Anniversary Thoughts (So Far)

Bzhai

@entrailbucket said:

@Bzhai said:
Last year had more exciting events. Lots of QoL improvements but new characters were awful.

This year it was the complete opposite. Loved most of the characters so far, interesting mechanics even if they're not meta. Events wise a complete snooze. Hardly any improvements to pve rewards. Too many unnecessary rebalance/costume bundles. Lots of controversy in pvp and boss events (supports and placement rewards).

What were the events from last year? The only one I remember is Quandary.

• Class of 20XX pvp events
• Boss events got a facelift, boss tokens were streamlined, 5* covers replaced LT in normal, heroic boss was introduced. Slot tokens were introduced, support tokens made available.
• They brought back 7-day events. Wasn't smooth but they made an attempt and I hope they learned from it and bring it back again.
• Deadpool dailies got a revamp. Tokens got streamlined, new nodes, more rewards.
• New supports were introduced. Shard system implemented.
• Bonus shard rate was increased for Legendary tokens. More generous now.
• A lot of needed rebalances finally happened (Wasp, Banner, Silver Surfer, Phoenix, I wanna say 5* Magneto?)
• Omega Red, the way they teased it and kept it a secret till the reveal.
• Ascension.
• Feeders got a major update. Remember a time when a 5* was released without a feeder? Those were dark times.

Those are just from the top of my head. Every month felt like there was something exciting to look forward to. Then when Jan 2024 rolled in it felt like the team was going through burnout and trying to catch up. PVE events repeated in a loop, communication fell off. Q&A is just meh now.

entrailbucket

@Bzhai said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Bzhai said:
Last year had more exciting events. Lots of QoL improvements but new characters were awful.

This year it was the complete opposite. Loved most of the characters so far, interesting mechanics even if they're not meta. Events wise a complete snooze. Hardly any improvements to pve rewards. Too many unnecessary rebalance/costume bundles. Lots of controversy in pvp and boss events (supports and placement rewards).

What were the events from last year? The only one I remember is Quandary.

• Class of 20XX pvp events
• Boss events got a facelift, boss tokens were streamlined, 5* covers replaced LT in normal, heroic boss was introduced. Slot tokens were introduced, support tokens made available.
• They brought back 7-day events. Wasn't smooth but they made an attempt and I hope they learned from it and bring it back again.
• Deadpool dailies got a revamp. Tokens got streamlined, new nodes, more rewards.
• New supports were introduced. Shard system implemented.
• Bonus shard rate was increased for Legendary tokens. More generous now.
• A lot of needed rebalances finally happened (Wasp, Banner, Silver Surfer, Phoenix, I wanna say 5* Magneto?)
• Omega Red, the way they teased it and kept it a secret till the reveal.
• Ascension.
• Feeders got a major update. Remember a time when a 5* was released without a feeder? Those were dark times.

Those are just from the top of my head. Every month felt like there was something exciting to look forward to. Then when Jan 2024 rolled in it felt like the team was going through burnout and trying to catch up. PVE events repeated in a loop, communication fell off. Q&A is just meh now.

Oh I see, I misunderstood. I thought you were only comparing the anniversaries!

Bzhai

Well even if we were comparing anniversary alone last year it started earlier with the Class of 20XX events. I remember there were way more free login rewards. This year there's only been 2 so far I think? And as mentioned vaults were much better. Tokens were not gated behind Lightning vaults. A vault within a vault. Jeebus.

But I can accept that last year was a bigger deal coz it was celebrating 10 years and a more significant milestone. But please devs, no more vaultception.

DAZ0273

We have already established that the Anniversary vault from last year was not any better than this year and that most of the super generous vaults were in 2024 barring one December one.

bluewolf

@DAZ0273 said:
We have already established that the Anniversary vault from last year was not any better than this year and that most of the super generous vaults were in 2024 barring one December one.

I will mostly agree, although it's possible I am not remembering the exact contents of the last anniversary and there might have been slightly better stuff in it.

One thing that has happened this year which I am not very happy with is they are putting in odd numbers of items in vaults to make it so you can't clear it with 10 and/or 40 pulls if you're inclined to do so. For years every vault had a multiple of 40 items, or maybe 41 or 81 if they were giving us a free token so you could pull that and use a 40 or two and get everything.

Now they put in 119 (Anniversary), or 44 (Zombies) so you have to pull single pulls at some point to clear everything, which for many players will slow down clearing if they have/purchase lots of HP (which might also disincentivize more HP purchasing as it tampers excitement). So if you want to use daily deals you need to wait several days, or spend full cost on the singles to go faster, or whatever makes sense to you.

It is not player-friendly and only makes sense if you're trying to force people to spend more HP to clear vaults. Which is their right but it's a clunky and annoying way to do it.

On the other hand the game is probably struggling a bit to maintain revenue with so many vets who are awash in currencies due to advanced rosters so I suppose this is to be somewhat expected.

ThaRoadWarrior

I was definitely able to clear the anniversary vault several times over in past years without being someone who has bags and bags of hp/tokens on hand ever, but this time I went through it just the once. However that is partially because I had to shift HP usage over to rostering ascended characters that I got from the steel vault, which I still maintain is a pretty amazing vault if you get the good stuff out of it (I've gotten 7 of the pre-ascended characters in it so far, still have 2 more to roster). It's also because I was flipping max-champ 2 and 3* characters for hp at taht time, and now that we are ascending I'm not doing that anymore. Conceptually I like this block of character releases, barring the 2* bloat, but it's very difficult to predict how those are going to behave ascended and they have no real value until that point.

658_2

Resource wise I can’t complain at all. I’ve bought the non cp Lightning Vaults and I’ve pulled most of the ascended characters from the Steel vault. Those things are so valuable, especially the 3 to 4s. Idk how long it takes me to collect 126 3* covers, but I assume it’s well over a year. So, between those, all the other stuff in those vaults, and the freebies, it’s not the traditional anniversary route, but I feel like I’m rolling in it. I pulled in the neighborhood of 3k cp the other day and brought back over 20k in hp; it’s crazy. I’m stoked with all that.

Gameplay wise, not loving it. I’m so sick of this boost list. It’s burning me out quick. I don’t want to play pvp. I don’t want to use these same teams over and over, for weeks now, so my play time in pvp is way down. Pve slightly less of a chore, but definitely enjoying it less than usual.

turbomoose

I’ve enjoyed the 2 vaults you get free tokens from daily play, also zombies was fun and the replacement covers were great to look at

Also the chance to buy the lightening vaults with ISO or CP instead of HP was a nice touch. Shame most of the vaults were not worth buying . Though I do wonder if some of those were aimed at people newer to the game, but those people were unlikely to have the resources to buy unless they use cash to purchase

Did not enjoy the return of quandary, though fortunately the gameplay had not changed since last year . The anniversary vault is a disappointment and I’ve hardly used it

Think for future reference if they go with the game pass again the rewards should be better and maybe more available, tier 2 and 3 once you complete the first levels

Overall enjoyed it though

DAZ0273

@bluewolf said:

@DAZ0273 said:
We have already established that the Anniversary vault from last year was not any better than this year and that most of the super generous vaults were in 2024 barring one December one.

I will mostly agree, although it's possible I am not remembering the exact contents of the last anniversary and there might have been slightly better stuff in it.

One thing that has happened this year which I am not very happy with is they are putting in odd numbers of items in vaults to make it so you can't clear it with 10 and/or 40 pulls if you're inclined to do so. For years every vault had a multiple of 40 items, or maybe 41 or 81 if they were giving us a free token so you could pull that and use a 40 or two and get everything.

Now they put in 119 (Anniversary), or 44 (Zombies) so you have to pull single pulls at some point to clear everything, which for many players will slow down clearing if they have/purchase lots of HP (which might also disincentivize more HP purchasing as it tampers excitement). So if you want to use daily deals you need to wait several days, or spend full cost on the singles to go faster, or whatever makes sense to you.

It is not player-friendly and only makes sense if you're trying to force people to spend more HP to clear vaults. Which is their right but it's a clunky and annoying way to do it.

On the other hand the game is probably struggling a bit to maintain revenue with so many vets who are awash in currencies due to advanced rosters so I suppose this is to be somewhat expected.

Agreed that the 119 is a weird number no doubt has some sort of psychological trigger attached to it.

trenchdigger

Or more likely the worst possible number to pull purely from daily discounts, given these are for 40, 10 and 1

bluewolf

By decreasing the vault item count by just the one item, they keep the vault at almost the same size but ruin the ability to rapidly clear everything in a few days.

With 120 items you can clear it every 3 days and reset for free with 40 pull daily deals. That would be 29,400 hp total. (yeah, it's a lot) Its about 1.5 starks in HP or $150 but then they often offer higher rates of HP/$ via various offers. In any case you get 3 covers/levels for a good number of metas for that cash which is unheard of, or at least was, until a couple of years ago or so and only really available like this during Anniversary on a reliable basis.

With 119 you can pull a 40 twice, then you have 30 items left. You could pull 10s those days as well and then you pull a 10 the next day and you still have 9 items left. If you pulled singles those 3 days you have 6 items left. Do you pull those 6 at full price/cost? Do you reset (maybe if it's not good stuff you do)? Do you wait 6 more days for the single daily deals? If you did 2 40s for 19600 then 3 10s for 8400 then another 3 singles for 100 you're at 28300 so your cost is less other than you are looking at another 1800 if you did the last 6, so that's 30,100.

The other thing they are trying to throttle - weirdly? - I think, is speed of high end roster growth via vault pulls via hoarded HP. If you can clear a vault over 3 days and it's open for 28 days or so then you can clear it about 9 times in full. If you need to think about whether you spend a bit more in HP to fully clear it at higher cost, or you wait longer and pull dailies at the deal rate, then your progress slows. Maybe you only clear it 3-5 times over that same span, or whatever. At the end of the day many players are focused on the most utility/meta characters and once you 550 those your interest in playing will probably drop, and certainly your interest in spending will be reduced if you know you are sitting at the top of the mountain in terms of speed etc. So throttling the pace that very high end late stage players can grow their meta characters is actually a good strategic move for the devs.

In the old days they did this basically via RNG and the fact that you needed to either spend thousands of dollars or hoard for a very very long time to take advantage of CP stores and get the metas. Now we wait around for the ability to convert HP into them and they need to find ways to keep us engaged when access has been increased as well as ability to advance our rosters.

entrailbucket

Ehhhh, I bet you've put more thought into this than they have.

I'm not sure who'd actually do single pulls to clear out the "extra" stuff in the vaults -- I just reset it when I feel like I've got most of the good stuff. It's not like these have one really good "chase" item in them, where that's the whole point of the vault. You really don't need to fully empty them.

Dogface

With the FF vault I finally got my first 5* 550 after almost 8 years of playing: Shang-Chi. The point is now I have 3 of his covers on the vine and 500 of his shards. What's the best thing to do here, re-roster or sell the covers for ISO? My mind goes against selling, but on the other hand, what am I going to do with a second, much lower level Shang-Chi?

entrailbucket

@Dogface said:
With the FF vault I finally got my first 5* 550 after almost 8 years of playing: Shang-Chi. The point is now I have 3 of his covers on the vine and 500 of his shards. What's the best thing to do here, re-roster or sell the covers for ISO? My mind goes against selling, but on the other hand, what am I going to do with a second, much lower level Shang-Chi?

Roster the second one as a rewards factory -- unless you're really hard up for roster slots or something, there's no reason not to.

BriMan2222

@entrailbucket said:

@Dogface said:
With the FF vault I finally got my first 5* 550 after almost 8 years of playing: Shang-Chi. The point is now I have 3 of his covers on the vine and 500 of his shards. What's the best thing to do here, re-roster or sell the covers for ISO? My mind goes against selling, but on the other hand, what am I going to do with a second, much lower level Shang-Chi?

Roster the second one as a rewards factory -- unless you're really hard up for roster slots or something, there's no reason not to.

This, plus there's always the possibility that they eventually make 5 stars able to be ascended.

Dogface

@entrailbucket said:

@Dogface said:
With the FF vault I finally got my first 5* 550 after almost 8 years of playing: Shang-Chi. The point is now I have 3 of his covers on the vine and 500 of his shards. What's the best thing to do here, re-roster or sell the covers for ISO? My mind goes against selling, but on the other hand, what am I going to do with a second, much lower level Shang-Chi?

Roster the second one as a rewards factory -- unless you're really hard up for roster slots or something, there's no reason not to.

69 free slots, so I'm good there. Swapping covers isn't a thing anymore then?

BriMan2222

@Dogface said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Dogface said:
With the FF vault I finally got my first 5* 550 after almost 8 years of playing: Shang-Chi. The point is now I have 3 of his covers on the vine and 500 of his shards. What's the best thing to do here, re-roster or sell the covers for ISO? My mind goes against selling, but on the other hand, what am I going to do with a second, much lower level Shang-Chi?

Roster the second one as a rewards factory -- unless you're really hard up for roster slots or something, there's no reason not to.

69 free slots, so I'm good there. Swapping covers isn't a thing anymore then?

They only let you swap covers from latest legends, except for the very rare times that they have allowed swaps from other cp stores for no apparent reason.

Dogface

@BriMan2222 said:

@Dogface said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Dogface said:
With the FF vault I finally got my first 5* 550 after almost 8 years of playing: Shang-Chi. The point is now I have 3 of his covers on the vine and 500 of his shards. What's the best thing to do here, re-roster or sell the covers for ISO? My mind goes against selling, but on the other hand, what am I going to do with a second, much lower level Shang-Chi?

Roster the second one as a rewards factory -- unless you're really hard up for roster slots or something, there's no reason not to.

69 free slots, so I'm good there. Swapping covers isn't a thing anymore then?

They only let you swap covers from latest legends, except for the very rare times that they have allowed swaps from other cp stores for no apparent reason.

Ha, I can't see that ever happening. To 550 from Latest Legends? It took a long time to get my first and until now only 5* 550. I just looked it up: Shang-Chi was released in August 2021, so it took just over 3 years. Anyway, time to re-roster Shang-Chi.

Daredevil217

@BriMan2222 said:

@Dogface said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Dogface said:
With the FF vault I finally got my first 5* 550 after almost 8 years of playing: Shang-Chi. The point is now I have 3 of his covers on the vine and 500 of his shards. What's the best thing to do here, re-roster or sell the covers for ISO? My mind goes against selling, but on the other hand, what am I going to do with a second, much lower level Shang-Chi?

Roster the second one as a rewards factory -- unless you're really hard up for roster slots or something, there's no reason not to.

69 free slots, so I'm good there. Swapping covers isn't a thing anymore then?

They only let you swap covers from latest legends, except for the very rare times that they have allowed swaps from other cp stores for no apparent reason.

I would roster the covers but keep the shards banked in case they ever allow swaps in the future for a store that has Shang.

JoeHandle

@Dogface said:

@BriMan2222 said:

@Dogface said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Dogface said:
With the FF vault I finally got my first 5* 550 after almost 8 years of playing: Shang-Chi. The point is now I have 3 of his covers on the vine and 500 of his shards. What's the best thing to do here, re-roster or sell the covers for ISO? My mind goes against selling, but on the other hand, what am I going to do with a second, much lower level Shang-Chi?

Roster the second one as a rewards factory -- unless you're really hard up for roster slots or something, there's no reason not to.

69 free slots, so I'm good there. Swapping covers isn't a thing anymore then?

They only let you swap covers from latest legends, except for the very rare times that they have allowed swaps from other cp stores for no apparent reason.

Ha, I can't see that ever happening. To 550 from Latest Legends? It took a long time to get my first and until now only 5* 550. I just looked it up: Shang-Chi was released in August 2021, so it took just over 3 years. Anyway, time to re-roster Shang-Chi.

It'll happen. Just keep playing, just keep playing ...