Replicant

MissoesRicRose

To this day I'm trying to understand why the game has:

Thor **; Thor ***

Elektra ***; Elektra ****

Thanos ***; Thanos *****

If it has no difference at all. They only do more damage. Because instead of so much repetition (which no one tolerates anymore). Do not add characters that are still outside.

abmoraz

While you are mostly correct, there are some minor differences between the 2 Elektras (ballet of death vs crippling blow) and the 2 Thanos (stun vs no stun, lock the board vs not) you listed.

If we are not counting the minor differences between chars, you missed:
Storm (* and ***)
Captain America (** and ***) (*** can replace any tile with his powers, not just basic tiles)
Star Lord (*** and *****)
Gambit (*** and *****)
Dr Strange (*** and *****)  (*** yellow heals, ***** yellow doesn't, but also has an active power)
Human Torch (** and ***)

broll

Because it's much faster, and cheaper to copy a character.  That's all it is.  It's a way to keep the new character treadmill at 11 so people keep throwing money at it to keep up while also doing less work.

redviper85

Probably because it is poor marketing to say " hey look at this, new player, you can play with this shinny new 5* Thanos/Gambit/Starlord with 2 short years of grinding." No one will want to start playing if the the new character is so far from unattainable. At least you can play with the slightly inferior version until you get to the big bad one. 

Jaedenkaal

abmoraz said:

While you are mostly correct, there are some minor differences between the 2 Elektras (ballet of death vs crippling blow) and the 2 Thanos (stun vs no stun, lock the board vs not) you listed.

If we are not counting the minor differences between chars, you missed:
Storm (* and ***)
Captain America (** and ***) (*** can replace any tile with his powers, not just basic tiles)
Star Lord (*** and *****)
Gambit (*** and *****)
Dr Strange (*** and *****)  (*** yellow heals, ***** yellow doesn't, but also has an active power)
Human Torch (** and ***)

Strictly speaking, 2* Steve can also replace all tiles with his Red and Blue powers. The -actual- difference is that 3* Steve does actual damage with Red, and his Blue leaves behind a Protect tile when it expires.

The stated explanation is that the so-called (by the forum) "lazy" characters allow D3 to add more characters to the game than if every character was a unique design. They got a lot of negative feedback from the community about it when they tried it initially (they even made a new "gold" 3* rarity for it), and they abandoned that plan fairly quickly; I think Human Torch was the last, and he was actually the reverse; the 3* first and the 2* second.

There's also a secondary benefit, especially for the latest 3*/5* releases, that newer players can experience rostering and playing with (for example) Thanos before they progress to the 5* tier of play, which is, presumably, pretty far away for a lot of players. 

So, although you can certainly choose to view them as being laziness on the part of the designers/developers, I think it would be more correct to treat them as 'bonus' characters. I think it's incorrect to assume that we're getting the simultaneous release of a 3* variant of a 5* instead of another 3*. I think it's far closer to the truth that we're getting that 3* variant instead of nothing.