alliance cover swaps

gagedalbor

Hello I've been playing for a couple months now and have used the forums from a far. My question for you vets is what about sharing your excess covers that you already have and being able to share with newer transitioning members? It could help with the big 2 to 3 star transition. I have sold hundreds of all the good 2 stars so far that could greatly help other alliance members alot. Most of my alliance is friends and family. Just a thought.

Unknown

The idea, or ones similar, have been suggested before.

I, for one, would love to be able to share pulls I get with my Alliance. They could, and should, restrict it so that you cant give anyone you've actually recruited to your roster. Just add an extra button to covers when they open to "Sell, Recruit, Send to Alliance."

FaustianDeal

I want to preface what follows with this:
I am totally on board with the concept of an alliance "discard pile" that team mates could draw from. I get a lot of cards that I can't use and I don't need to convert all of them to ISO.

One problem is that the game is freemium. If my transition-teammates could just build complete 3* characters from my cast-offs then that completely destroys a revenue opportunity. Doesn't mean it can't happen, but it probably strongly indicates that it won't.

I believe the chief argument against cover-sharing is that its too easy to transition from that to 'cover-farming' (gray-market, off-book transactions where real money changes hands). I've tried to devise a set of rules around the swap that are restrictive enough that it can't allow for someone to farm covers for profit (which seems like a generous application of the word 'profit' given how small margins would likely be).

The first failure of a P2P market to transact covers using in-game currency leads to a "rich get richer" problem. I often coast to a reasonable placement in PVP because I have no use for the 3-star covers... until I can turn around and get HP or (a better ISO rate) by moving them to another player. (And I can still require you to paypal me real money first...) Even putting restrictions that say "same alliance" or "equivalent value cover swap" still doesn't preclude a "real-money" requirement from being sprinkled in as a kicker.

I think economists would refer to this gray-market opportunity as "arbitrage"; but the rest of us would probably call it "why we can't have nice things"...

gagedalbor

Faustina you make good points about how it could turn into a outside "market" as some other freemium games have.....cough.....cough.....bunt...... as I could hoard all the extra covers and have a "alliance" member shoot me a couple bucks for those covers.

Unknown

There can never be a trading system in this game. The game economy is not strong enough to handle it.

Let's say a group of four friends decided to help out a fifth. They each have a full roster, and their friend is new. They all place in the top 5 of a PVP and give him their prizes. Now he's got a 4/4/4 that he didn't have to do anything to get. Now, instead of paying money to get that far, that fast, he's done it for free.

They set up these events so we have to fight like rats to get a prize. If we could get them another way, why wouldn't we?

Trading would make whales of us all, and D3/Demiurge would get nothing.

My friend and I each spent $100 at the anniversary. He's thinking of spending more. If I could have given him my cast-off covers, he wouldn't need to spend the money. But there's no transfer feature, so I had to sell off my extra Captain America and he's still looking for one. Same goes for all the Falcon s I got while he was looking for his first.

Imagine if I'd offered him a pile of covers for his daily reward X-Forces when they came up. He sold them because he was never going to try for that character. If I want more, I'll have to pay for them.

Square

I think there is a 100% chance that some high roller would use it to sell covers with real money ("I'll sell you a covered 4* Thor for $100"). The risk of that makes this idea impossible. And I've wanted to share in an alliance as well