4* releases are now a waste of everyone's time and money.

Vhailorx
Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
edited June 2019 in MPQ General Discussion
Prompted by polares in another thread, I want to raise this topic on its own.

As the topic states: 4* releases are no longer net positive value for mpq.  The tier is full.  Even good new 4*s like ronin and black cat are useless for most vets because a 270 4* is almost never better than a good 340+ 4* from 2017.  In order to be useful, new releases have to have unique interactions with 5*s like okoye (e.g. sabretooth) or be so stupidly broken that they can cannot be ignored (e.g. bishop).  and that means extreme power creep.

And the problem is worse for transitioners.  More 4*s just make life harder for newer players as dilution becomes a real problem and it's impossible to cover and level a viable stable of 4*s without carefully targeted spending.

So it seems increasingly clear to me that the writing is on the wall, the horses are out of the barn, and the 4* tier is dead.  More characters won't solve the problem, in fact they just make everything worse.  Retire 4* land, make 5*s/cp easier to get, and move on to a new trophy tier.

Perhaps this was the intent behind introducing supports in 2018?  And Demi just thinks it failed?  Whatever the case may be, it's past time to make this move. 
«134

Comments

  • Greenroom
    Greenroom Posts: 71 Match Maker
    Vhailorx said:

    And the problem is worse for transitioners.  More 4*s just make life harder for newer players as dilution becomes a real problem and it's impossible to cover and level a viable stable of 4*s without carefully targeted spending.
    Im about 430 days in and it is possible without much spending. I have  6 champed 4s and 6 more to roster to have all of the non-limited characters and ive only spent $20 or so to keep bonuses active. 

    I was lucky and signed up just as  Okoye was released and stupidly pulled all my tokens as they came in and got 5 in her black making transitions from tier to tier much easier. 

    I have sacrificed a lot of hours though and dont know how far I'll actually go with it. The future 4 to 5 jump seems impossible 
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    Greenroom said:
    Vhailorx said:

    And the problem is worse for transitioners.  More 4*s just make life harder for newer players as dilution becomes a real problem and it's impossible to cover and level a viable stable of 4*s without carefully targeted spending.
    Im about 430 days in and it is possible without much spending. I have  6 champed 4s and 6 more to roster to have all of the non-limited characters and ive only spent $20 or so to keep bonuses active. 

    I was lucky and signed up just as  Okoye was released and stupidly pulled all my tokens as they came in and got 5 in her black making transitions from tier to tier much easier. 

    I have sacrificed a lot of hours though and dont know how far I'll actually go with it. The future 4 to 5 jump seems impossible 
    Okoye was released more than 12 months ago.  And during your first 18 weeks playing the game, you managed to pull 5 covers for one of the 3 most important powers in the game (along with Thor green and kitty yellow).  I think that makes you (i) not really a newer player, and (ii) hardly and example of the typical player experience during the early phases of the game.

    Do you think that having 5 black covers for okoye might possibly have affected the speed with which youbuave progressed?

    Also, (and this is totally honest question because the world was totally different when I made the 4* transition) how useful are 6x 4* champs these day. Are they boosted often?  Which 6 do you have? Do regular 4* PvP events help, or hurt you?  How much do you play now?
  • Greenroom
    Greenroom Posts: 71 Match Maker
    Thats why i included the Okoye factor. I consider myself super lucky. Without that black I'd probably have given up months ago.

    First champ 4* was Medusa and second was Carnage so again, i may be a serious outlier as they pair perfect with Okoye. 

    I make it to 900 for the 4* cover in any PVP by climbing with Medusa and Okoye then i try and float with her and Bishop on defense. Its been a bonus for awhile too not have the required 4 leveled because the loaner doesnt eat health packs. Things get nore interesting with a semi but still low ranking 4.

    Max clear all PVE and all pvp to 575 or 900 depending on the cover.

    I guess my point was you can do it with luck instead of money but i readily admit you need one or the other. 
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited June 2019
    Borstock said:
    Dilution is a problem thread #6,486. 
    You misread me borstock.  Dilution is a separate problem.  It would be relatively easy to solve in a variety of ways if it were the only issue with the 4* tier. (Two solutions already in the game would be a latest/vintage split like with 5*s, or periodic special offers)

    My point is that the 4* tier is just too **** big now.  There is no longer a way to make meaningful additions to it that don't involve crazy power creep.  good characters just don't make an impact anymore. It's time for the game to democratize the 5* tier and find a new trophy tier for the Uber whales.

    Continued expansion of the 4* tier is not worth my time as players; it's not worth the money from whales, and it's not worth the dev resources spent on development.
  • jredd
    jredd Posts: 1,387 Chairperson of the Boards
    2 & 3* tiers could use a few more toons. going backwards doesn't seem like it'll happen though.
  • turbomoose
    turbomoose Posts: 806 Critical Contributor
    The time has come for something new, they seem to have given up on 2*, 3* and it’s been a while since we had a support 

    if they continue releasing 4*s at the current rate there will be another 10 by the end of the year 

    if they were to change to mainly 5*s then we would end up with too many of them too so a new tier might be a solution but both players and Demi are against a 6* tier of characters so I’m not sure where they go from here 


  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    turbomoose said:
    The time has come for something new, they seem to have given up on 2*, 3* and it’s been a while since we had a support 

    if they continue releasing 4*s at the current rate there will be another 10 by the end of the year 

    if they were to change to mainly 5*s then we would end up with too many of them too so a new tier might be a solution but both players and Demi are against a 6* tier of characters so I’m not sure where they go from here 


    The problem with 6*s now is that the 5* tier is already pretty big (about as big as the 3* tier).  So the lifespan of a 6* tier is limited because the 5* tier will seem stale and full to  vets pretty soon. 

    And of course the 4* era has lasted so long because of the various promised Demi made to whales when they released the absurdly expensive 5*s in 2015.    But that's not my problem.  And whether or not the fact makes life hard for Demi, it's just true that 4* land is ready to be taken behind the barn and sent to the big farm upstate. . .
  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,822 Chairperson of the Boards
    There are different aspects to dilution, and different meanings.

    There's the low (1%) chance of getting a specific 4* character.

    The issue the @Vhailorx is bringing up is the other side of dilution.  That adding characters to a large pool doesn't just make it harder to get them (it does), doesn't make it harder to level many specific characters to the point of usefulness (it does), but that each new character is compared to 80+ others and somehow needs to stand out in your roster.

    At this point it seems like we are almost in a Fan Service era of the game.  Lots of recent 4's (not tied to films) have been long-requested characters, which gives them some immediate appeal to their fans.  Black Cat probably had lots of requests along the way, although she also is scoring some synergy points.  But look at Sabretooth, Namor, Magik, Dazzler...all have fans in the game that are excited to get their covers.  Even Hela was one that i was hoping for back when Ragnarok was being cross-promoted.  There's a real question what characters we will see after the Far From Home tie-ins.  There could be even more fan-requested people coming.

    So is that enough?  Obviously not for some people.  I'm pretty ambivalent but it depends on the character.

    It's easy to say the 4 tier is too full - and it pretty much is - but the game design as is still requires mostly 4's to be introduced as new characters.  Moving up to 5's or maybe 6's would pretty much mean somehow increasing resources to avoid driving more players away.

    There are no easy answers to dilution and way to evolve the game.  Adding a 6th tier doesn't seem to me to be the answer.  I'm not sure I have an answer, though.  I do advocate slowing down the release schedule at this point, but I don't think that's going to happen.
  • jamesh
    jamesh Posts: 1,600 Chairperson of the Boards
    jredd said:
    2 & 3* tiers could use a few more toons. going backwards doesn't seem like it'll happen though.
    @Vhailorx's complaints apply equally to these lower tiers though: adding more 2* characters would increase the time it takes for starting players to cover characters in that tier, and increase costs for roster slots.  It's not at all clear that players are better served by spending more time at those low levels.
  • Tony_Foot
    Tony_Foot Posts: 1,814 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited June 2019
    Unless they find something else to sell, 6* is the only way forward and stop making 4*.

    I think the only way back for this game now would be to start over fresh learning from the mistakes made from a game they probably never intended or expected to last this long.

    As for being a waste of my time and money, they aren't. I don't chase them in either placement or ST and I don't spend a penny to get them.
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited June 2019
    Tony_Foot said:
    Unless they find something else to sell, 6* is the only way forward and stop making 4*.

    I think the only way back for this game now would be to start over fresh learning from the mistakes made from a game they probably never intended or expected to last this long.

    As for being a waste of my time and money, they aren't. I don't chase them in either placement or ST and I don't spend a penny to get them.
    They are waste in that you are spending some amount of time and/or money on something that has effectively 0 marginal value.
  • theomen
    theomen Posts: 99 Match Maker
    The game was always going to have this problem once it got on to its final tier of characters.

    You can't add characters forever, there has to be some stopping point, or at least a slow-down point.

    So how can D3 continue to make money if they can't keep pumping out regular characters? These are some options:

    Costumes
    Rebalancing existing characters and providing stores (I advocated a scheduled rebalance in suggestions which I believe could be profitable).
    Making supports more available and providing stores.
    New story modes we can buy as additional content.
    More ways to acquire 5*s.

    It would be better at this stage to improve and rebalance the characters we have, rather than to dilute too much more. A game where players can complete rosters and then choose from lots of competitive team options is fun; people are more likely to spend money on a game like that.
  • Space Dwarf
    Space Dwarf Posts: 29 Just Dropped In
    @Therealsmkspy

    That’s been my thought as well. There’s plenty of match damage in between the 4 & 5* tier. One could even promote the 4* that already have 5* feeders into the new tier. 
  • Dragon_Nexus
    Dragon_Nexus Posts: 3,701 Chairperson of the Boards
    Never thought that when the legendary tokens came out I'd view opening them and getting a 4* as the same kind of dud result as opening a heroic and getting a 2*.

    The last dozen 4*s I don't even know what they do. I still had to remind myself how 4* Black Widow works last time I had to use her in DDQ. Only exception is Bishop because...obviously.
    Used to be I'd get one, champ them and then spend time using them to learn them because they'd be useful eventually when a handful of 4*s were boosted. Now I champ them and forget they exist until a required node comes along.

    Nothing worse than a new 5* rolling out and it's meh. Or outright bad.The one and only remaining goal in the game and it's at the whims of the developers.

    Still waiting for a Classic Legends token so I could at least try to get some older ones now and then.
  • Daredevil217
    Daredevil217 Posts: 3,966 Chairperson of the Boards
    Not really a waste of time because I actually enjoy playing this game and collecting characters as trophies.  Even if my roster personally has moved beyond the 4* tier. I had loads of fun while I was there (and it was pretty recent). 

    And not really a waste of money because  I only spend 2 dollars a month; just like I always have. It’s an amount I feel comfortable with and if the game shut down tomorrow; I wouldn’t feel I wasted my money. 

    Waste of time? I’d do something else, Waste of money? I’d spend elsewhere. We do have some choices on these things. 
  • tiomono
    tiomono Posts: 1,654 Chairperson of the Boards
    Dragon_Nexus said:
    Still waiting for a Classic Legends token so I could at least try to get some older ones now and then.
    Psst. Nothing is stopping you from using cp on the classics store. Except the dillution, and less likely chance at covering newer meh 5*s.
  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,822 Chairperson of the Boards
    I suppose it goes without saying, but a Classics token would need to be only a step up in rewards.  And I still prefer CP anyway.

    CP can be used in Latests, special stores, for direct cover buys via HFH or your Level up screen.....lots of places.

    A token locks you into one use only.

    Adding some CP to the rewards can be accomplished on a small scale too.  Add 3 and slowly increase if needed (although this probably has no chance of happening, it would be a good way to adjust rewards).

Categories