Seems like every second or third tourney has Punisher as a reward.
Likewise for the 2* cover rewards - it seems like it’s “always” Wolverine. Hell, both events right now are rewarding Wolverine, and Simulator was rewarding Wolverine too.
If you want us to have a versatile and broad selection of heroes, why not reward the events that way?
Pretty sure the past 2 weeks have been rewarding all 2* villains for PvP tournaments. Something to consider is that newer players need a ton of a certain roster in order to have a high leveled character to be able to compete in tournaments. Sure, you might not need the Wolvie or Punisher covers, but to someone who is transitioning from 1->2* or 2->3*, being able to get these covers means being able to have a high leveled character and transition into the next tier. I think some selective memory is also in play here: Punisher hasn’t been rewarded in 2-3 weeks either.
Moonstone was up once. Cap was up twice.
I don’t remember seeing Daken, Bullseye or Ares, but perhaps I wasn’t paying enough attention.
More to the point, when was the last time GSBW (before Christmas, the Widow tourney?) or IM40(before Hulk event) was a reward? Are we ever going to see Hulk as a reward? We’ve been seeing lots of the 3* villains as covers, likewise with the lightning rounds. Them… and Punisher.
I believe that wolvie is being offered so much to compensate for all the people who sold theirs. Im re building mine. But I prefer going for 3* covers instead.
GSBW was recently, IM40 as well I think (not sure about this one). Both once albeit I believe?
Prior to the last event, Punisher hadn’t shown up (outside of unreachable progression) since December.
Actually, the last time Punisher was a reward was in late January, in the Divine Champions tournament, as far as I can tell.
And Daken was a reward for a tourney earlier this month, and GSBW was a reward for the Big Thunder tourney that featured superhealthed giants whacking each other with hammers. No IM40 though. I understand IM40 was really often during MPQ’s first few weeks though so maybe they still think they’re compensating for that? Still lots of Wolverine.
Maybe it does have a bit to do with perception. At the same time… No Hulk tourney reward since release. I dunno, I quite imagine that the devs are, if not actively tracking the data, can quite easily take a look. And I do get that it makes more sense to offer the rewards that are going to be wanted in the next immediate PvE event (such as Punisher just was but Wolverine isn’t), but that’s not always been the case. And perhaps it’s more a situation of a doctrine evolving as the game grows, instead of method aforethought.
But quite obviously, it’s not simple rotation - so what’s up with it?
My thoughts on the matter is that I believe that all of the original 3***s are reaching retirement age and their covers are becoming “out-of-print”.
All of the original 3s and 4*s were created before the character balancing system the devs use now to create new characters. Nearly all of them have been (Rags, IW) funbalanced, will be funbalanced (CMags, Spidey, Xforce), or were indirectly funblanced through the funbalancing of other characters (Rags → GSBW). I believe that the devs are quietly phasing out the original rare cast that have either possess high damage abilities without some kind of drawback (without a funbalance), or unique abilities that are deemed rather undesirable (rainbow battery - IM40).
As more and more 3*** characters are introduced, I’d think that the availability of the characters that are more than 1 or 2 months old is going to very low, delegated only to random token pulls. Keep swapping the new for the recently old to keep the cash flows incoming.
People are complaining “On noes…, yet ANOTHER Punisher tourney”. Give it another month, and Punisher will be in the retirement home as well (See IM40 tourneys early in the game for similarities). The comparisons are already being made between and Punisher and Psylocke in other threads. Missed your chance to build a full Punisher? That’s ok, because Psylocke is here to replace him for the next wave of new accounts attempting to jump from the 2** to 3*** ranks.
– Signed a person with some full 3*** covered characters, and has every character except IM40 and never expects to ever obtain a playable IM40. I simply missed the boat on him by starting MPQ late.
Now.. moving onto Hulk; he is in limbo. He is clearly on the new design roster (was he the first?) as his red and black (at 5) inflict damage on Hulk’s team. He has never been featured outside of the Chapter 2.5 event that introduced him and is starting to get close to retirement age himself. Is he too good in the dev’s eyes and has been sent to the retirement home already where the only way to level him up is through lucky token pulls to unlock covers and/or buying “out-of-print” covers with hero points?
In the end, if you want an older character, and you missed the boat in collecting covers when that character was featured 13,456 times in tourneys, then the only way to get that character moving forward is to outright buy the missing covers. And that, is probably “all part of the plan”.
My GSBW is 1/3 and no red. She has definitely fallen out of circulation. I do not mind because she does not really gel with the new characters anyway.