True Healing Discussion (Live 6/25)

1235771

Comments

  • mags1587
    mags1587 Posts: 1,020 Chairperson of the Boards
    This will not accomplish your goals. All this will do is put cheaters/whales who can afford to buy health packs the top spots in tourneys.
  • I don't even know where to begin.

    -Spiderman is LITERALLY useless now, I mean indisputably completely useless. Is he meant to be part of my "roster diversity"?
    -You've nerfed She Hulk before she even comes out. Was she balanced with this change? I suspect I can guess the answer.
    -You are making A VERY PAY TO WIN GAME even MORE pay to win. Do you seriously not know spending on boosts and shields BUYS SCORES? So D3's genius solution: Mandate more health pack buys (i'll now be buying zero in all situations rather than just PvE because you introduced **** scaling and I don't even use prologue healing, OBW or spidey anymore. You're just managing to piss me off to that level. Good job).
    - You are expressly punishing 2* players trying to transition despite constantly saying how hard things are for them. Screw those guys now? Well they can always use Bullseye and Moonstone... that'll work.
    - You harp on about roster diversity but it's BOLLOCKS. There's no way ANYONE will benefit from rolling out an underlevelled or underpowered team to try to prolong play. They will get ripped to pieces for having such a **** defence team. You think ppl will start rolling out a GSBW/Spiderman team to show off how diverse their roster is? Do you actually know how this game works? Ever played it?

    Just be honest for a second. You want to sell health packs. That's the only reason for this change. You ARE monegrubbing to hell and back. It's pathetic and you're gonna piss off almost everyone (i'm pissed off and this would only effect me if Spidey was a featured hero, don't use that POS anyway).

    I despair at what **** you spend your time on. Where's my Xforce buff? Sunder bug fix? Server stability?

    You genuinely believe you can make the game shittier and make more money because people will OBVIOUSLY spend real money on stuff just cause you try to FORCE them to and not just leave your game play something fun. I give up.....
  • Phantron wrote:
    ZenBrillig wrote:
    Ben Grimm wrote:

    But what this is going to do is just reward people who pay for health packs, either legitimately or illegitimately. An we'll probably see more cheaters. If you want to reward using a diverse roster, REWARD USING A DIVERSE ROSTER. Do something direct, like bonuses for diversity or penalties for lack of it. Don't go about it sideways; this simply won't work. It will make the game pay to win, and people will still be using the same five combinations, except that the top of the charts will be nothing but whales and cheaters, and Patch and Daken will be the new power combo. Otherwise, it'll be exactly the same.

    Side note: I have always wanted to see a developer implement negative feedback loops for powers, i.e., the more something gets used the weaker it gets. Imagine if every time a power got used its cost went up a tiny bit and the strength down a tiny bit, and at the same time every other power's cost went down an even tinier bit and the strength up. In theory such a system, when implemented correctly, would be self-balancing.

    The biggest downside is that the players would have to be accustomed to not being given fixed numbers for everything because they are always in flux.

    People don't like nerfs so you should instead do it the other way around, that each time someone is not used they get more powerful. If Daredevil gets to a point where he's level 300 (from base 141), someone's going to take a chance with him just because level 300 is such an overwhelming advantage to have.
    Or just make the post-match iso rewards scale with how frequently your team is used
  • IceIX
    IceIX ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 4,310 Site Admin
    Phantron wrote:
    ZenBrillig wrote:
    Ben Grimm wrote:

    But what this is going to do is just reward people who pay for health packs, either legitimately or illegitimately. An we'll probably see more cheaters. If you want to reward using a diverse roster, REWARD USING A DIVERSE ROSTER. Do something direct, like bonuses for diversity or penalties for lack of it. Don't go about it sideways; this simply won't work. It will make the game pay to win, and people will still be using the same five combinations, except that the top of the charts will be nothing but whales and cheaters, and Patch and Daken will be the new power combo. Otherwise, it'll be exactly the same.

    Side note: I have always wanted to see a developer implement negative feedback loops for powers, i.e., the more something gets used the weaker it gets. Imagine if every time a power got used its cost went up a tiny bit and the strength down a tiny bit, and at the same time every other power's cost went down an even tinier bit and the strength up. In theory such a system, when implemented correctly, would be self-balancing.

    The biggest downside is that the players would have to be accustomed to not being given fixed numbers for everything because they are always in flux.

    People don't like nerfs so you should instead do it the other way around, that each time someone is not used they get more powerful. If Daredevil gets to a point where he's level 300 (from base 141), someone's going to take a chance with him just because level 300 is such an overwhelming advantage to have.
    We've discussed doing something very similar, with characters getting more powerful as they "rest". The problem is pretty much what gets outlined above. In PVE Events, it would be an interesting addition, but in Versus it would be fairly well unworkable. Players would either win with a level 150 2* Thor and have a 150 defending (thus only playing with the most rested characters) or they would win with the 150 and have an 85 defending (so that attacking players don't have to rely upon rested characters to get any wins). Characters being buffed per Versus or Event is the go-between that we went with using.
  • Thank you. Regardless if you agree with the changes, the explanation makes great sense. While news and explanations are not requisite to your subscribers, I really think you underestimate the value of such as communication. I know obviously you are in the business of running a game, not a forum site. However, I (we) appreciate when you do take the time (even if its not much) to communicate changes/errors.

    Thanks again.
    IceIX wrote:
    One of the intentions with this change is to cut down on things like Prologue Healing, which prolongs play time through something that is pretty obviously just a time intensive process that doesn't involve actual strong gameplay. It's something people do because it's there, much like tanking. It's not something that's fun. It's not something that's enjoyable. It's something that exists and is taken advantage of because of pure efficiency.

    What we intend, and continue to drill in on is that we want players to have a broad mix of characters instead of a Top 3 that is their sole team to play with. In Versus this is a bit rougher of a prospect as players that battle have their last winning team placed on defense. So it's not always the best idea to fight with a less powerful defensive team in order to make up more points. That's something that we're always thinking about. We've discussed allowing players to set a defensive team, but with many other games out with similar versus situations this results in a very precise meta-game where an extremely large percentage of the user base chooses the same defenders. That's not a very fun time for most players.

    However, in Events, we continually buff different characters, and outside of Heroics, still allow for characters to be used that aren't buffed. What we want players to do is to play with the breadth of their roster instead of using Spider-Man or Black Widow as necessary crutches and only building 3 other characters. This change is intended to result in exactly this as players see that they can't just rely on in-battle healing and look for other ways besides spending Health Packs to continue playing. We want you to keep playing on your own schedule. We want you to play with multiple characters. Doing so keeps players on their toes and making them think of character combinations that they wouldn't otherwise go with if they weren't forced out of their single set of heroes.
  • JamieMadrox
    JamieMadrox Posts: 1,798 Chairperson of the Boards
    I'm not reading through 5 pages of ranting to find out if this has been said already, but this really hurts the players making the still very long transition from 2* to 3* rosters. It's hard enough to compete for any decent placing with just a 2* roster, but taking away the healing of the best support character in the group and you've just **** the majority of your player base.
  • Thank you. Regardless if you agree with the changes, the explanation makes great sense. While news and explanations are not requisite to your subscribers, I really think you underestimate the value of such as communication. I know obviously you are in the business of running a game, not a forum site. However, I (we) appreciate when you do take the time (even if its not much) to communicate changes/errors.

    Thanks again.
    Vercotti: Well I had noticed that the lad with the thermo-nuclear device was the Chief Constable for the area. Anyway a week later they came back, said that the cheque had bounced and that I had to see Doug.
    Interviewer: Doug?
    Vercotti: Doug (takes a drink) I was terrified of him. Everyone was terrified of Doug. I've seen grown men pull their own heads off rather than see Doug. Even Dinsdale was frightened of Doug.
    Interviewer: What did he do?
    Vercotti: He used sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor, bathos, puns, parody, litotes and satire.
  • ThatOneGuyjp189512
    ThatOneGuyjp189512 Posts: 543 Critical Contributor
    edited June 2014
    pmgvqPp.jpg

    on a more serious note, i think it does encourage roster diversity, i know all the OBW/(Thor/Ares) people will **** and complain, but i am HAPPY that i won't have to slog through a million cookie cutter OBW/Whoever teams. It will actually encourage me to try other combo's that i've never thought of before now.
  • Spoit
    Spoit Posts: 3,441 Chairperson of the Boards
    IceIX wrote:
    Phantron wrote:
    ZenBrillig wrote:
    Ben Grimm wrote:

    But what this is going to do is just reward people who pay for health packs, either legitimately or illegitimately. An we'll probably see more cheaters. If you want to reward using a diverse roster, REWARD USING A DIVERSE ROSTER. Do something direct, like bonuses for diversity or penalties for lack of it. Don't go about it sideways; this simply won't work. It will make the game pay to win, and people will still be using the same five combinations, except that the top of the charts will be nothing but whales and cheaters, and Patch and Daken will be the new power combo. Otherwise, it'll be exactly the same.

    Side note: I have always wanted to see a developer implement negative feedback loops for powers, i.e., the more something gets used the weaker it gets. Imagine if every time a power got used its cost went up a tiny bit and the strength down a tiny bit, and at the same time every other power's cost went down an even tinier bit and the strength up. In theory such a system, when implemented correctly, would be self-balancing.

    The biggest downside is that the players would have to be accustomed to not being given fixed numbers for everything because they are always in flux.

    People don't like nerfs so you should instead do it the other way around, that each time someone is not used they get more powerful. If Daredevil gets to a point where he's level 300 (from base 141), someone's going to take a chance with him just because level 300 is such an overwhelming advantage to have.
    We've discussed doing something very similar, with characters getting more powerful as they "rest". The problem is pretty much what gets outlined above. In PVE Events, it would be an interesting addition, but in Versus it would be fairly well unworkable. Players would either win with a level 150 2* Thor and have a 150 defending (thus only playing with the most rested characters) or they would win with the 150 and have an 85 defending (so that attacking players don't have to rely upon rested characters to get any wins). Characters being buffed per Versus or Event is the go-between that we went with using.
    I don't see how having a 85 character defending is really any different from your stated intended behavior of switching in your 'B team'?
  • Nope, no sarcasm (I'm as surprised as you). I am genuinely grateful.
    Emeryt wrote:
    Thank you. Regardless if you agree with the changes, the explanation makes great sense. While news and explanations are not requisite to your subscribers, I really think you underestimate the value of such as communication. I know obviously you are in the business of running a game, not a forum site. However, I (we) appreciate when you do take the time (even if its not much) to communicate changes/errors.

    Thanks again.
    Vercotti: Well I had noticed that the lad with the thermo-nuclear device was the Chief Constable for the area. Anyway a week later they came back, said that the cheque had bounced and that I had to see Doug.
    Interviewer: Doug?
    Vercotti: Doug (takes a drink) I was terrified of him. Everyone was terrified of Doug. I've seen grown men pull their own heads off rather than see Doug. Even Dinsdale was frightened of Doug.
    Interviewer: What did he do?
    Vercotti: He used sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor, bathos, puns, parody, litotes and satire.
  • zulux21
    zulux21 Posts: 249 Tile Toppler
    IceIX wrote:
    One of the intentions with this change is to cut down on things like Prologue Healing, which prolongs play time through something that is pretty obviously just a time intensive process that doesn't involve actual strong gameplay. It's something people do because it's there, much like tanking. It's not something that's fun. It's not something that's enjoyable. It's something that exists and is taken advantage of because of pure efficiency.

    What we intend, and continue to drill in on is that we want players to have a broad mix of characters instead of a Top 3 that is their sole team to play with. In Versus this is a bit rougher of a prospect as players that battle have their last winning team placed on defense. So it's not always the best idea to fight with a less powerful defensive team in order to make up more points. That's something that we're always thinking about. We've discussed allowing players to set a defensive team, but with many other games out with similar versus situations this results in a very precise meta-game where an extremely large percentage of the user base chooses the same defenders. That's not a very fun time for most players.

    However, in Events, we continually buff different characters, and outside of Heroics, still allow for characters to be used that aren't buffed. What we want players to do is to play with the breadth of their roster instead of using Spider-Man or Black Widow as necessary crutches and only building 3 other characters. This change is intended to result in exactly this as players see that they can't just rely on in-battle healing and look for other ways besides spending Health Packs to continue playing. We want you to keep playing on your own schedule. We want you to play with multiple characters. Doing so keeps players on their toes and making them think of character combinations that they wouldn't otherwise go with if they weren't forced out of their single set of heroes.
    That sounds great and all in theory, but that would assume a far more balanced roster than you currently have.
    I would love to jump around between my characters more, but the simple fact is a good number of the characters are just vastly inferior to others, with a large number of them being nigh unplayable unless multiple things go just right or if they are boosted a lot.
    At this point there is absolutely no reason why there are any characters that don't have 3 moves... none at all... if you don't have the man power to fix them... here is a novel ideal... STOP PUSHING OUT SO MANY DAMN CHARACTERS AND SPEND TIME FIXING THE BROKEN USELESS ONES THAT ALREADY EXIST... Beyond the three moves thing... perhaps maybe look at the weaker characters and make it a priority to make them useful... I mean people like moon stone, bullseye, bagman, etc. are so freakin' useless that it's just a waste of space that they are part of a heroic token. I know every character won't fit everyone's play style, but a number of characters are just plain bad with the mechanics that you have.

    But ok... you want us to play more of our rosters.... so again.... STOP PUSHING OUT SO MANY DAMN CHARACTERS AND FIX THINGS THAT NEED FIXING. I like new characters I really do.... but these lazy gold ones are terrible. It's nice to have a chance to play characters you like at higher levels, but at the same time it just continues to reduce the odds that I can get a usable amount of covers for 3 star characters (you mentioned having some sort of plan to help with that, but alas we see another thing that results in us losing more choice and trying to force us to spend more money instead of fixes that would actually make things less pay to win feeling)... and this is not even taking into account the massive iso cost to level up all of these characters. You say you want us to just play around with our characters and have fun, that you aren't pushing this more and more to a pay to win game... but I really can't see that... this is just going to lead to people having to spend money to heal their characters, spend money to raise their characters, or deal with the fact that they are falling even farther behind the people who spend a lot of money on the game.

    anyways, I hope after you guys continue to slowly destroy any fun anyone can have from this game while saying you are removing things so people have more fun that you guys have time to change your minds about things and actually make the game fun and do well for you. I like the basic idea behind this.... and I like puzzle quest in general... I do hope that someday you will sell a separate version of the game for $20 or so that isn't designed to take away as much money from me as possible... I'd buy it in a heartbeat. (heck a version where I could actually do stuff without grinding would be great, you could even charge like $10 per season (6 month periods not 1 month) where you add 5 new characters and I'd likely gladly pay if it meant with 4 hours of play a day on average I could easily have a max roster after 200 days without spending $1k plus to have the iso and hp to level and buy covers I am missing)

    PS: I don't use widow or spidy anymore, I am not frustrated with this change as even if I think it's a very very stupid change it doesn't directly affect me... I am more just frustrated with the fact you keep saying you want us to play a diverse roster and failing to give us a diverse roster that is balanced in any good way that we don't have to play the same X characters because they are the only actually good ones, while you continue to just put out more and more characters every two weeks just adding to the problem at hand instead of ever actually taking the time to fix characters... you know unless you are working on making them pretty much useless to have like Rags or Spidy.
  • Phantron wrote:
    ZenBrillig wrote:
    Ben Grimm wrote:

    But what this is going to do is just reward people who pay for health packs, either legitimately or illegitimately. An we'll probably see more cheaters. If you want to reward using a diverse roster, REWARD USING A DIVERSE ROSTER. Do something direct, like bonuses for diversity or penalties for lack of it. Don't go about it sideways; this simply won't work. It will make the game pay to win, and people will still be using the same five combinations, except that the top of the charts will be nothing but whales and cheaters, and Patch and Daken will be the new power combo. Otherwise, it'll be exactly the same.

    Side note: I have always wanted to see a developer implement negative feedback loops for powers, i.e., the more something gets used the weaker it gets. Imagine if every time a power got used its cost went up a tiny bit and the strength down a tiny bit, and at the same time every other power's cost went down an even tinier bit and the strength up. In theory such a system, when implemented correctly, would be self-balancing.

    The biggest downside is that the players would have to be accustomed to not being given fixed numbers for everything because they are always in flux.

    People don't like nerfs so you should instead do it the other way around, that each time someone is not used they get more powerful. If Daredevil gets to a point where he's level 300 (from base 141), someone's going to take a chance with him just because level 300 is such an overwhelming advantage to have.

    Uh, that doesn't work. If you do that then, every character only increases in power. That's just power-creep raised to the Nth degree.
  • IceIX
    IceIX ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 4,310 Site Admin
    Spoit wrote:
    I don't see how having a 85 character defending is really any different from your stated intended behavior of switching in your 'B team'?
    Well, in that particular case I was mentally assuming that the player with the 85 Thor was running 2*s anyway and not 141s. If you want to run with the 141 style, then say that a 300 Falcon is brought in along with a 141 Punisher and Magneto. Falcon helps on defense, but he doesn't synergize, so he doesn't help the team when defending per se. At least when you get to choose your B-team, you can decide to bring in characters that synergize.
  • IceIX wrote:
    Absolutely not the case. I can definitely understand that the intent is that we're making this change to increase revenue through Health Packs. That's not the case. We do think that some players will buy a couple more Packs off the back of this change for a couple days after it. This is the case with any change, such as a buff to an ability for a character. Users then go out and spend some Hero Points on respeccing. But we don't buff or nerf an ability because we want it to bring in revenue. We do it because we believe it will be in the best long term benefit for the game and for the users.

    Good PR required credibility. Given how thoroughly your team has worked to squander its reputation--despite the extensive feedback--why should we believe you *aren't* "listening to the metrics" this time?

    If D3/Demiurge actually cared about user experience, communication would become a vastly higher priority--way above new content, for instance--and you'd completely eliminate undocumented ninja changes to how the game works midway through events.
  • The solution you are looking for is to have the users level up as many character as they can to swap between. Does that mean you plan to open back up the ISO floodgate with 100 ISO first time completion bonus in PVE. Ideally also buffing the worthless 20 ISO reward
  • I honestly don't think this is a cash grab - prologue healing IS a really terrible mechanic and it's terrible that the way the game works forces it on us. I think d3p was thinking kind of like Phantron:
    Phantron wrote:
    Unless you enjoy playing the game simply for the sake of playing the game, progress in this game is almost always measured relative to your opponent (Heroic Oscorp is the one notable exception I can think of where the best prizes are progression-based). You being able to play less because prologue healing is removed doesn't change your relative positioning to other players with similar capability because they also will be playing less.

    In the villians only PvP people generally played far fewer games because it's a pain to bring people to prologue to heal, and that didn't stop people with strong characters from doing well, because if you win 6 games versus someone who can only win 5 games before you run out of health packs, that's generally still sufficient to achieve your usual ranking.

    Frankly all the argument about healing seems to be more about how it gives the player an advantage, except it does not because people who you ought to be competing against will have it too.
    Phantron wrote:
    I'm not too worried about P2W on health packs simply because if you're rich enough to heal at 50 HP a pop, you could just upgrade the covers outright and isn't the covers what we're fighting for in the first place? It you got to spend 1000 HP of health pack to win some cover, is that really saving anything? I'm going to assume a guy who can afford to do this isn't going to have problem winning his first cover and surely it's easier to just shell out 1250 HP than buying a bunch of health packs and still have no guaranteed you'll win?

    Unfortunately, this change

    1) makes worse the "play on OUR schedule, not yours" problems with the game - would you rather play for 2 hours once instead of a half hour four times a day? Tough tinykitty!
    2) doesn't account for the way a level 300 PvE team will all but shut you out of placing in an event now
  • IceIX wrote:
    We've discussed doing something very similar, with characters getting more powerful as they "rest". The problem is pretty much what gets outlined above. In PVE Events, it would be an interesting addition, but in Versus it would be fairly well unworkable. Players would either win with a level 150 2* Thor and have a 150 defending (thus only playing with the most rested characters) or they would win with the 150 and have an 85 defending (so that attacking players don't have to rely upon rested characters to get any wins). Characters being buffed per Versus or Event is the go-between that we went with using.

    The buff would obviously be a global factor not just how often any particular player used his characters and it should be recomputed periodically (say 2 hours or so). Let's say an event starts out with you running a level 395 Yelena and Bagman + featured and this turns out to be totally unstoppable because you just match 3 and kill everyone and you got 20K health on your 2 395s. But this buff would go down quickly when everyone realizes Yelena and Bagman is level 395 and starts using them. And you should have a level 395 Yelena and Bagman defending until you switched your team again, and if this means some people just stick with their super powerful often-neglected team in an initial blitz and never play again, that's their choice. If this tactic turns out to be too successful, it'd be self correcting because then people would all play the neglected characters which prevents them from being uber buffed in the first place.
  • Droc76
    Droc76 Posts: 56
    So Spiderman's new build is 0/0/13 according to the double nerfbat. lol
  • Vairelome wrote:
    Good PR required credibility. Given how thoroughly your team has worked to squander its reputation--despite the extensive feedback--why should we believe you *aren't* "listening to the metrics" this time?

    If D3/Demiurge actually cared about user experience, communication would become a vastly higher priority--way above new content, for instance--and you'd completely eliminate undocumented ninja changes to how the game works midway through events.

    Check out the graph here: http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/08/marve ... au-part-1/

    Arguably, the amount spent on health packs is so small (looks like ~5%) that even doubling it wouldn't be an efficient use of their time
  • gamar wrote:
    I honestly don't think this is a cash grab - prologue healing IS a really terrible mechanic and it's terrible that the way the game works forces it on us. I think d3p was thinking kind of like Phantron:
    Phantron wrote:
    Unless you enjoy playing the game simply for the sake of playing the game, progress in this game is almost always measured relative to your opponent (Heroic Oscorp is the one notable exception I can think of where the best prizes are progression-based). You being able to play less because prologue healing is removed doesn't change your relative positioning to other players with similar capability because they also will be playing less.

    In the villians only PvP people generally played far fewer games because it's a pain to bring people to prologue to heal, and that didn't stop people with strong characters from doing well, because if you win 6 games versus someone who can only win 5 games before you run out of health packs, that's generally still sufficient to achieve your usual ranking.

    Frankly all the argument about healing seems to be more about how it gives the player an advantage, except it does not because people who you ought to be competing against will have it too.
    Phantron wrote:
    I'm not too worried about P2W on health packs simply because if you're rich enough to heal at 50 HP a pop, you could just upgrade the covers outright and isn't the covers what we're fighting for in the first place? It you got to spend 1000 HP of health pack to win some cover, is that really saving anything? I'm going to assume a guy who can afford to do this isn't going to have problem winning his first cover and surely it's easier to just shell out 1250 HP than buying a bunch of health packs and still have no guaranteed you'll win?

    Unfortunately, this change

    1) makes worse the "play on OUR schedule, not yours" problems with the game - would you rather play for 2 hours once instead of a half hour four times a day? Tough tinykitty!
    2) doesn't account for the way a level 300 PvE team will all but shut you out of placing in an event now

    Prologue healing has hardly been necessary as long as Magneto is around. Patch and Daken would still do their thing too.

    There would have to be a rather significant nerf to most of the powerhouse characters to get the doomsday scenario people talk about. And if that also happened, that's far beyond what can be speculated without seeing the actual event.
This discussion has been closed.