Suggestion for PVP Power-ups

XandorXerxes

While the PVP power-up test technically promoted character diversity insofar as people used more characters than Thorverine (well, her nerf may also affect that), it actually limited the character choice to boosted characters, especially for transitioners. While normally the transitioners might climb with someone like wolverine / daken, running into level 100 Iron Mans pretty early forced them to their boosted Ares early. Then when they'd normally hit the 94 teams, they're running into a 3* equivalent Ares everywhere. It essentially felt like more work to get less far to them, they couldn't even get to their usual spots (I'm speaking after talking to my alliance mates, this may not be true of all transitioners).

It was pointed out in the poll thread that a lot of the top-tier PVP guys were boosted, which may have changed things. I think if D3 really wants to promote character roster diversity, boost on a curve. Take the bottom 50% of used 3-stars and bottom 20-25% (maybe more, but there are so few that you have to worry about offering too big a boost) of two stars and boost those based on how less-used they are. Beast is lowest popularity? Biggest boost. Colossus is the top of the 50% least used? He gets a small buff. The goal is to make the least-used characters (as these are almost always the weaker characters) powered up and viable alternatives for the strongest characters, so you can't just do a straight "least used character gets a 100 level boost" and then let it step down, you'd have to actually boost based on usage. Maybe instead of the bottom 50%, D3 just boosted anyone who was used less than a certain percent of the time. Straight "least-used" could lead to a power creep.

The popularity usage would have to be tracked and adjusted over time - invariably the bottom-tier of the "stronger" characters would drift downward as characters below them were boosted. Also you couldn't instant-nuke someone's boost - if Beast was boosted so strongly that 80% of people used him, you can't just revert him to normal next PVP, he'd just get that super-strong boost again later. D3 would obviously have to test what numbers could work here, but if the boost decayed at a moderately quick rate (25% per round) and the readjustments happened every 3 rounds or so then I think they could find a happy medium for some of the lesser-used characters, which also helps one other thing - balance!

If Beast being boosted at a certain level makes him used ~10% of the time, then maybe you've found the numbers he needs to be at to be viable. It could have a side-effect of causing new characters to be released under-powered and more appropriately balanced later, but that may be seen as better than releasing the next overpowered character and nerfing him or her immediately. Obviously super-strong character interactions would need to be taken into account on their own as well.

The last thing this does is leaves the 4* tier alone. It doesn't boost the strongest 3*s by default, so the 4* tier can go back to being however stronger than the 3* tier the devs intended it to be.

Thoughts? Improvements? I won't pretend the idea is perfect, but if this actually does help promote a more true roster diversity and helps weaker characters find their needed up-balance then I hope it can be used as a baseline for something.

Unknown

I think the curve boost is interesting, but confusing. Plus, then we'd just see Beast/DocOck boosted all the time when what the really need is a character redesign buff. Also, I liked seeing different 4* boosted, otherwise few people would touch 4* beyond XThor. Ares or Patch + Fury made for interesting combinations and different playstyles.

There's quite a bit of truth in what you posted. I ran Wolverine/Daken past IM35 until I ran into boosted Ares, and a couple squeaker fights let me know that they probably weren't the right duo to use against him. After that, I found numerous characters to use against Ares including:
OBW: Steal RGY
Blade: Steal Green, deny the rest
Mystique: Deny/Steal RGY
Patch: Green/Red denial, take Ares big hits.

I doubt IM35 is underused at the 1* stage, though the availability of Thor 2* covers may prove me wrong. Also I'm sure Ares is boosted because Thor 2* is too popular.

XandorXerxes

Thanks for the input.

1*s and 4*s can still have boosts of their own too - I was mostly referring to 4*s being left alone in the sense that if you boost the best 3*s, they start becoming 4* powerful (which I think may have been in the design). A lot of forum goers don't seem to care for that. If IW or Elektra were boosted enough to be as viable as other 4*s that's one thing - but the general mood seems to be that people would rather use a 3* than a 2nd 4* on their PVP team and so those factors would have to be taken into consideration as well.

While it's true that Beast / Doc Oc would be buffed often, that's part of the balancing process I mentioned. Some characters probably do need an entire rework to make them truly viable, and this wouldn't address that, but it would in theory be enough of a buff to make them strong enough to be considered. Their popularity would probably also have to weigh against how many people actually have Beast and Doc Oc in their roster, which I imagine is less than average.