contracting the 4* tier

jredd

Having to actually use dazzler today got me thinking. When, if ever will they reduce the size of the 4* tier? they just keep adding. and while a good number of the newer 4 and a good handful of the old are useful situationally, a strong number are really useless at this point. aside from champ rewards and feeding 5* they just clog up the tier. i know the answer is probably never. but maybe it shouldn't be?

HoundofShadow

Looking at this logically, it will happen

1) when they introduce 6* OR
2) when they decide to shut down the game


Pick your poison.

entrailbucket

All those terrible 4* serve a very important purpose -- they force people to buy roster slots for them.  That's the entire business model of the game.  They make like 80% of their revenue or something selling roster slots.  They'll never stop making new characters, and they'll never retire characters.

Carnifex

I'd personally like there to be a yearly poll where just a few 4*s are not retired but instead demoted down to the 3* tier with the appropriate rebalance. That way the characters may get some use from that tier of players and champ rewards could be updated to feed 4*s.

4*s who already feed the 5* tier should be exempt from getting demoted.
Hopefully then D3 wouldn't be losing anything, including their roster slot sales as mentioned above, and multiple tiers benefit from this strategy.

What do you guys think?  

fractalvisions

Carnifex said:

I'd personally like there to be a yearly poll where just a few 4*s are not retired but instead demoted down to the 3* tier with the appropriate rebalance. That way the characters may get some use from that tier of players and champ rewards could be updated to feed 4*s.

4*s who already feed the 5* tier should be exempt from getting demoted.
Hopefully then D3 wouldn't be losing anything, including their roster slot sales as mentioned above, and multiple tiers benefit from this strategy.

What do you guys think?  

That's an interesting idea. I like that.

HoundofShadow

What that essentially does is increase the time taken for new players to jump into 4* land. It will also decrease your 3* farming turnover rate. 

3* land can be completed in 6-10 months, and 4* land is the meat of the game. While it "improves" situation for 4* and 5* players, it worsen the situation for those in 3* land and below. On top of that it decreases the selling price of those "demoted" 4*. How are you going to compensate players the differences between 3* and 4* champ rewards?

toecutter3095

Demoting a character to the 3* tier would result in them being required more frequently though, wouldn't it?

PVE - The smaller pool of characters means the 3* is essential ~2 times per year, whereas the larger 4* pool and the cycle of Latest and Classics means a classic 4* is required only once maybe every 2 years (probably longer).
PVP - Almost all events have a required 3* and not a required 4* so this would be an extra time they are required now and the smaller pool means they would be required multiples times per year.
DDQ - There is still the  3* node for required characters, so again with the smaller pool you would be using the demoted 4* more frequently than you currently are in the 4* node plus you no longer get the payoff of a LL token from when they are in Crash.

Akoni

HoundofShadow said:

What that essentially does is increase the time taken for new players to jump into 4* land. It will also decrease your 3* farming turnover rate. 

3* land can be completed in 6-10 months, and 4* land is the meat of the game. While it "improves" situation for 4* and 5* players, it worsen the situation for those in 3* land and below. On top of that it decreases the selling price of those "demoted" 4*. How are you going to compensate players the differences between 3* and 4* champ rewards?

In addition to this, 4* characters require more resources to build. By demoting a 4* to 3*, ideally, you must compensate players for the resources they put into that character. These resources include tokens, iso, HP, and actual currency. Those who spent money on their Captain Carter (for example) will be furious about her demotion, if not adequately compensated. Furthermore, 4* are heavily offered in the Latest Legends and Classic Legends stores. By demoting them, devs will be required to not only modify the appearance and filtering of player rosters, but they will also have to make modifications to the stores as well.

Also, keep in mind that when each character is tested, their rarity is strongly considered. Each tier is compared significantly to the ones above and below them. Though devs are likely testing their 4* characters alongside 1* characters, it is more important to test them with and against 3* and 5* characters. As an example, most beginners will not be pairing Beta Ray Bill and Polaris with their 1* characters so the likelihood of them discovering the BRB/Polaris/Juggernaut winfinite team is rare. Beginner players do, however, have easy access to 3* characters. As a result, devs would need to re-test those characters for that new pool to ensure that they are not inadvertently introducing overpowered options to that character pool. At first glance, it may not be obvious, but there is a fine balance of powers between tiers.

Lastly, modifying a single characters probably isn't that big of a deal for devs, but when that precedence is set and multiple characters are now being modified, it can begin to impact other areas of need for devs causing set backs in new releases, bugs being fixed, new events being released, etc, etc, etc. Where should the line be drawn? Is there a limit set for the number of 4* characters that can be demoted? Should 5* characters like Kingpin be demoted to 4*? Should we demote 3* characters to 2* as well? The same argument for demoting 4* characters could technically be extended to almost every other tier.

Oh, speaking of events. Events and calendars are set around 3-5* characters. If a 4* is demoted, their corresponding event may or may not become obsolete. Isn't a character that is demotion worthy, also less popular (or desired) and therefore should not be featured in their own PvE? 

TheEyeDoctorsWife

I’d love a tier limit , and I’ve asked for a player poll who to cull.  100 4* (or 5*) is plenty. If they want to increase cost of roster slots as a revenue compensation I’m fine with that too , even though it would cost me more because I never roster useless characters that are necessary 3 days every 2 years . I can imagine new players coming in looking at all the characters and saying “ Tiny this , I’ll never catch up ! I’m playing elsewhere “ 3 years ago it took me 2 years to reach 5* it would have been slower now with all the extra characters added since then . 

Mr_F

@TheEyeDoctorsWife Multiple that.

Quick calculation: each year there are 104 events (twice a week, 52 weeks per year). So 40 events per years cause of new releases. 

I just looked the 4* list. Easily 50* of them can be considered useless. More! I've never soon 50+ 4* in simulator. Like Ever ever. If we keep 40 most usable ones, ist still 65+ to be ommited.

Its HUUGE amount of rewards. From events and champion levels.

Also:

Some time ago i created a Steam account for this game just to see how would an expierence player do in a fresh start.

Took me 4 days to fully finish prologue. After one week of a play (and 25$ of various offers spend) I had all 2*, and one championed, 14 3* and 7 4*. Plus a few tokens ready to open but ya know.

Even If I did not spend and half of that but all 2* I would say pretty nice. And I only used two of most common advices for new players: sharget Strange and never open tokens unless you have roster slot. If you will know what ya doing (and reddit and this forum is full of advices) you will catch up really fast.

And those are only two advices. Imagine if I continued playing and followed all of the advices we  spread among new players.

Point is: its not that hard as many of us thinks. Shards and milestones made it a lot easier.

Sekilicious

When I started they were probably 80 4*s and that seemed daunting. I took a break a couple of times before finishing the 3* tier and that probably took about a year of not playing optimally. My last break was after I champed about five 4*s and when I returned there were about 107 4*s. It is probably a combination of max champing 3*s and added rewards but the 4* tier seems to be going much quicker than the 3* one, in spite of having many more characters. The only thing that is daunting about the 4* tier now is the amount of iso I need to actually champ my fully covered toons. I will probably have at least one 5*, maybe more, by this time next year. Unless I walk away again. 

I think my point is the number of characters isn't all that different than other F2P games. There isn't much that isn't a F2P collection game out there that can hold my interest for any length of time. If you want a complete collection of 550 and multiple 370 toons to compete with the whales or players that have been here for 7+ years pulling 3 or more covers from classics every day it can be daunting for sure.  If you just want a game to pass the time and enjoy collecting the fact they add 24 characters a year that you can easily cover if you are playing that at the top tier isn't that big of deal. 

I would personally drop it to one character a month, alternating 4 and 5*. Having seen mega whales fully cover the newest 5* through the HP offers I have a feeling that will never happen. 

HoundofShadow

The biggest challenge in demoting 4* to 3* is compensation. It is a controversial and sensitive issue to many players. Based on past history, the probability of terrible compensation is high.

Some might not have thought of this situation but this should be pretty common:

When players roster all the 4*, their bottleneck is no longer HP, but ISO-8. Players prioritise champing 4* who are meta, whom they like or find useful. What's left are all those useless 4* they have left unchamped with over 10 or 20 saved covers and a few hundreds 4* shards. 

For every demoted 4*, what you lose are:

For the first 10 4* champ reward, you lose out (minimally) an additional LT, 6 CP,  and 50 HP.  For the next 10 4* champ rewards, you lose out (minimally) 1 LT, 12 CP, and 50HP iso-8. All the above in exchange for 40 specific 4* shards and 1 specific 4* cover.

If you look at the above, demoting 4* is such a terrible deal that a lot of players will review bomb the game into smithereen.

Jimsta_rooney

Eventually pvp will be 4 star, 3 stars will become as relevant as 2 stars are now. 
I thought they were looking to make a shift last season but this season they seem to have scrapped that idea. 
It will happen eventually though 

entrailbucket

They can't exclusively go to 4* PvP.  We'd all sell our 3* and they'd miss out on years of revenue.

The other, somewhat lesser problem is that the 4* loaner is frequently the best character that lower rosters have access to, so PvP turns into 1-on-1, loaner vs loaner for them.

KGB

What's the reason for contracting the 4* tier? Is it to save on roster slots?

New 4* releases spend about 3 months in the equivalent of 'latest legends' where they are featured over and over again in PvE (plus their PvP and their Shield Training etc). By that time anyone breaking into the 4* tier can fully cover the latest 4* release.

The older 4* that people want to contract are featured as mentioned above 1-2 times a year. So why would new players care about any that are non-meta? At most they need 1 cover to play the 4* essential in PvE and on occasion when they don't have the 4* rostered they will place slightly lower (but such players are never going to finish T20 anyway with baby 4* rosters when 5* players fill every T10 slot and most T20 slots) than normal. On the rare 4* PvP, they have use of the 1/1/1 loaner.

So again, what's the big need for contracting the tier?

KGB

TheEyeDoctorsWife

I could not care less about compensation, it’s a stupid premise to me in my situation. My compensation is that I no longer get disappointed when the LT I pull is not for that completely useless character that will never see the playing field and having a higher percentage of pulling a cover for something that will actually help me in battles . I would literally pay to have characters completely useless ( I’m talking to you , Bruce !!) be blocked out from me pulling them in draws. Sort of an un-favorite.

Tony_Foot

entrailbucket said:

They can't exclusively go to 4* PvP.  We'd all sell our 3* and they'd miss out on years of revenue.

The other, somewhat lesser problem is that the 4* loaner is frequently the best character that lower rosters have access to, so PvP turns into 1-on-1, loaner vs loaner for them.

True, if they went to 4* pvp I’d sell 40 dupes right away and give myself a few more years of 1000 cost slots. I recently went over 300 and with the reduction in HP over the years I notice I now have completely stagnated in HP growth. I’m treading water. I would happily let them retire 60 of the four stars or they should at least reduce the roster slot cost and half the ISO to champion a four star. The wall is insane now, so pleased I’m over it.

entrailbucket

They already let you pay to avoid getting certain characters...it's why tokens with a limited character pool cost more, and why it's obscenely expensive to buy individual covers.

All this stuff just sorta falls under "things that are their business model," and changing it at this point won't happen.  Maybe in MPQ 2 if they come up with a different way of monetizing the game.

Bad

4* characters. You can possibly use some of the them, it is impossible to use all. However they are there and they add diversity to the game. 
Some features they achieve:
- They are needed for events. Sometimes there is a loaner but having one high leveled of course helps. Events: Pvp, pve, COTT, boss event, puzzle gauntlet. 
- they are part of the rewards for pve and pvp. Sometimes the 5*shards are not interesting but the 4* it is and it means more population. To give a wide diversity of rewards and being interesting to players is of the most importance to a game.
- mentioned above the resources to champ them are high. The rewards they give are really high too, and sometimes 5* feeding.
- week boosts. You can have a 4* you never use but sometimes he pops up right behind the 5*, they are boosted this week. Then that 4* suddenly has a purpose and can be of great help for many players who perhaps happened to pull him more often.
Finally, as a 4* gets more covered it gets better rewards. The idea of losing those resources when you are almost there after so much time because some people voted so it is a bit crazy. 
Imo the only way some 4* can be changed is throughout a rebalance, and that possibility is rare.

Jimsta_rooney

entrailbucket said:

They can't exclusively go to 4* PvP.  We'd all sell our 3* and they'd miss out on years of revenue.

The other, somewhat lesser problem is that the 4* loaner is frequently the best character that lower rosters have access to, so PvP turns into 1-on-1, loaner vs loaner for them.

I sell my 3 star anyway when I have another fully covered. 
Tbh most people I know do the same thing. 
Yes it's nice to have a max champed one when their event comes around but it's not necessary 

DyingLegend

All this game does is release new characters.

It would be nice if they invested in new modes, new reward structures, QoL changes etc.

But. lets be honest, the game is super stale. New characters don't even spice that up anymore.