Cover's Value

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

I wanted to discuss a bit about the value of the covers that we get. Specifically the case where you get a cover you already have and you do not need anymore of it.

In this case you are stuck with a useless cover that costs only 100, 250, 500, 1000 ISO respectively for each * of the character. Not only they are not worth selling, but you are forced to do so as they will vanish after some time (Which is OK with me). I wanted to share my thoughts about this and see what your’s are and if we can come up with one or two suggestions on how to improve this game mechanic.

From my experience from a few card games, usually you get several options that have to do with the cards. You can Evolve, Enhance or Sell covers.

Evolve might just not work in this game because we are talking about actual heroes rather than creatures that can be melded to each other. And it would also not make sense in general with the theme of this game.

So my suggestions are as follows:

Enhance Character:
If you have a maxed Storm and you get another storm cover, apart from the option to sell it, you have the option to enhance your character with this cover in order for a small boost of stats (HP, Dmg, Ability Dmg etc. ). I saw in another thread that people where asking about small items to equip in order to boost some stats. Well this is it! This way not only your covers will never lose value, but you will not have any veteran or new player lose their desire for specific covers. If I can infinitely (The infinite part can be discussed) increase my characters stats with the more covers I get then I will always welcome new covers and I will be motivated to buy those 42-packs even if I have a max roster.

This could also solve the problem of MMR. Being that players will not have a wall to hit when they max their character. No matter how high you go, you can always go higher. So there will be a very big range of players with different roster power (Opposed to what we have now where you hit max levels and the majority of us have the same roster).

Merge covers for rewards:
Now this will be awesome. Following the example we have above, there are some characters (Bag-Man, Spiderman) that you just don’t want to have on you, let alone enhance them further. In this case we can have an option where you can merge a certain amount of covers of the same rarity for a chance at rewards. Rewards can vary from recruit tokens to a random same rarity cover or even a very rare chance at a 4*. All the rewards will, of course, depend upon the covers you merge.

Examples:

  1. Merge 5 1* covers = Chance at Random 1* cover, Standard Token, 1000 ISO, Heroic Token, Random 2*, Random 3* (Very Rare), 25-50HP (Very Rare)
  2. Merge 5 2* covers = Chance at 2000 ISO, Heroic Token, Random 2*, Random 3*, 50-100HP (Very Rare), Random 4* (Extremely Rare)
  3. Merge 5 3* covers = Chance at 4000 ISO, 2x Heroic Tokens, Random 3*, 100-200HP (Very Rare), Random 4* (Extremely Rare)
  4. Merge 5 4* covers = Chance at 50000 ISO, Heroic 10-Pack, Random 4*, 300-500HP (Rare)

Now in order to save those covers that we want to merge, I think there should be a place called “The Vault”. Where you save the covers you want to merge but you cannot use them again in game. So they are saved there for an infinite amount of time waiting to be merged when you decide to.

There might be details that I am forgetting or not thinking about at the moment. However, if anyone else likes this idea and want to share your’s please go ahead.

2

I like the ideas but know it would never happen, however, something that would be feasible is say with the merge thing, what if instead of selling for ISO you could merge the character for an automatic level up. Example.

You have Punisher covered lvl 158 5/5/3. You get a red cover, you have the option of training in case you want to swap covers, or merge. If you merge a Punisher with a Punisher he would automatically go to lvl 159. This would make the cover worth more than the 500 ISO, but only if you have an underlevled Punisher, otherwise you would just sell it for 500 ISO. This would be nice later as you could save 1000 of ISO points on straight character merges

3

Merging cover idea is sound, upgrade is not that much.

Why?
Well, let’s see if there’s no “infinite” upgrades, then you’re simply postponing the problem at some point covers are just useless again.
If they’re infinite - you have another, new problem: people who played longer will have gigantic advantage that any newcomer can’t close. Right now you have some specific point - 13 covers - where you “caught up”. Removing it will only add infinite power creep to the game and make “rich getting richer” much more prominent.

4

I thought of this myself. That is the reason I said this can be discussed. Maybe they can increment the number of covers required exponentially. So up to 10 enhances you can go by 1 cover each, then you will need 2 covers, then 3 etc. This way maybe they can have a progression but at a controllable pace.

5

I think this is a good idea.

I have Human torch at 5/3/4, so when I opened a token and saw a gold cover followed by Human torch’s symbol, I was beyond excited.

Then it came up red.

And I was crushed. Completely worthless to me. So I sold it for 500 ISO and felt totally robbed.

If I could have used that to level him, worth something like 1500-2000 ISO, it would actually feel like I earned something.

6

Part of the issue is that unused covers already have a function other than simply selling.

You can use them to change the powers on a maxed-out character, or you can use them to create a new character (start over with a new one).

I really like the idea of giving them another, better use, but I agree it’s against their bottom line to do something like that. Waste is important to this game’s economy.

7

Something similar i suggested a few months ago was a trade in system.
see link, https://forums.505go.com/discussion/8828

If you collect 25 one * covers, you can trade them in for 1 two*. Then collect 25 two * covers and trade those in for a 3*. Doesn’t matter what they are, as long as there’s 25 of them. Or it could be 50 one * covers to get 1 two *, whatever a proper conversion rate would be.

Since the devs didnt do it then, i doubt they will do it now, but one can hope. Oh well.

8

Merge 10 3* covers = 1250HP.

I suggested this previously as well, but it couldn’t hurt to bring it up again.

9

I’d point out that having covers become “useless” after a certain point help give breathing room for new players. You see a distinct drop in competition (for both pvp and pve) when the reward is an older cover. This is because most vets have those covers and are less likely to go as hard in the event, which gives transitioning players the chance to win those covers.

Giving the covers value post-maxing would really hurt the chances of those who actually need those covers. It was like back in the day when 3* covers would sell for 25 HP each. Vets would crush an event just so they can sell the 3 covers for an extra 75 HP.

10

Man, if they did something as simple as…

Selling 3* = heroic token
Selling 2* = standard token

…I’d be ecstatic.

Maybe they can shard the tokens, so selling a 3* cover is 1/5 of a heroic token, or something like that.

11

I’ve seen it mentioned before, but I think it’d be fantastic if they added a feature where I could pay a smallish amount of hp (200 maybe?) which unlocked my cover to be traded to an alliance mate. If sharing is too generous then maybe an even smaller amount of hp to reroll the cover? We all know people love gambling. How many people would pay 25hp over and over until they get something they need?

12

It is true that with the current cover distribution it might not work properly and only the luxurious rosters might benefit from it. But the cover distribution is another thing to discuss. The availability of them, of course, needs to be adjusted for this to be implemented. Maybe my example requires a bit of programming, so even a simpler version of it would be nice.

I just do not feel nice with the idea of “Win or Lose” when you open a token. Getting a token means that you already WON a price and it is now yours. So when you open it there should actually be something useful inside. It does not make sense to give me a price and then when I open it you take it back in an indirect way. I agree that there are items in a game where they become useless for a player after progression. But we are talking about an almost 70%+ chance that your token would be useless.

I wish there where tokens for 3* characters and above only. But that is another story icon_e_smile.gif

13

I’d like if you could trade two covers of the same character for one in the color you need. IE i have a green and a purple of they grey suit widow and trade those for one red cover of her. Other than that i’m with sandmaker. Experienced biggies will keep covers away from the smaller players if they can make value from them.

14

Off the top of my head, the least abusable way to go would be to be able to trade covers for tokens, but only up to one “level” below the cover’s rarity. So a two-star can only get you a standard token, three-star gets you a Heroic, four-star gets you…I guess an event token, and a one-star gets you nothing but ISO.

15

The problem with crafting is that then they’d have to get rid of cover expiry.

That’s needed for d3 to push people to buy cover slots, which is a pretty big source of income for them. I really hate cover expiry, but get why they have it.

16

This is why I mentioned that covers that you want to save for merge you will have the option to save in “The Vault”. If you save them there they are not usable anymore and they can only be merged. So you still keep the expiring dates, but the ones you decide you want to merge you just move them to The Vault and they stay there until you decide to merge them.

17

This game isn’t really like a normal card game because each individual card matters a lot more to you than a card in say puzzles and dragons would, meaning that the mechanics that you see there don’t necessarily transfer well to this game. Specifically,

Character enhancement - This would make the game an endless grind to improve your characters, which I think is actually a bad thing: with the way it currently is, you feel a sense of accomplishment / finality once you’ve upgraded a character to max level. Making there effectively not be a max level would probably disrupt the game balance / pvp too much and help turn the game more into p2w.

merge covers for rewards - The idea here is fine, but the amount of time spent executing this idea isn’t. In order to implement this, you would need a new vault screen, a new combine screen, new logic that combines stuff in the first place, etc. The problem I see here is what does d3 get out of this? I doubt that many players really feel like the redundant covers issue is a high priority (I personally am so iso starved that I will gladly take the 500 iso from 3* covers). I feel like what would happen is people would see this feature, go “oh thats cool”, and then spend exactly the same amount of time/engagement playing the game as they did before, which I doubt would justify that development time when they could instead do something like program new game modes (simulator for example, generally got a lot of praise / etc).

TLDR: d3 isn’t going to sell any more health packs from implementing this, so theres no point.

I think the current system is fine. We had 3* covers selling for 50hpin the past, but the veterans would then deliberately farm covers that they didn’t need in PvP just for the HP. Having it just be iso helped reduce that issue as well.

18

the vault idea would work, but d3 will need to put a max or limit on it. Otherwise everyone would put ALL their covers in there just to keep them from expiration. Say only 15 or 20 covers aloud in the vault at one time.

19

I don’t think this is a valid argument. Making the people that love the game the most not want to play it is a bad idea. They need a better way to separate the tiers of players so that everyone can earn great rewards whenever they want to play the game.

I also don’t see how you can crush an event without shielding, which would cost more than the 75-150 HP rewards.

20

OK, I got an idea. I don’t know if it has been posted before but here goes.

How about we make covers not color specific?

Meaning, when we get a cover it should not be assigned to a specific skill of the character. Getting a cover will allow you to upgrade any skill of the character you want once. This will remove the problem of players not being satisfied by the color of the cover given out. Respec of characters will be very much easier. The best thing will be that you will not have to throw away covers anymore unless your character is maxed. It is not nice to have 7 covers on a char and when you get the 8th you cannot use it because you already maxed that skill.

  • The price for buying covers will not change because it is the same amount of covers you need for each char.
  • The tokens will not be “Diluted” anymore as you will not have 3 covers for each character in there but only one.
  • There will be no such thing as useless cover color.
  • PVP rewards can remain the same (T100 = 1 cover, T25 = 2 covers, T10 = 3 covers, T1-2 = 4* + 3 covers). There will be no other impact than making the covers more valuable.