making a decision on dealing with wasted covers

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

#5 - Is this change designed to encourage hoarding?

No. Our expectation is that as players receive more covers of a smaller set of characters, they’ll have more opportunity to use their iso-8 to get those characters to level max faster than before.

We absolutely realize that it feels terrible to pull a 4-star or better cover that you have to throw away. We definitely want to improve this experience.

pulled this from the vaulting thread. i feel it deserves it’s own and immediate attention. the reason i feel strongly about it (and i’m sure a good percentage of you do as well) is because these two statements are so erroneous, so off-base, and so completely out of touch with what is now happening in the game that i think solutions to the issue of vaulting/reducing the available characters and simultaneously fixing the wasted cover phenomenon need to happen sooner rather than later.

let’s look at the first statement. with a smaller pool to pull from it definitely takes much less time to cover the newer 4* characters. however, the iso flow rate (which, up until vaulting, i felt was rather adequate) is now not commensurate with the rate of acquiring covers. without a corresponding increase in iso flow, folk simply can’t keep up with the amount of covers they pull.

which leads us to the second statement. pulling a 4* may or may not be a daily occurrence. so when we do get one it sure isn’t a great feeling to unload it for what amounts to an undervalued amount of iso. yet here we are pulling from the same pool of 12 4* and accumulating beyond 5 covers of a specific colour for under-covered characters.

i could type up a couple anecdotes like how i turfed purple mordo #7 this morning only to pull purple mordo #8 from one of the 3 LTs i was fortunate to get today. like rng went ‘hey, you dropped this!’ this was after pulling purple spider woman #8 with one of the other ones. 2 of 3 covers i pulled today went straight to iso for under-covered/levelled characters. i have a friend who has 7 red blade covers in his cue right now that he’s going to lose because he a) can’t apply the covers to different abilities, and b) doesn’t have the cp/iso to champ the character in time. i’m guessing things like this are the norm rather than the exception.

so how are we to interpret the statements i quoted above. these came from the lead developer via brigby in the vaulting thread. is he so out of touch that he doesn’t realize whats happening? does he even play his own game? and if so, does he play it honestly? for him to come out and make those two statements suggests he does not. otherwise he would know that vaulting, the rate of iso accumulation, and the inability to apply covers to any ability are hurting progression.

if they honestly want to improve the game by not having to throw away covers why hasn’t it been implemented yet? the community has been asking, requesting, begging for and suggesting solutions to this as long as i’ve been on here. are they serious about making this change or not?

2

just pulled a purple mordo from an heroic token…

3

Bad luck happens. Prior to vaulting, I had an iso debt of around 6 million plus if I wanted to “catch up” and level everyone to where I could get them, and champion them in many cases. With the release schedule the way it was, I could never make up ground, as I was working through a pool of 40+ characters whose iso needs fluctuated based on the whims of RNG-esus with every 4* I drew.

Now, with the streamlined pool, that allows me to focus the iso to minimize cover waste. Taking a character from 70 to 270 lies somewhere in the neighborhood of 375,000 iso. If I can pull down 25k iso a day (not unreasonable, and not requiring a hugely fanatical amount of play) and throw in a shield level every 10 days or so, I can knock that out in 2 weeks, or about as long as it takes for an extra cover on the vine to expire.

With 4* releases at the rate of every 2 weeks, then with a couple lull weeks in the middle of the schedule for a 5* release now and then, I’ve now got half the current 12 champed, and will have #7 done in about a week. Within a couple months, I will have 10 of them covered, and whatever the newest additions may be will be levelled as far as their covers will allow. I can actually see being “caught up” with my roster somewhere on the horizon. Two months ago, the time I could expect to be “caught up” was somewhere right around “never”.

Random chance is a fickle mistress, but before vaulting I had no shortage of wasted pulls myself. I’ve sold probably 15 Elektra covers just because I didn’t want to drop the iso to ever level her, even after she was at 13 covers. Expecting to be able to never waste a cover just isn’t all that reasonable in a chance-based system. (My 0/3/4 Drax can vouch for the fairness of it.) I’ve sold green IF covers #6, 7, and 8 in the past few days, but hey, that was an extra level or two on someone else right now, and eventually those other IF covers will drop and he’ll get his turn to get champed. The old system meant he’d be at maybe 6 or 7 covers (after I won 4 of them in the first event and a 5th in progression the next) if I was lucky. Now, he’s at 11 already after barely more than a month, and wasting a few here and there is a small price to pay for having useful characters sometime within the year of their release.

4

at any rate, if you pulled a cover you could actually apply to a character, or hell, a 5* cover, or a champ level cover that nets you 1000 or more iso/hp/cp/LT, is that not better than selling a 4* cover for 1000 iso?

5

Under the old system, unless you actively avoided champing somebody, you would always be steadily improving your chances of not wasting a cover though as each new champ would reduce your chances of pulling one.

Dilution was never the real issue with the ever expanding 4* tier, the real problem was the slow rate of building the newest characters, but they overreacted in their response to this issue which could have been addressed by adding the latest 12 LTs alongside the existing ones and allow their players to switch between the two as suited them at any particular time.

Taking myself as an example, even if both tokens existed I would currently be using the latest 12 version to try and get C&D covered, but at other times if I was low on iso then I would tend to use the original tokens since they would be giving me higher champion awards and less chance of a wasted cover.

6

Dilution was absolutely a problem. The more characters got added to the pool, the less likely it was to draw something you most needed. It wasn’t that I deliberately didn’t champ certain characters out of spite. I did it because when there are 40 characters, and at the time (especially minus intercepts and such prior to their implementation) I could hardly earn enough iso to champ one in the time it took for the next one to release, I had to be incredibly selective on who got the iso. Top tier characters got prioritized, and some, like Venom/Elektra/Miles went to the back of the priority list. Even without the vaulting being implemented they wouldn’t be likely to ever get a drop of iso put into them, beyond getting them to 4* Crash readiness. With the way the game is best played, they just aren’t priorities for being competitive.

But, with vaulting, characters like Carol, Medusa, and Coulson who normally would be at a handful of covers if I were drawing from the diluted pool the last two months, are already champed. That’s relevant to my competitiveness as a player. In another couple months, I will have minimized my wasted covers by a huge degree over where they’d be without the vaulting. The only waste I’ll have will be on 6+ covers when building newest released characters. Then, given that my iso needs will be minimal, due to having the vast majority of characters finished, I may actually be able to go back and throw iso into vaulted characters. Never would happen without the vaulting. I’d be barely creeping 40 characters along, rather than finally getting ahead of the iso curve. (And I’d be even further ahead if I didn’t feel like spending 300k to finally champ Nova when I got a few of his covers recently. Another luxury I wouldn’t have had if I were chasing my tail in the diluted pool.)

7

There is no way that the system is not supporting hoarding.

I play fairly competitively and I have most of the latest 12 championed (soon 2 more will join the group). So where I am with covers? I have C&D at 2 covers (skipped that a bit), Mordo at 9 covers, Coulson at 10 covers and Iron Fist at 11 covers. Groot at 3 not in packs yet. So I have only 4 characters that I can apply a new cover to. And of the 4 2 color are already maxed so would be wasted. So I have to hoard CP and LT for at least couple of season (sorry Coulson - i know you want to be a champion). Only when there is a larger pool of available characters it will make sense for me to pull again.

Otherwise I am getting more champions level for Agent Venom and the likes. Not a desired option.

Hoarding time it is.

8

Of course the system supports hoarding. The mere fact that tokens expire and covers don’t is going to drive hoarding. You need time to develop the resources to reduce the waste, and that’s going to be mean hoarding.

Further, CP/LT hoarding has become necessary as the 5* pool continues to dilute unscathed.

9

The new system does “require” a small amount of hoarding at the onset to get set up, but once you are set up you almost never have to hoard again.

Keep in mind that the ISO shortage is not real. If your goal was to champ every 4* then your total ISO needs are exactly the same. If your goal is simply to pull without waste then your ISO needs are reduced by 350k x number of vaulted non-champed 4s. Any pain you are feeling now is pain you would have felt later anyway as many 4s get to 270 at the same time under the old system.

As @“New McG” suggests though, it’s far easier to get the newest 12 champed, keeping champing the newly released characters as they enter the pool, and in a relatively short amount of time you are set up to always have all 12 of the 4*s in tokens champed or needing covers so that you have no wasted pulls.

10

Yes, it’s true that you’ll be able to go from x% of wasted 4* pulls to no wasted 4* pulls sooner than under the old system.

The question is whether that was worth culling 75% of the 4* tier.
Because that’s all that’s changed. You’re not getting more covers due to vaulting, and you don’t need any less iso to champ all the 4* characters. The only change is that you’re very likely to never champ many of the older 4*.

The time to actually be “done” with 4* has actually shifted significantly back, unless you already had ~90% of the required covers. (And it’s doubtful whether champing a vaulted character is even worth it anymore.)

11

Never say never. I have a Rulk with exactly 0 champ levels because I managed to (post-vaulting) finally get to 13 covers at 5/3/5, which is probably the worst configuration. I champed for the ability to respec to 3/5/5, and had the fastest clears I’ve ever done in the past week using him boosted.

12

I think you are severely underestimating how long it takes to generate enough ISO to be done with the 4* tier. Even only pulling 1 vaulted character for every 20 new character you are STILL most likely to be limited by ISO on your quest to finish the 4* tier.

You cannot think about the system as being static. Yes, it will take some massive amount of pulls to get 13 covers for the 30 or so vaulted characters, but it also requires a massive amount of ISO. Remember that to champ older 4s (both under the new system and the old) you need some ISO surplus beyond 25k/day. This is what dictates the speed at which you can finish them. So say you make 30k/day. That’s 5k bonus to apply to older 4s, or one additional champ on top of all the new release champs every 10 weeks. 35k/day gets you one every 5 weeks, or 10/year, or roughly 4 years to champ them all - regardless of old vs. new system. So even if covers for bonus heroes crawl in, between that and rewards you will still manage to get all those older characters covered WELL before you have the ISO to champ them.

13

The average cost to raise a child to 18 is $233,610… but you have 18 years to spread it over. You have 4 kids, each 3 years apart, that’s 27 years to spend $934,440. But you are now told you only need to spend it on one kid at a time, but you only have 12 years to spread it over.

You were going to spend that much money anyway… so money shortage really shouldn’t be an issue should it?

Even though your overall cost didn’t change, the amount of time you have to accumulate it has, and your income hasn’t. I do call that a money shortage, or Iso shortage.

It’s not the picture perfect perfect analogy for vaulting, but it is a good analogy for a fixed cost being condensed to a shorter time-frame.

Limiting the pool to 12 characters increases the speed at which you need to acquire iso to champ characters before losing the covers, since they have neither increased the rate at which you acquire iso, or the time you have to use the cover before losing it.

(the other 3 kids have a 5% chance of getting a meal each day so money saved?)

14

The best method of covering 5*s remains the same as it was pre vaulting, hoard and spend on latest legends.

With vaulting you now do NOT receive the benefit of having a whole bunch of the 4* tier championed when it comes to pulling your hoard, vaulting will ensure only the latest (and least likely to be championed because you’ve been hoarding) 4*s will be drawn, and in much higher concentration.

Pre vaulting to not waste covers when you pulled your hoard you could be slowly championing 4s, but post vaulting you just gotta hoard a TON more ISO, or just decide to scrap meaningful 5 progress in favor of pulling in accordance with the 4* train.

15

It wouldn’t be as painful if there was something better for wasted covers, other than receiving such a paltry amount of iso (either 1000 for 4* or 2000 for 5*). It should instead give you something more helpful, such as raising a level, some CP or leading up to a streak breaker of some sort.

16

The total cost is the same with and without vaulting but it’s not fixed. It’s ever increasing with the release rate. And you still have the same 2 week period to champ someone. So under the old system you were champing someone every 2 weeks and then stopping (presumably) while you gather more ISO, and the same applies under the new system. If you were cover starved before then at some point you get a rush of covers and create the same scenario that we see now.

It’s not like before vaulting we were getting this perfect distribution of covers such that we only ever had one character at 13 covers needing ISO and every two weeks we would have enough ISO to champ that one character while the 13th cover for the next character rolled in and we could continually champ everyone over time. Most 4* players have a whole slew of characters that are max covered and needing ISO and constantly making threads in the roster help section asking which one was worthy of ISO and which covers would be sold. If you didn’t want to waste those covers your hoarded. Same thing still applies with vaulting.

17

I agree that the system completely encourages hoarding - I’m doing it out of sheer desperation.

Right now out of the current 12,
5 champs
5 at 11-13 covers
So I’m basically pulling for Danny and Cloak. Who are at 7 and 6 respectively.

After this season, I’ll have champed 2 of the 5, one more out of tokens (Cage 5-2-5).

So then I’ll be at
6 champs (1 out, 2 in)
2 at the 11-13 range
4 pulling to improve

And this is before calculating PVE/PVP cover acquisition over the next three+ weeks - I’ll clearly earn more and waste a few more before then.

There’s zero logical reason for me to be pulling right now, and frankly I don’t like it. But I prefer to play smart, so I wait.

18

The new system definitely rewards hoarding even more than the old system did.

The upside to that is that if you were hoarding in the old system (which I was) then the new system actually makes it a lot less onerous. The people who never hoarded are the ones who are most negatively affected by the vaulting change.

I like to progress in chunks so most of the time I am taking a character from with level 70 to 270 or if I have needed to put some ISO in for a crash then level 120-150. Right now I’m hoarding all CP, legendary tokens and Heroics/non vault event tokens. I’ve been steadily champing the newer twelve and now have 7 of 12 champed with a Riri cover in the queue that I should still be able to finish in ten days. By the end of this season I hope to have 9 of the 12 champed. Since I decided to not champ Gwenpool and 4Cage I should be able to start pulling tokens in a month or so since all covers will be helpful at that point.

It takes a bit to get to that point but once you do you can really mitigate wasted covers. The only real waste I should have at that point is when I have a newer character with a very unbalanced build. And by hoarding I hope to be able to even reduce that by brute forcing with a lot of pulls and the occasionally 120CP to get that last cover.

19

I’m not sure how the best solution wasn’t to add a new pack, or just include all the newest 4* in the latest legendary and then have the classic pack be a mix of everything or just the older characters.

I’ve had to sell back at least 7 4* covers in the past week, and I’m about to waste 3 more Mordo and a Wasp, who was just vaulted. Getting these characters up to 11 or 12 covers only to not be able to finish them without wasting numerous extra covers for each is pretty terrible. That might have happened before, but not this quickly and not without progress being made on covering other characters. Plus it has completely halted the progress of my older 4*, and even my 3* roster is becoming severely unbalanced. Now I’m hoarding ISO just in case I actually one of these characters so I don’t waste any more covers, rather than spending it throughout my roster more evenly. I now live in fear of not having enough ISO to champ a 4* before covers get wasted. It’s unpleasant.

20

How much ISO do you make per day? Why wouldn’t you pull until you get a 14th cover for someone and then stop while you champ them and then continue?