In a game like Gundam Battle Gunpla Warfare, where you can take a base two star part (green) and upgrade it with awakening chips, you might initially feel like upgrading those parts is useful.

After all, using duplicate parts, you can upgrade Ex Skills and Passive Traits, and its much easier to come by green or white parts (like our friend the Guncannon that can be had via free rolls from our friend points), but the benefit isn't always there. When you compare 2 star or 3 star parts to natural 4 star parts, the difference in base values is really large. And without getting too deep into the math, the reason this matters is because if i have 1000 melee defense and you have 1000 melee attack, you will be doing zero damage to me. If this were not the case, base stats would not matter as much. But because this IS the case, base stats become quite important.

Now, prior to the buff to the Artemis parts, and the addition of code Phi parts, we used to have clear and distinct tiers. All 4 star parts had higher values at max than all 3 star. All 3 star had higher stats and values than all 2 star. Etc. It looked like the image below, with the only deviations being the top 3 blue parts.