Is it time for colourless covers? Pros and Cons

Thorstienn

Mostly wondering what people think.
Dilution is pretty heavy these days, and only going to get worse.
Control will always be kept in check due to iso limitations.
Whales always need to play the odds to get 13 specific covers anyway.
And no more CS cover swaps.
What do you guys think?

Dotproduct

Been discussed to death. Tell me how it makes the Devs more money and then maybe it will get a look in. 

Thorstienn

It doesn't instantly make money.
However, of players know that when they spend money on the game, none of their purchases are going to be wasted in another 8/6/0 cover, they may feel more inclined to purchase.
And of course this goes for anyone who has already made multiple purchases  (ie been willing to spend the cash) but have now stopped due to similar scenarios.
Finally, I feel it fixes a lot of the bad will/negative ppl find with the game (story and now versus grind) as all content equals progression. Then ppl might "recommend" the game to their friends, instead of "threatening to quit"
All of that, equals, potential money and longevity of the game.
If you disagree ok. Don' push for it. Don' talk it to death.

Thorstienn

aesthetocyst said:

Sure it can make money:

"Change color of this color for [Rarity^3 • 20] HP ?"

Had a similar thought today, a good potential compromise. Thank you for your input

STOPTHIS

Dotproduct said:

Been discussed to death. Tell me how it makes the Devs more money and then maybe it will get a look in. 

As aestheocyst pointed out, and something that as been suggested before, is charging an amount to exchange covers. It's not same thing as colorless covers, but it relieves the annoyance of pulling a useless cover. Especially in the 5* range.

I bet they could increase ISO sales a bit if your ISO debt could get out of control faster. More so if they improved ISO deals, which are hilariously out of date.

evade420

5* covers should sell for a legendary token

BearVenger

I don't like the idea of colorless covers, because I think it decreases the downside of whaling to get a character to 13 covers. Doing that would accelerate the gaps between those willing to spend and those unwilling to spend. Right now, if you have a rock of a 5-star cover, you pocket a measly 2K ISO and hope for better luck next time.

There's not a large number of people who WOULD whale if colorless covers were the case, but I imagine it would be some level of magnitude greater than what we have now. Even if it only doubled the people willing to max out three 5-star characters, they could sell off their middling characters and use the ISO to ramp them to champ levels. That would pretty much make a minimum bar for those who wanted to get t10-50. That would lower the tiers of the pyramid where the battle is "How champed are your 5-stars?". Then there would be no interest in chasing after any character that is 4* or less. Then there would be less non-Legendary token pack purchases.

If that were the case, there would be a lot of players who would lose the desire to spend on their roster and just go more casual.

TLDR: Colorless covers shorten the chase and make a direct spendpath to top-end rosters, decreasing the number of players willing to spend a little over the long term and devaluing the worth of anything less than 5* characters.

Thorstienn

@BearVenger
Completely understand where your coming from, but regarding overall players, I disagree.
Whales are going to whale anyway, this benefits them because they can potentially whale a tiny bit less to max the latest thing out there.
The rest of us, can fork over our $100 and get our 21CP, open a classic, and not have to worry about a 0/10/0 Carol. (All as an example)
As long as 5* are exponentially better than 4* ppl will always aim for them. It won' make the chase that much faster (RNG and all), but it will definitely make it less defeating for the non-whales. 

Kahmon

While I'm sure everyone would appreciate colorless covers, another idea is to make 6th+s of a particular color usable for other colors. Right now, you can only spend CPs on covers after getting the first of each color. Small change to that code would add the new option after getting 5 of a color.

Lots of happy customers and less work for customer service.

DAZ0273

Or introduce an in game trading system for players to swap covers. Make each swap cost, say starting at 1,000HP or x amount CP and scaling upward depending on cover rarity payable for the transaction. Limit how many transactions can be carried out per day or week or whatever. Players have more options, there is still an in game currency that players are incentivised to purchase with real life money (or earn in game) and hopefully CS don't get bothered any more. Players also still have to acquire those dupe covers in the first place, so nothing changes with regard to opening tokens or spending CP.

Only problems I can think of are it might be too much for servers to handle.

TF1977

5* cover “wild card” - one every 3 weeks, max of 2 in your saved rewards. Allows you to change 1 5* cover. Actually, you could make it universal - works on any character in the game.

or Give 5* the ability to change any color/power at level 400

DaSal

Once a 5* character reaches 5 in an ability, subsequent covers for that character could be colourless and applied where needed.

firethorne

Dotproduct said:

Been discussed to death. Tell me how it makes the Devs more money and then maybe it will get a look in. 

Aside from the obvious answer of charging for the service of changing it, it could potentially win back a few VIP's who had canceled, as they didn't want to spend $10 a month on unusable rewards.

Dotproduct

firethorne said:

Dotproduct said:

Been discussed to death. Tell me how it makes the Devs more money and then maybe it will get a look in. 

Aside from the obvious answer of charging for the service of changing it, it could potentially win back a few VIP's who had canceled, as they didn't want to spend $10 a month on unusable rewards.

Charge how much? They are already going the HfH cover at 250CP? The 5* direct buy is 750 CP, so you reckon at 500 CP is good price for colourless?

broll

I’ve never liked the idea of colorless covers. I would much rather see some system to solve that problem.  Something to where when you sell unusable covers you get a token or credit and once you have enough you can pick the cover you want.  

KinDM

I had the idea, which I don't know if they could realistically implement, of changing 5* characters to work on a single 1-13 scale instead of 3 separate 1-5 scales. It would remove color completely, and just level up each power in 13 steps from the equivalent to a current 1/1/1 to a 5/5/5. 

Pros: low cover 5*s may be slightly more usable, no more hassle with wasted covers and CS emails/time is greatly reduced. Endgame, 5*s are a little more powerful as they'd equal a current 5/5/5.

Cons: D3 makes less money in the chase, and it's easier for us to finish 5*s. The extent though is debatable, as they currently use resources to deal with swapping latest pulls. May require extensive coding. 

mega ghost

I think the system works fine in that they want our roster development to be impeded, and they want us spend resources (and maybe money) to do what we can to keep covers from expiring and going to waste. I do dislike it, though.

A better system, one that could make us happier and that still results in us spending resources to prevent waste, is to remove the expiration time from covers and instead limit how many covers we can hold onto at a time. Want to expand the number of covers you can hold onto? Better spend X amount of HP for a longbox that holds 10 more.

animaniactoo

Colored covers serve 2 purposes as the current bottleneck that they are:

1) They create a sense of achievement when you've achieved a completed 13 - that particularly quality and sense of achievement does not come without the frustration of covers that are "wasted" (but not really because they have some sell value, etc.)

2) They help stabilize the long-term pace of the game. If people develop their rosters too quickly, they run out of things to do. Playing becomes less of an achievement when you're not playing for rewards that are all that useful anymore. Particularly if you're not the top of the heap and at least have that to hold to.

Therefore, it's necessary to hold the longterm development pace to something that the devs can reasonably create new content against. At this point, with the numbers of bug issues that show up, I'd say it's pretty likely that they're already behind the pace and struggling.

People who are willing to pay to get past the bottleneck - fund the development. If those people get bored and give it up eventually, it's okay. They've already been worthwhile. Everyone else is another in-game resource of additional playerbase and holding on to those longterm is a goal that is easier to do if you don't let them "finish" the game in the same way.

Frustration there has to be carefully managed as you also don't want them to give up in aggravation at not being able to get past the bottleneck - there are various kinds of these bottleneck easers in the game already. Creating another one as broll suggests above is probably the most likely kind of path, although I would suggest adding some other additional cost to that. Maybe something along the lines of the token plus half the cost of what you would normally need to spend in CP for that particular color.

But for the reasons outlined above, it is very unlikely that there will ever be a time when it is time for straight colorless coves from the devs' POV.

animaniactoo

mega ghost said:

I think the system works fine in that they want our roster development to be impeded, and they want us spend resources (and maybe money) to do what we can to keep covers from expiring and going to waste. I do dislike it, though.

A better system, one that could make us happier and that still results in us spending resources to prevent waste, is to remove the expiration time from covers and instead limit how many covers we can hold onto at a time. Want to expand the number of covers you can hold onto? Better spend X amount of HP for a longbox that holds 10 more.

I think this is also a practical suggestion, although it is not one that I would prefer.

Kahmon

Just throwing in another idea. What if 5* covers weren't subject to the 2 weeks limit? The RNG could still make champing some characters difficult, but at least once done all covers that would have previously gone to waste would now be waiting to become champ levels.

Crowl

Colourless covers or colourless once you have 5 in a particular colour could actually increase sales due to there being less chance of money being spent on wasted resources, if people know that all their spending would actually result in them improving their roster, whereas now the value just isn't there for most people who aren't whales once their roster reaches a certain point.