Burst Healing vs Armor/Shielding

Meto5000

It seems like the main intention was to make it so people can't jump into prologue in order to top off all your characters. Another problem you're attempting to solve is players being able to leave most fights without taking any meaningful damage. While you've solved this issues with the change, it seems like you've done it in a way that makes a previously great ability nearly useless. My main problem with burst healing is there are so few situations where it is useful that you can no longer count on it for any strategic purpose. It's rare that a temporary burst of health will contribute anything meaningful to the outcome of a battle. Not only that, the idea of burst or temporary healing doesn't make a lot of sense. "So, I healed...but now I'm not healed...even though I healed...but where did my heal go?...I'm so confused..."

A solution has been presented by a few people where you instead change burst healing to a shielding or armor type ability to which you responded below:

IceIX wrote:

ZenBrillig wrote:

Another question - in most systems that I've seen with this 'temporary HP' mechanism (which admittedly is mainly MMORPGs and tabletops), you can exceed a character's max HP. Will that be the case here?

The mechanics are there for abilities to overcharge health, yes. With these particular abilities - Spider-Man, Black Widow, and She-Hulk, no. It wouldn't make sense for a breather from combat to put you at 110% health.

It appears the main reason you're brushing this off is because of the ability names. Anti-gravity device, Web Bandages and Reprieve - Honestly, aside from web bandages, none of these abilities suggest a heal either. Furthermore, as far as programming goes...changing the display name of an ability is probably pretty high on the list of things "easy fixes I can do quickly." And, you've already indicated that the mechanics allow for this type of "overcharge", so there's that.

A shielding ability would allow you to deploy the ability strategically and is less confusing since it's not tied to your health in any way. The shield or armor gets used up first before your health does. Unlike healing you can't recover from something after you've already been hit but it gives you a "breather from combat" by avoiding any further damage. You could even call it an avoidance shield or some other marketing malarky, as if "burst healing" or "breather from combat" made any real sense. Shields would be used up after each match and characters will still take damage every round since there are plenty of fast damaging abilities added on to match damage that accumulate significant health loss over multiple rounds.

A shield becomes a completely new category of power that could add new and fun dimensions to a game. Think about it, you could introduce a new character with very low health but a passive ability to start each match with some shield. It's not regen like Daken and Wolverine, but it sounds cool, right? Better still -- you've got the darn mechanics coded already!

I also drew you a picture so you could see how it might look.



In my opinion I strongly believe the healing change should be reverted until you have a more usable solution in place. I realize adding shielding represents a significant amount of developer time, but right now...burst healing just feels like bad and confused coding.

Tl;DR?

Burst healing is confusing, underpowered, and not a fun game mechanic. Shields could be different, new, and potentially a lot of fun.

Unknown

Well, making heals into damage absorption would make them strictly better for the duration of the battle. Normally if 9 blue or 12 yellow immediately fell on your lap on the first turn you still won't be firing up Anti-Grav or Web Bandages immediately, but if they work like the way described you'd obviously use it immediately and benefit from that.

I don't agree with the notion that abilities shouldn't 'overcharge health' based on its name, but OBW is probably going to be fine. I wouldn't mind seeing Spiderman's heal allow you to go over 100% because he can use some help.

Unknown

As I said in a different thread, they wanted to remove healing without actually having to do the work of replacing these abilities with new functionality. This 'true healing' does exactly that.

They know it's worthless, but they don't care. There's no ROI in creating new game mechanics for old characters. Which is why so many characters have languished with 2 abilities for so long.

That's the sad truth.

Meto5000

Anti Gravity Device becomes Anti-Gravity Shield! "Natasha uses stolen Russian technology to turn gravity against the opposing team encasing her team in a shield that redirects enemy attacks"

Web Bandages becomes Web Armor! "Spiderman surrounds his team with a thick coating of web armor that leave them safe from harm - until it wears out"

Reprieve becomes Legalese! "She-Hulk uses her knowledge of the law to confuse and confound the enemy team stealing their resources and reducing damage from incoming attacks"

Meto5000

Phantron wrote:

Well, making heals into damage absorption would make them strictly better for the duration of the battle. Normally if 9 blue or 12 yellow immediately fell on your lap on the first turn you still won't be firing up Anti-Grav or Web Bandages immediately, but if they work like the way described you'd obviously use it immediately and benefit from that.

I don't agree with the notion that abilities shouldn't 'overcharge health' based on its name, but OBW is probably going to be fine. I wouldn't mind seeing Spiderman's heal allow you to go over 100% because he can use some help.

Strictly better for the duration of the battle is a silly thing to mention. Doesn't nearly every ability make a team better for the duration of the battle in some way? Damage reduces enemy health...for the duration of the battle. Yes, it would be different than healing in that you can essentially pre-cast it, however, it still doesn't grant back any lost health. Will there be some teams that will rush to 9 blue in order to get a shield up? Sure, why not? There's a trade off to do that. You're preventing the next ~3000 team damage at the cost of not stocking up on something else. Still doesn't help much if Psylocks already gotten off her black power, or Lazy Daken has already littered the field with strike tiles.

Maybe there's a cap on the amount of shield which is limited to the power being used. So using two anti-gravs right away won't give you twice as powerful a shield. And if a stronger ability is used it just adds on up to its max power. In this case there's no issue using the first anti-grav, but there's strategy in when to use it next.

Meto5000

Toxicadam wrote:

As I said in a different thread, they wanted to remove healing without actually having to do the work of replacing these abilities with new functionality. This 'true healing' does exactly that.

They know it's worthless, but they don't care. There's no ROI in creating new game mechanics for old characters. Which is why so many characters have languished with 2 abilities for so long.

That's the sad truth.

But as I mentioned, shielding doesn't have to be a new mechanic JUST for old characters. A new character based around shielding could be pretty fun to use. An SC2 Archon style character with low health but starts the game with passive shielding and/or regens shielding throughout the match. You could even have "Anti-Shield" powers on new characters that do 100% damage to health and 200% damage to shielding.