Champion Acquisition - Something's Gotta Give!

So I recently watched BrutalDLX's retirement video, and something that he said really resonated with me.

The amount of time and/or money that is required to acquire new champions at a high level to make a serious impact to Endgame players has become insane. I understand that the method of acquiring these champions have not changed - in fact, the number of players who can win these champions from the Arenas has increased over the years. As of now, there are 200 spots for a 6* Featured Champion, and 800 spots for the 5* Featured Champion. The same can be said for the Basic Champion as well. However, in order to qualify for these precious few spots, players have to spend hours upon hours grinding away in the Arena. We're talking high hundreds of rounds (sometimes pushing well over 1000) in order to secure a 6* champion. While there are clearly players who are willing to spend that kind of time, I feel like I would not be alone in saying that I just don't have the time for that.

This doesn't even cover the spending side of new Champions. I understand that drop rates are posted and it's all about getting lucky, but you would think that spending multiple hundreds of dollars on crystals would guarantee something concrete. Sure, people get lucky with 5 or less crystals and walk away with a shiny new 6* champion to play with, but then there are times where you can open hundreds of crystals and get nothing. I believe it was Seatin who claimed to have spent almost $2000 without a copy of 5* or 6* Mojo (maybe it was just the 6* he was looking for, I don't remember), and honestly to spend that much without a guarantee of getting at least one copy of the Featured champion? Sounds a bit overkill, honestly.

Personally, I've reached a point in the game where I don't feel the need to spend too much time or too much money on the chance of winning/pulling a new featured champion. I'm sure others feel the same. It has nothing to do with the quality of champions being released. There have been a lot of fantastic additions to the Contest in recent years that makes me want to be excited about new Champions. Kitty looks amazing. I have been chasing Shang-Chi in featured crystals for weeks. I want to pull Peni Parker at some point, or take Hercules for a spin. But the thing that stops me every time? Looking at the crystal drop rates, or tracking the cutoff history for other new and exciting champions.

6* Kitty Pryde went for over 166 million points this round. If a team of 6* champions gave an exact 180,000 points in a single round with the 3x multiplier (20k points per 6* prior to multiplier), it would take a player 923 rounds just to break 166 million points. If a single round (3 fights) takes 3 minutes of playtime, 923 rounds is 2,769 minutes of playtime - or just over 46 hours. I understand that the timing of a round may be inaccurate, but the fact still remains that there is someone out there who spent enough time to score 166 million points over 3 days to end up not getting a 6* Kitty Pryde.

It's possible that the issue of players hiring other players or using arena bots to grind the arena for them is increasing the overall cutoff for a new champion, and I'm sure that should these issues be handled effectively that we could see a drop in cutoff scores that could potentially entice other players to give the arena a chance. But I don't know that it's the best solution.

I've got a an idea I wanted to share, whether it actually makes sense or not.

Add new milestones with copies of the 5 and 6* champion.
Make them the only milestone reward for that milestone, and make them far out from the 12 million milestone, but attainable. Stick the 5* Champion somewhere around 40 million arena points. This is somewhat in the ballpark of existing cutoff data for new Champions. Make the 6* Champion milestone somewhere in the ballpark of like 80-90 million points. It's still a time-consuming grind, but it's attainable. Players may be more likely to spend units on champion refreshes if they know that hitting that final milestone will guarantee them a new 6* champion.

This does, however, mess with the Rank Rewards system you have in place. A lot of players like shooting for the Top 1%-5% rank reward bracket, since it awards 5000 5* shards and 1000 6* shards. Maybe this reward could be a new milestone as well. Stick it in the 20-30 million point range, since that is around the current cutoff records anyways. I would consider it an improvement over the current system because it would allow more players to hit the rewards they want in the Featured Arena.

This does still leave Rank Rewards in flux, and I'm sure you would want to have some sort of system in place to entice players into shooting for high scores, so perhaps the Rank Rewards could get a revamp, based on the Champion milestone you hit.

For instance, at the 5* milestone, you qualify for 5* Rank Rewards. Maybe just for hitting that 40 Million Milestone, your Ranked Rewards would be 500 or 1000 6* shards, in keeping with the Top 10% rank rewards as they stand today. As they get closer to that 6* milestone, the rewards get better. Maybe they can be more 6* shards, maybe you can make them rank up gems (1 -> 2 or 2 -> 3) that will help players save some resources ranking up their champions and allow them to rank them higher by saving their T4CC.

When a player hits the 6* Milestone, it removes them from the 5* Rank Rewards entirely, and they become eligible for 6* Rank Rewards. Rewards could start out at 1000 6* shards (similar to the Top 500 and Top 5% brackets now), maybe shoot up to 3000 6* shards, and include pieces of rank up material for 6*s (T5B or T2A fragments, T4CC Selectors, etc.). Top prize can still claim the Warbound title, but maybe also throw in a 1 -> 2 rank up gem for the Top 5 players in the 6* bracket or something.

These rank rewards could entice players to keep pushing past the 6* Champion milestone and still instill a sense of competition amongst players, even though more players could be walking away with 6* Champions from a 3-day arena grind.

Anyways, I have probably babbled on for far too long here, but I wanted to share some of my thoughts with the developers and the entire community to see if anyone else feels the same way about getting new Champions.

Feel free to poke holes in my arena proposal as well, I understand it's probably pretty rough, potentially non-viable and/or game-breaking.

Comments

thanks4playing

Hoitado

Putting them as 5* & 6*s in Milestones is a terrible idea.

They should just add them in the Monthly Cav Crystals if anything. Its not like you can Acquire much of them. They would also have to cut down the amount of shards you get from the daily offers you can buy near the end of the month

BitterSteel

My biggest issue is waiting up to 7 months for them to be added to the basic, or 4 months for them to come into a featured. It’s a real Hype killer.

Go back to the old system and have champs added to the basic at the same time as the 5*. We had 5* champs added before their featured Crystal was over, why not with 6* too?

Will3808

I agree that arena should be revamped to make grinding for new champions more guaranteed once you get up past certain a certain point. I’m not sure exactly how I like the exact situation you’ve set out (I’m not an arena grinder myself so I don’t have much insight) but I definitely think kabam should look into this.

TrashyPanda

I agree that champ acquisition needs to change. Ideally, I'd like to guarantee that I'm working towards my target. Bad rolls would hurt a lot less if they took me a step towards my white whale.

The arena is the only way you can guarantee anything, but even the 5* basic is out of reach for most TB-level players.

kconrad37

Realized I never really said anything to address the crystals and their kinda bad drop rates. An easy way to fix this would be to introduce a sort of pity system so that after a certain number of crystals, you were guaranteed to pull a 6* champion.

So like every 40 crystals could guarantee a basic 6*, and every like, 75 or something, could guarantee the featured.

Deacon

i sit on thousands of units because i refuse to spend 300 units on a 3* champ crystal ... i spare myself the disappointment but that's just me lol. and i won't ever acquire a 6* champ from arena. i just don't have the patience or time or even interest in grinding arena.

Jaded

I’ve been saying the new champions should be in the milestones for a long time. However it looks it would be better. Right now the majority of people don’t bother with arenas because the new champion is unobtainable, some just aim for a rank %. It’s demoralizing part of the game that needs a revamp.

Too many people think it’s PvP when it’s just PvKabam.

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Draconic_12

@DNA3000 be like “Pathetic”

ChriissR

What I hate the most is how long it takes for them to get in the basic pool. Kitty Pride won't be in until May 2022. That's actually ridiculous and stupid.

Skiddy212

My biggest issue is waiting up to 7 months for them to be added to the basic, or 4 months for them to come into a featured. It’s a real Hype killer.

Go back to the old system and have champs added to the basic at the same time as the 5*. We had 5* champs added before their featured Crystal was over, why not with 6* too?

Yes

Therealdmo

I know it may be a bad idea to some but seen many other games where you acquire different (shards/points) to acquire certain champs/hero’s they may not be the feature or what you want at that time but rng alone is not enough

Reference

OP's points are legitimate, nonetheless interest between players and Kabam are not align and thus it is not easy to resolve.

New champ, although it is virtual, it's just like new product and involve R&D cost. The game company want to earn money via selling "preview" crystal or crystals in whatever names. If the 5*/6* champs become "certain" via milestone in arena, the winners are probably merc and some 24/7 availability players. The game company probably earn less from selling crystals.

The current arena is basically occupied by merc. Did the game company know that? Pretty certain. Would they eliminate them? Depends. From PR perspective the game company must prohibit any merc behaviour. However, those mercs set a high bar in 6* arena and push other non-merc players to spent units / buy units in order to catch up the lower rank champ (i.e. 5* atm), which is beneficial to the game company.

The game company is looking at PnL + number of active players (thus they allow you to setup many alternative accounts but not allow piloting, even though there is significant grey arena in between), when more and more players become less willing to stay online for grinding, and at some point which affect the unit bundle sales, then the game company would reform.

Some people in this forum give me an impression that they think players with UC/Cav titles are everywhere. 2 years before when Apple didn't change the Game Centre, actually we can obtain some data about % of you against the player base. At that moment a guy in reddit deducted the % of UC / Cav are less than 1%......probably because of a lot of dummy + inactive accounts.

StevieManWonder

What they should do is just decrease the run time for the Featured Crystals or just bring back the original featured crystal (when you had a 25% for 15K shards at the featured champ).
Seriously. Like I’m not going to open up another six star shard crystal until freaking January 12th when Kitty’s featured crystal finally comes around. It’s boring and kills my desire to keep playing knowing that I need to wait months to get even a chance at pulling a champ I want.

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GroundedWisdom

There are two sides to this I see. The first is that new Champ acquisition is pretty slow, in terms of adding them to the Crystals. That's pretty clear. The other side is that it's bound to happen when people amass the majority of Champs. New acquisitions will be fewer and farther in between.

The_Sentry06

Hard agree.

Add the 5* to a milestone in arena. And maybe decrease the runtime of the 6* featured or increase the odds of a new champion in that.

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J0eySn0w

i sit on thousands of units because i refuse to spend 300 units on a 3* champ crystal ... i spare myself the disappointment but that's just me lol. and i won't ever acquire a 6* champ from arena. i just don't have the patience or time or even interest in grinding arena.

Seriously bro! Besides these content creators I wonder why and how some do it, grind and beat your device, thumps and possible life for a champ sometimes you are not guaranteed to acquire. It's insane! Is it normally worth it I reason?
I get that it took a lot of time, planning and money to present these champions but isn't there a better way of giving the playerbase a better chance at obtaining them and at the same time cash in on the efforts or investment?
I'm not the gambler type of person, I knew that but it was solidified when I was exhausting some gifts cards I had from cav crystals. I should have taken some friends out for Halal and had a good time, that would have been more satisfying.
I never had any issues with the monthly sigil, daily units deal and the occasional mastery core deals. They were simple, guaranteed and fair...well, that was what I was able to do now I'm just done. Maybe I'm just cheap

Bendy

They need to increase the pool to just percentages, with crystals the featured rate needs to be higher i get its all rng but i pulled 3 nexus 6s and 5 6s from these cavs in 50 crystals and its insane that not 1 of them 6s were a featured like featured should be the one u get mostly than the others, the drop rates just need an increase higher than 0.30 due to the pool being in 200s now

kconrad37

What they should do is just decrease the run time for the Featured Crystals or just bring back the original featured crystal (when you had a 25% for 15K shards at the featured champ).
Seriously. Like I’m not going to open up another six star shard crystal until freaking January 12th when Kitty’s featured crystal finally comes around. It’s boring and kills my desire to keep playing knowing that I need to wait months to get even a chance at pulling a champ I want.

I actually think that this is a really solid idea. Kabam had originally stated that one of the reasons they were doing away with the Featured 5* Crystals in that format was because players were holding on to shards for months and months for a chance at the champion, when that was not the mechanic that they intended. However, I feel like at this point they've only made it worse. While players may not be hoarding for months at a time anymore (If I remember the old system correctly, their unique Featured Crystal would return a week before they hit the basic pool, which is 6 months after release), the new problem is that the current Featured Crystals do not give you the same chance of pulling the champion you want. I've personally been trying to pull Shang-Chi or Mr. Negative from the current 6* Featured Crystal since the beginning. I've pulled Captain Marvel 4 times, and she was sig 200 well before those crystals were opened. It makes the Featured Crystals feel worthless, because while I want a select few champions in the pool, there's like a 4% chance of actually pulling the champion I want. I'd rather gamble on a 25% chance to get the specific champion that I want from a unique Featured Crystal, personally.

Drop the 3* completely from any cav or paid crystals. Adjust the new rates accordingly.

Honestly, yes. It's past time that 3*s get removed from Cavalier crystals. It is ludicrous that a Cavalier level player, who can't even bring 3* or 4* champions into most content at their level, have to suffer a 50% drop rate on a more than useless 3* Champion. In reality, it's an 81% chance of pulling a useless champion when you factor in the 31% drop rate on 4*s from a Cavalier Crystal, though at least a 4* could potentially be used in the Featured/Basic Arena.

PHCs offer 2* through 4* Champions.
GMCs offer 3* through 5* Champions.
It's only logical that a Cav Crystal should offer 4* through 6* Champions.

Hoitado

What they should do is just decrease the run time for the Featured Crystals or just bring back the original featured crystal (when you had a 25% for 15K shards at the featured champ).
Seriously. Like I’m not going to open up another six star shard crystal until freaking January 12th when Kitty’s featured crystal finally comes around. It’s boring and kills my desire to keep playing knowing that I need to wait months to get even a chance at pulling a champ I want.

I’ve been thinking about this for months. I don’t know why they took it out as it was before my time but from the Videos I’ve seen it seems like a really smart idea

Worknprogress

I agree that arena should be revamped to make grinding for new champions more guaranteed once you get up past certain a certain point. I’m not sure exactly how I like the exact situation you’ve set out (I’m not an arena grinder myself so I don’t have much insight) but I definitely think kabam should look into this.

This is basically impossible to do with their monetization model. Practically everyone would just stop buying crystals except the lower tier players who open a few here or there for a champ they want to get lucky for. A decent sized roster can hit that 90-100M milestone suggested with no units spent at all and actually end up gaining units instead.

I get why players would want that and how it may make sense to some but that's just not going to be a realistic option certainly for 6*s anytime remotely soon.

jdrum663

I'm up for anything that changes this garbage arena system we have now unless they change it and make it worse.

Moosetiptronic

Changing arena is not the solution. Better champ upgrade rate, change to featured and I hate to say it, but perhaps locking increased featured odds even more starkly behind sigil or similar may be on the cards.

And I have not and would not buy the sigil.

I don't arena grind or buy Cavs and I have 1 2021 champ in 5* or 6*, which is mangog. As a mid to late game TB, I'd guess this is entirely normal? To have 1 2021 champion at a useable rarity 9 months into the year is bonkers. And I do occasionally splurge on featured.

Because there needs to be a better balance between champion acquisition and general in game expenditure from the masses. Because at the moment it's a tiny pyramid of super spenders at the top dictating how kabam make champs available.

As long as it is those willing to drop 100s or 1,000s on arena boosts or crystals paying for the game, then kabam may not feel the need to change it.

But it really does need to change!!! Arena milestones, dual Class 6*, old style featured, wish Crystal; what ever it is, it needs shaking up.

Ercarret

The problem I have with champion acquisition is that (like others have already pointed out) there is such a huge discrepancy between when the champion initially comes out with a lot of hype, and when I can realistically get my hands on them. You are never a part of that initial hype and can, instead, almost feel a sort of anti-hype eventually as you just never pull them. There are countless champs that I've seen be introduced, only for me to then see both their rise and their fall within the meta without me even getting my hands on them at a reasonable star-level. It feels like I'm watching at least parts of the game from the sidelines sometimes.

I think one thing Kabam could do is to make more events that require lower-level champs. Introduce side quests for 3 or 4*s, with progression-appropriate rewards. Given the current arena structure, those rarities are already easily obtainable. It's also really easy to rank them up. If you have quests where you can actually use them, you can bring non-whales onto the hype train and give them somewhere to take their new (low-star) champions for a spin. That way, people can grow to love them, which in turn leads them to want higher rarities of those champs to bring into regular content.

As it is now, sure, I can grind a bit for a 3 or 4* version, but I have no content to use them in so why really bother? If you introduce some challenges for those champs to partake in, you increase their desirability exponentially. You obviously can't take a 4* Kitty Pryde into Act 7 but if you can still use her to earn some extra TB-level rewards every once and again, then heck yeah I'm going to go after her in arena and rank her up.

If she serves no function for me, as a TB player, at that level...why should I go after her? What's the point?

Make that acquisition worthwhile, Kabam. Especially since you've already discontinued the selling of champions. What's the point of that if not to give us some content to use those champs in?

TheBoogyMan

You're missing out some really valid points. Might want to read it.

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FlyGalaxyBomb

A pity system would be amazing like GI, but I don't know how to feel abt it in MCOC

Maybe when they add wish crystals it might help?