Mythic boosters crowding out all others

[NYPup2Train]

I'm not as up-in-arms upset about the recent Booster changes as some other users; I'm a bit disappointed that Epic boosters are now un-purchaseable after level 200, and I still plan to ignore the Mythics, but they don't majorly affect my life and figure it's Kinkoid's game to structure how they please.

HOWEVER, this I do object to:

Mythic boosters can't be stacked. That's made very clear in all of the game texts. So what possible use could I have for three IDENTICAL pairs of them? And then being offered only 2 Legendary boosters (which can be stacked and therefore more of THEM would actually be useful!) because six slots are taken up by uselessly duplicated Mythics... that just adds insult to injury. (Or maybe the other way around. Can you add injury to insult?)

[NYPup2Train]

Today.

I mean, come on!!

[DvDivXXX]

What point are you trying to make?

Did you use to routinely spend up to 8 times 90 kobans every market refresh to purchase boosters from there before mythic boosters were introduced? If yes, fair enough.(*) If not, how does this change anything to your gaming experience whatsoever?

(*) I mean, if you really do that, it's very wasteful and unnecessary. But I'm calling this "fair enough" in this context because at least it makes sense that having less legendary boosters for sale matters in your eyes, regardless of how others might perceive your strategy.

[DvDivXXX]

On 9/19/2021 at 8:51 PM, NYPup2Train said:

Mythic boosters can't be stacked. That's made very clear in all of the game texts. So what possible use could I have for three IDENTICAL pairs of them?

Also, this statement makes zero sense. They do stack in your inventory, and you can choose to buy multiple copies of a specific type you find worth investing in. You can't use more than one at a time, but that doesn't mean you can't buy more than one at a time.

Just to be clear, you know these work just like other boosters in terms of purchasing and equipping them, right? Buying a mythic booster just puts it in your inventory. You then choose when to equip/use it. That's important to note, because you would have a point in the line quoted above IF buying them automatically equipped them for you, but that's NOT the case.

[Observer_X]

I may be wrong, but I think @NYPup2Train point is different. Given that he stated

On 9/19/2021 at 8:51 PM, NYPup2Train said:

I'm a bit disappointed that Epic boosters are now un-purchaseable after level 200, and I still plan to ignore the Mythics

I would say that his main problem is the high quantity of Mythic boosters that appear in the market, because more slots occupied by Mythic boosters means less slots for Legendary boosters. This does not siimply mean that he can buy less Legendary boosters, but also that he can't choose if he want to purchase them or not and which ones he wishes to purchase if he decides that at that moment his strategy requires that he buys the X booster (which, I would like to point out one more time, whether or not others agree that it's a good move, it is his move and he has every right to decide about it).

Did I got it out right, @NYPup2Train?

[DvDivXXX]

5 hours ago, Observer_X said:

I may be wrong, but I think @NYPup2Train point is different. Given that he stated "and I still plan to ignore the Mythics"

5 hours ago, Observer_X said:

I would say that his main problem is the high quantity of Mythic boosters that appear in the market, because more slots occupied by Mythic boosters means less slots for Legendary boosters.

You say his point is different, but then you repeat the main point he made the same way I understood it (and addressed it)... 😖 I don't see the difference, and I don't understand why you emphasized his lack of interest in purchasing mythic boosters...

Maybe it's the counterpoint I've made that gave you the impression I interpreted his post differently? What I was getting at is that, unless he used to buy (legendary) boosters at 90 kobans a pop somewhat routinely before mythic boosters arrived, then this shouldn't impact him. But if he did (which is to say if his perspective is what you described), then as I said I understand where his complaint is coming from.

As I also hinted at, this does imply that he's been throwing kobans out the window as this is a very poor strategy, and this change now forces him (or at least should force him) to consider other (better) options for his booster needs. But sure, missing this opportunity for improvement is his absolute right. It's my absolute right to find his complaint irrelevant, though. Because it takes a very specific and hopefully rare strategy to see what he's pointing out as a problem. For the vast majority of players, it's either neutral or even positive (more on that in the next paragraph), so changing this for his sake would be bad for the game.

Virtually no experienced player buys (legendary) boosters at the market these days, except for the occasional cordy when it shows up (which used to be fairly rare until recently). Since the introduction of mythics, even though we technically get offered far fewer legendary boosters overall, cordyceps have been showing up much more frequently than they used to. I suspect they tweaked the odds in our favor, although we don't have enough hard data to confirm it at this point. His two screenshots include a grand total of 3 legendary boosters, and 1 of these is a cordy. That's pretty unlikely with the previously known odds per booster type (50% chlores, give or take 30-40% gins, give or take 10-20% cords, and just about 1% jujubes). And it mirrors my own experience (and several other players' in my club and on the forum). I used to see maybe 1 cord every two or three market refreshes on average. Now it seems that I get more than 1 cord per selection on average. I even stopped buying them on sight (especially since we only use 3 legendary boosters at a time instead of 4, now).

Here's my market right now:

Looks familiar?

Anyways. I think we're done here. Playing in an unconventional way is one thing, and that's absolutely fine, I agree. Essentially asking the devs to revert positive changes just for your sake (because your unconventional way of playing makes them negative for you), well... no thanks.

[Methos2]

@DvDivXXX you may have forgotten how hard it is for lower level players and casual players to get boosters. When players haven't unlocked all of the PoP levels, they don't have access to large amount of mythic orbs that provide free boosters for them. To them, buying boosters although inefficient is a necessity. Lack of epic boosters on the market as @NYPup2Train stated is a disappointment because these are cheaper and most beneficial to lower level players. Having most slots occupied by mythic boosters reduces his choices of boosters as well.

Not everyone is lvl 400+ and hardcore. Please try to put yourself in someone else shoes before berating them. The mythic booster change may be helpful to you but not to him. In my opinion, dev could have implemented the change in a more friendly way so lower level players have less mythic boosters.

[DvDivXXX]

1 hour ago, Methos2 said:

you may have forgotten

1 hour ago, Methos2 said:

Not everyone is lvl 400+ and hardcore. The mythic booster change may be helpful to you but not to him.

1 hour ago, Methos2 said:

Please try to put yourself in someone else shoes before berating them.

Please practice what you preach, and stop assuming the worst of forum regulars in general and mods in particular (or at least yours truly). It's not the first time you resort to bashing me over flimsy, unfounded assumptions. And frankly, after the amount of details I went into to address the OP's complaints and then Obs' comment on it, and all the extra information and perspective I provided, it's just depressingly unfair to see someone jumping in and basically ignoring most of what I've said (or missing the points I've made) and only reacting to how they feel I should speak, and how they imagine the very weird out-of-touch privileged player they somehow project on me looks at the game and at his fellow players (despite mountains of evidence all over the forum that I'm a LOT better informed and I have a LOT better intentions than you give me credit for). Seriously, dude... You should know better than this BS by now.

*sigh* Putting that aside (for now), I'll list more relevant points you may have forgotten to take into consideration pertaining to the topic at hand (or things you might not be aware of, if I'm taking a page from your book and assuming the worst).

• We don't know what level the OP is. Above 200, sure (who isn't), but that's all we can really tell from his posts. He could be anywhere between W1 and D2 for all we know. Mentioning his disappointment about the level 200 threshold for mythic boosters to become the main type seen in the market doesn't necessarily imply he is level 200. Just like my being level 400+ now doesn't mean I've stopped caring or keeping in touch with lower level players and what they experience (as I've been doing since I was just starting out)...
   
• When you're low level enough that epic boosters are still more powerful than legendary ones for you, you should not use boosters, period, let alone burn kobans on them. If you want to play well and eventually progress in this game, that is. Your point about poor early to mid game players needing to buy them is invalid. Boosters are worth using in D2 and above. Before that, you're FAR better off fighting "naked" in the lower divisions while you slowly but surely improve your performances as you level up and otherwise progress outside of PvP. You don't need boosters against the map or in Seasons either, at that stage (on the contrary, boosting yourself holds you back if you do).
   
• I also used to assume that newer players shouldn't be able to use PoPs effectively, but after a recent discussion I've had with one about exactly that, the current early game experience seems to be much more PoP-friendly than I thought. So there's that. Even though, as I hinted at above, the best strategy in that situation would be to stash whatever decent boosters you get so you're better prepared when you reach the point in leagues where you can start benefiting from them.

1 hour ago, Methos2 said:

In my opinion, dev could have implemented the change in a more friendly way so lower level players have less mythic boosters.

Yeah, I agree to that (there seems to be a consensus on that, actually). It would make more sense if this started around level 350 (or at least 300) rather than 200. It doesn't change any of the above, but we do agree on that, as most sufficiently informed players would.

[JustVisiting]

2 hours ago, DvDivXXX said:

• When you're low level enough that epic boosters are still more powerful than legendary ones for you, you should not use boosters, period, let alone burn kobans on them. If you want to play well and eventually progress in this game, that is. Your point about poor early to mid game players needing to buy them is invalid. Boosters are worth using in D2 and above. Before that, you're FAR better off fighting "naked" in the lower divisions while you slowly but surely improve your performances as you level up and otherwise progress outside of PvP. You don't need boosters against the map or in Seasons either, at that stage (on the contrary, boosting yourself holds you back if you do).

I *kind of* disagree with you about this.

I, personally, have used boosters from reasonably early on - long before legendary boosters were superior to epic and in fact, even back to rare boosters. I do not think that was/is a bad strategy at all. It all comes down to whether you are having to spend Koban to get them and if so how much.

[Note - it wasn't until S2 that I started targeting 16-30 rather than just moving up each week, so I probably over-spent Koban wise a little in the first month or so while getting to this level and having to buy Rare boosters. After this though, I'd moved up to Epic boosters and was mostly picking these up from other sources.]

Your assertion is that you shouldn't use boosters pre-D2. I'm in D1. I could probably manage D1 without boosters now and still finish 30+ (I end up having to leave around 100 natural regens unplayed each week atm with boosters), but when I moved up I could not have. This is symptomatic of the approach I have taken throughout. I'm effectively always in the bottom 10% of my league in terms of level. Two weeks ago I was the 2nd lowest level player in my bracket. Finished 16th. Last week I was the 14th lowest out of 108. I finished 17th. Finishing 16-30 in D1 (which I have every week since moving up) wins me an extra 77 Kobans over the same finish in S3. If I was to buy boosters in the shop that's an extra 5 boosters. While I do pick-up the occasional Cordy, I don't buy 5/week. Most of my boosters come via orbs. So I could have continued to play non-boosted in S3, but I likely would have banked less Kobans and gained less XP sitting in a lower league.

This has always been the real balance for me - milking the most Koban out of the league, with the knowledge that if I push up too far I may get more Koban in league prize, but it could make the XP Daily Contests more difficult to win if I don't have enough wins available and as I have a decent success rate with them I want to keep them accessible. That Koban source is a bigger opportunity to bank Kobans than the league for lower level players. And to win the XP contests, it helps (a LOT) to be able to beat higher level players in the league. And boosters make that a lot easier. So even if you end up spending all of the gain from moving up a league on boosters, if you're winning more Koban in the XP DCs you're still coming out ahead.

The reasons I only say "kind of disagree" is that i) I would be the first to admit there have been some errors in my strategy as I learned and ii) I'm not sure I'm a good model of your standard player.

Throughout my time playing (ten months to the day) I've tended to use boosters. Some of that may have been misguided, specifically because you've made me question my approach in Seasons (I'm now tinkering with alternative strategies to see if they work for me). I thought the boosters helped me get further through Seasons faster using the non-optimal approach I was using (playing every natural regen). Getting through Seasons helped a lot in terms of winning DC, getting the girl in the LC and getting through the PoA. It now seems to me that I could have achieved the same results by playing less in Seasons but winning more Mojo on each individual performance. So I would concede that my use of boosters to help progress through Seasons early on may have been misguided. But this was also the lesser of the reasons I used them.

Alongside this I have unusual work/life conditions. The time I have available to play is likely radically different to many other players. That likely makes me more competitive than the majority of players of an equal level in the lower leagues and exaggerates the benefits of the boosters for me (if I can be available more frequently to look for good battles then I'm going to get more out of the boosters).

It may well be the case that if you removed the early misconception and the current work/life flexibilty that my view would be more closely aligned with your own on this issue.

[JustVisiting]

I will also be interested to see what impact a 90%+ drop in the MyP drop rate in the PoP will have on the attitudes to buying boosters in the shop...... The ability to get these boosters from orbs has just been substantially reduced.

That said, I still feel there's plenty of opportunity for those who are prepared to buy them in the shop.

[DvDivXXX]

4 hours ago, JustVisiting said:

I end up having to leave around 100 natural regens unplayed each week atm with boosters

This is a big part of why you shouldn't use boosters (and/or you should stick to a suitable division and start playing the "as close as possible to #15, while still farming as much XP as possible" dance). XP matters so much more than milking a handful more kobans at this stage, it's not even funny. Go back down to S3 if you have to, forget boosters even exist, and start maximizing your XP gains. In the long run, leaving XP on the table as you're currently doing is very detrimental; much much more so than the tiny bonus to your weekly koban pittance is beneficial now.

I'll leave it at that, because even though it's an interesting discussion and there would be a lot more to say, we're getting pretty far removed from this thread's original post. ^^ I do appreciate your openness and curiosity about the game, though. Your posts are often nice reads. Cheers.

[JustVisiting]

 

13 hours ago, DvDivXXX said:

I'll leave it at that, because even though it's an interesting discussion and there would be a lot more to say, we're getting pretty far removed from this thread's original post. ^^ I do appreciate your openness and curiosity about the game, though. Your posts are often nice reads. Cheers.

Thanks for the positive feedback - with forums I think you tend to get back what you put in and I like taking appart systems with lots of moving parts. There's always some new interaction you hadn't spotted before.

I hope I'm not stepping on your mod toes here, but you're right about this not being the appropriate place for this discussion and I thought I'd break this of into its own thread myself so I could work through my thoughts on your suggestions

[NYPup2Train]

Well! this took on a life of its own, didn't it?

On 9/22/2021 at 6:48 AM, DvDivXXX said:

What point are you trying to make?

Did you use to routinely spend up to 8 times 90 kobans every market refresh to purchase boosters from there before mythic boosters were introduced?

No, but I previously had a selection of boosters I could purchase, depending what stats I needed to goose.

When there are only 2 Legendary boosters on offer, at most I have choice of two types of boost, out of four total. (Yes, of course that could happen anyway by luck of the draw, no matter how many slots are available, but the odds of being able to purchase a booster for the stats you're looking to buff are immensely diminished when the number of options is reduced from eight to two.

 

On 9/22/2021 at 7:16 PM, DvDivXXX said:

Maybe it's the counterpoint I've made that gave you the impression I interpreted his post differently? What I was getting at is that, unless he used to buy (legendary) boosters at 90 kobans a pop somewhat routinely before mythic boosters arrived, then this shouldn't impact him. But if he did (which is to say if his perspective is what you described), then as I said I understand where his complaint is coming from.

You mentioned that twice, seemingly on some sort of assumption that I didn't buy (or at least might not have even bought) boosters before the introduction of Mythics, so now I'm complaining about something that doesn't even affect me just for the sake of complaining. Well, that does happen in online forums, but thanks for the benefit of the doubt.

The fact is, I didn't buy Legendary boosters very much, before the Mythic introduction. I bought Epic boosters. But now, I can no longer do that at all, so now I find myself "in the market" for Legendary boosters,  even though I wasn't in the past.

 

On 9/22/2021 at 6:56 AM, DvDivXXX said:

Also, this statement makes zero sense. They do stack in your inventory, and you can choose to buy multiple copies of a specific type you find worth investing in. You can't use more than one at a time, but that doesn't mean you can't buy more than one at a time.

Just to be clear, you know these work just like other boosters in terms of purchasing and equipping them, right? Buying a mythic booster just puts it in your inventory. You then choose when to equip/use it. That's important to note, because you would have a point in the line quoted above IF buying them automatically equipped them for you, but that's NOT the case.

Yes, I am fully cognizant of how that works.

I kind of feel like, in your rush to condescend to me, you forgot that the shop supply replenishes every six hours! So, yes, I re-assert that having Mythic booster "doubles" in the shop is useless. Especially compared to sub-Mythic-class boosters, since more than one of the same type of those can be activated.

You're right that if I hoard boosters in my inventory and obsessively manage my stockpile of them like it's my retirement portfolio, then it doesn't really matter what's on offer in the shop. Not all of us are that competitive, for starters, or want to put that much thought into it.

You asked way in the beginning "what point I was trying to make", and while I thought it was pretty clear, I guess not because you've made a lot of assumptions of things I never said or even hinted at. 

On 9/22/2021 at 7:16 PM, DvDivXXX said:

Essentially asking the devs to revert positive changes just for your sake

Which is never what I was asking.

Here's my issue: 

• In the Gifts shop, before the Mythics I'd typically see a selection of Rare, Epic, and Legendary options. Now, it's the same, but there'll be between zero and two Mythics included at the end.
• In the Books shop, pretty the same, before and after. (Though 
• Whereas for Boosters, before this change it was a selection of Epic and Legendary (probably a 5/3 split, usually); after the change it's anywhere from one to seven Mythics, and however many Legendary fill the remaining slots.

My entire issue here is that the change to the Boosters store — especially coupled with the removal of Epics for level 200+ — is so much more, and so unnecessarily more, drastic that the Mythic-incorporating changes to the other stores. And with the changes being made all at once, it created the impression that Boosters would largely or effectively be Mythic-only going forward.

With Epic boosters, the 60 Koban price wasn't unreasonable — it was low enough that, if I got the 150 Koban for completing all of the Daily Missions (yes, "if"; I don't always put that much time into it every day), it would cover an Epic booster or two.

Even now with the Epics no longer available, it still covers one 90 Koban Legendary.

But buying Mythics is an investment of either real money, or time devoted over multiple days just to amass enough Koban for a single purchase. More effort than I want to put into it. Doesn't mean I want them removed, just that I feel the store offerings should be balanced a little closer to how ALL of the other stores are. Heck, I'd even be fine if the split just stuck closer to 4/4 reliably. But more than that is excessive, and of no practical use to even the hardest-core players. (Because, like I said, 6-hour restock. Even if someone is looking to stock up, they don't need 5, 6, 7 all at once.) I totally get that they're useful to other players, and I have no interest in interfering with that, despite my disinterest in them — poor strategy though it may be.

(The idea that I have a "strategy" for an online sex game is laughable, TBH. Not knocking anyone who does, but it's just not my way. I've always known that the surest way to ruin sex is to overthink it. So my personal... approach — certainly not a strategy, calling it that would be an insult to strategies — to the game is to never lose sight of what the it's supposed to be about: More sex than violence... and even the violence is mostly sex.)