The 5-star Pitfall

Dormammu

I like to look at other player's rosters in-game. It's an old habit I have from trying to sniff out trap teams in PvP and now it's become general curiosity. I especially like to look at anyone who attacks me, win or lose, and see what their roster looks like. MMR is a strange and mysterious thing and its sometimes surprising to see the ranges out there. One trend I've seen over and over and over is the leveling of under-covered 5-stars.

Today I scored a defensive win in the Krakadoom PvP and glanced at the player's roster. They had a few champed 2-stars, a slew of mid-covered 3-stars, a handful of one-to-two-cover 4-stars, and four 5-stars. Two of their 5-stars had three covers and the other two had one cover, but all four were leveled to their respective softcaps. This player and I should never see one another in PvP - with nearly forty champed 4-stars they don't stand a chance against me. Yet, because of (I assume) the fact that they've leveled their under-covered 5-stars, MMR deemed it appropriate to pair us off.

I see this all the time. In fact, it's rare I look at a roster and find a 5-star at base level 255. It doesn't seem to matter where the rest of their roster is - the 5-stars are almost always maxed out to their softcap.

I can only assume some of the reasons for this:

1) Ignorance. Players think 5 is bigger than all the other numbers so having them and leveling them must make their roster stronger.
2) ISO surplus. They haven't hit the ISO-deficit-wall yet and have nothing better to spend it on.
3) Trophy. That level 300 5-star looks pretty impressive to their alliance mates, huh?
4) PvE. Maybe those 5-stars help them play at a higher SCL level in PvE, I don't know. If nothing else they do impressive match damage and soak up a bit of damage.

Or maybe MPQ does a horrible job of gating and educating players in-game, because doing so would mean less $$$. I understand - give new players a taste of the big time so they want more covers. I can't blame the developers for that, I want this game to go on after all and the only way that happens is if its profitable.

But when I see these rosters I just want to scream at the player: don't you know what this is doing to your MMR?!?

broll

I certainly fell for #1 back in the day (thankfully I never soft capped higher than 270).  It's abhorrent to me that there's still nothing in game to educate people about MMR and how leveling 5*s early is dangerous.  At least now it's not as dangerous as it used to be with SCL based scaling in PvE.

Huntah86

I'm at the point where I could move into 5* land (already champed Parker and have fully covered Thanos, Starlord, Surfer, GG, BSSM, Thor and DD and I'm only 1 cover away from fully covering Phoenix) but I stay at 4* land until I have a Gambit or the Meta changes where I could compete (plus I'd want to champ at least 3 at the same time). Any 5* I have that's leveled at all besides Parker is strictly because of the 5* essential in PVE.  I know I'm in the minority though and the vast majority of people who have poorly covered yet softcapped 5* are those who just don't understand how much it hurts them in PVP.  I was that guy when I first started, I was just moving from 2* to 3* land when I got my first OML (I didn't even know what a 5* was at the time). I leveled him to 270 immediately and shortly after I got a BSSM which I also leveled immediately and then was in PVP hell.  I couldn't even begin to compete outside of using plenty of match damage boosts and just match damaging teams to death (and I was only seeing smaller 4* and decent level 3*).  It took me about 4 months to fix my mistake with 4* champs.

Wil88

Even knowing what it does to your MMR, I have had to hold myself back on several occasions from levelling up my 5*. It's hard to resist making use of that 9 or 10 cover character just taking up space. 

That being said, having a level 360 OML has been a lifesaver for PvE and it hasn't affected my MMR for PvP. But he's the only one I levelled. 

BoyWonder1914

I learned better than to sink ISO in them thanks to having a very supportive and well-versed alliance family, but I can definitely attest to #4. I pulled a yellow OML cover while I was still very early in the 2-3 star transition, and he proved absolutely invaluable, even as just a self-healing meat shield. This was before SCLs, but I still never leveled him above 255, so while my scaling did take somewhat of a hit, it was nothing that champed 3s couldn't handle at that time. Due to his rarity, I preferred to tough out the scaling jumps as I champed more characters rather than selling him for an easier time in the short term. I also saw him somewhat frequently in PVP; people would pair him with 3* IF, and once an ability was fired, OML's strikes plus IF's attack tile could chew threw my non-boosted 3-star rather easily. 

DAZ0273

I see this a lot also. I was messing around in one of the recent PvP's (can't remember which, think it was Loki) and trying out my new JJ red cover and I came across an enemy player with JJ in another colour (Blue) and so was intrigued what that was like to play against. They had levelled her up to 270 and also had I think a boosted Archangel with 2 covers or something. And then a loaner Loki. I took along an appropriate team that would win without instawinning but there was no way I should be fighting players of this level.

I mentioned it in another thread but one of the biggest "traps" for want of a better word is that initial ability to level up with only 1 cover with 5* characters. I haven't levelled any of mine beyond 260 and that was only for a little boost of health in 5* Essential nodes. There should be some sort of SR gating on doing that for lower players.

ThaRoadWarrior

There are a couple of design choices at play that lead to this. First and foremost, the game does nothing to tell you how you should be thinking about managing your roster. No gentle nudge in any direction beyond "level up, and move on to that next star tier asap." And the implication is that lower tier characters are obsolete after you get some newer ones. Playing the prologue, being what amounts to a PVE mission, reinforces this. Then, you get turned loose into the rest of the "real" game, and you are given the guidance: "hey, go fight in PVP for the good rewards!" and that's all you get about how to win in Versus mode.

Leveling a 5* does help you in PVE, particularly if you're a young roster and need to hide behind the HP pool and match damage. But the arcane intricacies of MMR are why so many people get frustrated with points based PVP. If there were any in-game guidance for that mode at all available to the average player, I'm sure people would complain much less and make smarter choices.

smkspy

Never fell for that trap. Heck, I don't even level max-covered fives until I'm ready to champ them. It is one of the first I try to advise new alliance who have done it to stop, since it really is a waste of iso even if they have a surplus.

Calnexin

The game doesn't tell you anything about "MMR".  You have to find that out the hard way.  I think that's a disservice to newer players.  They get some 5* covers and think it makes them more competitive in PvP, when in reality it makes them far less.

Some of them may be purposeful.  Although leveling those 5* ruins MMR, they become far more useful in PvE, particularly if you lack the weekly boosted 4*s.  I've leveled a few undercovered 5* (Gambit, Daredevil, Black Bolt) beyond their starting 255 because they gain a tremendous amount of health and damage capability that make some of the more difficult nodes a lot quicker.  It's a huge jump-start in that area of the game, when speed matters but your more organically growing roster can't handle the highest tier available to you.  It allows you to bootstrap that mode at the expense of being able to do much in PvP.

talleman

What if i level all my undercovered 5*s to 300 (got them all) would i see undercovered 5*s in my pvp then? Btw i got 23 4* champs but i rather fight undercovered 5*s than champed 4*s.

Dormammu

I level all my 5-stars to 270. I don't do this to use them, I do this so that they always fit in my roster above the 3-stars but below my champed 4-stars in a nice group.

mega ghost

Back before 5* characters and in the early days of 4* characters, I had X-Force Wolverine at about 6-8 covers and I made the mistake of softcapping him when I didn't even have any 3* characters maxed at 166 yet (this was before champing as well.) It made the game almost unplayable for me for months until I'd brought enough 3* characters within range of him. They've changed how MMR / scaling works since then, but it burned me so badly that to date I haven't put a drop of ISO into any 5* characters (for reference, I now have 37 champed 4* characters, and another 16 at 13 covers just waiting for ISO, so it would not be unreasonable for me to begin leveling my 5* roster.)

bluewolf

talleman said:

What if i level all my undercovered 5*s to 300 (got them all) would i see undercovered 5*s in my pvp then? Btw i got 23 4* champs but i rather fight undercovered 5*s than champed 4*s.

With 23 4* champs, it’s likely that every week you will have boosted champs. That will push your MMR into the range of facing other champ 4 rosters. Will you see undercovered 5’s?  Maybe. It depends what other people are running.  But I suspect you know that it’s better to use most champ 4’s over undercovered 5’s, and so do most other champ 4 players.

hopper1979

If they dont know they will do it because, and I don't blame them, higher 5's should win, they do not understand the match up scaling issue.  I run a very mellow alliance but my one rule is do not put levels in your 5's if you want to have fun.  I recently finished by 35 4 star I have 3 5's maxed (no Gambit, Thanos, BP or DD) and pvp sucks for me I cannot imagine somebody with an under-covered 3/4 roster getting thrown into the scaling mess I see. You should not put any levels into your 5's until you have every 3 covered, do not level another one until you have most of the 4 done, the scaling jump happens somewhere between 1-2 fully covered 5's.  Be warned

TimGunn

why don't they lock leveling 5 stars until you are SCL 6 or something?  

shardwick

The game could be fixed for pvp if there was an option to disable 5s prior to the start of a season so your roster would act similarly to a Heroic event. Instead of having brackets of 5,000 in a season it could be 2k-3k instead. Off season events would have this option too but lightning rounds would still be a free for all.

smkspy

Leveling undercovered fives isn't the problem though. Not having any semblance to a clear path of building those classic fives is...and no, the band-aid off feeders is not a viable solution.

Dormammu

smkspy said:

Leveling undercovered fives isn't the problem though. Not having any semblance to a clear path of building those classic fives is...and no, the band-aid off feeders is not a viable solution.

It is the problem if you're still in 2-star land. A path to classic 5-stars should be the least of your concerns at that point.

Borstock

The only thing I can say is that players who want to get real serious about the game tend to seek out forums like this one. They will then learn of the MMR issues and likely delete their 5* characters weighing them down. So, it's probably not the You and Me players that are seeing the rampant frustration.

Not that it's much consolation mind you.

Quebbster

TimGunn said:

why don't they lock leveling 5 stars until you are SCL 6 or something?  

They could lock out the Legendary Token stores until the player reaches a certain level... They'd be able to get CP and spend it on extra covers for three- and fourstar characters, but not buy LTs... No risk of getting fivestar characters then.

Roland113

I'll just take a moment to agree that option 1, ignorance, caused me to level my Jean Grey Phoenix to level 285 when the opportunity arose, I even leveled IM to level 270.  It wasn't until sometime after that that I learned that I should in fact, not, raise my strongest character to as high of a level as I could.

I will say a couple of things though.  I rarely if ever play PvP so I really didn't notice the problem.  Jean really pulled me through a lot of matches early on.  At the time if you had told me I had made a mistake, I'd have vehemently disagreed.

Ironically enough, it's what, two and a half years since I started playing and my Level 285 Jean Grey Phoenix is still my highest leveled character, though Coulsen, Agent Venom and Gamora are all at Level 282,  When someone passes Jean, it will be the end of an era so to speak.