Does Vaulting solve the problem of all types of dilution?

Bishop

If they take the 2*s out of the vaults maybe it would help.

Jaedenkaal

Yes

Bishop said:

If they take the 2*s out of the vaults maybe it would help.

Yeah... those aren't the vaults we're talking about.

Beer40

No

New McG said:

Beer40 said:

veny said:

Turning servers off also solve dilution problem - your poll is vague and its result may lead to horrific interpretations.
My answer will be more complex - Vaulting decreased the amount of 4*s actually available, which increased the chance of picking one specific cover, but this came with huge (for me unacceptable) cost - non-vaulted 4*s are de facto unavailable (yeah, basically they are gone, impossible to be farmed, rr upgraded up to point useful in fight and DDQ titan node)

My poll is intentionally vague. This will allow everyone to voice their interpretation of the dilution issue (if they have it) or voice their opinion on if Vaulting fixed the issue, or if they didn't believe there was an issue to begin with. I am not trying to lead anyone in a particular direction with the poll. Yes or no is simple. Add your reasoning in your post. 

I feel that if I try to lead people in any direction by offering more than "yes" and "no" I'm doing a disservice to the merit of the poll, which is simply "is this working?". That is what the comments section is for.

As usual, in the comments, people are doing whatever they can to spin the issue to fit their opinion. Is anyone ever going to convince a "certain poster" that Vaulting is not good for everyone or even a majority by their comments? Ha! NO!

Vaulting is losing this poll. Point blank. 

di·lu·tion

dīˈlo͞oSHn,diˈlo͞oSH(ə)n/

noun

the action of making a liquid more dilute.

the action of making something weaker in force, content, or value.

"he is resisting any dilution of dogma"

a liquid that has been diluted.

plural noun: dilutions

I don't care that a quote from the MPQ team cherry picked pack dilution as their definition of dilution. That doesn't cover all dilution. Roster strength dilution is also affected by these systems. 

There have been plenty of suggestions that offer good alternatives to both pack AND roster dilution. Those have not (yet) been implemented. 

So we continue to debate this and hopefully catch the eye or ear of someone in power that says to themselves, "Wait, only making half of our customer base happy is not good. Go team, and find a solution that gets us to 80% or better"!

And that's my stance. I tried the suggested way. Not hoarding, opening tokens as they came, etc... All Vaulting did for me was drain my ISO for a few characters that I covered while at the same time WASTING a bunch of CP for powers I already had 5 in with characters that weren't up to 13 covers. CP are hard to come by, compared to every other resource. I don't particularly like a system that wastes those while not strengthening my roster. I can only level characters up so much until I have to get the needed covers for them. And once they leave the 12, that 15/1/1 is still just a 5/1/1 to probably never be covered. 

That is "working as intended?" Well, I hope not!

So let's have a simple poll to show them that people feel it is or it isn't..and if they want to draw more than a simple conclusion, they can read the comments.

In the end, the power lies with MPQ to interpret the results to their choosing. Just like we all interpret this poll and the very definition of dilution to our choosing. 

You can all be assured they will make the best decision for them. Hopefully, that decision makes more than 50% of the player base happy as well.

So you don't care about what dilution actually means as it relates to the discussion at hand, because you decided to make it about something completely different. Sure. Changing the subject entirely isn't exactly how debating works, but however you want to go about your business.

I think I understand the discussion at hand better than you, because I started it. Maybe the *people who disagree* don't like the discussion I started or the fact that we aren't letting them change it to fit their agenda?

*removed attacks on other posters - Ducky

zodiac339

Yes

Jaedenkaal said:

Bishop said:

If they take the 2*s out of the vaults maybe it would help.

Yeah... those aren't the vaults we're talking about.

Which is why I hate that the community uses the term "vaulting" (which you've seen I have a problem with). I like archiving as a term. Is there a better suggestion for how to remove the confusion between token vaults and characters removed from token pulls?

Beer40

No

61% to 38% against Vaulting. 

Explain to us more how little we understand dilution and how Vaulting is good for us all. 61% of us still don't seem to understand your...I mean the right! point of view...

*removed attacks on other posters - Ducky

Jaedenkaal

Yes

Beer40 said:

61% to 38% against Vaulting. 

Please, Vaulting truthers. Explain to us more how little we understand dilution and how Vaulting is good for us all. 61% of us still don't seem to understand your...I mean the right! point of view...

Of course not, and you yourself (and others) have explained that you don't care what dilution actually is, or what Demi did to address it.  So basically all of the "No" answers to your poll have nothing to do with the question, for reasons that several of us have already explained several times.

You'd have been better off asking "Do you like Vaulting?" Yes/No/Neutral. Then at least no one could get their answer wrong.

Heck, you could have even asked "Did vaulting solve more problems than it caused?" (Yes/No/Neutral) and even THAT would have been a better poll.

broll

No

Jaedenkaal said:

Bishop said:

If they take the 2*s out of the vaults maybe it would help.

Yeah... those aren't the vaults we're talking about.

I didn't take his suggestion like that.  If they took 2* out of Heroic tokens and increased the drop rates of both 3* and 4*s in Heroics it would have a huge positive effect on the problems dillusion causes.  

zodiac339

Yes

Beer40 said:

61% to 38% against Vaulting. 

Please, Vaulting truthers. Explain to us more how little we understand dilution and how Vaulting is good for us all. 61% of us still don't seem to understand your...I mean the right! point of view...

I'd hope the majority for archiving can appreciate that it's not good for all players. There's very little that can help new players, because you haven't, and will never (without buying a lot) catch up to old players. The best I can offer is that I spent the better part of 2 years with no shot at beating anyone with maxed out legendary heroes or Champion legendaries. I slowly developed those through what I could win or what RNG dropped through pulls. Slow, because the 1/40 it became spread out what dropped pretty wide. Now, while there are many of the high tier characters you won't be able to effectively develop, the speed that a newer player can make a roster of actaully usable heroes is much, much better.
The pro: can legitimately make a roster of Champion Legendaries within a year of play.
The con: a lot of boosted legendaries and top tier characters are out of effective reach due to being archived.
The truth: RNG would have kept those top tier characters out of your hands anyway.
The other truth: Both sides of this argument are determined not to actually listen.

BoyWonder1914

No

No. 

It solved an ASPECT of the dilution problem, which was the ability to cover newly released characters within a certain timeframe. Those same new characters still get added to the same diluted pool everyone else is in after its over, so its nothing more than a temporary solution for new characters AT BEST. For someone who starts playing this game 2 months from now and decides they REALLY like Spider-Woman, they still have to face the same dilution problem because they were late to the party. So please stop calling this **** a solution. 

They are going to continue to release characters, so the problem is only continuing to get worse until they decide to give players options for multiple vaults with these older people, that regularly rotates or features older people at a higher percentage. They misread people's attitudes about low odds pretty badly. Most people don't honestly give a 2 **** about how low the odds are, low odds are always gonna better than no odds at all. And please don't start with that Bonus Hero ****, because Bonus Heroes were a completely separate concept, and need to be viewed as such. People keep trying to pair them together as a solution for dilution, which is a huge load of ****. Vaulting is its own thing, Bonus Heroes are their own thing. Bonus Heroes + A store with the older characters would have been perfect. But stop trying to convince people that being forced to pull from the newest 12, with a small hope you'll get a Bonus, is somehow better than being able to pull from a vault that ALREADY has someone you want, but still with the small hope you'll get a bonus. 

So again, NO. Vaulted solved the problem of a particular kind of character being in a diluted pool. It didn't solve the fact that there's a diluted pool. The only way to actually solve this problem is reduce the size of the pool and create multiple. 

veny

Beer40 said:

61% to 38% against Vaulting. 

Please, Vaulting truthers. Explain to us more how little we understand dilution and how Vaulting is good for us all. 61% of us still don't seem to understand your...I mean the right! point of view...

This is not what poll wants to know.Yes, vaulting solved 4* diluition - removing 4*s permanently would solve it too... same as shutting down servers.
Poll question is stupid (sorry author) and its results can bring dangerous interpretations (like yours, "people like vaulting").
My answer would be: Yes, vaulting solved dilution. BUT, it solved it the most stupid way. Sadly, polls are not designed for complex answers so there are two choice for me - "Yes" answer, or not answeing at all.
I chose not answering, other may not...

BoyWonder1914

No

zodiac339 said:

Beer40 said:

61% to 38% against Vaulting. 

Please, Vaulting truthers. Explain to us more how little we understand dilution and how Vaulting is good for us all. 61% of us still don't seem to understand your...I mean the right! point of view...

I'd hope the majority for archiving can appreciate that it's not good for all players. There's very little that can help new players, because you haven't, and will never (without buying a lot) catch up to old players. The best I can offer is that I spent the better part of 2 years with no shot at beating anyone with maxed out legendary heroes or Champion legendaries. I slowly developed those through what I could win or what RNG dropped through pulls. Slow, because the 1/40 it became spread out what dropped pretty wide. Now, while there are many of the high tier characters you won't be able to effectively develop, the speed that a newer player can make a roster of actaully usable heroes is much, much better.
The pro: can legitimately make a roster of Champion Legendaries within a year of play.
The con: a lot of boosted legendaries and top tier characters are out of effective reach due to being archived.
The truth: RNG would have kept those top tier characters out of your hands anyway.
The other truth: Both sides of this argument are determined not to actually listen.

Another argument that frustrates me. People talk like developing other 4-stars and/or becoming competitive quicker somehow makes a player want a particular character less. Just because someone champs C4rol, Wasp, and Medusa and are now part of the same metagame most people are getting into, doesn't mean they don't still covet an Iceman or Peggy. There is zero reason that making newer characters MORE available, had to mean that they needed to make older characters LESS available. Those things aren't mutually exclusive by any means. It was a horrible decision, and it absolutely blows my mind that people feel the need to so adamantly defend a horrible decision that they had absolutely no part in making. 

Some people are just collectors and want to have and champ every character in the game. For a game that in some form encourages you to have all these people (have, not regularly use), I just don't get the rationale behind cutting off access to people. Hell, I'd have been less upset at them gating them behind some kind of paywall than taking them away altogether. 

MissChinch

No

Jaedenkaal said:

MissChinch said:

Does it solve the problem of people complaining at a new character release about being able to use them in a year or so?  Yup, that problem is solved

Does it solve the problem of dilution? Seems almost laughable, before I had increasingly bad odds on covering a 4* character, now I am unable to pull the vast majority of the tier...  Adding more characters dilutes the tier, restricting me from pulling most of them doesn't "un-dilute" the tier.

"Yes, but it also had a lot of other implications, many of which I don't like" is still "Yes" for the poll, it is not "No"

Sure, I can vote any way I like on a poll, as long as I scratch out the question and substitute my own. 

For reference, the "dilution" that is being discussed that may or may not have been "solved" by vaulting, is the dilution explicitly described in Dave's answer here:

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.

That's the problem. Tokens (not the tier) contain too many characters, so drawing a specific character available in that token is extremely unlikely.

Has vaulting solved this? Yes, yes it has. Did it have other effects that you may or may not  enjoy? Sure. Is the poll question and available answer list about those other effects? No. 

"Vaulting was designed to help with dilution. Is it working?

Does Vaulting solve the dilution problem?"

...is the only wording given to this poll...  

If you want to change it from the dilution problem to the problem of people complaining that they wont get a new character covered in a reasonable amount of time that's your call, but dilution was also an issue for people trying to cover existing characters and never seeing the right color/character combo.

The reason it was getting progressively harder for players to cover the older characters (waiting around forever for an iceman or teen jean cover) was because the odds of pulling them was getting worse and worse with more 4*s being added...  Removing the odds of completing them all together isn't a fix to the problem. 

"The dilution problem" encompassed it being difficult to get the remaining covers for heroes in the 4* tier... I'm not following the logic of how removing the ability to cover old characters altogether means its fixed.

mohio

Starfury said:

mohio said:

tl;dr - No one can prove that their roster is negatively effected by the change (cause it probably isn't), they just FEEL like they are due to various psychological complications.

What a bunch of ...

Every single one of my pre March 1 4* champs has been robbed of any chance of significant further growth.

Every vaulted half-covered is stuck there. People would be better off selling their 7th or 8th cover than adding it to a character they'll at best need once a year in ddq crash.

But yeah, the problem is that we feel the wrong way...

To your first point - your pre-March 1 champs weren't making significant further growth anyway, unless you were going to be placing t5 in PvP or t10 or better in PvE when those characters were offered as rewards. At under 2% chances per character on LTs you may have pulled around 2 covers in the past 2.5 months, making those characters so much stronger.

To your second point - this is a valid complaint and a problem with the current system. But tell me how it makes your roster weaker? You may have gotten those 2 or 3 covers just like in the above case, and you would still be left with something around 10-11 covers that still isn't usable next to your championed characters. Instead, now you have a system where you probably fully covered over half of the latest 12 instead of inching along those older characters and maybe fully covering them over the rest of the year.

In the end you can feel however you want. But I don't think anyone should be making factual statements about something they just have a feeling about. You can't say this is harmful to your roster growth because it just seems like it should be, or because you would have preferred something else.

One last note, in response to some other posts - us vaulting "truthers" or whatever you're taking to calling us, have been using bonus heroes to help bolster our argument because for one, they've worked well for us, and two, the devs themselves chose to bundle the changes together as one cohesive system. No one is trying to claim that it's perfect at what it's meant to help do, but it definitely alleviates at least SOME of the issues that keep coming up, so it is foolish to just ignore those because you COULD decouple the systems. Yes, you could, but the devs did not, so why should we?

broll

No

mohio said:

Starfury said:

mohio said:

tl;dr - No one can prove that their roster is negatively effected by the change (cause it probably isn't), they just FEEL like they are due to various psychological complications.

What a bunch of ...

Every single one of my pre March 1 4* champs has been robbed of any chance of significant further growth.

Every vaulted half-covered is stuck there. People would be better off selling their 7th or 8th cover than adding it to a character they'll at best need once a year in ddq crash.

But yeah, the problem is that we feel the wrong way...

To your first point - your pre-March 1 champs weren't making significant further growth anyway, unless you were going to be placing t5 in PvP or t10 or better in PvE when those characters were offered as rewards. At under 2% chances per character on LTs you may have pulled around 2 covers in the past 2.5 months, making those characters so much stronger.

Growing an average of 1 level per 49 token pulls is better than a guaranteed 0 levels per 49 token pulls.

BoyWonder1914

No

mohio said:

Starfury said:

mohio said:

tl;dr - No one can prove that their roster is negatively effected by the change (cause it probably isn't), they just FEEL like they are due to various psychological complications.

What a bunch of ...

Every single one of my pre March 1 4* champs has been robbed of any chance of significant further growth.

Every vaulted half-covered is stuck there. People would be better off selling their 7th or 8th cover than adding it to a character they'll at best need once a year in ddq crash.

But yeah, the problem is that we feel the wrong way...

One last note, in response to some other posts - us vaulting "truthers" or whatever you're taking to calling us, have been using bonus heroes to help bolster our argument because for one, they've worked well for us, and two, the devs themselves chose to bundle the changes together as one cohesive system. No one is trying to claim that it's perfect at what it's meant to help do, but it definitely alleviates at least SOME of the issues that keep coming up, so it is foolish to just ignore those because you COULD decouple the systems. Yes, you could, but the devs did not, so why should we?

And here we are back at the start. Why are issues coming up in the first place if this "solution" was so great? 

"Yes, you could, but the devs did not, so why should we?"

"The devs served us a **** sandwich on a platter and called it ice cream, why shouldn't we call it ice cream?"

Just because Bonus Heroes are literally the only option we have to get vaulted people now doesn't mean its a good option. Nor do we have to believe its the best solution to this problem just because THEY believe they developed it as so. 

Partyof5

No

Maybe we need a poll asking "Did this change increase or decrease your enjoyment of this game".  Or one the devs may look at: "Did this change result in you spending more or less money". 

This has decreased my enjoyment.  I now feel like I should hoard tokens and CP rather than cash in the rewards of my work.  Instead of looking forward to pulling a War Machine or Hulkbuster, I have to worry about pulling a Riri or Agent Coulsen.  I would rather get to choose what characters to pull from than have them filtered down for me.  BH helps some of that, but vaulting offsets any good that has done.  I don't want every character now, but I would like to build my favorites first.   

mohio

I never said bonus heroes was perfect. In fact I pretty much said it's not perfect at all. But anyway, when it's brought up it's usually after someone says "but I really want to champion iceman" or "I want my Peggy to get more champion levels". In these more specific cases bonus heroes actually works quite well (better than the previous system). But when people start saying "I want all of the top 10 heroes championed and at high levels", that is obviously not something bonus heroes is really equipped to handle. Of course I think at some point you just have to say that that person is just being a selfish something or other, but we all WANT more than the game gives us, so I don't think that's exactly a valid knock on the system. 

To go back one more step the "solution" to dilution was the "vaulting" of older 4*. It is simply not debatable that this is a valid solution to the prior issue of dilution (whether you like it or not is certainly subjective and a better thing to poll as partyof5 mentions above). To mitigate the problem of not being able to draw older characters they introduced bonus heroes. While everyone likes free stuff, the system is flawed in that at only 5% it's not a significant enough boost to drawing the old characters to make it feel like progress is being made outside of choosing only one bonus hero at a time. As they seem to realize, they have so far not offered enough other ways of obtaining these "vaulted" characters, which seems to be the crux of most of the problems. 

MissChinch

No

mohio said:

I never said bonus heroes was perfect. In fact I pretty much said it's not perfect at all. But anyway, when it's brought up it's usually after someone says "but I really want to champion iceman" or "I want my Peggy to get more champion levels". In these more specific cases bonus heroes actually works quite well (better than the previous system). But when people start saying "I want all of the top 10 heroes championed and at high levels", that is obviously not something bonus heroes is really equipped to handle. Of course I think at some point you just have to say that that person is just being a selfish something or other, but we all WANT more than the game gives us, so I don't think that's exactly a valid knock on the system. 

To go back one more step the "solution" to dilution was the "vaulting" of older 4*. It is simply not debatable that this is a valid solution to the prior issue of dilution (whether you like it or not is certainly subjective and a better thing to poll as partyof5 mentions above). To mitigate the problem of not being able to draw older characters they introduced bonus heroes. While everyone likes free stuff, the system is flawed in that at only 5% it's not a significant enough boost to drawing the old characters to make it feel like progress is being made outside of choosing only one bonus hero at a time. As they seem to realize, they have so far not offered enough other ways of obtaining these "vaulted" characters, which seems to be the crux of most of the problems. 

Problem with dilution:

- More 4*s being added into the pool made it harder for me to get the covers I wanted on iceman, jean gray and rhulk

- More 4*s being added into the pool made it take longer to cover a new character

- More 4*s being added into the pool means my championed IMHB is seeing progressively less and less levels

Vaulting is absolutely not a fix for dilution, its more difficult to pull more 4*s now than ever before (read impossible), and with each new 4* the problem still gets worse, simply look to the champion issue...  dilution was causing high level champions to become harder and harder to obtain because the pool of 4*s was increasing.

Vaulting exacerbates some of the problems that arose from dilution of the 4* tier in exchange for solving one of the problems that arose from dilution: The complaints that new characters will take forever to cover and thus customers becoming disincentivized to invest in new characters.

Please, if vaulting solves the dilution problem we had previously of each new 4* character making it less and less likely that I'll see higher level champions enlighten me, or tell me how dilution was somehow not to blame for my odds of getting a champion level being worse with each additional 4* released... 

Even the most zealous supporters seem to claim its in conflict with higher level champion rewards...

NewMcG

Yes

MissChinch said:

Problem with dilution:

- More 4*s being added into the pool made it harder for me to get the covers I wanted on iceman, jean gray and rhulk

- More 4*s being added into the pool made it take longer to cover a new character

- More 4*s being added into the pool means my championed IMHB is seeing progressively less and less levels

Vaulting is absolutely not a fix for dilution, its more difficult to pull more 4*s now than ever before (read impossible), and with each new 4* the problem still gets worse, simply look to the champion issue...  dilution was causing high level champions to become harder and harder to obtain because the pool of 4*s was increasing.

Vaulting exacerbates some of the problems that arose from dilution of the 4* tier in exchange for solving one of the problems that arose from dilution: The complaints that new characters will take forever to cover and thus customers becoming disincentivized to invest in new characters.

Please, if vaulting solves the dilution problem we had previously of each new 4* character making it less and less likely that I'll see higher level champions enlighten me, or tell me how dilution was somehow not to blame for my odds of getting a champion level being worse with each additional 4* released... 

Even the most zealous supporters seem to claim its in conflict with higher level champion rewards...

Another example of not using the word "dilution" properly.

The 4* tier was not being "diluted". It was being "expanded" by adding to it. What was being "diluted" were the tokens that provided the 4* characters, as the percentage chance to get any given 4* got smaller and smaller, to where it would now be just over 2% per character, if all 4* were still in the LTs. 

Think of it in terms of the wheel from "Wheel of Fortune". Each character represents a space on the wheel. At the start, there were a small number of characters, (say 20, since I don't want to dig through and see what the numbers were at the time of LTs being implemented), so the chance of hitting a given space on the wheel wasn't that bad. You'd need to hit each spot 13 times to finish a character, but since there weren't that many different spaces, the odds were decent that you might do so in a decent amount of time.

Now, imagine that twice every six weeks, they add two new spaces, make every space a little smaller, and you have to spin the same wheel to finish the new characters. Now they've got almost 50 spaces on the wheel, and every new "space" that gets added still needs to be landed on 13 times to be finished. That's what "dilution" actually is referring to.

By making the wheel consist of 12 spaces, and when a new space get added, they drop one out, it makes for fixed odds on those characters that have spaces on the wheel. In keeping with the WoF analogy, the spaces may be of different values, but that doesn't change the odds of landing on one. Not taking the characters off the wheel does change those odds, in an ever-diminishing way, every few weeks.

Jaedenkaal

Yes

New McG said:

Think of it in terms of the wheel from "Wheel of Fortune"....

Oh, they know what it means. But they can't admit it and still vote no, so here we are. Bad poll is bad.