Okay, hear me out. The point of this post is to suggest something to the formumites and the developers that I think would massively benefit everyone involved.
This game has two main modes: PvP and PvE. Which mode is played and which characters are chosen to form a team and take into battle is up to the player. D3/Demiurge has consistently stated that they want to achieve maximum diversity with respect to character usage as it will make for a stronger and more enjoyable game, but mostly that the players will have more fun because there’ll be more characters for us to go into battle with. That’s a great idea, but it comes with some serious drawbacks. First and foremost, many of the player base have severely underdeveloped characters. Some characters sit on the bench with just a single cover, others with 13 covers but without any ISO pumped into them. Either way, characters in that state are not appealing to the player base. How and why those characters were left in such a state is a completely different topic that I won’t discuss here. What I do think is important is dusting those characters off and getting them into the game. However, why would anyone do that if they know taking an underdeveloped player into battle might cost them critical PvP points, or bring forth extensive damage to two of their best players in a PvE match just because they wanted to test an unknown. Most of us consider the prospective costs and shy away from experimenting with the dusty characters, and instead go with the tried-and-true go-to’s. It’s just a logical choice coming to that decision. What that means to both D3/Demiurge and to the player base, is that fewer characters are being used, and consequently, fewer total matches being played. I say fewer matches being played because most players probably only play until they’re out of health packs. If only the same four or five characters are ever being used, then the number of games a player can play before they’ve used all their available health packs is quite small. With the recent health increases to a broad number of characters matches are taking two to three times as long. Our characters are taking more of a beating. Gone are the 30 second battles where we can leave with minimal to no damage and zero attacks by others while we were fighting our match; here are the battles that leave our go-to’s tattered and bloodied and three to four loses for almost a hundred points during the time it took to complete our match (the last part only applicable to PvP). This kind of experience leaves a sour taste in our mouths that doesn’t want us to try new things. That’s a lose-lose for a company that wants players to play, and players that want to play MPQ.
So how do we get the player base to dust off underdeveloped characters? How does D3/Demiurge get the player base to spend more HP on covers? What makes us, the player base, choose to spend that precious ISO and HP on characters we know little about?
The answer to all three of those questions is simple: we need to play with those characters at a much greater frequency than they’re currently being used. Simple, right? It really, really is that simple.
Here’s my solution. Create a Danger Room. In the X-men comics this was a place where the characters went to test and hone their abilities. They learned to work as a team, just as D3/Demiurge wants us to do with their 3-character team format. But, as I stated in the aforementioned paragraph, most of us aren’t willing to test or hone our new or unused characters because of the risks and costs of doing so. The solution is to simply remove the risk. We would match our teams against the teams of other players, but have there be no cost. Make the Danger Room be a place where all the characters return to full health at the end of each battle. Subsequently though, there should be no rewards for the player. There shouldn’t be any ISO handout at the end. No one should receive 2* covers because they won their Danger Room fight. None of the player base should be able to gain anything tangible that could progress their roster. What we would gain from the Danger Room experience would be just that, experience. We’d learn which characters pair best together. We’d understand how their abilities truly work in battle. I guarantee that many of us would begin to really like characters we’d before thought very little about. We might find that some characters only have a very specific niche in the game, but maybe that niche is one we’ve been trying to fill for a long time. Regardless, it’d give many of us the motivation to spend ISO and begin leveling players. Many players might be more willing to spend 1250 in HP to move a character from 4 to 5 covers because they experienced how good that character was at 4 covers in the Danger Room.
What’s best though, is that everyone wins. Players have more FUN. We learn how to use our characters without the fear of there being a cost. However, in order for us to make those characters better we’d have to leave the Danger Room and actually play the game. Best yet, D3/Demiurge wouldn’t experience the massive drop-off of their player base I’m sure has happened with all the recent changes. Out of health packs because of PvP and PvE battles? How about an hour-long excursion in the Danger Room while two health packs refill INSTEAD of closing MPQ and playing a different on-line game. How is that not a win for D3/Demiurge and the player that wants to play MPQ? We get to play. We get to learn ALL our characters. We would WANT to put resources into our unleveled characters. D3/Demiurge see’s players playing their game for longer periods of time. D3/Demiurge generates more revenue thru players purchasing HP so they can in turn purchase an additional cover or two.
So there you have it. That’s my idea to make this game better. Have a Danger Room. It’d be a world completely separate from PvP and PvE. A place where all characters enter at full health and then exit at full health after the match ends. There’d be no rewards. The reward is practice and knowledge. The reward would be a game that’d be a whole lot more FUN!
