'Boosted' Characters Rebalancing Post-Champions

David [Hi-Fi] Moore

Hi everyone,

We’ve read your feedback regarding adjustments to damage outputs for “boosted/buffed” 1, 2 and 3-Star characters that arrived with the Champions feature.
(Related thread: https://d3go.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=40034#p486532)

We can confirm that this change was intended. New scaling for “boosted/buffed” 1, 2 and 3-Star characters was introduced to ensure that 4 and 5-Star Heroes were stronger than 1, 2 and 3-Star Heroes at the same level.

Demiurge Quote:

“While we were developing Champions, we took a close look at the balance of characters above their max level, particularly the fact that 1-stars, 2-stars, and 3-stars could be significantly stronger than 4-stars and 5-stars of the same level. It's something we had our eye on for a while, but it became much more urgent with the introduction of Champions - if a balance change was to happen, it needed to happen before players spent effort leveling up their Champions. Starting at level 167 for 3-stars and level 104 for 1-stars and 2-stars, we phased in a reduction to their damage to bring them in line with 4-stars and 5-stars of a similar level.”

We apologize that the changes were inadequately explained in the original Champions announcement. There was some internal confusion regarding the changes that was muddied by a related, but separate issue, of a temporary bug with boosted characters.

We greatly appreciate your feedback on how the updates have affected your gameplay experience. While there are no current changes planned, we are definitely open to making adjustments in the future.

If you would like to list specific instances (in the General forum thread) where you believe this change has impacted your game experience negatively, we'd like to know. From there we can begin to assess the info and can make any needed changes based on your feedback. Your help would be appreciated and immensely beneficial to us.

Thank you!

tanis3303

So you intentionally nerfed the entire 2 & 3* tier. Ok, cool I guess...nice to finally get an official answer. Now, since all those characters are essentially worthless on a competitive level, is anything going to be done to address the crippling ISO-8 shortage that's preventing 98% of your player base from leveling up and using the characters that actually matter?

CaptainFreaky

How about boosted sell-back rates for all 3* characters?
Because for the most part I can no longer use them in competitive PVP and I could use the HP & ISO to work improving my 4* tier which (along with 5*) you've just made the ONLY relevant tier...thanks for that.

fmftint

Enjoy your nerf, 2/3 * players

Dave, you are in an unenviable position having to deliver this message.

I believe that thread is FULL of specific instances where gameplay was negatively impacted

CaptainFrugal

Will you reduce the challenge of the DDQ "Big Enchilada"? That would help, It seems nearly impossible now.

stochasticism

David, can you tell us at what level a boosted 3* post-nerf will need to be to now equal the damage of, say, a L240 3* and L290 3* before the introduction of champions? I chose those two as they were the previous levels a weekly boosted 3* and featured 3* would be after the boost? Knowing this will help us know if there is any hope for recovering our 3* rosters any time soon.

Buret0

Thing is, this is really only a nerf to the damage dealing 2 and 3 stars. Batteries still make the same amount of AP, so what this has done was to limit most of your damage output to the 4* tier, because:

1) You can't bring an unboosted 3* to a 4* or 5* fight, they die too easy;
2) You can't bring a boosted 3* for damage dealing, since they no longer have the power to take down even unboosted 4*s, let alone the 30K health boosted monsters like Red Hulk; and
3) 3* support characters tend to be bad in PvP, but can be useful in PvE.

So your boosted cyclops that used to do 13K damage with his black and could actually almost one shot support role maxed 4*s? You are now going to need to add a LOT of champion covers to him to see that kind of damage again. And he's doing less damage against even stronger characters thanks to boosting in the 4*s.

I can't wait until we start seeing event boosted 5*s, because that one time I fought a 95K health Phoenix was a lot of fun.

TLCstormz

David, this is FANTASTIC!!!!! Thanks for the news.

Please tell the developers that this is yet another COMMON SENSE PROBLEM that they have created. 3*Torch, Lazy Thor, Kamala, and Doom are all doing hundreds IF NOT THOUSANDS less damage with their greatest moves.

Isn't it COMMON SENSE that we would be disappointed, saddened, and wondering what the heck is going on????? lol. And that this was an AWFUL DESIGN CHOICE, in general?

Where is Pilgrym or Plygrim or whatever his name is at? He'll explain it all.

sinnerjfl

So why the hell did you introduce championning when at the same time nerfing two entire tiers of characters?

This is dumb dumb dumb dumb.

So I just need to get 100 covers of my championned favorite 3* to get them back to their pre-champion damage? REALLY?

wymtime

2015 was the year of the boosted 3* so players could keep up with much stronger players. 2016 is the year of the boosted 4* so players can keep up with the 5* players.
So 2017 will be the year of the boosted 5* then?
The need to boosted 3* has a bigger effect on PVP then anything else. What this is doing is creating a log jam at the 800-1000 point mark for 3* players who are desperately trying to get to 1000 in PVP to build thier 4* roster. It also creates a log jam for new 4* players with 1-2 max 4* because that is the only player they massively use in PVP because of scaling so they get stomped by everyone. I honestly don't know how I feel about this right now. I think there should be some seperation between the tiers, but I thought that boosting more 4* was suppose to help that seperation.
3* weekly buffs have significantly more health and do do more damage, and can take out non buffed 4* but will most likely take damage. Non boosted 3* will be targeted by all and 4* boosted teams will have almost no one willing to attack them since the match will take forever.
At least we now know

Jam_Adams

wouldn't it have made more sense to buff the 4*s and 5*s

udonomefoo

I wish ENJOYMENT of the game was more of a priority to this company. I enjoy playing with lots of different characters. I spent a huge amount of time and effort to get every possible 3* character cover maxed and most of them level maxed as well. Now that I have one (soon to be two) maxed 4's, I will never play any of them again in pvp, because the separation is too big.

xdogg

Thanks for helping me make the decision not to waste anymore Iso on my 3 satrs

Pylgrim

Thanks for finally acknowledging this. Now knowing this let's hope we can work it through.

The rationale behind the change is not entirely misguided. After all, a 240 Kamala dealt more damage with 12 Green than a 270 Jean Grey, to pick an example. I can understand why this /seems/ bad... but /is/ it truly? Thing is that the introduction of weekly boosts was a HUGE boon to PVP (PVE already had a number of event-specific boosted characters). It allowed players to punch above their weight level which -and this is the heart of the matter- is the level at which they have to play every PVP if they aspire to achieve long-term game-advancing rewards such as the ones at 1k and 1.3k. It may be true that this made boosted 3*s stronger than similarly-leveled 4*s, but what they cannot possibly compete with and the main reason why boosts were made necessary, is the 4*s' titanic HP.

Thus, nerfing the 3* boosted stats not only took the shine of one of the most positive features in the game in a while (championing), but it also removed a big part of the benefits of the previously best new feature in the game (weekly boosts). When a newly introduced change almost entirely undoes two positive features of the game, I believe it's necessary to take a step back and think better about it. Moreover, this is a change that no one ever asked. It's only now, after the fact, that a few people (like, a couple) have expressed relief at having easier fights with their half-levelled 4*s against boosted 3*s. But no one before complained about this! 4* teams still owned the top spots in the ladders every single PVP, as they were still stronger as a package than even boosted 3*s. This is an unnecessary relief measure for a comparatively smaller percentage of the player base that comes at the cost of making things much harder for a much bigger percentage of players!

Moreover, following R91 several measures have made 4* teams even more difficult, even not accounting for the nerf:

-4*s can be championed
-their damage and HP curves were actually improved for "boosted" levels
-Two more 4*s are now boosted each PVP.

This means that now more than ever, 3* transitioners are seeing 380 level or so monstrosities like a 35k HP Rulk (and sometimes, similarly leveled 5*s!) guarding that precious 1K reward which is their best bet at not letting pure luck dictate their progression. For contrast, a pre-nerf 240 3* Human Torch needed 6 Fireballs (38 AP) to take down that much HP. A post-nerf HT now needs 8 Fireballs (50 AP). In the meantime, that Rulk needs mere 9 green AP to bring him and the whole opposing team to their knees. Even if you managed to pull such miracle, that fight would easily take 5 or more minutes; in the meantime, several other teams of 4*s would have the chance to very quickly snack on that team, resulting by the end of the fight in 2 or 3 points lost per every point gained.

I ask of you, devs, what are we supposed to do? Wait for a year or so until we gather 100 covers of our 3*s and they return to their former power level while praying desperately that we open 4*s from Heroic tokens? By then, the meta will be made up of 550 5*s as every passing day the gap between 3* and 4* becomes bigger. I ask of you again, what are we supposed to do?

This change more than any other in the past has the distinctive taste of being intently unfair towards a significant part of the playerbase. It is no wonder that they tried to keep the matter under wraps all this long.

Raffoon

A month and a half later....

Wow, I knew communication was terrible from this company, but somehow I'm still amazed.

whoami24601

This is a pretty unacceptable timeframe for announcing something that should have been made known in advance of a major feature. Even announcing it after the advent of championing would've been better.

Heck, confirming it after it was widely reported within a day of championing going live would've been tolerable. Instead, the dev team acknowledged a bug in regards to champion/boosted characters, which led many to believe that there was a fix in the works for the sudden and unannounced nerfing of their roster. Even telling them then, "Hey, we feel it's an acceptable trade off, give it a shot with an open mind and let us know what you think" would've meant something.

This? "Yeah it was supposed to be this way all along and even though we read your comments of confusion and complaints, we didn't think they warranted acknowledging for a month." This comes a month or so too late to be of any worth to your player base. I mean, January 4 was the big reveal? That was seven weeks ago.

rawfsu

Making 4*'s and 5*'s more powerful would've been the better option. I haven't logged in yet today, but from what I've already heard, I'm not looking forward to it... It sounds like you have completely alienated everyone that's NOT a whale. To be honest, that really sucks. I was happy with my roster, coming along slowly as it may, but it seems I'm in for a major disappointment once I log on to play DDQ.

ronin_san

No need to read past this comment until we get official response. Go ahead and read Pylgrim's response again.

20three

particularly the fact that 1-stars, 2-stars, and 3-stars could be significantly stronger than 4-stars and 5-stars of the same level.

GASP! Wouldn't that just be the end of the world!

STOPTHIS

"David wrote:

Moore"]Demiurge Quote:

“While we were developing Champions, we took a close look at the balance of characters above their max level,

particularly the fact that 1-stars, 2-stars, and 3-stars could be significantly stronger than 4-stars and 5-stars of the same level.

Funny how this isn't a problem when it comes to PvE. You guys are a-OK with Juggernaut taking out an entire 3*/4* team.

I can't help but feel there's an intentional slow down on progression.

The 3* level is now harder to get into for 2* transitioners thanks to a **** redesigned DDQ. And it's harder to get out of now that you can't do as well in PvP thank to this nerf. Not to mention championing has pushed back the final progression for the level.

The 4* level now can't be bought as easily. So, you need luck when it comes to covers or drop a high amount of CmdPts for one cover. Meanwhile, characters are still being released rather fast, but their drop rate isn't becoming any better. The amount of 4* that can be earned in PvE is now limited with the vault change. Championing extends this level as well.

The 5* level requires an ungodly amount of CmdPts for one cover or tons of luck.

And of course the iso cap is stopping all levels of players from getting anywhere with any kind of speed.

This is **** is deflating my confidence in the game.

slidecage

xdogg wrote:

Thanks for helping me make the decision not to waste anymore Iso on my 3 satrs

shouldnt that read thanks for helping me to make the decistion to not waste anymore real cash on this game.

if they want to make it right ALLOW PEOPLE TO TRADE THEIR CHAMPIONS BACK IN FOR ALL OF THE ISO and COVERS They have wasted