In closing my last thought: You have beast, now Colossus. So what, where does that end? Look back at your roster. How's your Dr. Doom? Hood? C.Mags or even Loki? They're almost all OG 3*s surely you have them all at respectable levels right? Not really? But you use them often right? not really? So why do we keep them? Ragnarock used to kick ass, but we dont care anymore, nerfing/funbalancing, he's gone too. I only used the bad guys as an example but the good guys too: Spider man, nuff said with that.
I've been thinking about this a bit, and trying to find the difference between my experience and yours. Take this with a grain of salt, however, because a) I have a Nick Fury and b) up until the last Simulator, I rarely, if ever, used Classic Mags because I was missing a whole power. So the recent character changes didn't affect me much at all - Mags wasn't part of my normal strategy, I don't have a 2* Daken, 3* Daken is in the mid-levels for me and only used when boosted, Hawkeye was an improvement for a character I only mildly leveled for PvE, and X-Force got better for the top tier players (which I work to avoid) and anyone with ISO to burn. The last patch that bothered my play was Team Ups, and the patch after that fixed it for me (not having random Supernovas really made me happy).
I am currently maxed on five 3*s - Hulk, GSBW, Hood, Punisher, and Doom. I have a few more that have been leveled above 100 - Steve, Thor, Spidey, Patch, IM40 and Daken. I have a roster spot for every 3* or better, some of which are horribly covered. I consider my roster pretty diverse. The only characters without a spot on my roster are the 2* Dark Avengers (which will be painful if they ever do a Heroic with just those characters), and every 1* except Iron Man (been thinking about covering a Juggernaut just for Balance of Power, but haven't done it). I haven't sold a roster character in months. Every so often I consider opening a spot for those low star characters, but those covers are so common, I don't feel like I need to 'collect' them.
I think there's two elements to why I don't get frustrated (beyond the normal frustration of a bad bracket with superhuman players taking the top scores or a "this isn't luck, this is cheating" AI cascade).
The first is that I treat the Pokemon element of catching them all the 'reward' system. Levels aren't important to me beyond what they can do to earn more covers. If I get to the point where I have every character fully covered, perhaps that reward endorphin will switch over to leveling them all. But I don't get the same rush pushing the level button for Nick Fury to go from level 73 to 74 as I do getting a new cover for him - not even close. Because of this, I don't mind new characters. I'm never going to develop Beast into my top tier characters, but I sure as shootin' want to build him up to 13 covers.
To that end, roster slots are the only currency that matters to me right now. Maybe it helps that I'm sitting on a small mountain of HP to get me in that mindset, but that's the way I'm playing the roster game. As long as the game gives me that IV drip of a new cover every so often (especially if I feel like I 'earned' it), I find the collection aspect enjoyable.
The second element is the roster I've built. I have enough characters now that are leveled enough that I can field a few decent teams for any featured character PvP event. Hulk and GSBW, Steve and Hood, Punisher and Doom, etc. I'm just now getting Thor into fighting shape, so he'll get into the mix more frequently. I think the key is to build a roster that has a couple of good two-person teams that don't care about the third member. Between featured character PvP and required node PvE, that's probably about 80% of the matches where there are roster requirements. The random PvPs like the Avengers one right now or the PvE non-required nodes let you play with the rest of your roster. So having more than one core duo that can clean up the board regardless of the third character is key. And by having at least one cover of every character, those required PvE nodes won't be locked out, and you have a team that can deal with bringing along a low level anchor.
So what about those required characters? If the placement rewards for the event are desirable, it will probably pay to throw a few levels at them to get them somewhat resistant to AoE attacks and wars of attrition. If the soft cap is below 90, might as well max them out if I can. If the rewards are not interesting (already maxed the character being given away, or I know I won't have the time to put in an effort for progression awards), farm for ISO and ignore their levels. This way you can spread out some levels to the mid tier as needed and still develop the characters you want for your primary team when there is no incentive to level someone else.
Then comes a PvE heroic that limits the available characters into the single digits. Depending on who they pick, you could be in heaven or hell - it's awesome when they pick one of your primary teams, and it sucks when you haven't put any effort into the characters - especially since they need to make it new player accessible by including at least two 1* characters. This is where the previously mentioned 'level sprinkling' comes into play - I don't pay much attention to Modern Hawkeye, but I've thrown levels at him here and there. So when he gets picked for a Heroic, he gets boosted into playable range with about 3k health and the ability to deal a few thousand in damage. Once the event is over, he goes back to bench warming. Because of my strategy, there really hasn't been an event in recent memory that I couldn't participate in, just ones that were easier/harder.
And not since the Thorverine nerf have I sold a leveled character, and never a 3*. I think it only makes sense if you're funding the start of a 2* to 3* transition, but even then, the ROI is horrible.
The game punishes you for not having every character. The other players punish you for not having the best characters. There is a difference. Once I eliminated the game frustrations I could control, I started enjoying the game again. Kind of like the matches itself - if you focus on the troublemaker that trips you up and slows you down (OBW, Hood), you can then play the parts that are fun, like a Thunder Strike to Wolverine's face.
This was much longer than I intended, and not meant to say anyone else's play style is wrong.
you and feed me more and more Daredevils!
