I brought this up on Colog's guide to supports, but it really warrants its own topic, so I thought I'd post it here. Someone brought up "how do I get supports?" and I answered how I did (by spending 100hp on every vault once a day, basically, and spending on some of the deals,) but that leads to the real issue - how does a new player get supports?
The basic answer, at this time, is they don't. Supports add very little to the game at the lower levels, so even if a newer player is inclined to spend $$ or HP on supports, they really shouldn't because those resources would be much better spent elsewhere. This leads to a very basic conclusion - support tokens are way too hard to get.
At this time, beginner support tokens are available as two items in every PVE Vault - an 80 item vault. That basically makes them as rare as 4* covers - you will get them from time to time, but they are an extreme outlier pull. Otherwise you can get one by playing at a higher SCL for the season and placing very high. That's one, and you generally need to place T25 or better. Otherwise, you can spend 300 HP when a new support comes out and get three chances to pull one of 15 tokens from a 120 item vault - about as common as a 3* cover in that vault. Alternatively you can spend 4800 HP at that time for 5 tokens and a 4* cover, or 250 CP for 3 tokens and a 4* cover. In both cases the price is extremely high relative to normal 4* covers - the HP cost is 1200 more than the "going rate" (3600 for a 4* cover, 8 2* tokens, and 3 CP,) and the CP offer is... well it's terrible really, considering you can get 10 "Latest" pulls (on average, 8.5 random 4* covers and 1.5 5* cover,) or 12 "Classic" pulls (10.2 4* covers and 1.8 5* cover.)
I think we can all agree that this availability is way too low. I'd be interested in what other people have as suggestions, but here's my $.2.
Right now, support tokens, even the beginner ones, are harder to get than Legendary Tokens. That's tinykitty - they're not nearly as integral to the game as LTs and not even remotely as valuable. Making them as common as Heroic or Elite tokens is probably going too much the other way - that will flood the game with tokens and RIso. As common as Event tokens is probably closer to "right," but it's still probably a shade too common. So here's what I think would be ideal, keep in mind this is only my opinion and no better a plan than anyone else's:
- A beginner and advanced support token should be added to the progression rewards of both PVE and PVP. One each, I think.
- Beginner tokens should be available from some other source - I would lean toward placement in the subs of PVE. Top 50 is probably the right number there, since there's no top 25 in sub placement.
- Another Support Token should be available from Placement in PVE and PVP - here I think they should go all the way up to Master for sufficient placement.
- A Master token should be available from Season placement. I honestly think it should be no harder to get than the LT.
So this way a person who plays a lot at the high level will get a fair number of beginner tokens, a few advanced tokens, and probably one Master Token a season. This seems very reasonable, and it will mean that many people will start to cover some of the, at this point, many supports at a decent level.
Support distribution is another question - I'm not sure they want to fold in all the supports to the same token as that's already extremely diluted. A potential solution there is to have a different "support store" for each event support token, but I think I've made this post long enough...
OJSP said: GrimSkald said: I'd be interested in what other people have as suggestions, but here's my $.2. A lot of good points.. worth 20 cents indeed.I think eventually the tokens will be added to the reward ladders, but until then, the guaranteed way to get the tokens from the vaults without spending money would be through hoarding.
GrimSkald said: I'd be interested in what other people have as suggestions, but here's my $.2.
I'd be interested in what other people have as suggestions, but here's my $.2.
Brigby said: Hi @GrimSkald. Thanks for putting together this write up! You make some good points, and propose what I believe to be a very fair balance in availability. I'll be sure to pass this along to the team in my weekly report for review.
Jaedenkaal said: OJSP said: GrimSkald said: I'd be interested in what other people have as suggestions, but here's my $.2. A lot of good points.. worth 20 cents indeed.I think eventually the tokens will be added to the reward ladders, but until then, the guaranteed way to get the tokens from the vaults without spending money would be through hoarding. Man, that's a long-term investment though just for a guaranteed token. Even at SCL 8 I'm getting maybe... 8? 10? vault tokens for a 3-day event. So you're talking about holding on to these things for 5-10 of that single event, and that's not including the times when it is run as a new character release where there's no vault at all. Yikes.
Heh, I made a lot of typos in my post I see. I fixed most of them, but left the $.2 - it's ridiculous that the price for an opinion has not been adjusted for inflation.
You could hoard tokens to better your chances for getting the beginner support tokens, but that's very, very much not worth it. It's the support equivalent of a standard token. Chances are you'll draw a Rank 1 something that is part of the original crop...
As I said, supports are almost unavailable to new players (one of reasons I have so many of them is they gave us a fair number of tokens on release and special events,) and the resources they'd need to spend to get them is not worth the cost.
LeRoy1979 said: Brigby said: Hi @GrimSkald. Thanks for putting together this write up! You make some good points, and propose what I believe to be a very fair balance in availability. I'll be sure to pass this along to the team in my weekly report for review. Wait,...there is a weekly report to the Devs from the forum???
Nick441234 said: LeRoy1979 said: Brigby said: Hi @GrimSkald. Thanks for putting together this write up! You make some good points, and propose what I believe to be a very fair balance in availability. I'll be sure to pass this along to the team in my weekly report for review. Wait,...there is a weekly report to the Devs from the forum??? Yeah. Brigby has mentioned it a number of times. He goes into bat for us on a weekly basis. Obviously doesn't mean they listen to him.
This is what comes when you spend too much time writing a post, so that a bunch of other posts pop up between it and the last one you read.
You're welcome! It's been something I've been mulling over myself for a while - I figured availability was going to improve sooner or later, but I also thought some suggestions would be helpful.