Flaw with the current Marco token system

[Vapula]

I've been following the updates on forums, twitter and a common trend I'm seeing every month is the vast majority of players being upset at the quality of legendaries offered at Marco and I believe the big reason for that is the current 300 token legendary cycle is littered with unworthy or old artifacts, I'll state some examples:

1) Antikythera Mechanism, Video Game Console: Both used to be amazing Loot artifacts when Heavy Tanks were meta troops, but now that they are nerfed to death in the recent times, it is on par if not slightly worse than something Nefertiti Bust (which is a 100 token artifact) so I don't understand why you would sell inferior artifacts for 300 and better ones for 100

2) DaVinci Machine Gun, ASM anti satellite, Vampir: All 3 debated to be three of the worst world war artifacts even worse than artifacts like Sniper Kit or Avrocar or Gemini Helmet all given for 100 tokens, so again it's inferior legendaries for 300 tokens?
2.1) MP legendaries like Lewis chess men, Lycurgus cup both are in the 300 token cycle when far superior artifacts like nefertiti and ruyi respectively are in the 100 token cycle, so again inferior artifact = 300 tokens, superior artifact = 100 tokens? That's a math I can't get my head around!

3) Book of 5 Rings: It has very very little utility, most people don't even bother to build any Vault artifacts in museum, so I doubt you would ever get any sales if it is 300 tokens, but would definitely entice some players to buy it and work on Vault sets if it was 100 tokens, so a bad marketing strategy in my opinion..

4) Just like Antikythera and VGC; Joyeuse sword, Art of War, Manpack all used to few of the best legendaries in game but now with factory troops nerfed to death they are really outdated and don't deserve the 300 token price tag, reducing it to 100 would definitely increase sales of them..

Bottom line: Most of useful legendaries (be it war legendary like Huey, Cesar Statue, Dv Flying Machine, McConnells, Asdic, Abu Simbel or be it main hall uni time reducing legendaries like soul catcher, ashanti, enigma, helgo, Mars rover or newer legendaries like Thinker statue, Clem suit, Maori, Plane Gyro) are rarely put in the Marco lineup and even when they are they are usually only given once or twice per year because of which most people have 300-600, sometimes even more tokens collecting dust devaluing over time as they have nothing worthwhile to spend the tokens on and I believe the biggest reason is the excessive amount of unworthy legendaries in the 300 token cycle..
So reducing the price of above mentioned legendaries or other legendaries similar to the ones I mentioned will open up the slots for useful 300 token artifacts to be circulated more frequently and reliably giving everyone what they want..

And it's not like artifact price hasn't been reduced before, Nefertiti bust, Personal Computer, Great Imperial Crown, Gemini Helmet all were 300 tokens when when they were first introduced but they were not justifying their price token so were reduced to 100 where they now justify their price, why can't the same be done once again, but on a slightly larger scale to account for all the newer and hard to get legendaries?

Thanks for taking the time to read and I hope to see some positive response from others

 

[Toni]

I find all your arguments very easy to understand. However, as is so often the case, there are always different views and what we see on forums and social is not necessarily representative of the average player. If hurdles in the game are too low, I fear that there will no longer be an incentive for the top players to spend both money and time in the game. It all evens out in a certain way. That could be dangerous in the long run. I have been playing for many years with many accounts and I have to say that with patience you can still get everything and sometimes even with a bit of money.

 

[Seek]

The only flaw I see is they need to just simply add another teir 100 tokens 300 tokens 600 token and maybe even 1200 token tear for the rarest .
This way they could make more profits of the token sales they have. They could even age restrict the 600 token teir drone age or above.
This would allow players a actual chance to use tokens and complete collections of artifacts.

 

[King Crimson]

It's always interesting that people aften say it's useless when they really mean it's useless to me.
Perhaps @Vapula you can explain a few things:

1. vast majority of players - where did you get these stats? (and please don't say the forum or facebook)
2. when Heavy Tanks were meta troops, but now that they are nerfed to death in the recent times - how exactly have they been nerfed?
3. All 3 debated to be three of the worst world war artifacts - what exactly makes them the worst artifacts?
4. far superior artifacts like nefertiti and ruyi - superior in what way? Or just superior for your needs?
5. factory troops nerfed to death - really? Have I been using the wrong combo to win match after match all this time?

Just trying to get a handle on information that seems to have escaped me.

 

[SomeRandomPlayer]

True, as truthfully we don't know what the majority of people do. I'd wager to guess that the majority of players use heavy tanks, heck, I wouldn't be shocked if the majority of players use barracks tanks! People posting in this forum or on discord make up the minority of players; in fact, most players are (sorry to say this, but all things considered) poor attackers. I'd wager most museums lack any double digit buffs. Go down to alliance #1000 or #2000 or somesuch and bring tissues because there will be tears.

But as for the meta goes, and what is considered 'best practices', Vapula makes good points. Clearly some artifacts are better than others, and the system could use a revamp. But I don't think we know what the majority of players do.

 

[oddin]

It's always interesting that people aften say it's useless when they really mean it's useless to me.
Perhaps @Vapula you can explain a few things:

1. vast majority of players - where did you get these stats? (and please don't say the forum or facebook)
2. when Heavy Tanks were meta troops, but now that they are nerfed to death in the recent times - how exactly have they been nerfed?
3. All 3 debated to be three of the worst world war artifacts - what exactly makes them the worst artifacts?
4. far superior artifacts like nefertiti and ruyi - superior in what way? Or just superior for your needs?
5. factory troops nerfed to death - really? Have I been using the wrong combo to win match after match all this time?

Just trying to get a handle on information that seems to have escaped me.

what vapula says about artifacts is correct - under the prism of the current metagame

 

[Vapula]

It's always interesting that people aften say it's useless when they really mean it's useless to me.
Perhaps @Vapula you can explain a few things:

1. vast majority of players - where did you get these stats? (and please don't say the forum or facebook)
2. when Heavy Tanks were meta troops, but now that they are nerfed to death in the recent times - how exactly have they been nerfed?
3. All 3 debated to be three of the worst world war artifacts - what exactly makes them the worst artifacts?
4. far superior artifacts like nefertiti and ruyi - superior in what way? Or just superior for your needs?
5. factory troops nerfed to death - really? Have I been using the wrong combo to win match after match all this time?

Just trying to get a handle on information that seems to have escaped me.

1) Okay it may have been wrongly written what I meant was vast majority of players who eagerly wait out for legendaries and save their tokens in hopes of one day finally getting that one awesome legendary, but month after month they are just met with sadness and despair.. As for the vast majority of complete game population I agree with RandomPlayer one doesn't know the true extent of the player base, and honestly I've been to those lower ranked alliance and none of them know what they are doing, they just get to 100 tokens and on the very next day buy a legendary (crappy or decent) and be happy with their life and their "progress" so I was only counting the population who knows the importance of museum and know what they are doing and vast majority of that "invested population" has only been complaining about the lack of good artifacts (this post was made before the February Vault announcement just for the record)

2) Heavy tanks are clunky, take too much space and don't really justify their slow rate of speed, with the additions of additional Bunkers, ATGs and the entire state of defense library giving more troop spawns + council having ridiculous DST boosts for defenders, then manufactory adding protected defenders + unbetrayable defenders (not even mentioning the lvl 23 perk which spawns 2 HTs per wave) more often than not HTs just just crushed by the sheer amount of defenders a base can spit these days so really they've fallen off that throne they used to have 1-1½ years ago..

3) - Dvmg has 2 Machine gun infantry dmg (who even uses those troops on offense), then enemy Catapult dmg (reducing damage of that building of all the defensive buildings in game? ), then theres inv factory troop dmg which used to be decent during HTs reign but as I mentioned above more or less even without much nerfing HTs you can fairly easily stop HT attacks so not tho worth it, so essentially it's just a 1 liner (siege dmg)..
- ASM is a weird one it looks good at first with airstrip troop dmg, but then you realise you can get welrod for the same cost and it has better air troop dmg + gives AEDTH, as for the 4 defensive boosts there are already far superior and must have legendaries for defenders (Abu simbel, Maori, Gemini Gloves, Asdic) , even avrocar and Sniper kit are superior defensive legendaries than ASM
- Vampir I don't remember all the stats but iirc it's a mix legendary as well and only reasonable lines are mortar HP and APC HP which is good but definitely not something worth 300 tokens..

4) Lewis Chessman gives 24% ARL and 23% Raider dmg and HP whereas Nefertiti gives 40% ARL and 15% Raider Dmg and HP respectively 7% HP and Dmg increase should not require 200 extra tokens, considering the legendary gives 26% less ARL..
Same for Ruyi it gives 15% AEDTD, 15% AEDTH and 15% EDST, Lycurgus cup only gives 20% AEDTD so a 5% increase in AEDTD shouldn't be costing 200 extra tokens considering it isn't even giving any AEDTHP or EDST boosts..

5) As others have mentioned the current meta is anything but Factory troops for the reasons I stated above, they usually take too much space and don't really have an ideal way of dealing with the amount of defenders a player can spawn, they can work in some cases but I personally have not seen a successful HT attack on a 3D base in quite a long time..

 

[King Crimson]

1) Okay it may have been wrongly written what I meant was vast majority of players who eagerly wait out for legendaries and save their tokens in hopes of one day finally getting that one awesome legendary, but month after month they are just met with sadness and despair.. As for the vast majority of complete game population I agree with RandomPlayer one doesn't know the true extent of the player base, and honestly I've been to those lower ranked alliance and none of them know what they are doing, they just get to 100 tokens and on the very next day buy a legendary (crappy or decent) and be happy with their life and their "progress" so I was only counting the population who knows the importance of museum and know what they are doing and vast majority of that "invested population" has only been complaining about the lack of good artifacts (this post was made before the February Vault announcement just for the record)

2) Heavy tanks are clunky, take too much space and don't really justify their slow rate of speed, with the additions of additional Bunkers, ATGs and the entire state of defense library giving more troop spawns + council having ridiculous DST boosts for defenders, then manufactory adding protected defenders + unbetrayable defenders (not even mentioning the lvl 23 perk which spawns 2 HTs per wave) more often than not HTs just just crushed by the sheer amount of defenders a base can spit these days so really they've fallen off that throne they used to have 1-1½ years ago..

3) - Dvmg has 2 Machine gun infantry dmg (who even uses those troops on offense), then enemy Catapult dmg (reducing damage of that building of all the defensive buildings in game? ), then theres inv factory troop dmg which used to be decent during HTs reign but as I mentioned above more or less even without much nerfing HTs you can fairly easily stop HT attacks so not tho worth it, so essentially it's just a 1 liner (siege dmg)..
- ASM is a weird one it looks good at first with airstrip troop dmg, but then you realise you can get welrod for the same cost and it has better air troop dmg + gives AEDTH, as for the 4 defensive boosts there are already far superior and must have legendaries for defenders (Abu simbel, Maori, Gemini Gloves, Asdic) , even avrocar and Sniper kit are superior defensive legendaries than ASM
- Vampir I don't remember all the stats but iirc it's a mix legendary as well and only reasonable lines are mortar HP and APC HP which is good but definitely not something worth 300 tokens..

4) Lewis Chessman gives 24% ARL and 23% Raider dmg and HP whereas Nefertiti gives 40% ARL and 15% Raider Dmg and HP respectively 7% HP and Dmg increase should not require 200 extra tokens, considering the legendary gives 26% less ARL..
Same for Ruyi it gives 15% AEDTD, 15% AEDTH and 15% EDST, Lycurgus cup only gives 20% AEDTD so a 5% increase in AEDTD shouldn't be costing 200 extra tokens considering it isn't even giving any AEDTHP or EDST boosts..

5) As others have mentioned the current meta is anything but Factory troops for the reasons I stated above, they usually take too much space and don't really have an ideal way of dealing with the amount of defenders a player can spawn, they can work in some cases but I personally have not seen a successful HT attack on a 3D base in quite a long time..

Thanks for the detailed explanation. I actually agree with a lot of your points but where you mention 'factory' troops I'm hearing you actually mean Heavy Tanks?? You single them out quite a bit and I agree that HTs aren't what they used to be but I see the rest of the troops used quite regularly against me - especially zooks, APCs, MRLs, Infiltrators. I've never favoured a HT rich army - not because of the current meta but because they've always been too slow for my liking. I don't have any issues winning with zooks, APCs & a some infiltrators thrown in - even before the manufactory - but the rest of the factory can be archived for all I care. Besides, players don't win matches with just their ground troops anyway - factory or barracks. Mortars/artillery combo still fail to overrun my base.

And don't condemn players for buying a 100 crown artifact regardless of your opinion of it. Maybe some people are just happy to get a boost of some kind because they're not as passionate about the artifacts or play the game as intensely as others.
If you really want to help these players who 'don't know what they're doing', post a list of all legendaries with pros and cons and let them make an informed decision.