Moving away from guranteed covers

Unknown

Ok, so now we have a chance to earn a Standard token instead of ISO after battle and people are praising that this will help newer and mid level players. Sure, it's a good addition. But people seem to forget that it has gotten much harder to earn the covers you want/need over the last few months. The rewards structure is heading towards (even more) of a lottery system.

PvP Placement rewards: At the highest rank of 2* placement rewards, you used to win 3 covers for the 2* character, and 2 covers at next rank. Now the maximum is 1 cover.

Progression rewards: In PvP, you used to get a guaranteed 2* cover at 325 pts. That reward was moved to 600 pts. The token at 100 pts was replaced by a boost.
For PvE events, the progression rewards used to feature multiple 3* covers. Now there is usually one 3* cover as top reward, not to mention that top rewards have been unreachable for several events now.

Lightning Rounds: People argued that the rewards used to be too generous before. I won't argue either way, but the fact is that we went from guaranteed cover rewards to tokens.

Cover packs: The cover packs have no more guarantees. 10-packs at least guaranteed a single 3*, some even guaranteed the specific 3* character. Now, there is no guarantee, only "better chance". Buy a 40-pack and you could end up with nothing but Bag-man, Hawkeye, and Moonstone covers.

Characters: With the continued addition of 3* characters, the pool gets further diluted and decreases chance to pull the cover you want/need. Event specific tokens used to help in this regard by restricting the characters you could win. But that is gone, too, only to be replaced by increased chance of certain characters.

The guaranteed 3* covers for top players and alliances in PvP/PvE events is what we have left. How long before some of these rewards become tokens, too?

djpt05

Not to mention that top 10 for a tournament used to be around 700-800 pts (in the ones I've been in for months so maybe I'm just lucky) and the ones I have seen recently require ~1000 pts all because of season and alliance rankings.

So now people who don't even need the top 25 prizes (excluding #1) are pushing harder than before

WilsonFisk

djpt05 wrote:

Not to mention that top 10 for a tournament used to be around 700-800 pts (in the ones I've been in for months so maybe I'm just lucky) and the ones I have seen recently require ~1000 pts all because of season and alliance rankings.

So now people who don't even need the top 25 prizes (excluding #1) are pushing harder than before

True statement there. The last few weeks PvP score have definitely gone up. We're now working harder for less reward.

Dormammu

chadds wrote:

The last few weeks PvP score have definitely gone up. We're now working harder for less reward.

Part of this is the presence of Season 1 and the added competition it has added to the individual PvP tournaments.

But even before Season 1 scores were on the rise. This is simple inflation. As more players play the game there are more points to be had and the amount of points potentially gained per fight goes up. The new SHIELD training is a perfect example of inflation. Before, when it was in the Prologue, top scores were around 1000-1100. Now that it has meaning I won't be surprised when players reach 3000 points, simply because more players are invested and achieving higher scores instead of using it as the default tanking environment.

Inflation can also be used to explain why certain progression awards were raised - like the 2* cover moving to 600 progression points. It's a lot easier to achieve 600 points in a tournament than it once was.

Not that this has anything to do with reduced top-end placement rewards. If anything, those should become more plentiful because of inflation. As more and more players flood the game the developers need to look at increasing the range of final placement ranks.

Bowgentle

Dormammu wrote:

The new SHIELD training is a perfect example of inflation. Before, when it was in the Prologue, top scores were around 1000-1100. Now that it has meaning I won't be surprised when players reach 3000 points, simply because more players are invested and achieving higher scores instead of using it as the default tanking environment.

People will reach 3000 points because you can shield in training now, it's as simple as that.

Unknown

djpt05 wrote:

Not to mention that top 10 for a tournament used to be around 700-800 pts (in the ones I've been in for months so maybe I'm just lucky) and the ones I have seen recently require ~1000 pts all because of season and alliance rankings.

So now people who don't even need the top 25 prizes (excluding #1) are pushing harder than before

Early Season 1 pvps were still "lower," and now that we've had a couple pvps without kyipgate or highly desirable covers, I think we can lay that on the MMR change.

Previously, when you were at 700 trying to climb to 1100, you were constantly getting knocked back down by hordes of people with scores from 200 points. Now, it seems that when you have a score of 200 you're much more likely to see people with scores of 200-400 rather than people with scores all over the board. That means that people with high points are being seen and hit by far fewer people when they're unshielded and climbing

MarvelMan

Im at about 1k in Top Gun and I keep getting hit by people with <300 points, and I guarantee they arent ones I hit on my way up (who goes after a maxed Falc/LT/Hulk team at 200 pts?) so its still quite open. I think the threshold for where you are opened up has gone up, maybe from 500 up to 700 now, but that is small consolation.

I missed out on Patch covers when they were handed out during the Heroic (scaling was a B, plus I was gone that weekend) and ive managed to pull ONE cover for him since...in spite of routinely placing top 10 in PVP, and top 20 in PVE (main & subs). Ive sold more than a dozen for Frank, half a dozen C.Mag, a TON of villians....and I cant get my recent heroes anywhere. Targetting specific 3* is abysmal.

I also think that with the Season 1 the top tier players are taking more rewards than they were previously (I sat out several events or tanked down the rankings) which makes the players have an even harder time going from 2* to 3*. Add in the MASSIVE amount of HP new people have to spend to hold on to that random 3* cover they pulled/won and I think there is a serious potential for burnout before people really become established.