Looking at vaulting from a developers perspective

Straycat

GurlBYE wrote:

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.

As for the op's opinion, the title implies looking objectively at vaulting from a developers prospective, good or bad. At least that's how I read it. And the post was just about the bad.

It doesn't solve wasted covers, but it does effectively stop them for vaulted characters. Plus for the latest 12 its "easier" to pull the needed cover in time, granted a 5/0/0 will still lead to wasted covers.

And I wouldn't have to champ people out of spite as much. I can hoard until they leave the pool, then I won't pull their 14th cover. If I did get the 14th for someone vaulted, I can sell it knowing that I won't pull any more of them. I champed Venom because I had covers waiting, and because I thought I might still pull him later.

I don't min max this game, and I like opening tokens and getting new covers. Thats what this system has lead to for me so far. I don't think its perfect, but lots of people are so negative about it as if it has no positives. What bothers me is when players say they can't use bonus heroes for their 5/1/5 character since the bonus will likely be wasted, but act like unvaulting would help them.

GurlBYE

Straycat wrote:

GurlBYE wrote:

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.

As for the op's opinion, the title implies looking objectively at vaulting from a developers prospective, good or bad. At least that's how I read it. And the post was just about the bad.

It doesn't solve wasted covers, but it does effectively stop them for vaulted characters. Plus for the latest 12 its "easier" to pull the needed cover in time, granted a 5/0/0 will still lead to wasted covers.

And I wouldn't have to champ people out of spite as much. I can hoard until they leave the pool, then I won't pull their 14th cover. If I did get the 14th for someone vaulted, I can sell it knowing that I won't pull any more of them. I champed Venom because I had covers waiting, and because I thought I might still pull him later.

I don't min max this game, and I like opening tokens and getting new covers. Thats what this system has lead to for me so far. I don't think its perfect, but lots of people are so negative about it as if it has no positives. What bothers me is when players say they can't use bonus heroes for their 5/1/5 character since the bonus will likely be wasted, but act like unvaulting would help them.

Not so much. It stops everything for vaulted characters and does NOT stop my 7th progression X cover from also existing.
It'd be like saying I stopped getting useless covers for characters by just not playing anymore.

You also seem to be thinking people want just un-vaulting.

Not quite. people literally just want a change that will make vaulting work along with a pathway to older characters.
And the OP's post is an observation of "hey from the perspective of a business this is how the negatives we see are mainly negatives for us, so when we suggest solutions we should keep these in mind"
Or " don't expect the solution to be some guaranteed access to all your old 4's quickly"

I just personally want something way more consistent than bonus heroes.

The vaulting is negatively received because it closed off access to old characters, trickle in or not, and more or less sealed off older characters. Bonus heroes, while linked to the update can be used on new heros.
If it were a boosted bonus rate for old characters or something awesome. but it's not.

These discussions are all interesting but samey because everyone says the same extremes without really seeing the other.

Vaulting has positive aspects as well as negative.
It could potentially expand the life of the game or shorten it long term
But it most definitely solidly seals newer players from PVE essentials and some dead pool essentials.
It slows champing rewards for oldies but allows champing of new dudes faster, especially for top alliances and high performing players who usually start with 4-6 covers when the introductory pve is over.
It puts a timer on new 4's but allows you to get that new 4 for roughly every 6 months without a double release, or two being kicked out at once.

We've got the facts we just need a solution for old 4s.

purplemur

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,

to get two 4* covers a week your beating every Behemoth Burrito(7x2=14) and getting full progression from PvE(5+5+15=25)+(2perdayfor sub assuming you have req'd4;less likely with vaulting).
that is not minutes a day; 135 minutes a day maybe .
Only getting that 4*progression cover if your SCL high enough which means your prolly not just casually poking around.

I get it:BH as bundled with vaulting is not adequate to mirror the previous way of broad spectruming your roster and raising your overall power levels and in particular the few Dauthi's Top Tier. I understand that someone starting today would not have a realistic chance of using Rhulk. Even at your 2x4*s a week model you might not even champ the new 4*IF in the next 6 months. These are problems with colorless covers, iso shortage, poor vault rewards and over expansion more than vaulting legendary cover packs. But this new change was rolled out so poorly and the internetz is so volatile its like marie antoinette saying let them have Bonus Heros. torchforks and stuff.
They MIGHT, maybe, possumly roll back some of the changes, add even more legendary token screens to avoid 90% of the time, up the odds of BH, or give everyone a free yellow OML(but I need a red )!
When it appears that the Devs are doing little but kick out more MCU variants for Venom Bomb, it stinks like an unwashed aristocrat using too much perfume as they ride by the f2P masses on the way to eat turducken at the anniversary party which makes the forum ire worse and the community turn to back-biting and overly emotional logical fallacies...
like me (Flame On!) saying: Only soft-serve, weak-sauce players act like a 300+ level 4* is "ruined" or "garbage" because: "it will be impossible to max champ bobby now ". Is your outlook so bleak that all your progress is wasted and you'll never ever have any way to get an older cover than through buying from a legendary store? How are you champing 4*s but don't have HP to roster an A.venom or SpiderW? how can people complain about not having the benefit of champ levels and then refuse to use a latest toon?
So really the answer is to employ your brain and make a good team with agent venom or undercovered Hulkbuster, come up with a good defensive answer in PvP, Discover the new combo before the meta catches up and innovate your gameplay instead of acting like your tinykitty hurts cuz you sat on it wrong.
and devs: time to act on your compassionate listening and give us some love(hopefully with less bugs)! new mobs & new events! villains! mutants!

So until Hulkverine hits classics; make mine mPQ (you wouldn't like me when i'm sarcastic, bub)

astrp3

purplemur wrote:

When it appears that the Devs are doing little but kick out more MCU variants for Venom Bomb, it stinks like an unwashed aristocrat using too much perfume as they ride by the f2P masses on the way to eat turducken at the anniversary party which makes the forum ire worse and the community turn to back-biting and overly emotional logical fallacies...

Wait a minute. Are you saying the devs ate turducken at the last anniversary party?? That tears it! Now, I'm officially ticked off! THAT'S what the money grab was all about? Turducken?!? Turkey? Fine. Hen? OK. Duck? A little hoity toity, but I'll allow it. But all three at once? No way, man - no tinkitty way!

Or was it the unwashed aristocrat who was eating turducken (in which case, who invited him to MPQ's anniversary party?)

Crnch73

I can, in all honesty, understand WHY this happened. I even agree that it sort of HAD to happen. We have too many 4's to pull from, the tier dilution was making it maddening.

Here is the problem as I see it: Let's use the current PVP going on right now. Star Lord and 4Clops are both boosted. I happen to have both as low-level champs, so this is great for me. But imagine someone who just jumped to the 4* tier. If they have a few 4's champed but not boosted, there is no conceivable way for them to beat me. Their Star Lords and their 4Clops' are probably at 7 covers each. So they are forced to use their un-boosted 4's, which is no big deal since we all do it, right? Except, with only 12 outside the vault, there will always be more inside the vault than out. So, that means anyone who already had a handful champed of the vaulted characters has an advantage. They have a higher chance of having multiple boosted 4* champs for PVP and PVE, making matches easier and speedier. They also have the ability to use less health packs. Even my boosted champ Flaptain against your unboosted champ C4rol... I would win that match too. So a mediocre boosted champ beats an unboosted top tier. If I had all the old 4's champed and none of the current 12, I would still have more boosted champs than most of the playerbase. I think that's the biggest travesty here, is that the player base that built their rosters at earlier stages of this game's lifetime have a bigger advantage now than they did before. And as I have said before... I say this as someone who fits into the "have's" player base. So, this is more of me saying "geeze, the new people are in trouble!"

The math says we should be able to build any 4 star easier than we could before. But this is only probability. I am nearing 100 Legendary Token pulls without a single 4 or 5 star bonus character. Now, in the past I could have pulled 100 LT's and never gotten a single cover for the specific 4* I wanted (even if that is unlikely), so this is not the end of the world. But, now that BH's are the only means of me acquiring older 4's at all... I am dependent on them and keep getting frustrated. Sure they will come around eventually as placement/progression rewards, but that is not enough to keep me happy. Basically, I would be more likely to pull a specific, desired 4* with 100 token pulls a month ago than right now, even if that is only my experience and no one else has such bad luck.

I believe they made this change with the intention of it helping people. But the math just isn't working. They need to be better at mixing the boosted characters, or change the vaulting. I am fine with keeping it, but the probabilities need to be upped and number of characters in/out need to be tweaked.

Alsmir

So I decided to open my 3 LT and spend 100cp for classics. Just for the heck of it and to see if I can get anything usefull.

3x new 5* (super lucky bot not for me): Strange purple (meh), Surfer red, Captain red
Bloody 3k hp just to keep them and maybe use them after 2-3 years.

2x Agent Venom - a.k.a. another 1k hp to roster him
1x Peggy - at 5 covers now, soon gets vaulted - just a waste (on the other hand if we didn't have the vaulting, I'd be happy with her cover)
1x Wasp - at 5 covers now, gets vaulted after Peggy - same situation as described above
1x Gwenpool - 2nd cover
1x Medusa - 2nd cover

Yup I don't go nuts in the release events, that's why I'm a bit slow to cover latest characters.

Basically, opening 9 LTs costed me extra 4k hp for roster slots and I barely got anything usefull, compared to the old system, where:
9/43 characters that I really want covers for
(Cyclops, Carol, Ice Man, IMHB, Jean, Peggy, Rulk, Punisher, Thoress)

11/43 characters that I don't want covers for
(Carnage, Drax, Elektra, Invis Woman, Miles, Mr. Fantastic, Riri, Flaptain, Spider-Woman, 2x Venom)

23/43 characters that I don't mind getting covers for.


Next time I'll just gather 120cp and buy that bloody cover for Cyclops or I will make the big decission and quit this game completely, I'm gettiing tired of bugs, ignoring Steam players and "improvements" that just make everything worse.

Polares

Gmax101 wrote:

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.

Why do you assume the contrary, that they are related and they need to be together?

Just check the announcement thread

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=60255

The big new feature is Bonus Heroes. Then they also announce "Newest Characters in Packs" and "Additional Changes to Cover Stores", but with their own entity and announcement. The other features are always presented with the "Also, starting with ...". Nowhere in the announcement they justify Bonus Heroes as a way of getting the old chars now that they are Vaulted or anything similar to that, Bonus Heroes is just a way of getting your favourite chars.

In the end, both combat dilution, but in very different ways ( I guess this is why there were released together). But nowhere has been said that they go together, one depends on the other one and we wouldn't have one without the other. So you should not assume they are related.

Also, Bonus Heroes are for 5 chars, where there is no vaulting, so one more reason to see that they are completely independent.

Even when Brigby talked about different possibilities for Vaulting going forward (expanding the list of chars, adding rotation, etc.) the topic was just about Vaulted chars, no one was talking about Bonus Heroes or how it would be affected by changes to Vaulting. Basically, because they are two different things.

Daredevil217

I think it's interesting to look at my OP now that a "solution" has been announced.

As I stated, there are a lot of benefits for the developers with regards to vaulting and any solution has to take that into account.

The developers went with a solution that continues to promote the scarcity of older toons, the race against time, and has a cash-grab element to it. Pretty much everything I spelled out that occurred with vaulting and I stated that any solution would have to have these element as well.

I was hoping to be proven wrong but sadly that didn't happen.

Alsmir

And guess what? It was a money grab.

You can get vaulted characters, if you spend HP and still the odds are you will get a bunch of 2* instead.

Gmax101

Polares wrote:

Gmax101 wrote:

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)... ?

Why do you assume the contrary, that they are related and they need to be together?

Just check the announcement thread

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=60255

The big new feature is Bonus Heroes. Then they also announce "Newest Characters in Packs" and "Additional Changes to Cover Stores", but with their own entity and announcement. The other features are always presented with the "Also, starting with ...". Nowhere in the announcement they justify Bonus Heroes as a way of getting the old chars now that they are Vaulted or anything similar to that, Bonus Heroes is just a way of getting your favourite chars.

In the end, both combat dilution, but in very different ways ( I guess this is why there were released together). But nowhere has been said that they go together, one depends on the other one and we wouldn't have one without the other. So you should not assume they are related.

Also, Bonus Heroes are for 5 chars, where there is no vaulting, so one more reason to see that they are completely independent.

Even when Brigby talked about different possibilities for Vaulting going forward (expanding the list of chars, adding rotation, etc.) the topic was just about Vaulted chars, no one was talking about Bonus Heroes or how it would be affected by changes to Vaulting. Basically, because they are two different things.

I assumed they are linked because free covers for no reason, and a potentially substantial number of them, is not something I would typically expect from the developers, both because generosity is not historically been a trait associated with them, and also because I believe that Bonus Heroes on their own, while great for players, is probably very damaging to the longevity without vaulting.

The only reason Bonus Heroes affects dilution is by giving free stuff.... so you still get dumb RNG covers and it will get progressively harder to cover characters as more are added, but here have a couple of free covers extra so you don't mind. You might still get a load of covers for characters that you cant use, but every so often you'll get one you do want.

When pulling packs, without vaulting, progression is entirely RNG... and the dilution gets worse when you add more characters. Bonus Heroes does nothing constructive for that.

If you just had bonus heroes, there will be some people who use it to go after their favourite characters from comic books.... but in the main PVP events will soon degenerate in to the same 5-10 characters as everyone makes Peggy, Bobby, Carol etc champions... and people will only ever use the same few older characters which is not good for the longevity of the game.

And rather than having new characters as the focus, people will get less and less of them, but can still get those key Iceman or Peggy or Jean Greys..

I would be over-joyed to be proved wrong. For most players, if we had just had bonus heroes then people would be throwing their underwear at the developers in joy... cos they would have just been given a tonne of free stuff... so if that is the case then awesome.

But..... I make no secret that I prefer vaulting. It has made it easier for me to prioritise characters and plan my roster development. Not getting random covers for characters I have no intention of championing yet is nice, given that all my 4* other than Agent Venom (needs 1 cover coming from progression), Rikki (needs 1 cover) and Iron Fist (needs 10 covers) are max covered, but there are 15 who are not championed and will ultimately not be championed until I have got all my latest ones done and then they are featured in an event.

Granted the fact that I have 8 champs in the latest list at the moment (saving for Wasp... due to 6 covers on the vine) means I don't suffer from multiple covers all that often now...but while that Biases me in favour of vaulting, I would argue strongly that bonus characters on their own would have been dangerous for the game. Wildly loved by players, but dangerous for the longevity.


Ultimately though, it matters not a jot what I think... so I think we will have to agree to disagree no harm no foul

Daredevil217

Gmax101 wrote:

I assumed they are linked because free covers for no reason, and a potentially substantial number of them, is not something I would typically expect from the developers, both because generosity is not historically been a trait associated with them, and also because I believe that Bonus Heroes on their own, while great for players, is probably very damaging to the longevity without vaulting.

The only reason Bonus Heroes affects dilution is by giving free stuff.... so you still get dumb RNG covers and it will get progressively harder to cover characters as more are added, but here have a couple of free covers extra so you don't mind. You might still get a load of covers for characters that you cant use, but every so often you'll get one you do want.

When pulling packs, without vaulting, progression is entirely RNG... and the dilution gets worse when you add more characters. Bonus Heroes does nothing constructive for that.

If you just had bonus heroes, there will be some people who use it to go after their favourite characters from comic books.... but in the main PVP events will soon degenerate in to the same 5-10 characters as everyone makes Peggy, Bobby, Carol etc champions... and people will only ever use the same few older characters which is not good for the longevity of the game.

And rather than having new characters as the focus, people will get less and less of them, but can still get those key Iceman or Peggy or Jean Greys..

I would be over-joyed to be proved wrong. For most players, if we had just had bonus heroes then people would be throwing their underwear at the developers in joy... cos they would have just been given a tonne of free stuff... so if that is the case then awesome.

But..... I make no secret that I prefer vaulting. It has made it easier for me to prioritise characters and plan my roster development. Not getting random covers for characters I have no intention of championing yet is nice, given that all my 4* other than Agent Venom (needs 1 cover coming from progression), Rikki (needs 1 cover) and Iron Fist (needs 10 covers) are max covered, but there are 15 who are not championed and will ultimately not be championed until I have got all my latest ones done and then they are featured in an event.

Granted the fact that I have 8 champs in the latest list at the moment (saving for Wasp... due to 6 covers on the vine) means I don't suffer from multiple covers all that often now...but while that Biases me in favour of vaulting, I would argue strongly that bonus characters on their own would have been dangerous for the game. Wildly loved by players, but dangerous for the longevity.


Ultimately though, it matters not a jot what I think... so I think we will have to agree to disagree no harm no foul

There is a lot wrong with this post.

1. The assertion that people are getting a "substantial" number of free covers. DDQ created a substantial influx of covers. That was a monumental shift for the game. There are stories of people pulling hundreds of tokens and wondering if bonuses even exist. The bonuses are just what they say they are... a bonus. And a very occasional one at that. Not nearly enough to be considered substantial.

2. Your proposed problem of everyone favoriting only the best characters is already happening. Sorry to burst your bubble. That doesn't change with vaulting. My BHs are going to be Peggy and Captain Marvel (new), X23, Deadpool and Ant-Man (old). Actually (and I know my experience is not the rule) I'm only targeting top tier new people. My older targets are actually middle tier.

3. Saying that once people have Bobby and Red Hulk champed, they'll have no reason to collect new characters is perhaps the biggest fallacy I've heard here. I'm assuming you have a lot of older top tier 4s and yet you are still collecting new toys and playing with them. Why? Because that's the whole point of the game! People will always work harder to get better characters new or old. The only thing happening now is newer players aren't getting the same opportunities to cover the older characters you already were lucky enough to get.

4. You say that before vaulting, pulls were entirely RNG. It is the same thing after vaulting!! Agent Venom is my highest covered new toon and I have some dying on the vine. That's completely RNG (because I surely didn't ask for that distribution), just like the old system. You say bonus heroes does little to address it, but it's actually the ONLY part of this change that that combats RNG, by giving some control to the player.

TLDR: all of your concerns about giving bonus heroes and not vaulting are already happening now and we're happening before.