Expanding on the Championing concept

Slarow

Before Championing, whenever you pulled a cover for someone who you already had at 13 covers, it felt like a waste. Especially when you got into the 4* range. Championing took that negative experience of "ugh, another Hulkbuster cover... 1000 ISO" and turned it into "sweet, level up hulkbuster".

This, however, only fixed that negative experience on those characters that you have (or could get to) max level. The negative experience still remains whenever you pull a cover for a character you already have 13 covers for, but have not yet (or have no intention of) dumping ISO into to max out.

In addition, with the number of 4* characters continuing to expand and the current fact that you have to be very choosy about who you actually put ISO into, it makes pulling legendary/classic tokens a frustrating experience, especially when you pull the 14th+ cover for characters that you would love to have maxed, but don't have the ISO.

This negative experience, however, could be fixed in the following way:

Whenever you have a cover for a character that already has 13 covers, but is not level maxed, you have the option of applying the cover to the character. When you do, the cover applies 5x the amount of ISO to the character that the cover would be worth if sold separately. For example, applying a 3* cover to a character would be the same as if you spent 2500 ISO to level that character. 4*'s would apply 5,000 ISO to the characters level.

This would also help to address the current ISO shortage in a way that shouldn't have a large impact on the games revenue from ISO purchases. It is my understanding that the only people crazy enough to actually purchase ISO are the whales, who do it when a new character comes out so they can boost them to max level immediately. The above system wouldn't affect those sales (since they won't have extra covers the day they whale the new covers), yet it would still help the overall ISO shortage for the majority of players.

Orion

Rather than it being that complicated, adding a cover to a cover maxed character should just give them 1 level. Yes, that's less ISO than you suggested, but it's still far more than selling it on its own. For some of my 4* guys stuck in limbo, that would be worth 3k or so ISO. And you always have the option of adding some more levels the usual way so when you apply your cover then it's worth even more.

tdglory49

I've actually been thinking something nearly identical. I was just thinking applying the cover would add one level to that specific character. Although I definitely like the 5x idea more for obvious reasons, I figured my idea should be reasonably easy to implement since it's similar to championing.

Edit: Orion beat me to the punch.

Slarow

Orion wrote:

Rather than it being that complicated, adding a cover to a cover maxed character should just give them 1 level. Yes, that's less ISO than you suggested, but it's still far more than selling it on its own. For some of my 4* guys stuck in limbo, that would still be worth 3k or so ISO. And you always have the option of adding some more levels the usual way so when you apply your cover then it's worth even more.

The issue with that would be that it would force you to spend the ISO to get a 4* character up to level 150 before it would make sense to apply covers that way (its <1k per level until then). The break even point would be much higher than that as far as total ISO spent, and you would have wasted the ISO that could have been put into a tier 1 character. I see this as a way to prompt people to level up their second-tier characters, and forcing that much ISO as a preliminary investment will keep it a no-go for most characters.

Linkster79

Orion wrote:

Rather than it being that complicated, adding a cover to a cover maxed character should just give them 1 level. Yes, that's less ISO than you suggested, but it's still far more than selling it on its own. For some of my 4* guys stuck in limbo, that would be worth 3k or so ISO. And you always have the option of adding some more levels the usual way so when you apply your cover then it's worth even more.

Was going to post the same thing. A golden rule my old man used to tell me. Keep it simple, stupid. At 13 covers and not max level just 2 options are needed, sell or add level, possibly retrain if you fancy a respec for some reason.

tdglory49

Slarow wrote:

The issue with that would be that it would force you to spend the ISO to get a 4* character up to level 150 before it would make sense to apply covers that way (its <1k per level until then). The break even point would be much higher than that as far as total ISO spent, and you would have wasted the ISO that could have been put into a tier 1 character. I see this as a way to prompt people to level up their second-tier characters, and forcing that much ISO as a preliminary investment will keep it a no-go for most characters.

Taking a character up to 150 costs 40,010. That's not that expensive - anywhere from 2-4 days worth of playing. I wouldn't even think that you should be breaking even overall, but that doesn't seem too bad to me. Plus, investing that in a tier 1 character is probably 10-15 levels.

Also, maybe I'm in the minority here, but don't most people take their 4*s up to 120-160 anyways? That way they're semi-useful when required in PVE and they have a decent shot at beating their DDQ.

Slarow

tdglory49 wrote:

Taking a character up to 150 costs 40,010. That's not that expensive - anywhere from 2-4 days worth of playing. I wouldn't even think that you should be breaking even overall, but that doesn't seem too bad to me. Plus, investing that in a tier 1 character is probably 10-15 levels.

Multiply that times the ~30 4* characters that are sitting at minimum level for most 4* players, and it adds up. For it to be useful in raising up the mid and bottom tier 4*'s, it needs to be beneficial out of the box, and doing it based on ISO instead of levels does that.

tdglory49 wrote:

Also, maybe I'm in the minority here, but don't most people take their 4*s up to 120-160 anyways? That way they're semi-useful when required in PVE and they have a decent shot at beating their DDQ.

I only ever take them to the bare minimum required for DDQ. For todays Miles Morales, that was level 70.

rossmon

How about the ability to champion early? or cover adds a level and raises the max by 1? (I.E. adding a cover to a level 200 Thing would move Thing to 201, with a max 271, but would still have to champ and spend the iso to level him from 270 to 271.

DAC169

rossmon wrote:

How about the ability to champion early? or cover adds a level and raises the max by 1? (I.E. adding a cover to a level 200 Thing would move Thing to 201, with a max 271, but would still have to champ and spend the iso to level him from 270 to 271.

I think this is the best idea in the thread. Just add an instant "champion" level that doesn't effect the cost of leveling. I wouldn't mind if I had to pay for Championing first either.

tdglory49 wrote:

Taking a character up to 150 costs 40,010. That's not that expensive - anywhere from 2-4 days worth of playing. I wouldn't even think that you should be breaking even overall, but that doesn't seem too bad to me. Plus, investing that in a tier 1 character is probably 10-15 levels.

If that were true, I'd already have Champed all 3*s & gotten all 4*s at least to 150 or however high I could get those with fewer covers. Reality is that takes me about a week, depending on if it's a 1 or 2 PvE week. Gotta remember, different people have different roster strengths and therefore different incoming ISO rates.

Crowl

That simple option of an extra cover = one level up should be more than just at 13 covers, it should also be allowed if you have 5 covers in one colour as well.

As far as the complaint that you have to get a 4* to a certain point where you get more than 1k worth of leveling, if you choose not to level that character high enough to pass this threshold then you still get 1k worth of iso for the cover to use on another character so you don't lose out on anything.

tdglory49

DAC169 wrote:

If that were true, I'd already have Champed all 3*s & gotten all 4*s at least to 150 or however high I could get those with fewer covers. Reality is that takes me about a week, depending on if it's a 1 or 2 PvE week. Gotta remember, different people have different roster strengths and therefore different incoming ISO rates.

True, although I was trying to be conservative with my estimate. I generally earn 20-25k iso a day, but I tend to be T50 in PVP and T100 PVE, plus am in a T100 alliance for both.

Based on this (https://d3go.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=38321&p=475901&hilit=poll+iso#p475893) from a while back, I figured 10k would be the rough minimum for someone who's got a reasonably developed 3* roster and is at the point where they're trying to build their 4*s/has enough covers to do so.

dsds

Hate to burst your bubbles, this won't work. When a character isn't championed, you cannot change the abilities of the character. For instance if you have a hulk at 4/4/5. And you want to increase his green, the only way you can do this is through getting the green cover or through championing. So with your suggestion, the developers would also have to allow any maxed cover character to change abilities without champing them.

PuceMoose

Approaching it from a different direction: what about a 5x ISO cost in reward-queue respec? You pulled a Prof X blue, and your Prof X is 5/2/0? Spend 5,000 ISO to change the cover in your queue to the color of your choice. Black Panther at a lamentable 5/5/1? Spend 2,500 ISO to turn that queue blue cover to black.

tizian2015

I like ideas about expand champion-rules.

one suggestion:
- a max-leveled champion grants a bonus for selling covers from him, depending the *level. a max-leveled 2* thor-champ doubles the iso for selling his covers, a max-leveled 3*hulk-champ triples the iso for selling his covers, etc.