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

entrailbucket

I have no idea what you're talking about. Did you read what I wrote at all?

Let's make it simple...here's the last thing I wrote: "If, as you say, there should be no limit to how high lower level players can punch up, what incentive is there for anyone to spend money? How would they stay in business?" What is your answer for that?

Bowgentle

I still can't believe Demiurge thought roster scaling in PVE was a good idea.
"here, we'll remove the incentive to ever level your characters.
Oh, and we'll also never let you feel like your roster has gotten better."
Terrible game design.

KGB

@entrailbucket said:
I have no idea what you're talking about. Did you read what I wrote at all?

Let's make it simple...here's the last thing I wrote: "If, as you say, there should be no limit to how high lower level players can punch up, what incentive is there for anyone to spend money? How would they stay in business?" What is your answer for that?

I have no idea what the breakdown in revenue is for this game in terms of what players spend on.

I've seen it posted that the #1 revenue source is HP which is for roster slots. So players would continue to spend to get hero points for slots (and boosts/health packs etc).
Players also spend to buy stuff like costumes which is obviously a much tinier bit of money.
Players also spend to shortcut time to reach certain tiers or obtain certain characters.

Anyway it's not like any character of any tier can beat the highest level characters. It's only a small subset and only in specific circumstances (I can't punch up against every team/combo). So it's hardly a worry if I can sometimes punch up 100 or 200 levels.

On the flip side, what's your giant worry about players punching up 100 or 200 levels? You think MPQ is about to shut down because of this or something? That seems to be your big argument against it (ie you switched from PvP point losses to inferior teams to now being worried about MPQ revenue streams when neither of us knows anything about how that works unless you have some insider knowledge the rest of us lack).

KGB

entrailbucket

I asked how far players should be able to punch up and you answered that there should be no limit -- it should be based only on skill and synergy.

I explained why that would be a bad idea in a game that's run explicitly to sell stuff.

entrailbucket

@Bowgentle said:
I still can't believe Demiurge thought roster scaling in PVE was a good idea.
"here, we'll remove the incentive to ever level your characters.
Oh, and we'll also never let you feel like your roster has gotten better."
Terrible game design.

It's extra terrible game design in a game that's supposed to be designed to sell you stuff. "Here, spend a bunch of money that won't improve your experience in any way."

KGB

I stand by what I wrote.

I think the only disagreement we have (assuming we have any) is in how much skill/synergy and effort it should require. If you could do it 100% of the time with no effort/skill it would bad. If you could never do it regardless of skill/effort it would also be bad. Since the game has managed to survive for 9+ years it would seem to have a happy medium somewhere between those extremes (minus the short time period when Bishop was broken) that doesn't need to be changed.

KGB

Bowgentle

Come on.
Stop talking about "skill" in a match 3 game.
It's on the level of "match red and purple with Shang, win" skill.

Bad

?? There is skill and there are synergies, and each time more.
If you play exclusively with the chahulk team then I concede there is no much skill there.
There are teams which need high skill and the opposite.
For all tastes.

entrailbucket

@Bowgentle said:
Come on.
Stop talking about "skill" in a match 3 game.
It's on the level of "match red and purple with Shang, win" skill.

Or that there's absolutely ANY skill involved in "bring Polaris and Beta Ray Bill, match protect tiles, stunlock the enemy until they're dead." Most of these "punch up" teams just exploit overpowered stunlock or infinite mechanics. If someone beat my 600s with unchamped Abigail Brand and Talos, now that's a skillful player.

Anyway, we were having a "should" discussion. I think having higher leveled characters should matter more than it currently does, because I think the game should provide greater incentive for players to level characters and/or spend money.

The other poster seemed to think that having higher leveled characters should matter less than it currently does, or not matter at all, which I think is a bad idea, given the kind of game that this is.

ThaRoadWarrior

X-23 is my second totally organic max-champ 4*. My duplicate Lockjaw is now at 271 - why does RNGeezus like that dog so much?

Juggernaut is at 369; it hasn’t made as much of a difference as I expected on his splash damage (693). I’ll probably move to Rocket next who is at 361. After that, depending on what happens in LL, I might move to Riri to finish up Riri 3.0 and then shift my 5* favorite to Hit Monkey.

I’ve been spending all cp into Classic and all LTs into latest, attempting to commit to the bit and just pull everything always to stay current.

Current latest:
Arcade: 453 with 302 shards.
Riri: 3/5/4 with 178 shards (4* level 345)
Hit Monkey: 2/1/2 with 375 shards (domino lvl 331)

NEW:
Wong: 0/0/0 with 425

entrailbucket

For me it was always falcap -- him and Elektra. At least they finally made both feeders.

Seems like you're well positioned for the next rotation despite spending into classics. Why do you think it's working? The original question was why my dumb way worked for me, and why everyone thought it wasn't replicable...why is it working for you?

Bad

My arcade is 461. Riri 461. HM 464.
Is it working? Imo TRW is gaining some few classic covers in exchange of leveling more the LLs as I don't think that the cps and LLs income between me and him would be pretty relevant.

ThaRoadWarrior

I’m not ready to say it’s working yet, I did have a decent Riri and Domino at launch for these two characters. I think Wong will be where we really see it. But also I think I may have passed the 4*>330 thermocline as well.

Including max champs I have 82 4* characters at 330 or higher. 15 of those are at 370 now, so essentially those characters are low-champs or unbuilt dupes now moving forward. Another 5 are 368/9, so they don’t have anymore cp to give.

entrailbucket

You have 15 370s now?!? That's what it is...that's what I always thought it was. 4* are the key to the whole thing.

ThaRoadWarrior

Yeah I absolutely think it’s a certain volume of 4* in the 330-360 sweet spot that let you stay current. I’ve certainly pulled some classic 5s, but the 20% more shards and 4* rewards are where it’s at I believe.

330 being where the CP drops go from 5 to 7; seems like that’s a significant difference to a 4* within 20 covers either side of 300 where it ranges from 2-5cp.

entrailbucket

Everybody talks about how many tokens you need to open to get a certain number of 5*, or how classics are so much less optimal because of the dilution, but all the "misses" from token pulls end up being really valuable in aggregate, and classics give you 20% more pulls.

Also just wait till you get to run a 370 guy as the feature in a PvP. Most of them are pretty solid!

Sekilicious

The number and level of 4s required for classics only is less now than even when RW started with classics, what with everything being fed and sometimes double fed, retro feeders, hp stores, PvE and PvP (less but there in placement) and boss events. It has never been easier to get covers for 5* characters. You only need 2 or 3 from LL pulls and the characters will be champed eventually, but i would guess it can be done with 75% and around lvl 300.

As example, with a lvl 300 Domino feeding Hit Monkey you get 2 covers from retro, 2 from boss, 4 from PvE which means you need to pull 5 from LL. Maybe 4 if favorited. So assuming 25 pulls per cover that is 100 to 125 pulls. For Wongers that might go up to 150 considering it is pretty easy to get new 4s to lvl280 before rotation.

The main problem is still you can’t target meta characters, but frankly, if you want all 5s around the same level switching to classics only earlier is very likely a viable strategy.

ThaRoadWarrior

You only get 2 from the boss events if you are in an active alliance. I only got one from it, as I have from every boss event since our alliance has only hit alliance completion once ever under the old reward structure.

I also think that 25 pulls/cover math is a bit optimistic, but I stopped tracking pulls awhile back so I couldn’t give you metrics to say otherwise definitively.

I absolutely got a huge jumpstart from the retro feeders, and the at-launch feeders similarly have made a huge difference. That’s why I say Wong will be the real test since Abomination is also a new release.

dianetics

You should be looking to pull 9 covers from LL to champ any given hero. Since you know the first reward cover from 4* champ rewards will always be the top cover you have plan to have at least 1 extra cover for the hero.
It could be as little as 7 but you really should plan for 9. If you hit the cap then stop pulling and save your pulls, unless you want to make that character fatter.

Edit**

ThaRoadWarrior

I’m trying to decide on whether it is in my interest to try and push all my 4* characters to 320 as soon as they are favoritable. I don’t think I’m pulling in enough 4* shards to not get behind on them though; that may prove to be a red herring strategy. I have 46 non-Limited 4* characters under level 300, inclusive of un-covered dupes right now, so I think it is unlikely I could methodically get them there faster than they come out. Maybe just the feeders like Abomination would be worth it.