New Feature in R191: Shards

12357…32

Comments

  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited November 2019
    Since you will be guaranteed a 4* with the colour of your choice on the 27th CP store pull, I think you can plan in advance. You just need to keep 27 pulls on hand, which cost between 540 to 675CP. That would be 134 HT pulls.
  • Reecoh
    Reecoh Posts: 210 Tile Toppler
    edited November 2019
    froggerjohn said:
    I see this as "mostly good intentions", but with a horribly fatal flaw.

    I'll gladly trade the RNG roller coaster for guaranteed and visible progress.
    I'll definitely miss the delight of the "hot streaks", but I think the disappointments are emotionally harder and longer lasting than the 'wins'.

    Ditto for being able to earn shards in other ways, which continues to help the "targeted progress".

    Where I believe that this will be IMMENSELY frustrating, is when players change their mind on who to favorite.
    Because when doing so, you reset the progress to zero again.
    And I've done that numerous times in MPQ.

    Here's the best way I can think of to describe the problem.

    If you know in advance which character is going to be the most important character to have two months from now, then the whole system is great.

    But that absolutely is NOT the case. We don't know who's going to be in SHIELD training. We don't know who the "next great character" is going to be, or when it will show up. There's absolutely no way that we can set these favorites, and expect that this will still be the most desirable character by the time the shard progress is finished.

    And that is going to lead to TONS of regret, and wasted shards. This is the part that is going to cripple progress at a time where it needs to be improved.

    Keep in mind, the BH rates were set at a time when there were FAR fewer characters. The effectiveness has deteriorated as a result, because they have to be spread over a larger number of goals. In order to address that dilution, we needed a system that offered greater chances, not "statistically similar" to a rate that was already inadequate. And then further diluted from there due to ever changing priorities, and having to halt progress and start over.
    This is also my fear. I expect they don't want folks hoarding the shards and cashing them all in at once on a new character, but this will be much less flexible.
    I wonder if it will end up being an additional incentive for the late stage players to hoard CP & LTs so they can cash in all at once on the next meta 5*.
    Also, this is going to cause some of us who are more ... nitpicky ... to do some additional micro-managing. If I'm looking for a single cover I'm going to want to track the shards closely to try to get the exact amount of shards needed for that cover, before I cash in & change focus. Otherwise I'm going to have a bunch of tiny shard hoards attached to characters I likely will never need to bonus again. But then I'm still irritated that my S.R. XP ends in xxx9 and I'll never be able to get 1 odd XP to round it off.
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,455 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited November 2019
    I'm interested to see how this system will math-up in practice with below-5*s. I've been chasing America Chavez since February, and I've grown her from lvl 285 -> 347 as of today. Had this system been in place, every 26.67 legendary pulls would have earned me a bonus hero, roughly 1 every 13 days at my current pull rates. It's been 279 days since I made that choice, and crunching some rough numbers I'd have earned 21.5 bonus covers strictly out of Latest with this system. In reality, I've earned 23 4* bonus heroes JUST from pulling latest, not inclusive of what I've pulled out of other featured stores. Gut reaction says this is a huge step down for me at least, but since your mileage may vary on BH rates, it's hard to say. I've pulled down 62 covers for this targeted 4* since Feb from all sources, organic and rewards included. So that's:
    62 Total Chavez covers earned in 2019 to date 
    -23 bonus heroes from Latest
    -15 organic pulls out of Latest
    -2 bonus heroes from Classic
    -22 some random split from featured stores and event progression rewards.

    Will the new system get me anything close to that (nearly a year to do it already feels glacial to me)? My bonus hit rate in Latest is right around the advertised 5% since I started tracking it, so it's not like I'm pulling down wild numbers above standard.

    With a featured character store giving out 3 shards for a 4*, we're looking at 9 shards/pvp event with no distinction being made between a 3* store and a 4* pvp store, as opposed to the current 5% chance of a full cover per token.

    *Edit* Rather than use my back-of-the-napkin pull rate of 2/day, I actually tabulated it from my tracking spreadsheet. Based on my actual number of pulls out of latest, I'd have earned 21.387 covers. Since I didn't track about 20 pulls out of special stores this year, and I pulled about that many out of Classics, it's actually about the same for someone with my pull rate as the current BH system from Legendary stores. This does still *feel* like a step down from Heroic/Featured stores to me, but I don't have any data for how many tokens/day i pull in or open below legendary.
  • FesterTester
    FesterTester Posts: 51 Match Maker
    edited November 2019
    This new feature seems to encourage hoarding in a way that bonus heroes never did.
    Since you don't want to waste shard progress on a character by switching favorites before they are done, it means that one way to avoid this is to avoid pulling legendaries until you have enough of them to get all the shards in one go, which is 27 pulls for a four-star character (or 167 for a five-star).

    But my guess is the devs believe it will encourage spending (and it probably will): "I don't want to waste these shards when I switch favorites, I will buy more tokens and/or shards in the store to finish them right away so I can switch."

    (Edited to acknowledge that this very well might increase spending for some players).
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,455 Chairperson of the Boards
    @IceIX
    will shard purchasing be replacing the current HFH deals for individual covers, or will they be additional? 
  • Freelancer
    Freelancer Posts: 122 Tile Toppler
    I really hope these UI updates don't look like trash on Steam...
  • wymtime
    wymtime Posts: 3,759 Chairperson of the Boards
    So hear are some things I like and some things I don’t like from my first impression of these shards.

    like I know when I will be getting a cover for a 5* I want.  I can set it up so I get the last cover for a couple of old 5* to champ them and getting the specific color will help.  Even targeting a 4* knowing I will get this specific 4* every 26 LT pulls is a solid mechanic.  With shards also being earned from other items this should earn more covers overall.

    cons you have to target 1 character at a time.  In 3* land this sucks.  Currently I have the 3* favorited who will eventually feed up to a 5*.  I personally do not want to have to keep switching my 3* as I would prefer to just randomly get a bonus 3* and don’t want to micro manage my 3*’s since they are basically a resource farm.  For 4* I also have the ones favorited who will feed me a 5* and then some new characters.  Again I don’t want to micro manage my 4* which is why I like the bonus hero system.

    con this is replacing bonus hero’s instead of adding to the game.  Now eventually this new system looks like it will add, but initially it is more of a swap.  This is more disappointing as i wanted something in addition too not in replace of.

    i think I will like shards for the 5* world and would prefer bonus heroes lower tiers.  Again the lower tiers are more of a farm and should be on auto pilot not something I have to pay attention too.
  • JDFiend
    JDFiend Posts: 37 Just Dropped In
    If they are wise, they attach small parcels of character specific shards to everything. So you're building shards tier wide, and not just on favored heroes.

    Never enough to fully level. But enough to increase the temptation and pressure to spend in the shard store. Lower HP prices will also lower the guilt threshold from buys. 10 shards from a LT champion reward or even a bigger cluster of shards that will inch you closer to your shiny new 5*...

    Can see people buying small amounts of HP for with the time pressure being a factor. 

    Less guilt, less large lump sums, clearer rewards, greater temptation and buy now or miss out system. Think that makes sense from a business perspective. 
  • bickle
    bickle Posts: 31 Just Dropped In
    What happens to acquired shards if you change your targeted character? It’s very easy to envision collection shards for a character, but then wanting to switch characters for any number of reasons. Do the shards transfer? Or does the new character start out at zero? That would be....awful
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,455 Chairperson of the Boards
    Based on the store in the picture, my guess is every character now has a micro-currency attached to them that persists until you care about it. 
  • Therealsmkspy
    Therealsmkspy Posts: 254 Mover and Shaker
    edited November 2019
    Ultra micro transactions system...where's that south park meme when you need it.

Categories