crackninja said: I completely understand the negative reactions, I just wonder where we're going from here if it's not time. I don't have any 5*'s at more than 6 covers, and I must hoard for 6+ months in order to probably max cover a set of 3 characters. All signs point towards no desire to make it any easier to cover older characters, so this doesn't seem likely to change until there is a new shiny above them.I don't see it as the end of mpq if they don't move forward, but I do see a lot of people eventually completing their realistic goals in this game, understanding the sisyphean task of completing even 9 or 10 5*'s to give them solid options in the tier, and losing interest.
Borstock said: I don't think the game needs a second generally inaccessible tier of characters that would only hurt your scaling if you actually leveled them.
The only way this game works is by continually pushing back the finish line. Its not a knock on the game, its just conceptually very simple. They need to release new characters for people to want to acquire, they can keep doing it on the 4* tier, and cause problems there or they can move on and focus on 5*s. The 3* tier is pretty filled up, the 4* tier is there too, but there is plenty of space on the 5* tier.
They need to start crafting a believable means for 4*s players to transition into the 5* tier and give more opportunities to obtain the characters. Make the progression interesting for about a year and doable for the next 2-3, and while they do that open up 6*s for the whales and super hardcore.
Its either take a **** on the 4* pool by polluting them with more and more new characters that are either not any better (uninteresting and no draw) or are better (make previous characters useless) OR they get a good transition in place for people to move to the 5* tier and pump out interesting characters there, which would necessitate a more exclusive tier for the people into that (6*s)
I don't care about the specifics of how they do it, they just need to move off the 4* tier soon or be OK with ruining some of it... balancing 40-50 characters is extremely hard, it would be unrealistic to expect it to be done well (I'm quite impressed with how they've done the 3* tier, but even there the new additions of 3* thanos and 3* strange have wrecked the balance)
Qubort said: So introduce 6 stars when a tiny percent of people have a single fully covered 5 star? That makes perfect sense.
They introduced silver surfer 2 years ago... now new players can be pulling their first LT with a ~15% chance to get a 5* within the first few weeks of playing...
The issue is more that theres a traffic jam at the 4* tier, more characters coming in, poor 5* transition mechanism and a disproportionately small 5* tier compared to the tier below it... That transition needs to be smoothed out so the 4* tier doesn't get any worse, which would necessitate easier access to 5* characters and more 5* character releases (instead of 4*s).
That's when a 6* tier would be necessary, and might as well start it up sooner rather than later so there isn't just 1 or 2 characters in it that are going to be disproportionately covered compared to other characters... I'd be all for all players, upon hitting rank 100 (and retroactively for those there), getting 5000HP as a welcome to SCL9 prize and the 6* tier to start with 6 characters in it.
MissChinch said: Qubort said: So introduce 6 stars when a tiny percent of people have a single fully covered 5 star? That makes perfect sense. They introduced silver surfer 2 years ago... now new players can be pulling their first LT with a ~15% chance to get a 5* within the first few weeks of playing...The issue is more that theres a traffic jam at the 4* tier, more characters coming in, poor 5* transition mechanism and a disproportionately small 5* tier compared to the tier below it... That transition needs to be smoothed out so the 4* tier doesn't get any worse, which would necessitate easier access to 5* characters and more 5* character releases (instead of 4*s). That's when a 6* tier would be necessary, and might as well start it up sooner rather than later so there isn't just 1 or 2 characters in it that are going to be disproportionately covered compared to other characters... I'd be all for all players, upon hitting rank 100 (and retroactively for those there), getting 5000HP as a welcome to SCL9 prize and the 6* tier to start with 6 characters in it.
Please, just stop.They'll roll out the 6* tier exactly like the 4* and 5* tier - one character at a time, spaced months apart.That's how they've always handled things, no reason to expect that to change.Surfer has been out since October 2015, that's about 18 months, not two years.No, we don't need the 6* tier.But we will get it once there are 25+ 5s, and they'll roll it out like all the other tiers.
Bowgentle said: MissChinch said: Qubort said: So introduce 6 stars when a tiny percent of people have a single fully covered 5 star? That makes perfect sense. They introduced silver surfer 2 years ago... now new players can be pulling their first LT with a ~15% chance to get a 5* within the first few weeks of playing...The issue is more that theres a traffic jam at the 4* tier, more characters coming in, poor 5* transition mechanism and a disproportionately small 5* tier compared to the tier below it... That transition needs to be smoothed out so the 4* tier doesn't get any worse, which would necessitate easier access to 5* characters and more 5* character releases (instead of 4*s). That's when a 6* tier would be necessary, and might as well start it up sooner rather than later so there isn't just 1 or 2 characters in it that are going to be disproportionately covered compared to other characters... I'd be all for all players, upon hitting rank 100 (and retroactively for those there), getting 5000HP as a welcome to SCL9 prize and the 6* tier to start with 6 characters in it. Please, just stop.They'll roll out the 6* tier exactly like the 4* and 5* tier - one character at a time, spaced months apart.That's how they've always handled things, no reason to expect that to change.Surfer has been out since October 2015, that's about 18 months, not two years.No, we don't need the 6* tier.But we will get it once there are 25+ 5s, and they'll roll it out like all the other tiers.
You're missing the point... completely.
The penultimate tier was much SMALLER when they introduced 5*s, so they're behind with letting people progress, and the 4* tier is going to continue to suffer for it.
Introducing 6*s by itself isn't going to fix anything. I'll start with the most immediate problem so its easier to follow.
Complaints have been rampant for months, first snarky comments that new 4* characters would never get covered, then complaints about dilution making new characters flat out less appealing because again it would be a long time before they're useful, then the fiasco around vaulting, all symptoms of a bad transition from 4* to 5*...
On the 5* tier side of things there have always been complaints about how infrequent the random the progress is and how difficult it is to cover characters... D3/Demi ended up using a split in tokens as a bandaid for the poor transition, so we got Latest Legends and Classic Legends and plenty of strategies on how to best game it to get useful covers. Additionally, the roll out was so slow of the 5*s that OML, PHX and SS were far more prevalent than any other characters and provided a dismally boring 5* game. The fact that the tier was so lopsidedly covered caused balancing issues, and led to the situation where a nerf to OML amounted to wrecking scaling and crushing gameplay because he was one of only 2 or 3 5* characters that had been around long enough for people to have substantially developed.
This wasn't some unavoidable issue or a problem that "just happens" because of the type of game, it took months of focused new 4* character releases coupled with a very poor 4*-5* transition mechanic to make it this bad.
We're looking at 50+ characters at the 4* tier already, each new character makes balancing that tier that much more difficult. Power creep is a necessity to keep interest in new characters, but its also going to obsolete old character. These gameplay problems, and all of the complaints on the forum will just continue to get worse with more 4* characters.
New character focus should have long ago switched to the 5* tier over the 4* tier. In order for this to be successful better mechanics, or tweaks to the existing mechanics, are needed for transitioning players from 4* into 5*.
Keep in mind that D3 and Demi would probably like to continue to make money, and they have a section of the user base interested in paying money for exclusivity... If they were to just make all the 5* content much easier to obtain by the majority then this section of the user base needs some way to continue to pay for premium content, THATS the reason a 6* tier is necessary.
Don't mistake my expectations for what D3/Demi SHOULD do, I absolutely expect them to roll a 6* tier out far too late and far too slowly, run into the exact same issues they ran into with the 5* tier, and while they drag their feet, I expect them to continue to feed the dumpster fire that is the 4* tier, occasionally throwing bandaids out like different types of tokens and vaulting, but not addressing the underlying problem that got em there in the first place.
On the plus side, I DO expect we'll actually get to see, first hand, more of the problems stagnating on the 4* tier will cause, making speculation unnecessary.