The Gutting of the 5* Transitioners

OneLastGambit

I may not agree with the changes to OML (I was one of the few people who did not rank him very highly and have now sold him) but one thing is apparent there is a small subset of people for whom this change was dramatic.

If you were one of those people stuck in the early stages of the 5* transition and started that transition during the time that OML and Phoenix were easy to acquire - then this change probably hit you fairly hard.

Essentially this change (without giving the opportunity to swap your oml for a character of equal cover level of your choice) condemned those people to a MMR and scaling level designed for 2 champed 5* when you had only 1.5 functioning 5*. Suddenly for those people the game became 50% more difficult than it was before. Their only crime - was chasing, levelling and using a character which they were encouraged to chase by devs. Then once they had finally built 2 of these characters, the incredible token dilution for this tier couple with the 100% RNG acquisition forced many of these people into using these 2 as their only characters for the rest of their play - an issue lamented by many transitioning 5* players.

I had a long time member of my alliance quit yesterday, he was in this position. He didn't quit in protest or rage (though I'm sure he was a bit mad) he quit because suddenly the game was unplayable for him. trying to fend off 5* scaling with only one decent 5* is the exact opposite of fun. He sent an email to CS asking them to please remove all the levels from his phoenix and return some of his iso cost then he could play the game again. CS said no. His only 2 options then are:

1. Continue playing with his (already broken) MMR and scaling which has been compounded and made worse.

2. Sell both his OML and Phoenix - characters which took a year to build and countless hours of play - for peanuts.

Surely these should not be the only options devs? You lost a loyal and long term customer because you didn't see the secondary effect this change would have on this level of player and also because you wont even be kind enough to simply remove his levels then he can return to a normal MMR and Scaling? He (and likely many others) wasn't asking for an advantage to be given, he was asking for a disadvantage to be removed - one imposed by your changes.

@brigby I hope you read this post and pass it on to the devs and come up with a solution for this even something as simple as the ability to remove levels from characters and return 50% of the iso would be suitable. It cost me an alliance member who had been here longer than I had.

JamieMadrox

I played with OML a bunch last night. Still worked great and didn't seem to be that bad. Less powerful sure, but he still got the job done as well, or better, than a lot of other characters.

EvertonSte

I guess yours is champed then 

Pongie

Mine is 5/1/4 and he is definitely worst now. Every second battle he is downed and require a health pack to continue. Whereas before, you could bring him with 1/3 of the health and end up fully healed. 

Magic

My OML is 3-1-1 at lvl 315. Since the match damage was not changes the only downgrade I see in my daily usage is the smaller strike tiles. It's not a biggy for me. He will remain on 25% of my teams (all the trivial nodes, all LR when I fight seeds, 2 3* nodes in DDQ). The only thing that happened is he is no longer my favorited 5* and I don't care to see more covers. I will apply the 2nd yellow in couple of months when it drops from resupply list and that is it. 

OneLastGambit

The thing is when you have multiple champed 5s the oml nerf is no problem. When you are below 5* it is not a problem.

When you're only 5* are OML and Phoenix and oml becomes weaker then you are suddenly forced into a harder game, even if (as some say) it's only marginally weaker. The dearth of characters and lack of player controlled progression into that tier mean that you could conceivably be stuck with a weaker team, not because you made a bad decision, not because you played badly...but because the devs don't like one character being used more than others. That doesn't seem quite fair.

In my OP I state that the person (formerly) in my alliance in question would have been more than happy to have some iso refunded and all his levels removed from both oml and phoenix and simply stop using them and return to 4*. CS said no, his only choice was to sell OML for the buy back and take his chances at maxing another 5*. He did this and got no closer to maxing another 5* (again due to RNG) and so then his only 2 options became, play in a game that had suddenly got harder for no reason or sell his other maxed 5* for a very paltry sum and throw away the hours spent building and acquiring her.

For me personally, it has no effect. I rarely used OML before as I think he's boring and so selling was an easy decision since I had no intention of ever joining 5* (less so now). Bonus to me, my scaling actually decreased after selling making my game easier.

In Summary - keep your characters and make the game harder and less fun, or sell the prizes you've worked hard for and make it easier and more fun. Seems silly that the game rewards you for going backwards no?

darkestcurse

OML and BW are my only championed 5*'s and this NERF was painful.  I could trade my OML in for 7 random 5* covers and hope none are classics that I already have 5 covers in (my phoenix is 1/3/5, and SS is similar).  But now every match is difficult.  If I could trade my 13 covers of OML for 13 Thanos covers I'd take the trade quickly, but this compensation is not helpful.  Do I sell and hope to lower my MMR enough that BW will hold her own or suck it up since OML still lets me quickly finish the first levels of PVE's with Thanos?

broll

The gutting of the 5* transitions is the sequel to the gutting on 3* & 4* transitions (aka vaulting).  Coming soon gutting of the 2* transitions?

OneLastGambit

darkestcurse said:

OML and BW are my only championed 5*'s and this NERF was painful.  I could trade my OML in for 7 random 5* covers and hope none are classics that I already have 5 covers in (my phoenix is 1/3/5, and SS is similar).  But now every match is difficult.  If I could trade my 13 covers of OML for 13 Thanos covers I'd take the trade quickly, but this compensation is not helpful.  Do I sell and hope to lower my MMR enough that BW will hold her own or suck it up since OML still lets me quickly finish the first levels of PVE's with Thanos?

I can tell you based on my alliance mates experience after selling his OML that your MMR will not be lowered enough and it will put you at an even greater disadvantage.

Nightglider1

OneLastGambit said:

I may not agree with the changes to OML (I was one of the few people who did not rank him very highly and have now sold him) but one thing is apparent there is a small subset of people for whom this change was dramatic. 

A small subset, indeed. The people complaining on the forums are only a small percentage of the player base.

OneLastGambit

Nightglider1 said:

OneLastGambit said:

I may not agree with the changes to OML (I was one of the few people who did not rank him very highly and have now sold him) but one thing is apparent there is a small subset of people for whom this change was dramatic. 

A small subset, indeed. The people complaining on the forums are only a small percentage of the player base.

Thing is my nocturnal friend if it was a necessary change then I can ascribe to the 'damage the few to feed the many' approach, but this was not a necessary change and as a result it rendered the game completely unplayable for that small subset of players. I don't think anyone should be forced to quit after spending 2+ years playing and building that roster.

I can understand changes being forced which make people unhappy (sometimes it's necessary ) but making a change which renders it unplayable is not very fair.

If you bought a car and after 2 years a small subset of those cars simply stopped working because of a firmware update do you think people would be ok with that? Or do you imagine there would be some complaints and possible civil action?

Phumade

darkestcurse said:

OML and BW are my only championed 5*'s and this NERF was painful.  I could trade my OML in for 7 random 5* covers and hope none are classics that I already have 5 covers in (my phoenix is 1/3/5, and SS is similar).  But now every match is difficult.  If I could trade my 13 covers of OML for 13 Thanos covers I'd take the trade quickly, but this compensation is not helpful.  Do I sell and hope to lower my MMR enough that BW will hold her own or suck it up since OML still lets me quickly finish the first levels of PVE's with Thanos?

the real problem with running just 5bw is that you'll be immediately exposed by the 5* leviathans.  5* mmr is understood well enough in the community that the strongest players know what score differentials will unlock different mmr ques.  your banking on the fact that you can hide in the herd of 4* players.  But that doesn't fundamentally help you when a 5* needs to grill.  3 270 4* is just as trivial to a 460 5*/ champed 3/ loaner grill.  The bigger leviathans with 500+ 5* have to grill 5*/2 champed 4s.  

think about that fact.  The biggest players CC/grill team is still bigger than the tier your considering to retreat too.

This is effectively CC nerf 2.0.  If you can't afford to play at the highest tiers of the game.  your fundamentally playing a different experience.

Polares

OneLastGambit said:

darkestcurse said:

OML and BW are my only championed 5*'s and this NERF was painful.  I could trade my OML in for 7 random 5* covers and hope none are classics that I already have 5 covers in (my phoenix is 1/3/5, and SS is similar).  But now every match is difficult.  If I could trade my 13 covers of OML for 13 Thanos covers I'd take the trade quickly, but this compensation is not helpful.  Do I sell and hope to lower my MMR enough that BW will hold her own or suck it up since OML still lets me quickly finish the first levels of PVE's with Thanos?

I can tell you based on my alliance mates experience after selling his OML that your MMR will not be lowered enough and it will put you at an even greater disadvantage.

Yeah don't do it if you plan on playing PvP. Once you have a champed 5 you are at the max MMR level, it doesn't matter if you have one or two.

If you play a lot of PvE on the other hand then yes, sell it, your scaling will go down quite a bit.

We really need to get SCL9 and 10 and then those changes related to scaling based on the SCL you are playing. We need these ASAP.

And yeah I agree, the people that has been hit harder are the transitioners, and the people with just couple or three  5s (one OML of course). Also people with very high level OMLs (480+) will have a lot of problems now in PvE.

Slarow

I have a champed SS and a (within the past two weeks) champed OML. PVP prior to today was tough, but I could win more often than not as long as I avoided 5* champed recent characters (DS, Thanos, etc...). In the latest PVP, I lost my first 5 matches after defeating seed teams because there is no way for me to defeat a team with even two 5* champs, and *all* of my opponents have at least 2 5* champs.

OML's healing was the *only* thing allowing me to compete in the 5* champed territory that MMR has placed me in. Now, he goes down in a few hits and nothing but a speedbump. I now have zero usable 5*s, but am stuck facing 5* champed opponents.

Nepenthe

I have most of the 4*s champed, and was just barely beginning to put iso into some of my 5*s.  But I'm seriously questioning whether I want to bother with the 5* tier at all, and the OML nerf certainly doesn't encourage me. I may just stay a 4* player indefinitely.

astrp3

Polares said:

If you play a lot of PvE on the other hand then yes, sell it, your scaling will go down quite a bit.

Except that they've indicated that they're going to change PvE so that scaling is based on SCL rather than roster and hinted that it will happen this summer, so players might want to hold off if possible (though I'm not sure how confident I am that this will actually get done or that it won't cause more problems than it solves).

Vhailorx

OLG is obviously correct.  And the sad part is that this surprises nobody.  Players knew exactly whobwoupd be hurt worst by this nerf, and we also recognized that OML isnt OP and was only a "problem" if you care about selling health packs or promoting the sale of new characters.  

And the equally unsurprising compensation problems are just a nice kick in the teeth to finish everything off:  unhappy with your newly nerfed OML?  Sell him for 1/2 iso and 1/2 random 5* covers!  What's that, you pulled unusable  5* covers from those comp tokens?  Well, i guess you just have to buy some iso and cp so you can max and champ that classic 5* sometime in the next 2 weeks!  

From a customer service standpoint it's pretty pathetic.  And the saddest thing of all is that none of it surprises me, but i am still unsure about quitting.  Skinner box mechanics are pretty addictive. . .

Nightglider1

OneLastGambit said:

Nightglider1 said:

OneLastGambit said:

I may not agree with the changes to OML (I was one of the few people who did not rank him very highly and have now sold him) but one thing is apparent there is a small subset of people for whom this change was dramatic. 

A small subset, indeed. The people complaining on the forums are only a small percentage of the player base.

Thing is my nocturnal friend if it was a necessary change then I can ascribe to the 'damage the few to feed the many' approach, but this was not a necessary change and as a result it rendered the game completely unplayable for that small subset of players. I don't think anyone should be forced to quit after spending 2+ years playing and building that roster.

I can understand changes being forced which make people unhappy (sometimes it's necessary ) but making a change which renders it unplayable is not very fair.

If you bought a car and after 2 years a small subset of those cars simply stopped working because of a firmware update do you think people would be ok with that? Or do you imagine there would be some complaints and possible civil action?

I believe my post wasn't clear. I meant that we can't possibly know how many other people are upset/complaining/etc. since not the entire player base is active here.