Does classic store need a boost?

XandorXerxes

entrailbucket said:

Should it be easy for casual players to get 5* champions?  In a game where every mode is competitive, how does that change things for everyone else?

No, and my suggestion won't make it easy.

a) This would only apply to the classic store, so by definition it will always be behind the meta curve as the meta evolves.

b) casuals accrue CP slowly.

c) It's still a penalty - LTs won't help, and there's still a good chance that they don't get the cover of their choice. 

Keep in mind we're not talking about max-champing anyone. We're talking about casuals being able to fully cover a 5* at all. Right now there's not a way to do that except to hoard forever and then hope someone you want pops up in LTs. This would also have a secondary effect of making classics not a trap for casuals.

HoundofShadow

I have two questions:

1) Why should we help casual players to champ 5* more easily when they are not putting as much effort as other players? 

2) Is it compulsory for casual players to champ a 5* in order to enjoy them?

If a player is casual, chances are it will take him more than 1 year and probably 2 years to champ all 3*. As for 4*, it will probably take another 6 months or more to champ them.  With that in mind, it simply means that they don't need to champ a 5* in order to benefit from their abilities. First of all, they are going to be at 270-28x mmr. A champed 5* will screw up their mmr. My take is that a 1/1/1 or 2/2/2 5* will suffice for such group of players. Level the 5* to 300 if they want to deal more damages. A 20 levels difference shouldn't affect mmr too drastically. 

entrailbucket

I think they want it to take a long time, because it hides the fundamental shortcomings of a game like this.

Here's the thing, the big secret that nobody realizes until they get to the top (I'm not there, but I've been there, a long time ago): whatever you're chasing, there's nothing there. 

The chase IS the game.  That's all there is.  It doesn't magically get easier or more fulfilling when you hit whatever the next big milestone is for you.  Whether that's championing a single 4* or a single 5*, or maxing out the entire 5* tier, the only thing that awaits you when you get there is more grind. Someone is always ahead of you, and other people are always chasing you.

There's no secret game mode that opens up when your roster gets good enough.  There's no trophy room to display your #1 finishes.  The entire game is just more of the same grind, over and over. 

So if you speed up or bypass a particular stage, you're just skipping over some grind to get to more of the same grind.  The only way to enjoy the game is to learn to enjoy the grind.

Akoni

Even if CL tokens were implemented, I don't see casual players champing any particular 5* in less than 5 years. Even then, it would likely be Kingpin or Wasp. If we look at how often a competitive player earns a LL token, we can assume that a casual player would earn a CL token at roughly 20-25% of that rate since the availability of a CL token would make semi-competitive players more competitive. This decreases the likelihood that a casual player earns a that token.

I also wouldn't suggest any other changes to the CL store that would make it easier to get a 5* cover. The overwhelming number of pulls in CL provide a 4* cover. I know there are some arguing for higher pull rates for 5* or special CL stores, but I think that's coming from those semi-competitive players, not the casual players. Most casual players are happy with pulling a 4* since any cover at that point either increases their roster or makes it stronger.

TheRiddler

entrailbucket said:

I think they want it to take a long time, because it hides the fundamental shortcomings of a game like this.

Here's the thing, the big secret that nobody realizes until they get to the top (I'm not there, but I've been there, a long time ago): whatever you're chasing, there's nothing there. 

The chase IS the game.  That's all there is.  It doesn't magically get easier or more fulfilling when you hit whatever the next big milestone is for you.  Whether that's championing a single 4* or a single 5*, or maxing out the entire 5* tier, the only thing that awaits you when you get there is more grind. Someone is always ahead of you, and other people are always chasing you.

There's no secret game mode that opens up when your roster gets good enough.  There's no trophy room to display your #1 finishes.  The entire game is just more of the same grind, over and over. 

So if you speed up or bypass a particular stage, you're just skipping over some grind to get to more of the same grind.  The only way to enjoy the game is to learn to enjoy the grind.

Amen.

I figured this out not too long ago when I champed my first group of 5s. I pretty much champed Okoye, BRB, Apocalypse, Kitty and Carnage all at the same time and then a few months after got Colossus and Wanda. I seen it as a big goal to finally get a group of champed 5s.

The reality was that it didn't change anything. In PVE I'm still using the same BRB/Polaris/Jugg or Thanos team that I was using before I made the jump. I do have more options but they take more time and get damaged more easily. In PVP I was already in SCL 10 and got favorable matchups while now I'm seeing consistently harder meta teams.

I actually have somebody in my alliance who has quite the odd roster setup which I'm wondering if it might actually be setup quite well for this current situation. He has a single champ 5 which is in the 480 range and then a bunch of either max 4s or high level 4s and then most of the 5s at 13 covers but still at 255. And he has no intention of leveling them up. And he does pretty well. Obviously that requires planning before one starts to acquire or level up 5s to have the thought and patience to keep them at 255. But with them now boosted he will essentially always have champ 5s while only have a single champ 5.

Bad

And that proves the big need for helping casual players to adquire all 5*s: they will not upgrade them fearing not favorable matches.
They will not make any progress and they wont like people who advise them to do it.

HoundofShadow

I won't call players with multiple fully covered 5* and multiple max champed 4* casual. As a matter of fact, this particular player probably got scared by those saying how having multiple 5* is boring.

True casual players are those who champed their 5* after 4 or 5 years, and their other 5* are probably in the range of not more than 7 covers on average.

On the flip side, casual players are leveling up their 5* because they don't know how mmr works. They are unlikely to know or they won't be bothered to do what we are doing: maximising resource usages.

Casual players are casual because they consciously choose to dedicate more time to their real life events rather than virtual events. They log in to the game, play a few matches and log off. Like I always said, please jump into multiple top 10000 or 5000 alliances, observe what majority of the casual players are doing, how much they are playing, and how responsive they are in the chat. They are the true casual players.

It's not productive to help them acquire 5* faster. There's a proverb that goes, "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink". Likewise, you can help him to speed up champing 5* but if he's only interested in playing a few matches a day, which is already a routine or habit, it's not achieving anything, except helping (semi)competitive and full progression players to build their rosters faster.

DAZ0273

HoundofShadow said:

I won't call players with multiple fully covered 5* and multiple max champed 4* casual. As a matter of fact, this particular player probably got scared by those saying how having multiple 5* is boring.

True casual players are those who champed their 5* after 4 or 5 years, and their other 5* are probably in the range of not more than 7 covers on average.

On the flip side, casual players are leveling up their 5* because they don't know how mmr works. They are unlikely to know or they won't be bothered to do what we are doing: maximising resource usages.

Casual players are casual because they consciously choose to dedicate more time to their real life events rather than virtual events. They log in to the game, play a few matches and log off. Like I always said, please jump into multiple top 10000 or 5000 alliances, observe what majority of the casual players are doing, how much they are playing, and how responsive they are in the chat. They are the true casual players.

It's not productive to help them acquire 5* faster. There's a proverb that goes, "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink". Likewise, you can help him to speed up champing 5* but if he's only interested in playing a few matches a day, which is already a routine or habit, it's not achieving anything, except helping (semi)competitive and full progression players to build their rosters faster.

Not knowing how MMR works is not just a problem for newer/more casual players, I would guess that the vast majority of players do not understand it and this is why PvP is the redheaded stepchild of MPQ.

XandorXerxes

While technically true the goal isn't to make them acquire them "faster." The goal is to allow them to step into the 5* tier at all. I was absolutely miserable hoarding as long as I did, but there was no other way for me to get into the 5* tier but to hoard. I've been playing since before the 4* tier existed, and I only recently was able to crack my hoard. I only made it to 5*s because I told myself I had played the game for so damn long I was going to make it there, and the game actually became more viable (and fun) for me once I did. You guys would probably look at my roster and say it was too early to move into 5* land (58 champ 4*s, with a bunch more covered but no ISO), but I say screw that if I waited that long the game would probably shut down first.

Keep in mind they're not hitting 900 in PvP, they're not placing top 100 in PvE, and their alliance is giving them elite and standard tokens as alliance rewards. Most aren't hitting full progression in PvE either. They may not even be able to play SCL 10 (I wasn't until very recently). They can't crack a hoard at 300 tokens, because if they get bad luck they have to start all over again. They need a higher confidence level to make sure their years of accumulation aren't wasted.

I'm not talking about fully covering all 5*s, or even getting all 5*s. If you have a 25% chance of getting your favorite 5* on a 5* pull (i.e. 1/28 chance per token) it would still take on average 308 pulls to get 11 covers, and the combination of shards/4* reward/milestones can take you the rest of the way. It's still cheaper to hoard, but this allows for progression without having to hoard. It allows them to cover 4*s. It's not getting them to be competitive. It's not getting them three 5*s like hoarding would. It's getting them their one favorite 5* character while actually making them feel like they're making progress on their roster at the 4* level. If they opened tokens to keep up at the 4* level there's 0 chance of them ever getting to 5* unless a system exists that allows them to target a 5* while opening the tokens.

Bad

I just think out another proverb: "Do you want it? Then you sweat it" Hey, this one serves for both real and virtual life.

XandorXerxes said:

 The goal is to allow them to step into the 5* tier at all. I was absolutely miserable hoarding as long as I did, but there was no other way for me to get into the 5* tier but to hoard.

I was absolutely miserable too. And him, and they. It is the only way to advance to 5* land. That is what represents playing with 5* champed. But it is at the reach of absolutely everyone. Only thing needed is commitment and resolution.
Helping casual players to obtain 5*s just devaluates the meaning of a 5* and the hard task to obtain them. 
And possibly it wont solve their casual play anyway.

TheRiddler

DAZ0273 said:

HoundofShadow said:

I won't call players with multiple fully covered 5* and multiple max champed 4* casual. As a matter of fact, this particular player probably got scared by those saying how having multiple 5* is boring.

True casual players are those who champed their 5* after 4 or 5 years, and their other 5* are probably in the range of not more than 7 covers on average.

On the flip side, casual players are leveling up their 5* because they don't know how mmr works. They are unlikely to know or they won't be bothered to do what we are doing: maximising resource usages.

Casual players are casual because they consciously choose to dedicate more time to their real life events rather than virtual events. They log in to the game, play a few matches and log off. Like I always said, please jump into multiple top 10000 or 5000 alliances, observe what majority of the casual players are doing, how much they are playing, and how responsive they are in the chat. They are the true casual players.

It's not productive to help them acquire 5* faster. There's a proverb that goes, "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink". Likewise, you can help him to speed up champing 5* but if he's only interested in playing a few matches a day, which is already a routine or habit, it's not achieving anything, except helping (semi)competitive and full progression players to build their rosters faster.

Not knowing how MMR works is not just a problem for newer/more casual players, I would guess that the vast majority of players do not understand it and this is why PvP is the redheaded stepchild of MPQ.

A big thing for me has always been not knowing my defensive team. I understand the point of having to use a team for them to be on the defensive side. But from my understanding that isn't always the case. For example if I have a 5* MMR and then go into a PVP and win all the seeder matches with a 3* team then don't get hit does that mean all these 5* teams are skipping my 3* team? I doubt it. So who did the AI pick for my defensive team?

Is it too much to ask to at least be able to see what team the AI has for you on defense?

entrailbucket

Your defensive team is always the last team you won a fight with, with one notable exception.

If you win a fight with a high tier team and then win a fight with a lower tier team, the game will keep your higher tier team as the defensive team for you.  This was put in place to stop players from purposely putting out weak teams for others to attack.  The "tiers" in this case are just star level, the game doesn't judge which characters are good or bad.

There are a whole pile of edge cases and exceptions with this and players have figured out all of them, but it's not worth discussing all of that in depth here.

ThaRoadWarrior

The way I understand it is that you show up as a retal using the team you used to defeat that player, and the last team you used is how you will turn up as a "fresh queue" to somebody who just sees you as a non-retal. Once you use a higher leveled team than that, it becomes your new defense team. What I've never known for sure was whether or not it just uses the team's highest average level, or the team with the highest leveled individual character involved, or if it cherry picks out of all the teams you've run the highest leveled individuals to construct a "dream team" for you even though you yourself may not have run all those characters together. 

So if you beat a 5* team with an all 4* team, they'll see it as a retal, but you shouldn't be showing up for them as a fresh queue until you or they break mmr by climbing fast until you're using a team comparable to theirs.

entrailbucket

It doesn't do the "dream team" thing, it's always a combination of characters you've actually used.  It's not about character level, just star level, *generally*.  If you win a fight with a 5* team then win a fight with a 4* team, the player you beat will see your 4* team, everyone else will see your 5* team.

I'm generalizing rather broadly because I don't want to write 5000 words about this here.  There's like a million weird edge cases in how it handles different tiers and combinations and it's all been solved.

HoundofShadow

Even if the dev decided to give every player 5 champed meta characters or a mix of 5 meta and favourite 5* characters for free, it's not going to change the playstyle of the majority of casual players much. The dev might see a spike in playtime in the first couple of weeks and it will be back to old habit for these casual players.

These are the typical characteristics of casual players:

1) low scores in either pvp or pve. How low? Less than 10k points at the end of  story events, and typically low 1000-3000. For PvP, it's even lower.

2) Those smarter casual players will simply enter the events and do nothing at all because their scores are 0.

Such playstyle is a choice. Making 5* more achievable easier isn't going to change their lifestyles. They are not going to spend more time playing MPQ just because the dev give them 5 champed 5* for free. They will continue to do the above because quite clearly, they just want an outlet to destress for a while and get back to real life quickly.

The number of shards given in milestone rewards is enough to take a 0 cover 5* to 13 covers. I think this is already pretty good.

Heartbreaksoup

I used to take every 25cp reward that came with daily rewards and pull a Classic, saving 5cp for the next new character.  I've progressed so much in the game, however, that when I did this recently at day 1400-something, I got my useless 4* from the pack and asked why in the world I wasted the pull instead of saving all 25 for the next new character.  Lesson learned, I don't think I'll ever use that store again.

entrailbucket

One thing worth noting is that the casual players you accurately describe here make up the overwhelming majority of MPQ players.  I remember a statistic cited that 5% of MPQ players have at least one champion 5*.  (This was awhile ago, but it wasn't ancient history, it was within the last couple years)

Think about that -- if you have *a* champion 5* you're in the top 5% of the entire game!  I've had people who consistently finished in the top 5 of PvP and PvE events fight me on this and tell me they had maybe a 50th percentile roster, when they're placing in the top 1% of the most difficult events the game offers.

That's by design, though.  In order to keep us chasing whatever's next, they have to keep us looking up at the players ahead of us, not looking down at the much bigger crowd behind us. 

Progress has to be slow, because once you actually reach your goal, you find that nothing changes and you're now chasing some other goal.  Goals have to be very difficult to reach in a game like this to keep you engaged and chasing.

jredd

i've been calling for a CL token for a long time. it's the only permanent store without a token. makes no sense.

ThaRoadWarrior

Where would you insert it in the current reward scheme? What, if anything, would you be willing to exchange for it rewards wise, because it surely won’t be free.

BlackBoltRocks

ThaRoadWarrior said:

What, if anything, would you be willing to exchange for it rewards wise, because it surely won’t be free.

Red iso.