Support Shards System

meadowsweet

@Borstock said:
Only been hoarding support tokens a little while, but I have 87-21-8. I hope that amounts to something shiny.

Not to depress you, but I did the simplistic math and if you were to open those 116 tokens (which seemed like a lot to me!) your average return would be:

47.6 Supports at 1★
40.7 Supports at 2★
20.6 Supports at 3★
6.5 Supports at 4★
0.6 Supports at 5★

(spread across 20 different Supports...)

KGB

@meadowsweet said:

@KGB said:
It's not quite as bad as it looks because you collect from multiple categories at once.

Yes, but...

• Support tokens already relatively rare in this game
• Tokens are most commonly Beginner, not Advanced or Master
• Beginner Tokens are usually 1★ (55%) or 2★ (33%)
• Even Master pulls are most likely (62%) to be a 3★ Support
• Most pulls will be low-level duplicates of existing Supports
• Duplicates are spread across 20 Supports at any one time (and 60 & counting total)
• Wildcard payout is halved for maxed duplicates

If I'm trying to max out a Support that's not currently in rotation, I can hoard tokens and wait, but even when it's included, 95% of my pulls are going to be for the other 19 active Supports. Or put another way, to get the 10 duplicates to go just from 1★ to 2★ I would have to make 200 pulls (ignoring the Beginner Token shards.) That is excruciatingly slow progress.

I also think you might be double-counting the wildcard in your comment above. You mention:

• "open a beginner support" = 10
• "get a duplicate" = 10 (20 total)
• and then "unless that's at R5 already in which case you get 5 more wildcard shards" = 5 more, or 25 total (if I'm understanding you correctly?)

But that's not my interpretation of what they wrote. I believe it's two separate scenarios:

1. Open beginner (10 'wild') + 1★ duplicate of non-max Support (10 specific) = 20 shards total
2. Open beginner (10 'wild') + 1★ duplicate of 5★ max Support (5 'wild') = 15 total (all 'wild')

I guess it's good for a whale who already has 60 / 66 Supports maxed out, because they can direct all of their wildcard duplicate shards into a targeted Support of their choosing?

Lets say you hoard 100 beginner tokens and you wait for the support you want to be in rotation (1/20 chance).

If you open those 100 you get 10x100=1000 wildcard shards + you should average 5 pulls (1/20) of the support you want. Those pulls will be 55% R1 (+10) + 33% R2 (+40) + 10% R3 (+90) + 1% R4 (+160) = +29.3 shards on average duplicate or +146 more for 5 duplicates giving you 1146 shards. That's enough to go from R3 to R4 via shards and be somewhat on the way to R5.

Also don't forget the rest of the tokens that weren't the support you wanted (the other 95%) aren't wasted. They too are shards for leveling up those supports (or you acquire the support if you didn't have it). So +146 shards for all the other 19 supports in that group (5 duplicates again on average).

KGB

P.S. What I wrote I must have worded badly in my haste.
1) If you have a support not at R5 and you make a beginner pull you get +10 wildcard shards and AT LEAST +10 more shards for a duplicate support so you get at least 20 per beginner pull (assuming you don't have the support already) and could get as many as +170 if you pull a duplicate R4 (1% chance).
2) If you have a support at R5 and you make a beginner pull you get +10 wildcards and +5 wildcards for a duplicate of a R5 support so +15 wildcards.

P.P.S. One thing we haven't talked about yet but you should NEVER EVER use shards to go from R1 to R2 or R2 to R3. R3 supports are incredibly common (1/10 pulls even from beginner tokens + Puzzle Ops gives guaranteed R3 + some vaults give R3 or even R2 supports). So shards should be only used to go from R3->R5. More importantly, lets say you want to take your Royal Talon Fighter from R3 to R5 and from above we know 100 tokens gives 1146 shards that means you need about 220ish tokens to get 2400 shards (R3->R5). The important part I want to note is that if you've hoarded 220 tokens and you start opening, as soon as you reach 900 shards you should not level up to R4 but instead continue to open until you get all 2400 shards. The reason is if you get really lucky (1/20*1% = 0.0005% chance) and pull the R4 during your token opening your shard requirements are now only 1600 instead of 2400 so you can stop sooner.

DrClever

How fast do people think this process ought to be?

rainkingucd

@DrClever said:
How fast do people think this process ought to be?

I think you know the answer to that question

tupacboy

Let's hope they revamp progression rewards to include some support tokens

DAZ0273

@DrClever said:
How fast do people think this process ought to be?

It took Thanos several years to level up his Infinity Gauntlet so this timeframe seems movie accurate!

Daredevil217

To me this makes sense because supports only have 5 levels to be the equivalent of a 550. Plus rank 3 is guaranteed in time. So really two levels until max champed. So wanting to keep them extremely rare while giving SOMETHING for those wasted pulls seems to make sense.

Tony_Foot

With them going on pvp for defence as well as offence, I want progression to be slower than this! The less of the those new 5* players with decent supports the better!

meadowsweet

@DrClever said:
How fast do people think this process ought to be?

Well there are a couple ways of looking at it:
1. How far along should loyal 10-year players be in leveling up Supports? (granted, Supports were only introduced about 6 years ago)
2. Has the Support leveling system so far been sufficient? If not, should the devs make up for that?
3. Is there any way to retroactively / additionally reward long-time players? (as happened with the introduction of Feeders, for example)
4. Will I have to play for another 10 years to get my Supports to Level 250?
5. How do veteran players feel about being caught or passed by brand-new players in this aspect of the game? How do the new players feel about it? Was this the intention of the developers?

I'm not saying that they "owe me" and all of my Support should be Level 250 by the end of the month. But I've been playing for years and I've opened countless Support tokens and never had a single 5★ support until they just gifted every single player the Chimichanga recently. It does sting a bit that once again I feel like I've "lost out" for not hoarding tokens, that I should always be holding out because there will always be a better deal later that makes me feel like a chump.

Borstock

@meadowsweet said:

@Borstock said:
Only been hoarding support tokens a little while, but I have 87-21-8. I hope that amounts to something shiny.

Not to depress you, but I did the simplistic math and if you were to open those 116 tokens (which seemed like a lot to me!) your average return would be:

47.6 Supports at 1★
40.7 Supports at 2★
20.6 Supports at 3★
6.5 Supports at 4★
0.6 Supports at 5★

(spread across 20 different Supports...)

You're not invited to my birthday party. Neeeeeh.

hferg

@skittledaddy said:
From Discord:

IMO this makes it a pretty worthless system.

Seph1roth5

Nah still a much better way to get a higher rank of support than just hoping you pull it.

meadowsweet

@hferg said:
IMO this makes it a pretty worthless system.

Is that just because you were hoping to use shards to unlock all of the Infinity Stones?

DashBC

Will there be a way to preview what the upgraded stats will be? Kind of like how you can preview powers with 3, 4 or 5 levels?

Heartbreaksoup

This is so incredibly underwhelming. Hopefully there's more to come, because this hasn't been worth a year's wait.

Bowgentle

Glad to see we already have cash offers clearly designed for a system that isn't live yet.
Never change.

Borstock

@Bowgentle said:
Glad to see we already have cash offers clearly designed for a system that isn't live yet.
Never change.

This is my surprised face. Yours is good, too.

Daredevil217

2 Master tokens for 10 bucks?

Not going to lie… I bought it lol.

Bowgentle

Cool, after the update the screen is back to the "broken" Quandary UI, the Killmonger offer is a purple squiggle, and the Jane offer includes FF tokens.
At least the support thing works now.

Drlex

My special vaults are gone! It only has the PvP, PvE, and the tacos.