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

Vhailorx

Thanks to Mr. Guskin and Brigby for posting this information.  This is definitely the kind of communication that I have wanted to see from demi for quite some time.  So no matter what else I say, I want to clearly state that I very much appreciate the effort made to communicate directly with players and offer some rationale behind recent changes

In response to the specific statements themselves:

prologue:  Definitions are really important for this discussion.  The recent token changes basically encompass three different elements: (i) limiting the 4*s available in legendary, heroic, and event tokens to the most recent 12 4*s, which we can call the Current 12; (ii) introducing the bonus heroes system that gives players a 5% increase in total covers drops, targeted at the players' discretion; and (iii) restricting access to all 4*s other than the current 12, the vintage 4*s, leaving bonus cover drops, event rewards, champ rewards, event vaults, and daily resupply covers as the only means.  Vaulting has been used by players to mean some or all of these changes.  for purposes of this post, I will use the term "vaulting" only with regard to (iii), the restriction of access to vintage 4*s. 

(1)  Token dilution is a significant problem for players.  Adjusting token drop rates for the current 12 4*s has improved the token dilution problem for current 4*s.  Though I suspect that it stills takes many months for most players to cover new releases, and I am sure that reasonable minds can disagree as to the "right" amount of time necessary to cover a new 4*.  Certainly something had to be done about dilution in LTs and heroic tokens as the 4* pool grew towards 50. 

(2) I don't find this answer comprehensive.  Yes, there are clearly SOME benefits for players focusing on new characters faster.  But leveling a 4* to 270 is no longer an easy path to competitive success in the game.  There are many pre-existing systems in the game that heavily favor deep rosters of max-level characters (e.g., weekly boosting, champ'ing, essential nodes, featured 3*s).  And none of those systems have been changed.  Forcing players to focus on a smaller subset of characters helps in some ways, but may not result in the clear and unequivocally improved player experience suggested by demi's answer here. 

(3) I don't find this statement very coherent.  The stated question is "what about players who want to level evenly?"  But the answer suggests that it's better to level 12 characters quickly than 40 characters slowly.  That's the very opposite of "leveling evenly"!  The only accurate answer to this question is "there is currently no way for a player to level all 4* characters evenly in MPQ."  That statement might be good or bad (as argued ad nauseum on the forums and in this very post!), but it would at least be a direct answer to the question at hand. 

(4) This answer is mostly just a restatement of (1) with an acknowledgement that vaulting was a failure last time.  Yes, bonus heroes, and other means of collecting 4* covers allow some progress on vaulted 4*s, but the progress is extremely slow unless a players spends very heavily on event vaults or direct cover buys.  And of course the 5% bonus heroes drop rate is miniscule if considered relative to all 30+ vaulted 4*s.  So the original problems with vaulting do still exist, if on a potentially smaller scale (see below).

(5) As eloquently stated earlier in this thread, the problem for players that have reached the 4* tier isn't getting enough characters maxed to spend their iso.  It's getting enough iso to spend on their multiple characters languishing fully covered at low levels.  And in any event, it doesn't seem especially important to me at this stage to consider the intent of the changes, at least not until first considered the actual effects of the changes.  And there are definitely some circumstances under which players are much better served by hoarding under the new system.  If, for example, a player cares only about 4*s and is not chasing any particular 4* character, then players are strong incentivized to hoard tokens and CP until they have enough iso to champ a new 4* before opening any tokens.  And if players do not like or want a particular 4* character, then they are heavily incentivized to hoard for as much as 8 months until that character cycles out of the Current 12. 

(6) This is another answer that doesn't really address the stated question.  The answer treats acquiring some level 270+ 4*s as the end game; as if reaching that state will equate to competition (and for clarity, competitive here should be defined as reliable top 100 finishes, with some opportunity for an occasional top 20 or better finish).  But there are several problems with this assumption.  First, a 270 4* will not make anyone competitive in a pve event if they don't also have all 3 essential characters.  Nor will a few 270s guarantee anyone 800+ points in PVP unless those characters happen to be boosted and/or the player really understands the PVP system. 

(7) This is a pretty good answer.  low vintage 4* acquisition rates does hurt the value of the champion system and really does need to be addressed.  I look forward to more dev action on this issue.  And vintage heroics are not a sufficient solution!  (Also, why does access to vaulted characters have to be "limited"?  That use of languagr sounds a lot like artificial barriers are being errected; which in turn leads players to speculate about financial motives, which leads to anger.  And as we all know from yoda, that leads first to hate and then to suffering.)

(8) This is the right thing to say, and demi has occasionally proven sensitive to prolonged player criticism (though I would encourage Demi to consider the recent OML nerf after considering Mr. Guskin's statement about player feedback re: 4* character updates and the results.  Even if you don't restore his healing all the way, at least fix his red self damage and give him back strong black strikes.)

Summary:

I think an awful lot of the problems with the vaulting/token pool problems can be remedied in a way that is acceptable to both demi and players.  adding more CP-purchasable tokens for vintage 4*s is the obvious solution, as it would give players another path to shape their rosters suit their tastes, and it may also force players to make some challenging resource allocation choices (do I but LTs for 25cp chasing a cool new 5*, or do I buy Vintage Tokens for 18cp each to build out by vintage 4* bench?)

I also think that one of the biggest problems with the reintroduction of vaulting is that is severely undercuts many months of investment by both players and the dev team in other, older systems that rewarded players for taking a patient, broad approach to leveling.  In a vaccum, the vaulting/bonus/token changes may be acceptable, but when thrown on top of a very entrenched system that incentivized completely different behaviour, there will inevitably be whiplash.  Pretty much player likes bonus heroes (and wishes it were 10% or higher!), and most players see the benefits of smaller pools of characters in tokens.  It really is just the vaulting portion of the changes that causes problems. 

Finally, I still haven't heard a good explanation for NOT doing the obvious solution of creating vintage tokens with just vintage 4*s for 12-20CP each.  And when/if those vintage tokens are too diluted, there is no reason that demi can't further split up the tokens into Vintage 2015 and Vintage 2016 Tokens.  There has to be some middle ground between the efficient roster progress that players want and the glacial roster progress that keeps us grinding and makes demi/d3 money.  And demi has to have tons of data about player 4* acquisition rates from LTs with various different 4* pool sizes between September 2015 and September 2016 when the 4* pool grew from about 15 to about 40.  find the compromise pool size and lock tokens down at that size.

mega ghost

I said this when they first announced vaulting, and plenty of others have expressed the same, even in his thread: addressing dilution issues is welcome. What is not welcome is vaulting most of the characters many of us have spent a year or two trying to build up without any reliable way to access their covers from here on out.

The fix is very simple: make multiple stores. 25 CP can get you the latest 5* characters and latest 12 4* characters. 20 CP can get you all the rest, the latest excluded. Offer multiple Heroic token stores as well: one offers one set of 3* characters, the other offers the remainder, and we get to pick which to spend our tokens on.

Want to make dilution even more of a non-issue? Add even more stores, splitting up the character pools even further. The solution to dilution isn't to sever us from 75% of the characters and all of the time and effort we've put into them, it's to give us more ways to access them and their development.

jgomes32

A few things 

• With 50+ (60?) 4* you have no excuse to make those latest 12 as pve rewards. Change Pve rewards to vaulted only.
• Add a Vintage token for PvE progression and interceptions. Change to 4 only (while at it make Elite 3 only).
• Make a 5* only token.
• More iso.

Should new players be focusing on a smaller pool of heroes now? (also #6)
Well maybe, but they should have that choice. If you're gonna make them choose this system requires a huge change. Right now they are kind of forced to focus on latest.

Is this change designed to encourage hoarding?
In short yes. Last week i went on a pull rampage (300cp approx, 20LT). Pulls could have been much worse, i got lucky. Already up to 500cp. But i'm finishing Nova > Riri > maybe hulkbuster with pvp progression cover if there's time. With a 40k iso average per day i cannot pull anything for maybe 2 weeks, by that time you'll be rewarding Mordo as Pve rewards and he's already fully covered thanks to vaulting. Add another 10 days of hoard... This shows to me once again that the major issue of the game is iso. There's just not enough available to finish everything in time. D3 keeps finding "new ways to make us cover characters faster" (vaulting, 7 days progression, champ, BH and vintage to some extent, etc) in addition to normal progression/reward/tokens/tacos but nothing in regards to iso. It doesn't matter if i have every character fully covered but non-champed and wasting covers. So yes, hoard is inevitable. 

Daiches

Dave Guskin worked for WotC before. He probably knows more about mtg design and development philosophy than they have figured out about this game.

revskip

I just want to throw out there that not everyone is dissatisfied with the vaulting system and bonus heroes.  I for one like it, it has changed which characters I champ to an extent but has allowed me make serious progress with covers for the newer characters.  

Prior to vaulting I would never be able to finish a newer character in less than 9 months without super-competitive and borderline unhealthy play in PVE and massive HP expenditures on shields when I dipped my toe into the PVP pool for the cover at 900.  I generally get top 100 in new releases and am in a competitive PVE alliance so usually end up with 2-3 covers in the initial PVE and 1 more in the next event.  With the vaulting change I have been able to get everyone but Coulson (12 covers) and 4Fist (6 covers) to max covers and have been able to champ 5 of the non-vaulted characters in just over two months.  That kind of quick progress is great.  

Bonus heroes has also helped my roster greatly, getting my Nova in position to champ after terrible luck with RNG.  Nova was the first 4* I rostered, way back when noob brackets were still a thing I managed a top 5 finish and had all three covers in his first event.  I then went about 400 days with only an additional 4 covers.  Bonus heroes plus the boss event that just passed allowed me to finally champ one of my favorite newer comic book characters.  It also helped me get my Iceman to max covers, he had also suffered from poor RNG in the old system.  I've drawn bonus heroes at slightly less than 5% (exactly 4.6%) but that has been plenty to help my older characters get to the point where putting ISO into them isn't a total waste.  

My one real complaint with vaulting is that older characters really just don't have enough avenues to be earned.  It was nice to read that you are aware of that complaint and that it is being looked at.  

Ayasugi-san

Not everyone was dissatisfied with the old system of an increasingly diluted pool that nevertheless included all non-limited characters, but the devs saw enough complaints that they felt they had to address it. It shouldn't have to take universal complaints for vaulting to be fixed, and "but some people are okay with it" is not a good reason to not address it.

killerkoala

ok here my 2 cents again

1) colorless covers -  should done before any changes to tokens nothing hurts more than 6th+ color cover sold
2) 5* should never expire: they are already impossible to get unless ur whaling it
3) more iso gaining: Double iso or make no prize lower than 250 iso
4) Double CP progression for 7 day event: we are getting prizes for 1 event instead of 2 (3 and 4 day event)
5) A true 3*/4* token - what elite tokens should have been
6) Legendary Vaults:
a) Latest - same - latest [3 (5*) + 12 (4*)]
b) Classic - same - non latest 3 (5*) + latest 12 (4*)
c1) Vintage - New -  non latest 3 (5*) + non latest 12 (4*)
c2) Vintage - New - Let us choose which 3 (5*) and 12 (4*) - I like this option most
7) rotate 3* every season

Lord_Mephisto

Maybe this is crazy and I don't know the feasibility of these ideas, but, if the real intention is reducing hoarding and increasing the chance of maximizing characters, it could work...

The first would be creating a "wildcard cover" that could be used to redeem any cover for any character, even the newest.

The second would be removing the colors from the drawn covers. We would receive a cover for a character that could upgrade any power for that specific character.

Gmax101

Ayasugi-san said:

Not everyone was dissatisfied with the old system of an increasingly diluted pool that nevertheless included all non-limited characters, but the devs saw enough complaints that they felt they had to address it. It shouldn't have to take universal complaints for vaulting to be fixed, and "but some people are okay with it" is not a good reason to not address it.

Universal... nope.

Heavy majority of forumites... yeah I'll agree to that.

But it is well known that the number of forumites is a low % of the players in the game.

You only have to look at the all the people talking about Top 100 placing in events... well, that's just 10% of the players in the event, within a specific CL bracket.

It is no shock that a lot of the dedicated players on the forum were against Vaulting, but there were some in favour. If for no other reason than they recognised the risks to the long term game they like to play.

Some were even in a position where vaulting helped them do exactly what Vaulting and Bonus Heroes were designed to do, make it easier to get the newer characters serviceable and make it easier to get the specific older characters they like.

They didn't do Vaulting because a few people complained about dilution... they did vaulting because dilution obviously a problem that was just going to get worse.

Up here, in the lofty heights of 4* and 5* land, we often forgot that MOST players are playing with 2* & 3* and the odd 4* and this most definitely has let them get a functional 4* faster.

The essentials argument is one. But there are newer 4* in the boosted rotation, and one or two decent covered boosted 4* can make it possible to compete in PVE in SCL 6/7 even with out the 4* essential... and SCL 7 you will earn it.

Nick441234

I just cant understand how this is so difficult. Make Vintage Heroes available all the time and add tokens to progression in all PVE and PVP. Job done. 

I've fixed the problem in two sentences. 

DFiPL

First, thanks for taking the time to address the community's concerns. I don't want to come across as nitpicking here, but there are one or two things with each point that need addressing.

Brigby said:

#1 - Why the change?

For some time, Marvel Puzzle Quest has lived with a problem we call pack dilution. Pack dilution is the fact that since comic packs contain ALL characters ever released, each new character release “dilutes” the chance of drawing a given character of that rarity. When there were few 4-stars, each had a significant chance of being the 4-star you pulled when you received that rarity. Once there’s a large number of 4-stars in the offer, the chance of drawing any particular one is very small - and it continued to decrease with each new release.

One of the complaints we've been very sensitive to is that players that roster a new character are just spending HP on a roster slot for an unusable character that they are carrying around indefinitely. By reducing the number of characters in packs, we've more than doubled your chance of getting multiple covers for a single character, meaning we’ve halved the time it takes to make progress on the latest characters.

Each new character release "dilutes" the pool, that's true; on the other hand, archiving 75% of the pool to address that is akin to performing an amputation when somebody has a cut on their arm. Yes, it removes the injury, but it's a pretty extreme way of doing it. There are other approaches which might have been more effective; many of those have been proffered in the weeks since this change.

#2 - Should new players be focusing on a smaller pool of heroes now?

Yes, and there's a huge benefit in focusing on fewer characters at once. We believe that as players progress now, they’ll make faster progress on 3-star and 4-star Heroes. This should make you more competitive in events faster, earning you better event rewards as you climb SCLs. You'll also be able to make choices about who to favorite as a Bonus Hero, so you can make direct progress on characters that enhance your roster, and not entirely random progress, distributed between lots of characters without enough covers to be viable in play.

With fewer characters in the pool, a given player is more likely to max cover a 4* in less than a year. I will absolutely concede that point.

On the other hand? Play styles differ. I'm a pretty regular player - I go for max progression in every event I can reach it, and I'll even periodically make the effort for T50 or T100, particularly for new releases. That probably puts me on the 'above average' part of the bell curve. I have a friend who's been playing for nearly two years, but for various reasons, is much more casual. He might play to the 4* cover progression. He plays DDQ. He almost certainly doesn't play to max progression (for a litany of reasons I won't get into here). That limits his CP intake, which in turn is going to limit his progression on this smaller pool.

It was going to take him a while to reach 13 covers for a 4* under the old system with that level of play, but he'd have gotten there eventually. He's not going to be reaching 13 covers for any of the dozen 4* available at any given time under the current system.

My girlfriend is early days in the game (at least compared to me), but when she was asking for roster advice regarding 4*, I was able to tell her "roster the ones you get resupply covers of, because that's like free progress toward those characters." That advice is now obsolete; she's not going to complete Nick Fury without a LOT of bonus heroes, and she's not yet into even SCL7, so progression 4* are beyond her. So what vaulting does is creates an urgency - she really wants 4* Groot, for example - that she can't necessarily satisfy. Six months from now, Groot has come and gone, and if the system remains as it is, her chance to get him will have passed her by because his debut came at a time when she wasn't quite "ready" to engage with those mechanics.

What I'm trying to convey is that this change may benefit players who are trying to become competitive at higher tiers, but in so doing, it's leaving others behind.

I'm reasonably okay - my 4* are, for the most part, well-covered enough to be useful, and I have Wasp, Spider-Woman, and 4* Luke Cage either championed, or capable of so doing. I have enough roster spots to keep ahead of the release schedule, and that means that between that and my play style, I'll be able to cover new characters much faster than I've ever before done. But remember what I said earlier about my play being above average'? That still applies. I can recognize how the system benefits me and still be cognizant of how it leaves people who aren't on my level behind.

#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 think this misses the boat a little bit. The difference between how people level 3* and how they level 4* is one of scale; 3* are more readily available thanks to DDQ, so it goes faster, but it's still roughly the same. Nobody, or close enough to nobody as makes no difference, was pulling one character at a time so that they had 30 1-cover 4* on the roster. They had them in fits and starts. Maybe their XFW had 5 covers because they got the three resupply covers and only two from other sources, but they had really good luck with Invisible Woman and she had ten covers. To that extent, "leveling evenly" wasn't what folks were concerned about. They were concerned about the fact that people who spent money on a silly level were able to cover new characters significantly more quickly than they could ever hope to, even if they themselves were spenders. So, yes, now those people will be able to narrow the focus to a dozen characters, but the nature of "where do you start?" means that there's a treadmill effect. Maybe their best-covered 4* of the last dozen or so was Peggy Carter but whoops she's gone and now they're starting over with the 12 in the pack; add to that, every month 1-2 of those is going to leave and get replaced. If you aren't in that "above average" tier, Bonus Heroes alone isn't going to help you finish a character you might have gotten excited about, and champion rewards aren't a reliable avenue any longer either because some of the characters who feed the character that just got vaulted are, themselves, vaulted.

#4 - If vaulting didn’t work in the past, why bring it back?

Although vaulting isn’t without flaws, we still believe it is an important component of an effective solution to the pack dilution problem above. The single largest complaint we received last time was that players who were a few covers away from a max'd character couldn't make any progress until the character was rotated back in. Bonus Heroes helps to address that issue, by letting you make progress on a character that is no longer available in packs.

Bolded the relevant bit. Vaulting was reviled because it halted progress, but that character's day would come again. Vaulting 2.0 doesn't do that. You have a 1/20 chance of pulling the character as a bonus cover. Heroic tokens only have about a 1/14 chance of a 4* pull in the first place; that means a given Heroic token has a 1/280 chance of giving you a Bonus Hero for the character you hope to continue building. Legendaries obviously have a better rate on that, but we've already touched on the fact that Command Points are a currency for more regular players; someone who plays casually but is really attached to a particular character isn't going to amass Command Points at anything like the needed rate to finish that character once he or she rotates out.

#5 - Is this change designed to encourage hoarding?

No. Our expectation is that as players receive more covers of a smaller set of characters, they’ll have more opportunity to use their iso-8 to get those characters to level max faster than before.

We absolutely realize that it feels terrible to pull a 4-star or better cover that you have to throw away. We definitely want to improve this experience.

It may not be designed to encourage hoarding, but that's the effect of it. ISO flow isn't strong enough that players are just sitting on mounds of the stuff if only they had a character who could use it. So, yeah, choices have to be made. And basic math means that the older the character is, the more likely an "above average player" is to have them covered better than newer characters. So you might have anywhere from 25-50% of a given pool run the risk of unusable covers because of unfavorable builds like 5/2/5, or a lack of desire to expend a scarce resource in leveling and championing a less desirable character simply because that character has more covers. When that happens, the impulse is going to be to hoard until a more favorable situation presents itself with the more-desired characters. I'm glad you guys want to improve the experience of pulling a 4*+ cover that you have to toss! I just feel like vaulting accelerates that feeling, because with fewer characters to choose from, you're going to have more opportunities for "welp I have 5 in that power can't use that."

#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.

I will say this: as a long-time 4* transitioner who saw his progress accelerate greatly once SCLs and Command Points were introduced, I think you guys have done a pretty solid job of shortening that on-ramp. I just think that vaulting as a mechanic, while it shortens that on-ramp, is also going to be a sort of reset button for people who weren't well-along already. "Okay, you have a few characters at 5 covers, but we're going to lock all those away now and you can start over with newer characters. But it will be faster, we promise!" I'm not sure I'd feel great about that if I were in that position.

#7 - Is this change meant to slow (or in some cases eliminate) champing?

We had, perhaps incorrectly, felt that we had provided enough opportunities to continue to collect covers for older (out of packs) 4-stars via event rewards. We’re evaluating this assumption and are open to feedback - we don’t think we’ve gotten it quite right yet. We’ve already been trying to find limited ways to make these characters more available, such as the off-season Vintage Heroic store. We’ve got more work to do here, so stay tuned.

The problem - voiced loudly and often by many, I'm sure - is that the Vintage Heroic store suffers from a few problems: 1) it's significantly less useful for 4* heroes than 3*, just because 2* characters have such a high drop rate. 2) Even 3* heroes have limited upside here because the Vintage Heroics' availability is limited to 2-6 tokens per month, unless one spends, for which reason it has been decried as a "cash grab." 3) If this was an option for Heroics, why was it not an option for Legendaries? Why is there not a Legendary store where players can spend Command Points if the characters whose growth they want to prioritize are the characters they've spent months or years building and have some tangible progress on already?

#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.

That's a valid concern. There have been numerous suggestions as to how that might have alternatively been tackled without resorting to such a drastic tool as vaulting. Let me spend a moment with a few of them. 1) Daily 4* DDQ. The 3* game opened up with the introduction of DDQ. With a cover available every day, vaulting was unnecessary for 3*. What did it matter if there was dilution in Heroic tokens, if there was still a tangible way to make progress on the 3* roster? Folks have been clamoring for, oh, months for something similar for 4*. That could absolutely have been the other shoe: a daily 4* DDQ for "vaulted" characters with characters that rotate out of the Token12 joining that DDQ rotation so there'd still be a place to get them. That way you have the benefit you described above allowing players to cover new characters more quickly and benefit from that coverage in events, while still giving them an avenue to cover classic favorites. 2) I made a suggestion a while back to the effect of "Okay, it's probably not realistic to think that a 4* cover will be given away every day, but what about using the progression reward framework in DDQ to award a cover at 44,000 points?" I suggested the cover be for the current Crash of the Titans character, while others suggested it be for the next character, so that completing all seven nodes would give them progress toward the next Crasher (and perhaps thus help with characters who might otherwise be permanently inviable now). Both are defensible, and every five days is, frankly, less frequent than covers are available in PVE/PVP events. That should have been a slam dunk method of making those older covers available while still maintaining the new mechanic, if that's the horse Demiurge are hitching the game to. We've not seen that, nor have we had any feedback on the idea beyond Brigby passing it on to the development team. 3) Colorless covers. Part of why progress on coverage is so slow is because folks will go on a run of a particular color they can't use. Everybody's got a story like that. For me, it's Professor X and his purple. When I pull him from a token, it's nearly always his purple. I've still never pulled his yellow. I've talked to people who've had 1/5/1 characters who had another 7 wasted covers in that middle power. Allowing a cover to be assigned to whichever power would have enabled faster progress on characters in general without spoilage. 4) Lengthening or eliminating expiration dates on covers. Eventually, you can use them. There are others, but those are just a quick-and-dirty four of the most frequent as I type this (at almost 4 am), any of which could have ameliorated issues with dilution without needing to remove 75% of the character pool from tokens. I'm glad you're listening to feedback, and I'm glad you've taken the step to engage with the community. Is "ending vaulting" the answer? I don't know. Quite possibly not, but I think any or all of the suggestions I just laid out could be implemented alongside vaulting and then assessed. Vintage Heroics and the Heroes for Hire store theoretically give players another avenue to those older characters, but the reality is that both of those are going to be gated off for players who either are unwilling to spend at the necessary level (the 2500 HfH store is still the equivalent of $20 in currency) or who don't play regularly enough to earn that currency through progressions and placement. They might be a part of the solution, but ultimately, from the players' perspective, it's going to be a VERY small part of the solution. More needs to happen, and maybe that more is alongside the vaulting framework, but that more also needs to be player-friendly, rather than additional spending mechanics.

Pessi

I feel like the whole vaulting system was introduced without taking into account those in the middle. In a perfect world this system would work if there were two groups: those with all 4* covers and those with none. But the people in the middle on the 3/4 transition suffer because we had goals and multiple covered 4*'s that can no longer be maximised efficiently 

I'm now sitting at a point where I have most of the current 4*'s covered, but not championed. The cover dilution suited me before because I could champion as the covers came in, or pull to push when I wanted. Now I can only pull when I have the ISO. I can't get the champion rewards from my higher level 4* pre vaulting beacause they are not available regularly. Deadpool was my first champion (281) followed by x23 (280). Since I championed wasp 3 weeks ago she is now at 279. The dilution is now to strong!

Please do something like having the latest 12 and rotate in 8 oldies on a weekly basis based on the current boosted list.

There will always be more people in the middle..

killerkoala

nick_chicane said:

I just cant understand how this is so difficult. Make Vintage Heroes available all the time and add tokens to progression in all PVE and PVP. Job done. 

I've fixed the problem in two sentences. 

no on wants another ave to get 2*'s

Ayasugi-san

Gmax101 said:

Up here, in the lofty heights of 4* and 5* land, we often forgot that MOST players are playing with 2* & 3* and the odd 4* and this most definitely has let them get a functional 4* faster.

I'm not in the lofty heights of 4* land. I'm one of those players they say they're trying to help get into 4* land faster, and I'm feeling very pressured and limited by vaulting. I'm feeling like I have to rush to get characters that I want champed, that I'm wasting covers chasing a character that's about to leave tokens because I don't have enough ISO to champ everyone who gets fully covered faster, and that once I have a couple characters champed I'm basically forced into using them for most battles. And with OML being nerfed because of overuse, I'm also afraid of having my 4* champs nerfed because I and most other newer players will be using them a lot just to survive.

SnowcaTT

Problem: dilution.

Solution: INCREASE REWARDS.

This has been the "solution" for two years, and I've been out here saying it. EVERY TIME a new character is added, %drops, iso, hp should be added in equal proportion.

More SCL's (and daily 4* DDQ!) would help this out!

Starfury

Not much more I can add to what's already been stated, so I'll just reiterate my main three gripes with vaulting.

1. It's made getting vaulted covers from other sources (champ rewards, vaults, shield resupply) far less useful
no covers: spend 1000 hp for a character who's never going to be useful to you except to unlock required nodes? I really can't see a new player having spare hp for useless characters.
few covers: the cover's irrelevant, you won't get to 13 within the next few years.
10-12 covers: Better hope it's a color you can use, otherwise you'll wait another 6 months. Once you reach 13...
13 covers: Is it really worth it to sink up to 370k iso into a character you're never going to get much beyond lvl 270? You might be tempted to just throw it away.
champed: largely irrelevant, you'll get a champ reward but the character is still not going to develop further.

The worst offender is of course shield resupply, which will never, ever offer you a relevant 4* cover.

In short: Either offer covers for characters in sufficient numbers, or don't offer them at all. Currently, 75% of the 4* roster are in "too little to live, too much to die" territory.

2. It was implemented out of the blue without any information
As a "child" of the pre-vaulting era, I had only vaulted 4* champs. They've been made far less useful without any warning. Yet, they still represent over 66% of all the iso I've ever earned. If they'd given me at least a warning a season ahead, I would have had a chance to save iso so I could actually champ a few of the new characters once the system goes live.
That kind of thing just never going to go over well. How do you think someone felt, who got a 14th Ghost Rider token and champed him the day before the announcement that he'll never get any more covers for him?

The way the devs rolled out this massive change poisoned the atmosphere from day one even more than was inevitable anyway.

3. It was implemented without any alternative for people who wanted to continue progress on vaulted characters
Vaulting came and said: "You're going to get hardly any covers for 75% of your 4*, deal with it".
Even now, 2 months later, we're still at the point where the only response is effectively. "We thought that the other sources are enough, but you guys might be right, we'll think of something".

Why in the litter of all tiny kitties didn't they just split the removed characters off into a seperate pack that people could've bought if they wanted to pull older characters. Why? WHY?????

Why didn't they do it after it turned out that people were indeed quite unhappy? Even if it's just as an interim for a "real" solution. While I don't share the sentiment (I'm more of a Hanlon's razor guy), I can't really fault anyone for suspecting ulterior motives.


So while I certainly appreciate getting an actual response by the devs, it doesn't change the fact that after 2 months, we're still at the "We'll think of something" stage.

Edit: Way to go on the "Not much more I can add" front

Pylgrim

sinnerjfl said:

Pylgrim said:

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?

Thats not the point. The point is before you had at least a possibility of getting that character even if the odds were lower.

Now with Bonus heroes it's more than likely there is no possibility of getting that character because Bonus Heroes doesn trigger much if at all for 4*'s.

I'm sorry but you clearly are not understanding what I am saying or how the feature or probability works. "Heroes trigger for 4*s" by the amount I said, 1 in 20. You may feel that it is less than that and maybe have experienced a run of over 20 pulls without a bonus hero but that's how probability works. If you feel that that is a low frequency, I am telling you that without vaulting there would be even less frequency.

Yoik

I do not mind the Vaulted changes and welcome the Bonus heroes idea. It works for me personally but I can certainly see how it affects negatively the larger population base.

 

I appreciate the response from D3. It is measured, slightly blinkered but with an open invitation to effect cause.

 

As a longer term player 1230 + ish. At the point of vaulting I already had most of the vaulted toon’s champed. This left me with the newer toon’s to level up and champ as I went.

 

A couple of months down the line from that faithful day I’m now sitting at 41/48 4 stars champed. I have 7 left at various levels of coverage.

 

It has changed how I play the game, as now for me the by-product of vaulting is for me to hoard. It just does not make sense to do anything otherwise.

 

The danger of pulling a useless cover for the newer toon’s I have left is too great. Now when I get my 7 toon’s left all levelled as high as I can get them. I will look at my hoard and if it is more than 250 ledge pulls and there are some half decent 5 stars now available I will blow the lot. If not I’ll keep going.

 

So as a player who is in some ways in favour of vaulting I still have an issue with how it effects things and the way things are even though it is not the intention of D3 to encourage hoarding it certainly makes sense for quite a number of players.

 

I feel like I am forced to hoard because of my roster and what is available and because of the iso I receive in comparable levels required to get my roster to a place that I would not need to worry. I tend to get 30k a day.

 

Of course these are all 1st world problems but that’s what we are talking about here.

pheregas

Thank you for the original post.  It's good to know we are being heard, but it is equally important that a) it works in both directions by giving us more details/reasoning behind changes in a timely manner and b) something positive results from these discussions.

There are several in-game mechanics already in place that address several concerns.  Yes, people say increase the rewards (myself being one of them), but I also know from game design that early players will literally be swimming in iso if that unilaterally happens.  There has to be just enough to keep you wanting more so that if you want to whale up faster, you have that option, but also that you aren't left out to die in the desert with no water if you don't want to pay.

The CL ranks are a way to address this.  Obviously, as a player with multiple champed 5s and 40 champed 4s, my iso needs are greater than a 2/3 transitioner.  However, if the game design mission statement is that a player, regardless of tier, should be able to champ one in-tier character a week (so if I am in the 4/5 tier, I can do one 4* a week whereas the 3/4 transitioner can champ one 3* a week) then the CL iso rewards should reflect this.  Yes, legacy players should earn more because it costs more.  A lot more.

Regarding access to vaulted characters, as has been discussed many times, add a second permanent token for vaulted characters.  Let the players decide which token they'd rather pull.  And get rid of those 2*s.  There's so many avenues towards them that during the two events per offseason that we now have access to vaulted characters, it's almost feels mean to only pull 2*s from those rare tokens.

As has also been stated above, the need to hoard ends immediately upon the end of cover expiration timers.  I even had to sell 2* covers for my farm because a dupe was at 5/1/5 and I had 14 covers for that character in my inventory and the timers were going to expire.  I'd love to spend my hundreds of CP, but the reality is that I'd just be wasting covers if I did and we all work too hard in this game to waste anything we don't need to.

Thanks again for your time and consideration.

Fightmastermpq

irwando said:

Did not address the ISO shortage / need for much more ISO in a shorter period of time.

Did not address the fact that vaulted characters are still required for missions and newer players are even more hosed.

Here's the thing  I have 20+ champed 4*s.  If all the 4's were in the same pool I would level newer ones slower, but overall every pull would have a high likelihood of a cover I could use.  Now I 'm at a 50-50 chance of a cover for a character I don't have champed and have low on my priority to get champed.  So now I'm hoarding tokens and CP, something I never did before.

So your change means I open fewer tokens, not more.   yay.

There is no ISO shortage, your ISO needs are less now than they were before.  You now have at most 12 characters that need to be champed to open with no waste, previously you had as many as 27.

Essential characters are still offered as rewards for placing in the previous event, as well as for progression during the current event - just like they were for all of us.

Previously you were 20/47, now you are 6/12.  If you think you need to be hoarding now then you definitely should have been before.