Thoughts after Restarting: Day 60

bbigler

I wanted to make another progression post after restarting and mention some things that I’ve learned and how the new player experience is going.  In comparison to my last restart, I’m far ahead (3-4 weeks) of that roster at 60 days.  Here’s the general state of things:

 

Rank: 69, Slots 141

2* Tier: All Champed, Farming is in the 2nd Generation already

3* Tier: 24 Champed, 11 more fully covered (should finish covering them by year end)

4* Tier: 1 Champ - Polaris on Day 48! – Ikaris (13 covers), Blob (12 covers) – 75 Rostered! – 40 more to go (ugh)

5* Tier: Shang (4/1/3) Lvl 375, Ultron (4/4/2) Lvl 330, Gamora (0/2/2) – Pulled 107 tokens with a 5* rate of 20%

PVE & PVP SCL: 9

Supports: Taskmaster’s Sword at Lvl 150 on Polaris

                  Chewie at Lvl 126 on Ultron

                  Kimoyo Beads at Lvl 100 on Shang-Chi

 

What I’ve Learned:

• Shards are an awesome way for new players to catch up; this is how I got Polaris champed so early.  I’m currently building Mantis as a counter to all the Polaris teams in PVP.  After using Polaris constantly for 3 weeks, I can see why she’s so good and the basis for nearly all special tile teams.
• Constantly opening Latest is the fastest way to progress in the beginning.  Even a 1 cover 5* helps a lot at SCL 5 & 6.  A mid-level 5* helps a lot to handle SCL 7 & 8.  I’m currently handling PVE SCL 9 with Ultron, Polaris & Shang-Chi (plus supports).  Even though it’s harder, I think the increase in rewards is worth it.
• Top tier 4*s are more of a deterrent in PVP than mid-level 5*s.  I’m basing this on my preferences: it’s easier for me to fight and win (with little damage) against half-covered 5*s with 30K – 40K health; but a Grocket team will cost me a health pack.  Every team is beatable, the only question is what will it cost me in terms of boosts and health packs.  Shang can heal himself very well, but those Grocket teams hit fast and die fast before he can fully heal.  Carnage & Medusa is still annoying. 
• The distribution of supports and Riso is good – meaning, progress is steady and they do help in PVE.  The total number of supports is reasonable too. 
• The PVP MMR is good with my Level 375 Shang.  With my previous roster, when I leveled Kitty from 360 to 375, I saw mostly 5* champ teams.  The Evergreen MMR is also fair for my roster too. 
• There’s generally a good variety of events now; it’s not getting stale doing the same ones on a frequent basis.
• You can cover specific characters quickly if you’re willing to spend (there’s a ton more sales now)
• It’s better to spend your ISO first on your main fighters, then second on your farms – if your fighters are all leveled up, then build up your farms.  I used to have the idealistic view of champing everyone in a tier before moving onto the next tier.  But that method actually slows you down – I used to prioritize my farms over my fighting teams.  Perhaps it’s best to be opportunistic and champ characters when they’re essential or boosted that week.  Deciding how to spend my ISO is never easy.

 

I Must Complain: the 4* tier is ridiculous!  Yes, it has a great variety of fun and playable teams, but……..it has way too many characters and they are way too expensive to champ!  Why does it cost 75K to champ a 2*, then 127K to champ a 3*, but then a whopping 378K to champ a 4*?  Combine the number of characters and their champ costs together and you have the 4* wall.  Dear Devs: everything in the game is good except for this.  For my new roster, I did what you wanted and spent a lot of money on HP for roster slots, but I still need more for this tier!  If you don’t fix this growing problem, it will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. 

ThaRoadWarrior

During the old days of Shield Training, I used to keep all my 4*s at lvl 215, and then I would opportunistically champ them as I had the iso from there. Going from 215->Champ only cost about 240k, which felt right to me for the tier.

HoundofShadow

I read about capping 5* to 360 so that it won't mess up your mmr greatly. Is it still true?

entrailbucket

There's always a wall.  That's by design.

Go look up super old posts about the "3* transition" and how difficult that used to be.

Sekilicious

HoundofShadow said:

I read about capping 5* to 360 so that it won't mess up your mmr greatly. Is it still true?

That is still the prevailing wisdom on Discord.  It's to allow one to challenge SCL10 PvE but still below Max champ 4* MMR. I also read about someone who had luck with BRB capped at 330 for both PvP and PvE on Reddit a while back.. 

DAZ0273

Sekilicious said:

HoundofShadow said:

I read about capping 5* to 360 so that it won't mess up your mmr greatly. Is it still true?

That is still the prevailing wisdom on Discord.  It's to allow one to challenge SCL10 PvE but still below Max champ 4* MMR. I also read about someone who had luck with BRB capped at 330 for both PvP and PvE on Reddit a while back.. 

Once you go over the game starts to look around for base level 370 characters but quite often can't find any because max champed 4* are not often owned by 4* players - they are owned by 5* players and rarely count in their MMR as they have multiple champed 5*. However it can find a reasonably plentiful supply of baby 5* Champs which is what you get served up - might be in ones sometimes two's if you are unlucky. That was my experience this year - once I had gone over the threshold there was no way back and it made no sense to deliberately hamper myself when I would be matched with 5's no matter what so 5* land beckoned.

skittledaddy

HoundofShadow said:

I read about capping 5* to 360 so that it won't mess up your mmr greatly. Is it still true?

As at 360 soft-capper myself, I think that approach is only really effective when you have 4* chars around that same level.
Level 360 5s with baby-champed 4s might not yield the right results.

Sekilicious

DAZ0273 said:

Sekilicious said:

HoundofShadow said:

I read about capping 5* to 360 so that it won't mess up your mmr greatly. Is it still true?

That is still the prevailing wisdom on Discord.  It's to allow one to challenge SCL10 PvE but still below Max champ 4* MMR. I also read about someone who had luck with BRB capped at 330 for both PvP and PvE on Reddit a while back.. 

Once you go over the game starts to look around for base level 370 characters but quite often can't find any because max champed 4* are not often owned by 4* players - they are owned by 5* players and rarely count in their MMR as they have multiple champed 5*. However it can find a reasonably plentiful supply of baby 5* Champs which is what you get served up - might be in ones sometimes two's if you are unlucky. That was my experience this year - once I had gone over the threshold there was no way back and it made no sense to deliberately hamper myself when I would be matched with 5's no matter what so 5* land beckoned.

Yeah that makes sense. I have a single 5* champed, a couple soft capped at 330, one more at 300, then we get to my 4*s the highest is at 298 (Grocket). If MMR is top 5 (I get conflicting reports for top-3 and top-5) then mine is average 340. Pushing my fully covered 5* to from 330 to champ would push it to average 345. So soft capping below 360 and 330 would keep people below my MMR. 

fractalvisions

skittledaddy said:

HoundofShadow said:

I read about capping 5* to 360 so that it won't mess up your mmr greatly. Is it still true?

As at 360 soft-capper myself, I think that approach is only really effective when you have 4* chars around that same level.
Level 360 5s with baby-champed 4s might not yield the right results.

Really? My 5* are capped at 330 whereas my highest 4* is 292. I don't find this to be an issue.

@bbigler that's very impressive for just 2 months! How did you manage 107 legendary tokens with that roster?

KGB

fractalvisions said:

skittledaddy said:

HoundofShadow said:

I read about capping 5* to 360 so that it won't mess up your mmr greatly. Is it still true?

As at 360 soft-capper myself, I think that approach is only really effective when you have 4* chars around that same level.
Level 360 5s with baby-champed 4s might not yield the right results.

Really? My 5* are capped at 330 whereas my highest 4* is 292. I don't find this to be an issue.

@bbigler that's very impressive for just 2 months! How did you manage 107 legendary tokens with that roster?

Guessing 24 of them are from 3* champ rewards (ie 1st champ reward is an LT). Maybe a couple from champing Polaris. I think he likely bought VIP which would net another few LT's. If he joined a good alliance he'd get some more from alliance rewards on boss events etc. That would account for 40-50ish of the 107.

The remaining 60ish draws may be from CP of which he'd have a fair bit since he's cycled his 2* farm once already plus gotten plenty from PvE progression etc.

KGB

Timemachinego

KGB said:

Guessing 24 of them are from 3* champ rewards (ie 1st champ reward is an LT). Maybe a couple from champing Polaris. I think he likely bought VIP which would net another few LT's. If he joined a good alliance he'd get some more from alliance rewards on boss events etc. That would account for 40-50ish of the 107.

The remaining 60ish draws may be from CP of which he'd have a fair bit since he's cycled his 2* farm once already plus gotten plenty from PvE progression etc.

KGB

I'd expect smart spending via buy clubs too, that should account for some of the remainder via CP.

This speed-run type point of view is really cool OP, appreciate your updates!

Phumade

Part of me wants to try to see what I could accomplish with what I know about the game.  But then another part realizes how frustrated I get having to reclimb the mountain.

Good job Bigler for staying with it.

ThaRoadWarrior

I seem to recall bbigler was pretty good at pulling LTs out of vaults in the old days

bbigler

HoundofShadow said:

I read about capping 5* to 360 so that it won't mess up your mmr greatly. Is it still true?

Fortunately, there’s enough players like me that aren’t softcapping their 5*s, so the MMR finds them for me.  I only get hit by 5* champs when I climb “too” high. 

bbigler

You guys are right about how I got 107 pulls in 60 days: 3*champ rewards, normal CP accumulation, VIP gave 4, DDQ crashes gave 3, being in a good alliance (who also make purchases) and making many purchases myself (mostly for the HP).  Of course, I was smart with my spending and did some buy clubs. At this point, I’m done with spending except for VIP.  As for pulling LT from vaults, that’s not working for me anymore. 

I’m lucky to restart when I did and get a usable Shang-Chi. He’s awesome! He hits well above his weight. He can face off against 5*s twice his size and win. His criticals typical hit for 15K to 35K, but with high combo points I’ve seen 60K hits (and he’s only at level 375). It’s so cool to build up your combo, then switch targets and one-shot the highest health enemy.  My boosted Shang even did a critical hit for 107K one time. I’ve heard stories where Shang would take down an entire team of 150K health enemies in 1 turn. I certainly like strategically thinking about my matches and board state than relying on really strong passives to win. 

bbigler

entrailbucket said:

There's always a wall.  That's by design.

Go look up super old posts about the "3* transition" and how difficult that used to be.

I played back in 2013 - 2014 and experienced the 3* wall first hand.  It didn’t take them long to fix the problem though. Shards have mostly fixed the problem with covering top tier 4*s, but their iso costs are disproportionately high. Covering the remaining 4*s by tokens alone is a long long haul and would only be used to farm champ rewards. I may be wrong, but I’ll certainly analyze what I have with 4*s on Day 90

Timemachinego

I think part of it is that those us of playing seriously, we take pride in occupying our various alliance slots even if we can be easily slotted out when we do bad in an event... personally, I feel good maintaining some level of "quality" as a player that my mates can count on. I'm "new" in as I've only been playing for a bit less than the last 2 years now. I have spent (mostly on HP) to move faster and that's fine, more a measure of good design to get you to where you want to spend than not.

That said, the 4* tier is especially wide! Yes, you can and should prioritize certain characters but the "smart" choices make up a solid half of the tier and iso and HP slot costs (and earnings) have been static since way before the relentless 4545 release schedule began. 2x ISO nowadays feels about right and I'd like to see HP rewards either fall in line or at the very least the 300x roster increase to 2k should be abolished.

entrailbucket

bbigler said:

entrailbucket said:

There's always a wall.  That's by design.

Go look up super old posts about the "3* transition" and how difficult that used to be.

I played back in 2013 - 2014 and experienced the 3* wall first hand.  It didn’t take them long to fix the problem though. Shards have mostly fixed the problem with covering top tier 4*s, but their iso costs are disproportionately high. Covering the remaining 4*s by tokens alone is a long long haul and would only be used to farm champ rewards. I may be wrong, but I’ll certainly analyze what I have with 4*s on Day 90

There has to be a wall somewhere.  They have to give players some seemingly-insurmountable goal to strive for, because otherwise players would very quickly realize that there isn't much actual game to play. 

They also have to separate endgame/veteran rosters from newer players, and the way they do that is time and/or money.

So where should the wall be?

(Someone is going to say "there shouldn't be a wall at all!" If you think this, then you're saying there should be a linear, frictionless, quick path to fully maxed out 5*.  I think most MPQ players don't want to play a game like that, where everyone essentially has the same roster.  Most MPQ players like to punch down.)

bbigler

@entrailbucket I see your point, but I think the wall is in the wrong place.  I think the wall should be max champed 5*s, but that wall already exists. Ideally, a good “living” game like MPQ would have an inverted exponential progression curve. Meaning that progression is fast in the beginning but slows down the further you go until you’re crawling to get max champed 5*s. That progression curve already exists except that there’s another wall of champing older 4*s and 5*s. 

Why is the game like this? I believe it’s a simple matter of what sells. I’m betting that they’ve continued their character release schedule because it works for making money and keeping the game alive. But the side effect of this business model is a bloated 4*tier. Perhaps it’s been the dev’s plan for this to happen, but I think all players dislike it.   Perhaps they will increase 4* cover rewards and ISO in the future to balance It out. 

The good part is that new players can build up and champ new 4*s and 5*s releases, but champing the older characters is a progression wall.  Perhaps champing them is unnecessary since they can still compete with just the new characters. Of course, my ideas and opinions on this matter may change over time, but currently I think this is a problem. When I reach Day 90 and see what I have, my opinion may change. 

Sekilicious

The 4* appears insurmountable but really only takes time. I went from having 5 to all but 24 fully covered since last February. Of those fully covered, all but 50 are champed. I am hardly an optimal player though I reach progression in every event. I would love more iso but it is only a matter of patience at this point. YMMV. 

The 550 barrier is only a matter of hoarding 1800 pulls and picking two meta characters in any store. Also just a matter of time and patience when you reach that point. 

entrailbucket

Moving the wall back that far would be a massive, extremely significant change and I'm really not sure how it would affect the metagame or whether people would like it.

You're saying that a non-casual player shouldn't encounter any sort of real friction until they're solidly into the 5* tier, and that's just not at all the game we play now.

Basically, it'd be good for you but it'd also be good for everyone else like you.  There most likely wouldn't be a 4* MMR band -- serious players would be in the 5* tier right away.   

Would players want to play PvP where literally everyone has a 450+ roster?  What would it do to placement in PvE?  Would sub CL10 PvE even exist?  I can't really answer this stuff, but all of these things would need to be asked and the consequences might not be positive.