Should 4* characters outclass 3* characters?

Unknown

babinro wrote:

I'm concerned that I've poorly expressed myself in this poll.

Think of your chances of winning when using Juggs/Venom/Modern black widow vs an enemy OBW/Ares/Classic Storm. This is outclassing. Characters like Lazy Thor vs ** Thor also feel like outclassing.

I understand that 4*'s are supposed to be better than 3*'s.
I'm trying to get a feel of if they should completely outclass 3*s.

If the polls are any indication then the answer is clearly yes.

Should we be a lot more upset that the 4* field looks so terrible then?
You'd think that Fury would represent the absolute bare minimum of what makes an acceptable 4* and yet newer characters like Elektra and StarLord are vastly inferior.

I'll be interested to see if people cry foul the next time we actually do get a 4* character who feels worthy of that rarity by being on par or superior to X-Force/TGT.

You sir have never used Elektra vs lvl 300 Maggia muscles... then you would realise her TRUE POWER!!!!!

morph3us

babinro wrote:

I'm concerned that I've poorly expressed myself in this poll.

Think of your chances of winning when using Juggs/Venom/Modern black widow vs an enemy OBW/Ares/Classic Storm. This is outclassing. Characters like Lazy Thor vs ** Thor also feel like outclassing.

I understand that 4*'s are supposed to be better than 3*'s.
I'm trying to get a feel of if they should completely outclass 3*s.

If the polls are any indication then the answer is clearly yes.

Should we be a lot more upset that the 4* field looks so terrible then?
You'd think that Fury would represent the absolute bare minimum of what makes an acceptable 4* and yet newer characters like Elektra and StarLord are vastly inferior.

I'll be interested to see if people cry foul the next time we actually do get a 4* character who feels worthy of that rarity by being on par or superior to X-Force/TGT.

I think that, unquestionably, yes, 4*s should completely outclass 3*s, in the same way that 3*s completely outclass 2*s.

I suspect the main reason for the outcry about the power levels of X-Force and 4* Thor relates to the current way in which they can be obtained, which is mainly via progression rewards in PvP. Having to defeat 4* duos in hopping to 1000 points is difficult, but certainly not impossible. The 3* to 4* transition therefore isn't really comparable to the 2* to 3* transition, particularly now with DDQ, as you don't need to consistently beat maxed 3* duos with a 2* team to get to 3* territory, unlike the 4* transition.

I also totally agree, we should be a lot more upset that the 4* field looks so terrible. Given the amount of Iso required to level a 4*, there's no real excuse for Starlord/Elektra/IW to be as underpowered as they are (and even Fury, to a much lesser extent).

Eddiemon

firethorne wrote:

They should. That said, there is certainly a problem. I'd just say it was a problem with matchmaking. How many times should I, as a player with ZERO maxed out 3 stars be matched against teams using two or more characters at 100 or more levels beyond mine? I'd say it should not ever happen, but at about 400 points on a PvP, it becomes the majority of what I see.

It should happen when you try to pass them in the rankings. Cause, you know, it's a competetion and the person with the most points wins irrespective of roster development.

I only want to compete against people i can beat isn't a competetion. It's a North Korean election.

morph3us

Slightly old thread, but I had a thought this morning, and it seemed like it fit here.

I think the prime example as to why 4* characters should outclass 3* characters lies in the comparison between Nick Fury and 3* Thor.

In Mischief's December rankings, the two sit very closely, with 3* Thor at number 3, and 4* Fury at number 4. Arguably, that's a misranking, and Fury should be at rank 3, but irrespective of that, that clearly makes a point. Fury is probably slightly better than 3* Thor, but requires nearly three times as much iso to level to max, and double the HP, if you were to buy his covers. Given how close the two are in power levels, it makes the iso required to level Fury look like a poor investment (even if 3* Thor is overpowered for a 3*). Indeed, if we were take Iron Fist, as the new King of the 3*s, investing iso/HP into Fury makes even less sense in comparison.

tl;dr 4* characters need to be of sufficient power to warrant the iso/HP investment (particularly as it pertains to time spent obtaining it, or money).

NorthernPolarity

morph3us wrote:

Slightly old thread, but I had a thought this morning, and it seemed like it fit here.

I think the prime example as to why 4* characters should outclass 3* characters lies in the comparison between Nick Fury and 3* Thor.

In Mischief's December rankings, the two sit very closely, with 3* Thor at number 3, and 4* Fury at number 4. Arguably, that's a misranking, and Fury should be at rank 3, but irrespective of that, that clearly makes a point. Fury is probably slightly better than 3* Thor, but requires nearly three times as much iso to level to max, and double the HP, if you were to buy his covers. Given how close the two are in power levels, it makes the iso required to level Fury look like a poor investment (even if 3* Thor is overpowered for a 3*). Indeed, if we were take Iron Fist, as the new King of the 3*s, investing iso/HP into Fury makes even less sense in comparison.

tl;dr 4* characters need to be of sufficient power to warrant the iso/HP investment (particularly as it pertains to time spent obtaining it, or money).

But is it Fury being too weak, or IF / LazyThor being too strong? IMO it's a little of both: compared to more reasonable 3*s such as BP / Cage / etc, it's pretty clear that Fury's better than them. What we have here is a two pronged issue: Fury needs to be buffed, and LazyThor / IF need to be nerfed.

morph3us

NorthernPolarity wrote:

But is it Fury being too weak, or IF / LazyThor being too strong? IMO it's a little of both: compared to more reasonable 3*s such as BP / Cage / etc, it's pretty clear that Fury's better than them. What we have here is a two pronged issue: Fury needs to be buffed, and LazyThor / IF need to be nerfed.

I guess that's what I'm getting at as well. Fury's sometimes held up as an appropriate power level for a 4* character, but I think he's underpowered. As a corollary of that, I don't think X-Force or TGT are overpowered (or if they are, not by very much), and as such, I do think that 4* characters, as a class, should approach X-Force levels. I would agree that LThor and IF are overpowered for 3*s, and as a consequence, we end up with a strange blurring of the 3* and 4* power level distinctions, which isn't appropriate, given the disparity in resources that they require.

El Satanno

I'd like to take a slightly different angle on the whole conversation. While I will say "yes" to the OP, I would add the caveat that it should not be a tremendous leap but rather a more gradual improvement over the 3* lineup. The sort of curve one regularly imagines when considering the Law of Diminishing Returns.

For starters, let us assume (safely) that the rate at which 4* covers can be obtained remains fixed as is. Then let us continue on to assume that the Iso flow needed to improve/max them also remains fixed as is. We already have a situation in which there are only two 4* characters really worth fighting for, and a clearly stated intention by the devs that many more 4* characters will be released. If we start guessing that sooner or later an equivalent to X-Force or 4or (or gods forbid stronger character) will be introduced, it will surely only make the sensation that "the rich get richer" worse. If all 4* characters should be head-and-shoulders above the 3* class, there is no conceivable way that any 3* player could hope to make headway into that realm of play short of either infinite time, infinite resources, or astoundingly good luck. You can get from 1* to 2* with relative ease, and it's slowly getting easier to go from 2* to 3*, but the 3* > 4* transition is little more than a joke at this point and there is exactly zero indication that it will improve in our lifetimes. It will only get worse as the 4* lineup expands, exponentially so if all the new releases (or rebuilds of the old) are unstoppable powerhouses in comparison to everyone else. Meanwhile the popular adage that you need a 4* to get a 4* will surely prove itself ever more true.

So I posit that while 4* should be clearly better than 3*, it should be somewhere between X-Force/4or (vastly better) and Fury (not really better than the best 3*). Good enough to merit investment of time, effort, and resources, but not so good that they completely obviate competitive possibility for those outside 4* land. We have spent months hearing and voicing complaints about that 2* > 3* transition, and even that is not truly gone. Do we really want to see this game line us up to have those dark days again? I say no.

morph3us

You make some interesting points, but I think that there are two separate issues here. The first is the actual power level of the 4* characters. The second is a format issue, in that for the most, the most accessible way to obtain 4* covers is via PvP, and in order to do so, you're required to beat 4* teams.

The two issues are linked at the moment, because of the limited means by which one can obtain 4* covers, and I think that's the actual issue, not the power level of the 4*s themselves. If we were to take the 4*s in isolation, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect them to have a power level high enough to justify their resource requirements. What's necessary is another way to obtain 4* covers, such that their relatively higher power levels become less of a barrier to their acquisition.

El Satanno

You are correct. I am coming at it from the perspective that the general power scale of the upcoming 4*s is a great deal more likely to be re-evaluated by the dev team than the fundamental structure of either the reward scheme or event mechanics. I will wholeheartedly agree that there are surely a great many more problems that should be addressed to make this one in particular more manageable.

Unknown

So... the results of this poll not withstanding, apparently D3 thinks 4*s should not outclass 3* characters. They are just really really shiny 3*s, that never get boosted, or are always boosted by comparison, or something.

3* Thor, optimal build 3/5/5

Mjolnir's Might - 8 AP
1370 damage, 171.25 damage per AP, feeds

Thunderstrike - 12 AP
2486 damage, 207.167 damage per AP, feeds

Call the Storm - 14 AP
9036 damage, 645.43 damage per AP

4* Thor, "optimal (with planned changes)" build 5/3/5

Smite - 10 AP
4025 damage, 402.5 damage per AP, feeds

Striking Distance - 12 AP
aprox 3250 damage (exact number unknown), 270 damage per AP, "feeds" (unreliably) rainbow of unusable colors

Power Surge - 9 AP
0 damage, stuns, feeds

What the hell D3? What the hell.

SnowcaTT

No kidding. Nerf 4hor, pre-nerf Charles and make sure anyone who helps him gets the nerf as well....

So what they are telling us is

A) 4*'s should not be better (and are often worse) than 3*'s.
4*'s are going to be incredibly rare, so you won't get many.
C) 4*'s are going to be incredibly expensive to level with ISO, and to buy with HP.

With that, why would anyone buy covers or push to compete for these? Glad I'm not pushing in the Hunt for Charles - if he ever got good they would just make sure he wasn't pretty soon.

Katai

If I were making the game from the ground up, here's what I would've done with the 4* characters

Option 1: 4* characters are marginally better than 3*s. Essentially, these are treated as trophy characters to show accomplishment. However, top 3* characters should be nearly as viable as 4* characters to prevent a bottleneck in PvP where only 4*s are viable. The bottleneck we have right now makes it so that those with 4*s can get 4*s, but those with 3*s have no chance at all. This is a problem and should have been dealt with a long time ago.

Option 2: 4* characters are significantly more powerful than 3*s, BUT you can only take a single 4* character into any given match. 4*s would be treated like "limited" cards in your Magic the Gathering deck. This prevents 3*s from becoming absolutely obsolete, so they retain their value as viable pairings with 4* characters. It comes down to "You can either have Xforce, or you can have 4Thor. You can't have both, sorry".


However, if I were REALLY building this game from the ground up, any character can reach 4* ranking. When you max out a 1* character, you'd have the option to "prestige" and turn it into a 2*, but it goes back to level 1 (There would be some quality of life changes, like characters earning levels by participating in battles, and some characters may start at a higher * ranking). This makes ALL characters possibly viable 4*s, as well as eliminate the "Lazy" characters. I would also sell character skins in place of having alternate versions of the same character, as it is cosmetic and does not affect the gameplay at all.

Noobulator

Is 4>3?

simonsez

Noobulator wrote:

Is 4>3?

Not the way D3 does math.

Let's get real. As soon as people see how slow and useless GT is now, she will pretty much disappear from PvP. Which means we now have another 4* to gather cobwebs along with IW, Elektra, Starlord, etc. And yet we still keep chasing them. Why??