4* DDQ discussion.

san

Hi all,

I haven't been around for quite some time, and haven't played a single season of PvP since July. However, prior to that, I was an active player in a top50 alliance, with a very decent roster. Nowadays, I certainly wouldn't be an active player, though I play DDQ occasionally 2-3 times per rotation.

Now, onto my topic. DDQ. 4*. Daily. This needs to happen, ASAP. Here are my reasons.

1) There are folks out there like myself, for whom DDQ is the only time they play this game. For these folks, adding a daily 4* reward is highly unlikely to drastically alter the roster.

2) Most folks have *most* 4*s right now. It wouldn't change he meta for the active / competitive crowd, rather only speed up the champ levels to some degree.

3) For the top tier players (see: Pay To Win), this is a negligible change, and unlikely to alter anything in their day.

4) Finally, for the lowest tier players, just starting out, for whom it is a daunting task to collect all the characters, it may provide some incentive to do so.

5) there are many folks who see through the thin veil of new characters and shield rank to the fact that PvP and PvE have changed very little in the last year or two. This is a sad truth. For those, DDQ presents as the only challenge / puzzle in the game.

Now, this is not in the suggestions thread, as it's not really a suggestion that's new in any way. It is something that players have been asking for since you stopped producing any new 3*s and moved on to the 5* meta.

I apologize for the incoherent manner in which this has been presented.

TL;DR - Please put in 4* DDQ daily. It's sorely overdue. It won't harm the bottom line, and may help you gain (or retain) some players, which might be a good idea, especially if you plan to continue working in this business.

Cheers

San

Calnexin

I think the dearth of 4* covers is being adequately addressed by CL. Making 4* daily would accelerate the game, requiring the dev team to create either more 4* or higher tiers. If everyone has the same roster... that's the end game. It's when you stop playing.

dsds

4* daily ddq just creates a bigger gap between the roster rich and the roster poor. The majority is probably not at the 4* level. They are still at the 3*. This forum does not represent the majority.


Disclaimer, I have about 10 champed 4 star, and I would definitely benefit from daily 4star ddq. I also do not want to spend everyday spending 5-10 tries on the 4star daily ddq. Keep it as it is, the current 4* 5 day ddq is not broken. Please prioritize other things like bugs instead. I would much rather have a smooth running, crash free game!

san

Calnexin wrote:

I think the dearth of 4* covers is being adequately addressed by CL. Making 4* daily would accelerate the game, requiring the dev team to create either more 4* or higher tiers. If everyone has the same roster... that's the end game. It's when you stop playing.

It's not about having the same roster, Cenexin. Rather, it's about providing some entertainment to the people who have supported this game during it's lifespan. You can make it difficult (i.e. like regular 4* DDQ matches, or even 1v2) to prevent the acceleration for those with low level / undercovered characters. For others, I hardly think that one 4* cover every 40 days (for each character) would be game breaking or accelerate the cover acquisition greatly.

mpqr7

I think there should definitely be some sort of 4* ddq component every day. It doesn't need to give out a free LT or 4* cover as the reward, but there should be something. I'd like to think that there was some reason I championed 20+ 4*s, beyond waiting to use them a few times a year for their ddq crash (hi WS/Drax/GR/Gwen/Falcap/etc).

ZeiramMR

san-mpq wrote:

It's not about having the same roster, Cenexin. Rather, it's about providing some entertainment to the people who have supported this game during it's lifespan. You can make it difficult (i.e. like regular 4* DDQ matches, or even 1v2) to prevent the acceleration for those with low level / undercovered characters. For others, I hardly think that one 4* cover every 40 days (for each character) would be game breaking or accelerate the cover acquisition greatly.

But it would accelerate cover acquisition greatly.

For an example, let's take an SCL 7 or 8 player that I would consider "middle of the road": they hit max progression for Story events, the 900 point mark in PVP, but only place highly enough for 3* placement rewards.
Such a player would currently earn the following in a week (assuming two short PVE events instead of a single 7 day) for 4* covers, LTs, or chunks of 20 CP:

5 4* covers from progression rewards
80 CP from event progression rewards (25+25+10+10+10)
14 CP from mission rewards
1 4*/5* cover equivalent from Daily Rewards (either an outright cover, Legendary token, or 25 CP)
Let's say 2-3 covers via lucky token pulls and cumulative Champion rewards of CP or covers
1 LT from DDQ every 5 days assuming the person can beat the node

That adds up to 13-15 covers for 4*s/5*s in a week (by all means people, correct my math if you see anything glaring). Your change would add another 5.6 LTs a week, which is about a 40% increase.

bbigler

First, I need to say that most people do not have most 4*s at a competitive level for Crash of Titans. Most players are transitioning from 3* to 4* right now, which means that they may have all 4*s rostered, but half of them have less than 8 covers each. So, only half of their 4*s have a chance to win the Crash. This turns into 1 LT every 10 days, which would likely give a random 4* cover of the diluted 4* pool. Over time, they get more covers, win more Crashes and thus get more covers. It's a good engine in the game, but I agree that the engine is too slow.

Agreed. Increase the frequency of Crash of Titans to assist in the slow 4* transition that most players are in. Since D3 doesn't like to make drastic changes, they could increase it to a 3 day frequency instead of 5 days. Personally, I would like it to be every other day, which is still fair given the 42 x 4* characters in the game.

They could even implement a 5* "Crash of Titans" that awards 3 LTs because you would be facing off against a level 450 someone with your barely covered 5*. Actually, it would be really funny if they boosted 1* characters to level 450 and then had you fight them with your 5*, which could end in a loss. But because PvE scaling is bad for 5* rosters, we currently don't want to encourage people to level up their 5*s.

Smudge

ZeiramMR wrote:

But it would accelerate cover acquisition greatly.

For an example, let's take an SCL 7 or 8 player that I would consider "middle of the road": they hit max progression for Story events, the 900 point mark in PVP, but only place highly enough for 3* placement rewards.
Such a player would currently earn the following in a week (assuming two short PVE events instead of a single 7 day) for 4* covers, LTs, or chunks of 20 CP:

5 4* covers from progression rewards
80 CP from event progression rewards (25+25+10+10+10)
14 CP from mission rewards
1 4*/5* cover equivalent from Daily Rewards (either an outright cover, Legendary token, or 25 CP)
Let's say 2-3 covers via lucky token pulls and cumulative Champion rewards of CP or covers
1 LT from DDQ every 5 days assuming the person can beat the node

That adds up to 13-15 covers for 4*s/5*s in a week (by all means people, correct my math if you see anything glaring). Your change would add another 5.6 LTs a week, which is about a 40% increase.

Your assessment may be true for SCL8, but I can promise you it isn't for 7. Now that 7 and 8 are split, 7 is far more casual on the whole, at least in slice 5. I don't think even half of a bracket hits max progression; 25% maybe, but I think even that's a stretch.

I'm rank 70 and consider myself "hard-casual"; that is, I play 4x sub-optimal PvE clears, then run 2 more sub-optimal clears 3-4 (rarely 1-2) hours before a sub closes. I play new releases a little harder. Since the placement rewards for my style of play are better in SCL7, that's where I play, and this style of play nets me T20 at worst, generally T10. However, I don't always dabble in PvP, and when I do, even my 8 4* champions are not enough to carry me to 900 points without substantial time and shield hop focus, so I stop at 575 (if I even bother with PvP at all; I played She-Hulk's to 100 points by joining in the last 5 minutes available for the day).

I think I still play substantially harder than the average SCL7 player. There are some heavy-hitters that I constantly see in my brackets, but I strongly feel most are more casual than you're giving them credit for being. SCL8 is more hardcore and I can't really speak for that, but the cover flow for SCL7 players is definitely lower. I'd cut the 13-15 cover estimate in half for the average player without sitting down and doing the exact calculations.

I'm not saying daily 4* DDQ should be a thing or it shouldn't. If it is, the reward probably shouldn't be an LT with the cover flow opening a bit lately. If 4* DDQ were to become a daily thing, the devs would certainly see an influx of spending on boosts, though.

madok

I really hope they do implement the feature they talked about on the recent podcast interview. They wanted to give players a way of focusing their efforts on specific characters now that there are so many. I think that would greatly help a lot of folks across the board if they do it across all rarity tiers.

Just adding more 4* DDQ fights, just leaves us at the continued mercy of RNGesus.

JackTenrec

bbigler wrote:

Agreed. Increase the frequency of Crash of Titans to assist in the slow 4* transition that most players are in. Since D3 doesn't like to make drastic changes, they could increase it to a 3 day frequency instead of 5 days. Personally, I would like it to be every other day, which is still fair given the 42 x 4* characters in the game.

4* DDQ only helps players that have already amassed a reasonable set of 4* covers (with some exceptions, like stun or invisibility-capable characters that can punch significantly above their weight). You're either at the part of the curve where you can beat CoT, or you're not -- having additional attempts doesn't do anything to accelerate players into the 4* tier unless they're already reasonably established there.

The awarding of CP in increments rather than requiring final progression and the progression 4* cover at higher SCLs (7 and higher?) is already a huge boost to 4* cover acquisition, but I would have hoped that the addition of SCLs would have done more to accelerate the acquisition of 4* covers by expanding cover availability to players outside of T20. If they're not willing to do that, I think the actual answer would be a 3*-only mode where you're battling a team of 4* characters, either for a 4* cover or perhaps additional CP, since the real pain point of the transition is that you need probably at least a good 3-5 covers in a single character before they're viable in non-essential nodes.

DFiPL

Selfishly, I'd love daily 4* DDQ with an additional cover opportunity daily.

Realistically, I look at the thread I posted last night about 4* progress and how I've gone from a half-dozen or so half-covered 4* to 26 half-covered 4* and three champions (plus one add'l at 13 and several more at 12) since August, and I can see the 'that might be TOO much' argument.

But I do think there should be a 4* DDQ daily; remember when CP launched, they gave 1 CP away for completing every node each day? Bring that back. Add a 6th pin with a 4* required fight, and if you complete all six pins, get 1 CP.

You'd still have to do DDQ daily for 3 weeks before you got an extra cover out of that. I don't think that would be the worst thing.

DaveR4470

I don't think daily would be a good idea. But twice per DDQ cycle would be an improvement -- if only because there are SOOO many 4*s that it takes forever for them to loop around again.

firethorne

Calnexin wrote:

Making 4* daily would accelerate the game, requiring the dev team to create either more 4* or higher tiers.

Higher tiers you say? Your argument against it is that they'd have to create something that already exists, and has existed for a year now.

dsds wrote:

4* daily ddq just creates a bigger gap between the roster rich and the roster poor. The majority is probably not at the 4* level. They are still at the 3*. This forum does not represent the majority.

Which would end up benefiting the people trying to transition into 4* land a lot more than the ones already there. The difference between a 2/2/2 character and a 5/3/5 champion is significant. The difference between a Level 272 champion and a level 279 champion is barely noticeable. Those seven covers end up providing far more benefit to the player on the low end.

san

ZeiramMR wrote:

san-mpq wrote:

...
5 4* covers from progression rewards
80 CP from event progression rewards (25+25+10+10+10)
14 CP from mission rewards
1 4*/5* cover equivalent from Daily Rewards (either an outright cover, Legendary token, or 25 CP)
Let's say 2-3 covers via lucky token pulls and cumulative Champion rewards of CP or covers
1 LT from DDQ every 5 days assuming the person can beat the node

That adds up to 13-15 covers for 4*s/5*s in a week (by all means people, correct my math if you see anything glaring). Your change would add another 5.6 LTs a week, which is about a 40% increase.

This is an overestimation with zeal. Please remember, ZeiramMR, that I was in a top 50 alliance, and I would say doing fairly well overall, playing for PVE and PVP, and I certainly do not recall this calculation. If I got 6-8 4* covers during a week, I'd be very happy. If 3-4 of those covers were useful (rather than duplicates, or covers for a full-covered, under-leveled 4*), that would be even better.

You are looking at a pool of 40ish 4*s, at 13 covers a piece, or roughly 520 covers. At 4 NEW covers a week, it would take you 130 weeks to JUST MAX all the four stars. This does not include champion levels. Even at your overestimated 15 covers a week, it would take 34 weeks, or 8 months to simply get covers to the max for the 40, so no, that's not really very fast. In 8 months, I've beaten most every other game out on the market, perhaps several. I know they mean for there not to be any end, but 5*s are vastly more difficult to achieve. It would be daunting as a new player to have to collect all these covers from scratch.

bbigler

Eventhough more frequent 4* DDQ is appealing, it would create a larger ISO deficiency overall. I currently don't open or buy any Legendary Tokens because I need to "catch up" on the 4* covers I've already gotten. I'm still gaining about 4 x 4* covers a week. If I spent my CP and opened LTs, then it would be about 10 x 4* covers a week, creating a growing ISO deficiency. Eventually, I would start getting covers that I would have to sell because the character isn't champed or near it (because of the ISO deficiency).

Calnexin

san-mpq wrote:

I hardly think that one 4* cover every 40 days (for each character) would be game breaking or accelerate the cover acquisition greatly.

I think it would greatly accelerate cover acquisition. I don't have any numbers to back me up, so here's a lot of salt <saltysaltysalty>, but as I recall, DDQ was the primary way I built my 3* roster. I got covers here and there from other places, but that guaranteed cover allowed me to eventually champ all of them (except Strange).

I guess I'd like to see a 4* DDQ, but I hold those covers in higher regard than the 3* tier. I've only got 7 4* champs, but they make such a big difference in the game that it's rare I prefer to use a boosted 3*. I don't think they should be as accessible as 3* covers.

The rarity reflects their power. You can extend that to all other tiers. 5* are nigh impossible to accumulate with regular play. 2* are ridiculously easy to get. 1* are basically trash once you're out of the prologue. Given what those characters do, it seems appropriate.

san

Calnexin wrote:

I think it would greatly accelerate cover acquisition. I don't have any numbers to back me up, so here's a lot of salt <saltysaltysalty>, but as I recall, DDQ was the primary way I built my 3* roster. I got covers here and there from other places, but that guaranteed cover allowed me to eventually champ all of them (except Strange).

You defeat yourself with this particular argument. I presented numbers. Your logic is akin to saying "well I really don't know how many car crashes occur a year, but I'll definitively say it's 200"...

Calnexin wrote:

The rarity reflects their power. You can extend that to all other tiers. 5* are nigh impossible to accumulate with regular play. 2* are ridiculously easy to get. 1* are basically trash once you're out of the prologue. Given what those characters do, it seems appropriate.

Actually, this has been disproved many a time. Devs have commented on it. Rarity is JUST rarity.

Otherwise, I'm not sure we could explain how Storm (2*), a near goddess with the ability to control the weather, is outclassed by a mere mortal, the likes of Punisher (i.e. 4*). Your theory does not hold here.

Jarvind

Daily would be too often. You can cover a 3* roster pretty quickly from scratch, and DDQ is a big part of the reason - if you start flooding the market with 4* covers, you'll rapidly end up with an entire playerbase that has 4* rosters and the game stagnates because the only thing left to shoot for is RNG-based 5* characters.

I realize it won't be quite as fast as gaining 3* covers from DDQ since you have to beat their Crash, but many of them can be done with only a handful of covers so the principle is sound.

Additionally, clearance levels have made it so you can get at least one 4* from progression every few days, even if you never play PVP. Unlocking CL7 isn't too difficult.

All that said, I do think double Crash like we got for the PX invisibility bug would be warranted.

ZeiramMR

san-mpq: If the numbers I calculated are overzealous, that just makes your suggestion even more accelerated than the 40% increase I quoted.

I personally think that daily 4* is going to be too much of a boost sink for people who are borderline. That might be favorable to D3/Demiurge, though. But if they were to go to a daily 4*, I would suggest making every one give 5 CP instead of the LT. It is an incremental change for people who can't beat a good portion of the duels, and lets people use the CP on Classic tokens or for direct cover purchasing.

mega ghost

Getting more 4-star covers doesn't change the fact that it still takes forever to level and champ them one by one. Plus you need to have at least one cover for each character rostered to participate, and typically it takes 5-7 covers to be able to squeeze out a victory.

I'm open to other options too. Maybe the daily CoT doesn't award a LT anymore, but a cover specific to the character you're playing with similar to the Big Enchilada. Or maybe once every three days we get a CoT that awards LT, and all of the other days we get the Chimichanga Special, which has four waves of characters similar to the Big Enchilada except they're scaled higher, and it requires we have a set 4-star on the team, and it awards us with 10K ISO.

san

ZeiramMR wrote:

san-mpq: If the numbers I calculated are overzealous, that just makes your suggestion even more accelerated than the 40% increase I quoted.

I personally think that daily 4* is going to be too much of a boost sink for people who are borderline. That might be favorable to D3/Demiurge, though. But if they were to go to a daily 4*, I would suggest making every one give 5 CP instead of the LT. It is an incremental change for people who can't beat a good portion of the duels, and lets people use the CP on Classic tokens or for direct cover purchasing.

So now you backpedal and spin? I suppose you can spin it any way you like it, but the game does not move fast enough for new or old players. When we speak in terms of months, not days, it tells you something about the game, doesn't it?