As I considered the HP bonus sale this year, I decided to reflect on what the game offers for that HP. (I did support the game with an Asgard Treasure during the sale). The sale this year and last were pretty much the same, I believe (30% extra). Prices for HP have also remained the same for quite some time. (Other than the A/B offers that some players get).
So I looked and decided that Thanos 3/5 being added was a good break point to compare costs and benefits of spending, since it pretty much coincided with the last sale. And I included America Chavez in my numbers.
Pre-Thanos there were 95 3/4/5* characters. (For this post, I am ignoring the 1/2* tiers since they have been stable for quite some time). Thanos and all releases through America Chavez added 34 3/4/5*s altogether. This is a 26% increase in roster slots to 129 (again, ignoring 1&2s) if you want to/can roster all of these characters. That’s 34000 HP or about 1 2/3 Starks.
Anyway, if you are buying HP to give yourself roster slots to compete as a newer player, it costs about 26% more now. (Roster slot costs have not dropped in the past year at all.)
Are you planning to buy tokens with your HP? The hope is, I assume, for more 4’s. Let’s look at that a moment.
In the 4 star tier, we went from 43 to 61 characters. That’s almost 30% more right there (18 more characters). What does that mean?
Well, if you are trying to cover/level/champ 4s for their utility in PVE as a 4E, you now have about 8 months between runs as an essential. But I’m not including the fact that new characters will push that out to probably 9-10 months for existing characters, nor that the devs tend to run Latests a little more often. So you might miss one 4E every 10 months for not rostering a vintage 4. My rough estimate for last year is a 4 being featured about every 6 months, so they are now about 30% less valuable in terms of being able to compete in a PVE.
If you want to have 4’s ready to be used as boosted characters in PVE/PVP, we went from a 8-ish week cycle (5 per week, 43 4s) to a 12 week cycle (61 4s). So your advantage for any one 4* dropped quite a bit there. I realize this is a long game, but once every 3 months is not very exciting. Anyway, you could say that each 4* is 30% less valuable (other than the fact that some are always better anyway) in terms of boosted characters.
Now, procuring 4’s has changed a lot. A year ago you had 1/43 chance of any 4* from a pull (CP or Heroic) being for a particular character. Now we have bonus heroes as well as Latest making about half your 4’s focus among 12 characters, but half are now divided among 49 characters. So you have worse odds of a natural (non-bonus) 4 giving you a character you want - about 1% - if they are vintage status.
I estimate that it would be about 2290 CP to get one cover of all vintage 4’s now. Not including bonus heroes.
What about Heroic packs? Let’s say you bought 40 packs. I am not sure of the odds (the screen says they are increased, but not how much), but let’s say it doubles from 1/14 to 1/7. So if you have two 40 packs you get about 11 4’s. If you want to cover vintage characters, that about 16 40 packs (remember that you will get about 5.5 vintages per 2 40 packs) to get all 49 vintages once. That’s 179,200 HP or 9 Starks. I’m not sure if draw rates changed in the last year, but I think it would have been at least one less pack if you had 43 characters.
Bonus heroes are great but: 1. Inconsistent and not any kind of promise. 2. Make it hard to estimate what it will cost for things. I want to try to say it costs 26% more for covering the 4* tier, but if you have the bonus set right and you get lucky, it could be less per character.
I would say the main point I am making is this: Character increase means that your spending in game gets you less ahead than it used to, both in terms of roster slots and covers. And advantages you less in terms of character utility. Essentially, dilution of characters leads to inflation of resource costs, especially when compared to unchanging resource costs.
The devs are obviously interested in increasing revenue, but the prospect of spending is less beneficial for the average player than it was a year ago. Whales really are driving the spending as long as this is so. Whales spend to keep up, but catching up gets more and more expensive as the game goes on.
So while it would seem more fair to newer players to make HP cheaper - or make resources cost less - it seems unlikely. Make your own decisions accordingly.
Final note: I realize that many players spend HP on shields, but those are high end PVPers in general, and tend to be less concerned about roster slot costs or getting covers - aka vets.