Forum Thread

aesthetocyst

Forum post.

broll

I've been playing about a year and the initial roster slot investment was rough. I spent quite a bit of money the first few months to get my roster slots setup. I think this is something that can easily turn away new players to the game. I think it would make sense to have an adjustment to have a higher number of starting slots and make the number of slots before you hit the 1000 HP mark a lot higher. Wouldn't really help most of us that much, but would help keep the game healthily and regularly stocked with fresh meet.

I'm still light years away from the slot cap of 300 (117 right now) and I have every character roster minus a handful of 5* and 1* and I have 7 2* dups for my farm. I don't know that the slot cap needs to be raised but I certainly have no problem if they chose to do so.

babinro

I think the roster slot situation is 'fine'.

In my mind the sign of an acceptable F2P system is one that encourages spending at some point but can ultimately be surpassed over time. The flow of HP (and ISO) have pretty much reached that point in my opinion. It's only going to get more 'generous' with time when CL9 and especially CL10 eventually see the light of day.

There's a certainly a debate to be had about how long it should takes to become self sustaining.

I think the design of earlier tiers of play is such that the decision to simply not have everything is fine even though no one feels good about selling off tons of potential covers. When you break things down you only really NEED one 1* and a handful of 2*'s. 3's are where the issue becomes really difficult though as you need to be picky and just hope that your chosen few characters come up reasonably quick in rotations as you slowly build more slots with time.

From my perspective these difficult choices are FINE because of the long term payoff. But really this issue comes down to D3's internal numbers. They are the only ones that can tell us whether or not this 'wall' cause too many people to quit vs those who stick with it for free and those who buy their way out.

CyberVenom2001

For a long while, I thought it was way too costly to spend 1000HP on roster slots. Especially since I play to own every character, not necessarily to champion all or to have just what I need. It was very difficult to earn HP to the amount it was needed to keep up.

I haven't had at all since the updated awards system, Clearance Levels, Daily Resupply, etc.

Now, I'm able to keep 1000HP in reserve for new characters and earn plenty extra to purchase tokens and use for shielding in PVP. I'm very happyoung with the current system.

beyonderbub

I agree that slot costs should be adjusted lower taking into consideration the expanded roster choices; however, they should also factor in the new sources of HP that were not available up until the past year. It was not raining HP for the first 2 years and the cost to purchase has remained consistent (high?) all thru MPQ's lifetime. While I appreciate the new sources of HP revenue, I still seem to be consistently scraping by with my style of gameplay. If the endgame is pushing towards the inevitable use of all 300 roster slots (with 2*-5* farms fully stocked and active), I'm going to need 180,000 HP just for roster slots alone at the current rate. Ouch!

Dragon_Nexus

When the game came out it had the same setup damn near every F2P game does. A currency that's handed out like candy (ISO 8) and a premium currency you pay for (Hero points)

Unlike most F2P though, you could gather the premium currency as you played. Not a huge amount, but diligent savers could splurge now and then and have a darn ole fun ole grand ole time.

At some point however, the currencies switched. Now ISO 8 is a hot commodity that's difficult to get enough of and HP is incredibly easy to save up. I'll spend all mine on tokens or something and then just let it gether up and before I realise it I've got 2000 again. ISO 8 on the other hand is always in demand and I'm blowed if I'll ever buy any.

So yeah, the idea of complaining about roster costs seems kinda silly now since we get HP in abundance, especially if you 2* farm. I've always got plenty when the next new character comes out to afford a slot. Demiurge deciding to cap the cost at 1000HP helped a lot, of course.

Pope Belligerent

I'm of two minds on this. Having just recently made the transition to 3* land (only two more to roster!) and building a full 2* farm, hitting the 1000HP level for roster slots really, really hurt. I ended up buying HP just so those precious 3* covers I needed wouldn't die on the vine. And I understand that buying HP is how the game makes its money, but $20 for two roster slots is a lot. Now that the farm is running and I've champed about 3/4 of the 3*s, though, I'm able to stock up on HP and ISO a bit more (by not rostering 4* covers, which will undoubtedly come back to bite me soon).

So I guess I largely agree with OP - they could stand to re-adjust the roster slot costs a bit to account for how many new characters the game has, and how often they come out. It doesn't have to be a radical change, but something that's more in line with their release schedule would really help.

mpqr7

I remember sadly throwing away covers because I couldn't afford roster slots. Now, I only sadly throw away covers because they are dupes of non-championed characters.

With SCL, Intercepts and championing, I'm generally able to get over 1000 HP per week with moderate play, so roster slots haven't been an issue. My only other HP expenditure is shields (sometimes a lot when I aim for 1200, sometimes a little when I just go for 700 to 900+) and the occasional daily special vault token for an event I'm taking semi-seriously.

Basically, my ISO and HP game is fine these days. Only thing I'm getting too slowly is CP and LTs (and usable 5*s...). But I'm able to champion 4*s faster than before, which is cool.

jgomes32

The price is fine. Hp is pretty much useless to me. I have 113 slots (missing Riri and 5* Thanos) and 6230hp. My only hp expense is 8 or 24h # (even did my first hop to secure top 5 last event).

Day 440, free player.

Punisher5784

I agree they should reduce the initial costs for new players. While I also agree it is much easier to earn HP now than when I first started playing in 2014 but HP is still difficult for a new player to earn. With all the new characters, it likely takes a long time to build a fully covered character that isn't a 2* so they'll have a lot of unusable characters sitting in slots.

SangFroid

Op says it himself his main account has no issues buying slots and has a ton of HP to burn on tokens so what is the problem here?

Obviously if you are playing a second account one of them is going to suffer and not do as well so I see no issue, just play your second account as your main if you really want to. There is obviously a break even point in the level of play required to be net HP+ and that is where D3 makes money, new players buying roster slots. The game is FTP even at very high levels but the tradeoff for that is a very high time investment. So if you are putting in less time you don't reap the same benefits and to make up for this you either spend money to keep pace or you accept that you can't play at a high level with a minimal time investment and play the game casually. Not sure what is amiss here?

chamber44

mmm - i'm still in a ISO death spiral. I usually have between 500 and 2000 HP at any given time. In fact, i have about 1800 right now, though i might go ahead and buy the slot and roster the two Bagman in my queue.
I don't play PvE, so i'm not worried about being locked out of any nodes if i don't have a particular player rostered, though I have nearly all of them.

Calnexin

aesthetocyst wrote:

So what do ya think? Non-issue? Do you think it's time for an adjustment?

.

For established players, the QoL improvements allow you to keep up, and pretty handily. Earning 1000 hp inbetween releases is not a big deal if you're farming, max-progressing, and placing efficiently.

So it's a matter of keeping the up-and-comers on board, right? I think it would be entirely appropriate to scale back the cost for early rosters to make sure they're engaged. I don't know what the appropriate break point would be, but just to throw out a number - gradually scale the HP cost of a roster slot from 1-100 slots, and 1k thereafter.

Increasing past 1k is an option, but I'm opposed to it. We can't use new characters without covers. I have 11 5* that have yet to see a board. If I have to pay more than 1k hp to slot a useless character, the math gets fuzzy.

Teskal

I only wish they would increase the time till the covers expire.

whycantwesyncpc

Shocking revelation of the day: The world doesn't come to an end if you don't have every character rostered. There is nothing wrong with the price of roster spots. This is coming from a very casual player that doesn't spend much money.

Punisher5784

Teskal wrote:

I only wish they would increase the time till the covers expire.

Yes! I've been saying we should be able to rent a Comic Bin for 100 HP a month/week to store extra covers or make it a new feature for VIP

Marty17

Well, I've been keeping tabs for the last year of my accumulation per month. I earn the average of 2,000 (that's excluding the fact that I spend 2,000 on roster slots for new characters released). So overall I earn about 4,000 a month.

So it ain't bad, but admittedly I had purchase Stark Salary, like over a year ago & beyond, where I did struggle to gain enough to open up more slots. Now it has completely changed.

Pope Belligerent

aesthetocyst wrote:

Yes, established players can keep up, thanks to champs, higher SCLs, intercepts (if you get them ....), and placing highly. Great for us. and fine for the game, as we are the players most likely to spend in other ways.

But new players ...

• ... don't have 2* farms • ... don't have 3* champs • ... aren't playing in higher SCLs. • ... and need to buy slots far more frequently than vets, if they aspire to reaching the endgame.

With so many characters in tokens and in reward rotations, new players might need multiple slots per week (soemtimes per day! ) for quite some time. It's great that vets only need 1 every 2 weeks or so. Not the case for new players.

They are probably getting a trickle of HP from intercepts, and dribbles from daily resupply. The cost per slot is significant long before a player even has half the characters rostered,

THIS.

I'm seeing a lot of "well, my 2* farm and full roster of champed 3*s give me all the HP I need." Great. But for those at the start of the game, HP is a precious commodity and getting a 2* farm going and rostering enough 3*s to make it meaningful gains costs a LOT. Granted, going through the entire prologue will net you enough HP to buy your first handful of roster slots, but if you haven't discovered the forum yet (I didn't discover the forum until I'd been playing for almost 6 months and had just champed my first 2*) you don't know not to spend HP on tokens. I think the cost curve for roster slots really hits those people in the mid-2* stage through the 4* transition the worst. The exact time when you're deciding if you REALLY want to commit as much time to this game as it's going to require. I think easing that transition will pay off for D3 by keeping more casual players around longer and making them more willing to spend a little money.

SnowcaTT

This used to be my biggest crusade, but as a vet the HP doesn't bother me anymore.

For more than a year I've wondered how it is possible any new player gets into this game - I paid a little for my first few spots almost three years ago, I would quit if I was re-starting today.

I'm still a fan not only of giving a free slot for every new character, but putting those characters at 1/1/1 on every roster. Want payment - have folks pay for the covers. Don't demand payment for slots, or have players depend on RNG for covers.

carrion_pigeons

I have an alt account so I don't actually have to be a second-class Steam citizen, but I barely play it because roster slot costs are dumb at low levels. I would really, really like to link up my two accounts, but barring that, lowering roster slot costs would be nice too.

Mechahamster

With all the new releases and the fact you can easily get a new release now that they're a progression reward from the following event buying new roster slots is still all I do with my HP. You need a 1000 HP every two weeks for upkeep, basically. You usually get that without buying but it doesn't leave a whole lot of room for extra's unless you hit every reward of every event. My missus is a relatively new player who went through a few months of having to throw away tons of covers because the amount of new characters she got she just didn't have room for. I had to keep telling her the 3* characters will come around again eventually and just focus on the good ones. It's definitely a demotivation for newer players.