An Unintended Side Effect of Vaulting

OneLastGambit

I'm not debating vaulting.

Just thought I'd throw that out there from the start. Vaulting was done to supposedly let newer player become more competitive quicker. Nice idea and intent behind it is something I can appreciate. However there is a terrible unintended side effect, a rather ironic one too.

The recent nerf to OML was supposedly due to his high usage stats - keep this in mind.

Vaulting has meant that lots of newer (and older I guess) players can cover the current 12 far quicker. I've noticed during this current off season world mightiest pvp that the team variety is woefully low. Every single team contain at least 2 of the following 3 - peggy, wasp or carol. So by helping people cover the latest 12 you have pretty much ensured that in pvp all we are going to see is the latest 12 (or worse the 2 latest which are boosted for that event).

This absolutely sucks, it's not as if these teams are hard to beat, I win everytime. It's just dull. Very dull and the very reason why I had previously not wanted to jump to 5* and am now considering it since that tier now has more diversity and the lack of boosted characters means you *may* see different teams due to RNG acquisition. Right now when I climb high enough I see bolt, thanos, 5Cap, IM45, Goblin and even Banner a couple of times. This is starting to look more diverse than Peggy or Carol in every match.

DFiPL

Short term, that's an issue.

Medium to long term, I think we'll see diversity re-emerge as people champion more of the Token12 and characters cycle out and in.

And, of course, if they ever devise a reasonable solution for how people can get more reliable access to the Vaulted36, we may see those older characters re-emerge.

TheZeusBear

Agreed big time.. as someone new, the disparity in covers is pretty bad for me. My best vaulted 4* have 4 covers on them. ( IW, Antman, Nova, SL)
Current 12, 3 have 13 covers, 4 have 12, 3 and the rest aren't far beyond. Kind of forced to use them only for the foreseeable future. Every match past 575 in PvP is what you said, with the occasional 5* thrown in.

If I didn't have a decent team of 3*, I'd have gotten bored of no variation in my teams. 

Tl:Dr - can only use recent 12 for pvp/pve with 3* that have synergy

smkspy

I think it's also a case of some  people taking their toys out for a spin. It took two months to champ 5 of the Twelve, and where better to go experiment with teams than in pvp. I still relied on my vaulted champs, but now I have a much wider 4 star arsenal.

bluewolf

The boosted list for EM is very broad and includes many latest.  It is very similar to Shield Simulator i that regard; you will see these same teams there once you climb sufficiently.  I do not think this is  short-term; barring a nerf, combining Carol and Peggy with a number of others just makes too much sense.  Of course, Peggy is vaulted now, so those who don't have her are at an extreme disadvantage. I also note that I just champed Carol late last season and found teams with her very hard to beat with my legacy 4*s.

broll

DFiPL said:

Short term, that's an issue.

Medium to long term, I think we'll see diversity re-emerge as people champion more of the Token12 and characters cycle out and in.

And, of course, if they ever devise a reasonable solution for how people can get more reliable access to the Vaulted36, we may see those older characters re-emerge.

Agreed it's a short-term issue.  The longterm issue is that unless your 4*s were champed to a high level before the change, they're unlikely to grow past a certain range (that will vary by play habits).  I think we'll see new players with all their 4* being in the same range, probably 280-300, making that a very wide PvP range and not allowing for much/any growth of opponents for higher players.

GrimSkald

I'll point out that Carol synergizes very well with Wasp and Peggy, so it's not terribly surprising to see them out there.

Punisher5784

I said this when vaulting was first implemented: Everyone will use Peggy and Carol.. now it's happening. You can't blame the players, they're very strong characters and they were easier to obtain with vaulting (12). I could see some of the 12 get a slight nerf if players don't use newer characters that enter the 12. Why use a 270 when your older 12 is now 320 because you're pulling so many covers of the same character. 

I still think 12 is too small, either increase the latest characters to 15-20 or have a weekly number of 4*s added to the latest 12 for us to pull. This would alleviate alot of the problems and complaints.

Quebbster

Punisher5784 said:

I said this when vaulting was first implemented: Everyone will use Peggy and Carol.. now it's happening. You can't blame the players, they're very strong characters and they were easier to obtain with vaulting (12). I could see some of the 12 get a slight nerf if players don't use newer characters that enter the 12. Why use a 270 when your older 12 is now 320 because you're pulling so many covers of the same character. 

I still think 12 is too small, either increase the latest characters to 15-20 or have a weekly number of 4*s added to the latest 12 for us to pull. This would alleviate alot of the problems and complaints.

I certainly wouldn't complain if the boosted characters for the week were also available in the tokens.

It will also be interesting to see how long time it takes for Cloak and Dagger to start showing up in competitive PvP. I was quite impressed with the loaner in their PvP, so they definitely have potential...

Partyof5

Sounds like new players get a benefit of covering 4* quicker.  Won't that mess with their leveling (or whatever it's called)?  A new player with a champed WASP but no or few champed 3* will result in the 4* champ skewing their difficulty.  Maybe new players can just skip the 3* tier for the most part now?  

The hardcore players get the benefit of not having to get covers for the old 4* they champed long ago.  

Those of us who have played for a long time, but aren't whales or hardcore players got screwed with vaulting.  a roster full of 1-7 covered 4* that will rot for many months.  

Skrofa

A thought just hit me. 
Vaulting actually reminds me of the mtg card game. There is also a "vaulting" situation going on there where you've got cards rotating out of standard every year.
So you've got a few sets in the standard format and there are a few OP cards that you want to chase (earn or buy) to be competitive. But they are only relevant for a relatively short time and then you need to chase after the next big thing.

On the other hand...
You can still find packs and keep most of your cards relevant for longer in different formats like modern and vintage.

I don't know how clear this is for non magic players but this is the association i have made right now.

It really feels imperative that we are given a way to keep all our characters relevant aside from the BH and the horrible, HORRIBLE odds associated with that

Megdar

No, the analogy is the exact same, you can remove the "On the other hand" part. In mtg, you can't buy older pack, kind of, they are out of print, except for some store that will sell them overprice. And you mostly, except in rare occasion, never use them for vintage, legacy or modern. The power level of standard is way too low, so most of the card are irrelevant when they rotate out.

spiderpool

I noticed this too. Before vaulting in shield Sim I would see all sorts of combinations of 4* characters.   After vaulting every team I faced was some combination of wasp,  carol,  Medusa,  Peggy,  blade,  coulson. 

bbigler

Perhaps the only way out of the 4* Rat Race is to enter 5* Land?

BoyWonder1914

As someone who has yet to champ C4rol, this is highly annoying. She's one of those characters where the best counter for her......is her. The passive AP collection alone makes it dangerous every turn that she isn't stunned. Luckily I don't really need anything from Earth's Mightiest, but when I usually go above 575 anyway. 

Daredevil217

BoyWonder1914 said:

As someone who has yet to champ C4rol, this is highly annoying. She's one of those characters where the best counter for her......is her. The passive AP collection alone makes it dangerous every turn that she isn't stunned. Luckily I don't really need anything from Earth's Mightiest, but when I usually go above 575 anyway. 

I would love to see a new forum ranking of characters.  Wonder where Carol would rank compared to Peggy, Medusa, Rulk, and Iceman.

TetsujinOni

Daredevil217 said:

BoyWonder1914 said:

As someone who has yet to champ C4rol, this is highly annoying. She's one of those characters where the best counter for her......is her. The passive AP collection alone makes it dangerous every turn that she isn't stunned. Luckily I don't really need anything from Earth's Mightiest, but when I usually go above 575 anyway. 

I would love to see a new forum ranking of characters.  Wonder where Carol would rank compared to Peggy, Medusa, Rulk, and Iceman.

I believe that you've named the current top 5 4*s. Their ranking within that top 5 is debatable based on who else is boosted that week and whether you're talking PvE or 3* Essential/4*Release PvP or SHIELD Sim / other pick-3 PvP.

bbigler

Daredevil217 said:

BoyWonder1914 said:

As someone who has yet to champ C4rol, this is highly annoying. She's one of those characters where the best counter for her......is her. The passive AP collection alone makes it dangerous every turn that she isn't stunned. Luckily I don't really need anything from Earth's Mightiest, but when I usually go above 575 anyway. 

I would love to see a new forum ranking of characters.  Wonder where Carol would rank compared to Peggy, Medusa, Rulk, and Iceman.

Do you see a connection between Peggy, Carol, Medusa?  Their passive powers are the most annoying to deal with, hence people use them a lot in PVP to deter attackers.  Rhulk and Iceman are dangerous, but you can color deny them.  You can't do that with passive killers like the above.  That's why people love Bolt, his passive kills.

Daredevil217

Yeah, Medusa is my white whale, like Carol is for @BoyWonder1914.  I have Riri and Agent Venom cover-maxed but Medusa eludes me.

MarkersMake

OneLastGambit said:

Vaulting has meant that lots of newer (and older I guess) players can cover the current 12 far quicker. I've noticed during this current off season world mightiest pvp that the team variety is woefully low. Every single team contain at least 2 of the following 3 - peggy, wasp or carol. So by helping people cover the latest 12 you have pretty much ensured that in pvp all we are going to see is the latest 12 (or worse the 2 latest which are boosted for that event).

This absolutely sucks, it's not as if these teams are hard to beat, I win everytime. It's just dull. Very dull and the very reason why I had previously not wanted to jump to 5* and am now considering it since that tier now has more diversity and the lack of boosted characters means you *may* see different teams due to RNG acquisition. Right now when I climb high enough I see bolt, thanos, 5Cap, IM45, Goblin and even Banner a couple of times. This is starting to look more diverse than Peggy or Carol in every match.

That's not diversity - that's a lack of covers. People don't run 5 cap and goblin or banner(!) because they like them, they do it because they don't have a choice. 

People run their best characters at every tier. You'd see odd combos before because people couldn't get Rulk covered, so they would try their boosted Elektra because that's all they had. 

Besides that, several of the characters you mentioned  are, as others have said,  among the best in the game. Why wouldn't you run the best if you had them? I ran Carol/Medusa/Peggy because it makes characters like Rulk trivial. He takes too long before he becomes a threat. 

And for the record, *every* team is easy to beat, because the AI plays them stupidly. 

Vaulting has put more players on even footing, rather than having the RNG give the advantage of a fully covered high end character to some select few months or even years before others. This may be more boring, but at least it's a whole lot more fair. 

Punisher5784

Skrofa said:

A thought just hit me. 
Vaulting actually reminds me of the mtg card game. There is also a "vaulting" situation going on there where you've got cards rotating out of standard every year.
So you've got a few sets in the standard format and there are a few OP cards that you want to chase (earn or buy) to be competitive. But they are only relevant for a relatively short time and then you need to chase after the next big thing.

On the other hand...
You can still find packs and keep most of your cards relevant for longer in different formats like modern and vintage.

I don't know how clear this is for non magic players but this is the association i have made right now.

It really feels imperative that we are given a way to keep all our characters relevant aside from the BH and the horrible, HORRIBLE odds associated with that

I did not think about this. The devs used to frequently state when the game was first released that they were inspired by Magic. Alot of the game's mechanics are from Magic and you just nailed vaulting.