Dilution and the End.

WelcomeDeath

So...the game has a serious and growing problem.  The problem is as old as the game, but has had several fixes in the past.  Bear with me, this will be long. 

So...long, long, long ago the game was pretty much just a 1-3* game with a handful of 4 stars, mostly 3s being released.  For a little while, the devs tried vaulting (the original one!) where most of the 3 stars were in tokens, while some sat out for a bit, and it rotated every so often.  It didn't work.  It didn't fix the problem, it just moved it.  Eventually, the vaulting stopped.  Instead, the odds in tokens were adjusted to give out more 3 stars.  Then they were adjusted again, a couple times.  First to give out more 3 stars and eventually to give out more 4 stars, as those began to be released more.  DDQ was added to the game, and gave out a 3 star cover every day so long as you could beat it.  All of these periodic increases served to combat dilution and make the 3 star transition achievable.  Eventually, they stopped releasing 3 stars, and the problem went away forever.

But now there was a *new* problem.  4 stars were being released regularly and the only way to get them was by placing top 1 in pvp or top 2 in pve or by hitting 1300 in pvp (maybe also at 1k, it's been a while).  There was no way to reliably cover them other than by hoarding tokens.  Then a whirlwind of changes occurred.  We got LTs and the introduction of 5 stars.  Then we got command points.  We got 4 stars in progression in pvp *and* pve.  They gave out more 4s in placement.  They released the champion feature!  They fixed pve so it was more structured and less random (remember getting 20 iso 15 times straight trying for 1 cp?).  Life was good...for a while.  Needing to release more 5 stars meant they'd be harder and harder to get.  So, the devs made a bold move and what I believe to be a big mistake: they split the stores and created classics.  Things stayed pretty good for a while.

Nobody noticed at first, but the same problem that happened with 3s and 4s was happening again with 4s and 5s.  Dilution.  Nobody cared about 5s because of the split, and the rewards were enough to sustain the 4s for a while.  We even got SCL and shield ranks and more 4s for placement, far more 3s, a bit more cp, so things seemed good.  But time went on, and on, and on.  The classics you could ignore became necessary with the introduction of the 5E node in pve.  This was a good thing, but the problem was the only way to get them was classics, which got worse and worse as time went on.

About 2 years ago....the devs made another move.  They introduced bonus heroes and vaulting to combat 4 star dilution.  I know, I know...this didn't work with 3s, why would it work with 4s?  Well, it did.  At least it made it easier to get the latest 12.  Everything else was only bonus heroes and the painfully slow progression and placement covers.  Then it was half vaulting.  Then no vaulting.  Bonus heroes are a good idea but they pay out entirely too slow to combat dilution except for one single character.  Problem is, if you champ one character you really need a lot of them champed (except for 5 stars cause theres no boosted toons there).  The other problem is if they paid out too fast youd be able to get a 370 or 550 too fast, especially with latests being a thing.  Both experiments didn't work.  They began feeders, which are a great thing, but also like trying to stop the tide with a single paddle.  

What's the solution?  The only thing that worked in the past:  increase the rewards.  Give out more cp, more LTs.  Give out some 5 star covers here and there and the problem goes away.  The one thing blocking it and their greatest mistake of all (IMO): the latest/classic split.  If you give out more pulls and with people hoarding anyway, people  would hoard for shorter and shorter times and everyone would have 550s.  That's bad.  Latests need to go.  Keep release stores, those are fine.  Hell, dont give out more cp, give out just more LTs which can be used in the LT store (the L is for Legendary, not latests, remember?).  Put all the 5s in the LT store.  Then you can open up the floodgates without breaking the game.  You can adjust as needed for forever.  Youd still have people buying in clubs for CP for releases.  Hoarders could still hoard for those stores if they wanted to.  But new players could actually graduate to 4 star in less than 2 years (longer every day) and play with more than one 5 star when they were ready to make that move.  Dont like this?  That's fine.  But I have yet to hear a better solution.  Anyway, my WD account is no more, so this will be my last post here.  Good luck all, and I hope the devs do the right thing or at least do *something*, cause eventually it will expand too far and it will be impossible for anyone to progress.  Good night.

abmoraz

There are plenty of solutions other than "give us more stuff".  Just a few off the top of my head:

1. increase the variety in packs.  Have 4 or 5 LT packs.  Each one having a different selection of characters.  There's no need to have "only 3 latest in this pack" and "all others in this one".  That way you could draw from the pack that has the character you are aiming for and have a reasonable chance at getting them (As opposed to the classic packs now, which are a **** shoot)

2. retire characters.  Just like in M:tG or Yugioh or Pokemon, as new expansions are released, older ones get retired.  Make it so that every released card forces an older one to be retired.  Have events that are "all characters", but the normal PvE/PvP events can only use the characters currently in play.

3. Have a Thanos event where he snaps half the characters in the game (randomly) out of existence.  We then have to play for a month to a year without that 50% (in our collections or in packs) before Prof Hulk rescues them back.  Repeat the event periodically so that half the collection is always out of play.

4. Some other idea(s) that people smarter than me comes up with

A_Wise_Man

abmoraz said:

There are plenty of solutions other than "give us more stuff".  Just a few off the top of my head:

1. increase the variety in packs.  Have 4 or 5 LT packs.  Each one having a different selection of characters.  There's no need to have "only 3 latest in this pack" and "all others in this one".  That way you could draw from the pack that has the character you are aiming for and have a reasonable chance at getting them (As opposed to the classic packs now, which are a tinykitty shoot)

2. retire characters.  Just like in M:tG or Yugioh or Pokemon, as new expansions are released, older ones get retired.  Make it so that every released card forces an older one to be retired.  Have events that are "all characters", but the normal PvE/PvP events can only use the characters currently in play.

3. Have a Thanos event where he snaps half the characters in the game (randomly) out of existence.  We then have to play for a month to a year without that 50% (in our collections or in packs) before Prof Hulk rescues them back.  Repeat the event periodically so that half the collection is always out of play.

4. Some other idea(s) that people smarter than me comes up with

I think the issue with retiring characters is the fact that people spend money to chase certain characters.  For 5 stars they spend a *lot* of money sometimes.  Let's say you spend $30k on a set of 550s.  Then a week later the game says you cant use them for a month (or a year!!!!) because reasons.  Either nobody would spend anymore ...because why bother?....and the game would go under, or people would quit in large numbers and the game would go under.  
    The 4 or 5 different stores I guess could allow you to focus, but the game *requires* 85 4 stars and 36 5 stars at some point or another. So sure, you could get your kitty or thor or whatever and not play the ghost rider pve when it comes up, but not playing is a bad solution.  And if you're "focusing" on one store then another then another to build them more "quickly", you're not doing anything faster at all.  Also...where does a new 5 star go?  If they join a store, where do the other ones go?  If the stores shift while I'm trying to build characters A,B and C from the same store and then a new character pushes one out, then I have to build from 2 stores now.  
    I think (can't say for sure, only the OP knows) the point of the post is comparing dilution to inflation.  A long long time ago it cost 9750 to champ every 5 the game had (just 3).  Then they created classics and the cost went down to about 6940 (reduced from 25 cp for LTs to 20 for classics) and when there were 20 4 stars it cost about 6000ish cp to champ every single 4 star.  Fast forward a few years and itll cost you about 57,200 cp to champ the classic 5s and another 6,500 for the latest 3...or 63,700 total.  The 4 stars at 20 cp for 85 4 stars?  About 26,000 cp.  Theres 6.  10 times the amount of  5 stars and 4.5 times the amount of 4 stars.  Now, there have been some increases along the way, sure.  But nothing at all for the last 2 years.  I dont see this post as asking to "give us more stuff" for no reason.  If you got paid $15/ hour and your rent was $1k/month, and a few years later got paid $20/hour and your rent was $5k/month, you wouldnt be very happy.  I think this post is just suggesting that making the income increase every so often to keep up with the ever-expanding list of characters is a very good and also permanent solution to dilution. Otherwise the cost to catch up or even keep up will just be ridiculous (if it's not already.  56k cp is about $600k worth of stark salaries, assuming a 25% return for champ rewards off of characters).  I dont know about you, but I dont have that kind of money.  I think a growing portion of the playerbase is watching that number go up and up and up and waiting for at least *some* kind of change.  As nothing continues to happen, more and more players will leave and there won't be a game to worry about diluting.

tupacboy

A_Wise_Man said:

abmoraz said:

There are plenty of solutions other than "give us more stuff".  Just a few off the top of my head:

1. increase the variety in packs.  Have 4 or 5 LT packs.  Each one having a different selection of characters.  There's no need to have "only 3 latest in this pack" and "all others in this one".  That way you could draw from the pack that has the character you are aiming for and have a reasonable chance at getting them (As opposed to the classic packs now, which are a tinykitty shoot)

2. retire characters.  Just like in M:tG or Yugioh or Pokemon, as new expansions are released, older ones get retired.  Make it so that every released card forces an older one to be retired.  Have events that are "all characters", but the normal PvE/PvP events can only use the characters currently in play.

3. Have a Thanos event where he snaps half the characters in the game (randomly) out of existence.  We then have to play for a month to a year without that 50% (in our collections or in packs) before Prof Hulk rescues them back.  Repeat the event periodically so that half the collection is always out of play.

4. Some other idea(s) that people smarter than me comes up with

I think the issue with retiring characters is the fact that people spend money to chase certain characters.  For 5 stars they spend a *lot* of money sometimes.  Let's say you spend $30k on a set of 550s.  Then a week later the game says you cant use them for a month (or a year!!!!) because reasons.  Either nobody would spend anymore ...because why bother?....and the game would go under, or people would quit in large numbers and the game would go under.  
    The 4 or 5 different stores I guess could allow you to focus, but the game *requires* 85 4 stars and 36 5 stars at some point or another. So sure, you could get your kitty or thor or whatever and not play the ghost rider pve when it comes up, but not playing is a bad solution.  And if you're "focusing" on one store then another then another to build them more "quickly", you're not doing anything faster at all.  Also...where does a new 5 star go?  If they join a store, where do the other ones go?  If the stores shift while I'm trying to build characters A,B and C from the same store and then a new character pushes one out, then I have to build from 2 stores now.  
    I think (can't say for sure, only the OP knows) the point of the post is comparing dilution to inflation.  A long long time ago it cost 9750 to champ every 5 the game had (just 3).  Then they created classics and the cost went down to about 6940 (reduced from 25 cp for LTs to 20 for classics) and when there were 20 4 stars it cost about 6000ish cp to champ every single 4 star.  Fast forward a few years and itll cost you about 57,200 cp to champ the classic 5s and another 6,500 for the latest 3...or 63,700 total.  The 4 stars at 20 cp for 85 4 stars?  About 26,000 cp.  Theres 6.  10 times the amount of  5 stars and 4.5 times the amount of 4 stars.  Now, there have been some increases along the way, sure.  But nothing at all for the last 2 years.  I dont see this post as asking to "give us more stuff" for no reason.  If you got paid $15/ hour and your rent was $1k/month, and a few years later got paid $20/hour and your rent was $5k/month, you wouldnt be very happy.  I think this post is just suggesting that making the income increase every so often to keep up with the ever-expanding list of characters is a very good and also permanent solution to dilution. Otherwise the cost to catch up or even keep up will just be ridiculous (if it's not already.  56k cp is about $600k worth of stark salaries, assuming a 25% return for champ rewards off of characters).  I dont know about you, but I dont have that kind of money.  I think a growing portion of the playerbase is watching that number go up and up and up and waiting for at least *some* kind of change.  As nothing continues to happen, more and more players will leave and there won't be a game to worry about diluting.

Your math brings me depression