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

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  • Starfury
    Starfury Posts: 719 Critical Contributor
    Ducky said:
    @Khanwulf I believe Dave admitted they missed the mark in their post regarding the flow of covers for 4* covers that are not currently in tokens. I commend them for doing so because to admit fault on this forum can be a dangerous thing as a dev.
    Having to deal with unsatisfied customers?
    Welcome to the business world where the customer is always right because he pays the bills.

    I agree though, a dev doing anything on this board can be a dangerous thing. I for example almost had a heart attack this morning, when I see they actually talked to us.
  • jackstar0
    jackstar0 Posts: 1,280 Chairperson of the Boards
    We_are_Venom said:
    Good info, thanks. What about 5* Classics? Once a 5* moves to Classics, it's pretty much dead weight for many of us that pulled a cover or even a few. It's all but impossible to adequately cover a 5* that moves into Classics. If dilution is the enemy, can't we attack it on all fronts? 
    Or worse. I have a few that have 5 covers in one color and guess which color I get most often: that full one. The lack of exchange or other options and a paltry 2k iso for each is still so frustrating.
  • BoyWonder1914
    BoyWonder1914 Posts: 884 Critical Contributor
    Khanwulf said:

    All right, but if that's the case @Ducky then Devs have very badly bungled in estimating flow of 4* characters into the "vast majority" player. And I can cite myself as I simply don't have the time to struggle for even T100 placement amid other life concerns.

    Deep 3* champ roster? Check.
    Extensive, shallowly covered 4* roster? Check.
    No 4* fully covered let alone champed? Check.

    So, there are only two reliable paths for obtaining 4* covers: CP and PvE event progression. Versus is too much to obtain the 4* progression, and PvE placement is far, far out of reach.

    Random token rewards are possible, sure, but unlikely--there are a handful in a given month.

    So, Bonus 4* heroes are a joke, because they happen so rarely it might as well not exist. So far I've observed one (1) bonus 4* since feature implementation, and that's with regularly hitting full progression during events.

    So unless there happens to be a vaulted 4* in a progression, or I can advance a 3* far enough to generate a cover, I'm unlikely to ever see it.

    I'd love to be able to spend CP on a 4*-only token with only the vaulted covers. That would be ideal and I'd gladly burn my supplies into that in the hopes of finishing heroes. And yes, that would mean I'm not spending CP on Latest Legends with the latest releases. Oh well. My choice.

    --Khanwulf   

    Edit, PS: And yes, even with my very limited, no-where-near-champed roster of the current 12, I can *still* get worthless dupes--at the moment TWO (2!!!) purple Coulson withering away; at nine covers he's not going to be champed in the next 8 days. This will only get worse. Keep in mind these two covers represents more than a week's CP saving.... 
    As someone who's been where you are before vaulting, this is the only one of your points I'd contend. Roster strength does indeed play a role in PVE placement, but not always an absolutely critical one. Being fast, and being willing to do that ever-important 7th clear each sub is a much bigger part of it. I make T10 pretty regularly, but I see 3-star rosters in there all the time (even in CL8) because the reduced scaling just lets them clear nodes a lot quicker than a stronger roster sometimes. 

    I understand though, having such a small margin for error is exhausting. Assuming you work a 9-5 like most of us, if the game doesn't align well with your schedule and you can't do those first 4 clears right away, or you have to do your final grind at a time that's not optimal, t10 falls out of reach rather quickly. 
  • Shuino
    Shuino Posts: 164 Tile Toppler
    Since most of you on the forums here are pretty well into the game I can give some insight from a Day 25 player. 

    While I started the game at launch and played about 250 days the game took a huge turn for the worse after the GSBW then Rags nerfs which left me a bit frustrated so I stopped playing.

    Starting out in this game now is damn near impossible to play without spending money. I'm at 47 roster slots with 46 of them being filled. (Kept a single 1*) Needless to say without spending some money I would've lost probably more than half of my current roster. (I also only spent HP on Roster Slots) This is were vaulting does help the newer players as I'm not getting tons of single 4* covers taking up space I'll never be using. (Not that I've been using CP pulling for 4* & 5* anyways)

    I will say however I did not mind spending some money on roster space as I do enjoy the game and D3 is trying to make money off of it so sure good job on getting me to spend some money. 

    Currently I have all 2*s Rostered besides BagMan and only four are not fully covered, but those four are very close. However I only have 6 champ'd with one of those being a 3* (Strange woot). This leaves me in a horrible place currently. I can't spend any type of Token, HP, or CP on covers.

    So while I would love to start making the transition into 3*'s and getting covers I don't have the HPs or ISO to do so unless I want to start selling extra covers which is a total waste on return doing so. This is horrible game design for having fun and for spending money. However I wouldn't mind spending money for more roster space but I can't get the ISO to level anyone I pull so what is the point? I'm better off stock pilling everything getting ISO and then pulling which they apparently don't want. (Weird that game design is completely opposite of what they want......)

    Either they need to drastically increase ISO / reduce leveling costs or make it so 3* and up covers do not expire once pulled. That will solve either of the issues I'm currently seeing and by the looks of the replies in this post it will solve a lot of other problems with 4* and 5* players as well.



    All I have left to say is that even after not playing the game for a solid 2 years it's fun to see the developers still not listening to heavily repeated player feedback XD



  • GritsNGravy
    GritsNGravy Posts: 114 Tile Toppler
    Thanks Dave for writing this up, I appreciate the information.  These reasons make a lot of sense, especially when you consider a new player experience.  

    My knee jerk reaction of this new system was negative, but over the last few months I'm more of a fan now, I've built usable "new" 4*s faster than ever before.  I do have a fairly mature 4* roster though so I'm not feeling the burn of not getting vaulted 4*s.

    IMO the biggest problem with the current system is having to horde, or waste 4* covers.  It isn't that different from how the game has always been, just amped up.  Now I'm staring down wasting 7+ Agent Venom covers at a time instead of one or two random covers a month.

    Two ideas to help with the "wasted cover" problem:

    1. Have a way to feed a cover maxed (but not championed) character it's own cover to buy them a level.  This would allow thematic character growth and around the level 140+ range would start to be a tangible ISO benefit to the player (when levels start costing more than 1000 ISO).

    2. Another idea would be to have a new currency (or system) that tracks how many 4* covers you've sold.  Say once you've sold 10-20 of them you get a token that will give you a guaranteed cover from your bonus hero pool.  Turn your "bad luck" into consistent progress towards "good luck". 

    I think that's the main feeling of frustration, I want to be to do something with my extra covers that I can't use rather than just having to sell them.  Especially selling at the 4*+ level, they are so rare to come by, having to sell them feels bad. 
  • MissChinch
    MissChinch Posts: 509 Critical Contributor
    We_are_Venom said:
    Good info, thanks. What about 5* Classics? Once a 5* moves to Classics, it's pretty much dead weight for many of us that pulled a cover or even a few. It's all but impossible to adequately cover a 5* that moves into Classics. If dilution is the enemy, can't we attack it on all fronts? 

    Uhh they have quite clearly given us the answer, remove the ability to pull from the evil diluted pull and only give access to the few latest heros...  I'd expect classic legends as an option to be removed, to fix the problem.


    Please see Dave's (answer?) to number three for whats in place for those of us who wish to level those characters:

    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.

     




  • broll
    broll Posts: 4,732 Chairperson of the Boards
    Crowl said:
    Tony Foot said:
    A. Had a better drop rate, because I have had about 2 since it started.
    B. Let me put a heart not only by a character but by a character colour. There's no way I can risk BH say Bucky at 5/5/2, not at the current BH drop rate.

    To even suggest that as a work round is laughable. The only work around they are really interested in costs you thousands of HP. They might as well be honest and vault all but the latest character and give you a season before they vault it.
    Realistically, with or without BH, the best bet for a 5/5/2 is to simply bite the bullet and spend the 120 cp on that last cover if you think the character is worth championing, set him as your bonus until you get one and if it is the wrong colour spend the cp and the dupe will be used to take him to 271 and an LT.
    What I've been doing recently is not worrying about a 5/5/2 character until I get an unusable cover.  Once I get that (assuming I have at least 120 CP), I switch to this character as my only 4* BH.  I pull occasionally from CP / LT making sure I don't dip under 120 for 2 weeks.  If I get the cover to round out the roster, great no 120 CP spend, if I don't I spend the CP.  I I get another unusable then that's just another champ level when I do champ him.
  • Shuino
    Shuino Posts: 164 Tile Toppler
    GritsNGravy said:

    1. Have a way to feed a cover maxed (but not championed) character it's own cover to buy them a level.  This would allow thematic character growth and around the level 140+ range would start to be a tangible ISO benefit to the player (when levels start costing more than 1000 ISO).

    2. Another idea would be to have a new currency (or system) that tracks how many 4* covers you've sold.  Say once you've sold 10-20 of them you get a token that will give you a guaranteed cover from your bonus hero pool.  Turn your "bad luck" into consistent progress towards "good luck". 

    Both of those Idea's are pretty great actually. If the hero isn't champ'd and you get an extra cover have it go towards increasing it's level.

    2* =  5 Levels
    3* = 10 Levels
    4* = 20 Levels
    5* = 30 Levels

    The second is just a nice gesture and would help a ton towards getting those vaulted characters.  



  • JVReal
    JVReal Posts: 1,884 Chairperson of the Boards
    How about you have an option, before you pull your token, to choose between the full pool, or the most recent 12?

    Some days, like now when I'm sitting with 7 4* covers in queue that I can't use (and for only 2 heroes)... because I need Iso for both of them to champ them and not waste the covers... I'd like to have the option to pull from the diluted pool and hope for a cover I can actually use for Champ levels or for one of my many other 4* characters that aren't at 13 yet.  Selling for Iso is the absolute LAST thing I want to do with a cover.

    So, (like they used to have when they first introduced Latest and Classic), have two icons on the same screen for Latest, and the token works for either one, pull from the pool that you want, restricted or full.
  • NewMcG
    NewMcG Posts: 368 Mover and Shaker
    NMANOZ said:
    Bonus Legendary Vault (20 CP):

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


    A wonderful idea from the player side of things. Until you realize you're letting people pick exactly what 4* they buy a cover for for 20 CP by selecting a single BH. Never gonna happen at that price. Specific character covers cost 120 for a 4*. This would need to be more like 100 CP to be similar.
  • NewMcG
    NewMcG Posts: 368 Mover and Shaker
    JVReal said:
    How about you have an option, before you pull your token, to choose between the full pool, or the most recent 12?

    Some days, like now when I'm sitting with 7 4* covers in queue that I can't use (and for only 2 heroes)... because I need Iso for both of them to champ them and not waste the covers... I'd like to have the option to pull from the diluted pool and hope for a cover I can actually use for Champ levels or for one of my many other 4* characters that aren't at 13 yet.  Selling for Iso is the absolute LAST thing I want to do with a cover.

    So, (like they used to have when they first introduced Latest and Classic), have two icons on the same screen for Latest, and the token works for either one, pull from the pool that you want, restricted or full.
    That sounds like a nightmare for the Customer Service team, by suddenly adding tons of "I accidentally pulled the wrong token, I wanted latest, refund the classic I paid for" tickets. Like swapping latest 5* covers, only exponentially more likely to happen.
  • Jaedenkaal
    Jaedenkaal Posts: 3,357 Chairperson of the Boards
    Carnage_78 said:
    How about 5* dilution in Classic? I understand your arguments for 3/4* characters but shouldn't that also apply to 5*s?

    I've been trying to get a few of them finished but can't pull the required covers & every time a character gets added to that pool it becomes less & less likely that I will.

    Any plans to address that issue?
    Sure. Once there are more than 12 5*s in classic legendary tokens, they vault the oldest one. XD
  • broll
    broll Posts: 4,732 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited May 2017
    Jaedenkaal said:
    Carnage_78 said:
    How about 5* dilution in Classic? I understand your arguments for 3/4* characters but shouldn't that also apply to 5*s?

    I've been trying to get a few of them finished but can't pull the required covers & every time a character gets added to that pool it becomes less & less likely that I will.

    Any plans to address that issue?
    Sure. Once there are more than 12 5*s in classic legendary tokens, they vault the oldest one. XD
    If they did that I'd probably delete the game and be done. 
  • Jaedenkaal
    Jaedenkaal Posts: 3,357 Chairperson of the Boards
    broll said:
    Jaedenkaal said:
    Carnage_78 said:
    How about 5* dilution in Classic? I understand your arguments for 3/4* characters but shouldn't that also apply to 5*s?

    I've been trying to get a few of them finished but can't pull the required covers & every time a character gets added to that pool it becomes less & less likely that I will.

    Any plans to address that issue?
    Sure. Once there are more than 12 5*s in classic legendary tokens, they vault the oldest one. XD
    If they did that I'd probably delete the game and be done. 
    But... bonus heroes!
  • n25philly
    n25philly Posts: 426 Mover and Shaker
    edited May 2017
    mohio said:
    Man n25philly...I'll just skip all the parts that would get censored and leave me banned...is it really that hard to see the logic behind the changes? He laid it all out for you as several forumites have been doing for months now and you still call it "bad logic"? There were endless complaints about new releases being meaningless because we couldn't have them fully covered in a reasonable amount of time and even if we did they would be permanently stuck dozens of covers behind older characters and never used. So they make a change to address that complaint, it's not perfect (as admitted right here in this thread!) but they think it does a good job addressing some of OUR OWN COMPLAINTS, and on top of that they implement another change that is literally free covers (okay you still have to spend resources you bought or earned, but it's extra stuff you weren't getting before), but no, it's all just a huge slap in the face and will be the end of game...I just can't with you anymore...I hope you enjoy the next game you play much more than this one.
    Should I break it down?

    #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.


    If the problem is dilution, why not do what they did to make newer characters available while also giving those of us who need the access to the old characters?  Oh right because because that wouldn't create all kinds of artificial resource shortages to hopefully force people into spending money to move forward.  You know because they only way to address dilution is going to the other extreme and causing new problems. 


     #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.


    What about us that don't have the resources to go into that new pool of heroes?  I guess I should go through all my tokens/cp when 80% will be pure waste no matter what (not even counting 5* pulls) Oh wait I can gut my roster of characters I want to actually cover/level so I can go for the ones I don't want and the endless parade of pointless variants.  Nothing says fun in a licenced game than not only not being able to cover/level/play as your favorite characters than to have to trash them to likely never get them again.  S much fun, what a wonderful system!

     

    #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.


    Wow, the guy that wrote this should be a political campaign manager, because I don't think I've ever seen anyone stretch the truth this far.  Taking characters away makes it easier to roster evenly?  Locking everything behind a tiny chance of rng (and lets not even call it 5% since it's 5% based on everyone's pulls that there is no guarantee that you get that 1 in 20 shot)  As been said many times since vaulting was introduced, the odds are only good if you only set it to one, add more than that and they get really bad really fast.  But hey, ignore problems (like why should I pull in the first place if the odds of it being waste are ridiculously high to begin with and I can't get those wonder rare BH that let us roster evenly if I can't pull tokens anyway)  Maybe if you are pulling tons of stuff all of the time this might make some sense but for some of us it is pure ****.

     

    #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.


    It's easier than coming up with an actual good idea and forces people into bad situations that will push them into spending more money if they want to move forward.  Why get money from customers because they are happy when we can reach into their pockets and try and force it 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.


    I certainly can't speak for everyone but all this change did was force me into hording.  I haven't opened a token since the change.  Why open them when the odds of pulling something that will be pure waste is so high.  So it's try and horde forever to get the resources to be a part of the new wonderful system or stop playing.  At this point I am 99% #2 and the last 5 days I literally logged in and played 1 match to get the daily reward and meet requirements to stay in my alliance.  Being forced to horde and not progress is not fun.


    By the way players need to actually get the iso to level the characters to be able to max them faster.  Then again your reasoning might need to be based in reality to notice 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.


    You guys realize that your game carries the licence for one of the most popular franchises in the world right?  That people playing the game want to play as their favorite characters, right?  Adding say a token that offers the old characters would let people do that and build the rosters they way they want, still have your way of combating dilution by having the others offer just the 12, and make it look like you give a poop (censored enough?) about your customers.  Nope, have the be a knee jerk half baked idea that causes new problems.  Besides, combating dilution the intelligent way wouldn't be forceful enough on trying to force people into playing.

     

    #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 people answer would be yes, yes, yes, yes.  You are getting to many freebies, everyone pay up.  Why do bad ideas have to be the only way to open this up.  Vintages as an off season reward is a purely stupid idea.  Make it a full time token that people could pull as an alternative to normal heroics and it would actually make sense. 

     

    #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.


    Translation:  No matter how much everyone complains we are going to say that it's the people not on the forums/not speaking up that benefit from the system and the majority isn't complaining.  I had plenty of people in my casual alliance that aren't on this board that complained or quit.  As said many times why not just make a vintage 4* token that only has the vaulted characters and make the vintage heroics a full time that you can pull your regular heroics on.  Makes too much sense?  Doesn't do a good enough of a job of trying to force money from people?  



    It takes two month to answer and it's the same canned poop answers we've been getting from day 1.  As I see it the game is intentionally broken and this tells me that they have no interest in fixing it.  If vaulting is great for you than enjoy and more power two you.  After too months as much as I love the game I am sick of treading water and going nowhere with no good way forward and none in sight.  I don't know why you seem to be so insulting that I don't like being put in a horrible position and having my favorite game ruined but I hope you get over it.  I am just done.  I have lost all faith in the developers giving a poop about the game or us customers.  Its a shame, because in these two months I still haven't found a good replacement and I just keep getting more and more stressed out without a good game to break with during my 12-15 hour workdays.


    **Removed attacks on the devs and calling out of other posters. Also cleaned up the formatting to make it easier to read - Ducky

  • Jaedenkaal
    Jaedenkaal Posts: 3,357 Chairperson of the Boards
    Welcome Death said:
    I dont think vaulting is an issue.  I dont think bonus heroes are an issue.  3* bonus heroes seem to come pretty quickly, which is a good thing.  4* BH from heroics / event tokens are basically nil, and I'm ok with that.  I do not understand this, though: it was posted in the bonus hero thread, as an edit, that you're actually getting a 17% shot at a bonus hero for each 3* and 4* you pull from heroics.  The 5% is from the 2* diluting the pool.  That's fine.  But if i pull a 4* from the LT store, I'm only getting a 5% bonus for each 4* I pull, same with 5*.  
    It sounds like you do understand it. It's a 17% chance because there is not a 100% chance to pull a BH-eligible cover from a heroic token. So the odds of getting a BH from a heroic token are still 1/20, but because you can't get a 2* bonus hero, they're just weighted such that when you pull a 3* or 4*, your odds of also getting a bonus hero are 17%. Legendary tokens don't have this issue because 100% of draws are BH-eligible. So no matter which token you open, you have a 5% chance of also getting a bonus hero. The odds are the same even if one of them is calculated as 1.00 x 0.05 and the other is calculated as ~0.294 x ~0.17.
  • Spudgutter
    Spudgutter Posts: 743 Critical Contributor
    edited May 2017
    @n25philly

    I'm not the one you are replying to, but something you said really stuck out to me.

     "I haven't opened a token since the change."

    Why are you so vehemently opposed to something you haven't even tried yet?  You throw out numbers like "80% unusable" but then say you only play one match a day for the rewards. Of course you can't level up 4* if you don't play.  And if you really have that many of the current 12 maxed but not champed, then hoard.   They said it was an unintended consequence. Hoard your tokens, play pve to progression for the cp and iso rewards, and wait for some people to cycle out.  Is it ideal?  In my opinion, no. Is it worth railing against?  Again, my opinon, based on the last two months of actually using the system, is no.
  • Jarvind
    Jarvind Posts: 1,684 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited May 2017
    n25philly said:
     Makes too much sense?  Doesn't do a good enough of a job of trying to force money from people? 
    I mean, I just picked this one example because that was a lot of text, but.

    This may come as a shock, but being openly hostile and telling people they are trash uuuuusually doesn't win them over to your side. See also: recent American presidental elections.

    *removed content from quoted text that broke the rules - Ducky

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