Clear the Bench!
I was thinking this morning about a new type of event, one which forces you to clear your bench. Maybe this has been used in other games, but I don't play Marvel or any other game that might be similar, so it's a new idea to me, and even if something like it appears in other games, it could still be new and fun:
Pick a faction with a large number of toons, say GalRep. Now:
You are only allowed to use toons of that faction,
You cannot use toons that have not reached 7*, and
You can only use each toon once.
This is also important: you cannot begin a battle without all slots filled (if the faction has a number of toons that isn't divisible by 5, you can handle that by providing "event toons" at particular times on particular nodes)
You have a number of nodes, I suppose something kinda similar to GW, that ultimately requires literally every single toon to be 7* if you wish to complete it.
The nodes start out easier, but as they progress you either need to present overwhelming force OR you need the special abilities of a particular toon that presents a hard counter to that node. The hard counter that allows you to use lower-gear toons should require a zeta ability or something otherwise very, very significant.
The rewards for early nodes are mostly cash, training droids, whatever. This is throwaway stuff for endgame players, but useful for players level 60-84 who can get through a couple nodes but no further. BUT it also replaces the Credit Heist. People are always complaining about the lack of a credit heist, and there have been many, great Scoundrel-themed events since the Heist was introduced. Scoundrels won't suffer.
The final few nodes, maybe 3, provide a few shards of toons in that faction OR of that faction's enemies, whichever seems more thematically appropriate.
But the ultimate node, which cannot be accessed unless you have literally every single toon in that faction at 7*, provides significant shards (maybe 7-10, like Dathomir?) of a "capstone" toon of that faction, the way Wat Tambor is a capstone to Separatists or JKR is to Jedi.
The ultimate node would require both very strong toons (minimum g11) AND abilities which function as counters to the final node's challenge. (Compare to the C3P0 event as a minimum, where not only did you need g10-11, but you also needed specific ewoks with specific zetas, only this would be boosted up in difficulty a bit more than that, so you could only get away with 1-2 g11 toons, the rest requiring g12 or 13) This way, maybe it makes sense to use up Padme in node6 to save your Shaak Ti led clones for node9 where they provide a counter, but only if you know you won't be able to attempt the final node 10 since Padme is the only leader who can beat it. Saving Padme for node9 wouldn't help, because you want ShaakTi there anyway. So your strategy of using toons on different nodes would evolve as you developed enough toons to open up the next node in the chain.
https://media.giphy.com/media/Pq576oTuY4P2o/giphy.gif
This game mode would repeat once every week, so you don't have to play it every day and can even put off starting it if, say, you're close to getting a weak toon to 7* which (if you use it on Node1) will allow you to save a stronger toon for later nodes.
This game mode can also be "future proofed" by providing an opening node of 5 event toons with extremely low rewards, like 5k ship credits or something. As new toons are added to that faction, remove one event toon from the opening node for each toon added to the faction. . Alternatively, you can having an opening node that only allows (and only requires) a single 7* toon. As toons are added to the faction, you can add one available (and required) slot to that opening node. In this way, it still requires you to have every single toon in the faction at 7*. Of course, this only counts toons other than the capstone, so once you have the capstone toon at 7*, you've got an extra toon to use to beat the event, but also it doesn't matter: you were forced to get all the toons to get that capstone in the first place.
By the time that the game has moved on so much that you've added a full 5 new toons to the faction, your future-proofing runs out, but you've got a new one of these events to work on.
At that point, you can either allow each player to select between the new version and the old version (for people still working on the original capstone toon), OR, if coding that is too difficult, just add the old Capstone toon to one of the stores, one which isn't instantly easy (GET or Shard Shop or maybe Fleet, which is pretty easy but it still forces you to sacrifice zeta mats to make progress, so there's a real trade off - and a trade off which isn't gear) or make it only available for crystals in Shipments.
Players who complete the ultimate node after acquiring a 7* capstone toon will get Omegas instead of shards.
There are many advantages to implementing an event like this.
1. No more whining about when Credit Heist is going to appear. If you get 1-3M per week from this event you're still getting about the same amount of currency you would get from a credit Heist every 20 days or so, but instead of being random, the people who complete the most nodes would get the most. This further allows customization of the amounts for players at different stages of faction completion, with people close to the endgame getting more rewards.
2. This game struggles to reward different types of play, one being narrowly focussed and the other being a Pokemon collect-em-all strategy. The rewards for focussed play are generally greater. This wouldn't overturn this regime, but it would move things a bit more towards a balanced reward of the different strategies, where there's a reason to gear up (at least to g7/8) even the worst toon in every faction (I'm looking at you, Bodhi Rook).
3. More flexibility to play this event on days that are otherwise relatively quiet (no TB, no TW, etc)
4. Since you're trying to use your least-geared/ least-valuable toons on each node, those opening nodes would still be challenging for at least some of the players that are also beating the ultimate node because they have the faction's best squad maxed.
5. You encourage development of new strategies and creative use of weak toons. Maybe if your Node5 counter-team is stronger than it needs to be, you throw a junk toon in with 4 of those counter-toons so you can add one strong toon to an earlier or later node. Think dropping g12 Rex from Shaak Ti's quad on a node that is designed to be beaten by the 501st @g9-10 so you can use g12 Rex lead on a team of g7 toons trying to beat a node designed for g8-9. It's not exactly a sandbox, but forcing people to use all their toons also forces more creativity if they want to get as far as possible.
6. Even for the unluckiest who get 7 shards every time, 7*52 = 364 shards in a year, but even for the luckiest who get 10 shards every time, it would take 33 weeks to complete once you start beating the final node every time. That's 8 months. This would only need to be replaced once per year, so there's minimal development effort for the level of play-time content.
I think that the advantages of getting people to play their Ugnaughts and Bodhi Rooks and Jedi Knight Guardians while time-shifting their game play to the days when they most want something to do would provide a lot of benefit to the game.
ALSO it would provide something to think about for the whales who currently play a single-squad-to-completion development strategy. Maybe you could get some of those whales dumping some cash in to toons that are annoying to farm and provide little benefit but allow them to complete this Bench-Clearing event.
Almost-finally, although I use GalRep as an example faction because they are numerous and thus lend themselves to this type of event, there's no reason you couldn't have an event that includes more than one faction. Think an "outer rim" themed event, where Tuskens and Jawas and the Gamorrean Guard are all available, but some nodes provide faction-specific bonuses so that it's better to use your Tuskens on Node3 than node 5, etc. It doesn't mean you can't use a powerful group of Jawas on node3, but you can get away with less gear on your toons if you use the right faction at the right time. This still allows the mix-and-match creativity available to larger factions, but it also encourages specific toons on specific nodes without adding new zetas or otherwise re-working characters. A GalRep event would encourage specific teams on specific nodes by making the enemies vulnerable to a specific zeta. An Outer Rim event would just make the enemies vulnerable to a bonus only available to a single faction.
And...finally, this can also be used to make factions that have fallen behind relevant again. Resistance and First Order aren't relevant to any meta right now, but a combined FO/Resistance event like this would have enough available toons to make for a number of nodes once Episode 9 hits. You can encourage people to gather up those toons even if they aren't meta.
Also, you don't have to over-power any already-powered faction. Think Rebels. They're good for this event because they're so numerous, but they also have a powerful top-end squad with 3p0 and Chewie. If you make the ultimate node vulnerable to Rogue1 or Phoenix toons and give Admiral Raddus as your Capstone toon who boosts Rogue1/Phoenix rather than all Rebels, you can avoid overpowering a faction that has at least one meta squad and require more diversification to defeat the ultimate node (most people won't have Rogue1 as their most powerful / geared up Rebel squad) even though you know most people are going to have CLS/RH/Chewie/3p0/R2 maxed out.
Pick a faction with a large number of toons, say GalRep. Now:
You are only allowed to use toons of that faction,
You cannot use toons that have not reached 7*, and
You can only use each toon once.
This is also important: you cannot begin a battle without all slots filled (if the faction has a number of toons that isn't divisible by 5, you can handle that by providing "event toons" at particular times on particular nodes)
You have a number of nodes, I suppose something kinda similar to GW, that ultimately requires literally every single toon to be 7* if you wish to complete it.
The nodes start out easier, but as they progress you either need to present overwhelming force OR you need the special abilities of a particular toon that presents a hard counter to that node. The hard counter that allows you to use lower-gear toons should require a zeta ability or something otherwise very, very significant.
The rewards for early nodes are mostly cash, training droids, whatever. This is throwaway stuff for endgame players, but useful for players level 60-84 who can get through a couple nodes but no further. BUT it also replaces the Credit Heist. People are always complaining about the lack of a credit heist, and there have been many, great Scoundrel-themed events since the Heist was introduced. Scoundrels won't suffer.
The final few nodes, maybe 3, provide a few shards of toons in that faction OR of that faction's enemies, whichever seems more thematically appropriate.
But the ultimate node, which cannot be accessed unless you have literally every single toon in that faction at 7*, provides significant shards (maybe 7-10, like Dathomir?) of a "capstone" toon of that faction, the way Wat Tambor is a capstone to Separatists or JKR is to Jedi.
The ultimate node would require both very strong toons (minimum g11) AND abilities which function as counters to the final node's challenge. (Compare to the C3P0 event as a minimum, where not only did you need g10-11, but you also needed specific ewoks with specific zetas, only this would be boosted up in difficulty a bit more than that, so you could only get away with 1-2 g11 toons, the rest requiring g12 or 13) This way, maybe it makes sense to use up Padme in node6 to save your Shaak Ti led clones for node9 where they provide a counter, but only if you know you won't be able to attempt the final node 10 since Padme is the only leader who can beat it. Saving Padme for node9 wouldn't help, because you want ShaakTi there anyway. So your strategy of using toons on different nodes would evolve as you developed enough toons to open up the next node in the chain.
https://media.giphy.com/media/Pq576oTuY4P2o/giphy.gif
This game mode would repeat once every week, so you don't have to play it every day and can even put off starting it if, say, you're close to getting a weak toon to 7* which (if you use it on Node1) will allow you to save a stronger toon for later nodes.
This game mode can also be "future proofed" by providing an opening node of 5 event toons with extremely low rewards, like 5k ship credits or something. As new toons are added to that faction, remove one event toon from the opening node for each toon added to the faction. . Alternatively, you can having an opening node that only allows (and only requires) a single 7* toon. As toons are added to the faction, you can add one available (and required) slot to that opening node. In this way, it still requires you to have every single toon in the faction at 7*. Of course, this only counts toons other than the capstone, so once you have the capstone toon at 7*, you've got an extra toon to use to beat the event, but also it doesn't matter: you were forced to get all the toons to get that capstone in the first place.
By the time that the game has moved on so much that you've added a full 5 new toons to the faction, your future-proofing runs out, but you've got a new one of these events to work on.
At that point, you can either allow each player to select between the new version and the old version (for people still working on the original capstone toon), OR, if coding that is too difficult, just add the old Capstone toon to one of the stores, one which isn't instantly easy (GET or Shard Shop or maybe Fleet, which is pretty easy but it still forces you to sacrifice zeta mats to make progress, so there's a real trade off - and a trade off which isn't gear) or make it only available for crystals in Shipments.
Players who complete the ultimate node after acquiring a 7* capstone toon will get Omegas instead of shards.
There are many advantages to implementing an event like this.
1. No more whining about when Credit Heist is going to appear. If you get 1-3M per week from this event you're still getting about the same amount of currency you would get from a credit Heist every 20 days or so, but instead of being random, the people who complete the most nodes would get the most. This further allows customization of the amounts for players at different stages of faction completion, with people close to the endgame getting more rewards.
2. This game struggles to reward different types of play, one being narrowly focussed and the other being a Pokemon collect-em-all strategy. The rewards for focussed play are generally greater. This wouldn't overturn this regime, but it would move things a bit more towards a balanced reward of the different strategies, where there's a reason to gear up (at least to g7/8) even the worst toon in every faction (I'm looking at you, Bodhi Rook).
3. More flexibility to play this event on days that are otherwise relatively quiet (no TB, no TW, etc)
4. Since you're trying to use your least-geared/ least-valuable toons on each node, those opening nodes would still be challenging for at least some of the players that are also beating the ultimate node because they have the faction's best squad maxed.
5. You encourage development of new strategies and creative use of weak toons. Maybe if your Node5 counter-team is stronger than it needs to be, you throw a junk toon in with 4 of those counter-toons so you can add one strong toon to an earlier or later node. Think dropping g12 Rex from Shaak Ti's quad on a node that is designed to be beaten by the 501st @g9-10 so you can use g12 Rex lead on a team of g7 toons trying to beat a node designed for g8-9. It's not exactly a sandbox, but forcing people to use all their toons also forces more creativity if they want to get as far as possible.
6. Even for the unluckiest who get 7 shards every time, 7*52 = 364 shards in a year, but even for the luckiest who get 10 shards every time, it would take 33 weeks to complete once you start beating the final node every time. That's 8 months. This would only need to be replaced once per year, so there's minimal development effort for the level of play-time content.
I think that the advantages of getting people to play their Ugnaughts and Bodhi Rooks and Jedi Knight Guardians while time-shifting their game play to the days when they most want something to do would provide a lot of benefit to the game.
ALSO it would provide something to think about for the whales who currently play a single-squad-to-completion development strategy. Maybe you could get some of those whales dumping some cash in to toons that are annoying to farm and provide little benefit but allow them to complete this Bench-Clearing event.
Almost-finally, although I use GalRep as an example faction because they are numerous and thus lend themselves to this type of event, there's no reason you couldn't have an event that includes more than one faction. Think an "outer rim" themed event, where Tuskens and Jawas and the Gamorrean Guard are all available, but some nodes provide faction-specific bonuses so that it's better to use your Tuskens on Node3 than node 5, etc. It doesn't mean you can't use a powerful group of Jawas on node3, but you can get away with less gear on your toons if you use the right faction at the right time. This still allows the mix-and-match creativity available to larger factions, but it also encourages specific toons on specific nodes without adding new zetas or otherwise re-working characters. A GalRep event would encourage specific teams on specific nodes by making the enemies vulnerable to a specific zeta. An Outer Rim event would just make the enemies vulnerable to a bonus only available to a single faction.
And...finally, this can also be used to make factions that have fallen behind relevant again. Resistance and First Order aren't relevant to any meta right now, but a combined FO/Resistance event like this would have enough available toons to make for a number of nodes once Episode 9 hits. You can encourage people to gather up those toons even if they aren't meta.
Also, you don't have to over-power any already-powered faction. Think Rebels. They're good for this event because they're so numerous, but they also have a powerful top-end squad with 3p0 and Chewie. If you make the ultimate node vulnerable to Rogue1 or Phoenix toons and give Admiral Raddus as your Capstone toon who boosts Rogue1/Phoenix rather than all Rebels, you can avoid overpowering a faction that has at least one meta squad and require more diversification to defeat the ultimate node (most people won't have Rogue1 as their most powerful / geared up Rebel squad) even though you know most people are going to have CLS/RH/Chewie/3p0/R2 maxed out.
