6* Dual Type Crystal's!!!

They're here!!!

Comments

4* basic = 2k shards
4* duel = 2k shards

🧐

5* basic = 10k shards
5* duel = 10k shards

🧐🧐🧐

6* basic = 10k shards
6* duel = 12.5k shards

We need new people working at kabam. Feels like everything released lately has been the opposite of pro-player changes.
I know what you're trying to say, but from my perspective, what we're seeing is "Dual Class 6-Star Crystals are not pro-player". There is not rule here saying that you now have to stop buying the 10k Crystals and only buy the Class crystals.

They might be a bit different than other classes as they were introduced, but those Champs weren't at the top of the food chain, and we're not ready to make them available for the exact same price as 6-stars yet.
I’m honestly struggling to understand the reasoning here. We aren’t at all saying that 6 star dual crystals are not pro player. We think releasing these is very pro player. But we’re struggling to see the reasoning for making them more expensive. We know we don’t have to stop buying basics, but what makes a 6 star dual more valuable than a basic, and why is that reason not present in the 5 star rarity?
If that’s what miike was trying to say I missed that as well. I’m happy for duel crystals but it’s not pro-player to release them at an increased cost. Hopefully that clears up the previous comments I made.
I would ask that you ask yourselves that question... What makes the Dual Class more valuable than a Basic, and why SHOULDN'T it be more?

I get the precedent set by the 5-Star and 4-Star crystals, but it was exactly that precedent that kept us from launching these earlier. We know players wanted them; we weren't ready to make more specific 6-Stars available for that same cost, but also knew that when we added them for 5-Stars, we set that precedent. It was either break the precedent or keep waiting.

For complete transparency, we learned pretty quickly after the release of the 5-Star Dual that we shouldn't have made them the same price, but didn't want to change them after the fact. We did the same for 4-Stars, but are less concerned with those. We decided the best case was to leave them as is but didn't want to repeat that again.
They shouldn’t cost more because the odds for targeting champions isn’t different. Probably need some @DNA3000 math on this but I would bet money that the odds to pull god-tier champions from the basic to the duel crystals won’t change much.
They aren't, but that's not why the dual class crystal costs more. They cost more because they have a smaller pool, and thus a higher chance of pulling a specific champion within that pool.

If what you want is "any god tier champ" then the basic crystal is going to probably be your best bet. But who wants "any god tier champ?" Mostly people who don't have a significant 6* roster. Those are the people we tend to recommend to open basics - because they don't need a specific champ, they need *any* useful champ, and for them, more pulls is better.

But once you get past that point, you don't necessarily want just any god tier champ. First of all, you might have some already. Doom is great, until you have him. Then awakening him with a second pull is good, but maybe not as good as getting a new god tier champ. And then getting sigs on him is okay, if you want the prestige, but certainly not as good as pulling a brand new Hercules, or awakening that Archangel.

Targeting matters to players who actually want or need to target. I mostly open featured 6* crystals over basics, because they are almost *always* better for me. I have most of the 6* champs. I need the rest, or a few awakened. A basic crystal is highly likely to just be adding sigs on top of a champ I already have and either don't need awakened or already have awakened. Featured crystals are going to be at least 25% new, and probably more, and if a particularly bad one comes around, I can always skip it and save up for the next one. That level of targeting is *more* than worth 15k shards (I do buy the 13k Sigil version, but you can only get one every two weeks, and I'm buying way more than that).

Targeting isn't valuable to everyone. But to the players who need it, targeting is worth a lot. How much? Certainly more than 10k. Almost certainly less than 15k, because the featured crystal offers a targeted selection of 24 champs in the pool: a dual crystal has a larger pool than that, and thus a more diluted targeting ability. A dual class crystal sits approximately at the geometric mean between the basic and the featured crystal in terms of pool size, so I would expect the cost to sit in the vicinity of the geometric mean between the basic and featured costs, or about 12250 shards (why not the arithmetic mean, or just simple averages? Because the perception for odds tends to be proportional half the options is twice as good).

Anything between 12k and 13k probably would have been fine. You might have wanted to avoid making it identical to the Sigil discount (13k) but that isn't essential. But the crystal is most definitely more valuable than a basic and less valuable than a featured when it comes to targeting. For people not targeting, the crystal is worth the same as a basic. But the value of dual class crystals is being set relative to their value as a method of targeting.
So if the odds are similar then what makes a duel crystal have to be more then a basic? Targeting? It’s more of an illusion of targeting then actually targeting. We can target 2 specifics of iso but we can’t target 1/70 champion from the duel crystals. So ultimately we spend more on shards for the illusion of targeting. Where as 1/24 on the feature DOES sound better for targeting specific champions. Granted I won’t see one justifying point for the increased cost because I strongly see it as not needed, so perhaps you have a valid point just not for me.
Very few people are doing it for one champ.

I have these: Nick, KP, Apoc, Wags, Prof X (all awakened) plus Falcon and Masacre. Most of these are objectively strong pulls who would do almost nothing for me, though I’d be happy to awaken Falcon or my r2 AA.

I don’t have these: Corvus, Hype, Herc, Omega Sentinel, Warlock, Ultron, G99. These are objectively strong pulls who would be fantastic for me.

As 6-star AGs proliferate through the loyalty store, holiday deals and content, they also play a role in prioritizing selections.

I’m very disappointed at the outcome, but I’m also going to finish 7.2, 7.3 (exploration for both to finish act 7) and 8.1 (completion only) this month. I’ll use those nexuses, the summer event and maybe EOP to pad these numbers. In the mean time, I’ll briefly hold shards and make an informed decision about whether it’s worth the upcharge.
Correct, most people are seeking more then one champion and typically have a list of “misses” they are happy with. I pegged todays crystal at 18% chance to get something I want. Feature crystals are a 24% chance and basics (using a youtubers tier list) have a 28% chance to pull any one of their two top tiers worth of champions (73/254). So at 18% for the duel crystal it’s significantly inferior to the other two but costs between them. Like I said before, people will open them out of necessity not because it’s a good deal.

Edit: 18% is what suits my roster and opinion. Others could be a bit higher or even lower.

Consider this. If you’ve calculated the odds of getting something desirable out of the basic crystal as 28%, and todays dual crystal as having an 18%, then there has to be a dual class crystal that does better than the basic. Simple math: the basic is essentially the average of all the duals, because the basic is composed of all the duals combined. Since the current dual is not just lower than the basic, but much lower than the basic, there must be another dual that is significantly higher for this to average out properly. It may not be higher enough to cancel out the higher cost, but it could be. Since everyone has a different randomly generated roster and values champions differently, the odds of having enough of an imbalance between the dual class crystals to make some particularly bad and some especially good are not insignificant.

Also, there’s no such thing as a necessity that is a bad deal relative to other options. By definition, any deal that satisfies a necessity is better than all others that don’t. Anyone who opens these crystals “out of necessity” would by definition be worse off if they didn’t exist, and also worse off if they were forced to open basics instead. That makes their value proposition better than basics in those circumstances.

DNA3000

It seems like you’re making an assumption that the value of a Basic crystal is SUPPOSED to degrade over time. Why is that?

I made no such assumption. Whether they should or should not, my post stands. However, to address that point, the intrinsic value of the basic crystal does not shrink over time. If anything, it grows over time. Why? Because the average strength of champions grows over time due to power inflation. Therefore, the average value of the average champ in the basic crystal is also growing over time, and thus the crystal intrinsic value is growing over time.

Don’t agree? Who would want their basic crystals stuck in 2018? Players *wait* until champs they want are added. Nobody says they better open up all their basics before more champs are added. At least not since a long time ago (there was that one weird time a while back, when the game meta was still primitive and Star Lord was still at the top).

But I myself was not talking about the intrinsic value of the basic crystal. In fact, I said if you just want any champ the basic is probably the better choice. Because the intrinsic value of the basic champ was likely to be similar to the intrinsic value of the dual class crystals. I was talking about the *targeting value* of the crystals. The relative value of the crystals to someone specifically trying to target a limited pool of champs. The relative value of the basic crystal as a targeting device obviously drops over time, because it’s pool grows over time. No matter what you’re looking for, over the long run it’s value in chasing that thing will drop over time (except, say, on the day that thing is added).

Acquiring champs in general and acquiring specific champs now are two different things. Basic crystals are perfectly fine to acquire champs in general, and their value for that purpose doesn’t drop over time. But for players trying to narrow their pursuit of champions, they get worse over time, and thus there is a need to eventually offer additional targeting opportunities. But those additional targeting opportunities don’t necessarily come for free, relative to acquisition costs. In fact, the mistake Miike mentions is almost certainly that by setting 5* dual class crystals as having the same price of basics, they destroyed the value of the basics and eliminated the choice between getting more and getting better choice. Because the price is identical, then for the reasons I mentioned above, there must always be a dual crystal that has a better value proposition than the basic. They can’t all be worse, because the basic is the average of the duals, For any rational actor, the basics should never be bought. That was certainly not intended.

A fundamental tenant of game design is games are about choices, and every choice should contain a meaningful trade off. Choices with no meaningful trade off are themselves meaningless, and most likely design errors. This is a principle that is easy to find millions of players to disagree with, and zero game developers. People can disagree with it, they just won’t be able to find any game developers to go along with that.

DNA3000

Also, I made a promise I intend to keep, so here’s an apple, because I couldn’t resist checking the forums before heading to bed.

One a day keeps the economy designer away.

Ken1378

It seems like you’re making an assumption that the value of a Basic crystal is SUPPOSED to degrade over time. Why is that?
Basic crystals are perfectly fine to acquire champs in general, and their value for that purpose doesn’t drop over time.

Lol, what are you on about? This is total nonsense. Of course their value drops over time. Once you have more champs, more change awakened and more champs at max sig, you’re not getting the same value AT ALL. This is obvious.

2 years ago, my best 6-star champ was Vision Arkus. I had about a 20% chance of pulling my next best champion from any single basic opening. Now there are only a few dozen champs that I’m even interested in pulling from that crystal at all.

You’re clearly just trying to defend Kabam’s idiotic decision.

altavista

It seems like you’re making an assumption that the value of a Basic crystal is SUPPOSED to degrade over time. Why is that?
Basic crystals are perfectly fine to acquire champs in general, and their value for that purpose doesn’t drop over time.
Lol, what are you on about? This is total nonsense. Of course their value drops over time. Once you have more champs, more change awakened and more champs at max sig, you’re not getting the same value AT ALL. This is obvious.

2 years ago, my best 6-star champ was Vision Arkus. I had about a 20% chance of pulling my next best champion from any single basic opening. Now there are only a few dozen champs that I’m even interested in pulling from that crystal at all.

You’re clearly just trying to defend Kabam’s idiotic decision.

If you read through DNA3000's long post, he makes the distinction between intrinsic value and targeted value.
You seem to be arguing solely about Targeted value, while DNA3000 is trying to make a distinction.

As a separate topic, if Kabam let me pick which two classes comprise a Dual Class Crystal for that extra 2500, then that might be worth it for me. Considering I strictly don't want any specific Skill champion, if I could instead choose a Mutant/Cosmic that would seemingly be close to a wish crystal and potentially worth those extra shards.

DNA3000

It seems like you’re making an assumption that the value of a Basic crystal is SUPPOSED to degrade over time. Why is that?
Basic crystals are perfectly fine to acquire champs in general, and their value for that purpose doesn’t drop over time.
Lol, what are you on about? This is total nonsense. Of course their value drops over time. Once you have more champs, more change awakened and more champs at max sig, you’re not getting the same value AT ALL. This is obvious.

2 years ago, my best 6-star champ was Vision Arkus. I had about a 20% chance of pulling my next best champion from any single basic opening. Now there are only a few dozen champs that I’m even interested in pulling from that crystal at all.

You’re clearly just trying to defend Kabam’s idiotic decision.

When we talk about the value of the crystals changing "over time" there's two distinct things that are changing over time: the contents of the crystals, and the roster of the players opening those crystals. The contents of the basic crystal changes over time by including more champions: this is normally what people mean when they talk about the crystal's value "dropping" - the crystal contains more champions, so it is harder to pursue any one particular champion.

Relative to a single person, roster also grows over time. This tends, on average, to reduce the pool of desirable champions. This makes *all* crystals less valuable on average in terms of targeting, not because of the crystal contents, but because if you want a smaller set of things, it becomes harder to get those smaller set of things randomly. All random crystals will now have a harder time hitting the target.

The fact that the crystals dilute over time is an acknowledged issue: it is why the game has been adding more targeting options. This is a problem that affects everyone (albeit in different ways) and is a side effect of game growth. But the fact that the more things you have, the harder it is to target the rest, is not an unintended aspect of the game. It is *intended* that champion collection starts easy and gets harder. That front loads the experience of the game. If champion acquisition was somehow "linearized" so that it was just as easy - or hard - to collect champions at the start of roster acquisition and the end, the players with large rosters would have an easier time finding the things they were looking for but the players just starting would have a much harder time acquiring things at all. That's just the natural consequence of trying to make things not escalate: if they are never going to get harder, they can't start off too easy either.

A highly underappreciated aspect of random champion collection is that it intrinsically has this property: it is easy to start, and gets harder. This is a deliberate approachability aspect of the design. If you want to characterize this darkly, you could say that the game deliberately tries to hook players with easy champion acquisition to start, and then monetizes champion acquisition once they have made enough progress to be attached to the game. But however you choose to look at it, this particular aspect of things getting progressively harder is not a bug, it is a feature.

Ken1378

It seems like you’re making an assumption that the value of a Basic crystal is SUPPOSED to degrade over time. Why is that?
Basic crystals are perfectly fine to acquire champs in general, and their value for that purpose doesn’t drop over time.
Lol, what are you on about? This is total nonsense. Of course their value drops over time. Once you have more champs, more change awakened and more champs at max sig, you’re not getting the same value AT ALL. This is obvious.

2 years ago, my best 6-star champ was Vision Arkus. I had about a 20% chance of pulling my next best champion from any single basic opening. Now there are only a few dozen champs that I’m even interested in pulling from that crystal at all.

You’re clearly just trying to defend Kabam’s idiotic decision.
But however you choose to look at it, this particular aspect of things getting progressively harder is not a bug, it is a feature.

Well, I think you’re getting closer to the point I’m trying to make, this last statement is again, total nonsense. Like I mentioned in my first post, you are making an assumption that it’s a “feature”. Nobody is calling it a bug. I’m just asking why it has to be like that? And more specifically, why should we just blindly accept that it’s like that forever? Or until we switch to Featured crystals or until Kabam releases a new rarity. This idea that there shouldn’t be some middle ground is just small-minded. Dual crystals could be a very small step towards that middle ground. And if you accept that as true, then the argument that they SHOULD be more expensive completely falls apart.

Kabam has mentioned in previous posts that champion acquisition is something they want to be considerate about from a player perspective. They’ve mentioned it in posts about the Buff Program and I think it’s been tied into posts about increasing access to Nexus Crystals. The additional price for Dual Crystals seems to contradict that. And in my opinion, it comes across as stingy, unnecessary and supports my opinions that Kabam is very out of touch with their player base.

DNA3000

Well, I think you’re getting closer to the point I’m trying to make, this last statement is again, total nonsense. Like I mentioned in my first post, you are making an assumption that it’s a “feature”. Nobody is calling it a bug. I’m just asking why it has to be like that?

I've explained this multiple times now. You can choose to accept it or not. But the rationale for it isn't going to change.

This is not an assumption. First, this is very common knowledge among game developers, as I've had this conversation among multiple dev teams across multiple games, not to mention this is something that comes up in public discussions constantly. And second, this is a topic I've discussed with this team on this game, and the basic fundamental principles of game design do not appear to be things they are unfamiliar with. There's a lot of healthy debate over the details and the edges of the principles, but I have never had a developer of this or any other game try to stake out a directly contrary position. I would like to meet such a dev, because that would be a potentially very interesting conversation. Like asking a Martian about bank holidays.

Zuko_ILC

It seems like you’re making an assumption that the value of a Basic crystal is SUPPOSED to degrade over time. Why is that?
Basic crystals are perfectly fine to acquire champs in general, and their value for that purpose doesn’t drop over time.
Lol, what are you on about? This is total nonsense. Of course their value drops over time. Once you have more champs, more change awakened and more champs at max sig, you’re not getting the same value AT ALL. This is obvious.

2 years ago, my best 6-star champ was Vision Arkus. I had about a 20% chance of pulling my next best champion from any single basic opening. Now there are only a few dozen champs that I’m even interested in pulling from that crystal at all.

You’re clearly just trying to defend Kabam’s idiotic decision.

Intrinsic Crystal values don't go down over time. That's why the premium crystal is still the same price as 5 years ago.

Looking forward to that 2021 wish crystal!

Ken1378

Well, I think you’re getting closer to the point I’m trying to make, this last statement is again, total nonsense. Like I mentioned in my first post, you are making an assumption that it’s a “feature”. Nobody is calling it a bug. I’m just asking why it has to be like that?
I've explained this multiple times now. You can choose to accept it or not. But the rationale for it isn't going to change.

This is not an assumption. First, this is very common knowledge among game developers, as I've had this conversation among multiple dev teams across multiple games, not to mention this is something that comes up in public discussions constantly. And second, this is a topic I've discussed with this team on this game, and the basic fundamental principles of game design do not appear to be things they are unfamiliar with. There's a lot of healthy debate over the details and the edges of the principles, but I have never had a developer of this or any other game try to stake out a directly contrary position. I would like to meet such a dev, because that would be a potentially very interesting conversation. Like asking a Martian about bank holidays.

Lol, if it’s such common knowledge, then why did they release 5-star dual crystals for the same price at basics? Just stop. You’re not explaining anything, you’re just stating your opinion and trying posture. I’m bored of it now.

unknown

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