The biggest thing that this new 4* restriction has done is to make me regret arena grinds.
MMCskippy
Member Posts: 356 ★★
With the 4* basic and 4* featured champs more attainable in arena, I've been grinding like a good little summoner to fill in the spots that RNG has failed to fill in.
I did this thinking 4*'s will always be usable! They'll lock out 2* and 3* champs before 4*... I'll have time to game plan!
*** sad trombone ***
I did this thinking 4*'s will always be usable! They'll lock out 2* and 3* champs before 4*... I'll have time to game plan!
*** sad trombone ***
31
Comments
I say I’m free to play but I just bought a briefcase to buy two extra Champion grandmaster featured crystals. Total of three. I usually don’t gamble on the big crystals because my skills are just okay, I need more items than most to finish a difficult event, so credits go to items for me.
And here’s where Kabam is losing sight of the big picture:
My pulls are STELLAR in the RNG world, but the jubilation of this pull gets muted by the fact that whatever cool synergies this pull opens up only counts for 90% of the game content. 4* drops have been so rare out of purchase crystals and now they’re not fully functional.
When I first thought the Acts were going to be level restricted, I thought they’d go back and re-level 100% of that part of the game:
Act 1 - 1* champs
Act 2 - 2* champs
Act 3 - 3* champs
Act 4 - 4* champs
Act 5 - 5* champs
Act 6 - we’ll if you get to the final act you could use 100% of everything you have earned to this point.
I love the idea of group restricted maps because you can cobble together a line up from all levels and then need to maybe polish up skills on your top guys in what you have to work with. I think it’s a better situation due to potential synergy options you can choose. When you’re level restricted with bad rng, the skills may not be lacking but pulling a poison or bleed immune champ to be able to do content at your level is a pretty shabby game tactic. Especially when they’re changing game tactics this late in a game that appears to be getting to critical mass.
and now they tell everyone btw them 4* you grinded for and used resourses on (some you can use on 5*!) Wont make a difference in Act 6.
I am LVL 55
My 5* Champs have always had the first when it comes to resourses.
I have had to Rank 5 some 4* due to quests AQ roaster expansion etc.
Ranked up SL to Rank 4 just to take out Wolvi in ROL otherwise i rank up my 5*
I've bought every dungeon crystal he's been listed in, but he seems to be like Archangel... too OG for my RNG...
That's my biggest problem with the change: If you want a synergy on ANY quest map this very instant, (AW, AQ, Quests, etc) you can get it at the cost of handicapping your quest team. This change takes an existing game mechanic 100% away. If I want to buy individual revives or team revives in a quest map, it doesn't matter to Kabam, I'm using items and units.
Why people don't see this as a nerf and a cash grab is mystifying to me. This is a nerf and it might be a nerf bigger than any previous nerf. And the responses about Map 6 being something you build up to? I've played long enough and had to "build up to" LOTS and LOTS of older content and I used 3*s for synergies when I had to. When I built up to something previously, I've had 100% of the resources I've obtained at my disposal.
This move takes away strategy and makes Act 6 completion about spending cash or waiting an unknown time period to complete it if you're f2p. Waiting an unknown period of time for something in today's day and age only results in people quitting something that doesn't give you a timeline.
I have 34 5* champs and 1 6* champ.
I have 110 4* champs. (I think I need 33 to fill out my 4* roster.)
I am missing 10 3* champs. (I think that means I have 133 3* champs.)
This move arbitrarily reduces my roster by about 75% if consider unique champs. And this is a fair move how?
I obv prefer my maxed 5*s, and 2 of my non garbage 6*s, to using 3/4*, but utility is utility.
I question the marketing strategy of this, but at least it's somewhat fair to the players.
I think this move is to keep the whales spending and only that. There has to be a large contingent of players that are potentially addicts that haven't realized this game platform is fueling a gambling addiction. If you don't give those people a reason to spend $$$ on FGMC's... they'll get their **rush** somewhere else.
Heck, as I showed earlier, I spent on The Champion's FGMC during the 24 hour event but my pull illustrates my point even further... If I can use 4*s in 100% of content, my 4* Champion pull is me hitting the jackpot! I'm 100% in love with the RNG at that exact moment and Kabam has finally done me right. One pull soothes the sting of a bunch of crummy ones...
But if you pull something that the developers have decided is not "critical content" to finish the game, my pull becomes about the same excitement level as pulling a new 3* champ... I get to see how he works, I have another arena champ, and admittedly, he will still work in Uncollected maps in monthly content. It's not the response you would expect pulling someone you only have 5% odds to pull!!!
I'd argue until the FGMC's 5* drop rate increases, what's the point of buying them?
I think the change to the economics of rank up items in the game is what's throwing people off. Many feel as they've wasted resources on 4* champs. The certain god tier 4* champs that were seen as no-brainer R5s have all just been nerfed, especially if they're newer champs.
@UmbertoDelRio I appreciate your point of view. The truth is we truly don't know. I don't have any plan to run ROL, Act 6 or Variant because I can't save the units and items I personally would need to complete them. Wife, kids and work also work against me finding enough time to dedicate to completing things like ROL and Variant in a timely manner. The devaluing of a game resource that Kabam still charges top dollar for... The new offer has 4* class specific champs at $15 apiece, that's still pricey in my opinion, it just rubs me the wrong way. What I'm hearing you say is that Act 6 may be so ridiculous compared to Uncollected difficulty that using a 4* is pure folly and we should just wait to see what really happens. Taking that approach definitely results in less anxiety and might be right on the money.
I'm selfish. I still want to be excited about pulling a 4* champ. Having them taken out of the future of the Contest reduces that excitement. Even if, due to some weird new game mechanic, 4*s are trash in Act 6, it's still nice to be able to have them as a situational option or tap them for a synergy.
A 4* Heimdall can't make the difference in Act 6. History has shown, a la Perfect Block synergies, that if there's synergy that's too OP for the game, it gets nerfed.
i missed him...and dint get him, i eventually got him and duped him...from 4* basic,
but ill never get those 275 5* shards back....i still think about it, to this day
I think that's the whole argument about Act 6. Using a champ for a synergy that's too low for a map you're running is a trade off. You get a synergy but you lose an attacker. If my 5* Iron Patriot and 5* Hulk Buster could clear the same content as my 5* Blade or 5* Hype, you probably wouldn't hear a lot of complaining from people.
The current economy of the game is Kabam's own making. The environment that creates competition for the newest super champs devalues all the champs that don't have a movie being released in the next 12 months.
Even synergies are of Kabam's own making to create value in champs that may not have a lot otherwise. They even tried to address this by 6*s having more synergies than 5*s and so on down the line: For example 4* AA has 4 synergies, 3* AA has 2 and this is carried out through a range of champs.
I don't think the Killmonger synergy works with the 3* version, so Kabam has essentially been making 3*s obsolete for some time by doing this. They don't want to coast down the 4* synergy train. They want it to hard stop.
And this change forces us to have to deal with the crappy RNG for champ pulls, the poor damage leveling of champs across the same star level and we're again at the mercy of Kabam's "planning".
RNG doesn't just make it harder to get good champs. It actually makes it statistically *easier* to get good champs initially, and makes it progressively harder to get more good champs as you accumulate them. This takes some math to explain. Initially, when you pull a random crystal you could get any of the champs in that crystal (for anyone who thinks the crystals are rigged, just stop reading here: that delusion just complicates the discussion beyond the point where it will fit in one post). You're guaranteed to get a new champ initially, because you have none of them. However, once you pull one champ, the odds of getting a new champ decrease slightly, because you now have a chance to duplicate the one you have. With each pull, the odds of getting a new champ drop, and the odds of duplicating a champ rise.
Suppose there are 100 different champs in a crystal. Statistically, what is the average number of crystals you have to open before you have them all? Its a little more than 500. It looks like this:
(I just *know* someone's going to say "that's not guaranteed, you don't know how randomness works, etc etc, because "statistical average" is a concept that a lot of people can't be bothered with, so in advance I'll just say in reply, reread the paragraph immediately before the pretty picture please).
So let's try to get rid of RNG in this game. First, this is a champion collecting game. The objective of collecting all of the champs available is a legitimate target to balance around, so if we wanted to convert random crystals into fixed ones they'd have to cost *at least* five times more (in effort, regardless of how many shards the crystals cost which is arbitrary). But it is worse than that. Different players will value different champs differently, and that has nothing to do with which ones are "god tier" or not. Even if all the champs had mathematically identical performance (not possible, and not even desirable, but still) everyone would still have pursuit favorites. Allowing players to target specific champs means their ability to get the most valuable champs first will skew the value curve even more: in effect the first twenty will be worth more - to them - than the last twenty. To counterbalance that, crystals would have to cost even more - probably ten to twenty times more than they do now, if not more.
The problem is that the random curve doesn't express a single value for crystals. It makes them worth more initially, and less over time. But you can't balance a non-random crystal around the average, you have to balance a fixed non-random crystal around the best case valuation.
Randomness solves a specific game design problem: how to front load reward values early, when players have little attachment to the game. Every individual player's experience will be (randomly) different, and you may lose players who get an especially bad set of random results, but on average you'll retain a high percentage of them to a much better extent than if you tried to apply a very harsh reward system right up front. And it works extremely well psychologically, which is why this type of reward system exists pretty much everywhere.
People compare RNG to an imaginary game that doesn't have RNG but has extremely high reward rates, which they are never going to get because no game company is going to make it. They aren't comparing it to the super slow, super grindy types of games that did in fact exist and still do.
So let's go back to the 5*/6* restriction for Act 6, and compare the situation in the current game where players can get one 5* pull a week, against the fixed reward hypothetical where players might be getting one 5* every two to five *months*. Is the Act 6 restriction really highlighting the "problem" with random rewards, or is it actually highlighting the benefit that the vast majority of players (but of course, being random, not all players) get with much faster but random rewards?
Of course, given a choice I'd prefer to simply pick what drops from my crystals - of course that's the point of wanting things in a game. But I know that's not a real choice: that's a delusion. The real choice in the real world is between random rewards you can get a lot of, or fixed objective rewards that take superhuman effort to eventually get, it at all. After all, there is a way to get a specific 5* champ: just grind the arena. That's a ludicrous amount of effort for most players, but on the other hand its actually not all that much effort compared to the effort a lot of games require when targeting a guaranteed top tier reward. After all, if I actually wanted to spend the time and money, I can do that in three days. There are games where I would have to put in that level of effort for weeks or months to get the same result.
Given that real world choice, I'd choose the random rewards. And that's not a hypothetical choice, that's a real choice I make every day by continuing to play MCOC instead of any of those other games.
sadly though i think it is wasted typing it here as the majority of the community here that are the ones complaining will not care or understand what you are saying and still believe they are right and know better.
Maybe the real game economic that's causing this unrest is rank up resources?
The only thing mostly out of my control at this time: t4c's...
t4b's are definitely more available in today's day and age, but t4c's aren't in high enough quantities where you have to choose between R5'ing a top tier 4* champ or ranking up a mediocre unawakened 5* champ that could get replaced as soon as you pull a better option.
I have a decent champ pool and even when I felt 4*s were available everywhere I still struggled to decide what champs to rank up.
Before this announcement my choices:
4*'s to R5
Medusa (level 20)
Venom (level 80)
AA (unawakened)
This doesn't even mention the x-23 I have at level 99 that I don't R5 because I have an R5 Wolvie or the other nice champs I'd like to R5:
Angela (level 20)
Vulture (level 20)
Thoress (level 80)
Ronan (level 60)
My 5* R3 choices are (all are unawakened unless stated):
Green Goblin
Red Skull
Punisher 2099
Ronan
Star Load
Nebula
There's a R2 Juggy and WS in there that have passed over and over for rank ups so often that I don't consider them anymore.
Part of the reason I haven't made a 5* decision is because I have a 5* awakened Void that will go to R3 as soon as I have the t4c's. In the meantime, I have been ranking up top 4* champs. My last 4 R5s have been CAIW, IMIW, Omega Red and Ghost.
Will I have champs to take on Act 6? Definitely. Will this transition be easier than the 12.0 nerf? 100%!
I was spending when the 12.0 nerf occurred. Now my spend is more in-line with obtaining content that can be taken away at any time out of your control.