A Disturbing Trend in PVE Rewards

TimGunn
TimGunn Posts: 257 Mover and Shaker
The rewards for next PVE are up and the placement 4 star card is .... Wasp. 

It appears that devs are now prioritizing latest 4 stars in PVE rewards, at the detriment of the vaulted 4 stars.  It used to be It used to be that characters got rotated in a loose chronological order, with whoever hadn't been featured the longest coming up next.  

However, around the time of vaulting, they started rotating the new characters for a second PVE earlier.  It is basically each weekend a launch event for a 4-star (cloak & dagger last weekend) or the 2nd feature for a newer 4-star (c4rol this weekend).  Which you could sort of understand because they weren't putting those chars into DDQ Kraken until they had a 2nd PVE feature. 

But now the weekday events are also being given to latest?  We had Wasp featured 90 days ago, but haven't had Ant-Man featured in 210+ days!  But of course, we can pull Wasp (~7% chance) from any legendary token.  And Ant-Man is stuck in the vault.

We all saw the player base be outraged by the vaulting of all the classic 4 stars, but we still had a few options to get them, including PVE vaults, placement and progression.  Looks like they are lessening that avenue. 

And just slipping this change in without being upfront.  Well, I'm calling you on it!

Comments

  • veny
    veny Posts: 834 Critical Contributor
    Yeah, i am trying to monitor PvEs since vaulting (awesome feature indeed, just got purple Gwenpool - now has 6/3/0... before vaulting, getting unwanted duplicates took weeks or more likely months, now it can be days).
    Funny how they are stealing old 4*s from us - that means they are de facto taking championing 4*s away as well.
    I HOPE they are planning some legendary token with old 4*s and old 5*s - with it, vaulting could be good feature. If not, i will seriously consider leaving. I dont like threatening of forum but making heroes available de facto 1 year (1 month for each new 4*) turns any collecting efforst into either pointless try, or nessessary shopping spree.
  • vinsensual
    vinsensual Posts: 458 Mover and Shaker
    Not counting the release events, I think there has been a focus on latest 12s as pve rewards since vaulting.  I know we've gotten 4* Falcon and just had Red Hulk, but I'm confident the ratio has been skewed towards the 4 stars in the current rotation.  For instance, Wasp was a PVE reward in January.  Meanwhile I don't think Jean has been a reward since they added 4*s in progression rewards.  
  • Spidurman27
    Spidurman27 Posts: 184 Tile Toppler
    They are also cycling this group through quickly in order to make them crash/burrito eligible in DDQ.  

    I personally liked the alternating pattern of a classic 4* and then a newer one. 
  • Punisher5784
    Punisher5784 Posts: 3,845 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited April 2017
    Exactly. I'm also annoyed that the 7day PvE events that give 2 progression covers were current 4*s Gwenpool and Agent Venom. I would love some vaulted 4*s like Quake, who was skipped because of freaking Ultron
  • Pongie
    Pongie Posts: 1,411 Chairperson of the Boards
    With 50 4* in the game, it will take longer and longer for each to cycle around. As more get released, the cycle will just get worst. In a month/season, there's already only room for 8-9 in pvp (1-2 are normally new release) and 7-8 in pve (assuming the majority of events are 3-4 days with very few 7 days less new releases). Then you'll realise it'll be many months before each will rotate even if it was a set order (which it is in pvp). 
  • vinsensual
    vinsensual Posts: 458 Mover and Shaker
    They are also cycling this group through quickly in order to make them crash/burrito eligible in DDQ.  

    I personally liked the alternating pattern of a classic 4* and then a newer one.
    Making them Crash eligible sooner also has a side effect of discouraging hoarding/encouraging spending CP.  It's gonna be a pain in the butt to miss Crashes because I'm only getting covers from rewards and heroics. 
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    But from a practical perspective, if the only 4*s that newer players can cover quickly are newer ones, then it is reasonable to feature those characters in crash.  Otherwise newer people will never get to play crash.

    Ultimately all of these issues are follow-on problems that had to result from vaulting.  Demi should uave just increased the speed of 4* rotation and the availability of 4*s.  That would have fixed dilition.  Instead demi went with vaulting.  Ugh.
  • Felessa
    Felessa Posts: 161 Tile Toppler
    edited April 2017
    Yes! I noticed exactly that in the Sneak Peek... very unbalanced and unfair. I don't know why they can't just follow a vaulted - latest/new - vaulted - latest/new pattern. Just don't sacrifice +75% of the 4*s pool to accelerate the "crash/burrito" of a few...
  • ZeiramMR
    ZeiramMR Posts: 1,357 Chairperson of the Boards
    It should normalize pretty soon, though.
  • broll
    broll Posts: 4,732 Chairperson of the Boards
    Same tinykitty different day.  Is anyone really surprised at this point?
  • JackTenrec
    JackTenrec Posts: 808 Critical Contributor
    I don't know if this has been proposed before or not, but what I'd like to see is: if the top prize is a vaulted character, the placement rewards are treated like a new release. That is, the vaulted character is awarded to the top 100 players instead of the top 10.  I imagine that this wouldn't take a lot of development to change, and would help lower the bar for players trying to acquire older characters without waiting for them to cycle through months of events and/or praying to the BH gods.
  • JVReal
    JVReal Posts: 1,884 Chairperson of the Boards
    I was surprised to see Vaulting come back.  It didn't work so well the first time they did it when we had significantly less characters out there... not sure why they thought it would magically work a second time.
  • Quebbster
    Quebbster Posts: 8,070 Chairperson of the Boards
    @JVReal- the first time they promised the vaulted characters would come back into rotation eventually. No such promise this time - when they're out they're out.
  • Pants1000
    Pants1000 Posts: 484 Mover and Shaker
    Is there really any pattern here, or is it just the luck of the draw?  I noticed the most recent PVP rewards have been Drax, Electra and Ghost Rider.  Pretty weak 4's if you ask me, but that's 3 vaulted in a row on the PVP side.
  • jgomes32
    jgomes32 Posts: 381 Mover and Shaker
    Pants1000 said:
    Is there really any pattern here, or is it just the luck of the draw?  I noticed the most recent PVP rewards have been Drax, Electra and Ghost Rider.  Pretty weak 4's if you ask me, but that's 3 vaulted in a row on the PVP side.
    Pvp is alphabetical,
  • bbigler
    bbigler Posts: 2,111 Chairperson of the Boards
    I'm glad that Wasp is the 4* reward because I haven't champed her yet and she's about to leave the pool.  I bet other people are in the same boat.