Getting a bit sick of MPQ... kinda

Palookaville

Arphaxad said:

They need a SCL that doesn't allow 5 stars in PvP. Since champing Doc Oc, my first 5 star champ, I haven't played PvP. It's nothing but a health pack drain now with little to no variety.

Yes!

That would be a great addition to the game!
I would gladly take scaled down rewards if it mean't not facing 5*s.

granne

PvP with one 5* will depend a lot on which 5*. I have Thor as my only champ, and it's actually fun. That's not to say I don't see the Gambit wall - I do, but there are plenty of other targets and Gambit is beatable by Thor.

My advice would be to grin and bear it until you can get a second (and third), and either hoard for a while or just pull exclusively from Latests. With a few notable exceptions, newer releases tend to be stronger and/or more versatile.

Another trick is not to use your 5* from the start. Begin your climb with your boosted 4*s and you'll be largely invisible to double 5* teams to start with.

veny

I tried PvP after i abandoned it in 4* times... maaan, with champed OML and Phoenix, i am losing even at 0-200 points. You really need as much 5*s as possible to choose from, BUT, two problems:
1) They dont drop. With every 5* released, the chance for specific 5* is getting lower and lower.
2) Lack of ISO - most of players can barely earn enough ISO to upgrade more than just 4*s that are comming once every 3-4 weeks.

PvP system is flawed. It cannot handle 5* lack of ballance and increased fight lenght. Briefly said, weaker players had/have better chances in PvP, matches were faster, characters available and not hidden behind paywall.

I can see some easy solutions to this, that would turn PvP into more player friendly game, but i am afraid things will remain unchanged, so there is no reason for me to face the frustration of PvP again.

vinsensual

There's NOTHING in the game to warn a player about 5* mmr and it continues to be the worst problem for newer players.  At least with expiring covers there's an in game 14 day counter for each cover.  There's no "here there be dragons" popup when players get perilously close to the invisible line somewhere right before 400.  

Just add in a de-leveling feature and charge double the iso it took to get there.  They've done so much to "protect" new players from themselves, but nothing about keeping their 5s below some magic number or else they're screwed.  

tiomono

Daredevil217 said:

tiomono said:

@Daredevil217

Where did the devs say they would nerf gambit?

Will said:

“Trying to narrow the gap between the strongest character and the rest of the pack while keeping the strongest character the strongest is what we attempted to do with the recent Gambit rebalance, and that didn't successfully shake up strategy.”

Brigby said:

“It's certainly apparent to us that Gambit (Classic)'s strength is one that's a hot-topic issue for players, and I can understand why seeing these sparse season updates can be frustrating. While I don't have any details to provide just yet, what I can say though is that it's reasonable to assume that development time usually devoted to working on season updates (character buffs, system reboot, etc etc.) has been allocated towards a different aspect of the game. Thank you all for being so patient.”

While not 100% confirmation I can’t read those and not think a big nerf is coming 

I don't think big nerf from those statements though. It seems like they are not looking to gut a character again like they have in the past.

Daredevil217

tiomono said:

Daredevil217 said:

tiomono said:

@Daredevil217

Where did the devs say they would nerf gambit?

Will said:

“Trying to narrow the gap between the strongest character and the rest of the pack while keeping the strongest character the strongest is what we attempted to do with the recent Gambit rebalance, and that didn't successfully shake up strategy.”

Brigby said:

“It's certainly apparent to us that Gambit (Classic)'s strength is one that's a hot-topic issue for players, and I can understand why seeing these sparse season updates can be frustrating. While I don't have any details to provide just yet, what I can say though is that it's reasonable to assume that development time usually devoted to working on season updates (character buffs, system reboot, etc etc.) has been allocated towards a different aspect of the game. Thank you all for being so patient.”

While not 100% confirmation I can’t read those and not think a big nerf is coming 

I don't think big nerf from those statements though. It seems like they are not looking to gut a character again like they have in the past.

I don’t think they intended to gut any character they nerfed. I doubt they said, “hey, you know what would be fun?  Let’s make 3* Gambit one of the worst in the tier!” But regardless of their intentions, I don’t trust them to nerf him and not gut him. While they could finally get it right this time, I wouldn’t stake my MMR on it.  I’d rather wait and see and even lose a Gambit champ level. That risk seems much safer to me than ending up like all those people who had OML as their only champs and were stuck in 5* hell after he was gutted (and that’s when the meta has already passed him by mind you). 

Jarvind

I sold my 5*s the first time I covered a few and champed them. The constant repetition and the dramatically increased difficulty in PVP made it miserable and I missed using my loads of 4* champions regularly.

I dove back in with Gambit and am now up to 6 champed 5*s (Gambit, Phoenix, Widow, Hulk, Parker, and Daredevil) and it frankly still sucks. I still use Gambit/Parker for everything because the other characters just aren't as good. It's slightly more bearable this time around because Gambit trivializes so many opponents, but it's still boring as hell. 

I'm two Medusa covers away from finishing Black Bolt, but I don't feel like having the almighty Gambolt will really fix the problem, which is that the 5* game is just incredibly stale. It desperately needs new mechanics to balance out or mix up the rhythm, and I don't just mean new characters that create protect tiles when it's a full moon on a Wednesday or whatever. We need to be able to upgrade characters in ways other than just levels, or customize the way their powers work, or something.

Right now it's just matchmatchmatch until the first opponent is dead, then liquefy the other two with a flurry of powers. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. And as always, forget about placement in PVP unless you do that shield check nonsense, which is basically standing in line to win.

I've gone from hitting 900 in every PVP and full progression every PVE to basically just doing the DDQ most days. Hell, I don't even do the full DDQ - just the Burrito, required character and Enchilada nodes. Could be I've just been playing too long and I'm burned out, but the drudgery of 5* play has definitely been the catalyst.

Daredevil217

^^^^^

Thank you for reminding me why I’m staying in the 4* tier!  I love the variability and fun factor that comes with mixing and matching my 4*s. Such a fun tier.

Including Valkyrie, I’m only 2.1 million iso away from finishing the 4* tier- just her and 6 classics left (unfortunately I’m like 5.5 million away from finishing out the 3* dupes). When I finally get to that place where my 4s are done, it’d be nice to soft cap my 5s to play with my 4s rather than replace them. I shudder thinking about having to play with the same two characters every PVE and PVP. 

Jexman

At what level can you soft cap 5 stars and not change your MMR? Think mostly full 4 star roster for the baseline. Can you take them all to 300? 330? 360?

Crnch73

I’m there with you. I am going through the motions, just hoarding LTs and CP until angel leaves the latest, in hopes that I have enough to get one of the latest 3 champed. 

But overall, yea it’s getting stale. So many 4s and 5s and a fairly difficult and unpredictable way to acquire them. It feels like my goal should be to just focus on one character and go all-in for them, because trying to acquire multiple characters is a daunting task. 

My disdain is at a low level though. I loved the game back when I started, and the same things I loved then are still around. But all nice things lose their luster after a while. I often feel like the developers are happy with whatever revenue they can generate from new character releases, and to try to make big game changing moves would cost more money for them, so why do it. They have/had a great product, now we are just coasting here. There was so much momentum that it’s still moving in the right direction, but our speed is coming to an ever increasing slowdown. 

evade420

Jexman said:

At what level can you soft cap 5 stars and not change your MMR? Think mostly full 4 star roster for the baseline. Can you take them all to 300? 330? 360?

If memory serves you are probably good to take 1 or 2 5*s to 360 but I don't think its a good idea to do more than that , unless you have around 10 4*s around lvl 320 or higher 

SnagglePuss

.Jexman said:

At what level can you soft cap 5 stars and not change your MMR? Think mostly full 4 star roster for the baseline. Can you take them all to 300? 330? 360?

Keep the 5* around / under 360.
With enough champed 4* they should be boosted past 370 so will keep you in 4* mmr tier. You will however be placed at the top end of the 4* tier, so will run into a wall of Whatever the two best boosted 4* for the week is.

one Champed 5* and the rest under 360, with plenty of champed 4s, is an okay MMR band to be in, depending on who the 5* is (doesn't need to be top tier). It use to have the widest MMR range offering 4s, all the way to single champed 5s.

The original poster.
If your 4s are big enough then you can try using your 4s ONLY (no 5s). You will be facing off against 5* teams, but you will be hidden from double champed 5* mmr qs, other than retals or when mmr bands changed/the bracket is dry. Switch to 5s closer to the end / above 700/800. One annoying thing is that you are visibile to 4* mmr band, but you can't q them.

Daredevil217

Jexman said:

At what level can you soft cap 5 stars and not change your MMR? Think mostly full 4 star roster for the baseline. Can you take them all to 300? 330? 360?

For me I’m just going to go to the level of my highest 4. Right now that’s Vulture (303), Captain Marvel (297) and Gamora (295)... so if I were to do it today it’d be 300 (something about those even numbers). My lowest are Rider and Gwenpool at 273 (just champed today and yesterday). If I bumped all my 5s to 360 I’d fear having to play just them in Sim- and Sim is where I have the MOST fun with my random 4* combos. 

Jexman

yeah I already have two 5 stars at 360 & one at 345 & I hit a wall of buffed champed 4 stars around 400 or so, but I can beat those pretty readily because I have almost all the 4 stars champed at this point. After, what, two years, though, I'm itchy to use the 5 stars I have, and it's a bummer that I can't without making PVP suck more than it already does (which is not that much except for the lousy rewards relative to PVE).