play threshold for meaningful roster progress in 5* tier

KGB

One obvious solution for long time players like Vhailorx and presumably countless others is if the Dev's would simply let players choose one of the three 5* characters in the latest tokens in the same manner you choose your bonus hero.

That would let players keep a 5* there until they covered it (or decided not to finish covering it). It would hardly be game breaking but at the same time would solve a lot of the dilution problem that's only getting worse by the day in the 5* tier.

KGB

Pants1000

I have a somewhat similar roster, but because I pulled classics and didn’t hoard, my 4’s are higher.  I have 6 5* champs (OML, Phx, SS, Hawkeye, Ock and Cap).  Not the best group, but I was doing fine until Gambit.  

I have 24 300+ 4’s, including a 370 Peggy, and I often use them when boosted with my 5’s.  

In the next couple months I’ll be able to champ Thanos and Panther with 4* feeders, then maybe Bolt after that.  As more of my 4’s reach high levels they become more useful too.

The biggest improvement my roster will see might be Gambit getting nerfed though, lol.

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Phumade

spectator said:

It’s probably harder to get a feeder to 360 than it is to get 13 covers for a 5 star in latest

Of course.  360 is effectively 8 copies of 270 4* champ.

a more effective analogy is like building a 500 5*.  Still out of reach for us little guys.  But it’s an aspirational goal.  

entrailbucket

Vhailorx_2 said:

Spudgutter:

I don't object to characterizing my position as wanting more rewards for the same level of play.

What I object to is the implicit criticism that any request for more rewards at the same tier of play is somehow illegitimate, or unearned, or entitled. I have no interest in that sort of tinykitty faux-moralizing. This is a mobile match-3 game. No one "deserves" anything with regard to this game. Not the players, and not the devs. If the game offers enough fun and is a rewarding experience, people will play it.  If not, they won't and demi will have to shut it down. If they offer digital goods for sale that provide compelling value relative to cost, I will spend (e.g., when I played competitively, spending $2-10 every month for intercepts was decent value). If they want to offer 78k iso for $100 then I will be f2p and will not feel bad about that choice at all.

For me personally, the game is perilously close to "no longer worth it" because the level of additional play or spending necessary to make any substantive change to my roster is, IMO, onerous. I am trying to communicate that message to demi/d3 (and doing so publicly so that other players in the same position can add their voices to mine).

I'm sure they will rush to implement your suggestions in exchange for the extremely lucrative potential $0-2 per month that you are offering. 

The sense of entitlement that people are picking up on in your posts comes from the idea that somehow you and other players in your situation are so important that you can extort rewards by threatening to quit, and if you do follow through and quit, the game will die.  It won't. 

Look at all the "I quit" forum posts in the past (it's a popular genre).  People have been predicting this game's demise since 2014 and somehow it's still around.

smkspy

Well, with maxing out my 3* Pun the last of my OG champed 3s, I've officially progressed into full 2/3 farming mode. That's about the only "meaningful" progression that I can expect from the game at this point. Now the hamster wheel is at full spin mode.

ZeroKarma

I’m not catching entitlement or whining from Vhailorx. It’s a fact that the value of a dollar in this game is significantly less than it used to be. 

Surely, many veterans remember when $100 was enough to champ Thora and dominate the game! 

I dont spend much anymore because $100 doesn’t do anything for my roster. The in-game value of a Stark has been so badly diminished that the only new thing that you can buy which might have value to progress for people at my level is......supports.  That’s scary.

“Progression” paths for someone with 470+ 5*:

1. Hoard for 6 months spending $0
2. Save cp/hp and go all-in on supports if they are ever worth it
3. Spend $10k in buy clubs

Bowgentle

ZeroKarma said:

1. Hoard for 6 months spending $0
2. Save cp/hp and go all-in on supports if they are ever worth it
3. Spend $10k in buy clubs

4. Don't hoard, cover everyone as you go, $2 for intercepts.

ZeroKarma

Bowgentle said:

ZeroKarma said:

1. Hoard for 6 months spending $0
2. Save cp/hp and go all-in on supports if they are ever worth it
3. Spend $10k in buy clubs

4. Don't hoard, cover everyone as you go, $2 for intercepts.

That isn’t really progression. You might cover every 5* doing that if you’re diligent enough. But they won’t be high level and you won’t make it to the next “tier”. Whatever that is

Bowgentle

ZeroKarma said:

Bowgentle said:

ZeroKarma said:

1. Hoard for 6 months spending $0
2. Save cp/hp and go all-in on supports if they are ever worth it
3. Spend $10k in buy clubs

4. Don't hoard, cover everyone as you go, $2 for intercepts.

That isn’t really progression. You might cover every 5* doing that if you’re diligent enough. But they won’t be high level and you won’t make it to the next “tier”. Whatever that is

I dunno, my JJ is 466 now.

smkspy

Bowgentle said:

ZeroKarma said:

1. Hoard for 6 months spending $0
2. Save cp/hp and go all-in on supports if they are ever worth it
3. Spend $10k in buy clubs

4. Don't hoard, cover everyone as you go, $2 for intercepts.

Lol, so my strategy, except VIP, and my 3/3/3 JJ will disagree with this as I've not pulled a 5 in the last 25 pulls.

4 covers in the next two weeks...totally gonna happen...but BH!!! #anyoneatthislevelhasentitlementissues

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HoundofShadow

Let's see if I got this right…

OP's main problem:

Impossible for OP to make meaningful progress on his roster because he does not collect cp/LTs fast enough to fully cover new 5*s. 

Possible solutions by OP:

1) playing more, at least 1-2 hours a day to really grind PvP and pve.

This suggestion is out because OP no longer have or want to spend 2-2.5 hours a day playing mpq.

2) hoard for 6+ months (and miss out on several new 5* releases) and then pull LTs for 3 new 5* champs (noticeably less efficient now that CS cover swaps are dead).

This is out too. He wishes to see "a happy medium between a new 5* champed every 6 weeks or so and "hoard for 6 months and hope for the best!""

3) spend very heavily in buy clubs to supplement his cp income. 

This option is out as well because he doesn't have "enough disposable income to match mpq's monetization scheme."

OP's ideal scenario to solve his problem: 

~7-10 hours per week of "casual playing" that lets him gets every new 5* released to somewhere in the 10-16 cover range before they leave the LT pool, rather than the current 4-10 that he's currently getting.

What the devs can do to meet OP's requirements:

1) increase odd of getting (latest) 5* to from 1:7 to 1:3 or 1:2.

2) increase the amount of CP or LT gained by 2 to 3 times.

3) provide at least two feeders for each 5*

4) increase rewards of VIP

What the devs gain by keeping OP invested:

-  some modest spending (e.g. VIP or less for intercepts).

Realistically speaking, I think it's going to take another 2-3 years before OP's ideal scenario would happen, or it will never happen at all. It looks like the devs are going to lose another veteran soon.

KGB

HoundofShadow said:

Let's see if I got this right…

OP's main problem:

Impossible for OP to make meaningful progress on his roster because he does not collect cp/LTs fast enough to fully cover new 5*s. 

What the devs can do to meet OP's requirements:

1) increase odd of getting (latest) 5* to from 1:7 to 1:3 or 1:2.

2) increase the amount of CP or LT gained by 2 to 3 times.

3) provide at least two feeders for each 5*

4) increase rewards of VIP

I think the other thing not explicitly said is that part of the reason the OP is semi-retired is because there is no path to meaningful roster advancement in the 5* tier. The two paths right now are:

1) Spend thousands of dollars per 5* character. Because even a stark a month in a buy club only nets an extra 7 LTs (5 from buy club, 2 from a pair of 40 packs with the stark hp) which is 84 a year or about 7 5* covers per year which is next to nothing. A stark a month is 1200 a year which here in the USA would buy someone a full Vive VR setup (600) plus a ton of VR games to  give an idea of how it compares to 6-7 extra 5* covers.

2) Play 1-3 hours a day. Regardless of whether it's 1 or 3 hours the number of extra CP's earned is going to be very little (maybe 10 per day if he plays 3 hrs vs 1). That's again only 180ish LT's a year which is 25 5* covers a year.

It's easy to see why it's soul numbing when you look at it because neither is a reasonable way forward.

There are at least 2 other options Demi can offer besides the 4 you listed.

1) Provide cover swaps for a price (now that the free CS ones are no more). Maybe $10 per character you want swaps for. So if you crack a horde of latest and need swaps for 2 of the 3 characters you can pay $20 for the swap service. Seems like a win-win (revenue for Demi, player gets 5*)

2) Allow players to select one of the 3 latest 5* in the same manner you select bonus heroes. That would let players have a reasonable chance of getting covers for older 5* that are close to being covered (something the OP has) and let players who have bad luck cracking a horde keep a specific 5* in the latest rotation for a longer period of time.

Both of those would provide a much clearer way forward for players in the end game.

KGB

Phumade

Honestly with the no swap policy you realistically need 400-450 LL pulls to have a decent shot of champing 3LL 5*.  Whether you do those pulls in one go via hoard pop or open tokens as you go,  Its worth it to look at the scale of play you need to realistically maintain your membership in the 5* club.

So every 18 weeks you need around 10,000cp to 11,500 cp to make those 400-450pulls.

So if you can avg

18wks x 7 days = 126 days   then
10,000cpe/126days  --- 11,500cpe/126days

so you need to generate between

80cpe/day and 91 cpe/day to keep up with the 5* release cycle (Note these numbers only get you to 450 champed.).  Of course none of these numbers are factoring what comes out of your farms in any detail, but this should give you a good sense of how your play stacks up to the bare minimum pace.

Plus don't forget, what you don't earn through Progression, Placement, and Farms can always be supplemented through buy club.

grenadier

Back a page or two, the idea that only the top 0.1% has a competitive 5* line up came up.  I have no idea if those numbers are accurate, but for the sake of argument, let's say they are.

We saw the same thing with supports, especially with the Infinity Stones.  The idea that only the very top players would ever see them.

Does that make any kind of sense at all?  Why sink development dollars into content that hardly anyone will ever see?  It seems like they'd be far better off improving things for the masses, in hopes that enough of them put money into the game after seeing improvements to the core game, or to advance enough to get to that new content/feature.   That might mean UI improvements (or fixing the recently damaged UI, in Steam's case), making new events and new types of events, whatever.  

In the case of 5* covers (or even 4* for some), they might as well not exist if most players are expected to not be able to get them.  The whole rewards system seems geared to creating that 0.1% of haves, and ignoring the have-nots.  If a new cover is given to the top few players in a PVP event, why not increase that flow somewhat, to make them want to get more covers for that hero and champ it eventually? Give a bigger slice of the rewards to a longer list of players.  Or re-arrange the store to take the RNG out of things, so people know what they will get for their HP and CP.  I'm kind of surprised that hasn't happened already, given the legal backlash against loot boxes in some parts of the world.

I've made purchases in the past for HP.  I may well again.  But if I can't reasonably advance by playing 1-2 hours a day, then I don't have much reason to, since I won't need more hero slots for non-existent covers.  Thin out the 2* garbage in the various vaults, allowing for people to collect a few more higher tier covers, and that will drive sales of HP so that people can roster them.

HoundofShadow

@KGB

The second option looks better than the first because option 1 would be seen as a paywall. Players might be less likely to horde and they would be able to choose who they want: 1 cover for "useless" 5* and 13 covers for good 5*.
However, neither options are unlikely to meet OP's requirements since he's scaling back on his spending and has a limited playtime. The other problem he might run into could be iso-8 drought. The problem with 2nd option is that players would rather jump to 5* land instead of covering all 4* since getting 5* champed is much easier.

His ideal scenario:

~7-10 hours per week of "casual playing" that lets him gets every new 5* released to somewhere in the 10-16 cover range before they leave the LT pool, rather than the current 4-10 that he's currently getting. This is considered meaningful progress.

justsing

KGB said:

HoundofShadow said:

Let's see if I got this right…

OP's main problem:

Impossible for OP to make meaningful progress on his roster because he does not collect cp/LTs fast enough to fully cover new 5*s. 

What the devs can do to meet OP's requirements:

1) increase odd of getting (latest) 5* to from 1:7 to 1:3 or 1:2.

2) increase the amount of CP or LT gained by 2 to 3 times.

3) provide at least two feeders for each 5*

4) increase rewards of VIP

There are at least 2 other options Demi can offer besides the 4 you listed.

1) Provide cover swaps for a price (now that the free CS ones are no more). Maybe $10 per character you want swaps for. So if you crack a horde of latest and need swaps for 2 of the 3 characters you can pay $20 for the swap service. Seems like a win-win (revenue for Demi, player gets 5*)

I don't know how feasible this is, but I think it would be cool if they revamped VIP to include a lower 5* swap ratio, ideally 1:1 even if it's just restricted to Latest. I would happily start paying for VIP every month if we got 1:1 Latest swaps back like that.

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