Galactus and Spider-man Cosmic shards

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  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,658 Chairperson of the Boards

    Maybe they left all the Galactus shards in a storage closet at BCS?

  • Timemachinego
    Timemachinego Posts: 635 Critical Contributor

    @Ptahhotep said:
    While I would like to see the character switched now, I also think that it is a good idea to run one character long enough for sufficient shards to be gained in progression for a cover.

    I really don't think they should be releasing more than 3 a year, keep them on rotation and actually let us work at them. Right now we've got the making of a really good duo between Galactus and CGR and a guy that could finally make late-game web teams work in Cosmic Spidey. I want to play with THESE toys, not some nonsense subscription service where I get a leg for this guy and an arm for some other dude every few months.

  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 7,094 Chairperson of the Boards

    The 6s all now have a Limited tag on them.

    This implies….well, several things. But we will see what happens and who is proven right.

    You definitely can’t favorite them right now which tells you there won’t be pulls for them, and they won’t make those wildcard shard rewards for them for the foreseeable future. At least not like most characters. They’ll probably just do selectable shard tokens in offers, like we’ve seen recently.

    CGR remains the only 6 in pve.

  • SuperCarrot
    SuperCarrot Posts: 368 Mover and Shaker

    The limited tag feels like an attempt at un-ringing that six star bell to me…I am curious to see how this develops. Also I might be totally wrong on my perception, which is fine.

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 12,297 Chairperson of the Boards

    They obviously either have a plan or are gonna need to make one sharpish on 6* to avoid them being a bit pointless. I can't remember exactly what was said about their release cadence but if we are just going to be stacking up un-rosterable characters with half a cover worth of shards that we can never use then that will be worse than Supports was. I totally get that they don't want a situation where super hoarders can unload and instantly cover a 6* (without spending) BUT you can't have a "chase character" without the chasing bit, which at present is sorely lacking.

    Examples of good types of Chase:

  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 7,094 Chairperson of the Boards

    Responding again:

    It's not a wild conspiracy theory to suggest a company running one of the 10 most successful superhero mobile games - one that has lasted longer than many other games in general and seen multiple Marvel games fail while it keep going - is trying to manage the distribution and appeal of the Ultimate Tier's characters.

    Maybe BCS had no idea about Jugg/Sam, but Sam released and we all said "meh", and in a couple days they rebalanced him to make the strikes trigger differently and we were off and running. There's no way to know what they did or did not intend vs what they told us.

    I am not going to die on a hill about Hawkeye's winfinite being designed to make Galactus more appealing. It's just an idle thought I had. Plenty of winfinite teams exist outside of Hawkeye. Obviously (to me) someone wanted all the 1-5s to feel strong and useable and they overdid it with him; before rebalance he was someone you'd basically never use and was the weakest of the 1s.

    I am looking at all the things the new devs are accomplishing and I am very, very suspicious that they can't swap out CGR (who is once again the 6 in Lost in Time) because they "can't figure it out" - I don't recall them saying that, either.

    It's just smart marketing to make specific characters in a tier hard to get when:
    1. they are all designed to be stronger than all other characters below the tier
    2. you plan to release them rarely/infrequently
    3. you do not want people to build them like the other characters (13 is the maximum number of covers currently)
    4. You are worried about top players getting bored quickly if they all cover the new super-powerful tier and end up just fighting the same best team(s) among the 6s constantly AND new folks feeling frustrated if they run into covered 6s they can't defeat a lot because they become too common
    5. you want people to stick around chasing them
    6. You want people to spend on them

    Offering just one at a time in PVE, every 3-4 months switching to a new one, will allow T100ish people to get 2-3, maybe 4 covers on each one over that timeframe. No top player is completely happy with 3-4 covers. Making you need to spend to get above 1/3 or so of a character is smart marketing, and non-spenders can get a useable-ish version of the 6, keeping them interested vs adding one single cover over those same 3-4 months to each of 3, and then it taking longer to add one each time you add them in if you keep rotating them in PVE constantly. Even if you kept 3 in rotation you end up vaulting 1 once one is added, so might as well vault everyone who isn't the new one.

    Things are of course subject to change and acceleration at any time. An approach for now may be just for now, and we have no way of knowing what the plan is but the apparent current strategy seems like a rational approach to the game with the player base it has.

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 8,316 Chairperson of the Boards

    I just think that one piece of evidence goes a very long way toward dispelling a lot of the myths some folks seem to believe about character creation, the high end metagame, and the devs' intentions.

    Recently someone suggested that Iron May is better at 4* than at 5* because the devs wanted to give us the option -- use a strong character specifically created for us, or get champion rewards! It's far more likely that she's an accident, because they don't know how to do stuff like that on purpose.

    Hawkeye is probably an accident. Polaris was definitely an accident (they said so!). m'Thor was an accident (again, confirmed). Unless you think they're lying about this sort of stuff?

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 12,297 Chairperson of the Boards

    We went through a period of Dr. Strange in every vault and store. Does anybody really believe that was some sort of strategy for us all to get high level Dr. Strange or just some algorithm nobody checked on? If anybody can explain why giving us Cosmic Ghost Rider shards and not other 6* actually progresses a useful road map for the Devs with a logical end goal then I am all ears. I don't disagree with the idea of limiting access being part of the plan but rotating the shards would have an equivalent limiting effect when there isn't any other way to gain them. I guess I don't like the idea that the Devs are lying to us and find that to be a lazy entitled answer. Let me be clear though - Bluewolf is a very valuable member of this community and I do give a lot of weight to his input so I am open to being wrong, if anybody is right about this stuff I would definitely back Bluewolf. I just can't see it but that might be on me.

    I guess at the end of the day it is a bit frustrating to see this type of negativity when things seem on the up with the game.

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 8,316 Chairperson of the Boards

    @DAZ0273 said:
    We went through a period of Dr. Strange in every vault and store. Does anybody really believe that was some sort of strategy for us all to get high level Dr. Strange or just some algorithm nobody checked on? If anybody can explain why giving us Cosmic Ghost Rider shards and not other 6* actually progresses a useful road map for the Devs with a logical end goal then I am all ears. I don't disagree with the idea of limiting access being part of the plan but rotating the shards would have an equivalent limiting effect when there isn't any other way to gain them. I guess I don't like the idea that the Devs are lying to us and find that to be a lazy entitled answer. Let me be clear though - Bluewolf is a very valuable member of this community and I do give a lot of weight to his input so I am open to being wrong, if anybody is right about this stuff I would definitely back Bluewolf. I just can't see it but that might be on me.

    I guess at the end of the day it is a bit frustrating to see this type of negativity when things seem on the up with the game.

    I don't think it's negativity at all.

    I think it's very, very comforting for some folks to think there's a hand on the tiller, as it were, and that decisions that don't seem to make sense to us were made for some good reason.

    The other thing is that we all assume we're the most important people in the world, and can often only interpret things in terms of how they relate to us. The devs are managing a massive playerbase of what we consider to be quite casual players, so most of the choices they make are catering to somebody else. And that's fine!

    I just can't stand the cargo cult stuff. Most of the things that don't make sense are accidents or decisions made thinking of casual players, not 4D underwater chess or a reflection of some secret master plan.

  • TheXMan
    TheXMan Posts: 294 Mover and Shaker
    edited 21 February 2026, 22:34

    @entrailbucket said:
    I just think that one piece of evidence goes a very long way toward dispelling a lot of the myths some folks seem to believe about character creation, the high end metagame, and the devs' intentions.

    Recently someone suggested that Iron May is better at 4* than at 5* because the devs wanted to give us the option -- use a strong character specifically created for us, or get champion rewards! It's far more likely that she's an accident, because they don't know how to do stuff like that on purpose.

    Hawkeye is probably an accident. Polaris was definitely an accident (they said so!). m'Thor was an accident (again, confirmed). Unless you think they're lying about this sort of stuff?

    They specifically toned down some characters that they realized were going to be too good ascended as a 5. That was why they rolled them out in like 4 waves.

  • TheXMan
    TheXMan Posts: 294 Mover and Shaker

    This is from Ice on the Champions release FAQ:

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 8,316 Chairperson of the Boards

    @TheXMan said:
    This is from Ice on the Champions release FAQ:

    Yep, Aunt May at 5* has a lower buff percentage because she's meant to be buffing 5*, and the 4* one is higher because she's meant to be buffing 4*.

    I will bet my entire life savings that nobody considered that you people would purposely softcap a 4* to get a bigger buff%, because why would they? That doesn't make any sense!

  • TheXMan
    TheXMan Posts: 294 Mover and Shaker

    @entrailbucket said:

    @TheXMan said:
    This is from Ice on the Champions release FAQ:

    Yep, Aunt May at 5* has a lower buff percentage because she's meant to be buffing 5*, and the 4* one is higher because she's meant to be buffing 4*.

    I will bet my entire life savings that nobody considered that you people would purposely softcap a 4* to get a bigger buff%, because why would they? That doesn't make any sense!

    So the 'accident' then is that they didn't think people would softcap her. You keep saying it is an accident that she is better as a 4 and they clearly knew she would be crazy as a 5 so they lowered the buff.

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 8,316 Chairperson of the Boards

    @TheXMan said:

    @entrailbucket said:

    @TheXMan said:
    This is from Ice on the Champions release FAQ:

    Yep, Aunt May at 5* has a lower buff percentage because she's meant to be buffing 5*, and the 4* one is higher because she's meant to be buffing 4*.

    I will bet my entire life savings that nobody considered that you people would purposely softcap a 4* to get a bigger buff%, because why would they? That doesn't make any sense!

    So the 'accident' then is that they didn't think people would softcap her. You keep saying it is an accident that she is better as a 4 and they clearly knew she would be crazy as a 5 so they lowered the buff.

    She's an accident in design because they didn't expect the 4* version to be paired with lvl672 5*s.

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