New Feature - Champions 2.0 (Live with R287)

DrClever

@DAZ0273 said:
Every new thing seems to just make the richer much richer.

Not so much the rich richer, but the richest untouchable.

It's probably best to view it as a piece of satire or a solid preparation for life.

trewiltrewil

@trewiltrewil said:

@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) and the idea of farms does kind of go away (I don't think most player are going to choose to farm over ascend).

I'm excited though, because it means the game on net gives you more choices on how to spend resources, it's not just "grind LTs for the next 5".... now it's "grind LTs for the next 5 and use extra resources to do things you want to do".

entrailbucket

@Crowl said:

@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.

Only 3% of players have a character lvl450 or higher. The VAST majority of players in this game are what you describe as "very early on."

KGB

@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.

Unless you want to ascend a WHOLE bunch of characters in parallel, you won't need to buy a lot of slots.

For example lets say you want to Ascend 3* Iron Man. You buy 1 more slot and get 13 covers then ascend him to 4* level. At that point you free up a slot which you can then use to ascend say 3* Scarlet Witch. Once you get 13 covers of her, you ascend and move on to the next 3*.

The only time you'll need more than 1 more slot is when ascending multiple characters at a time (or if you ever wanted to take that 3* Iron man to 5* level in which case you will eventually need 2 maxed 4* versions of him but again, once he hits 5*, that 2nd max 4 slot frees up).

KGB

Bowgentle

@entrailbucket said:

@Crowl said:

@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.

Only 3% of players have a character lvl450 or higher. The VAST majority of players in this game are what you describe as "very early on."

You'll roll this statistic out for the next 12 years, won't you.

DAZ0273

It should qualified though that we don't know the total amount of players that the 3% applies to. If it is 1 million total players, then 30,000 of them have a 450...

Bowgentle

@DAZ0273 said:
It should qualified though that we don't know the total amount of players that the 3% applies to. If it is 1 million total players, then 30,000 of them have a 450...

Don't bring reason into his statistic!
Then you'd have to include non-casual players too, according to BCS' definition, and Bucket's 3% unravels at the seams.

entrailbucket

@Bowgentle said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Crowl said:

@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.

Only 3% of players have a character lvl450 or higher. The VAST majority of players in this game are what you describe as "very early on."

You'll roll this statistic out for the next 12 years, won't you.

It's SO useful though! The game does such a good job of hiding everyone from us (and hiding us from everyone) that people seriously think the entire playerbase is composed of us.

DAZ0273

@KGB 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.

Unless you want to ascend a WHOLE bunch of characters in parallel, you won't need to buy a lot of slots.

For example lets say you want to Ascend 3* Iron Man. You buy 1 more slot and get 13 covers then ascend him to 4* level. At that point you free up a slot which you can then use to ascend say 3* Scarlet Witch. Once you get 13 covers of her, you ascend and move on to the next 3*.

The only time you'll need more than 1 more slot is when ascending multiple characters at a time (or if you ever wanted to take that 3* Iron man to 5* level in which case you will eventually need 2 maxed 4* versions of him but again, once he hits 5*, that 2nd max 4 slot frees up).

KGB

I think I read somewhere that you'll need something like 8 slots in total to get to 5* tier from 1*? Dunno. It is overly complicated and I will wait and see in practice if I decide to monkey around with it. It isn't something that is going to be bothering me come launch day, lol!

The point is I don't think the game needed to go this route. I completely understand why it is doing it but I don't have to like it.

entrailbucket

@DAZ0273 said:
It should qualified though that we don't know the total amount of players that the 3% applies to. If it is 1 million total players, then 30,000 of them have a 450...

The specific number doesn't matter as much as the general direction. We are a tiny minority, that's what matters.

DAZ0273

@entrailbucket said:

@Bowgentle said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Crowl said:

@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.

Only 3% of players have a character lvl450 or higher. The VAST majority of players in this game are what you describe as "very early on."

You'll roll this statistic out for the next 12 years, won't you.

It's SO useful though! The game does such a good job of hiding everyone from us (and hiding us from everyone) that people seriously think the entire playerbase is composed of us.

All 30,000 of you!

Bowgentle

@entrailbucket said:

@Bowgentle said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Crowl said:

@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.

Only 3% of players have a character lvl450 or higher. The VAST majority of players in this game are what you describe as "very early on."

You'll roll this statistic out for the next 12 years, won't you.

It's SO useful though! The game does such a good job of hiding everyone from us (and hiding us from everyone) that people seriously think the entire playerbase is composed of us.

But the 3% is misleading.
It's, what was it, 10% of the people who stick around for more than 60 days?
That's a much more significant number I think.

entrailbucket

@DAZ0273 said:

@KGB 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.

Unless you want to ascend a WHOLE bunch of characters in parallel, you won't need to buy a lot of slots.

For example lets say you want to Ascend 3* Iron Man. You buy 1 more slot and get 13 covers then ascend him to 4* level. At that point you free up a slot which you can then use to ascend say 3* Scarlet Witch. Once you get 13 covers of her, you ascend and move on to the next 3*.

The only time you'll need more than 1 more slot is when ascending multiple characters at a time (or if you ever wanted to take that 3* Iron man to 5* level in which case you will eventually need 2 maxed 4* versions of him but again, once he hits 5*, that 2nd max 4 slot frees up).

KGB

I think I read somewhere that you'll need something like 8 slots in total to get to 5* tier from 1*? Dunno. It is overly complicated and I will wait and see in practice if I decide to monkey around with it. It isn't something that is going to be bothering me come launch day, lol!

The point is I don't think the game needed to go this route. I completely understand why it is doing it but I don't have to like it.

I think all of us are spending WAY too much time worrying about taking 1* and 2* to 550, and not nearly enough time thinking about what 550 Polaris or America Chavez will look like. Those guys are significantly more achievable and (probably) significantly more useful.

entrailbucket

@Bowgentle said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Bowgentle said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Crowl said:

@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.

Only 3% of players have a character lvl450 or higher. The VAST majority of players in this game are what you describe as "very early on."

You'll roll this statistic out for the next 12 years, won't you.

It's SO useful though! The game does such a good job of hiding everyone from us (and hiding us from everyone) that people seriously think the entire playerbase is composed of us.

But the 3% is misleading.
It's, what was it, 10% of the people who stick around for more than 60 days?
That's a much more significant number I think.

It's still a minority. The one guy who was fighting with me on here months ago said it was like 80%!

DAZ0273

@entrailbucket said:

@DAZ0273 said:
It should qualified though that we don't know the total amount of players that the 3% applies to. If it is 1 million total players, then 30,000 of them have a 450...

The specific number doesn't matter as much as the general direction. We are a tiny minority, that's what matters.

Dude - 30,000 players is not an insignificant amount of people! Unfortunately without context that 3% can be really small, actually quite large or anywhere in-between.

Bowgentle

@entrailbucket said:

@Bowgentle said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Bowgentle said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Crowl said:

@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.

Only 3% of players have a character lvl450 or higher. The VAST majority of players in this game are what you describe as "very early on."

You'll roll this statistic out for the next 12 years, won't you.

It's SO useful though! The game does such a good job of hiding everyone from us (and hiding us from everyone) that people seriously think the entire playerbase is composed of us.

But the 3% is misleading.
It's, what was it, 10% of the people who stick around for more than 60 days?
That's a much more significant number I think.

It's still a minority. The one guy who was fighting with me on here months ago said it was like 80%!

Oh I agree it's a minority, but it's not quite so small as the 3% makes it out to be.

DAZ0273

@entrailbucket said:

@DAZ0273 said:

@KGB 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.

Unless you want to ascend a WHOLE bunch of characters in parallel, you won't need to buy a lot of slots.

For example lets say you want to Ascend 3* Iron Man. You buy 1 more slot and get 13 covers then ascend him to 4* level. At that point you free up a slot which you can then use to ascend say 3* Scarlet Witch. Once you get 13 covers of her, you ascend and move on to the next 3*.

The only time you'll need more than 1 more slot is when ascending multiple characters at a time (or if you ever wanted to take that 3* Iron man to 5* level in which case you will eventually need 2 maxed 4* versions of him but again, once he hits 5*, that 2nd max 4 slot frees up).

KGB

I think I read somewhere that you'll need something like 8 slots in total to get to 5* tier from 1*? Dunno. It is overly complicated and I will wait and see in practice if I decide to monkey around with it. It isn't something that is going to be bothering me come launch day, lol!

The point is I don't think the game needed to go this route. I completely understand why it is doing it but I don't have to like it.

I think all of us are spending WAY too much time worrying about taking 1* and 2* to 550, and not nearly enough time thinking about what 550 Polaris or America Chavez will look like. Those guys are significantly more achievable and (probably) significantly more useful.

They will look like nerfed judging on what the first post said I would expect. I saw a comment on Discord by Ice where he said they might need to nerf the entire 4* tier. He could of course have been joking.

GrimSkald

@meadowsweet said:
So I've probably screwed up my maths somewhere, but I was trying to work out how many total covers (or shard equivalents) it would take in order to level up a character all the way to 550:

5★: 113 covers
(straightforward: 13 covers to champ, 100 covers to max champ)

4★: 526 covers
(13+113=126 4★ Binding, 1x4x100=400 5★ Ascension)

3★: 952 covers
(2x13+2x113=252 3★ Bindings, 1x3x100=300 4★ Ascension, 1x4x100=400 5★ Ascension)

2★: 1,404 covers
(4x13+4x63=304 2★ Bindings, 2x2x100=400 3★ Ascensions, 1x3x100=300 4★ Ascension, 1x4x100=400 5★ Ascension)

1★ (3 Powers): 1,508 covers
(16x13=208 1★ Bindings, 4x1x50=200 2★ Ascensions, 2x2x100=400 3★ Ascensions, 1x3x100=300 4★ Ascension, 1x4x100=400 5★ Ascension)

1★ (2 Powers): 1,460 covers
(16x10=160 1★ Bindings, 4x1x50=200 2★ Ascensions, 2x2x100=400 3★ Ascensions, 1x3x100=300 4★ Ascension, 1x4x100=400 5★ Ascension)

[Legend: "4x1x50=200 2★ Ascensions" means you have to upgrade (4) characters at an 'exchange rate' of (1) cover per level through (50) total levels, at a cost of (200) covers.]

It is odd that the 'exchange rate' at the 5★ tier is 4 covers per 1 level, regardless of whether you're talking about a 4★ character or a 2★ character. Given how much more common 2★ covers are than 4★ covers (and the fact that they're divided amongst many fewer 2★ characters), a 2★ character will fly from level 450 to level 550 in a tiny fraction of the time that it will take the 4★ character.

Anyway, feel free to let me know what I got wrong!

Ok, this math is really interesting, and to give us all a little perspective I went and updated my spreadsheet which had some math artifacts left over from the early days so my pull counts were probably not accurate. So I've been playing since... I think around April or May the first year? I distinctly remember the first Anniversary, so I've definitely been playing for a while. I've never played at a super high level, but I play every day and typically get top 50-100 for PVE, and 10-25 for PVP (at least now.) My Season totals have largely been top 100, though lately I've hit top 25.

So here's what I got -

I stopped tracking 1★ s earlier this year because it's super tedious, but my totals are in the 2.5 to 4K range.

My total 2★ pulls over the course of 10 years are pretty tight - 3.25 to just over 4K. That's total over 10 years - so roughly three times what I would need to get a 2★ to 550, but that's assuming I've been hoarding for years.

My total 3★ pulls, not counting the recent releases, are in the 400-500 range, so less than what I'd need for a 550, and that's total over 10 years. By way of comparison, Arcade is at 123 so he'd be 4★ material already, but only if I didn't want to "double dip" on his rewards (not quite anyway,) and certainly a long, long way from 5* hood.

4★s are all over the place, of course, but I can tell you I've sold most my double max champs since they were characters like Captain Marvel, Peggy Carter, Goddess Thor, and Miles Morales (ouch!) back when Roster slots cost 3k. I believe I've hit 370 more than once on roughly 6-7 characters, so to be honest my highest 4★ , if this system had been in place from day one, would probably be in the 480-490 range.

So yeah, perspective. I think very few people will promote their 3★ to 5★ for some time, and the 4★ to 5★ pipeline will exist, but we won't see 550s for a really long time...

As people point out, it does mean Polaris will be up there, but hey, she has very few hit points at any level...

DrClever

@KGB said:
For example lets say you want to Ascend 3* Iron Man. You buy 1 more slot and get 13 covers then ascend him to 4* level. At that point you free up a slot which you can then use to ascend say 3* Scarlet Witch. Once you get 13 covers of her, you ascend and move on to the next 3*.

Unless you also want to have 3* Iron Man.

And I guess it's likely that one might want to ascend the most useful characters from each level which would probably mean retaining them at their original level.

DAZ0273

@entrailbucket said:

@Bowgentle said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Bowgentle said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Crowl said:

@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.

Only 3% of players have a character lvl450 or higher. The VAST majority of players in this game are what you describe as "very early on."

You'll roll this statistic out for the next 12 years, won't you.

It's SO useful though! The game does such a good job of hiding everyone from us (and hiding us from everyone) that people seriously think the entire playerbase is composed of us.

But the 3% is misleading.
It's, what was it, 10% of the people who stick around for more than 60 days?
That's a much more significant number I think.

It's still a minority. The one guy who was fighting with me on here months ago said it was like 80%!

What if though that 3% increases to say 20% when you count actual active players who meet the Devs level of not being "casual" - as I said without context 3% is meaningless. If Bill Gates and I lose 3% of our income in a scam, Bill is gonna be much much more upset than I am believe me!