Update to S.H.I.E.L.D. Training

1EvilMan

I'm another one that's for Shield Training. Why take something out of the game if you're not replacing it with something else? There's  already a shortage of pve content that hasn't been played to death.

I'd rather have something that I may not be able to finish than not have anything at all. 

bluewolf

Copying myself from the Maria Hill thread....

Every time the ST came along, I would turn on animations and sounds and take some time to explore the new character and get a feel for them.  It was a fun way to leisurely play the game.

I realize a lot of people got upset when a new character was essential and they couldn't get the cover, but this decision to skip ST is a big disappointment for me and removes an event that I personally enjoyed a lot.  Of course, I always had enough covers (at least, I have for a very long time now) so I always got that free cover.

If there was a concern that too much stuff was being given out, you could have changed the rewards or something and adjusted the requirements.

-----

I have argued in the past that running an ST-type event at all times would have been a fun thing to see.  To offer an extra 4* cover for Classic 4's, and a chance to play around with characters.   (Maybe just running it every other week).  (This was before the rewards were adjusted, so I suppose we get more covers now anyway from the same "default content".)

I realize that dev time is limited (maybe very limited) and to build a new event like this every release or even more often is probably hard to justify.  I can only assume that the playerbase at large was not buying into the "chase a new character to 10 covers" as much especially since shards+dilution mean you can't really do that any more (bonus heroes made it seem more achievable).  Hence the ROI was diminishing rapidly and this time and effort are being abandoned.

If there is a hope of some kind of new untimed event coming along, I would enjoy more of those.  But we have said that many times, so I assume that sentiment is well-established by now. 

Players like untimed PVE content.  Making more, not less, of it would be greatly appreciated.

Ed_Dragonrider

What should come with a new character release? I guess the whole thing depends on who you are aiming it at to begin with. Is it still just the vets and whales and already deep rosters who you want it for, or are you finally going to include lower rosters, like 3*players?

I never liked shield training, although I never worked myself up over it. I consider myself an early 4* player, I'm at about day 700 now and I've only ever been able to do about 3 of these. Getting the vintage 4*s up to 10 covers was a bigger pain then having any of the newer ones, not that I had the newest shiny at 10 covers in time either.

Only good thing was that it wasn't timed, and even partial completions gave at least some iso and/or tokens.

This is also the only game I know where players if not actively dread, then at least groan and moan about new characters, instead of looking forward to them. Each character release should be a celebration not a burden or a chore. Why not make it one? Why not entice? Being a bit more generous with a single event that only comes around every 2 weeks anyway, would certainly help the hype for the game. It would be the "thing you dont want to miss ever!" and would urge players to interact with the game more, if only for the duration of the release event.

 Reading this (and the other Maria Hill) thread, I really liked what KGB said about getting increasing number of shards for nodes until in the end it totals one full cover. Even if you cant get that far, getting partial success will still feel like a win, even for lower rosters.

I admit I did also like the challenge of the forced three characters, although I didn't like that it was always against the exact same enemy. It certainly made it puzzlier. It would be really cool to have a node with a random enemy team every time. No matter how many times you play it, it would always be different! What a way to test a new character that would be....

Anyway tl;dr:
What I would personally think a new character release should have: 
- fun for everyone (don't gate players) 
- extra resources (this should be a celebration)
- loaner to test and mess around with
- untimed event

Steve111

The best way to release a new 4* is to do it in a pve format. Maybe a pve event where players can earn enough shards in a non timed event, enough to cash in for one cover. 

Colognoisseur

@Demiurge_Anthony

Can I ask a basic question?
What has been the historical participation for Shield Training?
Plus how that compared to what you as a development team had thought it would play?

It seems from my perspective something has not lined up with developer intent and player practice. 

spidyjedi84

I know I have complained in the past about not having a 4-star to level 209 for some of these events, but I still got roughly 9000 in ISO by being able to complete all the levels with at least 2 of the characters, four cover draws/chances at rostering the character from an exclusive vault that featured him (from the two characters and two from the group being at a desired level), and eventually 1 or 2 CP when I got covers from the character from placement in events. The 209 threshold pushed me from complacency to leveling my 4 stars to at least that level, and in my case, actually pushed me to leveling a majority of my 4 stars to champs over the span of a year, so I'm only chasing the new releases (aside from Talos, who let's be honest, developers, is just dead weight on any roster).
The only times I really complained were when there was a less than likely chance I could get one of the characters to 10 covers before the event ended. I actually have praised the S.H.I.E.L.D. Training when it featured more classic characters on these forums.
I think removing this removes the incentive/carrot to starting rosters to push more of their 4-stars to the 209 or above level. I don't like seeing any resources disappear from the game at any time, as all ISO or cover draws help my roster improve. I also loved that there was no time limit to S.H.I.E.L.D. Training nodes, that you could tackle them when you had the time. 
Stop removing elements of the game and listen to the criticisms being leveled at you. I didn't dislike this feature, just that sometimes things were too much of a crunch to have all of the 4 stars at level 209.

Nick441234

I would say SHIELD Training was fine, other than the latest 4* being featured too soon. Allow more people to be able to finish it by making the second newest essential, as someone else suggested. 

I would be incredibly surprised though if it comes back and isn't heavily nerfed. They nerf everything that doesn't need it and leave everything as is that does. 

bowla33

Can we just be honest and say too many people managed to complete it with the rollout of CL10 rewards? 

Or was being honest with how little you think of the player base at shard introduction a wake up call? 

LFChikarason

Echoing pretty much everyone else, it STUNK when we had a required four star who had just been added to packs the week or day of SHIELD training go live. But, with some advance notice, it was a fun/tough scramble to get that required up to level 250.
Easy fix seems to be just not do that instead of eliminating SHIELD training all together, changing the ability to get the newest four star from "possible" to "not at all."
Tough fix is all players get one cover (or equivalent of shards) and HP to roster said new four star. 

DFiPL

My only issue with it was it seemed like EVERY TIME a character who hadn't been in tokens the previous two weeks was essential for it. And EVERY TIME it seemed like the communication was 'whoops we didn't mean to do that we won't do that again.' And EVERY TIME that got ignored.

Three "forced" characters for a chance to earn a cover? Cool. One of those being a character you didn't have a chance to build unless you placed highly in that character's release PVE/PVP two weeks previously? Nah fam.

Bryan Lambert

The original explanation for Shield Training was that it was a mini-event designed to give additional rewards and a shot at the new character to players who’d developed deep rosters.

That explanation went out the window fairly quickly as Shield Training got underway when we realized that more often than not, what you were really rewarding was speed in acquiring recent 4-star covers. Which isn’t tied to a deep roster, but IS tied to high level alliance play and spending resources/money on tokens.

Over the years, you wavered back and forth between rewarding deep rosters (requiring a wide variety of older 4’s) and new cover acquisition (requiring recent/newest 4’s), never settling on anything for any real length of time. This led to confusion and frustration.

It also led to a hamster wheel cycle where the cover from Shield Training became more important because you needed it to get the next cover from Shield Training and on and on and on except when you changed your minds and the timing was weird or you went with older characters. This led to confusion and frustration.

There’s nothing wrong with the format of this event. There’s been nothing particularly wrong with the other events you’ve played with over the years. 

Why do I play this game (other than dogged stubbornness, apparently)? Well, the only real “goal” of the game is to collect, and ultimately finish (i.e. champ), as many characters as I can. So what do I want from a new character release? A fair, reasonable opportunity to collect as many new character covers as I can. That’s true for 4’s and increasingly true for 5’s, especially if the increase in 5-star release rates is going to happen. 

What’s fair and reasonable? I suspect I’ll disagree with demi on this one, but the fact remains that the value of a single 4-star cover decreases with every new 4-star AND every new 5-star released. That decrease in value has been accepted and incorporated into the game rarely and begrudgingly. Extra shard rewards in progression/placement help. Mighty tokens help. Lowering the placement release threshold for new releases helps.a LOT. But still, the amount of in-game play required to gain a single four-star cover is way out of whack with the in-game value and usefulness of that cover. I’d hope any additions to the release plans take this into account.

And the only reason I’m taking the time to write all this is because you acknowledged that historically, especially the last year or two, y’all have been bad at this and want to do better. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but even lying about it would show more or an interest in community engagement than the last six months have, so congratulations on your benefit of the doubt.

Waddles_Pines

Demiurge_[bagman] said:

Waddles_Pines: When you say " sandbox "danger room" where we can just fool around and try out new combos; without worrying about speed or getting attacked"  - who are you imagining you're fighting against? A training dummy? Or a variety of enemies/minions/heroes...?


Neoktheone: I'm interested that you liked the forced three characters. Thanks for the feedback. Curious to know if this is a widespread opinion!


Daredevil217:  "There is a long history of things being removed to be “re-evaluated” but never get touched on again. ...then the communication shut down and nothing changed. So the perception real or not is that we’re not being listened to."   I understand the sentiment. We want to do better, we also understand there's a lot of ground to make up. 


Mayo: "feature the second latest 4* instead of the latest in shield training"  Thanks for the thought. 

@Demiurge_[bagman]

 Truthfully either or would be fine.  Ideally it would be selectable enemies/levels so you can figure out how to get past certain teams (*cough* bishop *cough*), but that sounds like it would take a lot of development resources.  

Also, depends on what is the purpose of the "danger room", to showcase the last few characters (maybe last 10...) or to showcase every character.  There are merits to both approaches.  If it's just for latest, then having training dummies, or enemies that they were designed to go against would be good.  If it's for every character, then being able to choose enemies makes more sense.  Or you could have a few preset character teams: minions, heroes, or dark avengers 

And, since this thread is being actively monitored, one more suggestion (slight off topic) that I've made before.  Maybe you can recruit players from the forum, line, reddit, discord, in game, etc., to be part of player input panels.  Plenty of people love this game and would volunteer to give input on potential changes.  Rotate the "council" every couple or weeks to get new voices.  You can ask us for out IGN so you can see our roster strength's, scl's, etc. to make a well rounded "council"... as long as we're not all named Reed....

LifeofAgony

The timing and optics of this couldn’t be worse from where I sit.

ST was *supposedly* designed to reward Vets for having expansive rosters by requiring a mix of old and new 4s.  The final reward being a Legendary Token (being essentially pay-walled off as you couldn’t earn 13 covers without buying out vaults).

CL10 is introduced and a whole swath of vets who have played the game long enough to get to rank 120 and had the skill/temperament to place highly in all the new events (pve & pvp) to now actually get that LT at the end of the rainbow, without needing to buy out a vault.

This happens once for players and then the very next time shield training is due to be run, it gets the same treatment as many others and is “pulled for re-evaluations” which means it’s not coming back.

There was really nothing wrong with ST at all other than making new 4s required too soon, and that’s a *really* easy fix, certainly one that doesn’t require to full-stop the machine.

Wonko33

how about we keep shield training UNTIL the team comes up with something new?

ThaRoadWarrior

@Demiurge_Anthony @Demiurge_[bagman]

I would pose back to you the following questions: Who is this event for, and what is its purpose? 

Only the dev team can fully know those answers, so I can recount what it meant to me across its lifespan.

when I was a 4* player, My driving concern was a complete roster so I could have full access to event nodes. I wanted to be able to participate in every crash, story, alliance event, etc, so I’d play hard on release events. Shield Training at that time was aspirational: someday I’ll be able to hit that LT, but in the meantime let me get a starter cover so I can hit full progression on the next event. So my goal went from “1 of everybody” to “10 of everybody.” Then, once that happened, I’d let the Shield Training required characters drive my iso8 spend as I parked them at lvl 209. 

This meant that my Bonus Hero would Park on a 4* until they hit 10, then it was on to the next. My 3* hero was parked on feeders (even to the point of flipping them or growing early duplicates for lower in the reward tree colors I needed) until all the fed 4*s were champed.

after a certain point, I decided it was time to start chasing 5*s on purpose, so I put away 4* things and parked my bonus hero on America Chavez for AN ENTIRE HUMAN YEAR chasing Jessica Jones. In that actual fraction of my lifespan I was occasionally able to complete all three columns in ST, but I’d say as often as not I had 2/3 in a state I could do it. I was fine with it, because of the additional resources.

Now that SCL10 is live, I have 9 champed 5*s, and there are effectively 3 covers for a character in progression, I continue to chase feeders over new releases. Because I don’t need new 4*s anymore for competitive advantage (who aren’t Bishop and WCap of course). At this stage of my play, ST represents a low-effort single cover on those releases where I don’t have the capability to seriously chase placement.

basically problematic required characters and completely unsynergistic team composition aside, this event is pretty subtle at being something for almost all players. Removing it is a quantifiable negative to essentially all players of the game at every stage. Please replace it with SOMEthing if you can’t fix it.

Sm0keyJ0e

Demiurge_Anthony said:

Starting with Maria Hill, we are removing S.H.I.E.L.D. Training from new character releases. We are taking this opportunity to revisit the concept and see if we can come up with something that more players will enjoy and look forward to.

Why not take the opportunity to revisit the concept while it's still running? Maybe you should have already been revisiting the concept? It's not like whatever new ideas you may (or may not) have will be ruined by the event continuing on until you can find an appropriate replacement.

Your guys' history of looking at stuff almost always ends in that stuff never coming back in any form.

So glad the state of Michigan decided not to close all the roads and freeways while it took the "opportunity to revisit the concept".

shardwick

Honestly, with all of these lame decisions lately like nerfing hp and nerfing alliance sub rewards in Strange Sights I'm getting even closer to being done with this game. And announcing a new character and then saying that you were "reevaluating" Shield Training was really dumb.

Here's what you should have done.

"Hey, guys, check out this new 4*. She's essentially a low health 4* Sentry that can go invisible. Cool, right? No? Ehh. We ran out of ideas. Whatevs. Anyway, we will be removing Shield Training to look at how we can improve it. However, we know that many of you like to take advantage of the resources that you can get from Shield Training so until we bring it back we will have Gwen Prix take its place. It will be a double iso event and let you earn shards for the new 4* Maria Hill!"

jp1

The smallest bit of transparency would help a lot if there really is any motivation other than straight greed for these changes. 

Further, if you want to continue removing resources...instead of giving us weekly $20-$50 packs, make a tiered VIP with better rewards. Work towards making things more enjoyable and fun (like a game) and less work (like a job). 

SCL 10 has some really positive aspects, but my play time has become cumbersome and just dropping down to 9 means I can’t keep up with drained resources.

Loosie

Of course now that I have everyone except Karnak (and Spider-Ham and Taskmaster) to lvl 209 they get rid of Shield training.

The last few I’ve been able to complete. But it’s not only a cover for the new 4* we’re missing out on. It’s the resources 5 tokens, all that ISO. And then all the cp if you were able to get enough covers to fight the one-on-ones.

It really seems all the new features lately have been taken away resources in some aspect. 

DyingLegend

See, I feel like even if we provide decent feedback, the solution will end up being some sort of vault or an expensive bundle. 

Shield training was fine, most of the annoyances that came when there was a new character requirement that 99% of the community wouldn't have anywhere close to covered.

Handing out 1 "free" cover (that you have to work for) doesn't seem like a hard ask. This game has been coming across very stingy lately. With the high cost bundles, removal of bonus heroes and now the removal of shield training, game doesn't feel very player friendly.