CL10 and 5* release schedule

wymtime

jamesh said:

The main problem I see with the proposals in the original post is that they are only focused on ways that existing 5* players can acquire more 5* characters.

As things stand at the moment transitioning players and 5* players have the same options open to them for acquiring 5* covers.  If these methods become less effective (e.g. due to characters spending less time in the latest legends store) and the new acquisition methods introduced to balance are out of reach to transitioning players, then it simply increases the inequality.

Transitioning to the 5* tier will still be the same get 300 pulls and pull from the latest vault.  The difference is you could also earn 5 from feeders, and then from earning legendary tokens from progression and placement.  Most players who pull from classic stores are trying to build up their 4* so they will randomly get 5*  classics.  So if these people now got more classic 5* it would help them transition.  

Lastly going it will be inevitable that the devs will eventually go to 5* release only as there are already too many 4* in the game.  If they keep going with a release schedule of 4,4,5 we will have 4* tier bigger than all the other tiers combined 

jamesh

To stay competitive in PVE, you need to have at least one cover of each new 5* character.  If 5* releases are more frequent, a player will need to dip into their hoard more often while they're stockpiling CP/tokens.  That is going to slow down the process.

Adding champion rewards that give out the new 5* can help, but only if you have at least 23 covers for the 4* character chosen from a tier of 80+.  And I doubt anyone trying to break into the 5* tier is placing top 5 in versus tournaments or hitting 1500 points, so the extra resources you propose to add there are meaningless for such players.

HoundofShadow

The main question to ask is: Given that 5* is still the top prize of the game, what's the probability of the devs giving guaranteed 1:1 5* tokens in the near future? 

I think it's close to zero in 2019. 

*Exception: when they nerf five stars and you can trade them for guaranteed 5* tokens.

By giving guaranteed  1:1 odds of getting 5* via token pulls or placements, they are automatically downgraded to a level similar to giving 4* in Classic/LT pulls. This in turn affects all the values of their future bundles. They would have to add in more covers or reduce the cost of bundles.

Instead of going from 1:7 odds to 1:1 odds, I think it's easier to make the odds lower using other methods, or introduce other methods of acquring 5*.

Here are all the ways available to get 5* currently:
1) Pulling from Classics or LTs
2) BH
3) HfH store (250CP or 500CP)
4) direct purchase with 720CP
5) From feeders
6) Shield Resupply

Methods not available
7) bundles purchased using cash
8) DDQ vault
9) PvE vaults 
10) guaranteed 5* cover in DDQ

No 7. will be controversial and is likely to put off a lot of players.

No 8 and 9 will benefits hoarders. One way is to create a new vault. The cost of using HP to pull guaranteed 5* cover will likely be very high. Probably high enough to cause a backlash.

10) might work... but expect really challenging conditions.

A) Tweaks to BH rate might work.

Introduce 6*, which willl more or less give 5* covers in placement. However, the last publicly announced consensus (in early to mid 2018) among the players are they don't want six stars.

MorganWick

wymtime said:

Lastly going it will be inevitable that the devs will eventually go to 5* release only as there are already too many 4* in the game.  If they keep going with a release schedule of 4,4,5 we will have 4* tier bigger than all the other tiers combined 

We already have twice as many 2*s than 1*s, and more than twice as many 3*s than 1*s and 2*s combined. If I had to guess the devs are probably looking at a goal of at least 140 or so 4*s, maybe significantly more, when all is said and done if they want to maintain the same sort of proportions as the first three tiers, and then, eventually, hundreds of 5*s. Yet in recent months the devs seem to have moved to something closer to a 5-4-5-4-4 pattern, already releasing 5*s a bit more often.

I don't like rushing the devs into instituting 4-to-5 feeders too soon; that's how you get ill-fitting feeders because a better feeder or feedee hasn't been released yet, and to my knowledge no feeder has ever been changed. At the same time, the current system means once all your pulls are coming out of Latest, your progress on any card stalls once they graduate from Latest unless you're spending CP, HP, or real money on HfH offers or direct purchases, or unless the card in question has a feeder, giving feedees a significant advantage. I've seen suggestions for rotating vaults of both old and new 4*s as a solution for the dilution problem in that tier; long-term, something similar may be a good idea for equitable progress at the 5* level, assuming the devs want a max-champed 5* to be a reasonable goal for non-whales.

randomhero1090

If the 5* releases become more frequent, several things have to happen or i'm going to have to give up the game because trying to cover 5* will become impossible...

1)  Cost for 5* cover reduces based on the number of covers needed.  This will keep people from just buying 5s.
 - 3 or more covers need = 600
 - 2 covers needed = 480
 - 1 cover needed = 360
2)  Remove the "must have a cover to buy a cover" criteria.  You got a 5/5/0 Okoye, you should be able to spend a good deal of CP to finish if you so choose.
3)  Saved feature 2:1.
4)  All 5* need a 4* feeder.
5)  Total revamp of season rewards.
6)  3rd CP level award for progression in both PVP (ex: 5-10-15) and PVE (ex: 8-16-24)

In terms of generating revenue....
7)  Revamp VIP and add more CP/LTs to the program.
8)  Double if not TRIPLE the alliance CP awards for buys.
9)  More HP cover deals (like this Shuri one) since you can buy HP.


Game is down so I was bored

BoyWonder1914

The increasing Clearance Levels follow a pattern of giving more covers through placement and progression. If I'm not mistaken, in CL10 they would start giving us 2 4-star covers in progression (4+ on a 7-day event). It could also mean the Alliance Threshold for a 4-star cover could go up T25, and/or for individuals up to T100. I'm sure I'm off on at least one of those, but in either case they don't seem eager to be that generous with 4-star or 5-star covers. Not without steep difficulty or some other kind of cost. 

RPIJG

In addition to this boondoggle, it would be nice if you assigned a 3* feeder for new 4*'s.  At this point, each 3* should be feeding two 4*s based on the pool of toons in each tier.

bluewolf

I realize it's human nature, but it always amuses me when we say things like "this needs to happen or I'll do this."

I think it's clear that the release pattern has shifted from 33% 5's to 40% 5's given the past 6 months of releases.

Have rewards changed at all in that time?   Ha ha ha ha ha....No.

A 5 requires approx 200,000 more iso to level up fully.  While Latests makes your odds of pulling one of them 5%, which is far higher than say pulling a Sabretooth at about 1% odds, you still need to make an average of 7 pulls per 5* cover, and if your goal is to keep up then in theory there should be a CP increase of some sort to make up for that increased need, especially since you won't even get a single cover for that new 5* character in any rewards.

I'm not sure what would be "fair" but the fact is that the release schedule this year has moved to a place creating a higher demand for resources without any change in rewards for players.

(This is disregarding the state of the 4 tier and how hard it is to cover them without placing well in every event, and bonusing them, etc).

At some point I think each player needs to should ask themselves when they have had enough.  I have some hope for changes based on the survey, but this year is not impressing me so far.  Leaving me pretty disappointed, in fact.  Am I setting an ultimatum?  Not yet....

randomhero1090

bluewolf said:

I realize it's human nature, but it always amuses me when we say things like "this needs to happen or I'll do this."

I think it's clear that the release pattern has shifted from 33% 5's to 40% 5's given the past 6 months of releases.

Have rewards changed at all in that time?   Ha ha ha ha ha....No.

A 5 requires approx 200,000 more iso to level up fully.  While Latests makes your odds of pulling one of them 5%, which is far higher than say pulling a Sabretooth at about 1% odds, you still need to make an average of 7 pulls per 5* cover, and if your goal is to keep up then in theory there should be a CP increase of some sort to make up for that increased need, especially since you won't even get a single cover for that new 5* character in any rewards.

I'm not sure what would be "fair" but the fact is that the release schedule this year has moved to a place creating a higher demand for resources without any change in rewards for players.

(This is disregarding the state of the 4 tier and how hard it is to cover them without placing well in every event, and bonusing them, etc).

At some point I think each player needs to should ask themselves when they have had enough.  I have some hope for changes based on the survey, but this year is not impressing me so far.  Leaving me pretty disappointed, in fact.  Am I setting an ultimatum?  Not yet....

Yeah yeah i'm not quitting lol.

MTP

So how long will it be until Storm is added to the latest 5* and CM removed?  Just trying to gauge how much time left.

pheregas

MTP said:

So how long will it be until Storm is added to the latest 5* and CM removed?  Just trying to gauge how much time left.

Should be the 24th, right?  If I'm wrong I'll edit so as not to sow confusion.

Projectus2501

I know you guys don't like the cl10 chat and even less the 6* heroes. But releasing hordes of 5* really begs for those two game developments. How many 4* heroes existed when the 5* were released?

bluewolf

Projectus2501 said:

I know you guys don't like the cl10 chat and even less the 6* heroes. But releasing hordes of 5* really begs for those two game developments. How many 4* heroes existed when the 5* were released?

Mr. Fantastic, the 16th 4*, was released a week before the first 5*, Silver Surfer.

So we have more than twice that number of 5's now......

I dunno what their plan is, other than keep doing what they've been doing.

There continues to be neither design space nor need for 6*s when you can clear some nodes in one move with the proper Supports, Thanos, and Thor.  The only reason to start making 6*s would be to create some harder to get thing that would allow the game developers to make the current hard to get things easier to get.  And somehow make that work with the PVP system and game economy and feel somewhat fair to players.

CL10 would, to me, need a steady increase in players at the top end (7-9) to justify splitting off a segment to CL10.  So far, I've seen no increase in players there for a couple years now.  Maybe even a slight dip.

We will see what happens next....

Oh look, costumes!  Neat and fun!  (Honestly, I like them OK, but obviously they aren't changing how we play.)

KGB

bluewolf said:

CL10 would, to me, need a steady increase in players at the top end (7-9) to justify splitting off a segment to CL10.  So far, I've seen no increase in players there for a couple years now.  Maybe even a slight dip.

We will see what happens next....

I believe the massive number of limited stores with at least one top 5 character (esp the fan favorites store with 3 meta characters) is at attempt by the devs to push more late stage 4* players into 5* land so they can open CL10. As you have noted and as the devs have mentioned a few times in the past, there aren't enough strong rosters to justify CL10 yet so they need to accelerate the late stage 4* rosters like mine into the 5* tier.

They also know we aren't going to make the jump with mediocre 5s but we might/would if we had a least 2 of Thor/Okoye/Kitty with ideally another one of the next group like JJ/Daredevil/Thanos etc also champed.  Since dilution makes it impossible to cover them from classics they are putting one or more in every limited store.

KGB

Reecoh

KGB said:

I believe the massive number of limited stores with at least one top 5 character (esp the fan favorites store with 3 meta characters) is at attempt by the devs to push more late stage 4* players into 5* land so they can open CL10. As you have noted and as the devs have mentioned a few times in the past, there aren't enough strong rosters to justify CL10 yet so they need to accelerate the late stage 4* rosters like mine into the 5* tier.

They also know we aren't going to make the jump with mediocre 5s but we might/would if we had a least 2 of Thor/Okoye/Kitty with ideally another one of the next group like JJ/Daredevil/Thanos etc also champed.  Since dilution makes it impossible to cover them from classics they are putting one or more in every limited store.

KGB

My only issue with this plan is that currently the resources to acquire 5*s are split between CP & LL tokens, but only CP is useful for the limited stores. So if I decide to spend in one I'm going to have a harder time covering the latest if that's something I'm inclined to do.

At this point I feel like they should just replace all LL tokens with 25 CP payouts. That would be a minor boost to the economy in the sense that we could be more flexible with our spending and folks who want to pull only classics get a boost against the rising tide of 5*s.

Phumade

Reecoh said:

My only issue with this plan is that currently the resources to acquire 5*s are split between CP & LL tokens, but only CP is useful for the limited stores. So if I decide to spend in one I'm going to have a harder time covering the latest if that's something I'm inclined to do.

At this point I feel like they should just replace all LL tokens with 25 CP payouts. That would be a minor boost to the economy in the sense that we could be more flexible with our spending and folks who want to pull only classics get a boost against the rising tide of 5*s.

Eventually you’ll be able to do both.  Exclusively use the ll tokens to cover the LAst 3 and hoard cp for good spot opportuni5ies.  Don’t forget the magic number is 2 LL per day to cover the last 3.  I know it sounds ridiculous that rosters don’t have to focus their resources.  But eventually it WILL happen or at least to the point, your comfortably making progress on last 3 and saving cp for future uses.

Reecoh

Phumade said:

Don’t forget the magic number is 2 LL per day to cover the last 3.

That number will rise though if they do start pushing 5*s out at a consistently higher rate.

bluewolf

A couple numbers....

330 seems to be a pretty commonly cited number that I have seen in terms of covering people in Latests.  Especially now without CS swaps, although some may get covered and others may not.

A 4/4/5 release pattern means you get 18 weeks (usually) for each 5 in Latests, which averages to 2.6 pulls a day.

Moving to a 4/5/4/4/5 pattern (a simple 40% model) means that half the 5's will get 16 weeks in Latest, half will get 14 weeks.  16 weekers need 2.9 pulls a day to finish, 14 weekers need 3.3.

We really don't know what the goal or pattern will be, but it seems to me that 2 pulls per day isn't really getting the job done now (post-swap) and certainly is going to be falling short under a 40% 5 model, which we seem to have moved to.