Looking at vaulting from a developers perspective

Wjohnson992

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???

No actual game experience and a understanding of game mechanics. You think a champed Agent Venom can beat a champed Rulk. I'm happy for you.

Wjohnson992

GurlBYE wrote:

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?

Fightmasters math beats anyones own experience. Lets just not mention his bitterness over how his math understanding wrecked his scaling

GurlBYE

End of the day the route of the problem is trying to keep 4's as rare as they are.

The op said nothing malicious.

Realistically, this isn't a charity, it's a video game. It's a business. That's just reality.

Fightmastermpq

GurlBYE wrote:

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?

I'm pretty sure a basic understanding of math and probability is what drove people (me? was I actually the first to spell out the math on that here on the forums???) to start hoarding Latest pulls in the first place.

Aes has been touting the benefits of hoarding as a mechanism to overcome poor RNG since forever though.

I know you love your RNG soapbox, but a very rudimentary understanding of statistics shows that RNG gets negated as sample size increases.

Fightmastermpq

Wjohnson992 wrote:

GurlBYE wrote:

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?

Fightmasters math beats anyones own experience. Lets just not mention his bitterness over how his math understanding wrecked his scaling

Welp, that about wraps it up.

If anecdotal experience, emotion, and ad hominem trump math and reason then we have nothing left to discuss here.

Alsmir

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.

It helps me if I want to champ new characters, but it sucks for me if I want to finish any of the old ones (Cyclops, IceMan, Jean, Thoress, Rulk, Punisher, IMHB come to my mind), moreover all the covers that I pulled for old 4* just feel like a massive waste. It's going to be a pain in the **** to finish even one of them, none of them has enough covers to be usable. Essentially 90% of my 4* pulls up to date go to trash. I'm not including pulls of the few latest guys + 2-3 characters that I will try to finish via bonus heroes feature. It's like I'm getting punished for not hoarding every single LT and cp so far.

Wjohnson992

Alsmir 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.

It helps me if I want to champ new characters, but it sucks for me if I want to finish any of the old ones (Cyclops, IceMan, Jean, Thoress, Rulk, Punisher, IMHB come to my mind), moreover all the covers that I pulled for old 4* just feel like a massive waste. It's going to be a pain in the tinykitty to finish even one of them, none of them has enough covers to be usable. Essentially 90% of my 4* pulls up to date go to trash. I'm not including pulls of the few latest guys + 2-3 characters that I will try to finish via bonus heroes feature. It's like I'm getting punished for not hoarding every single LT and cp so far.

Oh I agree 100% we seem to be at the exact same stage of play and feel the exact same. The reality is Bonus heroes wont ever help us to ever cover the amount of older ones that we need to cover. BH is far too infrequent a thing. BUT we are meant to be greatly "helped" and be grateful for this.

GurlBYE

Alsmir 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.

It helps me if I want to champ new characters, but it sucks for me if I want to finish any of the old ones (Cyclops, IceMan, Jean, Thoress, Rulk, Punisher, IMHB come to my mind), moreover all the covers that I pulled for old 4* just feel like a massive waste. It's going to be a pain in the tinykitty to finish even one of them, none of them has enough covers to be usable. Essentially 90% of my 4* pulls up to date go to trash. I'm not including pulls of the few latest guys + 2-3 characters that I will try to finish via bonus heroes feature. It's like I'm getting punished for not hoarding every single LT and cp so far.

Essentially until change comes your best bet is going to have to be to just hoard and go nuts next season unless they change things.

I understand this benefits two crowds,

People who have not started on 4's and people who have most 4's fully covered. All of us in the middle are kinda left to wait on covering the newest 12.

I understand statistics and the data presented, as some people here would have you believe I'm not mentally capable of. I just think it's a good idea to listen to players who are vocalizing that hey, somethings gotta give so far as getting old characters. Plain and simple.
Like i get how lovely it is that you get to fully cover the newest character because you have everyone else champed anyway.
It makes sense.
Bonus hero's just need to be WAY better for those of us playing catch up.

Polares

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.

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.

1. Yeah, sure, all new chars can be stupidly good, so good they make all the other 40 chars irrelevant. But this is not very likely, just look at last releases... And remember, Power Creep is a bad thing! It just exists for Devs to make more money, but good and balanced games don't suffer from this.

2. This is completely ****. Because if no char would be vaulted we would still have bonus heroes, so you would cover them much faster, because you could pull them in tokens AND as bonus heroes. Why people use this reasoning at all???? Vaulting is COMPLETELY INDEPENDENT than Bonus Heroes! We would have Bonus Heroes in the old system too!!!

3. I might be wrong on this one, but then it means that you basically max your last two chars that go into the Vault. Always putting iso in your last two chars, independent on if they are good or not, you would not level your 5s or any other old char. Meanwhile, until the cycle is done we have to hoard. Great, super fun. Oh and what about champion rewards? We are going to get the rewards from 270-300 and that's it, we will never get the better rewards after 320 level, what about those?

4. What happens if vaulted top tier chars are still the best? New players get faster in 4 land, but with worse chars, what is the point of this? (They are going to love PvP). And faster doesn't mean better, this game has proven every single time that wide is better and much fun in most scenarios (specially for PvE, DDQ, etc.). This system has some advantages and some disadvantages for new players, mostly disadvantages for veteran players, and basically just good things for super whales, so how is my comment wrong?


I don't understand how anybody can defend Vaulting as we have it right now, seriously, we could have a much better system in place, with both the good of the old and the good of the new system!

Straycat

Obviously the op is biased towards the negative, as it clearly stated "recognize all the ways this system benefits them aggravating players". Our ideas generally start with how they help us, but of course we should think like devs at the way the ideas would hurt them.

So let's take the maybe most suggested idea of splitting the 4s into classic and legendary.
How does that affect us? The latest 5*s get tied to the latest 4*s, so 5* players end up with newer 4*s covered sooner. 4* players with most 4*s except the latest covered start pulling latest instead of classic, and move into 5* land sooner.
How does that affect them? People reach endgame faster, devs want to keep 5* land a distant goal so they don't want to do that

Now I made plenty of assumptions, but its not necessarily more presumptive than the op. I think some of those points were unintended consequences, if they are even true. Personally a few of them apply to me, but a few are way off.

I would like a behind the scenes look at the process here. How much did they consider those points, how much did they think ahead? What data are they looking at and what does that show so far? Bonus heroes seems to clearly be the focus of the change to spin it positive, but did that idea come before or after vaulting? When was the DDQ update thought up, since it promotes a diverse roster while BH does the opposite?

Now if we want to think like the devs about why they made this change? On every survey I say, "I love the game but its hard to recommend since it takes so long to get a good roster" For new players, it got easier to get a good roster. They also see so many people complain about wasted covers or covers they don't want, now we can lock those covers in the vault. Maybe they didn't look at the negative enough when making the change. I'm not sure all of the points in the op are deliberate vs unintended consequences

GurlBYE

Straycat wrote:

Obviously the op is biased towards the negative, as it clearly stated "recognize all the ways this system benefits them aggravating players". Our ideas generally start with how they help us, but of course we should think like devs at the way the ideas would hurt them.

So let's take the maybe most suggested idea of splitting the 4s into classic and legendary.
How does that affect us? The latest 5*s get tied to the latest 4*s, so 5* players end up with newer 4*s covered sooner. 4* players with most 4*s except the latest covered start pulling latest instead of classic, and move into 5* land sooner.
How does that affect them? People reach endgame faster, devs want to keep 5* land a distant goal so they don't want to do that

Now I made plenty of assumptions, but its not necessarily more presumptive than the op. I think some of those points were unintended consequences, if they are even true. Personally a few of them apply to me, but a few are way off.

I would like a behind the scenes look at the process here. How much did they consider those points, how much did they think ahead? What data are they looking at and what does that show so far? Bonus heroes seems to clearly be the focus of the change to spin it positive, but did that idea come before or after vaulting? When was the DDQ update thought up, since it promotes a diverse roster while BH does the opposite?

Now if we want to think like the devs about why they made this change? On every survey I say, "I love the game but its hard to recommend since it takes so long to get a good roster" For new players, it got easier to get a good roster. They also see so many people complain about wasted covers or covers they don't want, now we can lock those covers in the vault. Maybe they didn't look at the negative enough when making the change. I'm not sure all of the points in the op are deliberate vs unintended consequences

I dont see how a vault fixes wasted covers.

Wasted covers complaint is most often "wow I just got my 7th purple spiderwoman and have 0 in other colors"

I also think it's clear the op provided his opinion. this is a forum. everything typed is influenced by some sort of view or opinion.

Fightmastermpq

Polares wrote:

1. Yeah, sure, all new chars can be stupidly good, so good they make all the other 40 chars irrelevant. But this is not very likely, just look at last releases... And remember, Power Creep is a bad thing! It just exists for Devs to make more money, but good and balanced games don't suffer from this.

2. This is completely tinykitty. Because if no char would be vaulted we would still have bonus heroes, so you would cover them much faster, because you could pull them in tokens AND as bonus heroes. Why people use this reasoning at all???? Vaulting is COMPLETELY INDEPENDENT than Bonus Heroes! We would have Bonus Heroes in the old system too!!!

3. I might be wrong on this one, but then it means that you basically max your last two chars that go into the Vault. Always putting iso in your last two chars, independent on if they are good or not, you would not level your 5s or any other old char. Meanwhile, until the cycle is done we have to hoard. Great, super fun. Oh and what about champion rewards? We are going to get the rewards from 270-300 and that's it, we will never get the better rewards after 320 level, what about those?

4. What happens if vaulted top tier chars are still the best? New players get faster in 4 land, but with worse chars, what is the point of this? (They are going to love PvP). And faster doesn't mean better, this game has proven every single time that wide is better and much fun in most scenarios (specially for PvE, DDQ, etc.). This system has some advantages and some disadvantages for new players, mostly disadvantages for veteran players, and basically just good things for super whales, so how is my comment wrong?


I don't understand how anybody can defend Vaulting as we have it right now, seriously, we could have a much better system in place, with both the good of the old and the good of the new system!

1. Agreed. Many of the older characters are proven, while the newer ones are as yet unproven. Vaulting puts more pressure on the devs to release characters that aren't total stinkers.

2. No. BH and Vaulting go hand in hand. Sure they could have released BH as it's own feature, but D3 isn't in the business of just giving out free **** for funsies. It's a method to counteract the negatives associated with vaulting. IMO it sucks as the draw rate is too low to be meaningful. You get 3 characters on your team, let me pick 3 bonus heroes and give me 5% for all of them.

3. You don't need to put ISO into bad characters if you don't want to. This doesn't really change. I'm not leveling Agent Venom for example. If you have older 4s or 5s or 2/3 farms that need ISO at the expense of a newer 4 you can still make that tradeoff under the new system just like you would have under the old. I agree that not getting the upper level champ rewards is a huge negative of this system and IMO probably an unintended consequence. If the forums were a logical place you would see most of my posts on here **** about this aspect of the change rather than correcting all the misinformation and bad math. Previously I was on track to have several level 370s within the next 6-8 months. Now I will have 1 level 370 in probably 3-4 months, a second 3-4 months later, and then the rest will follow along that same time line. My long term progress really suffers here. Time will tell, but I'm thinking I can get newer 4s to 330 before they leave, so I'll have a roster full of 330s forever instead of a boatload of 370s.

4. Your comment is wrong because you said only the players with 370s will benefit. That's false. Players with no usable 4*s on their roster benefit as well. It's bad for me in the ways I outlined above, but I also benefit in other ways. I no longer have this massive ISO shortage from garbage tier 4*s that I'll now never feel pressure to champ. I'll waste FAR fewer covers. Those are benefits to me. Your reasoning is short-sighted as well. Long term this new system will provide more diversity of usable characters. If none of your old 4*s were usable they will remain that way, and for the vast majority of people they would have remained that way for quite some time. The new system will get you usable 4*s faster, and over time a diverse roster of new 4*s at a usable level. There are 2 groups of players that got boned really hard - those with all or almost all 4s champed, but not at 370, and the late transitioners with many 4s at 10-11 covers. This second group is not actually hit quite as hard as you can set these heroes as your bonus and finish them (the first two faster, the others slower), or if you were at the 8-9 cover level you'll actually have the newer characters at 13 before you would max them anyway. So it sucks, but not as bad. The first group went from not have any covers wasted to having most covers wasted until they can champ all the newest, AND they now miss out on the larger champ rewards from the older characters and BH doesn't really make up for those at all. So to act like only a handful of people benefit is just ridiculous as really there are only 2 groups that are badly hurt IMO.

I can defend vaulting because even though it's bad for me, I can see the benefits to the game as a whole. I can look at it objectively and determine how to best use the new system to progress without being emotional about whatever previous roster plans I had.

astrp3

carrion pigeons wrote:

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.

This may be true for casual players who are already well-along in their 4* transition, but I don't think it's at all true for players who are just starting the 4* transition (say, no 4*s with more than 5 covers). Under the old system, starting from scratch, if you only got two 4*s from tokens a week, with 45 characters in the pool, after ca 23 weeks (on average) you would have one cover per character (making the unrealistic assumption of even distribution). So to get 13 covers on a character from tokens alone would take you, on average, 299 weeks, or almost six years. And it would actually take longer than that since the 4* pool is growing by a character or two a month. If I had to wait that long to be competitive in a game, I would just quit. Yes, I know that tokens aren't the only way to get 4* covers, but the argument made here is only considering tokens.

I am actually one of the players that is in this situation and see the vaulting as a huge plus for me in the short term, since I will be able to get some useable 4*s in a few months rather than a year or more. I am not a casual player and average around a 4* token a day, so the nine months a new player spends in the vaults is more than enough time for me to get them fully covered (and then some) before they move out. And for sources others than tokens, I think the situation is much better for new 4*s than old ones since you can usually get 2-5 covers in the various release events. Missing out on all the release events for older 4*s has severely hampered my chances at covering them quickly.

Having said that, I would much prefer to have them add an easier way to get olders 4*s (splitting the stores, adding a new store/token etc.)

GurlBYE

astrp3 wrote:

carrion pigeons wrote:

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.

This may be true for casual players who are already well-along in their 4* transition, but I don't think it's at all true for players who are just starting the 4* transition (say, no 4*s with more than 5 covers). Under the old system, starting from scratch, if you only got two 4*s from tokens a week, with 45 characters in the pool, after ca 23 weeks (on average) you would have one cover per character (making the unrealistic assumption of even distribution). So to get 13 covers on a character from tokens alone would take you, on average, 299 weeks, or almost six years. And it would actually take longer than that since the 4* pool is growing by a character or two a month. If I had to wait that long to be competitive in a game, I would just quit. Yes, I know that tokens aren't the only way to get 4* covers, but the argument made here is only considering tokens.

I am actually one of the players that is in this situation and see the vaulting as a huge plus for me in the short term, since I will be able to get some useable 4*s in a few months rather than a year or more. I am not a casual player and average around a 4* token a day, so the nine months a new player spends in the vaults is more than enough time for me to get them fully covered (and then some) before they move out. And for sources others than tokens, I think the situation is much better for new 4*s than old ones since you can usually get 2-5 covers in the various release events. Missing out on all the release events for older 4*s has severely hampered my chances at covering them quickly.

Having said that, I would much prefer to have them add an easier way to get olders 4*s (splitting the stores, adding a new store/token etc.)

End of the day this is kinda what people opposed to vaulting want most.

It does provide benefit. We just need a way to cover them. I know that if I weren't saving up CP to fully cover some 10+ cover stragglers I could totally make 13 draws and it would likely bring progress on some new dudes and dudettes. And thats great. But not so great for the roster that I've had to spend money (regardless of how little) to actually keep.
stores and vaults (like the token based ones) aren't exactly great suggestions, as the op stated.

Crowl

Fightmastermpq wrote:

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.

The chances are not the same, without this excessive truncation you would be that much less likely to get into the scenario in the first place, even if you are right about this change also giving people a better chance of getting out of it as well.

However, in order to get out of the situation that person would have to keep opening tokens with the likely consequence of either the first covers being wasted or the ones pulled in order to avoid wasting those first ones.

Crowl

Fightmastermpq wrote:

2. No. BH and Vaulting go hand in hand. Sure they could have released BH as it's own feature, but D3 isn't in the business of just giving out free tinykitty for funsies. It's a method to counteract the negatives associated with vaulting. IMO it sucks as the draw rate is too low to be meaningful. You get 3 characters on your team, let me pick 3 bonus heroes and give me 5% for all of them.

They do not have to go together at all, some form of bonus hero could have very easily been put in place as a means to partially reduce the problems of dilution without the draconian approach they took with vaulting 3/4 of the 4* roster, the percentage chance simply isn't significant enough to have caused the game to have collapsed under the weight of their generosity, even before you consider those at the unlucky end of the rng who have seen sod all bonus heroes. (yet another reward mechanism in this game that seriously needs to have a mercy counter attached to it)

OneLastGambit

Some of the posts in this thread are heavily weighted.

The ones which state "Lets see Agent Venom take on Rulk" are insanely unfair. Not at all a fair comparison of new and old to take the worst new character and pair them against the best old character. Much more fair to say lets see Rulk take on medusa or Carol and you know what? I'd fancy my chances there.

Lets put Venom (eddie) up against agent Coulson and then make the same (invalid) argument about characters.

There are good and bad characters in both groups of characters, and thusly there is value in champing characters from the latest pool just as much value in fact as champing someone from the old pool. Vaulting is not popular and it does make progression on champs and resources more difficult but lets be fair with our arguments shall we rather than heavily weighting them in favour of the argument that we support.

OneLastGambit

Crowl wrote:

Fightmastermpq wrote:

2. No. BH and Vaulting go hand in hand. Sure they could have released BH as it's own feature, but D3 isn't in the business of just giving out free tinykitty for funsies. It's a method to counteract the negatives associated with vaulting. IMO it sucks as the draw rate is too low to be meaningful. You get 3 characters on your team, let me pick 3 bonus heroes and give me 5% for all of them.

They do not have to go together at all, some form of bonus hero could have very easily been put in place as a means to partially reduce the problems of dilution without the draconian approach they took with vaulting 3/4 of the 4* roster, the percentage chance simply isn't significant enough to have caused the game to have collapsed under the weight of their generosity, even before you consider those at the unlucky end of the rng who have seen sod all bonus heroes. (yet another reward mechanism in this game that seriously needs to have a mercy counter attached to it)

I agree that rather than a % chance to get a bonus hero it should simply have been a stated number of pulls.

Every 20 3* pulls grants a 3* bonus
Every 30 4* pulls grants a 4* bonus
every 10 5* pulls grants a 5* bonus.

This way everyone would know when they are going to get their bonus heroes and be able to plan for it without every giving a massive amount of freebies away

Polares

Fightmastermpq wrote:

I can defend vaulting because even though it's bad for me, I can see the benefits to the game as a whole. I can look at it objectively and determine how to best use the new system to progress without being emotional about whatever previous roster plans I had.

But this is a flawed system that just benefits a small group of people. This system can be improved so it can benefit EVERYBODY. This is why I say I don't understand anybody defending this system. You can defend parts of it, and then integrate the good parts with the good parts from the old system to have a new one that is much better.

I am also a bit tired of every single change being bad for veteran players. My spending in this game has been reduced A LOT, I just pay for the VIP now (and just because they added the shield Intercepts), and it looks like my spending will be reduced to 0 very very soon.


PS: And Bonus Heroes and Vaulting doesn't need to be together, in fact, when you see the announcement for Bonus Heroes it is quite obvious they are two different things, and they were presented as two different things that just happened to be released together. And there is absolutely no reason why Vaulting can be removed and Bonus Heroes continue as is.

Gmax101

Polares wrote:

2. This is completely tinykitty. Because if no char would be vaulted we would still have bonus heroes, so you would cover them much faster, because you could pull them in tokens AND as bonus heroes. Why people use this reasoning at all???? Vaulting is COMPLETELY INDEPENDENT than Bonus Heroes! We would have Bonus Heroes in the old system too!!!

Has this been confirmed anywhere (genuine question)... ?

If we assume they are independent, then Bonus Heroes is simply a free 5% increase in 3/4/5* covers to all players on the characters they want, which in no way combats dilution in tokens and also in no way pushes new characters or roster diversity.... as most players will champ the same 2/3 characters at each tier. And from a game life perspective this is not ideal...

Where as, treating it as a piece of functionality designed to relieve known impacts of other changes (e.g. Vaulting) makes a lot more sense.

Happy to be proved wrong if there is somewhere that clearly states that Bonus Heroes would have come if Vaulting was not also planned.