Hot take for the game to get better

TLDR; The game's deep, skill-based combat is overshadowed by a slow, complex, and expensive progression system (leveling, ranking, awakening). This drives new players away. Let us use new champions immediately at their base power to focus on skill, not grinding. Shift monetization to selling powerful new champions directly and monthly passes, making the game more accessible and potentially more profitable.

Hey everyone,

Hope everyone is doing good.
I have been playing this game ON and OFF from its inception days. I used to play for a few months, and then get bored and uninstall for a year or two.

Recently, I have gotten back and have been really understanding and appreciating the depth to this game, and watching guides and tutorials to upskill. This game has a lot of skill element like well timing blocks, dex, intercepts, knowing the optimal cycles based on your champ and the defender (and their nodes), and this is super impressive for a touch and swipe fighting game.
However, these elements get overshadowed by the following 6 things:
1. Leveling up
2. ranking up
3. getting better rarities
4. getting a particular champion
5. Awakening
6. Leveling up the sig
Now, these elements are also necessary for a game to have micro transactions, however to me, it seems that there are way too many of these elements, and they are all very slow and expensive, which I believe are the reasons new players quit the game after some weeks/months and popular streamers don't play this game, since they shift the focus of the game to acquiring the necessary resources and making your champs stronger.

From my experience with playing multiple free games that have micro transactions and are very successful like Clash Royale and PUBG, keeping the currencies and progression not very complex and having the focus majorly on the skill elements is the key for game to be more successful.
I can play Clash Royale for a year or two and already start playing at the highest level as an F2P player, and I can reduce that duration significantly by spending hundreds or maybe a couple thousands of dollars.
This is something I imagine is very much possible for MCoC as well. If I get a champion, let's say 5* Ghost, and I can immediately start using her without worrying about levelling/ranking her up, then I will have more motivation to try her out and get familiar with her kit, and if I feel she is OP, then I will simply focus on getting her rarer version (6*). Many times, it also happens that I spend resources on upgrading a champ, but then I find a better champ and get frustrated about spending resources on the former champ.

I believe that 'Leveling Up' using ISO-8 and maybe levelling up the sig can be removed from the game, and instead, other progression elements can be made harder to acquire, or something along the similar lines. Getting a duped champion provides class specific rank up resources or class specific champ acquiring resources along with something generic. (And obviously awakening the champion). The newly introduced champs can be made very OP during release and can only be acquired by spending money so that players have an initiative to spend money. Monthly passes can also help in some rare champs, along with other resources so that the purchase seems to be a decent deal every month. Stuff like this will help BGs as well.

I realise that the above suggestions are not all possible, but the main idea I want to convey is to simplify the currencies/resources/progression, and maybe make the other stuff harder to acquire, so that the focus remains on the action and skill part, and provides players better motivation to play and spend money.

I wish to suggest this game to other friends as well, but knowing that this game requires a lot of game time, and a lot of stuff to keep track of, I am not able to introduce other people to this wonderful game. This is probably the best Marvel mobile game and the best touch and swipe fighting game but its a shame that the player base is so small.

Thank you for reading my post. Feel free to provide your disagreements.

Comments

Flavyjay

This is very true, most mobile games focus on monetizing one or Two out of their many parts, but MCOC monetized all that is why I keep saying Kabam or whoever is in charge is the greediest company I have ever seen,

but your idea on how they should re monetize is questionable and I don't understand what you are saying completely want them to make things harder????

DivineEye266

@Flavyjay I suggested that if they remove levelling/ranking from the game, then they can make acquiring champions slightly more difficult, to balance the progression speed and not make things overly generous

Razorlord7

Bad idea. Op champ like serpent paywalled but you get to rank 4 your red hulk patriot and falcon for free. Goodluck getting rank 1 serpent down with your rank 4 falcon.

DivineEye266

@Razorlord7 not exactly what I meant. The new monthly champions can be paywalled (which is already happening), but the intent is to simplify the usage of champions that we already receive. I can't use my America Chavez because first I have to worry about her level, then her rank, then her awakening, then her sig level, and most importantly, her rarity. So much stuff is going on for every single champion that it gets overwhelming, and drives away most of the players.

Simplify the currencies, simplify the resources that are required to progress and become stronger and this game will do wonders.

FYI, by simplify, I mean that reduce the number of distinct things.

Razorlord7

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2875492#Comment_2875492

Agreed. But Kabam will make it so that you don't get champs like chavez on release and get it 2 years after here release till that time nico would come and Chavez won't be in your priority list. So a person willing to shell will have serpent and nico both for example and you'll have neither since you chose to be FTP. All you'll get is falcon rank 4 and the likes to counter them is what I meant.

DivineEye266

@Razorlord7 this is exactly what is happening in Clash Royale as well (I am taking CR as an example because I play it daily, and it is getting great revenue and hype lately). They release a new card and an evolution (similar to awakening you can say) every month. If the usage rate of these new cards exceed 70-80%, they do an 'Emergency nerf' and bring down the usage rate a little, and then the next month, nerf them a little more if usage rate is still high. As an FTP, I get evolution shards every month from a small grind, which enables me to get the latest evolution every 3 months. So for 1 in every 3 months, I can be on equal footing.

This approach can be taken by MCoC as well, the spending players can enjoy their broken champs every month right as it releases, the FTPs can grind for those resources that will help them in getting the new champs every 3/4/6 months, or run decks that have counters to those new champs. (Anti-meta)

DivineEye266

Another suggestion that I had, only for PvP modes like battlegrounds, things like level, rank and sig level can be capped to base/max and players will fight based on the availability of champs, their rarity and whether they are awakened or not. This will be a great way to incentivise the use of different champions.