Should Champion feature help balance the tiers of play?

OneLastGambit

For a second take the whales out of the occasion, realistically only another whale will catch a whale so they are the anomaly of the data set.

Now disregarding that, the champion feature will close the gaps between all the tiers, in particular those at the bottom will catch up much quicker to those at the top. The reason is ISO cost and cover availability. Yes it will be stupid when someone champion maxes a 4* or 5* but as covers for those are so rare (and the available iso to do so rarer still) it's not likely that will happen amongst the normal user base that quickly enabling the lower tiers to catch up a little and making the whole game more competitive (you can argue whether this is good or not amongst yourselves).

I welcome the change as I'm a fan of equality and level playing fields and I'm never gonna be in competition with a whale anyway but now I could be competitive with vets sooner.

In short it's good for lower tiers as they will catch upper tiers quicker
it's good for upper tiers as all those covers they thought were useless (hello bag-lady, DD and Star Lord) are now useful - AND there are prizes for using the covers in this way too.

simonsez

Given how much I hate the BoP event, why would I want a new feature that would make equality across star levels permanent?

OneLastGambit

simonsez wrote:

Given how much I hate the BoP event, why would I want a new feature that would make equality across star levels permanent?

BOP is the extreme of the spectrum, the champion feature doesn't make everyone the exact same level, it just evens things out a little and makes some of the 2* more viable in 3* world, some of the 3* more viable in 4* world and crucially...some of the 4* more viable in 5* world. How can that be a bad thing? Having more usable characters on your roster?

GrumpySmurf1002

simonsez wrote:

Given how much I hate the BoP event, why would I want a new feature that would make equality across star levels permanent?

I don't think this is creating equality. Think of current state with boosted characters. 240s don't really compete with 350s, save for the really exceptional ones.

This wouldn't be much different, a 266 isn't really going to touch a 370. Similarly, if they are boosted, a say 325 3* isn't gonna really hold a torch to a say 450 4*.

It definitely closes the gap especially if they don't fix the hilarious non-linear scaling of the lower tier, but I don't think it's gonna quite be BoP.

MPQ_Daywalker

OneLastGambit wrote:

For a second take the whales out of the occasion, realistically only another whale will catch a whale so they are the anomaly of the data set.

Now disregarding that, the champion feature will close the gaps between all the tiers, in particular those at the bottom will catch up much quicker to those at the top. The reason is ISO cost and cover availability. Yes it will be stupid when someone champion maxes a 4* or 5* but as covers for those are so rare (and the available iso to do so rarer still) it's not likely that will happen amongst the normal user base that quickly enabling the lower tiers to catch up a little and making the whole game more competitive (you can argue whether this is good or not amongst yourselves).

I welcome the change as I'm a fan of equality and level playing fields and I'm never gonna be in competition with a whale anyway but now I could be competitive with vets sooner.

In short it's good for lower tiers as they will catch upper tiers quicker
it's good for upper tiers as all those covers they thought were useless (hello bag-lady, DD and Star Lord) are now useful - AND there are prizes for using the covers in this way too.

Agreed -- these are my thoughts on the new feature as well. Speaking as someone who has been maxing out 3*s (up to 22 maxed now) for completionists' sake and just because I enjoy playing with them, this suddenly makes my investment of time and ISO over the past months incredibly useful -- I can actually use the additional 3* covers I continue to get to earn HP & CP, and eventually 4* covers and legendary tokens, along with ISO. It's going to slowly make my 3*s more competitive against non-boosted, non-champion 4*s -- whereas my only route to be competitive before was to slowly continue my march toward usable 4*s (my 0/1/2 Hulkbuster and 1/0/3 JG are ages away from being playable).

IMO, this is Demiurge's way of discouraging soft capping your rosters. Giving out HP, CP and covers to people who max out their characters, champion them and level them with more covers is a great way to entice people to do it.

And I'm personally really looking forward to the adjusting of powers whenever I want -- it gives me a reason to max out and champion Falcon, so I can adjust him for PvE or PvP play. Or adjust Luke Cage to have more or less protect strength, or Kamala Khan for more healing or more green generation... basically any character that has multiple decent builds for certain situations or when paired with certain characters.

Whatever the whales do doesn't really affect me -- I'm not going to be fighting maxed 5*s and currently skip many maxed 4* teams now unless one or more of my high-tier 3*s is boosted. This feature does indeed "breathe life into old favorites" and extends the enjoyability of my game for some time.

OneLastGambit

_Daywalker_ wrote:

OneLastGambit wrote:

For a second take the whales out of the occasion, realistically only another whale will catch a whale so they are the anomaly of the data set.

Now disregarding that, the champion feature will close the gaps between all the tiers, in particular those at the bottom will catch up much quicker to those at the top. The reason is ISO cost and cover availability. Yes it will be stupid when someone champion maxes a 4* or 5* but as covers for those are so rare (and the available iso to do so rarer still) it's not likely that will happen amongst the normal user base that quickly enabling the lower tiers to catch up a little and making the whole game more competitive (you can argue whether this is good or not amongst yourselves).

I welcome the change as I'm a fan of equality and level playing fields and I'm never gonna be in competition with a whale anyway but now I could be competitive with vets sooner.

In short it's good for lower tiers as they will catch upper tiers quicker
it's good for upper tiers as all those covers they thought were useless (hello bag-lady, DD and Star Lord) are now useful - AND there are prizes for using the covers in this way too.

Agreed -- these are my thoughts on the new feature as well. Speaking as someone who has been maxing out 3*s (up to 22 maxed now) for completionists' sake and just because I enjoy playing with them, this suddenly makes my investment of time and ISO over the past months incredibly useful -- I can actually use the additional 3* covers I continue to get to earn HP & CP, and eventually 4* covers and legendary tokens, along with ISO. It's going to slowly make my 3*s more competitive against non-boosted, non-champion 4*s -- whereas my only route to be competitive before was to slowly continue my march toward usable 4*s (my 0/1/2 Hulkbuster and 1/0/3 JG are ages away from being playable).

IMO, this is Demiurge's way of discouraging soft capping your rosters. Giving out HP, CP and covers to people who max out their characters, champion them and level them with more covers is a great way to entice people to do it.

And I'm personally really looking forward to the adjusting of powers whenever I want -- it gives me a reason to max out and champion Falcon, so I can adjust him for PvE or PvP play. Or adjust Luke Cage to have more or less protect strength, or Kamala Khan for more healing or more green generation... basically any character that has multiple decent builds for certain situations or when paired with certain characters.

Whatever the whales do doesn't really affect me -- I'm not going to be fighting maxed 5*s and currently skip many maxed 4* teams now unless one or more of my high-tier 3*s is boosted. This feature does indeed "breathe life into old favorites" and extends the enjoyability of my game for some time.

I'm the same whenever I get a cover for a character I max them to their current limit I never really bothered with soft-capping my rosters voluntarily (though at the minute a lot of mine sit at 127 due to a lack of iso) so I'm quite happy to see my decision to max people will pay off.

Here's the next good thing I think D3 got right - rewards for championing. Positive reinforcement we call that in the psyche biz and it is the most effective behavioural modification method available. They could have just raised the level cap (like previously) and left it at that, but they realised that people soft-capped their rosters to make it more advantageous for themselves and decided to throw some carrots to those that level up. If you want your userbase behaviour to change provide a reward for the desired change and it's more likely to happen (in this case there is also a secondary indirect negative reinforcement as those who softcap also fall further behind if they do not max out) It's a good example of behavioural conditioning in action.

simonsez

OneLastGambit wrote:

BOP is the extreme of the spectrum, the champion feature doesn't make everyone the exact same level

I know it doesn't. I was responding to the idea floated by the OP, where he wants to put the different tiers on a "balanced playing field".

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

I don't think this is creating equality.

I don't see how "balanced" and "equal" aren't synonyms.