True Healing Discussion (Live 6/25)

Unknown

Are there any ways to stop this change??? This is so STUPID!!!!

Mawtful

someguy wrote:

<snip> as more players refuse to buy health packs and instead put down the game and wait for their free health packs to regenerate. (And eventually, more and more people just won't bother to pick the game back up again.)

A lot of smart analysis in this post, but I'm going to focus on this little bit here. Essentially, the more often players put the game down, the greater chance that players will leave.

This entire thread is equal parts hilarious, devestating and pitiful. As much as I love MPQ, I can only hope that each poor decision ends up being the one that kills the game; and this might just be the one.

GuntherBlobel

Chimaera wrote:

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.

Even though D3 will refuse to do this I will restate it again for probably the 10th time. Let covers fully regenerate all health after every battle, and have health packs revive down characters. That will allow for extended play and only punish people who lose covers in a fight.

I'd like to see Prologue Healing removed, but I really wish they would have listened to your idea. It's simple and it would have been seen as a buff to the game.

When people explained to the Devs that a "Victory Bonus" would be a "Skip Tax" that people would actually welcome, they actually took that advice. So, I really I don't understand why they are ignoring your much friendlier (and easier to implement) solution.

Despite all this, I do want to thank IceIX for engaging in this dialogue. IceIX might be the ONLY way that some of these ideas make it to the Devs.

Feyda

This is a terrible proposed changed. If you want to encourage roster diversity this is NOT the way to go about it. I have been playing this game for 197 days and I have managed to max out 5 of my 3 star characters and get another 4 of them into the level 100 range. I would not consider that strong enough to combat a complete removal of healing from the game. Most players don't have anywhere NEAR that kind of roster strength. The problem with roster diversity is that it takes FOREVER to get enough covers AND iso in order to level a character up high enough to be useful. With this change, pretty much the only viable long term combos will be a mix of Patch, Daken, C.Mag (until nerf), and featured hero.

If you really want to promote roster diversity, multiple changes need to happen.

1.) Stop punishing players for using a weaker team by making that team your "Defense Team".
2.) Make heroes easier to level up. Currently it takes weeks of play to level 1 hero up to the level cap. If heroes gained experience for every battle they fought in and Iso was used as a kind of "free experience" currency, I might be more tempted to bring my B and C listers in for the ride so that they eventually fleshed out my roster.
3.) Get rid of the NEED for healing. I've said this before but Health Packs should only be needed to REVIVE a downed hero. If your hero doesn't go down in the fight then heal him back to full or perhaps a fair % of their missing health bar.
4.) Balance the "Just Plain Bad" heroes in the game. Ragnarok, Bullseye, 2* Daken, Moonstone, Yelena, Bagman, the list goes on and on. If these characters were more useful / fun more people would use them.

Unknown

someguy wrote:

For games like Candy Crush, this causes most people (free players who don't spend money) to pick up the game, play it for a bit, then put it down and wait for hours until they have more hearts.

MPQ, unlike other Match-3 games, does not have a limiting energy/hearts mechanic that prevents you from playing another battle.

As long as your team isn't dead or too injured, you can play as many additional battles as you want. OBW & Spidey [& She-Hulk]-style healing let you play for hours.

If OBW/Spidey/She-Hulk healing goes away, user engagement will drop as more players refuse to buy health packs and instead put down the game and wait for their free health packs to regenerate. (And eventually, more and more people just won't bother to pick the game back up again.)

Why would you anyways? "Playing for hours and hours" doesn't do anything for you besides increase your scaling and MMR

My play sessions for MPQ actually aren't much longer than my sessions in Candy Crush or Puzzle and Dragons... it's just that I play those on MY schedule, while MPQ FORCES me to make those play sessions every 12 hours or the previous 2 days effort is wasted, and I just can't keep doing that, which is why I'm quitting the game soon

Unknown

The Finn wrote:

Regalis wrote:

They've been tanking their Steam rating for the past 6 months.

http://steamcharts.com/app/234330

Clearly it's still too high, so they have to roll out more tinykitty like this.

Wow interesting page thanks for sharing! Usage peaked in Feb and has been cratering ever since. Of course you could make the case that steam users were a small part of their player base to begin with but i don't see why the trend wouldn't apply to other clients.

It also makes you think that for the under 1000 daily steam users that they seem to have (myself amongst them) that it shouldn't be that tough to link steam/android accounts. Meh.

Overall I guess I'm somewhat ok with this as I'm starting to transition out of relying overly on my OBW. But that's because my second maxed 3* was Patch, and my third (about 17k ISO short currently) will be Daken. So after playing 20+ matches in the Hotshot tourney... healthpacks are still at 5, patch/daken are still at full health, and Torch suffered 300 damage a while back from someone's Cstorm taking a bit too much damage at once. Everything else has been negated thanks to True Healing™.

So while I'm happy that I used a little bit of cash during the sale to get the last 4 Daken covers he needed... I'm not necessarily happy that I spent the cash in the first place.

I've said previously that I want the make me feel good about spending my in game currencies on leveling my characters - something I can see and feel a sense of pride and ownership over. That makes me feel good.

Having to spend in game currencies on temporary items - boosts, health packs, and to a lesser extent shields (I don't mind these as much), makes me feel bad. Honestly I have bought health packs twice in the 3 and a half months I've been playing the game (outside of the first week or so when I didn't know any better). I felt terrible about both of those times. It actively made me feel bad. Like I had done something wrong.
That's a terrible feeling to introduce to your player base.

Unknown

I totally get how healing characters and prologue healing are a problem. Unfortunately this solution seems confusing and inelegant. Round-only healing sounds pretty confusing on its own, and worse given how healing has worked in the past.

I wonder how more casual players and those not experienced with rpg mechanics will cope with two kinds of healing? I know I might forgo it completely because I won't be bothered to keep track of the numbers.

I hope what they implement is something a little more sophisticated. This seems so awkward.

Unknown

Seasons and alliances already made 2* -> 3* progression more difficult, and now this change basically takes a huge poop all over people struggling to reach 3* land.

@IceIX

When you say "Increase roster diversity" it actually means "Put up a huge paywall" for those players with only a few 3*s that absolutely need healing to keep up in their "working as intended" brackets.

Please hire more testers to examine how any change will affect the full spectrum of your playerbase, because right now it seems you are horribly out of touch with the largest percentage of that base.

kensterr

IceIX wrote:

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.

Being a cynic here but this will encourage players who have unlimited HP to buy health packs (if they choose to limit their roster) or keep buying shields, which in the end equals more "ka-ching" to D3. I'm only saying this because of the 2000 score in recent PVP achieved with limited roster.

Unknown

So are hot dogs in New York nerfed? That creates too much health and negates health packs. Spider-man can't heal, but a hot dog does?

And, interesting enough, did Spider-Man get unnerfed because of the new necessity for his protect tiles? Did falcon go from looking useless to a necessity along side daken and patch?

reckless442

I've read this entire thread and one thing I haven't seen discussed in connection with the aim of "roster diversity" is how that meshes with PVPs always having a featured character. How are we supposed to compete in PVPs when we are required to use a single character over and over if we can't heal? Let's use the current state of the game to illustrate the problem.

Right now, my 141 Human Torch is tanking red, green and black in every battle. Once I start facing 141 opponents, he is going to take massive damage every round. I don't have a choice about putting another character in his place unless I use the loaner, but that basically nullifies a roster spot. So I will basically have no choice but to burn health packs healing him. Compounding the idiocy is the fact that Human Torch is one of only three 3-star heroes available in the PVE. So how am I supposed to be using him in the PVP and PVE simultaneously unless I'm forking out HP for health packs?

Far from encouraging roster diversity, this makes the Sentry/Daken/loaner character + boosts even more powerful. Using three +3 all-AP boosts at 10 for 100 HP actually is cheaper than using a health pack (5 for 200 HP) every turn and the loaner character never needs healing and Daken heals himself.

As for the notion that this will discourage the amount that people play, the only way that will happen is if we eliminate competition that rewards grinding. So far, nothing the Devs have done has remotely accomplished that. To the contrary, each time they announce something that is supposed to discourage playing, it: (1) requires us to play longer (e.g.. higher-level opponents who take much longer to fight); or (2) seems to be coupled with some increased cost to play (e.g., making boosts more expensive).

If health packs were changed back to costing ISO, I could accept this change. But I know that's just wishful thinking. I am particularly furious that this announcement was made the day after the sale, since I used up a substantial iTunes credit, and am debating contacting iTunes, asking for a refund, and deleting MPQ for good.

Twysta

Unknown

The Red Boat wrote:

I totally get how healing characters and prologue healing are a problem. Unfortunately this solution seems confusing and inelegant. Round-only healing sounds pretty confusing on its own, and worse given how healing has worked in the past.

I wonder how more casual players and those not experienced with rpg mechanics will cope with two kinds of healing? I know I might forgo it completely because I won't be bothered to keep track of the numbers.

I hope what they implement is something a little more sophisticated. This seems so awkward.

This is why I think they should turn all this secondary healing into an "armor." Functions the same except:
-it can push hp above max during the match, making the moves useful regardless of damage already taken.
-its a different ability than "heal" and so its far less confusing to players.
-it could add a new layer of gameplay;go for armor early.in a match to block.damage (like def tiles but without the ability for someone to destroy your tile or the ability to turn multiple attacks with low damage in one turn into -1.

An armor ability would be the anti single shot damage move compared with def tiles being anti many smaller hits (just like the diff between strike and attack tiles SHOULD be that strike tiles better benefit multiple low attacks and attack tiles benefit strong singular attacks).

Unknown

In what world is prologue healing more hurtful to game play than CMags blue exploit?

Unknown

Even cmags nerf wouldn't draw this kind of attention, it's not like rags where everyone uses him. I rarely run across a defensive team that uses mags, and it's not like it's the speediest way to victory. Mags doesn't break the game.

Unknown

reckless442 wrote:

Right now, my 141 Human Torch is tanking red, green and black in every battle. Once I start facing 141 opponents, he is going to take massive damage every round. I don't have a choice about putting another character in his place unless I use the loaner, but that basically nullifies a roster spot. So I will basically have no choice but to burn health packs healing him.

And he's buffed so you wouldn't be able swap in different colours to get priority.

Unknown

Again, I get the goal of mixing up the rosters. When everyone is using the same thing, you're game is unbalanced and you need to fix it, but instead of lots and lots of OBWs on teams, now it's going to be dudes with claws as far as the eye can see.

Unknown

GuntherBlobel wrote:

Despite all this, I do want to thank IceIX for engaging in this dialogue. IceIX might be the ONLY way that some of these ideas make it to the Devs.

Yeah, sure, go see the 'Upcoming changes: Spiredman ruining" thread and its followup. O,O

Unknown

The Red Boat wrote:

Again, I get the goal of mixing up the rosters. When everyone is using the same thing, you're game is unbalanced and you need to fix it, but instead of lots and lots of OBWs on teams, now it's going to be dudes with claws as far as the eye can see.

I guess we should blame marvel for making them regenerate.

tbighead21

I don't know if somebody else said this - why not just Lock the story mode once it's completed or just lock those healers out of the missions once the 4 rewards are earned.