How has Ascension affected the meta?

Daredevil217

I haven’t really seen an impact on the meta yet tbh. My queues are all Colossus, Omega, Chasm, weekly boosted, etc. sometimes the occasional glass cannon (Shang/Jane/Polaris) or the occasional counter left out (Electro/Kittens) probably to fight said Omega Red. I don’t really see 4*s running stuff. So, natural fives with the occasional Polaris (and that’s mostly sim).

Reason? It’s only the 10+ year players/high spenders that are getting these characters high level ascended in a reasonable length of time. The whole “chase everyone”, “everyone is good!” (Not true lol), “don’t go all in” stuff only works if you have the massive resources to do so. Otherwise if you didn’t favorite anyone you’d never 550 anyone. Unless you plan to play for literal years at lower levels and never break into the upper echelon. While there are MANY viable teams/options now, the reality is the natural 5s are just easier to get due to 1:7 odds when featured in stores, and the 1 cover = 1 level versus 4s having 100s of characters diluting the pool, 4s not really getting featured other then occasional increased odds for a bunch (so still diluted) and the crazy 4:1 cover:level ratio.

So it stands to reason that natural fives will still be most of what you encounter when playing PvP because while maybe not as strong as the 4s at the same level, they don’t take years to obtain.

bluewolf

LR engagement is up because it’s one of the only ways for high end players to increase their rate of acquisition of 1* covers - playing pvp more, and the seeds spawn every 2 hours.

1s are now pretty valuable, especially if people bought the 1-5s.

Bowgentle

@Daredevil217 said:
I haven’t really seen an impact on the meta yet tbh. My queues are all Colossus, Omega, Chasm, weekly boosted, etc. sometimes the occasional glass cannon (Shang/Jane/Polaris) or the occasional counter left out (Electro/Kittens) probably to fight said Omega Red. I don’t really see 4*s running stuff. So, natural fives with the occasional Polaris (and that’s mostly sim).

Reason? It’s only the 10+ year players/high spenders that are getting these characters high level ascended in a reasonable length of time. The whole “chase everyone”, “everyone is good!” (Not true lol), “don’t go all in” stuff only works if you have the massive resources to do so. Otherwise if you didn’t favorite anyone you’d never 550 anyone. Unless you plan to play for literal years at lower levels and never break into the upper echelon. While there are MANY viable teams/options now, the reality is the natural 5s are just easier to get due to 1:7 odds when featured in stores, and the 1 cover = 1 level versus 4s having 100s of characters diluting the pool, 4s not really getting featured other then occasional increased odds for a bunch (so still diluted) and the crazy 4:1 cover:level ratio.

So it stands to reason that natural fives will still be most of what you encounter when playing PvP because while maybe not as strong as the 4s at the same level, they don’t take years to obtain.

Bucket telling you that everyone can do what he does, citing the usual two forum examples incoming.

entrailbucket

@Bowgentle said:

@Daredevil217 said:
I haven’t really seen an impact on the meta yet tbh. My queues are all Colossus, Omega, Chasm, weekly boosted, etc. sometimes the occasional glass cannon (Shang/Jane/Polaris) or the occasional counter left out (Electro/Kittens) probably to fight said Omega Red. I don’t really see 4*s running stuff. So, natural fives with the occasional Polaris (and that’s mostly sim).

Reason? It’s only the 10+ year players/high spenders that are getting these characters high level ascended in a reasonable length of time. The whole “chase everyone”, “everyone is good!” (Not true lol), “don’t go all in” stuff only works if you have the massive resources to do so. Otherwise if you didn’t favorite anyone you’d never 550 anyone. Unless you plan to play for literal years at lower levels and never break into the upper echelon. While there are MANY viable teams/options now, the reality is the natural 5s are just easier to get due to 1:7 odds when featured in stores, and the 1 cover = 1 level versus 4s having 100s of characters diluting the pool, 4s not really getting featured other then occasional increased odds for a bunch (so still diluted) and the crazy 4:1 cover:level ratio.

So it stands to reason that natural fives will still be most of what you encounter when playing PvP because while maybe not as strong as the 4s at the same level, they don’t take years to obtain.

Bucket telling you that everyone can do what he does, citing the usual two forum examples incoming.

I mean, citing the only two examples of people who've tried to do what I do and succeeded at it seems legit? Should I cite all the people who dismissed it as impossible without trying it?

Bowgentle

No, go ahead, debate with Daredevil.
I'll get the popcorn.

entrailbucket

@Bowgentle said:
No, go ahead, debate with Daredevil.
I'll get the popcorn.

He's got me on ignore! Which is odd because he keeps replying to my posts indirectly, but whatever.

The debate's all been had already anyway. If you want to go all in, and you like using the same few characters for everything forever, do that. It's been proven to work since the beginning, and if your goal is to optimize your resources, that's how to do it.

If you want to spread out and use a ton of different characters, that method also works now. It's more fun for me, and maybe for some others. It also gives you insurance against metagame shifts (or nerfs). It might even be a competitive advantage in the very long term, but I don't think we know that yet.

Bowgentle

I get you, but it takes SO LONG to get 3* chars to a 5* level and then keep leveling them.
I'm not sure the game has the 7+ years left it will take to get a broad range of ascended 3s and 4s to say 520+, like 40-50 characters.
And that's with us being us, with many dual 370s to start with.

entrailbucket

@Bowgentle said:
I get you, but it takes SO LONG to get 3* chars to a 5* level and then keep leveling them.
I'm not sure the game has the 7+ years left it will take to get a broad range of ascended 3s and 4s to say 520+, like 40-50 characters.
And that's with us being us, with many dual 370s to start with.

If you don't get them to 450 (or 470, or 490) you'll never get them to 520+. It's only impossible if you never start at all. And some of these guys are very usable at 470 (or even 450) when they're boosted.

If the game has a limited time left, would you rather spend that time hoarding and gaining no levels on anyone or incrementally grinding levels on everyone? There's no right answer anymore. The first one used to be the only way to do it, and now the second one is a viable option.

Bowgentle

I'm burning 5k CP on classics every 6 weeks or so because I find hoarding extremely boring, you're preaching to the choir here.
The boosted percentages for the 4s in classics help a lot.

entrailbucket

@Bowgentle said:
I'm burning 5k CP on classics every 6 weeks or so because I find hoarding extremely boring, you're preaching to the choir here.
The boosted percentages for the 4s in classics help a lot.

Good! If somebody wants to go all in, prefers to play with the same characters forever, prefers hoarding, that's GREAT. More power to them. Do what you like. If you don't like that, then do something else.

I get frustrated when people complain that the game lacks depth and variety, isn't fun, or that gameplay is a chore to be minimized. These things are only true if you're deliberately choosing not to take advantage of the alternate paths the devs have taken extreme pains to create. All the stuff you actually want is there, you're just choosing to ignore it!

entrailbucket

Also, it's hilarious that I've purposely done the least optimal thing forever -- I 550d Banner before his buff! -- and I can compete with the folks who've spent all their time theorizing and strategizing and optimizing and spreadsheeting.

It's like if someone spent all their time meticulously optimizing their stock portfolio, carefully arranging and balancing everything, staying on top of the news at all times...while I blindly "invested" in collectible spoons, and we both ended up retiring with the same amount of money.

All of your planning was meaningless! Life is random and unfair!

trenchdigger

Hmmm.... Based on that line of reasoning, don't bother getting an education or seeking to better yourself, just get a dead end job and buy a lottery ticket.

entrailbucket

@trenchdigger said:
Hmmm.... Based on that line of reasoning, don't bother getting an education or seeking to better yourself, just get a dead end job and buy a lottery ticket.

If someone does that and they end up in the same place as someone who, like, planned and generally tried...can you really say they did it the wrong way?

Phumade

@entrailbucket said:
Also, it's hilarious that I've purposely done the least optimal thing forever -- I 550d Banner before his buff! -- and I can compete with the folks who've spent all their time theorizing and strategizing and optimizing and spreadsheeting.

It's like if someone spent all their time meticulously optimizing their stock portfolio, carefully arranging and balancing everything, staying on top of the news at all times...while I blindly "invested" in collectible spoons, and we both ended up retiring with the same amount of money.

All of your planning was meaningless! Life is random and unfair!

Hehe, The difference is your the only one from your cohort that survived long enough to say that their lottery ticket hit. There are many many others from the other cohort, that rode that slow and steady train to thicc rosters and fat hoards.

but to be sure a fresh player would build their roster in an entirely different fashion. Part of me does thinks it would be more fun and intellectually challenging to put my roster on passive play growth and put my mental focus on a fresh account.

Borstock

@entrailbucket said:

@trenchdigger said:
Hmmm.... Based on that line of reasoning, don't bother getting an education or seeking to better yourself, just get a dead end job and buy a lottery ticket.

If someone does that and they end up in the same place as someone who, like, planned and generally tried...can you really say they did it the wrong way?

Yes, you can. Statistics allow for outliers. An objectively wrong decision can yield a positive result.

Scofie

@entrailbucket said:

@trenchdigger said:
Hmmm.... Based on that line of reasoning, don't bother getting an education or seeking to better yourself, just get a dead end job and buy a lottery ticket.

If someone does that and they end up in the same place as someone who, like, planned and generally tried...can you really say they did it the wrong way?

It's about the journey, not the destination. But the principle of "make the journey what you want it to be" still remains.

DAZ0273

Yeah - I mean you can win a race by taking an alternative route but if it was straight through the walls of an orphanage maybe having a better plan might have been good.

Of course I also tend to play this game with any number of orphans being scraped off the window washer and haven't had a plan since I pressed the install game button so I am not espousing any particular route, apart from of course the one with least child casualties.

This post got away from me a bit what with all the orphan death...play how you want safely away from any high density children areas!

Glockoma

@entrailbucket said:
Also, it's hilarious that I've purposely done the least optimal thing forever -- I 550d Banner before his buff! -- and I can compete with the folks who've spent all their time theorizing and strategizing and optimizing and spreadsheeting.

It's like if someone spent all their time meticulously optimizing their stock portfolio, carefully arranging and balancing everything, staying on top of the news at all times...while I blindly "invested" in collectible spoons, and we both ended up retiring with the same amount of money.

All of your planning was meaningless! Life is random and unfair!

Love the posts, but this isn’t the games economic structure. Rather, this example points to the fact that this game gives you the illusion of control when in fact the developers control the value. They only need to “rebalance” a character to alter the value and ultimately change the market.

Stocks, spoons, or whatever else is only as valuable as what a buyer is willing to pay. Laws of supply and demand are in effect. So if you’re the one with the collectible spoons when I come out to buy them, and they’ve been changed from silver to a few packs of Great Value plastic cutlery, well…

The opposite can be true as in The Hulk going from zero to Nice overnight.

Zarqa

@DAZ0273 said:
Yeah - I mean you can win a race by taking an alternative route but if it was straight through the walls of an orphanage maybe having a better plan might have been good.

Of course I also tend to play this game with any number of orphans being scraped off the window washer and haven't had a plan since I pressed the install game button so I am not espousing any particular route, apart from of course the one with least child casualties.

This post got away from me a bit what with all the orphan death...play how you want safely away from any high density children areas!

@DAZ0273 said:
Yeah - I mean you can win a race by taking an alternative route but if it was straight through the walls of an orphanage maybe having a better plan might have been good.

Of course I also tend to play this game with any number of orphans being scraped off the window washer and haven't had a plan since I pressed the install game button so I am not espousing any particular route, apart from of course the one with least child casualties.

This post got away from me a bit what with all the orphan death...play how you want safely away from any high density children areas!

At least go through the walls of a bank instead. Those daily deals are expensive

entrailbucket

@Glockoma said:

@entrailbucket said:
Also, it's hilarious that I've purposely done the least optimal thing forever -- I 550d Banner before his buff! -- and I can compete with the folks who've spent all their time theorizing and strategizing and optimizing and spreadsheeting.

It's like if someone spent all their time meticulously optimizing their stock portfolio, carefully arranging and balancing everything, staying on top of the news at all times...while I blindly "invested" in collectible spoons, and we both ended up retiring with the same amount of money.

All of your planning was meaningless! Life is random and unfair!

Love the posts, but this isn’t the games economic structure. Rather, this example points to the fact that this game gives you the illusion of control when in fact the developers control the value. They only need to “rebalance” a character to alter the value and ultimately change the market.

Stocks, spoons, or whatever else is only as valuable as what a buyer is willing to pay. Laws of supply and demand are in effect. So if you’re the one with the collectible spoons when I come out to buy them, and they’ve been changed from silver to a few packs of Great Value plastic cutlery, well…

The opposite can be true as in The Hulk going from zero to Nice overnight.

That's exactly what I was after. In an environment that's ultimately out of our control (like the stock market, or the MPQ metagame), meticulous planning only gets one so far. We don't control who's good, the developers do, and they can (and often do) change whatever they want, whenever they want.

Ascension has injected a massive amount of chaos and upended value across the board, and it's unclear how it'll shake out long-term.