Update to 4-Star Pack Odds (6/4/18)

Brigby

Hi Everyone,

Get ready to see more 4-Star characters! No, I’m not talking about the new Spider-Man (although I heard he’s fun to play ) I’m talking about improving the odds of getting a 4-Star character from packs! We wanted to give players a better chance at getting all 4-Star characters, not just a select few, so we're adding some tweaks and improvements to Heroic, Legendary, Story Mode, 3-Star Versus, and 4-Star Versus Comic Store odds.

This Wednesday (6/6), we will be adjusting odds for all packs that have a chance at giving out a 4-Star character, and adding 4-Star characters into 4-Star Versus Tournament Comic Stores. With the addition of these changes, we will also be on the lookout for opportunities to run 4-Star Versus Tournaments more frequently.

The odds for Latest 4-Star characters will be adjusted to match the odds for Vintage 4-Stars, however the odds for Vintage characters will significantly increase, and most Comic Stores will have higher odds of acquiring a 4-Star character overall. This means that there will no longer be a distinction between Vintage and Latest 4-Stars going forward. With these changes, players should have a consistent and quicker growth rate, concurrently for all 4-Star characters, than they did previously with their Vintage ones.

Here are the Comic Store changes you can expect to see:

Story Mode and 3-Star Versus Tournament

• Vintage 4-Star odds increased by approximately 200%
• Overall 4-Star odds increased by approximately 25%

4-Star Versus Tournament

• All 4-Star characters added to packs. Same odds as Story Mode and 3-Star Versus Tournament.
• New Release / Featured at higher odds than all 4-Star characters:
• 1x odds for featured character is approximately 10x higher than other 4-Star characters
• 10x odds for featured character is approximately 20x higher than other 4-Star characters
• Overall 4-Star odds increased by approximately 100%

Heroic

• 1x odds for Vintage 4-Star characters increased by 50%
• 10x odds for Vintage 4-Star characters increased by 100%
• Overall 4-Star odds remain the same

Legendary

• Vintage 4-Star characters increased by approximately 50%
• Overall 4-Star odds remain the same

IceIX

To head off some obvious questions:

Wait! What about new 4-Stars! This means they’re going to be harder to get!
Sort of. By putting the Latest 12 into the general 4-Star bunch, this cuts down on their relative odds. However, since we’ll be able to run 4-Star Versus runs more often and Stores tend to be more focused than Vaults, the change isn’t as large as it looks at the outset. Plus, the overall odds of 4-Star rarities are going up pretty much everywhere, so you’ll be pulling more in aggregate.

Oh, great. Now I’m going to pull Red cover 9 for my 5/3/1 America Chavez even *more* easily.

Nothing to announce right this moment, but that sort of situation is something we are directly looking at in our latest design rounds.

Does this mean we’ll be seeing less 3-Star Versus events overall?

Proportionally, yes, since the overall cadence of Versus events won’t be changing (for now! We’ll see how things shake out down the road of course). As a whole, they won’t be going anywhere though since there is a large portion of players for whom this part of the overall meta is exactly up their alley.

Isn’t this going to hurt people in 3-Star land with less Versus opportunities to use their characters?

With any change that affects higher tier play compared to a lower, sure. At the same time though, those same players will be gaining more 4-Star covers, so over a bit of time, they’ll be able to compete in both arenas, whereas right now a 4-Star Versus is extremely challenging for them, which is no fun for anyone.

n25philly

I take this as I am only going to pull 2* 90% of the time.  I kid, sounds like a good change overall

veny

Soooo... slighly better PvE tokens (good) PvP tokens (useless for me) and more PvP events (also useless for me).
How about making PvP finally playable and actually entertaining. Or how about making roster useful - i mean i have 150+ characters i am barely using. Give us some daily Boss challenge where we could use all our characters (each character once per day) to deal as much damage as possible for some good rewards.

DyingLegend

This is a lot to take in, I'm not going to cast judgment yet..... 

fmftint

Here's a thought,  how about posting the ACTUAL odds instead of
We increased them 200%!

Lord_Mephisto

Ok, so, basically, they’ve shaken the board again and changed the rules (not a bad one...) without any good reason. Now, we’ll be forced to open more packs to get latest 4* that, right now, usually are champed before turning into vintage. So bad...

Ducky

And the paradigm shift begins!

Mujo5

fmftint said:

Here's a thought,  how about posting the ACTUAL odds instead of
We increased them 200%!

THIS ... There has got to be some regulatory body we can report them to for the opaque gambling that goes on in this game

Also brigby says these are some of the changes. Why not list them all? Is there a character limit or something?

tiomono

I just say hooray for them looking into pulling the same color of a character over and over.

Brigby

Mujo5 said:
-snip-

Also brigby says these are some of the changes. Why not list them all? Is there a character limit or something?

Ah, sorry. That's just a remnant of the editing and finalization process. Those should be all of the changes to 4-Star pack odds. I've edited that one line to be more definitive.

Waddles_Pines

Can we get a timeline on the wasted cover item?  My 3 red Valkyrie covers dying on the vine are sad 

As for the distribution of 3*/4* pvp, why not run both at the same time, with the caveat that you can only pick one pvp per time frame?

Thanos

It's about time you start doing 4* pvp, something you should've been doing a year or two ago. Also, your finally looking for a solution for duplicate covers over five, this has been a problem since near the start of the game, this game is so far behind the curve design wise it's embarrassing. I guess better late than never.

Eichen

@IceIX

Why do you have to look for more opportunities to run more 4* PvP? Why can't you just run a 4* PvP alongside the current 3*? 

IceIX

Eichen said:

@IceIX

Why do you have to look for more opportunities to run more 4* PvP? Why can't you just run a 4* PvP alongside the current 3*? 

Because with the way current tech runs, that would mean a ton of people in a lot of different tiers and time shards.  Which could make things a bit... seedy for some shards. Which would then result in people trying to game the system to get "empty" shards. It's not impossible, but there's some other tech and backend work we'd have to consider to make sure that everyone gets a good experience there.

n25philly

BTW, someone should thank you for actually telling us about this before it went live.  Two wholes days before.  I know I'm going to save my tokens until the change

ZeiramMR

Here's a simpler question specifically about Legendary tokens: It says odds of Vintage 4*s are increasing by roughly 50% but the overall odds of pulling a 4* are the same for those tokens (about 85% or 6 in 7). But I also see a line about there not being a distinction between Latest and Vintage after this change.

Could you confirm that the odds of pulling a 4* is going to be split evenly across all 4*s (other than the Dino and Duck) or is there still a division? Because the math on the LT comment doesn't add up for me unless you are talking about categories and not individual covers.

Spiritclaw

@Brigby

I don't completely understand you, so let me take a part of what you said and try to rephrase it, in the hopes that by your telling me how I'm wrong I can understand better. :-)

Story Mode and 3-Star Versus Tournament

• Vintage 4-Star odds increased by approximately 200%

• Overall 4-Star odds increased by approximately 25%

If you have a token specific to a Story-mode tournament or a versus tournament with a required 3*, you have a 25% greater chance to get a 4* cover in exchange for your token.  We're no longer distinguishing between latest and vintage 4*s, so your chance of getting a vintage 4* will increase even more.

Is that correct?

BearVenger

@Brigby , at the risk of killing the magic, would you be able to give some explicit Legendary percentages:

1. Are the odds of pulling Legendary characters 1:7 (per the token screen, 14.3%) or 15%, as is stated on the forum?

2. Are the odds of the Latest/Vintage characters 4x/1x (per the token screen) or 50/50, as is stated on the forum? With 65 4*s, that currently puts the Latest/Vintage split at 1/1.1; about 10% weighted towards Vintage 4*s..

DarthDeVo

If people are going to be getting into the 4* tier faster but the rate of ISO gain remains the same or the cost of champing a 4* isn't reduced, then the ISO crunch is gonna get magnified. 

I'm almost through the tier (champing Professor X and Nova soon, then it's just Howard, Blonde Widow and Iron Spider), so more 4*s are good for me, but I feel sorry for people who hit a deluge of 4*s and lack either the HP to roster them or the ISO to champ them if they're fully covered. 

Ladies and gentlemen, start your hoards...

Dormammu

I'm happy I burned through my hoard today before this change went into effect... wait, I should be happy, right? Or should I be angry...? I can't tell.

I'm so confused.