Suggestion: Consume excess covers to level-up

TheVulture

I have been knocking around a few 2(+)-birds-with-1-stone type suggestions, and this one I think could have legs: how about letting people use excess covers to level-up their characters?

Implementation

1. On the character training/detail screen: once a character has maxed a power (either at power n/n cap or has 5 invested) + you have a cover for that power, the gold 'power up' arrow is replaced by a "level up" button or icon (e.g. upward arrow sitting inside a big L).

2. Clicking this new button consumes 1 cover to fill the current XP completely, granting a character level.

3. The new button is greyed out while at current level max, and isn't displayed at all when the character is at their final level max.

Why do this?

I think this would have a couple of positive effects on the game:

1. It promotes 1* characters as core squad members.
Perhaps I'm alone in this, but once I started getting higher covers it quickly seemed pointless to invest in 1* characters - it takes 18-28k ISO to level them to max, and this is a considerable sum to spend on characters with the lowest overall potential (the same sum can take a 2** to level 54 or a 3*** to level 62!).
Consequently I'm forever sitting with 7 characters on maxed covers that are half-levelled (early PvE story ones) or completely unlevelled; this feels like wasted potential, when those 7 do include some big names & interesting skills, which could have real use in 'pauper' tournaments, when powered-up for events or when elite folks are unavailable for selection.
At the very least, levelling them up without using ISO (and only forgoing the 100 ISO selling gives) would give players the warm & fuzzy feeling of having a core of characters to call upon and use to participate in squad events e.g. Avengers, Dark Avengers.

I've spent real money on the game myself - perhaps more than I should of - yet my high-power roster is paper thin; I've max Thor, Ragnorak and soon Grey Widow - when one/all of those characters are unavailable for selection or I just want to spice up my gameplay, I have 25 other characters yet no-one to call on!
It would be a significant extension of the new-player experience to have standard tokens double as level-ups the 9 times out of 10 they yield 1* characters, while currently there's a bit of a valley between the "ooh; shiny new famous characters!" 1* introduction and the distant promise of "and these are who you should be saving/hoping for!" 2**/3*** cast.

2. Increases player satisfaction/reduces player dissatisfaction with cover purchases.
I'm sure D3 have a clearer picture of the metrics & odds than we, but if I use my own purchase experience as an example; I bought The Hulk event 10 pack as a holiday treat, for the guaranteed Punisher & the bonus match access he granted (which turned out to be especially silly as I won a set of his 3 covers days later ).
That 10 pack contained the promised 1 Punisher, but also 9 completely-unwanted Wolverine & Captain America covers (unwanted because they are the most common/PvE-awarded 2** covers in the game so have their powers maxed); when these 9 covers were sold they yielded 1,125 ISO - not even enough for a single Ragnorak or Grey Widow level, while I was working on them.
The end result of this is of course that I, the paying customer, conclude the transaction feeling like a chump (really needed at least 1 more rare to 'break even') - and so not very keen to repeat such a purchase in the future.

How this low-rarity draw could have played out differently:
I'm holding 5 Wolverine & 4 Captain America covers that I don't need - but those characters are powered-up for this event so maybe worth levelling up with them instead...
Basic maths shows that I'd foolish to waste cover level-ups while they only cost 63 ISO, so naturally I want to shift a little ISO focus away from my 3*** characters to reach a point where 1 cover > 500 ISO...
Maybe I stop there, or maybe I find my 33% levelled powered-up characters useful in the event and start shifting the levelling goalposts so those cover level-ups become really ISO efficient...
Either way a] my roster has more depth b] I am more personally invested in those 2 characters and thus have more goals in-game c] I don't feel like my cash was mostly-wasted buying that 10 pack.

3. Combining elements of both the above: encouragement to keep purchasing roster slots, as characters level without taking attention/ISO away from each other.
Personally I hold on to all characters 'because Pokemon' ('nuff said!), but I expect many other people must get their first Yelena Belova (or whomever) and wonder why on Earth they should hold on to her when they've absolutely no intention of spending 18k of ISO on her while they're all-in on Thor, Wolverine, etc. - and it's a fair comment.
If Yelena Belova were just invisibly levelling off standard tokens however, by the time such a player has their level 85 Thor & Wolverine pair (both red/yellow/green) they might suddenly see the appeal of a purple/black/blue character who steals red/yellow/green and feeds critical tiles to those heavy-hitters - that's more Hero points spent for D3 and a happier player, where-as currently Yelena Belova covers likely ain't doing much positive for anyone.

The negative

This would mean players with power-but-not-level maxed supervillains have an incentive to compete for top lightning round tournament places - noooooooOOOOOOoOOoOOOooooooOO!

Unknown

I really like this suggestion, and I they could balance it out many ways:
1:Adjust the number of covers needed across the board (i.e. 2 covers per level)
2:Adjust the number of covers needed based on character rarity (1 cover per level with 1*s, 2 covers per level with 2*s, etc...)
3:Adjust the number of covers needed based on current character level (i.e. 1 cover per level for levels 1-20, 2 per level for 20-40, 3 per level for 40-60, etc...)
4:Turn in covers for experience instead of a level(I could sell my excess Captain America cover for 125 ISO-8, but if I use it on Captain America, it is worth 2-5x that amount)

Unknown

I doubt this will ever happen, but I like the idea. But if there are people spending money on iso, they won't take that away from themselves and forgo one of their income sources.

Pretty sure if this did happen I'd have a level 863 wolverine though, that's all I ever pull.

Unknown

My idea (I had posted before) was to have each excess cover add to the MAX HP of your character. Something real small like 10 - 15 pts for each cover.

It might even give more life to your 1 star characters if you had a modern storm that also had 3500+ HP's.

Nemek

Overall nice idea, though I think the effect it would have on lightning rounds would cause so much strife within the community, it would hardly be worth it. Right now, you really only see a couple of big-hitters in the lightning rounds competing for the big prizes each time.

If this were to happen, then we would see 20+ big-hitters compete for a very long time (however long it takes to level the characters...)

The other thing, is that the devs have been trying decently hard to try to slow down progression these days (after they super-charged progression in R40 with the 5-cover system and FB gifts.) So, I don't think we'll see it happen.

Unknown

I do like the idea of apply the cover as xp at an avdanced rate. Instead of selling it, applying it to the character directly for 2x resale value. Though, how'd that work with 3*s being worth HP as well (and I presume 4*s as well, I never looked).

Dayv

Kyosokun wrote:

I do like the idea of apply the cover as xp at an avdanced rate. Instead of selling it, applying it to the character directly for 2x resale value. Though, how'd that work with 3*s being worth HP as well (and I presume 4*s as well, I never looked).

I think this is a better suggestion than filling the bar outright. That could easily make a 2* cover that sells for 125 ISO worth over ten or fifteen times that much when applied to the right character.

That said, I'm not sure there's enough gain to this for them to put the effort into coding it.

Unknown

Maybe you could sell it for regular value or feed it to the main cover (same cover) for triple exp