Roster slot cost - the numbers

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ Suggestions and Feedback
1

I’ve read a bunch of threads/comments about the number of new heroes and increasingly prohibitive costs of roster slots and have been sitting here thinking “are they really that bad?”. I think this is purely from my perspective though and thought it might be useful for a few people with varying rosters to post what they can earn in the way of HP (if they decided to focus on earning HP in particular) in 2 weeks (assuming they go back to the 2 weekly releases).

That way we can have something to throw back at the guys from D3 when they say they’re “happy with things as they are”…

So… over 2 weeks there are (I think) 6 PvPs and, say, 2 PVEs.

I’m in a top 25 guild fro PvP, top 100 for PvE and have a cover maxed lvl 220 Xforce, a load of 166s and a near cover maxed 4Thor who’s level 180 or something.

In PvP I can hit 900 without a shield and end up top 25 (if I play at the end and time a final push well) or can get over 900 and top 10 with a 3 hour shield fairly consistently (avoiding crazier slices OFC).
So that’s either 100 progression, 50 reward and 100 alliance reward OR 100 progression, 100 reward, 100 alliance reward -75 for a shield. So I can earn 225-250 per PvP

So in PvP over 2 weeks that’s 1350-1500 HP

In PvE I spend much too long on this game and tend to get top 2 in subs and final placement or top 5/10. What that gets me depends heavily on the specific PvE but in prodigal sun that’s 7 subs which are 100 each for top 10 (was it 50 per on concurrent subs? don’t remember), 50 progression and 100 for final placement. So 850 HP (or 750 if the paired subs were only 50 each). Often the second PvE in a pair is shorter and gives less rewards but I would expect at least 300-350 from a PvE.

So over 2 weeks something in the region of 800 HP (if conservative) to 1k HP from PvE.

I have 63 roster slots (all heroes, few duplicate heroes for alliance TUs) and my next slot is 800. So, as you can see, from my point of view I could (if I didn’t splurge on shields for top 5s (or top 1) and/or 1300 progression (although in rare cases with XMEN help I can get 1300 before using a single shield)) I can afford 2 weekly roster slots without an issue.

SO what I was hoping for is people with more modest rosters and/or not in top 100 alliances etc could post what they can earn in 2 weeks assuming they don’t shield hop for extra rewards and compare that to what roster slots are costing them.

Finally… I know roster slot costs are a much bigger deal for ppl with numerically smaller rosters because, along with new releases, you’ll have plenty of 3s (or 4s) who you don’t own and might get covers for needing MORE slots per fortnight than just the single one i’ve costed for BUT if we can focus on the bare minimum we should reasonably expect to be able to do given release schedules that gives a good ground for us to argue with D3 about icon_e_smile.gif
.

2

That’s great for a veteran, but the flaw in your logic is a new player will discover far more than 2 new covers each week

3

A new player doesn’t need 3* covers, and probably can’t even earn them in PvP right now. So I doubt their intake is more than 2 per week unless they have crazy token luck. Even if it is, roster slots cost considerably less at that stage.

Where roster slots is a bottle neck is the players who have completed the 1->2 transition, who can reasonably assume to make a top 100 in a PvP semi-consistently and are also PvE competitive. Those are the people who might reasonably add 4 (one PvE, 3 from PvP) new characters in a week.

There really is no way around that bottle neck without a)tacking on 3 months of transition time b) forking over the money for roster slots.

$20 (2900 HP) will buy 4-5 slots at that stage (maybe more, i forget where the increments are). If you wait for a sale, that $20 can buy 3500-4000HP. I personally think that anyone who is that willing to grind the transition and invest months of time into the game probably has $20 somewhere to devote to that entertainment, but I also understand completely wanting to stay F2P.

But it’s acknowledging that you have to spend one of two things on the transition: time or money.

4

I will give 2 examples 1 where I am at, and 1 an estimate of the average player.
#1 me I can comfortably get above 800 points on PVP and am in a top 50 alliance. I do use 2 shields to get 1100 progression on about 1/2 100 progression, 50 placement, 100 alliance-75 shield=175 per event6=1050-225 for 2nd shield=825.
PVE I play hard but with the time slices normaly reach top 50 on all subs which is 50 HP=350=50 progression +100 alliance=50002=1000. So I get 1825 HP everyother week to aford the roster slot needed.

#2 a 2* team reaches 600 progression and a 3 hr shield for top 100 finish in a top 250 alliance. 50HP progression+25HP placement+50HP alliance-75 shield=50HP per PVP6=300 HP
For PVE I would say 4 out of 7 subs get top 50-top 150 placement, and top 100 alliance= 50 progression+ 200 subs+50 final+50alliance=3502=700HP
PVP 300HP+PVE700HP=1000HP for roster slots. The issue is when a new cover is won in PVP or non new character PVE is when issues occur becuase they have won the cover before they earned the HP. They are also not staying very HP positive to be able to buy a cover in the future.

There are players who are actuall earning less then example 2 who are not placing in the top 100 PVP or top 50 in subs in PVE so they get really hurt by the cost of roster slots.

5

I’m a sort of late-transition player with covered but unmaxed characters up to lvl150. I typically go to 800 and then shield in pvp which is sufficient for top 25 in my slice. That’s 75hp nett gain. 6x75 (2weeks/release) = 450hp.

Pve depends on whether I have time, but I generally get progression and final placement for total 100hp. Sub rewards are too variable to count on. Assuming 1 pve/week that gives me 200hp to add to my 450 from pvp for 750hp.

Oops, I just bought my 60th character and my next slot will cost 800hp! Luckily I have some hp saved up from when they were cheaper…

Edit: forgot about alliance rewards, but let’s pretend I’m in an alliance that isn’t getting extra hp from placement…

But if we look at the vast majority (bottom ??? of each pve bracket of 1000, bottom 400 of 500 for pvp), all they’re going to see is progression hp for pve and maybe up to 400-600 points in pvp, and maybe minor placement - 25hp for top100… that is if they shield to protect their scores to stay top 100, which means a nett gain of 0hp from pvp and maybe total 100 from pve.

I don’t envy new players to the game.

6

Everyday play granted me approx 200-250 HP per week. If I include my alliance rewards in times of its glory (before free 20 slots for all) it’s around 350 HP per week. But, my roster is far from having maxed 3* and even my best defensive team gets attacked pretty often, therefore I need to use shields if I wish to place within top 100 and deliver points for alliance. Net net I in average secure around 100-200 HP per week, which doesn’t cover the rate of new released characters with roster slot.

Knowing these limitations I started to select which chars to keep and which not to. Unfortunately sometimes I do regret my choices (e.g. I threw out 7 Loki covers as he was useless, then they buffed him, same applies for DareDevil and I sincerely hope Beast is not going to be buffed any time soon as I dumped already like 9 covers…), so more than ever I wonder should I still invest to roster slots, or spare HP to buy missing key covers (i.e. Hood blue, Punisher red, Patch yellow, Laken any…) in longer future?

Btw climb to 600 pts in PvP takes me at least 2 to 3 hours with my current roster even in last 3 hours of the PvP. 700 pts mark and above is sometimes nearly impossible for me to reach due to solid wall 270/166/166 I hit around 600 pts and lack of healthpacks. Guess I should tank more or invest $$ to max few 3* and try again.

7

Basically what will end up happening for me and I think for most players is that they will stop buying covers and buy roster slots, which in terms of HP is much lower revenue for the company, here’s a very simple logical assumption about what will happen.

Using a very conservative number, lets assume you never shield in PvP, you could easily get to 600 which will net you 50 HP and you play all PvE’s to full progression rewards and you get all 75HP in SHIELD. With an verage of 15 PvP’s, 4 PvE’s and 1 SHIELD you should be able to take in about 1025 HP every month.

So I’ll round down just for easy math will say 1000 HP per month, and I think that anyone with a solid 2* roster can easily do this.

We currently have 57 characters, in order to keep them all you need to have spent 21,150 HP if you divide that by 1000 you can see that if you started from the begining you can at least keep up but barely. The problem is 2 fold currently. The first is the rate of new characters, the second is the exponetial cost of roster slots, by then end of the month you will need 58 slots or 21900. The game has been out for 14 months which means with our currently 1K per month you only have 14,000 HP earned. Now there have been free HP, the HP in prologue, the HP you used to get from 3 and 4* covers and sometimes the progressions in in PvE are generous but the rewards are not keeping pace with the roster cost.

So lets say the 1K per month is expected, a veteren player should have no problem maintaing that ratio and if they average 2 new characters per month, logic states that roster slots should not exceed 500 HP. So the developers are having problems, here is a very simple formula that factors for the month or season.

Roster Slot (RS) = New Characters (NC)/Hero Points (HP) or

RS= NC/HP

There is your balance on the maximum cost of a roster slot. If you decide to release more characters per month then you need to lower the roster cost spot if you decide to raise the average HP per month than you can raise the cost of.

This very simple formula is what they need to do to assess roster slot costs, as you can see there needs to be a cap or you have to exponentially increase the HP as the amount of Characters increase.

Because if players are going to spend money, they are going to spend money on Roster Slots to keep characters rather than Tokens and Covers which are a large revenue source for D3, so sure, they can go ahead and keep roster slots the way they are but they will only hurt their long term profit and revenue for a very short term gain.

8

I’d probably be more conservative with your HP earning estimates from PvE. Events all have different amounts of subs (deadpool and rocket&groot have 3, etc).

9

Now I have 22 slots I’m on 60th day of playing and from that 22 only 4 or 5 not maxed 2* covers, iw yellow and xforce green, all others are 1-2 covered 3*. In this particular week I earned 400 HP inluding the reward from alliance in pve. I dont pass 300 points in pvp with my roster, so I don’t get any HP from pvp’s. Now I got elektra and ragnarok waiting in recruited should I just sell iw or mystique or someone else 3*?

10

I think there are 2 examples I can point to in my alliance (which is t100 or even t50 in most PVP & PVE events):

Established vets:
There are 6-8 players on my alliance who routinely score 900+ (1100-1300+ is common for all)..
If we can stay close to the 900 number we are doing the +200 HP the OP mentions… a higher score will erode a good percentage of that number. I would say our average (after shields) is closer to +100/event (+300/week)
In PVE the vets don’t grind as hard as the OP - so we don’t tend to see the same HP from individual placements… that and many events are much less generous than Prodigal Sun (much less).
I would say we also manage more in the +200-+300/week range.

Lots of the established vets are holding reasonably neutral for HP week over week, and still keeping up with roster spots. There are 2 caveats here though: 1-most of us don’t need covers (I only need covers for 5 3*s, for example) so there is little reason to push in PVP. The next time there is a Rocket/Groot prize I will probably be shield-hopping though, and that will hurt my weekly average. A PVP with a blue Goddess cover @ 1300 will also eat a nice chunk of HP in shields.

I don’t think the vets are quite as negatively impacted.

Transitioners:
We also have ~5 players who are solid 2* players who are working on building up to their first covered 3* characters. Our alliance (again, t50-t100 in every event in both formats) is burying them in covers, and difficult choices.

These guys are usually hard-pressed to make 700 in PVP (hitting the 166-wall @ 500 will do that), so they get more like +75HP/event
They tend to do much better in PVE, so they get more like the +300-350/week in PVE

The transition guys are not able to manage 1 roster spot/week. They are getting hit from both sides… they are winning covers for existing characters that they don’t have a slot for (one just won his first Loki cover), and make room for new characters that are getting released every other week (Elektra tomorrow, hopefully). The alliance prize hits them with ~4-5 covers/week - usually with 1-3 that they currently don’t have.

It might sound like a good problem to have, but it frustrates them to have to make hard roster choices. (The only testimonials I hear for people who ‘liked’ selling a partially covered 3*, or one of their 1* or 2* characters in order to make room on the roster are players who had a grudge against the character they were selling… I am a completionist, but Yelena was always first to go when HP got tight)

We have more than 1 transition player with untrained cards in their roster that are about to age out as they try to get the HP necessary to buy a slot for them.

In both those scenarios the players are benefiting from ~200-300 HP/week in the form of alliance prizes. If they weren’t on a t50-100 alliance the inflow of HP would be reduced. Covers wouldn’t come as quickly either though, so maybe its a push.

I don’t think its a pure ‘numbers’ problem, I think its a ‘value’ issue. Once a roster spot exceeds $5 in its real-world cost (anything > 600HP satisfies), then we start making a ‘value’ judgment. For most 3* characters, buying a roster spot to keep a 0/0/1 3* character doesn’t seem like a good ‘value’ for $5.

But this is the quagmire of trying to compare DLC for a console title to an in-app purchase..

11

thought 1000 is very high but breaking it down

i still suck at PVP and not good enough to get more then mid 300 in them but ALL. brings in 25 to 50 per round if lucky. say 2 per week (75 to 150) x4 300 to 600

PVE say they have 5 rounds if you can hit top 50 250 per week (if they have them every week) 1000

1300 to 1600 hp per month. Seems that still is not right but will start keeping track in jan. Joined NOV 1 2014 put 20 bucks of REAL Cash into the game and have 32 slots.

going to be happy if my team can pull 50 per week (200 per month)
Going to be happy if i can end up once or twice in top 50- 100 per event (400 per month)
then 100 for team ending

so 700 a month what would be at least one cover per month. will see what happens in jan.

I just hope the store PVE keep going and we have them at least once a week cause how bad im at in PVP right now just play one day and then check in before the end. THat one week we had between seasons i think i only logged in just to collect rewards and thats it.

i have 32 slots and still have lack of room

12

I probably could make it… I’m in an alliance with friends and we just have a good time, we don’t grind to the top 50 so I don’t get a lot of alliance rewards, but I do fairly well in the PVP and PVE.

The frustrating thing to me- and what isn’t taken into account in some of the balances above- is that I want to spend HP on things other than roster slots. Of course I’m willing to spend some of it, but I do like to try my luck with a heroic pack, or buy a cover here or there. Even if the math works out that most of the players can make enough HP to buy the slots each month, I don’t think the game should be balanced so that ALL your earnings have to go toward the slots.

Now, normally I’d say that you don’t really have to buy the slots… I mean, you could play a good chunk of the game with just a few characters. But the way that this game is set up, there are quite a few times when a certain player is either required, or completely locked out, so the game really does force you to keep a sizable roster. If those restrictions were removed (I mean, does it seriously matter if I use Black Widow against a CPU team of 3 Black Widows), then I’d have no problem with the slot price. But, as the game is set up now, it seems really steep.