Grand Experiment 2: Treading Water in the SCL 10 Post-Shardpocalypse

@Bowgentle said:
Was that choice ever stupid, though?
We always advised to build broad, not tall, so you are nerf-proof.
So there aren't any nerfs anymore but who knows when an old char you neglected becomes relevant again.

Remember, bucket, not everyone is you, with the choice of 10 550s vs 50 510s.
I've always told "normal" people to get a staple of good 450s instead of going all in on the current hotness.

For non-hoarders "all in" means getting a char to 480, maybe, not 550.

...we are all very, very lucky that everyone isn't me!

I dunno. I don't really engage with the players who make up the MPQ hivemind anymore, so I'm not sure what they do. I always told people to build broad, not tall, too, and then they'd throw Wasp at me as an example and go all-in for Okoye.

If you look at the top rosters you see a LOT of 550/550/550/450/450/450/etc etc. If I was in a position to make that decision, I'd much, much prefer to have 480/480/480/480/480 etc, and I think that's actually the more optimal choice today.

@Bowgentle said:
Nah 460 is enough for those.
Champ em all but pick good ones to get slightly higher after that.

I was thinking about this. What's interesting is that I feel exactly the opposite about it.

Here's what I mean: the "meta" characters are good and when they're boosted they get even better. I have Okoye, Chasm, etc, at relatively low levels compared to the rest of my roster, and I can handle their boost weeks just fine. I use them against much higher level versions and it's not an endless party, but I do ok.

But, the "they're fine at 460" attitude is pretty well universal. During, say, Silver Surfer's boost week, most players will get him to 460, so you'll very rarely see a high level one. Players who do have him at a higher level that week have a HUGE advantage. These recently-buffed dudes have insane stats now. My boosted Captain America does 115,000 for 7 red.

I say: zig when the community zags, if you're looking for a competitive advantage.

Why does it have to happen NOW? I slowly, incrementally built everyone up over a super long period of time. That's sorta what Road Warrior is doing too, and it seems to be working out ok for him.

It takes (possibly quite unrealistic levels of) patience -- the first step in getting him to 490 is getting him from 469 to 470. You can't ever get him to 490 if you don't get him to 470 first.

My goal has always been "get everyone to 550," and the only ways to do that are to spend a billion dollars or to pull classics over an extremely long period of time.

What's interesting is that it's actually sort of getting faster as I max guys out. I bonus all of the 4* that feed 5*, and only the feeders, until the guy they feed hits 550. So I've been able to turn off a bunch of feeders as those guys max out. Hawkeye is going to hit 550 this month, then GG is up next at lvl542, and that should take a month or so.

Normally I bonus the next unchamped 5* leaving latest, but I was able to champ Emma, Riri, and Hit Monkey before they even got into tokens because of feeders. I've been able to use the bonus on guys that were close to max, so it's even faster.

I still think there are more feeders on the way, and I bet we'll still see situations like Riri and Emma. But who knows. Either, way these guys are so much more generous that it's all been turbo mode for a few months now.

Nope, I have all of them selected at once. I turn them off when the guy they feed hits 550.

Remember, my (probably dumb) philosophy is "I want 5* covers and I don't care which ones I get."

Edit: thinking about it, it's probably better to micromanage this, I just can't be bothered to do it. Also I really like the idea of putting my fate in the hands of RNG.

And...it's maybe not even that dumb anymore? If they keep up the buffs/reworks, and assuming the weekly boosts stick around, your best bet for competitive play is to run the boosted guys every week, and the bigger they are, the bigger competitive advantage you'll have over the "get them to 460" crowd.

Since we can't predict who's going to be boosted, and we also can't predict which boosted guys will work best with which features (witness: the America Chavez event where Killmonger was boosted, and if you didn't have him, you just lost forever), you can't plan out which guys to target.

@dianetics said:

@entrailbucket said:
Since we can't predict who's going to be boosted, and we also can't predict which boosted guys will work best with which features (witness: the America Chavez event where Killmonger was boosted, and if you didn't have him, you just lost forever), you can't plan out which guys to target.

Killmonger boosted for Americas pvp was a bloodbath, and it was one of the funnest pvps since boosts were so new at the time.
Very few people were actually running him, but the second time he was boosted everyone ran him.

I completely agree a fat roster outweighs a few maxed characters.

So...what's weird is that everyone seems to know this and agree with it, but no one does anything with this information. Scroll through rosters in the top 10 alliances, or look at the top of your brackets, and every single roster looks the same -- between 3 and 6 of the same few guys at 550 and absolutely nothing else.

The boosts have been around for a long time now, and new players are still hoarding and going all in. It's bizarre. Everyone says the boosted guys aren't worth using, because nobody has the boosted guys at a high level, so of course they're not worth using.

First off, how dare you. Of course I can blame them -- that's, like, my entire schtick. I'm not going to totally reinvent myself 10 years in!

The problem is short-term thinking (which is an odd thing to do when you're hoarding for literally years). Of course 3 covers isn't significant, but 20 covers
certainly are, or 40 covers, or 100, and you can't get to any of those points without getting 3 covers first. It's like signing up for a marathon and then spending 10 years inventing teleportation, rather than taking one step at a time.

And that's the other thing I don't get. Why on Earth would anyone want to speedrun to the highest levels in a game that has no ending? There's nothing magical or more fun about the 550 game that's missing at lower levels. Getting to the 550 game should just be an unfortunate side effect of hanging around forever -- it actually means you're running out of stuff to do.

People have been saying that for 10 years though, and because the game is constructed in such a smart way (massive pressure to get new players to spend, no reliance on whales), they've been wildly successful for way longer than other games of this type and aren't showing signs of decline.

Then there's the other contradiction again...what happens if the game ends while you were hoarding? I'd think if that was your concern, you'd open everything immediately so you could have fun using it immediately.

My major problem, though, is that very few people actually think about this stuff or consider the ramifications of what they're doing. If you want to speedrun the endgame with 3 550 characters, you understand everything that means, and it's still your goal, go for it! But don't do it just because someone else told you it was the only way to play, or the most optimal way to play. There are other ways to do it that are also fun/viable, and the only thing at the end of the treadmill is more treadmill.