It appears to be that Demiurge wants the 4s to sit just above the 3 power band, so that 4s offer only a marginal advantage over 3s and do not entirely squeeze 3*s out of high tier play.
I think this is a mistake, and will only grow into a larger mistake as the 4* space fills out.
My primary concern is that mistakes are inevitable with character design. Sometimes characters end up stronger or weaker than they are intended to be. If the 4* power band is too close to the 3* band, then the inevitable mistakes will create excessive overlap.
Consider the 2*/3* power gap. After the level shift, this gap is substantial. So much so that only the very very best 2s (ares, obw) are competitive with the very worst 3s (beast, doc oc). The vast majority of 3s completely outclass the vast marjority of 2s and even average 3s will have a more than fighting chance against the best 2 team (e.g. in any pvp event using the loanders, something like psylocke + cap marvel @166 won’t have much trouble even against ares/obw unless they get terrible board luck).
This is not true of the 3*/4* gap. At least a dozen 3s are as good as or straight up better than almost all of the 4s. Xforce and 4Thor were the only true exceptions as they clearly outclassed the 3s (nerf discussions can use a different thread). And when a 3 character ends up a bit stronger than intended (e.g. Iron Fist), or a 4* character ends up a bit weaker (e.g., elektra), then result is a completely upside down incentive structure. Elektra is MUCH harder to get than Iron Fist, and much more expensive to buy/level. But if you had both at max level, you would almost never use elektra when given the choice.
Basically, demiurge is giving itself a VERY small target to hit with each 4* character design. They have to be enough better than 3s to justify the exponentially higher price of acquisition. But they apparently can’t be so good as to lock out 3 rosters from competitiveness (since both 4*thor and xforce did that were expressly stated to be “too powerful” for Demiurge’s plans). I just don’t think that is a sound design strategy. Errors and unforeseen consequences are bound happen, and with such a small target area, even modest errors can really upset the intended design.
I recognize that there are problems with just making 4s the new 3s (specifically, the game probably can’t support an economy of 30+ 3s that are just transitional characters, players would be upset at the diminution of their 3 stables, and the 4s aren’t numerous enough now to support their own separate play space). Nevertheless, that solution seems better to me than the current hybrid system where 4s are the only endgame prize to achieve, but don’t offer much of anything except a very high leveling cost and not much more utility than the top 3*s.
Alternatively, as others have suggested here, demiurge could segregate the player universe, offering 4* only tournaments and other barriers that would allow 4s to be power and unique without unbalancing 3 pvp play.
