Infinity Stone Supports, will they ever be available besides top 1 season score?

The rockett

As the title says, will these Supports ever be available any other way besides spending  hundreds and hundreds of hours playing this game for a 28 day stretch at a time?  

Since it seems that these are the best support in the game and there is no other way to get these supports besides one to score so many points in these PVP/SIM events.  

So if you do not play in a specific slice with specific people at a specific time there is no way that you can earn these supports.  

So what is the end game for the infinity stone supports?   Will they ever be available  to players that do not want to spend hours and hours and hours playing with specific people in a specific slice at a specific time? 

marshall

You could just as well say 'supports, will they ever be available'? 

- I have no way to chase the supports I want (i.e. Royal Talon Fighter, Chimichanga) 
- I haven't spent any red iso since launch, hit max progression on all events and still don't have enough to max a single support

shardwick

They might as well be about as rare as getting any other support in the game at this point.

The rockett

Not really.  The only way to get these supports is to play/run to Slice 1 or 3, depending on how points are, work with a certain group of people, play at a specific times so they can maximize points.  This was a terrible way to launch these stone supports and now only those people, now 14 a season down from 15 since we lost a bracket in SL7, who do as I said above will only get those. There was only a few that got them by not doing this and that was due to very late bracket flips.  I think the one season it was 2 events only.  So sacrifice 8 events for a chance at this support.  Is that what they intended?  

HoundofShadow

I think there will be an infinity Gauntlet support and those who got all stones gain some effects. After that, all Infinity Stone supports will be destroyed as we welcome the New Year. 

As for compensation, those players will get a chunk of Riso and maybe some Master supports token.

Kahmon

I'm fine with the top players getting the infinity stones for finishing in 1st place, but there needs to be a way for everyone to have some chance at them along with other rank 5s. Clearly both are meant to be rare, so how to do it?

One way would be limit them to Master tokens. This limits them to rank 4s & 5s, but there also needs to be a chance, however difficult to get the tokens. I have 2 ideas for this. The first, and easiest, is to put them into some vaults. Replacing 1 instance of health packs or a 2* from taco vaults, and any other 80+ vault that already has legendary tokens is a good place to start. The 2nd is through real gameplay and reward roster development. Add a new 5* crash to the Deadpool dailys. I like the idea of calling it the Chimichonga Challenge. Pit your 5* against a level 450 opponent. Give it a 5 day reset just like 4* crash.

Phumade

HoundofShadow said:

I think there will be an infinity Gauntlet support and those who got all stones gain some effects. After that, all Infinity Stone supports will be destroyed as we welcome the New Year. 

As for compensation, those players will get a chunk of Riso and maybe some Master supports token.

That would be an incredibly impressive in game meta event.  Maybe on the anniversary of IW.  all the infinity stones reset to zero riso and you have to grow them again

Twysta

Everything about how they've implemented supports has been terrible.
To how slow they are to roll out, to getting rid of the Steam UI for a mobile one on the hero page for something like this is a giant sucler punch.
They've been so tentative [which now looks more half-assed* (can I say that on here?) with the release they honestly might as well not have even done it for the majority of the playerbase. Honestly.

broll

Couldn't care less.  Support are bad and I'd rather them just admit they flubbed it and do away with them all together.

The rockett

The Power Stone is very OP.  Read what it can do.   It willl be the Gambit of Supports. If they release the stones into PVP with no other way to get them, the balance in the game will be in a bad spot I think.  

Cactus_Jack_87

If it's going to be OP, at least there will only be a handful of people that end up with it. I chased a stone a couple seasons ago, it was so much more trouble than it was worth. I'll be taking an "out of sight, out of mind" approach with them from now on, and I assume 99.99999 percent of all the other players will be as well.

The rockett

Cactus_Jack_87 said:

If it's going to be OP, at least there will only be a handful of people that end up with it. I chased a stone a couple seasons ago, it was so much more trouble than it was worth. I'll be taking an "out of sight, out of mind" approach with them from now on, and I assume 99.99999 percent of all the other players will be as well.

But that’s the point.  It shouldn’t be “out of sight, out of mind”. This is how things escalate and people stop caring.  Once we stop caring, then it’s time to move on like many have done over the past seasons. Just would like to know what the plan is for these supports that you cannot get any other way besides winning a season or be lucky enough to skip 70% of the events to snipe a late flipping bracket.  Is that what they intended?  

GrimSkald

I don't have any real objection to a "trophy" for finishing first in a Season.  Once they made that announcement I basically put the Infinity Stones out of my mind entirely and don't even think about them any longer.

I agree with Marshall, though - supports really aren't in the game at all yet.  They're in more of a "beta testing" status.  You can't get many of them at all, you can barely get the ones you can get, and the Red Iso income is so slow that you can't max any of them out.

Shintok17

It doesn't matter to me either way. The players that have the Infinity Stone Supports can only use them in PVE, so they don't directly affect me or many of us anyway. Even when they do implement Supports to PVP the people that have the Infinity Stone Supports wont affect me since I'm a 4* player and don't ever see any 5* teams. Those people with the Stones are max champ 5* players who most of us don't see in our PVP's anyways. I have learned to accept that I will not get all the supports let alone get them to 5* status since the availability is so scarce since launch. I will keep putting all my Red Iso on my 5* Wong Support, who is at Lv 152 at the moment and be happy to use it on my 3* Strange who I use almost every day in PVE.

Colognoisseur

I think I am on the Demiurge guys side this time.

We have asked for there to be some meaningful rewards for those who are the most committed. seems like Infinity Stone supports for finishing a season in 1st achieves that. It also isn't just a trophy as all of them look like they will be great additions.

To address the worry that they're OP lets look at who is getting them. In my cl9 season bracket it has been the guys who have multiple 550 5*'s. Even if they move to PvP and even if they take an already difficult match and shift it to unbeatable, just press skip. These are the players who finish first anyway without the supports that's how they finish first in the season standings.

To address the slow rollout. We have criticized them for doing things too quickly in the past without thinking about what a giant shift will do to the game overall. For supports in general we could say they're going too slow but nobody is using them to unbalancing effect yet. I have pushed all of the ones i have to lvl 50 and see a difference. I think they will be good and if it takes a year for there to be enough dilution within the support population to then up the amount of tokens able to be won and the amount of red iso increased. This time that might be the right answer. It would be nice if they said that was the plan because then I think some people would spend some red iso on the best few supports they currently have knowing things were going to become easier in the long run. One of the reasons they aren't taking off is people are waiting for "The Gambit of Supports" which might not ever come.

As to their "failure" this was the same "failure" that Team ups went through when they were first released. It wasn't until they introduced the ability for alliance mates to send out team ups that they really took off. now you can get a specific team up you need for a challenging battle. That wasn't the case before. I think supports are in the same place team ups were there is one more piece to them we haven't been given yet. when that happens then they can be fully judged.

Some of this could be solved by communication but we know that isn't going to happen.

What's left is to give the Demiurge team the benefit of the doubt which they have from me in this case.

Straycat

Are the new supports available at all? Anytime I get a support token, its for a dupe. It seems like the new supports are added to a release vault then they disappear forever. I like supports as a whole, especially ones that don't have % based activation but I have no idea how to earn them.

JHawkInc

This is a secondary problem, because we still need to fully roll-out supports in a meaningful manner, but I agree.

I'm down with super hard to earn things, and rewarding the most hardcore players with them. But without a way to acquire them at all for anyone else, it's a bit of a "rich get richer" scenario (which will only get worse once Supports hit PVP). And as much as this game encourages spending to advance and keep up, a threshold that can't be met at all only causes people to think "Why bother in the first place?" You don't want to discourage all of the small-moderate spenders by making them think it's a futile endeavor before they get started.

So I think they should finish this "beta" phase of Supports, add them fully to the game (it should be easy for 3*+ players to acquire Beginner tokens, and dedicated players should have ways to earn the Advanced/Master tokens). Then, take the Infinity Stones, and make them only available at the 4*/5* level. Maybe even only in Master tokens (so you can't get lucky and pull a 4* Stone from an Advanced token). They can be rare so that having one is a big deal, without being impossible to acquire so they're effectively irrelevant. (and then, down the line, this type of rarity can apply to things like a Cosmic Cube or The Darkhold or the Ultimate Nullifier)

Even ridiculously low chances to get one would be better than no chance to get them at all.

KGB

Supports *ARE* the 6* tier.

Here's my case for why that is:

First, a few months ago IceIX said that players had repeatedly said they don't want 6* characters and Demi was listening to that.

That said, if there *was* a 6* tier what would it look like.

1) It would be rarer than 5* tier. 5* are only obtainable by RNG on 1 token type and a few champ rewards. Are Supports rarer than that? Yes, they are because they are limited time only tokens that require enormous RNG luck coupled with huge spending of resources and then they are unobtainable.

2) 1* tier is 50 levels, 2* tier is 79 levels, 3* tier is 126 levels, 4* tier is 200 levels, 5* tier is 195 levels. So a 6* tier should be more levels than even 5*. Supports are 250 levels.

3) ISO leveling increases at each tier being the most expensive at 5*. 6* tier should be more expensive than 5 and potentially harder to get. Red ISO for supports is harder to obtain and it takes even more of it to reach max level.

4) New tiers change the game play mechanics in some way. When 4* were introduced the 3* class got a power nerf (documented on these forums) so the 4* tier power curve would be stronger. When 5* were introduced it was with huge match damage with the idea being even a few covers would make them viable. The 6* tier needs to introduce new game play mechanic. That mechanic is that they add new powers to existing characters in the 3-5* tier or increase their existing powers (3 max leveled supports at 5 covers will add potentially 9-15 new abilities/powers to a team which will increase it's power way more than anyone expects).

Thus supports are the 6* tier. The reason most players don't care or see them or use them is because most players are in 4* land or below so they have a long way to go before 6* is relevant for them in the same way that 5* are not really relevant for 3* players. For those of you in 5* land supports are where 5* land was when Surfer was first released and hardly anyone had any 5* and those that did had only 1-2 covers and he was not leveled. Once players started getting 5* leveled and champed things took off.

KGB

Dormammu

KGB said:

Supports *ARE* the 6* tier.

You make a lot of interesting points, KGB. Well thought out. It's entirely possible/probable that Supports are what the developers decided to go with instead of a 6-star tier, however Supports are not the 6-star tier. A character with 6 stars on it would be the 6-star tier.

The rockett

A lot of good points here that everybody has posted.  Most supports I am not excited about, but this power stone is something different. 


Equip to a championed character 
Once per turn, when the supported character makes a match, there’s a 12.00% chance to fire one of their powers at no cost. 

This support is top tier and very OP when looking at other supports.  

Rockwell75

KGB said:

The reason most players don't care or see them or use them is because most players are in 4* land or below so they have a long way to go before 6* is relevant for them in the same way that 5* are not really relevant for 3* players.

You make some interesting points but this I flatly disagree with.  The reason that most players "don't care or see them or use them" is because they're insanely overvalued, impossible to obtain and beyond impossible to level.  Plenty (actually probably most) of the support effects/mechanics are so tinykitty that they'd ONLY be valuable to players at lower tiers.  There are plenty I'd love for my 4s but have no way to get them.  I mean-- the support token you get for 4800 HP is equivalent in odds to a heroic meaning that the vast majority of the time you're going to get stuck with a 2.  The roll out of these things has been a clustercuss and that's why they haven't made a bigger impact on the player base.