Bonus Heroes/Vaulting= Evolving Metagame

fmftint

This is a bit disingenuous coming from a guy who has every classic 4 at 370. Of course it's "good for the health of the game" there's literally zero down side for you

alphabeta

TimGunn wrote:

alphabeta wrote:

...

With 2 new 4*s being added in basically every season just to stand still you need to be earning 731642 ISO per season or 34840 per day.
....

28 days between start of a season and the beginning of the next season. There are 10 PVP tournaments in season plus 2 off season tournaments = 12 tournaments = 4 weeks = 28 days. You have 28 days before the characters will rotate.

731,642 / 28 = 26,130

Requires some intense play, but achievable.

But guess you'll have to give up on them at some point if you ever want to level a 5 star.

So it's somewhat more achievable if you count off-season but that means to stand still you need to play intensely every single day year round and ignore entirely the 6 to 9 5*s that will be released during that year.

You can cut the maths a few ways but the conclusion to me is the same whichever way you cut it. Demi just stalled progress for a huge part of the player base effectively indefinitely if nothing false changes.

After some decent improvements in recent months this alone maybe the most retrograde step to player progress since .... changing cover purchase from HP to CP made Uber whaling a think and left the mere whale wondering **** just happened.

OneLastGambit

alphabeta wrote:

TimGunn wrote:

alphabeta wrote:

...

With 2 new 4*s being added in basically every season just to stand still you need to be earning 731642 ISO per season or 34840 per day.
....

28 days between start of a season and the beginning of the next season. There are 10 PVP tournaments in season plus 2 off season tournaments = 12 tournaments = 4 weeks = 28 days. You have 28 days before the characters will rotate.

731,642 / 28 = 26,130

Requires some intense play, but achievable.

But guess you'll have to give up on them at some point if you ever want to level a 5 star.

So it's somewhat more achievable if you count off-season but that means to stand still you need to play intensely every single day year round and ignore entirely the 6 to 9 5*s that will be released during that year.

You can cut the maths a few ways but the conclusion to me is the same whichever way you cut it. Demi just stalled progress for a huge part of the player base effectively indefinitely if nothing false changes.

After some decent improvements in recent months this alone maybe the most retrograde step to player progress since .... changing cover purchase from HP to CP made Uber whaling a think and left the mere whale wondering **** just happened.

Define progress

I assume you mean the ability to increase champ levels (and therefore resources) for any existing champed characters. That is one way to define progress.

Another way is to define progress as : Having more usable characters in your roster.

both definitions are accurate and oddly both situations are occurring right now. So has demi stalled progress? I think the answer to that question really depends on what stage you are at with your roster.

amusingfoo1

fmftint wrote:

This is a bit disingenuous coming from a guy who has every classic 4 at 370. Of course it's "good for the health of the game" there's literally zero down side for you

The downside to players like him are that his 4* dupes (and he probably has them for everyone) are now stuck in amber.

OneLastGambit

fmftint wrote:

This is a bit disingenuous coming from a guy who has every classic 4 at 370. Of course it's "good for the health of the game" there's literally zero down side for you

I think this is probably a slightly unfair criticism here if colog were the selfish type that you insinuate he wouldn't post such detailed guides and posts which are intended for players below his level.

Jaedenkaal

fmftint wrote:

This is a bit disingenuous coming from a guy who has every classic 4 at 370. Of course it's "good for the health of the game" there's literally zero down side for you

Well that's not totally true. No matter how many characters he has at 370 he can't personally influence the metagame; ie, the teams he (and the rest of us face in PVP).

If we get a character that's a good counter for someone like Red Hulk or whatever in the next few months, we stand a chance of being actually able to use them and see them with reasonable frequency in less than a year, which could in turn reduce the number of red hulk teams that we see, which could in turn increase the number of teams that weren't viable before specifically because of Red Hulk, and so on.

So he doesn't just mean that he'll be able to roster and level and champion them sooner (although he will), he means that a significant number of players will be able to do so, which will (in theory) benefit us all. Everyone who plays PVP, anyways. Which is the target audience of this thread anyways.

Since the MTG analogy has come up, its worth mentioning that what they did NOT do, which they could easily have done, is limit what characters you can USE in PVP.

swordfishdata

Since the MTG analogy has come up, its worth mentioning that what they did NOT do, which they could easily have done, is limit what characters you can USE in PVP.

This ++

I would actually like to see something like MtG's play format system in PVP - something like three different simultaneous PVP events, one in which you can only run the 8-12 most recent 4*s and 3 5*s, a 2nd in which you run the 18-25 most recent or any of the 5*s, and a 3rd in which anything goes.

or, season-long bracket tournaments with 12-hour matchup windows, winners determined by a point system that takes into account power scaling and team composition. IE, each player in a matchup goes up against an AI-selected team picked from the opponent's roster, or they pick a team based on the player's most frequently-selected team, etc, plays 3-5 matches against that team, and the player with the highest point total at the end of the window wins and moves up the bracket.

Anything to bring more variety to PVP.

cletus1985

@Colog

While I understand what you're saying and partially agree with you, a lot of what you've said is from your point of view which doesn't correspond with a large majority of those upset. I've always respected your opinion and while your general analysis is spot on, I wanted to offer my perspective from my point of view.

The main problem for me stems from the already existing gateway to 5*, the devs have created this system so I put this problem fully on them. Currently the only way to reliably transition to the 5* tier is to have 300 pulls from the Latest Legends pool, that's just statistical facts so they've created the hoarding necessity. Now, obviously you're going to pull 85% 4*'s (statistically, not RNG guaranteed). As a 4-5 transitioner this is the goal to advancement. Since you're going to get 255 4*'s out of these pulls you want to be prepared to have those covers mean more than 255,000 iso because it won't even get you a maxed 4*.

Before the vaulting if I had done this I would've been pulling with the odds being 98/129 (76%) useful covers, and 69 of those 98 useful covers would've netted me more resources for extra pulls, roster spots, leveling. Now under the new system I would get 27/36 useful covers (75%), but that well dries up really quick once my characters receive the 50 or so covers they need to be complete. Now I have an iso deficit of 4.5 million or I trash 205 covers for 205,000 iso. Granted I usually carry enough iso to champ 1 or 2 if RNG decides I need a glut of a certain character's cover, but this is a huge amount of iso to save up. Where as before I'd come out with way more resources than I had going in and have to trash roughly 61 covers. Although we all know how RNG works and it's just as likely I get more champ rewards and less waste when every pull has a 53% chance to be a champ level.

I think the savvy solution to this would be to bring the 4*'s more in line with the 3*'s in terms of vaulting and include let's say the latest 8, while rotating 12-15 of the others through the packs at the same time. It wouldn't make everyone happy, but it would alleviate some of the tension between those for/against this, while also making the new characters available at a much higher rate than before.

I think Bonus Heroes alone could've addressed the low availability of newer characters, but I'm willing to compromise and I'm hoping the devs listen to points of view from all angles. Hopefully this represents why so many are upset with the change in a calm enough manner that the problem can be resolved to find a middle ground.

kidicarus

lets talk meta then..

4* PVP is really about having the best boosted 4* available that week.

It's RULK week again. The only new 4* boosted as far as I can tell is danvers. RULK is strong against attack and strike tile users and has his strong colour as red, a colour he doesn't need for his active abilities. So as far as anything goes, RULK is a great counter for danvers and as far as newer players are concerned, there's really nothing in the arsenal for them to go up against legacy players. RULK is pretty good and will still continue to be good - too bad if you're not a legacy player.

I just recently joined the proper 5* metagame with fully covered BB, BW and Strange. Great so i'm not so effected by the 4* changes that it effects my ability to pvp for my level, but I will never fully reap the benefit of champing my 4* covers while you have already done so. Slow luck and non whale spending and all but I was happy with my progression. Look your roster is an aspirational one - I have never begrudged your spending to get there but I always assumed that I would get there eventually. Well, not anymore with the new vaulting. I'm not even going to go into the impact that this change will have on my short term resource generation.

To say hey guys its going to be fine, there's a new metagame and I don't have to see the same old characters over and over is a bit rich considering you don't have to "compete" at the 4* meta.

kyo28

OneLastGambit wrote:

Odds of hulkbuster in bonus heroes is 5%
Odds of hulkbuster previously was 1.5%

Yes yes I know, its RNG on top of RNG but the fact remains... 5% is better than 1.5%.

Correct if Hulkbuster is the only one I need.
Wrong if I need multiple older 4*s. I need 8 older 4*s (HB, Iceman, JG, etc) : so then the math becomes 5%/8 = 0.625%. Wow, nice odds. Even if I limit myself to half of those, I'm still stuck with 1.3% odds. Not so great, huh?

firethorne

kyo28 wrote:

OneLastGambit wrote:

Odds of hulkbuster in bonus heroes is 5%
Odds of hulkbuster previously was 1.5%

Yes yes I know, its RNG on top of RNG but the fact remains... 5% is better than 1.5%.

Correct if Hulkbuster is the only one I need.
Wrong if I need multiple older 4*s. I need 8 older 4*s (HB, Iceman, JG, etc) : so then the math becomes 5%/8 = 0.625%. Wow, nice odds. Even if I limit myself to half of those, I'm still stuck with 1.3% odds. Not so great, huh?

Bingo, the system falls apart the second you need more than two characters. The amount of draws to finish all the old classic 4*s has gone from ~600 to ~7000. And since the game favors having all characters for boosted and essential... Very bad news.

zodiac339

firethorne wrote:

kyo28 wrote:

OneLastGambit wrote:

Odds of hulkbuster in bonus heroes is 5%
Odds of hulkbuster previously was 1.5%

Yes yes I know, its RNG on top of RNG but the fact remains... 5% is better than 1.5%.

Correct if Hulkbuster is the only one I need.
Wrong if I need multiple older 4*s. I need 8 older 4*s (HB, Iceman, JG, etc) : so then the math becomes 5%/8 = 0.625%. Wow, nice odds. Even if I limit myself to half of those, I'm still stuck with 1.3% odds. Not so great, huh?

Bingo, the system falls apart the second you need more than two characters. The amount of draws to finish all the old classic 4*s has gone from ~600 to ~7000. And since the game favors having all characters for boosted and essential... Very bad news.

If you're building one character specifically, select that as favorite. No more spending 20CP and getting one of the newly archived heroes you aren't looking for. Now it's one of the 12 you probably don't have much of, followed by "surprise! Here's a cover for that Iceman you haven't finished!" Champion rewards like Hawkeye>IM40>Hulkbuster help too. Slowly, but they help.
EDIT: By that I mean, your best bet is to choose one (of each tier) to focus on instead of purposefully diluting your chances with the trap thought of "I need them all!"

kyo28

zodiac339 wrote:

EDIT: By that I mean, your best bet is to choose one (of each tier) to focus on instead of purposefully diluting your chances with the trap thought of "I need them all!"

Yes but why am I forced to choose only one? Why am I not allowed to give priority to my older 4*s which are further on their way to champion land and instead am forced to focus on only one older 4* and a bunch of newer 4*s, some of which I have 0 interest in?

I know if I limit myself to only 1 older 4* I up my chances but is that really acceptable? Is that good game design?

Twist and turn it anyway you like but for a 3*-4* transitioning player like me, this is a horrible, horrible gaming design. It's like Demiurge telling me: "all those cool 4*s you were working on champing? Yeah, put all that effort in the fridge except for one and instead start working on new ones"

No matter how you twist and turn it, that's poor design choice and I can bring up a bunch of similar games that work with a wide variety of 'packs' to give players all the choice they want on how to spend their resources: want new stuff? Spend it on the newer packs! Prefer old stuff? Spend on the older packs. And everyone is happy. Here however, we are forced to dance to the tune of the devs and I for one, refuse to do that.

This new system caters to players that have a fully developed 4*-5* roster and want to accelerate getting the newer 4*, but leaves all other player groups hanging.

zodiac339

I'm transitioning too. Making enough ISO to Champ 1 Legendary every 2 weeks means to me I can sit on the 4 who are at 13 covers. That I can (and probably should) change my bonus Legendary to Nova or some other early champ, and focus on champ rewards and saving ISO for the 12 in store that have a good chance of getting completed before they leave it. That I never have to spend 25 CP to get a newer Epic, just go "that's my bonus" and spend on classics. That I can stop worrying about those Legendary when a new Rare is out, and just focus on completing the Rare.
And for new players who need to roster characters for essential missions? Set as bonus. Only need one to do the mission, and all it does is leave them in the same position all of us have been in, EVERY ONE OF US, having to rely on the other two characters to get through the mission. You're annoyed, that's acceptable. But this design too is acceptable. It really is. Does it favor whales? Well, yeah, almost every part of the game favors people who buy in. Does it offer options and flexibility to non-whales? Yes, it does. Are veterans in a better position to continue advancing? Yes, that's nothing new. Thing is, if you have a fairly complete 3* roster and are transitioning to 4*, you're pretty seasoned and getting into the veteran area yourself. Regardless of your annoyance, the RNG of getting covers you don't need from a large, diluted pool is worse for you than the 5% chance of getting the one you need. And when you get to 13 covers and don't have the ISO ready, stop and work on the next one and be relieved, knowing you're not going to go over on covers or get some character you don't want to build. Venom? Wait list? Spider Gwen? Near permanent hiatus. Drax and Elektra? Hope you like staying at 12 covers, cause you are. In a way, this actually DOES help us more than whales, because it lets us focus the ISO we can't just buy. We have to choose our champions, and now we have much better ability to.

TLCstormz

Colog, you know that I adore you, but......almost ALL of that is SUPER out of touch with most of this game's user base.

:+/

Vhailorx

I appreciate your posts Colog, but I have to disagree with you on this one.

Yes, there are some benefits to giving players a way to build new 4* characters faster. But demi didn't just give players a way to do that. They also took away the most common path to build a deep 4* roster.

But you don't really discuss that at all. The closest you get was saying:

Yes I understand and acknowledge the frustration at the lack of warning this was coming but. . .

And that doesn't even acknowledge that many people who are frustrated because they have spent the last 14 months building the deepest possible 4* bench, investing large amounts of iso in less than great characters so as to maximize the value of each LT, and the game has now severely devalued that investment. This isn't really an issue if a large portion of your classic 4*s are already at or near 370. But if your main group of 4*s is in the 271-300 range, then this change is a bit like waking up in the morning to discover that someone took half the money out of your retirement account (with the obvious caveat that a game is not RL, and few peopke have spent retirement account amounts of money on this game.)

As far as I can tell, the most efficient ways to build now are:
(1) grind iso hard constantly to champ the current 12 4*s quickly as possible, and keep opening LTs. Just keeping pace with the current 12 as they rotate will require a bit less than 28k per day. Most players don't play enough to earn 28k iso per day. It's pretty hard to average an income of 35k+ a day (requiring maybe 3+ hours of play everyday, and more during LRs). Whatever extra iso is earned above the bare minimum necessary for the current 12 can be used to backfill classic 4*s from Bonus Heroes or level 5*s.
(2) hoard for a very long time, until you have 8 + million iso (that's almost a full year at 20k a day). Then open several hundreds of LTs. With that much iso, you will be able to champ all of the current 12 and plus few more classic 4*s or 5*s that you can also manage to finish.

Neither of those sound like a ton of fun to me. In #1 the game is deciding how I prioritize my iso for me. And in #2 my roster progress is stalled for a very long time (the better part of a year). Option 3 is not champing the weakest 1 or 2 characters of the current 12, which will likely force me to sell a lot of covers if I keep opening LTs.

And this doesn't even address the inevitable frustrations of new players who will have a much harder time collecting old characters to use for essentials (good luck finishing top 10 if you don't have an essential character). For sure, some people will b able eto grab 3* and 4* essentials from prog rewards, but that can actually be pretty tough if you don't already have the essential characters. It's not impossible, but it will prevent such players from being competitive for quite some time.

And will there really be all that much more variety in the 4* endgame? The 4* meta is notably different from the meta in any other tier (even the 5* tier) in one key way right now: boosting is insane for 4*s. As kidicarus says, there is little to suggest that PVP won't continue to be a game of "best boosted 4* of the week." Assume I open 35 LTs tonight and finish out my Wasp; hell assume I finish out one of the current 12 that you really like, say Blade, and champ him up to 280. Yay! Am I really going to use him at 14k health and 85 match damage in PVP this week over my Rulk (40k-ish health and 150ish match damage)? boosted 4* champs so much better than regular 4* champs that it's kind of absurd to consider using any unboosted 4* in PVP unless there is no other option.

So in summary, the costs being levied to get any extra 4* variety are extremely high. But your post doesn't really address those costs at all. And I am not even sure that there will actually be any increased variety at all until they change the way boosting works.

carrion_pigeons

kyo28 wrote:

I know if I limit myself to only 1 older 4* I up my chances but is that really acceptable? Is that good game design?

Yes! It *is* good game design! You get to execute an actual strategy now. You get to come up with a plan for your roster and run with it without being subject to RNG deciding that your next champ ought to be Elektra instead of Iceman. *This is better.*

I know the sunk-cost fallacy is strong in this game, and it's hard to look at pages of characters with no real chance of ever getting covered, but the reality is you probably weren't going to use them anyway, and if you were, well, you'll eventually get around to favoriting them anyway, once your other priorities are taken care of.

I am quite happy I don't ever have to worry about champing MrF or Venom. I don't even feel an urgent need to champ, say, Riri, despite knowing she'll be common in tokens for a few months, because I know she'll eventually rotate out and I can ignore her forever. I'll just bring her up to 188 and let her win her Clash when it comes up and otherwise forget she exists. *This is good game design* because I can choose who I want to prioritize and who I level up, without permanently sacrificing some portion of my pulls.

Almost everyone still seems to be in Pokemon mode, but you get to throw off the shackles now. Soon, you'll never have to open another Wasp! Rejoice!

kyo28

carrion pigeons wrote:

kyo28 wrote:

I know if I limit myself to only 1 older 4* I up my chances but is that really acceptable? Is that good game design?

Yes! It *is* good game design! You get to execute an actual strategy now. You get to come up with a plan for your roster and run with it without being subject to RNG deciding that your next champ ought to be Elektra instead of Iceman. *This is better.*

I know the sunk-cost fallacy is strong in this game, and it's hard to look at pages of characters with no real chance of ever getting covered, but the reality is you probably weren't going to use them anyway, and if you were, well, you'll eventually get around to favoriting them anyway, once your other priorities are taken care of.

I am quite happy I don't ever have to worry about champing MrF or Venom. I don't even feel an urgent need to champ, say, Riri, despite knowing she'll be common in tokens for a few months, because I know she'll eventually rotate out and I can ignore her forever. I'll just bring her up to 188 and let her win her Clash when it comes up and otherwise forget she exists. *This is good game design* because I can choose who I want to prioritize and who I level up, without permanently sacrificing some portion of my pulls.

Almost everyone still seems to be in Pokemon mode, but you get to throw off the shackles now. Soon, you'll never have to open another Wasp! Rejoice!

And now give me one good reason why older 4*s shouldn't be in a separate vault. ONE logical reason!
If there are only 2 4*s I'm interested in in latest legends and 7 I'm really interested in in older 4*s, why am I not allowed to pursue the latter in a separate vault, even more so since I already have more covers for those and will be able to transition faster to 4*s player status that way?

ONE ... LOGICAL ... REASON. Try it!

alphabeta

OneLastGambit wrote:

alphabeta wrote:

TimGunn wrote:

alphabeta wrote:

...

With 2 new 4*s being added in basically every season just to stand still you need to be earning 731642 ISO per season or 34840 per day.
....

28 days between start of a season and the beginning of the next season. There are 10 PVP tournaments in season plus 2 off season tournaments = 12 tournaments = 4 weeks = 28 days. You have 28 days before the characters will rotate.

731,642 / 28 = 26,130

Requires some intense play, but achievable.

But guess you'll have to give up on them at some point if you ever want to level a 5 star.

So it's somewhat more achievable if you count off-season but that means to stand still you need to play intensely every single day year round and ignore entirely the 6 to 9 5*s that will be released during that year.

You can cut the maths a few ways but the conclusion to me is the same whichever way you cut it. Demi just stalled progress for a huge part of the player base effectively indefinitely if nothing false changes.

After some decent improvements in recent months this alone maybe the most retrograde step to player progress since .... changing cover purchase from HP to CP made Uber whaling a think and left the mere whale wondering **** just happened.

Define progress

I assume you mean the ability to increase champ levels (and therefore resources) for any existing champed characters. That is one way to define progress.

Another way is to define progress as : Having more usable characters in your roster.

both definitions are accurate and oddly both situations are occurring right now. So has demi stalled progress? I think the answer to that question really depends on what stage you are at with your roster.

Once you are into the 5* tier jumping on a never ending treadmill of championing 4* characters regardless of there actual effectiveness simply to avoid missing out in huge resources isn't progress.

Your definition of progress requires that the character becomes usable and unless boosted and championed to level about 300 4*s aren't useful to a 5* player so it won't be progress for us.

Look back to the original post Colog started calling then the irrelevant 7 deliberately - 4*s are irrelevant in a 5* game and this change robs a 5* player of realistic hope of making any of there 4*s relevant again if they aren't already.

Hence progress stalled for those progressing into the 5* tier or already there.

I accept that for others progress may not have stalled for then (yet) but if that is the ultimate destination of everyone's game play (devs called 5*s an End Game at launch remember) then it'll come to everyone sooner or later.

Alsmir

OneLastGambit wrote:

Pentagoon wrote:

fmftint wrote:

Colognoisseur wrote:

It reminds me of the decision Magic: The Gathering made when they limited the cards to be used to only the most recent releases. That decision has helped keep that game a vital entity for over twenty years now. At the time that decision was met with a lot of irritation too. I am hopeful that this change can allow Marvel Puzzle Quest to retain an evolving metagame which will also allow it to last a long time too.

Except they haven't done that, MPQ still requires you to roster and use EVERY character from 2-4

Many players now have 0 chance of obtaining the older 4 tier

Not true - scroll to the right in your roster and you can see that you can favorite characters that you don't have any covers for yet. If you want Hulkbuster for example, just select him as your only 4* favorite and any bonus pulls you get will be all Hulkbuster. It's a great way to get older covers when they are not in the latest rotation for pulls.

And actually the odds of receiving a hulkbuster via this method are better too (unless I'm mistaken).

Odds of hulkbuster in bonus heroes is 5%
Odds of hulkbuster previously was 1.5%

Yes yes I know, its RNG on top of RNG but the fact remains... 5% is better than 1.5%.

Let me reapeat myself.
As a guy with no 4* champs, I'm interested in 5 guys that are no longer in the LT pool. My odds for getting one of their covers went from 1/9 (5/45) to 1/20.

So, that's the fact for me.