SHIELD Resupply, Tokens, and Scaling Revamp

Dwarfsteel

Below are some of my thoughts and suggestions (with some borrowed from others) on how this game could improve the user experience and keep players engaged longer, thus increasing the odds of monetary contributions. I'm a newer player and these are largely taken from my perspective, but I think they have aspects that will appeal to the larger player base as well:

SHIELD RESUPPLY
I think that the daily resupply could use a revamp. I know that it has been touched up since the introduction on CP's and that is part of my reasoning for the reassessment. I fail to see the reason for the inclusion of CP at such early timeframes. Unless D3 have some near future plans for using CP's outside of the purchase of LT's that will be useful to the entire player base regardless of status. To be fair, I'm speaking about this from the perspective of someone at the 62 day mark.

By day 156 I'll have earned enough CP to buy a LT (outside of those earned by nodes, rewards, and purchases). By day 156 I hardly see the chances of me or anyone outside of a super-whale being able to make use of these. As it is, I'm staring at 38 CP and 2 LT's that I could use, but at the risk of either ruining my game from ridiculous scaling by the lucky/unlucky pull of a 5* or essentially wasting them by selling the covers for the paltry iso offered. And so they'll sit taunting me for quite some time.

I believe that the CP's should be removed from the early nodes of the resupply and added in to the later stages where people can actually put them to good use. In place of these (and I believe other resupply nodes) we should be getting more 2* (pre-60 day) and 3* covers (pre-360 days). If the median of play is intended to be 3*'s I believe it is in the best interest of everyone (players and developer) to get the player base up into that tier sooner. I also believe the 1000 iso as the highest possible iso resupply reward is a bit of a miss. I'm sure it was adequate in the early days of the game, but now it seems highly inadequate given the millions of iso that is/will be required to advance anywhere near the upper tiers of play. Iso rewards should be more plentiful than currently at the earlier resupply nodes to get players into the established median of play and on to the payment plan. By this I mean a player is far more likely to continue playing and paying when they believe they are among the majority and have an investment in what they have collected. A player is far more likely to drop a game if they think they have little hope of "catching up" without dropping thousands of dollars as just playing a lot will not get them there. They're far more likely to become regular paying customers to "stay competitive" rather than paying to play "catch up". The more regular occurrence of covers also encourages buying slots which we all know is a major driving force for buying HP's. The resupply is the perfect vehicle for advancing players to the plateau where the developer wants them and where the players would like to be as it is purely based on the number of days played.

In addition, the standard tokens offered in the random drops should discontinue after about the 60 day mark. I know I may be biased on this, but I'm sure others would agree. Standard tokens end up being a rather large disappointment fairly early on at this point in the game which leads me into my next suggestion. At some point, probably around the 60-90 day mark, these random standard tokens should be replaced with heroic tokens, and at probably around the 360 day mark a new token type should be available for higher tiers of play. The bonus for the number of alliances players played in the last day also needs an update. 10 iso per player really is an insignificant bonus. At best, 200 iso per day doesn't really do much for anyone and I strongly believe this needs a boost to make it feel like more of a bonus and encourage that daily play. At 50 iso per player (1000 iso per day max) I believe would help newer and older players alike without "breaking" the game. It just really feels like the resupply list and the daily per-player alliance bonus need a major refresher to reflect the current status quo of the game and it is more of a relic from the earlier days of the game that is just more or less being cut and pasted as the game continues.

TOKENS
As I alluded to in the above suggestion, and also commented on by others, the tokens need to be adjusted. We can all agree that the token odds are for the most part atrocious. Standard tokens become more or less useless very early in the game these days and there is very little reason why anyone beyond 360 days should ever be getting them. Even myself at 62 days have max covered and optimized the 1*'s and am a few covers short of the 2*'s. They are a consistent and significant let down even to me and the iso for selling them is marginally beneficial. I'm sure it's even worse for the older players. My suggestion, and others have suggested it to, is to add another token tier while adjusting the covers available to the existing tokens. There is no reason why a beginning player should even have a remote chance at attaining a 3* from a standard token (much less a 4*, which I've heard is possible). From personal experience, I pulled a Sentry from a standard token in my first week of play and it broke the game for me. The prologue nodes jumped 15-20 levels due to scaling and I was wiping every time. For a fledging roster this was crippling. As a new player, I had no idea what had happened. The game became unplayable and, had I not thought to look it up (which is how I found these forums), I would just as likely dropped the game altogether not spending a dime. Fortunately/unfortunately I was able to determine that Sentry was a sub-par performer and selling him was a relatively easy decision, but what if it was a higher tier 3*? Not every new player is going to investigate game mechanics like scaling and there's a high chance they'd uninstall the game and play something that's easier to understand with D3 losing potential revenue.

To alleviate the above issues, standard tokens should only provide 1* and 2* and should rarely if ever be seen beyond a certain point as they quickly become a disappointment. Heroic tokens should only provide 2* and 3*. A new token (call it whatever you want, Valiant tokens was suggested by another user) and they should only provide 3* and 4*. Legendary tokens could more or less stay the same (I'm sure some will lament over this, but with the other changes I'm suggesting it should lessen the impact). These changes would slightly increase the odds of specific character pulls in the various tiers of play and I believe without breaking the game. It will lessen the disappointment and likely encourage the purchase of token packs. There's much more potential of someone dropping the equivalent of $15-60, depending on whether it's a 10 or 40 pack, for more targeted odds of something they need. I would imagine the disappointment of a 3* or 4* player pulling +/- 90% 2* characters discourages future purchases beyond the whales or super-whales whom money is less of a concern. People are far more likely to part with their money if what they're purchasing gives them a sense of achievement rather than disappointment. It creates buyers remorse that can linger for quite a while and possibly permanently.

SCALING
This subject needs to be looked into. While I don't profess to know the algorithms that go into how scaling works, I do know that it more or less takes the levels of your highest level characters. I can see the basic logic of why this would appear to be sufficient, but in practice it does not work very well for many players. As I stated before, I had pulled a Sentry in my first week of play. There is no reason why a 1 or even 2-3 cover character should skew scaling. Another example from personal experience is that I won an X-23 purple cover in an event around my second or third week. By then my roster was in a bit better shape, but there was a significant increase in my scaling. Given the rarity of 4 *'s and the potential usefulness of X-23 I decided to slog it out, but it was a much tougher climb than it should have been given the tiny advantage she gave me for the level of play I was at.

As I understand it, the higher level players are experiencing the same thing with the 5 *'s. The 1,2, or 3 covers some have do not make them very utilizable, yet their scaling is affected all the same. Again, as I stated earlier, I have 2 LT's and enough CP's to buy another. If I weren't knowledgeable in the game by being on the forums, I could just as likely have cashed these in and found my game largely unplayable by the lucky/unlucky 10% chance of pulling a 5*. As a newer player who, perhaps not understanding game mechanics, would likely drop the game as it is largely unenjoyable. No one likes to sell covers they don't have, especially given the ridiculously low pull %'s.

My suggestion is to either adjust the algorithms to somehow account for a low cover character (count them as 10 or 20 levels lower than they are and maybe more for 5*'s) or give us a way to bench them until we're ready for them as has been suggested by others. At the least, an in game warning explaining scaling with number examples of what could potentially happen to their game. Give a person a chance to make an informed decision before making the game unplayable or far less enjoyable.