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

Crowl

DarthDeVo wrote:

I suppose at this point, I'm not really adding anything new to the discussion, other than to voice my support for splitting the token pool for 4*s and 5*s into a Latest and Classics store, where the three latest 5*s and 12 latest 4*s are in the Latest and all other 5*s and 4*s are in Classics. Or something along those lines.

If they did make a change along these lines, classic tokens should still include the new 4*s, excluding them from there would be a terrible idea.

Personally, while I would like an approach that allowed us more scope to select who was in tokens, the simplest solution would be to bring back full 4* versions of each LT and then that way if the new truncated tokens are actually what people want then they can still select those and for everyone else they can get the full range of 4*s alongside the tiny chance of the particular 5*s they want.

Magic

Coubii wrote:

As I've suggested in an other topic, why not allowing users to select which twelve 4* we want to see in the legendary pack ? It would solve both dilution and the possibility to champion old characters. Every body would be able to pull only what they want. You have already 5 in one color, here again, don't take the chance to pull a 6th, just remove that character from your list.

This is very naive thinking. Try to look at this from the other side - what is the gain for the developers? Where is the money coming from if every player can quickly cover all the top characters? Never going to happen. And frankly it would be a horrible solution for the players as well - constant fight against equally strong opponents would increase the drop rate.

The ultimate solution to this crisis is simple - revers the vaulting and keep the bonus heros. Player base would be above happy with it. Devs would not see much of a drop (rather increase with the better rates for 10 and 40 packs).

nickaraxnos

kyo28 wrote:

nickaraxnos wrote:

Conclusion? 20% of all players can be happy with the new system. Rest of us can't compete

Exactly. And my guess is this 20% are the biggest spenders hence why D3 probably only had those in mind when implementing this change.
So perhaps the other 80% need to stop spending money on this game (no more VIP, no more buying HP, etc). Perhaps then that loss of revenue will be big enough for D3 to start considering to change the system. 80% low spenders might even dwarf 20% high spenders, who knows. Because in my experience, a company will quickly address issues once consumers start to talk (or complain) with their wallets.

Yes, the pareto rule works both ways. So probably those players are the spenders. Or most of them.
But a suggestion i can make is this.

Make a third legendary token that will have every old 4* and 5* but no chance for bh when pulling from there

kyo28

Currently there are 13 different 5*s and 47 different 4*s and the list will keep growing. That means if we substract the 'latest', we are left with 10 classic 5*s and 35 classic 4*s. So with that in mind:

Why not go a step further and make 3 LT vaults?
1. Newest LT the way it is now with 3x5* and 12x4* (the latest ones)
2. Classic LT 1 with 5x5* and 18x4* (classic ones)
3. Classic LT 2 with 5x5* and 17x4* (classic ones)

When a latest LT moves from latest to classic, move it alternatively to Classic LT1 and LT2 vault. When those vaults get too large, split and add another Classic LT vault (CLT3) and rearrange the classics accordingly.

It offers freedom to players to pull from the pool they want; it combats dillution and it's a future-proof system because you can keep adding Classic LT vaults. Moreover, since pull rates remain virtually the same but offers a bit more control to players, I'd wager people would spend more money on the game whereas now newer players are feeling left out and want to stop spending money on the game.
Pull rates would also remain higher for latest LT's (since less populated) than the classic ones (higher populated but manageable) which corresponds perfectly with the difference in price (25CP vs 20CP)

It would be a win-win for both the gamer base at large (both advanced and beginning players) and for the devs who will most likely see more revenue. Whales will keep spending on latest LT's but transitioning players will spend on the classic vaults thus generating two revenues streams for the devs.

Look at other games that offer various 'packs' to use resources on: players in general tend to spend more money on those than on game where they feel their progress is stifled or where certain 'packs' have become unavailable.

Let's also not forget that a game that fails to attract new players will bleed dead over time, because a longtime player can stop or move over to other games. But if you don't have fresh blood to replace those, you'll end up with a continuing dwindling player base. Besides, the beginning player of today could be the whale of tomorrow.

Markot

kyo28 wrote:

I'm sorry but this in no way resemble the old system, because for every LT pull I still get much higher pull rates for the 12 newer 4*s whereas the pull rates for all older ones will be astronimically lower. Even just selecting only 8 older 4*s lowers their pull rate to 0.625% ... selecting all of them drives it down to, what? 0.1% or something.
Compare that to the 1.5% they had in the old system!

I think, you don't understand my suggestion of simple change of current system. I suggest that all heroes marked for bonus should have exactly the same probability as new 12 for standard pull. So with all of them marked all 4* will have 85%/45 = 1.8888% standard LT pull probability (same as old system), with only one marked each will have 85%/12=7% probability if the marked is one of new and 85%/13=6.5% if marked old one. And after this standart pull you would have 5% probability for bonus pull which would be selected from bonus heroes only.

berr1_75

With this change almost imposible to find the old 4 stars characters,they shoud reduce the comand points required to upgrade them

broll

Not sure if the devs will come back to this thread or not but here is a thread with great questions they should really see:

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=60457

I would add to that. How are we supposed to champion characters no longer in tokens that are at 5/5/0? With 0 we cannot buy covers with CP. We could favorite them, but the chances are so low of getting what we need and are more likely to get a wasted cover.
If we only favorite that 1 4* our chance are:
5% chance of bonus hero from legends pack.
85% chance that the bonus procs on a 4*.
33% chance that we get the correct 4*.
.05 x .85 x .33 = ~1.4% chance.
To get all 3 with those odds we're looking at 3/.014 ~ 219 pulls! (with tons wasted along the way).

Also with 0 in the last slot we don't have the option to buy with CP which seems to be the common sense way to solve issues like 5/5/2 maybe even 5/5/1 in the new system.

Progression and Placement rewards are so few and far between with character sprawl we're lucky if that will come up once a year.

blargrx

Quebbster wrote:

blargrx wrote:

Finally finished reading all 36 pages.

Pretty much everything has been covered in terms of analysis both good and bad, while I doubt they'll change the vaulting, the one change I wish they would make would be that the bonus hero has to be a usable cover of your favorited character.

For all of us chasing our final 1-2 covers of an older 4* favorite that is no longer in rotation, the devs suggestion is to favorite them. Well if I'm sitting at 1/5/5, the chance of getting a bonus cover isn't very high... multiply that by 1/3 since I can only use one cover... that makes the new system heartbreaking if I do manage to get lucky

There's progression rewards or just outright buying the covers you need for CP though. I understand why those options are not particularly attractive though.

I agree but those were both options prior to them implementing the new system. The devs response to players complaints about taking out the older 4*, was favorite your older 4* and you'll get the covers eventually in bonus heroes.

Well the mechanism they're suggestion isn't even a consistent way to get the cover. The slim rng of pulling a 4* x bh rng x 1/3 rng = sad face

GurlBYE

Bonus heroes is a work in progress right?

5% of an already like 15% (outside of legendaries) isn't going to cut it. i'm finding it is a underwhelming in the grand scheme of this being our only (some people will say placement, 900 etc. If I could get those, i wouldn't care, I'm 1 4 champ deep, and the only other characters slightly close are ALL old and most have 5 of something. Like 5/0/5 carnage, 5/0/3 Hulk buster) way to cover characters besides waiting 40 events for them to roll around.

Like I got lucky the first day of bonus heroes and got my bonus red hulk. unfortunately. He was a green for my already 2/5/2 Red Hulk.

I've opened several tokens a day with odds to have 4's. 0 Bonuses. I'm not expected 1 every token. But a 10 pack, and 4-5 heroics a day, and well. WHat can I say. Consistency is key when these guys can be colors I have 5 of.

While it's great I got a Carol for me 0/1/0 Carol, she wasn't a priority over the obvious giant red mover and shaker, and he's my only bonus hero in the 4 star tier, of the many that were getting closer to finally being champed.

I understand there is a desire for this to be the way moving forward, but we need a compromise that works for all players. Something I can actively say "oh thank goodness I'm say, 10 hell 20 tokens, from my next bonus" as opposed to being stuck in 5% land. which will be 70% for some and .2% for others.

I wish there was some sort of compromise that could be met for older characters, Maybe a new token type that we get a subset of points from that can go towards being spend on old 4/5 covers that can only come from legendaries? (legend points?)

I'd like some sort of definitive road to walk down besides, "well hey on day 3000 maybe I'll get a red hulk"

I understand command point for covers, but we can't really have old 4 covers and new 4 covers have the same 120 CP cost then can we? Especially when the odds for all new 4's technically went up by 3 times each.

GurlBYE

It sucks because i really like the idea of bonus heroes.

It's everything that came with it thats the problem. Mainly because it tossed a huge other hurdle in front of my 4 transition after it's been sitting in front of me all this time. I just got 4clops champed literally on valentines day.

I've had carnage since release. Same with Iceman, Red Hulk and a handful of others (antman etc), so being in the weird place of being so close to these characters useable that I can take it, then having them regated in a new way feels weird.

I know the odds aren't that far off of what they were but it was actually more likely for me to get old characters under the old structure than new.

It seems like we're all really disappointed and just angry, but it's more so disappointed that the idea seems so close to knocking it out of the park, then just kinda fell flaccid.


I appreciate the thread is being followed, hopefully this is watched super closely so it can be fine tuned instead of left alone like a few other outdated systems in the game.

Crnch73

Crowl wrote:

DarthDeVo wrote:

I suppose at this point, I'm not really adding anything new to the discussion, other than to voice my support for splitting the token pool for 4*s and 5*s into a Latest and Classics store, where the three latest 5*s and 12 latest 4*s are in the Latest and all other 5*s and 4*s are in Classics. Or something along those lines.

If they did make a change along these lines, classic tokens should still include the new 4*s, excluding them from there would be a terrible idea.

Personally, while I would like an approach that allowed us more scope to select who was in tokens, the simplest solution would be to bring back full 4* versions of each LT and then that way if the new truncated tokens are actually what people want then they can still select those and for everyone else they can get the full range of 4*s alongside the tiny chance of the particular 5*s they want.

I like this idea, but obviously we would only put the top 12 characters in that vault all the time. Maybe a compromise (to build on your idea) would be that they do this:

divide the pool into 3 (or more) separate groups. Each group has some top-tier 4's and some junk-level 4's. Each group has a mix of old and new characters. You can select which group you want to be active in the tokens. So, let's say you really want hulk buster, like I do. In his group, you also have Red Hulk, Agent Venom, Riri, Wasp, Mr. F, etc. If none of that group entices you, here is another group... it includes Teen Jean, Ice man, Eddie Brock, Nova, etc... That way you get a fair mixture of old and new, good and bad. They set the groups, so you can't actively "game" the system, and if you get lucky and get to 13 of a character, maybe you just move onto the next group. It works just like selecting your favorite Bonus Heroes, and it lets you focus your efforts on whatever character you want to... but still allows for RNG to screw you over, which they clearly have based their business model on

smkspy

A few musings that I've begun to notice.

This change is hugely beneficial to whales and vets like myself that already have the vast majority of older 4s already champed.

Currently at 15 champed all older characters, with 6 maxed covered waiting to be champed, all older characters too. LTs now are bringing up the back end of roster now.

Riri is already at 8 covers.
Spider Woman at 9 covers.
Agent Venom at 7 covers.
And Blade up to 5 from a measly 2 covers.

None of them are particularly strong 4s, but covers are covers, and it's great not to wait 6-7 months when RNG starts to magically decide that they should LT priority.

Not having classic fours in the mix allows to wait on and control when I want to champ them. Take Max Pun for example. Mine is 5/5/3. I have 3pun at 181 and two covers in the RQ that would give me my 14th cover. Normally, I'd have to rush to build up my iso and champed under normal cover expiring restraints. Now, I plan to add 182 cover and sell 183. With both being vaulted, I can simply favorite 3pun when I'm champ Maxpun and wait for that 183 to drop. I don't have fear that mad dash to champ before a cover expires.

Nevertheless, I either have to send 120CP on my 12 cover 5-2-5 Starlord or wait for a progression reward to give me that 13th cover. But I have a new option. I can favor my level 204 Gamora and let her provide that 13th Yellow SL cover. Which is what I'm doing with 3Carol and 13th cover yellow peggy. Basically, favoring 3 stars and accelerating them is now my main method of finishing off all those 11-12 covered classic 4s. Where this hurts is classic 4s that are also poorly covered. my 1-3-0 Drax and 3-2-1 Winter Soldier will have to take the very long route of favorite building, which doesn't seem really worth when I favor champ 4s for champ rewards. I pretty have to favor them when I don't want levels to my existing champed 4s.

Overall, for my own game, these changes are win-win with the except of champ levels for already champed 4s.

This change has many downsides for new players and people attempting to make the transition into 4 star world. Building classic 4s is that much harder, and while people can favor any particular 4, it doesn't take into account when people get on cover streaks that accelerate a build. Likewise, these player are forced into building and champing the twelve even if they don't really desire so. Riri is going one of the twelve for months, and those players really don't have much of a choice if they desire to have champed 4s.

Something will definitely get rolled back, what it is I don't know. I just hope it is something that benefits everyone.

Coubii

Magic wrote:

Coubii wrote:

As I've suggested in an other topic, why not allowing users to select which twelve 4* we want to see in the legendary pack ? It would solve both dilution and the possibility to champion old characters. Every body would be able to pull only what they want. You have already 5 in one color, here again, don't take the chance to pull a 6th, just remove that character from your list.

This is very naive thinking. Try to look at this from the other side - what is the gain for the developers? Where is the money coming from if every player can quickly cover all the top characters? Never going to happen. And frankly it would be a horrible solution for the players as well - constant fight against equally strong opponents would increase the drop rate.

The ultimate solution to this crisis is simple - revers the vaulting and keep the bonus heros. Player base would be above happy with it. Devs would not see much of a drop (rather increase with the better rates for 10 and 40 packs).

I don't agree with your view. There are plenty of solutions to make it more fun and diversified (and defacto money coming).
Make non top characters feature more often to diversify. Modify too weak characters to even the competition. Create different gameplay (like Kealicius boss mission) to make relevant some current niche characters.

The burrito mission could be exactly one example. Outside of DDQ, I no longer use 2* characters. It's a bit sad, they were my best friends for almost 2 years and when I finally ended my 3* transition: I no longer use them, cause they are not relevant anymore. Dev could propose special events with feature character where you could use any variant. (example: any black widow from any level). There is much more to do to develop money income, but I digress.

Personally, I like the idea to have a smaller vault. It will greatly help me to cover my heores which are barely almost with 2 covers. That's a shame however that currently I have no more hope to fully cover an old legend... My suggestion was proposing the best of the 2 worlds.

Magic

Coubii wrote:

Magic wrote:

Coubii wrote:

As I've suggested in an other topic, why not allowing users to select which twelve 4* we want to see in the legendary pack ? It would solve both dilution and the possibility to champion old characters. Every body would be able to pull only what they want. You have already 5 in one color, here again, don't take the chance to pull a 6th, just remove that character from your list.

This is very naive thinking. Try to look at this from the other side - what is the gain for the developers? Where is the money coming from if every player can quickly cover all the top characters? Never going to happen. And frankly it would be a horrible solution for the players as well - constant fight against equally strong opponents would increase the drop rate.

The ultimate solution to this crisis is simple - revers the vaulting and keep the bonus heros. Player base would be above happy with it. Devs would not see much of a drop (rather increase with the better rates for 10 and 40 packs).

I don't agree with your view. There are plenty of solutions to make it more fun and diversified (and defacto money coming).
Make non top characters feature more often to diversify. Modify too weak characters to even the competition. Create different gameplay (like Kealicius boss mission) to make relevant some current niche characters.

The burrito mission could be exactly one example. Outside of DDQ, I no longer use 2* characters. It's a bit sad, they were my best friends for almost 2 years and when I finally ended my 3* transition: I no longer use them, cause they are not relevant anymore. Dev could propose special events with feature character where you could use any variant. (example: any black widow from any level). There is much more to do to develop money income, but I digress.

Personally, I like the idea to have a smaller vault. It will greatly help me to cover my heores which are barely almost with 2 covers. That's a shame however that currently I have no more hope to fully cover an old legend... My suggestion was proposing the best of the 2 worlds.

I'm afraid it was not proposing the best of 2 worlds. It was proposing that players can cover the best ones and the weak ones would not be on the lists ever. That is something the devs can't accept. And please don't make me try to believe that you would target Wasp over Iceman or Cyclops in a short list vault just because there might be an event that uses her. Not going to happen and I don't believe you would do that.

Giving a players an option to select 12 toons we are looking at the following: Carol, Peggy, Medusa (from the current golden 12), Iceman, Hulkbuster, Jean, Punisher Max, Cyclops, Red Hulk, Deadpool, Thorress and probably Nova. Some players would plug in the recent editions in (say Coulson over Nova). Some might do that for some older ones when they have already some champions levels. But regardless - the majority would have that list. And it would lead nowhere.

Developers are free to introduce more events at any time. We are begging for that for over 2 years. What we get is an odd event here and there and a new hero every two weeks.

Straycat

I'm confused on their 5% figure. They only give the figures for heroic tokens. They say there is a 17% chance of getting a bonus if you draw a 3 or 4 from a heroic token. So what is the chance of bonuses from legendaries? Is it still 5%?

DesertTortoise

Straycat wrote:

I'm confused on their 5% figure. They only give the figures for heroic tokens. They say there is a 17% chance of getting a bonus if you draw a 3 or 4 from a heroic token. So what is the chance of bonuses from legendaries? Is it still 5%?

Correct. Legendaries are 5% flat because every draw in it is eligible for a bonus hero draw. Heroics offer you a 5% chance to draw a bonus hero, but since the majority of a heroic token isn't eligible for a bonus hero (2-stars) the 3-stars and 4-stars that you end up drawing have a higher percentage chance of being a bonus hero when drawn.

Crnch73

are people still getting bonus heroes at a reasonable pace? I have gotten a total of 2 bonus heroes since the launch, with well over 200 token pulls. I had stockpiled a lot of CP and tokens, so I went on a splurge. Starting on Thursday of last week I began keeping track of token pulls and bonus heroes. If you don't include data from the first two days, clearly I am at 0% bonus heroes (though with increased 5's from LT's). Overall, if you include data from the first 2 days, overall I have had a total of 68 token pulls that were eligible for a bonus hero, meaning the token resulted in a 3 star or higher. Of those 68, only 2 became bonus heroes. That translates to just under 3% return rate.

even if you say "the difference between 3% and 5% is negligible, this is working as intended"... that still tells me that bonus heroes don't happen often enough... period. 1 out of every 20 pulls is not enough to try to get any vaulted covers. Most people don't get high enough placement in events to earn 4* covers, and people like me have a hard time getting to 900 in PVP. So in reality, the only time I can get vaulted 4's is through PVE progression. So... once a year, I get a specific 4* cover, and I pray that it's a color I can use! yippee! goodbye to the old 4's, goodbye to champion levels. Oddsmakers, I know you want to say this is RNG, but it is really just a screw job. Vegas wasn't built on winners, right?

GurlBYE

The percentage should be increased healthily or the vaulting system removed.

Can't have both in their current forms to be fair.

broll

Crnch73 wrote:

are people still getting bonus heroes at a reasonable pace? I have gotten a total of 2 bonus heroes since the launch, with well over 200 token pulls. I had stockpiled a lot of CP and tokens, so I went on a splurge. Starting on Thursday of last week I began keeping track of token pulls and bonus heroes. If you don't include data from the first two days, clearly I am at 0% bonus heroes (though with increased 5's from LT's). Overall, if you include data from the first 2 days, overall I have had a total of 68 token pulls that were eligible for a bonus hero, meaning the token resulted in a 3 star or higher. Of those 68, only 2 became bonus heroes. That translates to just under 3% return rate.

even if you say "the difference between 3% and 5% is negligible, this is working as intended"... that still tells me that bonus heroes don't happen often enough... period. 1 out of every 20 pulls is not enough to try to get any vaulted covers. Most people don't get high enough placement in events to earn 4* covers, and people like me have a hard time getting to 900 in PVP. So in reality, the only time I can get vaulted 4's is through PVE progression. So... once a year, I get a specific 4* cover, and I pray that it's a color I can use! yippee! goodbye to the old 4's, goodbye to champion levels. Oddsmakers, I know you want to say this is RNG, but it is really just a screw job. Vegas wasn't built on winners, right?

My pull rate was sub 3% also. 2:70
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=60544

broll

GurlBYE wrote:

The percentage should be increased healthily or the vaulting system removed.

Can't have both in their current forms to be fair.

I'm honestly fine with the percentage. IMO one of two things need change:
1. Remove the vaulting.
or
2. Make favorite tagging be by cover color. So people can actually cover a 5/5/0.

I'd rather #1 and #1 would required less development time, but I think either would mostly fix the system. Even with #2 old 4* progression would be much slower, but there would be a trade off in 0 duplicate covers.