4* Progression too slow

JohannesKepler

I'm at 1082 days played. Say an average of 15 minutes a day that comes to 270 hours.

Right now I have 41 of 65 four star heroes. To even get roster space for the rest would cost $83 at the current HP sale, but I'm not even going to go into the laughable pricing scheme in the game. Of those 41 I do have, I'd say 15 have a chance of winning Clash. So I have a 6/10 chance of even having the hero needed, and a 2/10 chance of conceivably winning.

I think the Clash swaps every 4 days, so there's about 90/year, at 2/10 chance of winning gets me 18 covers/year. Even if I only pulled heroes I own, those 18 covers might bump up a few more into the "can conceivably win" range.

Let's not forget my taco tokens. It takes 200 days to get 300, assuming 3/day (which we cannot because you need all 4* to get 3 every day), and because you have to split in half due to the 2 types of tokens. A full 300 tokens gets me 3 covers, again assuming the legendary token pulls a cover I own. Add that to my 18 from Clash, I'm looking at 21 4* covers/year.

It will take me 23 years to champ my 41 heroes at this rate.

Does this seem reasonable?

Daredevil217

JohannesKepler said:

Say an average of 15 minutes a day that comes to 270 hours.

It will take me 23 years to champ my 41 heroes at this rate.

Does this seem reasonable?

Yes.

ThaRoadWarrior

If all you're doing is DDQ, that pace seems about right, yeah.

JohannesKepler

Okay... Well, how long do y'all play each day? I mean, I just told you I've put in 260 hours which would put this game squarely in 4th place in my most-played games on Steam. What is the threshold for playtime where progression speeds up?

ThaRoadWarrior

It's less about how long you play and more about how much content you get through. I play story to progression and pvp to 900 where I can (generally spread across a couple days) but at least to 575 points. I would consider what I'm doing to be "hardcore casual" since I'm completely free to play and not chasing placement at all, but I'm still putting in enough time that this game feels like my hobby. I usually throw on something on Netflix at night, and play MPQ on the side while I do that, so it's realistically an hour or two a day while I'm doing other stuff.

The reason I say it's not how long you play is because there are characters who speed up your clear times quite a bit, and you can control the difficulty in story at least via SCL choice, so your mileage on how long it takes you to reach progression is going to vary

ThaRoadWarrior

For context: I'm a day 1034 player, I have at least one of everybody above 1* on roster, but no 5* champions. My best covered 5* is Ghost Rider at 7/3/2, the rest range all over the place with most in the 4-6 range.

I have every 4* on roster, 36/77,are champed with the best being Rogue at 292, 17 more with 13+ covers waiting on iso. All but Domino, Bishop, Prowler, and Taskmaster have at least 10 covers (eligible for Shield Training). I've max-champed 7 or 8 3*s, sold a couple and started rostering duplicates instead. I have a level 123 Bagman, but can't quite bring myself to roster Yelena even though i throw away at least 3 covers for her a day from PVP.

ThaRoadWarrior

The other issue with "I've put in 260 hours" is that you've aggregated all your playtime across the life of the game into a single block, but since the content is tied to the real-world calendar, spending 260 consecutive hours on the game wouldn't have netted you as much reward as spending 1hr/day for 260 days if that makes sense, since events are always coming and going. And certainly spending 15min/day doing DDQ across 1082 days doesn't equate to the same level of reward as doing 1hr/day for 260days

Jaedenkaal

JohannesKepler said:

Okay... Well, how long do y'all play each day? I mean, I just told you I've put in 260 hours which would put this game squarely in 4th place in my most-played games on Steam. What is the threshold for playtime where progression speeds up?

I probably play for 2-2.5 hours a day, which would put me at... nearly 3000 hours on day 1311. I have all the 4*s rostered and 54 of them championed. I've spent less than $100 on the game total.

JohannesKepler

All right, so y'all have really only answered the question "is this reasonable" in terms of the mechanics of the game itself as they exist now. But my question is more to the devs in terms of, "is this a reasonable thing to expect of your players?"

I play for 15-30 minutes on my bus commute to and from work. I'd have to think that's pretty typical for a mobile game. I'm saying that with that playstyle, 4* progression grinds to a halt. At this point, I'm not about to start playing more (2-2.5 hours would consume more than all of my free time lol), I'm more likely going to just stop playing at all. Hitting a wall in a grindy game like this makes me re-evaluate my time. That's why I'm suggesting 4* progression is too slow.

ThaRoadWarrior

The game is what it is, so I’d say the question as you pose it needs to be answered by you - it sounds like you find it unreasonable, and if we’re all being honest we all probably think so, so quit I guess right?

Another option would be to switch from spending 15 min/day in DDQ (which i assume from your references to the crash and taco vaults) to spending 15 minutes/day doing wins-based PVP. That way you can accrue CP and better tokens during the span you're willing to invest, and you should see an acceleration in your progess. I don't know if it'll be enough for you to stay satisfied, but I imagine you could hit 20 wins across a standard 3-day PVP event for the 10cp and whatever tokens come before that, which should let you buy into classics semi-regularly.

JohannesKepler

ThaRoadWarrior said:

The game is what it is

Okay, sorry if I misinterpreted the purpose of the suggestion and feedback section of the forums?

Thanks for your suggestion about switching to pvp, I'll see if that works for me.

ThaRoadWarrior

Suggesting a tweak or rebalance is one thing, suggesting a full and complete overhaul of the game economy seems kind of like something else though lol. You're not wrong that the pace of progress in this game is glacial; it's pretty buck wild that a) the developers expect people to spend actual years progressing in this game and b) that so many of us have agreed that's a thing we want to be doing. And also that so many people have agreed to pay the real world dollars the game demands for virtual goods...that's a bridge too far for me personally.

You mentioned your 4* roster, but are you farming 2* and 3* characters underneath them? I assume so, but in case you aren't, I'd recommend you start doing that rather than prioritizing 4*s. It's much easier to get 2* and 3* covers casually, and their champion rewards are the engine that feeds higher level play. 

But I think PVP is the best value/match if you have a limited window of time to play. Every match results in iso or a cover that helps your farm (or can be sold) and now that wins-based is a thing, you should be able to access some of the better progression rewards without having to worry about hanging on to points via shielding or having a strong defense team in place. Plus, unlike story-mode matches which have 4-6 good rewards and then nothing, every match in PVP will get you something. 5-6 wins/event/day will get you to the 10cp reward on a standard pvp.