Why don't we have some 5* Champions?!

Hello once again ..

Why don't we have some 5* champions in crystals?

Do you guys know why?

Some 5*:
-Dr Strange
-Scarlet witch
-Thor
-and some that I don't remember.

It gotta be a solid fact or reason but I don't think it will get in the way since is just a game, right?

Comments

unknown

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IcsGrec

In short: because they would break the game.
Thor and SW would destroy everything.
Wolverine would be impossible to beat without heal block.
BW is extremely powerful as she is now. As a 5* she would be OP.

No idea about Strange.

cUbA_LiBrE

I don't see any reason why there is no Abomination as 5*. He would make a decent defender on AW.

Dr. Strange as a 5* could actually be pretty nice as an attacker. I don't think he would be OP so why holding back?

I agree with SW not having as a 5* Star or BW. But I do think that Thor as a 5 Star could work. He will still only be able to deal two armor breaks.

DrZola

I’m confused...

Other than BW for the occasional Modok or spiked armor node (and always with bitter disappointment at how ordinary she’s become), I haven’t used any of those champs much over the past 12 months.

I thought the reason they were diminished in 12.0 was for the good of the game going forward and so that we could continue the Contest without their outrageous abilities breaking it.

And yet we now have champs available as 5* and 6* who are functionally equivalent if not superior.

Kabam.

Dr. Zola

TitoBandito187

DrZola wrote: »

I’m confused...

Other than BW for the occasional Modok or spiked armor node (and always with bitter disappointment at how ordinary she’s become), I haven’t used any of those champs much over the past 12 months.

I thought the reason they were diminished in 12.0 was for the good of the game going forward and so that we could continue the Contest without their outrageous abilities breaking it.

And yet we now have champs available as 5* and 6* who are functionally equivalent if not superior.

Kabam.

Dr. Zola

Agreed!

So, basically IMIW and Domino are the new WAR defenders everywhere. I had 2 IMIW on my path (7), 2 as minis and one as the boss last war. Yeah that was really fun. Life being sucked out of me in AW. Don't bother with the counters rebuttal (cause someone is going to post it). I know the counter - easier said than done unless you fight perfect all the time and have stronger champs to take him down faster. I took mine down, it cost me some revives and potions - I'm not going to pay for more if my stash runs out from this. He's a pain in the butt.

Namelez

TitoBandito187 wrote: »

DrZola wrote: »

I’m confused...

Other than BW for the occasional Modok or spiked armor node (and always with bitter disappointment at how ordinary she’s become), I haven’t used any of those champs much over the past 12 months.

I thought the reason they were diminished in 12.0 was for the good of the game going forward and so that we could continue the Contest without their outrageous abilities breaking it.

And yet we now have champs available as 5* and 6* who are functionally equivalent if not superior.

Kabam.

Dr. Zola

Agreed!

So, basically IMIW and Domino are the new WAR defenders everywhere. I had 2 IMIW on my path (7), 2 as minis and one as the boss last war. Yeah that was really fun. Life being sucked out of me in AW. Don't bother with the counters rebuttal (cause someone is going to post it). I know the counter - easier said than done unless you fight perfect all the time and have stronger champs to take him down faster. I took mine down, it cost me some revives and potions - I'm not going to pay for more if my stash runs out from this. He's a pain in the butt.

Totally agree bro counter works but it isn't as easy as it looks it's like tryna build poise with Sparky it's not too easy not saying it's hard but it's not a piece of cake either

DNA3000

DrZola wrote: »

And yet we now have champs available as 5* and 6* who are functionally equivalent if not superior.

In the case of Scarlet Witch, I would argue that is not true. In the case of Dr. Strange, I'd argue that probably is true.

But I think the reason we don't have them as 5* champions yet is due to an ironic problem. We can argue over whether it is reasonable to release those champs as 5*, but game developers have procedures to prevent those kinds of arguments from going around in circles within their own dev groups. At this point, to release either as a 5* would require a significant mandatory design review and testing phase, and the ironic part about that is that all that effort would detract from releasing new champs. Since it is generally always the case that the return on investment is better when that effort goes towards new champions (even though the testing and design time is much smaller here, the return on investment is also much smaller when all that's happening is a higher tier version of an old champion is getting out there), those champions I suspect are trapped in inertia-land.

If Dr. Strange was ever going to be released as a 5*, there has to be a perceived higher return on investment for that effort. For example, it is possible that the devs could decide that effort was worth it as a tie-in to Dr. Strange 2, whenever that releases.

It often happens that the reason why something isn't done by a game development team that seems both logical and easy, is because there's something else they would rather do instead, and there always is. I once made a suggestion to a game developer that he said he basically agreed with and would be willing to do, just as soon as he wasn't working on something more important. And he kept his word by eventually implementing a version of that suggestion. Three years later.

DrZola

DNA3000 wrote: »

DrZola wrote: »

And yet we now have champs available as 5* and 6* who are functionally equivalent if not superior.

In the case of Scarlet Witch, I would argue that is not true. In the case of Dr. Strange, I'd argue that probably is true.

But I think the reason we don't have them as 5* champions yet is due to an ironic problem. We can argue over whether it is reasonable to release those champs as 5*, but game developers have procedures to prevent those kinds of arguments from going around in circles within their own dev groups. At this point, to release either as a 5* would require a significant mandatory design review and testing phase, and the ironic part about that is that all that effort would detract from releasing new champs. Since it is generally always the case that the return on investment is better when that effort goes towards new champions (even though the testing and design time is much smaller here, the return on investment is also much smaller when all that's happening is a higher tier version of an old champion is getting out there), those champions I suspect are trapped in inertia-land.

If Dr. Strange was ever going to be released as a 5*, there has to be a perceived higher return on investment for that effort. For example, it is possible that the devs could decide that effort was worth it as a tie-in to Dr. Strange 2, whenever that releases.

It often happens that the reason why something isn't done by a game development team that seems both logical and easy, is because there's something else they would rather do instead, and there always is. I once made a suggestion to a game developer that he said he basically agreed with and would be willing to do, just as soon as he wasn't working on something more important. And he kept his word by eventually implementing a version of that suggestion. Three years later.

Good anecdote. I think you are right about the rationale, and it makes economic sense.

In terms of power, a credible argument could be made against SW as a 5*(although I would like to see how her damage scales compared to a Prox, Corvus, etc.), but the other three are different in my opinion. Much of the game content would relegate their 5*’s to very good status instead of dominant like they once were (except Doc, of course—he’s hopelessly neutered).

Dr. Zola

DNA3000

DrZola wrote: »

(except Doc, of course—he’s hopelessly neutered).

DNA's MMO rule number five: Game developers always screw up healing. It is always immensely strong, or ridiculously ineffective. There are mathy reasons for this I'll skip here, but the most important thing to note about how most healing mechanics work is that healing is a non-proportional damage mitigation mechanism.

Armor, resistance, that stuff. 100 points comes your way, 50 points gets mitigated, 50 points lands. If you want to kill the target, you just have to send twice as much damage their way. Or you can just attack for twice as long. Both work. But healing: you send 100 points of damage, the target heals 200, and you can't win. Attack twice as long, doesn't matter. Deal twice as much damage, also doesn't matter. Until you deal 201 points of damage you are incapable of beating that target (I'm excluding complex mechanics like heal block for simplicity sake).

Another way to look at healing is that it doesn't scale like most mitigation. 25 points of heal might be meaningless, but 250 points of heal might be immortal. Anything with a heal scales in non-intuitive ways. I don't think Dr. Strange as a 5* has any game-breaking ability, but that's a very detailed evaluation as a whole. That heal gets increasingly potent as he scales up. Granted, so does everyone else's, but you know who else isn't available as 5*: Wolverine. We fault Kabam for not testing before releasing, well this is where absent careful testing or having strong math wizards on the staff, being conservative is probably the right call.

To put it another way, as a 5/50 I would take Captain Marvel over Dr. Strange. As a 5/65, I would take Strange. As a 6* rank 5, who knows?

DrZola

DNA3000 wrote: »

DrZola wrote: »

(except Doc, of course—he’s hopelessly neutered).

DNA's MMO rule number five: Game developers always screw up healing. It is always immensely strong, or ridiculously ineffective. There are mathy reasons for this I'll skip here, but the most important thing to note about how most healing mechanics work is that healing is a non-proportional damage mitigation mechanism.

Armor, resistance, that stuff. 100 points comes your way, 50 points gets mitigated, 50 points lands. If you want to kill the target, you just have to send twice as much damage their way. Or you can just attack for twice as long. Both work. But healing: you send 100 points of damage, the target heals 200, and you can't win. Attack twice as long, doesn't matter. Deal twice as much damage, also doesn't matter. Until you deal 201 points of damage you are incapable of beating that target (I'm excluding complex mechanics like heal block for simplicity sake).

Another way to look at healing is that it doesn't scale like most mitigation. 25 points of heal might be meaningless, but 250 points of heal might be immortal. Anything with a heal scales in non-intuitive ways. I don't think Dr. Strange as a 5* has any game-breaking ability, but that's a very detailed evaluation as a whole. That heal gets increasingly potent as he scales up. Granted, so does everyone else's, but you know who else isn't available as 5*: Wolverine. We fault Kabam for not testing before releasing, well this is where absent careful testing or having strong math wizards on the staff, being conservative is probably the right call.

To put it another way, as a 5/50 I would take Captain Marvel over Dr. Strange. As a 5/65, I would take Strange. As a 6* rank 5, who knows?

Haha...way more analysis than I put into it but I agree entirely with your assessment of healing as a tricky mechanic. I think it’s also a reason why new champs seem to fall most times into the far end of either side of the spectrum: good/useful or bad/arena fodder. It’s way easier to critique and “armchair edit” the champ after testing against innumerable nodes and enemies than it is to design them out of whole cloth. And sometimes what looks on paper like a strong champ winds up being a weak one.

I’d still like to see the estimated stats for a 5/65 duped Wolverine—just for kicks. It’s a shame that beloved characters like him get benched as rosters progress.

Dr. Zola

DNA3000

DrZola wrote: »

I’d still like to see the estimated stats for a 5/65 duped Wolverine—just for kicks. It’s a shame that beloved characters like him get benched as rosters progress.

It is a shame; there are ways to balance around this problem but they are very mathy. As a rough estimate, a 5/65 Wolverine would likely have about twice as much health and healing, which means you're looking at a 14% chance for about 2100 heal plus an awakened 8% chance for 5600 heal per hit taken, scaled to power bar levels. If we assume Wolverine averages about half that much heal then he'd statistically heal for about 740 health per hit he takes. If we assume the player plays Wolverine at max power to maximize the heal then he'd be healing for about 1500 health per hit he takes. Those are very rough numbers as I don't know and haven't spent time to work out the power scaling rule for Wolverine's heal.

That's a lot. Heal block and RNG can still kill you of course, but if my back of the envelope calculations are correct that would be quite an interesting thing to play. There are a lot of fights where it might be better to deliberately get hit than hold block.

unknown

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unknown

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DNA3000

My_Superior wrote: »

@DNA3000 Factoring in Willpower, 6 star champions, and Rank 5 5-stars, how long do you think Abomination has before becoming a meme?

Seven.

Ghostspider231

The reason why certain champs like Thor and SW aren't 5* is that people won't spend money on the newer strong champs if champs like SW and Thor can do the job just as well. And God forbid if folks beat LOL without spending hundreds of dollars.

DNA3000

Ghostspider231 wrote: »

The reason why certain champs like Thor and SW aren't 5* is that people won't spend money on the newer strong champs if champs like SW and Thor can do the job just as well. And God forbid if folks beat LOL without spending hundreds of dollars.

Would OG Thor under post 12.0 mechanics even be a good choice for LoL as a 5/65?

StL_Suits

DNA3000 wrote: »

DrZola wrote: »

And yet we now have champs available as 5* and 6* who are functionally equivalent if not superior.

In the case of Scarlet Witch, I would argue that is not true. In the case of Dr. Strange, I'd argue that probably is true.

But I think the reason we don't have them as 5* champions yet is due to an ironic problem. We can argue over whether it is reasonable to release those champs as 5*, but game developers have procedures to prevent those kinds of arguments from going around in circles within their own dev groups. At this point, to release either as a 5* would require a significant mandatory design review and testing phase, and the ironic part about that is that all that effort would detract from releasing new champs. Since it is generally always the case that the return on investment is better when that effort goes towards new champions (even though the testing and design time is much smaller here, the return on investment is also much smaller when all that's happening is a higher tier version of an old champion is getting out there), those champions I suspect are trapped in inertia-land.

If Dr. Strange was ever going to be released as a 5*, there has to be a perceived higher return on investment for that effort. For example, it is possible that the devs could decide that effort was worth it as a tie-in to Dr. Strange 2, whenever that releases.

It often happens that the reason why something isn't done by a game development team that seems both logical and easy, is because there's something else they would rather do instead, and there always is. I once made a suggestion to a game developer that he said he basically agreed with and would be willing to do, just as soon as he wasn't working on something more important. And he kept his word by eventually implementing a version of that suggestion. Three years later.

@DNA3000 @DrZola

I completely agree with this logic, but I don't think there would be much testing involved (not a Kabam doesn't test joke

). These characters already exist as 5*s, we face them all the time as opponents in quests. Perhaps making them playable character does require more dev/testing/release process, but I would think the biggest majority of that work is already done.

-Suits

DrZola

I tend to agree with that @StL_Suits. I also appreciate the signoff on your post.

Dr. Zola

StL_Suits

DrZola wrote: »

I tend to agree with that @StL_Suits. I also appreciate the signoff on your post.

Dr. Zola

Hahaha, I think you've told me that before. Thanks!

-Suits

DNA3000

StL_Suits wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

DrZola wrote: »

And yet we now have champs available as 5* and 6* who are functionally equivalent if not superior.

In the case of Scarlet Witch, I would argue that is not true. In the case of Dr. Strange, I'd argue that probably is true.

But I think the reason we don't have them as 5* champions yet is due to an ironic problem. We can argue over whether it is reasonable to release those champs as 5*, but game developers have procedures to prevent those kinds of arguments from going around in circles within their own dev groups. At this point, to release either as a 5* would require a significant mandatory design review and testing phase, and the ironic part about that is that all that effort would detract from releasing new champs. Since it is generally always the case that the return on investment is better when that effort goes towards new champions (even though the testing and design time is much smaller here, the return on investment is also much smaller when all that's happening is a higher tier version of an old champion is getting out there), those champions I suspect are trapped in inertia-land.

If Dr. Strange was ever going to be released as a 5*, there has to be a perceived higher return on investment for that effort. For example, it is possible that the devs could decide that effort was worth it as a tie-in to Dr. Strange 2, whenever that releases.

It often happens that the reason why something isn't done by a game development team that seems both logical and easy, is because there's something else they would rather do instead, and there always is. I once made a suggestion to a game developer that he said he basically agreed with and would be willing to do, just as soon as he wasn't working on something more important. And he kept his word by eventually implementing a version of that suggestion. Three years later.

@DNA3000 @DrZola

I completely agree with this logic, but I don't think there would be much testing involved (not a Kabam doesn't test joke ). These characters already exist as 5*s, we face them all the time as opponents in quests. Perhaps making them playable character does require more dev/testing/release process, but I would think the biggest majority of that work is already done.

-Suits

How champions work in the hands of the players can be dramatically different than how they work when in the hands of the computer, both because the computer almost never uses tactics that leverage how champions' abilities work, and because frankly champions spend more time getting hit than hitting when used by the computer. For example, take Scarlet Witch. What would seeing SW as a 5* in game content tell you about how powerful she would be in the hands of players, if you didn't already know?

Also, if the 5* version was bugged in some way, it is possible we wouldn't know about the bug if the champion was not playable because the computer doesn't complain about bugs. We'd only really know about and tend to notice bugs affecting their defensive and reactive abilities, and less so their offensive ones.