Now, we are all the 1%

ThaRoadWarrior

I'm a day 1328 player and I play to progression in SCL 9 pve, and to 900 when I can in SCL 9 pvp, at least to the 10cp if its especially brutal. I gave up using my 4*bh to stay current on new releases in February to chase 5*s via feeders, so here is what it looks like to just get  non-limited 4*s through organic progression play by pulling as you go out of latest and not using your BH on it. Name (release date): Cover Spread format.

4*s starting with Bishop, who has been my benchmark for un-covered releases until lately:
Bishop (11/13/18): got the last cover i needed from an organic pull this week, champed today at 273, just shy of 1 year
Prowler (11/29/18): Champed, this was the last character I bh'd to 10 covers
Namor (1/28/19): 5/5/3 with 3 saved. RNG was kind on this one, covered on August 5th (7 months)
Magik (2/19/19):4/4/5 got the 13th cover for her out of Gwen Prix september 20th or so, 7 months
Talos (3/11/19): 2/3/3
Th4nos (4/15/19): 3/1/4
Ronin (4/29/19): 3/3/8
Sabretooth (5/20/19): 4/3/4
Black Cat (6/17/19): 2/5/5, 4 saved. RNG has been especially kind here
Mysterio (7/1/19): 1/3/4
Juggernaut (7/31/19): 3/1/3
Human Torch (8/26/19): 0/2/2 (still new at this time)
Worthy Cap (9/19/19): 0/0/1 (currently in release events)

5*s released during that span:
Kingpin (12/10/18) : 5/4/3
GE Doom (1/14/19) : 3/5/5
Danver5 (2/26/19) : 6/1/3 (C4rol was a feeder while in latest, so i had a free red)
Hela: (3/28/19) : 5/2/4
Rescue: (5/13/19) : 5/2/6
5torm : (6/3/19) : 2/4/7 currently in Latest Legends
Iceman: (7/17/19) : 2/1/2 currently in Latest Legends
Professor $$ ( 8/14/19) : 0/0/0 currently in Latest Legends

I have 66 4* champs (including Howard), 12 more covered (including Devil D), the rest in various states of disrepair (including ham and taskmaster). My best 4* is a lvl 336 Chavez, followed by Rogue at 304, Nico and Kingpin both at 300, everyone else is somewhere below that, most in the 280s.

I have 2 5* champions, Ghost Rider and Doom. I just flip my 3*s now when they hit max-champ for the iso, trying to champ my 4*s rather than hanging on to dupes. I've flipped a little under half the tier so far. Not playing competitively in either mode means this isn't the worst to go in with a loaner or baby champ on occasion. My alliance is mega casual, so i basically got my roster the hard way.

Daredevil217

HoundofShadow said:

Vhailorx, chances are, your alliance either spent some money, have played way earlier than me, in top alliances, do some line coordination or a combination of the four. That's why context is important.

My context is:

1) I'm 100% FTP
2) have never been in a top alliance
3) I spent about 2000 CP on other stuff instead of opening Classics, and wasted about 500 CP in the beginning. That's about 125 covers.
4) I don't do LINE coordination to jack up points in PvP.

I'm not at the top 1% or top 5% of the game, but I'm at a place where I can consistently secure top 10 in SCL 7 PvEs without spending or doing any form of coordination.

What's your context and what's your alliances' contexts?

So far, nobody can answer or dare to answer:

1. How wide the gap "should" be between competitive players and pure progression players for new character release?
I say top players can champ a new 4* by the third pve. How long should it take pure progression players and everyone else in between

2. 2. How fast should new players be able to close the gap for 4* in general?

I could catch up with all 4* releases and have 70% of the 4* covered at 13 or champed. However, you find this to be slow. 

For players like me, how fast do you think I should be able to catch up? Should pure progression players be able to catch up as fast players like this.

I think this same thing has been said over and over when I first started joining the forum:

In 2017, there are posts like new players can never catch up with 4* characters. Even if they could, they need to spend a lot of money to catch up.

In 2019, this "fear" of never catching up is still around. 

All I can say, that this is totally false for players like me. Jumping to a conspiracy theory, I think some of the vets are probably using new players as bargaining chips to increase rewards by using fear of never catching up or having to spent tons of money on this game. 

Context is important. Expectation is important.

Pure progression players will never catch up with top players. That's a fact they have to accept. They can't use the same strategy that top players use to play the game. 

Being at the top 1% means a lot of hard work or dedication or money. If players can't or refuse to do this and expect to catch up with the top, they have unrealistic expectation.

I will agree that expectations are hugely important, because you’re claiming you “caught up”, but it doesn’t seem to match the numbers you provide. 

You were in here TWO YEARS AGO hearing people say “new players won’t catch up”. And two years later as a self-identified competitive player netting T10 wins you still have less than 70% of the tier complete. And that’s not even the end tier. That’s the penultimate tier. TWO YEARS of competitive grinding. And you’re still not there. What’s your in game name/alliance? I’d love to look at your roster and see what exactly two years looks like. 

DAZ0273

Being a "competetive" 4* players has been something the game has helped players out with over the last few years.

In terms of "catching up" it is important to consider that the introduction of cover saving changed everything with regard to the 4* tier (less so the 5* tier as they had the cover swap option at the time). Anybody playing after this timeframe really has zero idea of what iso pressure is really like. You can now plan your roster tactically whereas before you were massively at the mercy of RNG. I would not have to play like a madman to obtain the 600,000+ (starting from nothing as I had just played like a mad man to champ another equally benchwarming 4) iso needed to champ Elektra and Quake in like 7 days like I did back then for two mid tier niche 4* benchwarmers because otherwise who knew when the next cover would come along? So from that perspective, newer players have an advantage in the 4* transition. Probably the hardest time for 4* dilution was prior to latest 12 vaulting where you had absolutely nothing to assist you in transitioning - not even bonus heroes. No SHIELD Training. No Heroes for Hire. Grind, spend or die.

Newer players have it hard because of dilution only but the Vets (and I don't include myself in this category) do know what they are talking about because they transitioned at a time when the game gave them absolutely nothing to help. The fact that the game has succeeded in improving the game for newer players in so many ways and yet has somehow managed to go backwards on dilution is deeply frustrating.

Now there are so many 4* to collect, which ones do you pursue? If you want them all champed then I suggest that you will not catch up with this level of dilution anytime soon and without a deep, deep championed 4* roster you will not be competetive within the 5* tier.

ThaRoadWarrior

I wonder if releasing characters like Bishop, Sabretooth, Juggernaut, and now Worthy Cap (maybe, the jury is still out on what a "good" one of those might be like) isn't an open-eyed attempt at closing the gap between 4 and 5* players from both directions? 5* players feel compelled to chase that OP 4.5* character, 4* players chase it to play up, everybody is chasing. So rather than just not realizing what a character like that is going to do, perhaps they know full well what that character will do, and it's doing it? This makes 4*s who are worth spending for to some on both sides of the "4* wall" as it was referred to earlier. Just a thought.

For me right now as a 5* transitioner, injecting Iso-8 into the economy, or failing that, addressing the high champ cost of 4 and 5* characters would make a huge difference. That is entirely useless to a lot of people solidly in the 5* game, so that's a "me" fix. But once I champ all, or nearly all of my 4*s, I feel like the resource flow would probably allow me to tread water a little better on 5* releases than I have been doing. Playing the way I do is pretty comfortably getting me to 11,12, or even 13 covers on new release 5*s, but I've essentially had to give up on older ones unless I bonus my way to them directly or via feeders. That doesn't seem right in the face of either current meta (BSSM/Silver Surfer) to me. Asking a player to save up for 10 months to a year, a real calendar year mind you, not an accelerated in-game year, for a chance at covering 1-3 characters in an unpredictable special store is really a crazy ask in my mind. So I try not to worry about it, spend as I go and enjoy the game as it presents itself to me.

bluewolf

ThaRoadWarrior said:

I wonder if releasing characters like Bishop, Sabretooth, Juggernaut, and now Worthy Cap (maybe, the jury is still out on what a "good" one of those might be like) isn't an open-eyed attempt at closing the gap between 4 and 5* players from both directions? 5* players feel compelled to chase that OP 4.5* character, 4* players chase it to play up, everybody is chasing. So rather than just not realizing what a character like that is going to do, perhaps they know full well what that character will do, and it's doing it? This makes 4*s who are worth spending for to some on both sides of the "4* wall" as it was referred to earlier. Just a thought.

First, I think it is at least somewhat true that they are trying harder on the 4 tier because of dilution.  Making a functionally irrelevant 4* character (aka a mediocre, gather AP and fire powers, no synergy) is just not a good plan at this point in the game's life.  How long they can keep finding ways to release characters that combine novel and strong powersets while being exciting characters to players - and having the powersets thematically fit - is obviously one design challenge for the game.

In my opinion, chasing 4's via spending is almost a fool's errand and/or something that happens by accident while you are whaling 5's.  Dilution means you will make 5X the progress (when pulling from a Latest or Special CP store) on a specific 5 vs what you'd make on a specific 4 you want (but didn't bonus).  In effect, it is just as expensive to add covers to a desired 4 as it is to add the number of covers to a desired 5.  Unless, I guess, you are going to whale 4's via Classics?  But who would do that?

This is straight up broken.  I don't care how good Bishop or Juggernaut or whoever is.  There is no realistic way to chase or whale 4's to a high level other than as a byproduct of chasing 5's.  My estimate is it would take almost a year to get a bonused 4 to 370 if you are playing hard and have a very, very high level/developed roster.  Spending would accelerate that but I would never recommend people spend to chase a 4 regardless of their quality given the cost involved.

Only the whaliest of whales who are driven by showing off etc will chase a specific 4 via spending.  There may be some but I doubt many of them are spending because they want a 4, since they will almost certainly be focused on the 5's they are chasing when they pull.

Phumade

bluewolf said:

This is straight up broken.  I don't care how good Bishop or Juggernaut or whoever is.  There is no realistic way to chase or whale 4's to a high level other than as a byproduct of chasing 5's.  My estimate is it would take almost a year to get a bonused 4 to 370 if you are playing hard and have a very, very high level/developed roster.  Spending would accelerate that but I would never recommend people spend to chase a 4 regardless of their quality given the cost involved.

Only the whaliest of whales who are driven by showing off etc will chase a specific 4 via spending.  There may be some but I doubt many of them are spending because they want a 4, since they will almost certainly be focused on the 5's they are chasing when they pull.

In the year that Bishop has been out,  He's grown to 320 naturally.  At that level he's fully viable partner for my big 5* /4* teams.  By viable, He can survive 2 to 3 matches against 5* A teams before needing a heal.

Overall it takes about 1/2 season after a 4* enters tokens before I can champ it.  maybe closer to a full season.  Overall this number hasn't changed in years.  Before latest 12 vaulting, it would only take me about a season maybe 2 to fully champ a new release.

Overall,  the devs have done a much better job of making 4* viable at a much much lower level than older chars.  Compared to legacy 4* like 4* cap Marvel/iceman.  (I can consistent run my 4* thanos at 278 and know I will win gritty matches 9/10)  The current run can work even at the 270-300 range.  Its really not as imporant to grow these 4* to massive 330 plus before using them.

Anyway I've heard this story for 5/6 years and  for me the time to champ a new release has stayed pretty consistent at 1-2 season over the last 4 years.  And I'm having a much easier time of using and integrating these 4* into my 5* roster.

bluewolf

@Phumade

No offense, but I assume you bonused Bishop for some time to get him to 320.  Which is not exactly "natural".  I bonused mine for a little while and he is now 302.  Compare to Domino who released before 2 weeks him and is currently 291, or Dazzler who released on 9/6 (2 months before Bishop) and is now 303, or Nebula who is 300, or Emma who is 301......

However:

I agree that for a high performing player it is not any harder to champ a 4 than it was in the past simply because we are hoovering up placement covers, especially as more vets throw in the towel making placement easier for those sticking around.  We can easily steamroll the players who are struggling to champ their basic set of meta 4's in the current era.

I agree that some recent toons work well enough at low levels, like Bishop and Thanos.  Juggernaut can be helpful at lower level SCLs.  Sabertooth is a very good Gritty counter and also is very viable for hops or what have you.  However, you usually need to make sure they are teamed up with high level toons to absorb damage.

But I don't think you'd get very far in PVP running a 278 Ronin, or Black Cat, or Mysterio, or Talos, or Magik, or Namor......

Bishop and now Hammercap fall in the category of "jump in front" characters that have always benefited from having low trigger points (see also XFDP).  Rogue is an exception where you definitely want her at a high level.

______

I realize that for a vet who has been playing a long time and has lots of champed 4s, and a set of champed 5's that allows them to achieve what they want when they want, this issue (dilution) is somewhat inconsequential to your experience.  But it's still a bit frustrating to see how slowly my roster progresses.

And for new players, making this issue worse just makes them less and less likely to stick around as their frustration at even being able to become competitive grows.

ThaRoadWarrior

I've had my bonus exclusively on Chavez since Feb, she's gone from 285->336 in that span. I would agree with it taking a year for a single character to grow to max-champ status if not a little longer. But that's at the expense obviously of everyone else. I assume people that hoard all tokens (standard, heroic) can chase 4*s pretty comfortably by bonus when they hit latest, but that doesn't really suit my play style.

I think a large part of it comes from how often you can place in the 4* zone both as a player and an alliance, right? And that's as it should be I suppose.

BriMan2222

DAZ0273 Is right.  I'm a day 2053 player and I remember when I first started and 3 stars were basically the end game because getting  a 4 star, X-Force Wolvie being the only one at the time, was basically impossible.  I think the only way to get him was the 3 free covers after one year of daily rewards and then the only way to get him was to be in the very top of the top pvp alliance placement.

People on the forum and on FB pages constantly post stuff like "Oh great, I pulled my 900th Moon Stone cover" but I remeber when pulling a moonstone or any 2 star was a huge thing, and getting a 3 star cover was something that happened three or four times a year.  Grinding up into 3 star play was an immense challenge.  There was no bonus heroes, no saving covers, and if you think placement and progression rewards are stingy now you should have seen them back then.  Imagine most of the rewards being basic 1 star tokens and small amounts of iso, and the 1 star tokens almost never gave a 2 star, and with your 1 star and poorly covered 2 star roster you would have hard time making it past the moderately difficult nodes in pve and pvp you could just forget about.

Back then I gave up on the game because it was so hard to get a few usable 2 stars and getting a single covered 3 star seemed impossible.  I only logged in once a day to see what my daily reward would be.  That didn't change until they introduced the deadpool daily, and suddenly there was a way to get 3 star covers.  I slowly became able to gather some 3 star covers and then they finally updated placement and progression rewards and token odds and 3 stars went from seemingly impossible to not that difficult to get and 4 stars also became easier to get and as I progressed my 3 stars I was finally able to sometimes hit the 4 star reward in pvp.   Then they introduced champing and champ rewards and suddenly I had a way to obtain 4 star covers aside from hitting 1000 (it was 1000 for the 4 star back then and not 900) once in a blue moon and they added a 4 star into pve progression and I slowly built my 4 stars up.

As daunting as it must seem to new players to build 4 stars with dilution.  I assure you that you have many, many , many more options and opportunities to obtain, and with bonus heroes target, 4 star covers than I could ever could have dreamed of having to chase 3 stars or even 2 stars.  I started a new game for my wife a few months ago and I already have her a more fully developed roster in a few months than I had in my first 2 years.  I would rather be a new player now with a huge mountain to climb than a new player back then with a smaller mountain to climb but with an impenetrable wall surrounding the mountain with no idea how I was supposed to get past the wall. 

Kletvar

ThaRoadWarrior said:

The Content Furnace is hard to overcome as a monetization model for sure.

It's been suggested a bunch that the stores get divided up by some arbitrary or meaningful distinguisher (a decent model might be this Class of 20XX format we see the game already knows about via the upcoming PVPs boost list, maybe it's making better use of Affiliations, could be anything) so that you could kick the dilution can down the road some more. 

They can just take Hearthstone's example of dealing with crazy amount of cards and mix it with your advice. 

Hearthstone, as a collectible card game has lots of cards. And every 3-4 months, the game releases a new set of cards with more than a hundred cards in the set. And the game is 5 years old, so you can imagine the number of cards in the game. And yet, their game designers manage to offer players better chances of getting the newer cards. How ? Well, the game is divided in two formats: Standard and Wild. Standard format is made of the newer card sets ( sets that were released in the past 2 anniversaries), and Wild is every other card. When a new anniversary comes in, the sets that were released during the first of the two anniversaries gets flushed to Wild, so there can be made more room for newer sets of cards. 

So, how Hearthstone's system of dividing new and old can be used in this game ? As you said, they already made a PVP based on the history of releases. So, if they can do that for PVP, they surely can do something similar to the Classic Legends store too.
With the Classic Legends store having 84 4*s ( soon 85), the Classic Store can be divided in two stores. The first one having the newer half of the 4*s, and the second one having the older half of the 4*s 
But, some of the most used 4* characters would be divided between the two stores and that would cause an outrage at the players. So, the two stores may share the top 10 or 15 most used 4*s ( GRocket, Vulture, Bishop etc.). This way, players can pick easier between stores and not be like: Oh man, should i go in the store with Bishop, or should i go in the store with GRocket). Sketch here → http://prntscr.com/pau3c5
So, with each store initially holding around 55-60 4* characters, the drawing odds would be better, the game would be in better state than now and the player base would slow down with the complains.

And one thing before someone asks me "What about when the game will have more 4*s? How the dividing of the stores would work then?".
The game has a game designer that gets paid and game testers that also get paid. They will surely find a way for the times when the game would have more characters. If i get paid for finding the final solution, i will find it. But i don't get paid, so i present only the starting point, and that's only because i like this game and because i think it deserves better and brighter days. Otherwise, i wouldn't even bother about it.



The other easier solution to get more 4*s is an ongoing Gwenprix, but maybe a bit sped up, that would give a 4* on it's 4th day, not on it's 5th day.

ThaRoadWarrior

^ This proposed solution is not dissimilar to the now-defunct Latest 12 4*s that all had increased draw odds anywhere you could pull 4*s. Whenever a new character would rotate in, the next would fall off into "vintage" status. At the time, as a 3* player aspiring to roster 4*s, I was generally able to get them to be champable juuuuuuust as they were dropping out of latest. This is not very different than how I currently find myself acquiring 5*s as I go. You build a head of steam as you get more of them champed, and rewards start showing up more regularly, giving you access to more pulls, etc. It's also basically what happens to 5*s when they fall out of Latest Legends into Classic Legends, which is just a huge swamp of get what you get, and don't get upset for slightly reduced prices. I think we're at the point where 4*s need this, and 5*s need some further subdivision. It needn't be 3, it could be 5, or 8, or whatever makes sense, but open dilution doesn't really help.

Therealsmkspy

One problem is that the experience of roster progression for us vets is now completely different from those of new players. So for us to say that so and so method works is very much out of date. 

Much like other vets, I can champ each new release in a reasonable amount of time. Leveling them up after champing is another story. My Ronin and Thanos are both a measily 273 despite both being champed for two months now. Kraven is my highesr 2019 release at 302.

Only thing that I can confidently say is that, if I had to start over again, I wouldn't. Two years ago, yeah, I might have, but as of now. Without a viable fast track method.of getting and securing a strong 4* roster, no way.

Edit: Even as vet being a 5* players it is a painful and lousy experience. Build a latest 5 to 45ish (if I get lucky) and they're done after that. Maybe get a feeder reward here and there, maybe a one or two from a new release vault. But my entire existence in this is building and mildly champing the latest new release.

ThaRoadWarrior

Therealsmkspy said:

One problem is that the experience of roster progression for us vets is now completely different from those of new players. So for us to say that so and so method works is very much out of date. 

That's pretty real.

I'm not all that far removed from my 4* days, and for me I remember feeling limited by the Latest 12. I wanted certain characters because I liked them (Kingpin and C4ge), or was hearing how great they were (peggy), etc, but unless they were in Latest 12, they were basically dead to me based on the amount of legendary draws I was earning. The way I was talking about 4* bonus heroes in those days is the way many of us are talking about 5* bhs now. It's all about pull volume, and that's all about resource acquisition.

It feels to me like we're about ready to freeze the 4* tier and harden it up. I thought that's why the Latest 12 was going away at the time - since there was no meaningful distinction necessary anymore, ie they were slowing or stopping the flood of new 4* releases. Obviously that didn't happen right away, until maybe recently with the new 4454545 release schedule we seem to have. I guess it's possible I saw the writing on the wall back then, but that the wall was so much further away than I thought it was and we're only now getting to the point where it's happening? I don't know lol

ammenell

have about 80% champed - most low tier chars are parked at 209, can't be bothered for those rewards.

my mostly undercovered 5*s are softcapped at 330 - i could level some, i could even champ thor and bolt, but then I could as well just stop playing judging by what I read about 5*land. 

new shiny 4*s get bonused, 5*s ignored. try it, it's fun. 

tiomono

Right now I would suspect it may be better for players going into 4* play to pick a synergistic team of 3 and bonus them. Get those 3 champed and pick another few. Just let rng dictate the rest. 

shap328

I'd much rather be the 1% that has a few billion dollars to spare.