True Healing Discussion (Live 6/25)

Unknown

dlaw008 wrote:

I haven't read the entire thread, but I'm going to comment on what I did read.

For me, this change is all win. They just made my personal playstyle much more effective.

I NEVER prologue heal. I NEVER use OBW or Spiderman. I play with a couple of different teams depending on my characters' health totals and the stage of the event. Early in an event I throw in tankier guys like Lazy Thor, Black Panther, and Hulk. Late in an event I will usually go with something Fast like Patch and Cmags. And in any case at every stage I go out of my way to minimize the damage my characters receive and I don't use health packs until I absolutely have to.

So now they made my guys recover faster, while taking absolutely nothing away from me? I have a hard time being upset with that.

Prologue healing sucks. I tried it once, and immediately decided it was for the birds. I couldn't believe that some people actually put themselves through that. And OBW and Spiderman are both decent characters (even post nerf), but at the higher tiers of play neither one of them cuts the mustard.

Now here's the "but".

Development time is being used to figure out ways to get rid of prologue healing? Prologue healing. Really?

Oy vey.

How much "win" will you think this change was when a huge swath of the playerbase disappears and all you're left with are whales and cheaters? What's good for you isn't always good for the majority

Der_Lex

I think I've found the real problem here. It's that 'temporary healing' sounds way too negative. People don't like temporary things. You need rebranding. A new kind of healing for a new age in MPQ. And therefore, I suggest calling it...

Sexual Healing.

Think about it. Sex sells. Everybody loves it, but everybody knows it can't last forever, so it makes sense that it's not permanent.
And it synergizes so well with all the characters that use it, that it becomes blatantly obvious. OBW with her sexy fishnets. Smart and curvy She-Hulk. Spider-Man, in his tight, tight outfit, creating bandages with his sticky fluid.

Rebrand it. Add as much of the Marvin Gaye song as a sound effect to the abilities as you can do for free. People will love it. The forums will become a place of good cheer, peace and love again. Book it. Done.

MaxCavalera

Der_Lex wrote:

I think I've found the real problem here. It's that 'temporary healing' sounds way too negative. People don't like temporary things. You need rebranding. A new kind of healing for a new age in MPQ. And therefore, I suggest calling it...

Sexual Healing.

Think about it. Sex sells. Everybody loves it, but everybody knows it can't last forever, so it makes sense that it's not permanent.
And it synergizes so well with all the characters that use it, that it becomes blatantly obvious. OBW with her sexy fishnets. Smart and curvy She-Hulk. Spider-Man, in his tight, tight outfit, creating bandages with his sticky fluid.

Rebrand it. Add as much of the Marvin Gaye song as a sound effect to the abilities as you can do for free. People will love it. The forums will become a place of good cheer, peace and love again. Book it. Done.

Not sure they will go with this... But it should just be called shielding or hit point shielding. Any characters known for creating protective barriers would be ideal candidates for ablities using this mechanic in the future. Using it to adjust to existing characters that heal is coming off forced with odd wording and contrived reasoning. Healing is out Shielding is in.

HailMary

AJBCLF wrote:

So then there's two ways D3 can handle this.

(1) Listen to the overwhelming majority of the fanbase.
Result = fostering of goodwill / voice of the people being heard / keep the game fun / people won't ragequit / still make money!

(2) Don't listen
Result = opposite of everything in #1 EXCEPT: make slightly more money than before

#2 wins in a landslide!

"The overwhelming majority of the fanbase" is not represented on the forum. Case in point: we pretty much all hate the updated cover packs with non-guaranteed featured heroes, and for good reason. However, actual sales went up significantly immediately after the change. Perhaps said sales have gone down since then, but forumite sentiments don't necessarily correlate with general userbase sentiments.

People who play this as a casual "collect some cool Marvel heroes" game and spend a few bucks have no idea at all what prologue healing is. For all we know, the type of player that D3 is most fervently trying to attract/retain is generally being disadvantaged by the current healing system.

Unknown

HailMary wrote:

"The overwhelming majority of the fanbase" is not represented on the forum. Case in point: we pretty much all hate the updated cover packs with non-guaranteed featured heroes, and for good reason. However, actual sales went up significantly immediately after the change.

I think the only reason the sales went up were the introduction of new characters and people wanting them so badly that they were literally wasting their money on "lucky" pulls. I am sure that the sales have decreased. Or at least I hope so. But considering they are adding new characters every other week, probably not. which is sad.

MaxCavalera

HailMary wrote:

AJBCLF wrote:

So then there's two ways D3 can handle this.

(1) Listen to the overwhelming majority of the fanbase.
Result = fostering of goodwill / voice of the people being heard / keep the game fun / people won't ragequit / still make money!

(2) Don't listen
Result = opposite of everything in #1 EXCEPT: make slightly more money than before

#2 wins in a landslide!

"The overwhelming majority of the fanbase" is not represented on the forum. Case in point: we pretty much all hate the updated cover packs with non-guaranteed featured heroes, and for good reason. However, actual sales went up significantly immediately after the change. Perhaps said sales have gone down since then, but forumite sentiments don't necessarily correlate with general userbase sentiments.

People who play this as a casual "collect some cool Marvel heroes" game and spend a few bucks have no idea at all what prologue healing is. For all we know, the type of player that D3 is most fervently trying to attract/retain is generally being disadvantaged by the current healing system.

Yeah I think this is probably more true then a cash grab they have made lots of tweeks that made it harder on the hardcore catering to presumably the much larger casual non-forum goer base. If everyone is forced to play less then clueless casuals will have and easier time and can win a few covers they may stick around longer.

Unknown

My Opinion:

This is a total failure move. Its so clear that is a MONEY issue, greedy move...

For instance, chatting about this issue today with my alliance there was a clear consensus : we not gonna spend a dime in this game anymore with this "New feature" active.
Just for you know, IceIX and greedy developers. Pay 2 win is the road for any gamer´s userbase go to limbo.

Unknown

HailMary wrote:

"The overwhelming majority of the fanbase" is not represented on the forum. Case in point: we pretty much all hate the updated cover packs with non-guaranteed featured heroes, and for good reason. However, actual sales went up significantly immediately after the change. Perhaps said sales have gone down since then, but forumite sentiments don't necessarily correlate with general userbase sentiments.

The perhaps part is pretty significant for the argument, don't you think? We have a hearsay about the increase without being able to see how significant it actually was and where it went -- could have been just a simple fluke due to unrelated reasons, or a burst shortly compensated right on. Remind mi please, did we believe thee attached reasoning that players hated the guaranteed character and loved the random pulls for the excitement?

The fact that instead of so many wanted changes and possible actual improvements we get this **** suggests attempted grab for either money or power. Actually might be the latter, we have long history of moves to force play to some intended thing including targets for game length in minutes and turns, damage taken, etc.

sure, the majority of spenders look like mindless monkey from the articles who make decisions on shiny storefront gfx and keeps pushing buttons without knowing what it will provide and why it is good or bad.

Honestly I'm not even sure the charts used for decisions (and shown in articles) are at least cleaned from cheaters. Those spending forged HP and ISO. We know the game allows it still and it goes mostly unnoticed or tolerated for long times. Would that make perfect sense to see up in token "purchases" after drop rate nerf when you can print your own HP?

elusive

So do the devs have a team whose motto and sole purpose is "What can we take away from the game?" Because I feel like, given how often things are taken away (iso completion bonuses, anyone? I really miss those) and how screwed up the servers are half of the time, plus how often we're fed retreaded events (some of which have had typos and bugs in the past and still do when they come back around), it'd explain a lot. And while we're speaking about Ares's Sunder, they've said they've fixed it twice now and yet it's still there, but they have plenty of time to do things like this.

Sorry, just woke up and I'm kinda cranky. Point still stands, though. And heck, I don't even use prologue healing.

Unknown

For one, I'm pretty sure a large swathe of the player base will not be leaving because of prologue healing, whether it benefits me or not. And let me be clear - the part that benefits me is that my characters recover more quickly, not that OBW won't heal up my opponents. The whole point I was making was that this effort seems terribly misguided. Even if this ends up nerfing 'victory lap' healing it's not going to change much of anything. OBW is hit by this, but OBW blue was gravy anyway. 2 star players see OBW in their queue constantly because of Aggressive Recon and Espionage, not Anti-Gravity Device. As a matter of fact, I would bet that most of the people asking for 'roster diversity' and complaining about ubiquitous OBW are people that constantly run OBW. I don't suspect this is going to change any of that. At all.

Actually, come to think of it, this is almost a straight OBW Nerf at this point, since She Hulk is not yet in the wild and Nobody seems to like the new spidey. Maybe this change forces people to reexamine their play style. And they try to convert to 3* strategies, which already don't involve OBW. And because there are so many 3* now they have to try to get the first cover, then buy the rest with cash in order to complete one.

I figured it out! It's a cash grab! Soylent Green is made of people! IceIX was on the grassy knoll!

HailMary

pasa_ wrote:

The perhaps part is pretty significant for the argument, don't you think? ... [and the rest]

The "perhaps" part is indeed critical. That uncertainty is partly my point: we have forumites crowing about how this is obviously Greedy McGreederkins that can't possibly be good for any significant number of players, then using that to snowball even more rage.

That certainty is unfounded. When it comes to cover packs, I honestly think the given reason might not be bulls---. Aside from the "guaranteed featured heroes" event packs, all tokens and cover packs in MPQ feed into the Skinner box. The "maybe I'll get really lucky on the next one, or maybe the next one" mentality can plausibly mean that nerfing cover packs directly generated more sales because it really does get a certain part of the playerbase more excited when they (sometimes) get a featured hero.

I agree that there are much more worthwhile things to fix, at least from where we stand. For example, I find it ridiculous that the minikitty server implosions still happen with great regularity. Not fixing those once and for all while adding shiny features is like a car company saying "Well, the transmission still spontaneously liquefies about once a month, but hey, good news: your seats are now upholstered in contrast-stitched Alcantara leather!"

Shortening cheater-sandboxing turnaround time would be great, too. Also, the "AP from thin air" AI glitches that more and more people are posting about. That last one is pretty much the definition of "game-breaking" from any sort of fairness standpoint.

I think D3 is indeed trying to push players towards a narrower, more "balanced" range of playstyles, likely because much of its paying and about-to-be-paying playerbase hasn't figured out prologue healing, or tanking, or the other not-so-short shortcuts we've found. I don't disagree with casting that as a "power grab," though they already have all the power anyway, so it sounds a bit weird to me. But, that's quite distinct from the "it's just a player-hating money grab to make us spend money on health packs/boosts and literally nothing else at all!" characterization that's flooding the forums.

Twysta

Der_Lex wrote:

I think I've found the real problem here. It's that 'temporary healing' sounds way too negative. People don't like temporary things. You need rebranding. A new kind of healing for a new age in MPQ. And therefore, I suggest calling it...

Sexual Healing.

I made this in graph form for you.

Unknown

dlaw008 wrote:

For one, I'm pretty sure a large swathe of the player base will not be leaving because of prologue healing, whether it benefits me or not. And let me be clear - the part that benefits me is that my characters recover more quickly, not that OBW won't heal up my opponents. The whole point I was making was that this effort seems terribly misguided. Even if this ends up nerfing 'victory lap' healing it's not going to change much of anything. OBW is hit by this, but OBW blue was gravy anyway. 2 star players see OBW in their queue constantly because of Aggressive Recon and Espionage, not Anti-Gravity Device. As a matter of fact, I would bet that most of the people asking for 'roster diversity' and complaining about ubiquitous OBW are people that constantly run OBW. I don't suspect this is going to change any of that. At all.

Actually, come to think of it, this is almost a straight OBW Nerf at this point, since She Hulk is not yet in the wild and Nobody seems to like the new spidey. Maybe this change forces people to reexamine their play style. And they try to convert to 3* strategies, which already don't involve OBW. And because there are so many 3* now they have to try to get the first cover, then buy the rest with cash in order to complete one.

I figured it out! It's a cash grab! Soylent Green is made of people! IceIX was on the grassy knoll!

Once again you're being short-sighted in your analysis of the change.

What I'm concerned with is an overarching issue that the Devs need to address if this game is to survive long-term. The fact that progression into the 'promised' 3* land is gradually becoming harder and harder for new players. When you and I began playing this game the landscape was totally different. It was objectively easier to build a roster of 3*s that you wanted to use. People like HailMary were able to reach elite status completely F2P (although I have no idea how many hours he's spent, probably enough to pay for his covers many times over, like many of us hardcore players). The ability to pull a HailMary and achieve progression through time is being slowly eroded. The changes that have affected this landscape have been listed many times: removing guaranteed covers, introducing powerful new chars but never improving weak old ones, etc. And now True Healing.

To use the GoT comparison again, "Winter is coming" - everything we're arguing about on the forums today does not compare to the danger looming in the horizon that threatens to kill the game. Of course, if the Devs' plan all along was to milk Marvel + PQ as much as possible in the short-term and move on when the license expires, then I guess this change might fit their vision?

DD-The-Mighty

Linkster79 wrote:

IceIX wrote:

bonfire01 wrote:

I wonder if a mod can just edit his post like they can with everyone else's?

Yes, and that was the case. The situation has been handled. There is zero call for post vandalism from anyone, much less someone with moderator privileges.

D3 lost control of their moderators long ago. Threads calling out cheaters being stickied and others threads being left unlocked despite them being in complete violation of the board rules. A message board left to rot by its creators is bound to decend into chaos.

Yea, well, that's what you get when you pick mods from the community based on a popularity contest.

spccrain

MaxCavalera wrote:

Nemek wrote:

ZenBrillig wrote:

MaxCavalera wrote:

If by durables these are thing that are permanent improvements then i think this remind me of some threads awhile back where improvements to the shield HQ were a possibility or maybe that was someones personal idea. Again seems like now would be a great time to implement something like buying a Medbay for your shield HQ to speed up healing. Increased healing for 1 character to start buy more slots etc. You could go a little whacky and recruit non pvp characters like Dr Moria to increase mutant healing or something. This sounds like pay to win but we already kinda of had that with alliance slots so I don't see why not see something like this again.

It wouldn't have to be just HP, they could also give 'alliance points' for finishing high in events, and use those (probably in combination with HP) to build out an alliance HQ.

I'd love to see that! I, too, immediately went to HP being the purchasing currency...but if there was a non-purchasable currency (that, indirectly, is fueled by ISO/HP expenditure by winning tournaments), I'd be all over that. Preferably something that won't give a particularly large advantage to top alliances to avoid the 'rich get richer' aspects of it all.

I was thinking it should be open to solo players as well but Play & Pay (alliance points & HP) to win is probably better keeps people engaged in-game and i doubt people would look at their respective pvp leader boards and think that guy at #1 is definitely beating me because his characters are regenerating at 10 hp more per minute!

Amazing! Simply Amazing! I would love to see something like this implemented. Not the paying for it part because I know the price would be like 10000HP for 1% more healing but the Alliance points for finishing high is a great idea.

kensterr

I dedicate this song to OBW: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdGZBRAwW74
LOL!

Kelbris

DD-The-Mighty wrote:

Linkster79 wrote:

IceIX wrote:

bonfire01 wrote:

I wonder if a mod can just edit his post like they can with everyone else's?

Yes, and that was the case. The situation has been handled. There is zero call for post vandalism from anyone, much less someone with moderator privileges.

D3 lost control of their moderators long ago. Threads calling out cheaters being stickied and others threads being left unlocked despite them being in complete violation of the board rules. A message board left to rot by its creators is bound to decend into chaos.

Yea, well, that's what you get when you pick mods from the community based on a popularity contest.

Unknown

I'm still confused by the idea of temporary healing vs. permanent. From the examples they give, permanent healing is only that which the body does for itself, while temporary healing is healing given to you by others. But that's like me going to the doctor for being sick, given anti biotics, and having them fail as soon as I leave the clinic.

If you want people to use more of there roster then how about expanding the 1s and 2s? All we've gotten lately is a flood of new 3 stars that many casual players can't get a hold of in bulk. Meanwhile your handing out 1s and 2s hand over fist. The problem is the limited number if them combined with the issue that many of them just plain suck (even in their own tier) if people like blonde widow were actually competitive in their own tier (let alone beyond it) maybe they'd get some play. That's why characters like Thor Ares OBW see such popularity. Because they've got abilities and strengths that let them play against that next level. It's a hard fight usually but at least you have a chance.

And to people crying when their 3*s get beat by my 2*s keep in mind that when my 2s fight your 3s, your 3s are controlled by the AI. The AI isn't always making the best choices, or I can use the AIs logic against it. Either way, your 3* team can then retaliate against my 2s and stop a mud hole inside 10 turns like would be expected.

Unknown

dlaw008 wrote:

OBW is hit by this, but OBW blue was gravy anyway. 2 star players see OBW in their queue constantly because of Aggressive Recon and Espionage, not Anti-Gravity Device.

I have been playing for over 6 months now. Before I found this board, I was leveling up using Thor and CStorm - her Wind Storm was very helpful but she was very squishy. I did OK but I would not be able to get high in PvP without the use of health packs - it ultimately limited the amount of time I could play consecutively.

After finding this board, I leveled up OBW and Ares, and now I can play for hours without needing a health pack. The main reason I use OBW is Anti-gravity device. I can match up against any team and leave with full health - I will not say it is quick because I have to make the conscious choice to go after blue to heal - but for the savings in health packs it is worth it to me.

"True Healing" is a way to ensure they continue to collect the health pack revenue. If they want to fix the prologue healing or encourage roster diversity, it would make more sense to offer up more characters that can fill a healing role, or better yet heal back to 100% following a match. If I didn't have to worry about my heroes being damaged for the next PvP, I would definitely use other heroes instead of always using OBW. I would be happy to try other combinations knowing that if I lose, they will be healed and I could try again or switch up heroes, without having to spend $$$.

I am on Day 190 and I still don't have a 3* with more than 9 covers. And now, I have very little chance of getting any without winning PvP or PvE events. I won almost 20 yellow tokens this week and I pulled not one 3* - NONE! Now they are going to take away my ability to win PvP and PvE events without spending on health packs. As a fan that has been along since the beta and has dropped a couple of hundred dollars into the game, I'm feeling a bit irritated that D3 wants more $$$ from me - and they aren't getting any more until they start implementing changes that actually help me progress (instead of constantly making it harder).

Kelbris

IceIX wrote:

Old Healing Rates

- All characters regain 12 health/minute - Wolverine and Daken regain 24 health per minute

New Healing Rates

- 2* characters regain 18 health/minute (1.5x faster) - 3* characters regain 24 health/minute (2x faster) - 4* characters regain 30 health/minute (2.5x faster) - Characters with significant regenerative powers: Wolverine, Daken, Spider-Man, Hulk, and She-Hulk regain health at double the rate.

This is awesome. I've only been using the given health packs for ages now, and now the entirety of these changes benefit me while stalling other players?

Works for me. It's a competitive game, after all.