Debate on the value of shards

13

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  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    Shards make it possible for devs to put 5* shards as progression/placement rewards in the future, if I didn't interpret it wrongly. Be warned, though, it's not going to be 30 or 50 shards per reward. I know some of you are expecting them to give full cover of 5* in progression, but it's highly impossible. Even though It happened once before, but it is gone. For now, you can get it every 90 days though from your login rewards.
  • PuceMoose
    PuceMoose Posts: 1,445 Chairperson of the Boards
    Does anyone remember the exact date the shard update hit? I managed to bring 4* Juggs up to 271 today with shards, and I remember he was 3/2/4 before shards were implemented. I'm just curious to see how long it's been.  
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    It should be 18/19 November. That's about 55 days.

  • jamesh
    jamesh Posts: 1,600 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited January 2020
    tiomono said:
    jamesh said:
    tiomono said:
    DAZ0273 said:
    fight4thedream said:


    Are lower end rosters hurt by dilution? Only if their main priority is to champ everyone. But this isn't exclusively a 4* tier problem. The 5* tier also has this issue to a lesser extent but ironically the stakes are higher in the 5* tier as champing the "wrong" 5* characters will drastically make a player's experience less enjoyable, particularly in PvP. I don't know how true that is for the 4* tier.  I agree the current state of affairs is not ideal for a new player looking to optimize their competitive edge but it's exactly for that reason that I think inter-tier 4*/5* pairings are good for the game since it allows for a greater amount of players to get their foot in the door of the highest tier of play.


    This is an interesting point.

    I transistioned to a champion 4* player with X-Force Wolverine, Luke Cage, Mordo and then Wasp (pre-buff) during the period of "meta" Cap Marvel, Medusa, Gamora, R4G and Vulture. I am reasonably confident that the bad RNG handed to me slowed my progress but each of these characters (and especially Wasp post buff) could get me to at least 575 in PvP so you could argue the toss whether having the "meta" would have advanced me faster. Probably in PvE it would have but not enough to have an impact.

    I am currently waiting to go to the 5* tier. So far I have Cable. That is NOT happening. There is no question however that a champed Kitty would massively influence my game strategies as I have the 4* assorted kit all ready to go.

    Given that a new player need only really chase a champed 4* Juggernaut, R4G and Bishop to put out a "competetive" (I don't even think Worthy Cap is necessary) PvP team with just a non optimal Kitty Pryde who has a couple of yellow, dilution suddenly doesn't look like a problem.

    However...each new 4* does make even getting those guys covered more difficult and as shards are glacial pace, I think new players may still struggle with dilution.
    I keep seeing people say shards are glacial or slow. Aren't they literally 1% slower than bonus heros on average? I get that I'm in the minority on these forums for liking shards even as is. It still somewhat amazes me just how much disdain there is for them. I feel they could even give the average player more hope in getting what they wanted from the game instead of the total "hiding behind the rng curtain" that was bonus heros.

    It's not 1% though.  If consider only legendary tokens, and assume you opened enough for the bonus hero rate to converge to the advertised probabilities, then the new system will give you ~ 20% fewer 5* covers and 12% fewer 4* covers.

    Those numbers add up quite quickly, and the pain was exacerbated by bonus heroes being the last reliable way to cover new characters fast.

    But why consider only legendary tokens when heroics give you 4* shards too? And how many pulls do you need to hit that 20% fewer covers? How many players under the rng of bonus heros already had stats as bad or worse than that 20%?

    If we convert the old average bonus hero rates for heroic tokens to "shard equivalents", each heroic token would give you 4.76 4* shards and 11.43 3* shards.  So you're looking at 37% fewer 4* covers and 12% fewer 3* covers.

    Things get a lot worse if you're buying 10- or 40-packs of heroic tokens though.  Previously they offered double the bonus hero rate of single tokens, so a 10-pack would net you ~ 233 3* shards, and 89 4* shards.  That kind of difference adds up fast.

  • Kolence
    Kolence Posts: 969 Critical Contributor
    PuceMoose said:
    Does anyone remember the exact date the shard update hit? I managed to bring 4* Juggs up to 271 today with shards, and I remember he was 3/2/4 before shards were implemented. I'm just curious to see how long it's been.  
    Shards replaced BH on November 19th.

    We got champ rewards update on December 10th. And then a few days later for real. :)

    So keep in mind some of Juggs shards might have come from Magneto (as secondary 4* fed): 2*->3*->Juggs
  • BoyWonder1914
    BoyWonder1914 Posts: 884 Critical Contributor
    edited January 2020
    Without getting into the numbers, it certainly feels slower at all levels except for 5-stars. I'm not really a hoarder unless I'm shooting for a specific 5 that I know might be in a store soon, otherwise I typically pull any kinds of tokens as I go. 

    - I pulled 3-stars rather frequently, and thus 3-star bonus heroes rather frequently. Between the guaranteed one from the standard tokens, pulling 3s from elites, heroics,  and PVP stores, I would sometimes get multiple 3-star BHs in one day. Shards have slowed me down SIGNIFICANTLY here. With those sources giving 10 shards/pull, it's takes 30 to get one cover. In all the time that Bonus Heroes were active, I don't think I EVER pulled even 10 3-stars without getting at least 1 BH. 

    - Shards have also significantly slowed me down on the 4-star front. Just like 3s, there are multiple potential sources to pull 4-stars from, and most of them came with a chance of getting a Bonus Hero. This one is much harder to prove without the numbers though, since you get a different amount of shards for LT/CP pulls as opposed to pulling from Heroics and PVP stores. I can't really quantify how often I pulled 4s from Heroics/PVP, and then got a Bonus 4 on top of that. All I remember is how awesome it felt. Latest/Classics though, I still feel like I'd pull a BH at least once every 15-20 pulls. Sometimes more frequently if I'm particularly lucky, sometimes less - still much more frequently than the 40 latest/classic pulls it would take, or the 133 or so it would take if you just pulled them from heroics. I get that this measure is wonky since your pulls from all sources contribute to the same pool of shards, still feels much slower than I remember with Bonus Heroes. 

    - Again, 5s are really the only area where I'd say I'm feeling a benefit. I couldn't tell you how often I actually pulled a Bonus 5-star cover, but I know for sure I could count the amount of them I'd received with 2 hands, and I wouldn't need both of them. I have yet to actually finish a 5-star starting with 0 shards though, the ones I've finished got help along the way from feeders or HFH deals. 

    EDIT: I realize that the odds are supposed to "balance" in a way because the BH chance would only kick in if you actually pulled a character of that tier, whereas shards count for all pulls regardless. Still feels significantly slower in most cases. 
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    Daredevil217 said:
    HoundofShadow said:
    Shards make it possible for devs to put 5* shards as progression/placement rewards in the future, if I didn't interpret it wrongly. Be warned, though, it's not going to be 30 or 50 shards per reward. I know some of you are expecting them to give full cover of 5* in progression, but it's highly impossible. Even though It happened once before, but it is gone. For now, you can get it every 90 days though from your login rewards.
    Who are these strawmen expecting full 5* covers in progression or even placement? Seeing as how we don’t get 5* colored covers, has any single poster stated that they expect the developers to hand out the equivalent of a full colorless cover? 

    One of the things that bothers me with your posts is you often argue against points no one has actually made. I don’t find this tactic particularly fruitful to these types of discussions. 
    I mean sure, I find hound's straw men frustrating too.

    But honestly, in this instance, would the world really end if full 5* covers were included as hard to achieve prog rewards?  It happened in the first civil war runs, and the game didn't collapse.   and it's not as if prog rewards are "easy" or "free".  Even max pve prog takes about 3-4 hours of optimal play per event.  Plus, there are almost 3 dozen more 5*s in the game now than there were in 2016, so getting 1/13 of a character in exchange for a significant time investment in the game (especially if it was only for special events), doesn't seem like an insurmountable risk.

    Democratizing the 5* tier would not be a bad thing for players.  And if it occured in concert with the the introduction of a new chase item to keep vets grinding, I really don't see how it would be anywhere near as devastating as hound seems to think.
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    There are players expecting the dev to give out 5* covers in progression. It doesn't matter if it's a colourless or coloured 5* cover.

    Let's not pretend players in here don't have high expectations from the devs. How often have the devs failed to meet the expectations of the players here? A rough estimate would put it at 90% of the time, or it could be even higher.

    In the case of shards, they were expecting the devs to:

    1) introduce Shards without replacing BH.
    2) roll out "colourless cover" without those tradeoffs. For example, one of the common feedbacks/reactions was that the dev could have shifted those rewards "taken away from them" to other part of the reward table.
    3) keep the percentage of gaining extra cover via shards as close to BH as possible.

    Based on the above observations, I don't think it's unreasonable to conclude that there are players expecting full colourless 5* cover in the future. If the dev were to put three 5* shards in progression in the future, it will very likely be perceived as an insult to the playerbase, or sarcastic remarks will be thrown around.


  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,439 Chairperson of the Boards
    "would like to see" and "expecting" are a few shades apart, for me. I'd like it, but i'm not expecting it.
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited January 2020
    Hound,

    You havent actually argued that giving out 5*s in progression would be BAD for the game.  You just seem to accept that it is "impossible" for some unexplained reason, presumably because demi/d3 haven't done it in almost 4 years.  But demi/d3 can be wrong, and have been in the past.

    Also, in addition to conflating desire and expectation, you have listed EVERY complaint about shards or proposed alternative implementation, and them just assumed that all of the 'bad' players want ALL of those things

    Furthermore, you act as if the only two options are full 5* covers or 3 shards (that's 0.6% of a 5* cover).  And you don't consider where the rewards might go in prog.  Sarcastic remarks and player outrage if 3x 5* shards were added early in pve progression, with no other rewards being taken away would be misplaced.  That would be mostly useless given per-character locking and the length of the pve rotation, but it would be better than nothing.  But imagine if 3x 5* shards were put in prog above the final CP reward?  Or even worse, if they replaced the final CP reward.  The pitchforks would come out for that, and IMO that would be the appropriate response from players.

    You always want to boil eveything down to "whatever demi/d3 do is justified" and anyone who suggests otherwise is just a whiny, entitled player demanding "free stuff." That's not a very useful or productive frame for any discussion.
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    I assume you are talking about giving full 5* cover in progression, because I think it's possible that small amount of 5* shards get rolled out in progression or placement rewards. Look, there's a new bundle in-game for 525 shards of 5* Jean Grey and 4 4* covers of IMHB and other resources. I hope it should be obvious to you why one full covered colourless 5* in progression cover per regular pve will be virtually impossible as of now.

    I'm not saying that players want all the above points listed about shards. I'm listing various feedbacks by different groups of players towards shards.

    3 shards is merely an arbitrary number that I used. It could be 3, 6, 9 or any number. As of now, 9 is the highest number of 5* shards players pull from store.

    If you look at what was removed to give 5* shards, I think players can more or less expect and gauge how much resources will be "taken away".
  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,805 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited January 2020
    There have definitely been some people in the past thinking maybe you would get 5* covers from somewhere in the game.  They DID offer them the one time in the first Civil War, but it is often the case that there will be an initial run of something with really good rewards, or a really good offer that turns out to be one of the best ones you see/get.

    Sometimes we think maybe SCL10 would offer a 5* cover but that remains a pipe dream, and I am very skeptical they would offer a full cover if they ever do introduce SCL10 (but maybe you would get 1/5 of one or something).

    I remain hopeful that we will see event rewards soon so we can make our final (for now) assessment of shards and how they impact the game.  There is a slight chance that event rewards will be additive vs a tradeoff, given that you need to directly engage with the game to earn them vs something you get passively from adding covers to characters.  At the end of the day, the reason for the grind is very much to get you invested in your roster and characters (and therefore more willing to spend), so if the result of your work/play ends up feeling diminished, they will be working against your enjoyment of the game and a major reason to spend money on it.

    But that of course assumes they are not over-valuing the colorless nature of shards in their calculations.
  • BriMan2222
    BriMan2222 Posts: 1,278 Chairperson of the Boards
    HoundofShadow said:
    There are players expecting the dev to give out 5* covers in progression. It doesn't matter if it's a colourless or coloured 5* cover.

    Let's not pretend players in here don't have high expectations from the devs. How often have the devs failed to meet the expectations of the players here? A rough estimate would put it at 90% of the time, or it could be even higher.

    In the case of shards, they were expecting the devs to:

    1) introduce Shards without replacing BH.
    2) roll out "colourless cover" without those tradeoffs. For example, one of the common feedbacks/reactions was that the dev could have shifted those rewards "taken away from them" to other part of the reward table.
    3) keep the percentage of gaining extra cover via shards as close to BH as possible.

    Based on the above observations, I don't think it's unreasonable to conclude that there are players expecting full colourless 5* cover in the future. If the dev were to put three 5* shards in progression in the future, it will very likely be perceived as an insult to the playerbase, or sarcastic remarks will be thrown around.


    Do you have any evidence of these players expecting a full 5* cover in shards? Because I'm on this board, and MPQ groups on facebook, line, and discord and I have never seen any player anywhere say that.  Unless you have some screenshots or links to someone saying that I then just making a baseless claim that there are players expecting full 5 star covers shards means nothing and I could just as easily say "absolutely no Mpq player ever has ever made a claim that they expect full 5 star shards as a reward in mpq" and I have exactly as much evidence as you have.
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited January 2020
    I'm stating an opinion based on observations of past reactions and expectations (that is not limited to only shards) around here. Then, I infered that it's not unreasonable to believe that there are players expecting a full colourless 5* cover (in the future).

    If my opinion turns out to be wrong, then so be it. The worst case scenario is that I have a new set of data or information that I can use to refine my opinion in the future.

  • BriMan2222
    BriMan2222 Posts: 1,278 Chairperson of the Boards
    HoundofShadow said:
    I'm stating an opinion based on observations of past reactions and expectations (that is not limited to only shards) around here. Then, I infered that it's not unreasonable to believe that there are players expecting a full colourless 5* cover (in the future).

    If my opinion turns out to be wrong, then so be it. The worst case scenario is that I have a new set of data or information that I can use to refine my opinion in the future.

    So in other words, no.  You have no instance of anyone ever saying that and you are just making assumptions about what other people want and present it as if it is fact.  In which case there is no argument to be made if you are starting with a strawman that you have created.
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    You want me to give evidence of players explicitly saying that they expect one full cover of 5* shards in progression, which is totally different from how I reached my opinion. 

    Let me state it again, my opinion is based on observations of past reactions, feedbacks and expectations of players around here. It is derived from the many events that have happened over the past two years of participation in this forum. What I'm doing is inferring. 

    From Cambridge dictionary, "infer" means
    "to form an opinion or guess that something is true because of the information that you have". 

    Just because I guess or think that something is true doesn't make it a fact.

    Stop nitpicking. 
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    I'm not going to continue to argue about fact and opinion because I have clearly and publicly stated and acknowledged that what I'm writing is an opinion, and yet some continue to accuse me of stating my opinion as fact. As a matter of fact, I have stated in the past that I'm stating opinions in the forum and if it's a fact, I will quote the relevant posts by the dev team or any other trustworthy sources.

    The fact that one of the nature of a discussion forum is to allow posters to share opinions is clear enough that most posts are opinions, unless stated or proven otherwise. 

    Also, my posts are not targeted at specific players or posters, unless stated otherwise.

    Lastly, I'm out. 

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