new characters

TxMoose

ok, I understand some need for new characters and shaking up the game now and then. this feels like an endless stream of new character after another. this is pretty disheartening - I love playing but cannot continuously grind pve after pve for t50 needing the next shiny new thing. I can do it, but I much more enjoy being able to coast to a t150 and now that I can place in pvp, pve is losing its luster for me.

will there ever be an end to this or any restraint at any point? one new character a month sounds very reasonable to me but lately its been ridiculous. more dilution of the token pools and its gonna stretch ddq into longer and longer cycles to where in the near future there will again be a feeling of no progression. I haven't been around that long (day 161 - started last thanksgiving) and in my 5+ months of playing, 5 ****s and 8 ***s have been released (if I counted right) and it seems to be accelerating. how many ***s do we need? how much is enough (at 38 now if I counted right)? 60? 80? do they realize how much roster slots will be by then? its crazy now and then they throw a bottom tier ** as an essential. blegh.

needed to vent. some of you need to also. go for it.

I will say I love the gameplay aspects and the general idea. I've put money into it and love playing. I guess I have to take the bad with the good here. don't like all of it though.

GrimSkald

The typical release rate is one new character every other week - so if Thick as Thieves is a weeklong event, it will be a (sort of) typical release - since they released Hulkbuster last week. Still, the "three new characters in a row" bit was not that long ago, and we're all still pretty resentful of that nastiness.

I blame the movie, but they really could postpone their "normal" characters, y'know?

OnesOwnGrief

TxMoose wrote:

I love playing but cannot continuously grind pve after pve for t50 needing the next shiny new thing.

You hit the same point I did months ago. Now would be a great time to scale back. I find PvP to be a much better avenue to obtain new characters so I don't really bother with PvE unless I really like the new character. Only recent characters I played PvE for were Kamala Khan and Quicksilver after a few months hiatus. Played DDQ during that period I was gone and spent HP from those months to grab covers.

TxMoose wrote:

will there ever be an end to this or any restraint at any point?

Honestly, I don't think so. If you think about it, new characters are the fastest to gain covers for in a timely manner if you do the PvE and PvPs. Very easy to get most coverage done and a small dent in HP in order to cover max. But the fact of all of it is that after that initial essential in PvE and that upcoming PvP, they are very rarely required soon after that. With the increasing number of characters, there will be even even more of a gap between them actually being essential or featured in their own PvP.

Billigoat

One of the things I liked about this game when I started to play was... strangely... the limited roster slots. It didn't feel like a compulsory "gotta catch em all" mentality I've seen with other free-to-play games and it felt like they were encouraging me to keep the heroes/villains that I actually liked because I had to pick and choose the ones that were worth keeping to me.

Granted, that feeling faded as I played more and my roster slot count went up, so I see where you're coming from, but looking at this objectively... they're giving us new content and we're essentially saying "No more free content!", which is usually unheard of in games.

Cyclops, for instance, I didn't get because I had something going on in his launch event. At first I was pissed because he's a favorite character of mine in the comics, and he's decent in a team lineup, but really at the end of the day... he's still part of the 'gaming experience' because people use him all the time and I'd rather have him in the game than not at all. Right?

rixmith

The problem is that there really isn't such a thing as an optional character (at least for 3*s). They will be Essential in some PvE's, buffed in others, and they will have PvP events where they are featured. If you don't have the Essential character the PvE is way less fun, and can be very hard to place well in; If you don't have the featured character for PvP you'll be target practice for everyone who has a leveled version.

So if you don't keep up with the grind there will be chunks of time where you feel completely helpless in the game, and that's no fun. It makes it very hard to get out of the hamster wheel.

Buret0

TxMoose wrote:

ok, I understand some need for new characters and shaking up the game now and then. this feels like an endless stream of new character after another. this is pretty disheartening - I love playing but cannot continuously grind pve after pve for t50 needing the next shiny new thing. I can do it, but I much more enjoy being able to coast to a t150 and now that I can place in pvp, pve is losing its luster for me.

Top 50 has always been the requirement for the new four stars.

I see that Vision, being a three star, will be awarded to the top 150.

Billigoat

rixmith wrote:

So if you don't keep up with the grind there will be chunks of time where you feel completely helpless in the game, and that's no fun. It makes it very hard to get out of the hamster wheel.

Yes, that's where the compulsion comes in. Fortunately, if you skip out on a PVE or two, when you do jump back in your competition has usually scaled down a bit too. I think Demiurge is decent at detecting when players are getting fed up with the grind, giving you an easy time if you take off a week or something.

That's my recommendation, unless you MUST MUST MUST have the Vision immediately.

Virus_Type_V

i think when they built this game, i dont think you were meant to have every possible character on your roster.

i think the selection process of who to keep and drop is part of the strategies in the game...

Eddiemon

TxMoose wrote:

ok, I understand some need for new characters and shaking up the game now and then. this feels like an endless stream of new character after another. this is pretty disheartening - I love playing but cannot continuously grind pve after pve for t50 needing the next shiny new thing. I can do it, but I much more enjoy being able to coast to a t150 and now that I can place in pvp, pve is losing its luster for me.

So stop chasing that shiny new thing.

Seriously once you stop being obsessed and start playing just as much as you enjoy, the game becomes so much more rewarding.

Unknown

Introducing new characters into the game is D3's way of distracting us from previous complaints. Case in point, the Ultron events. Complaints are minimal now because we're focusing on landing everyone's favorite synthezoid, the Vision. D3 used this tactic before and will do it again. But, I aint complaining.

SnowcaTT

Introducing so many new characters so quickly only highlights a couple of complaints.

1) WHERE ARE THE FREE ROSTER SPOTS? These six characters in seven weeks cost 850 to 900 HP each for anyone having one of each character. I don't know how to get that much HP each week except shell out -lots- of real money for it. I have always been an advocate for a flat 500HP cost for roster spots, but if there is a character released every week....these simply need to be free, at least the first time you recruit the character.

2) Why are some old characters so worthless? If new characters (QS/Vision) are terrible, folks don't care about them. But if they are better than old characters (Psy/Spidey/GSBW/Im/Rags to name a few), it makes you wonder why new characters are coming out rather then balance of old characters.

3) How are we supposed to get this characters covers? With every new character, the chances of seeing them as a reward in PVP/PVE/DDQ simply stretches out farther and farther. To make these actually "usable" (enough covers) is getting to be a longer and longer process. It may be time to look at a deeper reward structure (T250 get a cover, T100 get two covers).

4) How are we supposed to level these characters? Just like you aren't getting enough HP to put them on your roster, you aren't getting enough ISO a week to level a character to 166 (well, every third to 270...): so you can't make them "usable" on this stage either. ISO reduction to level is somewhat of a help, but the time has come to double iso everywhere in the game all the time.

I'm sure this list can go on. More characters are great! But quick releases do highlight some other big problems....

Unknown

The less you give a ****, the happier you will be.

SnowcaTT

0verkill wrote:

The less you give a ****, the happier you will be.

I agree, the less resources and care you put into four-stars, the happier you will be. They tend not to be overly powerful and get nerfed quickly anyway.

Marty17

I know introducing new characters is to draw us in but the same can be said repeating the rewards for recent new characters as most of us needs it to fully build 13/13 covers.

I'm more than happy if they were to replace The Vision placement rewards with either or as they're more recent