Fighting the bloat

Dormammu

A year ago I made the jump to 4-star land by champing my first. Today I champed my 30th 4-star. A year ago that would have put me at 75% of the tier champed. Today that puts me at just 50% of the 4-stars champed and I feel like I'm spinning my wheels against the bloat. I'm not making my roster any stronger, I'm just making it bigger.

Ugh.

JHawkInc

We really could use more stuff in the game that awards roster depth. Like a Gauntlet type event you tackle with no healing or health packs, where being able to field more total teams is beneficial. Or an "away mission" type thing where sending more (and higher level) characters increases the odds of success, so having very broad rosters lets you complete more of these missions successfully as you advance your roster.

Something to make it feel less like "bloat" and more like "utility."

smkspy

Dormammu said:

A year ago I made the jump to 4-star land by champing my first. Today I champed my 30th 4-star. A year ago that would have put me at 75% of the tier champed. Today that puts me at just 50% of the 4-stars champed and I feel like I'm spinning my wheels against the bloat. I'm not making my roster any stronger, I'm just making it bigger.

Ugh.

Stay in course, you'll get there. Champed my first Oct of last year. Today I champed my 56. 

But yes, all this game is about is making your roster bigger. Of those 56 champed, I probably use 12 at best on a regular basis.

LifeofAgony

Part of it is just the Pokémon gotta catch em all mentality - the majority of your roster will collect dust no matter what tier level you as there are varying levels of quality toons in each tier.  In 5* land, if you have champ gambit, you’re using gambit no matter how many or how high level your other 5s are. 

But they payoff for having all all of them champed is they continue feeding rewards to fuel your progress.  Keep pushing ahead, you’re well on your way.

Orion

It’s especially true for the 5* players. It’s just habit at this point to keep collecting and champing new 4*s.  Most of the newer 4*s, it’s doubtful I could even tell you what their powers are.  I used them as essentials in PvE and PvP but they didn’t do anything but be filler.

I would love for there to be an event that required you to use 20 or so characters with no healing.  Even then I would only use a handful of 4*s. But it’s better than what I’m doing now (Gambit, Gambit and more Gambit).

Pants1000

The Shield Training event does this a little, but it has generated plenty of complaints.  In the current event you get rewarded for having a high level Kingpin and Carnage.  Maybe they should expand on the event, so the rewards are better than a couple event tokens (well at least for the majority that don’t have 10+ covers for the latest 4*).

LifeofAgony

Orion said:

It’s especially true for the 5* players. It’s just habit at this point to keep collecting and champing new 4*s.  Most of the newer 4*s, it’s doubtful I could even tell you what their powers are.  I used them as essentials in PvE and PvP but they didn’t do anything but be filler.

I would love for there to be an event that required you to use 20 or so characters with no healing.  Even then I would only use a handful of 4*s. But it’s better than what I’m doing now (Gambit, Gambit and more Gambit).

There was - it was heroic pve.  I really wish it would be brought back.

BoyWonder1914

Before I slowed myself down by not really playing much over the holidays and spending time with my family, I was on a streak of champing a new 4-star character every Friday. Between rank increases, PVE clears and grinds, PVP progresssion, and champ levels the iso was just there. If the 4-stars on average come every 2 weeks, you should be able to catch up if you're only giving your iso to your 4s. But if you're also doing 5s, rechamping 3s, and managing a 2-star farm, then it truly becomes a hamster wheel. I'm trying to just power through the 4s THEN worry about other stuff, but more and more 3s keep reaching 266 and getting fully covered again. Still waiting to reach this magical "iso surplus" that 5-star players say occurs once you finally reach that finish line on the lower tiers. 

Spidurman27

The only way I'll ever see an ISO surplus is when I stop pulling CP/LTs.  When I've taken breaks to hoard, the ISO piles up incredibly fast.  As it stands, I'm always needing more for something.  Right now I have a 3* and two 4* waiting to champ, which is doable, especially since I have some excess 266s ready to churn.  

But no, most of the time when you see an ISO surplus, it comes from token management as much as anything.

Phumade

Spidurman27 said:

But no, most of the time when you see an ISO surplus, it comes from token management as much as anything.

This 1000% percent.  Add in managing your farms so they "ripen" at the right time, playing for seeds at the start of every LR.

This is beyond the scope for most players, but log your resources for a week or two so you can get daily avgs on your ISO, HP, CP flow.

Be incredibly consistent on your play.  There's a pretty broad sweet spot in the game that balances roster growth, resource acquistion, and time spent playing.

animaniactoo

Last year at this time I was just getting off the hamster wheel of cascading 3*s ready to champ, covers on the vine. It made me a bit nuts to be honest. I finished champing all my 3*s in about March and started working on the 4s. Since then I've managed to champ 19, plus champing all new releases for 3*s except for Angel currently sitting at 3/3/3.

So, I think I am definitely making progress that is at least slightly ahead of development pace. Within the next 10 days, I expect to finish off 2 more 4s (one almost there and one with a major deficit). I expect that at this point next year, I'll be looking at what I'm doing about 5*s, but since my best covered character is sitting at 4/5/1 with a 3/2/1 as the next most covered, I think life's going to be okay until then. That could all change if 5*s start being more accessible via progression rewards or other avenues, but right now the options are limited enough that I don't feel I'm going to run into a wall with it anytime soon.

Jarvind

If you do the DDQ daily, play every PVE to progression, and are in a decent alliance, you do get enough ISO and HP to outpace the new releases. It just takes a lot longer than it used to in order to catch up.

broll

BoyWonder1914 said:

Before I slowed myself down by not really playing much over the holidays and spending time with my family, I was on a streak of champing a new 4-star character every Friday. Between rank increases, PVE clears and grinds, PVP progresssion, and champ levels the iso was just there. If the 4-stars on average come every 2 weeks, you should be able to catch up if you're only giving your iso to your 4s. But if you're also doing 5s, rechamping 3s, and managing a 2-star farm, then it truly becomes a hamster wheel. I'm trying to just power through the 4s THEN worry about other stuff, but more and more 3s keep reaching 266 and getting fully covered again. Still waiting to reach this magical "iso surplus" that 5-star players say occurs once you finally reach that finish line on the lower tiers. 

It's actually on average every 3 weeks.  Every 2 weeks it's 4/4/5 so over a 6 week period 2 new 4*s are released hence every 3 weeks.  Based on my ISO income estimates it takes me about 7 days to earn the ISO for a champ so that holds with yours.  So you can champ 4*s 3 times as fast as they are released (not accounting for other ISO expenses like farming and 5* champs).  

It's totally possible to make headway the way the game is now.  I champed my first 4* less than a year ago and I have 75% of them champed today.  I expect to be at or near 100% in the next 6 months or less depending on how much ISO get's diverted to 3* farm and 5*s.

As noted by others the biggest thing there is hoarding and cover management.  For the vast majority of my 650+ days playing lack of covers was the barrier to 4*s.  Even once I crossed that it was typically champ the one or two at 13.  Then at some point I crossed the threshold to where most of my remaining 4*s were at or near 13 and ISO became the constraint. In both cases, cover scarcity and ISO scarcity hoarding is the biggest problem solver.  Hording during cover scarcity allows you to avoid any unexpected covers and focus the schedule provided by PvE progress, PvE Ranking (if you can), PvP progression, PvP Ranking (if you can), 3* champ rewards, BH (from HTs), and H4H.  Then once you do open your hoard all those characters you champed during the hoard get champ levels instead of 1000 ISO when you get covers.  Hoarding during ISO scarcity helps you maintain champing at a pace your ISO income can keep up with and again avoid cover waste which is always a huge negative.

I certainly am not at a point where I have any ISO surplus.  I passed the early game ISO surplus period and am pushing through to the eventual ISO surplus that comes once most are champed.  I suspect that period will come once you're in the 90-95% champed range just chasing new releases, 3* farm, and 5* champs.

abmoraz

JHawkInc said:

We really could use more stuff in the game that awards roster depth. Like a Gauntlet type event you tackle with no healing or health packs, where being able to field more total teams is beneficial. Or an "away mission" type thing where sending more (and higher level) characters increases the odds of success, so having very broad rosters lets you complete more of these missions successfully as you advance your roster.

Something to make it feel less like "bloat" and more like "utility."

I've suggested the following in the past... but here we go again:

To reward large rosters (and encourage others to increase roster size), all they have to do is turn every event into a "Heroic-style" event.  Now, before anyone gets all "go tinykitty yourself.  Heroic's suuuuck!", hear me out.  I didn't say "Heroic", but "Heroic-style".  Instead of the event specific ISO buffs that we currently get, D3 would stick to weekly buffs.  When we start an event (be it PVP, PVE, Lightning, Deadpool, etc...) we use our roster screen to "Assign toons to that mission".  How many and which ones are up to us. 

Once that toon is assigned to that mission, it cannot be used in other missions.  Do you really love your Panthos combo?  Gonna have to choose whether to use it in the PvE event or the PvP one.  Are you going to waste your Gambit on lightning rounds?  Sure, D4vers might be a required 4* for a given 7-day PvE, but would you rather have her available for the 3 PvEs that run during that time?

In Terms of storyline: I sent this team of heroes/villains out to deal with the Symbiote infestation that is the PvE event "Venom Bomb".  They aren't around to fight in the Versus Event "Predator and Prey".

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