn than I could ever Dream of. Some are just fortunate enough to have a high income and not a whole lot of expenses, and if they want to spend that extra Money on a game I see no reason to not let them.

I know a couple of guys in similar situations. One works an oil field job in I think Alaska. The pay is great but there's bugger all to spend it on out there. Granted he spends his money on furry art for him and his friends, but point is there are people out there who make serious cash and end up spending it on silly things.

Jarvind

People spending tons of money on the game aren't necessarily rich. Ever been to Los Angeles? You'll see dudes driving 200k cars and go "oh wow that guy must be loaded," but what you don't see is they're driving them home to tiny apartments where they live with 5 other people because that's what they blew all their money on. And then it gets repo'd the next month.

I can't speak for other countries, but the vast majority of people in America are very poorly educated on what responsible spending is. Obviously I'm not saying that every whale roster belongs to some sort of degenerate, but I'd be willing to bet that there are a handful in that category.

Fightmastermpq

I was in a 3-buy room during the sale and there were multiple buys happening every day, and multiple people that were in almost every buy. We are fortunate to have a lot of big spenders helping to keep the lights on.

Vyshus

If you buy using amazon you get 25% discount on $500, so a x5 stark club costs $375. Also 2 weeks ago amazon had 50% digital sale on top of the 25% discount on coins.
So during that sale there was a lot of x8 buyer clubs going down. Each round comes to 1,120cp and costing about $360ish (not sure though the coin thing and taxes throw me off)