When we all were first beginning to r3 our 6 star champions, almost all of us very carefully considered who to rank, gave it tons of thought and on most occasions we all ranked the Dooms of the world, Corvus, Nick Fury and Torch etc as our very first r3. Now, I keep seeing the complete opposite with r4’s. It seems as though the same careful consideration is not being practiced. It’s almost as if some rank ups I’ve seen the summoner stuck his or her hand in a hat and pulled out a name! It’s not as if r4 materials are super common that can be gotten very easily either. Can someone help me understand this trend? Can someone help me understand why I’ve seen r4 Yellowjacket, r4 Rogue, r4 Air Walker and please help me understand r4 Groot!!!!
the real answer when you see a R4 Groot for instance is that people just want to be the one with a R4 that no one else has. and that's it. R4 Iron Fist .. R4 Superior Iron Man etc ... they just don't want to follow the trends and I can respect that.
I think another important thing is the prevalence of sig stones and awakening gems. A lot of people got their first Rank 4 via the 3->4 Gem in Act 7 Exploration. This also came with a Generic Awakening Gem and 200 Sig Stones. Those latter items would've been reasons to not go with certain champions as our first Rank 3 because some champs need an awakening or need high sig and a summoner may not have been able to accomplish those other tasks at that time. There was lots of debate around whether Namor was a good Rank 3 for Thronebreaker for those reasons. This just wasn't a road block this time around.
My theory is we're seeing the consequences of rank deceleration - the increased attack and health we get for each rank up is noticeably and deliberately smaller from R2 to R3 to R4 than it has traditionally been. As a result, the pressure to rank the champ you think will get the most numerical benefit from that rank up is dropping. While it is still significant, it is now low enough that players are more likely to exercise some of their own preferences on those rank ups. So yeah, I think the game is giving people more opportunity to rank up "for fun" because the opportunity cost of being fun or daring with your rank ups is much lower. People can express themselves more in their rank ups. So they are ranking up for diversity of deck for battlegrounds, they are ranking up their favorite pet champ, they are ranking up just to be different, or to make a statement about a champ they think is underappreciated, just because they can.
Which I think is an all around good thing.
I don't necessarily agree here. I think minimizing the importance of rank ups means that pretty much the only people that actually care about them is the most competitive. If you're throwing all your eggs in that one basket for monetization of rank resources, that seems flawed to me.
That might be problematic, if Kabam wasn't also shifting content development to reward more diverse rosters. In the old days, you could rank up three god tier champs and basically do everything in the game. Even the less skilled and lower progress players were being told to just rank up that Star Lord and be done with it. But nowadays, most players need a wider range of champions, and most players can't just do everything with a couple R2s. For them, every rank up helps, because they never reach a point where anything is easy. It is just less difficult.
The most competitive players will spend no matter what, to squeeze out any advantage. But the less driven players will still spend, they will just spend more on what they want and less on what someone else tells them they need.
This game has three big monetization baskets. Champion acquisition, rank up resources, and consumables (across all game modes). Rank up deceleration really only affects one of those baskets, and I don't think it is a given that it is affecting it negatively. And even if it does to some degree, it could also be affecting the champion acquisition basket positively, because rank up deceleration also shifts the focus towards acquiring a more diverse set of champions: having more R2s than less R3s, so to speak, can encourage players to want to chase after more champions, rather than focusing all their resources on just a few.
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All hail the 7* overlord incoming. 50k shards/crystal for a chance to get your very own 5/65 Groot equivalent. Meep morp!
The most competitive players will spend no matter what, to squeeze out any advantage. But the less driven players will still spend, they will just spend more on what they want and less on what someone else tells them they need.
This game has three big monetization baskets. Champion acquisition, rank up resources, and consumables (across all game modes). Rank up deceleration really only affects one of those baskets, and I don't think it is a given that it is affecting it negatively. And even if it does to some degree, it could also be affecting the champion acquisition basket positively, because rank up deceleration also shifts the focus towards acquiring a more diverse set of champions: having more R2s than less R3s, so to speak, can encourage players to want to chase after more champions, rather than focusing all their resources on just a few.