Things I've learned in 4 months of playing this games

Unknown

This is by no means the best way of going about this - but if it helps people avoid the same mistakes I've made, then hopefully people can have a better time playing. Please feel free to correct or add to this and I'll credit you and put you in the OP
In terms of PVE, I'm not the best in the world but I was in the top 10 in the Simulation event and top 50 in the event before that and usually place in the top 10-20 in the sub events.
I can only speak from the PVE perspective. Right now PVP and I aren't talking, but if I end up trying my hand in it again, I'll update with my thoughts

1) Specialize your characters. What I mean by this is do not have 15 characters all levels 20-30. Try and rush at least 1 team of 1* characters to max level, and then get a team of 2* up there after that. While this might help for weekly "buffed" characters, in the long term it will limit you when the only events are PVP events and you need to grind out on the prologue missions.

2) Try NOT to sell your covers. I made massive mistakes in selling covers to get ISO to level other covers. Now I'm regretting it and have to try and get the covers back. Dakken comes to mind, I didn't think he was really great, and now I am wishing I hadn't sold my max covered Dakken. You never know when a new cover comes out that synergizes intensely with an existing one (Falcon and Dakken now).

3) Compete in every event you can - this goes without saying but getting a "free" 100+ ISO (from burnable Standard tokens and ISO bonuses) really helps

4) Manage your Health Packs well. BTW, getting a free health pack doesn't = having a permanent increase of 1 to your health pack total. If you have 6 health packs, you only regenerate to 5. But make sure to manage them - don't burn a health pack for a character that has a regeneration time of less than 30 minutes. I generally don't do anything under an hour, depending on what I'm going up against that round.

5) Join an Alliance! It's free ISO - even if yours stinks and doesn't always win in events.

6) don't rush 3* covers - I had started doing that in the beginning and ended up with a level 41 Hulk, and levels 40 and 41 Storm and various other ones. I'd rather have had those ISOs for 41 Hulk go to Storm and M. Mags and have higher levels for them (in turn getting better rewards, in turn accellerating my leveling process)

7) Don't go overboard spending $$ on covers, but don't be afraid to do it either. This comes down to, what you can afford to spend, spend. You can always do another event and grind more ISO and whatnot to get more covers. You can't always make up your time spent at work to pay money to get covers.

8) - it's never too late to recover. I had a BAD roster a month ago - no one over level 40 and a bunch of characters that weren't focuses. Now I have a much more solid core team of 2* (85 Storm, 71 Mags, 66 Thor) and I'm working to finishing them up so I can start focusing on my next strategy.

Unknown

Congrats, man. Keep plugging away.

The slow pace of progression in this game can really make the rewards feel that much sweeter.

Unknown

I'm really wishing I hadn't dropped my Dakken now - I could have a 69 Dakken paired with a Thor who does bad things when he makes new tiles and strikes for a ton supported by Falcon. I've got a 3/1 Dakken, but it would take a long time for me to get the rest of the covers and ISO

BTW is there a cover that generates RED tiles? I'm not sure off hand

ThatOneGuyjp189512

yeah i made that same daken mistake, i probably could have maxed him out a long time ago if i hadn't sold them, then i realized....how much i HATE going against him with my two star team. No, there isn't anyone that generates red, probably cause there's a lot of characters and teams that use red(thorverine comes to mind). i think Cstorm's raging temptest used to generate red before they nerfed her, but that's about all i can think of.