Doomed to never be happy about changes ?

broll

Daredevil217 said:

Starfury said:

sh81 said:

Of course, we know thats never going to happen.  So instead, while I was broadly keeping up with the release rate, I am now going to be forever behind.  And Ill be wasting more and more pulls while pulling tokens for vaulted characters I cant use or dont want.

Oh come on!!!

You weren't just keeping up, you were champing them far ahead of schedule. Your Sandman is at 11 covers and he's been in the latest 12 for 1 of 8 seasons., your Vulture's at 6 a week after he's entered tokens. You champed C4ge who was only in the latest 12 for two seasons.

Look, if I wasn't convinced that 3.5% instead of 7% was easily enough to cover the latest 12, I'd be totally opposed to this move as well. But you're complaining about things that won't even happen.

sh81 said:

My preferred solution was a second vault.  Another token, "Vintage" containing 12 vaulted characters.  This would then rotate its contents periodically (Id be happy with weekly, but even if it was every season Id be fine).

Vaulting proved that it works.  It works REALLY well, so why not apply it to vintage tokens as well?

Rotating vaults wouldn't change a thing. Vaulting didn't increase the speed of cover acquisition by dividing characters into pools of 12, it worked by removing almost 40 characters from tokens. The moment you open a second vault, you either don't pull from it, or you're splitting your progress between the latest 12 and the guys in the other vault. Or you just ignore it and we're back where we were with vaulting, where 75% of the 4* roster are essentially shelved.

On top of it, you'd just get monthly threads complaining about why they "deliberately" put Rulk in a pool with Ghost Rider, Kingpin and Nick Fury and why they pulled twice as many Mr. Fantastic, Elektra and Failcaps as they got Iceman and Peggy.

It's more work for the devs for the same overall effect as this change had.

There's so much truth here. The fact that our cover acquisition rate is the same is probably the biggest point that he's missing. WE are not subjected to wasted pulls (well no more so than before).  That's a huge misconception.  If you have no use for a character and want to skip them, focusing only on the newer shinies than yeah, YOU will have covers you CHOOSE to waste. I have a Fury dying on the vine so will stop pulling until I champ him. I'm choosing not to have wasted pulls.

The only way I will waste pulls is the dreaded 6th cover which has happened to me under every system (pre-vaulting, vaulting, and post-vaulting).

And here is the point you are missing from him.  For people who hoard they are controlling their cover acquisition rate themselves, so while yes it hasn't changed, hoarding strategies changes greatly when the pool is larger.  In the vaulting solution with hoarding it was possible (and relatively easy) to achieve a 0% 4* cover waste.  I don't think the same will be true here.

What we have is still better for most players though, just wish they switched Latest to the vaulted solution and we have a hybrid where people could pursue the best of both systems.

ChocoFlavaa

The best solution the devs should've come with was leaving everything how it was and just adding the a Vintage 4*s Character Vault. That IS WAAAAAYYYYY easier than coding  the latest 4*s in both vaults and with 3x the chances and adding all of the vintage characters to both vaults. That way people who want to target Vintage characters with their cp can do just that, and people who want to target latest characters can do the same. They can do that even with or without the chance chance of getting any 5*s and I'd be happy with it. 

**Edit: Basically just change everything back to the way it was, then add a Vintage Vault for the same 20cp but without the chance to get any 5*s so that there's no need to jack the prices up on the Latest and Classic legends vault. Or if the devs are feeling charitable, then can add the 5*s to the Vintage Vault for the same 20cp, or lower the vintage Vault price to 15cp w/o the 5*s. All that would work great for everyone as long as they don't jack cp prices up. 

DarthDeVo

broll said:

After some time to think my knee jerk reaction has settled down.  Ultimately this change is better for most people and I'm not going to rally against it like I did with vaulting.  There's really only one group it hits pretty hard and that's people deep in 4* transition with a lot of 5 covered non-champed 4*s and even then it's still better than the pre-vaulting solution.

The only change I'd like to see them make is to change Latest to the vaulted solution and leave Vintage as is now.  I don't think it will happen, but I think that would be a really good compromise of both systems and let people chose which system they want to live with.

Edit:  I flew off the handle largely because I had a good plan setup and that needs to be retooled again.  I don't do well with last second changes to plans especially with little to no warning.  Getting some notice so hoards like me could cash out in the old system if we chose to would have been nice.  Not sure why they wouldn't want to do this as it also might have prompted purchases for people desperate to finish off a few of the last 12 before the change.

Short answer is they don't intend for people to hoard in the first place, so why announce a change in advance that will possibly benefit hoarders? 

Please note I'm also currently one of those hoarders.

Alsmir

sh81 said:

Too bad indeed, I feel like I would be quite happy if you added me to it.


In what way was vaulting BAD for you, exactly?

Did it stop you competing?  Did it stall your development?  Did it ruin your roster?

Of course I can only speak for my own experience, but there are some universal truths to it.

Vaulting most certainly enabled people to get 4s not only useable, or covered, but champed.  In a meaningful way, this is a positive.

Thats a fact.

It also restricted access to older characters, which many are not happy about, so a negative effect.  Another fact. 

They can both exist together, its not an either/or situation.


What I was finding, from my own experience, was that older covers were actually accessible.  Not as accessible as I would have liked, but also, certainly, not locked away and out of reach.

Having been a victim of dillution, and a beneficiary of vaulting (and I wasnt a fan at all at first), I feel I have a valid opinion on the change.  We have returned to dilution, I dont like that.  And I feel the same issues that plagued me then will return now.

You are welcome to disagree.  Just as you are welcome to choose not to respond, considering you are unable to ignore me

1. Vaulting made most of my previous LT pulls irrelevant. I was punished for not hoarding from the very start. All of my vaulted characters were stuck in place. I could get 1-2 covers from PvE progression (and even PvE rewards started giving way more latest characters) and that was it.

Since the beginning of vaulting I managed to champ 2 vintage characters. Only because of BH mechanic. Each of them was at 9 covers pre-vaulting. During vaulting times, I earned 2 covers for them via champ rewards (from 3*) and that was it. If it wasn't for BH they would be at 10 covers each right now.

2. Vaulting accelerated my 4* covering beyond what I wanted. Now I'm stuck with higher ISO shortage than ever before. I haven't finished champing 3* (2 left) and I have no bloody idea how to pull enough ISO for that. My 2* farm almost died, when I was selling them to desperately champ 4* characters with expiring covers.

3. My chance of wasted pulls increased from 0% to 16,6% as I fully covered Mordo and Riri with no ISO to champ them and no incentive, as they won't offer anything usefull.

4.I was pressured to play more to:
- cover latest 12 before they leave tokens
-get ISO to champ them

Which was really burning me out. It was painfull to see Peggy, Jessica, Gwenpool, Kate leaving tokens before I can do anything to champ them. Then they would be stuck in the useless vintage pool and getting 1-2 covers/year.


I managed to champ 5 guys. 3 thanks to vaulting. 2 thanks to BH mechanic. It's nice, but it didn't improve my roster by that much. It rocks when one of them is boosted but that's it. PvE takes similar amount of time as before. I get some extra kick from Carol, but higher enemy levels mean that I can't enjoy Strange/Thanos fast clears as much.
PvP is same as before. As I champed first 4* match maker adjusted.

Now I can finally afford to skip some awfull events, rebuild my farm and start gathering ISO for some usefull characters.

Alsmir

I'm no longer worried that if character X leaves tokens, I will have great difficulty covering them. Because of that I can take a small break from PvE to rejuvenate my strenght.

I'm back to covering a wide roster. Less wasted pulls. I will finally make some progress on older characters (Jean, Rulk, Peggy, Thoress, Iceman to name the ones I especially want), at the same time I will still get covers for latest guys at accelerated rate, which should be enough to finish them in nearby future.

I should get enough time to rebuild 2* farm, champ 2 remaining 3* and figure out what to do next. Eventually I will hit the wall of covering multiple 4* at the same time, but at least I have time to prepare. In the meantime I can use BH to controll who gets extra covers.

Alsmir

I'm a bit afraid that eventually I will have plenty of 4* waiting to be champed, but I hope that with BH I will cover the important ones first and pump ISO into them. I can live with a bunch of mid-tier guys who are just sitting there with no ISO.

Good luck to you too. Hopefully vaulting changes mean that Demi is open to suggestions, and maybe, just maybe we can have ISO issues adressed together with 6th cover problems.

Wolarsen

I follow what Skrofa put on the first post:

- Terrible lack of communication; I had a small hoard of tokens, and I would have liked to spend them before the last change in order to build up Vulture

- Much better alternatives suggested, in particular sepparating tokens into "vaulted" and "12"

- getting back to dilution for new players, that was the reason of the vaulting.

Overall I rather the new situation to previous because i have a deep roster, but the change could have been implemented way better

NewMcG

Alsmir said:

I'm no longer worried that if character X leaves tokens, I will have great difficulty covering them. 

Once a character leaves tokens, their % is just above 1% right now. In two months or so, it will drop below 1%. With good luck, you'll need somewhere around 1,000 4* pulls to cover a non-latest 4* from scratch. If you were worried about not covering someone from the latest 12 in an 8 month window, then I'm not sure what to say to you about a process that will take thousands of pulls.

Daredevil217

My goal is to champ everyone. I have enough really good 4* that I don't really NEED anyone. I really WANT Vulture (he's my sole bonus) and Iceman (but mourned that loss awhile ago since he's a 2/5/2 build). So even though it's a 1% draw for any ONE specific vintage, I don't think most people wanting old characters want only one.  This was the same logic fallacy that people had with Bonus Heroes (you can get older characters faster!! ... if you only want one).

For me, the only way a pull won't be useful is the dreaded 6th cover (such as a 6th Blue for Bobby).  I can live with those occasional losses as it's better than not having access to over 75% of the characters.   Since I plan to champ em all, aside from "6th cover syndrome" my pulls will either be a champ level, a useable cover, or a 14th cover (at which point I stop pulling until that person is champed).

This isn't an either/or strategy. It's both/and. Those who wanted access to older characters get it. Those who wanted newer characters at an accelerated rate get it too.

All the people crying about vaulting ending are the same ones who cried when it was implemented thinking they know better than the developers. To those people I say why not let it ride out?  The developers already proved that they knew better than you once, why not give it a chance before grabbing your pitchforks?

Beer40

Daredevil217 said:

My goal is to champ everyone. I have enough really good 4* that I don't really NEED anyone. I really WANT Vulture (he's my sole bonus) and Iceman (but mourned that loss awhile ago since he's a 2/5/2 build). So even though it's a 1% draw for any ONE specific vintage, I don't think most people wanting old characters want only one.  This was the same logic fallacy that people had with Bonus Heroes (you can get older characters faster!! ... if you only want one).

For me, the only way a pull won't be useful is the dreaded 6th cover (such as a 6th Blue for Bobby).  I can live with those occasional losses as it's better than not having access to over 75% of the characters.   Since I plan to champ em all, aside from "6th cover syndrome" my pulls will either be a champ level, a useable cover, or a 14th cover (at which point I stop pulling until that person is champed).

This isn't an either/or strategy. It's both/and. Those who wanted access to older characters get it. Those who wanted newer characters at an accelerated rate get it too.

All the people crying about vaulting ending are the same ones who cried when it was implemented thinking they know better than the developers. To those people I say why not let it ride out?  The developers already proved that they knew better than you once, why not give it a chance before grabbing your pitchforks?

In fairness, if they knew better than us wouldn't they have just left Vaulting as is? Brainstorming and idea exchanges lead to some really great things, everywhere. The makers of this game should feel fortunate that they have a community of people passionate about this game to offer advice* and keep it going financially. And we should feel fortunate they they are keeping something we really enjoy going. Its a collaboration more than either side "knowing better".

*ALL advice. Their job is to sort thru and determine what is good or not.

Jaedenkaal

Beer40 said:

In fairness, if they knew better than us wouldn't they have just left Vaulting as is? 

Knowing better than the players and being able to improve on previous decisions are not mutually exclusive. 

D3/Demiurge is already in the unenviable position of being statistically completely unable to make major changes/upgrades that 100% of their player-base will "like"; why would we also shackle them to an unreasonable expectation of infallibility?

Beer40

Jaedenkaal said:

Beer40 said:

In fairness, if they knew better than us wouldn't they have just left Vaulting as is? 

Knowing better than the players and being able to improve on previous decisions are not mutually exclusive. 

D3/Demiurge is already in the unenviable position of being statistically completely unable to make major changes/upgrades that 100% of their player-base will "like"; why would we also shackle them to an unreasonable expectation of infallibility?

By only taking a portion of my quote you invalidate what I was saying. The person I quoted gave them an apparent expectation of infallibility (your words) and I essentially said the same thing you are saying "they need to be able to improve on previous decisions". 

I believe a lot of the push behind improving things is based off player feedback. The game will seemingly always make money (Marvel property, free to start/play). They're trying to figure out how to make MORE money. How do you do that? Brainstorm and try to incorporate ideas customers like into that system. Not our actual ideas, because those mainly favor players only, but bits of them.

Jaedenkaal

Beer40 said:

By only taking a portion of my quote you invalidate what I was saying. The person I quoted gave them an apparent expectation of infallibility (your words) and I essentially said the same thing you are saying "they need to be able to improve on previous decisions". 

I believe a lot of the push behind improving things is based off player feedback. The game will seemingly always make money (Marvel property, free to start/play). They're trying to figure out how to make MORE money. How do you do that? Brainstorm and try to incorporate ideas customers like into that system. Not our actual ideas, because those mainly favor players only, but bits of them.

This quote, I presume you mean:

All the people crying about vaulting ending are the same ones who cried when it was implemented thinking they know better than the developers. To those people I say why not let it ride out?  The developers already proved that they knew better than you once, why not give it a chance before grabbing your pitchforks?

There's no expectation of infallibility here that I see; merely a (possibly hyperbolic) observation that what the forum is really complaining about is change (of any kind) that appears to inconvenience them personally in any way. And that more likely what's happening is that D3 is making changes for the long term health of the game, as they see it (which may or may not be changes to previous changes that they have made).

Yes, you might not agree with them personally right now. Yes, you can absolutely give feedback about those changes. Should Demiurge feel any pressure at all to "cave" to the protests about a change made only days ago? Absolutely not.

NewMcG

Daredevil217 said:

All the people crying about vaulting ending are the same ones who cried when it was implemented thinking they know better than the developers. To those people I say why not let it ride out?  The developers already proved that they knew better than you once, why not give it a chance before grabbing your pitchforks?

Uh, nope. The second vaulting happened I was delighted to take Carol and Medusa, languishing away at 5 covers each (after months in packs and winning 3-4 covers from their release events, while I pulled no shortage of Fury, Carnage and Elektra covers), and have an actual chance at finishing good, new characters. 

Beer40

Jaedenkaal said:

Beer40 said:

By only taking a portion of my quote you invalidate what I was saying. The person I quoted gave them an apparent expectation of infallibility (your words) and I essentially said the same thing you are saying "they need to be able to improve on previous decisions". 

I believe a lot of the push behind improving things is based off player feedback. The game will seemingly always make money (Marvel property, free to start/play). They're trying to figure out how to make MORE money. How do you do that? Brainstorm and try to incorporate ideas customers like into that system. Not our actual ideas, because those mainly favor players only, but bits of them.

This quote, I presume you mean:

All the people crying about vaulting ending are the same ones who cried when it was implemented thinking they know better than the developers. To those people I say why not let it ride out?  The developers already proved that they knew better than you once, why not give it a chance before grabbing your pitchforks?

There's no expectation of infallibility here that I see; merely a (possibly hyperbolic) observation that what the forum is really complaining about is change (of any kind) that appears to inconvenience them personally in any way. And that more likely what's happening is that D3 is making changes for the long term health of the game, as they see it (which may or may not be changes to previous changes that they have made).

Yes, you might not agree with them personally right now. Yes, you can absolutely give feedback about those changes. Should Demiurge feel any pressure at all to "cave" to the protests about a change made only days ago? Absolutely not.

Fwiw, I love this change, and I was against Vaulting. So maybe I took issue with the comment about people taking both sides of the argument,I dunno. 

And anyway, I agree that "caving" to the protests will not and should not happen. But the feedback (good and bad, because you can't magically make everyone submit good feedback) is definitely necessary, so that they can continue to make choices for the good long term health of the game.

Think of it this way: What if they made a change to the game that ensured they would profit well financially and keep the game running for 10 years guaranteed. No bugs, more events, new stories, etc... and everyone universally hated it? Even for some stupid reason we all hated it. All of us. That's what feedback is for, to help you see what you just can't see on your own. Cave to it? No. Encourage it? Definitely (and the bad comes with that, unfortunately lol

Jaedenkaal

Beer40 said:

Fwiw, I love this change, and I was against Vaulting. So maybe I took issue with the comment about people taking both sides of the argument,I dunno. 

And anyway, I agree that "caving" to the protests will not and should not happen. But the feedback (good and bad, because you can't magically make everyone submit good feedback) is definitely necessary, so that they can continue to make choices for the good long term health of the game.

Think of it this way: What if they made a change to the game that ensured they would profit well financially and keep the game running for 10 years guaranteed. No bugs, more events, new stories, etc... and everyone universally hated it? Even for some stupid reason we all hated it. All of us. That's what feedback is for, to help you see what you just can't see on your own. Cave to it? No. Encourage it? Definitely (and the bad comes with that, unfortunately lol

Absolutely. I'm not subscribing to the argument that "everyone hated vaulting, and now suddenly everyone loved vaulting" argument, although it is very interesting to me that the supporters of vaulting were, seemingly, few and far between at the time, and we couldn't convince anyone that vaulting might be even a little bit good for them, and now suddenly there's this huge outcry, using all the arguments for vaulting that myself and others have been using all along.

I personally think it seems on face value to be an excellent compromise (and it was always going to be a compromise; no solution was going to please everyone). Is it another change to they way I approach the game? Yep. Smaller than vaulting, certainly. Am I going to boycott opening tokens until they make a change? No, that would be counter-productive. I need to actually use the system so I can have an informed opinion.

Anyways, it sounds like we are in agreement. It is our right to provide feedback to the developers about how we feel about the game (the more thoughtful and informed the better, of course). It is Demiurge's responsibility to take that feedback into consideration as they make improvements to the game.

revskip

Jaedenkaal said:

Beer40 said:

Fwiw, I love this change, and I was against Vaulting. So maybe I took issue with the comment about people taking both sides of the argument,I dunno. 

And anyway, I agree that "caving" to the protests will not and should not happen. But the feedback (good and bad, because you can't magically make everyone submit good feedback) is definitely necessary, so that they can continue to make choices for the good long term health of the game.

Think of it this way: What if they made a change to the game that ensured they would profit well financially and keep the game running for 10 years guaranteed. No bugs, more events, new stories, etc... and everyone universally hated it? Even for some stupid reason we all hated it. All of us. That's what feedback is for, to help you see what you just can't see on your own. Cave to it? No. Encourage it? Definitely (and the bad comes with that, unfortunately lol

Absolutely. I'm not subscribing to the argument that "everyone hated vaulting, and now suddenly everyone loved vaulting" argument, although it is very interesting to me that the supporters of vaulting were, seemingly, few and far between at the time, and we couldn't convince anyone that vaulting might be even a little bit good for them, and now suddenly there's this huge outcry, using all the arguments for vaulting that myself and others have been using all along.

I personally think it seems on face value to be an excellent compromise (and it was always going to be a compromise; no solution was going to please everyone). Is it another change to they way I approach the game? Yep. Smaller than vaulting, certainly. Am I going to boycott opening tokens until they make a change? No, that would be counter-productive. I need to actually use the system so I can have an informed opinion.

Anyways, it sounds like we are in agreement. It is our right to provide feedback to the developers about how we feel about the game (the more thoughtful and informed the better, of course). It is Demiurge's responsibility to take that feedback into consideration as they make improvements to the game.

There were plenty of voices supporting vaulting when it came out.  I know you were, I was, NewMcG all extolled the merits of the system.  In addition to the neophobe reaction that many people had the pro vaulting crowd also had a person who was kind of a tool to everyone as the most vocal person around.  That person has since been banned and he did the pro vaulting crowd very few favors by ostracizing people by calling them numbskulls and the like.  

The new system isn't a terrible compromise.  I don't love it even though it actually will work out just fine for my roster because I have a thing about wasting covers and this will increase the necessity of hoarding for me after finally getting to the point where I didn't have to.  But it is workable and in the long run will help me more than it hurts me.  The same can't be said for everyone but I have a feeling that people who are singing its virtues now will figure that out once the unusable covers start adding up.  

Alsmir

New McG said:

Alsmir said:

I'm no longer worried that if character X leaves tokens, I will have great difficulty covering them. 

Once a character leaves tokens, their % is just above 1% right now. In two months or so, it will drop below 1%. With good luck, you'll need somewhere around 1,000 4* pulls to cover a non-latest 4* from scratch. If you were worried about not covering someone from the latest 12 in an 8 month window, then I'm not sure what to say to you about a process that will take thousands of pulls.

Except I'm not covering anyone from scratch. Most of them are sitting at 3-7 covers, thanks to all the pulls from pre-vaulting,

revskip

Alsmir said:

New McG said:

Alsmir said:

I'm no longer worried that if character X leaves tokens, I will have great difficulty covering them. 

Once a character leaves tokens, their % is just above 1% right now. In two months or so, it will drop below 1%. With good luck, you'll need somewhere around 1,000 4* pulls to cover a non-latest 4* from scratch. If you were worried about not covering someone from the latest 12 in an 8 month window, then I'm not sure what to say to you about a process that will take thousands of pulls.

Except I'm not covering anyone from scratch. Most of them are sitting at 3-7 covers, thanks to all the pulls from pre-vaulting,

And with the new system each of them are likely to stay in that range for a long, long while.  With perfect distribution you'll get 1 cover for each of the vaulted characters for every 100 legendary pulls.  If your character is at 7 covers that is 600 pulls.  At 3 covers that is 1000 pulls.  1000 pulls is close to a year if you are already well into the 4* transition.  And that is assuming perfect distribution which is highly unlikely.  

There are certainly rosters who benefit from the new system, Anyone who already has all the 4*s champed is definitely going to benefit from this.  I'm a borderline case where I benefit more than most.  I have 32 4* champs and plenty of 4* previously vaulted characters at 13 covers and as long as I hold on to enough ISO most of my pulls will result in champ levels or new champs.   With your roster though this system is much more likely to slow your progress than accelerate it.  

broll

Jaedenkaal said:

Beer40 said:

Fwiw, I love this change, and I was against Vaulting. So maybe I took issue with the comment about people taking both sides of the argument,I dunno. 

And anyway, I agree that "caving" to the protests will not and should not happen. But the feedback (good and bad, because you can't magically make everyone submit good feedback) is definitely necessary, so that they can continue to make choices for the good long term health of the game.

Think of it this way: What if they made a change to the game that ensured they would profit well financially and keep the game running for 10 years guaranteed. No bugs, more events, new stories, etc... and everyone universally hated it? Even for some stupid reason we all hated it. All of us. That's what feedback is for, to help you see what you just can't see on your own. Cave to it? No. Encourage it? Definitely (and the bad comes with that, unfortunately lol

Absolutely. I'm not subscribing to the argument that "everyone hated vaulting, and now suddenly everyone loved vaulting" argument, although it is very interesting to me that the supporters of vaulting were, seemingly, few and far between at the time, and we couldn't convince anyone that vaulting might be even a little bit good for them, and now suddenly there's this huge outcry, using all the arguments for vaulting that myself and others have been using all along.

As someone very vocal against vaulting who has now defended it in light of this change I'll speak to this.  At face value early on vaulting seemed terrible.  It attempted to solve one problem by causing a few other (increased cover waste for non-hoarders/people feeling forced to hoard, new players not able to play as much due to required character restrictions, lopsided roster development, locking out the back half of 4* champ system, etc).  That being said after living with it I found several hidden gems, one of the most significant of them being this system made it legit possible (and not all that difficult) to obtain the fabled 0 cover waste, if you're willing to hoard patiently and roster plan.  It completely killed RNG, the worst boss in the game.

The new system unfixes dilution in a significant way, but it's not as bad as the original system.  It did however fix a lot (if not all) of the problems vaulting introduced.  Since this system fixes more than it breaks, it's a better all around system for varying roster levels, fewer people are as vocally complaining about, and I ended up regretting complaining about vaulting in the long run, I'm going to not rally so hard against this system and instead adopt a wait and see approach.

With that being said I feel to a certain extent I helped kill the goose that laid golden eggs.  0 cover waste was amazing for the short time it lasted. Part of me suspects that the change to vaulting had little/nothing to do with player outcry and was response to seeing in their metrics that people were getting 0 4* waste and a dramatic increase in hoarding and devs felt those as undesirable and started working on a change.