Answers To The 8 Questions About Vaulting (5/2/17)

Steellatch

Pylgrim said:

So you need to let the hopes of randomly progressing your old characters go. It was a hollow hope that greatly depended on RNG, anyway. Instead, accept that now you can max-cover the new 4*s much, much more quickly (in 120 average pulls as opposed to 400 in the previous scenario) which will make you more competitive, which in turn may help you more easily place and advance in events that reward the old 4*s you want in a more controlled and assured manner than simply RNG.

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Im not looking at it wrong. Im looking at it exactly how I and many others play the game. Its not RNG when your "counting the cards'.  Placing t5 in pve is competitive enough for me. 

*Removed personal attack - Ducky

Edit: There was no personal attack. 

Pants1000

Thanks for the explanations.  None of them surprise me, but it's nice to see assumptions confirmed.

I get the overall problem and "solution", although it is frustrating to feel like I should hoard tokens because I have so many max covered latest 4's but no ISO to champ them.  That should go away in about 2 months when I manage to champ them all.

I am looking forward to seeing additional ways to get vaulted 4's, whether it's new/changed tokens, CL9, or whatever else you come up with.

sinnerjfl

#8 - If enough people voice concern, would you be willing to end vaulting?

Yes. We've made it very clear that we're interested in player feedback, and willing to adjust accordingly. Player feedback has guided our characters updates to focus on increasing 4-star power, rather than decreasing overpowered 4-star characters. This was fantastic for both sides; we saw increased use of different characters, and players were happier that we didn't have to change the 4-star characters they loved.

We think it’s very important to note that just ending vaulting is not a full solution; doing so will restore the pack dilution problem outlined in #1 above which threatens the long-term health of the game. We hope you understand that solving for all of these issues is complex and takes time, and we continue to appreciate hearing from players to hear your specific concerns with changes we make to the game.

The forum has already shared most of its feedback regarding vaulting... you are welcome to read this 50+ page thread located here http://forums.d3go.com/discussion/60255/new-feature-bonus-heroes-updated-3-1-17/p1

(TLDR; we dont really like the vaulting)

smkspy

I could get behind vaulting more if bonus heroes weren't such a joke mechanic when you're on the wrong side of rng. 

But yeah, vaulting probably has been a success for pushing a lot of players up to levels of mmr that they're probably not ready for yet. It's pretty much made 4 stars a mini 5 star tier, but we'll see. 

TeamStewie

[quote]#6 - With older characters being more of a rarity, how are newcomers supposed to compete for these characters without having these essential characters in the first place?

New players haven't been able to compete because they've been making extremely slow progress on their rosters. We see players with lots of Champion'd 3-stars, but no usable 4-stars. They have plenty of 4-star covers, but no 4-star is above 5 covers, and so they are completely locked out of the 4-star transition. With this change, those players should have a much shorter on-ramp to the 4-star game and therefore to competing for rewards at that level.

[/quote]

This is completely missing the point. The point is, new players have no chance of getting a possible essential character for a PVE which will totally hose their placement for an event. It doesn't matter if I have all 12 of the latest 4 stars champed if the required 4* for the event is a vaulted character I've had no chance to pull. 

BatteryHorse

Brigby said:

#3 - What is in place for those who want to level evenly?

We think players who want to level more evenly will still have a vastly improved experience. You’ll find that token pulls reward more covers to the latest characters, so instead of leveling forty characters that have 1-5 covers, you'll be leveling twelve characters plus Bonus Heroes that have 10+ covers.

We understand that players have different play styles, and we want to support as many as we can. More fundamentally, we want players to always feel a sense of progress, especially week to week. By focusing on a narrower band of characters, players can still choose to level a lot of characters evenly, but will see more noticeable gains across those characters.

I still feel like this reasoning is flawed.  I know it's been talked about to death, but while the developers insist they implemented this change for the benefit of players they subsequently removed a lot of the choice about how we play and how we build our rosters.  

I think they genuinely feel that if they had a vault with the latest 12 and a vault with the classic 30+ that people would just continue to collect the classics and ignore the new characters, and I think that's at the heart of the change.  They're tired of people complaining that they have a 1/1/3 set of covers for whatever new character is out, that it'll take a year to cover them, and everyone goes right back to using their favorite handful of characters, so they just dramatically reduce those choices.

And to an extent I understand the motivation.  They work hard on these releases, they have a model where they have to release a new character every couple of weeks, and the game isn't going to flourish if every new character is met with a yawn.  But at the same time removing that much choice from the player, I think, betrays a stunning lack of faith in their new products.  

If vaulting really is to the player's benefit they should see people taking advantage of it in a fair system.  As an example, two vaults, one with the new 12 and the other with the remainder.  If vaulting really does help the player, the market would drive most players to the new vault to exploit the efficiency of the limited range of covers. 

That problem could also be mitigated by making the bonus hero drop rates better, or implementing streak-breakers.  For most players bonus 4*s drop so rarely that they're a nice surprise but not an actual strategy for building your roster.  There is no reason to create such scarcity in covers, especially since ISO rates are effectively limited (there's only so much ISO you can reasonably earn per day, and the conversion for purchases is terrible).  

They restricted choice unnecessarily, and I think it's because if they gave you an actual choice you wouldn't make the one they want you to.

zodiac339

I find that archiving characters has been very helpful for me. I'm hitting day 1032 and have a fairly developed roster of legendary Champions, so I don't know how well that applies to other people, but looking at my roster since archiving, I have:
1. Champed Peggy Carter before she left the store, along with Wasp, Spider Woman, Medusa, and Carol Danvers, all without whaling for ISO or HP.
2. Fully covered Luke Cage, Gwenpool, Agent Venom, and Agent Coulson, and brought Blade, Riri, and Mordo to 12 covers (DP vs MPQ may have Riri beat the 4 fully covered to the Champion punch).

Naturally, the problem is a matter of ISO. With 4 fully covered in the latest 12, and another 4 (Ant Man, Venom, Quake, and Devil Dinosaur) sitting at 13 as well, pulls from the Legendary store are at a halt in order to avoid too many lost covers. At least now, though, I can hold back until those highly covered characters are Champed or archived, then pull again, knowing there's little risk of wasted covers.

And Agent Venom can sit un-Champed while everyone else passes by. He can get the scraps when everyone else is done.

carrion_pigeons

The real problem with the design you've proposed is that, for all that it makes it easier to champ certain 4*s, it essentially sets players back by a huge amount if they aren't already set up to use a 4* character they were building.  My 11-cover Invisible Woman and 9-cover Nova were the product of a substantial amount of work, and now that work is undone.  I will never have those characters as a competitive part of my roster, Bonus Heroes or not.

Don't get me wrong, I *like* vaulting.  I think it's an improved design over what we had before.  But the reason for the outcry has nothing to do with playstyles or fixing dilution.  It has to do with a large amount of effort that's gone into the game which is now wasted.  What people really want is a way to makes the progress they had on those older characters mean something again.

broll

I've said it over and over again, and I'll say it here again.  Just make a CP vault that has the 'vaulted' characters.  If you care about letting people have a choice in their play style then GIVE US A CHOICE.  COME ON!  I mean they are called latest and classic.  You had it already there in the title.  If you think more than 12 is too diluted, make a 3rd, or even a 4th.  Let people pull from the group of characters they want, not the ones YOU want.

I appreciate the spirit of what you were trying to do and you got it 70% right with Bonus Heroes and latest 12, you just messed up taking the old ones completely out.  Put them back and you've solved it.  Anything short of that WILL NOT CUT IT.

**Removed Profanity - Ducky

amusingfoo1

I still need to give some thought to individual answers, but wanted to say, now, thanks for writing this.  This is the kind of feedback we really want.  Much appreciated.

Ducky

I think the problem with the way the forum sees vaulting versus how the devs see it is a matter of perspective.

The devs target audience for vaulting makes up a very small percentage of the forums, I think, as we mostly have developed rosters and vaulting wasn't made to directly benefit that demographic. Vaulting was made to benefit the very, very large portion of the player base that doesn't frequent the forums, that doesn't sniff the t100.

I think this is why there has been such an impasse on the subject between the two sides. We want to be able to continue to grow are nice and shinies while the devs want to give the vast majority of the player base a chance to even get a couple nice and shinies, which is why Dave mentioned that dilution in packs is bad for the longevity of the game.

Do I know of a way to make vaulting more palatable to the forumites? Nope, lol. But I don't think it is by basically repackaging dilution into a smaller form in more subsets of tokens. My hope is that the vintage heroics are just a stopgap solution while they work on something more dynamic to help alleviate the forum's concerns regarding vaulting. Only time will tell, though, and I hope in the end it all works out.

smkspy

@zodiac339


I'm pretty much where you're at in terms of character levels since vaulting. 5 of the latest champed and rest at 11-13 covers. Only Danny is at 6 right.

That's amazing progression in just two months. Iso crunch is so bad with all the recent champing that I've been forcing into hoarding, something I never did before.

Now I've got all around blocked champ progression until the token pool opens up more.

Pylgrim

carrion pigeons said:

The real problem with the design you've proposed is that, for all that it makes it easier to champ certain 4*s, it essentially sets players back by a huge amount if they aren't already set up to use a 4* character they were building.  My 11-cover Invisible Woman and 9-cover Nova were the product of a substantial amount of work, and now that work is undone.  I will never have those characters as a competitive part of my roster, Bonus Heroes or not.

If you make IW your 4* BH, you can expect to get her fully covered in less than 40 pulls. If there was no vaulting/BHs, it would be somewhere in the vicinity of 90 pulls.

DyingLegend

Simple solution is offering a legendary pack that offers a certain amount of rotating old 4* characters or changing the crash of titans to every 3 days or making the crash if titans give you a cover of your choice for the character that is being used in the event; IE win with cyclops classic get your pick of one of his colors.

 Also the main issue I have with vaulting is I cant earn the newest 12 fast enough before they get vaulted. Just got Wasp covered 3-3-3 and she is next to be vaulted. So I will have another character dead in water because they will be removed from the pack and the bonus hero draw rates are awful. 

It's nice to have this communication, I feel it's been long overdue. 

Tintaiwan

#8 - If enough people voice concern, would you be willing to end vaulting?

Yes. We've made it very clear that we're interested in player feedback, and willing to adjust accordingly. Player feedback has guided our characters updates to focus on increasing 4-star power, rather than decreasing overpowered 4-star characters. This was fantastic for both sides; we saw increased use of different characters, and players were happier that we didn't have to change the 4-star characters they loved.

We think it’s very important to note that just ending vaulting is not a full solution; doing so will restore the pack dilution problem outlined in #1 above which threatens the long-term health of the game. We hope you understand that solving for all of these issues is complex and takes time, and we continue to appreciate hearing from players to hear your specific concerns with changes we make to the game.

How many people?   
Count me as one.  
If vaulting was supposed to fix four star progression that is a joke.  Bonus hero maybe, but vaulting only changes the pool.  We maybe able to progress to champion with new characters, but will stall out again once they are vaulted. 

sinnerjfl

Pylgrim said:

If you make IW your 4* BH, you can expect to get her fully covered in less than 40 pulls. If there was no vaulting/BHs, it would be somewhere in the vicinity of 90 pulls.

Or you could pull zero bonus heroes as well because the % is so low.

Pylgrim

sinnerjfl said:

Pylgrim said:

If you make IW your 4* BH, you can expect to get her fully covered in less than 40 pulls. If there was no vaulting/BHs, it would be somewhere in the vicinity of 90 pulls.

Or you could pull zero bonus heroes as well because the % is so low.

5% is one in 20. Without vaulting, there would be 46 4*s in the pool, so the chances to get that particular character would be 1 in 46. Which one is lower?

mpqr7

It's great to learn the insights from the devs.

I definitely don't see Vintage Heroics as the solution. You spend lots and lots of HP for a tiny chance that you might get a vaulted 4*? That's a massive amount of dependence on RNG, a huge step backward.

Dragon_Nexus

Brigby said:

#6 - With older characters being more of a rarity, how are newcomers supposed to compete for these characters without having these essential characters in the first place?

New players haven't been able to compete because they've been making extremely slow progress on their rosters. We see players with lots of Champion'd 3-stars, but no usable 4-stars. They have plenty of 4-star covers, but no 4-star is above 5 covers, and so they are completely locked out of the 4-star transition. With this change, those players should have a much shorter on-ramp to the 4-star game and therefore to competing for rewards at that level.

Hope you don't mind me pointing out the statement below the question does not really answer the question.

It outlines the existing problem, but not a solution to that problem outside of "Don't get the old ones, just focus on the new ones."

Which is fine and all until there's a week with majority older 4*s. Then they *can't* compete. Or the only 4*s they have aren't boosted, making them an easy target. There are plenty of really good vaulted 4*s like Red Hulk, Jean Grey, Cyclops, Hulkbuster, Xpool, Thor and so on that players have no access to. Hell, I busted my buns to get TA Hulk up to champ status because I kept drawing covers for him...and then never drew a cover again, and likely won't for a long time.

I fully understand the notion of wanting to decrease pack dilusion, and it was definitely a problem, but you've done a half fix. You've helped people get newer characters faster but you've put nothing in place for those who *wanted* some of the older characters.

In an example, say there's someone else out there as obsessed with Lady Thor as I am. Her comic run has been really good this last year and she is a damn good character in the game still. A little lower tier than she was before some really good new characters came out, but still very handy when boosted. You can't really get her now, and if that was a draw to the game for someone, they're more likely to give up knowing they can't get a character they really like.

Stax the Foyer

Brigby said:

#6 - With older characters being more of a rarity, how are newcomers supposed to compete for these characters without having these essential characters in the first place?

New players haven't been able to compete because they've been making extremely slow progress on their rosters. We see players with lots of Champion'd 3-stars, but no usable 4-stars. They have plenty of 4-star covers, but no 4-star is above 5 covers, and so they are completely locked out of the 4-star transition. With this change, those players should have a much shorter on-ramp to the 4-star game and therefore to competing for rewards at that level.

 

First, this is greatly appreciated.

But I'll respectfully note that there are eight questions, and only seven answers.  The above answer is at best a related comment, not in any way an answer to the question (which presumably, is "you're not supposed to").

Something more needs to be done to make up for the unavailability of vaulted 4* covers.  A substantial increase to BH might be a good start, since that allows people who want vaulted characters to chase those, but gives people other options.

Another option worth considering, which is more in the vein of consolation rather than addressing the issue, would be to significantly reduce the ISO costs for leveling a vaulted 4* character.  Given that they're never going to be a substantial source of champion rewards anymore, making them cost half as much to level seems about right.  Then you can choose to champ an older character without it being as much of a waste of ISO.