After 1 Year and $1200 this is what I got

entrailbucket

@Bowgentle said:
Funniest part is, like half of the current posters are current or ex-Dorm.

How dare you

bbigler

If I ever came back to play again, I would start a 4th roster and commit to only spending $10 a month on VIP. Since ascended 1-stars would level up faster than everyone else, it would be interesting to fight tough battles with them. I would still champ 5-stars, but would they be at lower levels? That roster building would be interesting to see. And since I wouldn’t spend money buying roster slots, I may not be in a constant ISO shortage, which would be very nice. Plus, my precious “few” slots would go to the new characters because you naturally get more covers for them, which may force me to play a variety of characters and not just the classic metas.

But I would bet that if I posted my progress after a year someone would criticize it by saying that buying VIP every month bought my success. Even if I didn’t spend anything, someone would say that playing 3 hrs per day is not normal or reasonable. And even if I reduced my play time and spent nothing but still got a good roster after a year, someone would still try to “write off” my success with luck.

Daredevil217

What I believe impacts progress.

In order I’d say:

1. Prior knowledge/ understanding how to min max this game. Having several past accounts, knowing about LINE, understanding the meta at the end game, knowing about farming, etc. is not something a new 2* player will begin to understand.
2. Time spent. Even if you’re a “bad player” you’ll progress just logging on 5 hours a day.
3. Timing. I’m not talking PVE clears. I mean did you enter the 5* at a time when there was a meta-changing character? Or did you happen to enter with Miles, Peggy, and Vulture. Big big difference.
4. Era. Yeah dilution is worse than ever in the current era, but it is easier than ever to target specific characters thanks to shards, increase to bonus shards, special stores, and increases to rewards in general. Since you really only need a handful of characters to compete in pve, chase them while ignoring others and you’ll be fine. And in PvP if you are playing 5 hours a day you clearly can just chase wins and don’t even need the meta.
5. Money. Money is HUGE in the early game and much less important once your roster is established. But holding onto as many covers as you can is great for farming as well as access to essential nodes.

But more important to the factors that contribute to success is how you define success. Interesting that the OP measures it by resources and 5* covers gained. This is not uncommon. Others may measure success not by the number of characters champed, but by how well they are able to place in PVE/PVP. For others, the less time they spend playing the game, the greater the success (I shave 20 seconds off my clear times!). Or… maybe success could be defined by actually enjoying the game. If you spend large sums of money and grind to the point it’s a second job, it can lead to high levels of burnout. I’ve played for 8 years and have really loved the game during that time. I consider slow progression that I’ve enjoyed to be way more of a “success” than if I were to pack 8 years worth of playing into a fourth of the time. I also just got back to back T1 finishes in PVE. And as cool as that is, if I was not enjoying the game that “success” would mean nothing to me. But that’s me. The one thing I love about this game is you really can create your own fun/goals depending on what you value.

bbigler

@Daredevil217 I agree with you. Success can be measured in different ways and luck is a factor to success and ultimately people can play however they want … and no one is justified in telling them they’re doing it wrong. And it’s natural to think “if I can do it then anyone can do it”. Unfortunately, when things are subjective like how much does skill, work, resources and luck affect your “success” in the game, we can argue ad nauseum about that.

Here’s something to consider if anyone wants to start over like I did:

• Taking a break in the middle slowed down my progress
• I didn’t get 1-Star and 2-Star ascension rewards until the very end.
• I didn’t get the increased Bonus shards until my last 4 months
• I didn’t get more support tokens until my last 2 months (Boss Heroic events)
• Anniversary gave me a 1 month ISO boost

So, if someone started over right now and put in the same number of hours and money, they would likely build a better roster than
mine. The point is that the game continues to change and give out more rewards as time goes on. I’ve played this game off and on since November 2013, so I’ve seen all the improvements each year. It certainly accommodates new players, which is actually vital to their business.

bbigler

@Daredevil217 one more thing….you said …

3. Timing. I’m not talking PVE clears. I mean did you enter the 5* at a time when there was a meta-changing character? Or did you happen to enter with Miles, Peggy, and Vulture. Big big difference.

Meta breaking characters come along every 6 months or so. And the others in between them aren’t that bad, meaning good enough to win PVP battles. Perhaps you’ll need a health pack, but those are free every 35 min. From what I’ve seen, this can be done with any set of Latest 5-stars. Let’s say I missed Shang in Latest, what would have I done?

Ultron - I would have paired him with Polaris to produce and buff strikes every turn, and then they both hit harder. Plus I would have a stun on blue and black. Add in Valkyrie, and you have a legit stun lock team that can hit above their weight.

Gamora - I would have paired her with Valkyrie to frequently hit with Gamora’s red AOE. Plus, Gamora’s yellow is effective at taking down the Steel-Witch duo. And since her colors overlap Apoc, she could take him down too. Add in Melinda as a 3rd and you have a legit PVE clearing team.

Sersi - I would have paired her with Ultron to either be very defensive with buffed protects or very offensive with buffed strikes. I could pair her with 3*Kamala for a winfinite. She could even work with Gamora, choking purple, producing red strikes, and feeding Gamora red for her AOE.

Big Wheel - He could work with Sersi since she’s designed for cascades.

Crystal - I could have paired her with Abby for a defensive health burst team, or with Ultron to double buff specials, or with Gamora to have 3 cheap hits on black, yellow and green.

VenomRex - I would have paired him with IM40, which feeds his 3 powers.

Vulture - I would have paired him with Gamora for rainbow coverage and to feed her powers. Or with Valkyrie for an airborne lock.

Goose - there are certainly ways to exploit her powers. Pair with Valkyrie to make her invincible for the entire battle. Pair with Nico to buff her strikes.

Need I go on? There are always ways to use the Latest 5-stars to win battles. No matter what, I could have always played to 25 or 50 wins, ignoring my rank. As for PVE, it took me 7 months to reach rank 120 and be eligible for SCL10. By that time, I could have favorited a Classic meta, like Shang, to win those tough battles.

bbigler

@entrailbucket said:
Money actually CAN buy success in this game, but I've only seen it happen once. It takes such an obscene, ridiculous amount of money that nobody in their right mind would ever do it.

I suppose what I enjoy the most is speed-running the game, which is why I was willing to spend the maximum I was comfortable with (1% of my income) in order to run through it as fast as possible. Of course, there’s still more path to run, but I’m tired now and need a break. And if I did this again (which I don’t plan to), I would want the experience to be different.

entrailbucket

@bbigler said:

@entrailbucket said:
Money actually CAN buy success in this game, but I've only seen it happen once. It takes such an obscene, ridiculous amount of money that nobody in their right mind would ever do it.

I suppose what I enjoy the most is speed-running the game, which is why I was willing to spend the maximum I was comfortable with (1% of my income) in order to run through it as fast as possible. Of course, there’s still more path to run, but I’m tired now and need a break. And if I did this again (which I don’t plan to), I would want the experience to be different.

No, I just saw somebody say that money can't buy MPQ success. It can, and it actually has, at least once that I know of. But you have to do things (like spending tens of thousands of dollars on iso) that nobody will or should ever do.

Bowgentle

@entrailbucket said:

@bbigler said:

@entrailbucket said:
Money actually CAN buy success in this game, but I've only seen it happen once. It takes such an obscene, ridiculous amount of money that nobody in their right mind would ever do it.

I suppose what I enjoy the most is speed-running the game, which is why I was willing to spend the maximum I was comfortable with (1% of my income) in order to run through it as fast as possible. Of course, there’s still more path to run, but I’m tired now and need a break. And if I did this again (which I don’t plan to), I would want the experience to be different.

No, I just saw somebody say that money can't buy MPQ success. It can, and it actually has, at least once that I know of. But you have to do things (like spending tens of thousands of dollars on iso) that nobody will or should ever do.

With ISO included in most offers these days, the cost to buy success is now significantly lower.
Just keep buying all the chains with 15+ tokens and CP and you're set.

Bad

@bbigler said:

Need I go on? There are always ways to use the Latest 5-stars to win battles. No matter what, I could have always played to 25 or 50 wins, ignoring my rank. As for PVE, it took me 7 months to reach rank 120 and be eligible for SCL10. By that time, I could have favorited a Classic meta, like Shang, to win those tough battles.

Ultron is bad. Really bad. And the others characters you mentioned are in the same direction (gamora and sersi). A direction where I don't see them even when boosted.
If you want to play for wins that's great because with teams like those actually there's no other way to play pvp as they will hit you without mercy.
If you enjoy experiencing pvp teams that's great too. But effective and competitive pvp characters are already well known and there's no others no matter how you think they could work.

ThaRoadWarrior

For me, success meant getting ahead of the release schedule without having to buy my way there. The game offered me a path to do that without spending, and that was the challenge I chose to accept.

Daredevil217

@Bad said:

@bbigler said:

Need I go on? There are always ways to use the Latest 5-stars to win battles. No matter what, I could have always played to 25 or 50 wins, ignoring my rank. As for PVE, it took me 7 months to reach rank 120 and be eligible for SCL10. By that time, I could have favorited a Classic meta, like Shang, to win those tough battles.

Ultron is bad. Really bad. And the others characters you mentioned are in the same direction (gamora and sersi). A direction where I don't see them even when boosted.
If you want to play for wins that's great because with teams like those actually there's no other way to play pvp as they will hit you without mercy.
If you enjoy experiencing pvp teams that's great too. But effective and competitive pvp characters are already well known and there's no others no matter how you think they could work.

That’s why I put “time” at number 2 and “timing” at number 3. You can take any set of LL including the current one and grind out 50 wins. Most players I know prefer not to spend 5-6 hours per day on something that can take them a fraction of that. But if you are willing to dedicate a fourth of your day to this game then yes, it’s true it doesn’t matter who is in latest when you pull.

bbigler

@Bad You missed the point, but @Daredevil217 explained it. Any set of LL can grind out wins, and since there’s little difference in rank rewards, it wouldn’t significantly slow down your roster building.

I’ve played all of my champed 5-stars by choice. I’ve used Ultron with Polaris and Valkyrie to beat the SCL10 Challenge Node against 650s. I’ve used Sersi and 3Kamala and Quake to also beat the CN. I’ve even used Moon Knight with Valkyrie and Melinda to beat the other hard nodes. I could have used Shang for every battle (and I did) but that eventually got boring.

Bad

@bbigler said:
@Bad You missed the point, but @Daredevil217 explained it. Any set of LL can grind out wins, and since there’s little difference in rank rewards, it wouldn’t significantly slow down your roster building.

I’ve played all of my champed 5-stars by choice. I’ve used Ultron with Polaris and Valkyrie to beat the SCL10 Challenge Node against 650s. I’ve used Sersi and 3Kamala and Quake to also beat the CN. I’ve even used Moon Knight with Valkyrie and Melinda to beat the other hard nodes. I could have used Shang for every battle (and I did) but that eventually got boring.

Are you talking to someone who started fighting his 5* champed roster with kingping pre rebalanced isn't it?
And who has made many videos and posted it in YouTube beating CN nodes with MK, sersi, cyclops, B Wheel, Heimdall, emma frost, deathlock, abygail, etc...
I think the one missing the point is you.
Of course you can beat anything given the easy difficulty of the game with any LL. But you'll be playing suboptimally and wasting a big amount of resources for your decision.

bbigler

@Bad You can’t take criticism, can you? I’ll try explaining this again……

This isn’t a choice. A new player can’t choose how good the LL are when they start, so they can’t choose to play any more optimally. And I’ve learned from my restarts that you can build your roster faster by opening LL tokens immediately instead of waiting for a new meta breaking 5-star to come along. So, it’s not a waste of resources to use “sub-optimal” 5-stars. And once your farms produce enough LT and CP regularly, you’ll be champing all Latest Legends no matter how good or bad they are. It only took 7 months for my roster to get to that point, and then those farms just kept getting better. You could say that these farms are the true power of the game.

So, jumping into LL immediately in order to build your roster as fast as possible is the optimal way, regardless if any of those LL are meta. Meta characters will only make your battles easier and faster, and if you play them right, they can improve your rank. But since there’s little difference between rank reward tiers, they won’t make a significant difference in building up your roster.

Daredevil217

@bbigler said:
@Bad You can’t take criticism, can you? I’ll try explaining this again……

This isn’t a choice. A new player can’t choose how good the LL are when they start, so they can’t choose to play any more optimally. And I’ve learned from my restarts that you can build your roster faster by opening LL tokens immediately instead of waiting for a new meta breaking 5-star to come along. So, it’s not a waste of resources to use “sub-optimal” 5-stars. And once your farms produce enough LT and CP regularly, you’ll be champing all Latest Legends no matter how good or bad they are. It only took 7 months for my roster to get to that point, and then those farms just kept getting better. You could say that these farms are the true power of the game.

So, jumping into LL immediately in order to build your roster as fast as possible is the optimal way, regardless if any of those LL are meta. Meta characters will only make your battles easier and faster, and if you play them right, they can improve your rank. But since there’s little difference between rank reward tiers, they won’t make a significant difference in building up your roster.

I think this is a fair point and I really like what I bolded. That is helpful advice for new folks.

I think the point of contention between you and Bad is that you are defining “success” differently. If you can get the shiny resource no matter how long it takes, that’s success. Bad is claiming that real success is not about winning, but winning fast. This is why I wrote what I did about how do you define success, because you likely won’t see eye to eye if you’re coming at it with different goals.

Put another way- say someone argues “it would take 4 years for a new player to be competitive in the end game! I can’t recommend it to someone just starting!”. And you come along and are competitive in a year. Sure it proves that a new player can do it. But someone could make the argument that you packed 4 years worth of time and money into a year, lol. I get everyone’s situations are different, but if you think the average person spends 8 hours work/ 8 hours sleep / 8 hours free time- then 6 hours of MPQ is 75% of that last chunk. That’s a really big ask alone before factoring money into the equation.

Just food for thought. Definitely not trying to discredit the hard work you put in. If anything it’s impressive.

Personally I held myself back and soft-capped for a long time because I didn’t want my 4s to be obsolete. Clearly I would’ve been handicapping myself based on your goals, but given my own goals I was playing “successfully”.

bbigler

@Daredevil217 I agree with your points. Old players are not concerned with building up their roster / farms, but focus on getting the best characters and supports possible (unless they’re casual old players). But I also think old players have forgotten what it’s like to build up their roster and their old strategies from 5+ yrs ago no longer apply.

I never recommended that new players should spend 5-6 hrs per day on the game. I agree that’s not healthy, which is why I quit. But keep in mind that only 2-3 hrs of that time was doing battles. The other half was consumed reading and responding to posts on the forum and in LINE, plus opening tokens, applying covers, switching favorite shards to maximize rewards, researching characters and combos, and generally making plans and goals for the week. I could have cut out the social aspect of the game to spend less time, but talking about the game may be just as interesting as playing it. If you want my official recommendation for new players, here it is:

Hear Ye! Hear Ye! All new players who wish to build their roster as fast as possible without spending too much time, money or effort:

1) Play PVE nodes to full progression rewards but no more. Don’t worry about your speed or clearing order either. Just play for fun.
2) Play PVP events to 25 wins but no more. Don’t worry about attacks or your rank or buying shields. Just play for fun.
3) Buy VIP for $10 per month, which gives you some great rewards, slightly faster healing and most importantly Bonus rewards in PVE. Ignore all other offers.
4) Join a good alliance, which also gives you lots of great alliance rewards.
5) Don’t hoard resources; build your main fighters and farms at the same time.
6) Focus your favorite shards on getting the best “meta” characters
7) Don’t spend too much time chatting about the game, but it’s useful to learn the meta characters and teams.
8) Play Lightning Rounds if you have time, but don’t worry about missing them.

Daredevil217

@bbigler said:
@Daredevil217 I agree with your points. Old players are not concerned with building up their roster / farms, but focus on getting the best characters and supports possible (unless they’re casual old players). But I also think old players have forgotten what it’s like to build up their roster and their old strategies from 5+ yrs ago no longer apply.

I never recommended that new players should spend 5-6 hrs per day on the game. I agree that’s not healthy, which is why I quit. But keep in mind that only 2-3 hrs of that time was doing battles. The other half was consumed reading and responding to posts on the forum and in LINE, plus opening tokens, applying covers, switching favorite shards to maximize rewards, researching characters and combos, and generally making plans and goals for the week. I could have cut out the social aspect of the game to spend less time, but talking about the game may be just as interesting as playing it. If you want my official recommendation for new players, here it is:

Hear Ye! Hear Ye! All new players who wish to build their roster as fast as possible without spending too much time, money or effort:

1) Play PVE nodes to full progression rewards but no more. Don’t worry about your speed or clearing order either. Just play for fun.
2) Play PVP events to 25 wins but no more. Don’t worry about attacks or your rank or buying shields. Just play for fun.
3) Buy VIP for $10 per month, which gives you some great rewards, slightly faster healing and most importantly Bonus rewards in PVE. Ignore all other offers.
4) Join a good alliance, which also gives you lots of great alliance rewards.
5) Don’t hoard resources; build your main fighters and farms at the same time.
6) Focus your favorite shards on getting the best “meta” characters
7) Don’t spend too much time chatting about the game, but it’s useful to learn the meta characters and teams.
8) Play Lightning Rounds if you have time, but don’t worry about missing them.

I think everything but #5 is pretty much conventional wisdom that the “old heads” would agree with. And even number 5 is something many would agree with, it’s just not as universal as the other 7 points.

What is your take on investing in classics versus latests for a new player? Especially now that the odds have been increased on top of the lower price point?

mani82

@BriMan2222 said:

@HowDoIUnlockBatman said:
No, what makes OP wrong is that his experience didn't take place within the last year, whereas mine did. Do you think he favourited the five stars he has champed or do you think it may be slightly more possible he pulled those covers when they were in latest legends, consecutively over a period of six months from sep21 onwards?

He literally says Shang chi was in latest the post above mine. Do you even read peoples posts or are you just waiting to jump on new members to flex your mod powers that nobody cares about?

You've pretty much just proved the point why i don't want to interact with you people in the game. I said nothing about the forum did i? I just don't want to have to shield 24/7 to prevent the constant attacks from whichever of the discord/line clique I've offended today.

If you're worried about forumites attacking you in game, I think you've vastly over-estimated our power and our level of care. There's like 20 of us that are active here, and I really don't think any of us would go to the lengths to find out what slice you play pvp and then try to manipulate MMR to find you repeatedly. Even if somone was offended enough to want to do that, I think there's like 2 people here who would know how
@BriMan2222 said:

@HowDoIUnlockBatman said:
No, what makes OP wrong is that his experience didn't take place within the last year, whereas mine did. Do you think he favourited the five stars he has champed or do you think it may be slightly more possible he pulled those covers when they were in latest legends, consecutively over a period of six months from sep21 onwards?

He literally says Shang chi was in latest the post above mine. Do you even read peoples posts or are you just waiting to jump on new members to flex your mod powers that nobody cares about?

You've pretty much just proved the point why i don't want to interact with you people in the game. I said nothing about the forum did i? I just don't want to have to shield 24/7 to prevent the constant attacks from whichever of the discord/line clique I've offended today.

If you're worried about forumites attacking you in game, I think you've vastly over-estimated our power and our level of care. There's like 20 of us that are active here, and I really don't think any of us would go to the lengths to find out what slice you play pvp and then try to manipulate MMR to find you repeatedly. Even if somone was offended enough to want to do that, I think there's like 2 people here who would know how to do that.

Who are those two people pls enlighten we can stay quite without offending them

Bowgentle

You'll notice when you get 12 reds from them.

bbigler

@Daredevil217 That’s an excellent question about Classic tokens; should new players open classics for PVE required characters OR obtain Classic 5s through feeders and PVE shards?

If you noticed from my stats, I got 59 out of 89 5-stars, which is 66% of the tier. I did that without opening Classics (well, I pulled
maybe 10 times). I was surprised at how many covers/shards I was getting for the Classic 5-stars without pulling Classics. Plus, I would rather champ the Latest 5s instead of a bunch of 1-cover 5s that each need a roster slot. But the increased odds in Classics with the lower price is more useful later in the game.

So, I think the best course of action is to spend your CP on Latest until your farms produce enough LT to champ Latest without CP. Then spend CP on Classics. As for the meta 5s, build them up with favorite shards. That’s how I would do it.