Is the 4* tier dead?

HoundofShadow

I'm going to be blunt and I think that the solution to your perceived problems about MPQ(dilution/time spent on the game) and "Speed is King" is that players should get free-flow of top placement rewards for simply playing the game.

Let's start with PvEs:

Even if the dev do away with the current time slices, make PvEs more puzzle-like, and reduce the number of clears to 1 or 2 fights, do away with essential character nodes, speed will still determine who gets the top placement rewards because the chances of the devs giving top placement rewards to all players is virtually zero. The top 10 players or top 1% are still going to get the best prizes.

The differences that I expect are:

1) players don't have to schedule their lives around timing.
2) Their timing will be even more subjected to board control or RNG
3) The dev will put a cap on the number of retries to prevent abuse.
4) The gap between new players and veterans players will get even wider because veterans are more well equipped to solve the "puzzles".

The other alternatives is to give every players top placements rewards for just completing the nodes, but this will make the game downright boring, in my opinion.

Jumping to PvP, I think using the statement "punishes us quite brutally for an accidental loss (both directly via health packs, and indirectly via lost placement rewards) is a bit excessive. In order to prevent this brutal punishment, the dev has to do away with point loss or reduce point loss to an insignificant amount, make shield hopping close to irrelevant, and allow all characters recover to full health after each match except for Thor who will begin at 50% health. The problem I see is that you are introducing tapping into PvPs. The winners of the PvPs will be those players who can spend 10-18 hours a day winning PvP match. 

As for power creep/difference between 275 and 340/broken meta, it can be easily solved by making all PvPs: Balance of Power. 

As for dilution, players can customise each of their own Heroic and Cp stores and pulls from them.

Vhailorx

Really hound?  You're going back to the old straw man that I just want "free stuff"?

Even if that were a fair critique of my position in other debates, it is a complete non sequitor in this context.

tiomono

@Vhailorx
I still feel the colorless aspect of the shard system is very valuable. I had a character get up to 23 saved covers before I could champ them before. That's the kind of very rare example that sticks in your mind and sours a person on rng pretty hard. With shards everytime I get enough for a cover it is one guaranteed step to champing them sooner than under an rng system. Which is why I feel shards do help dillution a bit better than bonus heros. But that's not really the overall point of this discussion.

I like how you lay out your thoughts and agree with alot of what you say on the difficulties of the 4* tiers bloat.

BoyWonder1914

fight4thedream said:

But what I am trying to understand is what people who make this argument about the 4* tier expect. If a 4* character power set does nothing noticeably significant they are written off as a waste of roster space. In contrast, if a 4* character power set does something that impacts the meta, they are called broken. I think the problem lies in the conceptualization that the different tiers should operate separately from each other, specifically with each higher tier clearly dominating the preceding tiers,  which I believe is bad game design.

I think this is a bit of an extreme way to look at it. There's no problem with a 4-star character being able to decently hold it's own against a 5-star character - the issue is with that 4-star character having a mechanic that literally makes it impossible for a 5-star character to win against it. A 4-star character shouldn't be able to passively build up enough AP to stun-lock a 5-star character to death just by said 5-star character sneezing. That's why it's considered "broken". If I'm a Lv 10 Mafia Boss facing a Lv 5 foot soldier, I shouldn't need to send another Lv 5 foot soldier just to have a shot at winning that fight, because said foot soldier has a power that makes him mega broken against Mafia Bosses specifically. THAT in my opinion is what is bad game design. I'm fine with Bishop smacking my 5-stars for 5K damage every time I touch him. I'm fine with that eventually causing that 5-stars death, because I didn't find a smarter way to deal with it before the damage piled up. I'm NOT fine with now not being able to touch Bishop for the rest of the match, simply for breathing in his direction. The "jump-in-front" mechanic for match damage, or any mechanic for that matter, is broken when instead of giving you a significant edge in battle, it essentially guarantees victory. I'm totally fine with a higher tier generally meaning it dominates lower tiers, with exceptions that can be made in certain circumstances. There was nothing wrong with IM40 - IceMan/Peggy/Thor punching above it's weight class because that was balanced by them being beatable by a variety of teams. There aren't too many teams that can beat a Bishop-powered Beta Ray Bill, a Worthy-charged JJ, or any variation of these teams where a hiccup by a 5-star passively gives them the AP to wreck you in 2-3 turns. 

HoundofShadow

Let me take back all my assumptions and try something different.

Since Speed = better rewards now,

In order to prove that MPQ is not about speed, logically, the devs has to give equal rewards to all players, and possibly do away with placement rewards, or shift placement rewards to progress rewards.

Optimal play = min time spend, max rewards gain.

I would like to hear your solutions to convince yourself that MPQ is not about speed. I also like to hear what's your vision of what MPQ should be PvE, PvP, rewards allocation wise. Also, if you were the dev, how would you solve character balances, dilution problems, broken meta problem, and how fast players should be able to progress. Let's use the number of 4* champ and 5* champ per year as a guide to measure meaningful progression.

Vhailorx

Hound:

I don't really have to solve MPQ's problems.  I am not a dev/pub.  I'm just a player.  Fixing everything is demi/d3's problem and I think the solution will be a difficult one.  But that doesn't mean the problems don't exist, or that I am somehow wrong to point them out.

Also, you are still setting up a false choice.  You act as if the only options are the status quo, or "equal rewards to all players." Why?

Right now rewards are given based on (1) how much you play, and (2) how quickly/when you play. And (2) is weighted pretty heavily at the high end because the very very best placement rewards are MUCH better than anything else (e.g. 2 4* covers + CP for top 10 placement in cl9 PvP, versus 0 4* covers and 0 CP from 11-50 for the same event).  So long as that remains true, players (on the whole) will always favor faster teams.  Full stop.  It's not a mystery, or player greed/entitlement, or some deep-rooted character flaw.  It's just basic logic.

All that said, there are already a few game modes that don't emphasize speed as much in mpq.  Most boss events don't require careful timing at all to clear, just 10-15 people playing regularly.  And the guantlet was completely timeless, as are DDQ and the special events like 12 days of mpq.  And events like shield training emphasize roster depth rather than speed.   There are even unexplored options like fixed-team nodes that might require players to use specific lineups (a la the old heroic events, but maybe with loaners).  And there are other more puzzle-game-y options:  mpq could explore pre-determined starting boards, different board shapes, or evergreen style modes that emphasize different colors.  They could bring back environmental tiles.  They could add character strength scores like a lot of fleet sim games (so kitty or okoye have a power rating of 1000, but wasp is 275.  And you get extra rewards for playing with a lower strength team). 

There ARE other options, even if implementing them would be a big task.  And all of this is really a side discussion to the topic of this thread, which is "is additional growth in the 4* tier in the current environment a net benefit to the game"?

Finally: I very intentionally did not define optimal play as "max rewards/minimum time spent.". Go re-read my response to fight4.  I said optimal roster progression is achieving the strongest possible roster based on set playtime/money constraints.  I think that is a significantly different metric.

Daredevil217

BoyWonder1914 said:

fight4thedream said:

But what I am trying to understand is what people who make this argument about the 4* tier expect. If a 4* character power set does nothing noticeably significant they are written off as a waste of roster space. In contrast, if a 4* character power set does something that impacts the meta, they are called broken. I think the problem lies in the conceptualization that the different tiers should operate separately from each other, specifically with each higher tier clearly dominating the preceding tiers,  which I believe is bad game design.

I think this is a bit of an extreme way to look at it. There's no problem with a 4-star character being able to decently hold it's own against a 5-star character - the issue is with that 4-star character having a mechanic that literally makes it impossible for a 5-star character to win against it. A 4-star character shouldn't be able to passively build up enough AP to stun-lock a 5-star character to death just by said 5-star character sneezing. That's why it's considered "broken". If I'm a Lv 10 Mafia Boss facing a Lv 5 foot soldier, I shouldn't need to send another Lv 5 foot soldier just to have a shot at winning that fight, because said foot soldier has a power that makes him mega broken against Mafia Bosses specifically. THAT in my opinion is what is bad game design. I'm fine with Bishop smacking my 5-stars for 5K damage every time I touch him. I'm fine with that eventually causing that 5-stars death, because I didn't find a smarter way to deal with it before the damage piled up. I'm NOT fine with now not being able to touch Bishop for the rest of the match, simply for breathing in his direction. The "jump-in-front" mechanic for match damage, or any mechanic for that matter, is broken when instead of giving you a significant edge in battle, it essentially guarantees victory. I'm totally fine with a higher tier generally meaning it dominates lower tiers, with exceptions that can be made in certain circumstances. There was nothing wrong with IM40 - IceMan/Peggy/Thor punching above it's weight class because that was balanced by them being beatable by a variety of teams. There aren't too many teams that can beat a Bishop-powered Beta Ray Bill, a Worthy-charged JJ, or any variation of these teams where a hiccup by a 5-star passively gives them the AP to wreck you in 2-3 turns. 

I maintain Bishop is broken because he doesn’t need any other character to do what he does. You can’t target someone else and avoid his trigger because he’ll jump in front. The AP he collects is usually best used by himself so he doesn’t need an additional outlet. He shuts down characters an entire tier above him for 4 turns just for matching 3. The damage he doles out passively is honestly just icing on the cake. In 5* land, Rocket needs Kitty. Worthy needs Hawkeye. America needs Professor or Thor. Sabretooth needs Okoye. These are not characters you can put with any old 5* and have them shut down the opponent for existing. 

I have 26 5* champs. When the next 5 rotates in and I bust my hoard, I will have closer to 30-31 champs. And still Bishop is the scariest most effective character on my roster because the only counter strategy (Surfer) is not even that good due to needing the first ever 5* with high enough match damage to tank. The other good 4* mentioned in this thread synergize well with 5* characters*. Bishop doesn’t. He doesn’t need to. Just put him on a team with anyone and enjoy a free shield.  That is my definition of broken. Others may disagree. 

[*Note that Bishop does actually have synergy with BRB- at least on paper. Bish collects blue for existing. BRB hits you with super cheap blue nukes and spams protects. Bishop eats the protects for even more blue AP on top of the AP he gets for existing. You continue to eat nukes and fight through waves of protects....

But that doesn’t change the point that Bish doesn’t NEED a particular 5 to be broken. He just happens to work better with some than others.]

Ugh

I wish it would die.  it's just way, way too diluted.  Been playing for over 4.5 years and I am so sick and tired of being locked out of stuff because you can't get covers for new characters.  I should be past that at this point.  It's getting so hard to justify the time sink for this ****

CT1888

Fwiw, for me, 4* tier has died and been resurrected a number of times. Pre the latest 12, new characters were irrelevant as they didn't have the champ levels that my best characters had, so they were bench warmers and champ level rewards only. Then came the latest 12, and they started overtaking my early champs, and every release was going to be worth something. Removing latest 12 killed that, and new releases became irrelevant again. 5* land beckoned, and 4* tier was mostly irrelevant, with the odd exception of higher  levelled characters when boosted (Carol especially).
Champing more 5*s killed it again, then more recent (Sabretooth with Thor Okoye, Gritty, Bishop with Strange or JJ, and I'll be able to use Worthy / Hawkeye in about a month) have opened it back up again, and got me looking at other combos for fun in Pve. The fact that I have the toolkit that allows me to deal with most of these combos helps too.

TL:DR the 4* tier has died and come back to life several times for me as the game has changed. It is what it is. 

fight4thedream

Mod note: Split a discussion on the value of shards to a new thread. Feel free to continue the discussion on that topic there.