Support Circuit Post Mortem - what do you think and what did you get?

DAZ0273

I didn't really know what option to pick as none really summed up my opinion.

The event is simply more PvE and I find PvE tedious but I did really like the big pin battles and it was nice to have newer characters in it as opponents.

I believe I obtained exactly zero Supports but I did only play 3 out of 4 weeks.

Not keen on this for a Monday.

PiMacleod

I upgraded one support to 2* from 1*, and another to 3* from 2*.

That's over the course of all 4 weeks, and i fully progressed each one.

Kinda sad.  I was hoping to land a new 4* (or higher) of ANY support within this time frame

bluewolf

I liked the event, but I don't think it does enough to add access to supports

Good:

1.  The event is new and provided a few interesting things (challenging nodes, boss pins)
2.  There were a good number of earnable tokens
3.  Some more CP and riso

Bad:
1.  Almost no way to gain a guaranteed Support token
2.  The timed aspect meant you had to focus on playing over a 24 hour period - I'd prefer a longer period with no placement
3.  Placement rewards were basically meaningless since you needed to T3 for anything somewhat important, and those were often dupes anyway.  So why bother?
4.  The lack of progression between the weeks/rounds of Support Circuit, which could have provided a method to reward some actual Support Tokens (or a Support) to people

Separate from the Support Circuit event, I'm also unhappy with the way the tokens were changed (in terms of what ranks come from tokens).  I can accept the reduced riso rate, but the rank odds change.....rankles me.

My personal results were pretty good.  I pulled the 3 Masters and got two rank 4s and a 5, so I beat the odds significantly.  But I still feel like the structure of the event isn't as good as it could be.

EDIT:  I was thinking more about the fact that the developers both want to slow down/not speed up the game (evident from recent characters), which is fine and a laudable goal.  But this event, regardless of that, still has a placement component.   I really wish they would have embraced that design direction and made this progression only, but maybe they couldn't.  I really would have enjoyed a weekly PVE progression event where I could use my whole roster, make fun teams, experiment, etc.

Marc_Spector

I liked the event and I think it's a good solution for adding access to supports

As tempted as I was to vote for the 2nd option, I begrudgingly had to vote for the first -- as I did wind up over the four weeks getting four newer supports that I didn't have yet (Royal Talon Fighter, Tinkerer, Pocket Radio, Quantum Realm -- of ranks between 2-4* each)  So, if the goal was to provide access to the newer supports, then, mission accomplished I suppose. I definitely agree that there could be tweaks to the event's numbers across the board. I personally find the rank rewards utterly insulting and wish there was at least a single support token awarded for the lowest rank & up (or, remove rank entirely from the support event.)

bbigler

I liked the event, but I don't think it does enough to add access to supports

I don't count new 1* and 2* supports as a success because they're almost useless.  So, for me, the real question is: what percentage of players got a new 3* - 5* support this past month?  If that percentage is not above 50%, then I consider this a failure.  What I think this event/vault really is, is a way to look like you're increasing support distribution without actually doing it.  Perhaps I'm just in a cynical mood, but this distribution is not good enough. 

spidyjedi84

I dislike the event, but I admit it does well to add access to supports

Too much grind, period. I like some of the ideas of the Support event, but a total of 48 clears to get not only the RISO rewards, but all four covers to the support vault and the whatever amount of CP was too similar to PVE. Eliminate the placement awards, period, similar to Deadpool Daily, and make it no more than 10 additional matches in a week to get covers and RISO rewards only or move it solely to a Saturday/Sunday event when there can be nothing going on in the game and I'd probably attempt it again.
I will commend the developers that they staggered this event usually with a two day node, so you could focus a lot of energy in PVE and then the next day head into Supports, but that's not going to be tenable from a long term solution. 
It did increase my chances at supports, with me receiving at least 5 support tokens from the vault and two new to me supports. 
The vault, though, needs to only be RISO rewards and support tokens, period. If that means raising the cost for HP draws if it's going to last all month long, do it. Having 2-star and 3-stars in that vault is just another slap in the face for those playing this for access to supports and RISO.

randomhero1090

I liked the event, but I don't think it does enough to add access to supports

Got 2 blue tokens from the vault, both were 3* supports.  Blues should be 4*+.

DeNappa

There's some pros and some cons in my opinion:

Pro:

• Refreshing matchups in enemy teams
• Gives some extra support vault tokens

Con:

• Too grindy
• Runs for only 24 hours in addition of any currently running events
• Placement rewards are 'meh'

Mixed

• Large vault, with a lot of useless stuff in it too, but does have daily deals and is open for a long time.
• Boss pin -- dunno if I like the direction they're going with the 'no stun' boss nodes

Because the vault is open for a long time it gives a decent enough chance for a support or support token pull. And even beginner tokens can give a rank 4 support, now.


To counter the cons, I would propose to scrap the placement (convert to 'progression only'; maybe add a few more progression rewards to make up for the placement reward loss) and keep the event open during the week.

CT1888

I dislike the event and it does not do enough to add access to supports.

It was too grindy, and I was never going to get involved in trying to place. 
I think the first time I played CL8, did the boss node 3 times, the cp node 4 and everything else once then gave up. Week 2 was similar, week 3 and 4 I dropped to CL5 iirc and Thanos'd my way to max progression as quickly as possible.

My first pull from a basic support token gave me a 3* Royal Talon Fighter, which was nice. 

Nick441234

I dislike the event and it does not do enough to add access to supports.

I cannot express how much I hate that we are expected to do another 6 clears of an event. I think it has helped with the lack of supports but nowhere near enough. 

Kolence

I dislike the event and it does not do enough to add access to supports.

It's too grindy. Yes, there are characters that let you win pve fights in 1 or a few moves, and I have them. But that is only making the chores be done faster if I choose to use them, not letting me really enjoy pve play. Which is kinda funny because this event has potential for more puzzly play - with no esential characters, we can choose a full team of three. Plus the final big pins. All nice new ideas, still mostly ruined for me by grindiness.

I'd prefer fewer clears in pve, in general, with a steeper increase in levels. But if "regular" pve needs to stay as it is for reasons (more accessible to a wide range of rosters? but why not use CLs better for that?), I would've hoped something new could've been slightly different?

As for the vault, it is ... large.   So there's a chance you miss nice rewards altogether in one cycle/season. But the odds of hitting something good are better now than before. It's just so much tinykitty rng again...

Heartbreaksoup

I liked the event, but I don't think it does enough to add access to supports

I'd have preferred it if we could play over the course of 7 days rather than just 24 hours, but I appreciated having something new in PVE and hope to see it again soon.

With about 75% of the 2*s in the vault removed.

Twomp_thaDJ

I liked the event itself, but I think it does nothing to add access to supports

The event was a great place to gain more resources.. free CP each week is why I say the event was ok. As far as supports go the vault is to big.. if it’s a Supports vault and you want to bolster supports in the game, it should only have support related things in there. Even if it’s predominantly beginner tokens at least it’s giving us a chance to have gain all the supports even at a low level. Those excessive 2* did feed my farm.. but with all the other regular events that feeds it well enough.  We might as well just say supports are more rare than 5* BH pulls

Vhailorx

I had absolutely absurd luck.

Bought every 100hp daily deal, and a few 10 packs too. Was chasing an rtf like everyone else (until the wakanda vault happened).

From about 85 pulls, I got

2x Master tokens

2x advanced tokens

4x standard tokens

2 of the fixed supports (not the rtf)

A few 3*s, iso, and lots of 2*s. (Plus the cost3 and other resources from progression)

From those tokens, I actually got my first two 5* supports (1 from an advanced token just to show how crazy lucky I was!).  5* Chimichangas and blackbird are now mine, for whatever that's worth.

I also added a rank to 4 or 5 lower rank supports (including getting to rank 3 on some new supports where that really matters). And I got rank 1 victorious and pocket radio.

All in all I think that is a far better outcome than anyone can expect from that vault without having tens of thousands of HP saved, or whaling heavily. 

My thoughts in the event are as follows:

(1) I think my particular outcome was great and should probably be a little bit above average for a veteran player's experience. A month long even that provides 1-3 high level supports, plus additional ranks for a handful more, and adds1-2 completely new supports seems like a good reward level for regular players.

(2) the fact that my outcome was so outrageously lucky suggests that the rewards need to be tuned up a bit.  I would guess that I got a top 1-5% outcome, but I think it should be more like a top 20-35% outcome.

(3) the last thing this game needs is another event asking for ~70 matches on a strict schedule in a 24 hour period.  The grind needs a serious quality of life improvement.

(4) rewards in mpq rarely go up, especially on the second run of an event, so regardless of my preferences in #2 above, I expect the next iteration of this event to be less generous.

(5) I remain very uncertain about the relative value of the newer 3x stronger abilities supports versus the older 5x weaker power supports

(6) the delta between the utility of some support powers versus others is outrageous.  + a bt of damage v. dark avengers is trash tier. %chance fortify a friendly special tile on match/power/turn is incredibly useful. %chancr start with 6-12 AP is match-ending with the right setup.  I feel like a balance pass is necessary for some of the older, useless supports.

(6) relatedly, the character locks on supports are irritating.  Imaging pulling a 5* ancestral realm, only to realize that you have a grand total of 10 BP covers across his 3 iterations.  What a waste.  Same with all the villanous supports in a game that is maybe 15% villains. My own 5* chimichangas are way more intriguing than my 5* blackbird, just because I don't have any of the 5* X-Men champed just yet. Obviously they can't all be exactly as useful, but the gaps do seem quite wide.

(7) I want supports that subtract match damage from Characters to improve our ability to tinker with which character tanks what color.

(8) also, more placement rewards for a pve event?  And only top 3 get the support tokens that the event is theoretically about?  C'mon!

(9) as always, enemy variety is nice, and newer events have an advantage (it's not all dark avengers!).

FesterTester

I dislike the event and it does not do enough to add access to supports.

15 pulls from playing 3 of 4 weeks.  Don't have notes handy but here's what I remember:
1 beginner token (currently un-opened)
2 three-star covers
some purple and red iso (mostly purple)
a bunch of 2-star covers

The event itself isn't bad per se, I liked the big pin battles, but the regular battles are just more grind in a game that already has more than enough.
A 240-item vault where the average player who does full clears will earn 16-20 non-hoardable tokens is ridiculous and almost the same as the "card pack" model, except for superwhales who are willing to drop a lot of resources to clear the vault.

Halleck

I liked the event, but I don't think it does enough to add access to supports

As someone who took a break from the game shortly before the original announcement, I don't know if my feedback is extra valuable or irrelevant.

I logged in the first instance and really enjoyed the battles themselves. As something that could be a smaller commitment of time, the same time each week, it had some casual appeal as an alternative to longer, staler PVE. However, several weeks later the reality is that I didn't log in other than that first time.

The progress rewards and vault composition deflated any enthusiasm I had to actually chasing any of the rewards.

I'd like to think that substantially increasing the progress or pin rewards, plus extending the window to a week would both help. The time extension in particular would fill a niche/hook that the game doesn't currently have. For me, I honestly don't know if it would be enough though. I think asking "Did Support Circuit bring me back into the game?" is a metric that's unfair to ask of the event, but it's the only metric I have.

jredd

I dislike the event and it does not do enough to add access to supports.

if making supports easier to get was the intended outcome it failed miserably. 

just extra grinding (we don't need) for more resources. if it's going to be 6 clears, it should be open for 6 days. if it's going to be one day it should be 3 clears or less. and having placement rewards is silly. make it progression only.

Kevmcg

I liked the event, but I don't think it does enough to add access to supports

Over 4 weeks of placing well in the events, I ended up with just 1 new 2* support and extra RISO. More resources were nice for the effort, but this barely scratches the surface of making supports more available.

The #1 change should be to have many more high end supports earned in placement. At a MINIMUM, Top 1 should get the Master, 2-10 Advanced, and 11-25 get basic support draws. Most of these end up as dupes and just RISO anyway - current payouts are too conservative, bordering on proof of poor planning.

I see this similar to when RISO rewards were 1/18th of what they are now, common sense showed that it was not a balanced reward system. I hope they are assessing the results and come back with more meaningful chances at obtaining higher rank supports on the next 4 week circuit.

I'm getting close to having all my usable supports maxed to their possible level. Then the whole feature will be even more meh than it currently is unless something changes to make it more exciting or collectible.

HoundofShadow

I'm not sure which option to choose because I bought a number of Support bundles before they nerfed Master Support tokens. 

I got one Master token, one Advanced token, and a couple Beginner Support tokens. All these turn out to be Rank 1 to Rank 3 dupes, which are expected for me.

The changes I want to see is them banning players with full fledged 5* roster from jumping to SCL 7 and lower because they are denying the opportunity for 3*/4* players to get a chance at earning support. 

They could increase the placement rewards for support tokens from top 3 to top 5, 8 or 10.

Coubii

I liked the event, but I don't think it does enough to add access to supports

Event itself is nice, I liked the semi boss fight.

On the support side, really meh. Earned a dupe, that's all. Odds are really too weak. Nobody want to whale out such vault...