The real problem is the release cadence.

With the rollout of Groot, and Ant-man, I've noticed an increasingly frustrated tone in the discussion around the availibility of new characters. While the bulk of the complaints have been directed at the drop rates from the ant-man orbs, and the 100-shard blitz-only unlock model, i think both of these are actually symptoms of a larger problem. Foxnext is pumping out new characters at a rapid pace, but isn't giving us any way to farm them after their release.

A healthy game like this, needs to have a steady pipeline from release to farm-ability. Otherwise players are going to become frustrated with a buildup of characters that cannot be farmed, which only serves to highlight the divide between F2P's and whales. This is what we have now.

With the impending release of Wasp, foxnext will have added 11 new characters to the game since launch. That's an enourmous amount for a game that's only been out for 3 months; nearly a character every single week on average. Yet, to date, not a single one of these characters has become farmable.

Add in the three preexisting characters that also cannot be farmed (BW, Rocket, Ultimus). for a total of 14 out of the games 72 characters, or 19%. 1 in 5 of the total hero pool is totally unavailable to progress on outside of the premium orb. It's even bleaker when you only look at named heroes, and lets be honest, noone installed this game because they were excited to be able to play as a hand archer. The named heroes are the ones we really want, and care about.

There are currently 40 named-characters in the game, meaning the catalog of 14 un-farmable ones represents a staggering 35% of the hero pool. This is why players are getting frustrated. The pipeline to farmability needs to keep even pace with the release of new characters, otherwise the problem will continue accelerating. Just throwing them in premium orbs isn't enough. At current pace, within 2 months half of the named-characters in the game will be impossible to farm.