New Feature in R191: Shards

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  • Rosraf
    Rosraf Posts: 113 Tile Toppler
    So, should I be hoarding all tokens for now in order to collect shards off them sometime next week?
  • shardwick
    shardwick Posts: 2,121 Chairperson of the Boards
    Rosraf said:
    So, should I be hoarding all tokens for now in order to collect shards off them sometime next week?
    Unless you want another crack at getting some bonus heroes.

    @IceIX Is the Shard Store completely random in what it offers or would it be weighted a bit more in favor of characters that you need more covers for?
  • RickOShay
    RickOShay Posts: 452 Mover and Shaker
    shardwick said:


    @IceIX Is the Shard Store completely random in what it offers or would it be weighted a bit more in favor of characters that you need more covers for?

    It would definitely be great to establish a 'schedule' of characters that will be available in the shard store. 
    Unless of course it uses the mentioned 'need logic', presenting characters based on what individual roster specifics.
      
  • tiomono
    tiomono Posts: 1,654 Chairperson of the Boards
    RickOShay said:
    shardwick said:


    @IceIX Is the Shard Store completely random in what it offers or would it be weighted a bit more in favor of characters that you need more covers for?

    It would definitely be great to establish a 'schedule' of characters that will be available in the shard store. 
    Unless of course it uses the mentioned 'need logic', presenting characters based on what individual roster specifics.
      
    It says every player will have a unique store. So I'm guessing it's a layer of rng in this new system.
  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,690 Chairperson of the Boards
    Apparently (according to Ice via Discord) the store will be randomized (not weighting towards covers you need) and cycle through all the characters before repeating.  He was not 100% sure though.

    I have no idea if the rotation will be locked in or if, say, you might see Okoye at the end of the 19 day cycle one time and then at the beginning the next time.
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,352 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited November 2019
    If he's only earning 1LT/week, he's not really ready for the 5* game though, right? I earn 2.5 pulls/day (ish), and I'm only just working on my 4th 5* champion (iceman). 

    I'm going to be very curious to see what my rate of Spid3r-Man acquistion looks like once Shards go live - that will let me know who to target next. I'm trying to decide how fast it will be to grind say Hawkeye (2/5/3) up by Favoriting the entire reward chain from 3->4->5 compared to say moving over to Shuri who has no 3* feeder, or working on Hela that needs 2 covers but has no 4* feeder. It feels like focusing fire is going to be the new name of the game to me rather than targeting who I want independently at every tier.

    Using the feeder system in conjunction with direct-favoriting shards seems like the move to me rather than trying to grow up an unfed 5* directly. I'm really not that concerned about staying Shield Training Ready after a year of kicking that habit, I'd rather get some more 5* bodies on the bench now that I'm stuck with this MMR.
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    I thought the new system should be better for children. I always read stories about how RNG is associated with gambling and how it is a negative influence to them. 

    Under the new system, no more RNG is involved. It's simply hard work pays.  :|
  • tiomono
    tiomono Posts: 1,654 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited November 2019
    pheregas said:
    Just want to say that I was trying to explain the shard system to my 12-year old son this weekend.   At first, he was very excited.

    Then you could see the look of deflation and apathy come over his face once he realized that at his current rate of LT earnings (one a week), it would take him over 3 years to earn a single 5* cover.
    But it will help his 4* progress. I just got a bonus spiderman 2099 putting him at 2-6-2. If it were under the new system it could have been 3-5-2. Had he been up for shield training the new system would have let me meet that characters requirements because it removes the rng.

    I also recently got a bonus for my 5* goblin who is now at 3-3-6. He also could have been at 12 covers instead of sitting at 11 with one saved.
  • Godzillafan67
    Godzillafan67 Posts: 581 Critical Contributor
    pheregas said:
    Just want to say that I was trying to explain the shard system to my 12-year old son this weekend.   At first, he was very excited.

    Then you could see the look of deflation and apathy come over his face once he realized that at his current rate of LT earnings (one a week), it would take him over 3 years to earn a single 5* cover.

    Did you then explain to him the odds of pulling a 5-star from an LT?  And the odds of pulling a BH?  And then how, when you multiplied them together, he got a result not too much less than the estimated 3 years?  And that that is just the expected result -- he could get it on his first try or not for the first 5 years.  (To be fair though, I'm pretty sure my kiddos would choose the rng BH.)
  • Daredevil217
    Daredevil217 Posts: 3,938 Chairperson of the Boards
    ThaRoadWarrior said:

    I'm going to be very curious to see what my rate of Spid3r-Man acquistion looks like once Shards go live - that will let me know who to target next. I'm trying to decide how fast it will be to grind say Hawkeye (2/5/3) up by Favoriting the entire reward chain from 3->4->5 l
    That’s what I’m doing right now. Thanks to BH (RIP) I recently took my Hawkeye to 11. He’s a very favorable 4/4/3. I have 3/5* Clint and Kate Bish (L312) as my sole BHs. 

    I’m thinking I need to take my BH off 5* Clint though because if they give out “freebies” for our favorites at launch they’ll go to waste. The plan is 8 Kate Bishop BHs (whoops... 3200 Kate Bishop shards) will bring 5*Hawk to 4/4/4, then I can buy his cover for 250 when he’s featured (should be 5-6 events away). Much quicker than using 5* shards. So I guess I’ll move my fav to someone else. 
  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,690 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited November 2019
    The catch-22 of the shard system is laid out quite clearly by all this.

    Steady progression is potentially better for a lot of people (my lifetime BH on 5's is 3.23%, so I'm about 8 covers behind the supposed 5% rate).  But we are losing the Surprise Jump in progress that BHs offer.

    In most cases players are now locked into slow progression models for the covers they want, with the state of your roster offering some higher level of speed and your level of play offering ability to accelerate that.

    I'm curious how this all works out since a lot of the game's revenue (up to now) is driven by an addiction/chance model where you are hoping for the thing you want to maybe happen this time.  Whereas now all you can do with spending (other than basic RNG in normal pulls) is slowly move your progress bar up. 

    But dilution is making all pulls less likely to give you the result you want, and now you can't hope that maybe the result you asked for (via BH) will maybe trigger this time "ahead of schedule".

    It has become basically impossible to spend money and chase a person you want via RNG unless you like the odds when you have 88 4' in tokens (once the unrevealed new person drops in).  You will of course be able to buy shards, but there are a lot of spenders who enjoy the RNG aspect of buying packs and things who will be facing much worse odds and you'd think pack spending will drop off as a result.

    I guess we will see how the current playerbase and their spending habits evolve under the new system.
  • AWorthyChap
    AWorthyChap Posts: 12 Just Dropped In
    Daredevil217 said:

    I’m thinking I need to take my BH off 5* Clint though because if they give out “freebies” for our favorites at launch they’ll go to waste. The plan is 8 Kate Bishop BHs (whoops... 3200 Kate Bishop shards) will bring 5*Hawk to 4/4/4, then I can buy his cover for 250 when he’s featured (should be 5-6 events away). Much quicker than using 5* shards. So I guess I’ll move my fav to someone else. 
    Ugh.  This amount of long term planning is going to be devastating to new players that won't be able to plan out their rewards like this.  To really make the most of this new system you need to work out when you will receive the covers you need from rewards vs. how long it will take to pull the appropriate number of shards.  Roster management is a huge MPQ pain point and this just adds to it.
  • RickOShay
    RickOShay Posts: 452 Mover and Shaker
    I don't think it will take much more planning than BH did already. 
    Sure, you need to think about your 'shard earnings' per day/week or whatever; but for the most part you are going to set your TH on someone and leave it for quite a bit of time. 
    Many of us during BH probably spent more time moving this selection around quite often compared to how we will during TH (even average rosters I predict will be similar). 
    No one really wants more micro-managing efforts, but earning shards per character will take a bit of time, and we can't (unfortunately) move these shards around to others, so we will earn and wait.  
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited November 2019
    I think one important data everyone is lacking is how most players are playing MPQ. If the devs share this piece of data, it will give us insight into how and why they design new features a certain way. The problem now is players think that every players are playing the game the same way they do. So, if the new feature is bad to them, it's bad to every players in the game.

    As mentioned, shards will be rolled out to other parts of the games and in deals. Shards progress don't stop at just pulling tokens. I thought this is pretty important, but expect even progress for shards. 
  • AWorthyChap
    AWorthyChap Posts: 12 Just Dropped In
    edited November 2019
    HoundofShadow said:
    I think one important data everyone is lacking is how most players are playing MPQ. If the devs share this piece of data, it will give us insight into how and why they design new features a certain way. The problem now is players think that every players are playing the game the same way they do. So, if the new feature is bad to them, it's bad to every players in the game.

    As mentioned, shards will be rolled out to other parts of the games and in deals. Shards progress don't stop at just pulling tokens. I thought this is pretty important, but expect even progress for shards. 
    That's a terrible assumption.  I'm going to set my targeted heroes on day 1 and likely never change them.  So "wasted shards" aren't going to be a problem for me.  But I still recognize that there are A LOT of newer players out there still trying to just get every character rostered, or every 4* where they need to be to finish S.H.I.E.L.D. training.  For those players this shard system adds a ton of unwanted complexity to roster management....and even with tons of micromanaging your roster will still lead to wasted shards.  Whether or not that affects me doesn't change the fact that it's a glaring flaw in this new system.
  • Daredevil217
    Daredevil217 Posts: 3,938 Chairperson of the Boards
    Yeah. You have to think about the daily resupply rewards that sometimes drop 5* covers, 250 CP HFH deals, feeders, and special stores.

    Though I’m sadly guessing we get much less pop-up special stores (aside from anniversary and those tied to 5* character changes- rebalance, feeder, costume, etc.). This slow down has already happened and I think this is why as the devs knew shards were coming. I think it would cut into their “shard sales” to offer potential full covers for 25 CP when we could pay for 1/25th of a cover. Which kind of sucks because I have some characters at 3-4 covers in classics that are not feasibly “shard-able”. 

    I also think to ward off people complaining about “wasted shards” and getting the bad press, they just won’t offer us as many avenues (special stores) where that could happen. I hope that’s not the case because those stores have helped me immensely in my transition, as I’m sure they would others. 

    I’m willing to take a “wait and see” approach but history tells me that they are often clueless when it comes to their own market. And as soon as they make a change, they often have to double back to right the wrong and “over correct”. 

    Look at supports. They were way too stingy thinking we would throw money at them to chase these things and now are a dead feature. Look at the 50/50 token odds. People were champing way too fast for their liking and now dilution is worse than ever. We can go all the way back to the cost of iso bundles in the store that no one buys. I don’t have the metrics on costumes but you’d think with all the people saying “just sell them for $2 each as standalone items” that they’d try it with just ONE single costume.  Too stubborn.  I wouldn’t be surprised if they die too if people aside from those in buy clubs anyway aren’t buying them. 

    As for shards, they are coming out the gate stingier AND removing BHs to boot? This is a bold tactic. So I’m hoping it is coming with a huge ramp up in rewards as that is long overdue anyway. But history shows they think “let’s see how much they are willing to pay” and when they find out they price us out, they abandon ship altogether. I really want this to succeed so here’s hoping they understand for once. 
  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,690 Chairperson of the Boards
    Daredevil217 said:
    I don’t have the metrics on costumes but you’d think with all the people saying “just sell them for $2 each as standalone items” that they’d try it with just ONE single costume.  Too stubborn.  I wouldn’t be surprised if they die too if people aside from those in buy clubs anyway aren’t buying them. 

    I agree with everything else you said but costumes won't die as long as the servers are on and enough money is rolling in to pay everyone.  An artist puts the art together, they layer it into the poses/animations, they put the unlock key together with some covers or tokens and sell a bundle.  So little work for pretty much pure profit, and each one has been limited so we drop some money when we see one we like that fits our spending level. 

    WAY more profitable than all the weeks of work creating a new character that has a good chance of being poorly received (Carnage) and not moving anyone to blow some bucks on them.

    Of course they could offer them at a lower price point, but they are risk-averse (reasonably so, to some degree) and don't want to disrupt their own market.
  • jp1
    jp1 Posts: 1,080 Chairperson of the Boards
    Mcrib marketing in full effect.

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