Cover Expiration Concerns

pheregas

There have been untold numbers of posts regarding the Iso shortage. This is not that conversation (though it continues to be a conversation worth having).

This post is in regards to the 2-week limit on covers in the Rewards area.

I, like many others, work hard to earn Tokens (all colors!) And while I do enjoy playing the game, playing as much as possible to try and generate iso to level/champ my characters (which I do firmly believe is a goal of the game), and having to race the clock in order to try and earn enough Iso to champ a character before covers expire is a problem.

I had three 4cyc covers (woot!). I barely got him champed in time. On that last day, I pulled 3 kingpins for my cover-maxed KP. (Daily Reward, Legendary Token, and champ 183 reward - which I would've waited more for that, but the cover I had that would push me to 183 was about to expire). While awesome, now it's time to grind grind grind for more iso.

One could argue to just not redeem tokens, but that is a major source of iso for me.

(Note: this is accidentally turning into a iso-whining post and I really wanted to keep away from that.)

So, in conclusion...

Iso doesn't expire.
HP do not expire.
CP do not expire.
Tokens do not expire.

Please make reward covers not expire.

Vhailorx

Sadly, it's not gonna happen. Expiring covers are a key mechanic to incentivize roster spot purchases (especially early on).

They might extend the expiration time again (it used to be a week), but they won't ever remove the mechanic entirely. It's too important a revenue source.

carrion_pigeons

Reward covers expire because the game is F2P and they need drivers to make people buy HP/Iso, and this is a big one. Probably the main one for the average player?

I agree with you that it's **** and exhausting and unfun design, but what can you do? The developers are required to design their game so that their profit comes at the expense of the players' fun - that's the entire point of the F2P model.

MojoWild

I don't sweat the covers I can't use and sell them for iso, and concentrate on leveling up who I want, rather than let the extra covers dictate. I do keep some ISO around to level up the DDQ four star as needed. I've maxed a couple four stars now this way, and overall have a stronger four star tier for it. Eventually, I'll be able to max more and be able to utilize more covers as they come up instead of selling them.

san

Allow all covers to expire, according to the rating.

expires in 1 week
expires in 2 weeks
expires in 3 weeks
expires in 4 weeks
expires in 5 weeks

This is reflective of the difficulty of championing them. Four star characters who are even remotely close, CAN be championed in 4 weeks or less by an avid player. This is fair, no?

BlackSheep101

How about covers only expire if you don't have the character on your roster yet?

MojoWild

MojoWild wrote:

I don't sweat the covers I can't use and sell them for iso, and concentrate on leveling up who I want, rather than let the extra covers dictate. I do keep some ISO around to level up the DDQ four star as needed. I've maxed a couple four stars now this way, and overall have a stronger four star tier for it. Eventually, I'll be able to max more and be able to utilize more covers as they come up instead of selling them.

Btw, my first go round in the four star DDQs, I could only beat half of them. This time around I beat all but Mr. Fantastic's but I only have him at 1/5/3. Everyone else I only put enough ISO in to win the match. I know I'm going to be tanking some of the recent releases when they are introduced into DDQ rotation, but things are only going to improve, since the next rotation I'll be able to focus on leveling up singular characters. For me, I have a four star progression plan that is starting to snowball nicely and am seeing the payoffs of discipline and patience.

TxMoose

if they ever extended the timer, I could see them putting a cap on the size of the covers in waiting. 50 wouldn't be bad, but if they restricted it to 20 or so that would suck unless the timer were removed completely. if they removed it completely they might restrict it to 5-10 spots. then they could monetize adding waiting room slots for hp. it could still work business-wise, but would definitely be a different dynamic.

Nate7671

An alternative suggestion would be to allow players to merge covers - for example I may have a cover sitting in my queue because I don't have enough ISO to Champion the toon. I could however proceed to buy an additional roster spot to place hold the cover if I could for sure "merge' the toons together once enough ISO was generated to Champion.

This would limit the wasted covers and encourage users to buy roster spots, not to mention have a use for HP now that you cant buy covers.

While I would love to not have covers expire this is another option.

pheregas

Totally forgot about the one week expiration (I'm on day 770). Up until Championing, I never really paid attention to cover timers. Either I needed it, or I didn't, so it got sold or applied pretty quickly.

I do like the idea of stratifying the expiration time based on rarity.

Jarvind

I stressed out hard about expiring covers when championing first came out - I had about 25 3* covers saved up and only one or two of the characters were close to max level.

Eventually I realized that there was no possible way I'd be able to apply every cover I ever get without buying absurd amounts of ISO, which I'm unwilling to do. Now I don't worry about it - if using the cover requires me to go bonkers for a week scraping every drop of ISO, I just sell it. It's not worth the stress, and covers will always come around again eventually.

pheregas

I'm on a similar page there. I've champed all the 2s and 3s that I'm going to so those are easy decisions. And certain 4s, sure, they get sold too. I've got 18 cover-maxed 4s and have 10-12 on 7 more. There are just a handful of 4s that I really want to Champion. Those are the ones that are the problem.

Thing is on my list and I keep getting single covers for him.

Then Ice Man, once I get his 13th cover (which I'm guaranteed to get eventually with 3* champing).

But in between? OML gets a little love (finally) once KP is up and ready to go.

dokiy

I wonder how much revenue a one time, $19.99, charge would bring if offered the following:

No cover expiration
Double ISO rewards
No critical damage boost rewards

And that is. I'm sure a LOT of people would make that purchase. Would the extra ISO destroy the game? Eh maybe, but covers/slots/HP/Health Packs would still cost extra if need be.

veny

How about making the vault?
You could store unused cards there (those you want to keep) and they will remain there forever. Vault would come with 3 free slots and another slots could be purchased with HP.
So if you get a 3* card you cant use, you can store it in vault until you get the roster slot or promote the cover.

Eec411

5 star covers should never expire. The fact that they're random to get means if you're unlucky enough to get one you already have 5 of, you feel extra dumb. Making 5s never expire also allows lower tier rosters to open legendary tokens and give them the ability to not roster to mess up their scaling.

Phumade

pheregas wrote:

Please make reward covers not expire.

Sigh, while I personally don't care one way or another. I would actually tell you this is a bad idea and an even worse way to manage covers.

Many of you remember stockpiling tokens in anticipation of Championing. I'm sure that many of you like myself saw first hand the joys of navigating though 100 plus covers in the rewards que. That was not a fun or pleasant experience.

At the min, I'll always open tokens in most common to rarest cover order. I'll also make sure I sell all 1* covers before I make any decisions about 2*, and so forth.

I go through all of these hoops because scrolling and managing through 100+ reward covers is a painful experience that will inconvenience more users than this will benefit. At the min, they need to put some basic sorting options into the system before they ever consider lifting the 14day expiration rate.

It might seem like having the 14 expiration date is stacked against you, but as a practical matter, a hard expiration date solves some real inventory mgt issues and makes the cover application process much more manageable and user friendly.

This sounds like a good idea, but in reality, they need to address basic issues like sorting before considering lifting expiration dates.

DFiPL

BlackSheep101 wrote:

How about covers only expire if you don't have the character on your roster yet?

+1

OneLastGambit

When championing was first introduced I played like a madman every LR (i do mean EVERY) all subs of pve and hit SIM and PvP hard as well. I was champing a character every 4 days from lvl110 up to 166 (3* characters). The game kept giving me another cover for another character that I COULD champ and it seemed to never give me covers for ones I had already champed (a curious feature which continues now)

I got burned out fast, that's a lot of mpq. Like some of the earlier posters I simply decided that I would only champ one at a time and any covers I got which were not needed would be sold to help champ the one I was currently working on rather than kept in the queue ready to chain champ one after another.

Since then I've found my gaming experience to be better. And all it took was some simple decision making.

TimGunn

i agree. there is no good reason why we couldn't have a month before the cover expires.

Phaentom

san-mpq wrote:

Allow all covers to expire, according to the rating.

expires in 1 week
expires in 2 weeks
expires in 3 weeks
expires in 4 weeks
expires in 5 weeks

This is reflective of the difficulty of championing them. Four star characters who are even remotely close, CAN be championed in 4 weeks or less by an avid player. This is fair, no?

Now that is a GREAT idea!

mckauhu

Well because topic is "Cover expiration concerns", I have one. My 3* Cyclops cover expires in 2 days. To champion him, I would need all of my current iso8. Same time I soon have 2-3 2*s about to be max covered. So my question is, should I champ Cyclops with all I have (100k iso8) or champ possibly 2-3 2*s when their covers come soon? Also I have one free roster slot for either 3x2* mags or for War machine, which you would prefer? Thanks in advance.

By the way my roster doesn't much of a look like that anymore below, I have just one championed 2* which is Daken.