*Update* I've solved the Roster, ISO, and HP problem

Phaserhawk

The answer is Deadpool Daily but not right now.

In the last 3 Q&A's the devs keep dodging the issue, and I do get it, there is no easy answer until your's truly just figured it out. How? Create Deadpool Daily nodes that take roster and character levels into context.

So essentially you keep what Deadpool Daily as is but add nodes seperate from the current ones, the requirement to enter said node is based on your roster and avg character level.

This addresses the 2 problems the devs stated in Q&A #3, they can't increase the flow of ISO so much that it accelerates newbies into a slow down since they have all their characters maxed, but you also can't keep creating a divide between the haves and the have nots so here you go.

You could create 7 nodes to start, and you can only enter 1 node as long as you meet the requirments.

Node 1--1* and 2* not maxed
Node 2--1* and 2* most maxed
Node 3--Solid 2* roster
Node 4--2* to 3* tranitioner
Node 5--Sold 3* roster
Node 6--3* to 4* transitioner
Node 7--Solid 4*

Each node offers a fair amount of HP and ISO for that players level. Someone in Node 7 who have all the characters needs to be able to get much more HP and ISO to keep up with the roster slot costs so if you played this node daily you should be able to get a good chunck of that HP cost covered from this, not all since you get some from PvE and PvP events but quite a bit, however you won't be able to go into 1-6 and scoop up more, you are blocked out. The same is true for Node 1, you will get enough HP and ISO to help you to progress but you still need to earn some.

These nodes fix all the issues since it allows D3 to slowly increase the ISO and HP flow for each segment of the game population. I mean we already have sharding and PvE's are skewed to low level rosters so the disparity between vets and newbies will always be there but the interaction can be limited.

Assuming this works, (it will) you could further change rewards in PvE and PvP (HP and ISO, not covers) to a players ranking. If I"m Node 5 and finish top 5, vs someone in Node 6 grouping, I won't win as much ISO or HP, but I will win more than nodes 1-4. But again this would be down the road.

So what my suggestion fixes is the HP and ISO flow for players as well as tailoring the flow to a specific players rosters and levels. It keeps new players from accelerating to levels they aren't ready for or earned, but it also keeps the vets on pace for the ever increasing HP costs and ISO demands. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE do this!!!!! This will fix a lot of issues we vets are having without messing around with the newer players.

bknfoodie

TL;DR Scale rewards ?

Phaserhawk

bknfoodie wrote:

TL;DR Scale rewards ?

517 words is too long? The future has no hope.

NorthernPolarity

The idea of arbitrary restrictions as to what you can join based on your average roster level seems... very inelegant. If I'm a 2* player with say Ares / OBW and I am capable of doing node 4 stuff, but my average roster level is 60, being gated on node 4 seems really arbitrary. Doesn't the current DPD sort of do this already but in a way that is more natural? Adding more HP rewards gated by the featured character or harder nodes would accomplish the same thing without these restrictions.

Phaserhawk

NorthernPolarity wrote:

The idea of arbitrary restrictions as to what you can join based on your average roster level seems... very inelegant. If I'm a 2* player with say Ares / OBW and I am capable of doing node 4 stuff, but my average roster level is 60, being gated on node 4 seems really arbitrary. Doesn't the current DPD sort of do this already but in a way that is more natural?

It has nothing to do with what you can do, it has everything to do with controling the ISO and HP flow, other than those nodes, you have access to everything else everyone else does, this is just a means to tailor the flow of resources to a specific player progression

Unknown

Have you considered the possibility that your perceived "problem" can easily be addressed simply by playing the game more and worrying about "fairness" a little less, at least as it applies to this game?

Completely serious here, not trying to be snarky.

MarvelMan

shade_tree wrote:

Have you considered the possibility that your perceived "problem" can easily be addressed simply by playing the game more and worrying about "fairness" a little less, at least as it applies to this game?

Completely serious here, not trying to be snarky.

There is that, but suggestions like this are addressing both the iso/hp flow as well as content.

notamutant

You do realize they need to make money on this game, right? If they offered just enough ISO and HP for everyone at all levels to not need to buy anything ever, then they wouldn't make any money. I can see maybe having a higher ISO reward node, but not HP. It just makes no sense. Especially for people with max slots already, because those people are more likely to get more HP in general from rewards for ranking higher, and they don't need to buy as many roster slots to keep up as the newer people earning less. Just pick which characters you want to level. There, problem solved. There is around 6k a day from DDQ already. Combine that with other ISO earning and you can max Thoress in 2 months if you ignore other guys.

Phaserhawk

notamutant wrote:

You do realize they need to make money on this game, right? If they offered just enough ISO and HP for everyone at all levels to not need to buy anything ever, then they wouldn't make any money. I can see maybe having a higher ISO reward node, but not HP. It just makes no sense. Especially for people with max slots already, because those people are more likely to get more HP in general from rewards for ranking higher, and they don't need to buy as many roster slots to keep up as the newer people earning less. Just pick which characters you want to level. There, problem solved. There is around 6k a day from DDQ already. Combine that with other ISO earning and you can max Thoress in 2 months if you ignore other guys.

The main issue at hand though is HP, because sooner or later in order to open up those extra roster slots, you are talking about more HP to get a character than HP to buy a cover. I think currently in order to have all the characters you have to drop 800 or 850 HP, and with 2 characters a month, there is not enough HP flow from anything to cover that unless you are in a top alliance, hardly need to shield (those 2 don't usually go together) and place top 10 in all PvE. Im not asking them to give away the store, but HP requirements for veterns is much, much larger than anything a newer player needs, and therefore creating a node that a player can earn and increase over time to help them keep pace with exponentially increasing roster slots would be a good start.

babinro

Phaserhawk wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

The idea of arbitrary restrictions as to what you can join based on your average roster level seems... very inelegant. If I'm a 2* player with say Ares / OBW and I am capable of doing node 4 stuff, but my average roster level is 60, being gated on node 4 seems really arbitrary. Doesn't the current DPD sort of do this already but in a way that is more natural?

It has nothing to do with what you can do, it has everything to do with controling the ISO and HP flow, other than those nodes, you have access to everything else everyone else does, this is just a means to tailor the flow of resources to a specific player progression

A possible solution to this could be to base the node requirements on total ISO lifetime earned or total HP earned lifetime if not a combination of the two. You could display this information as a progress bar like you would any given PvE/PvP. Upon reaching the next progress level you unlock the superior node rewards.

I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to calculate the expected amount of earned ISO/HP a typical player obtains at any given transition point and it would likely promote sales as people may simply buy the HP and ISO required to reach the next reward tier rather than grind their way to the goal naturally.

In addition you could always 'dangle the carrot' so to speak and continue well beyond the 7 nodes for vets to at least partially keep up with the ever increasing costs of roster slots.

This idea has potential.

To illustrate using completely made up numbers...

Node 1: Automatically unlocked. Prize: 500 ISO and 25 HP
Node 2: Requires: 20,000 ISO and 1000 HP. Prize: 1000 ISO and 50 HP
Node 3: Requires: 100,000 ISO and 5000 HP. Prize: 2000 ISO and 75 HP
Node 4: Requires: 250,000 ISO and 10000 HP. Prize: 3000 ISO and 100 HP
Node 5: Requires: 500,000 ISO and 20,000 HP. Prize: 5000 ISO and 125 HP
Node 6: Requires: 800,000 ISO and 35,000 HP. Prize: 7000 ISO and 150 HP
Node 7: Requires: 1,200,000 ISO and 55,000 HP. Prize: 10,000 ISO and 175 HP

Unknown

MarvelMan wrote:

shade_tree wrote:

Have you considered the possibility that your perceived "problem" can easily be addressed simply by playing the game more and worrying about "fairness" a little less, at least as it applies to this game?

Completely serious here, not trying to be snarky.

There is that, but suggestions like this are addressing both the iso/hp flow as well as content.

But other than the Jugg Heroic PVE, content isn't really a problem either.

rixmith

I like the concept, but it might be a little overcomplicated. But to build on it, what if we kept the DDQ the same as it is (which I think is quite good) but...

Each day there was one additional node which required the featured character, and that character had to be Level 166. The reward would be another 2500 ISO and another Taco Token. Now players have an incentive to bring underleveled characters up to full, and a decent new supply of ISO to help do that.

On the last day of 5-day prize cycle there was one additional node. This node would restrict the usable characters to the 5 that were rewarded for the week (you'd only use 3 of the 5, so you wouldn't need all of them to be good). This node would reward a 4* cover.

scottee

Phaserhawk wrote:

notamutant wrote:

You do realize they need to make money on this game, right? If they offered just enough ISO and HP for everyone at all levels to not need to buy anything ever, then they wouldn't make any money. I can see maybe having a higher ISO reward node, but not HP. It just makes no sense. Especially for people with max slots already, because those people are more likely to get more HP in general from rewards for ranking higher, and they don't need to buy as many roster slots to keep up as the newer people earning less. Just pick which characters you want to level. There, problem solved. There is around 6k a day from DDQ already. Combine that with other ISO earning and you can max Thoress in 2 months if you ignore other guys.

The main issue at hand though is HP, because sooner or later in order to open up those extra roster slots, you are talking about more HP to get a character than HP to buy a cover. I think currently in order to have all the characters you have to drop 800 or 850 HP, and with 2 characters a month, there is not enough HP flow from anything to cover that unless you are in a top alliance, hardly need to shield (those 2 don't usually go together) and place top 10 in all PvE. Im not asking them to give away the store, but HP requirements for veterns is much, much larger than anything a newer player needs, and therefore creating a node that a player can earn and increase over time to help them keep pace with exponentially increasing roster slots would be a good start.

But why is a F2P player entitled to have enough AP to open a new roster slot every 2 weeks? F2P players being able to keep up with every new bit of content released (characters) is already rare, and there's nothing wrong with that.

It should be totally normal for a F2P to have to make a decision like, "Do I sell AWolvie to make room for Iron Fist, or do I spend 650 HP?"

People keep using the argument that you need to keep every single character in order to "compete", and that's just patently false. There's nothing wrong with using one roster spot to rotate new characters for the next PVE and then dumping the useless ones. Use Starlord for the next PVE, then sell him. Use that slot for Squirrel for a PVE, then sell her. Would we all love to keep every cover we win? Of course. But part of every strategy game is the problem of scarcity: limited resources with multiple goals that resource is needed for. People are basically saying, remove the scarcity problem. It's like saying Starcraft shouldn't have minerals or gas, or Counter-Strike shouldn't make you buy weapons/ammo.

NorthernPolarity

scottee wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

notamutant wrote:

You do realize they need to make money on this game, right? If they offered just enough ISO and HP for everyone at all levels to not need to buy anything ever, then they wouldn't make any money. I can see maybe having a higher ISO reward node, but not HP. It just makes no sense. Especially for people with max slots already, because those people are more likely to get more HP in general from rewards for ranking higher, and they don't need to buy as many roster slots to keep up as the newer people earning less. Just pick which characters you want to level. There, problem solved. There is around 6k a day from DDQ already. Combine that with other ISO earning and you can max Thoress in 2 months if you ignore other guys.

The main issue at hand though is HP, because sooner or later in order to open up those extra roster slots, you are talking about more HP to get a character than HP to buy a cover. I think currently in order to have all the characters you have to drop 800 or 850 HP, and with 2 characters a month, there is not enough HP flow from anything to cover that unless you are in a top alliance, hardly need to shield (those 2 don't usually go together) and place top 10 in all PvE. Im not asking them to give away the store, but HP requirements for veterns is much, much larger than anything a newer player needs, and therefore creating a node that a player can earn and increase over time to help them keep pace with exponentially increasing roster slots would be a good start.

But why is a F2P player entitled to have enough AP to open a new roster slot every 2 weeks? F2P players being able to keep up with every new bit of content released (characters) is already rare, and there's nothing wrong with that.

It should be totally normal for a F2P to have to make a decision like, "Do I sell AWolvie to make room for Iron Fist, or do I spend 650 HP?"

People keep using the argument that you need to keep every single character in order to "compete", and that's just patently false. There's nothing wrong with using one roster spot to rotate new characters for the next PVE and then dumping the useless ones. Use Starlord for the next PVE, then sell him. Use that slot for Squirrel for a PVE, then sell her. Would we all love to keep every cover we win? Of course. But part of every strategy game is the problem of scarcity: limited resources with multiple goals that resource is needed for. People are basically saying, remove the scarcity problem. It's like saying Starcraft shouldn't have minerals or gas, or Counter-Strike shouldn't make you buy weapons/ammo.

Building on top of this, it is indeed possible for a f2p veteran to keep up with roster slots. Let's just take the straight up worst case scenario: you are in a top 100 alliance (which is typically 500-600 minimum each PvP, which is trivial to do on no shield for a person with xor). You get 100hp from progressions, 50hp from your top 100 alliance, and 50 HP from placement awards = 200 HP per PvP. There are 3 a week, so you should easily be earning a minimum of 1.2k HP every 2 weeks just by pushing to 725 and not using shields, ASSUMING you have xor. This isn't even counting the best case scenario where you are a top 50 alliance, and or make top 10. Not being able to keep up either means that you're using a ton of unnecessary shields on silly things like season score or PvPs where getting top 5 doesn't matter. There is definitely an HP crunch for players who do not have xor and can't afford to do this, but veterans should have zero trouble keeping up with roster slot expansion.

scottee

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Building on top of this, it is indeed possible for a f2p veteran to keep up with roster slots. Let's just take the straight up worst case scenario: you are in a top 100 alliance (which is typically 500-600 minimum each PvP, which is trivial to do on no shield for a person with xor). You get 100hp from progressions, 50hp from your top 100 alliance, and 50 HP from placement awards = 200 HP per PvP. There are 3 a week, so you should easily be earning a minimum of 1.2k HP every 2 weeks just by pushing to 725 and not using shields, ASSUMING you have xor. This isn't even counting the best case scenario where you are a top 100 alliance, and or make top 10. Not being able to keep up either means that you're using a ton of unnecessary shields on silly things like season score or PvPs where getting top 5 doesn't matter. There is definitely an HP crunch for players who do not have xor and can't afford to do this, but veterans should have zero trouble keeping up with roster slot expansion.

Yeah, I'm actually in this boat, but know I'm the rarity. That also doesn't account for the HP earned in PVE's, especially subs. On top of the free HP from daily rewards and DDQ.

My brother started the game 2 months after me, only has one 166 because can't play much time each day, and he has 50 roster slots open. He doesn't have the time to compete in PVP's or PVE's, so he's just playing DDQ and saving HP to buy X-Force covers.

MarvelMan

scottee wrote:

It should be totally normal for a F2P to have to make a decision like, "Do I sell AWolvie to make room for Iron Fist, or do I spend 650 HP?"

People keep using the argument that you need to keep every single character in order to "compete", and that's just patently false.

As F2P, I dont expect to avoid those decisions. And I would never argue I should be able to keep all characters.

My personal take on the ideal situation is that there is a small gap between being able to do everything and what I can earn. I feel that if I were to put in a lot of effort I could almost bridge that gap, but not quite. Right now that gap is pretty much a chasm, so these are suggestions on how to reduce the size, not close it entirely.

scottee

MarvelMan wrote:

scottee wrote:

It should be totally normal for a F2P to have to make a decision like, "Do I sell AWolvie to make room for Iron Fist, or do I spend 650 HP?"

People keep using the argument that you need to keep every single character in order to "compete", and that's just patently false.

As F2P, I dont expect to avoid those decisions. And I would never argue I should be able to keep all characters.

My personal take on the ideal situation is that there is a small gap between being able to do everything and what I can earn. I feel that if I were to put in a lot of effort I could almost bridge that gap, but not quite. Right now that gap is pretty much a chasm, so these are suggestions on how to reduce the size, not close it entirely.

My current next roster slot costs 650 HP. I have every 3* and 4* character. It's completely reasonable, and not even that hard, for a F2P player to earn 650 HP every 2 weeks. That's only 325 a week. Between PVP, PVE, and DDQ, if a F2P isn't putting in the effort to earn that much HP that is already available, there's really nothing to complain about. A player who is good enough to win the cover of every new 3/4* at the release event surely is good enough to win 325 HP a week.

Roswulf

NorthernPolarity wrote:

scottee wrote:

Let's just take the straight up worst case scenario: you are in a top 100 alliance (which is typically 500-600 minimum each PvP, which is trivial to do on no shield for a person with xor). You get 100hp from progressions, 50hp from your top 100 alliance, and 50 HP from placement awards = 200 HP per PvP. There are 3 a week, so you should easily be earning a minimum of 1.2k HP every 2 weeks just by pushing to 725 and not using shields, ASSUMING you have xor.

I can't help but laugh at a definition of veteran that places top 100 alliance membership and a well leveled Xor as the "straight up worst case scenario."

I'm not personally sure that the price of roster slots should come down- my issue with the roster system is more that it is no fun and works against the system of offering new character covers as the shiniest of shiny prizes rather than the pricing. But a definition of veteran where the worst case is hard capped at 2,000 players and soft capped at a usable Xor seems...excessively restrictive.

SnowcaTT

scottee wrote:

My current next roster slot costs 650 HP. I have every 3* and 4* character. It's completely reasonable, and not even that hard, for a F2P player to earn 650 HP every 2 weeks. That's only 325 a week. Between PVP, PVE, and DDQ, if a F2P isn't putting in the effort to earn that much HP that is already available, there's really nothing to complain about. A player who is good enough to win the cover of every new 3/4* at the release event surely is good enough to win 325 HP a week.

If you kept every 1* and 2* those slots would cost you 800. With the speedy 3*/4* release rate, slots are going to cost you that much pretty soon even if you don't keep 1* and 2*. Where should it end?

Unknown

scottee wrote:

My current next roster slot costs 650 HP. I have every 3* and 4* character. It's completely reasonable, and not even that hard, for a F2P player to earn 650 HP every 2 weeks. That's only 325 a week. Between PVP, PVE, and DDQ, if a F2P isn't putting in the effort to earn that much HP that is already available, there's really nothing to complain about. A player who is good enough to win the cover of every new 3/4* at the release event surely is good enough to win 325 HP a week.

And that's fine for right now. But in a year, when they have added 25-30 new characters, your next roster slot will cost 1000 HP. There are members of this forum who have a roster cost of over 3000 HP currently. It is manageable at this moment, especially if you have sold most of your 1 and 2 stars, but it will soon not be manageable. Long term health has to be thought of, as well as your short term needs.

scottee

SnowcaTT wrote:

scottee wrote:

My current next roster slot costs 650 HP. I have every 3* and 4* character. It's completely reasonable, and not even that hard, for a F2P player to earn 650 HP every 2 weeks. That's only 325 a week. Between PVP, PVE, and DDQ, if a F2P isn't putting in the effort to earn that much HP that is already available, there's really nothing to complain about. A player who is good enough to win the cover of every new 3/4* at the release event surely is good enough to win 325 HP a week.

If you kept every 1* and 2* those slots would cost you 800. With the speedy 3*/4* release rate, slots are going to cost you that much pretty soon even if you don't keep 1* and 2*. Where should it end?

For a F2P, keeping every 1* and 2* is a want, not a need. If you want to be a collector, that's fine, but it comes at a cost. And it's reasonable for that cost to be higher than a F2P player can afford.