New Feature - Champions 2.0 (Live with R287)

DAZ0273

Likewise I only have 1 max champed 4* and only a smattering of max champed 3* and all my dupes got eaten through by the 3/5 releases so I can't see me doing much with this, especially as the release rate won't slow down. I have one rostered 1* - I might mess around with that on release of this next week but my HP was being aimed at Anniversary, not on spurious roster slots when I already have 300+

I don't really see how this is new player friendly either myself but then the whole thing hurts my head.

rainkingucd

@DAZ0273 said:
Likewise I only have 1 max champed 4* and only a smattering of max champed 3* and all my dupes got eaten through by the 3/5 releases so I can't see me doing much with this, especially as the release rate won't slow down. I have one rostered 1* - I might mess around with that on release of this next week but my HP was being aimed at Anniversary, not on spurious roster slots when I already have 300+

I don't really see how this is new player friendly either myself but then the whole thing hurts my head.

I'm thinking the same. I just rostered a dupe 1* Spider-Man to test it all out, so 1 slot no big deal. I'm not ready to start my 4* yet. Maybe I'll do it with 2* Storm too. And I just maxed out my dupe 3* Iron Man, so I figure I'll test with one of each tier to start.

DrClever

It's not new player friendly unless they start being very very generous with new roster slots.

It looks like fun but as others have said I'm a long way from being able to do anything with it, so I'm looking forward to seeing what the big beasts do with it and to each other.

It looks like the people who might suffer are those playing at the very top level without huge rosters - they might see their peers who have a horde of duped maxed 4*s stealing a march on them.

For some reason softcappers seem concerned - I hope that's not without justification.

slidecage

I didnt read though 10 pages so this mostly Rips people off who hit the 300 slots and had to sell people so they didnt have to buy slots i had around 40 or 50 people i had to sell just so i didnt have to pay 1200 per slot.. i doubt they do retro and give us credit for all of the people we sold

ThaRoadWarrior

Why would they?

DAZ0273

I juggled my roster for so long to try and keep it below 300 but in the end I gave in because the release pace just doesn't stop and I couldn't keep my head above water. If this had been a year ago it would have been different as I had dupe 3's along with max champed 3's aplenty. I only have 9 max champed 3's right now with everybody having been recycled otherwise apart from some of the new 3's still coming up. So yeah - I figured my focus was finishing off the 5* tier not looking downwards. Big joke on me with this, lol!

Bad

It doesn't matter how many dupes you had.
That was before.
Right now things changed for real. If you favorited a character and reached max, logically you changed it in order to have a wider roster. Now that's not needed anymore, and continue growing more and more 3* or 4s once all the other characters are ok to play any event.
Also new boss events have heroic. A wise move would be to study which affiliation you are missing the most and then beginning to ascend a 1 or 2* in order to cover that.

I don't think all pvps will start filling up with 5* ascended characters. If that happens that will be in the long endgame MMRs.
But on time there will be some variety in pvp for sure. And the one having a psylocke 5* i.e of course will have an easy pvp or LR.

DAZ0273

@Bad said:
It doesn't matter how many dupes you had.
That was before.
Right now things changed for real. If you favorited a character and reached max, logically you changed it in order to have a wider roster. Now that's not needed anymore, and continue growing more and more 3* or 4s once all the other characters are ok to play any event.
Also new boss events have heroic. A wise move would be to study which affiliation you are missing the most and then beginning to ascend a 1 or 2* in order to cover that.

I don't think all pvps will start filling up with 5* ascended characters. If that happens that will be in the long endgame MMRs.
But on time there will be some variety in pvp for sure. And the one having a psylocke 5* i.e of course will have an easy pvp or LR.

I have every single character in the game bar the 1* of which I have 1 because it has always been understood that 1* characters are gateway characters and I have been playing 7 years. Every single 4* is champed apart from Negative Man. So I am not suffering from a narrow roster but nobody ever said that keeping copies of max champed characters would become important - so like many I sacrificed them in order to try and champ the 5* - the top tier of the game which presumably was the goal of players advancing. So I am not missing any affiliations, I just don't like being steered in the direction of "You might wanna have at least two of every character".

And it does matter how many dupes you have - that is entirely the point of the new system - don't have a dupe and want to ascend a character - buy a slot. This is all about slots - they could have easily implemented this without any need to have duplicates of the same character but they didn't. It is not hard to understand the path they chose of course and Devs gotta get that gold but it is a bit transparently obvious what this is looking to do. Nothing I can do but either suck it up or get killed by 4* Ares so it is what it is. Simples.

Bad

@DAZ0273 said:

And it does matter how many dupes you have - that is entirely the point of the new system - don't have a dupe and want to ascend a character - buy a slot. This is all about slots - they could have easily implemented this without any need to have duplicates of the same character but they didn't. It is not hard to understand the path they chose of course and Devs gotta get that gold but it is a bit transparently obvious what this is looking to do. Nothing I can do but either suck it up or get killed by 4* Ares so it is what it is. Simples.

Yeah you are here wishing a gacha game doesn't behave like a gacha game. And maybe they could just keep everything the same, repeation behind repeations, and probably endure a lot of years more.
But they choose to work hard and develop the game further more. I applaud them for that. And it's time for them to harvest well earned profits, and for us to adap to.
A 4* Ares won't kill you because it's still a 4*.
But a 5* polaris and BRB are able to do it.
So the race starts now.

DAZ0273

@Bad said:

@DAZ0273 said:

And it does matter how many dupes you have - that is entirely the point of the new system - don't have a dupe and want to ascend a character - buy a slot. This is all about slots - they could have easily implemented this without any need to have duplicates of the same character but they didn't. It is not hard to understand the path they chose of course and Devs gotta get that gold but it is a bit transparently obvious what this is looking to do. Nothing I can do but either suck it up or get killed by 4* Ares so it is what it is. Simples.

Yeah you are here wishing a gacha game doesn't behave like a gacha game. And maybe they could just keep everything the same, repeation behind repeations, and probably endure a lot of years more.
But they choose to work hard and develop the game further more. I applaud them for that. And it's time for them to harvest well earned profits, and for us to adap to.
A 4* Ares won't kill you because it's still a 4*.
But a 5* polaris and BRB are able to do it.
So the race starts now.

If you can quote me directly on this Forum or elsewhere if you like where I said your opening lines above I will let you get away with it, otherwise you are just making assumptions and putting words in peoples mouth and talking nonsense. I never said this game could not advance, change or adapt. In fact it is you who are putting forth the idea that all this game can ever be is a "Gacha game". It can be whatever the Devs want it to be. If I don't like what it becomes then I can also do as I please.

Crowl

@JediJones77 said:
I like the idea of being able to upgrade every character in the game to the same tier. I also play Contest of Champions, and that's basically how that game works. All the same characters exist at each star level, for the most part. It's not done by upgrading from one level to another, but that's beside the point. The main point is, if you like the basic Wolverine character, the same character can be played as a 1-star, 2-star, 3-star, 4-star or 5-star.

The problem with the plan outlined here is the very awkward and confusing mechanics to get this "ascension" done. If this is tough for an end game player to process and absorb, imagine how confusing it is for a newbie joining the game today. The biggest confusion comes in what it will take to ascend a low rarity character, like a 1 or 2-star, up to 5-star. It's like a Russian nesting doll scenario to figure out the steps to taking a 2-star to 5-star. By my math, you'll have to be holding 4 separate roster slots for that character at one point to eventually get it there. That's awkward, complicated and just ugly to look at when you're browsing through your roster.

Why can't this process be simplified? How about all the extra covers for a character just get placed in an "ascension bank" on that character's screen. Then once you get enough covers, you can pay HP to "ascend" them to the next level. First step would be to max the character you have. Then, after that, each new cover goes in the "ascension bank." And when the bank reaches its threshold, you can pay HP to ascend the character. I'm not asking to get them upgraded for free. But rather than paying HP for new roster slots and juggling multiple versions of almost every character in the game on your roster screens (which is even more annoying on the screens where you select characters for fights), let us just keep one copy of the character and pay the equivalent amount in HP as an "ascension fee." It would make this whole process so much easier to learn, understand, explain and execute.

That would be a far more elegant solution than this one they are introducing and would see far more engagement right from the outset as there would be no need to keep hoarding until you have the multiples required. Although it would be better if they took it a step further an opted for something like that CoC approach where ascended characters could still be used at lower star ratings (or just their original one) for those nodes like DDQ require a particular star rating.

Crowl

@entrailbucket said:

@BlackBoltRocks said:
They could reduce the cost of roster slots further.

Or they could, you know, make roster slots gasp free! There's no other game that penalises players for adding to their rosters like MPQ. I don't get penalised for catching as many Pokemon as I can in Arceus or Violet.

They'd have to find some other way to make money. They could probably do this if they didn't have to pay Marvel for the license, but I don't think the game would be as popular without these characters.

Outside of very early on, will that many people actually be spending money to get roster slots though or it it more likely that they earn enough to keep up with demand HP or are forced to sell covers when they can't do so. It seems more likely that those spending real money are doing so for offers/vaults that appeal to them and all that reducing/removing roster costs would do would be to encourage more regular spending elsewhere since they would no longer need to hoard a certain amount to ensure they had enough for their next batch of roster slots.

ThaRoadWarrior

As I’ve been thinking about this, I think reward wise it may actually wash out to being a pretty good deal for 4-5s over time. 5* rewards are on average way better than 4, so if you aren’t concerned about feeder output I think you’ll potentially come out ahead here. The only question is pull rate if you are needing 4x covers to get any resource reward from that character at all, so I guess we’ll have to see. I really don’t see any downside to activating the 1* tier either outside of eventually needing 4x roster slots per character. I have a duplicate Chavez at 318 right now, my highest level dupe. I think I’ll push her to 320 for the JJ shards and then merge them when she becomes part of the mergeable pool. That (I believe) will grant me a ~465 level 5*, and that would put her in the ballpark of my average 5* level. The bulk of my other dupes are either not quite 13 covers or barely champed, so I kind of feel like kicking them to 450 and then just rostering at least a single cover backfill for node access is going to be my strategy at that tier.

MegaBee

My current play style is max champ 'em all, then roster a dupe. That's going to serve me well going into this.

Bad

Feeder concerns were pretty much a thing from the past.
Why do you want 2 or 3 covers of x character when you can have polaris, chavez, valkirye, gorr, deathlok at 460 5* tier?
Just saying.

DrClever

@Tony_Foot said:

I don't know why you would want to go after soft cappers

I don't think it's something the game should incentivise as a strategy - it's the equivalent of dropping back a year at school and bullying the littler kids.

(As always, berate the game, not the player, if you are having fun doing this, more power to you, but don't expect much sympathy if someone else exploits the game mechanisms and you end up with the filthy end of the stick for a change)

Why in hell would I now want to get a 550 or three and end up in sheer hell.

Why would you ever have? I don't see it as much different to the current state of affairs - the people at the top have the resources to stomp on anyone daring to trespass in their demesne.

Let's say the meta becomes 550 Big Wheel, 550 (4) Puck 550 (4) Winter Soldier. There's nothing a 9 year player like me can do to join that meta in any meaningful way.

Yes, same. But how many players could? None that I can currently compete with.

I think even the top of the game where people hoarding for years rather than spending will get annoyed with this level of gatekeeping.

Sorry, I don't get the problem - you acquire and spend resources, you have the things.

Within the grubby capitalist mechanics of the game I don't see any added unfairness from this.

DAZ0273

The roster slot pressure has been increasing since BCS took over so it isn't a complete surprise that this is what is driving this. The surprising thing for me is that they have designed a system that penalises new players in this way, many of whom might not even understand that the elevation bit is optional (although clearly desirable for early players to keep their max covered 1* useful beyond Prologue).

Every new thing seems to just make the richer much richer. I also don't really see that it addresses 4* dilution unless greater access to the legacy 4* is provided beyond the once per month maybe Classic boost.

trewiltrewil

@Tony_Foot said:
I'm hoping (wishful thinking) that they increase token drops for 4* somehow. Better odds on mighty tokens or something to slightly speed up my 4* progression to allow me to play this game where I take 4* to 5*. I play a lot and currently with dilution getting more of a problem in the 4* tier think I'm still 2 years from taking a dupe to 370. I won't take up a 370 and a 270 because I need every feeder cover I can get. Plus I want to double dip rewards.

I think they are going to have to touch the drop economy.... but I think they will do it slowly.

I also think they are probably going to revisit slot cost again and also ISO drop rate as a result. You are going to really need more iso in that low 5* band as a result (not everyone is post iso).

edwar368

Not sure how I feel about this yet, will let it play out. It is obviously a way of extending the game (and keeping the cash flowing), but as a longtime player (am 12th on the Steamladder for worldwide play time) who is a bit of a completionist, and curses every time a new char is released, as I only needed one more for a full set, and now back up to two lol. Plus, I like to have a "wide depth" roster and so only have 1 Championed 5 star as I concentrated (and still am) on raising other 5 stars to max. This new system does favour those who only want to build a tight roster of powerful characters and for me (who already struggles in PVP) I can only see things in the PVP space getting worse, but have to admit, will still almost certainly keep playing

no1amerioca

My alliance was discussing if the ascend would be better suited as a SUPPORT option using red iso instead?