Vaulting and its fallout are still significant issues in the game. . .

smkspy · June 2017

@brigby

3 star vaulting is a problem too, but it is mildly allivatied by daily deadpool and that 3s are heavily available in vaults.

nycjonny · June 2017

I would be happy if the token pulls from Classic Legends gave you a different set of 12 "classic 4*s" instead of the exact same 12 most recent 4*s you get in Latest Legends. That would solve the problem for me.

Jaedenkaal · June 2017

OK. two years ago, eh.

there are no legendary tokens. none of the characters you mentioned exist. the only way to get 4*'s is that tiny chance from a heroic token, or placing 1st in an event. you'll get a few in daily rewards, eventually.

Those are the options that people 2 years ago had. The game has changed a lot since then, almost entirely for the better.

You want ice man so badly you'll die without him? bonus hero him, buy covers with CP, maybe hit up the HfH for your 13th cover. Those are options that people 2 years ago did not have.

broll · June 2017

I had just started my 4* transition when vaulting came out. Vaulting has some good and some bad.

Good:

You can champion new 4*s much sooner.

Bad:

4*s level very unevenly, either super fast or at glacier-like speeds.
One of the driving goals for me in this game was championing every character, now that seems extremely unlikely.
I still have to compete against players who champed older top tier 4*s before the change. Right now the current 12 seem good by comparison to those, but that will only remain true if power creep continues indefinately, which doesn't seem good for the game.
All 4*s have a glass ceiling based on how many covers you can get in ~9 months they're in the covers.
The best rewards in the champion system are at the back half, that's gotten much harder for 4*s (this is also true to a lesser extent with 3*s).
Now ever player in 4* tier (and above) is on a constant treadmill where they have to keep pace championing before characters drop or be left behind.
One of the lauded things with the launch was the ability to choice who to level. Bonus Heroes provided that (it's great don't need a change there unless you want to boost the % ) but vaulting then took it away.

All we really want is choice. Give 1 (or more) CP stores with the older 4*s so those that want to get them have a reasonable avenue.

Wumpushunter · June 2017

my bonus hero rate is about 2.23%
I am using my HP for roster slots and I do not reward cash grabs.
If I spent every CP of my hoard I could get one vaulted character to 13 covers. 120 x 13.

Any other methods that won't take 6 months x how many vaulted fours?

Jaedenkaal · June 2017

took longer than 6 months 2 years ago, so I'm still not sure what you're complaining about.

Saving for roster slots for who, exactly, if you're not spending CP or opening tokens?)
Sounds to me like not spending the resources you do have has "stolen" your 4* transition, not vaulting.

animaniactoo · June 2017

I'm at the early stage of transitioning. I just champed Blade and Gwenpool as my first 2 4* champs (within the last week and change). I have a few at 5/2/5, several at 5/4/3 or 5/3/2, and many of those are now vaulted (Moonknight, Wasp, and Peggy, who were my early leaders in the "starting to be useful" category).

I have everyone rostered, but some of them are sitting at 2/0/1. In general, they are useful for me in being able to access PVE essential nodes, but I can only get through those by ignoring them and packing my strongest characters around them and try not to let the 4* get too damaged until the last round.

3 stars I have everyone champed (except for Peter Quill), but only 8 of them are above 200.

I can pull a new cover from classic 2-3 times a week, once in a while more, but that's about it. I'm a regular PVE T50 player, and I do the DDQ every day.

Fightmastermpq · June 2017

@Brigby I'm a 5* player, but I am still very much residing in 4* land. I see far more potential in getting the newest 12 characters to 370 since having them boosted to 479 has them seeing play over my 450-470 5*s.....especially in PvE where I don't have to worry about defense.

aa25 · June 2017

Token dilution is definitely a problem. But the current "vaulting" method is not the solution. It just moves the problem that used to be with all 4* over to the vintage 4*. People who are transitioning when the vault kicked in suffer the most, many of them essentially have their progress set back tremendously if not have to start the transition process all over again.

@Brigby For your question, I'm a 4* player. Moved in just in time before "vaulting" hammer hit the process. Half of my 3* and 4* are pretty much paralyzed now and got left behind.

Wumpushunter · June 2017

Fightmastermpq · June 2017

I fixed your post for you.

The two bad things you listed are linked as well. The one bright side to these though is that even if your play style doesn't change one bit (and you are currently bringing in 25k ISO/day) this problem will slowly start to fix itself. At first you will have a handful of newest characters champed and when you open tokens you'll use those champ rewards to fund more champs, and the more of the 12 you have champed the larger your income from those champ rewards, which will drive even more champ rewards going forward. Over time you will start to get deeper and deeper into the champ rewards for each character before they are vaulted.

Reecoh · June 2017

I had finished champing all of the 3*s and blown my hoarded LTs and CP just a little while before vaulting hit. I think I got my fist 4* champ the same week Vaulting was released (Rulk).

Since then, I have managed to champ 13 more 4*s. All of them have been in the tokens. I have 22 LTs and over 1K CP stocked up b/c I'm currently in a cycle of open 1 to 3 LTs, champ whichever I get on the vine that's within a cover (possibly spending some CP on a cover), then start building ISO again. My 4* Bonus hero is always either trying to pull a missing cover for whomever is on the vine, or trying to get another Rulk to get that first LT. Yes, my first champ is also my lowest and the only at 270.

Fightmastermpq · June 2017

You can't say that. You aren't comprehending what dilution really is. If there are 50 4*s and you pull 50 tokens and get 1 of each that's not helpful. That's dilution - the pool is too diluted for you to make meaningful progress on them all. D3 isn't in the habit of handing out free tokens (well, not more than the 5% BH we got anyway), so those 50 pulls that you got aren't going to change. So ANYTHING you do to use those same 50 pulls to make meaningful progress on any character will necessarily prevent you from making meaningful progress on some other character or group of characters. Period. That's just math.

No. They aren't starting the process over again because the process they followed before is gone, and the process they follow now is very different. The process they follow now takes less than 1/4 the time it did before. That means if you were less than 3/4 done with a character (fewer than 10 covers) you will actually max cover a character in tokens now faster than you would have finished off those last 4+ covers under the old system.

spiderpool · June 2017

Well, when vaulting started I think I had about 14 camped 4* and my highest leveled one was about 278. Since vaulting I now have 27 4* camped and will soon champ mordo and riri and my highest leveled 4 star is 292.

I think over all the changes have been good. I covered and camped the new 4* fast and they quickly surpassed my older 4* in lvl. Carol, Medusa, and blade are my highest lvl 4* . The only down side is that my older 4* rarely get champ levels.

Jarvind · June 2017

I very recently (like eight or nine days ago) transitioned to 5* scaling, but before that I was firmly entrenched in Foursville with all characters rostered and the majority of them championed. Right now i've got 42 of the 50 champed (not counting Howard and Dino) and the only vaulted characters not champed are Fury and Invisible Woman. Honestly, I'm still on the fence about selling off my 5s because the 5* game is so whack, so I might be back there soon.

Since it looks like you're accruing suggestions here I will re-state my proposed fix that I've posted elsewhere. Keep the system roughly as-is with a limited number of characters in tokens. Allow us to choose which characters fill some of those token slots, out of the same pool of characters that are eligible to be bonus heroes. For example, lock in the 6 latest, and let us pick 6 characters that will also appear in tokens.

This would keep the new characters in tokens for about 3 months, which is enough time for a lot of folks to cover them, and would let us keep working on whichever characters we like best, or missed because they're vaulted.

The UI functionality is already there, even - just like we use the heart to pick bonus heroes, add a star or something that lets us pick our 6 open token slot heroes. If none are selected it just defaults to either the next 6 newest, or random heroes out of the whole pool.

Maybe it'd have to be the 8 latest and four of our choosing, or whatever, but the point is that it keeps the system allowing new players to advance 4*s quickly while still giving us the opportunity to advance our favorite characters at a reasonable pace. It also adds an element of control. People really, really like having some measure of control over how their roster develops. Just go ahead and look at all the threads bemoaning the reliance on RNG to advance in the 5* world if you don't believe me.

You could even tie the ability to do this to SHIELD rank. Start off locking in the 12 latest, then give us the option to control one slot every 5 levels, starting at 50 or so, until we we reach the maximum. It adds more meaning to SHIELD rank and tying it to a high level keeps new players from just going bananas and ending up with 36 1-cover characters.

I feel like some version of this is probably warranted at the 3* level as well, though covering and advancing them is significantly easier since they show up a lot more as guaranteed rewards, so it doesn't murder fun to the same extent.

Nepenthe · June 2017

@Brigby, I now have all of the 4*s champed except Sandman, although all in the low end of the champion range. (My highest is now a level 308 Blade.) I do think the vaulting/bonus heroes situation is better than the old system, but I want an option to buy another type of legendary token that has the older 4* heroes available.

Here's why: Since vaulting every new character has quickly passed all my old characters in levels, even the very first ones that I was able to champion, even the ones I've set as bonus heroes. Everyone who says "Set an old hero as your bonus hero, you'll get it 1 in 20" is missing the point that there's more than one vaulted hero that we want to be able to level. Even if there was only one old hero I favorited, let's say I pulled a big hoard of LTs, enough that 120 of the pulls were 4*s. On average, that would be 10 of each of the latest 12 4*s and 6 of my FAVORITE HERO. My favorite is 4 levels behind all those new ones. If I have 2 favorites, that's 3 levels for each of them... 3 favorites it's only 2 levels for each of them. 6 favorites means I'd only get 1 level for each of my favorites, compared to 10 levels on each of the new heroes! Guess what, there's more than 6 vaulted heroes that I'd like to level up. When bonus heroes launched, @Cthulhu said it was about giving us more control over our rosters, but the math doesn't really support that. It's great for leveling up new heroes quicker than before, but there is no option to say "Hey I've got plenty of covers for the newer heroes, I'd like to pull some old ones now."

So why not a vintage legendary token? I wouldn't buy it all the time because I do want the new heroes too. But once all my newer 12 4*s are 20 levels or so above my older 4*s, yeah I'd switch for a while, probably until there was another new release that excited me. My ideal solution would be more than 1 type of vintage legendary though, so you could split up the 5*s as well instead of the one big diluted pool of 5*s in classics. Here's my suggestions thread about themed legendary stores, although thinking on it more I'd prefer they were available all the time instead of rotating, because if they rotated we'd have to hoard until the one we wanted came around.

Milk Jugz · June 2017

I had about 5 4* champed and about 10 more fully covered when vaulting hit. I now have 26, almost 27 champed. My biggest issue with vaulting is lack of champ levels. The vaulted ones I've champed are sitting, mostly, at a paltry 271 or 272, only due pve or pvp progression rewards. Peggy had been forever frozen at 282, until I got that cover from pvp progression, now she will be at 283 for the foreseeable future. C4ge, stuck at 273. Wasp 277. Progress stalls almost completely once they are out of tokens.

Tajit · June 2017

When vaulting started, I had all the 3s championed and zero 4s - my closest were Invisible Woman, Punisher, Cyclops, and Fury, all who were one cover away. All the 4s were at least rostered, I was only wasting covers when someone had a color maxed. I don't hoard anything, I pull as soon as I have a token or 20cp.

Now, three months later, I have two 4s championed: Gwenpool (who'd begun at 2/2/3) at 276, and Invisible Woman at 271.

As for those who were part of the latest 12 at one point and have rotated out, Carter went from 5/1/2 to 5/4/3, Wasp went from 3/0/1 to 5/1/5, Spider-Woman went from 0/1/1 to 3/3/2, and Cage went from 4/2/1 to 5/2/2.

This has been a good change as far as getting newer characters to where they can at least do their Crash of the Titans before they get vaulted. It has been a frustrating one in that most characters so far are getting locked away shortly before they could be championed. I've received five or six 5star bonuses, but only 2 4star bonuses. That hasn't helped this.

The lack of roster progress has also made me stop caring entirely about ISO as a reward, because my only use in three months has been to champion those two 4s and recycle some 2s. I have enough banked for 5 champions.. just waiting on covers to happen.

Evilgenius9 · June 2017

I am in 4* land. 18 champed 4*'s, OML best 5 at 12 covers. Vaulting made the bigger problem in the game that much worse - the lack of ISO. An alliance member and I figued out we each need 7 million plus iso to level the characters we have to max. I have 45 LT's and over 600 cp saved up, and recently spent 240 cp to champ medusa.
I am honestly debating if I should give up on finishing 4*'s and start levelling my 5's. I'd like to champ all 4's, but I think the better plan is build them high enough to win their crash and sit on them, while I equally level my 5's with all 3 powers.
While I am giving feedback, I don't understand why scl9 is not in game yet. It's ridiculous, 10 should probably be here - but 9 absolutely should be. Even if it's locked at 100 and higher (I'm 86 for comparison) - it should be in game now. No excuses.

Vhailorx · June 2017

Hi Brigby,

Thanks for wading into this topic despite fairly harsh tone. I was well into 4* land when BH + vaulting went live. I had 20 something 4* champs at the time, and have 37 now. I have all 4*s prior to rocket and groot fully covered, and 10 vaulted/limited 4*s are unchamped.

Since vaulting went live I have champed 3 vaulted 4*s (spidergwen was my target before the vaulting, so I finished her to catch the covers. Since that time I have champed Kate and X23, both of whom were unicorns that I had been chasing with little success for many months in 2016. They are currently at 273 and 272 respectively.)

When vaulting went live my highest 4* champ was IMHB @298. 4* blade had about 7-9 covers at the time. My IMHB is currently 301 as is my 4* blade. They are my highest 4* champs.

I now have 3 fully covered 5*s and am likely to level and/or champ some of them in the coming few weeks, so I am just about ready to become a 5* transitioner rather than a true 4* player.

Turning more directly to vaulting: 4* vaulting is a more significant problem than 3* vaulting because vaulted 3*s are significantly more available than vaulted 4*s. It is much easier to get multiple covers for 3*s from placement rewards in PVE and PVP, and 3*s are not too hard to pull from event vaults either. Plus 3*s drop from tokens much more often than 4*s, so a 5% bonus hero rate is a fair bit more useful at the 3* level. Overall my vaulted 3* bench is definitely making more progress than my vaulted 4*s. But in the long run, this will become a problem in 3* land too. I recently hit my first level 266 3* (cage), and would bet that if this system stays the same I will be able to build my second 3* luke cage to somewhere around 230 before I max champ my vaulted 3*s at 266. The different between a boosted level 200 3* champ and boosted level 266 is massive, so this will have an impact on my game experience eventually.

At the 4* tier the situation is more extreme. As you can see from my blade/IMHB comparison, I am running something like a 10:1 cover ratio now for current/vintage 4*s. I would very much like to champ some interesting older 4*s like War Machine or Moonknight that aren't necessarily top tier, but have interesting and unique play mechanics. Unfortunately, it is very hard to justify that cost now. Each vintage 4* I champ is one fewer current 4* champ, which costs me ~ 2 weeks of PVE grinding or I will fall behind the pace of release. And that's before counting the iso demands of leveling a 5* bench.

The champion system was a great addition to the game. But the current 4* cover distribution rate significantly hamstrings the champion system. I know the dev team doesn't have too much practical experience playing this game at the veteran level, but the difference between a 4* champ boosted from 275 and a 4* champ boosted from 310+ is very large. Demi definitely needs to make some changes to increase the availability of vintage 4*s. the vintage heroic tokens are an absolute non-factor. We each get 6 single tokens every 4 weeks, each of which have ~7% chance to drop a 4*. The expected number of 4* drops from vintage heroic tokens every season is about 0. 1 is a nice bonus.

Having said that, I definitely acknowledge that Grimskald and Fight are right to point out that simply going back to the old system is not a desirable option either. 4* dilution was getting to be a significant problem. It was becoming hard to fully cover new characters in less than 6-8 months, even for relatively advanced rosters like mine. So some method of speeding up the covering interval for 4*s was necessary. The problem is that vaulting forces players to focus on the current 12 characters to the near exclusion of all else, and that is especially bad since it was introduced alongside bonus heroes, which was advertised as a tool for empowering player choice. Nor do I think demi's bottom line would appreciate the simplest player-friendly solutions (something like bumping BH up to a 25% drop rate and then throwing all characters back into legendary tokens).

But there are a number of compromise solutions that could be implemented fairly easily with the existing game infrastructure and wouldn't result in a torrent of extra 4* covers for players or allow for us to target only the best characters and cover them too fast.

I think the most promising one I have seen is the one I mentioned up above: create new legendary token stores for the different annual vintages of MPQ characters. The net result of such a system would be that players would have LT ACCESS to any 4* they wanted, but they would still have to choose how to allocate their resources. And we players couldn't get JUST the good characters and ignore the others. If wanted to chase Iceman, we would also have to chase Ghost Rider and Mr. Fantastic who came out at roughly the same time. And chasing Iceman would mean NOT chasing Peggy, who came out the following year, etc.

The most attractive feature of this arrangement is that it would put a floor on dilution. MPQ releases about 26 characters per year (8 5*s and 18 4*s, plus the odd 3* too nowadays). That would put a floor of about 4.72% on the drop rate for any given 4* and 1.875% for any given 5*. I think that's pretty manageable, but if demi thinks that is too little dilution, then they can package 18 months or 2 years together to get lower per-character odds. And since none of this would affect the Latest Legends tokens, demi doesn't really have to worry about the effect it might have on the hoarding economy. latest LTs will remain a much more efficient way to build the latest characters, so hoarders will still be chasing their 5* champs there. Think of it like capping the roster slot cost. Most players didn't like the 1k cap and thought it was too high, but setting the cap was good for the long term health of the game because it didn't continually punish players for expanding their rosters. Splitting the classic LT pool into vintages is the same basic idea: setting a hard limit on the amount of dilution in the game.

Mostly I just created this topic because the long-term ramifications of the vaulting system are still a potentially big deal (unless you agree with Fight), but there had been no official red-name comment on the topic since the introduction of vintage heroic tokens. I don't want demi or d3 to think that we players have forgotten about the issue, and feedback is always appreciated.

Vaulting and its fallout are still significant issues in the game. . .

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