Colorless Covers Vs. Colorful Covers - A coding Question

pheregas

First off, I'm not a programmer (though I did take one C++ course many years ago in college). I do, however, realize that coding is complex and that what might seem to be a simple change can actually be quite difficult to implement.

That being said, the forums have talked ad nauseum about implementing a system of colorless covers for 5 star characters to get around the disappointment and frustration of gathering yet another red phoenix cover on your 0/0/5 phoenix.

My question, and suggestion, is to bypass the colorless covers and go directly to colorful covers. Make each cover include one of every potential color that is applicable to an individual character. And I think this should apply to all characters, not just 5s. We've all, at one point, been stuck with that one next tier character that we just can't get that last colored cover to fully max cover.

In my limited/low experience, it would seem to me that adding information to what is already there would be far easier to encode than to remove all the preexisting information and make a new Colorless color.

You'd still only be able to apply one cover. It would just highlight each of the available ones, then click the one you want (much like how champion redistribution of powers works) and then the cover is consumed, just like normal. Now no covers go to waste.

Is this idea even feasible? What are the pros and cons of either system? Are there monetary ramifications to the company to switching to a colorful/colorless system? In my experience, I might actually be more likely to spend HP on a vault if I can attain a colorless/full cover since, odds are, that at least one-third of any undercovered character's cover in a given vault will be the wrong color to be useful otherwise.

Punisher5784

I have suggested this before. Currently on the Character Cover screen if you have 13 covers and try to apply a 14th cover of a color that is not 5 (prior to Championing) then there is a pop-up on which colors you want to reduce. They can use this existing system when you try to add a 6th cover of a color you already have 5 of, the pop-up would ask you which color you want to apply the cover to. Therefore, no need for Colorless covers.

The system is already there! They just need to tweak the code. I am tired of pulling a color I already have 5 in.

mpqr7

Please make this happen asap. Cthulu said there were plans in the works in a post that was made many, many many months ago.

It is absolutely dreadful to play for months and finally win a new 5*, and then it turns out it's a dupe of a non-champed color. 2000 iso.. ugh.

Also I just spent around 1500 in HP to pull my fifth Spiderwoman Black from the vault a few weeks ago. I knew I shouldn't have done that because today, I just pulled... a 6th spiderwoman black

DaveR4470

I don't think it's so much a question of coding -- I think the coding is pretty simple -- as it would be a database issue, perhaps. Keep in mind that adding a function that requires additional data adds additional data for MILLIONS of accounts, which seriously increases the amount of data the home servers have to track. Some things may be really simple to add, but prohibitively onerous on the databases (and the game probably doesn't make enough to justify a major database upgrade, which can be expensive as hell).

The Bob The

Wasn't there an attempt to give a colorless/random/something Chulk cover during Amadeus' Inferno a few months back? IIRC, it wasn't exactly colorless, but you could interpret it (generously? hey, it's the holidays) as an attempt to move in that direction. I ALSO remember it going horribly wrong, with an auto-rostered Chulk cover that you couldn't apply to an existing character, but the attempt seemed to be there. Anything still in the works for that, or was it a dead end?

bbigler

DaveR4470 wrote:

I don't think it's so much a question of coding -- I think the coding is pretty simple -- as it would be a database issue, perhaps. Keep in mind that adding a function that requires additional data adds additional data for MILLIONS of accounts, which seriously increases the amount of data the home servers have to track. Some things may be really simple to add, but prohibitively onerous on the databases (and the game probably doesn't make enough to justify a major database upgrade, which can be expensive as hell).

The change wouldn't increase data stored on a database, the data is already there; it already stores the cover levels of each character. The function that checks how your cover can be used, being "Add Level", "Train" or "Recruit" can have an additional check for characters that are not max covered, but that cover is already at 5 would then give the "Train" option. That would require an additional popup to ask which color you want to apply it to.

The point is, it can be done without a database upgrade.

broll

Punisher5784 wrote:

I have suggested this before. Currently on the Character Cover screen if you have 13 covers and try to apply a 14th cover of a color that is not 5 (prior to Championing) then there is a pop-up on which colors you want to reduce. They can use this existing system when you try to add a 6th cover of a color you already have 5 of, the pop-up would ask you which color you want to apply the cover to.

The system is already there! They just need to tweak the code. I am tired of pulling a color I already have 5 in.

I prefer this to 'colorless covers' There should be some cost associated with it as well IMO.

JackTenrec

DaveR4470 wrote:

Keep in mind that adding a function that requires additional data adds additional data for MILLIONS of accounts, which seriously increases the amount of data the home servers have to track.

Millions of accounts could increase their data usage by millions of bytes per account (which sounds like some appallingly inefficient programming for the feature being suggested) and still only increase data requirements by a few terabytes. That's not particularly big or expensive by modern computing standards.

Ducky

The question of colorless covers was brought up on Discord to a dev and iirc the dev said it would require a change to the core of their code that would take ~6 months to implement. This is probably why colorless covers will never happen, or at least not any time soon.

Shinigami

Have another button on the colour cover, next to the 720 CP button will probably be fine.
Takes you to your cover screen filtered by the character you have selected.
Allows you to select a queued cover if there is one. Remove the cover you've selected, add 1+ to the colour you targeted.

Chrono_Tata

I'm not convinced that coding is the real issue against implementing colourless cover, but just the fact that they would allow people to progress significantly faster. The whole idea of f2p games is to keep free progression fast enough that people don't get too frustrated that they quit, but just frustrating enough that people are willing to put in some money to speed it up. If colourless covers are introduced it could significantly affect their revenue from people buying cover packs.

Ezrius

Chrono_Tata wrote:

I'm not convinced that coding is the real issue against implementing colourless cover, but just the fact that they would allow people to progress significantly faster. The whole idea of f2p games is to keep free progression fast enough that people don't get too frustrated that they quit, but just frustrating enough that people are willing to put in some money to speed it up. If colourless covers are introduced it could significantly affect their revenue from people buying cover packs.

3* progression is slow enough, and I'm getting very close to championing the entire 3* roster. Yet I have a 1/0/5 Red Hulk and a 1/2/5 Nick Fury. My chances of covering those 4*s (nevermind and 5*s) in a reasonable timeframe appear ludicrously small. I do not see money as a way to resolve this issue if I get frustrated with it, I see moving on to another of the endless stream of mobile games as far more likely. Knowing that these progression issues exist and depsite having many friends that are Marvel fans, I also never recommend this game to anyone, because I don't want them to get to the point that I have and hit the same wall. I doubt I'm alone in these sentiments, and that's not good. It needs fixing.

TLCstormz

I already told y'all, months ago, that their response was "it's too hard to do."