Theory on 4*'s

Vhailorx

Optimus:

240 days and no full 3*s is rough. Do you think your experience is typical? Are you f2p? In an alliance? Even without 5*s in the game, I don't think the 3* transition should take that long.

I am a bit over 100 days more than you and almost have a cover-complete 3* roster (having spent some real money on roster slots early on, but never on packs or iso).

My impression was that increased token odds, ddq, and the end of vaulting had really improved the 3* transition, but perhaps I am wrong.

You are definitely right that pleasing veterans and newbies is increasingly hard. I just think that veterans will need 5*s in the long run to stay interested, and demiurge will have no choice. They will also have to make secondary changes to speed up the early stages of the game.

Unknown

Vhailorx wrote:

Optimus:

240 days and no full 3*s is rough. Do you think your experience is typical? Are you f2p? In an alliance? Even without 5*s in the game, I don't think the 3* transition should take that long.

I am a bit over 100 days more than you and almost have a cover-complete 3* roster (having spent some real money on roster slots early on, but never on packs or iso).

My impression was that increased token odds, ddq, and the end of vaulting had really improved the 3* transition, but perhaps I am wrong.

You are definitely right that pleasing veterans and newbies is increasingly hard. I just think that veterans will need 5*s in the long run to stay interested, and demiurge will have no choice. They will also have to make secondary changes to speed up the early stages of the game.

its pretty tough to cover a 3*...and the catch 22 is you need 3* to place well(especially now). Even though deadpool daily helped, once I got my Daken/Blade to 166 that's when I really started raking in the covers.

With the 3* pool more diluted than ever and D3 not communicating/planning 3* rewards(except for lots and lots of 3* storm/falcon ) if someone is unlucky with tokens(which I can definitely believe), yeah.

I remember my old thread where ppl said the same thing.

Vhailorx

There have been way too many **** repeat 3* rewards (cap. Marvel and mostorm especially) of late, and that should change.

But it seems to me that the way to build a 3* roster is to buy roster slots and place at least top 100/150 in pve. That will get you once cover for many 3*. With a Max 2* roster and lost of 3*s, you can take full advantage of ddq.

Join a pve alliance to double up on covers. Eventually you will get lucky and cover a few 3*s. Then things really take off as you can join a PvP alliance.

This strategy will still take a while, but I would be surprised (and disappointed with demiurge) if that took 240+ days for anyone who is willing to grind pves. And please don't take this as a criticism of optimus or any other specific person.

optimus2861

Vhailorx wrote:

Optimus:

240 days and no full 3*s is rough. Do you think your experience is typical? Are you f2p? In an alliance? Even without 5*s in the game, I don't think the 3* transition should take that long.

I'm in an alliance, one of its commanders actually, but it's not T100. We're fairly casual and do well to T1000.

I'm not strictly F2P but I haven't made a buy in months. I've only ever bought $2 or $5 of HP at a time. I have to do something today with Vision up in DDQ though (I have one in inventory, no slots, and only 40 HP). I've got 47 slots. My best two 3* have 11 covers each.

I have finished T100 in PVP a grand total of once, I think, very early on. I snuck into a very soft bracket and won a Blade cover. The highest score I ever got was 575'ish. 800? 1000? Shyeah right.

I've finished everywhere from T50 to T500 in PVE depending on ease of bracket, my commitment, job requirements, and life. Being a new dad has pretty much obliterated any chance I have to consistently T150 (I won't make it in EoTS, for instance; I hate 4* events because the 4* chasers really run up the scores).

I have a hard time believing my experience would be atypical. I'm not a whale, I can't spend hours playing every day, I can't even play at specific times any more.

My impression was that increased token odds, ddq, and the end of vaulting had really improved the 3* transition, but perhaps I am wrong.

It has. Not to the degree you think. With 40 3* characters, the full DDQ cycle spans 120 days now. That's a long time just to get any particular character to 2/1/1. Even with a little token luck, you just can't hope to get 13 covers for any one character in that time span. And one character alone won't do it.

Colognoisseur

I don't remember who mentioned it above but I am definitely almost always fielding a 4* team over the last month. There is enough synergy within the tier that my 3*'s are almost reduced to being utility/support.

As to how to allow for an even smoother transition I was hoping that they would add in a run of 4* DDQ where the final two nodes work the same way. You need the four star cover already to play the gating node to the survival node where you win the cover. There are now twelve 4* in the game (not including Dino because he is a chase character) It would take thirty-six days to do a full rotation. I would like there to be a 4* cover after every set of five 3* DDQ's with a special 4* Vault which also contains more 4* covers.

As others have mentioned Growth Industry is also a good template and it could be a weekly event. Ant-Man's Weekly Quest? That would put another chunk of 4* covers into the game.

With three 4*'s available in every PvP and nine a week the transition will truly be on if there is a way similar to DDQ to also add covers.

Vhailorx

It's great that 3 4*s are available every PvP event (though getting all three in each event is not something that can be done most of the time for most people). But the covers are for different characters, so it will still take a very long time to build up any given 4* (especially since more are being added every few weeks).

Optimus: i would guess that you are a typical player across the entire player base, but play less than the average forumite. I don't know that demiurge can easily create a system that is equally rewarding for you (who occasionally gets top 100 in pve) and someone like colog (who grind 20/24 lightning rounds each week, plus 1300 in each PvP and top 10 in each character release pve).

That said, if 3* transition still takes 4-6 months, then demiurge has a real problem and needs to crank up the 3* reward rate even further.

(as, re pvp: have you tried jumping into PvP events very late? Joining with an hour or so left and grinding as fast as you can can improve your final placement, and you can also get lots of juicy 75 point nodes to climb quickly. Even with a mainly 2* roster, you can probably get the 650 or 725 rewards this way)

optimus2861

Vhailorx wrote:

(as, re pvp: have you tried jumping into PvP events very late? Joining with an hour or so left and grinding as fast as you can can improve your final placement, and you can also get lots of juicy 75 point nodes to climb quickly. Even with a mainly 2* roster, you can probably get the 650 or 725 rewards this way)

The last time I tried that, I was #484 when I joined or something crazy like that. Complete bust. And that gets back to the "play at specific times" dilemma, which is difficult to do when you've got a 3-month old baby in the house, and a M-F full-time job. And oh yeah, a loving wife who is not a gamer

That much doesn't bother me TBH. It is what it is. I choose not to whale, though I could afford to, because I don't think I could look myself in the mirror laying down $50, $100 at a time on a mobile phone game. It's just not a gaming model I can get my head around. If I'm paying that kinda dough, I want a full game in a box with kickass gameplay & graphics (not that I have time for that any more! ). Not just moving gems around. I have to tell myself that $2 or $5 is equivalent to coffee or burger money to get myself that far.

Vhailorx

optimus2861 wrote:

Vhailorx wrote:

(as, re pvp: have you tried jumping into PvP events very late? Joining with an hour or so left and grinding as fast as you can can improve your final placement, and you can also get lots of juicy 75 point nodes to climb quickly. Even with a mainly 2* roster, you can probably get the 650 or 725 rewards this way)

The last time I tried that, I was #484 when I joined or something crazy like that. Complete bust. And that gets back to the "play at specific times" dilemma, which is difficult to do when you've got a 3-month old baby in the house, and a M-F full-time job. And oh yeah, a loving wife who is not a gamer

That much doesn't bother me TBH. It is what it is. I choose not to whale, though I could afford to, because I don't think I could look myself in the mirror laying down $50, $100 at a time on a mobile phone game. It's just not a gaming model I can get my head around. If I'm paying that kinda dough, I want a full game in a box with kickass gameplay & graphics (not that I have time for that any more! ). Not just moving gems around. I have to tell myself that $2 or $5 is equivalent to coffee or burger money to get myself that far.

It does suck to jump into a mature bracket where you have no chance to place well. But if you are only getting 400 to 500 points in PvP anyway, there is effectively no loss. And sometimes you will be lucky and get a fresh bracket.

The "must play at specific times" thing is definitely hard to work around with this game. But at least by entering a bracket late, you don't have to commit to a particular slice early on. You can wait until you have a free stretch of time just before any one of the slices end.

I concede that it is a less than ideal strategy. But the ideal strategy requires lots of free time on a set schedule. I doubt your child will just happen to have the same schedule as mpq! It sucks, but as I said above, I don't see how the devs can easily accomodate vastly different play schedules.

Edit: as for spending money on the game, I definitely think that spending about $20 is a huge help early on (it should get about 30 roster slots which will easy the roster crunch and allow players to keep random 3*s that they acquire and actually build a 3* bench). after that, the marginal return on investment for additional spending is quite low (sorry demiurge, but it's true!). If you are still having to make difficult choices about which 3* covers to keep, you might be better off saving up 3 or 4 burgers' worth and buying $20 of hp the next time there is a sale and using it all on roster space. But if you already have 40+ roster slots, then your money is probably better spent on actual burgers (or your child, or your wife, or your game box as necessary ).

Dauthi

JVReal wrote:

4* is inevitable and was their plan that they announced a long time ago. I have no doubt that we will maybe see 5* next year and a half or so, and hopefully they think through the process so that each level is still relevant and has it's place in the game.

This is why. It was announced long ago that in 2015 their focus was a lot more 4*s. There was uproar for awhile because 2015 hit and they hadn't started putting many out.

The rate at which they are coming out is what was foretold, and it was definitely needed because there wasn't much to do if you were a veteran because of a lack of 4*s.

Unknown

I guess that's why I'm having a hard time imagining the existence of such a mythical creature outside boss battles like Ultron Prime.