Has anyone done the math?

DaveR4470
DaveR4470 Posts: 931 Critical Contributor
in MPQ General Discussion
In all the agita over Vaulting and such, I haven't seen anyone actually quantify the change vaulting brings.  Because vaulted characters (other than 2*s, but I don't think any 2*s will be vaulted) are not IMPOSSIBLE to get; the change is really that they now are only available by starring them and getting them as bonus covers.  Since Demi actually gave us data on the heroic token, it should be possible (and fairly straightforward) to determine the odds of obtaining a cover from any given 4*, or a specific cover, from a heroic token pre- and post-vaulting.  

I did some back-of-the-envelope math the other day and although I would not submit my results to any academic journal (it was reeealllly rough), it seemed that -- at least for heroics -- the trade-off was (a) about twice the chance of getting an unvaulted 4* character from a heroic in exchange for (b) a 50% reduction in the chance of getting a vaulted character.  (This reflects the fact that the odds of getting a favorited character cover is in your hands -- if you only favorite one specific character, you have a 100% chance of getting that character from a bonus, which means you have a 5% chance of getting one whenever you pull a 4*. And so forth.) In the long run, of course.  

That's just the heroic, of course.  The legendary token has a different calculus.  (Whereas the heroic gives 2*s, which have to be taken into account to get to the 5% overall pull rate, the legendary only gives covers eligible for bonuses, which means it should be a flat 5% chance to get a bonus.)  

I think this is important to calculate, because I think there's been a LOT of hyperbole over vaulting on this forum.  Reducing the chance of getting a certain cover from 8/1000 to 4/1000 is certainly statistically significant, but I wouldn't exactly call it "stalling my progress in the game".  You had a slim chance of getting that cover when it wasn't vaulted, now you also have a slim chance of getting it. It's just slimmer.  But to hear some people talk, it's more like "I was getting 4 4* Invisible Woman covers a week, and now I won't get any until Armageddon."  Well... no.  I think people don't realize that while they are pulling a good number of 4*s from tokens in a given time period, they are pulling very few specific character covers (or specific colors within that character).  And while the odds of a bonus token are not huge, they give you the opportunity to dictate the SPECIFIC character you receive, which I think actually improves your ability to develop a character.  

It would be nice to actually know the real impact of this, instead of wildly speculating about it.  Just my $.02.
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Comments

  • Pants1000
    Pants1000 Posts: 484 Mover and Shaker
    All of that math ignores 4's from progression, placement, vaults, daily rewards, and champ rewards.  

    It's tough to do the math on that because it varies a lot depending on play style.  A t10 player will get a lot of vaulted 4's from placement that a casual player won't.

    I would be interested to see some stats on different players experiences considering all of the sources.  I haven't kept track, but I would guess about 20% of the 4's I've got since vaulting was introduced have been vaulted 4's.  Slower for sure, but vaulted 4's are by no means impossible to get now.
  • MarkersMake
    MarkersMake Posts: 392 Mover and Shaker
    Welcome Death said:
    Sure thing.  If you pulled all legendaries in a non-vaulted system, you would need to pull about 719 legendaries to cover all 47 4* covers, assuming an even spread and color coverage (it would be higher of course because youd get dupes and runs on one character, but let's assume a perfect world for both systems). Your 5s (If you pulled all classics) would average around 390-405. You would  need 6248 pulls to get every 4* to 370.  At that point, if you pulled all classics, your 5s would be at level 522.  That's max champing all 4s.  


    Now, with a vaulting system, assuming you're only using LTs  and getting the vaulted 4s from those pulls, you would need to pull 10,705 tokens just to COVER the vaulted 4s.  Thats enough pulls to max champ every classic 5*, build dupes and get the dupes to level 483. Max champing the vaulted 4s would require 93,058 pulls. Thats enough pulls to max champ and flip every classic 5* 11 times(!) and have your last set at level 475.  

    These rates are ridiculous.  Sure, building a single 4* faster is a good thing, and if we played a game with no essential 4* / boosts / featured / whatever it would be a non-issue.  But the game is set-up in a way that you have to have all characters rostered in order to compete (even DDQ!)


    So, to answer your question.  Bonus heroes / vaulting made it about 2 times the rate to acquire one single classic 4*.  For the tier in general, the rate is about 6.7% of what it used to be.  In other words, you have to pull about 15 times the amount of tokens to get the same rate on the tier as before.  Bonus heroes = great idea!  Vaulting = ....maybe not so much.  If theyd kept the BH and did away with vaulting and/or gave better rates for BY specifically in the LT store, it would have been a fantastic system for fighting dilution.


    WD, can you re-run those numbers assuming a person doesn't want to cover every 4* character?

    I mean, there are about 5 that I can think of off the top of my head (Peggy, Teen Jean, Rulk, Iceman, Thoress) that would be great to have, some that would be nice, and a bunch that are very meh.

    I know the game rewards rostering every character (essentials, boosted list, crash, burrito, etc), but how does the math look if you just want 1 cover for all 4*s (to roster themq)  and only want to champ and/or max-champ 5 or maybe 10 of the vaulted ones. 

    Obviously, you're not my math lackey - I can take a closer  look later and post back if you don't have time, and/or don't want to. I just think that would be a more realistic look at how things would actually play out in the long term. 
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    MarkersMake said:

    WD, can you re-run those numbers assuming a person doesn't want to cover every 4* character?

    I mean, there are about 5 that I can think of off the top of my head (Peggy, Teen Jean, Rulk, Iceman, Thoress) that would be great to have, some that would be nice, and a bunch that are very meh.

    I know the game rewards rostering every character (essentials, boosted list, crash, burrito, etc), but how does the math look if you just want 1 cover for all 4*s (to roster themq)  and only want to champ and/or max-champ 5 or maybe 10 of the vaulted ones. 

    Obviously, you're not my math lackey - I can take a closer  look later and post back if you don't have time, and/or don't want to. I just think that would be a more realistic look at how things would actually play out in the long term. 
    Sure, if you limit the definition of "better" to mean "exactly what I would prefer," then of course the thing you prefer is "better."

    Drastically increasing the availability of 12 4*s at the cost of the other 30 4*s will obviously be an improvement for those people who only want to cover those 12.  

    But the game really does heavily incentivize a complete championed roster.  Not only are champion rewards very strong, but 4* boosting is just as strong.  It's hard to justify using even very strong 4*s like iceman and cyclops when they aren't boosted, not when they will have 1/2 the health and 1/2 the damage of boosted mid tier 4*s.  And scaling/mmr really locks players in to using their strongest characters in high end play, so having more characters at the highest level is a great way to save healthpacks (you can just swap to a new team, rather than needing to heal the same one all the time).

    Obviously everyone should play the game in whatever way makes them happy.  But if we are talking about what is best for the game, then my preference is to focus on more optimal play wherever possivble (since that is something that we can define objectively, unlike preferred playstyle which is inherently subjective). 


  • MarkersMake
    MarkersMake Posts: 392 Mover and Shaker
    edited April 2017
    Vhailorx said:
    MarkersMake said:

    WD, can you re-run those numbers assuming a person doesn't want to cover every 4* character?

    I mean, there are about 5 that I can think of off the top of my head (Peggy, Teen Jean, Rulk, Iceman, Thoress) that would be great to have, some that would be nice, and a bunch that are very meh.

    I know the game rewards rostering every character (essentials, boosted list, crash, burrito, etc), but how does the math look if you just want 1 cover for all 4*s (to roster themq)  and only want to champ and/or max-champ 5 or maybe 10 of the vaulted ones. 

    Obviously, you're not my math lackey - I can take a closer  look later and post back if you don't have time, and/or don't want to. I just think that would be a more realistic look at how things would actually play out in the long term. 
    Sure, if you limit the definition of "better" to mean "exactly what I would prefer," then of course the thing you prefer is "better."

    I... 

    Did I even use the word "better"? 

    I said "more realistic" because I think that approach would be a more rational thing to do if vaulting becomes a permanent thing. Nobody is going to try to max-champ everyone on their 4* roster. They don't even try to do that without vaulting (I mean, yeah, for champ rewards, but nobody wants to devote resources to max-champ Elektra, even after her fix). 

    For the record, I think vaulting, as implemented, is deeply flawed. An easy fix would be to just set a user toggle on your game profile to choose which 4* pool you want to pull from (latest / classics), and any tokens that give you 4*s will pull from that pool. That way, you can focus on what you want, when you want, and change directions easily at any time. 

    I just thought WD could give numbers that would more closely reflect how a reasonable person might behave. 
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    Maker's:

    I just meant to suggest that your definition was too narrow.  For the reasons stated i my post, i think the goal of a single cover for most 4*s is not especially reasonable (everyone's taste will vary, but this is certainly very sub optimal)
  • MarkersMake
    MarkersMake Posts: 392 Mover and Shaker
    I never claimed it was the only approach, just a more reasonable one than trying to max champ all 4*s.

    Feel free to state your interpretation of a more reasonable approach, though. 
  • Spiritclaw
    Spiritclaw Posts: 397 Mover and Shaker
    It seems to me that the more pressing problem is the dramatically increased odds of pulling a cover that you will need to purchase a new slot in order to keep.
  • Alsmir
    Alsmir Posts: 508 Critical Contributor
    I don't want one vaulted 4*, but more like 6-8.
  • nickaraxnos
    nickaraxnos Posts: 46 Just Dropped In
    I am not really good at math but lets try something easy. 
    Assume you are a new player. No 4* in your roster yet. And you want only 5 from the vaulted ones.
    With a flat 5% you need 20 pulls for one cover from your first char. 
    20×13=260 pulls to max cover your first out of five.
    260×5=1300 pulls. If you add to this at leadt 10% dupes its 1430 pulls.
    Meanwhile you be getting a lot of dupes from the latest 12 and you will always be on the chase of iso for those latest 12 unless you decide to hoard until you have enough isi for everything.
    But is this a fun way for a new player to play a game?
    Even if you manage to champ those 5 vaulted you will just then realise that this is simply not enough. There always be in the meanwhile 5 more peggys that it wil be vaulted at the point your hoard ended.

    Solution i think is simple. Make the game fun for everyone. 3 lts, one of them with the vaulted characters. At least 10% rates for bonus heroes. Less new 4* per year. More pve stories. New pvp formats. Less hp for buying covers or more iso. Less bugs, better communication with players.

    Simple things are the mostt difficult to achieve but as lao tse said, the bigger journey starts with a small step
  • Jexman
    Jexman Posts: 165 Tile Toppler
    Have the developers themselves explained to us what *they* thought vaulting would accomplish for their game?
  • Starfury
    Starfury Posts: 719 Critical Contributor
    Here's some additional math. This is a graph of the net Iso balance of a 4* champ => Iso rewards from every fourth champ level - 12500 initial investment - 1000 iso value of each cover


    Good luck getting any 4* to the point where they really start to pay back Iso.


  • JangoLore
    JangoLore Posts: 126 Tile Toppler
    Also subjectively, I have only received one 4* bonus hero, and ironically it was medusa, not a vaulted hero.  If I were in a position of needing to acquire covers from vaulted heroes, I think I would be more concerned, but as I have hit the hot ones (iceman, rulk, thoress, HB, star-lord, peggy, etc) I don't feel as much concern about getting vaulted heroes.  Gotta be tough for newer players ( Im 1184).
  • nigelregal
    nigelregal Posts: 184 Tile Toppler
    I have been tracking all my Legendary Token Pulls for 6 or more months now. Since the new vaulting I started a fresh track since previous data is no longer valid with new vaulting.

    Here is a screengrab of the 4* covers I have opened from tokens. I have 244 tokens opened since Vaulting. 

    http://imgur.com/a/j61us

  • broll
    broll Posts: 4,732 Chairperson of the Boards
    carrion pigeons said:
    The problem people have with vaulting varies according to their status.  Veterans with champed 4*s don't like vaulting because champ rewards for newly champed characters are less valuable than those with more levels.  Vaulting makes it harder to get characters deep into their champ levels, and this reduces the flow of resources to vets.

    People in the 4* transition don't like vaulting because they had a whole bunch of half-developed characters who are suddenly either wasted space or else extremely more long-term projects that can only rely on Bonus Heroes to get anywhere, one at a time.

    People without older characters at all don't like vaulting because they still have to compete against people who have them, and it feels like an unfair advantage they can never overcome, in terms of flexibility and utility.

    Also, everyone objects to the way vaulting causes more wasted pulls.  This is admittedly a short-term problem, but it's one people are having right now.

    Vaulting has clear long-term benefits: it creates a shifting metagame which gives the game more depth.  It lessens the burden on new players in some respects to advance.  It justifies the existence of Bonus Heroes, which probably would never have been implemented without it.  It came with an associated bump in total 4* acquisition.  All of that is nice.  But it's easy to see how a change that had immediate negative effects on every active player in the game would be unpopular.
    You were gonna get a like until that last paragraph.  There are no clear long-term benefits and those short-term benefits aren't going to suddenly go away.  A few of them will gradually fade, but that will take either vets quitting or a very long time to achieve.
  • carrion_pigeons
    carrion_pigeons Posts: 942 Critical Contributor
    broll said:
    You were gonna get a like until that last paragraph.  There are no clear long-term benefits and those short-term benefits aren't going to suddenly go away.  A few of them will gradually fade, but that will take either vets quitting or a very long time to achieve.
    Vets quit, and time passes, and that is what is called "long-term".

    I don't need likes to be right.  It's dumb to pretend like there were no design reasons for vaulting.  It might go away if it's unpopular enough, but that's no reason to be deliberately blind to reality.  Assuming it doesn't go away, people will get used to it, and new players will never question it.  Unlike many, many things in this game which are obviously bad design, that any new player can look at and say "wow, that's total ****," vaulting just isn't one of those things.
  • Fightmastermpq
    Fightmastermpq Posts: 995 Critical Contributor
    broll said:
    carrion pigeons said:
    The problem people have with vaulting varies according to their status.  Veterans with champed 4*s don't like vaulting because champ rewards for newly champed characters are less valuable than those with more levels.  Vaulting makes it harder to get characters deep into their champ levels, and this reduces the flow of resources to vets.

    People in the 4* transition don't like vaulting because they had a whole bunch of half-developed characters who are suddenly either wasted space or else extremely more long-term projects that can only rely on Bonus Heroes to get anywhere, one at a time.

    People without older characters at all don't like vaulting because they still have to compete against people who have them, and it feels like an unfair advantage they can never overcome, in terms of flexibility and utility.

    Also, everyone objects to the way vaulting causes more wasted pulls.  This is admittedly a short-term problem, but it's one people are having right now.

    Vaulting has clear long-term benefits: it creates a shifting metagame which gives the game more depth.  It lessens the burden on new players in some respects to advance.  It justifies the existence of Bonus Heroes, which probably would never have been implemented without it.  It came with an associated bump in total 4* acquisition.  All of that is nice.  But it's easy to see how a change that had immediate negative effects on every active player in the game would be unpopular.
    You were gonna get a like until that last paragraph.  There are no clear long-term benefits and those short-term benefits aren't going to suddenly go away.  A few of them will gradually fade, but that will take either vets quitting or a very long time to achieve.
    The first rule of Likes is you don't talk about Likes.

    How about the length of time it takes to get to a point where you have virtually no wasted 4* covers getting cut to 1/4 what it was before?  Is that not a benefit?  Feels like a benefit to me.

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