Characters Make Bronze great again!

[Fel]

Hello yall, back again to rant about a game I suck at.

We all hate bronze fighters. It sucks to pull them, and they clog up your fighter AND move inventory.
They're generally there to be 30 skill points and a some extra EXP for that new gold you pulled.
However, there are some people willing to put the effort into upgrading these bronzes to golds.

Most of the points I make here will extend to silver fighters, though to a smaller percentage of them.

To upgrade a bronze to gold, you require 3 other bronzes of the same character, and 4 silvers of the same character. This is already quite a hefty sum if you aren't pulling from character relics regularly. There is also the experience required to get to level 30 and 40 respectively.

The biggest reason bronzes aren't being used at gold is due to the terrible base stats they have. Credits to the spreadsheet made by raidriar.
Considering they've been upgraded to the same rarity, I believe upgraded bronzes should have similar stats to the base gold fighters.
It does make sense for them to be weaker than base golds, but with PF providing gold fighters so regularly and the effort it takes to upgrade, the current strength of bronze fighters are too low.

In a game where the energy system is used to force encourage players to use different fighters, buffing bronze fighter stats would be a great way to promote diversity in what fighters people use. Having a nice color scheme be unusable just because its a bronze fighter sucks too.

Sundae school is one of my favorite color schemes. Please let me beat people up with it better.

 

[Jezuz]

Or you can just use them for their intended purposes, to compete in the Bronze leaderboard. As you make them gold you still need bronze keys to upgrade them. There is absolutely no problem to be addressed here.
Let us keep in mind that Skullgirls mobile, unlike the desktop version(bless that game), is absolutely free. Even though I've played the game free and have gotten top 100 in the gold leaderboard reaching 4mil, I've occasionally bought gatcha's with iTunes cards even though I have no use for them. And therefore, buffing bronze units have absolutely no relevance. Just my humble opinion.

 

[Fel]

They don't need to buff bronzes in their bronze form. Just buff their Gold form stats.
Lets think about this for a second. I don't mind bronzes being used only for Bronze PF and Bronze only missions. However, why have an option to upgrade them to gold when it locks them out of their intended use and can't be used in Gold PF reliably? The bronze key thing matters less because there's less incentive to go for them (people rarely compete in the bronze PF). The only problem there would be is the gold and points required to level a Bronze's skills which is considerably lower than a Gold.
The problem I was addressing is that Bronzes cannot be used as Golds. Upgrading them is a waste of time and units. If need be, raise the difficulty of upgrading them, so it requires more gold, or extra skill points to do so.

People will still spend theonite to buy relics when new characters come out or when they start out. If profitability is an issue, just make evolving cost theonite or something.

 

[Jezuz]

They don't need to buff bronzes in their bronze form. Just buff their Gold form stats.
Lets think about this for a second. I don't mind bronzes being used only for Bronze PF and Bronze only missions. However, why have an option to upgrade them to gold when it locks them out of their intended use and can't be used in Gold PF reliably? The bronze key thing matters less because there's less incentive to go for them (people rarely compete in the bronze PF). The only problem there would be is the gold and points required to level a Bronze's skills which is considerably lower than a Gold.
The problem I was addressing is that Bronzes cannot be used as Golds. Upgrading them is a waste of time and units. If need be, raise the difficulty of upgrading them, so it requires more gold, or extra skill points to do so.

People will still spend theonite to buy relics when new characters come out or when they start out. If profitability is an issue, just make evolving cost theonite or something.

Ah I see. I must've read that wrong. It's very common for gatcha games to make the bronze evolved units a tad weaker than their gold counter parts. Honeslty I think it's fine, as it enticed people who are pay to win to buy them with real money. It definitely makes sense gameplay wise, but honestly I can barely feel the difference.

 

[Fel]

Ah I see. I must've read that wrong. It's very common for gatcha games to make the bronze evolved units a tad weaker than their gold counter parts. Honeslty I think it's fine, as it enticed people who are pay to win to buy them with real money. It definitely makes sense gameplay wise, but honestly I can barely feel the difference.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15fSq6nRmKWcIejk0oR01Rhg0LUcTYQP_qbBlhJIzj4E/edit#gid=0
Here's a link to the spreadsheet I mentioned. A bit worse is fine but these stats are pretty much garbage tier. A few exceptions though.
The base value matters so much because at high PF streaks everyone has %Def, %Att and %HP.

 

[Jezuz]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15fSq6nRmKWcIejk0oR01Rhg0LUcTYQP_qbBlhJIzj4E/edit#gid=0
Here's a link to the spreadsheet I mentioned. A bit worse is fine but these stats are pretty much garbage tier. A few exceptions though.
The base value matters so much because at high PF streaks everyone has %Def, %Att and %HP.

Wow, those stats are actually so sad. Filia is definitely having a bad hair day lmfao. Even though I'm seeing this in front of me, playing the game I don't feel this difference too much. I've poured all my bronze resources into my blue Cerebella and it preforms just as well(if not better) than a half maxed gold. But yeah, if a original gold character was to be maxed out, compared to a gold evolved unit it would just flop. The problem is how do we solve this issue. We can't just change the skill tree every single time we evolve a unit, and just buffing bronze characters take the point out of rolling a gold to begin with.

 

[Jezuz]

In the end I think that we should probably just not change how bronze works. Maybe we can get an option to switch outfits with crystals or IRL money by fusing certain units together. That would be cool.

 

[Fel]

In the end I think that we should probably just not change how bronze works. Maybe we can get an option to switch outfits with crystals or IRL money by fusing certain units together. That would be cool.

Honestly just making upgrade cost coins and skill points would be fine. Understudy is actually one of the better bronzes in terms of stats and SA so its understandable.

 

[ImaiKari]

Honestly just making upgrade cost coins and skill points would be fine. Understudy is actually one of the better bronzes in terms of stats and SA so its understandable.

Understudy doesn't even have 4k attack, what do you mean by better in terms of stats? Some bronzes like both of filia's need to have their SAs reevaluated for sure. I don't think the stats should be too similar. A base bronze should feel like a bronze compared to a gold, even when evolved to gold because you're trying to force something into a place where it's not meant to be. If everything was able to work as a gold then there would be less excitement in actually pulling a gold. Bronzes as a majority should be more often seen in gold prize fights, but they should never be up there in the max range, because that's not where they belong. Being able to use any fighter you get from a relic reduces the value of the base golds.
[EDIT] I also saw a good point being brought up; bronzes, even as golds, still only take bronze keys and very small sums of skill points and coins. Bronzes are always supposed to be budget fighters, that's their role.

 

[Fel]

Understudy doesn't even have 4k attack, what do you mean by better in terms of stats? Some bronzes like both of filia's need to have their SAs reevaluated for sure. I don't think the stats should be too similar. A base bronze should feel like a bronze compared to a gold, even when evolved to gold because you're trying to force something into a place where it's not meant to be. If everything was able to work as a gold then there would be less excitement in actually pulling a gold. Bronzes as a majority should be more often seen in gold prize fights, but they should never be up there in the max range, because that's not where they belong. Being able to use any fighter you get from a relic reduces the value of the base golds.

Unless im reading the spreadsheet wrong understudy has the 6th highest FS total out of the bronze fighters and has a SA that straight up boosts damage. Probably one of the three Id say is almost usable along with Cold Stones and Beatbox.

The biggest problem I have is that the upgrade feature is virtually useless outside of a few units at best. Even golds have a spectrum of stats, and having every bronze be worse than a dread locks in terms of stats isnt exactly ideal in my opinion. Of course i dont expect bronzes to be up there with Harlequin or have matching attack values with Buzzkill.

Being able to use any fighter from relics is a good thing. Having base golds be better is fine, but having inherently useless units is just bad game design. Of course, bronzes arent useless cuz theyre used in bronze PF and bronze only nodes, but once you upgrade them they lose their niche.

And honestly the PFs give the best golds mostly anyways, opening relics werent very worthwhile until the new gold variants. The game is already very limiting in terms of what units are viable or not, and thats a big problem.

 

[ImaiKari]

Unless im reading the spreadsheet wrong understudy has the 6th highest FS total out of the bronze fighters and has a SA that straight up boosts damage. Probably one of the three Id say is almost usable along with Cold Stones and Beatbox.

The biggest problem I have is that the upgrade feature is virtually useless outside of a few units at best. Even golds have a spectrum of stats, and having every bronze be worse than a dread locks in terms of stats isnt exactly ideal in my opinion. Of course i dont expect bronzes to be up there with Harlequin or have matching attack values with Buzzkill.

Being able to use any fighter from relics is a good thing. Having base golds be better is fine, but having inherently useless units is just bad game design. Of course, bronzes arent useless cuz theyre used in bronze PF and bronze only nodes, but once you upgrade them they lose their niche.

And honestly the PFs give the best golds mostly anyways, opening relics werent very worthwhile until the new gold variants. The game is already very limiting in terms of what units are viable or not, and thats a big problem.

Less than 4k attack is not really viable in most situations. The grab damage increase is percentage based, so increasing something already so low doesn't help too much by itself. If it can't be a carry by itself, it's not good.

Again, it's virtually useless to anyone who already has viable golds. That's probably working as intended, since, as I stated, the bronzes are budget characters. They're very cheap to actually upgrade, and for most people, the cost of 3 bronzes and 4 silvers is very small. Many games work this way, where once you get the best of any given item/character, that the lower versions are meant to be left behind for the better thing. This is evident in the fact that bronzes often have SA's that reflect as weaker versions of base gold SAs. For example, scarlet viper and bloodbath are very similar in the way that they work, just with a different buff applied, but making the SA more generally applicable. The bronzes are often built to be niche versions of golds, which fits their role as budget characters, so that you don't have to invest large quantities of supplies into these characters. This idea can often be successful, like with cold stones and beatbox, where they get a niche strong enough to stand out on their own.

Being able to use any fighter reliably in an area outside of where it is meant to be is not healthy. If you could pull a ton of bronzes and just use those variants throughout the game, you would devalue the golds, which should remain an event to obtain, at least as a majority. Some flop, of course.

Really? I find it a wide spectrum. There's at least 2 variants for any given fighter, often more that can be used to work through max teams. You can easily use a gold cold stones to carry through a max team, even though that's likely unintentional. And then there's big band, who has 6 very usable variants.

 

[EmeraldSkirmish]

I feel that for the work of leveling up bronzes, they SHOULD be somewhat comparable to golds... But I don't have any suggestions right now on how to improve that system without unbalancing something else.

 

[ImaiKari]

I feel that for the work of leveling up bronzes, they SHOULD be somewhat comparable to golds... But I don't have any suggestions right now on how to improve that system without unbalancing something else.

What work? It takes like no resources once you have tons of spare bronzes and silvers. You start just evolving characters to gold just to clear up space.

 

[EmeraldSkirmish]

What work? It takes like no resources once you have tons of spare bronzes and silvers. You start just evolving characters to gold just to clear up space.

You have to level to 30, and then again to 40. THEN you can grow to become a gold. If we really are just treating them as diet golds, why make them re-level from 0?
Also, I feel that it bears mentioning that I liks some of the bronze pallettes... making there be SOME way to keep them on par as the game progresses would be nice. Having no way to use the characters' primary skins without being underpowered is a bummer.

 

[ImaiKari]

You have to level to 30, and then again to 40. THEN you can grow to become a gold. If we really are just treating them as diet golds, why make them re-level from 0?
Also, I feel that it bears mentioning that I liks some of the bronze pallettes... making there be SOME way to keep them on par as the game progresses would be nice. Having no way to use the characters' primary skins without being underpowered is a bummer.

I'm not sure about you, but most of my bronzes and silvers automatically just hit level 30/40 from me doing prize fights, and if I'm trying I can get a silver to 40 in less than 2 days. Where's the work? It's super easy and effortless.

 

[Fel]

Again, it's virtually useless to anyone who already has viable golds. That's probably working as intended, since, as I stated, the bronzes are budget characters. They're very cheap to actually upgrade, and for most people, the cost of 3 bronzes and 4 silvers is very small.

Why does it need to be virtually useless? There's a way to make them usable without making them better than golds. I don't mind if they change the upgrade costs to reflect the power boost. There is no point in making them virtually useless when upgraded and have it serve more purpose when its not upgraded.

Many games work this way, where once you get the best of any given item/character, that the lower versions are meant to be left behind for the better thing.

But those games generally have a lot more characters. Also, all SGM variant designs are limited to their character, only changing the color. There's plenty of reason to want to use bronzes, but the game doesn't provide enough outlets for it.

This is evident in the fact that bronzes often have SA's that reflect as weaker versions of base gold SAs. For example, scarlet viper and bloodbath are very similar in the way that they work, just with a different buff applied, but making the SA more generally applicable.

Well there you go, bronze SAs are generally weaker, so they'll have a natural gap with golds anyways. Again I'm fine with bronzes being weaker, just boost them to a point where they aren't wet noodles.

Being able to use any fighter reliably in an area outside of where it is meant to be is not healthy. If you could pull a ton of bronzes and just use those variants throughout the game, you would devalue the golds, which should remain an event to obtain, at least as a majority. Some flop, of course.

This is not true. People aren't gonna give up on going for golds just because their bronzes can fight too. It'll give people in the early game a boost, so they'll continue to play and start participating in PFs sooner, leading to golds in their collection. Its not like people will stop pulling relics either. You know that people in the discord spent theonite on buying character relics, even though they generally have a strong collection already. Having bronzes be stronger won't discourage people from getting golds. If anything, perhaps it'll stop people quitting the game early when they pull no golds

Really? I find it a wide spectrum. There's at least 2 variants for any given fighter, often more that can be used to work through max teams. You can easily use a gold cold stones to carry through a max team, even though that's likely unintentional. And then there's big band, who has 6 very usable variants.

I think this is a big problem this game has. When you're limited to 7 variants of a character, having only 2 of them be useful, heck, Filia probably only has 1 usable variant, is really limiting. Perhaps I wouldn't mind if they were all different characters, and Golds were the main fighters while bronzes were background characters or something. I understand that Big Band has multiple useful variants, but thats an exception.
Fire Emblem Heroes also has characters that have likable designs from 5 stars to 3 stars. If you really want, you can upgrade your trash tier character into a monster with enough investment, just because she's your waifu. You said before that this wasn't a fair comparison, but you end up talking about "many other games" too, which I feel isn't a fair comparison either.

 

[ImaiKari]

Why does it need to be virtually useless? There's a way to make them usable without making them better than golds. I don't mind if they change the upgrade costs to reflect the power boost. There is no point in making them virtually useless when upgraded and have it serve more purpose when its not upgraded.

Well they're useless to us because we have the best golds. You can go in and try to beat a max team with whatever bronze you want, but in the end, they'll be useless since there will always be a few golds that are very strong anyways. HQ, RE, Epic sax, WB, etc. It's useless because there's something even slightly better. You would need to make the bronzes on the level of the highest golds or above to make them not useless to the top 33%~ of players. The other 66%~ Probably can't even get a gold bronze, especially before they pick up something top tier from a PF.

But those games generally have a lot more characters. Also, all SGM variant designs are limited to their character, only changing the color. There's plenty of reason to want to use bronzes, but the game doesn't provide enough outlets for it.

Considering many bronzes are simpler, less applicable versions of some golds, I don't understand why you'd want to use a majority of bronzes in place of these golds.

Well there you go, bronze SAs are generally weaker, so they'll have a natural gap with golds anyways. Again I'm fine with bronzes being weaker, just boost them to a point where they aren't wet noodles.

My point was that a good amount of bronze SAs are just more unreliable niche versions of gold SAs. They're not wet noodles, a good few can do plenty fine.

This is not true. People aren't gonna give up on going for golds just because their bronzes can fight too. It'll give people in the early game a boost, so they'll continue to play and start participating in PFs sooner, leading to golds in their collection. Its not like people will stop pulling relics either. You know that people in the discord spent theonite on buying character relics, even though they generally have a strong collection already. Having bronzes be stronger won't discourage people from getting golds. If anything, perhaps it'll stop people quitting the game early when they pull no golds

Ehhh, they'd certainly lose some luster if you can use just anything. I agree to what you said here more-so now, though.

I think this is a big problem this game has. When you're limited to 7 variants of a character, having only 2 of them be useful, heck, Filia probably only has 1 usable variant, is really limiting. Perhaps I wouldn't mind if they were all different characters, and Golds were the main fighters while bronzes were background characters or something. I understand that Big Band has multiple useful variants, but thats an exception.
Fire Emblem Heroes also has characters that have likable designs from 5 stars to 3 stars. If you really want, you can upgrade your trash tier character into a monster with enough investment, just because she's your waifu. You said before that this wasn't a fair comparison, but you end up talking about "many other games" too, which I feel isn't a fair comparison either.

Filia has like 3 that I use reliably-- It's more than 2 a character, I find myself using close to 3. I know beo's golds are all functioning fine, pea has at least 3, eliza has a solid 3, etc... It's normally 2 golds and one silver, though beo and big band are the exception.

FEH also locks some of the highest tier characters behind 5 star pulls only. They also cycle characters and variants like nobody's business (Which I can imagine might be attributed to a much larger team), and many of the bronzes or silvers you pull won't fit into the bow/Reinhardt meta, and will flop (In arena and end insane mode, at least).

 

[Jezuz]

Honeslty, I can beat teams of super strong high power level units with my shitty revolved units all the time. It's a matter of how much skill you demonstrate while battling

 

[Fel]

Well they're useless to us because we have the best golds. You can go in and try to beat a max team with whatever bronze you want, but in the end, they'll be useless since there will always be a few golds that are very strong anyways. HQ, RE, Epic sax, WB, etc. It's useless because there's something even slightly better. You would need to make the bronzes on the level of the highest golds or above to make them not useless to the top 33%~ of players. The other 66%~ Probably can't even get a gold bronze, especially before they pick up something top tier from a PF.



Considering many bronzes are simpler, less applicable versions of some golds, I don't understand why you'd want to use a majority of bronzes in place of these golds.



My point was that a good amount of bronze SAs are just more unreliable niche versions of gold SAs. They're not wet noodles, a good few can do plenty fine.



Ehhh, they'd certainly lose some luster if you can use just anything. I agree to what you said here more-so now, though.



Filia has like 3 that I use reliably-- It's more than 2 a character, I find myself using close to 3. I know beo's golds are all functioning fine, pea has at least 3, eliza has a solid 3, etc... It's normally 2 golds and one silver, though beo and big band are the exception.

FEH also locks some of the highest tier characters behind 5 star pulls only. They also cycle characters and variants like nobody's business (Which I can imagine might be attributed to a much larger team), and many of the bronzes or silvers you pull won't fit into the bow/Reinhardt meta, and will flop (In arena and end insane mode, at least).

Theyre useless to everyone because its either inaccessible or too bad to use. Just because i have a epic sax doesnt mean I dont use RE, even though epic sax is more reliable.

I want to use bronzes because of their color pallette and to a lesser extent their SAs. Theyre fine as is on their own, Im just critiquing the upgrade feature. You say "a good few" can do fine, but you also said that understudy was weak?

I think its a problem with the whole game, the characters are very unbalanced. Even among golds. Of course, the predictable AI closes that gap a bit but the existance of blonde filia (cant even remember her variant name smh) says a lot about it.

Honestly i think this is less important that balancing the existing golds, but its definitely something Id want to see in the future.

@jezus
There comes a point where the base stats just arent high enough to play safely. For example, my PFs boil down to fighting Blue or Diaz (or Aeon) over and over again. I havent tried yet but if my maxed parasite weave does 100-400 damage on hit, i dont think most bronzes could even put a dent on them before charging their BB3.
I guess Aeon is a saving grace considering how weak she is though.

 

[Cellsai]

I definitely agree that there should be some way to upgrade Unnatural Golds to the equivalent stats of Natural Golds, but there should also be some sort of system to make natural golds more preferable.
A "quick" fix I can think of that still encourages people to go after natural golds for the sake of convenience could be something like this:

1) Give all characters a Natural Max FS, and Bonus Max FS.
EG: A Bronze Robo Fortune ends up at 5000FS when evolved to gold and max leveled. That's her Natural Max FS. Her Bonus Max FS could be 9000FS.

2) Once you get a character to level 50, you can then pay some cost (canopy coins, skll points, theonite, sacrificing duplicate characters, whatever) to further power up those characters. Once they reach their Bonus Max FS, they can't be powered up further.
EG: Pay 500 Theonite to increase Robo's stats by 400FS (10% of the difference between her Natural Max FS an Bonus Max FS). It will take 10 upgrades to hit her Bonus Max FS.

3) Make it so Natural Golds are already at their maximum Bonus Max FS, Silvers need to be upgraded 5 times to reach their Bonus Max, and Bronzes need to be upgraded 10 times to hit their Max.

This would make Gold's far better by default, but give people a way to eventually get their favorite characters up to par if they want to put in some work. I'd also make it pretty expensive so that it's something only high level players should be aiming to do.

Still pretty clunky, but I wouldn't be opposed to something in that direction.