The Marquee release structure owns bones.

"CallidusThorn;c-1602066" wrote:
I'm kind of torn on marquee events. There's nothing really wrong with them, unless it's a character that needs to be properly starred up to be of any real use. I've been using Nest in arena for a while now, and I've only just gotten her to 4*, for instance. But for characters that need to be 7* to really be of use, or who only really work as part of a team of other marquee characters, it's a lousy way of adding them to the game

I get where you're coming from, but this is two separate issues. Your problem isn't with the marquee structure, but rather with the release cadence. If a character was made farmable immediately after it released via marquee event, for instance, you would be happy as a clam. More in line with my original point, though, is that between Chromium and Aurodium releases it's ALWAYS been this way, marquees provide a free friendly approach to that.

And having marquee after marquee is just boring. It's reached the point that I don't really bother with them anymore. I clear the text talking about the ability, hit auto, and do something else until I can move onto the next tier. Mix things up, give us some variety. Throw new character shards into a bonus tier of omega battles over a month or two, or give us a few event battles we need to win with the character's faction to get shards, or go crazy and throw characters that aren't going to have as much impact or are part of a team of new characters straight onto nodes or into the shipments.

I get where you're coming from here, too, and even agree that these are really appealing alternatives, but let's game it out and see what that would result in. Omega events have level restrictions, meaning that newer players can't participate and get shards, whereas marquee events are level banded with scaling difficulty so newer players will be able to participate for sure and stand a good chance of completing all tiers. Moreover, if shards are put into omega battles, unless we put more than a total of 3*-worth in a month people are going to complain that they take too long and still result in a, and I say this in their words not mine, "a useless 3* character on my bench I won't touch."

A faction event also seems fun and exciting, but again--new players are very likely shut out. Moreover, go through the archives and look at any time a Legendary event was released or an event that required one specific faction and you'll see dozens of "How dare you make me farm these useless characters" threads... Faction events will happen and should happen, but they're going to be Assault Battles--have that faction to earn shards of the enemy faction.

Lastly, putting new characters directly into nodes and shipments if they're not going to have much of an impact is, again, not a problem with the marquee structure but rather the release cadence. But even then, you specified that they should be characters that won't have much impact, and that just won't happen. It would mean putting someone directly into shipments or nodes would be a tacit admission that the character isn't good and you can straight up skip it.

The point--and here I'm talking to everyone, not just to CallidusThorn--is that every solution is flawed because if you look at the criticisms people have been saying here, no one actually has much of a problem with marquee events, but rather with the release cadence or with platoons or with some other thing they don't like and they just lump it all together with marquees. No wonder those solutions are insufficient, you're suggesting them to solve the wrong problem!