5* characters, do they do more harm then good?

VASH1456

I was wondering,with the new PvP scaling going off how many/what covers you have on a character, would adding a 5* to your roster completely throw your PVP match scaling off the charts again? I had a 1 cover OML a couple months ago but sold it a week later cause I was getting matched with lvl 200 to 220 4* teams when my 3 highest playable character were a 10 cover lvl 127 LOKI, lvl 94 2* THOR,and lvl 94 2* WOLVERINE. After I sold him off, the next event my match scaling went back to normal. IMO it seems 5* character are for people who've been playing the game since day 1and have almost every 4* character fully covered and at lvl 270.

Quebbster

I Think that's the Point of the new matchmaking system. The old system apparently Went solely on level, so adding a level 255 OML increased your level average quite a bit. Now that the number of covers is taken into account too your OML would be registered as not that potent and your relative Power would be less.
Then again, if you don't have a fully leveled threestar yet it's probably too soon to start thinking about fivestars.

ammenell

Quebbster wrote:

Then again, if you don't have a fully leveled threestar yet it's probably too soon to start thinking about fivestars.

thats my philosophy, except i substitute 3* with 4*

Quebbster

ammenell wrote:

Quebbster wrote:

Then again, if you don't have a fully leveled threestar yet it's probably too soon to start thinking about fivestars.

thats my philosophy, except i substitute 3* with 4*

With a few decently leveled fourstars you could at least start to Think about fivestars though as they won't throw your scaling too out of whack.

ammenell

pretty sure i have to deal with way more fully leveled 4* and good leveled 5*teams on my way to 1k

besides, I don't even have useable 4*s

but thats just me, and I see 3*s as endgame and 4*s as a “nice to have“ - bonus

5*s are for the whales in my book

Azoth658

I've found the new matchmaking frustrating as I have 3 covers on my SS and 1 on my JG and even though I tend not to use them I keep fighting people with at least 1 5* in the enemy team every match.

Now this would be fine if the match damage of 5*s was not so ridiculous so I'm forced to use my SS to tank some of the match damage.

I'd much prefer an algorithm that looked at your covers and level of your last 10 PVP matches and use that as a base. Then I could have 3*s fighting 3*s instead of Jeanbusters, Goblins and OMLs

VASH1456

Thanks for the info. I don't have a fully covered 3* yet let alone a 4* that's half covered,my Sam W has 5 (3 of those covers I got in a 24hr period from heroic and taco tokens). I wanna sell off BnB Spidey but it's mentally hard to sell a 5* character but I remember the anger of not being able to play when I had OML in my roster. Thanks again for the help.

Nick441234

I'm still at least a year off being anywhere close to looking at 5*s. I have no issue whatsoever in selling any covers I get. They do more harm than good.

NickHewitt12

In every sense of the concept, 5*s do more harm than good, and I say this as someone with a level 390 OML. The issues with scaling, the issues with difficulty, the reduced diversity in team building, the random nature of distribution: 5*s will be the death of this game.

Polares

Nicholas Hewitt wrote:

In every sense of the concept, 5*s do more harm than good, and I say this as someone with a level 390 OML. The issues with scaling, the issues with difficulty, the reduced diversity in team building, the random nature of distribution: 5*s will be the death of this game.

I think probably the second worst part, after randomness with distribution, it was that they were designed as the ultimate reward for playing, but then they introduced CPs, and after that the ability to buy CPs, and that destroyed completely the goal. Now we have people with 550 level 5s, and people who play a lot with 3 cover chars, etc. which is too much disparity (champion system is the one to blame for this).

If you won one 5 for every 10 LTs exactly, and they were unbuyable, the problem would be much smaller.

And 2 players should not have access to 5s AT ALL. And 3s players should have a very small chance to get 5s. This is the stupid problem that all players are fighting for the same rewards, this is one of the biggest problems this game has always had since the beginning of times.

Quebbster

Nicholas Hewitt wrote:

In every sense of the concept, 5*s do more harm than good, and I say this as someone with a level 390 OML. The issues with scaling, the issues with difficulty, the reduced diversity in team building, the random nature of distribution: 5*s will be the death of this game.

I have suspected that building my 5* might make the game less fun. Thanks for this Little confirmation. I feel better about focusing on 4* for a while longer now...

rawfsu

I'm feeling the effects of 5*'s on my roster, and it has me on the verge of quitting. I have 2 Dark Phoenix, 1 OML, and in four days, two SS due to the Daily Reward. My 4* roster is coming along, with LThor at 12 covers, Fury at 10 as of yesterday, and IW at 11 covers. HOWEVER, I stopped LThor at 200 since the cost got way out of hand, and am working on capping Fury at 200 as well. The jury is still out on IW. With my roster, it's a nightmare for PVP, which has been my sole focus for several seasons. I hit the wall in the PVP testing way earlier than usual, not to mention having to spend more ISO to find reasonable match-ups. If I had to do it again, I would've sold my 5*'s, as I was hitting 800-900 comfortably before rostering them. Oh well, with the prospect of having two 5*'s with multiple covers, looks like I'm stuck.

mohio

rawfsu wrote:

I'm feeling the effects of 5*'s on my roster, and it has me on the verge of quitting. I have 2 Dark Phoenix, 1 OML, and in four days, two SS due to the Daily Reward. My 4* roster is coming along, with LThor at 12 covers, Fury at 10 as of yesterday, and IW at 11 covers. HOWEVER, I stopped LThor at 200 since the cost got way out of hand, and am working on capping Fury at 200 as well. The jury is still out on IW. With my roster, it's a nightmare for PVP, which has been my sole focus for several seasons. I hit the wall in the PVP testing way earlier than usual, not to mention having to spend more ISO to find reasonable match-ups. If I had to do it again, I would've sold my 5*'s, as I was hitting 800-900 comfortably before rostering them. Oh well, with the prospect of having two 5*'s with multiple covers, looks like I'm stuck.

Not that I'm trying to let the devs off the hook, but I wonder if part of what has happened to you really has nothing to do with your 5*. Presumably you have enough 3* maxed/championed at this point that a 255 is not going to increase your scaling/matchmaking by much at all over a 240+, and just rostering 5* does not put you automatically into 5* territory. I think instead what's happening is that you are not appreciably improving your roster really at all (a 200 4* is usable, but at best on par with a 240 3* I would think), and the same people you are used to facing are starting to use 5-6 cover 5* or have started maxing out their 4*. It probably takes some time for these guys to make their way past your MMR range, so you keep seeing them in your queues, and while frustrating, I don't think your 5* are to blame.

Soitswritten

New MMR has been rough on me because of my 3/4/1 Phoenix. She doesn't hit hard enough to scare anyone but all the cover make her seem stronger to the new system. Seeing nothing but 5's and maxed 4's in pvp after 400. I just maxed and champed only my 3rd 4* yesterday. So I have Rulk, HB and Jean at max and many cover maxed bu no ISO. Gonna take me two months to get Bobby from 150 to max given the ISO I'll be forced into putting into Howard next week for DDQ. Really the problem is that I have so many covers despite not having the characters useable. It sucks.

Dayv

New MMR should be nothing but improvement for someone with a single-covered 5*.

Before, that character counted as their level, 255, with no correction for only having a single cover.

I don't know the actual math involved, but the new MMR math looks at your covers in addition to the character level. For a very simple example of how that might work on the back end, imagine it works like this:

[(Number of covers)/13] multipled by [character level] = [effective character level for MMR]

In this example, a one-cover 5* at level 255 would count as 1/13th of level 255, or level 20.

Meanwhile, my five-covered Phoenix that I havent started to level yet would count as level 118 for match-making purposes.

That's almost certainly an overly simplified version of the actual math, and the results I have could be way off, but the philosophy of it is right.

If I were coding it, I'd probably give a one-cover character a 40% modifier and have each cover added increase that by 5%, up to 100% at 13 covers, to make the math simpler and cause it to swing less wildly with the first few covers. This would give values of 102 and 153 for the two examples above.

mohio

DayvBang wrote:

New MMR should be nothing but improvement for someone with a single-covered 5*.

Before, that character counted as their level, 255, with no correction for only having a single cover.

I don't know the actual math involved, but the new MMR math looks at your covers in addition to the character level. For a very simple example of how that might work on the back end, imagine it works like this:

[(Number of covers)/13] multipled by [character level] = [effective character level for MMR]

In this example, a one-cover 5* at level 255 would count as 1/13th of level 255, or level 20.

Meanwhile, my five-covered Phoenix that I havent started to level yet would count as level 118 for match-making purposes.

That's almost certainly an overly simplified version of the actual math, and the results I have could be way off, but the philosophy of it is right.

If I were coding it, I'd probably give a one-cover character a 40% modifier and have each cover added increase that by 5%, up to 100% at 13 covers, to make the math simpler and cause it to swing less wildly with the first few covers. This would give values of 102 and 153 for the two examples above.

This is an interesting thought...I would have assumed that the "balance" would be at fewer covers however. What I mean is that at 4 or 5 covers it is maybe "worthy" of that 255 (or whatever level you have it at), but at fewer covers it would be discounted, higher covers it might be considered stronger. I know 4* are designed differently, but whatever algorithm must work for them too. If you consider that a lot of damaging 4* powers get an almost 100% increase from 3-5 covers, you can see why it wouldn't be silly to equate a max covered but only level 100 4* to perhaps a level-capped 168 4*. Surely a fully covered 4* at any level performs "better" than its level until it is 270, so shouldn't the adjustment take this into account as well?

Unknown

I'm thinking I need to ditch my singleton red cover OML. I'm a newbie and have champed 2s as my highest level characters @120 and no 3's more than 7 or 8 covers except mystique and the game is abmysally hard all of the sudden.

In pvp I'm constantly matched against champed 3* teams after 300 and pve the "normal" level fights are around 180....I was really excited to get a "lucky pull" with a leg token, but it sounds like I got a secret handicap.

If I dump him, when does the game rebalance?

VASH1456

@BOOYHWAH

If you sell off your 5* your PVP/PVE will go back to normal at the start of the next event or at least mine did. I was in the same boat as you a couple months back when I pulled OML. BAM! Instantly matched with championed 3* teams when my 3 highest PLAYABLE characters were lvl 94 2*'S. I had a lvl 127 Loki but he's more of a support/board shaker used good against certain characters.

VASH1456

@BOOTHWAH

I was in the same boat a couple months ago when I pulled a OML from my L token. I was instantly matched against championed 3* teams when at the time my 3 highest leveled PLAYABLE characters were lvl 94 2*'S. My match scaling went back to normal at the start of the next PvP/PVE event. Hope this helped a little.

VASH1456

So is the new match system in effect as we speak?

Pants1000

I disagree with most people here. OML is great as long as you have a yellow cover. I have a 4-cover OML and even without a black cover he's better than any 4-star I have.

If you plan to play a while, don't sell any 5 stars. I think you'll regret it in the long run.