Has anyone done the math?

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  • Fightmastermpq
    Fightmastermpq Posts: 995 Critical Contributor
    edited April 2017
    Vhailorx said:
    Pants1000 said:
    I disagree, at least from my perspective.  I fit nicely into the 4* vet category, but I'm fine with vaulting.  Yes it changed my overall goals and strategy, but that's not a bad thing.  Since vaulting was introduced I champed Wasp, Medusa, Cage, Gwenpool, Blade and Carol.  Without vaulting I would have had the same amount of ISO to champ 6 characters, but they probably would have been Bucky, Kate, Drax, Fury, Rulk, etc.  

    Rulk jumps out on that list because he's top tier.  I just finally got his 13th cover a week or two ago, which took me over a year due to poor luck with rng.  To me that's what I like about vaulting.  New characters will get fully covered in months, not over a year.

    i don't have any over 300 yet, but I have IMHB and Peggy at 290+ and set as bonus heroes, so I expect them to hit 300 soon and maybe someday hit 370.
    So vaulting is good because you were able to champ wasp, medusa, cage, gwenpool, blade, and carol rather than WS, Kate, Drax, Fury, and Rulk?

    That's not an analysis of vaulting; it's a comparison of two different groups of 4*s.  The current 12 4*s may be good at the moment; but even if we assume that's true today it certainly won't always be the case.  If vaulting lasts long enough then the current 12 mix will go through good and bad phases like anything else. 

    As for my groupings, I am sure that some players in all 4 of my categories do not agree with my analysis.  I still think my analysis was more or less correct. 

    I think everyone agrees that covering new 4* characters faster is generally good for the game (just like everyone would rather have a bonus heroes system than nothing).  the debate is whether or not the benefit of faster champing for new releases is offset by the arbitrarily simultaneous vaulting of all older 4*s.  IMO the answer is pretty clearly no, but I am biased as per my own categorization of players.  What I really would like demi to comment on is their decision not to do the obvious thing and put vintage 4*s in Classic LTs.  the explanation offered by brigby was pure nonsense. 
    If we take a step back and look at this at a higher level it might be a little easier to understand why the math tends to favor vaulting over not.....

    The whole reason dilution is bad is due to RNG-based progression.  You pull a token and you have a 1/43 chance at the 4* character that you want......or now a 1/47 chance........and a year from now a 1/64 chance or something like that.  So as time goes on your odds of finishing characters just keeps getting worse and worse.

    So what does vaulting do?  It changes those odds from 1/never to 1/12.......at least for the first 8 months then they go to 0 (which all odds were effectively approaching anyway.....)  It inherently reduces the RNG in the system by having your odds go from forever decreasing to being fixed at 1/12.  In general that's a good thing, and in the very long term (talking a roster full of 370s here) it's a great thing when you combine it with Bonus Heroes and allow people to COMPLETELY remove RNG from their vaulted 4* progression by letting them only set BH to characters that will result in not wasting covers.

    So at this point really the ONLY negative is the quality of new characters vs. vaulted.  I will argue that the advantage here falls to the new characters due to power creep, but even if you disagree I still think the differences are negligible when you compare to the anti-RNG benefits that vaulting provides combined with BH as a mechanism to still be able to cover those handful of truly god-tier vaulted 4s should you feel the need to do so.
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited April 2017
    Holy **** Fight, you keep on arguing right past the issue I am trying to discuss. 

    Odds haven't gone from 1/47 to 1/12.  They have gone from "1/47 across 47 different characters" to "1/12 for 12 characters and 0/35 for 35 characters." 

    If you aren't getting 15-30 covers per month for vaulted 4*s from placement rewards and vaults etc, then the 0/35 is a huge setback for roster progression.  Because the game still incentivizes a complete roster via champing, weekly boosting, and PVE essentials.

    No one likes token dilution.  Everyone likes bonus heroes.  Everyone likes champing new releases faster.  But all of these issues are only linked because demi decided to link them. 

    --Token dilution could have been solved by offering multiple tokens, or reducing the price of tokens to allow player resources to account for more pulls. 

    --Bonus Heroes could just have been bolted on to the pre-vault system.

    --New releases could have been champed faster by significantly increasing the availability of covers during release events (top 100 could get multiple covers instead of top 20, or new releases could be offered in back to back events upon release, or new character tokens could offer more than a .18% drop rate for new releases!).
  • Starfury
    Starfury Posts: 719 Critical Contributor
    edited April 2017
    If we take a step back and look at this at a higher level it might be a little easier to understand why the math tends to favor vaulting over not.....

    The whole reason dilution is bad is due to RNG-based progression.  You pull a token and you have a 1/43 chance at the 4* character that you want......or now a 1/47 chance........and a year from now a 1/64 chance or something like that.  So as time goes on your odds of finishing characters just keeps getting worse and worse.

    So what does vaulting do?  It changes those odds from 1/never to 1/12.......at least for the first 8 months then they go to 0 (which all odds were effectively approaching anyway.....)  It inherently reduces the RNG in the system by having your odds go from forever decreasing to being fixed at 1/12.  In general that's a good thing, and in the very long term (talking a roster full of 370s here) it's a great thing when you combine it with Bonus Heroes and allow people to COMPLETELY remove RNG from their vaulted 4* progression by letting them only set BH to characters that will result in not wasting covers.

    So at this point really the ONLY negative is the quality of new characters vs. vaulted.  I will argue that the advantage here falls to the new characters due to power creep, but even if you disagree I still think the differences are negligible when you compare to the anti-RNG benefits that vaulting provides combined with BH as a mechanism to still be able to cover those handful of truly god-tier vaulted 4s should you feel the need to do so.
    Please stop sullying maths' name. If you want to argue preference, do so, but when you say removing vaulted 4* from tokens doesn't matter because chances were getting lower with every new 4* you're getting ridiculous.

    For simplicity's sake, let's look at a time when there were 48 regular 4*. The 36 oldest share a collective 75% chance of getting a cover. Vaulting reduced that to at most 5%. The same would have happend by the process of dilution once we had reached our 720th 4*. At the present rate of 2 4* every 6 weeks, this would have happened in the late autumn of 2055.

    We really dodged a bullet there...

  • Warbringa
    Warbringa Posts: 1,288 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited April 2017
    Math aside....as all great arguments start....they simply could have used the 5* model (or a modified version of it) to allow players a choice as to how they wish to spend their tokens and earn covers.  Instead they chose a clearly inferior mechanic.  That is what angers so many people.  Yes I am one of those who are angry because I am a casual player who mostly has older 4* close to 13 covers and now I am really being pushed back.  I have only received 1 4* bonus hero since the mechanic started and my draw rate for them is far under 5% for 4* covers so yeah that mechanic isn't working for me either.....RNG.
  • mohio
    mohio Posts: 1,690 Chairperson of the Boards
    I don't know how to say this in more ways...the pull percentages on individual characters is so low, you'd never make meaningful progress on your 4* without bonus heroes or without spending a boatload of money. As a quick illustration of both RNG and slooooow progress I'll offer up my own roster. For all intents and purposes I had 4hor, HB, Fury, JG, and XFW champed on day 1 (not completely true, but I don't think I ever wasted any covers. Their levels are HB at 307, Fury 301, JG 300, 4hor 297 (actually 310 but 13 are from a dupe I already had), and XFW 289. First, you can see that's 18 levels of variance over the time that championing has been out, so that's quite a lot. Second, XFW only gained 19 levels over the year+ that he's been championed. Dilution just means I would be pulling fewer and fewer of these covers, so while yeah I would like to keep growing them, I'm not deluded enough to think that I would be able to max champ them in any kind of reasonable time frame. 

    Where you guys have good points is looking at the "bigger picture" saying you had 75% champed or whatever, and now you only have 25% champed. Same for me, and yeah that short term picture really sucked. But it's just a short term setback. In another 3-6 months I'll easily be at 75% or higher and the older ones of the bunch will likely be up at 300 or so, getting those better champ rewards. 
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited April 2017
    Mohio. You act like disliking vaulting is the same as liking token dilution.

    Dilution was a real problem.  But demi's terrible solution just creates new and different problems.  

    If the game (1) strongly pushes players to have a complete roster, but (2) has too many characters relative to the current token odds, then the solution isnt to reduce the number of characters available in tokens.  That solves problem 2 but makes problem 1 worse.  The solution is to increase the options available to players for roster building.  And before you are all "but bonus heroes. . ." 5% is not enough relative to the scale of vaulting.  Just adding 5% BH onto the old system would have been good.  Adding 5% BH and doing vaulting is just a slap in the face to player: "we could solve this problem sensibly, but instead we are twisting the monetization screws!"
  • revskip
    revskip Posts: 965 Critical Contributor
    Vhailorx said:
    Mohio. You act like disliking vaulting is the same as liking token dilution.

    Dilution was a real problem.  But demi's terrible solution just creates new and different problems.  

    Adding 5% BH and doing vaulting is just a slap in the face to player: "we could solve this problem sensibly, but instead we are twisting the monetization screws!"
    This is one of my biggest problems with the uproar over vaulting.  The constant refrain of "cash grab" and "overly aggressive monetization".  

    The game only exists if it makes money.  A lot of it in fact.  Even with a small development team when dealing with a company like Disney the bottom line is what matters and what keeps the lights on.  Vaulting addressed a very common complaint (dilution) in a way that made it much easier to cover newer characters and the Heroes for Hire and Vintage Heroic tokens gave users an option to pay out of the problems it created (slower progress on older characters).  You can still absolutely go free to play, your progress will just be much slower.  

    A big portion of the user base of this game does not ever spend a single cent.  A tiny portion of the user base spends inordinate sums of money to stay at the zenith of competition.  In between those extremes are people like me who have spent some.  I have been VIP since the program was offered with a month and a half off when I just took a break from the game.  I have also spent a couple of times on HP packages including one buy club.  I'm a small fry in terms of expenditure and won't spend much more than renewing my VIP every month so I don't miss out on SHIELD intercepts (sorry Steam people).  

    When the company makes changes that are positive that also encourage spending I don't get bent out of shape about them.  I recognize that the big spenders pay sick money to get tiny edges.  A person who spends whale like money still has to deal with crazy scaling, and almost always has to deal with someone who has spent just a little bit more.  

    Vaulting definitely created some issues, slower progression for anyone who isn't whaling and/or hitting top placement being among the biggest.  But in a game that is all about collecting those problems aren't inherently onerous.  You can still push towards champing every single character.  It will just take more time or more money.  Considering that ISO flow has improved drastically in the last year you will still end up with more champs in 2017 than you were able to get in 2016 with the same exact expenditure whether pure free to play, a small fry like me or a mega-whale.  The only thing that changed are which characters you champ and the order that you do so in.  
  • Fightmastermpq
    Fightmastermpq Posts: 995 Critical Contributor
    Vhailorx said:
    Holy tinykitty Fight, you keep on arguing right past the issue I am trying to discuss. 

    Odds haven't gone from 1/47 to 1/12.  They have gone from "1/47 across 47 different characters" to "1/12 for 12 characters and 0/35 for 35 characters." 

    If you aren't getting 15-30 covers per month for vaulted 4*s from placement rewards and vaults etc, then the 0/35 is a huge setback for roster progression.  Because the game still incentivizes a complete roster via champing, weekly boosting, and PVE essentials.

    No one likes token dilution.  Everyone likes bonus heroes.  Everyone likes champing new releases faster.  But all of these issues are only linked because demi decided to link them. 

    --Token dilution could have been solved by offering multiple tokens, or reducing the price of tokens to allow player resources to account for more pulls. 

    --Bonus Heroes could just have been bolted on to the pre-vault system.

    --New releases could have been champed faster by significantly increasing the availability of covers during release events (top 100 could get multiple covers instead of top 20, or new releases could be offered in back to back events upon release, or new character tokens could offer more than a .18% drop rate for new releases!).
    I'm not arguing past the issue, I think I just haven't been clear enough in my point.

    I think a big part of the problem is that everyone is weighing vaulting vs. not in the bubble of the current released characters, and failing to understand what happens under each system as newer characters are released.  In the terms of this math problem most are treating the current crop of characters and their tier ranking as constants when the reality is they are variables.

    Take the bolded paragraph above for example.  If you hold the pool of all characters constant then yeah, removing 75% of the characters from tokens all together is a huge setback to roster progression, but if you consider the continual release of new characters and define roster progress by the number of champed 4*s then it really probably doesn't change much.  As you say in the second sentence - the game incentivizes a complete roster, so ultimately you are going to try to champ everyone eventually anyway.  Under the old system that process was almost completely dictated by RNG, and there was a ton of uncertainty with every pull - would you get cover you needed? A champ level? Or a wasted cover?  And over time that uncertainty would grow with dilution.  With vaulting though the uncertainty is limited to the newest 12 characters which gives players a lot more flexibility because they now only have to prepare for one of 12 possibilities.

    Another problem is that we tend to fear change and are married to our roster plans - regardless of how viable they are now.  We thought we needed that Iceman or Rulk or IMHB or whoever to be successful, but the fact of the matter is - we don't.  Trust me, I've been taking down champed 5s with duos from the newest 12 whenever they are boosted.  Sure it's harder to champ the vaulted 4s now, but there is a mechanism in place to make sure that you do champ them at your own pace and largely without subjecting to the will of RNGesus, but more importantly you don't NEED them to be successful anymore.  It's now far easier and more predictable to champ the newest 4s and they are good enough to have you progressing and placing just as high as you would have with even the best vaulted 4s.  And as so many have pointed out, any vaulted 4 with less than 10 covers was going to take a really long time to finish anyway due to dilution (and would only get worse over time) - BH will actually speed them up.

    As revskip said, at the end of the day you are still champing the same number of 4*s based on your ISO earn rate, it's just that now it's easier to minimize your wasted covers by focusing on the newest 4s, while using any extra ISO that you have to go back and champ that Iceman, or Rulk, or IMHB that BH has unlocked for you.

    Think about your long-term steady state roster.  You are in a spot where you pull in 25-35k+ISO/day and you are champing a 4* every 1-2 weeks.  This is more or less the same under either system.  You are keeping up with releases and the number of non-champed 4s is slowly approaching 0.  You've progressed to the 5* tier and every once in a while you have to splurge some ISO on 5s and fall behind a bit, but are able to slowly catch back up.  Under the old system as you continue to pull covers you are adding champ levels to the earliest 4s that you champed and they are slowly moving in to that nice 320-370 range, but you are still pulling quite a few covers for characters that you just don't have enough ISO to champ, these end up being wasted covers.  And in the very long term you start getting 370s.  Now for every 370 you get the odds of a wasted cover go up, and eventually you get to a place where your progress is severely limited by RNG, rarely pulling a cover for a 4* that isn't already at 370.  Now consider the same scenario with vaulting.  You are still champing a 4 every 1-2 weeks, but in a very short time you are completely caught up - all 12 of the newest 4s are champed and so every token you open gets applied as a champ level, you aren't wasting any covers.  Your newest 4s hit 300-320 or so before they leave (possibly much higher even) and your roster very slowly approaches a pretty even balance of those 310s.  You set your best and brightest as BH and those toons move up to 370 one by one (or you could set them all if you like that even approach....player's choice here) and every time you get someone to 370 you remove them as a BH and you stop pulling their covers - there are still no wasted pulls.  Ever.  So at the end of the day the total number of champ levels will be greater with vaulting, but they will be more evenly distributed rather than biased toward your earliest champs.

    Vaulting and BH just gives you so much more control over your long term roster plans, and for a community that has reviled RNG-based progression for so long I really just have to assume that most just aren't seeing this massive long-term benefit that vaulting has brought us..
  • broll
    broll Posts: 4,732 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited April 2017
    Vaulting and BH just gives you so much more control over your long term roster plans, and for a community that has reviled RNG-based progression for so long I really just have to assume that most just aren't seeing this massive long-term benefit that vaulting has brought us..
    I would argue that BH gives control, vaulting takes it away.  Vaulting is more aggressive than BH.  1 step forward, 2 steps back.  If the vaulted characters were available somewhere, classics, a new token vault, whatever, then I would agree it's more control, but it's not.  We are at the mercy of the schedule for when we can get those characters outside of a 5% chance and a few other outlying ways to get them that we have no control over.
  • DaveR4470
    DaveR4470 Posts: 931 Critical Contributor
    Vhailorx said:
    Odds haven't gone from 1/47 to 1/12.  They have gone from "1/47 across 47 different characters" to "1/12 for 12 characters and 0/35 for 35 characters." 
    @Vhailorx, the only real problem I have with anything you're saying is this quote -- because it's empirically incorrect, as you're not considering the bonus hero effect.

    The odds have not gone to 1/12 for 12 chars and 0/35 for 35.  They've gone to 1/12 for 12 chars and (1/N)*5% for bonus heroes, where N is the number of vaulted characters you've favorited (assuming no non-vaulted characters are favorited as well).  You have to consider the system as a system, and not focus on one part of it.  

    Your point is valid that the change means that covering all the 4*s at the same time is significantly more difficult now, which is definitely something that should be taken into account.  (It is also something that disproportionately impacts lower-level and newer players.)  But it is now much, much quicker to cover specific 4*s -- something that benefits a lot of people (admittedly skewed towards experienced veteran players).  Because you can change the odds for specific vaulted 4*s to be way more in your favor than they were under RNGesus (by only favoriting them), and that is not a valueless thing.  Would things be a lot better and a lot quicker without vaulting?  Yes (except for the new characters), absolutely - but I'm not comparing the system to hypothetical alternatives, I'm comparing it to what it replaced.  

    You also have a valid point when you say that if you don't get covers from progression/placement/alliance rewards, it will take forever to cover vaulted characters.  My point is that it already was taking forever to cover 4*s through tokens; the vaulting/bonus change just makes a terrible situation terrible+1.  But it also lets you cover specific 4*s faster.   So even if the new player gets screwed in the abstract by vaulting, the new player can nonetheless cover up a Peggy, an Iceman, and a Rulk much, much faster via tokens than they could before.  I think a lot of people tend to overlook how large a percentage of their covers came from PvE and PvP awards, and not from tokens, and therefore think "it took me three months to cover Peggy, now it will take three years."  Well, yes, if you consider tokens.  But it would have taken you two and a half years to cover Peggy just through tokens before.  The token system is a crapshoot in general; I guess my point is that making it a different sort of crapshoot isn't a game-breaking change.

    I would fully back any of your suggested alternatives, though!
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited April 2017
    Revskip: the game is freemium.  That means the devs have placed a real-money price on just about every in-game transaction.  It's therefore fair game for players to speculate about the fiscal motives behind each game change.  When Destiny or Overwatch roll out balance changes no one complains that the devs are engaged in a money grab (in those games the money grab microtransactions are on the cosmetic side of things).  But in a pay-to-win game like MPQ, concern about ulterior financial motives is inevitable and, IMO, appropriate.  That doesn't mean that demi/d3 are bad guys or are out to screw players.

    Fight: we just aren't ever going to agree.  You treat BH like a realistic way to level multiple 4*s to 370.  That is effectively impossible for the vast majority of players.  Assuming you have 1 4* at level 300 (something that maybe 10% of players have), it still requires 1400 4* cover pulls to level that character up to 370 via bonus covers assuming you only have 1 favorite hero.  Even assuming you can score 10 covers from prog/placement, it's still 1200 4* pulls to hit 370.  And that's for just 1 4*!  To max the vintage top 5 will require something like 6000 LTs.  How many players will ever pull that many LTs in their entire MPQ careers?  Assume a player earns 100 LTs a year from ddq and champ reward etc, and then earns 160 cp a week and spends them all on classic LTs, so that's 8 a week.  That player will still need more than 11 years of MPQ play to earn 6000 LTs and that will get 5x 4*s to 370. 

    Now, I freely admit that most players are never going to get any 4*s up to 370 under any system, so we are really talking about 1% problems here.  What I am really trying to illustrate is that BH as currently implemented is not really an appropriate mechanism for leveling 4* champs.  It's theoretically much better suited to filling the odd corners in a roster and getting characters from 10 to 13 covers.  But it actually sucks at that because it doesn't account for dupes.  Setting any 5/5/1 character as a favorite is asking for disappointment. 

    As for your other arguments, I really don't find them especially compelling.  reducing the pool of available pulls from 47 to 12 increases player flexibility and player control?!  You act like champing all 12 current 4*s is an easy, quick task.  But even for the serious vets who can champ 1 4* every 2 weeks, it will still take 6 months to get 12 champed, but which time 8 new characters will be in the pool.  It's not a task that most players will blow through quickly; it's a never-ending grind that most players will never escape. 

    Broll is right; the changed demi pushed out are 1 step forward and 2 steps back for many (most?) players.  If you want to be happy about it and focus on the 1 step forward, that's great.  But please don't pretend that the two steps back didn't also happen.
  • mohio
    mohio Posts: 1,690 Chairperson of the Boards
    I see over and over in these threads about vaulting that people wouldn't mind the latest 12 being the only 4s in the latest legends token, but they want all 4s (or only the older ones) available in either the classic tokens or a separate store altogether. While I don't deny that that would be a great change for the player, it is just not what the developers intend for the game, and what they think is in the best long-term interest of the game. Choice is nice when you are a well-educated consumer and know how your choice will effect you. Too many choices, however, can actually be detrimental to people's enjoyment. Anyway, I guess my point is, the devs want everyone playing with the newer characters that they spend their time creating, and not just collecting dust for 6 months when you finally get 13 covers, and then continue collecting dust because why use a 270 boosted over a 320 boosted? So, they force everyone to collect those characters by vaulting the older ones. Giving players an out by offering "vintage" 4s in another store is not what they want, so I really don't think it's coming. They are experimenting with other ways to offer these characters, like the vintage heroics and the daily 4* store, so maybe other attempts are coming as well, but I wouldn't expect another cp store option since that would undermine their goals (well, what I assume their goals are). 
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited April 2017
    mohio said:
    I see over and over in these threads about vaulting that people wouldn't mind the latest 12 being the only 4s in the latest legends token, but they want all 4s (or only the older ones) available in either the classic tokens or a separate store altogether. While I don't deny that that would be a great change for the player, it is just not what the developers intend for the game, and what they think is in the best long-term interest of the game. Choice is nice when you are a well-educated consumer and know how your choice will effect you. Too many choices, however, can actually be detrimental to people's enjoyment. Anyway, I guess my point is, the devs want everyone playing with the newer characters that they spend their time creating, and not just collecting dust for 6 months when you finally get 13 covers, and then continue collecting dust because why use a 270 boosted over a 320 boosted? So, they force everyone to collect those characters by vaulting the older ones. Giving players an out by offering "vintage" 4s in another store is not what they want, so I really don't think it's coming. They are experimenting with other ways to offer these characters, like the vintage heroics and the daily 4* store, so maybe other attempts are coming as well, but I wouldn't expect another cp store option since that would undermine their goals (well, what I assume their goals are). 
    What the hell is wrong with players advocating for changes that are good for the player?  And before everyone starts screaming about "whiny, entitled millenials," who is arguing that demi can't make money for the game?  All I am saying is that demi's vision for the game may not always be the best vision, or even a particularly good one.
  • broll
    broll Posts: 4,732 Chairperson of the Boards
    mohio said:
    the devs want everyone playing with the newer characters that they spend their time creating, and not just collecting dust for 6 months when you finally get 13 covers, and then continue collecting dust 
    This brings up another problem with vaulting that doesn't get as much press.  People have posted here that their favorite part of the game is the pokemon effect (gotta catch em all) and it's well known how many gamers are completionist.  They are going to turn away that audience by ruining that aspect of the game.  

  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    DaveR4470: You are right that bonus heroes do matter.  I was just talking about vaulting.  And I partially reject your assertion that we must consider the system as a whole.  It's true that we should keep the whole system  in mind when considering the total roster effect of changes.  But there is no particular reason that vaulting was tied to bonus heroes except that demi did both at the same time.  I think it's fair to consider the separate elements of the new system and their discreet effects when arguing about what changes should stay in the game. 

    As for how  many 4* covers players get from sources other than LTs, that's great question.  Maybe one of the serious log keepers on the forums has good data.  For myself I would guess that I earn 3-6 covers for 4* characters from placement/prog/vault rewards, and earn the rest from LTs.  I don't often buy out vaults for new releases, or grind for top 10 finishes.  But when I have done so it has made a huge impact on how quickly I can cover those characters.  So when characters like Peggy had a release event plus a few extra covers made available via an extra prog cover in her PVP event and a special event vault with reasonable pricing, I managed to finish her release events with something like 6 covers for her, and she was champed in October without any direct buys.  That took me about 3 months.  I was able to do Medusa (thanks to the naughty or nice vault) and carol (thanks to SLRs) even faster than that. 

    But I still haven't fully covered war machine or ws or moonknight, characters for whom I only earned 1 cover in the release PVE and 1 in the release PVP. 
  • mohio
    mohio Posts: 1,690 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited April 2017
    Vhailorx said:
    Mohio. You act like disliking vaulting is the same as liking token dilution.

    Dilution was a real problem.  But demi's terrible solution just creates new and different problems.  

    If the game (1) strongly pushes players to have a complete roster, but (2) has too many characters relative to the current token odds, then the solution isnt to reduce the number of characters available in tokens.  That solves problem 2 but makes problem 1 worse.  The solution is to increase the options available to players for roster building.  And before you are all "but bonus heroes. . ." 5% is not enough relative to the scale of vaulting.  Just adding 5% BH onto the old system would have been good.  Adding 5% BH and doing vaulting is just a slap in the face to player: "we could solve this problem sensibly, but instead we are twisting the monetization screws!"
    First off - I certainly don't mean to equate those things as you say - I am merely trying to point out HOW BADLY dilution was already getting and showing that a return to the previous system would actually do any of the things you guys seem to think it will. In a different post just above you talk about how many pulls it would take to BH someone up to 370 and indeed it is an absurd total. But it's still fewer than it was before! Let's instead look at how many pulls it would take under the old system just to get 13 covers. With soon to be 47 characters, you would average one of everyone every 55 pulls. That's 715 pulls on average to cover a 4* that you had 0 covers of before. This is what is facing 3-4 transitioners in regards to all older characters. They don't have release events to get a head start on covering them, and they likely aren't placing t5 in cl8 in pvp to get multiples there. PvE is a grind-a-thon, so if they're getting covers from placement there, then that's great, but more likely they'll get one cover in PvE progression per year, and maybe 2 or 3 per year in PvP progression. That's just glacial progression towards transitioning to 4*, most players would rightly quit before they ever made it. 

    Edit - lost my train of thought for a minute...I also quoted the above because I do think that dilution was too big of a problem not to try and solve asap. The game does indeed push players to have a DEEP roster, or a DIVERSE roster, but I don't think it pushes players to have a COMPLETE roster, that is an internal pressure players place on themselves. The daily 4* store solves the problem of not being able to complete that day's DDQ, and outside of the gauntlet (which maybe is fixed these days - I keep skipping them) nowhere else do you absolutely have to have all the 4* or all characters in order to make it to full progression. 
  • mohio
    mohio Posts: 1,690 Chairperson of the Boards
    Vhailorx said:

    What the tinykitty is wrong with players advocating for changes that are good for the player?  And before everyone starts screaming about "whiny, entitled millenials," who is arguing that demi can't make money for the game?  All I am saying is that demi's vision for the game may not always be the best vision, or even a particularly good one.
    Nope - nothing wrong with it, by all means keep advocating for positive changes. I'm merely pointing out what I think their reasoning is and why that line of requests I don't think will work. Others have pointed it out before, but suggestions that end up being positive for the players also have to come with something that will make them money or they're not likely to do it just out of the goodness of their hearts. 
  • Straycat
    Straycat Posts: 963 Critical Contributor
    Vhailorx said:
    Pants1000 said:
    I disagree, at least from my perspective.  I fit nicely into the 4* vet category, but I'm fine with vaulting.  Yes it changed my overall goals and strategy, but that's not a bad thing.  Since vaulting was introduced I champed Wasp, Medusa, Cage, Gwenpool, Blade and Carol.  Without vaulting I would have had the same amount of ISO to champ 6 characters, but they probably would have been Bucky, Kate, Drax, Fury, Rulk, etc.  

    Rulk jumps out on that list because he's top tier.  I just finally got his 13th cover a week or two ago, which took me over a year due to poor luck with rng.  To me that's what I like about vaulting.  New characters will get fully covered in months, not over a year.

    i don't have any over 300 yet, but I have IMHB and Peggy at 290+ and set as bonus heroes, so I expect them to hit 300 soon and maybe someday hit 370.
    So vaulting is good because you were able to champ wasp, medusa, cage, gwenpool, blade, and carol rather than WS, Kate, Drax, Fury, and Rulk?

    That's not an analysis of vaulting; it's a comparison of two different groups of 4*s.  The current 12 4*s may be good at the moment; but even if we assume that's true today it certainly won't always be the case.  If vaulting lasts long enough then the current 12 mix will go through good and bad phases like anything else. 

    As for my groupings, I am sure that some players in all 4 of my categories do not agree with my analysis.  I still think my analysis was more or less correct. 

    I think everyone agrees that covering new 4* characters faster is generally good for the game (just like everyone would rather have a bonus heroes system than nothing).  the debate is whether or not the benefit of faster champing for new releases is offset by the arbitrarily simultaneous vaulting of all older 4*s.  IMO the answer is pretty clearly no, but I am biased as per my own categorization of players.  What I really would like demi to comment on is their decision not to do the obvious thing and put vintage 4*s in Classic LTs.  the explanation offered by brigby was pure nonsense. 
    I am in the same group, 4* vet. And instead of championing Kingpin, Miles, War Machine, and Mr Fantastic I champed Carol, Wasp, Mordo,and Blade.

    I would argue it is an analysis of vaulting tho. It's not that I was able to champ some good new characters, its that the old characters can stay unchamped without fear of wasted covers. That is the only reason I have Carnage and Venom champed and while I would like to earn on that investment, opening a token and seeing a Carnage cover was never something I wanted.

    I am stuck in the grind mainly because champing Rhulk paused my progress on the latest 12. I have 5 champs and 3 covered of the 12, and I have half a mind to hoard until Cage leaves so he doesn't take up any iso. Last bunch of pulls were all champ levels, so I don't have a set plan going forward yet.

    Personally I am enjoying the new system more than the old. Since vaulting was introduced I still got covers for vaulted characters and overall had less wasted pulls. That's just me, I'm not gonna try to convince anyone why vaulting is or isn't the best scenario, since the pros and cons are well defined by now.  Still, its not a great argument that the best scenario for vaulting is that it lets us not waste covers after we hit 370.
  • Fightmastermpq
    Fightmastermpq Posts: 995 Critical Contributor
    broll said:
    mohio said:
    the devs want everyone playing with the newer characters that they spend their time creating, and not just collecting dust for 6 months when you finally get 13 covers, and then continue collecting dust 
    This brings up another problem with vaulting that doesn't get as much press.  People have posted here that their favorite part of the game is the pokemon effect (gotta catch em all) and it's well known how many gamers are completionist.  They are going to turn away that audience by ruining that aspect of the game.  

    How do you define "gotta catch em all"? Rostering all characters? Champing all characters? Max-champing all characters?  Vaulting+BH will typically do all of these things better.  

    Most people bitten by this Pokemon bug are hardcore in release events to get the initial cover(s), but if they miss one BH will likely reward it far sooner than RNG under the old system.  The advantage in champing and max champing all characters goes to Vaulting+BH as well as I described above thanks to fewer wasted covers, and being able to set your BH to the character that you "gotta catch".
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    Mohio: For clarity: by complete roster I mean all 4*s rostered and champed, all 3*s rostered and champed, all 2*s rostered and farmed at all times. 

    The reason I say that the game pushes people to have characters champed rather than just rostered is that (1) boosting is very powerful, especially at the 4* champ levels, and scaling is keyed off level.  So having an essential or featured, or weekly boosted character champed is a substantial advantage at the 3* and 4* tiers (less so for 2*s because they contribute little to PVE essentials nodes as is and aren't ever pvp featured characters, except bagman). 

    Vaulting makes it somewhat harder to for newer players to roster vintage 4*s, but makes it MUCH harder for those players to ever champ many vintage characters.  Perhaps that is why I view vaulting a much bigger negative than you?

    And again, comparing the build rate for a single 4* under the new and old systems is not a particularly useful comparison.  building a single 4* under the old system may have been slower, but it happened simultaneously with building dozens of other 4*s at the same time.  Now all of that progress is focused down into 12 + 1 characters.