Broken Rewards Cycle (concerning Electro)

TheEyeDoctorsWife

This season Immortal Hulk is the scheduled C2 on 8/12 so I don’t think anyone wants that moved .   Amazing timing the devs released counters to him to make him less meta just before his turn in rotation. 

St_Bernadus

I am with the OP in that replacing the 5E on their first go as essential is well mildly irritating. A more player friendly option would be to put one of the other 2 Latests in this slot.
I think the worst option is to replace a Classic as the 5E since they get to be featured only rarely.

helix72

The problem is boss events. They don’t give 5* shards and so take away one cycle each time they’re run. Either update the rewards or stop boss events (preferably the former, the occasional variety is nice).

entrailbucket

A lot of alliances can't/don't finish boss events, and players are ok with it because the rewards are bad.  If they made the rewards good, those players would get upset and a lot of casual alliances would die.

There's no way to make everyone happy.

HoundofShadow

That's why fixed schedule + RNG is the fairest way: Each group of players has a turn to get upset, rather than one specific group of players who will never get upset.

Sekilicious

Well the fairest way would be to just add two offerings of 5* shards, possibly as a week-long event. Or make so the introduction event gives 250 shards instead. I get that these are unlikely to happen. 

JHawkInc

HoundofShadow said:

That's why fixed schedule + RNG is the fairest way: Each group of players has a turn to get upset, rather than one specific group of players who will never get upset.

I'm way more verbose than is often needed, but this was my ultimately my original point. It's not fixed right now, and it would be better if it was, even if it can't be perfect. (heads up, 'bout to get verbose again, the next stretch is all just a hypothetical on how to achieve the above quote, so it's not going to hurt my feelings if anyone wants to skip to the next quote for the sake of general discussion, lol)

They've halfway got a solution already, too. The normal pattern for 5-star essential characters is 3 Latest, 2 Classic, Boss events skip. Right now new releases happen on either Latest/Classic parts of the cycle, and two different things happen. If the new release is on a "Latest" turn, that Latest character misses a shot at placement/progression rewards in favor of the new character. But if the new release is on a "Classic", they've been running a sort of "dummy" Classic.

For example, Electro's release, just recently. The pattern had Captain America (First Avenger), Loki, and Peter Parker Spidey. Cap and Spidey were our "2 Classic." Cap's event rewarded Electro shards in placement, and then Loki's event rewarded Electro shards in progression. So Loki was effectively "skipped."

The trick is that Loki had already been run as a Classic 5 in this "cycle." Meaning, for fairness purposes, he'd already had his turn for shards, and had the same number of shards awarded this cycle as Cap and Spidey. 

Basically, it's fair to skip Loki for shards because he's already had a turn. It's certainly not perfect. It's still imbalanced in that Loki was featured again, which benefits people who already had Loki ready to compete in the event, so skipping them is fair for rewards, but still uneven for the frequency they are featured.

And they could theoretically do this for ALL 5-star releases. They could run one of these "dummy" 5's in between Havok and Electro. Let's say, Iceman. He had shards rewarded this cycle already. Havok's even rewards Odin shards in placement, Iceman is featured when Odin is rewarded in placement, and that event could have awarded Electro in placement, so then when you continue with the Latest 5's, nobody gets skipped for rewards. And if the devs would be willing to throw us a bone, the Classic 5's run for new releases could even be skewed towards more popular characters. This "cycle" of Classic 5's had 42 5's in it, and 14-15 releases. If those releases could feature the most popular of the Classics, it'd be nice. Or maybe do them thematically (Loki was featured while his show was on the air, without breaking the 3Latest2Classic pattern OR the order of Classic 5's, so that's neat). At the very least, people are less likely to complain if Kitty and Okoye get extra runs but the likes of Wasp and Banner don't, you know?

Sekilicious said:

Well the fairest way would be to just add two offerings of 5* shards, possibly as a week-long event. Or make so the introduction event gives 250 shards instead. I get that these are unlikely to happen. 

The devs seem to not like player engagement over week-long events, but I've seen this suggested as a solution a few times as well. A week-long event ought to provide the same rewards as a pair of 3 and 4 day events. So what if the progression/placement cycle remained the same, the week-long events were run for 5-star releases, and the "extra" 5-star rewards went to the new character? There's a mess of pros and cons there, too, but it's a thought. And it would answer multiple issues, since people ask where the 7-day events have gone anyways.

Bad

As years were passing by the cycle will become larger and ever changing as on each year 11 new 5*s joining classics.
If each 5* gets his turn it will happen that the more moderns ones, those that some players could be more interested because they have several covers left for champing, will see the light once on the running year and after that it will be his turn on 2 years, if the pattern continues.
Some 5*s wont avoid to be skipped.
The fix I would love to see is new content, a new regular gauntlet, pve or alliance event, rewarding classic characters shards in order release but skipping 3 characters i.e. from one to another. 
Imo that would help to avoid pressure on the classic cycle and obviously we would get more resources. 

JHawkInc

Yeah, that's another issue. The current "cycle" of Classic 5's started the first of July... in 2020. And it's still not over. And the next one just gets longer. That's one reason I suggested running popular characters when they'll be skipped for new character release shards.

And I agree with a new event, same setup, same reasons. I'm pretty sure I've seen the idea tossed around before one way or another. I had thought of offsetting it by half, so basically halfway between normal Classic appearances, the character would show up in the new event. But if you offset it as a preview, the new event could be a challenge to prepare people for PVE. Like, you could earn some Classic shards in a new-gauntlet that would help you in a few weeks when the character is required in PVE. I like that setup more, honestly.

Only trick is that if we convince the devs it's a good idea, we won't see it implemented until spring 2023...

DAZ0273

Isn't it about time that Shards were introduced to PvP? Put them in a release 5* PvP (for that one event maybe swap out the Progression CP rewards if the Devs absolutely can't bear to make things more juicy). It would possibly drive engagement for PvP and as these things are one offs there isn't an expectation of repeat. That would then mean they didn't have to mess around with PvE rewards and players can still get the new release shards.

entrailbucket

5* shards already are in PvP...you can earn up to 150 per event.

HoundofShadow

He meant putting 5* shards in progression rewards in pvps. We are probably looking at 100-125 wins or 1500-1800 points.

entrailbucket

Yeah, I think they'd value those so highly that they'd end up at a pretty high score, like you say.

If they were at, say, 1500, it would be a little easier to get to 1500 than it is now (because people who stop at 1200 now would go to 1500, so overall points would go up) but they'd still be out of reach for many players.

JRYUART

I agree, shards would be welcome as a reward in PvP progression. However, instead of having character specific shards, the devs should consider awarding generic 5* shards that players can decide what to do with. Having the luxury to earn generic shards in general would alleviate many of the previously mentioned issues.

entrailbucket

Generic 5* shards would be *by far* the best reward in the game (better than entire 5* covers) and I can't even imagine how hard you'd have to work to get them.

Maybe 3000 points in PvP?  Or t1 placement?

Bad

I'm not sure that would be realistic, either devs implementing it, or players going for 1500 / 3000 points. 
That would require knowledgements like hopping between shields, equip boosts, and wasting resources that cannot be in the hand of all players in all alliances
Perhaps if the character shards are meta enough there could be players trying. 
But I don't think adding more rewards on pvp could benefit a great amount of players, in the same way than giving 150.shards only benefits one player in each pvp( or several players in maný brackets and slices)

Sekilicious

If they were generic they would probably only reward 15 per event. The other option would be a 5* DDQ that offered shards, but I have no idea how that would be implemented. 

JRYUART

entrailbucket said:

Generic 5* shards would be *by far* the best reward in the game (better than entire 5* covers) and I can't even imagine how hard you'd have to work to get them.

Maybe 3000 points in PvP?  Or t1 placement?

I'm thinking small increments that can be earned over time through various events and modes, perhaps cumulatively enough for half a cover each season to use on whatever you want.  If this was established, players could then target this goal and have them at the ready for whenever it may come in handy , like OP's original concern. Players who build up a surplus could also have the option to take a break on some events due to real life obligations if they had these shards to compensate for sub optimal performance . 

HoundofShadow

You can already earn at least ~18 cover worth of 5* generic shards via milestones. 250 generic 5* shards per season in a year gives you 2750-3000 5* generic shards. If you look at this rationally, it's virtually impossible. 

Reasons:

1) Champing 100 4* gives you 3500 generic shards. It took me at least 3 years to do that. Champing 101st to 250th 4* will give you a total of 1350 or 2.7 covers. This will take 7 years. Total 5* shards 4850. It's an average of 700 5* shards a year or ~60 5* shards per month.

2) Collecting 50 5* powers give 5 covers or 2000 shards. 50 powers is approximately 8750 cp. This will take at least a year or more depending on how competitively you play. From 50th to 900th power collected, you'll get another 2100 shards of 4.2 covers. 900 powers use approximately 157, 500 cps.

3) You get classic 5* fixed colour cover every 90 days, not of your choice. 

4) There are regular 525 5* shards + 5 4* covers cash bundle being offered regularly. Who's going to spend 
 when you can get 1 5* cover of your choice every other month? 

Based on the above, I think it's more likely to be 50 5* generic shards per season.

Bad

Generic 5* shards still are not implemented, to my knowledge. There are 5* favourite shards going to your character. 
And that won't fix the problem of the classic cycle as players will use them for his meta character.
At least that is what I'd do if they gave them to me.

There are already support tokens rewards, daily shards, and milestones.
At least creating new content and rewarding more 5*s classic shards for to help with the cycle would be a perfect fine excuse for it.