Opinion: The game transitions to 3* only

AdamMagus · March 2014

The game seems to be transitioning where 3* will be the one and only level for all characters.

It is my opinion that the developers have realized that having to balance characters across their own star level is hard enough as it is, it makes things somewhat easier to balance, you won't have to worry about balancing 2*s in relation to 3*s (see Wolverine AX and Thor MN).

Most new characters released in the past few months have been 3*, Ares is the exception (perhaps there's another am missing)

With the release of "Lazy" Thor and "Lazy" Captain America as 3* I feel that the developers will eventually get rid of the Star ratings and that all character will be the same star level (at this point there is no point for star ratings). Making all characters 3* would of course would require retuning the prologue

Personally I think I would prefer if they got rid of the current star tiers

Would you prefer to see all 1* and 2* characters upgrade to 3*, same powers, just new level cap (141)?

Eddiemon · March 2014

No,

3 Star is just the money making round. The more 3 stars you have the harder it is to complete a character and so the greater temptation to spend money to get that missing cover. Conversely you want people to be able to quickly assemble a 1* character so they can participate properly in the game

On the other hand you need one and 2 stars for the gambling effect of basic and heroic tokens. The gambling effect is one of the addivitive properties of games that keep people engaged and 'just one more game' playing.

Once 3 star gets too fat to reasonably collect characters expect them to make it easier to get 3 stars and 4 stars to start expanding as teh money making tier.

Even with this logic, some 2 stars are the most purchased covers with HP...

Unknown · March 2014

I think it is merely growing. There will come a point, in my opinion, that we will be saying "How come all they ever release are new 4* characters? Why no new 3*?" and eventually after that, the same about 5* characters.

Unknown · March 2014

Eddiemon wrote:

No,

3 Star is just the money making round. The more 3 stars you have the harder it is to complete a character and so the greater temptation to spend money to get that missing cover. Conversely you want people to be able to quickly assemble a 1* character so they can participate properly in the game

On the other hand you need one and 2 stars for the gambling effect of basic and heroic tokens. The gambling effect is one of the addivitive properties of games that keep people engaged and 'just one more game' playing.

Once 3 star gets too fat to reasonably collect characters expect them to make it easier to get 3 stars and 4 stars to start expanding as teh money making tier.

Even with this logic, some 2 stars are the most purchased covers with HP...

I forwarded my thoughts on this in a thread (I think one of the Spidey ones?) last night on this topic.

Essentially, the recent changes have created three distinct progression paths.

F2P: 1* --> 2** --> 3***, same as it always has been. However, this path has been altered to be considerably more difficult because of the removal of gaining 2** covers reliably in PvP tourneys and mandatory reliance on token pulls for covers to build teams. Also, reliance on random token pulls greatly increases the odds of throwing needed covers away because of roster space issues.

P2W (low): 1* --> 2** --> 3***, same as F2P, but with the recent changes, required HP to be spent to buy covers that the RNG will not give a player. At only 500 HP/cover, this generally falls into the line of a "bite-sized" purchase. Also, HP is spent on roster spaces due to random new characters generated by token pulls that a player cannot control.

P2W (high) : 1* --> 3***, with the ability of new characters to temporarily fly under the radar of most players because of a lack of personal scaling to win/place well in events, these players can gain perhaps 1 in each color of a new 3*** character and then purchase out the remaining covers at 1250 HP each to build a team. Alliance rewards yielding 3*** covers will add to this effect as well.

With ISO flowing freely, gathering enough to max a 2** is not difficult. But leveling any 3*** to 141 is still very difficult, as 172k ISO is a very significant number to reach (with the true 3*** growth range of 100-141 requiring over 80k alone to max). This total is even harder to reach for any semi-competitive player, as the constant flow of required 3*** new characters released every 10-14 days, mandates the redirection of ISO to them and away from the player's primary characters to remain competitive in upcoming events. So, yes, the temptation to beat the leveling curve and actually generate leveling progress towards a character would warrant the temptation to purchase ISO from the shop.

AdamMagus · March 2014

Eddiemon wrote:

No,

3 Star is just the money making round. The more 3 stars you have the harder it is to complete a character and so the greater temptation to spend money to get that missing cover. Conversely you want people to be able to quickly assemble a 1* character so they can participate properly in the game

I feel that making all characters 3* would not remove the temptation to spend money, if anything people would spend more money knowing that every pack you opened you'll get a character that will allow you to compete. Yes some characters will always be better than others no matter how much you balance them but I can see people wanting to spent money, for example, to get that missing cover to max out a 3* Juggernaut with 9K health or a 3* Modern Storm with 5800 health to team up with 3* Black Panther

Eddiemon wrote:

On the other hand you need one and 2 stars for the gambling effect of basic and heroic tokens. The gambling effect is one of the addivitive properties of games that keep people engaged and 'just one more game' playing.

Making them 3* would remove the need for basic and heroic tokens, you would have just one type of token for a pack that contained all heroes. For new characters they could keep them in temporary tournament packs like they do now (e.g. a Lord of Thunder pack and Lord of Thunder Pack x 10 to get a 3* Thor now if you really want it). There would also be no need for multiple currency types for packs, just have them cost HP, reserve ISO8 for leveling. The gambling effect would come from opening a pack and not getting the character you expected, so it's still a gamble when all characters are 3*, the difference in this gamble is that now you don't dismiss a character like you do now, where a 1* is seen as trash and is auto vendored

Eddiemon wrote:

Once 3 star gets too fat to reasonably collect characters expect them to make it easier to get 3 stars and 4 stars to start expanding as teh money making tier.

Even with this logic, some 2 stars are the most purchased covers with HP...

Yes there is the issue of keeping it reasonable to collect a specific character, but you can always try your hand at getting them through tournaments, special x10 packs or even alliance rewards

Thanks for all your points, I found them very interesting

Eddiemon · March 2014

AdamMagus wrote:

I feel that making all characters 3* would not remove the temptation to spend money, if anything people would spend more money knowing that every pack you opened you'll get a character that will allow you to compete. Yes some characters will always be better than others no matter how much you balance them but I can see people wanting to spent money, for example, to get that missing cover to max out a 3* Juggernaut with 9K health or a 3* Modern Storm with 5800 health to team up with 3* Black Panther

Making them 3* would remove the need for basic and heroic tokens, you would have just one type of pack. There would also be no need for multiple currency types for packs, just have them cost HP, reserve ISO8 for leveling. The gambling effect would come from opening a pack and not getting the character you expected, so it's still a gamble when all characters are 3*, the difference in this gamble is that now you don't dismiss a character like you do now, where a 1* is seen as trash and is auto vendored

Yes there is the issue of keeping it reasonable to collect a specific character, but you can always try your hand at getting them through tournaments, special x10 packs or even alliance rewards

Thanks for all your points, I found them very interesting

You have removed the bait from the hook though. The prologue, a rapidly assembled iron man, M storm, MWIdow. seeing your team grow in real time, it drags you in. Whereas if you started the game with 3 star covers and couldn't complete a character in the prologue, how would you feel about the game?

Then that whole 'there is another tier for me to climb' incentive is good too. Even better when ther are 2 tiers. It gives the game a greater development curve before you are swimming with the sharks.

For the first 2-3 weeks you don't need to pay to improve your roster, it just happens naturally. Then you hit the 1* to 2* boundary and questions are asked. Compare that to starting with some 3* covers and realising that the only way to improve really is to drop money because you are winning nothing.

Eddiemon · March 2014

Lyrian wrote:

F2P: 1* --> 2** --> 3***, same as it always has been. However, this path has been altered to be considerably more difficult because of the removal of gaining 2** covers reliably in PvP tourneys and mandatory reliance on token pulls for covers to build teams. Also, reliance on random token pulls greatly increases the odds of throwing needed covers away because of roster space issues.

A bigger kick in the teeth is the removal of healing from the Venom storyline. First time around I had Wolverine and Thor covers within my first week of playing. Now because you have to rely on health packs to get through the prologue it can take a month before you get your hands on Thor/Wolverine and that's if you even know they are there and make a beeline for them.

AdamMagus · March 2014

Eddiemon wrote:

You have removed the bait from the hook though. The prologue, a rapidly assembled iron man, M storm, MWIdow. seeing your team grow in real time, it drags you in. Whereas if you started the game with 3 star covers and couldn't complete a character in the prologue, how would you feel about the game?

Yes it's unfortunate that they removed most cover rewards from the prologue and resorted to turning it into a Cover Pack lottery. Your first team Iron Man, M Storm and MWidow should come as rewards on the prologue nodes, every few nodes you would get a cover, same as it was when the game launched. So by the time you finished the prologue you would have a couple of decent teams to get you started in the transition to PvP and PvE tournaments.

Eddiemon wrote:

Then that whole 'there is another tier for me to climb' incentive is good too. Even better when ther are 2 tiers. It gives the game a greater development curve before you are swimming with the sharks.

For the first 2-3 weeks you don't need to pay to improve your roster, it just happens naturally. Then you hit the 1* to 2* boundary and questions are asked. Compare that to starting with some 3* covers and realising that the only way to improve really is to drop money because you are winning nothing.

I guess am just not seeing this game as an RPG as I should be (marvel puzzle quest), which is why I guess the whole tiers to climb thing doesn't really jive with me. I personally see this game more as a PvP game, I find most of my time is spent competing vs other players in PvP matches, not doing storyline quests (those new "episodes" that come once a month)

When I play a game like Marvel vs Capcom 3 I don't have to worry about my Wolverine being useless as soon as I unlock Akuma, there are no tiers, any character I choose is viable and will allow me to compete. In this game that Iron Man 35 I loved at one point will get vendored as soon as I get a 2* to a decent level and then again that 2* for that 3* etc

Right now, imo, 17 out of 37 (45%) of the characters we own are not worth using again once you have a decent 3*s team, all the game has done is left me with just 55% of characters as viable and the other 45% I just vendor them, by making them all 3* or just removing the Star tiers period, you would have all characters be viable (e.g.that 141+ Iron Man 35 in the Simulator is no joke with those protect tiles)

The only times we use those 17 characters are when we're forced to in those silly Tournaments that require them. I guess I'll try seeing this more as an RPG and less as a PvP game

over_clocked · March 2014

While I adore the idea of not having star tiers (it irked me greatly even when I first learned of them, why would some Daken be higher tier than a living goddess Storm? Made no sense to me back then)...
If you remove the tiers, suddenly people with developed 1*s and 2**s get insane benefits. 1*s and 2**s scale considerably better than 3***s, but even a still squishy mStorm with 4300 health (same as the Hood) will be completely OP and the best support character out there along with Spidey. Juggernaut would be more desirable than modern Thor or Black Panther, because hey, he's cheap. It means that all the people who have worked for their current 3*** roster but could not afford the space for each and every character, get ****, real hard. I just don't see how you can implement that without making a completely different game.
1*s are completely useless (sorry mStorm, you're too squishy, but still a goddess of PvE), except for Prologue, one star tourneys and severely roster limited events a la Heroics, but there are only what, 7 of them? We have 12 2**s (2 mostly useless) and even more 3***s, which are bread and butter of MPQ once you make transition.
I made some unfortunate HP spending in the game while being a F2P (450 HP total I believe, enough to buy a slot right now), but since mid December I could afford to build up to 32 roster slots and even have most one stars, building and appreciating them anew, even if only for one star tourneys. The completionist in me doesn't mind having cover capped Yelena, Bag-Man and Bullseye even, but there's no space for them yet. Now what I want is being able to get the juicy Sim ISO to level all my covers, lol, but rubberbanding and wiping prevent me from that.

Unknown · March 2014

I guess they do want to delay the transition from 1 star to 2 or remove it completely since they now give out only 1 cover in tourneys.
Still its pretty disheartening when you know you need at least 10 covers in a 3 star before they start becoming usable.
At least lighting rounds helps, you can pretty easily get 2 standard tokens from each round every 2 hours just beating on seed teams and it should cover cap your 1 stars along with the prologue pretty easily.
Seems at every turn they're making it pay to compete, not pay to win.
That's cause of how hard it is to put together a 2 star team now compared to 3 months ago.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty happy I started during the TaT era, pretty much cover capped patch after thorverine nerf so I never had to deal with that.
At that time, had no idea on tourneys nor lighting rounds so I was ISO starved instead of cover starved.
In the case now, you either play the lottery and go straight from 1 star to **** 3 star due to MMR and scaling or try to gather a 2 star team in tourneys.
What happens then is scaling kills you since you spent the time getting 1 cover 2 stars instead of 3 covers 3 star prizes and suddenly, your 1 star team can't cut it any more due to scaling.
I think the best solution currently is concentrate on getting 3 3 star prizes when your still in the sweet spot and spend a bit of cash(before you didn't need to since 3 star covers sold for HP and they gave out more) on shielding.
This is so you get 30 covers minimum needed for a 10 covered 3 star team at least asap and then join a free alliance and hope for some extra hp so you can cover cap them asap.
Then its basically down to grinding every lighting round to get the ISO to max them.
Then and only then your gonna be competitive with a team of 141s, wouldn't be so bad, mabey 20 bucks spent if you made efficient use of your time.

Unknown · March 2014

The problem is that a whole mess of characters appears to be 'balanced by a lack of HPs' if you try to bring the 1* and 2* into the game and 2 cover characters are allowed to reach 141 as well. Let's say everything scales like a 3* so you don't have this unreasonable stat gain. Modern Storm, Juggernaut, and Daken would still almost certainly be top tier immediately. Modern Storm is usable even at level 50. Juggernaut would be Hulk class HP, with a monster red attack for defense (where you don't really care if he gets hurt) and a very powerful board clearing move. Daken, of course, needs no introduction on how powerful he can be.

Of course it wouldn't be bad if these characters are balanced but then we don't even have the current 3* anywhere remotely balanced so adding some characters who are arguably too powerful even at level 50 is just asking for more problems. That's not to say conceptually someone like Daken or Juggernaut won't work, but it's going to involve effort that I don't see happening.

That said if you want to make 2* viable most of them just need about 20-30 levels depending on who it is. Ares with a 40 level boost is more than a match for any normal 3* level 141s, and he sure isn't broken as a 2* either. Not sure why they'd do it since the 3*s is likely where the money is.

Unknown · March 2014

They give out so many recruit tokens now that it has become the way to transition to 2*. There are a lot more events happening simultaneously that tokens rain down on everyone. Granted most are 1* but you do get enough 2* that it can build your team as a F2P player.

Unknown · March 2014

3* is what makes them money, however this happens because at least half the 2* are so bad so players rarely spend the ISO to level them or even collect their covers. It is also true that once you make the transition to 3*, there is almost nothing 2* characters can do better than a 3*. Most players, myself included, don't even have a complete roster. This means that the HP we would spend to open 2-3 slots, is used to level a 3* character.

I posted in the past that the only way to make 1* and 2* useful is to limit the total * of a team that takes part in an event or tournament. And I am not talking about running an event like that once per month, but using these limits to all events and tournaments in the game. For example, a Lone (One) Star Skirmish would be a 3* tournament, an event like the one that introduces a new character could be a 12* (up to 3x4* characters) and various other events with different levels, like making Lord of Thunder a 7* (2x3*+1* or 1x3*+2x2*) tournament or a Only Ladies tournaments a 6*.

Another reason why many don't own a Bullseye or Yelena is because they are rarely needed in events/tournaments since the main story is build around the heroes. Having a secondary Prologue campaign about the villains and holding regular tournaments where they are needed will force players to get them and level them. Also, making 2* characters necessary to play missions in events instead of 3* newly released heroes will open up the game to more players and will force players to open more slots and level them if they want the new rewards. Having an event where you play as a villain team in order to unlock a new 3* hero would be a great opportunity for players to finally use those underdeveloped and underused characters.

Personally, I would like to see more iconic villains make an appearance in the game like a 4* Apocalypse/Thanos/Ultron, but I guess they want to stay strictly to the Dark Reign storyline since it is in the title and they can't/won't use these villains. It is sad that they have already used most well known villains that make an appearance in the DR arc since I find villains more interesting.

Unknown · March 2014

Narkon wrote:

3* is what makes them money, however this happens because at least half the 2* are so bad so players rarely spend the ISO to level them or even collect their covers. It is also true that once you make the transition to 3*, there is almost nothing 2* characters can do better than a 3*. Most players, myself included, don't even have a complete roster. This means that the HP we would spend to open 2-3 slots, is used to level a 3* character.

I posted in the past that the only way to make 1* and 2* useful is to limit the total * of a team that takes part in an event or tournament. And I am not talking about running an event like that once per month, but using these limits to all events and tournaments in the game. For example, a Lone (One) Star Skirmish would be a 3* tournament, an event like the one that introduces a new character could be a 12* (up to 3x4* characters) and various other events with different levels, like making Lord of Thunder a 7* (2x3*+1* or 1x3*+2x2*) tournament or a Only Ladies tournaments a 6*.

Another reason why many don't own a Bullseye or Yelena is because they are rarely needed in events/tournaments since the main story is build around the heroes. Having a secondary Prologue campaign about the villains and holding regular tournaments where they are needed will force players to get them and level them. Also, making 2* characters necessary to play missions in events instead of 3* newly released heroes will open up the game to more players and will force players to open more slots and level them if they want the new rewards. Having an event where you play as a villain team in order to unlock a new 3* hero would be a great opportunity for players to finally use those underdeveloped and underused characters.

Personally, I would like to see more iconic villains make an appearance in the game like a 4* Apocalypse/Thanos/Ultron, but I guess they want to stay strictly to the Dark Reign storyline since it is in the title and they can't/won't use these villains. It is sad that they have already used most well known villains that make an appearance in the DR arc since I find villains more interesting.

Making the transition to a full *** roster may make most **s useless, but there's still an occasional one like OBW which can help you a lot if you don't have the right *** like Spidey developed.

As far as the other tournies go, I was pushing for something like a "lowest cover" tourney in the suggestions folder, which would have pulled a lot of the more abused characters out of the tourney such as OBW, but that started a new round of **** about how it would become a Thorverine tourney.

I agree that more ways should be found to make Bullseye useful, but disagree on Yelena. Yelena's destined to remain a butt monkey because she's one of the guaranteed villains in the prologue along with Venom, Juggernaut, Daken, and Ragnarok.

One way to keep Bullseye relevant would be to re-run the Top Shot tourney where you're forced to use Bullseye or Modern Hawkeye as part of your team, as both are underused characters in need of rebalancing.

As far as the other villains go, I agree that they need to make their way into the game but disagree with making them 4*, as that puts them out of the range of usefulness for probably 95% of the players, possibly 99.5%, because of the number of covers and amount of ISO needed to develop them.

Besides the villains you mentioned, other potential villains could include Red Skull, Crossbones, Iron Monger, Whiplash (Ivan Vanko version), Mandarin, Ronan The Accuser, Nebula, Shadow King, Mystique, White Queen (classic), Dr. Octopus, Lizard, etc.

A good chunk of these have, or will have, a lot of exposure to the general public because they appeared or will appear in various Marvel movies such as Captain America 1 and 2, Iron Man 1-3, Guardians Of The Galaxy, the X-Men series, the Spider-Man series, etc.

Hell, make Norman Osborn playable as either Green Goblin or Iron Patriot while creating a 4* unplayable event character, a la Devil Dino, as Sentry / The Void.

Unknown · March 2014

We should have new villains... If we have to stick with the Dark Reign storyline we could have Noh-Varr as Cpt. Marvel, Sentry(I know that he is not de facto a villain but he is in the original dark avengers team) and Osborn as Iron Patriot. I can easilly see at least 2 of those as *** and 1 of those could be a ****.
By the way we are gonna have a new villain... (lazy?) daken was announced as the new gold character.

Unknown · March 2014

Might be a self fufilling prophecy that 2* players spend less than 3* players. I can see just as well as everyone which characters I would like to level up but if I want to be competitive later on.

One stars fall like rain and two stars come at a manageable pace so finishing your collection of 2* feels like a doable task. 3 stars are that much rarer/harder to get so if you do manage to get 11 covers of Patch, would you consider buying the last two? I would. If you only have 3 would you buy the last 10 though? Some might but i'd bet most would just sit on him till they found more covers before spending anything on him.

The more people play and enjoy the stronger the feeling of 'I want to support the developers of this game I have spent so much time on,' but they aren't going to spend on something they don't want, something they won't use or something that is not currently better than what they are already using.

The breaking point for paying comes when you can tell yourself you will notice how much what you bought will improve your experience in the game long term.

Opinion: The game transitions to 3* only

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