True Healing Discussion (Live 6/25)

Unknown

Speaking of "engaging gameplay"... Let's have a look at regenerating health packs. They just regenerate without you doing anything! This is not engaging and not fun! I propose that players must do something for health pack to regenerate, so they feel painful responsibility for each and every pack and value them, preferably something that brings money to MPQ, as with all recent changes. Guess 1000 captchas from some Indian botfarm, mine set amount of bitcoins for devs? Everyone, feel free to add more bright ideas to make game even MORE FUN!!!!!!!!!! (that's ten exclamation marks)

Tharos

Great article from Josh Sawye, but unfortunatly, there is a huge gap between theory, and the way demiurge apply it.
I think they are aware of all this common sense things.
I think, they expect what is happening on the steam charts: reduce healing -> reduce life on characters -> faster to kill a character -> faster to use all health packs -> faster to stop being able to play -> reducing play session duration -> far less users on average (which is different of the number of unique users).

Demiurge always had great theory. The first ones that came in mind:

Albert Reed on his blog wrote:

Make Everything Overpowered

Albert Reed on his blog wrote:

If players truly feel that your balance changes have made the durable no longer useful, then selling it for hard and soft currency should be a no-brainer.

Albert Reed on twitter wrote:

"The public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all." <--- great product management advice.

Sources of the quotes: blog and tweet

But they miserably fail every time to apply these theory. (which recent change was here to make anything overpowered? did anyone notice an increase of "False Healers" price for sell once they were far less usefull?). Such a waste of positive energy! If only they had listen to themselves instead of listening to their figures.

It is even more shocking if you compare the rage on this official forum (not only for this change, but for the past few months), and the point of view of Demiurge head, quoted from here

Albert Reed on twitter wrote:

I am so happy that I spent the past six months making my games better for our players rather than making a throwaway demo for the press.

Unknown

smatterchoo wrote:

I have debated whether or not adding my voice to the cacaphony would help, hinder, or other. In the end, I must do as I teach and speak as I live.

To every single one of you ranting, just shut it. You sound like petulant children throwing a fit when the cranky old man kicks you out of his comic store for just reading and never buying. (Yes, I've also spent money in the old man's store, so I have a bone to pick about being kicked out, too).

To every constructive criticism, thank you. We can only hope the powers that be listen, or risk alienating a significant portion of their user base.

To those who injected humor into this thread, THANK YOU. It's taken me 3 days to get through all 50 pages and your collective wit made the slog better.

Finally, to the powers that be, I have to say .. I get the WHY of what has been done (top of the list is smoothing out the utilization curves and laying the groundwork for future monetization schemes), but the HOW is a serious issue. At the end of the day, this is your IP to do with as you see fit, making the decisions (good or ill only time will tell) you believe to be in the best long term interest of the going concern. On the flip side of that coin, though, is the user base who is free to make their own decisions with regards to how to spend their free time and spare money. You believe that installing this health governor was a necessary change, and better to just do it and let the chips fall where they may. But that is neither good gamesmanship nor good business decision-making. Just as in a match3 game, there are moment-to-moment good choices and bad choices, and it is the player's (your) responsibility to ensure the next move doesn't result in a game-ending cascade. In this case, you needed to clear some tiles (communicate) BEFORE activating your next power (healing nerf). Based on the energy in this thread, the cascade is dwindling, but I fear the consequences to your game's future.

I enjoy this game and I get why some people are so emotionally invested. This is COMIX. These are our childhood friends being brought to life in a new and interesting way.

The collective plea here is simply this: "Please don't ruin this for us". You have an amazing pool of smart, talented, and motivated people developing this game. You also have an orders of magnitude larger base of smart, talented, and motivated fans lining up to play your game. It would be wise and magnanimous to begin a reasoned dialog with them. They deserve at least that much.

And never forget, with great power comes great responsibility.

P.S. Ice, you have my sympathy.

Very unfair and rude to talk to the ranters like that when pretty much everyone in this thread (including you it would seem) is in agreement on the same issue. In fact to use your own example, you are behaving like the cranky old man.

So many people are so passionate about this game and so upset/angry by the change that ranting is thenatural course of action, it makes you feel better to vent your anger sometimes, maybe you should try it.

And I wouldnt waste your sympathy on IceIX, save it for the screwed over players that you feel should just shut up.

kensterr

Seriously why is this thread still not locked? It is no longer "upcoming" and since the changes have gone live, there's no point of discussion in this thread anymore. Join in the newer threads discussing this topic.

Vyshus

I was wondering how many would download a F2P game with a 1 rating?

Unknown

kensterr wrote:

Seriously why is this thread still not locked? It is no longer "upcoming" and since the changes have gone live, there's no point of discussion in this thread anymore. Join in the newer threads discussing this topic.

You mean the spam threads taking 90% of the first page?

(sure title should be changed to '**** we poured on you: True Healing' or something) and unstick.

NotYou13

At this point, characters need to heal to full at the end of every match unless they were downed. This current implementation just forces people to stop playing pretty quickly. I feel sorry for anyone playing on a non-mobile platform.

kensterr

@pasa I can't do anything about the spam threads but there are different anti-spam plugins for phpBB which might solve the problem. Be it captcha or first time poster's thread queued for moderation etc...

Unknown

Give up, anything that gives less $$$ is just not going to happen. After all IceIX did let it slip once that main reason against themed PvP was that corresponding tokens didn't sell that much. This is exactly the same situation.

Too bad people don't look in future and don't understand that any possible burst of healtpack sales now translates into much less players and income later.

Unknown

rowaasr13 wrote:

Give up, anything that gives less $$$ is just not going to happen. After all IceIX did let it slip once that main reason against themed PvP was that corresponding tokens didn't sell that much. This is exactly the same situation.

Too bad people don't look in future and don't understand that any possible burst of healtpack sales now translates into much less players and income later.

IceIX said that? Well that does explain why PVP has been an endless stream of boring 'featured hero + 2 best others' events recently.
Shame, I was living in hope of the themed PVP events making a return at some point.

Lone Star, Bad is good, Divine Champions, Fearless defenders, No Mans Land - all excellent and alot of fun. Hmm when I put it like that I can see why we dont have them anymore.

Unknown

I've played this game a long time and have enjoyed it. But I hate this change enough that I signed up for a forum account to protest it. Please bring back healing as it was. Who cares if people were prologue healing? They chose to do it. Please undo this change.

Also, calling it a feature is pretty insulting.

Unknown

I too created an account on this forum to air my frustrations.

I have been playing 110 days straight and loved the gameplay even though there was a little bit of a grind element to it. I paid for HP on multiple occasions, and made my largest in app purchase to date with their recent "sale" only to be blindsided by this horrible change (True Healing). I am in the 2* -> 3* transition and heavily relied on OBW to extend my gameplay.

Now it seems that the AI is much more powerful, downing many of my characters in a single play and my gameplay at any given time clocks in at around 20 minutes. During the waiting period for healthpacks and health regen, I seem to get attacked and any forward progress during my 20 minutes of gameplay is quickley erased. This is more than frustrating, games are meant to be FUN and challenging. The recent change no longer makes this game fun, and now makes me horribly frustrated, which is not an element that I look for to spend my valuable time and MONEY on.

I do feel cheated and sincerely regret paying anything at this point. It is also sickening that the devs are not even listening to the majority of their customers!

I urge everyone to rate this game in their respective app store, google play, and steam accounts and let everyone know about the terrible environment the devs created with this latest change.

They turned a 5* game into a 1* game, and I will not dedicate any more of my time and $$$ on it unless the devs actually listen to the massive complaints that are being raised by us, their paying and devoted customers.

SnowcaTT

Yet another slap in the face with new PVE.

Use your she-hulk! (Except for those who got screwed out of covers: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10477)
Use your OBW! Oh right, she sucks now.
Use your one-star Hawkeye and Storm! That will get you far once scaling starts!
Use Bagman! Oh wait, he's worse than those one-stars.

And of course, can't heal any of them once they go down, unless you want to pay through the nose. Terrible.

Unknown

The PACman wrote:

rowaasr13 wrote:

Give up, anything that gives less $$$ is just not going to happen. After all IceIX did let it slip once that main reason against themed PvP was that corresponding tokens didn't sell that much. This is exactly the same situation.

IceIX said that? Well that does explain why PVP has been an endless stream of boring 'featured hero + 2 best others' events recently.

Yep, right here: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=9587

IceIX wrote:

Themed Events like you state have been taking a nap while we figure out how to make them a bit better for income. I know it sounds a bit mean, but themed Events did horrible in sales in comparison to even a 5th run of a character based PVP Event.

smatterchoo

The PACman wrote:

smatterchoo wrote:

...
To every single one of you ranting, just shut it.
...
I get the WHY of what has been done (top of the list is smoothing out the utilization curves and laying the groundwork for future monetization schemes), but the HOW is a serious issue.

Very unfair and rude to talk to the ranters like that when pretty much everyone in this thread (including you it would seem) is in agreement on the same issue. In fact to use your own example, you are behaving like the cranky old man.

So many people are so passionate about this game and so upset/angry by the change that ranting is thenatural course of action, it makes you feel better to vent your anger sometimes, maybe you should try it.

And I wouldnt waste your sympathy on IceIX, save it for the screwed over players that you feel should just shut up.

In retrospect, I see that I was harsh, and for the record I duly apologize to anyone I may have offended. Thanks for calling me out.

I think what I was trying to get across, unsuccessfully it seems, is that emotional pleas do nothing to sway business decisions. Rants are easily dismissed. In other words, you're not going to get the cranky old man to let you back in his store by shouting in his face, calling names, assembling a mob, or any other emotion based tactic. That typically will only reinforce his opinion that his initial decision was sound.
What has a better chance of working to change his mind is positivity. Constructive criticisms are one example. If you choose to see this as a negotiation rather than a decision to be reversed, you open up a world of possibilities that didn't exist in the binary state.

I hope that clears things up a bit, and if not, then we'll just have to agree to disagree.

xKOBALTx

Wraith9490 wrote:

Well, thanks to this change, I spent maybe 30 minutes with MPQ and got some good time in on Skyrim. Shoot yourself in the foot much devs?

Unknown

Constructive criticism:

Vyshus

This topic is just getting started. It’s only a matter of time before people become obscene to get immediate mod/dev attention. Also for those who care iTunes rating dropped from 5 to 3 since update.

Unknown

I've also signed up to the forums after almost 100 days of continual play to air my ... displeasure? disappointment? frustration? (I'm not entirely sure what I'm feeling at this point) about this change.

With the change actually in effect now, I'm finding the PVP event (Hollowpoint Kiss) more engaging with the different character combos (rather than the usual OBW/**Thor or OBW/Ares combo) to use and compete against. So the change is working on that front. I'm actually enjoying using **Cap and **Magneto combo or **Thor and Moonstone (!I know!) combo with MBW among others. That said, realizing that one using a **Storm/**Mags combo is going to be crushed if that's your last out (buy shields!!!) is equally unpleasant.

The frustrating element for me, though, is that being able to heal makes continuous gameplay nigh impossible. I appreciate the accelerated healing time, but it's not enough to make it fun, it makes for, as repeated often on this thread, about 20 minutes of gametime, every 3-4 hours. Blitz/wait/Blitz/wait/Blitz/wait is far more frustrating that filing through an endless slog of OBW/Thor or OBW/Ares combos.

I would say perhaps to help ease the pain, an increase in standard # of health packs (10) and/or a reduced restock time for health packs (15 minutes) would make this change far more palatable.

I enjoyed splitting time between the PVP and PVE events but without a healer the ability to engage in both and to be well-ranked without the cash drop is going to be far more difficult.

I'd like to believe this isn't a straight cash grab, as it's not a very bright one if so. I've certainly never dropped $ on a health pack and I won't start now. I've only ever dropped $ to get coins to buy more cover slots. I could also see maybe dropping $ on certain character covers if they were cheaper but 500/1250coin is way too much. Perhaps a scaling (buy your first add'l cover at 100coin and double for each additional) would find people spending and buying more coins to purchase-level their characters (especially at 2* -> 3* transition where it's so painful and time intensive to earn or highly improbable to randomly get a *** cover), and being able to accelerate the growth of certain characters might have them playing with more variety...

Unknown

Vyshus wrote:

This topic is just getting started. It’s only a matter of time before people become obscene to get immediate mod/dev attention. Also for those who care iTunes rating dropped from 5 to 3 since update.

I am happy to hear that their rating is dropping.

I think it was after the Throverine nerf that IceyIX decided to share that D3 doesn't really consider ITunes/Google-play ratings after a change or update. After he said that, MPQ got bombarded with 1&2 star ratings, but I think it went back up to a 4*-5* rating 2-3 months later.