Newb Report 01: Legendary Token Fail

Finally decided to turn in the few legendary tokens I've gathered since starting MPQ. I was totally bummed when one of the three returned a 5* Green Goblin cover. As a day 95 player who has been leveling broadly rather than narrowly I absolutely cannot use this as a 255/89/89 level average would make the difficulty un-playable.
Now while I understand that not all rewards should be applicable to all player levels, the thing that puzzles me is that the starting level for the 5*'s is completely out of line with the design that seemed to be in place up to that point. For the other rarities there seemed to be a very consistent calculation of new start level around 42% of previous rarity max and new max level chosen so that the previous max is about 50-60% of the new one. The 5* blows this out of the water; it's like they skipped 5 and 6 stars and went right to 7 (well, 6.5 to be fair), but only on the start level.
I would of thought that the game design would have been something like this:
Instead we get 5* characters that start out at 255. No wonder the current game for higher level players (doesn't include me) appears to be broken in favor of 5* or nothing. I'd almost think that someone fat fingered a number somewhere and it snuck past testing.
Heck, if the 5* GG I just got was only level 115 I could actually consider rostering it and sucking up the difficulty bump until I leveled up a few more heroes/villains. Instead, sometime in the next two weeks I'll have to discard it for a miserly 2000 ISO. It's such a waste that I'm not sure I'll even want to turn in more legendary tokens until I can actually take the hit of a 5* bump.
edited with proper ISO for 5*
Now while I understand that not all rewards should be applicable to all player levels, the thing that puzzles me is that the starting level for the 5*'s is completely out of line with the design that seemed to be in place up to that point. For the other rarities there seemed to be a very consistent calculation of new start level around 42% of previous rarity max and new max level chosen so that the previous max is about 50-60% of the new one. The 5* blows this out of the water; it's like they skipped 5 and 6 stars and went right to 7 (well, 6.5 to be fair), but only on the start level.
I would of thought that the game design would have been something like this:
Cstart/ Stars Start Max Pmax Pmax/Cmax 1 1 50 2 15 94 .300 .532 3 40 166 .426 .566 4 70 270 .422 .615 5 115 450 .426 .6 6 190 750 .422 .6 7 315 1250 .42 .6
Instead we get 5* characters that start out at 255. No wonder the current game for higher level players (doesn't include me) appears to be broken in favor of 5* or nothing. I'd almost think that someone fat fingered a number somewhere and it snuck past testing.
Heck, if the 5* GG I just got was only level 115 I could actually consider rostering it and sucking up the difficulty bump until I leveled up a few more heroes/villains. Instead, sometime in the next two weeks I'll have to discard it for a miserly 2000 ISO. It's such a waste that I'm not sure I'll even want to turn in more legendary tokens until I can actually take the hit of a 5* bump.
edited with proper ISO for 5*
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Comments
And if you have 4* near max 3) Iso to level up any tier 1 chars you get champ covers for.
(this is the one that gets me.....every time: looking at you X23)
Except for the part where having a 4* character allows you to be more competitive in PvE.
Getting screwed by scaling by obtaining a 5* is an artificial problem that shouldn't even exist. Come to think of it, the insane cost of roster slots, especially for less developed rosters, shouldn't exist either. Why are you defending this ****?
You know it has always bugged me that they allow new players access to both LT and CP (particulary in PvE) which as you aptly described should be "end game" content (which no new player would actually know since it's not indicated anywhere). I understand the business reasoning behind it, a new player opens said token and gets an ultra rare 4* and 5* characaters so they feel compelled to put them on their roster but from a game design standpoint it makes little sense. Then again we all know that the game is in dire need of a redesign for it's reward system.
It was her favorite character for a while since it acted as a giant meat shield and made the fights a little easier while she was building her rosters.
So where are the 3* tokens? We have Heroics if you want 2* and Legendary's if you want 4*, but there is not a token that gives an acceptable return of 3*. Why the hole right in the middle? I mean, the DDQ is nice, but a token option would be appreciated.
The Big Enchilada gives you a guaranteed daily 3* with no competition. Compared to the other cover sources, I think you're giving DDQ too little credit for what it provides. Would you rather have random tokens, or a guaranteed cover? I'll take the cover.
Unfortunately, there is no really solid source for 3* covers outside of the DDQ. If you can regularly obtain event and heroic (basically 2*) tokens, they end up being a good long-term source of 3* characters DDQ aside. Short term, you'll still feel the rarity squeeze on 3*s.
I'm wouldn't want them to replace any current features, but maybe adding a reward that returns 3* at the rate the 2* or the 4* in their respective tokens occur. The "if you don't have it, you can't get it" part of this game seems to have been developed with the perspective of players that have been along for the whole ride; not only can't you do the BE if you don't have that day's cover, you miss out on the corresponding token in the required node. Luckily for the days I do have it I've found a OBW/Cap/Jugg combo that has yet to fail me. Not always the fastest win but reliable (and swapping out Juggs for Moonstone when there's a first round Thug is extremely fun!)
I'm also looking at it from a slightly different perspective: one of the reasons I started playing this game was to try a gamification experiment where accomplishing tasks etc. in real life allows me to spend money on this game. The problem I'm beginning to run into is I need to increase the time spent on the RL aspects and spend a corresponding increased amount of money on the game. But besides roster slots there is nothing you can spend money on that gives a worthwhile return. I'm already at a state where 2* covers are worthless to me, and spending $20 for an average of three 3+* covers (assuming I did the 10x for 2800 instead of buying a 1x everyday, or one of the vaults) is not a good value. I don't care if I have plenty of money to throw at the game, I'm not going to do it if I'm not getting a decent return, and there is no way I consider $6 for a 3* cover worthwhile.
Nothing in game tells you that... anywhere... As a new player who fell in this same trap nothing in game gives you any idea that LT should be avoided at low levels. Conventional wisdom tells most people that higher levels = better so if they want to claim that then it should be spelled out somewhere.