Cover Scrapping system

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ Suggestions and Feedback
1

Let me preface by saying that I am a very patient person. Even if a system like this never got incorporated, I wouldn’t mind and continue on selling the 3* covers I draw as I always have, waiting until I can get my roster upgraded and relying on PvE to decide what covers I should keep.

That said, I do wish there was a sort of system in place to alleviate the burn I endure. I thought of a way that might address vaulting issues and other token related issues swimming around here on the suggestions board, and I came up with the idea of a tertiary currency. More like an item though.

I figure if players, both new and old, have to painfully delete a 3* cover, whether it be clearing a roster member for problematic scaling purposes or dumping that excess black Doom, they could be given something along the lines of a Scrap Token (I thought the name ‘Mint Token’ would work, but it makes me think of candy). Replacing the "Pay x HP for cover upgrades could be replaced with a scrap token system, where the scraps could still be bought with HP, but the incentive for competing in an event that rewards a character you’re maxed out on would still be present. Based on current prices, I came up with the following model to make the conversion equal.

1 Scrap = 125 HP

1 sold 3* redeems 1 Scrap
1 sold 4* redeems 2 Scrap
Characters in roster that are sold return Scrap equal to the number of covers they have applied.

Scrap boosting 1* costs 1 Scrap
Scrap boosting 2* costs 4 Scrap
Scrap boosting 3* costs 10 Scrap
Scrap boosting 4* costs 20 Scrap

Scrap is not rewarded for events or progression or stashed in packs. It’s only meant as a consolation for unfortunate 3*+ trashing without being so bold as to straight up give away HP, which has far more uses than Scrap would have. Scrap can only be used on already owned characters/powers, but if possible, 0 covered powers on owned characters could be unlocked with a double payment, which should be expensive enough to discourage it as anything more than a desperation measure.

I really feel this would be a fitting consolation, to sate both early game players, who really want to see a return on that 3-star that expired before they could open a new slot, to late gamers who eventually have to exclude what prizes even benefit them anymore with their maxed out Wolverine Patch-es. Where someone with a maxed out 3-star can still see a tiny benefit to placing 1st-2nd for their 4* prize and having those leftover previous rank rewards. It’d take more than THREE top-10 events for them to even dream of boosting another 3* by a single cover.

I also feel like this would be a better alternative to RNG workarounds proposed like Token Trade-Ins, because it serves more as an apology that the luck just wasn’t in your favor as opposed to simply handing you good luck, which itself can still ultimately flop given that there are 33 3* characters now. There is only a 3% chance of even getting the specific 3* character you want when the token turns gold, and even then, it could end up being Ragnarok. This is why I propose this system. Luck into 10 different 3* draws, but none of them you want? Well that’s really unfortunate, so take an upgrade to one of your existing characters that you like on the house, but be careful not to unbalance your roster and ruin your PvE scaling when you do so.

2

I’m really confused by this. Seems really convoluted and not really an answer to any existing problems.
Guess I need this boiled down more for me.

3

might be worth it if 1/3 cost of cover scraps can be used to change the color of 1 of your draws. may work really well with the extended expiration timer in the up coming patch. scraps may need to be separated into rarity cause 1 trashed 3* =/=a 1* boost or 4 scraps to boost a 2*. may be 1 cover for 1 scrap per rarity, 5 1* scraps can convert ( 1 1* scrap changes color) to 1 2* scraps, 10 2* scraps( 2 scraps change color) make a 3* scrap 10 3* make a 4*. 5 3* scraps makes a 3* upgrade, 2 scraps changes color, 2 4* scrap makes a cover, 1 changes color. but then i might sell all my worthless 3*, or maybe all, to beef up my 4* or swap a maxed color character. or just make rewards colorless to solve a couple problems or maybe have event rewards be colorless while draws remain colored.

4

Essentially, this is just a way of recycling 3* covers you draw/win, but don’t want or need, without being as brash as demanding they be sold for HP. I stick with 3* covers as a focus because they are the goal. They have been the majority of character releases and will continue to be so as long as the game continues to run. They are the main event prizes and what everyone strives for when opening their coveted 10-packs of Heroics This comes up with a problem though. When we have more characters to be drawn and won than most can keep up with as the seasons alternate, there are going to be a LOT of complaints from people who either don’t have room for all the extra characters they win from event to event or even those who have their 3* characters fully built and maxed out and couldn’t do anything with a new 3* pull if they wanted to. But it’s not worth placing 3rd in an event aiming for that 4* win when you have the 3* fully made. And your consolation is just HP, and Iso and a few 3* covers to sell for 1500 more Iso.

Some guy in one of my old alliances drew and threw away SEVEN Daredevil covers, and many in my current alliance aren’t bothering with the Simulator event because the prize is GS Widow, which really skews how the entire alliance is going to place. People already have complaints about the HP cost for purchasing the cover upgrades on existing characters already. (Is one 3* really worth $12.50???), so a Cover Scrap would be a way of selling those targeted upgrades at a discount, should you end up selling your event prizes or drawing a cover you don’t have room for, or otherwise don’t want. It’s not handing you something for nothing. It’s saying “Hey you earned enough really great prizes, but they just weren’t the ones you wanted. So to show you we’re still cool and as thanks for pushing on even through such terrible luck, we’ll give you ONE thing you want.”

If I were a new player and saw that there was hope to redeem my misfortunes with a single silver lining, i would be thrilled to keep playing, since even the darkest of times would be just another stepping stone to a guaranteed bright spot.

5

I really like this idea!

As a transitioner who is currently sitting on their first “excess” cover, trying to decide what to do with it, (Do I replace a lower level character with a duplicate? Do I hope that I can earn enough HP to buy another roster slot before it expires?), and as someone who just sat out much of a PvE event because the placement prize was one I couldn’t use, I would really love to have this option open to me. Now that I’m finally reaching a point where I can see the valid reasons for sitting out events, I’d much rather be given an incentive like this to continue playing (since I do, in fact, really enjoy the game). icon_cool.gif

6

Really just reminds me of the old days when 3* or better covers also gave HP & Iso.

I think this type of system is going to help advanced players more than newer players as they have far more covers they collect and don’t need than newer players who should be keeping every cover they can.

What if as an alternative use a new roster slot system where every player can have one copy of every character, however they are all locked and unusable till the player pays HP to unlock and use them. When a player pays HP for Roster slots they can choose to unlock a new character or make room for a double of an existing one. Perhaps even an option to swap unlocked slots for some additional cost (like 500 Iso & resetting the newly locked character back to the default level.)

7

It’s a good system, but it’s not going to happen. Roster Slots and the Cover Expiration system is part of the business model. That’s why in the next update they chose to ‘extend’ the expiration time rather than remove it completely. When you draw a 3-star you can’t recruit, that time is a venom injected into the cover, and it will die unless you buy the antidote to save it. The idea of my Cover Scrapping system is, once again, a ‘discount’ to the existing system of ‘use HP to buy a specific cover upgrade’. It makes purchasing the upgrade cheaper, and depending on how long the individual player waits and collects/scraps 3-stars, it essentially lets a person ‘name their price’ to a level of how much real world money they care to dump to make up the difference between Scrap and HP. The lower that price is, the more collecting/winning they have to do in between purchases.

Everything in this game favors advanced players over new players, between how far they get in PvP progression points before they get attacked faster than they can retaliate, to how many PvP nodes they can punch in PvE before their entire roster is on a 1 hour Injured. But at the very least, when a new player starts drawing Tokens, they’re not always going to be able to have slots or afford to make room. so they sell one 3 star cover and get 500 ISO. A single recruit token worth of Iso while trying to get their first OBW off the ground, and then what? After they slog through getting at least ONE 94/94/94 team, they hang their head in shame at all the event prizes and draws they burned through for those specific 39 covers (179 in my case for EVERY 2 star) with little else to show for it?

Saving scraps as a tertiary currency could be a godsend for someone in need of a way to make that extra push into the 3* tier outside of the cold random cycles of DDQ. They get 3 different 3 star characters built with all three powers. They recycle those 3* prizes they draw or win that they don’t have slots reserved for and apply any covers that DO match. Every time they save 10. they add an improvement to the weakest power of their 3* team until we suddenly have a trio of heroes OVER level 94, but are balanced so that the PvE scaling doesn’t go nuts. This keeps going with the heroes being leveled slowly over time, event after event, draw after draw, DDQ after DDQ until our new player has at least ONE 166/166/166 team, possibly even spec’d perfectly to his liking from using those scrap on specific colors. Where does he go from here? Well he did all those events and probably used HP to add more slots over time on any characters he liked or simply needed for required character nodes. He can start building a new character he likes up to Max Level, but what happens if he wins or draws another cover for his 3 star MVPs or any other dedicated characters he managed to bring to max level? Why not scrap the excess those have become! Now all this could take place over months of play time. While he has three 3-star characters, there have probably been two or more new characters released in that time. Even while our theoretical player could spend another 100 scrap to build one more 1/1/1 character to 166, the time it takes him collect and trash all those 3-stars could see several MORE new character covers released. And when you piece together the logistics of it, Could you honestly expect a dev to argue that TEN ‘unwanted’ 3* prizes and draws aren’t worth a single upgrade? Let alone A HUNDRED for one max character?

8

Interesting!

Personally I would love to see this, even though I’m currently at a point where there’s only one 3* or 4* cover that I wouldn’t be able to use. I’m already picturing slamming my head against the wall after “luckily” drawing the same unusable covers over and over again…

I can see one probably dealbreaking counterargument that the devs might raise, though: I think it pretty much removes any and all incentive for higher-end players to buy token packs. (It’s probably debatable whether they’re buying them now, but that’s another analysis…) There’d be no reason to buy packs for a better chance at certain character covers when you can just farm DDQ and the 900/1000 point progressions in PvP for unwanted 3/4* covers to scrap. That would be awesome for players, but terrible for business. Alas.

Maybe there’s a spot where the de facto HP award per scrap token is low enough that it wouldn’t eat into sales… If it were, say, 25 HP per scrap token (which would make it roughly the same as the long, long ago HP-returned-on-sale for higher level covers), you’d still have to grind a while to earn a usable cover, but it’s still something towards progression, and not just “yay, a few ISO.” A tiny change for the better is still a change for the better.

Finally, I want to publicly apologize for being a jerk to you in that other thread. I was 100% wrong to be snippy. Don’t know what got into me. I actually did appreciate (and had considered) the math work you provided. I do wish we could have had a further discussion on it, because I actually had answers for you, and it would have been interesting… but instead, I was a butthole. Serves me right, I guess. This idea’s better than mine was in any event. But I am sorry.