The long-term 5* transition dilemma (TL;DR it's impossible)

Jamie Madrox wrote:

I know of at least one F2P player with a maxed (and championed) OML and a very usable SS. It's not impossible, you just need to place well in every PVP and PVE, get as much CP as you can for tokens, and have a horseshoe shoved so far up where the sun don't shine that you can spit nails.

I don't think you read much beyond the title.

With new 5* releases it goes from needing you to be really really lucky, to being impossible.

kalex716 wrote:

XandorXerxes wrote:

So, the new 25CP tokens actually make it possible (if you are patient) because they only have the newest three 5*s.

If we assume you need 18 covers per character to get it fully covered, and that your pulls are evenly spread (this may be the limiting factor), you need to get 54 5* covers, or use approximately 540 LTs. While that may not get you all 3, that should at least get you 1 fully covered one, likely 2. You just have to like the 3 five-stars that are out I suppose. At your maximum rate of 6/week, it would take you 90 weeks or 1.65 years to save up those tokens, assuming you get 6/week every week. At a more "realistic" 4/week, that's 133 weeks, or 2.56 years.

That's not counting any tokens from championing characters, CP earned, CP received from supply drops, or any 5* covers put in supply drops. If all that combined could push you up to 9 tokens/week, then you're talking 60 weeks - just over a year.

Now, if you play casually like I do and don't hit tokens in PvP or PvE then your title is probably accurate.

I wouldn't call anybody willing to horde the only thing that gives us even a mild sense of elation from time to time to open in this game, for an entire year or more as a "patient person". I'd describe them as a sadist.

But I can appreciate you doing the napkin math!

Right, and this is the even bigger problem. To successfully transition you are saving tokens for over a year for that one day where you finally collect and hope you get lucky. But what are you doing up until that point? You have eliminated the most vital element of progression. You can just slowly accumulate a diverse 4* roster, but that typically won't make you much more competitive in either PvE or PvP. So what then????

I'm to the point now where I can easily hit 1300 every PvP. And there is no incentive to push higher. I can compete as well as I need to in PvE events within my time constraints. The only thing left for me to do is start working on 5* characters to make it easier for me to push in PvP, but to successfully do that requires a year of hoarding tokens......I'm starting to wonder if I would have more fun spending that year doing something else.

Jamie Madrox wrote:

PeterGibbons316 wrote:

Jamie Madrox wrote:

I know of at least one F2P player with a maxed (and championed) OML and a very usable SS. It's not impossible, you just need to place well in every PVP and PVE, get as much CP as you can for tokens, and have a horseshoe shoved so far up where the sun don't shine that you can spit nails.

I don't think you read much beyond the title.

With new 5* releases it goes from needing you to be really really lucky, to being impossible.

I guess I should have finished what I was originally going to say. The same player has one other 5* nearly complete, and at least one of each colour for the rest. So yes, it's not likely that the F2P player will ever be competitive again, but it's not impossible.

Again, you are talking about current state, my dilemma is future state. I'm trying to plan for my future, and it looks bleak - as it will for anyone that isn't a super whale. Right now there are only four 5*s to choose from, and when SS and OML were first released they were the only ones. It was a lot easier to get a usable SS/OML than it will be for all future 5* characters. As soon as Phoenix was released the drop rate reduced to 3.33 (repeating of course) % from 5%. It's going to get even harder.

You won't be able to have a proper 5* transition like you did at every other tier. To get a usable 5* character you are going to have to save up hundreds of tokens over a period of no less than 1 year, open them all at once, and pray to RNGesus that you get enough covers from the 5*(s) that you want to be usable.


I left out the CP portion of the discussion, but it's worth talking about (and IMO doesn't really make the situation much better.....) Here I'll assume 1 LT worth of CP/week. Call it 20, call it 25.....both are IMO a bit generous, but it doesn't really matter for this discussion. If I earn enough CP for 1 additional LT each week that gives me roughly 5 additional 5* covers after my year of hoarding (or perhaps 2 known 5* covers @ 720 CP/pop.....starts to make sense long-term in the context of this discussion). If we are talking about balancing out a 5* roster those 5* covers get distributed across all classic characters. So now there are 3, but a year from now maybe there are 6. So you pull on average one additional cover for each of them in a year. So it's not "impossible" to make the 5* transition, but it is either extremely unlikely, and/or extremely slow. And how do we decide whether to spend CP on latest or classic covers? My OML is 2/1/1 - playable in PvE, and not total garbage in PvP (although not a deterrent either), I'd really like to have more covers for him, but does it make sense to spend CP on classic covers trying to earn more OML, or save it for some as yet unmentioned 5* to come? This has always been a key decision in the game - and part of what makes the 2/3/4* roster building aspect enjoyable, but at those tiers you can afford to make a mistake. At the 5* tier a poor decision can take over a year to correct......

If you want to talk about the possibility of keeping up with ALL new 5* characters......it is statistically impossible in the long-term with the current reward structure.

And honestly, maybe all of this is fine. Maybe that's the intent. Maybe we don't want the game floaded with any more rosters filled with maxed 5* characters. But I had been playing under the assumption that eventually I would be able to max my OML or my SS or some other new 5* character that I really liked.....in time. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that this is an impossibility. I'm going to have to hoard tokens for over a year and then hope that the latest 5* characters are the ones worth having maxed covers for.