Dear D3: 8 questions that will help us understand vaulting

Straycat

n25philly wrote:

They could have just split the new and old and accomplished the same thing without taking away so many characters.

Bonuses would have been better without vaulting. Too many characters now are hidden away behind more rng which is a terrible things. I shouldn't have to deal with rng inside of rng to lvl my 3* characters or improve 4*'s I already rostered. There are absolutely 0 good reasons for vaulting.

I actually like the 3* system, but mainly since DDQ is there and the vaulted ones will be back in tokens later. Vaulting does address the getting unusable covers for unwanted characters problem. It is the quickest way to address it since the majority don't have the last 12 covered and almost all tokens will be usable.

Vaulting also addresses the complaint that people have on new characters. The "this character sounds good, I'll be sure to try it out in a year when I have them covered" Of course they could have moved them to Latest legends and leave the classics the same, but tying the latest 12 4*s with the latest 3 5*s could have some unintended consequences, probably why they wanted to keep that system the same.

That being said, I hope they make a new token or do something because I don't like the idea that all those old 4*s are locked away

n25philly

Straycat wrote:

n25philly wrote:

They could have just split the new and old and accomplished the same thing without taking away so many characters.

Bonuses would have been better without vaulting. Too many characters now are hidden away behind more rng which is a terrible things. I shouldn't have to deal with rng inside of rng to lvl my 3* characters or improve 4*'s I already rostered. There are absolutely 0 good reasons for vaulting.

I actually like the 3* system, but mainly since DDQ is there and the vaulted ones will be back in tokens later. Vaulting does address the getting unusable covers for unwanted characters problem. It is the quickest way to address it since the majority don't have the last 12 covered and almost all tokens will be usable.

Vaulting also addresses the complaint that people have on new characters. The "this character sounds good, I'll be sure to try it out in a year when I have them covered" Of course they could have moved them to Latest legends and leave the classics the same, but tying the latest 12 4*s with the latest 3 5*s could have some unintended consequences, probably why they wanted to keep that system the same.

That being said, I hope they make a new token or do something because I don't like the idea that all those old 4*s are locked away

Except none of that is true! Vaulting just forces the new characters on you. Split them, up. Keep the new legendaries as the 12 newest so people can get and cover them. Make the classic pull the rest. Oh my god, you just did the exact same thing without negatively impacting anyone. Not negatively impacting customers, what a concept! As I've said many time there is no reason why they can't implement these things while keeping everyone available to pull if they need/want. Choice is good, forced is bad. Why is a simple concept so difficult?

grunth13

fmftint wrote:

The root issue was whales with EVERY classic 4 already @370. They are the main financiers of the game and they were tossing 75% of their token draws and that is UNACCEPTABLE! With this vaulting they will now be able to use 100% of their token draws

This and the fact that now most of us will have to come up with 4.4 million iso to even start opening lt's so that we don't waste those covers is probably the main for this change. Now i don't think people will all of a sudden start buying iso...i honestly think casual players will stop buying like they used to--to the point of maybe going f2p. As for the whales, if you limit your 4s to the newest 12, they will have them covered to 370 within 2 to 3 weeks, then they will start trashing all the covers again.

Tromb2ch2

grunth13 wrote:

fmftint wrote:

The root issue was whales with EVERY classic 4 already @370. They are the main financiers of the game and they were tossing 75% of their token draws and that is UNACCEPTABLE! With this vaulting they will now be able to use 100% of their token draws

This and the fact that now most of us will have to come up with 4.4 million iso to even start opening lt's so that we don't waste those covers is probably the main for this change. Now i don't think people will all of a sudden start buying iso...i honestly think casual players will stop buying like they used to--to the point of maybe going f2p. As for the whales, if you limit your 4s to the newest 12, they will have them covered to 370 within 2 to 3 weeks, then they will start trashing all the covers again.

Even before if you didn't have the newest 12 champed you still would have had the 4.4 million iso deficit from them that hasn't changed. Instead of having 40- however many you have champed now it is 12- however many you have champed (from that 12). So if you don't have any champed you now have to spend less. If you had most of them champed then you still would have had to champ them next anyway.

n25philly

Tromb2ch2 wrote:

grunth13 wrote:

fmftint wrote:

The root issue was whales with EVERY classic 4 already @370. They are the main financiers of the game and they were tossing 75% of their token draws and that is UNACCEPTABLE! With this vaulting they will now be able to use 100% of their token draws

This and the fact that now most of us will have to come up with 4.4 million iso to even start opening lt's so that we don't waste those covers is probably the main for this change. Now i don't think people will all of a sudden start buying iso...i honestly think casual players will stop buying like they used to--to the point of maybe going f2p. As for the whales, if you limit your 4s to the newest 12, they will have them covered to 370 within 2 to 3 weeks, then they will start trashing all the covers again.

Even before if you didn't have the newest 12 champed you still would have had the 4.4 million iso deficit from them that hasn't changed. Instead of having 40- however many you have champed now it is 12- however many you have champed (from that 12). So if you don't have any champed you now have to spend less. If you had most of them champed then you still would have had to champ them next anyway.

Before you could take your time. Now you have to get them done and fast. Either they will rotate out taking away covers or you have to champ them so the covers don't go to waste since you either will need to keep pulling to get other covers you need and get lots of extras that either need to be champ levels or you are going to be forced to sell. I guess forced waste is a good thing now too?

Tromb2ch2

n25philly wrote:

Before you could take your time. Now you have to get them done and fast. Either they will rotate out taking away covers or you have to champ them so the covers don't go to waste since you either will need to keep pulling to get other covers you need and get lots of extras that either need to be champ levels or you are going to be forced to sell. I guess forced waste is a good thing now too?

You can still take your time now if you so choose too. But the total iso deficit had gone down drastically. And you make it sound like next month 12 new characters will be in those vaults. At the current rate they are going it's basically new 4* 2 weeks new 4* 2 weeks new 5* 2 weeks repeat. This will give a normal player plenty of time to gather the required iso to champion whatever new cover is added.

n25philly

Tromb2ch2 wrote:

n25philly wrote:

Before you could take your time. Now you have to get them done and fast. Either they will rotate out taking away covers or you have to champ them so the covers don't go to waste since you either will need to keep pulling to get other covers you need and get lots of extras that either need to be champ levels or you are going to be forced to sell. I guess forced waste is a good thing now too?

You can still take your time now if you so choose too. But the total iso deficit had gone down drastically. And you make it sound like next month 12 new characters will be in those vaults. At the current rate they are going it's basically new 4* 2 weeks new 4* 2 weeks new 5* 2 weeks repeat. This will give a normal player plenty of time to gather the required iso to champion whatever new cover is added.

What about the abnormal player? Not everyone treats this like a second job. When I started tracking what I need resource wise to champ my 3* it slightly more than what it would cost to champ these twelve. That was back during the first running of the civil war event. I am just reaching the end now, two left to champ. It's been almost a year? This also kills any chance I have at leveling and champing the old characters? If I am forced to use so much iso to constantly stay on top of the newest 12 that are forced on us how could I possibly every hope to level and champ one of the old ones, especially with all of the champ rewards being stolen from us due to the removed characters?

Jarvind

I like that this thread has been corrected for various instances of what could barely even be considered profanity, but none of the questions in the actual post have been addressed.

snlf25

My take is that they wanted to add a layer of desperation to character building. They already have whales, they want more whales - so introduce a character, and if it's good you better damn well buy those 40 packs because somebody who sucks like Wasp is coming to bump them off. Same thing Disney does with their Blu rays. Buy now! It's going into the vault for 15 **** years! This is your last chance! Coincidence?

carrion_pigeons

It doesn't slow champing, in the long term. In fact, it speeds it up, assuming that Iso flow isn't a problem once you take all the old 4*s out of consideration as part of your Iso debt. The raw number of 4*s obtained by every single player is higher than before.

It hurts right now, yeah. All the people who were getting or expecting champ levels for their older characters are negatively affected in the immediate future by the change. But the thing is, that won't stay true. Once people start getting into the mode of prioritizing current characters plus maybe one older character as a long-term project, then champ covers will flow more freely than they ever have.

Yes, this amounts to an ongoing and increasingly significant nerf to pretty much every top-tier character in the game, and it's easy to understand why people would hate that. But looking at it objectively, the consequences are clear: more diversity in PvP, smaller ramp up to competition-level for new players, and more effort required to stay on top of the game than just farming champ levels for the best characters. None of that is bad, from a game-design perspective.

This design has problems, for sure, and it hurts casual players who had plans to just ease their way into the 4* tier via rising tide (like the OP) the most. But slowing down champ levels isn't seriously one of those problems, in the long run.

Suddenreal

n25philly wrote:

Again, why do they need to take away the old characters to make it easier to gain the newer ones? All they would have to do is split them. You want to get the new characters then open the new ones and you get them. Those of us who want the old ones still can get them. It makes no sense to take the old ones away. This is forcing the new characters on us, not helping people get them. Bonus heroes is only say they can say there is still a way to get them to try and lessen complaints. The limit store does help people get the new ones and bonus heroes does help get specific ones, but again, why do they have to vault characters to accomplish that, both could accomplish this without taking away the older characters.,

No, that's just delaying the problem. Remember when there were too many 5 in the Legends pack? They split them up in Latest and Classic. And then there were complaints about how the Classic 5 pool also got diluted, making it harder to get the character you wanted. If you split up the packs, there still will be a time where there will be complaints about how the Classic packs are too diluted to get a specific character. Now you can focus on one character and you'll have a 5% chance of getting it, up from 1.5% (I believe) you had previous. You get better odds of obtaining it, and (if you don't like the ones you can get in the packs) free ISO.

Or we can just split everything up in multiple packs, Latest, Classic, Evergreen, Oldies, Ancient and Prehistoric. Then people can complain there are too many pages on the shop to get to the screen they want.

Tromb2ch2

n25philly wrote:

What about the abnormal player? Not everyone treats this like a second job. When I started tracking what I need resource wise to champ my 3* it slightly more than what it would cost to champ these twelve. That was back during the first running of the civil war event. I am just reaching the end now, two left to champ. It's been almost a year? This also kills any chance I have at leveling and champing the old characters? If I am forced to use so much iso to constantly stay on top of the newest 12 that are forced on us how could I possibly every hope to level and champ one of the old ones, especially with all of the champ rewards being stolen from us due to the removed characters?

The abnormal player like yourself should realistically be happy about this change. In the old system because you were pulling characters at a slower rate it took you forever to champion any character as the pool gets more and more diluted. Now you have a higher chance of even covering one character. And the best part is you can pick said character! If anything you get the more benefit out of this change than the rest of us. You have yet to tell us which character in particular you want so we can't help you meet your goal. So help us help you, what character do you want to champ in particular?

Daredevil217

Fightmastermpq wrote:

I don't work for D3, but I can answer all these questions for you......

Daredevil217 wrote:

Question 1: Why the change?

Dilution was a problem, bonus heroes help. We complained of too much RNG, bonus heroes accelerate (slightly) progress on a few select characters.

Daredevil217 wrote:

Question 2: Should new players be focusing on a smaller pool of heroes now?

Yes, the newest ones.

Daredevil217 wrote:

Question 3: What is in place for those who want to level evenly?

Friends don't let friends softcap.

Daredevil217 wrote:

Question 4: If vaulting didn’t work in the past, why bring it back?

Dilution is a bigger problem now than it was then and something needed to be done, bonus heroes are a solution to much of the problems created by vaulting.

Daredevil217 wrote:

Question 5: Is this change designed to encourage hoarding?

No.

Daredevil217 wrote:

Question 6: With older characters being more of a rarity, how are newcomers supposed to compete for these characters without having these essential characters in the first place?

Just like they did before - by acquiring them in their previous event when they are awarded, or through progression in the current event.

Daredevil217 wrote:

Question 7: Is this change meant to slow (or in some cases eliminate) champing?

Maybe? Honestly I think this is maybe an unintended consequence of the devs really not having a good grasp of higher end play - the biggest negative of the change IMO.

Daredevil217 wrote:

Question 8: If enough people voice concern, would you be willing to end vaulting?

No.

Q1: you're confusing bonus heroes with vaulting. Bonus heroes does slightly help with RNG, vaulting does not. I very clearly stated people love the former but mostly hate the latter.

Q2: So if we are supposed to be focusing solely on the blessed 12, how does that vibe with all the other game features I mentioned that promote roster diversity? It's a mixed message.
How do I compete in DDQ, Crash, essential nodes, get champ rewards, etc. just focusing on 12 toons??

Q3: The fact that I bring all my toons up to champ status as soon as I have 14 covers means I'm definately not softcapping. I would not go to war with Falcap, Wolverine and Cho as three of my only four champs if I was softcapping.

Q4: So bonus heroes is your answer to why vaulting will work this time around? God I hope that's not going to be D3s official stance.

Q5: If it's not designed with hoarding in mind it will be an unintended side effect. I also agree that they want us to spend and not hoard but what else do you do when you've maxed covered the blessed 12? Or you don't have the Iso to champ them? Do you keep throwing away tokens hoping to pull a bonus (the answer to all life's problems)? Seems wasteful.

Q6: But you just said people should focus on the blessed 12 in your response to Q2. In fact I've heard many people talk about chucking undercovered toons because they will never get them to a useable place. Maybe newbies can keep a revolving roster spot for essential 4s, then chuck and replace them once the event is over (like many do with 2*). Seems kind of sad but is that the best way to go? Assuming you're right and I can get my one progressional token each time the event rolls around. How can I compete in Crash or Burrito? Wait for 10 or so events with that one character? Literally years before I can compete. Unless of course I maxed my 4s before the wall went up, in which case the resources will be flowing.

Q7: Glad we agree. If you can admit there is perhaps one unintended consequence of this then it follows that the developers are fallible and there may in fact be more than one unintended and detrimental consequence to this extreme shift. Many of which people have beautifully articulated on these here forums.

Q8: I'm really hoping you're wrong and the developers listen to their player base/consumers.

Tromb2ch2

Q1: you're confusing bonus heroes with vaulting. Bonus heroes does slightly help with RNG, vaulting does not. I very clearly stated people love the former but mostly hate the latter.

Vaulting does help with RNG 1/12 > 1/40+

Daredevil217

Suddenreal wrote:

If you split up the packs, there still will be a time where there will be complaints about how the Classic packs are too diluted to get a specific character. Now you can focus on one character and you'll have a 5% chance of getting it, up from 1.5% (I believe) you had previous. You get better odds of obtaining it, and (if you don't like the ones you can get in the packs) free ISO.

Another person confusing vaulting with bonus heroes. Yes, bonus heroes are a good thing and people are not complaining about getting a small chance at leveling a favorite or two. It's the vaulting that people are complaining about. Please don't confuse the two issues. I don't know why this is such a hard concept to grasp.

Tromb2ch2 wrote:

n25philly wrote:

What about the abnormal player? Not everyone treats this like a second job. When I started tracking what I need resource wise to champ my 3* it slightly more than what it would cost to champ these twelve. That was back during the first running of the civil war event. I am just reaching the end now, two left to champ. It's been almost a year? This also kills any chance I have at leveling and champing the old characters? If I am forced to use so much iso to constantly stay on top of the newest 12 that are forced on us how could I possibly every hope to level and champ one of the old ones, especially with all of the champ rewards being stolen from us due to the removed characters?

The abnormal player like yourself should realistically be happy about this change. In the old system because you were pulling characters at a slower rate it took you forever to champion any character as the pool gets more and more diluted. Now you have a higher chance of even covering one character. And the best part is you can pick said character! If anything you get the more benefit out of this change than the rest of us. You have yet to tell us which character in particular you want so we can't help you meet your goal. So help us help you, what character do you want to champ in particular?

I would actually love your help with my roster. I would like to cover max and champ the following characters with 8 or more covers below (I have more with 8+ covers, these are just the ones I'd be really happy to pull a cover for and eventually champ):

Jean Grey (All New X-Men) 5/3/4
Red Hulk (Thunderbolt Ross) 2/5/5
The Punisher (MAX) 5/3/4
Professor X (Charles Xavier) 5/2/5
Carnage 4/5/3
X-23 (All New Wolverine) 5/3/3
Star-Lord (Legendary Outlaw) 4/3/4
Miles Morales (Spider-Man) 3/3/5
Deadpool (Uncanny X-Force) 3/2/5
Kingpin (Wilson Fisk) 3/4/3
Ant-Man (Scott Lang) 2/4/4
Cyclops (Classic) 4/2/2
Thor (Goddess of Thunder) 2/1/5
Nova (Sam Alexander) 3/3/2
Luke Cage (Power Man) 5/3/0
Winter Soldier (Bucky Barnes) 4/2/2

Oh wait... you thought I had ONE favorite character that I wanted to champ?

No, there are several and under the old system the odds were MUCH greater I'd pull a cover that would bring one of these characters to 13 where they'd join Falcap, Wolverine and Cho in champland. If I didn't pull one it's likely I'd pull one of the characters in my 7 covers or less group that would move into the bracket above. Sure I wasn't fast tracking to 5* land but that was never my goal. So again, explain to me how this new system is better for my roster goals to champ the above characters.

Daredevil217

Tromb2ch2 wrote:

Q1: you're confusing bonus heroes with vaulting. Bonus heroes does slightly help with RNG, vaulting does not. I very clearly stated people love the former but mostly hate the latter.

Vaulting does help with RNG 1/12 > 1/40+

No... you're still at the mercy of the random number generator. Theres a smaller pool of characters yes, but it's still random and I can pull my 13th blue Riri just as easily as I can pull that last cover to max Peggy. It only helps with RNG if you assume the blessed 12 are all covers people want.

Bonus heroes (a separate addition) DOES help with RNG even if slightly.

Tromb2ch2

Daredevil217 wrote:

I would actually love your help with my roster. I would like to cover max and champ the following characters with 8 or more covers below (I have more with 8+ covers, these are just the ones I'd be really happy to pull a cover for and eventually champ):

Jean Grey (All New X-Men) 5/3/4
Red Hulk (Thunderbolt Ross) 2/5/5
The Punisher (MAX) 5/3/4
Professor X (Charles Xavier) 5/2/5
Carnage 4/5/3
X-23 (All New Wolverine) 5/3/3
Star-Lord (Legendary Outlaw) 4/3/4
Miles Morales (Spider-Man) 3/3/5
Deadpool (Uncanny X-Force) 3/2/5
Kingpin (Wilson Fisk) 3/4/3
Ant-Man (Scott Lang) 2/4/4
Cyclops (Classic) 4/2/2
Thor (Goddess of Thunder) 2/1/5
Nova (Sam Alexander) 3/3/2
Luke Cage (Power Man) 5/3/0
Winter Soldier (Bucky Barnes) 4/2/2

Oh wait... you thought I had ONE favorite character that I wanted to champ?

Okay I'd probably focus on luke cage because he is currently in the 12. Set bonus 4* to cage and 3* to cage and it shouldn't take too much time.
After that I'd work on Cyclops as he will probably be the easiest of the rest. Set bonus 3* as Cyclops and bonus 4* as Cyclops and remove the rest.
After you get enough for him I'd probably shoot for miles. Setting 3* to spiderman and 4* to miles.

Just like it was before it will take time to get anywhere in this game. Now for these 3 above the 3* are in the vaulted 3's so getting the first 4* champ reward will be fairly quick and you'll probably get the 2nd in a reasonable amount of time (compared to before).

Tromb2ch2

Daredevil217 wrote:

No... you're still at the mercy of the random number generator. Theres a smaller pool of characters yes, but it's still random and I can pull my 13th blue Riri just as easily as I can pull that last cover to max Peggy. It only helps with RNG if you assume the blessed 12 are all covers people want.

But before if you wanted to max Peggy it was a 1/40+ to get Peggy then 1/3 to get a certain color. Now it is 1/12 for Peggy 1/3 for color. That makes it more likely to pull it now so yes vaulting did help with RNG.

Tromb2ch2

Okay so there are currently 43 characters that aren't limited or new so before there were 129 different covers in this new vault there are 39 different covers.

kyo28

Daredevil217 wrote:

I would actually love your help with my roster. I would like to cover max and champ the following characters with 8 or more covers below (I have more with 8+ covers, these are just the ones I'd be really happy to pull a cover for and eventually champ):

Jean Grey (All New X-Men) 5/3/4
Red Hulk (Thunderbolt Ross) 2/5/5
The Punisher (MAX) 5/3/4
Professor X (Charles Xavier) 5/2/5
Carnage 4/5/3
X-23 (All New Wolverine) 5/3/3
Star-Lord (Legendary Outlaw) 4/3/4
Miles Morales (Spider-Man) 3/3/5
Deadpool (Uncanny X-Force) 3/2/5
Kingpin (Wilson Fisk) 3/4/3
Ant-Man (Scott Lang) 2/4/4
Cyclops (Classic) 4/2/2
Thor (Goddess of Thunder) 2/1/5
Nova (Sam Alexander) 3/3/2
Luke Cage (Power Man) 5/3/0
Winter Soldier (Bucky Barnes) 4/2/2

Oh wait... you thought I had ONE favorite character that I wanted to champ?

No, there are several and under the old system the odds were MUCH greater I'd pull a cover that would bring one of these characters to 13 where they'd join Falcap, Wolverine and Cho in champland. If I didn't pull one it's likely I'd pull one of the characters in my 7 covers or less group that would move into the bracket above. Sure I wasn't fast tracking to 5* land but that was never my goal. So again, explain to me how this new system is better for my roster goals to champ the above characters.

THIS

This exactly sums up the problem. People keep saying "oh but now you have 5% chance instead of 1.5% chance to get that cover" ... Uhhh, yeah, if I only had one older 4* left to champion. I'm in the exact same boat as you are and feel your pain ... to the point that if Demiurge doesn't fix this, I'll leave this game for what it is and go back to PlantsVZombies2 or DC Legends or whatever.

Vaulting is a slap in the face for transitioning players, nothing more, nothing less. And it's a very unprofessional design to boot. I mean, I've seen amateurs game creators come up with better reward systems than this heap of nonsense. Even a simple game like PlantsVZombies 2 has various 'packs' where you can spend your resources the way you like, to get the rewards you like. Here, they just force feed the latest down our collective throats and to hell with the older 4*s we were working so hard on championing. Way to handicap newer players vs veteran players! PVP will turn in an even greater slaughter fest than it already was: You were fast enough to champion your Iceman, Jean Grey and Prof X? Good for you! Now you can kill off all the newer players. You were not fast enough? Tough luck, you'll have to do with weak Riri.