Looking at vaulting from a developers perspective

Fightmastermpq

Daredevil217 wrote:

With the new vaulting mechanisms in place there has been immense backlash from players, but not a lot of noise from developers other than “we are discussing it”. I think the most desired change discussed on the forums was to add classic 4s to classic tokens (seems kind of like a no-brainer), but that solution did not pop up on the developers list of things they are even considering.

Brigby wrote:

We just finished up another meeting with the development team earlier today, so I'd be happy to provide some insight.

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.

So that led me to believe that ultimately, if we want to propose solutions to developers we have to think like developers and recognize all the ways this system benefits them aggravating players.

Increased value of vaults
Stories have popped up of people spending huge amounts on vaults so they can cover or complete older 4s. Under the old system people thought, “I’ll eventually get them”, but now, vastly increased rarity has upped the “value” of older 4s which can result in increased HP spending.

More time grinding
New releases will always be a grind-fest. Being in an over-saturated pool for a year won’t matter. There are enough people with the “gotta have the new shiny now!” mentality that will make these events slug fests. Only now, older toon events will also be a slugfest due to increased rarity. Especially the top tier vaulted 4’s. More hours grinding = win for the developers.

The 120 CP debacle
A lot more people are just buying covers outright with CP. With this new economy there is a huge amount of waste pulled (more on that later). As such, people are opting to cut out the middle man and simply purchase the covers that they can’t seem to get outright so they can use the 7 covers dying on the vine before they expire. That’s potentially 6 covers you could use being traded in for 1. Seems steep but when you replace dilution with oversaturation it becomes the best option and the developers ultimately win when you spend more resources for less covers (thus, needing to buy more resources). Similarly buying covers for near-completed vaulted 4s is more appealing than ever with the increased rarity.

The race against time
With Peggy rotating out, many are spending like mad hoping to cover her before she moves into the retirement home. People spending money and popping tokens to beat the proverbial clock is a win for the developers and of course adds to the aforementioned waste. This will continue to happen with each toon that rotates out (especially top tier ones) due to the increased scarcity.

Race against time II: electric boogaloo.
The second race against time has to do with waste. Many many reports of several (sometimes double digit) dupes dying on the vine has people rushing to champ all these new characters before the 14 day expiration date. This can cause an increase in iso sales (not to mention HP to roster all these new characters). Under the old system, people had time to collect iso as covers trickled in. Now, people are buying covers outright for their 11/2/5 characters and spending iso to max them.

Whale chum
One of the proposed benefits of this new system is that transitioners and newbs “get to” progress faster. That is great! Only what happens is new players getting propelled into brackets they can’t truly be competitive in and are essentially fodder for whales. While under the old system, people with 3-4 covers on their 4s were matched up against other 3-4 covered 4s while they transitioned. Now, players with 3-4 shiny new champs are going up against whales with boosted champs (new and old) many of which they have no chance of getting. In this case the whales get more “competition” but less competition having already climbed over the wall. Being launched into 4* land without a solid diverse roster sucks, but a win for whales is a win for developers.

Health pack sales
The counter to my last point is always, “any team with 2-3 solid 4* can compete”. In order to do so they are going to have to spend quite a bit on healthpacks. The reality is, if I have a solid diverse roster of low-covered 4s going against similar competition (old system) I can use more of my roster and spend less on packs. If in order to compete, I’m locked into my two best characters (this is progression?) then, I’d better be ready to spend way more on packs.

Champ drought
Finally, one of the biggest drawbacks of this new system for vets is a lack of champion levels from vaulted 4s. Before, for many vets every other cover they pulled was a champ level for an older toon, which meant no resources outgoing and instead resources were incoming. Now there is more of a need for resources than ever to prevent waste, and a less of them coming in than before. Now, if we want those resources we used to get we need to spend more or play more.

Conclusion
If you want to propose solutions, you have to think like a developer. I am sure the developers had all of the above in mind when they thought about impacts on the player-base and saw this as a money grab. I think they assumed that any negative backlash they would receive would be absolved with “bonus heroes” – and in their defense, there are some more vocal posters on here who bought into it (“Why are you complaining? You can theoretically cover that one single 4* character faster than before??”). Luckily a large majority of the playerbase has been able to see the drawbacks and have voiced their displeasure. Looking at the response from Brigby (spoiler above), even their solutions involve more money grabs (new store, new vault), or continued increased scarcity (amended vaulting). Overall, I would not expect a solution that will appease those who see the drawbacks for players (which I sort of outlined in another thread) and the many gains for the developers (outlined here).

Congrats on 100 million, MPQ!

I think this might be the biggest load of **** I've ever read on here, and I don't understand what you are even talking about when you claim to be looking at this "from a devs perspective." Do you even know who the devs are? And how they differ from the publishers?

Increased value of vaults
This is a made up problem that I pointed out in punisher's thread. The cause of the problem (lack of cover availability) eliminates the problem (need to cover characters so that new covers pulled don't go to waste).

More time grinding
Just plain wrong. Now that characters are more readily available many people won't play as hard for them as they will be easier to pull from tokens and cover after the fact.

The 120 CP debacle
Wrong again. With much higher draw rates you are far more likely to pull that final cover you need before you have to drop the 120 CP on it.

The race against time
I don't think this is a real problem either, not in the long term at least. Once characters have been in the newest pool for 8 months people will have ample time to get them covered without needing to spend like hell before they get vaulted.

Race against time II: electric boogaloo.
Another short term problem. Eventually all players that earn ISO at better than 25k/day will never have to worry about champing a new 4*.

Whale chum
No. Just no. Comments like these make me wonder if you even play this game. MMR shields weaker rosters from the whales anyway. And this change has nothing to do with SCL so I'm not sure what the **** you are even talking about with "getting propelled into brackets they can’t truly be competitive in."

Health pack sales
What? No. Players will always have to transition at some point, and they will likely use more health packs during those transition periods sure, but having that transition period happen earlier does nothing for net health pack sales. Also, can we stop pretending like health pack sales are significant profit center? I'd bet the majority of players on here have never spent HP on health packs.

Champ drought
Short term problem again that only applies to vets with most or all of the older 4s champed.

Conclusion
Sorry, not everything the devs do is a money grab. Vaulting + BH was their best effort at the dilution problem while maintaining overall cover distribution rates. Remember most players don't spend, and so their goal is rarely to try to get players to spend more, rather they want to try and attract as many new players as they can and get them to keep playing and hopefully spending regularly. Dilution was making progress too slow causing people to quit before they became regular spenders. So think like a dev - how do you fix that? Vaulting was their solution, targeted primarily at newer players to keep them engaged in the game by making meaningful progress in a shorter period of time but without just giving out covers like candy. The game falls apart without a broad playerbase, and so they are concerned with retaining players more than squeezing every last dime out of them.

So when it comes down to it you really just don't trust the devs because you don't understand what motivates them.

Sounds like a personal problem.

carrion_pigeons

Fightmastermpq wrote:

Players will always have to transition at some point, and they will likely use more health packs during those transition periods sure, but having that transition period happen earlier does nothing for net health pack sales.

Actually, the effect on transitioners is one of the few ways I can see vaulting having a genuine negative effect on certain players: it's entirely possible for a person to get stuck in transition now, forever.

Let's say you're a casual player who achieves, say, two 4* covers from tokens per week. You don't spend more than a few minutes on the game, but up to now you've been making slow and steady progress towards a real roster. Now, over the course of a character's lifetime in tokens, you will open ~70 such tokens. This is enough to get, on average, 8 covers for that character. Then that character falls out of tokens and you're left with one more unusable waste of a roster slot, which will never help move you past the 3* tier. At the rate you're going, you have no reason to expect that any 4* character will ever get fully covered, barring an extremely long-term plan based on Bonus Heroes.

Alsmir

That's why we can't have nice things. Any time that a new patch includes changes that are potentially game-breaking for a part of player base, we will have people defending developers, because those changes either benefit them or don't affect them at all.
I find it mind-numbling how many people don't realize that in those games we're the part of the community. If a part of the community gets alienated and starts dying, it might not affect you at first, but it will have an impact on you eventually. That's why it is important for example to cater to new players. They bring the fresh blood and keep the game healthy.
The moment we get a change, that makes players consider quitting, it's not just their problem, but everyone else should acknowledge, that some action is needed in order to help them.

Stop just thinking about yourselves. Just because 5* acquiring rates don't affect me, doesn't mean that I don't reckognize it as an important issue.

Polares

carrion pigeons wrote:

Despite all the whining about vaulting going on in the forums, I strongly doubt that most people think it's bad. The majority of players not on the forum are probably just as happy to get a Carol cover as a Hulkbuster, and maybe happier to get an Agent Venom than an Elektra (since he is easier to cover).

Long-term, this change has positive implications as long as new characters are competitive with old ones. Everyone who feels gypped at not being able to get Iceman might care a lot less if future releases make having an Iceman not that big of a deal. And I do think they plan to crank up the power a good bit on new releases, if only to make the barrier to entry less punishing.

Yeah sure, they are going to be super happy when Peggy gets vaulted. At that moment, 6 out of the 7 top chars will be out of tokens, Peggy, Iceman, Rhulk, Cyclops, Jean, IMHB out of tokens. When those people get obliterated by a team formed of those 4s, with no chance at all of covering those chars themselves, they are going to be super happy! Yeah Carol is great, but she is just one of the chars in the top tier... And by definition you will always have more top tier chars out of vaulted tokens than inside.

Also what happens when you need someone out of tokens to complete your team, for example, Carol, Coulson, Starlord, this team is crazy good, but it requires and old char. There are a lot of combos that require new and old chars, and new players will not be able to use those teams!

carrion pigeons wrote:

Most of the complaining is coming from people being short-sighted, frankly. They see that they can't develop older champs and think this will cost them champ rewards, which it does in the short-term, but won't stay true once they hit an equilibrium point. And the trade-off is that the metagame will change over time, making the game less stale.

Champion rewards have been reduced, that is a fact. Now is much harder for anybody that it is not a super whale to get the 320+ champion rewards that are the best ones. Every time you get close with one char it will be vaulted, so most people will never be able to get chars at that range. Then, also the percentage of championed chars is going to be smaller, so more covers will be wasted, and people will get less champion rewards in general. And of course you have lost the option of choosing who you should champ. Now you need to champ chars that are not vaulted.

I don't see why the metagame will change. Some people, new players, might use more new chars, but the biggest userbase is still old players, and those will keep using buffed top chars. New chars that are great will be used, but the other ones will be easily forgotten, exactly the same as before. The only difference is that new top chars will be adopted faster, but as long as Devs don't get crazy, and all new chars are super mega great, the change will be quite small (from 3-4 months to max a top tier char to maybe 1-2 month now?). Also you forget about 5s, which are the kings of the meta and currently unaffected by this change.

The worst part is that they have so many different tokens, it would have been SUPER easy to vault just latest LTs for example, and leave classic with all chars. Then people would have the choice to do whatever they wanted to do. Give choice to players is always a good thing! If they vaulted all LTs is for a reason (money or stupidity).

This chance is just good for super whales that already have old 4s at 370, they are the only people that will really benefit from this change, THE ONLY ONES, this chance as it stands right now is bad for everybody else.

Crowl

Daredevil217 wrote:

broll wrote:

Daredevil217 wrote:

More hours grinding = win for the developers.

Why would you say that? I would think more grinding = more burnout = difficulty keeping players longterm.

I assume people want them playing their game as much as possible. Ad revenue (though I no longer get those shield intercepts at all and have no idea why), and time away from other games are just two reasons.

Most of these f2p games want you playing them regularly in smaller bites throughout the day (more chances to tempt a purchase from you presumably) rather than in the larger chunks you see with mpq e.g. if you play pve optimally and don't do much pvp you would do ddq in 15 mins or so and would not touch the game throughout the day other than the 2-3 hour block around your sub's reset time.

Crowl

carrion pigeons wrote:

Long-term, this change has positive implications as long as new characters are competitive with old ones. Everyone who feels gypped at not being able to get Iceman might care a lot less if future releases make having an Iceman not that big of a deal. And I do think they plan to crank up the power a good bit on new releases, if only to make the barrier to entry less punishing.

Most of the complaining is coming from people being short-sighted, frankly. They see that they can't develop older champs and think this will cost them champ rewards, which it does in the short-term, but won't stay true once they hit an equilibrium point. And the trade-off is that the metagame will change over time, making the game less stale.

Unless the weekly boosted characters are picked carefully to ensure a mix of top new and old then the people with both available to them will be at a clear advantage and even if they do manage to have a mix of both in the boosted list, any synergies between those old and new characters will also give an advantage.

Complaining about the complaining when you haven't fully considered the implications is probably more short-sighted, the reality is that under the old system your champion rewards income would steadily increase over time, whereas under the new system you will see a drop-off when you have champs moving out of the newest 12 that will somewhat recover as you champ even newer heroes, but then it will drop off again once the next couple move out and so on. Ignoring the likely increase in wasted cover under the new system, we will get roughly the same amount of champ rewards, but they will continually be in the lower half of the champion levels which give lesser rewards than the later ones.

kyo28

Of course, it goes without saying that every change in the game is made from the perspective of hoping to earn more money. And in that regard I can imagine some players might react the way the OP describes but my reaction is quite the opposite:

I feel stifled in my progress. That in turn makes me not want to invest money in the game.
1. buying vaults: I've never bought HP to buy vaults and I don't do it now as well
2. Health Packs: never bought them and won't start now
3. buying to race against the time: nope, as I just want to progress on my own steady pace

If anything, I've spent less money: before vaulting I would have bought in the 30% off HP sale and now I didn't because I don't see the point in spending more on this game who only caters to whales. Moreover, when my VIP expires, I won't renew

I'm just one player, though. So perhaps due to this change they rake in more money. But it won't be my money.

Fightmastermpq

Polares wrote:

And by definition you will always have more top tier chars out of vaulted tokens than inside.

Not necessarily, you have no idea what power creep will bring. It's possible that the 10 best characters are among the 12 newest.

Polares wrote:

Also what happens when you need someone out of tokens to complete your team, for example, Carol, Coulson, Starlord, this team is crazy good, but it requires and old char.

Then set that old character as your bonus hero and finish them faster than you would otherwise.

Polares wrote:

Then, also the percentage of championed chars is going to be smaller, so more covers will be wasted, and people will get less champion rewards in general.

This is just flat out wrong. If you make ISO at 25k/day (most serious players do I think) then you never waste another cover again. Ever.

Polares wrote:

This chance is just good for super whales that already have old 4s at 370, they are the only people that will really benefit from this change, THE ONLY ONES, this chance as it stands right now is bad for everybody else.

Also wrong. Clearly this helps newer players get to the 3* and 4* tiers faster. Players with a solid group of 6-10+ 4* champs also benefit in that now they can focus on newer characters and have far less waste. The later champ rewards are an issue sure, but for many the additional champ rewards from all the newer characters might make up the gap.

Crowl

Fightmastermpq wrote:

This is just flat out wrong. If you make ISO at 25k/day (most serious players do I think) then you never waste another cover again. Ever.

Your claim simply isn't true at all, except in the narrow case of you hoarding all your resources until you have the iso to champion people but when you spend those resources you don't end up with a lopsided 0/5/5 character.

The chances of producing a lopsided character are drastically increased with a vastly reduced pool of possible covers and once you have one, wasted covers will be inevitable as you will need to continue drawing in the hope of getting the one you need so hoarding won't be a viable approach, even if you find it at all acceptable that people are basically forced to hoard rewards to avoid wasting them in the first place, which seems like a fairly glaring flaw in a reward system as it is.

Xzasxz

Fightmastermpq wrote:

Polares wrote:

And by definition you will always have more top tier chars out of vaulted tokens than inside.

Not necessarily, you have no idea what power creep will bring. It's possible that the 10 best characters are among the 12 newest.

1. Just curious: what reasonable 4 teams for Versus mode could be formed out of heroes currently in the packs? Remember - Peggy is out of it pretty soon.
2. Should we expect some serious power creep with new heroes to be introduced?
So maybe ca 3/4 (at least in the 4 land) of the heroes should be just removed from the game? All the problems solved?

Bowgentle

Xzasxz wrote:

1. Just curious: what reasonable 4 teams for Versus mode could be formed out of heroes currently in the packs? Remember - Peggy is out of it pretty soon.

Medusa / Carol is terrifying.

Carol on her own is better than 85% of the older 4s, and you'll have a lot of time covering her and pile on champ levels.

Fightmastermpq

Xzasxz wrote:

Fightmastermpq wrote:

Polares wrote:

And by definition you will always have more top tier chars out of vaulted tokens than inside.

Not necessarily, you have no idea what power creep will bring. It's possible that the 10 best characters are among the 12 newest.

1. Just curious: what reasonable 4 teams for Versus mode could be formed out of heroes currently in the packs? Remember - Peggy is out of it pretty soon.
2. Should we expect some serious power creep with new heroes to be introduced?
So maybe ca 3/4 (at least in the 4 land) of the heroes should be just removed from the game? All the problems solved?

Wasp/Medusa with Carol/Coulson in almost any combo does very well.

Alsmir

Polares wrote:

This chance is just good for super whales that already have old 4s at 370, they are the only people that will really benefit from this change, THE ONLY ONES, this chance as it stands right now is bad for everybody else.

Also wrong. Clearly this helps newer players get to the 3* and 4* tiers faster.

Yeah, it totally helps that I need to move from characters that I have 4-8 covers for to latest 12, where 3 of them aren't even in my roster.

Fightmastermpq

Alsmir wrote:

That's why we can't have nice things. Any time that a new patch includes changes that are potentially game-breaking for a part of player base, we will have people defending developers, because those changes either benefit them or don't affect them at all.
I find it mind-numbling how many people don't realize that in those games we're the part of the community. If a part of the community gets alienated and starts dying, it might not affect you at first, but it will have an impact on you eventually. That's why it is important for example to cater to new players. They bring the fresh blood and keep the game healthy.
The moment we get a change, that makes players consider quitting, it's not just their problem, but everyone else should acknowledge, that some action is needed in order to help them.

Stop just thinking about yourselves. Just because 5* acquiring rates don't affect me, doesn't mean that I don't reckognize it as an important issue.

You are really projecting here. This change is mostly bad for me, and I've been vocal about that. But I'm open-minded and am one of the VERY few people on here that have recognized that this change is positive for the game as a whole, even if mostly negative for me. I'm by no means trying to defend the devs here, only pointing out all the logical inconsistencies that people use to try to hate this change because they are emotional.

Crowl wrote:

Fightmastermpq wrote:

This is just flat out wrong. If you make ISO at 25k/day (most serious players do I think) then you never waste another cover again. Ever.

Your claim simply isn't true at all, except in the narrow case of you hoarding all your resources until you have the iso to champion people but when you spend those resources you don't end up with a lopsided 0/5/5 character.

The chances of producing a lopsided character are drastically increased with a vastly reduced pool of possible covers and once you have one, wasted covers will be inevitable as you will need to continue drawing in the hope of getting the one you need so hoarding won't be a viable approach, even if you find it at all acceptable that people are basically forced to hoard rewards to avoid wasting them in the first place, which seems like a fairly glaring flaw in a reward system as it is.

THIS is why we can't have nice things. People aren't being honest with themselves at all. Sure, you will still waste covers for bad distribution, but your odds of getting **** by RNGesus is exactly the same now as it was before - this change has nothing to do with it. In fact, you are 4x more likely to overcome poor cover distribution before your covers on the vine have to be sold because of the increased draw rates. To suggest that your chances are "drastically increased" is based in nothing other than an intense need to hate this change.

This very thing happened to me and I posted in the other thread. My Carol had 2 green covers since her release and I could draw nothing but yellow and black. Under the previous system I would have drawn those yellow and black covers over roughly 250 pulls and sold them all off as I failed to grab a green cover before they expired. But with the new system I just kept pulling and since the Carol draw rate is 4x what it was I managed to get my much needed green cover and immediately apply SEVEN champ levels (I had to sell 1 or 2 of them). By drastically increasing your odds at each character RNG is now slightly less of a factor as things are more likely to happen within the 2 week expiration window.

Fightmastermpq

Alsmir wrote:

Polares wrote:

This chance is just good for super whales that already have old 4s at 370, they are the only people that will really benefit from this change, THE ONLY ONES, this chance as it stands right now is bad for everybody else.

Also wrong. Clearly this helps newer players get to the 3* and 4* tiers faster.

Yeah, it totally helps that I need to move from characters that I have 4-8 covers for to latest 12, where 3 of them aren't even in my roster.

You clearly haven't given this any thought at all. Yes, it absolutely does help you as you will now earn covers at nearly 4x the previous rate. So in the time it would have taken you to earn those last 5-9 covers you will now earn 18-32.

You'll pull 13 covers for a new character under this new system before you would have pulled 4 covers for a character under the old system.

Wjohnson992

Its definitely amusing how people who are trying to start champing 4*'s are saying how they are now locked out and how this change has screwed them badly are now being told by people well into the 4* transition how it definitely "helps" them. It clearly does not despite what knots and excuses the vets try to make.

Fightmastermpq

Wjohnson992 wrote:

Its definitely amusing how people who are trying to start champing 4*'s are saying how they are now locked out and how this change has screwed them badly are now being told by people well into the 4* transition how it definitely "helps" them. It clearly does not despite what knots and excuses the vets try to make.

By "knots and excuses" do you mean simple and basic math???

GurlBYE

carrion pigeons wrote:

Fightmastermpq wrote:

Players will always have to transition at some point, and they will likely use more health packs during those transition periods sure, but having that transition period happen earlier does nothing for net health pack sales.

Actually, the effect on transitioners is one of the few ways I can see vaulting having a genuine negative effect on certain players: it's entirely possible for a person to get stuck in transition now, forever.

Let's say you're a casual player who achieves, say, two 4* covers from tokens per week. You don't spend more than a few minutes on the game, but up to now you've been making slow and steady progress towards a real roster. Now, over the course of a character's lifetime in tokens, you will open ~70 such tokens. This is enough to get, on average, 8 covers for that character. Then that character falls out of tokens and you're left with one more unusable waste of a roster slot, which will never help move you past the 3* tier. At the rate you're going, you have no reason to expect that any 4* character will ever get fully covered, barring an extremely long-term plan based on Bonus Heroes.

DING DING DING

winner here.

The usual crowd of "be happy about everything people" keep assuming that a person who isn't on the forums will naturally hoard and get characters before they get out of tokens.

They also don't earn as much as a higher player with a full roster.

Wjohnson992

Fightmastermpq wrote:

Alsmir wrote:

Polares wrote:

This chance is just good for super whales that already have old 4s at 370, they are the only people that will really benefit from this change, THE ONLY ONES, this chance as it stands right now is bad for everybody else.

Also wrong. Clearly this helps newer players get to the 3* and 4* tiers faster.

Yeah, it totally helps that I need to move from characters that I have 4-8 covers for to latest 12, where 3 of them aren't even in my roster.

You clearly haven't given this any thought at all. Yes, it absolutely does help you as you will now earn covers at nearly 4x the previous rate. So in the time it would have taken you to earn those last 5-9 covers you will now earn 18-32.

You'll pull 13 covers for a new character under this new system before you would have pulled 4 covers for a character under the old system.

You should understand the game mechanics more. Unless you hoard you will earn the same amount of covers you are just drawing from a much smaller pool. Unfortunately the weekly boosts DO NOT consist solely of this smaller pool. If they want to "help" new players and keep vaulting they must then edit the boost list. Maybe Wasp/Carol are good but against a boost Rulk/4clops its advantage older player. The excuse of "favourite older 4*" doesnt work either due to the minute chance of actually getting a bonus cover.

GurlBYE

Fightmastermpq wrote:

Wjohnson992 wrote:

Its definitely amusing how people who are trying to start champing 4*'s are saying how they are now locked out and how this change has screwed them badly are now being told by people well into the 4* transition how it definitely "helps" them. It clearly does not despite what knots and excuses the vets try to make.

By "knots and excuses" do you mean simple and basic math???

"Basic math" doesn't guarantee progress, or people wouldn't be hoarding to cover 5's before they leave tokens, no?