New "Feature" creates new revenue. But not from health packs

Unknown

Ok, I have been thinking about this for days. I have went thru many stages. Hope (that they wouldn't roll it out), disbelief (that they did), sadness, anger, aggravation, more anger, etc... And finally, I realized that this is NOT just about sales of Health Packs.

And you can agree with me, or not. Feel free to leave your thoughts below...

But consider this:

-You are playing PVP, kicking kitty, health packing up here and there every other match as needed. -You wipe out all your Health Packs, -You are faced with 3 choices:

-Stop playing for 3 hours and lose points from attacks until your HP's and characters regen (free). -Buy 5 HP's and keep kicking kitty. (200HP) -Buy 3 hour Shield to let your HP's regen without fear of losing points, and take a break. (75HP)

-So you chose option 3 and buy your shield, it's much cheaper than HP's. (That is the option that a lot more people are going to chose, IMO)

I am looking in my bracket, and I have never seen so many 300-400 scores shielded. I guarantee that shield sales have probably doubled this PVP. (Exaggerating, I know.)

So while I honestly don't think it will cause huge upswing of Health Pack sales, I can say that I know it has caused an up sale in shields.

Unknown

But buying shield has always been an overwhelmingly superior way to getting a good score as opposed to hoping you can survive the horde, so is it really bad that people are now going for the smarter option? Granted, that option is no longer not as smart if everyone also does it too, but at least prior to the true healing changes, if you could go back in time and advise yourself on what to do in a PvP event, almost certainly your conclusion would be 'buy more shields'.

Unknown

Sometimes I find myself more tempted to start the game with AP boosts, as to finish the game as quickly as possible and avoid a drawn-out battle where I take a lot of damage.

Spoit

Phantron wrote:

But buying shield has always been an overwhelmingly superior way to getting a good score as opposed to hoping you can survive the horde, so is it really bad that people are now going for the smarter option? Granted, that option is no longer not as smart if everyone also does it too, but at least prior to the true healing changes, if you could go back in time and advise yourself on what to do in a PvP event, almost certainly your conclusion would be 'buy more shields'.

Below the break-even point, like the OP was talking about?

Rusalka

Phantron wrote:

But buying shield has always been an overwhelmingly superior way to getting a good score as opposed to hoping you can survive the horde, so is it really bad that people are now going for the smarter option? Granted, that option is no longer not as smart if everyone also does it too, but at least prior to the true healing changes, if you could go back in time and advise yourself on what to do in a PvP event, almost certainly your conclusion would be 'buy more shields'.

Actually, before this healing nerf, my time-travel advice to myself would've been "don't shield too early." I wasted a ton of HP on early shields as a newbie. Eventually I learned to play more efficiently, shielding only when I had a score worth preserving until my final push. Taking a handful of defensive losses in the first 2 days of a two-day event was no big deal. Except now it is a big deal, because my final push will be a lot shorter. So yeah, I can see how early shielding is going to become a lot more common.

SnakesArrows

I completely agree. Health packs are not the primary motivator. The primary income generator is shields as you said. I would say that second is additional roster spots. If going to keep playing you now need an A, B and probably C team. Whether these spots goto a diverse set of characters or multiples of Thor, Ares and OBW is to be seen (if their goal is a diverse roster why allow multiples of same character?). Guarantee that folks with maxed Lthor and LDaken ect will not be selling additional covers but building those prime B team characters also. They just got the long term folks and whales that thought they were done with anything but new releases to buy more roster spots! Third is probably ISO sales. Foolish investment at almost any price, but at current WAY over priced. However, to get a "diverse" roster you need to level up many more characters. Prior to "true healing" 2* players could focus on getting a good A team and then soft cap any good 3*'s that you have in the 2-3* transition period. Now they have drug that process out further by forcing folks to level up additional 2* B and C teams instead of pushing the 3*'s to soft cap. I could see folks breaking down and buying the ISO in frustration. Finally, there will be an uptick in health pack sales. Everyone of those sales (earlier shielding, rosters, health packs, ISO) they make will have the players grinding their teeth as they are forced to make the purchase. Is it a viable long term business strategy for a non-necessary commodity, that customers hate buying your product or feeling forced/cheated when buying your product. I don't think so, but i guess D3 has a different model.

This change was massive. I agree to an extent that it was getting boring fighting Ares/Thor + OBW. I did not find story healing to be any fun (but did allow you to get back to the fun and play basically when I wanted to play, not every 2-3 hours when finally healed up). I was as guilty as any 2* team out there of running Ares/OBW to the ground. Story healed as much or more than anyone. However, there were and are much better ways of handling this perceived problem (i really did not see it as a problem). They should be focusing on their problems with existing characters, additional content, sever issues ect ect ect. long before focusing on story healing. In six months i have never seen a "fix" by this company be implemented so fast (how long was spidey nerf announce to implementation, how long ago was X-force/Mhawkeye promised fix, Mag nerf?), yet they rush out "true healing" in a day after forum announcement. There must be a TON of money that they have projected to be made from this change to move so fast. I think it took them longer to fix their severs a few PVE events ago than it took them to rush out "true healing". Crazy!

Unknown

Spoit wrote:

Phantron wrote:

But buying shield has always been an overwhelmingly superior way to getting a good score as opposed to hoping you can survive the horde, so is it really bad that people are now going for the smarter option? Granted, that option is no longer not as smart if everyone also does it too, but at least prior to the true healing changes, if you could go back in time and advise yourself on what to do in a PvP event, almost certainly your conclusion would be 'buy more shields'.

Below the break-even point, like the OP was talking about?

I'm assuming you'd only shield if you want at least one of the 3* cover offered, so your break even point is roughly 1250 HP. If you're shielding when you don't even need the 3*s, you're either wasting your HP or your roster is obviously very strong so the healing change wouldn't have much of an impact on you. Now, I don't expect anyone to spend 1250 HP worth of shields to just get a 3* cover, but I do assume if you want a 3* cover you'd be more willing to spend on shields to preserve your score. Now the 'don't shield too early' advice is also very valid, but that's something that has nothing to do with true healing changes. That's just something you got to gauge your competition correctly to know whether 500 is too low to shield or not, because after the true healing change 500 suddenly seems to be a very respectable score for a 2* player.

From my experience greed almost never pays off. Whenever you try to squeeze in one more game is the game you'll walk out down 100 points. So I don't think teaching people to shield more aggressively is somehow bad. Granted if everyone shields aggressively then that'd no longer be good advice, but shielding is mostly about doing what the majority is not doing. If everyone is shielded, you shouldn't be shielded (because your roster should be very strong relative to those who do not so you can capitalize on that), and if everyone is not shielded you should be shielded (to avoid all the powerful players that aren't shielded). At least so far I think the game still leans toward shielding being better than not, and I don't think we'll hit a point where so many people are shielded that it is better to be not shielded.

Rusalka

Phantron,

I think early shielding does have to do with healing. It's not just a matter of gauging the competition, it's also a matter of judging how many points I can afford to lose early in the event and then make up again later. Without healing, players without deep rosters have to be a lot more conservative about how many defensive losses they can take.

Dayv

I think the real results of this change won't be completely obvious until people have time to settle down and form new patterns, probably a couple weeks. Behavioral changes now may not be permanent or final.

Unknown

Also it will bump sale of certain covers and possibly ISO for payers that remain here and look to exploit the benefits yet not having them already. That is some new revenue for some time. We have a slice of people who are not looking at amount of money or the values just spend away.

I'm sure the bottom line will still go down as we have more people with more reason and better judgement who enjoyed to play their style in mostly f2p arena but will just stop being forced to play a single style, prescribed schedule and on mostly p2w arena.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

I'm assuming you'd only shield if you want at least one of the 3* cover offered, so your break even point is roughly 1250 HP.

That is not a break-even point. Rather a break-out one. Spending more on a single cover than you could buy it directly is poor choice.

But for those who consider buying stuff a no-go for being overpriced the sticker value is irrelevant. Imagine a current player thinking 1250 way too much. Put him in a play model of a PVP. Now increase the cover cost to double or 10x. Will that change his strategy? I say not at all. What proves the initial value was irrelevant. To have an impact you'd need to lover it down to break the axiom of not being considered.

Unknown

My 2 cents as a 2* player caught in transition.

I have never shielded or bought hero points. I find the hero points I earn to be much too important for roster spaces to waste on shields. To spend 75 hp on a shield to win 25, 50, or maybe 100 hp is a poor return on investment and, as 3* covers are relatively worthless until you have 8-10 for the same player, they are not worth 1250 hp in my mind (nor even the 75 hp shield cost).

Based on the current standings of the PvP, I don't think my strategy changes. My placing remains the same (top 50, top 50, and top 25 in last 3 PvP), currently 16th, but my point total is significantly lower, making hp that much more valuable as the progression rewards are out of reach.

over_clocked

Yep. A 3* cover is NOT worth 1250 HP, it's just a price tag put on it by the devs (and you have to get the first of these to even be able to buy that, so a first cover can be subjectively priced at 2500 HP, but a cover costs zero to the devs once a character is designed). Personal player tolerance to spending HP on shielding instead of buying a cover outright varies, but you have to be crazy to think that to pay more than, say, 300 HP for 1-2 3* covers is anywhere close to a good deal, especially with the new reward structure since getting top 100 is always doable if you can stick around in the last hour. My tolerance is even lower because I already have a good roster and spending more than 375 HP for 4 3* covers, however new and enticing, is probably out of the question for me.

Unknown

papa07 wrote:

My 2 cents as a 2* player caught in transition.

I have never shielded or bought hero points. I find the hero points I earn to be much too important for roster spaces to waste on shields. To spend 75 hp on a shield to win 25, 50, or maybe 100 hp is a poor return on investment and, as 3* covers are relatively worthless until you have 8-10 for the same player, they are not worth 1250 hp in my mind (nor even the 75 hp shield cost).

Based on the current standings of the PvP, I don't think my strategy changes. My placing remains the same (top 50, top 50, and top 25 in last 3 PvP), currently 16th, but my point total is significantly lower, making hp that much more valuable as the progression rewards are out of reach.

Same here. I am glad about every roster spot I can buy. I usually place among top 50 / sometimes top 100 if I was unlucky with the bracket. Shields are just too expensive for me. And I am 100% F2P, because I'm poor