Well, they certainly made the 4* transition easier...

Orion

Just not necessarily in the way that you'd want.

Now that there's only 12 4* characters in tokens, it's certainly much easier to max and champ one of those 12. And let's be honest, there are some great 4*s in that batch of 12 (Carol, Peggy and Medusa). There are stinkers too, but the point is that it's now easier than ever for a 4* transitioner to get their first level 270s.

So all you 4* transitioners, do you like this change?

Dayv

Orion wrote:

So all you 4* transitioners, do you like this change?

Ah, but there's the rub. We're all 4* transitioners now... forever!

notamutant

You pretty much listed the only 3 out of 12 characters worth champing in that batch. Moonknight and Gwen are okay, but not the same type of good as the others. Medusa is only good in certain circumstances. So really 2/12 or 1/6 or 16% chance of pulling a cover I want now. Before, I might've not gotten newer characters covered for 6-10 months, but at least I pulled more champ covers for characters I already champed. Also screws with my plan to never level my 5 stars and just get level 360 4 stars.

Orion

notamutant wrote:

You pretty much listed the only 3 out of 12 characters worth champing in that batch. Moonknight and Gwen are okay, but not the same type of good as the others. Medusa is only good in certain circumstances. So really 2/12 or 1/6 or 16% chance of pulling a cover I want now. Before, I might've not gotten newer characters covered for 6-10 months, but at least I pulled more champ covers for characters I already champed. Also screws with my plan to never level my 5 stars and just get level 360 4 stars.

Moon Knight, Kate, Blade and Gwenpool are decently strong. Not top tier by any means, but solidly middle of the pack or better. I just camped Cage recently and he was pretty useful in PvE when boosted, dropping strength 700 protect tiles every time they fired a power. So that's 8 of the 12 that aren't trash. Spider Woman is meh, and the others are bad, but let's not say that there's only 2 or 3 characters worth worrying about in that batch.

Vhailorx

Pretty sure kate is in LTs right now, and she is very good.

But this is all beside the point. The pool of 12 will rotate forever. But the fact of a limited is effectively permanent, and that very significant ramifications (both good and bad)for everyone. It's hard to say for sure how this will work out, but i am skeptical. . .

thechairman

For a mostly casual player, I'm pretty sad. Never thought I'd be a token hoarder, but this I suppose is the only way now.

firethorne

Vaulting is sword that cuts very deeply in both directions. Having only two characters where a draw can be wasted (4/5/3 Luke and 3/2/5 Medusa), is great. Having a 5/5/2 War Machine or 5/2/5 Miles that will remain that way until that cover rolls around as a progress reward, perhaps some time next year, or I shell out 120CP, which seems too expensive for a mid tier character I'll rarely use, seems much less awesome. And a significant reduction in my ability to get Iceman or Hulkbuster champ levels seems very bad as well.

Overall, there were far more elegant solutions to this problem. There's no net gain in problems solved with vaulting. It just moves them to a different side of the room.

Vhailorx

firethorne wrote:

Vaulting is sword that cuts very deeply in both directions. Having only two characters where a draw can be wasted (4/5/3 Luke and 3/2/5 Medusa), is great. Having a 5/5/2 War Machine or 5/2/5 Miles that will remain that way until that cover rolls around as a progress reward, perhaps some time next year, or I shell out 120CP, which seems too expensive for a mid tier character I'll rarely use, seems much less awesome. And a significant reduction in my ability to get Iceman or Hulkbuster champ levels seems very bad as well.

Overall, there were far more elegant solutions to this problem. There's no net gain in problems solved with vaulting. It just moves them to a different side of the room.

Here's a proposal, leave everything about the favorite system as is. But return tokens back to how they were. Token pools remain pure rng, and we all get a helpful bonus hero cover of our choice from time to time. What is wrong with that?

This whole bonus hero thing seems like a smoke screen designed to distract us from the quasi vaulting mechanic which has the real intent of slowing down the rate at which whales get champ levels and extending the champion system.

firethorne

Vhailorx wrote:

Here's a proposal, leave everything about the favorite systrm as is. But revery tokens back to how they were. Token pools remain pure rng, and we all get a helpful bonus hero cover of our choice from time to time. What is wrong with that?

This whole bonus hero thing seems like a smoke screen designed to distract us from the quasi vaulting mechanic which has the real intent of slowing down the rate at which whales get champ levels and extending the champion system.

I think more can be done in the long term to make tokens better. Perhaps separate pulls for classic 4*s and this new pool latest 4*'s, much in the vein of 5*'s. Or perhaps a new kind of pull that will take into account your roster and build a personalized pool. But in the short term, yes absolutely. Leave the favorite system in place, and throw the vaulting in the trash.

DFiPL

Honestly? I'm willing to keep my powder dry on this one. I'm not super thrilled with the vaulting, but the specific list available right now doesn't hurt my feelings none.

But having an increased chance to pull Peggy covers, having about half the characters in the 4* pool currently be characters I'm actively trying to build, and just the idea of bonus pulls in general are all things I'm totally down with.

The vaulting is going to slow the champion process for me, which hurts mainly because I've only got a couple of 3* characters even within 20 covers of the 2nd 4* reward, but there's always DDQ.

But there's a tradeoff on that:

Blade: 0/3/4 (7 covers)
Captain Marvel 1/1/1 (3 covers)
Gwenpool 2/0/2 (4 covers, after current PVE progression)
Kate Bishop 5/1/2 (8 covers)
Luke Cage 4/2/2 (8 covers)
Medusa 0/2/0 (2 covers)
Moon Knight 1/3/2 (6 covers)
Peggy 1/1/2 (4 covers)
Riri Williams 0/1/0 (1 cover)
Spider-Woman 1/2/1 (4 covers)
Agent Venom (0 covers)
Wasp 1/1/1 (3 covers)

The bolded cats are characters whose Crash turns got skipped by the devs. Luke Cage could probably win his, if it ran today, and Blade might be able to, but none of the other bolded characters could. So the fact that 4* from my Legendary pulls are going to focus on those cats means I can bootstrap them up into Crash-viable territory much faster than previously I would have been able to.

Know what else? I've only, to this point in this Crash cycle, had five Crashes I outright could not win. Peggy, Nova, and Spider-Gwen I skipped due to poor coverage; Moon Knight, I lost, probably because I didn't have enough green; and Quake, who's vaulted.

War Machine is the only other character on my roster whose Crash got skipped and who is poorly covered.

So from a purely selfish perspective, that's 8/9 characters yet to have their first Crash, whom I will have an improved chance to cover before that happens, and another two I couldn't win with who will, hopefully, be in a better spot next time around. I get that I'm in a pretty unique set of circumstances here, that the characters available are almost universally the characters for whom I most need covers in order to keep farming LTs from the Crash. I get that that won't be true for everybody (especially new players) and so I can understand the vitriol against vaulting.

But I can use bonus heroes to continue to chase covers for, say, Iceman. Or Cyclops. Presumably, vaulted characters will still show up in PVE progression. And in the meantime, I'll have a shot to pull the bottom of my 4* roster up to parity with the rest of my 4* roster.

So I'm not saying I'll never look back at this post and say "oh how innocent I was then," but for right now, I'm actually pretty okay with how things look.

But I'm also painfully cognizant that my specific set of circumstances colors that.

KGB

I'm cautiously optimistic.

Everything and I mean everything depends on whether they rotate the current 12 characters on a regular basis. By regular, I mean every season (roughly once a month). If they do that then I'm all for this change because I can target specific seasons where groups of older or newer 4* are that I want and open in batches then. If the current 12 is simply always the latest 12 with new releases bumping out the oldest of the 12 then this is going to be bad.

Old Way: A back of the math envelope calculation says that it takes ~50 tokens to get 1 of every 4* (assumes 42 4* characters in total with 84% chance of 4* and 16% of 5*). If we assume it takes ~15 covers on average to full cover a character (13 usable and 2 duplicates) then it means you need to open 750 LT's to cover every 4*.

New Way: You can cover a specific one of your choice via hero favorite much faster as in 300 4* (5% chance) which requires 357 LTs (rest are 5*). So you cover any specific one WAY faster and for 750 tokens you can roughly cover 2 older ones of your choice. But the rub is that you have nothing of the other 30 older 4* and 50 covers of the current 12 (so you'd end up with 37 champ levels after 750 tokens or 12 champ levels at the 357 token mark.

So you end up with a top heavy roster under the new method with lots of champ levels on them.

(sarc on) The only plus I see is your needed ISO is going to be WAY down because you are only covering 12 (or 13 with 1 favorite) characters at a time rather than 42+. (sarc off)

KGB

stochasticism

KGB wrote:

I'm cautiously optimistic.

Everything and I mean everything depends on whether they rotate the current 12 characters on a regular basis. By regular, I mean every season (roughly once a month). If they do that then I'm all for this change because I can target specific seasons where groups of older or newer 4* are that I want and open in batches then. If the current 12 is simply always the latest 12 with new releases bumping out the oldest of the 12 then this is going to be bad.

That's exactly what the rotation schedule is.

ClydeFrog76

"New characters will be added to the packs shortly after they are released. When a new character is added to the packs, the character released the earliest is removed from the pack."

Older 4*s will NEVER get put back in.

fanghoul

It seems mostly a good thing to me.

I mean, I get to actually have some of the newer 4* characters be usable within maybe months instead of next year.

And I never have to draw another Carnage cover, unless I want to?

And I can pick a 4* that I want to work on, and he'll progress faster than he would have before?

And people don't have to go up to 100 roster slots right away because otherwise they'll be throwing out 4* covers when they draw from the classic pack?

All those seem like good things.

Ducky

Please keep all discussions regarding Bonus Heroes in the official thread. Thanks!

Dayv

Vhailorx wrote:

Here's a proposal, leave everything about the favorite system as is. But return tokens back to how they were. Token pools remain pure rng, and we all get a helpful bonus hero cover of our choice from time to time. What is wrong with that?

This whole bonus hero thing seems like a smoke screen designed to distract us from the quasi vaulting mechanic which has the real intent of slowing down the rate at which whales get champ levels and extending the champion system.

Absolutely this. There was no good reason to link these changes. The only reason I can see is a misguided one: to try to diminish frustration at vaulting by bringing in bonus heroes with it and treating it as one system.

Dayv

stochasticism wrote:

KGB wrote:

If the current 12 is simply always the latest 12 with new releases bumping out the oldest of the 12 then this is going to be bad.

That's exactly what the rotation schedule is.

Just clearing up the that in stochasticism's reply here.

4* available in tokens = 12 latest 4*, not including release during the current season.

No other rotation of 4* token drops has been stated or implied.