'Tis the season

Isay_Isay

It’s time to begin the airing of grievances.

Bonafides - Resupply Day 2601, Shield Rank 216, Roster Spots 369, 7M ISO banked, 5M red ISO banked

“Double” ISO rates should be the standard – there hasn’t been a meaningful ISO adjustment since Release 75 back in May 2015 where all levels for 3s and 4s were dropped across the board.  Granted in hindsight, we can see this was to ease the sticker shock of the 5* tier that debuted a few months later.  Cut to today, we now have more 5s than the now complete 3* tier and the base cost of the majority of new characters is 3 times what it was from R75.

But I say Isay, what about Shield Rank rewards?  Oh we’ll get the Shield Ranks, but that ISO doesn’t come fast enough to be relied on.  Won’t that also cut into ISO sales in the Resource Shop?  Yes, but I would imagine the percentages of purchases of ISO compared to Hero Points is small enough that it wouldn’t matter and one could argue HP sales may go up as people are maxing out their rosters faster than before.

The roster spot “penalty” should be reviewed – I’m sure 300 roster spots seemed like a ridiculous number at some point.  Same way there were surprisingly low triggers by today’s standards for ISO and HP that would get players sandboxed early on.  We’re already up to 225 characters with 2 more in the pipeline for this Holiday season.  Compounding that were the changes to Shield Rank progress being limited to adding covers and champion levels making it necessary to start 2, 3, and (for vet players) 4 star farms.  The first few 4* dupes were fine as the final champ reward essentially covered their dupe slot, but over time it becomes more punitive to have those dupes given the steady flow of new characters.

Bring back The Gauntlet – Honestly, any untimed event is a great break from the constant clear/grind cycle that PVE has become. 

Bring back Heroics – Heroics were a great way to show how characters could interact and make use of the deadweight on your roster. It sucks every couple weeks to have to remind myself what Northstar or Karolina or any other low level 4* does whenever their turn comes up for PVE or DPD.  These events could be run in tandem with normal PVE or possibly as an unlock on the normal Prologue tab for a different Scenario each week.

Allow Cutscene replay - Someone spent the time laying out those PVE story screens and I imagine the majority of PVE players just skip it entirely to make sure they are clearing as fast as possible.  Create a button on a story node that allows a player to review those scenes at their leisure.

Make a choice on Supports – I’m sure Support Circuit is having a wonderful time on that farm up North with all that space to run around in, but in the meantime you’ve got to figure out a better way to level up Supports because the current system is garbage.  Tokens are given out infrequently and even when you get them, you are too likely to get a duplicate and a measly red ISO pittance as a result.  You are already giving out waaaaaaay too much red ISO to begin with.  Why is red ISO even a part of PVP rewards at all given Supports have no function there?

Shield Rank rewards should be revamped – They should look to Milestones as a template and give out more than just ISO.  A burst of shards/tokens/supports/costumes are more rewarding than the current system.

Let your player base beta test upcoming characters – The people who play the game are more likely to find those fringe cases.  Just create a test node for the new character with a Shield Agent avatar and all flavor text removed from their skill set and let us play around with different combinations.  At the very least be sure to run the following:

Does this character do damage actively or passively where a boost to that damage is excessive?

Does this character create special tiles in quantity that if boosted can cause/prevent excessive damage?

Does this character create countdown tiles in quantity and/or duration that can be abused by certain passive traits?

To be clear, I’m not calling for changes to the characters these tests are in reference to since these “tricks” are too ingrained at this point and are a lot of what CL10 play is based on.

EDIT: The Great Undo - It's time to Ctrl+Z the following character changes:

Mr Fantastic - take his blue back one iteration, it was an effective stun and a cheap Team Up

Goddess Thor/X-Force Wolverine - Hey remember the 2 characters who validated the 4* tier?  With power creep, their heyday versions would be right in line with where things are now.

Sentry/Hood - Good ol' Sentrybomb.  It was highly effective when 3* Hulk was the epitome of health, but now it would barely scratch a 5*.

2* Funbalancing - Let's have 2* go all the way back.  This would really only affect newer players and DPD (Since 2* was removed from CL10 PVE entirely).

And now, the Classics section…

The Classic Legends tokens need revisited – Classic tokens are a CP toilet; the pool is too diluted to invest in and the odds of getting a specific character let alone a specific color are ridiculous.  This is a bygone system.  Special Classics store should be run every other week or allow the player to choose a pool of 3 specific Classics at a 5 CP premium to the Latest pool.

EVERY Classic should have a feeder – Allow me to repeat: EVERY CLASSIC SHOULD HAVE A FEEDER.  Honestly, the older 5s should be on their second or third feeder at this point.  As stated above, the Classics tokens are not a viable way to cover a character.  Feeders are a great way to get a Classic started or fill out any gaps if you were playing while they were in Latest.  Once a character is rolled out of the Latest pool, their feeder should take effect a couple days later.  For example, since Daken rolled out today, someone like say X-23 should have updated rewards by midweek so players can make changes to favorites as needed. But won't vets get double rewards and/or even stronger 5s as a result?!  The double reward has always been an issue if a feeder character has been available for a while and it's more frustrating when a completely new character is updated (cough Jubilee cough).  As far as the rich getting richer, it's at most 7% per champed feeder, not exactly game breaking but enough to feel rewarded.

5* match damage needs unification – As I stated in 5* Deadpool’s release post, at 450 he would completely tank for a 450 Surfer despite Blue being Surfer’s primary color and Deadpool’s tertiary color.  How is this acceptable at all?  We see yet another bump to match damage with Magneto’s release.  Specific match damage was all over the place for the first batch of 5s because they were doing fundamentally different things that have now become normal within the game mechanics.  Like with other tiers, there should be a standard for base match damage.

Mjsleftglove

Agreed 100%

pheregas

Hear, hear.  Well stated.

Isay_Isay

As I was reminded by an alliance mate, the largest ISO pack available to buy is just enough to fully champ a 2* to further show how little ISO is valued in game

supergarv

Great list!

I can only add (as if your list is not more than 10 years worth of work already):

- Make DDQ somehow scale to 5* rosters / SCL ranks past 100: Finishing the 1&2* missions is a slog for us and no fun. Since I‘m post iso I skip the 1* and 3* node, but 3* cover and the taco tokens remain important for the farm. Still that 2* wave node is the most annoying daily task I perform.

- Maaaaaybe finally fix that Mindless One tile placement bug? That only works properly once when the game is restared? And maybe generally speed up tile placement / banner animations and that „tinker pause“ after powers are fired

- better TU/AP boost management, better roster preset UI/handling

fnedude

I know I'll be shouted down for this, but constant Double Iso8 isn't needed.

That's one of the challenges graduating from 3*->4*->5* land, managing your Iso8.

I know everyone wants to have all champed toons, but if D3 did double iso8 all the time, why even have Iso8 anymore?  What's the use if EVERYONE (stressing) is post-iso8?

It took me forever to get post-iso8 and get everyone champed, before saved covers were ever introduced, and it is an accomplishment for sure.

sambrookjm

Isay_Isay said:

It’s time to begin the airing of grievances.

...

5* match damage needs unification – As I stated in 5* Deadpool’s release post, at 450 he would completely tank for a 450 Surfer despite Blue being Surfer’s primary color and Deadpool’s tertiary color.  How is this acceptable at all?  We see yet another bump to match damage with Magneto’s release.  Specific match damage was all over the place for the first batch of 5s because they were doing fundamentally different things that have now become normal within the game mechanics.  Like with other tiers, there should be a standard for base match damage.

Of all of your greivances that I agree with, this is my #1 gripe.  I use Iceman and Black Widow for my comparisons, as I've got them both champed and at nearly identical levels.  Iceman's third color is still more damaging than Black Widow's first...and his abilities are far, far easier to activate.  I've got no problem with the health of some of the 5-stars being greater than the others, but the match damage should be the same per level.  If you want a Vision/Ghost/Karnak type passive where the damage can be boosted due to an ability, that's fine.  But please get some standard damage levels for the matches!

Rod5

Fully agree with every bit of that.

Houtro

100% agree, particularly the +300 roster slot is just ridiculous.

Michael1957

Obviously this will be the most popularly responded to topic of the year , I wondered over a month ago why no one had made it yet . I feel justified . Thanks 

abenness

Well said @Isay_Isay

I'd love to see the alliance raid events come back into rotation too - the content is already there! Even if you feel a pressing need to tweak the rewards to bring them into line with a normal pve, I'll take it - an untimed team event would be a really fun change of pace.

DyingLegend

Agreed

I'm just confused on why some new characters get feeders while others don't. A little clarity on the subject would be nice from the devs.

Every character should have a feeder. Its allows you to target and progress through tiers. I'd start buying things again if they devs could just iron out the feeder system once and for all. They probably already know what characters they are releasing well in advance, so having a standardized feeder system setup doesn't seem too crazy.

DeNappa

I agree the 2000HP per roster spot is ridiculous. i'm not at that point yet but it's basically punishment for being a veteran player.

RentedPanda

I love double iso and would like to see it more frequently, but I am not sure I would like it as the new baseline.  I think it would have reduced my engagement as I built my roster if I didn't have to save iso and play more to generate more.  As an event it is something to look forward to and see real impact from in terms of roster growth.  Also, not sure how it is for all types of rosters but all of the new Quest rewards really increase my iso bank while encouraging me to pace out adding covers (and thus spending iso) in order to get the daily rewards.

Glockoma

Loved this post.

One thing I would love to add, though I understand it will likely never happen:

an overhaul of the Alliance tab and the functions within. It’s extremely dated and limited.

would love to not have to use LINE for every effective communication and have alerts enabled.

I would even settle for an upgrade to stone and chizel...