I like the multiple Featured characters and recent changes.

peteer01

I saw a lot of anti-multiple featured character threads, and I wanted to share my positive experience with them.

First off, I'm probably not the typical player. I'm a father of two with a full time job who has gotten #1 in multiple PvE events and has my +7500 points in Season XII, but belongs to an alliance that has never gotten higher than top 250 awards for anything.

I have two 166 characters and a 165 Nick Fury. I don't buy covers, but after buying hero points multiple times to buy roster slots, I'm sitting on about 3700 HP and 60 characters, missing just a handful of 1 characters and bagman that I don't want to buy slots for.

The featured characters seems like a great idea. I can play with a variety of teams I wouldn't normally play PvE with, and I can see something other than 4Thor and X-Force along side the featured character. I don't care if it's a handful of character combinations and the top teams are all similar permutations of 280 290 280, that's a great step above seeing the same three characters ad nauseam. What's even better is that means that not all is lost just because I don't have maxed covers. Yeah, it's a lot of grinding and multiple shields, but I can still place top 25. I was usually able to grind and place top 25 before this, but it's more enjoyable now. I'd be happy to focus ISO on the featured characters I do have a good number of covers for so that I can be more competitive in future battles. That's far more appealing than just knowing that it's going to be my same two 166s with a featured character against X-Force and 4Thor.

The other change I really like is Deadpool events. It lets me get some much needed ISO and a cover. It got my brother to start enjoying the game again because he enjoys logging in daily again, and got my mom some covers she can use her amassed ISO on and keeps the game fun because it's something different that rewards you for playing each day. (She plays every day, but without finishing high enough in events to get hero points and covers, she just ends up with lots of ISO and no covers.)

The one outstanding complaint I still have is that it doesn't matter how much I play. I can't hope to compete against those people who play the same or less than I do, but belong to an alliance with strangers who play a similar amount.

I've been irked forever by alliance rewards. The only reason I started playing is because my mom, sister and brothers all play. My one brother has a 13 cover X-Force wolverine from pre-all 20 alliance roster spot days when he'd get handed top alliance prizes on top of his own playing. I've only been playing for 263 days, but he's been playing for much longer, and has an optimized PvE team built around X-Force as a result. Yes, it sucks that he can drop into a PvP near the end of an event and pull #1 pretty regularly based on the speed he can KO at, but it's how the game is built, and he sells his unneeded and covers and will forever stay ahead of me on ISO. He said it gets old and that he doesn't enjoy the game as much as he used to, and I dislike that despite putting way too much time into this game all the time, I can't ever catch up with him. Meanwhile, my mom loves the game and plays every day, but she's not a gamer, she's a grandmother, and her top character is 127 after about a year of playing. My sister's top characters are all 94s and my other brother has a 147 X-Force and 8 100-130 level covers, but with both of them playing for more than a year, it's obviously they play casually. The thing is, we all play daily, and we all enjoy playing because we play in the same alliance. We're the kind of players D3 wants, as we've all put real money into the game to get the HP needed to add covers to our individual rosters.

Since the change to make all alliances are 20 roster spots, we've been able to get a fun group of daily players that includes the five of us, another buddy of mine and 14 strangers who play regularly. It's nice that now we can get some Alliance based Hero Points, but it doesn't stop the widening gap between myself and the top alliances.

I get the irony. I have put in an unhealthy amount of time to get the 32 covers I do have. If I had joined a top alliance that wanted a #1 PVE finisher that can put up reasonably good PVP points, I'd have far more Hero Points, ISO and covers than I do now. But if I wasn't playing with my family, and felt pressured to keep up with a bunch of strangers for fear of getting booted, the game would become less fun, and I'd have stopped playing.

My primary purpose with this rant is to make sure people at D3 know that there are a lot of people, paying customers, like me, who are glad to see the move to increase variety in PvP, increase variety and rewards in PvE (specifically Deadpool events) and decrease the alliance gap (20 rosters for everyone). I think most of the moves D3 has made in the last six months have been very good ones. Not nearly enough that I'll ever be competitive without leaving my alliance and joining one with people who put up numbers like mine, but hopefully D3 can get around to addressing that in time.

So, D3, keep tweaking the game, keep tweaking characters, and try to keep it fresh and fun for all of us. Thanks.