Updates to Earning Supports *Updated (1/24/19)

bluewolf

@Smart80
It's a good point that if you don't care about the 16 Supports, you don't care about Support Circuit for 4 weeks or the vault.  But I'd still rather wait for the next round to find the one(s) I want at a higher chance to pull them vs just make more pulls at the more diluted pool, and it's not THAT long, and they're still just Supports.  Also gives me time to hoard Riso, perhaps.

@Brigby
Perhaps this will be obvious later today, but can a Select Support token be hoarded past the 4 weeks and used in the next Select 16 store/pool?  Or even when ALL the Supports are available?  Or will an attempt to hoard Select Support tokens just result in many pages of different token stores?  I think this is the first time anyone brought up the question of what happens to newly hoarded actual Support tokens vs focusing on the vault token issue and older Support tokens.  Thanks to @Ed_Dragonrider for bringing this up.

MadScientist

@Brigby

The vault items in the first post add to 243, not to 240.

Jormagund

Shhh, don't tell them that, they'll pull the Master tokens to fix the maths!

bluewolf

Don’t worry, the Master tokens are still in there.  Along with 106 2*s.

RickOShay

MadScientist said:

@Brigby

The vault items in the first post add to 243, not to 240.

Great news! It's only 106x 2* instead of 109.

RickOShay

First impression of CL9 was that it is a pretty cool event. It's more grinding than I would have liked though, so I'm glad it's jut once a week. It looks great and the final bosses node was good fun. 

Too bad the 5* character boost doesn't apply to this event, although I'm glad the rest of the boosted character list applies. 

The 'extra' rewards are decent, so if you have the time or drive, it could be worth it for you. 
It think the rewards are worth the effort, CL9 full 4x clears will earn you 4 Tokens to the Support Circuit vault. Unfortunately you have around a 44.2% chance of getting a 2* on each pull. However, over the 28 days you have a good chance to attain useful supports, and the HP multi-draws are there if you need to go crazy (at rough odds). 

MaxPowers

At the moment this new feature really just feels like an excuse to add another vault to lure in some whales.

The odds of getting a support, let alone a useful one, are still miniscule at best.

Its a shame they couldn't have implimented supports into the existing reward structure somehow. I really cant justify all the extra grinding for what currently amounts to a niche feature.

Moon Roach

I climbed the ladder, did the three boss battles, opened my tokens, got a couple of 2*, decided that's enough.  Unless I'm really bored, I won't be going for clears and progression.  Absolutely not placement.

Am I looking forward to the next run in a week?  Well, of course I am, it's in the future.

Am I thinking about it with a sense of excitement and anticipation?  No.

Dogface

4 tokens. Result : three 2* and some iso. The 7 CP was the best thing. 

On my other account I got two support tokens. First a beginner token which got me a 3* support (nice), second was an advanced token, which gave me the same support, but as a 2* (not so nice).

Brigby

bluewolf said:

-snip-

Brigby
Perhaps this will be obvious later today, but can a Select Support token be hoarded past the 4 weeks and used in the next Select 16 store/pool?  Or even when ALL the Supports are available?  Or will an attempt to hoard Select Support tokens just result in many pages of different token stores?  I think this is the first time anyone brought up the question of what happens to newly hoarded actual Support tokens vs focusing on the vault token issue and older Support tokens.  Thanks to Ed_Dragonrider for bringing this up.

The Support Store tokens will update alongside the Support Store content during their rotation cycles. Vault tokens are the only ones tied to their respective vaults.

bluewolf

@Brigby
That clarification was very helpful, thank you. 

Ed_Dragonrider

Called it!

Smart80

So, we can treat the support tokens as LTs and hoard till the right selection is offered? Sorry, just want to be sure and have been dissapointed enough this week, waiting months to have support store being updated....

Ed_Dragonrider

Smart80 said:

So, we can treat the support tokens as LTs and hoard till the right selection is offered? Sorry, just want to be sure and have been dissapointed enough this week, waiting months to have support store being updated....

Yes.

Brigby said:

The Support Store tokens will update alongside the Support Store content during their rotation cycles. Vault tokens are the only ones tied to their respective vaults.

My interpretation (again i might be wrong) is that the support store will fluctuate (and probably confuse a lot of people).

Like, say from this current vault you get 20 support tokens. Then when the circuit season is over, your 20 supports will stay fixed, and the store around it will change. Into the off-season full pool. If you dont spend them here either, then the store changes again. Into the next R16 rotation store.

So basically the support store will shrink and expand but your 20 tokens remain fixed. Obviously you can always add to them or spend.

This R16 -> Full -> R16 -> Full -> etc store will confuse a lot of people. But its the best way to chase a specific token and quite frankly to me it makes sense.

Of course if this is wrong, then they would need a seperate token for the off-season store. I think it unlikely.

Again, this might just be my messed up brain....

jamesh

Richyyy said:

Brigby said:

Is this actually an improvement? Beginner tokens are a little bit better; Advanced tokens are minisculely better; and Master tokens, should you ever happen to luck into one and get excited about the possibilities, are vastly worse. I applaud the efforts you guys have made to improve this situation, and I'll reserve total judgement until it's all in the game, but as more of the information has trickled out it's less and less interesting or exciting. We've got another grindy PvE, more vaults that are mostly junk, bare minimum changes to the token odds, and a completely unnecessary slash to how much riso you get for duplicates. Two steps forwards and what looks like it's pretty much two steps back.

Master tokens with a 1:10 chance of receiving a rank 5 support have not existed for a long time.  With the recent Victorious support release, the master tokens had a 1:27 chance of giving a rank 5 support, and the probability has been hovering around that level for a long time.

So the new master support tokens have better odds of pulling a rank 5 (at 1:20), but much worse chances of returning a rank 4 (at 1:3 rather than 26:27).  With that said, the difference between rank 3 and rank 4 supports is vastly less than it used to be too: with reduction in the number of powers a support provides, you're only looking at an increased level cap.

Richyyy

jamesh said:

Richyyy said:

Brigby said:

Is this actually an improvement? Beginner tokens are a little bit better; Advanced tokens are minisculely better; and Master tokens, should you ever happen to luck into one and get excited about the possibilities, are vastly worse. I applaud the efforts you guys have made to improve this situation, and I'll reserve total judgement until it's all in the game, but as more of the information has trickled out it's less and less interesting or exciting. We've got another grindy PvE, more vaults that are mostly junk, bare minimum changes to the token odds, and a completely unnecessary slash to how much riso you get for duplicates. Two steps forwards and what looks like it's pretty much two steps back.

Master tokens with a 1:10 chance of receiving a rank 5 support have not existed for a long time.  With the recent Victorious support release, the master tokens had a 1:27 chance of giving a rank 5 support, and the probability has been hovering around that level for a long time.

Interesting. I admit I hadn't even really noticed because the chance of getting those tokens was so remote anyway. The odds in the old Supports Store still say 1:10 for a 5* from a Master token, but yeah, if the only support tokens available (above beginner level) were for the special stores with much lower odds, then they'd already quietly slashed them by proxy.

jamesh said:

With that said, the difference between rank 3 and rank 4 supports is vastly less than it used to be too: with reduction in the number of powers a support provides, you're only looking at an increased level cap.

Not entirely true given how many of the old-style 5-power supports are still kicking around and the fact that they never updated them. I think over two-thirds of the supports in the current store's group have five powers rather than three. So a 4* support would give you both an extra power and the potential 50 extra levels over the 3* version.

bluewolf

I’m pretty sure the original Master tokens (1:10) were only available at the original Support launch.  Once they started with the Support bundles and vaults, they went to the reduced odds and that was it.  (In retrospect, maybe people would have jumped more on the first deals if they knew that...). Anyway, while they were lsited in the old Support Store there was never a way to acquire them.  And now they are gone forever.

I am also pretty sure the devs have no intention of ever updating the Supports en masse to either all have 3 or 5 powers.  It seems clear that the current design model is everything has 3 effects (along with a synergy effect, usually).

n25philly

i still just don't get supports.  Everything feels so random about them.  I've had a few randomly rank up, but still have no clue what triggers it.  I still don't get why you can't put them on 2* characters.  There are no shortage of 2* essentials and with a small group of characters it might help keep it interesting. (god those two 2* only deadpool dailies are boring as hell)  Otherwise I have a support on each of my regulars and put one on the essentials in the rare case I actually find a somewhat useful one.

Supports don't necessarily seem like a bad idea, it just seems like they were rushed or something and no one has really thought how to properly implement them.  I guess we should be glad that we at least don't have to buy a $75 bundle to get them...

Smart80

Ed_Dragonrider said:

Smart80 said:

So, we can treat the support tokens as LTs and hoard till the right selection is offered? Sorry, just want to be sure and have been dissapointed enough this week, waiting months to have support store being updated....

Yes.

Brigby said:

The Support Store tokens will update alongside the Support Store content during their rotation cycles. Vault tokens are the only ones tied to their respective vaults.

My interpretation (again i might be wrong) is that the support store will fluctuate (and probably confuse a lot of people).

Like, say from this current vault you get 20 support tokens. Then when the circuit season is over, your 20 supports will stay fixed, and the store around it will change. Into the off-season full pool. If you dont spend them here either, then the store changes again. Into the next R16 rotation store.

So basically the support store will shrink and expand but your 20 tokens remain fixed. Obviously you can always add to them or spend.

This R16 -> Full -> R16 -> Full -> etc store will confuse a lot of people. But its the best way to chase a specific token and quite frankly to me it makes sense.

Of course if this is wrong, then they would need a seperate token for the off-season store. I think it unlikely.

Again, this might just be my messed up brain....

Thanks. Was late last night Brigby’s words were kinda circling around on my screen and just wasnt sure what he was saying :-)

This is really nice to hear actually. Eventhough these first 16 probably are too good to pass on, it could be very useful later on, to get that really good one thats still missing!




**** UI SUGGESTION ****
Give the current 16 supports some sort of indicator in support roster, to make it nice and clear which could be improved at this point

jamesh

Brigby said:

*New Update*

@Brigby: is there any chance of getting the game to display these percentages directly rather than imprecise rounded 1:X odds?

Based on these tables, the new probability of receiving a rank 4 support from a master token could be written as 1:2.5.  Yet the game instead shows "~1:3" because it rounds everything to an integer.  In this case, the error from by that "approximately equal" sign is a massive 7 percentage points.  You could fit the entire probability of receiving a rank 5 support in that approximation error and have room to spare.