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

CNash

nick_chicane wrote:

I do find it strange that they consider this to requirement this much thinking. Just create a new token with the older characters in and make them available to purchase and win through PVE progression. I cant understand why this would be something that requires weeks of consideration.

It shows that the original decision to implement character vaulting again, along with Bonus Heroes, was something they didn't take lightly. It probably took them just as long to analyse all the data and come up with a plan to accomplish their goals.

What those goals were seems easy to work out... but there's the ever-present specter of monetisation hanging over every decision they make, which they'll never tell us anything about. This means that the "common-sense" solutions that we come up with are not made with all of the relevant data points in hand, and so may not solve the entirety of the problem.

NewMcG

nick_chicane wrote:

I do find it strange that they consider this to requirement this much thinking. Just create a new token with the older characters in and make them available to purchase and win through PVE progression. I cant understand why this would be something that requires weeks of consideration.

Except it isn't that easy, since there isn't an exclusively 3*/4* token of any sort right now. If they made one like you suggest, then there wouldn't be a 3*/4* token that has the newer stuff in it. Then they'd have to make one of those for the still-active 3*/4*s.

Also, it's doubtful that if that token was made, that it would be given out in every PVE event without pulling out something like the 3* or 4* that's in progression right now. There's still a significant group that would still rather have the newer stuff, because it's the stuff many have far less covered at this point. It's a lateral move at best.

northnorth

I feel like this was a way to prolong the 4* characters. They changed it so that the last 12 4* are in the legends packs so people will cover the latest ones faster and not complain about only having a couple covers for the next couple months.

I have most the latest 12 4* around 7-8 covers and the 12 before those ones at 7-8 covers as well and they've had a lot more time to gain covers.

Bonus Heroes has not helped me gain the additional covers that I would be missing out on now they have went back to vaulting.

JoeDeeCee

I received Luke Cage that triggered Thanos as a bonus. And I didn't have him selected as a favorite.

Daredevil217

CNash wrote:

nick_chicane wrote:

I do find it strange that they consider this to requirement this much thinking. Just create a new token with the older characters in and make them available to purchase and win through PVE progression. I cant understand why this would be something that requires weeks of consideration.

It shows that the original decision to implement character vaulting again, along with Bonus Heroes, was something they didn't take lightly. It probably took them just as long to analyse all the data and come up with a plan to accomplish their goals.

What those goals were seems easy to work out... but there's the ever-present specter of monetisation hanging over every decision they make, which they'll never tell us anything about. This means that the "common-sense" solutions that we come up with are not made with all of the relevant data points in hand, and so may not solve the entirety of the problem.

Even though it seems like it was just dropped on us, I have no doubt the developers put a lot of thought and a lot of time into the decision to vault older characters in favor of the 12 newest.

The sad part is it took the community all of 5 seconds after the announcement was released to see the many glaring holes this system has.

GurlBYE

New McG wrote:

nick_chicane wrote:

I do find it strange that they consider this to requirement this much thinking. Just create a new token with the older characters in and make them available to purchase and win through PVE progression. I cant understand why this would be something that requires weeks of consideration.

Except it isn't that easy, since there isn't an exclusively 3*/4* token of any sort right now. If they made one like you suggest, then there wouldn't be a 3*/4* token that has the newer stuff in it. Then they'd have to make one of those for the still-active 3*/4*s.

Also, it's doubtful that if that token was made, that it would be given out in every PVE event without pulling out something like the 3* or 4* that's in progression right now. There's still a significant group that would still rather have the newer stuff, because it's the stuff many have far less covered at this point. It's a lateral move at best.

As soon as the legendary token and elite tokens were added and announced, I can remember people mentioning why a 3/4 token was absent, ( I was one of them).

i'd personally rather finish the characters I've been working towards for the last year then work on characters that I, don't have rostered, or have 2 covers of.

It's also very hard to hear the same argument of "focus on the new guys",

I've got 22 or so slots in my roster of 4's that now won't grow without my input
along with every single 5 star besides hawkeye sitting in my roster with a giant (TO BE CONTINUED...) (this isn't a new issue, it feels more futile addint each one to be honest, I'm actually less excited when the card turns purple then when it stays gold from legendaries)

That's a 1/4th of my roster that just got left on hold because of this decision out of left field (this isn't counting the 5's), that's outside of the 20 30's that have had their champ levels slowed from every non vault source.

I'd sell them off no problem at all tbh, but there were features added and featured characters that don't allow me to just go, "eh whatever" and sell them off.

Crowl

Daredevil217 wrote:

Even though it seems like it was just dropped on us, I have no doubt the developers put a lot of thought and a lot of time into the decision to vault older characters in favor of the 12 newest.

The sad part is it took the community all of 5 seconds after the announcement was released to see the many glaring holes this system has.

Sad but not unexpected though since major changes tend to have unexpected (or unadmitted) consequences that are rapidly spotted straight after they provide us with the details.

GurlBYE

Crowl wrote:

Daredevil217 wrote:

Even though it seems like it was just dropped on us, I have no doubt the developers put a lot of thought and a lot of time into the decision to vault older characters in favor of the 12 newest.

The sad part is it took the community all of 5 seconds after the announcement was released to see the many glaring holes this system has.

Sad but not unexpected though since major changes tend to have unexpected (or unadmitted) consequences that are rapidly spotted straight after they provide us with the details.

Seems like if they announced features before they were ready and got feedback, they'd likely have systems done that they don't need to revamp once they launched, they'd likely just need small glitch fixes..

I'm pretty sure you could offer some steam players the opportunity to test new features for a few thousand or 100 and they'd gladly find any errors or shortcomings on test accounts.

NewMcG

GurlBYE wrote:

New McG wrote:

nick_chicane wrote:

I do find it strange that they consider this to requirement this much thinking. Just create a new token with the older characters in and make them available to purchase and win through PVE progression. I cant understand why this would be something that requires weeks of consideration.

Except it isn't that easy, since there isn't an exclusively 3*/4* token of any sort right now. If they made one like you suggest, then there wouldn't be a 3*/4* token that has the newer stuff in it. Then they'd have to make one of those for the still-active 3*/4*s.

Also, it's doubtful that if that token was made, that it would be given out in every PVE event without pulling out something like the 3* or 4* that's in progression right now. There's still a significant group that would still rather have the newer stuff, because it's the stuff many have far less covered at this point. It's a lateral move at best.

As soon as the legendary token and elite tokens were added and announced, I can remember people mentioning why a 3/4 token was absent, ( I was one of them).

i'd personally rather finish the characters I've been working towards for the last year then work on characters that I, don't have rostered, or have 2 covers of.

It's also very hard to hear the same argument of "focus on the new guys",

I've got 22 or so slots in my roster of 4's that now won't grow without my input
along with every single 5 star besides hawkeye sitting in my roster with a giant (TO BE CONTINUED...) (this isn't a new issue, it feels more futile addint each one to be honest, I'm actually less excited when the card turns purple then when it stays gold from legendaries)

That's a 1/4th of my roster that just got left on hold because of this decision out of left field (this isn't counting the 5's), that's outside of the 20 30's that have had their champ levels slowed from every non vault source.

I'd sell them off no problem at all tbh, but there were features added and featured characters that don't allow me to just go, "eh whatever" and sell them off.

I have every 4* so far rostered, and about 10 champed. Many, many others of the vaulted 4s close to finished, but a cover or two away from 13.

According to the majority of the board, I should be annoyed that I can't finish them off and start cranking away at those champ levels, but I can't bring myself to be upset because the progression was at a snail's pace with so many 4s in the tokens before the vaulting. My highest 4* champ is still in the low 280s, and that was a 4* (IMHB) that got champed the day the champion system went into place. So in the entire time the system has been around, I've gotten, at best, 10-12 covers apiece for my championed 4*s. (And significantly less for the newer champed ones.) At the same rate I was getting them, I'm realistically YEARS away from getting into the "good" champion rewards (which everyone seems so upset about missing out on) if I'm pulling from a token with 50+ different characters in it. And that only gets slower as more and more releases happen every few weeks, making those covers even more scarce. While at the same time adding to the roster more and more characters that end up stuck in the 5-7 cover, unusable rut that most ended up in after the initial 3-4 covers I could get in the release window.

Since the change, I've pulled only a single bonus 4*, but I've taken some good new 4*s (Marvel and Medusa) from that 5-6 cover dead zone up to close to finished. That absolutely wouldn't have happened before the change. Sure, I've gotten some less than desirable new covers for other less-good new folks, but there was no shortage of those in the 50+ character pool that existed. (Hello, dozen or so extra Elektra covers I've sold because I really have no desire to spend the iso for 200 to 270.) I just can't find the outrage in me to get too peeved about this, when the old system had plenty of downside on a daily basis as well.

GurlBYE

New McG wrote:

GurlBYE wrote:

New McG wrote:

nick_chicane wrote:

I do find it strange that they consider this to requirement this much thinking. Just create a new token with the older characters in and make them available to purchase and win through PVE progression. I cant understand why this would be something that requires weeks of consideration.

Except it isn't that easy, since there isn't an exclusively 3*/4* token of any sort right now. If they made one like you suggest, then there wouldn't be a 3*/4* token that has the newer stuff in it. Then they'd have to make one of those for the still-active 3*/4*s.

Also, it's doubtful that if that token was made, that it would be given out in every PVE event without pulling out something like the 3* or 4* that's in progression right now. There's still a significant group that would still rather have the newer stuff, because it's the stuff many have far less covered at this point. It's a lateral move at best.

As soon as the legendary token and elite tokens were added and announced, I can remember people mentioning why a 3/4 token was absent, ( I was one of them).

i'd personally rather finish the characters I've been working towards for the last year then work on characters that I, don't have rostered, or have 2 covers of.

It's also very hard to hear the same argument of "focus on the new guys",

I've got 22 or so slots in my roster of 4's that now won't grow without my input
along with every single 5 star besides hawkeye sitting in my roster with a giant (TO BE CONTINUED...) (this isn't a new issue, it feels more futile addint each one to be honest, I'm actually less excited when the card turns purple then when it stays gold from legendaries)

That's a 1/4th of my roster that just got left on hold because of this decision out of left field (this isn't counting the 5's), that's outside of the 20 30's that have had their champ levels slowed from every non vault source.

I'd sell them off no problem at all tbh, but there were features added and featured characters that don't allow me to just go, "eh whatever" and sell them off.

I have every 4* so far rostered, and about 10 champed. Many, many others of the vaulted 4s close to finished, but a cover or two away from 13.

According to the majority of the board, I should be annoyed that I can't finish them off and start cranking away at those champ levels, but I can't bring myself to be upset because the progression was at a snail's pace with so many 4s in the tokens before the vaulting. My highest 4* champ is still in the low 280s, and that was a 4* (IMHB) that got champed the day the champion system went into place. So in the entire time the system has been around, I've gotten, at best, 10-12 covers apiece for my championed 4*s. (And significantly less for the newer champed ones.) At the same rate I was getting them, I'm realistically YEARS away from getting into the "good" champion rewards (which everyone seems so upset about missing out on) if I'm pulling from a token with 50+ different characters in it. And that only gets slower as more and more releases happen every few weeks, making those covers even more scarce. While at the same time adding to the roster more and more characters that end up stuck in the 5-7 cover, unusable rut that most ended up in after the initial 3-4 covers I could get in the release window.

Since the change, I've pulled only a single bonus 4*, but I've taken some good new 4*s (Marvel and Medusa) from that 5-6 cover dead zone up to close to finished. That absolutely wouldn't have happened before the change. Sure, I've gotten some less than desirable new covers for other less-good new folks, but there was no shortage of those in the 50+ character pool that existed. (Hello, dozen or so extra Elektra covers I've sold because I really have no desire to spend the iso for 200 to 270.) I just can't find the outrage in me to get too peeved about this, when the old system had plenty of downside on a daily basis as well.

I understand your point. And that's all I can say. We can go back and forth repeating each other, and we both feel differently. I personally am envious that you even got to fully cover hulkbuster. Mine will now sit at 5/0/2 (or 3 haven't checked in a bit) until I make him bonus or Ironman 3 puts out. See another anecdote.

No one Demands you feel outrage.
We're demanding a solution that feels more thought out and doesn't leave some of us in the rain, while we have other people saying "well I'm not upset".

That's great. More than great, that means part of the job is done.

Answer this.

How would an improvement on bonus heros or vaulting NEGATIVELY effect you or the progress you are making or will currently continue to make?


Bottom line congratulations.
But just like the shortcomings placed upon me and those like me don't make your progress worse,
your and those like you's progress doesn't make the shortcomings put upon me better.

If there's a net gain to be had for us both, what's the harm in enjoying the change as is, and letting further change take place.

NewMcG

GurlBYE wrote:

If there's a net gain to be had for us both, what's the harm in enjoying the change as is, and letting further change take place.

Because short of letting every player customize their tokens individually (which is so insanely unrealistic on a logistical level I'm not going to bother trying to explain why) there's no perfect solution. Throwing the old 4s back into the token pool lets everyone, in theory, finish covering every single existing 4*, get them championed, and then run them all to 370. Which is fine and dandy, until the reality of it sets in, which is that doing so requires thousands of Legendary tokens, if you're going that route as your primary means of getting covers. (And that's what the uproar is about, is Legendaries.)

And even if you nail all the perfect draws from the tokens, then there's the tens of millions of iso involved in levelling them, where catching up is also an impossible proposition if you're much more than a few characters behind. So you're left picking and choosing who to use your iso to level, even if the covers are flowing like water.

To those who think that having 4*s back in Legendaries is the magic panacea for building their 4* roster, I'll tell you, it doesn't really work that way. I opened tons and tons of legendaries with that full pool available, and still came nowhere close to finishing everything off on the 4* front. There's a lot of chaff in the group that got vaulted, and the good stuff can still be targetted with bonus heroes. For every theoretical Iceman, Cyclops or Teen Jean that gets put back in, there's an equal number of theoretical Venom, Elektra, Nick Fury, Winter Soldier, Drax, Carnage, Ghost Rider or Mr. F covers that also would be there. I know everyone thinks that having everything there guarantees the good stuff all the time, because that's what they want, but there's a whole lot of undesirable covers that got weeded out with the vaulting. It may only be a few at a time, but picking and choosing bonus heroes can at least guarantee that the covers that trickle in from that group are the actual ones you'd prefer to have.

GurlBYE

New McG wrote:

GurlBYE wrote:

If there's a net gain to be had for us both, what's the harm in enjoying the change as is, and letting further change take place.

Because short of letting every player customize their tokens individually (which is so insanely unrealistic on a logistical level I'm not going to bother trying to explain why) there's no perfect solution. Throwing the old 4s back into the token pool lets everyone, in theory, finish covering every single existing 4*, get them championed, and then run them all to 370. Which is fine and dandy, until the reality of it sets in, which is that doing so requires thousands of Legendary tokens, if you're going that route as your primary means of getting covers. (And that's what the uproar is about, is Legendaries.)

And even if you nail all the perfect draws from the tokens, then there's the tens of millions of iso involved in levelling them, where catching up is also an impossible proposition if you're much more than a few characters behind. So you're left picking and choosing who to use your iso to level, even if the covers are flowing like water.

To those who think that having 4*s back in Legendaries is the magic panacea for building their 4* roster, I'll tell you, it doesn't really work that way. I opened tons and tons of legendaries with that full pool available, and still came nowhere close to finishing everything off on the 4* front. There's a lot of chaff in the group that got vaulted, and the good stuff can still be targetted with bonus heroes. For every theoretical Iceman, Cyclops or Teen Jean that gets put back in, there's an equal number of theoretical Venom, Elektra, Nick Fury, Winter Soldier, Drax, Carnage, Ghost Rider or Mr. F covers that also would be there. I know everyone thinks that having everything there guarantees the good stuff all the time, because that's what they want, but there's a whole lot of undesirable covers that got weeded out with the vaulting. It may only be a few at a time, but picking and choosing bonus heroes can at least guarantee that the covers that trickle in from that group are the actual ones you'd prefer to have.

Just a new token is the easiest and most talked about option.

It wouldn't change anything now but allow people who want older characters to aim for them.

No one thinks what I bolded in your statement, so I could go further but we'd be discussing something no one brought up, which is likely why this thread is so bloated.

The underline, no there is no guarantee, there wasn't a guarantee before either. It was possibility, regardless of how small.
And statistically speaking, there was more likelihood it was a cover for the 75% of vaulted characters then the 25% that are out right now.
Right now we aim and wait, before we collected as many as possible and most were chipping away towards a large wall.

Crowl

New McG wrote:

To those who think that having 4*s back in Legendaries is the magic panacea for building their 4* roster, I'll tell you, it doesn't really work that way. I opened tons and tons of legendaries with that full pool available, and still came nowhere close to finishing everything off on the 4* front. There's a lot of chaff in the group that got vaulted, and the good stuff can still be targetted with bonus heroes. For every theoretical Iceman, Cyclops or Teen Jean that gets put back in, there's an equal number of theoretical Venom, Elektra, Nick Fury, Winter Soldier, Drax, Carnage, Ghost Rider or Mr. F covers that also would be there. I know everyone thinks that having everything there guarantees the good stuff all the time, because that's what they want, but there's a whole lot of undesirable covers that got weeded out with the vaulting. It may only be a few at a time, but picking and choosing bonus heroes can at least guarantee that the covers that trickle in from that group are the actual ones you'd prefer to have.

Bonus covers doesn't guarantee anything as it is a 5% chance to pull one and thus rng can ensure you see practically zero progress on your characters from it.

Bringing back all 4*s in additional versions of each LT alongside the new truncated versions would not solve the dilution issue, but it would give people some choice in how they wanted to proceed and to try and downplay the sheer volume of good characters by simply naming more mediocre to poor ones is an extremely disingenuous tactic.

I would say that out of the vaulted characters, half of them would be ones that people would most definitely want to champion, the other half then being spread over a range of very nice to champion all the way to down to Mr F levels and who knows how many of that lesser half would be transformed with a much needed rework at some point that probably won't happen now.

As far as the dilution issue, bonus heroes without vaulting would have helped in this area, but at the same time when your roster develops sufficiently even the lesser characters contribute to a feedback loop as more champion rewards leads to more cp and LT and more chances to get the characters you most want.

nickaraxnos

Lot of talking we do but no changes are coming.
I understand changes might be difficult but until you come up with a solution for the legendaries tokens why not make improvements to the current system of vaulting?

Change the vaults with 40 heroes in them. 20 of them 3* and 20 of them 4*. 50% chance to get one of the vaulted characters is not bad and a lot of people will spend hp

Also remove 2* from heroic tokens and give 70% - 30% for 3* - 4*

Make 10% the chance of a bonus hero and MAYBE we wont need anything else.

Small fixes can do big difference

Daredevil217

Monday morning... still hate this change.

I have a question though. On what day does Peggy rotate? Is it the first day of the new season? First day of the offseason? Just want to know how long I have. The clock is ticking on the only non-vaulted character I care to chase.

Quebbster

Daredevil217 wrote:

Monday morning... still hate this change.

I have a question though. On what day does Peggy rotate? Is it the first day of the new season? First day of the offseason? Just want to know how long I have. The clock is ticking on the only non-vaulted character I care to chase.

She will remain in tokens for the off-season, the token rotation happens at the start of the new season (last time it was a few hours Before the season started but whatever... It was still Thursday, not Monday).

CNash

Dilution of the character pool in Legendary Tokens was the problem. The solution is not to lock characters away, but to dilute the tokens and not the characters they contain.

How about a series of themed storefronts, perhaps rotating on a season-by-season basis, each containing a discrete group of heroes. For example:

• The Spiders store, with Gwen, Miles, Carnage and both Venoms
• Street heroes: Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Punisher, Elektra
• X-Men: Wolverine, Iceman, Jean, Deadpool, Cyclops, X-23...
• SHIELD: Fury, Coulson, Quake, etc.

Add in a few others who don't otherwise fit into neat "categories" to fill the tokens out to 12, and there you go.

killerkoala

Daredevil217 wrote:

Monday morning... still hate this change.

I have a question though. On what day does Peggy rotate? Is it the first day of the new season? First day of the offseason? Just want to know how long I have. The clock is ticking on the only non-vaulted character I care to chase.

4* are only added hours before the 1st day of the season, if their release day, their 1st pve essential, and also their featured pvp has been finished. if one of those 3 hasn't been completed they are pushed till the season after, if i remember right.

Xzasxz

Brigby wrote:

Nellobee wrote:

It has been two weeks. Brigby?

*Hope you don't mind the copy-and-paste of my response from another thread

The intent behind Bonus Heroes, and the removal of older 3 and 4-Star characters from packs, was to reduce pack dilution and provide a way for players to acquire newer characters faster. Having said that though, the team recognizes the community concern regarding older 3 and 4-Star progression, and has decided to start exploring several options to try and alleviate those concerns.

Keep in mind that this is still exploration, and nothing is 100% guaranteed, but here are some of the ideas that the team is investigating:

- A new store containing older 3 and 4-Star characters - Rotations for removed 3 and 4-Star characters - A new vault containing older 3 and 4-Star characters

As you can tell, these ideas are sparse in detail, as the team is still figuring out which could work the best. Once we have more information to provide, we'll be sure to update the community.

Still nothing? The longer I think about it, the more I'm sure that You will not solve the problem unless You adjust game economy a bit. Let's see, how many new 4 /5 heroes has been introduced in last 500 days? And how much game resources (covers, HP, ISO) income has increased in the same time? Compare it. You have the answer what You should do. But You have a problem. With whales and income from them. Anything You do will either keep most of the players unhappy, or may hurt Your income from whales. So the thing is to find the sweet point between those two options.
And frankly: whoever decided to introduce this New Feature the way it happened should apologize to everybody. You didn't even checked if the majority of players want this "improvement". Yes, they would really appreciate Bonus Heroes idea itself - there is no doubt of it. But the rest coming with it ...

And mybe the solution is pretty simple. Maybe just scrap the whole idea of bonus heroes and vaulting and just double 4 covers income. Maybe increase ISO-8 income a bit, not that much, same wit HP - only a bit. I know, the people wil starve HP to roster all the covers - let THEM choose which ones they want to keep. They wioll have not enough ISO to champ the all - let THEM choose. With that increased ammount of covers they get progression will be much faster even if the big part of covers will be changed to ISO. And I'm sure that many players will decide to spend more money to buy HP for more roster slots.

kyo28

Wow, still no concrete action or plan from the devs aside from the last message by Brigby?

They're probably too busy counting the money they made with the latest 'sale' for their 10th anniversary.

Anyway, I've cut back on game time here and moved over to Marvel Future Fight for the time being.