Our server side patch today will make a change to Comic pricing. While the patch isn’t quite out yet, I figured that starting the discussion slightly early couldn’t hurt. After all, if for some reason we have to pull the patch till Monday it doesn’t invalidate anything.
The change:
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- Sell prices for Comics have been changed. Old → New
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- Common (1*): Same, 100 Iso-8/0 Hero Points
- Uncommon (2*): 125/0 → 250/0
- Rare (3*): 150/25 → 500/0
- Legendary (4*): 200/50 → 1000/0
- Added chance to gain 25 Hero Points from any Standard Comic Pack draw. This is currently set to about the same chance as pulling a 3* character.
What we intend the reward Comics to be are just that, rewards. They need to be something that players want to go for and even when they’re given them through chance or another means and they end up less useful, something that feels nice to get. Right now, other than the Hero Points from 3*s, they’re not. They don’t give appreciable Iso-8, so when they’re picked up they’re just something to sigh at and toss away.
We completely understand that this will “kill off” wanting to gain and sell 3* characters for Hero Points. However, what was happening as a result is that the players that were able to place highly would get not only placement rewards but also pull another 1-2x that from covers that they didn’t need in the first place. This would put them into a stronger position for the following Tournament, repeating ad nauseum. The rewards weren’t the Comic Covers, they were the Hero Points masquerading as Comic Covers.
So what we’ve done is use this as an opportunity to kill three birds with one stone. We’ll increase Iso-8 on Comic Cover sales. This makes the rewards more worthwhile because the rewards for 2s+ are better. Getting a 2 character will be worth the lower Iso-8 reward from most PVE Event mission pins.
Secondly, it increases overall Iso-8 inflow for all players. For older players getting Heroic and Event tokens, this will greatly increase their income as they’ll be selling the same number of Comic Covers as they did before but now gaining double or more Iso-8 from each of them. For newer players, they’ll get a nice little bump whenever they run into a cover that they’ve maxed out the color on. This isn’t mean that with this one change we think that Iso-8 flow will be perfect. We’ll continue to look at things and optimize as necessary.
Thirdly, the change makes it so that everyone gains Hero Points from events, be they PVP or PVE, not just the people that place top in Tournaments. Yes, it’s only a chance to gain Hero Points from a Comic Pack. But every player can and does gain Standard Tokens from every Event, with those players that play more gaining more tokens. We’ve set the rate of Hero Point drops in the Standard Packs to equate to the overall outflow via Comic Cover selling that we experience during Events, so we’re expecting the same amount of Hero Points to be going out to players via this change.
Overall, players that are placing highly in every Tournament and selling their Comic Covers each time will very likely be gaining less Hero Points per event that they run unless their luck with pulls are insane. PVP events moreso than PVE Events, since those players tend to also be those that farm out rewards from each mission pin, so they’ll be gaining more Standard tokens in PVE Events. Players that can’t quite reach the big leagues in Tournaments will see an uptick in their Hero Point gains, since even though they can’t grab 3*s easily, they’ll still be getting Standard tokens through their placements which has a chance of giving a boost. Overall, we see the change as providing a better experience across all our playerbase as a result.
Edit: Updated title to specify that it’s a change to sell prices, not Comic Pack prices in general.
