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

NewMcG

n25philly wrote:

1) be FORCED
2) be FORCED
3) be FORCED
4) be FORCED
5) FORCING me

I think the worst part of my day is when the D3/Demiurge hit squad comes in and trains its rifles on me until I play the game for two hours.

Moon Roach

I did some number crunching on my current rosters, figuring out what percentage of 4* covers that I could draw would be immediately useful (*), compared to the good old days of last week.

For Moon Roach, out of the 129 possible covers (47 characters, no Coulson, Mordo, Howard or Devil) it was 116 (90%). Now it's 29 out of 36 (81%).

For Wolveroach, it was 96 out of 129 (74%), now it's 35 out of 36 (97%).

What prompted this? Wolveroach getting that 1 out of 36, a Moon Knight purple from the Kingpin Crash. He's 4/5/3 and level 240, so who knows, I might get to champion him before the cover expires.

(*) Champion level, or a colour that isn't already at 5. Of course it's more complex than this.

Update: Just got the 10-pack on Wolveroach's account, got a 4* (Gwenpool) and a bonus 4*. Of course I'd set up my only 4* favourite as Moon Knight. Of course it was purple. I'm all conflicted.

Update 2: Just got the heroic token rewards for the season, from one I got a 4* (Riri, 1000HP to roster), but also got a bonus, a useable Moon Knight. Moon Knight is championed. But that's only because I was lucky enough to get a 4* and then got a natural critical hit with my d20, and was lucky to not roll 1 or 2 on my d6.

WelcomeDeath

Cthulhu wrote:

Overall this is a way to fix how many characters were in the packs, pack dilution. Now, you have the latest characters and any number of bonus characters that you select to help determine your draw. My first pull, I was able to get 5 bonus covers of a character I hearted by opening a 40 pack. I know that's a lot of hero points for that particular pack. But the main thing is that now you select the covers that you want from all of the characters so it's more focused on what you need, rather then a huge number of all the characters you may or may not need.

Thank you all for the feedback, please continue to try it out and let me know what you think. I'll do my best to read more comments and answer any questions in this thread.

A couple things. You got 5 bonuses out of a single 40 pack. That's fantastic, but it's inconsistent. One of the major gripes about the 5* transition is that it is totally reliant upon RNG. You and I could both pull the same amount of tokens over a lifetime of mpq, but without some kind of streakbreaker for bad luck, if one is very lucky and the other very unlucky, one will be well ahead of the other. I know two players that I won't name, very different stories. One opened 3 tokens the day bonus heroes started. Pulled a 5* from and got a bonus 5. Pulled 2 4* from LT and got 2 bonus 4s. Pretty great right? Another player I know opened up 40+ LTs, hundreds of event tokens, and spent all his remaining hp on 3 (or 4? Cant remember right now) 40 packs. Not one bonus hero out of the lot.
So, yes, focused progress, but only IF you get lucky enough to get through 2! Rng gates. Buy a lottery ticket and win...another lottery ticket. Win on the second one and get the big prize.

Furthermore, it is now EASIER to cover a latest 5* out of LTs (odds 1 in 20) than it is to cover a classic 4* (odds 1 in 24) from the same pulls. Was this intended? Same idea, if you tried to whale LTs and get all the classics to 13 covers, youd need to pull about 9,360 tokens with cp. To cover all classic 5s youd need to pull 866 LTs at once. If you pulled the 9360 and had even distribution, youd have every classic 5* at level 550 and their dupes at 463....seem a little broken? In the very very long term I suppose this evens out, but thats a veeeeery long term goal.

I said in a different thread, i do think that vaulting needs to happen. Leaving everything in tokens will eventually lead to such dilution that youd never be able to cover anything, never mind adding champ levels. I also appreciate the need to feature the latest additions to mpq. Thats where the money is made, and thats what keeps the game fresh. Bonus heroes essentially allows us to create custom tokens of any character we choose so we can cover them specifically. Why not take it a step further? Keep the bonus pulls (nobodys stupid enough to turn down free pulls) and allow us to turn our own characters on and off. The store level would be a good place for it with the revision to how available characters are listed (photos not just names). Have a mandatory 12 4* and 20 3* (latest/featured) and the rest separate. Let us turn them off and on. Odds would never be better than they are now, and dilution would only be what you want it to be. Do it with classic 5*, too, with a minimum of 3 (or 4 or 5 if you want it to be less appealing than the latest 5s) It would still be some RNG, but a lot more controllable. It would still force latests and additional roster slots. It would let you try to cover the featured 4* of the week to compete (and drive cover sales!). Or to cover older 4* for crash of the titans, or the burrito, or pve, or...anything, with decent odds so that you could actually get it done. Thanks!

A_Wise_Man

Cthulhu wrote:

Overall this is a way to fix how many characters were in the packs, pack dilution. Now, you have the latest characters and any number of bonus characters that you select to help determine your draw. My first pull, I was able to get 5 bonus covers of a character I hearted by opening a 40 pack. I know that's a lot of hero points for that particular pack. But the main thing is that now you select the covers that you want from all of the characters so it's more focused on what you need, rather then a huge number of all the characters you may or may not need.

Thank you all for the feedback, please continue to try it out and let me know what you think. I'll do my best to read more comments and answer any questions in this thread.

Good for you? Thats over twice the advertised rate and well over the experiences tons of others are having, so thats probably not the best example. Better to use something closer to the guidelines. Like, "Hey, I just spent $200 on 3 40 packs and I got ONE cover on the 4 cyke I so desperately want! This is awesome!" See how that goes over.

Dayv

Cthulhu wrote:

Overall this is a way to fix how many characters were in the packs, pack dilution. Now, you have the latest characters and any number of bonus characters that you select to help determine your draw. My first pull, I was able to get 5 bonus covers of a character I hearted by opening a 40 pack. I know that's a lot of hero points for that particular pack. But the main thing is that now you select the covers that you want from all of the characters so it's more focused on what you need, rather then a huge number of all the characters you may or may not need.

Thanks to the champion system, which was almost universally well-received and has guided most of my roster decisions for the last year, there is a "huge number" of characters I need, and most of them are not just the last 6 months of releases!

I honestly can't tell whether D3 and Demiurge seriously thought that players would welcome with open arms a change to make 3/4 of of 4* covers far harder to get, or whether the corporate stance of "Bonus Heroes makes up for this inconvenience" is so mandated that people are forced to maintain this position no matter what or risk being out of a job.

Please make up your minds: is Bonus Heroes a great new additional set of rewards, or is it the tiny apology allowing us to rescue a very small portion of the older 4* characters from obscurity? It kinda feels like we're being given both answers, despite them being totally incompatible.

Dayv

A_Wise_Man wrote:

Cthulhu wrote:

Overall this is a way to fix how many characters were in the packs, pack dilution. Now, you have the latest characters and any number of bonus characters that you select to help determine your draw. My first pull, I was able to get 5 bonus covers of a character I hearted by opening a 40 pack. I know that's a lot of hero points for that particular pack. But the main thing is that now you select the covers that you want from all of the characters so it's more focused on what you need, rather then a huge number of all the characters you may or may not need.

Thank you all for the feedback, please continue to try it out and let me know what you think. I'll do my best to read more comments and answer any questions in this thread.

Good for you? Thats over twice the advertised rate and well over the experiences tons of others are having, so thats probably not the best example. Better to use something closer to the guidelines. Like, "Hey, I just spent $200 on 3 40 packs and I got ONE cover on the 4 cyke I so desperately want! This is awesome!" See how that goes over.

Yeah, and if Cthulhu had pulled less than the expected 3.2 bonus covers in a 40-pack, I suspect the anecdote wouldn't have come up at all.

Bonus Heroes are great, vaulting is terrible, and it's a little insulting to have the two conflated as if they were a single feature.

That said, Bonus Hero pulls having their tier dependent on the tier of the cover being rewarded is a weird design decision. It amplifies the existing luck of the player. A person who is drawing far fewer 3* and 4* covers than expected is also getting far fewer Bonus drops than the expected average, and a player who pulls an above average rate of 4* in Heroics and 5* in Legendary has an above average chance of getting bonus covers for those tiers. That's... an odd decision.

I would have expected Bonus Hero reward tiers to have been based on the token level pulled. Something like:

• Legendary Tokens: 5% chance of a 5* Bonus Hero
• Heroic Token: 5% chance of a 4* Bonus Hero
• Elite Token: 5% chance of a 3* Bonus Hero
• Standard Token: 2% chance of a 3* Bonus Hero

Of course I'm just spit-balling the numbers here, but that feels like a more fair system, and a simpler one. And you're far more likely to find people whose good and bad luck on token pulls and Bonus Hero rates balance each other a bit than you are someone who has legitimately great results in both or legitimately terrible ones in both.

Vhailorx

Cthulhu wrote:

Overall this is a way to fix how many characters were in the packs, pack dilution. --snip-- But the main thing is that now you select the covers that you want from all of the characters so it's more focused on what you need, rather then a huge number of all the characters you may or may not need.

That would be much more comforting if you hadn't designed the rest of the game to heavily incentivize me to need every character eventually. Champing rewards, champion sale prices, essential characters, ddq nodes, featured PVP events, and weekly boost lists are all mechanics that push players to roster and level every character in the 2*-4* tiers. So which are the characters that I may not need?

carrion_pigeons

DayvBang wrote:

Please make up your minds: is Bonus Heroes a great new additional set of rewards, or is it the tiny apology allowing us to rescue a very small portion of the older 4* characters from obscurity? It kinda feels like we're being given both answers, despite them being totally incompatible.

Why are they incompatible?

Tell me which statement you disagree with:
1) We get more 4* covers than ever before with Bonus Heroes active.
2) Bonus Heroes can be leveraged to obtain old covers.

Seems pretty compatible to me.

After all the exploding people have done on the forums, I'm still pretty unclear on exactly what the problem is supposed to be with this feature. Yes, it will slow you down in your effort to champ, say, Ant-Man. But Ant-Man wasn't ever a high priority character in the first place, and most people were content to let him sit on their roster for years, if necessary. He wasn't changing the way anyone played.

The old 4*s are full of characters that people didn't really care about. The news that you don't have to sink Iso into them now in order to take advantage of champ rewards in general ought to be good news. Those character were just filling space on rosters, acting as batteries. Now the batteries are still around but there's less than a third as many to have to worry about. Why is this not okay?

The high quality old characters can be farmed up faster than before. Don't tell me they can't. The impact of Bonus Heroes is enough that you can earn covers for a desired character at ~triple the old rate if you want (talking about 4*s specifically). And frankly there just aren't that many that matter. If you have an 8-cover War Machine or something you were excited to bring up, well, now you have a choice to make, but it isn't that different from the old choice that RNG made for you. The only real difference is that now you have to make a choice you know is suboptimal, if you want your War Machine champed, as opposed to letting RNG do it on your behalf.

Blergh

carrion pigeons wrote:

DayvBang wrote:

Tell me which statement you disagree with:
1) We get more 4* covers than ever before with Bonus Heroes active.
2) Bonus Heroes can be leveraged to obtain old covers.

I'd disagree with both.

As as consisted top 25 (and I'm being modest there) player in both PVE and PVP I get a good turn over of tokens and CP. So far I have had exactly 3 bonus heroes, 2 of which were three stars.

Of the four stars I have pulled, I had a blade red which is already at five. So a useless dupe. A Spider-Woman Purples which is already at five so again kind of useless. Another one for power-man I am going to have to sell as though that powers at five he has a whole colour category missing. I also had a 5 Gwenpool cover dupe, but at least I could champ her for 350,000 odd iso.

So I'd argue the bonus hero wouldn't be enough to cover the old covers to great effect.
I could also argue that I am getting less usable four star covers as they I have increased duplicate covers I can't apply. I'd get more covers that I did not have to sell under the old system. Even if I did cover the evenly to champ level it'd be more iso that I could make to champ them all consistently. So in effect I am getting less four covers than before.

That's my experience so far.

DFiPL

Cthulhu wrote:

I understand what your saying. You guys would like a pack of 4 stars that are all older 4 star covers and a pack of new 4 star covers, but what I'm saying is you can select the exact 4 stars you want to focus on and when you get a bonus cover it will be the exact cover you have hearted. Now you can select the 4 stars you want to work on, and get them as bonus draw, so if your working to get covers for a few older 4 stars, just select those few older 4 stars.

1) Thanks for stepping in to communicate with the forum, both on behalf of the playerbase, and for poor Brigby, who I don't think has been out on the pointy end of a forum uproar like this before.

2) "Covers for a few older 4 stars" might be one thing. "Covers for 75% of the 4* spread" is something else. Me? I'm in an okay place, because I had nearly all of the 4* rostered before this change, and of the 4* I have who can't win the Crash yet, most are newer. So my ability to continue to gain 4* covers isn't affected that much; WHO those covers are is, of course, but that's true of everybody. What isn't true of everybody is having nearly all of the 4* on hand already.

The impact there is the 2 CP daily in DDQ that they may not have yet been able to get, and now will have difficulty getting going forward.

The impact there is that there are now fewer avenues towards acquiring those covers, or towards covermaxing all but the latest 12 4*, for folks who haven't been playing for 2-3 years.

I'm completely okay with attacking token dilution by limiting the pool of 4* in the token. But limiting rotation to 'new in, old out' pushes the 4* tier into the same place the 5* tier is: get it while it's hot, because if you can't, you probably never will.

Yes, it's much less expensive to use CP to buy covers for 4* than it is for 5*, but the 4* tier is still being pushed into that same place, after all of the positive changes in the last 6-12 months to open up the availability of 4* covers.

Bonus Heroes, on its own, is a fantastic change. I have nothing but positive feelings for the ability to both get a bonus pull and control what that pull is.

But if you're going to address dilution by reducing the number of covers in the pool, there are all kinds of ways to do that that don't lock out 3/4 of the 4*.

You already have a structure with Latest and Classic Legendary tokens. You could put the 12 newest 4's and 3 newest 5's in the Latest and everything else in Classic. Of course, that still leaves the dilution issue that's been facing the older 5's. So...appropriate Classic for a new type of Legendary token. Select three older 5*, 12 older 4*, and rotate the characters in that token every season or so. Yeah, you're still 'benching' part of the 4* (and maybe 5*?) pool, but you give the playerbase clarity on when the best times are to chase the characters they're trying to cover, and, importantly, you give them the ability. I bet a combination of a rotating monthly "Classic" Legendary pack and Bonus Heroes would quell a significant part of the furor. You'd have bonus pulls; you'd have reduced dilution when the characters you're chasing get their turn in the token (with the added bonus of the playerbase feeling a little more in control since they could target their pulls); you'd still be able to push the newest characters in the Latest Legendaries; and the spend-CP-on-covers mechanic would still be in place for those who just gotta have it now.

Tony_Foot

carrion pigeons wrote:

The old 4*s are full of characters that people didn't really care about. The news that you don't have to sink Iso into them now in order to take advantage of champ rewards in general ought to be good news. Those character were just filling space on rosters, acting as batteries. Now the batteries are still around but there's less than a third as many to have to worry about. Why is this not okay?

The new 4*s are full of people no one cares about too. You didn't have to sink ISO into the rubbish old ones either. You got them to DDQ level mostly and forgot about them unless you had all the best ones already champed. Those characters will still fill up roster spots for anyone like myself that also plays pve for the essential and to try to complete Crash.

I looked at your roster and apologies if it's not up to date but I can see why you think this way. You don't have a single 4* champed? You think this will save you iso and roster slots, it won't. The moment you do your 2nd 4* champ and play pvp you will see why you need those top tier boosted champions. Something like 12 of the top 15 have been retired?

I have no doubt they will now pump out a character or two that makes Ice man look like Bagman to try to make people forget.

kyo28

Tony Foot wrote:

carrion pigeons wrote:

The old 4*s are full of characters that people didn't really care about.

I'm sorry but speak for yourself. Rulk, Iceman, Jean Grey, Prof X, etc ... all characters we don't care about? They are the most prevalent in PVP nowadays!
Yeah, whales and longtime players who have them rostered and champed up to level 300 may not care, but a transitioning 3*-4* player like me cares a great deal about these characters!

Turn and twist it all you like, there is no, absolutely NO LOGICAL REASON not to have the older 4*s somewhere available in their own separate vault. Limiting Latest LT'S to new 4*s is one thing, but taking the older ones out of ALL the vaults? Give me ONE reason that validates this. Dilution isn't a valid reason as that is solved by taking them out of Latest LT'S already. Why can't they be in the Classic LT's? Or why can't there be a new vault or new vaults dedicated to older 4*s?

There is not reason whatsoever to take them out of rotation, none! I see only two explanations, both equally bad:
1. the dev's didn't realise the impact that this would have on players who are behind the curve. In which case, they are rather incompetent at their job, I'm sorry to say
2. the dev's did realise this but didn't care. They only cater to the whales who are the biggest revenue stream and this change caters perfectly to them but pushes players who are behing the curve even further down.

I don't know which option is worse, not realising or not caring. But it must be one of those two.

Not only are players who are behind the curve unable to rooster and build older 4*s at the rate they used to, it also prevents them from getting more Latest LT's because they won't be able to play Behemoth Burrito because guess what? It's the older 4*s that are in rotation there, not the newer ones.

I can't even begin to express the level of disappointment I feel towards the devs. Look at my roster in my sig and tel me this is a good change for me. You can't, because it's not.

And for the record, I pulled some 20 Latest LT's to check out the new system:
* Thanos: > yay!
* Spider-Woman: + > OK, it's an OK character. Not top of my list but not bottom
* Medusa : 3 + > Same as Spider-Woman
* Riri : 2 + > Boo! Lowest priority 4* in my roster of all 4*s!
* Peggy Carter : + > Yay! One of the few newer 4*s I'm really interested in!
* Blade : + + > not excited about this character
* Agent Venom : > same as Blade
* Gwenpool: 2 + > same as Blade
* MoonKnight : 0 covers > booo, one of the few new 4*s I'm interested in
* Bonus Heroes : 0 covers > booo!

So I got 1 5* I like, 2 4*s I'm really interested in and the rest is all but filler. 0 bonus heroes so 0 covers for my older 4*s I really, really want to champ.

Not feeling the love here, not at all!

whitecat31

Cthulhu wrote:

It's both. You get the new covers mixed with any selected 4 stars that you would like to get.

This is an attempt to allow you to choose what you want and have a better chance at getting what you want.

What I want, is the champion progression of the 20 something 4 star characters I invested millions of ISO into to mean something. Before, I had about a 50% chance of a four star cover to be worth something to me champion wise. Now, I have a 5% chance, plus whatever I have champed out of the current 12 available, which is not many.

Also, this selection of the new 4 star characters IGNORES the player base rating system of what we consider the top 10 Four stars. The only top 10 ten four stars in the selection of 12 characters is Peggy Carter, and Danvers (some people are iffy on that). Five of the 12 available are 5 of some of the worst available in Wasp, Venom, Luke Cage, Riri, and Gwen Pool (assuming you don't play with cheat sheets). Many players don't want to HAVE to invest ISO into these characters, or feel they have to invest ISO into these characters.

kyo28

whitecat31 wrote:

What I want, is the champion progression of the 20 something 4 star characters I invested millions of ISO into to mean something. Before, I had about a 50% chance of a four star cover to be worth something to me champion wise. Now, I have a 5% chance, plus whatever I have champed out of the current 12 available, which is not many.

Also, this selection of the new 4 star characters IGNORES the player base rating system of what we consider the top 10 Four stars. The only top 10 ten four stars in the selection of 12 characters is Peggy Carter, and Danvers (some people are iffy on that). Five of the 12 available are 5 of some of the worst available in Wasp, Venom, Luke Cage, Riri, and Gwen Pool (assuming you don't play with cheat sheets). Many players don't want to HAVE to invest ISO into these characters, or feel they have to invest ISO into these characters.

This perfectly sums it up.

firethorne

carrion pigeons wrote:

Why are they incompatible?

Tell me which statement you disagree with:
1) We get more 4* covers than ever before with Bonus Heroes active.
2) Bonus Heroes can be leveraged to obtain old covers.

Fallacy of negative conclusion from affirmative premises. The problem is, these two do not combine into "We get more old heroes than ever before."

The old heroes have moved entirely into a place where they are now nearly unobtainable. Before, you drew 20, you got 16 old, 4 new. Now, you draw 20, you get 20 new, plus one old. Yes, 21 > 20. Your premise one is true. But, the problem we're taking about is 1 < 16. Dramatically less.


By the new route, if you want Hulkbuster, the bonus will always be Hulkbuster. Your premise 2 is true... sort of. Because before, that draw 20 may not have given you a Hulkbuster. But if it didn't, it would have given a Maxpun, Iceman, TeenJean, 4thor, Cyclops or 4pool, etc. and invariably more than one. So sure, the bonus hero can be old. That additional bonus you get one out of twenty times can be old. But absolutely nothing else will be. And that is a devastating reduction in overall acquisition rate of old characters.

WelcomeDeath

carrion pigeons wrote:

The old 4*s are full of characters that people didn't really care about. The news that you don't have to sink Iso into them now in order to take advantage of champ rewards in general ought to be good news. Those character were just filling space on rosters, acting as batteries. Now the batteries are still around but there's less than a third as many to have to worry about. Why is this not okay?

The high quality old characters can be farmed up faster than before. Don't tell me they can't. The impact of Bonus Heroes is enough that you can earn covers for a desired character at ~triple the old rate if you want (talking about 4*s specifically). And frankly there just aren't that many that matter. If you have an 8-cover War Machine or something you were excited to bring up, well, now you have a choice to make, but it isn't that different from the old choice that RNG made for you. The only real difference is that now you have to make a choice you know is suboptimal, if you want your War Machine champed, as opposed to letting RNG do it on your behalf.

To the first statement: The older 4s have several 4s people dont care about, but there are many 4s that people really are invested in and use all the time. While I do appreciate not pulling any more Elektra covers, taking rulk, ice, jean, cyke, etc out to make that happen isnt really worth it. Furthermore, its not ok because you miss out on champ levels and newer players miss out on covering them for ddq, essentials, features, boss battles, etc.

To the second : Sure, the old characters can be farmed up faster IF YOU DO ONE AT A TIME. Furthermore, the statement about odds being 3 times what they were needs to be qualified. The latest 4s are 3x+ what they were because there are less than 1/3 of them in packs. That has NOTHING to do with selecting favorites. If you pick just one favorite 4*, youll earn covers on just that one character at twice the rate (not three times!) you used to. If you pick two, its the same rate. If you pick 3 or more, its considerably slower than the old rate.

lomgamer

This is so bad. As a transitioner to 4* field, my roster is full of 3 championed 3 stars and lots of 4 stars that have between 9 and 2 covers. And you know what? You just crossed out half of them. Now, more that half my my champions are useless, because they will never get any significant number of cover to get 4* out of them (But yay, you picked Spider-Man and Squirrel girl)
And my 4 stars? My peggy is pretty happy with this change, because i allready have 8 covers for her, but what about Cyclops,Hulk buster, Red hulk and all those guys, that i decided to to lvl up and keep in roster, because i like them way more and i already had them at 3/4 covers when i got some new hero. It just does not seems fair... you **** half of them in the **** with no lube.

Vladdy

Even after some days thinking about it: I don't like the "vaulting" aspect of "Bonus Heroes".

Getting covers for free at whatever rate is fine of course, there is no doubt about that. I pulled a bonus 5* Thanos!

But I started hoarding for a reason.

Back in the days I hated to have to sell 4* covers I can't use when I pull a Legendary Token. So I decided to hoard Command Points and champion as many 4* as possible to reduce the chance for those wasted pulls.

Before the new bonus feature kicked in I was up to 9 4* left to champion and over 6k Command Points hoarded (yes, Legendary Tokens are my weak point, I can't hoard them). A pretty solid situation when trying to avoid wasting pulls. But now, a moment later, my situation changed. My chance to pull something I have to sell greatly increased. So I have to keep hoarding unless I change my decision and "feel good" about selling 4* covers I can't use.

And hoarding is "fun".

...

Nellobee

So far, I have gotten 1 Peggy from BH. I currently also now have 4 4* covers sitting that I can't afford to roster. Great change.

smkspy

I hope they're smart enough to not put a twelve character as the next simulator progression reward. I have zero reason to finish it today because I know that I'll finish off Riri long before she gets vaulted and I don't necessarily want to champ her over other 4s so plenty of cover will probably get sold off.