The removal of proper healing was a brilliant move.

Unknown

No, I'm not being sarcastic and no I'm not agreeing with the decision. But from a financial standpoint (no matter what lies Icex thinks we're gullible enough to believe) it is brilliant. Think about it, now if you want to compete in pvp, in addition to shield hopping, now you will have buy 3 health packs. Assuming they don't raise the price, that's another buck, buck and a half the whales will shell out each fight. Where it gets really brilliant is the side effects, people will be buying more roster slots to have characters to play with when their mains go down, people will also buy more buffs to quicken the pace of battle to lessen the chances of having to use health packs. I would also bet that people would actually start spending more on covers in the hope that they get a lazy Daken or a Patch. Seriously, my hat is off to the devs, this was a brilliant business move.

But for a pr move, it's going to probably cost them a bunch of whales, and they're going to have to entice new people, so I expect to see a lot more adds for this game. I know I'm done spending cash on this game.

In the end, however, I have a feeling the devs will be like the king of Epirus, winners of the battle but looking over a scorched battlefield.

Just my 2 cents

Unknown

It's only brilliant if the people are dumb enough to do what you write (and in considerable numbers too, continually).

Otherwise it's just some strip mining act. What wise people don't consider in the brilliant category.

_RiO_

I wish them best of luck attracting new players with a gross deep negative review rating on all app stores and Steam.
Demiurge themselves may pay no heed to negative reviews, but you can bet that potential customers will.

Unknown

I think it is a dangerous shell game they play, where they continually make these dramatic changes to the meta-game and expect their players to shoulder it. At some point, all these little jabs become a wound that doesn't heal for the player and they quit in disgust.

Also, I see it less as a move to sell more health packs and more of a move to encourage people to keep a 40 character roster (ie. continually buying roster slots and not selling off characters). I think that's where their bread and butter is in making money off of people.

Unknown

_RiO_ wrote:

I wish them best of luck attracting new players with a gross deep negative review rating on all app stores and Steam.
Demiurge themselves may pay no heed to negative reviews, but you can bet that potential customers will.

Here is the thing to consider:

The vast majority of people don't ever look at the reviews. They will see two things, the first is the Marvel license and second is that it's free.

The tiny kitty thing is, Demiurge is trying to be King (the makers of Candy Crush Saga) but they just don't have the product to do it with.

Unknown

I find no brilliance in short term greed driven decisions. In my opinion it's just the easiest decision to make. It took no guts what so ever.

Fulgren

I was initially raging when the new healing rules were released, but after a couple of days of playing with them, my opinions have changed slightly.

Here are some results I have observed and find interesting

1) PVP ladders dont climb as hard anymore. My current Hollowpoint kiss bracket, 2nd place has 650 points. I'm in a death bracket, which means I have been play triple 141's the entire tourney, with no GSBW, so I'm 2v3ing every game. Yet somehow games remain winnable and fun.

2) Less punishment from retaliations because ppl need to heal, unless your point score is so rich that people cannot afford to not attack you.

3) Meta is more or less the same, I'm actually looking forward to the Daredevil tournament, lol that guy is so bad it will be good


Based on these results, it looks to me like these changes were made specifically to reduce binge-playing, and stop players from burning out. Why is this not madness?
Going through a 2 hour session with OBW is intense and time-consuming, and all her healing keeps you in the game. Problem is, EVERYONE is doing the same thing, leading to super competition and much stress for everyone involved. Based on the flavor of the forum over the last 2 months, players were churning out because they felt burnt out and tired by trying to get over 800 pts just to get top 10 in PVPs. This was trending towards a bad end.

Fast forward to this week, and suddenly, there is less PVP activity because of the lack of healing. Thing is, prizes have stayed the same. If MMR is working properly, then you are fighting players on your level, so that makes it an even field on average. It's still possible to race to 1100 in PVP, but far less likely.


Some context: I have 3 mid-tier 141s (Psy, Hood, Pun), and a bench of 85's. I get regularly placed in Death Brackets, and I have not played against or deployed an OBW in PVP since hitting 141. On a side note, I used to think the meta was warped by OBW, then I started fighting 141 Magnetos all day and I cant complain against OBW anymore.

Unknown

I could be wrong but we have had people screaming at the devs to "Fix MMR" forever. If you were in charge of all the variables and everything was working as best as you could get it but having healing/infinite turn characters just broke every attempt to get MMR to work.

If that was the situation you were looking at as a dev would you just let it be and say yes it is broken but people will get mad if we take out the variables that keep breaking the whole system, or will you ignore the hatespam and do what it takes to fix it.

In this last round, spidey was first. Now comes healing which hits spidey again but is really aimed at our lady of fishnets. CMags is probably next. If we actually want MMR to be balanced and work correctly we need to give up our insane power combos that nothing else can compare to. Combos can be fun, and strong, and still balanced.

I admit I could be wrong about all this but I can see logically how these changes may be necessary ones to make the game more fair. But if we are being honest, we don't want fair. We want our team to win, and that is why this is such a bitter pill to swallow.

HailMary

Fulgren wrote:

1) PVP ladders dont climb as hard anymore. My current Hollowpoint kiss bracket, 2nd place has 650 points. I'm in a death bracket, which means I have been play triple 141's the entire tourney, with no GSBW, so I'm 2v3ing every game. Yet somehow games remain winnable and fun.

A point of clarification: "death bracket" refers to an individual leaderboard bracket, and not your node opponents (that's MMR). A "death bracket" is a ranking bracket that has an inordinate number of high-level players. When this happens in a tourney with good rewards, or near the end of a Season when people are pushing for Season points, the T10 threshold can easily surpass 1100.

Unknown

Toxicadam wrote:

At some point, all these little jabs become a wound that doesn't heal for the player and they quit in disgust.

Happy accident, or intentional??

Unknown

Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather be a Valve-brilliant than a Zynga/King.com/EA-brilliant.

I think the change is fine, but the minute I feel D3 has turned into Zynga is the minute I uninstall the game out of principle.

_RiO_

Fulgren wrote:

PVP ladders dont climb as hard anymore. My current Hollowpoint kiss bracket, 2nd place has 650 points. I'm in a death bracket, which means I have been play triple 141's the entire tourney, with no GSBW, so I'm 2v3ing every game. Yet somehow games remain winnable and fun.

And my bracket is definitely not a death bracket, but has 900+ at the top 2 anyway.
Which goes to show you cannot draw a solid conclusion from a single data point.

Unknown

Fulgren wrote:

1) PVP ladders dont climb as hard anymore. My current Hollowpoint kiss bracket, 2nd place has 650 points.

...and yet some players are still managing 1600+ most of us will struggle to break 900... so now it's totally broken