New Feature: Bonus Heroes! *Updated (3/1/17)

Wjohnson992

After a nights sleep I think D3 could appease the issue of top 4*'s falling into the abyss.

Open up SCL9 and have its progression consist of 1 3* and 2 4* and alliance reward being the 4* again.

Then the devs should reassure that any of the 12 newest 4* will NOT come up as progression rewards. That way you can still get older 4*'s fairly regularly through pve/pvp.

While the packs will make newer 4* characters useable faster. Avoiding situations like that time War Machine got skipped in Crash since he had never been a reward since his release.

Pylgrim

Vhailorx wrote:

Do you want a level 370 Rulk? Now it is EASIER to achieve that than before. Take a moment and do the maths for yourself and tell me the estimate of pulls you'd need to get a 100 Rulks under the old model. I'll wait. (And yes, I know that you mean more than just Rulk but still, ask yourself how many of the pulls towards max-champing Rulk and all the other good characters would be "wasted" on the characters that you don't really care that much for under the previous model.)

It's the bold part of your sentence where we part ways. I don't just want a single 370. I want a bunch of them. Under the old system, the only characters for whom I "wasted" a cover were those that I would not be able to champ fast enough for lack of iso. I was happy to get a champ level for any 4*. Hell, I even champed Fantastic when I had 6 expiring covers for him and no other clearly superior 4*s waiting to be champed. champing was a fairly player-friendly addition to the game, because it mitigated the downside of RNG token pulls. Now every character could potentially be turned into a useful resource farm with an initial iso investment. And the more you champed characters, the more productive tokens became.

My concern is that the new system will give me a nice 5% boost of targeted covers (yay!) but also turn an extra 15% or 20% of my 4* token pulls into unusable "wastes" because I can't champ the newest characters fast enough. That would be a net negative (Boo!).

Now it's possible that once we are 6 or 9 months into this system, it will turn out that I can collect 13 covers and enough iso to level a new 4* fast enough that I won't be overly burdened by the new system. And if it turns out to be true, then the new system may be more positive than I suspect, but I am a little skeptical. I would not be surprised if, in the long run, the net result of these changes was that where a player may once have had 40 4* champs at an average level of 300, the same player would now end up with something like 5-10 4* champs at level 350, and 30-35 champs at level 280. and I would personally prefer the former.

I reckon you are right about the sudden upheaval that players at our station are about to experience but I am positive that we'll reach the scenario that you theorise.

As for preferring a few high level 4*s over every 4* at a mediocre average... I think we'll have to agree to disagree. If I could convert every cover of Eddie I've ever got into an Iceman or Quake or Peggy, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Now I am basically given that chance. Besides! You don't really need to go to 350! Just take a character to 330 and move to the next. Pretty sure that in the time that the fully RNG previous system would allow me to get my 4*s to level 300, I could get a decent and not too small stable of my favourite 4*s to 330. Yeah, I'll lament the iso that I put into champing Elektra because I don't see myself ever giving her a turn at the wheel of fortune, but such are the vicissitudes of a feature's early adopters.

NMANOZ

I scrolled to Bagman. He is not available, it broke my heart.

apmonte

VIP player with 12 champed 4-stars.

Conceptually I like the change with the bonus system, but agree with most that it needs to be adjusted. Latest Legends draw looks like it should with the 12 latest 4-stars in it. However, the Classic Legends should contain all four stars except the latest legends (like the 5-stars). Why isn't this the case? The newest 12 four-stars certainly aren't classic in any sense of the word. Heroics should contain them all.

I did a bunch of classic pulls to bring up my newer 4-stars (cheaper than latest legends), but am now ISO starved again and will stop pulling for a while. Managed to put six Jessica Drew covers in my queue. Need ISO to get her champed now. Purchasing ISO isn't even remotely an option at current prices.

Quebbster

Guess I am officially ISO starved again. I was planning on saving up Latest Legends so I could have a big opening party and open at least 250 in one go. With 40+ different fourstars available in legendary tokens, that would mean around 5 extra covers for each one on average. Now with just 12 fourstars that means I should be getting 15 covers or more for each one, so I need to be ready to champ as many as possible of them to avoid covers going to waste. An off-the-cuff calculation puts the cost for that Little Project at around 3 million ISO at the moment. I currently have around 2 million ISO stockpiled, so I have some way left to go... and that doesn't leave any ISO for the fivestars. Yay.

8punch

i figured actually out why they used the 12 level 4 card bracket for legends

this way it is much easier for whales to get their level 4 cards max champed. they dont get the old cards anymore, which they already have champed and has no more value for them.

Tony_Foot

8punch wrote:

i figured actually out why they used the 12 level 4 card bracket for legends

this way it is much easier for whales to get their level 4 cards max champed. they dont get the old cards anymore, which they already have champed and has no more value for them.

Absolutely, has there ever been a better time to be a whale? Killed cakes to kill the competition from taking rewards and a 4* cover system that now makes it easy to aquire and max a 4*, while drawing latest legends to cover the 5*. On one hand I totally understand why a business wants to keep these biggest spenders interested but on another they have made it cheaper for them

D4Ni13

qandols wrote:

TL; DR Today I earned a Standard Token. I opened it and to my surprise it was 3* BWGS AND a bonus IF. That's great! But does it mean I will never have to see 1* from standards anymore?

You were just very lucky. I opened all kinds of tokens today including Standard, Elite, 1xHeroic, 10xHeroic Pack (from the current season) and 2xLT and yet not one single bonus. The standard gave me 1* and 2*, so don't worry, you'll have your 1* heroes.

Magic

Since I had some Kate covers already dying on the vine i went in with my CP to get the elusive blue. Took me 20 pulls and she is a champion now. Thanks to the new fav feature Carol D is maxed covered and waiting for ISO as well. So out of 12 4* in the selection I have 3 championed (well 2 - Kate and Peggy but Carol will be there soon). Spider-W is maxed covered but I have no intention of championing here (i will rather wait her out of the rotation) - I have sold 3 covers today from the pulls. Moonknight needs one cover but I doubt I will get it before he rotates. Other then him - only Medusa is my championing target. The others will be sold for ISO when they are maxed covered.

The new feature changed my approach as before I meant to champion all of them. But since I can choose not to get any Electra covers (or later Wasp or Agent Venom) I see no point it investing ISO in them. Crash level is max I am willing to go.

And coming to think about it - I like it.

Another advantage - the small pool of heroes makes the new release way more relaxed. You will keep getting the covers soon. Look at my Carol - I have never maxed a character this quickly. And with this feature it will happen again.

Bloody_Marvel

I can see a rather simple solution to this problem:

Legendary tokens:
Latest 3 5* covers
Latest 12 4* covers

Command Points:
Remaining 10 5*
Remaining 33 4* covers

That way you can still obtain the older 4* covers through Command Points.

DesertTortoise

I picked Carol as my lone 4-star favorite, opened a few LRs and a 40 pack. The result was my Carol went from 1/3/3 to 2/5/5 and I also got two Medusa covers so I championed her immediately. There was an insane element of luck in all of this, of course, but it was nice to have control over who I was drawing. I'm now saving up 120 CP for that last Carol cover because I believe that's an acceptable value for her. After that flurry, I'm in a bit of an iso hole, so I switched my favorites to some of my lower covered, high tier characters that are vaulted (like Jean, who is 3/4/4 and Star-Lord, who is 5/1/0) for the time being in case I get lucky and pull a bonus 4-star from a heroic.

I think there was some comfort in the linearity of the old system of champ every 4-star so no 4-star cover goes to waste, but I don't think that's what we should be striving for. My optimistic hope if we'll want to champ every 4-star anyway if they continue to update the low tier characters as well as they have been recently.

I think the most ideal system would be to make latest legendaries contain the three most recent 5-stars and the twelve most recent 4-stars. Allow the classic legendaries to be three 5-stars and twelve 4-stars that are not included in the latest packs that are chosen by the player. Even better if we could set those both at the same price of 20 CP.

This is sort of a stream of consciousness. I think this is an excellent first step but I hope both the players and the devs will be patient in the short term to really see what problems come from this end up being and swift to change things for the better based on those findings.

firethorne

Bloody Marvel wrote:

I can see a rather simple solution to this problem:

Legendary tokens:
Latest 3 5* covers
Latest 12 4* covers

Command Points:
Remaining 10 5*
Remaining 33 4* covers

That way you can still obtain the older 4* covers through Command Points.

I think the only real problem with this is the people in my boat, who have a fair number of the older 4*'s covered and champed, but don't have a single 5* fully covered. It keeps us in the state where, if we want to try and get the 5*'s we really want from classics, we'll continue to get a lot of wasted 4*'s, and if we focus on latest, we'll never finish all of the 5*'s that have been released.

smkspy

I think my problem with it is that it just continues and worsens the 5 star lottery scheme. Except now, older 4s and favorites have become glorified 5s.

So yay, some people are pulling bonus 4s, equally many people are going bone dry. It is nit a good thing to double down on something so many complain about as one of the number one reasons they hate acquiring the 5 star tier.

That being said, as a 4 star player, I do like them focusing on the latest 4s a bit (though 15-16 would have been a beer number imo), but all they needed to do was create a 3rd LT for those oldest and they could have further split the older 5s into that as well.

All this is needlessly complicated just to force to people to roster and play with the new toys that few were really using.

whycantwesyncpc

So I decided to look at my roster and actually do the math to see just how royally screwed I am by the changes.

I am assuming I start the 4* transition at the start of next season as I still have 2 3*'s to champ. That means after the first rotation of the chosen 12.

I will need the following:

700 hp, I have 100

4534752 iso assuming champing these characters which would totally screw up my roster and scaling forcing me to basically only be able to play these 12. That is also assuming I get these last 2 champed by then which is unlikely so I will likely need to collect even more iso. How the hell am I supposed to put that kind of iso together?

I am going to have to collect all of this with less champ rewards do to characters I am no longer worth of getting champ levels for, thanks...


This means that if I redeem any kind of legendary there is a 58.33% change it will be completely useless unless until I can put together the hp to roster it. Again with less resources coming in. That is assuming that I pull a 4*. Pull a 5* and then I am royally screwed as I only have 1, black bolt that is in classics. If I pull from classics what are the odds that I pull him and not someone else and get put in an even bigger HP crunch?

Tell me again why I shouldn't feel screwed by these changes? Why should I even consider trying to go into the 4* tier? Why I should keep playing at all? I am never going to keep up with these resource needs. I am never going to progress in this game. Never in the time frame allowed since they keep rotating stuff out of the chose making the resource needs higher as I'll never get anything done by the time stuff starts moving out again.

They just put a giant brick wall in front of me with "FU for wanting to progress" graffitied all over it and I am not supposed to feel completely f'd over?

Thanks for taking my favorite game away from me. I'm going to go cry now

Vhailorx

8punch wrote:

i figured actually out why they used the 12 level 4 card bracket for legends

this way it is much easier for whales to get their level 4 cards max champed. they dont get the old cards anymore, which they already have champed and has no more value for them.

Maybe. But "champed" is hardly the endgame for whales. They want 370 4*s that they can use with their 5* rosters.

GurlBYE

firethorne wrote:

Bloody Marvel wrote:

I can see a rather simple solution to this problem:

Legendary tokens:
Latest 3 5* covers
Latest 12 4* covers

Command Points:
Remaining 10 5*
Remaining 33 4* covers

That way you can still obtain the older 4* covers through Command Points.

I think the only real problem with this is the people in my boat, who have a fair number of the older 4*'s covered and champed, but don't have a single 5* fully covered. It keeps us in the state where, if we want to try and get the 5*'s we really want from classics, we'll continue to get a lot of wasted 4*'s, and if we focus on latest, we'll never finish all of the 5*'s that have been released.

They didn't increase the rates in 5 star packs. So I can't see how it'll change anything. You'll just get a bunch of the newest 12, and unless you champ them quickly, will remain that way for 24 weeks.

The 4's and 5's don't have equal probability, the 5's have a much much lower rate.
It's actually more likely you have the 4's they removed fully champed and ready to go.

DesertTortoise

whycantwesyncpc wrote:

So I decided to look at my roster and actually do the math to see just how royally screwed I am by the changes.

I will need the following:

700 hp, I have 100

This is honestly coming from a good place and I'm not trying to be rude, but is this a miscalculation or a typo? I don't think a 600 HP hole is worth complaining about.

4534752 iso assuming champing these characters which would totally screw up my roster and scaling forcing me to basically only be able to play these 12. That is also assuming I get these last 2 champed by then which is unlikely so I will likely need to collect even more iso. How the hell am I supposed to put that kind of iso together?

Doing the math, it appears you believe you're expected to champion all twelve of the non-vaulted four stars. That's not really a fair comparison since you could easily say that you'd have to champion all 40+ of the current 4-stars if there wasn't any vaulting. Looking at the 4-star transition from afar is always messy and the numbers will always seem overwhelming. This is a problem that isn't unique to the bonus heroes.

This means that if I redeem any kind of legendary there is a 58.33% change it will be completely useless unless until I can put together the hp to roster it. Again with less resources coming in. That is assuming that I pull a 4*. Pull a 5* and then I am royally screwed as I only have 1, black bolt that is in classics. If I pull from classics what are the odds that I pull him and not someone else and get put in an even bigger HP crunch?

This was always the case. In the old system you were expected to roster all 4-stars as well. This is not a new obstacle. In fact, you now only have to worry about 12 4-star to potentially roster rather than the 40+ it used to be so in some ways it's safer to pull LRs if you have the 12 current characters already rostered.

Do you have a link to your roster? I'd be happy to provide help/strategy with this new system. It changes things but not necessarily for the worst.

madok

I do have to give them props for releasing a feature that has generated even more "conversations" than Boss Rush did.

cozmo1682

So far, I haven't seen a bonus hero either yet. I haven't opened that many tokens, but basically 95% of the time you're going to get no bonus which makes the vaulting even harder to understand.

fmftint

Here's my issue, this change invalidates 3-4 months of championing, I'm never going to favorite Elektra, Reed, Sue, Miles, Gwen, XFW, Antman, etc, and they're all out of the dwar pool so they are now a several million iso write off

But you can get them as placement, progression and vault rewards! Great, once or twice a year I'll get +1/2 covers for them