Take it a step further: Eliminate healing entirely

Unknown

I will say, with a dose of salacious irony, I'm glad to see prologue healing gone. It is nice to see a change that screws the mid-tiers for once, instead of just the vets.

OK, now that I've made new friends, here's the idea:

Get rid of event healing completely. When a character goes down in an event, he/she is done. Period. No health packs, nothing.

If you want to implement a P2W mechanism, give a boost that *temporarily* INCREASES a team's health. Recommend you only do this for PvE, to prevent riots.

Separate the three tiers into a genuine 1*, 2* and 3* tier. As soon as you use ANY character from a higher tier int he tourney, you've graduated. Shard based on tier, not performance. This gives players motivation to rise up and master a tier before moving on, amd incentivizes building 1* and 2* competence and rosters. Get rid of the terrible, terrible 1* and 2* rewards for everybody. Nobody thinks that's a good idea and it can't lead to any monetization.

The above would force/reward:

Roster diversity and depth, and even multiple copies of chars as a viable tactic (albeit unlikely since it would cripple your versatility)
Player strategy about whom to pit against whom at what point of their run
Elimination of grinding while still incentivizing boost purchasing and character development
Increased tension and strategic analysis of playstyle
Shorter bursts of play with higher reward potential

Most important of all, it would make the game **** interesting again. People would have to use a variety of characters and strategies, and make some unlikely or sub-optimal pairings in order to advance their best teams.

If people are really loathe to give up on healing, set it to a 24hr basis or something, so you get your chars back after a day.

This game could be so much better with so little effort. You're never going to monetize health packs--doing something like this would encourage people to spend money on short bursts of play, improve their rosters, and reduce burnout.

Honestly, guys, try something. We're tired of 'changes' that no-one in the community wanted or asked for, overnerfing critical characters (yes, CStorm, Rags, Thor and Spidey all need to be nerfed, but every time it's been overkill) and lame PR justifications from IceIX for the dev team (really? you're making the game less boring for us? I like you, but that's the worst line I've ever been asked to swallow from a dev/mod).

Make a better game, and we'll pay you. Make us *want* to give you money again.

Unknown

...

I... I actually like this idea. Really like it. I was all prepared to come in here and read some tongue-in-cheek bit of absolutism or a completely ridiculous bit of moronism, but I was not prepared to have my mind so completely and thoroughly blown. Kudos to you, sir.

Unknown

I like it too, but this will probably only happen after season 16 when they announce mpq2

Unknown

Very good idea

You could still play with your 1* roster, even if you have 3*, so very nice for the diversity !

1* rosters fight for 1* and 2* covers (event reward and after-match reward)
2* rosters would fight for 2* and 3* covers
3* rosters would fight for 3* and huge amount of iso.

And you could compete in 3 tournaments simultaneously. So you can have extended time of gameplay without healing needed.
That's the principle of many F2P games, where low levels can enter some tournaments, but have prizes in relation with their levels

But I I think it would be better if it was a 'separate' event, like the shield training for example, and when still have mixed events

I miss my IM35/mStorm/cHawkeye

qtquazar, i support you

Unknown

zapzap wrote:

And you could compete in 3 tournaments simultaneously. So you can have extended time of gameplay without healing needed.
That's the principle of many F2P games, where low levels can enter some tournaments, but have prizes in relation with their levels

I think for practical reasons you would have to choose one, or else you'd reintroduce heavy burnout + give too much advantage to high-ranked, paying vets. But otherwise, yeah.

vudu3

qtquazar wrote:

Get rid of event healing completely. When a character goes down in an event, he/she is done. Period. No health packs, nothing.

Do you mean done for the rest of the event or done as in the game deletes the character from your roster? I need more roguelikes in my MPQ.

Unknown

This idea is amazing, at least for PvE. I assume that your characters would start fresh at the beginning of each event, and by the end of the event you are down to very carefully trying to figure out where you can get points with the remnants of your roster. Imagine, you might actually find yourself using that Bagman and Yelena to win a few points. No grinding, no scaling, no prologue healing, no MMR. I think that the new temporary healing model might even fit in nicely.

Instead of selling health boosts, sell boosts for a whole character like those that are currently given to featured characters in each event?

Unknown

BlackDog wrote:

This idea is amazing, at least for PvE. I assume that your characters would start fresh at the beginning of each event, and by the end of the event you are down to very carefully trying to figure out where you can get points with the remnants of your roster. Imagine, you might actually find yourself using that Bagman and Yelena to win a few points. No grinding, no scaling, no prologue healing, no MMR. I think that the new temporary healing model might even fit in nicely.

Instead of selling health boosts, sell boosts for a whole character like those that are currently given to featured characters in each event?

That's exactly the idea.

And vudu3... you and I are going to get along famously. I'm a hardcore roguelike player as well. The "16-rune" on Crawl kind (is it 15 now? haven't played that one in a few years)

Unknown

I came into this prepared and hoping to hate you idea, qtquazar. But I reluctantly fell in love with it. Good idea to actually promote diversity and put basically everyone in your tier in the same boat as you.

In this case I'm thinking opponent levels would have to be controlled somehow, but clearly not in the current fashion. I'm thinking something that changes more fluidly on a personal level like "level of highest char with still alive minus level of lowest char still alive" or something. It avoids abuse b/c to lower that number you'd either have to kill your high characters and fight the lower opps with your lower characters, or murder the lower end of your roster. And even people who do that will eventually kill their 141s by the end of a long event and be screwed in the long run. So as opposed to levels increasing over an event they'd actually steadily decrease.

One piece of constructive criticism towards this otherwise good idea is that entering a tier based on having a single maxed character will screw over that player; competing in a bracket full of people with 6 Tanky 141s when all you have is a single 141 Falcon would be a huge issue and you wouldn't be able to keep up. So maybe shard it more by having tiers of 1-2 maxed, 3-4, and 6+ or something

But overall I have to say (reluctantly, of course ) good idea

Unknown

Jjosh wrote:

I came into this prepared and hoping to hate you idea, qtquazar. But I reluctantly fell in love with it. Good idea to actually promote diversity and put basically everyone in your tier in the same boat as you.

In this case I'm thinking opponent levels would have to be controlled somehow, but clearly not in the current fashion. I'm thinking something that changes more fluidly on a personal level like "level of highest char with still alive minus level of lowest char still alive" or something. It avoids abuse b/c to lower that number you'd either have to kill your high characters and fight the lower opps with your lower characters, or murder the lower end of your roster. And even people who do that will eventually kill their 141s by the end of a long event and be screwed in the long run. So as opposed to levels increasing over an event they'd actually steadily decrease.

One piece of constructive criticism towards this otherwise good idea is that entering a tier based on having a single maxed character will screw over that player; competing in a bracket full of people with 6 Tanky 141s when all you have is a single 141 Falcon would be a huge issue and you wouldn't be able to keep up. So maybe shard it more by having tiers of 1-2 maxed, 3-4, and 6+ or something

But overall I have to say (reluctantly, of course ) good idea

Yeah, I've thought about that issue, but to me, that's somewhat 'caveat emptor'. You still have all your 2*s that can be used to support.

It's the kind of idea that would also be easy enough to pilot in a tourney before major game scope changes. Would require some code change to link healing to individual events rather than global (likely the most coding work)--then you just sandbox the tournament, see how it goes, and tweak ruleset after. You don't even need to do the three separate tiers for a starter tourney--just see how the idea plays out in a 'No Holds Barred' 250HP entry fee tourney.

I suspect what would happen is people would start with the mid-to-low end of their roster, and gradually wipe characters until everyone was fighting with their best. But I'm not sure. I'd actually be curious to see what came out of the mix.

Unknown

qtquazar wrote:

I suspect what would happen is people would start with the mid-to-low end of their roster, and gradually wipe characters until everyone was fighting with their best. But I'm not sure. I'd actually be curious to see what came out of the mix.

That's likely how people would do it assuming they changed pvp retal teams from "team they beat you with" to "current team". Otherwise people would be too scared to use their lvl 30 3*

Unknown

Actually, the idea's not terrible. It could work. I think it's pretty funny though that everyone in this thread seems to think it's genius while if IceIX posted saying they intend to eliminate healing altogether... well I can't imagine what the outcry would be like.

Unknown

dlaw008 wrote:

I think it's pretty funny though that everyone in this thread seems to think it's genius while if IceIX posted saying they intend to eliminate healing altogether... well I can't imagine what the outcry would be like.

It's all about delivery and transparency. I think most of us clicked on this thread ready to engage in some outcry but the idea is well thought out, thoroughly explained, and actually accomplishes its own goal. If IceIX posted this same idea, it would read "We're getting rid of free healing but you can buy healing with HP if you want, you start tourneys with 1* characters, and there are no more 2* rewards."

Now don't get me wrong, I don't blame IceIX for this. He's the messenger and I actually feel sorry for him because it has got to suck sitting behind that keyboard every day trying to find a way to clearly word the vague memo you've been handed about upcoming changes, knowing full well that your reward will be screams, hatred, and the rage quitting of people that you've come to respect from your own community. Even for someone with incredibly thick skin, this has got to take its toll on your psyche.

john1620b

dlaw008 wrote:

Actually, the idea's not terrible. It could work. I think it's pretty funny though that everyone in this thread seems to think it's genius while if IceIX posted saying they intend to eliminate healing altogether... well I can't imagine what the outcry would be like.

And we'd all have qt to thank for it.

NorthernPolarity

qtquazar wrote:

I will say, with a dose of salacious irony, I'm glad to see prologue healing gone. It is nice to see a change that screws the mid-tiers for once, instead of just the vets.

OK, now that I've made new friends, here's the idea:

Get rid of event healing completely. When a character goes down in an event, he/she is done. Period. No health packs, nothing.

If you want to implement a P2W mechanism, give a boost that *temporarily* INCREASES a team's health. Recommend you only do this for PvE, to prevent riots.

Separate the three tiers into a genuine 1*, 2* and 3* tier. As soon as you use ANY character from a higher tier int he tourney, you've graduated. Shard based on tier, not performance. This gives players motivation to rise up and master a tier before moving on, amd incentivizes building 1* and 2* competence and rosters. Get rid of the terrible, terrible 1* and 2* rewards for everybody. Nobody thinks that's a good idea and it can't lead to any monetization.

The above would force/reward:

Roster diversity and depth, and even multiple copies of chars as a viable tactic (albeit unlikely since it would cripple your versatility)
Player strategy about whom to pit against whom at what point of their run
Elimination of grinding while still incentivizing boost purchasing and character development
Increased tension and strategic analysis of playstyle
Shorter bursts of play with higher reward potential

Most important of all, it would make the game tinykitty interesting again. People would have to use a variety of characters and strategies, and make some unlikely or sub-optimal pairings in order to advance their best teams.

If people are really loathe to give up on healing, set it to a 24hr basis or something, so you get your chars back after a day.

This game could be so much better with so little effort. You're never going to monetize health packs--doing something like this would encourage people to spend money on short bursts of play, improve their rosters, and reduce burnout.

Honestly, guys, try something. We're tired of 'changes' that no-one in the community wanted or asked for, overnerfing critical characters (yes, CStorm, Rags, Thor and Spidey all need to be nerfed, but every time it's been overkill) and lame PR justifications from IceIX for the dev team (really? you're making the game less boring for us? I like you, but that's the worst line I've ever been asked to swallow from a dev/mod).

Make a better game, and we'll pay you. Make us *want* to give you money again.

I think the basic idea of a one life type of thing is neat, but youd be crazy to switch completely over to this new system and get rid of existing pve. Just as an example of a potential problem: the veterans with all the characters and such would just completely dominate this mode, so you would have literally every single transition player crying their hearts out about how before in pve at least they had a chance, but this new mode makes it pretty impossible for them to compete (basically exactly what were seeing now, but to a greater extent due to how important roster depth would be to this mode). I think an incremental approach where you have this mode as a standalone shield sim type of deal where its up for a month and perhaps has an hp entry fee to incentivize d3 to actually make the mode would be a cool addition to the game.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

qtquazar wrote:

I will say, with a dose of salacious irony, I'm glad to see prologue healing gone. It is nice to see a change that screws the mid-tiers for once, instead of just the vets.

OK, now that I've made new friends, here's the idea:

Get rid of event healing completely. When a character goes down in an event, he/she is done. Period. No health packs, nothing.

If you want to implement a P2W mechanism, give a boost that *temporarily* INCREASES a team's health. Recommend you only do this for PvE, to prevent riots.

Separate the three tiers into a genuine 1*, 2* and 3* tier. As soon as you use ANY character from a higher tier int he tourney, you've graduated. Shard based on tier, not performance. This gives players motivation to rise up and master a tier before moving on, amd incentivizes building 1* and 2* competence and rosters. Get rid of the terrible, terrible 1* and 2* rewards for everybody. Nobody thinks that's a good idea and it can't lead to any monetization.

The above would force/reward:

Roster diversity and depth, and even multiple copies of chars as a viable tactic (albeit unlikely since it would cripple your versatility)
Player strategy about whom to pit against whom at what point of their run
Elimination of grinding while still incentivizing boost purchasing and character development
Increased tension and strategic analysis of playstyle
Shorter bursts of play with higher reward potential

Most important of all, it would make the game tinykitty interesting again. People would have to use a variety of characters and strategies, and make some unlikely or sub-optimal pairings in order to advance their best teams.

If people are really loathe to give up on healing, set it to a 24hr basis or something, so you get your chars back after a day.

This game could be so much better with so little effort. You're never going to monetize health packs--doing something like this would encourage people to spend money on short bursts of play, improve their rosters, and reduce burnout.

Honestly, guys, try something. We're tired of 'changes' that no-one in the community wanted or asked for, overnerfing critical characters (yes, CStorm, Rags, Thor and Spidey all need to be nerfed, but every time it's been overkill) and lame PR justifications from IceIX for the dev team (really? you're making the game less boring for us? I like you, but that's the worst line I've ever been asked to swallow from a dev/mod).

Make a better game, and we'll pay you. Make us *want* to give you money again.

I think the basic idea of a one life type of thing is neat, but youd be crazy to switch completely over to this new system and get rid of existing pve. Just as an example of a potential problem: the veterans with all the characters and such would just completely dominate this mode, so you would have literally every single transition player crying their hearts out about how before in pve at least they had a chance, but this new mode makes it pretty impossible for them to compete (basically exactly what were seeing now, but to a greater extent due to how important roster depth would be to this mode). I think an incremental approach where you have this mode as a standalone shield sim type of deal where its up for a month and perhaps has an hp entry fee to incentivize d3 to actually make the mode would be a cool addition to the game.

PvE would either be tiered as well, or you could characterize it the way you want.

Actually, I would do a lot more loaners (at decent levels) for PvE, so more people can see what these characters can accomplish and the kind of combos they might form. Simulator was an excellent first step in forcing players to at least experiment a little bit more.

I think the game currently exists with a very limited (and arbitrary) ruleset that does not do justice to its possibilities. The dev team has so far shown a very lazy approach to 'developing' the actual game--either by nerfing characters, changing cost rates for boosts, etc.

We shouldn't' have to be discussing the merits or elimination of tanking... the very fact that tanking needs or doesn't need to exist based on the dev structure is the real problem, as is the limited use of your rosters, as is the total lack of incentive to advance beyond a few highly-leveled characters.

The key mechanics of the game need to be rethought, looking for expedient solutions that a) encourgae players to play in shorter but more rewarding bursts and b) incentivize players to spend money in a way that doe not force them to feel degraded as a P2W player. Roster slot limitation, IMHO, is an example of a decent, working mechanic that accomplishes that. Health packs, on the other hand, are not. These dichotomies should be the triggers for better design--rather than trying to 'trick' players into paying money on changes that don't do anything to improve the underlying design.

tl;dr

Make a better game, and they will come. And pay.

NorthernPolarity

qtquazar wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

qtquazar wrote:

I will say, with a dose of salacious irony, I'm glad to see prologue healing gone. It is nice to see a change that screws the mid-tiers for once, instead of just the vets.

OK, now that I've made new friends, here's the idea:

Get rid of event healing completely. When a character goes down in an event, he/she is done. Period. No health packs, nothing.

If you want to implement a P2W mechanism, give a boost that *temporarily* INCREASES a team's health. Recommend you only do this for PvE, to prevent riots.

Separate the three tiers into a genuine 1*, 2* and 3* tier. As soon as you use ANY character from a higher tier int he tourney, you've graduated. Shard based on tier, not performance. This gives players motivation to rise up and master a tier before moving on, amd incentivizes building 1* and 2* competence and rosters. Get rid of the terrible, terrible 1* and 2* rewards for everybody. Nobody thinks that's a good idea and it can't lead to any monetization.

The above would force/reward:

Roster diversity and depth, and even multiple copies of chars as a viable tactic (albeit unlikely since it would cripple your versatility)
Player strategy about whom to pit against whom at what point of their run
Elimination of grinding while still incentivizing boost purchasing and character development
Increased tension and strategic analysis of playstyle
Shorter bursts of play with higher reward potential

Most important of all, it would make the game tinykitty interesting again. People would have to use a variety of characters and strategies, and make some unlikely or sub-optimal pairings in order to advance their best teams.

If people are really loathe to give up on healing, set it to a 24hr basis or something, so you get your chars back after a day.

This game could be so much better with so little effort. You're never going to monetize health packs--doing something like this would encourage people to spend money on short bursts of play, improve their rosters, and reduce burnout.

Honestly, guys, try something. We're tired of 'changes' that no-one in the community wanted or asked for, overnerfing critical characters (yes, CStorm, Rags, Thor and Spidey all need to be nerfed, but every time it's been overkill) and lame PR justifications from IceIX for the dev team (really? you're making the game less boring for us? I like you, but that's the worst line I've ever been asked to swallow from a dev/mod).

Make a better game, and we'll pay you. Make us *want* to give you money again.

I think the basic idea of a one life type of thing is neat, but youd be crazy to switch completely over to this new system and get rid of existing pve. Just as an example of a potential problem: the veterans with all the characters and such would just completely dominate this mode, so you would have literally every single transition player crying their hearts out about how before in pve at least they had a chance, but this new mode makes it pretty impossible for them to compete (basically exactly what were seeing now, but to a greater extent due to how important roster depth would be to this mode). I think an incremental approach where you have this mode as a standalone shield sim type of deal where its up for a month and perhaps has an hp entry fee to incentivize d3 to actually make the mode would be a cool addition to the game.

PvE would either be tiered as well, or you could characterize it the way you want.

Actually, I would do a lot more loaners (at decent levels) for PvE, so more people can see what these characters can accomplish and the kind of combos they might form. Simulator was an excellent first step in forcing players to at least experiment a little bit more.

I think the game currently exists with a very limited (and arbitrary) ruleset that does not do justice to its possibilities. The dev team has so far shown a very lazy approach to 'developing' the actual game--either by nerfing characters, changing cost rates for boosts, etc.

We shouldn't' have to be discussing the merits or elimination of tanking... the very fact that tanking needs or doesn't need to exist based on the dev structure is the real problem, as is the limited use of your rosters, as is the total lack of incentive to advance beyond a few highly-leveled characters.

The key mechanics of the game need to be rethought, looking for expedient solutions that a) encourgae players to play in shorter but more rewarding bursts and b) incentivize players to spend money in a way that doe not force them to feel degraded as a P2W player. Roster slot limitation, IMHO, is an example of a decent, working mechanic that accomplishes that. Health packs, on the other hand, are not. These dichotomies should be the triggers for better design--rather than trying to 'trick' players into paying money on changes that don't do anything to improve the underlying design.

tl;dr

Make a better game, and they will come. And pay.

Sure, but you cant expect a company to go "okay guys, lets throw away 6 months of work tuning our existing pve system and replace that with this entirely new system that may or may not actually be better for our profits". It just doesnt make any sense from a development standpoint, and no lead in their right mind would ever do something like this when there is a far safer alternative such as deploying the change incrementally. Change doesnt happen overnight unless something is seriously messed up, and while the whole forum seems to think that the healing change is precisely that, after a week things are just going to go back to normal just like every other change in the past that was supposdly gamebreaking and spawned a 50 page thread. My point was just that if you honestly want to give d3 some constructive criticism and suggest something that they might actually implement, its probably not a good idea to suggest something that theyll just straight up never do, like completely revamping their pve system overnight.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

qtquazar wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

qtquazar wrote:

I will say, with a dose of salacious irony, I'm glad to see prologue healing gone. It is nice to see a change that screws the mid-tiers for once, instead of just the vets.

OK, now that I've made new friends, here's the idea:

Get rid of event healing completely. When a character goes down in an event, he/she is done. Period. No health packs, nothing.

If you want to implement a P2W mechanism, give a boost that *temporarily* INCREASES a team's health. Recommend you only do this for PvE, to prevent riots.

Separate the three tiers into a genuine 1*, 2* and 3* tier. As soon as you use ANY character from a higher tier int he tourney, you've graduated. Shard based on tier, not performance. This gives players motivation to rise up and master a tier before moving on, amd incentivizes building 1* and 2* competence and rosters. Get rid of the terrible, terrible 1* and 2* rewards for everybody. Nobody thinks that's a good idea and it can't lead to any monetization.

The above would force/reward:

Roster diversity and depth, and even multiple copies of chars as a viable tactic (albeit unlikely since it would cripple your versatility)
Player strategy about whom to pit against whom at what point of their run
Elimination of grinding while still incentivizing boost purchasing and character development
Increased tension and strategic analysis of playstyle
Shorter bursts of play with higher reward potential

Most important of all, it would make the game tinykitty interesting again. People would have to use a variety of characters and strategies, and make some unlikely or sub-optimal pairings in order to advance their best teams.

If people are really loathe to give up on healing, set it to a 24hr basis or something, so you get your chars back after a day.

This game could be so much better with so little effort. You're never going to monetize health packs--doing something like this would encourage people to spend money on short bursts of play, improve their rosters, and reduce burnout.

Honestly, guys, try something. We're tired of 'changes' that no-one in the community wanted or asked for, overnerfing critical characters (yes, CStorm, Rags, Thor and Spidey all need to be nerfed, but every time it's been overkill) and lame PR justifications from IceIX for the dev team (really? you're making the game less boring for us? I like you, but that's the worst line I've ever been asked to swallow from a dev/mod).

Make a better game, and we'll pay you. Make us *want* to give you money again.

I think the basic idea of a one life type of thing is neat, but youd be crazy to switch completely over to this new system and get rid of existing pve. Just as an example of a potential problem: the veterans with all the characters and such would just completely dominate this mode, so you would have literally every single transition player crying their hearts out about how before in pve at least they had a chance, but this new mode makes it pretty impossible for them to compete (basically exactly what were seeing now, but to a greater extent due to how important roster depth would be to this mode). I think an incremental approach where you have this mode as a standalone shield sim type of deal where its up for a month and perhaps has an hp entry fee to incentivize d3 to actually make the mode would be a cool addition to the game.

PvE would either be tiered as well, or you could characterize it the way you want.

Actually, I would do a lot more loaners (at decent levels) for PvE, so more people can see what these characters can accomplish and the kind of combos they might form. Simulator was an excellent first step in forcing players to at least experiment a little bit more.

I think the game currently exists with a very limited (and arbitrary) ruleset that does not do justice to its possibilities. The dev team has so far shown a very lazy approach to 'developing' the actual game--either by nerfing characters, changing cost rates for boosts, etc.

We shouldn't' have to be discussing the merits or elimination of tanking... the very fact that tanking needs or doesn't need to exist based on the dev structure is the real problem, as is the limited use of your rosters, as is the total lack of incentive to advance beyond a few highly-leveled characters.

The key mechanics of the game need to be rethought, looking for expedient solutions that a) encourgae players to play in shorter but more rewarding bursts and b) incentivize players to spend money in a way that doe not force them to feel degraded as a P2W player. Roster slot limitation, IMHO, is an example of a decent, working mechanic that accomplishes that. Health packs, on the other hand, are not. These dichotomies should be the triggers for better design--rather than trying to 'trick' players into paying money on changes that don't do anything to improve the underlying design.

tl;dr

Make a better game, and they will come. And pay.

Sure, but you cant expect a company to go "okay guys, lets throw away 6 months of work tuning our existing pve system and replace that with this entirely new system that may or may not actually be better for our profits". It just doesnt make any sense from a development standpoint, and no lead in their right mind would ever do something like this when there is a far safer alternative such as deploying the change incrementally. Change doesnt happen overnight unless something is seriously messed up, and while the whole forum seems to think that the healing change is precisely that, after a week things are just going to go back to normal just like every other change in the past that was supposdly gamebreaking and spawned a 50 page thread. My point was just that if you honestly want to give d3 some constructive criticism and suggest something that they might actually implement, its probably not a good idea to suggest something that theyll just straight up never do, like completely revamping their pve system overnight.

My point was more that you don't have to revamp the PvE 'system' at all (that isn't to deny there are coding requirements regarding how healing functions overall).

Transition players are always going to be in a rough spot. That's the definition of the idea of 'transitioning'. The bigger problem is that they need to see value on the other side to be motivated to complete the transition.

Regardless, your PvE concern is fairly easy to mitigate with something already being used (which was also suggested by another player earlier in this thread): sharding. You simply group players by a mechanic that takes into consideration their available roster resources, if the first few PvEs prove that to be necessary. I would still leave a high degree of variance here, as you want to reward players that make different upgrade choices in different situations or spend to seriously upgrade marginal value characters, but, really, whatever. Not that difficult design-wise.

The only real work is the recoding of the global healing mechanism. That's a definite time investment, but seems to me like a simplification of the game's code, rather than a complexification.