The problem, to me, isn't actually vaulting

DFiPL
DFiPL Posts: 2,405 Chairperson of the Boards
I didn't mind it so much when it happened and that hasn't really changed - I have five of the current Token12 covered, have covered everybody from Peggy through C4ge/Spider-Woman, and most of the rest have made significant progress.

So the reality is, it has achieved its goal.

Where I'm starting to have an issue with it is that between the lack of appreciable access to vintage heroes, and the veritable flood of covers for the Token12, champion decisions can sometimes cause resentment. I have a 13 cover Mordo; do I champion him, with maybe another dozen covers and the concomitant rewards, or do I champion X-23, who might get a couple covers a year, but who I've actively been trying to cover for a year or more?

I guess maybe put another way, if I could level the characters whose cover flow has been drastically reduced without feeling like I'm harming my progress with the active ones, I'd resent it less when I cover an active character I don't much care for. If 40 of the 4* are going to be minimally accessible for most players, maybe their level costs should get a look? 
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Comments

  • beyonderbub
    beyonderbub Posts: 661 Critical Contributor
    New meta says Mordo is the efficient choice. X-23 can wait until you've champed the Token 12. Chances are you'll pull several Mordo covers before your next x23 cover
  • DFiPL
    DFiPL Posts: 2,405 Chairperson of the Boards
    broll said:
    DFiPL said:

    The problem, to me, isn't actually vaulting


    Where I'm starting to have an issue with it is that between the lack of appreciable access to vintage heroes
    Which is what vaulting is...  Several people have suggested reasonable ways to get access to the 'vaulted' characters.  You're agreeing with all the people who don't like vaulting...
    Maybe I'm not doing a great job of explaining. As things stand, the characters you can get covers for are treated the same as those you cannot.

    So when I'm presented the choice between championing one or the other, it causes me some resentment - the cost is the same but the benefit, aside from the pleasure of completing an actively desired character, is not.

    Absent an accessibility solution, which has been slow in coming, maybe reducing the costs for a subset which already has reduced reward accessibility is a way to go.

    Do that, and even if I can't get as many of the older covers, I'm less likely to resent "Mordo or..." situations. And that resentment is the problem for me more than the act of vaulting.
  • smkspy
    smkspy Posts: 2,024 Chairperson of the Boards
    My 7 vine mordo covers demand I champ Mordo...before that was gwen...before that was riri...and before that was agent venom.

    Each character has their use, but yeah, I would call a little feeling of resentment an accurate description when champing them.  
  • evade420
    evade420 Posts: 440 Mover and Shaker
    I've easily sold 20+ mordo & agent venom covers, I just can't bring myself to champ them, or riri for that matter.
    I can't help but think what level my older 4* champs would be now if it weren't for vaulting :neutral:
  • Fightmastermpq
    Fightmastermpq Posts: 995 Critical Contributor
    DFiPL said:
    I didn't mind it so much when it happened and that hasn't really changed - I have five of the current Token12 covered, have covered everybody from Peggy through C4ge/Spider-Woman, and most of the rest have made significant progress.

    So the reality is, it has achieved its goal.

    Where I'm starting to have an issue with it is that between the lack of appreciable access to vintage heroes, and the veritable flood of covers for the Token12, champion decisions can sometimes cause resentment. I have a 13 cover Mordo; do I champion him, with maybe another dozen covers and the concomitant rewards, or do I champion X-23, who might get a couple covers a year, but who I've actively been trying to cover for a year or more?

    I guess maybe put another way, if I could level the characters whose cover flow has been drastically reduced without feeling like I'm harming my progress with the active ones, I'd resent it less when I cover an active character I don't much care for. If 40 of the 4* are going to be minimally accessible for most players, maybe their level costs should get a look? 
    But that's the price you pay to get rid of dilution.  Basically we said "hey, it really sucks that there are so many 4* covers that it's going to take literally years to cover them." And the devs responded with "well what if we took the covers you would have applied to 3/4 of the 4* pool and instead applied them all to the newest 1/4 of the pool?" That's vaulting. It's a tradeoff. The total number of 4* covers earned was never going to change (well, not beyond the 5% BH they so generously gave us), and so the problem was in how to apply those covers.  The gamble the devs took was that most would rather not take years to champ 4s, and so vaulting was born.
  • DFiPL
    DFiPL Posts: 2,405 Chairperson of the Boards
    DFiPL said:
    I didn't mind it so much when it happened and that hasn't really changed - I have five of the current Token12 covered, have covered everybody from Peggy through C4ge/Spider-Woman, and most of the rest have made significant progress.

    So the reality is, it has achieved its goal.

    Where I'm starting to have an issue with it is that between the lack of appreciable access to vintage heroes, and the veritable flood of covers for the Token12, champion decisions can sometimes cause resentment. I have a 13 cover Mordo; do I champion him, with maybe another dozen covers and the concomitant rewards, or do I champion X-23, who might get a couple covers a year, but who I've actively been trying to cover for a year or more?

    I guess maybe put another way, if I could level the characters whose cover flow has been drastically reduced without feeling like I'm harming my progress with the active ones, I'd resent it less when I cover an active character I don't much care for. If 40 of the 4* are going to be minimally accessible for most players, maybe their level costs should get a look? 
    But that's the price you pay to get rid of dilution.  Basically we said "hey, it really sucks that there are so many 4* covers that it's going to take literally years to cover them." And the devs responded with "well what if we took the covers you would have applied to 3/4 of the 4* pool and instead applied them all to the newest 1/4 of the pool?" That's vaulting. It's a tradeoff. The total number of 4* covers earned was never going to change (well, not beyond the 5% BH they so generously gave us), and so the problem was in how to apply those covers.  The gamble the devs took was that most would rather not take years to champ 4s, and so vaulting was born.
    And, I mean, that's fine. I understand the tradeoff, and I'm mostly okay with it. Of the last, what, sixteen 4*? I've either championed or fully covered 9, and I have three others at 10+ covers. That's a sea change from before where I was busily covering and championing older characters, but I was largely locked out of covering new characters - and the one I most wanted, my dearest Peggy, was slow going.

    So the flip for me has been that I'm able to cover and use the newer characters much faster than I used to be able to, and that's gratifying. But I'm still looking at, at most, two 4* champions a month, and the nature of the Token12 is such that with 1-2 4* entering tokens each month, it's difficult to get ahead enough on that front to be able to turn to older characters.

    I'm close to getting X-23 fully covered, as I mentioned. Which is great! She's another I've wanted to cover, to give me a usable 4* with true healing. But where do I fit her in for the ISO she needs to get to 270? She's not in tokens anymore, so I'm just not going to see many covers for her in the next year, which makes maxing/championing her feel like a waste of resources that could be used on somebody who IS active.

    If she isn't going to get many, if any, champion levels, and she's not available in tokens anymore, why should it cost the same to take her to 270 as it would an active character? If it cost less to take those vaulties to 270 as I get them to 13 covers, I likely wouldn't begrudge Mordo the 300k'ish it'll take to do the same to him. As much.
  • Starfury
    Starfury Posts: 719 Critical Contributor
    edited June 2017
    Do what the devs have so obviously done:

    Pretend the vaulted characters don't even exist.
  • Alsmir
    Alsmir Posts: 508 Critical Contributor
    Starfury said:
    Do what the devs have so obviously done:

    Pretend the vaulted characters don't even exist.
    Weekly buffed list is disagreeing with you.
    It was so fun grinding in Hawkeye'e PvP with 90% of the teams aboove 500 points using boosted Jean Grey.
  • Pla5yer99
    Pla5yer99 Posts: 32 Just Dropped In
    I think it is time to have another token tier rather than just latest and classic. Classic have way too many 5 stars to try my luck to draw them. How about a mid tier legendary token with only 4-5 5 stars inside which get rotated monthly? This way we have a chance to use our cp to get popular classic 5 stars 
  • Nick441234
    Nick441234 Posts: 1,496 Chairperson of the Boards
    DeNappa said:
    I'm more concerned about not even being able to maxcover the 4*s before they leave the packs again. 4* acquisition rate isn't that high for everyone...
    It doesn't help when you constantly get covers you dont need too!!!! I've had C4rol at 5 black for some time now, but of course, I just keep on getting those blacks! 
  • nitefox1337
    nitefox1337 Posts: 80 Match Maker
    edited June 2017
    I googled Vaulting. I read the official Vault announcement from mpq. And yet, I still have no clue about what this "Vaulting" everyone is talking about is nor how it works.

    If someone could explain it from scratch, it would be much appreciated.
  • Fightmastermpq
    Fightmastermpq Posts: 995 Critical Contributor
    I googled Vaulting. I read the official Vault announcement from mpq. And yet, I still have no clue about what this "Vaulting" everyone is talking about is nor how it works.

    If someone could explain it from scratch, it would be much appreciated.
    https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/60255/new-feature-bonus-heroes-updated-3-1-17/p1

    "Vaulting" refers to the part about removing characters from packs.  The characters no longer available are considered to be "vaulted" i.e. locked away in a vault that are not accessible.

    The term comes from when this practice was first used several years ago where vaulted characters were truly vaulted - there was no way to get them at all.  Now you still have some limited access to vaulted characters through rewards and bonus heroes, but they are not available in things like LTs, heroics, etc.
  • Fightmastermpq
    Fightmastermpq Posts: 995 Critical Contributor
    DeNappa said:
    I'm more concerned about not even being able to maxcover the 4*s before they leave the packs again. 4* acquisition rate isn't that high for everyone...
    Why are you concerned about this?  Have you tracked your 4* acquisition rate?  How many covers do you have for Coulson and Mordo?

    I would encourage you to join myself and others here as we track our progress for some extended period of time to get a firm grip on our own rates of progression so that we can have a more informed opinion of how viable this vaulting mechanic is for rosters of all levels.  Thanks!
  • Megdar
    Megdar Posts: 133 Tile Toppler
    evade420 said:
    I've easily sold 20+ mordo & agent venom covers, I just can't bring myself to champ them, or riri for that matter.
    I can't help but think what level my older 4* champs would be now if it weren't for vaulting :neutral:
    There is 40 vaulted, so even if you have all of them Champ, they would just have 0.5 more level. You only dream it would be better. But mostly it would have changed nothing. You should have just champ Mordo and give him the cover.
  • Wumpushunter
    Wumpushunter Posts: 627 Critical Contributor
    There are so many ways they could ameliorate the impact of vaulting.
     But as long a single person buys HP for the heroes for hire store, vaulting served it's purpose.
    You don't create a problem then fix it with a 3200 HP store without that being the very reason you created the problem in the first place. 
  • GrumpySmurf1002
    GrumpySmurf1002 Posts: 3,511 Chairperson of the Boards
    Wonko33 said:
    Personally vaulting was a disaster- How many Colston purple must I trash while all my championed vaulted characters just sit there ? 
    None?  Stop pulling/start hoarding if waste is a huge issue.