Hero portraits we can work towards

[Benched]

I believe two updates ago included the introduction of changeable hero portraits into the game, along with some unique ones that could be obtained in brawls and events. I personally love the idea behind them, as they are basically a status symbol within the game, you are able to show off a hero you have, or how well you did in a certain event and I really do hope to see more in the future!

In the meantime, I was wondering if it would be possible if we could have some sort of progress or goal for each hero that allowed us to change the color of their basic portraits. A non-event way to obtain some interesting and cool portraits during downtimes in the game. One of the ideas I have would relate to pvp wins, and also give an extra incentive for people to play pvp outside of tournaments and brawls. My idea:

Progress bar for each hero that counted wins for the hero that was in the FIRST SPOT of your party (the default user controlled hero).
Goals would be set at (x) amount of wins for each level, I was thinking like 500, 1500, 3000 for now.
Once you hit a goal, it unlocks another color portrait for that hero, up to you guys for what those colors would be.

Some pros on my idea: Allows people to grind pvp outside of events towards a goal that they desire. Having only the first slot hero earn the win allows this process to play out a long time for people and would hopefully create news teams to play against. It’s another status symbol, and could be unique for some players (players might go after the portraits for some lesser player heros in pvp).

Some cons: I have no idea how this would be implemented or if it would even be possible. Brawl events with required heros may screw this up.(like the callious event where she was always your first hero.) The portrait page for our profile might be come a little unorganized and messy especially if other unique portraits get added. Don’t know where players could look to check their status for wins on each hero.

Overall, I think the customization aspect is a huge part of a lot of games, and also having a goal to work towards over time is a great thing for a game to have for its players. Pvp does not have to be the route to take, it just seemed like the most logical and fun way to earn these portraits.

[Poobgloob]

Great idea @Benched! Love it.

Although, maybe instead of “first slot” hero gaining progress for milestone, I would rather see “MVP” hero gain progress for milestone.

Currently, MVP hero serves no purpose other than bragging rights (I suppose).

Using your idea:
“Get MVP with Vanguard in PvP 300 times” (for example) sounds much better to me.
Plus, the MVP is virtually always the hero you control anyways (unless opponent outplays you).

Additionally, I think it would cause players to use more unorthodox team compositions, rather than the normal meta Gammond, Mandrake, DogFace, etc, that we typically see.

I think the Devs should seriously consider something like this (if they aren’t considering it already).

[Benched]

I considered MVP as being the one that it counted for, but how that is determined right now gives very little room for some of the weaker heros to obtain that. Even in certain team comps there is usually two heros you can predict that will win MVP just because of the damage or the heals. What happens if the hero you are trying to get MVP dies before the match is over but you still win? Not to mention that even if you win, you are not guaranteed to have one of your heros as the mvp, which adds even more randomness. Having just the first slot/user controlled hero allows you to make a composition that’s still strong enough to win, but you get to choose who that win goes too.

There some teams you can prettt much know who will get mvp if you win, but let’s say you are trying some of the heros out in pvp that are middle of the pack for you powerwise. I just think it would be too random for people to stay engaged and want to grind for the portraits if it was solely giving out to the MVP.

Maybe make it so if your first slot hero also wins mvp it counts towards two points to your progression?

[Poobgloob]

True, but I also think that the fact that some heroes have an easier time getting MVP would add more of a challenge at obtaining the portraits for the heroes that have a harder time getting MVP; which would consequently add more value to them, since they would be rarer and harder to acquire.

With first slot heroes, all you’d have to do is play 300 matches with them in the first slot, and you’d gain the 300 match milestone, because each match would be guaranteed progress on the milestone bar.

However, with MVP heroes, it adds more of a challenge at working towards a specific hero’s portrait, AND each match would not be guaranteed progress towards the milestone bar.

In regards to my first point, getting MVP 300 times with Gammond would be a hell of a lot easier to do than get MVP 300 times with Oro, for example, hence making Oro’s portrait colors more valuable than Gammond’s.

Also, depending on who you’d be trying to work on, it would require the player to use more unorthodox team compositions, especially if you are trying to work on a weaker hero (since you’d have to try and avoid using any heroes that can get MVP easier than the hero you’re trying to work on).
Personally, I just prefer more challenging tasks, I think that’s why I’d prefer MVP over first slot hero, haha

[Rook]

I love the idea of portraits as achievements for specific heroes that you guys can work towards over time. We built the portrait system out to be pretty flexible because this idea was definitely brought up during the design process.

@Benched is right in that none of our screens support this very well right now. We could create Achievements for every hero and gift the portraits through there, but the Achievements screen is pretty bad at letting you browse for future Achievements and the Portraits screen doesn’t support showing progress towards unlock. It only displays if you have or have not unlocked the portrait. If we can figure out the best place to show your progress towards unlocking these and how to keep it organized, the actual code required to make the system work is pretty minimal.

What do you guys think? Make Achievements easier to browse or keep this separate from Achievements and build this into the Portraits screen?

[Poobgloob]

My vote would be to it keep separate from Achievements and to create an organized Portraits screen, accessed through your Player Profile screen.

Here is a proposal:
Add a Portraits screen in the location shown below

After being clicked on, it could bring up a screen similar to the Hero’s screen, shown below, where instead of displaying their star-level, power, hero-level, class, and ranking, it could show the amount of portraits you need to unlock for them…

For example, underneath where it displays Gammond’s name, it could instead show:

~10 / 18 Portraits unlocked~

The hero’s would be in alphabetical order, and could be clicked on, which could bring you to a screen with all of the locked and unlocked portraits for that specific hero, each with a progression bar (similar to the progression bar for upgrading a hero to the next star).

Example after clicking on Scum:

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*Scum with Green Border Frame (Image)*
Rewarded for Unlocking Scum
~ Unlocked ~

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*Scum with Red Border Frame (Image)*
Rewarded for achieving 300 MVP’s in PvP with Scum
~ Progression Bar: 168/300 ~

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*Scum with Purple Border Frame (Image)*
Rewarded for achieving 1000 MVP’s in PvP with Scum
~ Progression Bar: 168/1000 ~

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*Scum with Flame/Fire Border Frame (Image)*
Rewarded for reaching 10-star with Scum
~ Progression Bar: 5/10 ~

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*Scum with Skull Border Frame (Image)*
Rewarded for killing 5,000 opponents in PvP with Scum
~ Progression Bar: 3,867 / 5,000 ~

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*Scum with Lightning Border Frame (Image)*
Rewarded for causing 1 Billion Damage to opponents in PvP with Scum
~ Progression Bar: 389.7 M / 1 B ~

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Again, these are just some hypothetical unlockable portraits.
As far as all non-hero-specific portraits go, there could be a separate tab (at the end of the hero list) for Event-specific or General portraits.

[Benched]

@Poobgloob I do think MVP would be another great thing to have, maybe in addition to overall wins? I just think even when you are creating those special team comps to try and make progress towards a portrait you want, the other player you are going up against may not be doing the same, and most likely will have a better team comp than the one you are running with.

With only two resets and most people running with 3 hearts per hero, when going for some of the weaker heroes portraits it may be borderline unobtainable to string together 5+ wins with that team let alone 5 mvps on the correct hero. With all factors going on, you would be lucky to get maybe 1-2 mvps towards your progress a day. I love the idea, but could just see it being more of a luck based achievement rather than skill, at least how the MVP system is calculated right now.

@Rook I think you would save yourself time down the road by making a separate section for the portraits. Especially if you guys have plans of introducing more into the game. The tab that we have now to view them is actually pretty clean and easy to choose. I was thinking maybe have a double tap option for each hero portrait that opens a menu that shows the obtained/missing portraits, similar to what the layout is now. Obtained would be colored in like normal, while the missing would be greyed out (like how the missing heroes portraits are). When tapping on the missing portraits it would show the progress you need to have in order to unlock it.

I also like Poobs suggestion above mind as well if you guys wanted to make a dedicated page for it rather than through the profile.

[Poobgloob]

@Benched When you put it that way, I have to agree with you about the MVP. It would be extremely slow progression for a lot of heroes. With that being said, maybe the MVP portraits could still be implemented, but rather than 300 --> 1,000 --> etc… Just a simple one-time 100 MVPs in PvP with *insert hero name here* unlocks a portrait. Still would take some time, but reasonably so.

Nonetheless - The idea itself is golden, and all the different options for different unlockable portraits are endless, and I would love to see it implemented into the game ASAP

[Rook]

Awesome ideas guys, thanks! I like @Poobgloob’s idea of being able to browse portrait by category, otherwise trying to browse through hundreds of portraits would get pretty overwhelming. One suggestion I have is to make sure we can support more categories than just Heroes. For example, maybe you would have a PvP, Bounties and Special Events categories where you can work towards portraits not tied to specific Heroes but game modes instead. We always try to think of ways we might end up using our systems in the future and try to support that from the very beginning.

[Benched]

Yes absolutely love the idea of game modes also being ways of obtaining cosmetic rewards for the game. The ability for players to show off their success and achievements is a huge part of a lot of successful games. I only mention PvP because that is the game mode where players are usually spending the most time in the game, especially if they keep winning. I have no idea what/if there are other game modes that are planned to come out, but having individual achievements players can work towards in each mode would awesome too.

This thought popped in my mind reading your reply as well, but maybe in addition to individual achievements we could also have alliance based ones as well. Maybe a special bounty portrait of the highlighted hero for that event that is earned for the entire alliance based on where they finished? Similar to how you guys introduced the kunoichi portrait but for everyone in the alliance, not just the individual.

Last though on the alliance customization, all though I’m a little skeptical about how this would work or be perceived, how about different emblem symbols that could be added for the alliance? I know we have a good list right for the leader to be able to customize what the alliance emblem looks like, but maybe have special ones that can be earned through various tasks or included with the trophies that we earn. Just adding a little flair to show unity within an alliance rather then focusing on the individuals. Again, just a broad idea for customization that requires some sort of achievement on the alliance level.

[Poobgloob]

@Rook Yes, I was sort of suggesting that in my last post, but here’s an expanded thought:

After clicking on Portraits from Player Profile menu, it will open a screen shown below (excuse the poor editing, its just a rough draft, haha).

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The Red text shows the Portrait categories, while the White text shows the progression bar (number of portraits unlocked / total number of portraits) and as you can see, I have added a few suggestions:

1. Heroes: Opens up a screen with a list of heroes in alphabetical order (which I’ll expand on in a bit).

2. PvP: Shows all non-hero-specific PvP portraits, including total PvP wins, maybe in specific power brackets, total damage, etc.

3. Bounty: Shows all Bounty event portraits, including total damage done, damage done in a single event (Deal 1 billion damage in a single bounty event), etc.

4. Special Events: Shows all special event portraits, including the Easter event, future holiday events and what-not (which I would like to request making a little easier to obtain in the future, since the description does say “Participation”, lol).

5. VIP: This one is simple, maybe you guys could make an increasingly cool-looking portrait for each VIP level (more incentive to become higher VIP, and players have another way of showing their VIP level off).

6. Endless Mode: I’m including this because I’m hoping you guys add this game mode, lol. Just another category of portraits for another mode.

7. Campaign: A portrait for obtaining 3-stars on each level in a district, both for normal and for hard mode (so currently, a total of 18 portraits). Players can show off that they got 3-stars in every level in District 9 hard mode, for example.

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As for the Hero portraits, here is the screen that could come up after clicking on the “Heroes” category:

An alphabetized list of heroes, each with a progression bar showing
(number of portraits unlocked / total number of unlockable portraits).

Each hero can be clicked on, showing all attainable portraits for that specific hero.

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*Note: The yellow-bordered portraits box is not a placement suggestion. It’s just an indication of the tab that is currently open.

[Rook]

Very cool Thanks for taking the time to put that together and for putting so much thought into this, both of you! I’ll show this to the team and get our UI guys thinking about how they can take the ideas here and turn them into reality.

Also @Benched, unlockable Alliance Emblems is definitely something we want to see in the future as well. We’ve added it to past games and they’ve been a big hit.