The Collector’s Vault

As many of us are familiar with, champion acquisition can be a very frustrating thing since it’s random from crystals or you spend an ungodly amount of time in arena, which not a lot of people are a fan of. Please let me know your thoughts on my post below.

In Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 (BO4), they have a Black Market where you can purchase various items from weapon skins, character outfits, emotes, and other things you can use to personalize your profile. One thing I particularly like about BO4’s Black Market is that it updates every 30-45 days with brand new items and weapons. And every new weapon seems to be stronger than the previous weapon in the last update. What’s great about it? Everybody has the same chance to get these weapons!

How does this work? Well as you can see from the image above, in Tier 100 you see the Ultra Rare Weapon called the Switchblade available for pick up. In BO4 when you play a match, you get XP for both yourself (to level up) AND you get Black Market XP. Gaining Black Market XP allows you to increase your Tier level, therefore get more items along the way as you play the game. At the beginning of every new update, everybody starts out in Tier 1 in the Black Market. Now, if you want the latest weapon on the first day when the new update drops, you can purchase all Tiers available from that update. However, if you want to play the patient route you can play during the course of the update and earn your way up to Tier 60 (for example) and get the new weapon.

Since we already have a Black Market, we can call this “The Collector’s Vault” The tiers can be different for every *progression* title. For example, the Collector’s Vault items for that update would be different for Contender, Proven, Conqueror, Uncollected, and Cavalier.

The way this system would work for the different progression titles is that everybody has the chance to get 2 versions of 1 new character. If we take this month as an example, with Uncollected you’re able to get the 4* and 5* version of Aarkus. I suggest the higher the progression title, the more tiers for that month since there will be greater rewards. And for the sake of balance, I do suggest that only 1 new character per month or every other month to be available for acquisition during a particular Collector’s Vault update. I do want to emphasize though that the ability for the player to gain all tiers during a particular update should be there.

Here are the Vault tiers for each progression title as well as what you get from certain tiers:
- Contender: 35 tiers (PHC shards throughout the tiers)
- Proven: 50 tiers (tier 50, new 3* character)
- Conqueror: 70 tiers (tier 50 3*/ tier 70 4* character)
- Uncollected: 100 tiers (tier 65 4*/tier 100 5* character)
- Cavalier: 150 tiers (tier 100 5*/tier 150 6* character)

I think a system like this can definitely be beneficial in MCOC for everybody for the following reasons:
- You can keep the Cavalier crystals, since they are generating a great deal of revenue for you.
- Along with sales from Cav crystals, you can get more sales from using this Vault system because a lot of people want the hottest and latest thing day 1 (you can set the price point of each tier between $2-$4 USD).
- This also helps people who spend money every now and again.
- Not only does this system benefit paying players, but also Free to Play players because everybody has the same amount of time to grab the various items available from this update.
- A system like this would certainly benefit the grinders since they’re maximizing the amount of energy and time they use during the course of a typical MCOC update.

What do you think?

Comments

VanillaCoke

You seem to be very analytical @DNA3000 I certainly would like to hear your thoughts.

FreeToPlay_21

I tried to propose an idea like this a few months back, I couldn't explain it in a very good way though. This is a great idea in my opinion, it'll be a great addition to the game

Lormif

2 things.

that game is not a pay to win faster game. You pay for the game upfront.
also everyone in this game has the same chance to get the items.

the system you propose works well in a game like that , not in a game like this where their revenue largely comes from their crystal sales. if we got the champs every month then there would be no reason to buy the crystals.

GroundedWisdom

That would restructure the entire Reward system. Can't say I'm on board. There are benefits to RNG.

ItsDamien

One thing I would like to correct you in. The microtransactions in Call of Duty games are the biggest source of Revenue for Activision on their CoD titles, amassing billions of dollars every year with each new release. The game sales themselves don't even come close.

Lormif

The $ amount made is across all their titles at activision blizzard not just COD, and there is no way to equate them to game sales without all the data, but that is largely irrelevant. Their game model is not pay to win or win faster, it is pay upfront. Their game systems require everything to be generally normalized.

VanillaCoke

You did forget that they can continue their crystal sales. Also there are 2-3 new champs every month. The ability to get one new champ every month or every other month is not game breaking.

Lormif

Except I didnt forget, I mentioned it explicitly. Ok lets say there would be "less" reason to buy the crystal.

VanillaCoke

It doesn’t restructure the entire reward system. You can keep the current system, yet implement this one. We can all keep playing the RNG game, but this Vault system would certainly ease the frustration that comes with the very limited specific champion acquisition in the game.

ItsDamien

Yes but the model shown as the basis for this idea was CoD only. Also Activision Blizzards revenue largely comes from Microtransactions and not game sales. That's why they add them into every game.

You can check how much they made from microtransactions alone and it dwarfs their game sales.

Source: Worked closely with people who worked at Activision Blizzard, and worked for many years in the games industry myself.

VanillaCoke

Less reason? How? You only get the champion once. You would still need to awaken and give the champion sig stones, especially if you care about prestige.

Lormif

You dont get sig stones in these crystals, and there are other ways to awaken. also the suggestion mentioned upgrades, so I would have to assume that is talking about awakening and sigs....

Lormif

And most of that money was for trivial things like mounts in WOW, not competitive things like an MCOC champion.

ItsDamien

Actually most of that money was from loot boxes, with a substantial portion being from weapons that could only be gained from loot boxes in Call of Duty. Also whether it is just a mount or not, I only stated that it was from Microtransactions which that also encompasses. Plainly in this sole point alone, you are factually wrong.

In terms of Kabam doing it. I agree with you.

VanillaCoke

What crystals are you talking about? You simply get the champion. You would need to awaken them some other way by either: using an awakening gem you’ve saved, get the champion in arena, or purchasing crystals. The suggestion did not say upgrades, but items. These items can vary. An awakening gem every month would be a bit much, but having that as an option once every 4-6 months would certainly be nice. However, I will leave that decision to the dev team’s discretion.

VanillaCoke

Thank you very much! I appreciate it 😊

GroundedWisdom

Not really. People would just buy the Champs they want instead of relying on RNG. That's counterintuitive to the point of having a random system. It would also affect the Arena, and people enjoy earning them.

VanillaCoke

RNG will still play a role in the game. With my system, you can't "buy the champs you want." The champions that will be available through the Collector's Vault will be available according to the Dev Team's discretion. I did also bring up the opportunity of having champions available every other month, so there will be some time where you can't purchase the champion you want. How would this affect the Arena? You can still earn your champions. Nobody is forcing you to pay money. You can simply grind out the tiers through this system and enjoy it that way.

flygamer

ha nice, almost spit out my drink...

VanillaCoke

… huh? Why did you almost spit out your drink?

DNA3000

I think there's no problem with the idea in principle, in fact many games use ideas like this and they obviously work there. But I think the idea would be problematic here, because the game wasn't designed to work with it.

Call of Duty is a shooter, MCOC is a progressional collector game. In a shooter, the game designers want to create a roughly level playing field in general. "Progress" in a game like that revolves around veteran players getting more skilled, and players acquiring things over time that have some benefit, but not an overpowering amount. You actually want all players to have roughly the same access to most things, because you don't want time to confer a lot of advantage in the game.

But in progressional games like MCOC, the driving point to progression is that it confers significant advantages. It would be pointless to progress in the game if it didn't. And that progress includes (besides skill, which I'm not always going to explicitly disclaim since it gets repetitive) roster growth and development (rank up). Basically, getting new champions and ranking them up has to matter, a lot.

But that creates a problem. In a shooter, with at least a nominally roughly level playing field between veterans and new players, the barrier to entry is low. Anyone can jump in and not have to face veteran players shooting low yield nuclear weapons at them. But in MCOC, you do. So why join as a new player? The solution MCOC uses is to make it difficult to acquire champions in a deterministic way. The very very top grinders can do so, but only a couple hundred can do that in the arena. Everyone else has to acquire champions randomly through crystals. And that means veterans are in a similar situation to new players when it comes to new champions: veterans do have some advantages over new players in getting new champs (they have larger rosters for grinding, they acquire shards faster, etc) but they cannot leverage their veteran status to get those champs way faster than new players can.

If they could, new players would be in the hopeless situation of not just being behind veterans, but doomed to fall further behind with each passing day, as not only would they not have the large rosters of veterans, they'd perpetually be earning new champs slower. But in fact, because champs are earned randomly, there's actually a diminishing return on crystal openings. When you have very few champs, the odds of pulling a new champ are high and the odds of pulling a champ that will make a material difference in your roster is also higher. The more champs you have, the lowe those odds drop (because there are simply fewer options you don't have).

A system like you're describing would, in somewhat simplified terms, replace the diminishing returns system of random crystals with a more linear system of getting champs with predictable and deterministic effort. Two obvious side effects are that players will be spending less time and less money acquiring new champions, but the third less obvious one is that it shifts the advantage strongly towards veterans always outracing new players to the newer champs. And I think in a free to play game, that's a dangerous thing to do.