True Healing Discussion (Live 6/25)

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  • Dear IceX,

    Long time listener, first time caller.

    I've been reading the comments, eating my popcorn, and wanted to say a few brief things that I'm sure will resonate with others.

    Before I had a maxed OBW, I played sporadically. Since then, yes, I've used her as a crutch and have had her in almost every team (both PvP and PvE) because her healing ability allowed me to play for much longer. But that is how I have been able to obtain so many covers and begin my transition from 2* to 3*. If it were not for her, I would still be stuck in the 2* phase. And these days with so many new 3* covers coming out, the time it takes to max out a 3* takes much longer. This, and the inability to continue play for prolonged periods of time, means my daily play will be reduced.

    I agree with your statements about wanting players to spread out their rosters, and I see your vision as a sound goal. But the method it will take to get there seems to give an advantage to players who already have an established team of maxed 3* characters. 3* covers are obtained through winning tournaments and helped by belonging to a top alliance that has already reaped the benefits of prolonged play. At least prolonged play through healing gives players who have not yet reached this level a sense of achievement.

    Many players have a core team that they play with, but this is mainly due to cover availability. 3* covers don't reach the playability of their maxed-out 2* counterparts until over level 100, and 10 covers are needed to reach that level. I've been playing since almost day 1 and I have ZERO 3* characters with more than 10 covers. My core team is OBW/Ares/Thor and I don't change it up too much because the 3* characters I do have don't help me win faster. If I HAD more 3* covers to build up to be competitive, sure I'd switch it around from time to time to make things interesting. I have a feeling all "true healing" will do is make me less competitive, which will slow down the rate of 3* covers I get and in turn make me not play as often.

    Just my 2c
  • Spoit
    Spoit Posts: 3,441 Chairperson of the Boards
    IceIX wrote:
    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.
    Maybe I'm not understanding the theoretical buff thing, but I don't see why you couldn't pair up the B teams with synergies too. I had tons of fun using GSW+spidey, hood+LC+IM40, or 2* daken+falcon in pve, where you actually kind of want to take damage, and it's not a defensive liability. None of which I'd use in PvP otherwise (well, maybe hood)
  • Spoit
    Spoit Posts: 3,441 Chairperson of the Boards
    gamar wrote:
    I think d3p was thinking kind of like Phantron
    That's horrifying
  • ZenBrillig wrote:
    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

    I don't think they're trying to double it; I think they're trying to make it go up by an order of magnitude. And they're willing to break the game to do it.
  • Unknown
    edited June 2014
    ZenBrillig wrote:
    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

    Profit is income after expenses. Generally expenses chew up most of your income so even modest increases in turnover have a large impact on profits.

    Don't know why i'm bothering though, you'll only be continuing your co-leadership of the mindless apologist cheerleader club anyway.
    Phantron wrote:
    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.

    So you're completely against this change because it further reduces roster diversity? AND you're pretty sure EVERYONE has those heroes and no-one has a 2* roster, or a transitioning 2-3* roster than doesn't somehow have a C.Mags or a pairing of Laken + Patch? It's all clear to me now!
  • Now that this game is ending, what am I going to play during my poop breaks at work?
  • If you want players to use more characters and adapt more play styles then focus on balancing the characters.

    Making a game change like this only refocuses the players on using a new subset of characters and abandoned the ones they are already using. This doesn't make the game better, it just frustrates the players and you alienate your user base. People end up using the same limited about of chars they just shift from one set to another.

    As a matter of fact I am sure right now we all have the same two characters in mind icon_e_smile.gif

    Unbalanced characters will always force the users to just jump on the best team at the moment. You either adapt to new strategy or you die..... Give me a balanced set of chars that can counter each other and my play style will adapt based on the scenario.

    If you want to stop prologue healing then address the situation directly.

    ps. I always thought an interesting mechanic might be lowering point rewards from a win based on boosts used. You could also do this based on chars used, weak chars like bagman can give you a bonus against points won. The key here is offering a balance of power vs reward.
  • IceIX
    IceIX ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 4,308 Site Admin
    gamar wrote:
    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
    Actually, it does indirectly account for that. If you're not using Prologue healing right now, the net effect of this change is relatively low. As Phantron points out, those taking advantage of the mechanic will also be brought down to the same level, so the playing field there is even. They'll have to use more characters, as will anyone that hadn't been using that method. If you're not healing in combat and ending up at max health at the end of it regardless of the enemy group, you're also not scaling as quickly as a result. So if you're only seeing 300s because of that bit, you won't be after a couple Events bring your PVE Rating down to the place it probably should be without the existence of "Stun Lock Last Enemy Heal To Full" tactics.
  • Waaaaittttt a second.....

    Is "true healing" actually that X-Force Wolverine buff we've been promised for months?

    Well played. icon_twisted.gif
  • There are a few major problems with this.

    1. Healing is now a liability within battles.

    I was going to quote a discussion I had with Phantron in the Sentry character thread, but that thread has apparently been accidentally deleted. Paraphrasing, I thought that Sentry's self-damage was too much of a liability to be worthwhile over the course of an event. Phantron responded with the cogent point that in this game, speed is health. Sentry is capable (when paired with LDaken) of faster wins than almost any other pair in the game. Sure he takes self-damage, but by doing so he *avoids* the damage enemies would deal on later turns.

    So lets consider a typical game I might play with my 141 LThor / 85 OBW / Featured team. The board opens, and I have a choice to make - which ability do I want to fire first? A lot depends on the board of course, but assuming the matches are roughly equal, it becomes a matter of strategy. I can go red, to try for an early kill on a squishy. I can go yellow, or even green, to work directly towards ending the match. If the enemy has cascaded early, I might go purple to cut down on their lead. And if my heroes are low on health, I might go for blue. If I go for blue, I am sacrificing speed - possible yellow and green matches - in order to gain health, and thus play for a longer period of time over the event. This is a risk. By taking more time to heal myself, I am giving the enemy extra opportunity to fire abilities. I am gambling that I can heal myself and beat them before they deal more damage than my healing ability.

    Post-"True Healing"? There is now no benefit to gathering blue AP early in a match. Because the healing is temporary, I am literally doing nothing but giving the enemy team extra turns to injure me. Healing abilities are only ever useful now when the AP is gained incidentally.

    If you make this change, speed will no longer be king. Speed will be everything. LDaken/Falcon or LDaken/Sentry are already hugely strong; after this update they'll be in a class all by themselves.

    2. This change benefits PvE to the huge detriment of PvP.
    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.

    You're right on this one, IceIX. And honestly, I could even approve of this change as far as PvE goes. It increases the value of roster diversity, rewards veterans for having a built up roster, reduces the torturous grinding that has come to characterize PvE. None of that applies to PvP.

    You said it yourself: the "last team to win on defense" principle starkly limits what can happen in PvP. Using anything but your best is suicidal. And because everyone *else* is also using their best, the amount of damage you risk taking is often far higher than in PvE. (High personal scaling excepted.) Which means that in order to grind for those prize covers and upper-tier progression rewards, healers were a necessary evil. Remove them, and what's left besides fruitlessly bashing your head against hordes of high-strength enemies?

    Shields. Boosts. Health Packs.

    ...

    You know, I'm trying not to see this as a blatant cash grab, but you have to know you're making it difficult.

    3. D3....you do want us to play this game, don't you? For long enough to enjoy it?

    This one is closely related to my previous point, and it goes like this: PvP - the place where you offer something like five times as many prize covers as PvE, drains health *fast*. Swapping out your roster is not an option without drastic changes to the scoring system. Prologue healing was a chore - yes, you're right on that one - but it was a chore that you gave us, and our reward was that we got to play your game for as long as we actually wanted to.

    Look. When I spend money on a F2P game, I want to do it because the developers have made me happy, and have given me the opportunity to simultaneously reward their efforts and gain additional happiness myself. This is *exactly* why I don't have the slightest regret over buying skins for League of Legends. Hell yes, I'll pay their salaries!

    MPQ, however, has for the past few months felt like a game that wants me to pay for the privilege of not being frustrated. I feel less like I'm fighting my opponents in the game, than like I'm fighting the game to let me play it. I really, really hope that changes, because for a long time I really enjoyed this game.

    It's a huge project. For now, I'm just going to say that in order for "True Healing" to be viable in my eyes, two things need to happen:

    1. Healers must be able to 'overheal' allies, ala the Medic in TF2.
    and 2., Health packs must be abolished, and all teams restored to full health after each PvP match.

    I don't see that happening, but then, I don't see "True Healing" being a positive addition to the game either.
  • IceIX wrote:
    gamar wrote:
    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
    Actually, it does indirectly account for that. If you're not using Prologue healing right now, the net effect of this change is relatively low. As Phantron points out, those taking advantage of the mechanic will also be brought down to the same level, so the playing field there is even. They'll have to use more characters, as will anyone that hadn't been using that method. If you're not healing in combat and ending up at max health at the end of it regardless of the enemy group, you're also not scaling as quickly as a result. So if you're only seeing 300s because of that bit, you won't be after a couple Events bring your PVE Rating down to the place it probably should be without the existence of "Stun Lock Last Enemy Heal To Full" tactics.

    When will you realise you MADE a game that PUNISHES using a variety of heroes? You use a weak team in PvP and get ripped into little tiny pieces. People use fixed combinations cause your **** ai can't play half the heroes AT ALL on defence.

    Also what makes you believe this only effects prologue healing? Do you mean that your cryptic descriptions do NOT mean, for example, that a teams with OBW, Thor + featured hero goes into PvP. Takes 1k damage, heals then leaves to find they are short 1k health? Cause that ISN'T prologue healing. It's playing the game.

    As far as the PvE description you've just got to sit out half the content for 2 weeks and you're golden? So I get given the new hero to use in the next PvE afterwards when they are a required hero right? I mean having to sit out is your fault not mine..... no then?
  • Can someone clarify how healing will work in PVP if you use OBW? Say i come into the match with full health, heal during the match and leave with full health, where will my teams health levels be for the next match?
  • Phantron wrote:
    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.

    "Win if and only if you have Patch/Daken" is even worse than P2W

    If you get an unlucky cascade near the end of a PvE sub, you're either spending or stopped in your tracks. Putting more emphasis on luck and P2W isn't good imo. And if you're trying to go for 1100, being able to conserve health packs by prologue healing while shielded is invaluable... I really don't see how this change could NOT advantage people who spend on health packs.

    Although, one of the things I haven't liked about this game is the trend towards "win with one move" characters like LThor and BP... this change might make mid-tier characters that can quickly nickel-and-dime you, like Psylocke and HT, (and LDaken icon_rolleyes.gif ) a lot better on defense?
  • It's 2AM. Good night.
  • On the one hand, I transitioned away from playing OBW or Spiderman ages ago. I have never bought health packs. It's been ages since I bothered with prologue healing (since I quit using Spidey stunlock due to it being boring, taking ages and just ramping up my scaling). Only in crunch time PVP rushes where I can sit down and play for like 2 hours against tougher opponents am I likely to run out of health packs rather than run out of time to play. So this doesn't effect me a great deal. Especially since I will shortly be at the point where I can run a couple of different viable 3x141 teams and just switch in the B team without losing very much.

    On the other hand, my roster used to be at the stage where OBW was a giant crutch who allowed me to keep playing when I otherwise couldn't, and I know a lot of people are in that stage.

    Was prologue healing really an issue? Who bothers with that kitty anyway, when at the upper levels of a PVP tournament what matters is the SPEED at which you can climb before you shield. If you're going through all your health packs and shielding, then prologue healing, then coming out of shield you might as well just be buying health packs anyway rather than shielding. If it's for people to grind in PvE, really, is that a problem? Seriously, speaking as someone not taking advantage of prologue healing and speaking as someone who hardly uses OBW or Spidey everanymore (outside the recent Webslinger tourney, of course), I don't feel like the people doing those things have any advantage over me.

    This feels like a solution solving something which wasn't a serious problem and will drive away players who feel like they're being bled to buy health packs or disadvantaged against people Paying To Win or Cheating To Win. Maybe accelerate healthpack regain or out of battle healing (especially for 2* and below)?


    Also, way to demoralize the people who were still insisting that Spidey hadn't been nerfed into uselessness and was still a useful character.
  • Finally an end to widow, ares and widow, Thor teams beat 3* teams. That has been so silly.
  • ender wrote:
    Can someone clarify how healing will work in PVP if you use OBW? Say i come into the match with full health, heal during the match and leave with full health, where will my teams health levels be for the next match?

    Your team's health will be exactly where they would be if there had been no healing at all during the match.
  • Reaching that "mythical" $1 per user per day will be pretty easy when a whole mess of casual/free people quit in disgust. Having only whales play your game is an easy way to skew the numbers! Too bad overall revenue is probably about to take a dump
  • clf_02 X3 wrote:
    Finally an end to widow, ares and widow, Thor teams beat 3* teams. That has been so silly.

    How will they end? If defense teams are still the last team that you played (win or lose currently for some reason) then people will just suicide their widow/ares/Thor teams after they finish their climb.

    The teams you fight will not change. The teams you fight them with will.
  • IceIX wrote:
    gamar wrote:
    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
    Actually, it does indirectly account for that. If you're not using Prologue healing right now, the net effect of this change is relatively low. As Phantron points out, those taking advantage of the mechanic will also be brought down to the same level, so the playing field there is even. They'll have to use more characters, as will anyone that hadn't been using that method. If you're not healing in combat and ending up at max health at the end of it regardless of the enemy group, you're also not scaling as quickly as a result. So if you're only seeing 300s because of that bit, you won't be after a couple Events bring your PVE Rating down to the place it probably should be without the existence of "Stun Lock Last Enemy Heal To Full" tactics.

    But if I'm a 2* team out of health packs and facing level 100 enemies and get knocked out, I'm ready to go in 3 hours. If I'm a 3* team out of health packs and facing level 150 enemies and get knocked out, I'm ready to go in 9 hours. How is the playing field even?
This discussion has been closed.