Character customization quest

mischiefmaker

There are three problems that I'd like to solve:

1. Respec. There are actually two different situations here: the case where the character is maxed at 13 covers and you want to change from 5/5/3 to 4/5/4 or what have you, and the case where you're not maxed out but you really didn't want to raise a power because it now costs more AP or has a higher countdown tile. The first is more frustrating but it'd be nice to solve both.

2. Monetization. Some people are finding that they just don't have anything they want to buy.

3. High-level content. A dedicated player playing in every tournament and getting all the available rewards will run out of things to do and collect. This problem is solvable by introducing new characters, but it's hard for the dev team to code, test, balance, and release new characters faster than the most dedicated players can earn and level them.

I propose a feature that hopes to address all three concerns: a quest line that unlocks a character customization screen.

The quest
The quest entry point is a card in the Prologue. It unlocks after completing the Dark Avengers storyline. Thematically it could be something like a "vision quest" or a "training mission" where the character is getting a better handle on controlling his/her abilities (think Professor X's school in X-Men). The missions in the quest could either be static, or scaled to the level of the character, or could even be unique per character (so, for example, Storm's quest line would be different from Iron Man's). This last one sounds like too much work for designers, so I'd go with scaled to the level of the character. Each level should also require one or more other characters, providing a guest character if the player doesn't have that character in the roster, so that going through the quest helps players discover new combinations. There should be mission rewards but they should for the most part be ISO and boosts as this quest will be played many many times by most players; for the same reason, each mission should lock after being played once, as in The Hunt.

When starting the quest, the player chooses a character. This character becomes required for all missions until the quest is completed (there might also need to be an abandon feature, in case the player finds the quest too hard with a given character and wants to start over with someone else). When the last mission in the quest is complete, there is a splash screen announcing that the character customization screen for that character has been unlocked.

Character customization
This screen has a portrait of the character and two or three slider bars corresponding to the powers of the character. The player may set the sliders to any power level, up to a maximum of what has been unlocked via covers/hero points, and no more than 13 total levels. This means that players will now be incentivized to collect 15 covers instead of 13 for 3-power characters, but once they complete the quest, may freely interchange, giving designers more flexibility to change powers and players more flexibility to experiment with builds.

Additionally, the customization screen should have a number of skins available for each character. Skins would have no in-game effect other than to change the character portrait when fighting. It would not change the character portrait when selecting which team to fight (this is so that people are not confused about what character they are up against). There might also be accessories that are available for each character. For example, Wolverine might offer the standard yellow suit, the black leather suit from movies, flannel-shirt and leather jacket casual Wolverine, shirtless Wolverine, etc. Accessories might include, for instance, extra large sideburns, a cigar, or a Santa hat.

Another customization section should be power animations. Players would be able to purchase different animations for each of the powers and choose between them. Again, this would have no in-game effect other than aesthetic.

Customization options should be purchasable via hero points. Some things should be exorbitantly expensive, so that high-level players can show off how rich they are.

Benefits
1. The slider bar option for skills has been discussed previously, and is the best solution to both of the respec situations mentioned above. Additionally, it opens additional design space: now it's feasible to have a tournament where no power is allowed to be above level 3, for instance, without having a large chunk of the playerbase feel like they're being excluded.

2. Several people have stated that they're willing to pay for vanity objects like Santa hats. Having lots of costumes and accessories gives people an opportunity to pay for things they like without worrying about breaking game balance.

3. Adding new accessories should be relatively cheap compared to adding new characters; once the system is in place it should just be art and content management, no actual coding required. Thus this would give an easy source of content for keeping high level players occupied -- there would always be another costume or hat or animation to collect -- in addition to high level players needing to complete the quest with every character to unlock their customization screen.

Unknown

These are some interesting ideas but I'm not sure if all of them could be implemented. For instance, Marvel is the license holder and might not take too kindly to Wolverine in a cowboy hat. They may be very picky about how their characters appear in the game. To make a weird comparison, up until Gran Turismo 5, there was no car damage ever modeled because none of the car license holders wanted to allow their cars to look anything except pristine and shiny new.

If D3P doesn't budge on respec, I think it might be good to have some kind of Danger Room style training area that lets players experiment with what it's like to have 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 points in a skill, so players can try before they buy, just to avoid buyer's remorse later. Any matches they play there should give no rewards (0 ISO) and be up against a **** enemy team (low-level HAMMER or something).

mischiefmaker

Fair point on the license. I considered that, but it seems like for many characters there's enough variety to add accessories and costumes without straying from canon -- see the Wolverine examples above, all of which minus the Santa hat are from already-established Marvel properties.

Nemek

I'm meh on the cosmetic stuff, but some people are really into that, so for sure.

I do really like the idea of a character-specific side mission, though. It's a crazy amount of work from the devs, though. I'd probably like to see it not scaled by level, though. I think making them really hard for even high level versions would encourage players to devote a lot of ISO into a character in order to unlock their customization screen.

Dayv

someguy wrote:

These are some interesting ideas but I'm not sure if all of them could be implemented. For instance, Marvel is the license holder and might not take too kindly to Wolverine in a cowboy hat.

Oh yeah, that would never happen.

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