Why Healing is Gone: It's Boring

Unknown

Nemek wrote:

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.

I can see what you mean, and obviously if the points are equal I am going to go for the easier match but I would still do the same regardless of how healing works. I think when this would come into effect would be if its slightly more or less points. Say you have a match for 25 points against HT, Spiderman and Mags vs a match worth 26-28 against sentry daken Lthor. Honestly I think I would still pick the 25 point match just because if in my head if I have a chance at taking a lot of damage, I also have a high chance of losing so I would rather play it safe. Maybe i would go after that second match more often if I knew I could come out full HP though. I do like the idea.

Unknown

I appreciate your thoughts on "why healthpacks?" Nemek, but I'd be surprised if D3 has given them that much thought. I suspect they put in an energy system cause other games had one. It doesn't make many sales or incentive people to play more regularly, but now inertia has it held tight.

Unknown

Nemek wrote:

TLDR: Prologue healing is a chore. It's tedious and un-fun (the results, however, can lead to plenty fun). But, since it's available, players feel forced to partake in it to remain competitive among their peers. Game mechanics that reward tedium and boring gameplay should not exist. Similarly, game mechanics that "force" users to use certain characters should also not exist. The system needed to change.

Completely agree, BUT:

Nemek wrote:

While the methods used to curb skipping and tanking possibly have questionable effectiveness,

There's the rub, isn't it?

Look, I don't fault d3p for the fact that emergent gameplay lead to strategies such that tedious play leads to victory, and trying to fix that. But let's look at the examples:

Skipping:
PROBLEM: The MMR system pairs people way above their punching grade, or pairs them with people whose points are such that attacking them is a DISadvantage.
POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS: Decrease penalties for losing fights and/or retals, let shielded players show up more frequently, make it so we don't see the same 5 players over and over as we skip, ""fix"" MMR
D3P's "fix": Skip Tax. Everyone is still forced ("nudged") by the system because the cost of not skipping is so high, but now it's more painful for them

Scaling:
PROBLEM: We want newer players to have a chance in events, we don't want everything to come down to grinding forever
POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS: Give players more ISO as their scaling rises, make separate brackets for veterans and new players, don't freaking do community scaling at all
D3P's "fix": Characters now scale to level 400. For Reasons. Playing the game more than "necessary" is just shooting yourself in the foot

Tanking:
PROBLEM: We don't want high level players bullying low level players
POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS: Give players more ISO based on opponent's MMR, make seperate brackets for veterans and new players, ""fix"" MMR
D3P's "fix": Numerous, players are still "nudged" to tank because the cost of not tanking is so high, but now it's more painful for them

Prologue Healing:
PROBLEM: Players without certain characters are at a disadvantage, it's boring
POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS: Put Spidey's yellow back in that one venom node, Honestly I'm not even sure what the "right" solution is here because just letting everyone heal to max would just make tanks great on defense AND offense, and what is the health pack system even supposed to accomplish? It seems like a holdover from other IAP games where you can purchase to play longer, but that mechanic really, REALLY doesn't work in a game centered entirely around player vs player
D3P's "fix": Temp healing is actually how I'd handle healing in a game like this, but the fact that the game transitions between "critical play times" where keeping a healthy team is absolutely essential and "down times" where it doesn't really matter really crimps the ability for any fix to work

It's not d3p's motivations. It's that they stumble around, Mr Magoo-like, implementing "solutions" that do nothing to address the PROBLEM causing the tedious behavior, and their "treat the symptom not the disease" band-aids are often less like band-aids and more like salt in the would, not even treating the symptoms but just making it more painful for the patient.

Honestly I'd feel MORE confident in the game if they ignored the problems or even implemented changes that seemed more like cash-grabs, it's the fact that these changes don't seem intended to increase revenue AND come nowhere near close to addressing the game's flaws that make me lose optimism for the game improving

SnowcaTT

I've read a lots of topics about problems with the game, or suggestions folks would like.

I don't think I remember seeing a "Healing is Boring" or "Prologue healing is a problem" thread before. Certainly it might lead to the "Matchups are all the same" type thread, but that is a different problem.

This problem that was "solved" was not something that anyone was begging for a solution for.

I can't even think of how many threads I've read about MMR-hell. There is a problem that people are begging for a solution for, if the dev team wants something to do.

Spoit

I only skimmed, but does that mean that the real reason spidey was bag-maned was because he was boring as hell?

Kelbris

I really don't like this mentality where someone else can tell me what I find fun.

I stopped doing it months ago and started only relying on health packs (primarily because I want to play this as little as possible; too many unopened console games for me to care about a phone game), but I actually enjoyed seeing how much health I could restore while doing as little damage as possible, while controlling the entire board with OBW. It was like a little mini game with my own Nuzlocke rules, trying to collect AP with match-4 City tiles and spamming Recon to minimize the amount of CD tiles I have to deal with.

If you think it's un-fun, that's fine. Say it. But actually say "I think it's un-fun." You're Nemek; people will agree with you anyway

Unknown

While there is definitely truth to the assessment that "prologue healing being the only way to go for some players = boring game experience"--

The real problem is that this has been all there is for many players. Since day 1.

A real solution would be "exciting new alternatives."

D3P's solution is: "take away the only way to go for some players while not adding any new alternatives, exciting or otherwise." Which, net-net, makes the game less enjoyable for many and will cause an exodus.

Not going to bother linking to all my old harebrained suggestions but there are plenty of other ways excessive character damage could be mitigated (other character tanking for you, temporary bonus health "armor," even Super Mario Bros. style temporary invulnerability for X turns). No steps to any kind of alternative have been taken. Since day one, the game has only offered "boring" healing. Now, even that is being taken away.

Roster diversity is a completely separate issue that D3P is not actually trying to solve for--that's just a smokescreen and code for "we just want to shake out all the F2P OBWs." If overall roster diversity were at all important to this company, it would not have gone on to release 3-star clones of 2-star characters, especially 3-star Thor, who is such an overpowered no-brainer to use that it's ridiculous. Not to mention that the new change makes the already overexposed Patch and 3-star Daken even more prominent, which means even less diversity in PVP. Like people needed more reasons to play these guys. Self-damaging Sentry with HP-powered boosts killing entire teams in 60 seconds has been covered extensively in other threads so I won't go into that, except to point out that it also plays perfectly into D3P's hopes that players will buy more heal packs. If D3P actually wanted roster diversity, maybe it could stop re-releasing 3-star versions of the same characters that have been in the game for months, and instead buff some of the game's many, many, many underpowered loser characters--something I lobbied for, for months, until I gave up.

It's been correctly pointed out that heal packs are miserable investments that nobody buys in any great quantities. This nerf is clearly an attempt to move more of them off the shelf, like swapping the canned corn with the canned peas to bring them to eye level. It's a ridiculous, out-of-touch, consumer packaged goods approach that has no place in a complex, live, PVP mobile game.

My impotent ranting aside, change like these will cost them customers, money, and eventually the game.

Unknown

One comment I'm not seeing a lot of is ALL 2* PLAYERS ARE EQUALLY AFFECTED
You still will get the same placements because the same problems is faced by all

As far as making the transition from 2* to 3*, I feel the anger people have for losing obw for prologue healing but much like the "loss" of spidey for 3* players, this will make you a better player
I used to use spidey 100% of the time and won maybe half of all PvP but I played too slow & needed to use 24hr shield & play early cause spidey limited me. Once I "couldn't" use him anymore, I steadily became a faster player
Now I get 1100 w 2-3 shields (150-300 hp cause sometimes I use a 8hr in addition to some 3hr) instead of 1000 w 300-375hp of shields
Use to make slight HP profit from PvP (I gained hp from pve). Now I make a profit on hp in both

My honest advice to players wanting to transition from 2* to 3* is the following:
1) play every lightning round. Farm it for ISO & tokens. You can make 20k+ per day easy. Any roster can do this
2) play trainer as much as you can. Don't worry about your score. Just win a lot. Progression rewards & lots of regular ISO. Again any roster can do this
3) use boosts late in PvP from all this ISO to help your score in PvP for better placements
4) find a venue (this board, stronger alliance, FB pages etc) where you can ask questions to do better in general

Just remember it's not hard to get a strong roster. It's mostly about earning tons of ISO. Placements for covers are useless unless there's ISO to level up. Soft cap all 3* ASAP. If you have tons of ISO, you will be just fine. Trust me

GrumpySmurf1002

JoshBot3000 wrote:

Soft cap all 3* ASAP. If you have tons of ISO, you will be just fine. Trust me

Given everything I've read and experienced about the 2 -> 3* transition, this isn't very reliable advice.

The more levels I put into the 3*s on my roster (and one are higher than lvl53 right now), the more I see 141's pop up in my PvP nodes. You're right about saving the ISO. But this isn't the way to make the transition. You have to save up covers and ISO, and then dump it into the 3* in one shot.

Similiarly, running up your wins in the sim is another good way to run into opponents you can't beat with a 2* roster, with or without OBW.

And yes, while it does affect all 2* players, it affects them considerably more than 3* players, simply because of the diversity of the characters (12 vs 22, let alone discussions of who are actually useful).

Unknown

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

JoshBot3000 wrote:

Soft cap all 3* ASAP. If you have tons of ISO, you will be just fine. Trust me

Given everything I've read and experienced about the 2 -> 3* transition, this isn't very reliable advice.

It reads as an awful advice unless it stands in the if context that comes after. In MPQ you rarely sit on tons of ISO, so you put it here it counts. Wasting it on characters that just collect dust is just plain bad.

I never leveled anything before putting to actual use (or know how I will in some upcoming game. Most *** characters suck even with 11 covers and it's exceptional case to be useful with mere 8. And those still are happy to eat 60-80k of ISO or more.

If you do have all the covers and ISO it still worth thinking limits of leveling instead of just capping. In teamwork it is important who will take what colors so you may be better stopping way under 141 looking at color damage numbers.

I was actually sitting on ton of ISO lately still have just 3 141s: LT, BP and Patch (with LD softcapped waiting covers). While most others are 7-20 levels lower and a group of rarely used characters kept between 80-110.

simonsez

Phantron wrote:

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.

Don't really follow the logic behind your post. Healing isn't about attaining an advantage; it's about being able to enter a node or a PvP battle with a team that's not crippled. IE, attaining parity, not an advantage, since your opponents are always at full health.

If they're going to be giving us PvEs with limited rosters, with nodes where goons feed yellow to Hood, green to Jugg, and they both start cascading on the 3rd move without making any matches, and start piling up the reds for headbutts, there's no way my Thor is getting out of this with more than 20%-30% of his health, if that much. So what are my options if I want to play another node without prologue healing? I send him into the next node and ride him as long as I can; buy/use a health pack; use someone else and watch the rest of my characters get nibbled down to nothing; wait 4 hours for him to regen. I don't see how any of these is a good option, and I don't see any argument against the necessity of prologue healing for the 99% of players who aren't playing infinite turns with CMag.

wymtime

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

JoshBot3000 wrote:

Soft cap all 3* ASAP. If you have tons of ISO, you will be just fine. Trust me

Given everything I've read and experienced about the 2 -> 3* transition, this isn't very reliable advice.

The more levels I put into the 3*s on my roster (and one are higher than lvl53 right now), the more I see 141's pop up in my PvP nodes. You're right about saving the ISO. But this isn't the way to make the transition. You have to save up covers and ISO, and then dump it into the 3* in one shot.

Similiarly, running up your wins in the sim is another good way to run into opponents you can't beat with a 2* roster, with or without OBW.

And yes, while it does affect all 2* players, it affects them considerably more than 3* players, simply because of the diversity of the characters (12 vs 22, let alone discussions of who are actually useful).

I could not agree more with Grumpy smurf (great name by the way). The 2-3* transition just got a lot harder. I am in that phase now and have 3 3*** cover over 100 and 2 close. going into PVP and not being able true heal is going to make the game a lot different. for a 2* team getting hit with 1 sunder or rampage will drasticly set a player back while playing PVP.
The good part of this update is it will force players to know they can win without a fully healthed team. It will help scaling and MMR becuase people will loose more trying out different rosters (not fun for players but a truth). What the devs need to do is increase the normaly number of health packs we can hold. I think 8 health packs is a good number. It would let you heal 2 teams in 1/2 hour and 3 full teams in 1 hour. If you going through more than 9 health packs an hour you are probably healing too often when you can play injured.

Unknown

A hard to code, yet simple solution to all the 2* transtition thing would be to allow players to "choose" their PvP bracket instead of relying on bad meta.

When an event starts with say, Punisher rewards... They should just implement a system where one can choose... Say the "Lazy Daken" tournament or the "astonishing wolverine" tournament.

Where one is a "everything goes bracket" and the other a 2* cap bracket.

Once you enter a bracket the other dissapears/greys out.

A 2* transitionning player would play against other 2* transitionning players, without the worry of "MMR hell". If, I don't know, Nemek or Reckless or anyone else out there, with a full orster of 141's feels the need or want to go into that bracket, so be it. They will still be limited to the same 2* roster as everyone else. Granted, they might have a few more maxed 2*s, but that's where MMR comes into play. Level the playing field and give people the chance to diversify.

THIS would really bring a breadth of life back into the game. Also, by running dual bracket systems, space out the rewards to some that would be hard pressed to reach them.

Just my 2 cents, but to me, this would make sense...

EDIT:
The overall "total score" of either chosen bracket would have to cumulate for Alliance and alliance rewards. Where as both tournaments would combine for "alliance rewards" - where the alliance reward is one combined total for both brackets.

GrumpySmurf1002

Tonzil wrote:

A hard to code, yet simple solution to all the 2* transition thing would be to allow players to "choose" their PvP bracket instead of relying on bad meta.

It doesn't solve the problem of the 2* level being a 3-4 person show (OBW + the r/g/y guys).

That's the biggest issue. They've taken "people use OBW too much" and "people are healing in prologue too much" and turned it into "here, play with a set of 4-5 useful characters that you can't heal any more." They're doing this under the guise of diversity, when the people relying on the OBW crutch don't have real alternatives anyway.

You'll see it full force in the next PvP where OBW will be locked out. Count all the different 2* pairs you see. There's 55 possibilities of 2* pairs, and your count won't exceed 10.

Unknown

Nemek did you get my PM?

SnowcaTT

JoshBot3000 wrote:

One comment I'm not seeing a lot of is ALL 2* PLAYERS ARE EQUALLY AFFECTED
You still will get the same placements because the same problems is faced by all

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” (Orwell)

I'm sure some will be willing to pay a ton for healthpacks, which will keep them going. This game suddenly became pay-to-win.

(Maybe it always was. And I'm sure some will use another method to "win".)

Unknown

To me it's one more way they are trying to make this into a money pit. Taking away this healing property will make me look for something else. Simply, I will play this game, but not competitively or nearly as much.

killerkoala

without prologue healing. pvp and pve event are going to only going to be for the pay to win "idiots". i can't imagine winning more than 5 matches before needed to wait hours for health packs and characters to recharge. i just did lightning round (9am pst)and my character are not going to be fully healed till 2nd (1pm pst) lightning round after. so i guess waiting till after juggs event should have been consideration.

simonsez

killerkoala wrote:

without prologue healing. pvp and pve event are going to only going to be for the pay to win "idiots".

Pretty much. Instead of rewarding obsessive dedication towards maxing points, now you just need to be one of the few willing to buy lots of health packs.

Unknown

JoshBot3000 wrote:

One comment I'm not seeing a lot of is ALL 2* PLAYERS ARE EQUALLY AFFECTED
You still will get the same placements because the same problems is faced by all

As far as making the transition from 2* to 3*, I feel the anger people have for losing obw for prologue healing but much like the "loss" of spidey for 3* players, this will make you a better player
I used to use spidey 100% of the time and won maybe half of all PvP but I played too slow & needed to use 24hr shield & play early cause spidey limited me. Once I "couldn't" use him anymore, I steadily became a faster player
Now I get 1100 w 2-3 shields (150-300 hp cause sometimes I use a 8hr in addition to some 3hr) instead of 1000 w 300-375hp of shields
Use to make slight HP profit from PvP (I gained hp from pve). Now I make a profit on hp in both

My honest advice to players wanting to transition from 2* to 3* is the following:
1) play every lightning round. Farm it for ISO & tokens. You can make 20k+ per day easy. Any roster can do this
2) play trainer as much as you can. Don't worry about your score. Just win a lot. Progression rewards & lots of regular ISO. Again any roster can do this
3) use boosts late in PvP from all this ISO to help your score in PvP for better placements
4) find a venue (this board, stronger alliance, FB pages etc) where you can ask questions to do better in general

Just remember it's not hard to get a strong roster. It's mostly about earning tons of ISO. Placements for covers are useless unless there's ISO to level up. Soft cap all 3* ASAP. If you have tons of ISO, you will be just fine. Trust me

This post is so ridiculous and all of the advice so bad I'm not sure what to do with it. Every 2* Is affected equally? No. That depends on your playtime, your bracket, your MMR, your roster, etc. All 2* are not affected equally. And no, they won't place the same even if they were. Why? Because they have to compete against, either through MMR or brackets, people with 3* rosters.

Hoarding iso does not get you a 3* roster. Soft capping all your 3* does not make it easier to get more 3*s. In fact it probably makes it harder. Oi.