Classic 5* Heroes for Hire - buy them. (And please make the 4 & 5's shards)

bluewolf

First things first:  When you see an HFH for a meta 5 (or someone you need a cover for) you should buy it.  Why?

1.  The cycle keeps getting longer.  First round went from mid-Nov '17 to mid-March '18 (4 months).  Second round went from mid-March '18 to mid-October '18 (7 months).  Third round went from mid-Oct '18 to mid-Aug '19 (10 months).  This current cycle started mid-Aug '19 and will end in (probably) mid to late July '20 (about 49 weeks).  You can see where this is going......

2.  Trading 10 pulls for one cover may seem like a questionable thing.  I would argue that as dilution spreads your pulls each pull becomes less valuable because your average champ reward is, more and more, going to a low-level champ who you are likely years away from getting to a high level.  So the loss of (in essence) 9 pulls - since you need to consider you'd need 25 CP to get a cover, in anything besides Classics) - is not nearly as big as it was once upon a time.  Adding 9 random champ levels spread among 88 characters is not really moving your roster much, especially now that you absolutely can't get a bonus cover, just slowly add shards.  And it seems like an absolute steal vs 167 pulls for a "Extra" 5.

Now:

Devs, please, please, please consider changing the HFH to shards so we can get a colorless cover.  As I pointed out - the cycle is insanely long now.  It will be a YEAR until you again have the opportunity to buy one single cover of a 5* you want (ex:  Kitty) for 250 CP.  And then it will get longer!  And longer.  And longer....  This isn't going to radically speed up anyone's progress.  Heck...it might even make some people spend a little money if every HfH was potentially worth spending on.  I am not asking for a giveaway here, or some crazy idea like rewarding 5's in placement, or anything other than making this increasingly rare opportunity to use our resources for a desired cover as appealing as possible.

So far shards are feeling kind of meh to me and many other players.  It seems like replacing a somewhat-random cover color with shards would make players better see the benefits (please also look at random Limited covers for Howard and Spider-Ham from events).

EDIT:  After thinking about it.....the 4* Crash cycle is about 440 days long with 88 characters, and growing.  So why not make that cover shards as well?