What is the logic behind the 5 star essential rotation?

TheSeven

Last week (or was it the week before?) Brigby explained the 5 star essential rotation (hope I remembered this correctly, because I can’t seem to locate the post):

• 3 latest;
  
• 2 classics;
  
• rinse and repeat.

I’m looking for the logic behind this, but I can’t find it. 

Since 5 stars are earned entirely by luck, I would have thought it kinder to simply rotate through every 5 star BUT the latest. That would give everyone 3 to 4 seasons to build their latest 5 stars before they need to use them. The current system ties PvE success to 5 star RNG luck – anyone who has been lucky enough to draw a Gambit (or whatever the new shiny is) will finish ahead and earn more resources than those who have not – which can’t be good for the game.

I can’t see this increasing spending. I can’t think of a culture shift they might be trying to impose. I’m not trying to be critical. It’s just that normally, even if I don’t like their logic, I can find it. This time I’m at a loss. Maybe someone can explain the reasoning behind choosing to do things this way?

Dormammu

I dunno about any of that, but I have to smile at the developers for putting a 5-star essential node featuring Black Bolt against three goons in an event where he and 5Gambit are both boosted. It's like they are winking at the whales and saying, "Here, have fun slaughtering this node on us. Thanks for all the cash."

TPF Alexis

Dormammu said:

I dunno about any of that, but I have to smile at the developers for putting a 5-star essential node featuring Black Bolt against three goons in an event where he and 5Gambit are both boosted. It's like they are winking at the whales and saying, "Here, have fun slaughtering this node on us. Thanks for all the cash."

I added Strange just for kicks

bluewolf

Here is the nice way to think about it:  You are far, far more likely to pull a cover for a specific character for a 5* from Latest than Classic.  If you are a newer player, you may not have several Classic 5's.  But you can pretty easily get at least one Latest cover for each character.  For younger rosters (playing, for example, in SCL7), they can get by with 1-2 covers without much problem.

If you are playing at higher SCL's, having less covers is harder, but each player can try to decide which SCL to play based on their covers.  It's actually pretty fair to the players overall.

As to why 5's are required at all, I think they wanted to make them more appealing to roster (after SCL scaling made the 5 tier less detrimental for PVE, the 5E makes it a benefit to have them rostered.)

I agree that the goal was not to increase spending.  They will not acknowledge that the Classic 5's are basically stuck in never never land as dilution increases every month.  Maybe some day they will increase the pull rate or something.  (Although that would mess up 4* transitioners who don't want a bunch of 5's, so the devs are kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place there.)

Only a fool would whale to try to cover 5's from Classic.  Or someone that has so much to spend, they would probably be better off just buying the dev and making them give them the roster they want.

wymtime

They are putting latest into the 5* essentials because they don’t like the fact that so many players are hoarding tokens and CP waiting for 5* they want.  This way if players want to play at higher CL to get the better rewards and CP they better pull their latest tokens.  The devs don’t want players to hoard and it cost so much to level a 5* they think it is fun to decide who should I level and which extra covers should I sell because I can’t champion all of them.