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

killercool

I have done the initial run through in SCL9 and was able to do everything with the single team of Kitty, 4* R&G and Medusa (no health packs used in the entire 4 clear run).  It was fun to see some new teams and the challenge level seemed reasonable.

I have to say that after having another look at the prizes for the various SCLs I can not see enough benefit to the SCL9 prizes to make it worth my time.  From what I can see I can drop down to SCL5 and sacrifice a single vault token in return for a much faster clear.  Quality of life tells me this is a simple trade off to make - SLC5 for all future Support Circuit events (with a humble apology to all those level appropriate rosters that may be there with me).
 

Dragon_Nexus

PuceMoose said:

Has it been mentioned if these tokens roll over like taco tokens do? Meaning, if you play the event for six months (or however long it would take) to get 240 circuit tokens, could you then pull them the next time the event was live and empty the vault?

The tokens only work for this vault. You can wait a year and these tokens will only be for this vault. They're continuing to discourage hoarding.

As for the touch issue, the hitbox on the larg pin is whack, yo. It's way bigger than the pin itself, which is why it's hard to hit nodes 1, 2 and 9 without hitting the boss by accident. It's a big square around the pin. I've mapped it out...I mean what even the heck, dawg.

Borstock

I got 1 duplicate support in exchange for basically having to do PvE twice today. 

I don't like complaining about extra cps and hps, but holy moly.... Swing and a miss on this one, guys. 

jamesh

Richyyy said:

I've found it slightly ridiculous that the lvl250 powers were listed in the announcement threads, considering how unlikely anyone was to obtain the 5* variant. But showing the lvl250 powers when I click on, say, the 1* Chimichanga in my Support Circuit vault is absolutely outrageous. That's a 'reward' that has a specifically defined power, and if you check it out beforehand it shows something entirely different. If I click on a 1* Iron Man cover in a vault or my queue, I don't get shown what 5* Iron Man could do at full power.

All this support stuff is enough of a mess without wildly misleading (and probably illegal, frankly) information on top.

If you get lucky and pull a support directly from the vault and it isn't level 250 as shown, I'd contact customer support.

I know it is unlikely that they'll level it up for you, but it does add a cost to this kind of deceptive behaviour that could shape future behaviour.

SaltyK

jamesh said:

If you get lucky and pull a support directly from the vault and it isn't level 250 as shown, I'd contact customer support.

I know it is unlikely that they'll level it up for you, but it does add a cost to this kind of deceptive behaviour that could shape future behaviour.

I got "lucky" and pulled the 2* Pocket Radio, it's 1/100.
I doubt customer service will do anything.

KGB

Dropped down to CL6 since the rewards (CP, vault tokens the only things that matter) are essentially the same for CL6-8 unless you finish 1st overall.

I picked Slice 4 and it took 35 minutes to clear with my 4* roster after it opened tonight at 8 EST. The AI never fired a single power against GrockMorDusa during my full clear. I'm currently sitting 5th. A quick glance at the Top 10 shows I'm not alone. The 4 faster players than me all have champed 5* rosters and slots 6-10 are deep 4* roster.

At the time I shut off the app there were only 2 rosters in the T20 who are legit CL6 players (3* rosters). Gotta feel for them because they won't finish T20 due to the presence of all the high tier rosters.

Oh yeah. My 4 draws. 1500 ISO, 2* Torch, Daken and Wolvie. Not that I expected anything else.

KGB

broll

I tried to play this event to the CP, but I couldn’t. It was just another PvE sub.  The only reward I truly care about is the CP and it’s not worth that much of an extra grind for it.  

The only good thing about it for me is that because I don’t care about anything but the CP it will be super easy to skip and pretend it doesn’t exist (like all of supports)

fmftint

Can you really call it new content when it's simply a carbon copy of the old content?

bluewolf

HoundofShadow said:

Devs, forget about making most of the players use their CP or HP to dip into Support HfH bundles.

HP is for roster slots/Comic Packs only and CP is for opening LT or Classics.

They are not going to spend real cash for Support tokens too.

Rank 1 to Rank 3 are useless. Rank 4 might not be not really useful because Rank 5 Perk is locked out.

What does this leave the devs with to make them happy? Give them Rank 5 Supports of their choice, preferably levelled up to 250, through non-placement PvE progression rewards.

As long as you don't give them Rank 5 support of their choice, with the following conditions:

1) no placement required
2) not having to touch their HP/CP/cash at all 
3) no RNG

I'm afraid these are all the feedbacks you are going to see for the rest of the year, and that's a long road ahead.

I don't think it's fair to just broadly paint your fellow players as whiny demanding people who will never be happy with anything except ALL THE FREE STUFF.  I mean, yes, everyone wants more stuff but the developers made this whole Support system really tough to fit into the game design. 

The game is built, for better or worse, around building characters via the right combination of 13 covers.  The first 5 covers of any character are guaranteed to have you making progress on him/her.  With luck you can get all 13 without saving any, but in many cases, you can eventually get there (5's are a whole different issue).

Supports are built on making it very hard to pull anything better than a rank 1, in general.  (Depends on the token.)  And you'll therefore often, on your next pull of that Support, get the same Support and Rank you have already, which does nothing except allow you to collect some needed Red iso to level up that support, or another one.

So.  Open a cover token and often either get a cover to make specific progress on your character, or add champ levels and both make the character stronger AND get some nice champ rewards.

OR

Open a Support token and often get the Support you already have at the same rank (maybe even a lower one) which doesn't help you advance that Support at all, unless you now have enough Riso to add a level to it.  And experience that over and over and over again as you just keep pulling Rank 1 Blackbird or whatever.  

Surely you see how these two systems are dramatically different, and the game trains the players to expect and enjoy one system (character development) that Supports do not follow except in the smallest way.  (Open tokens in hopes of getting something you want.)

So it is completely understandable and justified for players of this game to not really appreciate or enjoy the Support leveling system as it was designed.

Now:  Do I like Supports?  I do.  Why?  Because I have had some lucky pulls and have some useful Rank 4 and 3 Supports (I outright bought the Deadpool bundle that included a Rank 3 Chimi, which still seems like it was a good purchase.)  I do not, however, enjoy the Support distribution system very much before, and so far don't feel much better about it.

Further:  There should be some way to get a Beginner Support token from this event without placing T3.  Maybe they could have set up a progression over the 4 runs of Support Circuit (making it one long event, since the Vault will be in the store for 28 days before changing).  And completing points equal to progression 3 times would give you a token, if just playing for one day would not be "enough" play time to justify that for the devs.  (This would not address the Pulling a Duplicate issue, but at least address one big complaint.)  I don't know the exact level of play vs rewards that the developers would feel comfortable with, but obviously many people are miffed that they were told we are getting a new way to get Supports but it's still just a chance that you'll even get one actual Support token.  Grinding PVE is a guaranteed pull at the Legendary store; why can't this do something similar, since it follows the same structure (grinding, timed play, placement rewards)?

I have seen others suggest that making a change so that enough duplicate Supports somehow add up to an increased Rank, or maybe each duplicate slightly increases the odds of pulling the next Rank of that Support, or something, could help people like Supports more, and the duplicate pulls less annoying.  I tend to agree.

Finally:  Yes, I spent real cash on a guaranteed Support.  Because it seemed worth it.  Where are the bundles like that now?  I think players would spend more resources on Supports if they felt like the odds of improving their existing ones or getting new ones were better.  The occasional direct selling of a Support would probably be a big win for the developers and get a lot more takers than things like $75 Red Goblin costumes that don't actually impact your play at all.

I would not recommend to anyone, with the revised odds on Support tokens, that they spend CP on these bundles.  Odds are really good that you'd get nothing better than a Rank 3 now.  Maybe, I might say use some HP you have on that bundle if the character is appealing or will help you.  There are definitely players who have spent CP and HP on the bundles and enjoy them; I say do that if you like.  But for many players, the experience of opening Support tokens in general - finding a duplicate of what you have already and making no progress - makes them very hesitant, if not completely refuse, to expend resources on the bundles.  Which is precisely, I suspect, the situation that the developers would like to avoid or move away from.  I feel like the way this event and vault and token updates are structured do not do anything to change that opinion, and may make it even stronger among many players.

Zeofar

Just did my first clear on this event. Loved it. Great variety from enemy teams, a cool miniboss node, and a bunch of rewards that I wasn't gonna get otherwise. Fun stuff and feels like a step in the right direction on every front for me. I hope devs aren't discouraged by players that just want to make roster progress in a game they don't actually enjoy playing.

ThaRoadWarrior

I went through SCL9 to progression, it was quite a slog. I’m not going to do a final grind, but I do progression only generally andwas never planning on that. I would much prefer if every node were a single clear.

I ended up getting 5 draws in the vault, got 3 3*s, 500iso, and a 2* Thor. I was left feeling a bit like Ian Malcom: “you do...ah....plan to give out supports in your...uh....support event, right?”

zeroswitch

Dragon_Nexus said:

As for the touch issue, the hitbox on the larg pin is whack, yo. It's way bigger than the pin itself, which is why it's hard to hit nodes 1, 2 and 9 without hitting the boss by accident. It's a big square around the pin. I've mapped it out...I mean what even the heck, dawg.

I had the same problem.  Minor quibble but worth looking at.

Otherwise, my experience with the Support Circuit is postive.  Cleared them all once, and with my 4 tokens I lucked out and got the 3rd prize out of 240 from the vault (2 star kimono beads, which I didn't have.)  

jamesh

SaltyK said:

jamesh said:

If you get lucky and pull a support directly from the vault and it isn't level 250 as shown, I'd contact customer support.

I know it is unlikely that they'll level it up for you, but it does add a cost to this kind of deceptive behaviour that could shape future behaviour.

I got "lucky" and pulled the 2* Pocket Radio, it's 1/100.
I doubt customer service will do anything.

To be clear, I don't expect them to do anything either.  I still think it is worth while for you to contact them anyway.  If a deceptive behaviour has no cost (or even drives HP sales from people chasing the supports in the vault), then they will continue on.

Each support ticket costs money to process, so it can help shape development priorities.

skittledaddy

I expected a whole lot of nothing from this event, but played it anyway. Had to try it, even if just once. 

Completed 3.7 with relative ease. Challenge was appropriate for SCL7. Got the 7 CP I wanted and planned to move on. Instead I had lucky enough results in the Vault

Mystique
SWitch
iso
Advanced Support Token

Popped my Adv Token and got a 4* Dora Milaje. My first 4* support! Not necessarily a great support, but more versatile than my previous 2* version. 


I guess I'm not allowed to complain until next week...

HoundofShadow

In order to change how supports is distributed, such as putting a beginner or Advancd support token in progression for every event, and let players feel a sense of progress, the dev must change all Supports to require up to 250 pulls of that same Support to max level that Support and remove the current "Pull Rank 3 to max level to 150 and pull Rank 4 to max level to 200" so on and so forth. Instead of Pulling Rank 3 and you can max level it to 150, you probably need to pull 50 Rank 3 of that same support to level it to 150.

The reasons for so many dupes and the slow support distribution, that I believe, lies in the way Support and Character are collected, earned and levelled up. 

1) You need 113 comic covers to max level characters beginning from 3* tiers, whereas you need just 1 Support Token to unlock whatever Rank that support gives. Getting a Rank 3 support is like getting a champed 3*, in one pull.

2) To get a 3* characters from 0 cover to 13 covers using pulls from Heroics token and BH aside, you need 1/5 * 1/47 or 235 pulls per cover or  3055 Heroic pulls to cover that specific character. Even for a 5*, you need to hoard 360 LTs or so for at least 6 months to champ all latest 5* characters. 

3) You can feel progress for characters with X covers because they need 13 covers to champ and every non-dupe cover increase their powers. You need only 1 Support token to feel the full effect of whatever that perks that Rank give you. Of course, you are going to get dupes after dupes. 

4) Right now, there are only 42 Supports that can be pulled and don't forget, the devs gave at least 10 Beginner and Advance tokens to every players freely, up till Rank 2 Wasp Gauntlets support(?). By now, many players would have ~ 50% of the supports. You are going to see dupes and more dupes.

5) Even if the developer put a beginner support token in progression for every PvE, they are going to hear complain about getting dupes, or either that, Rank 1, Rank 2 or even Rank 3 perks are a joke. If they switch the way supports are levelled up, the focus will be how they have to grind to level up support. End of the day, the devs can implement all these things, but they won't be satisified until they can get Rank 5 support of their choice. 

1882

I think D3go missed a trick with the new support thing! I believe they should have made it like DDQ. But you earn a master support token not a LL on the big one. Seems a lot of work the way they have done it. Imo. 

Tony_Foot

I don’t even like the odds on daily deal so not pulling that either. I think I’d rather just once a month buy the HFH Hp purchase get a 4* cover and the 5 tokens for a guarantee chance of RNG. If I bought the heroic daily deal I might have switched to this vault but don’t fancy getting in the habit of 2800hp every month for a vault containing so many 2*.

DAZ0273

HoundofShadow said:

2) To get a 3* characters from 0 cover to 13 covers using pulls from Heroics token and BH aside, you need 1/5 * 1/47 or 235 pulls per cover or  3055 Heroic pulls to cover that specific character. Even for a 5*, you need to hoard 360 LTs or so for at least 6 months to champ all latest 5* characters. 

I don't see how you can leave aside bonus heroes when talking about this, bonus heroes are now an integral part of this game and the advancement of player progress. It is perfectly possible to bonus hero a 3* to champion state in a few weeks, I've done it many times, mostly when I was at the 3* level. So that makes the 3055 Heroic pulls stat meaningless. That is without even considering that every 3* cover will have a chance at guaranteed covers via DDQ, PvE and PvP and Champion levels from certain 2*. Sure, you might have to wait for them to cycle but it is guaranteed. So with one run at SCL7 PvE you can get 2 guaranteed progression covers (3 at SCL8), 1 guaranteed cover from PvP progression, 1 guaranteed cover from DDQ and 3 guaranteed covers from certain 2*. So you can get more than 50% of covers from a 3* before you even touch a token, no RNG involved. That also doesn't include placement.

Also - why only Heroics? You can obtain 3* from Elite tokens which are obtained on an even greater frequency than Heroics, thus again impacting any required amount of pulls.

So basically, obtaining champed 3* characters is not overly reliant on RNG and for certain ones (we didn't specify which) the game helps us out with getting there. I don't see the same non RNG path to a 3* Support.

As you have on more than one ocassion used my exact argument above (except without anywhere near the same amount of guaranteed covers) to argue that players should be easily able to prep for SHIELD Training, I'm a little surprised you have turned it on its head when it comes to Supports trying to suggest that champing a 3* is down to RNG via Heroics (and leaving out Elites).

I think the playerbase would be pretty happy with the difficulty of obtaining a 3* Support being equal to the difficulty of obtaining a 3* Champion.

broll

Also why in the world are these new support stores always showing vs only showing when you have tokens?  Making them only show unless you had tokens (or there was some buy option) was genius and a great way to cut down on the ridiculous amount of cluttered screens in the recruit section.  I hope that's just a mistake/oversight.

HoundofShadow

The reason why I didn't include Elite or even Standard Tokens, DDQ, PvE etc is because there are too many variables to make a fair comparison. Even if you factor in BH, it's every 100 Heroics token pull on average to get one 3* bonus heroes. Besides, you can't control what colours of the cover you can get. You just spelled out that you need weeks to champion a 3* and we are not even talking about max champing. You don't need weeks to reach the max level of whatever Rank you got for support, you need 1 pull, the right pull, which is going to take seconds to get that.

Also, the reason why I chose 3* and 5* as examples is because it was chosen at random. 

Secondly, I have no idea what you meant by this:

"As you have on more than one ocassion used my exact argument above (except without anywhere near the same amount of guaranteed covers) to argue that players should be easily able to prep for SHIELD Training...."

I think you got the wrong person because I was never an advocate for players to be able to complete SHIELD Training easily. 

Players right now can easily get Rank 3 Supports. It's up to them to pull the trigger. Players can get guaranteed support tokens for 4800HP or 250CP in HfH store if they don't feel like competing for placement to get those tokens or to try their luck at vault.  They are only seconds away.