champion “skins”, an old idea which could be implemented in this new game.

TP33

i know what you’re thinking, “another one of these threads?”, i can’t remember when the first ask for different skins for champions was. i remember a large uphaul in the movement when infinity war released, as much discussion arose on whether or not the new versions of captain america or iron man were needed, however i know since then a thread has been made on this topic every few months.

in this thread i will give my thoughts on how champion skins could be introduced in a way which makes sense for the game and it’s champions. covering why we want them in the first place, what would count as a “skin” and what should be a new champion, acquisition of skins and how they could be implemented into the game and the consequent effects of introducing skins into the game.

why do we want skins?

it simply boils down to wanting a new aspect of the game, and seeing the scope and scale of a universe as large as that of marvels within the comics, films and all other forms of media fans often find that some versions of their favour characters are not included in the game for a multitude of reasons. and skins would be a great option not just for fans to see versions of their characters which may not require the whole months long process of a character design, but also for the wider customisation of your personal account.

what would be a skin, what would be a new champ

what constitutes as worthy of a whole new character would most logically boil down to the question of “does this new character have a substantially different set of abilities to warrant a new champion?”. the release of the infinity war variants of both captain america and iron man caused a lot of thought about skins, however i think that both champions have such different traits and abilities after their years of experience that new characters are warranted. other examples of champions with alternate versions which make sense are

hulk and immortal hulk
hawkeye and ronin
falcon and new captain america
daredevil (classic) and daredevil (hell’s kitchen)

however champions which could have been “skins” would be

the cyclopses
captain america WWII
the iron fists

with these “rules” skins i would love to see implemented would be

a version of pheonix which is just dark pheonix (basically the same power set just a difference in who’s in control, but the abilities of a dark pheonix champion would be the same as those of pheonix)

retro versions of the x men (or newer versions for those who it applies, lots of inconsistencies with the era of x men both in game and in other media it’s all very confusing)

some more comic book accurate versions of many of the movie tie in characters, for example red guardian and gorr

nimrod forms (the more the better can’t get enough of this guy)

enough of my own personal stuff (feel free to add any skins you’d like to see below) back to the implementation and consequences of adding a “skin” system.

implementation and consequences

just like how we have champion crystals i would suggest a “variant crystal” where you would aquire different “variants” of characters. variants would be valid across all star ratings, for example pulling a dark pheonix version of pheonix would mean that you could apply the skin to a 2* or a 6* or a 4* if you so choose. a variant wouldn’t change anything gameplay wise and wouldn’t have to change much visually other than the champion themselves and maybe some visual effects (for example a green laser might be changed to a red one). the variant crystals would be aquired like all other crystals, you could get shards for them or buy them outright. over time we could get limited time to station crystals featuring a select group of skins (like featured 5/6*s) for example a retro crystal would have champion variants based on old school comics etc.

variants could also be given outright by some events, and become like collector items, for example appearing in a special objective for a side quest etc. they would also work in PvP settings so could be used to almost show off.

in this way variants would be similar to profile pictures or titles, being a way for players to customise their accounts and show their achievements, whilst not directly effecting gameplay.

it would take a while to make variants and to introduce them into the game, but so far we’ve been given no indication that they’re even being worked on, and i think they would make a great addition to the game (especially as many players are getting a bit bored and this would be a good way to improve players motivation to play and get, could also be profited from)

Terra

My opinion TLDR is, "No thanks"

Shadowstrike

The major issue why we shouldn't do skins is the fact that if you take someone like Captain America and Captain America World War II and consolidate them with an interchangeable skin, then you have to consider everything that the person either spent in resources or shards in order to obtain that champion. We're talking gold, iso, catalysts, signature stones and gems if used that would take the development team and extended amount of time in order to properly research and return to the individual player in a process that could take years to do it correctly and all I'm thinking is in that time frame and then all that manpower, you could have just focused on buffing those Champions to be distinct enough to warrant keeping them as is.

Not to mention if you're going to do something like try and give Phoenix a new dark Phoenix skin, I'm going to want some new attacks or I'm going to want some new animations that make her feel like dark Phoenix because just slapping a coat of paint on her still doesn't fix her problems.

Ceder

Skins just aren't needed, and honestly speaking it would be super annoying especially if you start to have trouble finding the difference between specific champs that have another variant in the game