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

Fightmastermpq

sh81 said:

Ive mentioned in another thread, but figure it should go here also.

The simplest solution seems to me to be to have the classics store also limited.

The latest store has the most recent 12.

The classics should have a rotating selection of 12-16.

That way, when a character I want comes around in the classics (as it would pretty regularly) I can use my hoard/cp/tokens to really go for it.

This is exactly the solution applied to latest legends, why not classics too?

It simple.  It changes little fundamentally.  And it addresses the problem at hand.  

No more dilution, only a little patience required.

What do you do if you have 8 of the 12 champed?  Do you pull, or do you wait until you have 9/12? 12/12?  You are still forced to champ all the 4*s, and you have no idea which ones to champ first because the next group of 12 will be completely random.

Ducky really said it best - you don't fix dilution by repackaging it into a smaller form in more subsets of tokens.

NMANOZ

Bonus Legendary Vault (20 CP):

Covers for the 4 star bonus heroes you have chosen ONLY.

broll

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.

 

Dilution still exists, you just flipped it. The new problem is gong to be that new/newer players will need to roster every character due to the required characters for events, but it will near impossible for them to max cover/champ them. So now instead of the newest characters feeling like wasted roster space, the 30+ oldest will. The way I see there are only a few fixes for this.
 1. Completely remove the vaulted characters from the game and give people resources in their place. This would cause massive rage.
2. Remove all vaulted characters from all requirements (PvE, DDQ, etc.) and remove their events.
3. Give people an a good option to get the vaulted characters. A CP vault for 4* and an alternate heroic token for 3* (similar to the vintage vault, but all the time and be able to use your heroics on the one of the players choice).

Brigby said:

#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.

 

This will only work if you dramatically increase the amount of ISO. Right now people are regularly leveling 4* way to fast to keep up with their ISO and feeling forced into either dumping covers for hoarding. If this is truly your intent you either need to reverse vaulting or dramatically increase ISO (The later is long overdue regardless of vaulting but vaulting drastically increased the problem.

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.

 

This is so very out of touch. For PvE to compete you need 2 things:
1. To be able clear all nodes at least 6 or 7 times.
2. To be able to do those clears at the correct time.
In order for new players to compete in PvE with this change they will need to lug around near useless vaulted 3* and 4*s for a very long time, probably years, vs being able to start champing 4* in a year.

 In PvP to compete you need to have the best characters champed and high level. Since you've made many of the best characters unavailable new players will struggle to compete, at least until better characters replace them.

Nick441234

killerkoala said:

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

True, but even as is, its still a hell of a lot better than having no way at all to get the vaulted characters. 

Fightmastermpq

Rotating ALL characters through the packs reintroduces dilution in smaller subsets though.  Except now instead of spreading them out across several tokens you are spreading them out over time.  So to get to a place where you can pull without waste will require hoarding until you get just the right RNG combo of covers in the pool, or simply champing every single 4*.  You didn't solve the problem.  With the current vaulting system you know for a fact that all you need to do to pull without waste is champ the 12 newest characters.

If you want a shot at every character you will inherently have dilution.

With regards to your final point, I agree, and it sounds like the devs recognize this problem as well.  The earn rate for older covers is too low to be impactful, which is why a lot of vets are upset with vaulting - those sweeter champ rewards are now coming in at a snails pace.

StarScream

Thanks for the laugh from #8. It was great.

smkspy

SnowcaTT said:

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!

This is a big part of it. Dilution wasn't so the problem as more of symptom of larger problems facing the game.

Even with champing and scl, rewards just wouldn't match the level of play that person's roster  level. That's how we got the unofficial system of 2 star farming.

Problem is the average player doesn't want to 2 star farm, so quickly fall back into the trap of pulling a sea of 2 stars that are unusable and take  quickly leads to disinterest. Vaulting only compounds that them as they probably aren't in a position to have had a ton of high leveled or champed vaulted characters when it was inplemented. 

Really you could at me and my GF accounts at how the dedicated and average were affected by vaulting. The dedicated player in myself puts up with the same events over and over again slugging their way through repetition, embracing unofficial game mechanics like vaulting, and accepts that rewards through tokens are sad. The average player becomes bored with these things, and their play and progress grinds to a halt. 

She is just entirely disenchanted with the game even before vaulting that she didn't see the point in playing the same thing over and over again getting nothing in return. 

I slugged through it and my roster exploded, vaulting greatly benefited me, but for it was a too little too late for her. Vaulting just killed what little interest she had left in the game. Know what brought her back though for a week. The thanos event. She played that like crazy. She also played the starlord event. 

In short, dilution was a problem but a small problem of the much larger one that was Chingy rewards and lack of new content.

killerkoala

nick_chicane said:

killerkoala said:

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

True, but even as is, its still a hell of a lot better than having no way at all to get the vaulted characters. 

lol pulling 2*'s is not any better, they need to make a real way to get 4*'s

Ryudoz

The problem with vaulting 4* comes from the fact that this game still relies on using older 3* and 4* for content. Required nodes and the CotT DDQ node are where. Current required PVE 4*? Nova. He's vaulted, with no other way to get him outside of Strang3 champion levels. Current CotT Required? Thing, and even older vaulted character, that at least has a 2* champion path (via HT). The problem is though, vaulting has cut championing off at the knees. Given no reliable way to cover (and add levels to) older characters, a large portion of champion rewards got locked behind another steel door with RNG written on it.

It doesn't make sense to create content for characters that are vaulted. Sure for PVE you can earn 2-3 4* covers over a single PVE event (depending on length) IF you have all 3 required characters, but by making any of those characters vaulted you send the message that yes, we have to collect them all if we want all the rewards (predominantly iso, which is badly needed). 

That's not even getting to the Crash DDQ node, where not only do you need a Vaulted 4* in many occasions, but a well covered (my Thing is 1/3/1 and has NO shot at winning, even if I snagged the useless yellow cover in the taco vault because why offer a cover other than his passive that relies on teammate damage intake to be useful in a 1 on 1 fight?!), appropriate leveled and vaulted character. So now for a majority of F2P vets like myself (1100 plus days and counting) are still struggling with these because of cover drip and the large iso investment in a single 4*.

My suggestion is one that I've been touting for months now: a daily 4* DDQ node. Only vaulted 4*. Tie it to the Behemoth Burrito much the same way the 3* node is. It's time. It's beyond time. The Crash node will still have a higher value than this as the LT rewarded there has a chance for a 5* AND now a BH. 

Crowl

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.

Thanks for posting these comments from the devs, but that answer to #3 is truly horrific in how badly it tries to dodge round the point (has he considered a career in politics? ) that some people simply don't want to just focus on a narrow group of characters, when your roster is sufficiently developed you reach the point where practically every cover could be used and so they will not be getting a vastly improved experience.

Giving people the opportunity to level new characters faster is a great option to have added to the game, however there is simply no reason why this had to be done at the expense of almost all progress on existing champions.

If you are so sure that vaulting is what people want then keep the current truncated LTs and bring out unabridged versions alongside them, those who want to focus on the latest 12 can do so and those who want a broader approach to levelling their characters could also do so without harming each other.

kyo28

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 of all, many thanks for finally talking directly to the community. I think it's very important for all of us players to hear from the devs directly from time to time.

Just a note about question #6. I feel this is a false argument. Granted, newer players can champ 4*s much faster with the current comic packs, but which 4*s? Since scaling and matchmaking in PVP supposedly tries to pit players of a similar level against each other, I'd much rather have a slower progression but being able to build a diverse roster, rather than have a shorter on-ramp to champed 4*s but being limited to some 4*s that don't fit my roster or are just plain bad.

This is why a lot of players have pleaded to have more than 2 CP comic packs, so that each player, new and old, can spend their CP chasing the covers they want.

Crowl

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?

Worrying about a specific character was always the wrong way to deal with developing your roster since the advent of championing, just keep building them all up, champ the best available (or one with a lot of spare covers) character when you have enough iso and move onto the next, each time you did that you are gradually increasing the chances of your covers being usable, unlike now where it is cyclical with you being stuck with lopsided characters and potentially wasted covers more often.

Crowl

jredd said:

"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."


colourless  covers!  colour-less covers. covers we can apply to any ability. colourless, colourless, the colourless cover kneels before god... 

maybe try colourless covers? how many people have asked for it/complained about it? 

you've streamlined acquiring covers for new characters. now, continuing to give us (the same, unchangeable) random colour locked covers leaves covers withering on the vine. i pulled 30 lt's the other day and got 5 blue coulsons, for my 2/4/5 coulson. my buddy has 6 red blades in his cue. now i need to get 300K+ iso and 2 more non blue covers in 2 weeks to use them.

colourless covers!

and throw in a double iso event in there every now and then. ya stingy stingies!

If they still wanted rng to play some part in the process then the simple option would be for a cover to only become colourless once you already had 5 covers in that particular colour, there is such a narrow window in the game where the colour of a character's cover matters (between 6 and 13 out of 113) that it just seems so silly for there not to be a solution to the situation.

GrumpySmurf1002

The intentions behind vaulting, while I may disagree at parts, are fine based on the goals stated.

The main issue is that the rest of the game design, notably character essentials, is based on collecting and leveling *all* the characters.  This obviously runs counter to a vaulting system.

So the obvious question becomes, how do you reconcile the two?   Limit the use of essential characters as a mechanic, or expand the essential rewards to ease that burden?   Either is sufficient, but one must be done.

veny

So, instead of slowly getting all 4*s, we are getting 12 newest very quickly and, when they leave vault, we get almost none... no championing, no promoting, no use for non maxed 4*s.
Since vaulting i sold over 30 (!!) duplicates of 4*s (and no, mostly it was not 5/5/2 builds, but f.e. 5/1/0 like my Gwenpoole).
Its nice you summed up some wannabe reasons why you decided to add vaulting, but unless you REALLY GIVE US THE CHOICE between old and new 4*s, there reasons are irelevant.
And please, dont insult all of us with statements like "cover dillution is bad for you and vaulting should help you and its good for you and we care about you etc. etc." - no, YOU came with this option. Yes, dillution is bad, but this is not the solution.
You know what? Give us more 4*s from CL 9 and 10, more 2*s and 3*s we can promote (to get 4*s in the end), remove vaulting completely or give us tokens with good ol´ 4*s and dilution is gone.
Or at least make a poll about how players feel...
Trust me, after 2500 hours i dont realy care for why did you close me the way to promoting my 13 old champed 4*s and championing other old ones.

You know how you recognize bad attitude? To much "we" in the post

Thats my honest (emotions and feeling included) opinion.

JVReal

D3 Concern:  Dilution of character Pool.
D3 Answer: You only get covers from the most current 12... and here's 4 new Variants!!

D3 Concern: We want to see more roster diversity among users, people are using OML too much.
D3 Answer: You only get covers from the most current 12... and stop using OML (nerf).

D3 Concern: We want to encourage and reward roster diversity by having 2*, 3*, 4* (and the occasional 5*) essentials.
D3 Answer: You only get covers from the most current 12... and hope you selected the 4* essential as your Bonus Hero and hope you actually pull a bonus hero before the PVE ends. Super Fun!  Use CP to increase your odds to 5%!

D3 Concern: You have too much Iso on your hands and nothing to spend it on.
D3 Answer: Level those 12 most current heroes (or villains)!  You can now champ them faster than ever!

**DISCLAIMER: I am not a D3 Employee, nor am I a developer or a person authorized to speak for D3.  These comments are for entertainment purposes only and not to be misconstrued as actual D3 statements.  These are only an interpretation of actions as perceived by a 2.5 year veteran of the game.**

Crowl

Wonko33 said:

How about adding the characters we favor to the pool? If someone doesn't like vaulting he can just favor all the characters. 

This would be a good option, but to ensure the latest characters were still built at a faster rate than before they could make it so that bonus heroes were no longer the ones we selected since those would be added into the pool anyway and were instead covers for the latest 12.

Jaedenkaal

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 don't think you understand probability at all. It's entirely the point. 1/20 odds is simply better than 1/46(and falling) odds. Bonus heroes triggers 1/20th of the time for 4*s.

Crowl said:

Worrying about a specific character was always the wrong way to deal with developing your roster since the advent of championing, just keep building them all up, champ the best available (or one with a lot of spare covers) character when you have enough iso and move onto the next, each time you did that you are gradually increasing the chances of your covers being usable, unlike now where it is cyclical with you being stuck with lopsided characters and potentially wasted covers more often.

Yes, that's how it worked starting with championing and ending with vaulting. Before that, the strategy was different, and now it will have to be different again.

Starfury

Jaedenkaal said:

Yes, that's how it worked starting with championing and ending with vaulting. Before that, the strategy was different, and now it will have to be different again.

Demiurge studios, hard at work preparing for the next time they throw sand in everyone's works

Wonko33

Crowl said:

Wonko33 said:

How about adding the characters we favor to the pool? If someone doesn't like vaulting he can just favor all the characters. 

This would be a good option, but to ensure the latest characters were still built at a faster rate than before they could make it so that bonus heroes were no longer the ones we selected since those would be added into the pool anyway and were instead covers for the latest 12.

I don't think that's necessary at all. Just let people decide who they want to focus on by letting them add whomever that want to the pool of the latest 12.

I am not sure if they want to do that for the 5* but I don't think it would create any imbalance for 3*/ 4* roster player could do that.