New Event - Support Circuit Updated (1/28/19)

StevO-J

Ok, this is certainly an improvement by the looks of it. Will reserve any definite judgement until it has been around for a few runs probably.

But honestly, and I'm not trying to be negative, I can't help but feel this is a gigantic missed opportunity to make this a progression rewards only event. Especially with it running only 24 hours, seems like placement rewards are out of place here.

fmftint

I would hope time slices will be offset from both vs and story

Spudgutter

More pve grinding, rich get richer/bracket sniping rewarded, existing pve time slices, almost no guaranteed support tokens, small percentage chance of vault token giving support token, and it only runs one day a week.

Wow

edit:  changed "no guaranteed support tokens" to "almost"

i am still hoping to be wrong, but once again looks like we have one step forward, two steps back

Punter1

I think this update makes me more disappointed and vocal because it's plain that the mysterious Devs are just out of touch with the vast majority of the player base, if not all of the player base.

Supports aren't that great - the UI sucks so actually using them is a painfully un-intuitive experience, they modify characters a little but not enough to be that exciting

You also don't need many supports - most people only use a small handful of characters in PVE so you only need a small handful of supports.  Many at lower levels have similar powers so the numbers of actually useful supports is minimal

This event isn't going to do what needs to happen, which is make us more excited for supports with better ways to use them, gain them and level them up. 

Instead its just another grind in an already grindy game added with almost no guaranteed supports.  The cool stuff in the announcement like the big pins are instantly glossed over and any positive thoughts are overwhlemed by the negative setup.

This should be a non-placement, week long event with single clears.  Go at your own pace and get a support token at the end.  Simple.  Don't complicate it!

Take this feedback and what appears to be similar thoughts from others, delay the release and come back next week with a better announcement that shows someone there knows how to listen.  Please!

jamesh

What sort of levels can we expect for each clearance level?  With no boosted characters, I'd hope they're lower than the equivalent story mode clearance levels?

wymtime

@Brigby can we get what the actual time slices are going to be?

Brigby

jamesh said:

What sort of levels can we expect for each clearance level?  With no boosted characters, I'd hope they're lower than the equivalent story mode clearance levels?

There's no event-specific buff list, but Supports Circuit does inherit the weekly buff list. As for enemy levels, you can expect the same levels for their respective S.H.I.E.L.D. Clearance Levels as you would any other Story event

therightwaye

Brigby said: 
Missions are repeatable, and there are "time slices." Regular Missions have 6 Mission rewards each, just like a regular Story event, but you only need 4 clears of each to reach max progression rewards.

Legit want to know, is there a reason all these modes have to do with speed? Is it code? Is it concern for player attrition? This type of play style has always been burdensome, but after several years I'm getting ready to be done with it. Is there hope or am I best to be done now?

Unfortunate waste of an opportunity try something new.

therightwaye

I'd expand but I have only a few free minutes left before I have to grind again.

Kahmon

Looks like a lot of wasted effort when offering a weekly Gaultlet with focus on supports as rewards would have worked better.

Dragon_Nexus

Without event-specific boosted characters, who's going to be mad enough to do CL9 unless they have level five hundred plus 5*s? That sounds like one hell of a slow, tedious slog that won't result in much of a placement result.

And you need to clear each node 4 times each again.

I have to wonder why. Why not a simple one-hit-and-done? This will seriously drag the event out. Why even have it placement orientated at all? Just have a simple progression system like a Support style DDQ? Have it open all week, allow everyone time to hit the nodes in case they weren't able to log in that day, and then have done with it.

I assume this is going to run along side existing PvE. And if the placement structure is identical, this is going back to the bad old days of The Simulator or Prodigal Sun where there would be two sub events you had to try to complete at the same time. I'm not looking forward to having to try to get good placement on this event and the existing PvE.

Bowgentle

More of the PVE grind.
Just what the player base asked for.
Thanks for listening.

HoundofShadow

I think if the devs want those unhappy players to be happy, they must do this:

Event-Specific
1) make the event 100% progression, preferably run for the whole week.

2) make it a one-clear only node, which means a total of only 12 clears are needed.

3) Allow players to hoard Support Vault Tokens.

Support-related
1) putting Master Support token as the bare minimum rewards in progression rewards. Why? Beginner and Advanced Supports are pretty much useless, given the low odds of getting Rank 4 and Rank 5. There's a 2% odd of getting Rank 4 in Beginner Support token, and 10% and 1% odds in Advanced Support token for Rank 4 and Rank 5 respectively. It's only 40% chance of Rank 4 for Master Support token. Players are going to draw mostly Rank 1 to Rank 3 Supports from Beginner and Advanced token, which aren't going to help them speed up. If it doesn't speed things up, it's useless.


2) There's a 5% chance of getting Rank 5 in Master Support Token, equivalent to ~20 pulls. That works out to a minimum of 5 Master Support tokens in progression rewards per week.

Master Support tokens need to give a minimum of Rank 4 supports, just like how LTs or Classics are giving a minimum of 4-star characters, and the odds for Rank 5 need to be increased to at least 10%.

3) ability to choose the specific support instead of relying on RNG to get the support that the players want.

As long as any of this isn't accomplished, you will continue to hear negative feedbacks about how Support can be "earned" and how they are opening useless Rank 1 and Rank 2 supports, and probably Rank 3 supports.

fmftint

You're almost better off just buying the daily deals than actually playing this

bonny79

When does the event start?

zodiac339

With the number of special store supports introduced, I’d like to see a Featured Support for placement. Keep some RNG if you want, 1st (or top 3 hopefully) get the rank 4 featured support, top 5 rank 3, top 10 rank 2, and top 20 rank 1. Maybe have the character they are for featured/required for a given mission. Throw in the Master/Advanced tokens in but seriously, extend the placement for them.

DFiPL

This, uh, ain't an improvement, @Brigby .

Not when you have a 240 item vault stuffed with 2* character covers, because for 997 out of every 1000 players, that's going to be the majority of what they'll see.

They won't get the support tokens with the improved odds of pulling better supports, so the reduction in bonus rISO from duplicate pulls will be a net negative for them. It will actually be worse than it was before, because in addition to not ever getting supports, they'll get less for any useless supports they DO receive than they were used to getting.

The idea of the Circuit is a good one, but you need to go back to the developers and tell them that a drastic rethinking of the rewards table is necessary, because this is not, as it stands, remotely an improvement for anybody but the tippy top of the tippy top.

Quebbster

Don't Think I can be bothered to play this competetively, but progression rewards seem nice enough to play casually. Especially if the vault is available for the whole cycle.

Nick441234

broll said:

Really?  You had to stick some CP and actual useful stuff in here?  Couldn’t have been all RISO and support junk so I could pretend it doesn’t exist like I do with everything else support related?

We welcome you to Supports now. 

Nick441234

I'm all for new stuff but making this like a normal PVE is incredibly unfair. Basically, one day a week, we now have to grind away each of these nodes at least 7 times to have a chance of finishing near the top. Thats now on top of grinding away at least 7 times in the usual PVE event. This is horribly unfair on our sanity. 

If this had been an event that stuck around for the full week so you could clear the nodes every now and then throughout the 7 days then it would have been perfect but you decided we must fight each other for placement in this too.