Its hard to be excited about new characters

wirius

I love the new characters D3 throws in, but the problem is, I have to wait months to play them to their full potential. When Collossus first came out, I scored top 10 pvp and pve to get as many covers of his as I could. I believe I'm 3 covers short of max, and that was MONTHS ago. I have about 5 covers on blade. How long will it take for me to max him out? Months. This is because we're at the mercy of what covers are offered as rewards.

I understand the reality of a free to play phone game however. They keep releasing new characters and not letting you max them because people buy into it and make them money. Its always tricky to tell a free to play company "Let us get covers easier!" when they have the logistics of money made versus scarcity. But maybe there is a way that will make D3 money, keep covers scarce, but at the same time, let people focus on covers they want.

The Proposed Solution

Personally, I would like to see a separate income from HP and ISO that was based on level difference in fights. You cannot buy these points. Beating low level rosters than yourself would earn you less points, beating levels higher than yourself would earn you more points, and baseline would give baseline. These points would allow you to go to a cover store, where you could pick from any cover in the game (barring 4*'s at this point in the game's lifecycle).

1. This would help motivate end game people who often have to score for covers they already have maxed out. Sure, ISO is nice, but further rewards are a greater carrot on a stick.
2. This would encourage people to fight higher level rosters if the points are tuned correctly. This especially helps the transitioning 2's roster who are trying to get 3's. Even if they can't score in placement, fighting that 166 wall can give points to buy the 3'* cover they want, so then they can start competing for the top 100.
3. High level scaling wouldn't be an issue as much for people with end game rosters. They now know they are getting a greater reward then those with low scaling.
4. Instead of waiting 4 months to max out a character, perhaps this can be lowered to a month. Considering the pace of new characters being released about every, that still leaves a lot of choice in who to cover buy. The points can also be tweaked as needed for d3's pace. This lets d3 keep their release pace because there is now an method for people to focus on one character.
5. Whales will still buy. A whale could get the points to buy that 1rst cover color they need, then use HP to buy the rest. Considering more people can now get first release covers with this system, this should actually encourage more whaling.

To prevent grinding abuse in pve and pvp, have the points rewarded tied somehow with your score in pve. So for example, a hard node could give 2.0 times the score in points, while an easy node is .2, or whatever math needed.

fmftint

they don't want you to earn covers. they want you to BUY them.
it is just that simple

wirius

fmftint wrote:

they don't want you to earn covers. they want you to BUY them.
it is just that simple

See point 5.

rednailz

wirius wrote:

fmftint wrote:

they don't want you to earn covers. they want you to BUY them.
it is just that simple

See point 5.

whales will still buy, but they need everyone to buy. why would you contract your target market?

JVReal

I think you have some interesting ideas.

I think progression rewards would stay a fixed cover, but rank rewards be a choice between 3 covers so you can pick the one you want from what the dev's want to offer you.

I like the idea of doing something with your points, perhaps buying different poses for your character or different battle animations (can't suggest different outfits as that seems to be the thing that defines the different versions of characters in this game). Something to bring a little bit of customization to the character for you to enjoy personally since you are the only one that gets to see the animations or poses unless someone looks at your roster and your character's build.

I would really love to have a "headquarters" you can buy so that you can store your characters you haven't built up enough to be playable, or to store covers you don't have room for in your roster so that they don't expire. Maybe you can purchase it with the points you propose we earn through playing, etc.

I'd also like to see a percentage of the PVE score go towards season scoring, even if it's just 5 or 10%. I have never understood the Season only incorporating PVP... This way it will help with Season progression rewards for those of us that can't compete in PVP or hate competing in PVP.

wirius

rednailz wrote:

wirius wrote:

fmftint wrote:

they don't want you to earn covers. they want you to BUY them.
it is just that simple

See point 5.

whales will still buy, but they need everyone to buy. why would you contract your target market?

These separate points are based on individual play, and are a slow release. This is NOT a substitute for buying. This allows you to get covers you do not have, and then you can spend money to buy the rest instead of grinding for a month or two to complete the covers. The individual purchase ability is not a gimme grab bag.

So for example, you've been grinding for 2 weeks to get ONE 3 star cover. In the last few tourneys, you won a green L thor, a red L Thor, but didn't get the yellow. So, you buy the yellow. You have some money, and you have all three colors. It takes about 2 weeks of steady play to earn one cover of your choice, so you spend HP to max out L'thor and go to town.

Another example, you have 3/3/3 in one set of characters. You don't know when that 3* will be up again. You're a heavy player, so you can grind for four weeks to get four covers. That's still a month, but a month in which you have a goal to work towards, despite the other covers you win or lose.

Unknown

There's no reason for them to make it easier to max out characters as long as there is still no meaningful advantage between your 4th and 40th maxed 3*, so they might as well make it hard and get a bit more money. It's your choice to max out yet another guy that is unlikely to have any impact. To fix the problem they've to rework the game so that having 40 maxed characters offers some (not necessarily large) as opposed to no advantage, and the only thing I can think of is either a random select mode or that each node have their own required characters and there are going to be problems with both solutions.

Unknown

To play devils advocate, They have to release so many characters because this game is advertised "Build the best marvel team." So they're going to release any and all marvel heroes/villains over time. And if you look at the list... They still have hundreds more to go.

IamTheDanger

If I'm understanding this correctly, it would be something like Deadpool points. Something you can earn by playing and then cash them in for other things. I really like the new poses and animation or headquarters idea. But covers should be very expensive and cost more the higher the number of s. If a person plays and gets the max amount of points/currency every day, then it should take at least a month to get a 3 cover. Or 2 months for a 4 . Still, a pretty good idea.

esoxnepa

rednailz wrote:

wirius wrote:

fmftint wrote:

they don't want you to earn covers. they want you to BUY them.
it is just that simple

See point 5.

whales will still buy, but they need everyone to buy. why would you contract your target market?

This is when we need the statistics to see when people are buying covers. Are most people buying covers right from having the first cover, or are they buying to take a character from almost playable to playable?

With so many characters in the game, and so many covers, I believe they could do something that gradually reduces the HP costs for a specific targeted cover, and overall their sales would increase. At 1250 HP, most non-whales on the board only claim to buy critical covers of top tier characters. If you could target a cover and have it's HP decrease over time, say by 100 hp a day, I think you'd see more impulse buys. 1250 HP you might think about pretty hard for a cover, but if after a week it was only 700 HP, some might buy it Getting sales you would not see otherwise. Plus, it also adds another layer of "We're not pay to win" to their arguments.