How do I love S.H.I.E.L.D.? Let me count the ways.

mpqr7

This Shield update was a great idea. I had actually wanted something like this for a while, but I didn't know exactly how to express it. I had probably made suggestions that cover parts of it, but this is a more comprehensive solution.

1) It gives extra ISO, but only for those who try harder. Not everything will give you XP, but if you are willing to put in a decent amount of effort, such as completing a node 6 times, then you'll get some. And for people who already are doing full clears of each sub, they get rewarded, regardless of their placement.

2) Veterans get better rewards. Veterans are more likely to have higher rarity characters championed, so they'll get more XP from adding power levels and champion levels to their higher rarity characters, as well as being able to win the harder matches.

3) New players can get plenty of rewards as well. New players will also get their fair share of rewards. They'll probably get more from PVE than vets, since some vets are no longer as interested in grinding pve... although with the XP bonuses, more vets may become more engaged with pve again!

4) RNG is less painful. Since you get XP for opening all non-standard tokens, it's less painful if you don't get the character you wanted. You still feel rewarded, no matter the outcome.

5) Rewards for doing things you already do. I regularly send team-ups, max-champ and sell my 2*s, add champion levels to my 3* and 4*s plus power levels to my 4*s and 5*s, so it's nice to know that doing that is now worth XP. It makes me more excited about doing things, such as scoring enough in pve or pvp to get an event token.

Basically, after 2+ years, I was getting a bit burned out, but now I'm more excited about the game and feel more motivated to play different parts of it! Also, the reward graphics are nice.

It will probably take an average of 1-2 weeks to go up a Shield level.. we'll see. So that means around 6 months to a year before the average vet goes from 65 to 100. Maybe at that point, they'll raise the level cap. Or maybe when they add in the Clearance Levels, that will provide additional ways to get more ISO and such. I'm looking forward to finding out!

Stony

Couldn't agree with you more. Between this and the smaller quality of life changes it appears as if they occasionally do listen to the playerbase. Here's hoping Stage 2 and 3 are just as awesome!

PS. Hopefully Anniversary 3 will be more like 1 and less like 2, and I will be a happy puzzler!

wirius

This system belongs in a book, "So you want to make a great game?", Chapter 3: Improving gameplay.

Jarvind

Word. After people did the math on cycling champions and figured out it was a small net loss of ISO, I was kinda resigned to the idea that any ISO changes were going to be less "positive and helpful" and more "smoke and mirrors."

SHIELD rank is awesome and has absolutely no negatives that I can think of. Thanks D3/Demiurge/whoever.

Stashasaurus

The only thing that might make it better is if it adjusted the pull chance ratios the higher your SHIELD rank was, thus lowering your chance of pulling 3-star covers when your roster is mostly focused on the 4/5 stars...

Alfje17

Yeah, can't see anything negative about the SHIELD ranking either. Only thing I could use, is a way to speed up the SHIELD supply: I'm about 2 years behind (day 286) and have to wait until Nov 2017 for SS or Feb 2018 for OML