I’m glad to see there is thought out reasoning to the change.
However, when it comes to chasing mythic, any chance at a mythic is better than no chance at a mythic.
If I wanted to target “Wulfgarok”, I would craft it with Diamonds. Well, if the rotation ever gets around to it.
If I wanted a stray shot at any mythic of a specific color, the old summoning stones did its job. While even if the “assumed” odds were 1/1000, Summoning stones were a stable resource that could be gained and would be beneficial over a long period of time.
Was the old colored jewel rate ideal to a player’s liking? Probably not, but it is something at the very least.
Now that its dropped down to just common-> epic, its lost most of its appeal. I can easily get ultra rares and epics through gem chests, and commons and rares through gold chests. They were already available elsewhere.
At one point, I considered buying daily deals of the Pharos-Ra colors to up my chances. Now there’s just no reason to.
I’d propose to craft a common, rare, ultra-rare, or epic, people should be able to trade in traitstones + shards for them and leave the old summon stones untouched.
This alone should make them much more useful than they were before. As in, now they actually have a purpose - 16.7% chance of getting a specific epic per stone draw. Several weeks worth of saving and you might actually get a specific one. If you can rebrand this as their purpose and basically ignore the fact that they drop other “stuff” at all and consider it just filler on the table, the change might go over a little better.
Only seeing 12 a week in a (random?) rotation is still a concern, since they could be months even at this point, and too long and they are basically have as long of a wait in between each one as the event schedule of years past.
However; a big disconnect between the stated goal of the revamped system and how it works is the commons and rares. They are just filler on these tables. Not enough of them given to make any impact given the number of draws you have available. Maybe the numbers can be buffed to at least 10 commons and 5 rares per draw? And two copies of the ultra-rares. That would bring everything a bit more in line. Even with those numbers, I still don’t consider this a feasible way to target these commons and rares. More… you might get some of them while you are targeting a specific epic so they might reach mythic a week or two before every other common and rare in your collection, RNG willing.
Or, as another example of why the commons/rares numbers are way out of whack, lets look at your example.
Lets say I wanted to get a single common to mythic. I need 191 copies. Each common comes in groups of 3 at a 1/8 chance and can only be targeted on one color. You’ll get, on average, one copy of a specific common every per about 133.333 Jewels for a single copy of a common on average. So, you need 25467 Jewels to ascend your single common (and another arbitrary one) to mythic. As a free player (with the same paramaters you have given, so no gem bounty, 100 jewels per week of each color), you’d mythic this common in 254.7 weeks, or about 58.45 months. So in this 4.88 year period, you’d probably have drawn about three random mythics on average by your own estimation, but instead now, you have six targeted commons to mythic. Many of which already would be if you had been opening gold keys during the interim. Given the choice, very few people are going to choose 6 specific common (non GW, non Guardian) troops to mythic and six other common to mythic over even three random base mythics, so even the raw numbers aren’t in your favor.
Even just filling in for needing 10 copies of a specific common, you’d have to blow through on average 13 weeks worth of resources to get you there. Or you can farm gold for a couple hours to open gold keys for those 10 copies (or if you are in a guild with any kind of activity, just open some, since a ton are given weekly). Its not even comparable.
Of course, the entire argument is hyperbole because nobody would use summoning stones for targeting them once they understand how the systems work. It would be foolish to even attempt to target commons in this manner. Mythics, on the other hand, I can see people actually wanting to put in for their 1 in 10000 lottery draws, whether or not the odds are so far against them it wouldn’t make logical sense. I mean, isn’t the entire acquisition model for basically everything in the game already built on that premise? Put another way, if someone was getting 12 free lottery tickets a week, and they suddenly the lottery tickets removed the 1 million dollars cash prize and replaced them higher chances at the $5 prize but also added chances to win a free pack of chewing gum, most people probably wouldn’t see it as a positive. Unless they really like gum. That is where the people complaining about the nerfs are coming from.
Hopefully this has shown why the system doesn’t really cover what players were asking for.
tl;dr, again
Revamped summoning stone system is not a viable alternative to target low rarity troops in its current state, which is a large part of its stated purpose
Rebrand the system as basically just Epic targeting but sometimes you’ll get garbage and it will probably be more well received, because as stated, this does look a lot more helpful for targeting Epics (rotation issues aside)
huge buff to the number of commons and rares dropped on a single draw is needed, and also 2x ultra-rares could help as well to round things out if you want lower rarity targeting to even be on the fringe of viability. Alternatively, summoning stones (Jewels) need to be much more readily available (ie, not hard bottlenecked like diamonds).
Edit: My numbers for drops were for 6 items on each table and not 8, so they are even worse… revising now.
@Nimhain How about simplifying it like this: Currently in the weekly rotation of legendary and mythic troops we can choose exactly the one we want (thank god it’s not a random one of the ones available). Why not do the same with the commons-epics?
Just let us simply pick and craft the ones we want from the weekly selection and vary the jewel cost accordingly? This 1:8 chance business is crap mate for such a rare resource.
I’d like to point out that reworking the Summoning Stone changed it from being just another form of chest to yet just another form of chest. A random pull from a limited pool, just with the jackpot removed.
I like your core idea of being able to craft targeted goodies, I’m just not seeing how this implementation is supposed to even get close. One step towards that goal would be to a offer a craft rotation of Common/Rare/Ultra-Rare/Epic troops similar to the Legendary/Mythic one. Possibly replace the diamonds on the price tag with an appropriate number of gems of the corresponding color.
The other main issue is, the nerf to Event keys. It is still impossible to get the new troops via event keys. Event keys still drop far too much non event crap!
I don’t know. I don’t have much issue with getting event troops. Except of course draak has eluded me the last 2 ghulvania visits. I certainly had more than enough crimson bats however. I’ll trade 10 bats for their spare draak if anyone’s up for it…
Given how adding commons/rares was handled here, I am now categorically opposed to any changes to Event keys. Right now, event keys will always drop at least 100% legendary from the kingdom at the same keys/legendary rate as a gem key. The chances to roll each rarity are the same as gem keys, so you don’t “lose” a kingdom legendary if you roll a different kingdoms epic or ultra-rare. The non-kingdom drops for Epics at the moment appear to do little more than round out the table - drops from the kingdom are almost 9 times as likely. And ultra-rares from the kingdom are still about six times as likely are so common that is barely matters, since they’ll often hit mythic just from collateral key openings if you try to target a single legendary or sometimes a single epic.
I can almost guarantee that any change in this delicate balance would have us need more keys on average to get the stuff that most people actually use event keys to target (eg., a single copy of a new legendaries, new legendaries + epics to mythics for new released kingdoms). And unlike summoning stones, which were viewed as a bonus or largely ignored, Event Keys are a huge part of endgame collection strategy.
Things look pretty normal to me. Troops currently in Glory Packs are weighted 2:1 vs other troops from the kingdom, and non-kingdom Ultra-Rares and epics just fill out the table at extremely reduced chances comparatively. Its always been this way.
Unless you were talking about the task rework in 3.2 that removed half the event keys per week? But either way, the issue with Event Keys is not that non-kingdom troops are on the table, its that soon too few will be given to properly target even one of a new legendary as we get kingdoms with three (possibly even four) legendaries in them. I wouldn’t want the drop tables for event keys to be another thing that gets “fixed” without proper clarification of the issue. The only thing that needs to be done in this case is any “Event” Legendary given the same treatment as Glory Pack troops for the duration of that event - 2:1 weighting on its drop chance versus other legendaries in the kingdom.
Yup! My point exactly! It’s not even close to 50/50 now, but it should be weighted to the new troops somehow. Imagine when you have been playing long enough and there are 3 or 4 legends in a single kingdom!
For legendaries in a two legendary kingdom, all indications are that it is 50/50 on which will drop currently (if you get a legendary to drop). The RNG can just be terrible and streaky. I spent around 160 keys for a Scylla, my buddy got her in 10. But… it should be weighted toward the new one, yes. Especially since we have to suffer through the buyable troops being weighted to appear more, when thats the ones we don’t want to drop for the most part.
Yes, but when you see 3+ year players, like me, spending 750 Event Keys and getting 18 Krakens and 2 Scylla, how do you account for that and then decide that your RNG engine is working properly @Nimhain?
The RNG has to be more even with 750 keys. Keep in mind we now get only 24 Event Keys per week… Assuming our Guild Maxes ALL Tasks…
