My attempts to "pay to win" before any data wipe

In 100 chests or 100 items? I bought 20 chests for 100 items and manually tallied as I collected each item (including common).

If you did 100 chests, then that's 2 legendary out of 500 items, a very different result. Which is probably your point.

 

I spent around 2000 pizza on chests and got 1 legendary ( technically 2 but it was a the dupe bug i previously reported and now confirmed ) So that is 1 legendary in 67~ chests for me

 

Imagine me sobbing at the crushing revelation that you don't read my bug reports. Over-dramatic sobbing, right here.

Speaking of which, Crushing Revelation needs to be a card of some sort.

 

Excellent. Program it.

Er . . . get hired by Blue Manchu and then program it.

 

My Rarity levels for 130 items from 24 Pizza chests and 2 Gold were:

Rarity

Count​

C 79
U 21
R 25
E 5
Total 130

Common / Uncommon / Rare / Epic / Legendary.

I did not get a Legendary item at all, so Sir Knight beat the odds considerably in that respect.

I got two Epic items in the first 5 chests, then none for the next 10. I did notice that opening a lot of chests in a row seemed to "diminish" the draws, but that was probably just "Loot Fatigue".

Item Level:

Level Count
1 18
2 6
3 14
4 3
5 4
6 10
7 1
8 5
9 14
10 3
11 6
12 9
13 8
14 3
15 14
16 3
17 3
18 6
Total 130

Note that I only found 1 level 7 item - Novice Chopping

 

So 2200 pizza in chests and now i got 2 legendarys in total a lvl 1 chest and a lvl 15 divine item

 

Okay, then. So what you're saying is that getting two of my aforementioned four legendaries in a single chest is really unusual and I should be proud of that moment.

Until it all gets erased.

Unfortunately, I had the sound off at the time. Is there a different "wow, a good item showed up!" sound effect for legendary items, or is it all the same from uncommon upward?

 

Got 2400 pizza worth of chests(80 chests) and recieved two legendaries... superb proliferation and trained proliferation.

EDIT: another 2520 pizza(84 chests) got me 3 legendaries(well, 4, because advanced augmentation got duped)... advanced augmentation(greyed out), amulet of blades, and telekinetic stone(which is strictly worse than the epic ring of apropriation)

 

Which you can't do with fake money paid for fake pizza. Ah, it all comes full circle, doesn't it?

 

Reporting on my initial goal: I have beaten Return to the Astral Shrine with a level 14 party. The meaning is somewhat ambiguous.

My deck design was "Add Stun, add mobility cards (both Free Move and Whirlwind), add Block Magic, add Damage, it doesn't matter how many drawbacks you have to take." I was surprised and pleased to find Staggering Blow on an item that doesn't require bronze talents: Sword Of Thunder, level 13 weapon, two clear talents. It also has Thunderblast, which I needed for the Stun. (By the way: this probably has been reported, but damage from this "Sonic" attack has no sound effect.) I beat the adventure on my first try.

Now . . .

Did I beat it BECAUSE I spent all that "real-world" money? I don't know that it's certain. Spending the pizza INFORMED me that Stun was available at a useful talent cost, and then I used my in-game gold to buy other relevant items. I might have purchased that Sword of Thunder, come to think of it. Disregarding that, my build contains only 3 items I got from pizza-based treasure chests, leaving 97 as excess for my "pay to win" purposes. I haven't even spent all the gold I made.

Further thoughts: the 3 items I mention were 2 Rares and 1 Uncommon, so it would have cost me 225 gold (at my level) to buy them "legitimately." I had 209 gold at the start of this excursion, which, of course, would mean going bankrupt in order to have a chance.

So do I "owe" my victory to the pizza? Or could I have gotten here with the aid of the wiki (once it's complete) to teach me about Stun, and a little faith in making expensive Rare purchases? This is difficult to say.

 

I think I can narrow down my questions.. I give my opinions as well, but maybe I am a bit biased so I am curious what others think as well.

A) Did it help.. Which I think it did. Without those items (the 2 not the other 97 heh) you most likely would not of been able to do what ya just did. Could you of got them from a shop, or from loot for beating a quest.. Maybe, but ya got them from the chest, so for now at least it did help you beat that quest. Now helping is not necessarily "Bad" so that is why we need to look at the other parts.

B) Was the help it gave you unachievable by normal means? Unachievable by other means is most likely a no. Given time I am sure you could of gotten whatever ya gotten on what finally helped push ya over that last little bit to beat the level. The knowledge of things working together could of also been achieved through other means so that itself isn't bad either.

C)Was the reward more powerful then those other means. This I am going to say yes.. the amount of items as well as the quality. This is my opinion (Though I think it is shared by a few). Though it is luck on what you get (SirKnight is just too darn lucky lol) the fact that 5-6 pieces of equipment, with most the equipment being better then you might even have access to at the moment can be quite strong. Add to that you can do that for as much as ya like (As long as you have the money). I think it is a bit more then any other reward you can get through any other means.

D)Did it break the game, by either hurting your play or others? This is the important one.. I haven't tried MP after I got some stuff.. So I am wondering how it will go through there. But at least single-player, the abilities and limits of the dungeons are still there, and despite opening the chest, and getting some decient items, the missions are still kinda tough. Now there are a few that are quite easier. But even with the new stuff it is no cake walk through most the missions. For example with the stuff I got from the chests, at level 14 I beat Lair of the Rose Dragon (Lvl 17 Premium Dungeon). It wasn't easy.. Died a couple times on the last guy.. but that was because I had access to lots of "Different" things to choose from so I could properly equip the guys to go in there. I am not going to say yes, or no on MP, but for single player.. having access to all those items well.. lets just say like SirKnight, I am also able to beat dungeons that I haven't before. Not by using "All" chest stuff, but just a few here and there to give the "Edge" I guess.

Edit: Also curious.. Did they lower the drop rate of Epic items? Also, maybe if you want to keep the ability to sell from the chest replace some of the items with Treasures. Just a thought though.

 

With your point D there, I might note the adventure did not become "easy." The second fight was terribly close, where on the last round Gary and I each needed just 1 victory point to win. I finally won by having my Dwarf Wizard abandon his post on a victory square to do a Charge that dealt exactly enough damage to kill an enemy. He could have died from a three-HP counterattack.

I'm neither more nor less concerned about multiplayer. There's one thing we don't know: the pizza chest says it covers "any level," so will the level cap go up once higher-level items are added to the beta? Will it give out items with talents above bronze? Because, if so, then the fixed character level means those high-talent items can't be used in multiplayer. In fact, if you are a dedicated player-vs.-player sort and don't unlock single-player shops, then you won't even get use from selling said items. (If you believe in single-player, of course, you have to spend time leveling-up to earn those talents.)

Speaking of limits, here's one if people feel like limiting the number of pizza chests: what if you could open 1 per day, +1 for every treasure chest shop unlocked within single-player?

 

Lol I have no doubt, that despite what you do the missions will remain very difficult. This isn't an easy game, and a lot of people are not going to like that, but it is what it is. At least they pushed off the difficulty (From the Trog levels) back a little bit so people can kinda get use to things before it gets deep.

I merely meant when it comes to MP I had no idea. That is not really something I was am focused in trying out. While I agree that the Ability points will be a great equalizer, the problem comes with access. For example, lets say equal level (Which would mean even Ability Points), I would just worry since someone else would have a great deal more access to all these varied amount of items that it would be like putting the best that could against someone who has just scraped together what they have. I hope that makes sense, and though yes.. it may not be "Over Powering" (depending on what is going against what) but it definitely gives the advantage to the person with all the stuff.

This is not a bad idea, also I would suggest if it is just equipment to drop the number from 5-6 to 3-4. But that is just me. I don't know if someone would pay for that still as is so that might be too much.

 

There is only one bad thing about that it forces the pvpers to pve if they want to compete so while i like your idea it kinda defeats the purpose which is why I'm reluctant to agree. A similar idea would be limiting the number of pizza chests to the general progress of the pve people so say day 1 of my account i can open 0 chests and then every 2-3 days you ad on another one to the 24 hour limit of chests this would make pvepvpers not feel like spending 200 dollars on pizza leaves them in the dust while letting the purist pvpers stay generally up to date with their friends. The rate and number is obviously pulled out of thin air but i think the idea serves the purpose better. But as always i can be completely wrong so feel free to share your thoughts!