Why Healing is Gone: It's Boring

135

Comments

  • NorthernPolarity
    NorthernPolarity Posts: 3,531 Chairperson of the Boards
    bonfire01 wrote:
    Maestro145 wrote:
    I often see, 2* rosters getting top 5 top10 in my bracket. So... it is not too hard, i guess.

    Once I was also 2* player and somehow got my first 141, then second... It is not easy, but possible.

    It used to be a LOT easier to get 3* rosters so what's your point? That it used to be easier, you took advantage of it being easier, now it's harder, new players are screwed? Not using OBW when it was MASSIVELY easier to progress means less than nothing.

    As far as the OP's post goes what a load of tosh. Healing is boring? Well that equates to playing is boring because healing is how most 2* players get to keep playing. The fact 3* players can tank then run through 2* teams to get to 700+ then worry about taking some damage in fights (or not if you use certain combos) DOES NOT mean it's the same for 2* players. Those guys fight 2* rosters and take damage. They then have to decide if they can face ANOTHER roster equivalent to them on the level of damage they've taken or use health packs (which are not exactly infinite as a resource). Once they have used their free health packs then what? Pay or bugger off for 2.5 hours assuming they want to/can play every 2.5 hours.

    It's a tinykitty change that says you have 3 options as a 2* player:

    1) Arrange your life around MPQ to keep using HPs as they refresh. No single long play session a day for you! What, you have work and a life? Well you're not for us then!
    2) Place poorly and never progress. It's all for the joy of the game! I never needed anything better than a 2* anyway! icon_rolleyes.gif
    3) Pay money to make MINIMAL tinykitty PROGRESSION. Ooh I can spend HP on health packs to get a 3* cover which isn't much use unless I already have a load for that hero (unlikely given how diluted 3* rewards are) AND the ISO to level him AND EVEN THEN he'll get hurt and I won't be able to use him much. At least i'll avoid the tedium of not paying!

    As for the moronic **** about this being a great leap forward for roster diversity you have literally no clue. The very concept that trash tier 3*s will start getting used to prolong play in PvP with the system of defensive teams shows a PROFOUND lack of understanding of the game. There is still only a point in using a very select set of heroes, in fact you might say it'll SHRINK if anything. Daken and Patch all the way to 700 (once C.Mags is neutered)? Well why not? Any reason? No? OK, i'll put them in then.... icon_e_geek.gif

    Roster diversity is EVEN WORSE at 2* level. Moonstone + Bullseye.... that'll go well.

    As for the claim healing is tedious.... what a load of ****. How tedious was firing off OBW's blue in a fight for you? How short is your tinykitty attention span that spending AP on anything other than damage for one turn bored you? Now PROLOGUE healing might be tedious (it is IMO) but this change DOESN'T ONLY EFFECT THAT. No matter what **** IceX was using to justify it.

    Gaining An Advantage The ONLY Way

    Already be at a point where you don't need to heal. Everyone else can tinykitty off and keep playing with their little 2* heroes (just not very often). icon_evil.gif

    Conclusion

    The change is great for me, less annoying 2* teams I have to overtake and they'll even be somewhat boned in PvE! All I need to do is become a icon_twisted.gif sociopath icon_twisted.gif so I don't empathise with them at all, ignore the fact F2P games only work with a broad base of engaged and active non-paying players over whom the paying customers can gain an advantage by paying thus feeling they get value for money AND it would help if I regularly agree with all the **** the devs post.... preferably without thinking too much icon_idea.gif .

    The Future Obstacles

    -2* players can't play as much, therefore can't progress and start leaving. We need to get new players and therefore need to advertise the game on forums for gullible people and poor decision makers. icon_idea.gificon_idea.gificon_idea.gif
    -People who have large, diverse rosters because the flow of HP and ISO used to be MUCH bigger than it is now don't feel like their unfair advantage gives them enough. This leads to stupid forum posts about the Dev's "visions" or "intentaions". I need to find a way of giving a flying tinykitty about the Dev's "visions" and "intentions" because I can't possibly enjoy a game for being fun if I have the slightest inkling that a few ppl I don't know or care about aren't feeling fulfilled. icon_rolleyes.gif
    -Morons will start making lets nerf Daken and Patch (and A.Wolvie and presumably even X-Farce) posts. I must try not to get too pissed off by this. It will be hard. Morons annoy me.... I will try to cope and you all should too!

    Remember back when wyp quit the forums because they werent fun anymore? People like you are exactly why this is happening. While nemeks opinion is obviously not a popular one regarding this change, calling him a moron when all he did was thoughtfully express his opinion is despicable. And the people who are actually promoting your crybaby behavior by upvoting your post? You all should be ashamed.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    edited June 2014
    NorthernPolarity wrote:
    Remember back when wyp "quit" the forums because they werent fun anymore? People like you are exactly why this is happening. While nemeks opinion is obviously not a popular one regarding this change, calling him a moron when all he did was thoughtfully express his opinion is despicable. And the people who are actually promoting your crybaby behavior by upvoting your post? You all should be ashamed.

    Maybe I was a touch too sarcastic but bottom line is you're misrepresenting an opinion with telling us how we are all mistaken little children. It was not "I think healing is boring" But "healing IS boring".

    I did state why I countered his statements so it wasn't exactly a one line post calling him an idiot.

    There was literally ZERO empathy for 2* players. It was like they don't exist or count.

    Apparently the changes fall very well in line with saving us from tedium. Again not he THINKS that but it just plain does. So anyone who doesn't find it tedious to heal in a match with OBW is wrong? Still claiming it's an opinion.

    Also if you're going to be bizarrely nitpicky I said (some of) his opinions (or statements more to the point) were moronic not him.

    And out of general interest is calling someone a crybaby for expressing their opinion despicable? Just wondering....

    Don't know why i'm bothering to type this out TBH.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    soenottelling wrote:

    Try to.give them intelligent options that benefit them and us? This forum got the skip tax changed to a bonus.

    I've seen a couple of people mention this, and it's not really a good example of how they listen to players. The only reason they listened about the skip tax was because they didn't have to do anything different than they planned. The only differences between the initial proposal and what they rolled out was presentation. Players get bonus Iso for not skipping instead of iso matches rewards increasing. They listened because they didn't have to deviate from their plans to do so.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    The problem with this change to healing has nothing to do with its effect on the game. None of us "endgame" players have time to heal in prologue without throwing up a shield and we all know better than to drag Spider-Man or OBW into a fight when we are just a few points short of 1100.

    The problem is that the devs have obviously put so much thought into this healing change and zero thought into fixing the problems that necessitated this change - or any other problems for that matter.

    -The little "rank" display on the main menu is worthless. R55 introduced ranking refresh bugs that make it infuriatingly difficult to know where you rank in PVE or PVP tournaments without constantly entering the sub or bracket, clicking the rewards tab and navigating individual rank. I should know this at a glance during the final minutes of a PVE event's subs so that I know where to focus my efforts. During the last brotherhood event I had to waste time manually checking to make sure that I stayed in the top ten instead of focusing on fights to maintain my position. That time really added up.

    -Enemies steal AP somehow, someway, without Hood, OBW, or anybody else. They do not just receive it from NPCs like thugs or muscle. They TAKE IT from us somehow. AI OBW takes so much more sometimes. Dormammu's Aid helps the other team too - the t's special. Zero acknowledgment of the issue and no fix in sight.

    -Landscape mode on tablets. We've got thousands of words from Ice about all of the thought that went into this true healing change and no evidence that the devs have put any effort into making their game workable on tablets. I am on Day 240 now and I still have to clumsily swipe left or right on my tablet screen to know how much AP my opponent has. The last tablet optimization involved adding a worthless blue border to the game so that it looked less like an iPhone game run at 2x on an iPad. That's not the optimal use of screen real estate we were hoping for. They can create a gorgeous display for their 1,000 regular Steam users but they cannot take the effort to improve the experience for their thousands of tablet users?

    -Server malfunctions. "Unintentional" greyouts? Fine, they get the benefit of the doubt. How much serious thought went into whatever caused them? So far it looks like they just changed things on the fly the same way they did the last time tanking got out of control. "Comm Link Disrupted" every time an event ends. My internet connection is fine. How much work and serious thought have they put into fixing that?

    -Content. We're on the cusp of what? Episode 4.5aii(¡)? How do we introduce Shulkie? A new story PVE that actually works her into the mythology and continues the Dark Reign storyline? No, we get Heroic again. After that she will just be ignored like Psylocke, Black Panther, Daredevil (don't get me started), Ares, Human Torch, etc. You know they want to run Prodigal Sun again soon. And then The Hunt!

    Enemy Diversity - The healing mechanic has no effect on defense teams as best I can tell. We are still going to be fighting OBW/Ares/Featured half of the time and Lazy Daken/Sentry/Featured for the other half. This changes nothing for us. It creates no diversity whatsoever in rosters we fight.

    We're all familiar with the Pareto principle in software - the 20% of the problems that affect 80% of the userbase are the problems that need to get fixed. Prologue healing affected 100% of the publisher's bottom line, but how many users did it really inconvenience? If slow healing in prologue is a problem, then it is one of the lowest priority problems the game has.

    TLDR: There's a huge spider on your back!*

    *That's what you get for not reading my posts, you inconsiderate jerks.
  • franckynight
    franckynight Posts: 582 Critical Contributor
    bonfire01 wrote:
    NorthernPolarity wrote:
    Remember back when wyp "quit" the forums because they werent fun anymore? People like you are exactly why this is happening. While nemeks opinion is obviously not a popular one regarding this change, calling him a moron when all he did was thoughtfully express his opinion is despicable. And the people who are actually promoting your crybaby behavior by upvoting your post? You all should be ashamed.

    Maybe I was a touch too sarcastic but bottom line is you're misrepresenting an opinion with telling us how we are all mistaken little children. It was not "I think healing is boring" But "healing IS boring".

    I did state why I countered his statements so it wasn't exactly a one line post calling him an idiot.

    There was literally ZERO empathy for 2* players. It was like they don't exist or count.

    Apparently the changes fall very well in line with saving us from tedium. Again not he THINKS that but it just plain does. So anyone who doesn't find it tedious to heal in a match with OBW is wrong? Still claiming it's an opinion.

    Also if you're going to be bizarrely nitpicky I said (some of) his opinions (or statements more to the point) were moronic not him.

    And out of general interest is calling someone a crybaby for expressing their opinion despicable? Just wondering....

    Don't know why i'm bothering to type this out TBH.
    Sometimes i wonder if you' re not the alt account of phantron.. You are never agreed on anything with anyone except that the game is broken.. go figure.. icon_eek.gif
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    I find the commitment to laziness pretty inspiring, though. They got rid of healing without actually having to do the work of replacing those abilities.
  • MarvelMan
    MarvelMan Posts: 1,350
    I havent waded through everything above, but maybe, just maybe, instead of trying to eliminate "un-fun" methods of gaining an advantage they eliminate the un-fun content that results if you dont gain that advantage? Such as hitting 212/141/141 teams when fielding teams of 9x/9x/loaner......or lvl 140 Daken when I just started the PVE and skipped the last one? In those scenarios I HAVE to do everything I can to get the advantage...or not play. And they obviously choose not play: http://steamcharts.com/app/234330
  • scottee
    scottee Posts: 1,610 Chairperson of the Boards
    bonfire01 wrote:

    Maybe I was a touch too sarcastic but bottom line is you're misrepresenting an opinion with telling us how we are all mistaken little children. It was not "I think healing is boring" But "healing IS boring"...

    ... Again not he THINKS that but it just plain does. So anyone who doesn't find it tedious to heal in a match with OBW is wrong? Still claiming it's an opinion...

    Pretty much everyone's statements in every forum post are the person's opinion.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Healing isn't even a 'boring advantage' like Nemek postulated. A boring advantage would be saying doing nodes precisely every 2h 24m in PvE. It's about as boring as it gets but if you do it you get a huge advantage in PvE, and more importantly, not everyone can actually do this which is why you should do it even if you think it's dumb, because it is a significant advantage.

    Healing is not an advantage unless you're naive enough to think you're the only person in the world that has figured out how to heal. In reality everyone besides you also knows exactly the same thing regarding healing. If a team needs prologue healing to be competitive, it is already roadkill for the top teams that do not need healers, like Magneto + anyone, Sentry + Daken, Thor + almost anyone, and so on. The powerful teams pile up victory so reliably and quickly that they must use shields to preserve their score because even if you win a game every minute, if you do that for 60 minutes you'd still end up losing most of the points you gained when your 60 victims decide to collect on your debt if you never shielded. A high powered offensive team either doesn't care about the score or they must use shields to preserve the score so healing is meaningless to them, since once you use shields you got to wait for the shield to clear out as many retaliation as possible, which gives you more than enough time to use health packs.

    So while it would appear those who need heal are worse off, the truth is that the top teams are always just harvesting your hard earned points if your team isn't that good. The top teams harvest each other already since Magneto + anyone still steamsrolls Magneto + anyone on defense too, so why would they ever pass up a potentially weaker target that might not even be able to retaliate successfully? Of course, compare to anyone but the top teams, healing is still the same as before because all your non top-team opponents are also healing too. I mean you'd think people would notice with the prevalence of OBW in the tier below the top teams that everyone and their brother has a healer on their team permanently, but apparently people still act as if they're the only person who's ever figured this out because all those guys running OBW in every other match you see sure aren't using her to heal?
  • Orangecrush
    Orangecrush Posts: 119
    Maestro145 wrote:
    I don't heal in prologue since season 1. Just work on your roster and when you have 8-10 141s, you do not need to heal at all!
    That is basicly saying "have you tried sucking less?"

    How many hundreds of hours does it take to get the iso to upgrade 8-10 3 stars if you aren't dropping hundreds of dollars or cheating? That isn't even taking into account the time to get 13 usable covers per character.
  • killerkoala
    killerkoala Posts: 1,185 Chairperson of the Boards
    I think the best way for people who have large diversified 141's rosters; to know how it feels to have a limited character choice and use healing to keep playing; is for people who have more than 4 141's is for them to have health packs regeneration turned off and to have all their iso and hero points to be taken away, and iso and hero points removed from prizes both individually and alliance. then D3 will have a so much of a money grab that they won't know what to do with it. if you are not willing to pay to win, you are not the players they want on their game anywhoo.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    bonfire01 wrote:

    Apparently the changes fall very well in line with saving us from tedium. Again not he THINKS that but it just plain does. So anyone who doesn't find it tedious to heal in a match with OBW is wrong? Still claiming it's an opinion.

    Most of us have taken some form of Composition at some point in our lives. We do not write "I think that X is _____ but that is just my opinion." We write "X is ________" and then explain our reasoning. Mature people who read our reasoning know that these declarative statements are actually opinions and treat them as such.

    You're not pointing out a flaw in Nemek's argument; you're just demonstrating your own inability to carry out a reasonable discussion.
  • Professa D
    Professa D Posts: 111
    If they introduced the many-times-suggested mechanic of only being downed if your HP went to zero (ie as long as you don't die you come out of the battle completely healed), then they wouldn't even need to differentiate between true healing and in-battle healing. They would both serve the purpose of increasing the likelihood that you would make it to the end of the battle without dying and thus be completely regenerated. Then the value of buying a health pack would seem much more in line and people would be more willing to buy them if they knew that by reviving a character that character could last multiple battles without getting downed.

    This would completely eliminate Prologue healing, allow people to play for hours at a time if they so choose, and level the playing field so it's less p2w. I for one know that when I was playing Candy Crush and I ran out of lives, that just meant I would go play something else or stop playing the game all together. I fear this will happen once this takes effect. I know for damn sure that I'm not going to swap in a less than optimal team in PvP just cause I'm out of health packs. I'll lose 150 points just trying to win a battle worth 30.

    I also think it would open up the option for an interesting game dynamic where you could manipulate your own character's health in-battle in increase attack effectiveness (like doing a calculated Sentry attack to bring down teams HP then letting cStorm's yellow nuke the other side) and stuff like that.
  • Bloody Sky
    Bloody Sky Posts: 8
    Honestly, I think they should just do away with the whole character regen/medpacks thing and figure out other ways to earn money. Character costumes (different colors, perhaps), unique looking tiles or battle backgrounds, etc. Just take out-of-combat HP out all together. When the battle is over, your characters go back to full health, win or lose, ready for the next battle.

    Why? Because having to wait around, and instead stare at a timer on a screen, in a video game is silly, even if the game is Free-to-Play. It's the same reason a lot of Facebook games get a bad rep with their stupid energy system, where you must have a certain amount of energy before you can move on. Don't have enough energy? Well you're going to have to wait hours, or even days, or give us that money. People don't like that **** on Facebook and flash game websites, why do we tolerate it here in MPQ? Plenty of games out there are F2P but don't restrict how much players can play the game.
  • Nemek
    Nemek Posts: 1,511
    Professa D wrote:
    If they introduced the many-times-suggested mechanic of only being downed if your HP went to zero (ie as long as you don't die you come out of the battle completely healed), then they wouldn't even need to differentiate between true healing and in-battle healing. They would both serve the purpose of increasing the likelihood that you would make it to the end of the battle without dying and thus be completely regenerated. Then the value of buying a health pack would seem much more in line and people would be more willing to buy them if they knew that by reviving a character that character could last multiple battles without getting downed.

    This would completely eliminate Prologue healing, allow people to play for hours at a time if they so choose, and level the playing field so it's less p2w. I for one know that when I was playing Candy Crush and I ran out of lives, that just meant I would go play something else or stop playing the game all together. I fear this will happen once this takes effect. I know for damn sure that I'm not going to swap in a less than optimal team in PvP just cause I'm out of health packs. I'll lose 150 points just trying to win a battle worth 30.

    I also think it would open up the option for an interesting game dynamic where you could manipulate your own character's health in-battle in increase attack effectiveness (like doing a calculated Sentry attack to bring down teams HP then letting cStorm's yellow nuke the other side) and stuff like that.

    You know, I actually had a section on this but the overall post was getting way too long and I was way past my bed time, but I think it's a very interesting topic.

    One of the major tenets of F2P gaming is for players go come back daily, with generally small spurts of gaming each day - this is why we see the energy based systems, Candy Crush 'lives', and daily login bonuses for all sorts of F2P games. These types of systems ensure that somebody couldn't bull-rush the entirety of the system and essentially "finish" the game very early (kind of like what happened with the release version of Plants vs. Zombies 2 - you could see the entirety of the game content within a couple of days, without spending a dime. It's now been heavily modified with reoccurring events to entice players to come back every day or so.) But, with MPQ, there's always "new" content ("new" as in different, even if it's somewhat rehashed from weeks/months prior) - I would hope that in itself would be enough for players to come back semi-daily, and not the health-based regeneration system.

    We also know that health packs sell really poorly, as shown in the breakdown in the VentureBeat article. So...where exactly is the motivation in having the energy/health-based system that exists today? Does it have a much larger effect on getting players to return day after day than I actually think? Or is it's main purpose derived from how the devs see strategic gameplay play out - where deep rosters are expected to be the key to success. With partial or full auto-heals (but not revives) between games, a player's risk tolerance changes dramatically. Players would take on way harder fights, since the offensive advantage + full health still gives a high likelihood of winning almost any match, regardless of how outmatched the characters actually are. Would we need to see smarter AI or better defensive abilities to counteract that? Or would it be OK that any team could beat any other team, but the difference would lie in the kill-speed?

    It's an interesting thing to think about.
  • thedarkphoenix
    thedarkphoenix Posts: 557 Critical Contributor
    I like to think this is one piece of a larger vision (or puzzle icon_cool.gif ) for the game.


    Otherwise it really doesn't help much
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Might be off topic but I feel that if the nerf to Spiderman wasn't enough, this is the final nail in the coffin for him, he's now pretty useless. I mean it just seems that if I have a better 3 star with quicker damage why keep Spiderman. Also it make the upcoming Shehulk less viable, lets face it. The majority of people using her were going to rely on green, now with this new feature I don't see myself ever using spidey or shehulk unless i'm forced to. Instead of making more varied rosters I feel it just moved to whoever chugs out the most damage, not a bad thing for me since I like quicker games but I feel that characters need reworks quicker.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Polroid wrote:
    Might be off topic but I feel that if the nerf to Spiderman wasn't enough, this is the final nail in the coffin for him, he's now pretty useless.

    spider-man-hospital-bed-500x320-1.jpg
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Nemek wrote:
    Professa D wrote:
    If they introduced the many-times-suggested mechanic of only being downed if your HP went to zero (ie as long as you don't die you come out of the battle completely healed), then they wouldn't even need to differentiate between true healing and in-battle healing. They would both serve the purpose of increasing the likelihood that you would make it to the end of the battle without dying and thus be completely regenerated. Then the value of buying a health pack would seem much more in line and people would be more willing to buy them if they knew that by reviving a character that character could last multiple battles without getting downed.

    This would completely eliminate Prologue healing, allow people to play for hours at a time if they so choose, and level the playing field so it's less p2w. I for one know that when I was playing Candy Crush and I ran out of lives, that just meant I would go play something else or stop playing the game all together. I fear this will happen once this takes effect. I know for damn sure that I'm not going to swap in a less than optimal team in PvP just cause I'm out of health packs. I'll lose 150 points just trying to win a battle worth 30.

    I also think it would open up the option for an interesting game dynamic where you could manipulate your own character's health in-battle in increase attack effectiveness (like doing a calculated Sentry attack to bring down teams HP then letting cStorm's yellow nuke the other side) and stuff like that.

    You know, I actually had a section on this but the overall post was getting way too long and I was way past my bed time, but I think it's a very interesting topic.

    One of the major tenets of F2P gaming is for players go come back daily, with generally small spurts of gaming each day - this is why we see the energy based systems, Candy Crush 'lives', and daily login bonuses for all sorts of F2P games. These types of systems ensure that somebody couldn't bull-rush the entirety of the system and essentially "finish" the game very early (kind of like what happened with the release version of Plants vs. Zombies 2 - you could see the entirety of the game content within a couple of days, without spending a dime. It's now been heavily modified with reoccurring events to entice players to come back every day or so.) But, with MPQ, there's always "new" content ("new" as in different, even if it's somewhat rehashed from weeks/months prior) - I would hope that in itself would be enough for players to come back semi-daily, and not the health-based regeneration system.

    We also know that health packs sell really poorly, as shown in the breakdown in the VentureBeat article. So...where exactly is the motivation in having the energy/health-based system that exists today? Does it have a much larger effect on getting players to return day after day than I actually think? Or is it's main purpose derived from how the devs see strategic gameplay play out - where deep rosters are expected to be the key to success. With partial or full auto-heals (but not revives) between games, a player's risk tolerance changes dramatically. Players would take on way harder fights, since the offensive advantage + full health still gives a high likelihood of winning almost any match, regardless of how outmatched the characters actually are. Would we need to see smarter AI or better defensive abilities to counteract that? Or would it be OK that any team could beat any other team, but the difference would lie in the kill-speed?

    It's an interesting thing to think about.


    I don't see why this would make people take on fights any more than it is now. I mean maybe if people are skipping Ldaken fights because they are afraid to take too much damage but other than that, If I am running a 2 star team I am not going to touch 141's regardless. I can come in right now with full health and the offensive advantage and then just prologue heal if i think I can win without getting downed. It's really not too much of a difference.
  • Nemek
    Nemek Posts: 1,511
    sms4002 wrote:
    I don't see why this would make people take on fights any more than it is now. I mean maybe if people are skipping Ldaken fights because they are afraid to take too much damage but other than that, If I am running a 2 star team I am not going to touch 141's regardless. I can come in right now with full health and the offensive advantage and then just prologue heal if i think I can win without getting downed. It's really not too much of a difference.

    Hm, maybe we play differently, then. I tend to avoid fights where I think the there is high likelihood of taking high amounts of damage, if the points are equal. Or, if I'm on a long run (either my 0 - 800 run or 800 - 1100 run), I'll always pick the match I'll lose less health in, to make sure I have enough health packs to last me down the stretch. If I were at full health every match, it'd probably be more time-efficient to just pick whichever fight comes up first.

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