True Healing Discussion (Live 6/25)

Unknown

Guys, we talked about this already. Way back when you wanted to implement a skip tax, players told you again and again not to punish us for playing the way we want to, but reward us for playing the way you want us to. Remember that? It went on for a while. Now here we are being punished for sticking to a small group of characters instead of being rewarded for using a larger group. And this change doesn't even create "diversity." Out of 8 PvP nodes available to me right now, 7 of them have 3* Wolverine, Hulk and Thor. Self-healing and high HP characters are going to be the new OBW/Spider-Man. That's because people don't want to play a large variety.

I'm sure that every player enjoys trying out new characters and combos, but at the end of the day in every game I've ever played, players have their favourites and they mostly stick to them. WoW players might have a dozen alts, but everyone has a main. Even in Monopoly some people will only use the top hat or the race car. People just feel more comfortable sticking with what they know.

But if you want us to expand and diversify our rosters, that's great. I don't want it said that I just came here to criticize, so here's some ideas no one will read and will never be considered:
- PvP tournaments that feature teams instead of individuals, like Avengers, X-Men, "street level" characters, villains, and so on. Instead of everyone using their 2 favourite characters and the featured one, buff a handful of characters and let us decide who to use.
- Account-level bonuses for maxed out characters (eg: a 5% chance to heal for 50 damage when you match yellow if your roster has a fully leveled Wolverine, a chance to spawn a weaker version of Doom's attack tile when you match black, 2% bonus health if you own Hulk, or 2 extra black tile damage if you own Black Panther).
- More characters that heal, stun, steal AP or mitigate damage. It seems really obvious, when you think about it. You want us to use more characters, we always want to use a character that heals. If more characters could heal...do you see it now?
- Character-specific health packs. Instead of a shared pool of 5, 1 health pack per character. Maybe even with a larger recharge time, since we'd have way more of them to spread around our rosters.
- Lower the damn cost of covers. Seriously, 1250hp is stupid expensive for less than 10% of a character's potential. If it was closer to 500hp to buy up a cover I'd have a lot more capable 3* characters and you'd have a lot more of my money.

Brainstorm, D3. Come up with your own ideas. It's fun! Think of constructive, rewarding features you could implement that would allow players to play the game the way we want to, but still accomplish your goals of large and diverse rosters. Or don't, whatever. You guys are doing just fine as "that game I play for 10 minutes a day to get the login bonus," I suppose.

Unknown

RockMonster wrote:

Now here we are being punished for sticking to a small group of characters instead of being rewarded for using a larger group.

Later posts of IceIX clarified on that bit: D3 wants us to *level* every characters to cap. They don't give a flying kitty whether you use them or not.

The piece in this thread mentioning diversity and denying other stuff is there just to supply the recent article to have some quotes. No one in right mind and minimal knowledge of the game took it for anything but distilled **** for obvious reasons. And could state a dozen ways that would actually help toward that aim from the top of his head just like you.

But it is nothing but smoke and mirrors.

Even IceIX admitted in this very topic that actually using B and C team in PVP would result in leaving them for defense and gaining serious loss of points -- possibly more than you gained by playing with them in the first place. And that they were thinking hard about it and decided to just do nothing at all.

Unknown

Hey guys! I just found this awesome game called "Hearthstone"!It's on PC and iOS for now, and they're promising it will be on Android soon.They don't make you deal with health packs or any other way of trying to prevent you from playing too long in one sitting unless you cough up some cash! They just tried to make a really fun game (you know, back like MPQ used to be a few months ago) in the hopes that if you enjoyed it you'd feel like spending money on it. Crazy, i know! (Oh yeah, and for the moment at least it actually seems to be matching me against people who are actually my own level, rather than the equivalent of the x/141/141 teams i see all the time in MPQ, but it's a bit early in my progress through Hearthstone to really judge that.)

And yes, i'm a bit behind the times on this, but before now every time my friends mentioned the game i always said "I'm already playing a F2P game, i don't have the time to spend on two of those things! But then this weekend, when forced to take a break from MPQ after just 20-30 minutes because of True Healing, i decided to give it a try. Right now i'm playing MPQ until i run out of health, then playing Hearthstone for awhile, then coming back to MPQ. But the motivation to come back to a game that wants to punish me for trying to play it seems to be ebbing over time...

So has anyone else found any really cool games after MPQ forced them stop playing?

Unknown

Daetrinnn wrote:

Hey guys! I just found this awesome game called "Hearthstone"!It's on PC and iOS for now, and they're promising it will be on Android soon.They don't make you deal with health packs or any other way of trying to prevent you from playing too long in one sitting unless you cough up some cash! They just tried to make a really fun game (you know, back like MPQ used to be a few months ago) in the hopes that if you enjoyed it you'd feel like spending money on it. Crazy, i know! (Oh yeah, and for the moment at least it actually seems to be matching me against people who are actually my own level, rather than the equivalent of the x/141/141 teams i see all the time in MPQ, but it's a bit early in my progress through Hearthstone to really judge that.)

And yes, i'm a bit behind the times on this, but before now every time my friends mentioned the game i always said "I'm already playing a F2P game, i don't have the time to spend on two of those things! But then this weekend, when forced to take a break from MPQ after just 20-30 minutes because of True Healing, i decided to give it a try. Right now i'm playing MPQ until i run out of health, then playing Hearthstone for awhile, then coming back to MPQ. But the motivation to come back to a game that wants to punish me for trying to play it seems to be ebbing over time...

So has anyone else found any really cool games after MPQ forced them stop playing?

Here you go.

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10446

Unknown

This is just a suggestion.

Since temporary healing is only a buff. Can the temporary healing be use to bring someone hp above the initial
amount so it acts like an adrenaline rush?

Since with this change, players will rush to activate temporary healing as fast as possible so they have
a shield over characters that are injured, this can also help non injured members to receive that buff.

yogi_

Faithword wrote:

Since temporary healing is only a buff. Can the temporary healing be use to bring someone hp above the initial
amount so it acts like an adrenaline rush?

No.

Unknown

Faithword wrote:

This is just a suggestion.

Since temporary healing is only a buff. Can the temporary healing be use to bring someone hp above the initial
amount so it acts like an adrenaline rush?

Since with this change, players will rush to activate temporary healing as fast as possible so they have
a shield over characters that are injured, this can also help non injured members to receive that buff.

They've the ability to put temporary health above 100%, but it's not something any of the current available healing does.

If someone is supposed to get the ability to go over 100% it'd have to be Spiderman, who needs way more help right now than OBW.

doc8998

First, if this gets lengthy, I apologize in advance, but hope some will bear with me if it does get wordy.

Secondly, I've been doing my best to keep up since this thread was a few pages long, but that durned real-life stuff kicks in, and well, I've certainly skimmed quite a bit; SOOOOOO if I repeat much, I offer another round of apologies.

Onto the meat of my post...

I have not been moved to posting on these forums since the "Thorverine" debacle, and this "True Healing" patch has certainly moved me to wanting to post, but I gave it several days, as I did back with "Thorverine." I'd rather ATTEMPT to add something constructive to the conversation than just rage, but I'm not promising I won't head into that territory here.

Please, please, PLEASE just call "True Healing" for what it is. A cash grab. I'm guessing that I wouldn't be the only one that wouldn't have both been angered and lost some respect along the way with this. If you had simply stated that more revenue was necessary to keep the game viable, both my wife and I probably would have been happy to help with pumping some funds into your pockets to keep a game that has had us each hooked, (I hit 220 days today, she's approximately 150,) with the proper incentive.

Before I go any further into "incentive," allow me to offer a pretty (I think, but could easily be wrong,) solid idea on how to have implemented "roster variety" into play.

Put a NUMBER OF USES (speaking pvp) on the characters per time or matches played. ie: OBW can be used 3X per 10 matches, or 5X per 24 hours, or 6X per 2day pvp.... The quantity and time frame as specified is NOT the point. It's a simple rebuke to "roster variety." It may actually cause people to think before automatically going to their tried and true team. (Also, take into account ROSTERS. ie: a player with a roster of 10 should be given more uses vs someone that has a 40+ roster. Every 5 roster slots PURCHASED (not "in use," or actively held by a hero,) reduces a usage of characters by one. This is NOT a hard equation to work... (PLEASE NOTE: I did not use any math on this- it's a suggestion. I'd love to hear anybody's thoughts on this who are more math-oriented than myself... I don't know, should players start with a 10 use per character per day in pvp, then have it drop by one per X roster spots purchased until a low of... what? 3-5 X per day? (if that was a "per day" idea... Alternatives are there for "per event," as well- This concept would need more fleshing, as I could see both sides of the coin on this, but I think this CONCEPT works to diversify the teams being played in events.)

As far as (sorry for the indirect quote,)

[b]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."[/b]

As many others have stated; it may not necessarily be "fun," (I RARELY do this, but when I do, YES I'd rather be playing whatever event... but is it NOT fun? No... I LOVED this game, more is more.) But, like many games, there is often some things that are necessary evils to continue on... It helps get back onto goal. Secondly, if this keeps people playing, who cares? In this case, people are playing because they PLAN on continuing with whatever event they were doing. Want to have them find other things to do? Make them step away from the game while they wait for their characters to heal.

In all likelihood, you've actually ENCOURAGED THE OPPOSITE of "roster variety." (Although I see this currently, I'm guessing others will start hopping onboard with this now.)

How so?

I have a roster of 33. That Captain America at 85 I have that I built up alongside Ares that IS, with the occasional "needed in a particular node," fairly worthless to me, other than the fact that I don't want to sell him off? He IS my roster diversity for when I've healed through via OBW/ Spidey/ health packs, and want to continue against other teams as an event ends. Pfft... GONE. The characters I've held onto but haven't leveled... Lazy Daken, Moonstone, Bullseye? Sure, perhaps they work on teams, I've played against them. (SEEEEE? other characters ARE used.) I've managed this long without them. Toss them aside, too. I get enough Ares, Thor, OBW, and others that I'll just get rid of characters that I've managed without this long/ only use as desperation moves and just wait it out to build up second and third versions of the characters that are proven.

Now, it may not be popular, especially with those with multiple builds of a character that pvp events would carry a limit (what type and what that limit is, is up in the air,) of character usage, but it does address "character variety," without putting the onus of your player base having to shell out cash to keep in supply of health packs.

Same as with "Thorverine," the feeling is... You at D3 aren't happy with how things are playing out in the game you created, so when balancing is needed, you throw the responsibility back onto the players. Oh, sure, you gave us a way to respec after "Thorverine," (something that REALLY should have been there to begin with,) but at the cost of either hoping to get card drops or having to pay. Now, there's nothing wrong with having to pay to respec when a player chooses to/ doesn't like the way the card plays in actuality vs. theory, or finds that changing something creates a better symbiosis with a preferred team. However, your inability to find some way to allow players to respec their characters when YOU nerf them at no cost to the player, who is at your whim, is decidedly weak.

Want people to spend more into your game? GIVE THEM SOMETHING WORTH SPENDING ON. (Hell, I'd even be okay with an occasional character that won't be dropped unless you purchase him/ her. Make them level 270 cards. (While still having other 270s available as rewards.) Give those characters exclusive events once a month with greater rewards.) When you keep saying "oops, my bad!" and then expecting your playerbase to shell out to stay competitive, guess what's going to happen to your playerbase? I'd say a little something like what happened in the last event (sorry, think it was Hotshot prior to Daredevil... I'm a tad lost on that at the moment.) I joined in with 24hours to play. Quickly jumped to 88th place, but had RL happen. Came back a few hours later, and was still in 88th. Played to 76... RL again. Come back, had been defeated twice, but only fell to 78. Played to 64th... Called it a night... Ended in... 64th place. I have NEVER seen this before. I was a hardcore player of Guild Wars 2, (and will be again, when I'm capable of being back at my PC for more than 45mins at a time,) a game that gets no revenue from subscriptions, but does draw money based on selling items that people WANT... Whether it be simple cosmetic items (such as mini-pets or apparel,) or actual useful items. (unlimited use harvesting items vs the in-game sickles/ picks/ axes that break after XX amount of uses.) Someone else I believe very early in this thread mentioned SWG, a game that continuously nerfed characters in the name of balance, often WELLLLL after players had maxed those professions... It surely sent me scrambling to find a different game after the 3rd time.

Look, you're a business, you need to have revenue... I'm fairly certain everyone understands that. But what people want, especially with so many great games and new systems now available, (your game truly does just stand out among every game and system because of its addictiveness, ease to play, and ability to sneak a game in with only 5 minutes on your hands,) is to be treated FAIRLY and with some measure of HONESTY. Character out of balance? Don't force your players to pay for what you should have caught during testing. Come up with some other way of managing it. I just gave an example of a way to workaround teams using the same 3-5 characters constantly. It wasn't fleshed out entirely, but as opposed to having us sit on our hands and wait, with the only other option being to pay you for health packs, it's at least something I'd understand if implemented- if implemented properly. Players I'm sure are sick of playing against the same 3-5 characters, but we're an adaptable bunch. I may have found it a bit monotonous, but not necessarily BORING. Another thought- introduce "counter cards"... Heck, sell them... a stack of 5 cards for xxx amount of coins. Play one before your match that halves the effectiveness of your opponents powers, but does 1 1/2X MORE damage from their 3-gem matches. SO many other things you can do that doesn't detract from the core gameplay nor make your playerbase pay for your "fixes." I'd rather you find a way to implement this style of thinking than introduce a bunch more characters any time soon... But then again, that would cut into money... People want those shiny new cards, they need to keep paying for new roster spots.

When Thorverine occurred, my wife and I had probably pumped around $100 each into this game, mostly for character slots. When you pulled that stunt, we made the immediate decision we wouldn't spend any more money on coins or ISO, and if we could help it, on Thor or Wolverine. After several weeks, we finally gave in and bought the remaining abilities for each character to "make us whole." Since then, we've stuck to that arrangement, despite whatever temptation may have come our way. Hearing OMags is getting nerfed next, after Spidey had just awhile ago... IN BOTH CASES, DIRECTLY AFTER I MANAGED TO FINALLY GET MY FIRST 2 CHARACTERS OVER 100... YUP, THOSE 2, THE ONLY 2 I'VE MANAGED.... WITH NO WAY FOR ME TO RESPEC CHARACTERS BECAUSE OF YOUR DECISION...(growls, then breathes again.) has certainly been full of temptation... But, I won't... ANY chance of blowover since Thorverine was just destroyed, despite my excitement (and perhaps a little "HA! I hit 100 twice before you," directed at my wife,) all by "True Healing." (But then again, I suppose should healing be anymore permanent in this game than death often is in the comic books?) I'll sit through with whatever changes you make, and as you continuously change the game, continuously suck the enjoyment out of this game, I'll keep getting pushed towards the precipice of just deleting what was perhaps one of my favorite games in recent memory... And with a catalog of 966 games to my name, that's saying something. (YES, I HAVE AN ADDICTION!)

But here's the difference between your game and the nearing 1,000 other games in my collection. My wife plays. Oh, sure, she'll occasionally play a game of Mario Kart, but MPQ is the one game her and I will play as often as we can, sitting on the couch together as our one year old naps, talking about where we are in that particular tournie, or what rewards we just got. In fact, she's probably become more addicted than I have. Like most others here, I'll add my voice to the "players don't play on D3P's schedule, we play on ours." What used to be easy to play through during one of his naps is now near impossible. He's still mid-slumber when we've finally been forced to quit. And like most people, once we set it down, we'll find other ways to keep busy until he wakes.

As it stands, I'm currently on my second of potentially third surgeries. I have had a lot of time on my hands since last year, and if I need the third, (my neck,) it's going to be a lot more yet to come. I'll give praise where praise is due. especially since these past two have taken serious time away from being able to get to the PC... MPQ has helped me stay sane. However, (and this is a pretty good example of just HOW strong of a grasp MPQ has had on me,) after my second surgery, I was given a gift of a Playstation 4 to help the boredom. (Despite having the aforementioned catalog of games I could have spent time catching up on.) And that PS4 has been played, and played a lot... But, it would have been played a LOT more if MPQ wasn't around.

But, MPQ's hold on my is not that strong that if I'm being forced to set it down, that I'm going to sit staring at the clock until I can play more than one more match. Wolfenstein and Watch Dogs have been sitting here, with Sniper Elite 3 on the way, once I get into them, I'm not going to be playing much MPQ if I can't sit with it for more than 45mins. Sure, I'll clock in a little bit with my wife as we relax after she gets home, and the little guy goes to sleep, and we pop on some random TV show for that last hour before she calls it a night. With the last of my "play money" sapped as we cinch up our belts in preparation on the news of whether I need neck surgery, the idea that I had this INCREDIBLE game on my phone, one that originally didn't feel like "Pay to Play," was nice. It had no true "end-story," nothing to prevent me from continuing to keep playing it. I was in no danger of reaching the ending, and it had proven I was in no danger of getting bored with it.

But, that's changed. I'm getting bored with it because I'm being forced to put it down before I'm ready to, and there appears to be an end-story happening... Not by Doctor Doom, Magneto, Loki, not even Galactus himself... No, it's becoming more and more apparent that the ending Is involving nothing more than simple greed.

Ending by saying my thoughts on "fixes" may very well be chock full of holes... These are off-the-cuff ideas that I attempted to put in as alternatives to what I (and others,) keep seeing that seems to penalize the players when "balancing" occurs. I'm not saying I'm right, nor that my ideas may also seem like penalties against players, either. Character utilization in pvp by limiting their uses I tried to balance against the thought that those just starting would need more uses. (In retrospect, it should also be balanced against 2*, 3*, etc, as well...) "Counter-cards" may have a hole in the theory- all of this was on the fly here.

Thank you for reading,
and
Warmest Regards,

-doc8998

Unknown

yogi_ wrote:

This from IceIX via http://www.d3pforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10735&start=20#p177017.

"We haven't abandoned discussion on the healing changes, there's simply nothing for us to actively contribute at the moment. The change is made, we're monitoring that thread (and others) to see what general discussion is like. We're also heavily monitoring associated data streams such as play times and play patterns across multiple tiers of player types to see if the change made the difference we were expecting. We need at the *very* least a full PVE Event to see how player patterns change during the Event to start to get an idea of what worked and what can be iterated on. Trust me, we're listening. I just don't have anything that I can say other than that until we figure out precisely what the change did in total."

Well, thanks for destroying my chance to get 10-pack while you "experimenting" and "observing". I tried to gain some "roster diversity" with those extra covers, but I guess you don't really need that.

Unknown

pasa_ wrote:

RockMonster wrote:

Now here we are being punished for sticking to a small group of characters instead of being rewarded for using a larger group.

Later posts of IceIX clarified on that bit: D3 wants us to *level* every characters to cap. They don't give a flying kitty whether you use them or not.

Ahha, and how do we level up all characters, if we are not allowed to play more than a couple of rounds? For example I logged in a few minutes ago, played 4 rounds, used up all my Health kits, logged out. Since I was unsure of victory on a match, I spent 200 Iso on 5 boost, so I came out like 200 Iso on top (probably less).

Oh, right, I remember now, we can BUY Iso-8 as well! There is absolutely no problem to obtain thousands of Iso in seconds! That's why they introduce the new level caps as well! You just buy some Iso and that's it. No one expects you to do it the hard (ie: impossible) way to collect all that Iso for all your characters, that would be unreasonable.

I expect they will raise the Iso rewards to double soon, so they can say they are listening to us, but if you see the above real life example, I would have ended up with 400 Iso instead of 200, so basically, I would have been at the same point.

It is the same with the Natural healing boost. Yesterday I got my Ares down to 20 Hp in a fight, he needed almost 5 hours to heal up naturally. So the upgraded natural healing is another feeble attempt to mask the atrocity they committed against us.

SnowcaTT

[quote="rowaasr13"Well, thanks for destroying my chance to get 10-pack while you "experimenting" and "observing". I tried to gain some "roster diversity" with those extra covers, but I guess you don't really need that.[/quote]

With their drop rates, the 10-pack might not have done you any good. I grinded hard to get close before the change, and wasn't sure I'd be able to get the last 600 points or so I needed (which I was averaging every PVP before this). I did get it, horray! Zero 3*'s, boo!

I was just getting the hang of 2* PVP and doing pretty well, top 100 constantly getting 600-700 points. I haven't been able to hit 600 since this change, like everywhere else it makes me play the game much less often. And that makes me wonder if I should play at all.

Let's use Penny Arcade (links, language) for examples for the developer. You want your player base to pay lots of money, without realizing why. It's a good product, they can't stop!

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/ ... y-manifest

Instead, you've put in a change that makes them stop playing. This is the opposite of what you want. You don't want your customer base to realize why they are spending money: you are incredibly greedy. Then they will stop paying.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/12/05

Unknown

So if true healing is so wonderful that it helps build strong gameplay with diverse rosters... then why hasnt D3 promoted this brilliant new feature on the "what's new" section of the play store?

Literally no mention at all.

Funny that!!!

Unknown

Incredible_Bulk wrote:

So if true healing is so wonderful that it helps build strong gameplay with diverse rosters... then why hasnt D3 promoted this brilliant new feature on the "what's new" section of the play store?

Literally no mention at all.

Funny that!!!

If they cared about diverse rosters, then the addition of covers to characters wouldn't be in spurts of 3 levels to start with. The first 10 covers of a character don't matter, because their level is crapped, err, I mean capped, to stupidly artificial low numbers, with increasingly higher ISO costs. You can't build a useful character easily, so you're stuck with whatever you can focus on the best. These changes are a great way to cripple people with smaller rosters.

Unknown

fidsah wrote:

These changes are a great way to cripple people with smaller rosters.

Maybe that could be the "What's new" tagline on the play store?

Or "NEW: Healing no longer heals"

Or "NEW: Your favourite characters secretly made worse!!"

Unknown

true healing is poor choice of words, and im not happy about it

should really be called false healing

tunguska1969

Changes are absolutely idiotic.
Unless these changes were to somehow make money
they certainly don't help me play more.
It's infuriating how long I have to wait now to play and after having every character dead
that was viable in helping me move up in ranks. Just made me want to snap my ipad in half.

I've been trying to play with these changes but found it hard to get any enjoyment
out of it after seeing I'm knocked out of any chance to compete in under 15 minutes.

The time it takes the characters to regain health now does take the sting out of it a little bit
but still leaves more of my roster out of commission. Lightening rounds now are absolutely horrid.

If this is the way it's going to be then a lot more PVE events need to be added.
Waiting for characters won't be so bad for me on that part as I'd be waiting for the reward nodes to
get back up so I can move up in rank.

Was looking forward to playing a lot as I'd started vacation the day of the changes.
Was also about to purchase a stark salary. SOOOOO happy that I didn't do that now.

Phew. Enough venting. Just so frustrated after having a few games in Army of One
and going through all my health packs and not being able to play anymore.

*just wanted to add the changes also hinder my ability to take part in more than one event at a time.

IceIX

Just as a note, so far we saw an increase in Health Pack purchases the day of and after the change went Live, likely due to people reacting to the change by "powering through it" instead of changing their gameplay patterns. Then sales dropped down slightly below "standard" for on Friday/Saturday. Now they have been stable for the past day and a half at the same general amount as before the healing change. As we expected, so far the change hasn't made any real bump or dip in Health Packs for the user base. Basically, we weren't expecting this change to make any huge impact financially in regards to Health Pack purchases. So far, it's been about a net zero. As stated before, it wasn't our intent and so far the change has had about the expected result in regards to changing player's play patterns away from Prologue Healing or reliance on similar strategies to extend play. We're still monitoring closely though, as we haven't even run a full PVE Event with the new changes in effect.

I get the cynical idea that the change was intended to simply line our pockets. It was never the reasoning on our end, and continues to be something that we did that hurts now for some players but we wholeheartedly believe is in the best interest of the game in the long run. I just wanted to throw out a bit of info on the actual financial aspects of the change to illustrate what has happened so far there, so that you all are better informed.

Unknown

I don't buy it.
Frankly, there is no goodwill left between Demiurge and myself.
I treat company line as **** while hoping, however unlikely, that it may not be.
This is the level of cynicism the actions of your company has instilled in me.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Just as a note, so far we saw an increase in Health Pack purchases the day of and after the change went Live, likely due to people reacting to the change by "powering through it" instead of changing their gameplay patterns. Then sales dropped down slightly below "standard" for on Friday/Saturday. Now they have been stable for the past day and a half at the same general amount as before the healing change. As we expected, so far the change hasn't made any real bump or dip in Health Packs for the user base. Basically, we weren't expecting this change to make any huge impact financially in regards to Health Pack purchases. So far, it's been about a net zero. As stated before, it wasn't our intent and so far the change has had about the expected result in regards to changing player's play patterns away from Prologue Healing or reliance on similar strategies to extend play. We're still monitoring closely though, as we haven't even run a full PVE Event with the new changes in effect.

I get the cynical idea that the change was intended to simply line our pockets. It was never the reasoning on our end, and continues to be something that we did that hurts now for some players but we wholeheartedly believe is in the best interest of the game in the long run. I just wanted to throw out a bit of info on the actual financial aspects of the change to illustrate what has happened so far there, so that you all are better informed.

I don't think PvP would have much impact because you can basically buy 5 health pack for 75 HP in the form of a 3 hour shield, and it also clear out retaliations. That said I wonder if shield usage went up precisely for that reason.

Breakking

Due to the wonderful True Healing change and a very high MMR, I was able to play a whopping 8 matches in 40 minutes in the Punisher PVP today using a total of 6 health packs. I now have to sit and wait until I wake up in the morning to play again.

Had I been able to play longer, I probably would've used the HP that I had previously BOUGHT to shield up and protect my higher PVP scores. As it stands now, I will let my lower PVP score stand there unprotected for the night.

This is another side effect of potential lost revenue due to this drastic game change. I no longer have to purchase HP to protect a great score cause I don't get to play long enough to get a great score. You'll be saving me money and costing yourself some in the end