Finally, destruction of bad metagame!

Dauthi

bonfire01 wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

This sounds like most phone/facebook games. They limit what you can do in a certain amount of time to avoid burnout. These games aren't meant for hardcore gaming as they offer a lot less content than something like WoW. They are meant to get on during small intervals in your life and are often promoted to do such (new PVE timers, health packs, health regen, shields etc). I also believe if you can't play longer than an hour on 6 health packs your problem is MMR/Tanking, not healing.

You believe that 3*s are progressing faster? Note that they often get rewards they already have, limiting their progression as well. Meanwhile whenever a 2* roster gains any 3* it is 100% progression. The more 3*s you the slower your progression to boot.

Tanking only impacts 2* players when 3* players who have tanked hit them.

Are you implying that 2* rosters do not have to tank?

I can't comment on how much that happens to each player but since 2* players apparently outnumber 3* players I imagine a lot of their time is spent beating up on each other. Since D3 has stated they want "challenging" fights then your MMR locking you to equivalent rosters won't change so what kind of fix are you envisaging?

There is no cap on how high your opponents scale according to your MMR. This is the problem.

As far as 3*s go are we meant to be getting sympathy for those duplicate covers? I don't expect a great deal.... I can get hold of pretty much whatever covers I want. Unless I get unlucky with my bracket I can generally get 1st in PvP if I want to.... so what's limiting my progression?

I am trying to make those with 2* rosters understand we aren't actually receiving all the rewards they think we are. We obtain 1 or 2 covers usually just like when they win with a low ranking.

Are you saying having to wait for covers you want to rotate around is somehow worse than struggling to win anything at all? Especially when 2* transitioning players need to complete individual heroes to be of any use so they ALSO need to wait for heroes to rotate around and then somehow win the covers.

Progression is earning covers, and if both 3* and 2* are able to earn the same amount of covers per event then that is what matters. 3* gets slowed down by obtaining doubles or having completed 3* characters in general. 2* gets slowed down by low gains but it is highly unlikely they are receiving doubles so their progression is guaranteed.

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

So people (like myself) that devoted a couple hours to a climb now have to spread that out over smaller chunks, or run less than ideal teams, opening up to even more retaliation. If you're on Steam (like myself), that's not realistic. If you have a career, that's not realistic. If you have kids, that's not realistic.

Im pretty sure the problem is less steam and more of the last two. There are plenty of gamers out there on summer break with a lot of time to invest on their PC. A phone can be brought places but if you are going somewhere it is likely it is to do something (work, watch a movie, etc). Despite being a phone user, 99% of my time is spent playing at home regardless.

Unknown

Dauthi wrote:

I really don't understand the complaining. This is a great move by the developer, and hopefully they will continue. Going to prologue and healing your characters not only did not make any sense, it was not fun. It doesn't make any sense why we would have to do something not fun and unrelated to actual gameplay to compete with other players. Forcing players to play constantly due to prologue healing also increases burnout for many. It makes much more sense to increase health regeneration and allow people to spread their gameplay through out the day while still being able to compete, in fact it makes even mores sense with the recent refresh rates to PVE. Since it affects all players it means that casual players will have a slightly better chance at competing and all players will have to play less to keep up with those who used to play all due thanks to a terrible metagame.

The only downside I can see is that it made Spidey that much more useless. I am now crossing my fingers for them to do something about tanking, though it is understandable it is a much larger and complex system change to deal with. I expect there will be just as much discontent when tanking is fixed and the benefits taken away from the privileged who have always used it to fight characters 1/3 their level.

It takes a lot to tick me off, but how are people privileged by tanking? ANYBODY Can tank....So please explain how that is an advantage?

nimvin

And I have not seen it mentioned so I will. Newer users could always be directed to OBW to help them prolong their play time to earn more iso-8 to level all characters. Now the NUMBER of rewards I need to earn enough iso 8 to level has not changed but the time it takes me to EARN that amount of iso 8 has greatly increased. Used to be able to farm LR's for almost entire event but now after seed teams are done have to let them heal for next round. Best char btw is 3/3/5 lvl 115 lazythor. And yes I paired him with obw.

Unknown

WilliamK99 wrote:

It takes a lot to tick me off, but how are people privileged by tanking? ANYBODY Can tank....So please explain how that is an advantage?

But the question is.... will we like it when you're angry?

Dauthi

WilliamK99 wrote:

It takes a lot to tick me off, but how are people privileged by tanking? ANYBODY Can tank....So please explain how that is an advantage?

Non-forum players who know nothing of metagame, and players who have refused to play the tanking metagame. There is by far more people who do not tank to those who do.

Unknown

Dauthi wrote:

WilliamK99 wrote:

It takes a lot to tick me off, but how are people privileged by tanking? ANYBODY Can tank....So please explain how that is an advantage?

Non-forum players who know nothing of metagame, and players who have refused to play the tanking metagame. There is by far more people who do not tank to those who do.

Again, how does that make tankers privileged? It actually takes a lot of work to tank, it's not magic, like spending a ton of money in the game....

Unknown

This change felt pretty inevitable, it made 2 characters basically completely mandatory to have and is no small part of the reason the 85 PvP brackets are an endless torrent of Ares/Thor + OBW teams and effectively nothing else whatsoever. It's also a double-sided change, for all the downsides the people you're competing with also received the same change.

I hope regen rates/medkits see a rebalance, but this particular change will be good in the long run I feel.

Unknown

Dauthi wrote:

I really don't understand the complaining. This is a great move by the developer, and hopefully they will continue. Going to prologue and healing your characters not only did not make any sense, it was not fun. It doesn't make any sense why we would have to do something not fun and unrelated to actual gameplay to compete with other players. Forcing players to play constantly due to prologue healing also increases burnout for many. It makes much more sense to increase health regeneration and allow people to spread their gameplay through out the day while still being able to compete, in fact it makes even mores sense with the recent refresh rates to PVE. Since it affects all players it means that casual players will have a slightly better chance at competing and all players will have to play less to keep up with those who used to play all due thanks to a terrible metagame.

The only downside I can see is that it made Spidey that much more useless. I am now crossing my fingers for them to do something about tanking, though it is understandable it is a much larger and complex system change to deal with. I expect there will be just as much discontent when tanking is fixed and the benefits taken away from the privileged who have always used it to fight characters 1/3 their level.

But they didn't just stop prologue healing; they nerfed two characters.... One of which was just nerfed! They could have just locked out prologue healing instead. Then we get to hear that it's being done to promote roster diversity, which 95% of the people know is bullcr@p. How was this such a high priority over the thousands of other issues?

Oh, and they gave this forum 2 days notice, but the rest of the player base got zero notice.


P.S. You know that your name, dauði, is Icelandic for death, right?

Bisounour

ihearthawthats wrote:

Well if you want to understand, not everyone used prologue healing. Obw and spidey were able to top off every other match during the actual matches.

If they wanted to only kill prologue healing, they'd limit true healing to pve only.

As a relatively new player who is in the 2* Bracket currently, I would say this is very true of my current situation. I never once used prologue healing with OBW. Just using her made me able to grind games to get a "decent" rating without completely running out of Medpacks. Her healing within the matches themselves was enough to make it so I only had to medpack after an unlucky cascade match or from fighting a much higher lvl opponent. Her healing was rarely used to actually save my team from losing the match but to make grinding matches less of a hassle in wait time.

Unknown

bonfire01 wrote:

@Phantron

I get what you're saying but it's not like there is going to be 100 established 3* players putting forth effort in every reward bracket. Lots of 2* players are essentially competing with each other for 3* covers and the healing nerf both makes it even more P2W to get ahead of your fellows AND hammers people on certain playing schedules (see above).

The fact they get fed off of by 3* players who've tanked on occasion doesn't seem to be a big issue to most ppl and being able to sustain a push vs similar teams seems to be the determining factor in who gets the rewards they want.

not everyone's aim is to come first or even top 25 remember.... it's not the only way ppl progress...

But the shielding situation is still mostly a matter of guessing. I'm sure we are all familiar with this scenario. You play and climb pretty smoothly, and you think 'just one more game' and then you walk out and find yourself missing 150 points. Now, prior to the healing change (or if you're a top tier team) you just shrug that off and try again, and the same thing likely repeats. You keep on doing it until you either get super lucky, or you got tired of losing 150 points and shield and call it a day.

Now, with the healing nerfed obviously you do not get many shots at trying this for the lower end guys. But there was never any magic involved in knowing when to shield. I'm pretty sure if you can travel back in time to warn yourself, a lot of the time would be 'shield now and don't even try to play more'. So the fact that you've less shots at the shield roluette doesn't make it more or less likely you'll get a good finish. Maybe the structure favors shields too much, but that's a fundamental problem in the game that goes beyond healing. Short of playing hard in the last 2 hours or so (and this is still possible), nobody's score is going to hold up without shields if they remain exposed for extended time, and certainly not someone who is still relies on prologue healing.

I'm not sure what happens below the top 50 range. At that range, scores sometimes can hold up on their own. At that range you're most likely dealing with other guys featuring similarly weak rosters, so it seems like that should balance itself out. It's true each hit is more devastating than before, but people at your competition level are also less able to mount attacks. If OBW somehow falls out of favor, that actually makes effective attacks very difficult because OBW is a very strong offensive character.

Unknown

Unless there's something that'll separate the people with all high-leveled 3* characters from the people with mostly 2* characters on their rosters, it's really hard not to look at this as something to keep those two groups of players separated and make that transition as difficult as possible. Even if I got more points than "I'm supposed to", with healing I could at least be able to have a shot at getting those points back and still have a shot at getting a 3* reward. Now, no matter what, I'll have to wait several hours unless I have multiple teams that will be competitive.

Maybe it's just because I'm already in a bad mood today, but it just feels like it's a step to help the rich stay/get richer.

Dauthi

WilliamK99 wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

WilliamK99 wrote:

It takes a lot to tick me off, but how are people privileged by tanking? ANYBODY Can tank....So please explain how that is an advantage?

Non-forum players who know nothing of metagame, and players who have refused to play the tanking metagame. There is by far more people who do not tank to those who do.

Again, how does that make tankers privileged? It actually takes a lot of work to tank, it's not magic, like spending a ton of money in the game....

Because they have the knowledge of it's existence thus have the choice to use it.

MikeHock wrote:

But they didn't just stop prologue healing; they nerfed two characters.... One of which was just nerfed! They could have just locked out prologue healing instead. Then we get to hear that it's being done to promote roster diversity, which 95% of the people know is bullcr@p. How was this such a high priority over the thousands of other issues?

Oh, and they gave this forum 2 days notice, but the rest of the player base got zero notice.


P.S. You know that your name, dauði, is Icelandic for death, right?

There are always better ways to do something, and I don't claim to know all their options or why they chose this one. All I can say is that it is nto as bad as it seems. It is my opinion that they should have fixed how MMR/Tanking works first too.

I didn't know that, that is pretty cool. I got it from a creature type from when I used to play Magic. https://www.google.com/search?q=Dauthi& ... 80&bih=987

Bisounour wrote:

ihearthawthats wrote:

Well if you want to understand, not everyone used prologue healing. Obw and spidey were able to top off every other match during the actual matches.

If they wanted to only kill prologue healing, they'd limit true healing to pve only.

As a relatively new player who is in the 2* Bracket currently, I would say this is very true of my current situation. I never once used prologue healing with OBW. Just using her made me able to grind games to get a "decent" rating without completely running out of Medpacks. Her healing within the matches themselves was enough to make it so I only had to medpack after an unlucky cascade match or from fighting a much higher lvl opponent. Her healing was rarely used to actually save my team from losing the match but to make grinding matches less of a hassle in wait time.

OBW is great all around definitely at 2* and low 3*. The difference is she is not as viable when fighting at 3* level and Spiderman is garbage. By using either one you leave yourself open to get hit by other teams because your team is an easy target.

yogi_

As I just posted in the other thread:

This temporary heal is poor design.

Heal is heal - there should not be different types of heal. If it's not a heal, change the skill description to make it something more... less ridiculous.

Yes, just because it solves your problem, doesn't mean there wasn't a better way of going about it.

So, you've got the current system which is clear that you have no intention of going back on. Ok, fine. But rejig Spider and OBW to have an ability that is not "temporary heal". Shall we be seeing temporary heal in more future characters?

The other flaw is the enemy temporary heal is essentially a permanent heal, as they come back to full health at the end of the game and no permanent effect is felt. Very frustrating.

Kinda insulting and at the end of the day, once again, rather than geting your outcomes through changing what should change (the character, I guess), you add another broader game dynamic, which adds little to the game (by taking away an obvious but arguably overused thing but replacing it with a poor substitute).

Easy out, but poor longer term design choice.

Unknown

RichHurtz wrote:

Unless there's something that'll separate the people with all high-leveled 3* characters from the people with mostly 2* characters on their rosters, it's really hard not to look at this as something to keep those two groups of players separated and make that transition as difficult as possible. Even if I got more points than "I'm supposed to", with healing I could at least be able to have a shot at getting those points back and still have a shot at getting a 3* reward. Now, no matter what, I'll have to wait several hours unless I have multiple teams that will be competitive.

Maybe it's just because I'm already in a bad mood today, but it just feels like it's a step to help the rich stay/get richer.

You never had a shot at getting those points back relative to the super teams, and everyone else knows exactly the same trick as you do. I mean seriously, OBW is the most popular team outside of the very top teams. Do you somehow think the guys running OBW didn't even know how to use one of her abilities?

That's not to say the current state of the game is good but there was never any real hope for the guys who still need prologue healing.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

RichHurtz wrote:

Unless there's something that'll separate the people with all high-leveled 3* characters from the people with mostly 2* characters on their rosters, it's really hard not to look at this as something to keep those two groups of players separated and make that transition as difficult as possible. Even if I got more points than "I'm supposed to", with healing I could at least be able to have a shot at getting those points back and still have a shot at getting a 3* reward. Now, no matter what, I'll have to wait several hours unless I have multiple teams that will be competitive.

Maybe it's just because I'm already in a bad mood today, but it just feels like it's a step to help the rich stay/get richer.

You never had a shot at getting those points back relative to the super teams, and everyone else knows exactly the same trick as you do. I mean seriously, OBW is the most popular team outside of the very top teams. Do you somehow think the guys running OBW didn't even know how to use one of her abilities?

That's not to say the current state of the game is good but there was never any real hope for the guys who still need prologue healing.

So what... because I didn't already have those 3* characters, I shouldn't have a chance at being able to actually get them and be able to make progress in this game? If there weren't characters taking 4+ hours to heal "naturally" or if there was a chance we could pull a Health Pack upgrade from packs or as a daily reward, maybe there wouldn't be such a reliance on OBW.

And I know there's no reason to point it out, but I guess I was one of the few who didn't prologue heal.

Unknown

RichHurtz wrote:

So what... because I didn't already have those 3* characters, I shouldn't have a chance at being able to actually get them and be able to make progress in this game? If there weren't characters taking 4+ hours to heal "naturally" or if there was a chance we could pull a Health Pack upgrade from packs or as a daily reward, maybe there wouldn't be such a reliance on OBW.

And I know there's no reason to point it out, but I guess I was one of the few who didn't prologue heal.

The point is that you were never escaping from the guys who can instantly pound your team to dust and have almost no fear of retaliation, prologue healing or no prologue healing. Your reliance on OBW just makes you served as dinner multiple times instead of just once. When you get pounded by an evil 141X3 team for large number of points, do you really think these guys just go away if you go back to prologue healing so more? Those guys don't go away, ever, short of extreme luck. You can't even shake them with a 141X3 team if they have significantly less points than you, so why would they ever pass up a target that can't fight back?

Dauthi

yogi_ wrote:

As I just posted in the other thread:

This temporary heal is poor design.

Heal is heal - there should not be different types of heal. If it's not a heal, change the skill description to make it something more... less ridiculous.

Thats a cool opinion. Healing is whatever a game designates it to be, it generally increases health of characters, temporary or not.

Yes, just because it solves your problem, doesn't mean there wasn't a better way of going about it.

So, you've got the current system which is clear that you have no intention of going back on. Ok, fine. But rejig Spider and OBW to have an ability that is not "temporary heal". Shall we be seeing temporary heal in more future characters?

She Hulk.

The other flaw is the enemy temporary heal is essentially a permanent heal, as they come back to full health at the end of the game and no permanent effect is felt. Very frustrating.

Sounds like defensive play took one step closer to being viable. Nice.

Kinda insulting and at the end of the day, once again, rather than geting your outcomes through changing what should change (the character, I guess), you add another broader game dynamic, which adds little to the game (by taking away an obvious but arguably overused thing but replacing it with a poor substitute).

Easy out, but poor longer term design choice.

The healing game dynamic has been broken for a long time. The developer never intended prolonged game play without paying since the beginning.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

RichHurtz wrote:

So what... because I didn't already have those 3* characters, I shouldn't have a chance at being able to actually get them and be able to make progress in this game? If there weren't characters taking 4+ hours to heal "naturally" or if there was a chance we could pull a Health Pack upgrade from packs or as a daily reward, maybe there wouldn't be such a reliance on OBW.

And I know there's no reason to point it out, but I guess I was one of the few who didn't prologue heal.

The point is that you were never escaping from the guys who can instantly pound your team to dust and have almost no fear of retaliation, prologue healing or no prologue healing. Your reliance on OBW just makes you served as dinner multiple times instead of just once. When you get pounded by an evil 141X3 team for large number of points, do you really think these guys just go away if you go back to prologue healing so more? Those guys don't go away, ever, short of extreme luck. You can't even shake them with a 141X3 team if they have significantly less points than you, so why would they ever pass up a target that can't fight back?

Honestly, this is just making it seem like "What's the point?" I've been struggling to make the transition from 2* to 3*, and have actually had luck lately since I would want until late in the events and start playing, usually only seeing other 2* 85 teams the whole time while being able to have a chance at getting those covers due to joining a later bracket. And if someone that was a 3* 141 team did attack me and take some of my points, I would hope it'd get to the point that they'd move well beyond me and the few points they'd get from beating me again wouldn't be worth it. Now without a way to reliably heal my team, it seems like that won't work and I've just lost one way to actually get these covers. And if I have to, let's say, keep playing throughout all of the PvP event, I'll end up having to go against those big teams and get hit as easy points. It's been a bad day for me outside of this game, and maybe it's just put me in a doom and gloom mood, but I guess I'm struggling to see the positive of a change like this as someone trying to make that transition.

Dauthi

RichHurtz wrote:

And if someone that was a 3* 141 team did attack me and take some of my points, I would hope it'd get to the point that they'd move well beyond me and the few points they'd get from beating me again wouldn't be worth it.

There is always another 141 looking for easy prey (you). Sure one passes you, but many more are lining up at your door.

Now without a way to reliably heal my team, it seems like that won't work and I've just lost one way to actually get these covers. And if I have to, let's say, keep playing throughout all of the PvP event, I'll end up having to go against those big teams and get hit as easy points. It's been a bad day for me outside of this game, and maybe it's just put me in a doom and gloom mood, but I guess I'm struggling to see the positive of a change like this as someone trying to make that transition.

You only need top 100 to get a 3* cover. PVE is even more viable for everyone as it scales to their level. That is where you will get your progression.

Rusalka

Phantron wrote:

The point is that you were never escaping from the guys who can instantly pound your team to dust and have almost no fear of retaliation, prologue healing or no prologue healing.

Well, duh? Of course healing (either in prologue or in PVP itself) has no impact on defensive losses, no one ever claimed that it did. But if my defensive losses stay the same while my offensive wins are significantly reduced -- which they now will be -- then I'm screwed. Before this change, even when I was in MMR hell I could at least rack up some progression rewards before the 141 teams came to kick me back to my proper place. Now those rewards are going to be that much harder to reach. And I didn't even use prologue healing all that much; I mostly used OBW to reduce the damage taken during the match, not to heal after. Being able to do that made a lot of difference, though.