'Tis the "Season"

Ed_Dragonrider

Hi All!

So it seem to me, 'tis the season when wishes do come true around here (we just need to ask often enough); Dazzler and Kitty, increase in Riso and even an update to the resupply.
So I'd like to raise a topic too. I looked back on the forums here, and I know I'm not the first to push for this, but it's been a while now, and if the devs really are listening, and in a wish granting mood, then maybe this is the best time.

So once again: please sort out and update the 3* to 4* feeders please!

Currently there are 5 pairs of characters that give champ reward covers for the same 4* characters. Namely:

Angel + Beast ----> Jean Grey

Colossus + Wolverine ----> Wolverine X-Force

Daken + Ragnarok ----> X-23

Daredevil + Elektra ----> Elektra

Gamora + Star Lord ----> Star Lord

Now dilution being the big (and ever increasing) problem that it is, and the 4* tier being almost twice the size of the 3* one, having five of these characters give different 4*s instead, would be really helpful, much appreciated and an answer to many of our prayers/grumbles.

I know this might bring up a lot of issues, but properly communicating this well in advance, both on forums and in-game would allow everyone to make their decisions and in the long run can only benefit the game. We have save covers now, for those who would hold off on champing to get the new covers, and the BH feature would allow others to finish off what they were building with the old version. Even if "retroactively" comes into it, we are only talking 3 covers (per character), not 6 like with 4* changes.

Unless this is already in the works for a surprise anniversary gift to us all, this obviously won't be done any time soon. But perhaps for X-mas? New Year? Before the turn of the century?
And it doesn't need to be done all at once either, just change 1 or 2 now (this year) and then the others next year sometime.

There are so so many possibilities even if we go with the 'thematically makes sense' approach, and if that is not a concern (see thanos --> spider woman) then options are nearly endless.

For myself I would change:
 Beast --> Nightcrawler (if we need an excuse: both are x-men and both are blue  )
 Colossus --> Emma Frost (again both x-men, both impenetrable skin)
 Ragnarok --> Ghost (both villains)
 Gamora --> Nebula (sisters)
Daredevil ---> just about any other hero (pull it out of a hat.... )

Of course there could be many other variations, but point is: Please do something!!

Thank you

shardwick

I think they've talked about this already and that they didn't really want to change things up anymore because they know that people are working towards a specific cover with bonus heroes. I mean let's say that you're working on your St4r Lord and you just need one more red cover to finish him off. Well, you got the red cover from 3* SL already and you're about 15 covers away from getting his red cover from Gamora. Devs announce that they changed Gamora to now feed Nebula instead of 4* SL. Do you think that you'd be pissed? I know I would.

If it was me I would change things up so that players could choose who they wanted characters to feed and it would primarily go based upon affiliations. You have a champed XF Wolvie so you could have your Colossus feed Jubilee a cover at 183, Jubilee at 223 and then Professor X at 266. And for characters that only have a vague affiliation like Heroes they could feed a handful of different characters like 3* Guardian of the Galaxy characters feeding 4* GotG characters plus Nebula. 

AndiTi

shardwick said:

I think they've talked about this already and that they didn't really want to change things up anymore because they know that people are working towards a specific cover with bonus heroes. I mean let's say that you're working on your St4r Lord and you just need one more red cover to finish him off. Well, you got the red cover from 3* SL already and you're about 15 covers away from getting his red cover from Gamora. Devs announce that they changed Gamora to now feed Nebula instead of 4* SL. Do you think that you'd be pissed? I know I would.

If it was me I would change things up so that players could choose who they wanted characters to feed and it would primarily go based upon affiliations. You have a champed XF Wolvie so you could have your Colossus feed Jubilee a cover at 183, Jubilee at 223 and then Professor X at 266. And for characters that only have a vague affiliation like Heroes they could feed a handful of different characters like 3* Guardian of the Galaxy characters feeding 4* GotG characters plus Nebula. 

I am in the exact situation shardwick indicated (except my Gamora is 23 covers short, but close enough) and yeah, if you are going to make a change like this you need to give a lot of notice. That said, I do agree with the basic premise. It would be nice to not have replication and more diversity. 

shardwick

AndiTi said:

shardwick said:

I think they've talked about this already and that they didn't really want to change things up anymore because they know that people are working towards a specific cover with bonus heroes. I mean let's say that you're working on your St4r Lord and you just need one more red cover to finish him off. Well, you got the red cover from 3* SL already and you're about 15 covers away from getting his red cover from Gamora. Devs announce that they changed Gamora to now feed Nebula instead of 4* SL. Do you think that you'd be pissed? I know I would.

If it was me I would change things up so that players could choose who they wanted characters to feed and it would primarily go based upon affiliations. You have a champed XF Wolvie so you could have your Colossus feed Jubilee a cover at 183, Jubilee at 223 and then Professor X at 266. And for characters that only have a vague affiliation like Heroes they could feed a handful of different characters like 3* Guardian of the Galaxy characters feeding 4* GotG characters plus Nebula. 

I am in the exact situation shardwick indicated (except my Gamora is 23 covers short, but close enough) and yeah, if you are going to make a change like this you need to give a lot of notice. That said, I do agree with the basic premise. It would be nice to not have replication and more diversity. 

I remember a similar topic came up earlier this year and people wanted Gamora to feed G4mora instead of Star Lord and it was right before a new season started. I was like if these fools end up costing me one of my last St4r Lord covers...

Dragon_Nexus

Why would 3* Gamora not lead to 4* Gamora?

I honestly see Beast leading to Jubilee.

Colossus should lead to Dazzler because *someone* needs to.

Ragnarok...dunno. Anyone's good, really.

Daredevil should link to 5* Daredevil. Because I can't think of anyone else thematic for him.

tiomono

Dragon_Nexus said:

Daredevil should link to 5* Daredevil. Because I can't think of anyone else thematic for him.

Hmmm.... yup, no thematic ties to daredevil from bullseye or kingpin. 3* daredevil also has absolutely no connection to electra. Nope none at all. (Sorry couldn't resist)

Back on topic.

Not every character needs to have a thematic connection in my opinion. But there should not be 2 3 stars giving the same 4 star when there is a larger number of 4 stars in the game.

Any change they make along these lines will upset someone. And not making any change will also upset someone. It's a no win situation for the devs. 

Ed_Dragonrider

tiomono said:

Not every character needs to have a thematic connection in my opinion. But there should not be 2 3 stars giving the same 4 star when there is a larger number of 4 stars in the game.

Exactly! Thanos ---> Spider Woman. Not every character has a thematic connection already. You would need to redo the entire tier to make it make sense. Like having Thanos --> G4mora (-->5*Thanos), have Gamora give Nebula or 4Grocket and then have Daredevil ---> Spider Woman, just so she doesn't loose a feeder. No way will they shuffle everything around that much just for connection sake. And if we don't care about connections, then there really are endless choices.

Any change they make along these lines will upset someone. And not making any change will also upset someone. It's a no win situation for the devs. 

True that, and I get what the others are saying too, but with dilution, this is more like a continuously festering situation, that is only going to get worse over time. 
This was why I was advocating for a slow and gradual, but do something solution. They don't need to do all of them at once (no sense in pulling the rug from under 5 characters at the same time), and given enough notice time, people could finish (or hold off on) whatever they are doing.
I mean, if they announced now, in october that they will do this from say xmas or jan 1, that would give 2-3 months to do whatever. Would that really not be enough??

Would be nice to hear something from the official side too.

Ptahhotep

With the disparity in numbers between 3* and 4* characters it would be better if each 3* fed two 4* characters. There are sufficient LT awards in 3* champ levels to fit in a second set of 4* covers.

Ed_Dragonrider

Ptahhotep said:

With the disparity in numbers between 3* and 4* characters it would be better if each 3* fed two 4* characters. There are sufficient LT awards in 3* champ levels to fit in a second set of 4* covers.

Having covers for two characters would be even better, but i'm not sure people would like to replace LTs with a fix 4* cover. Not at this lvl. After all, you might get a 5* out of an LT which is even better.
I personally wouldn't mind.

Ptahhotep

Ed_Dragonrider said:

Ptahhotep said:

With the disparity in numbers between 3* and 4* characters it would be better if each 3* fed two 4* characters. There are sufficient LT awards in 3* champ levels to fit in a second set of 4* covers.

Having covers for two characters would be even better, but i'm not sure people would like to replace LTs with a fix 4* cover. Not at this lvl. After all, you might get a 5* out of an LT which is even better.
I personally wouldn't mind.

As a player I would like it best if three of the lesser rewards were replaced by 4* covers, but as a realist I recognise that the devs would replace the tokens that give a guaranteed 4* as that doesn’t change the economy. At best I would only expect to see the covers replacing two legendary and one heroic token if some compensation were to be included for the loss of the chance at a 5*.
Personally I would prefer to have specific covers as that offsets the vagaries of RNG when trying to cover characters to some extent.

BigSoftieFF

Much rather keep LT’s than get 3 additional 4* covers. Kill off 3 250 iSo rewards and I’m in.

nippy

Stop your griping... the system has been setup, so people have already changed setup their feeder system.  But since this is an inconvenience to one person, let's go ahead and screw thousands of players.  As long as we please one person.  /s

nippy

while we are at it, can we change the title header, to reflect topic instead of another gatcha header

BoyWonder1914

tiomono said:

Any change they make along these lines will upset someone. And not making any change will also upset someone. It's a no win situation for the devs. 

I honestly think people are just going to have to get over it. Not updating these champ reward tracks AT ALL is much more detrimental to the longevity of the game than just leaving things the way they are because John Doe is 2 covers away from his 13th Jean Grey cover and will get upset. 3*/4* covers are not THAT hard to obtain in this day and age of MPQ, where it truly sets your roster progression plans back because you didn't get 1 feeder cover. Bonus Heroes and Saved Covers will ensure that your efforts are rewarded one way or another. The 3-star tier isn't growing at even a quarter of the rate the 4-star tier is, so something needs to give here. As long as they announce it well enough in advance, you should have ample time to figure out another strategy for getting said cover. 

Shintok17

Dragon_Nexus said:

Why would 3* Gamora not lead to 4* Gamora?

I honestly see Beast leading to Jubilee.

Colossus should lead to Dazzler because *someone* needs to.

Ragnarok...dunno. Anyone's good, really.

Daredevil should link to 5* Daredevil. Because I can't think of anyone else thematic for him.

I have the same question with Why would 3* Rocket & Groot not feed 4* Rocket & Groot? Some of the 3* to 4* Feeders are so obvious, but not to the Developers. Most of the older 4*'s don't even have feeders, but some 4*'s have 2 to 3 feeders. Just take some of those and give them to the ones that don't have feeders.

Jwallyr

I agree that with significant lead time, players would be in a position to decide whether they're "close enough" to leave the BH, get that one last feeder cover and switch to the new feeder, or just go ahead and swap in advance. If I were just a few covers away from popping out a new feeder I would probably stick it out (BH 3s are relatively common, and the non-BH-3s aren't super rare either) but if I had just gotten one, swapping to the new feeder would let me get ahead of the game.

A related problem that's not 100% addressed here is that some of the absolute best 4s in the game (Gamora, Rocket & Groot, America Chavez, Vulture) are going unfed while some pretty terrible 4s are fed (Kingpin, Elektra, XFW). It's an incredible slog to try and get some of these extremely high-tier 4s up and running, and I had the good fortune even to be playing back when "Latest 4s" was still a thing, so I had a big head start on America and Vulture. Even so, getting the insanely easy, massively front-loaded pvp combo of Medusa/R&G/Gamora online is a monumental undertaking, with only Medusa being fed. Spreading the feeders out and having a few of the 3s directly feed their 4star cousins would open that combo up to newer players, so at least we could abuse that cheesy combo.

Quebbster

Shintok17 said:

Most of the older 4*'s don't even have feeders, but some 4*'s have 2 to 3 feeders. Just take some of those and give them to the ones that don't have feeders.

The reason some fourstars have two feeders (I don't Think any fourstar has Three feeders, feel free to prove me wrong though) is that when the threestar champion rewards were set there were more threestars than fourstars, so it was only natural to double up on some. It's the newer fourstars that do not have feeders, the oldest fourstar without a feeder I could find was Spider-Gwen, released in February 2016. Second oldest was Agent Venom, released in November 2016. After that it admittedly gets a bit spotty, the last update to the champion rewards was a year and a half ago in April 2017 (https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/63653/champion-reward-update-for-select-3-stars-4-21-17/), so any fourstar released after that could only get a feeder through a newly released threestar (Rogue, I am looking at you). That update was made a month after they changed fourstar draw odds to only have the latest twelve fourstars available in tokens (https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/60256/new-feature-bonus-heroes-updated-3-1-17#latest), so maybe they figured you could get the new guys easily enough through tokens and you had feeders and bonus heroes for the older ones. I do not know. I would absolutely welcome updates to the champion rewards though.

AndiTi

Three days after I posted I pulled my last red St4rlord cover. Clearly I need to whine on the boards more often when in those situations, it works 😂

MissoesRicRose

I would also like to add:
some x-men -> Archangel 
Deadpool -> Cable
Kraven -> Dr.Octopus
Mordo -> Dr.Strange
Rogue -> Gambit
Ghost Rider -> Ghost Rider
Luke Cage -> Jessica Jones
Prof X -> Kitty Pryde
Invisible Woman -> Silver Surfer
Spider-Man Infinity or Venom -> Spider-Man Black
Hulk -> Hulk B.Banner

BoyWonder1914

MissoesRicRose said:

I would also like to add:
some x-men -> Archangel 
Deadpool -> Cable
Kraven -> Dr.Octopus
Mordo -> Dr.Strange
Rogue -> Gambit
Ghost Rider -> Ghost Rider
Luke Cage -> Jessica Jones
Prof X -> Kitty Pryde
Invisible Woman -> Silver Surfer
Spider-Man Infinity or Venom -> Spider-Man Black
Hulk -> Hulk B.Banner

They addressed that one a while back