5* Heroes for Hire has been running since Sept '17 with the start of the 5* essentials. The first rotation of all Classics took about 6 months. The second rotation took about 7 months. The current third rotation is looking like it will end up taking about 9 months. The fourth rotation by my estimate will take 49 weeks or so, or almost a full year.
(Each rotation takes longer because the pool of Classics continually grows. There will be 32 or 33 Classic 5’s by the time the next cycle starts, it seems.)
So, obviously your access to HFH for a character is being reduced. The 5th rotation will take more than a year, and on it goes.
On the one hand, there are now more popup stores which can give you a chance to pull a cover for someone. On the other, you can’t save CP and get that specific color you need.
Now, I know that the 5* tier is the ultimate goal and increasing access is a tricky thing for the developers to balance. But it is kind of a bit too far when you are going to be waiting a year for a chance to buy a cover for someone you want, in a game with 35 5* characters, meaning 455 covers to get them all to 13.
Now, maybe no one cares much since we have feeders for most of the 5’s, and pulling from stores is better, and all that, but these stores are completely unpredictable, and feeders only give you 6 5* covers per 103 4* covers.
Two possibilities:
Make more (all 3?) colors available for purchase each time the 5E rolls around. Maybe you can only pick one color if letting players spend 750 CP on 3 covers is not a trade the developers want to make.
Run an extra HFH at all times, rotating among Classics. Maybe it could be tied to the DDQ cycle so you end up with a 170 day cycle with a new one every 5 days. Maybe they just run 2 Classic HFHs (two different characters) every time there is a Classic 5E so you at least can see two characters every time.
I think this would be a fair and good change for the game.
This one does seem reasonable. Giving people more choices on where to spend cp without actually giving more rewards seem good to me.
Players love options in collector games like this. It is increasingly more difficult to get a specific character you like or want currently. Players need some short term progress options like this.
I am fine personally settling in to the long game. I also realize my opinion is in the minority. Many people want to be able to see progress options for specific characters in the 5* tier that they want. It feels bad waiting a year to have a shot at a specific cover they want, or for 20 or more champ levels on a 4*.
Personally think they should make the HfH deal for 5* HP based like all others. CP keeps it so restrictive, which would make sense if it were a repeatable buy. But a move to HP, they’d see that currency source skyrocket in sales.
Pretty much would be printing money for themselves.
Run an extra HFH at all times, rotating among Classics. Maybe it could be tied to the DDQ cycle so you end up with a 170 day cycle with a new one every 5 days. Maybe they just run 2 Classic HFHs (two different characters) every time there is a Classic 5E so you at least can see two characters every time.
It’s pretty easy to pick. Same cycle, you just start in the middle. So basically, when a character is Essential, they’ll show up again in HFH halfway between then and the next time they’re Essential. Cuts the wait time in half for everyone. And if they’re going to only offer colors one at a time, it means less wait until a different color pops up as well.
I like the color select option. When it was GE Doom’s turn, I paused and thought about buying a cover for my 3/3/5 GED… Except that the available cover for sale was blue so… Hard Pass..
P.S. This is not the first time a scenario happened like this.
given that a single classic costs 250cp now, and a single direct buy cover via the character costs 720, I’d consider a 1/1/1 for 750 (assuming I had it), which I never do. I still would like to see the cost of individual covers come down permanently when a character hits classic.
Picking a color while retaining the cost and single purchase aspects seems very fair and frankly makes much more sense than what will be a 2+ year wait for a color to repeat (especially for those sitting at 5/5/0 or 5/5/1 on a character). Yes, I get cover swaps help in that regard but making this adjustment is not providing any boost to the actual RATE of 5* acquisition, just more player choice in how they spend a valuable resource.
That said, it’s probably harder to code a color select feature than it is to just run them more often.
Slightly off-topic: is it me, or does it feel like the special stores have dried up significantly over the last several weeks?
It has been 2 months since the last special store (Wrestling Demons, accompanying the Strange costume bundle), which is the longest period without one since they started running on a pretty-frequent basis in January.
When we didn’t get one at all during the Spidey celebration I figured they’re going the way of the gauntlet. Sad because I really liked them. And really would have liked a store to finish my BSSM.
