When I got 4 star upgrades without need for any affection on Ankyo and Battler, and then on Battler also didn't need affection points and could insta upgrade her to 5 stars (or rather I can upgrade her, I just don't have spare 5 milions of cash seeing how I am slowly upgrading to 3 starts other new girls). I gone to discord and asked if they changed something, like did they remove affection cost need for 4/5 stars or something.

What I got in response is that they changed something with latest patches that makes girls remember how much affection points pre-2.0 you gave girls, which is around 15k, so each girl that was on 3 stars and need less than 15k total now to get to 5th star will have her 4/5 stars insta unlocked, if girl needs more than 15k she will require those 15k less.

Seeing as affection point cost 417, this 15k thingy makes upgrading girls to 5 stars around 6.25m cash cheaper, thou total cost go up into tens or hundreds of millions quite fast, at which point this "bonus" doesn't help much.

As a side note. Technically if they will release 4/5 stars slow enough, most players should be able to collect affection and cash to upgrade them 4/5 stars girls to those 4/5 as a side thing to upgrading newly acquired girls to 3 stars. Of course this doesn't work for new players or people who whaled and got a lot of girls fast.

Our only hope is that we will level fast enough and that with leveling up cash we gain from selling freely acquired items will become significantly huge portion of our income to offset 4/5 ridiculous costs. Or that supposedly to be released before end of the year PvP update will have high enough number of changes with maybe how much affection item drops/cash drops we get.