[quote=“David [Hi-Fi]
Moore”]
For starters, we’ll be releasing more 4s this year, a lot more. We’re currently devoting a lot of thought to making that transition smoother than it was from 2s to 3*s.
[/quote]
There have been many great suggestions made that would make transitioning easier.
The 3* covers are usually prizes for events. Most of these events are part of seasons, and are mandatory to play for anyone in an alliance. The bulk of the people winning these event need the points, not the covers. Transitioning players don’t have a chance. The event winners sell the covers they don’t need for ISO. How to fix this?
- Free shields for giving up covers. This protects points, at the cost of foregoing prizes.
- The Scrapyard tourney, constantly giving away the discarded 3* covers.
- For an event with a character prize, do sharding based on “fully covered” / “not fully covered”.
I’m one of the whales of the game. I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on it, and won many events. Even so, I still haven’t fully leveled up the following guys. I haven’t had the ISO or the hero points. For Colossus, I don’t have his red cover yet. Colognoisseur is one of the most diehard collectors of the game, but even he has mentioned being broken by Elektra. I got up to #10 in the event, but there is obvious cheating in it – impossible scores by people with terrible rosters. If D3 isn’t going to take cheating seriously when the prizes are that scarce, then the event isn’t worthwhile. It’s the first event I’ve truly given up on. They haven’t even released Elektra’s stats.
Still, I have a gigantic roster. I have Yelena. Why? Because I got tired of her being added to my roster. I got tired of indicating over and over again that I didn’t want her. I don’t like the Flashy Red or Yellow Roster Warning if I don’t have 2 extra slots I don’t need. Fine – I’ll get the extra roster slots to stop the pestering.
If there was a break that let me focus on characters that interest me, I’d work on leveling up Mystique, Rocket&Groot, 4* Thor, Fury, and Loki. I really liked the changes for Loki, and spent hoarded Hero Points to get his Green Mischief up to 5 covers. He’s a lot of fun. Unfortunately, there is no break.
The game is becoming Whack-a-Mole. To be competitive, there’s a different new character that’s needed every few days.
Starting next year, Elektra will be that required character, owned by a tiny fraction of the players, and an even tinier fraction of the honest players. She’ll be the required character in yet another broken event that D3 will work hard to fix, hours too late. The prize will be some other 4* character. A 50/50 chance at getting a few Elektra covers will be available for about $50, but you’ll need to spend $100 more to get all her covers, and then another $200 to level her up enough to fight level 395 foes in the event. If there aren’t too many cheaters in your bracket, then 7 days of around-the-clock grinding might get you the absurdly limited prize of the next 4*.
Put that on repeat – yet another 4* character is the next prize. And on and on.
Meanwhile, there are still plenty of problems with the existing characters. Recent fixes for Daredevil and Loki are very welcome. But it’s not necessary to do a complete design to buff a character. It could be done just by lowering some costs.
20 AP – Ballistic Salvo – IM40 (also drains 10AP from other colors, or 30 AP total)
14 AP – Smash – Hulk (often damages teammates, drains up to 10 green, for total cost 24 AP)
13 AP – Unibeam – IM40 (also drains 10AP from other colors, or 23 AP total)
19 AP – Ultra-Freon Beam – IM35
19 AP – Sentinel of Liberty – Captain America
18 AP – Grant Invisibility – Invisible Woman
18 AP – Switcheroo – Bagman
18 AP – Murderous Aim – Bullseye
17 AP – Control Shift – Moonstone
13 AP – Force Bubbles – Invisible Woman
When Lazy Cap, Daken, Thor came out, I sold those 2* characters, expecting that they wouldn’t be needed any more. IceIX even mentioned that people with the higher level versions likely wouldn’t need the lower level versions. Unfortunately, lots of limited roster events have made the 2* versions necessary. More character whack-a-mole.
I’ve posted dozens of outlines for improving the game. Some of these outlines have over 100 upvotes. Many others have also made great suggestions, and my compilations are mostly stolen from those guys. Because I read the forums and I recognize good ideas. If the devs are truly willing to listen, then I can put together a poll for them that lets people vote on what they’d most like to get changed. I’ve put many of these polls together.
The developers seem to have three fallback positions to any suggested change.
- The fix wouldn’t be awesome enough to enact it.
- The fix would add complications to the game.
- Things are fine as they are.
Popular suggestions for making the game more awesome have seemingly been ignored, such as the “What characters do you most want?” polls.
Popular suggestions for simplifying the game have seemingly been ignored, such as an indicator for the enemy’s strongest color.
A few days ago, I posted it’s easy to be positive about MPQ. I listed some of the recent improvements to the game.
I gave up on the Elektra event, though. Making her a 4* and throttling down the rewards that much is a step in the wrong direction. Even worse is forcing people to fight for a prize that’s still under wraps. If Elektra is a terrible character, the people that fought the hardest for her will be upset.
D3 shouldn’t encourage people to give up on them. Neverending whack-a-mole isn’t awesome.