What we can infer about Feeders from Shardmass

Tony_Foot

@Bowgentle said:
Since the current devs seem to have more than a vague notion about high level play, there's no way they'll activate supports in PVP.

Why? People have said you could be on the end of an instant BRB hit from turn one with the right supports. Or an Apocalypse hit. But you wouldn't be if they just allowed supports for you as the attacker. There's no need to have them on defence. If I could run supports now on attack only I'd be skipping a to less Chasm. I could punch up a bit too. It would be faster.

@GrimSkald said:
While this is definitely the sort of thing they need to do to put in a 6* tier, I don't think that's necessarily what is happening. They are making the 5* covers more available, and even more possible to get the new 5* characters higher, but to add another tier that's even more rare still seems premature. You'd need to stagger out releases a lot more, I think, which really wouldn't help them with dilution.

Of course 6* are coming. You only need to read the softening of the stance in the Q and A to that question. This is of our own making. Double feeders and quicker access to 5*. This can be done for free. I have almost covered Riri, I don't spend a penny and can keep pace with new releases. With the increased covers from boss events I can do this on LT alone. Without CP which has now grown to 32k.

That is not sustainable. Then you have the comments on re-jig and balance CL10. They stated CL10 will always be the top level but it may need looking at. I can understand why. 6* are inevitable to keep this game alive. How else can they slow down the release rate on 4* and 5*? Also I'm told so many 550 players have quit when they realise there's no challenge there anymore.

I don't want 6* but I've no doubt now they are in the planning. I don't want them for the purely selfish reason I spend nothing and keep pace.

entrailbucket

That stat always blows people's minds because the game is designed to conceal it. They have to keep you chasing, so the game generally forces you to interact only with players at your level and above.

Try looking at other random players' rosters as you start your climb in PvP or as you clear in PvE -- most players (even in scl10) have a lot of one and two cover 5* rostered. Make your alliance public or join a public alliance and look at those rosters, and you'll see the same.

Making 5* more available won't cause those players to start championing 5* -- they're still way too rare and diluted for that. What it will do is cause them to roster more characters, and that is where the game makes its money.

Bowgentle

Yeah the top 1% players - which is what the whole forum is - don't matter.
So what, we'll have an easier time covering 5s, we were going to cover them anyway.
If the top 1000 players save 100 pulls every 3 months, the game as a whole doesn't care.
Meanwhile, 10.000 players had to buy roster slots for the generously given 5s.

Bad

I'm not a 550 player at all, however since some time ago I feel there is not really a challenge for me.
Actually that happens in all gacha games if you invest too much time money or effort and that raises you too high above average players.
I hope BCS could offer good challenges for me.
But a 6* tier would solve that? Nope. A 6* tier doesn't offer absolutely nothing new at all except power creep. They are doing a great work with their 5s. I don't see how releasing a new tier the game would be a lot better, more like the opposite, more ways to mess it up and piss off the majority who is playing this game, the 4 players.

HoundofShadow

6* allows the dev to put 2-3 covers of 5* in pve and pvp progression rewards. This is a natural progression.

And Supports being activated in pvps/pves/boss events for AIs (and players) allow for greater challenges.

entrailbucket

At this point who knows what they're doing with supports. One would think they'd make some efforts to balance them or add more before they expand them to PvP. There's a few supports that are basically "win the game turn 1" and the rest are like "do 10% additional red match damage to villains, on Thursdays between 1am and 2am.". I guess there's nothing stopping them from doing that, but the whole situation with supports is very weird and half-done anyway.

I don't see 6* happening anytime soon. People have been speculating on 6* since about a month after 5* happened. Is it possible? Sure. But the previous regime didn't do it when it made the most sense (when the whales started going extinct and the top 1% all went free to play) so I don't see why they'd do it now. They've already driven off anyone willing to spend thousands on the game, the top players now won't spend at all, and it's really hard to make new whales at this point in the game's lifecycle.

Bad

@HoundofShadow said:
6* allows the dev to put 2-3 covers of 5* in pve and pvp progression rewards. This is a natural progression.

And Supports being activated in pvps/pves/boss events for AIs (and players) allow for greater challenges.

Supports for AI is something players instantly would hate.

2-3 covers for 5s is something cool that we 5 players would appreciate.
But that would mean to 4* players an order to full advance to 5* tier if they want to continue doing something in the game.
They can accept the deal or not. If they don't, there would be a big, big problem (and in 8 years they hadn't).
On the other hand, putting iso on a 6* cover would create the same issue to 4* players than Wolverine 5* pre-nerfed.

Sp1d3r

@HoundofShadow said:
Given that some Supports are broken (those that gives +6ap at the start of the game), they can turn a 5* into a pseudo 6* in pvps and pves. Imagine eating a Skuttlebutt at the start of opponent's turn or watching Apocalypse fire his yellow at the start of his first turn and many other more possibilities. In PvEs, watch a 6XX Green Goblin fire his Glider or a 6XX BRB fire his Skuttlebutt at the start of their turn.

Since Supports seem to be the focus this year, we probably see Supports being activated in pvps at last, which would give us our pseudo 6*.

I fire apocs yellow at the start of the battle I have avengers tower and korg both supports gain yellow ap at the start of the battle(not every time but most if it) it can finish teams off quickly 😁

KGB

I've long advocated for PvP supports that are separate from the PvE ones we have now.

These new PvP supports would have only 2 powers, one on offense (ie when player is controlling the team) and one on defense (when the AI is controlling your team).

This way they could introduce new supports and make sure they are balanced for PvP play. You'd have to decide whether you were going to equip supports that help you more on offense or defense (assuming you care at all about defense which most players don't).

KGB

Grizwald

@Omegased said:

Double feeders are going to be a Thing.
I'm on the fence with this one. 12 covers without pulling a LL or CL? that's a bit easy.

I'm on day 2306 and only just maxed out my first 4* a few months ago. That involved that 4* being my favorite target for close to two years. My next highest is at 343. Having two 4* feed someone is still going to take a long time to get to thirteen covers. It will be faster to just target that 5* and pull tokens instead.

HoundofShadow

On the other hand, I've at least five 4* max champed and I'm on day 1832. I've spent zero dollar on this game for my main and I'm not in any top 100 or better alliance.

Ultimately, it depends on how competitive players choose to play. If you want the dev to lower the bar for casual or full progression players, then it's another story.

Sekilicious

I would be interested to know where everyone thinks ‘endgame’ is. As a 5* player with eight meta champions (and 4 non-meta lacking iso) I still consider myself mid game.

HoundofShadow

End Game is when all the characters you want to play are champed and you can afford to miss partial or entire pves/pvps without any significant hit to your CP/LTs income. I would say I've reached the end-game and I haven't been playing MPQ competitively for about two weeks thanks to the dev's generosity. As a matter of fact, I've been doing DDQ, one-off event, a little pves and some pvps for the past two weeks. I've fully covered over 80% of the 5* and the rest of the partially covered non-latest 5* don't matter to me anyway. It doesn't matter whether I've champed them or not because they don't interest me greatly.

entrailbucket

@Sekilicious said:
I would be interested to know where everyone thinks ‘endgame’ is. As a 5* player with eight meta champions (and 4 non-meta lacking iso) I still consider myself mid game.

See, this is exactly what I was talking about. Your roster easily puts you in the top 5% of all players, and possibly in the upper half of that group. But you interact only with players at your level or above, so you don't ever notice the massive numbers of players behind you.

Again, this is by design. Why do you think this game has been successful for so long?

Sekilicious

Maybe. I would like to see up-to-date numbers. But being top-5% doesn’t mean I’m end or even late game. It means the majority of the player base doesn’t last long enough to make to my stage. Maybe to be what they are trying to rectify. More people reaching the mid-game.

entrailbucket

The player a few posts above you has been playing for 2300 days and just championed his first 4*.

Edit: Well, I'm an idiot. That player got their first character to 370, not 270.

Let's try this: if the majority of the player base doesn't make it to your stage, doesn't that mean, by definition, that you're at the end game?

Sekilicious

I don’t think so. But then I consider Hound to be late game and you end game.

Bad

By that definition 4* players with soft capped 300 level 5s are at endgame too.
Obviously if gacha games are a marathon and you stop running, you are at the same endgame that those that are running turning around Earth.
There is always more road to run.
Do you have a complete 550 roster? Nice, then max the new 5 release. If you don't want to do it you are at a relative endgame.

entrailbucket

You're just moving the goalposts. That's fine -- that's what the game is specifically designed to make you do. If they didn't force you to move those goalposts constantly you'd have nothing to play for.

Again, someday try looking at other CL10 players' rosters while you climb in PvP, and then consider that CL10 is the highest tier of players. Those players exist -- you can't just pretend they don't count because you don't interact with them.

ThaRoadWarrior

I would say the “endgame” for a treadmill like this one is probably when you pass all the game-defined goals and milestones and have to start creating your own. Your mileage is obviously going to vary here.