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

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  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
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    entrailbucket said:
    Just watch, they're probably going to do something horrible like replacing the one free cover with 800 free shards. 

    Remember the last time they tried to give us a whole ton of free shards?  We fought that then and we'll fight it again now!
    The problem isn't adding more covers.  It's demi replaced one fixed 4* cover reward with 800 shards AND needs cp/hp heavily.  So now we have more covers, but also more pressure to buy roster slots and fewer ways to target our prefered characters.  It's not all bad, by any means.  But it's also not the 'everything is awesome' change that demi/d3 and the white knights want us to believe.
  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 9,656 Chairperson of the Boards
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    And D3/Demi are throwing more and more stuff at us to buy, not just with real cash but in game currency (HP) too. We expected the Vault for Maria Hill but where did that Ides of March one come from? Heroes for Hire offers are coming fast n furious. Extra shards are nice but they mean little if you don't have all the other resources you need too. Strangely though they seem to have rolled back the special CP stores that they were throwing up around new 5* releases last year.
  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 9,656 Chairperson of the Boards
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    OJSP said:
    DAZ0273 said:
    And D3/Demi are throwing more and more stuff at us to buy, not just with real cash but in game currency (HP) too. We expected the Vault for Maria Hill but where did that Ides of March one come from? Heroes for Hire offers are coming fast n furious. Extra shards are nice but they mean little if you don't have all the other resources you need too. Strangely though they seem to have rolled back the special CP stores that they were throwing up around new 5* releases last year.
    My feeling is this is what they decided to do to stop token exploits and previewing.

    I always get skeptical when I see people posting 1/80 Vaults when they got the LTs. I mean, I managed to get 3 LTs in 3 different vaults within a week (but I'm quite sure they weren't all from the 1st pulls), so it is possible. But, when this makes me doubt other people's luck, the problem is quite bad (considering I usually try to see things positively). It's feasible to see people using the exploit to get the 4* cover multiple times to finish SHIELD Training.

    The lack of 5* CP stores is probably to stop people picking and choosing when to bust their hoards. Probably.

    These are just my speculations.

    Well 21 pulls netted me pretty much what I wanted from the Ides vault (although I was 100 Storm shards adrift of a cover) but that is pretty rare - I often have to buy the whole thing out. So if there are people out there previewing then I guess I can see why the Devs want to stop that by shifting to bundles and the like which are less rng. I suppose that model also gets around the "lootbox" element to RNG prizes that is under so much scrutiny.
  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,335 Chairperson of the Boards
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    OJSP said:
    DAZ0273 said:
    And D3/Demi are throwing more and more stuff at us to buy, not just with real cash but in game currency (HP) too. We expected the Vault for Maria Hill but where did that Ides of March one come from? Heroes for Hire offers are coming fast n furious. Extra shards are nice but they mean little if you don't have all the other resources you need too. Strangely though they seem to have rolled back the special CP stores that they were throwing up around new 5* releases last year.
    My feeling is this is what they decided to do to stop token exploits and previewing.

    I always get skeptical when I see people posting 1/80 Vaults when they got the LTs. I mean, I managed to get 3 LTs in 3 different vaults within a week (but I'm quite sure they weren't all from the 1st pulls), so it is possible. But, when this makes me doubt other people's luck, the problem is quite bad (considering I usually try to see things positively). It's feasible to see people using the exploit to get the 4* cover multiple times to finish SHIELD Training.

    The lack of 5* CP stores is probably to stop people picking and choosing when to bust their hoards. Probably.

    These are just my speculations.
    This is probably driving some of the rationale behind less CP store stuff.  However, I think that you are more likely to lose sales (converting cash to in game currency) when people are previewing vaults etc vs people previewing whether their hoarded CP will become a Havok or not.  The level of people who are jumping into buy clubs to replenish CP they spent in a special store is a small fraction of the players.  I could be wrong.

    Another factor is that there is increasing international pressure on loot boxes and similar mechanics.  Australia is considering making loot boxes an 18+ transaction with age verification required.  Obviously selling someone a direct 5* cover (and maybe you throw in some tokens) gets around that issue vs someone spending cash on a currency which has no guarantee to get what you want.

    There is also probably more buy-in among existing users who have been saying for years how much they like good bundles and are more willing to buy a useful 5* cover vs the "spend $75 and get 5 tokens" offers of the past.  I'm sure if people weren't jumping on these offers, they'd stop making them.


  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 9,656 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Of course (ironically?) they just ran a spend $75 for some tokens and stuff bundle just this weekend!
  • chf5868
    chf5868 Posts: 21 Just Dropped In
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    In the "revisiting the concept" vein, I believe there would be a lot less negative player feedback if the removed event was replaced with something new & shiny. Taking back resource opportunities for those on the purchase/not purchase fence costs the game in terms of real money spent. Also, from the looks of the many forum posts, it's going to start costing players in general. There are far too many game choices out there for MPQ to retain players with a busted game.
  • Mayo
    Mayo Posts: 156 Tile Toppler
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    Afaik once a store or vault opens, the order of covers is chanced and never changes no matter what you do so previewing is not a game changing factor, the issue here is that step by step the game has been taking away useful resources and throwing candies to increase expenditure. Maybe mature rosters and whales will not feel the impact but new player rotation will increase as they figure out that even buying bundles and offers they will never, ever be able to enjoy the game when they start leveling up and turns pay to play.

    Btw, the dilution solution is easy. Create rotating or permanent stores containing covers to specific years (for 4* and 5*) instead of one single classic store. This is the quick fix for dilution. We know it, they know it. They only need the will to make happen.

    Cheers! 
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
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    I think new 4* loaners should be champed version in PvPs because it allows players to really get a feel of the characters. Many players change their opinions of new 4* after champing them, which is after many months down the road. I think it should be enough to make interested players chase them hard due to whatever good experiences and feelings they had with the characters in PvPs.
  • St_Bernadus
    St_Bernadus Posts: 601 Critical Contributor
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    Heh champed loaners in new releases would be awesome. And you would have the odd situation of people using the loaner all the time in pvp then using their own undercovered version to grill with.
  • Rhipf
    Rhipf Posts: 294 Mover and Shaker
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    Mayo said:
    Afaik once a store or vault opens, the order of covers is chanced and never changes no matter what you do so previewing is not a game changing factor...

    Previewing is kind of a game changing factor.
    If you preview the store/vault and see that you are going to get **** draws you aren't going to pull from that store/vault and you will save your resources for the next store/vault that you preview and have draws that you like. The fact that the stores/vaults are static is the whole reason that previewing is even possible.
  • mega ghost
    mega ghost Posts: 1,154 Chairperson of the Boards
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    S.H.I.E.L.D. Training is good, except when it requires a new 4* as one of the three required characters. This was regularly its biggest flaw. Giving us a single cover for a new 4* is not giving away the farm. We earn 1/13th of a character, that will still need 12 more covers and plenty of ISO to become competitive. Letting us earn a cover gets us excited about the new release, motivates us to get involved in the events, and encourages us to purchase another roster slot with HP — all good things for you. Fixing that one detail would be a big improvement on its own, but to make it even better:

    1) The required character selections should reward having a deeper roster, but I think there's merit in not even having required characters. Perhaps just make challenging nodes with recommended character levels. i.e. "If your team isn't at least level 229, they likely won't make it past this node without some luck and sweat and tears. Want to add another dimension of challenge? Make it so that if a character falls in battle they get locked out of the rest of this S.H.I.E.L.D. Training. This will force us to try different strategies and not just run in with our A-Teams. Or if our A-Teams all fall, we'll be trying our darnedest with our weaker 4* and maybe even see if some 3* teams can hack it.

    2) The node that features the new release should really highlight them. Show us why they're fun, how they can be great, and what some good team combos might be. There have been plenty of teammate and enemy combos in this node that seemed to specifically highlight the new character's weaknesses, which is a real wet blanket.

    3) The nodes that run along the bottom that require the new character should be eased up a bit. Remove the level requirements and just make them increasingly challenging, so that one can technically beat them with only a cover or two, but it would be prohibitively difficult, sort of like attempting a Crash of theTitans with an under covered and under leveled character — maybe you'll do it, on the 20th try. The rewards should also match the challenge, though, and getting all of the way to the end should be significant, perhaps rewarding 5* shards?
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,185 Chairperson of the Boards
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    I came out of this character launch with a 2/2/2 in the end. SCL10 progression is still generally better than I was able to do before in 9 even without shield training, but it really did feel like a non-event this time after having it so long.
  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,335 Chairperson of the Boards
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    I started off thinking Hill was pretty lousy.  (Low covers.)

    Eventually I got enough covers for her and realized she's pretty good, but would be horrible on defense.  (I have 12 covers.)

    ST was a way to skirt the "false initial impression" issue so players could try out a fully covered characters and begin forming an impression that way, instead of based on whatever covers they collected in the initial release.
  • Mayo
    Mayo Posts: 156 Tile Toppler
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    Rhipf said:
    Mayo said:
    Afaik once a store or vault opens, the order of covers is chanced and never changes no matter what you do so previewing is not a game changing factor...

    Previewing is kind of a game changing factor.
    If you preview the store/vault and see that you are going to get **** draws you aren't going to pull from that store/vault and you will save your resources for the next store/vault that you preview and have draws that you like. The fact that the stores/vaults are static is the whole reason that previewing is even possible.
    I beg to differ, if you search the forums sometime ago there was randomness in draws which could indeed benefit previewing by giving you different results. Now that draws are fixed (not random) there is no advantage. For example, if you preview your next five latest legends looking for a 5* and get five 4*s it is irrelevant if you actually pull or not at that moment since those covers will still be waiting for you when you draw tomorrow, next week or next month to avance towards your next 5*.

    All draws help for your game in one way or another so you can hoard add infinitum hoping to get a 550 hero in a future massive draw or draw every few days and enjoy the game (which i do because for what I see i don't think the game will last more than 2 years).

    Cheers! 
  • Mayo
    Mayo Posts: 156 Tile Toppler
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    OJSP said:
    Mayo said:
    I beg to differ, if you search the forums sometime ago there was randomness in draws which could indeed benefit previewing by giving you different results. Now that draws are fixed (not random) there is no advantage. For example, if you preview your next five latest legends looking for a 5* and get five 4*s it is irrelevant if you actually pull or not at that moment since those covers will still be waiting for you when you draw tomorrow, next week or next month to avance towards your next 5*.
    Previewing doesn't really work for token stores. It mainly works for Vaults (unless they've fixed that too recently, but considering some people were still complaining about it a few weeks ago, I think it's still happening). Like you said, we can't preview Latests or Classics because of the predetermined pulls. However, we could preview other stores that have the 3 characters we want at high levels and decide if we wanted to pull or not, depending on how good the pull rates are.
    Somewhere i read that vaults now are also pre chanced so no real advantage evenmore anyone can do it for common knowlegde.

    Nonetheless shield trainning really has no excuse to be taken away than taking away more free resources from the game. A real tragedy. 

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