Grand Experiment 2: Treading Water in the SCL 10 Post-Shardpocalypse

ThaRoadWarrior

At the moment, i'm more inclined to expect a shuffling of the difficulty/reward structure for the various SCLs before we see a 6* show up. I wouldn't think they are going to appear before 2024 if they are on the near to mid term roadmap at all based on the other things they've been saying with more definitive answers. Rostering 1* characters was a low effort/risk speculation to take based on that vague answer we got about champs coming maybe one day for that tier.

HoundofShadow

Even before BCS took over, that was one of the outcomes I'm expecting. And my expectation has always been consistent and that is: if the dev (regardless of whether it was Demiurge back then or BCS currently) decides to flood players with 5* covers or devalue 5*, then they are either planning to shut down the game or they are going to make some big change, and 6* or pseudo 6* (Supports) has always been one of the big changes I'm expecting. So, it's not new and I can dig out those posts before the existence of BCS.

Plans are executed in stages, and I don't expect the dev to release 6* or pseudo 6* immediately after giving us Shardmas because that leaves a bad taste and that's terrible marketing. There will be cooling period before they reveal the plan. I'll give them before MPQ 10th year Anniversary to reveal the big change that I'm expecting. If there isn't plan, then I'll just enjoy MPQ as much as possible.

Reward changes in SCL will come together with 6* or pseudo 6* reveal to soften the "pain".

ThaRoadWarrior

I don’t doubt that is the logical progression. I believe supports will come before 6* probably, but I also think 6* will hit the game at some point. This game is long past the point where it would have made sense to develop a Marvel Puzzle Quest 2, so it will be interesting to see what a geriatric mobile game like this will do in its golden years.

Vhailorx

@ThaRoadWarrior said:
I don’t doubt that is the logical progression. I believe supports will come before 6* probably, but I also think 6* will hit the game at some point. This game is long past the point where it would have made sense to develop a Marvel Puzzle Quest 2, so it will be interesting to see what a geriatric mobile game like this will do in its golden years.

BCS must have some plan for moving past the current state of the game, or else flooding the field with 5*s the way they have done this past month makes no sense). A revision to the support system seems like a logical next step to me since it's easier to revise an implemented system than create a new one, and the timeline for a late winter or spring support redesign would be plausible in terms of dev time (a little over a year since they entered the game and 9 or 10 months after they took over full time).

After that is done, however, it still seems to me that game will need a new trophy tier to chase as 5* s have become (relatively) attainable for dedicated players. Is 7 years post-release enough time with a 5* meta to assuage the concerns of level 500+ rosters?

ThaRoadWarrior

6* acquisition rates are where it is going to hinge in terms of player acceptance I think. Will it be the “token to a vault with a chance to win a token to a store with a chance to land a cover” model or will we just see a pricier 6/5 token come out? Or something else?

HoundofShadow

As usual, players in general are going to dislike it, and you get your typical quitting posts. If 6* crash and burn, then it's going to be terrible. The dev won't recover from that. 6* release will allow the dev to introduce a lot of changes/solutions to things like:

4/5 Dilution
Outdated VIP contents
Shield ranking rewards
Excess iso-8 in higher tier
5* covers in pvp progression rewards and more in pves etc
Better login rewards

They talked about restructuring rewards in scls as well, and restructuring happens when there are big changes, like Shards. Personally, I don't consider reducing the number of wins in pvp as restructuring.

I'm not sure how often any of you (non/light spender) look at cash bundles but the contents are getting generous. There was this 4* Riri or Wolverine bundle this month that includes 4000 of their shards plus a few other minor things like cp or tokens for ~$20. For 3*, there was a ~$20 bundle that gives 3 powers for each of the 16 3* characters with 2000 HP and other minor resources. Also, those triple tier purchases give more 5* shards.

I think it's an exciting to be in, regardless of whether a true 6* is coming.

ThaRoadWarrior

I agree with you we feel like we are on the cusp of some big rollout, but I don’t think I’d be confident it was a 6* tier when they still seem to be trying to figure events out. But they’ll get there.

Grizwald

Due to the Winter Fan Favorites, Gargantos is ready to be champed. From the most recent Shardmas drop, 5* Thanos is ready to be champed. Everyone having a feeder will help getting all the classic 5* to their full potential.

KGB

@Vhailorx said:

BCS must have some plan for moving past the current state of the game, or else flooding the field with 5*s the way they have done this past month makes no sense). A revision to the support system seems like a logical next step to me since it's easier to revise an implemented system than create a new one, and the timeline for a late winter or spring support redesign would be plausible in terms of dev time (a little over a year since they entered the game and 9 or 10 months after they took over full time).

After that is done, however, it still seems to me that game will need a new trophy tier to chase as 5* s have become (relatively) attainable for dedicated players. Is 7 years post-release enough time with a 5* meta to assuage the concerns of level 500+ rosters?

I've thought since day 1 that BCS took over that they realized that 1 and 2* land is dead and that they wanted to push players into 4* and 5* land ASAP since that's where all the new character releases are and what new players will be looking that. That's why it's raining covers in 3* land and below and even 4 and 5* land is a lot easier to enter (but takes a long time to master as in collecting all characters).

Easiest way to do it is to drop the 1* tier entirely and just make those few 1* characters all 2* characters. Then rename all the tiers so 2 becomes 1, 3 becomes 2, 4 becomes 3 and 5 becomes 5 and you can open up 6* land calling it 5*

KGB

Bad

Imo there are a lot of conspiracy theories here.
Did BCS lie in any moment? I think it's proven that never. They said probably not, or at least not soon there will be 6s: trust it.
Now. Before opening a new tier at least all 5 should be upgraded and standarized. How many 5s are in queue for that? And when it will be accomplished, given the present speed on upgrading?
Finally. 6 tier would be open exclusively for supreme characters? If it's the case, it could be a very limited tier.
Or any character could enter it like happens on 5* tier? Big wheel entered 5* tier. Could it happen that Paste Pete entered some time 6* tier? Wouldn't be it pretty hard to explain on this case that Paste Pete was beating up to a pulp Apocalypse?

ThaRoadWarrior

Reading the tea leaves is a time honored tradition. There is a difference between a changed plan and dishonesty I think. They probably mean it when they say it today, but it does seem the natural progression of things to me.

Bad

Everything is planned on the run.
There is a LOT of things of the most importancy which need to be adressed before.
The very last thing the game needs is to sail up into a new tier before to standarize all 5*s (some of them need a redesign on powers in order to be played), redesign the difficulty on pve, new content like new modes, new pves featuring modern characters, new MMR, etc...
All that will take literally years but it will consolidate the game foundations.

entrailbucket

@ThaRoadWarrior said:
@entrailbucket how (if at all) have these broken circle 5* rebalances affected your 550 experience?

For the rebalances -- not much, but only because they haven't had a chance to yet. I do have both Surfer and Iron Man at 550, but neither has had a boosted week yet, so it's hard to tell how good they are.

When Surfer was boosted in PvE he was quite good though. His black is still too expensive to actually cast but blue and red are cheap and very good.

Post-buff, none of them is good enough unboosted for me to win fights against 450+ top tier 5* like Chasm etc. For whatever reason, they seem to aim pretty low with these buffs.

The Phoenix buff by Demiurge produced a similar result. I have her at 550 too. She's very good boosted but can't beat good 450s when she's not.

What has helped is the absolute torrent of retro feeders. Opening only classics for 7 years or whatever means my 4* roster was objectively stupid... there were a bunch of guys I had 3x 370s of. I got 20+ covers of some 5* from the retros, and my average 5* level is over 500 now. Being able to run 2x 600+ characters every single week is tons of fun, gameplay changes every week, and even the bad characters murder at that sort of level.

Edit: how did I forget about Banner?! I have him at 550 too (lol) and he's actually the best of the bunch, by a lot. At 550 he's almost good enough to beat 450s unboosted, but at 675 he's just an absolute terror and he's a blast to use.

Zalasta

I really don't want to see 6 star characters. I'm on day 2652, and while I do have all 5-star characters, I still have 22 classics that aren't champed. Even among my champed 5-stars, my highest is level 467. That's not even the traditional 20 levels in to get your first 6-star cover. It's taken me seven years to get where I'm at, even with the recent generous rewards. 6-stars would be completely unobtainable/unusable, except to the whales. There's plenty of work that needs doing without the huge complexity of adding 6-stars.

I'd much rather see them add another 50 or 100 champion levels to 4 and 5 stars.

For sure, I'd like to see them rework the SCL levels by eliminating/consolidating lower tiers and moving tier 10 down to tier 8 or 9. Then add in tougher tier 9/10 with appropriate reward structure.

They've done a great job so far, so I hope things continue moving in the right direction.

entrailbucket

Next week, both Iron Man and Banner are boosted.
That's gonna be a really fun week for those who have them.

Bowgentle

@entrailbucket said:
Next week, both Iron Man and Banner are boosted.
That's gonna be a really fun week for those who have them.

Sadly, no Team Iron Man.

ThaRoadWarrior

Why is Team Iron Man like the least used affiliation but it feels like new characters keep coming out with Tram Cap I wonder?

entrailbucket

Weren't all the "good guys" in Civil War on Team Cap?

The real problem here is that Iron Man cares a whole lot about who's on his team, way more than any other character does. I was hoping they'd fix that when they redid him. When they redid Cap years ago they changed him so he got a little bonus from affiliated guys but was ok otherwise.

atomzed

@theroadwarrior, I been following your thread For the longest of time, I have been focusing my CP and LT on latest legends. As a champ them all player, this is the best way to guarantee that I have sufficient pulls to cover them.

However I have reviewed my approach since BCS took over. With more feeders and boss PVE giving out 5* covers, i no longer have issues covering the latest 5*. I also managed to save up more LT tokens.

So I started following the method of pulling some CP for classic legends. The 20% discount can be significant, as it gives me more 4* and 5*, which in turn generates more rewards.

I will probably try to make sure I have sufficient CP and LT to cover the latest 5*, but I should be able to dedicate some CP to classic. Thanks for the thread!

entrailbucket

Max level boosted Iron Man has 450,000HP.

He does 79,000 base damage on red, plus 73,000 per Team IM ally.

His yellow is obviously still uncastable at 12ap, but at 5 covers the CD tiles do 76,000 damage each.