Replacing some rewards with “re-spins” is probabilistically equivalent to simply taking out the rewards, which would be simpler and potentially better psychologically (instead of a 1/300 chance, you have a 1/250 chance for a specific cover, for example). Maybe it’ll be fun and spice it up; for some the spinning wheel is a source of distress and should be avoided.
I agree with the majority of your sentiment, but I don’t see why hoarding should be discouraged. Hoarding tokens has always been the way some people managed them (especially those of us who can’t afford enough roster slots). While it is true that the Vault encourages hoarding to a greater extent than before, I don’t believe that this is an issue that needs resolving - more of a personal preference. I do agree that the inactive vaults should not be resetting, but that’s a separate technical issue that can hopefully be resolved.
How would you go about implementing the free reset? Would it be one per iteration of the vault? Or just one for any instance of the vault? ie. you get one free reset every time EotS is run vs. you get 1 reset to use on all EotS events and once you use it, it’s gone. I think a better method of resolving this would be to allow resets to be free until you buy/spend tokens to “lock in,” after which they’ll cost whatever the current value is (maybe change the price, I don’t remember the numbers off the top of my head). This will ensure that everyone’s vault has covers they actually want, which should drive revenue up from token sales. As it stands right now, resets are only viable for super-whales, whereas those who may want to buy a few tokens for a shot at a potential cover might be dissuaded from doing so by a bad vault. If this is the case, they’d likely be of the mindset “why spend XXX HP to get a chance to get a vault that’s just as bad?” which is obviously not conducive to sales.
With endless resets, of course there are those who will just keep spinning the wheel until they get a vault that has everything they need, then proceed to load up on tokens to clear it. However, my argument is as follows: the packs are priced such that it’d be more economical to simply whale up covers rather than buy tokens, unless it’s the first cover of a color (for 4* at least, which is the direction the game seems to be heading. Even for 3*s, I think it’s still better to go for the sure chance, unless there’s several covers you desire). Thus, they won’t be cheating the system. Furthermore, the fact that they’re whaling benefits D3 anyways, with opportunity cost of resets made up for by increased sales at lower price-point (I consider this a fair assumption, because it’s absurd to believe that any business will depend upon the high-spending minority rather than the low-spending majority for its income. I’ve only taken introductory economics, but how many players have you run into who have actually bought multiple resets in a single vault?). Players get vaults they like, which leads to more spending; it’s a win-win for everyone!
Let’s use an 80-prize vault as our standard. For the sake of simplicity, we’ll assume that the player either wants a single cover or 3 covers (I know Pool Party Vault has 4, but afaik that’s the only one that has been so far). If there’s 1 desired prize in the vault, it’ll take an average of 41 draws to get it. So, disregarding the few free tokens that may be earned, the player is basically buying a 40-pack (42 if you want to be pedantic) per desired cover. This only makes sense for new releases/missing first covers; otherwise it’d be cheaper to directly buy the cover. Okay, well then let’s say there’s 3 good covers in there. The average number of draws to get them all is 63. Going by daily deal prices, that’s 17k hp. So there’s no point in whaling the vaults unless you don’t already own a certain cover that happens to be in there. I admit that this analysis is heavily skewed towards those in the 3*-4* transition or beyond, but realistically, if you’re whaling, you won’t be stuck in the 2*-3* transition very long. For casual spenders, free vault resets will, at worst, cause no change in revenue - if they weren’t interested in the vault to begin with, they wouldn’t waste hp on a new one. With free resets, they’d be guaranteed a vault that is at least as good as the initial one, leading to an increased possibility of spending hp on tokens.
