OSU Buckeyes 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. What we intend, and continue to drill in on is that we want players to have a broad mix of characters instead of a Top 3 that is their sole team to play with. In Versus this is a bit rougher of a prospect as players that battle have their last winning team placed on defense. So it's not always the best idea to fight with a less powerful defensive team in order to make up more points. That's something that we're always thinking about. We've discussed allowing players to set a defensive team, but with many other games out with similar versus situations this results in a very precise meta-game where an extremely large percentage of the user base chooses the same defenders. That's not a very fun time for most players. However, in Events, we continually buff different characters, and outside of Heroics, still allow for characters to be used that aren't buffed. What we want players to do is to play with the breadth of their roster instead of using Spider-Man or Black Widow as necessary crutches and only building 3 other characters. 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. I know I'm probably in the minority but I welcome this change and see where they are coming from. I see this leading to more diverse matches and it rewards having a good team instead of 2 max characters.
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. What we intend, and continue to drill in on is that we want players to have a broad mix of characters instead of a Top 3 that is their sole team to play with. In Versus this is a bit rougher of a prospect as players that battle have their last winning team placed on defense. So it's not always the best idea to fight with a less powerful defensive team in order to make up more points. That's something that we're always thinking about. We've discussed allowing players to set a defensive team, but with many other games out with similar versus situations this results in a very precise meta-game where an extremely large percentage of the user base chooses the same defenders. That's not a very fun time for most players. However, in Events, we continually buff different characters, and outside of Heroics, still allow for characters to be used that aren't buffed. What we want players to do is to play with the breadth of their roster instead of using Spider-Man or Black Widow as necessary crutches and only building 3 other characters. 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.
OSU Buckeyes wrote: wharrrgarbl wrote: Nobody wants them, but my 2 cents is that it'd be a lot simpler just to add a new rule/logic/code/whatever that "you can't have more health at the end of a fight than you did at the start." That takes out prologue healing, but leaves in in-battle healing. Unless, of course, the actual goal is not to remove prologue healing, but to make health packs the only (non character-specific) form of healing. [lying] But I'm not cynical enough to believe that's the impetus behind this change. [/lying] Also, the idea that this will make me bust out Cap/Moonstone/etc. for PvP is pretty funny. I'd rather run Bagman/Bagman/loaner. At least he's already got the "Kick Me" sign on him. The idea of having (and utilizing) a deep roster is good, but the defensive team mechanic is a complete anathema to that. No one's going to try to pick up a win or 2 with Bullseye if it means he ends up in someone else's crosshairs. The way I read the change this is what they are planning on doing so not sure what you are trying to say.
wharrrgarbl wrote: Nobody wants them, but my 2 cents is that it'd be a lot simpler just to add a new rule/logic/code/whatever that "you can't have more health at the end of a fight than you did at the start." That takes out prologue healing, but leaves in in-battle healing. Unless, of course, the actual goal is not to remove prologue healing, but to make health packs the only (non character-specific) form of healing. [lying] But I'm not cynical enough to believe that's the impetus behind this change. [/lying] Also, the idea that this will make me bust out Cap/Moonstone/etc. for PvP is pretty funny. I'd rather run Bagman/Bagman/loaner. At least he's already got the "Kick Me" sign on him. The idea of having (and utilizing) a deep roster is good, but the defensive team mechanic is a complete anathema to that. No one's going to try to pick up a win or 2 with Bullseye if it means he ends up in someone else's crosshairs.
IceIX wrote: What we intend, and continue to drill in on is that we want players to have a broad mix of characters instead of a Top 3 that is their sole team to play with.
Budapest1980 wrote: There are some whiny people on this message board. Every change is the end of the world and further proof that the developers are totally clueless.. Yet for all its flaws, MPQ is obviously pretty amazing or they wouldn't be so passionate. I think this change will probably be for the best. In its current state, healing abilities are a bit TOO good. With this update, abilities like anti-gravity device will still be useful, but no longer quite so necessary. Speaking as someone who has been following a deep roster strategy from the start, it's gratifying that I might finally get a competitive advantage from it.
Warrition wrote: If one of your goals is to discourage prologue healing (which I can agree is un-fun), and also to encourage more roster diversity, why not try out a more incremental change to start. Instead of healing never persisting, make it so that characters can simply never leave a match with more health than they started with (other than by true-healing means). So for instance, if your OBW (max HP: 3115) entered the battle with 2500, took damage down to 1900, healed to full, then dropped back down to 2700 and ended the battle, she would emerge with 2500 health. My proposed change alone would completely eliminate prologue healing, and would also make it so that eventually you'll need to swap out your "A" team (if it includes OBW) or use heals. But since it's a much less drastic change, you can take metrics over time and see if it's having the desired effect, and can then decide later which direction to take things.
gamar wrote: 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?
Ben Grimm wrote: My big question:are they evil or incompetent? IceIX insists they're simply incompetent; they want to promote roster diversity by using a game mechanic that sounds like a combination of Rube Goldberg and the underpants gnomes. No healing = roster diversity. It's missing several steps and a lot of logic, but that's the plan. They're simply too far removed from gameplay to realize how badly conceived this idea is. The other, probably more likely answer is that they're evil. They don't think they're selling enough health packs, and this will force people to buy them. I'm fairly close to certain this is the real reason, because the explanation given simply doesn't make any sense. I'm not accusing IceIX of lying - he may simply hav been fed a bill of goods by his bosses - but this decision probably will result in increased sales of health packs, unfortunately, and probably won't do anything to improve roster diversity. The question, I suppose, is how quickly does this render the game unplayable? Do the whales start taking the entire top ten immediately? Top twenty? Will this totally freeze the rest of us out of competition, or simply make it much, much harder for us? What will it take to make D3 realize that this will be catastrophic for gameplay, in all likelihood?
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.
Zhirrzh wrote: Also, you COULD keep playing with your 2* team for a while.
Budapest1980 wrote: There are some whiny people on this message board. Every change is the end of the world and further proof that the developers are totally clueless.. Yet for all its flaws, MPQ is obviously pretty amazing or they wouldn't be so passionate.
acescracked wrote: Is this change to facilitate burning through heal packs faster? Thus, making people buy health packs more which creates more revenue for D3?