Is the Vault Working for You? Vault Efficiency

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

The Vault was praised because you would pull a reward out, and you wouldn’t pull it again thus upping your % to obtain the specific item you are trying for. However with only 10 tokens and 300 rewards, your chances seem pretty slim to obtain that desired cover. Note that it was confirmed that tacos will be split between Sweet and Savory, so saving 100 tokens means you will have to save 200.

I decided to do some number crunching to see what kind of gains you can get by saving. This graph depicts it pretty well as it shows the % gain for waiting every 10 intervals. Math isn’t my forte, but I think I am competent enough to not have fouled up the numbers. icon_lol.gif

http://imageshack.com/i/p5TBmbiKp

You start getting a benefit from the Vault system at around 100 tokens, at which point your benefit grows rapidly, leaving little reason not to wait another 10 tokens, then another.

This leaves players 2 options:

A. Use tokens immediately and forget about waiting. This makes it a better version of what we used to have.
B. Save 600 tokens (300 for both taco types), and pull until you get what you want then continue to save.

So if you want to use the system, you will be waiting (600/365*2) .821 years, so about 10 months.

2

That last sentence is SO depressing.

And a mess.

3

Unless, of course, there are more than two types (Sweet, Salty, Sour, Spicy…)… icon_twisted.gif

EDIT:
OK, so I see postings confirming Sweet and Savory, so just the 2…

(for now?)

4

That last note I added was written quickly, I didn’t calculate that you get 2 taco tokens a day. Fixed!

5

In other words, the conclusion I came to is that this is a pretty aggressive money grab. It was pitched in that “monthly” QA video as a benefit, but it really means you won’t get anything worthwhile (you have a chance of 1/300 for getting everything, so none of those individual percentage points) unless you save. It’s depressing that you have to save for almost 10 months just to be guaranteed that you actually land something good. I suspect that was the reasoning behind splitting things into the bullshit sweet/savory categories. They might as well combine the two, doubling the crappiness of the vault. Seriously, after every win (testing community scaling) comes a backhand from D3 (the vault). I never got anything good from the taco tokens, except maybe 3* I already maxed or 250 GP that didn’t amount to anything.

6

There were always two pulls of tacos. Nothing has changed. And the vault is not a backhand from D3.

I really wish everyone who is complaining would be reverted back to the old taco system.

And once again:

7

What it is: 4s added (1% chance), slightly better chance to pull 3s (1%ish better). Less 2* pulls, and instead 1.5k ISO pulls and healthpacks. (I added this to the OP for the sake of objectivity)

What it isn’t: The Vault (unless you wait 10 months or pay money)

I think it’s fair to complain when you only get what was announced 10 months after it opens. That is over half the amount of time I have played this game.

8

The Vault isn’t meant to give you rewards, it’s meant to give you a chance at getting the rewards.

So as I understand it you are complaining that they took a feature and improved it, but you are mad that you can’t get everything immediately. Talk about an immediate need gratification.

9

They made a feature (The Vault), and made it inaccessible for 10 months. They could have added 4s and improved 3 pull rates in the original DDQs, and we would have exactly what we have now. As some people said, it’s “smoke and mirrors” because it doesn’t actually do what they want you to believe it does until you save at least 100+ tokens. I hoped this post would show what’s really happening here, and the true benefits.

As I said in the opening, the Vault’s features were supposed to be:

This just isn’t the case unless you obtain 100ish tokens, in which case you may as well wait to 300. It wouldn’t be so bad if there was some kind of middle ground, but there isn’t. You either wait or you don’t wait looking at the numbers.

10

Except it is. Just not as significantly as you want it to. And it isn’t inaccessible. I have benefited directly from the Vault in the two days it’s been live simply by pulling healthpacks for my end grind in PvE. 395s can chew through them if they get off a lucky cascade. You just choose not to use it until you can guarantee yourself a 4*.

Again, it isn’t meant to give you the 4*. It’s meant to give you a chance at it.

So working as intended? I think so.

11

I am so confused. The Vault is so much better than the old taco system. Wasn’t everyone saving tacos for the weeks with characters they wanted anyway? And now you have an increasingly better chance to get something good out of the 100 saved tacos (i know some people had more) than before.

It’s a great improvement by my lights.

12

It’s better than the old way, which is good! Mostly, it’s a visual add-on to resemble a slot machine. Wasn’t there an article from way back when that mentioned people liking the token gamble?

13

You are going to be waiting 10 days for a .02% increase, 20 for .04%, 1 month for .05%, 40 for .06%, 50 for a .08% and 2 months for .1%. This is even giving the percentages a boost by looking at the last pull only.

That may sound reasonable to you, but in statistics this change is virtually nothing. The problem is that it is a 10/300 pull, and you have to save double the amount of tokens. Personally I think it would be reasonable to have one (10/150 pull) or the other (one set of tacos).

It’s better than DDQs, and it works technically, but the results are so ridiculously insignificant it certainly doesn’t do what was advertised. You won’t see actual results unless you wait.

14

This is worded perfectly. It’s nice that there’s a small increase to 4* odds in DDQ tokens. It’s incredibly disappointing that the actual Vault feature might as well not be there.

If you spend 150 tokens and don’t pull a 4*, your chance to pull a 4* increases from 1% to 2%.

If you spend all your tokens as you get them and want a single cover from the vault, the cover that you want will increase in odds from 1/300 (0.33%) to 1/290 (0.34%) over the course of the week.

If the key feature of the vault is that pulling a token out increases your odds of pulling other things, then that increase should at least be meaningful. If not, then it’s not The Vault, it’s just a change in token odds. Which is nice, but not what they outlined.

Did you know that if you just invest some money for 30 years and then take it out of the account, you’ll be able to buy all the tokens that you need to get every character? What’s that, 30 years seems too long? So does 10 months of giving up token pulls to guarantee 4*s.

It sounds like you’d also like to try this new wonder drug that just came out too! It’ll increase your lifespan… By 1.5 seconds total. And you can only take it once. Oh, and I forgot that we had thousands of doctors devote their time to working on it for years, it costs a few thousand dollars for a patient to buy it, and the treatment takes a painful hour. But it’s a great idea, right? A life-extending drug!!! Who could complain?

Here have a brand new wonderful cookie. It has chocolate and will taste wonderful. The cookie is actually only half of a single chocolate chip, though. What a great new cookie feature!

I think the vault is a great idea, but like most great ideas in this game, the actual implementation of that idea is very lacking, leaving what could have been great as instead just disappointing. At this point, they might as well have just changed the token odds and spent the rest of their time doing something useful instead.

15

This system is built around long term benefits as opposed to immediate ones. But then again most system in this game are, so it’s sorta not too surprising.

I’m not sure the game needed another longer term goal considering people are talking about like 4-5 covers of a single star.png
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not even broaching the subject of the hero points needed to use them or the iso to level them.

16

Something people on this post are ignoring because they are obviously free to play: this greatly incentivizes people to spend money on cover packs now. In the past, there was no reason to buy a cover pack. On my sandbox account I use to try out new characters, I often spend over a million HP to pull the three different colors of a 4 star. For a person that actually wanted a specific cover, it would cost tens of thousands of dollars, and therefore just not be worth it. There is no whale with that much money to waste. Now, someone can spend $100 in the vault when it has a cover they want, and be guaranteed it. No longer do they have to spend hundreds on packs and not even be guaranteed to get the cover they want eventually.

So what the Vault really is, is a new incentive for people to buy covers. Unfortunately, it is still out of reach for normal players to afford, as it would still take $100 just to bring the odds down enough to be reasonable.

17

I’m going to back up Ducky on this one. Dauthi, you seem to be griping because this system doesn’t meet your expectations. That doesn’t make it “inaccessible” nor does it make it any less than what we were told. Your claims in this thread are either misleading or outright false.

18

It’s almost 3 Stark Salaries to guarantee the pull. I seriously pity anyone that spends $100, buys 3 40 packs, and then discovers that they haven’t even increased their chance of a 4* from 1% per pull to 2%. You know it will happen to someone.

300 things in the vault is too many. Removing a token barely increases your odds to pull something that you want. Does it increase it? Yes, technically. When you walk outside, do you increase your chance of being hit by a meteor or a piece of jettisoned airplane poop? Yup! But not enough to warrant any consideration.

19

As a player who play frequently but haven’t spent a single $ in this game (I have 52 character slots and today I will be getting the #180 daily award, a X-fore Wolverine), I have no compliant about the Vault, because I never expected it to be much better than the old one.

In fact, it is a little bit better than the old one (looking at the numbers), I am happy with it. (although the last few days I could only got 2* covers as usual)

20

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Vault is the answer to our prayers. It’s an improvement over the prior Taco thing, which in turn was an improvement over standard tokens. That much, I think, is not really subject to rational argument. My big gripe here is that we already have enough people who post thread after thread of misleading and/or outright false complaints about how the game works. The original post here strikes me soundly as one of those. I’ll piss and moan about stuff as much as the next guy, so long as it’s not based on a lie or erroneous logic.