Toucharcade "True Healing" article

Unknown

toucharcade.com/2014/06/27/marvel-puzzle-quest-true-healing/

There's a lot of apologizing on behalf of the devs in that article. Did Phantron write it? Is that his day job?

Anyway, be sure to leave a few comments correcting any glaring inaccuracies that you can and will find there.

Similarly, there's another incentive to keep a large stock of healthy characters: without a way to heal your heroes, you'll need fresh cannon fodder to keep your play session going once your favorites go down. To balance the change in healing abilities, characters now regenerate health faster than they did before. There are now fewer ways to heal your team, but they're not out of commission as long. For anybody that didn't depend on Black Widow or Spider-Man, "True Healing" simply makes wait times shorter.

Yeah, no. Raising recovery rate and the true healing change are two entirely separate things. And the increased recovery rates were an afterthought.

There's no reason to keep a large stock of healthy characters when most of them are useless.

One of Marvel Puzzle Quest's strengths is that it offers a variety of game modes, satisfying competitive PvP players and more laid-back story mode players. Each mode has its own trends and strategies, and True Healing affects them all in different ways. The Marvel Puzzle Quest devs have backed down from tweaks before—there's no longer a penalty for skipping a retaliation battle, for example—but only time will tell if they choose to scuttle "True Healing."

This. Is my favorite part. Hey guys, isn't PVE super casual these days? Are we satisfied with PVP? Remind me again about the variety of PVP options we have. I'm drawing a blank.

DD-The-Mighty

read it. Sounded like a long winded way of telling people to "suck it up." nothing to see here.

Twysta

va·ri·e·ty
[vuh-rahy-i-tee]
noun, plural va·ri·e·ties.

1.the state of being varied or diversified: to give variety to a diet.
2.difference; discrepancy.
3.a number of different types of things, especially ones in the same general category: a large variety of fruits.
4.a kind or sort.
5.a different form, condition, or phase of something: varieties of pastry; a variety of economic reforms.

Unknown

TouchArcade Article wrote:

IceIX, the board's administrator, explained that the "True Healing" mechanic was introduced to prevent Prologue Healing and to encourage roster diversity by forcing people to find new teams.

Here's me experience so far with "roster diversity":
1. Use my standard A-team.
2. After taking significant damage, use my healthpacks on my A-team and/or wait.
3. Use Patch/LDaken for the next 3 hours.

So yeah, I find myself using a "diverse roster" for a few games, then the entire rest of the time using Patch/LDaken. It wouldn't be so bad if all the 2*/3* legacy characters in this game weren't so underpowered/broken, but I feel there's only a small viable handful of characters in this game.

I also find it funny how this change to "promote diversity" has directly affected Spider-Man, and made him such that nobody would ever want to voluntarily use him now. 12 AP for a temporary heal? 15 AP for a 3-turn stun? No thanks.

Dauthi

Ghast wrote:

For anybody that didn't depend on Black Widow or Spider-Man, "True Healing" simply makes wait times shorter.

Yeah, no. Raising recovery rate and the true healing change are two entirely separate things. And the increased recovery rates were an afterthought.

Pretty sure my edit is his point, and it is absolutely true. You had to have 2 specific characters to use healing in the first place. This is a buff to everyone else.

There's no reason to keep a large stock of healthy characters when most of them are useless.

In what context are you referring this to?

CFacto

I agree the roster diversity argument is complete nonsense. Daken and Patch are now massively more useful than any other character.

Unknown

Dauthi wrote:

Ghast wrote:

For anybody that didn't depend on Black Widow or Spider-Man, "True Healing" simply makes wait times shorter.

Yeah, no. Raising recovery rate and the true healing change are two entirely separate things. And the increased recovery rates were an afterthought.

Pretty sure my edit is his point, and it is absolutely true. You had to have 2 specific characters to use healing in the first place. This is a buff to everyone else.

The shortened wait times were introduced at the last minute after the "true healing" system was announced. Faster healing over time is not part of the change in healing mechanics. Saying that "true healing" makes wait times shorter is inaccurate.

Also, those three characters healed others and kept them in the fight. Nerfing their abilities affects -all- characters.

As for the rest, if the other characters were not useless, then why do you never see them outside of required tournaments. I can count the number of times I have fought unbuffed Psylocke, Daredevil, Iron Man (Model 40), Bullseye, Moonstone, Invisible Women, Falcon, Hawkeye (both), Human Torch, Loki, Dr. Doom, Ragnarok, Lazy Cap and Yelena on zero hands. No fingers necessary.

user311

That fact that this article exists proves that social media works. Everyone should redirect the forum rage to facebook and twitter. I tweeted to touch arcade at 3pm yesterday to write an article. Certainly plausible that they have staff that play this game though.

Unknown

JessyC01 wrote:

TouchArcade Article wrote:

IceIX, the board's administrator, explained that the "True Healing" mechanic was introduced to prevent Prologue Healing and to encourage roster diversity by forcing people to find new teams.

...but they were too incompetent to make it separate from PvP healing or maybe they did it on purpose to sell health packs. Who knows?

Dauthi

Ghast wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

Ghast wrote:

For anybody that didn't depend on Black Widow or Spider-Man, "True Healing" simply makes wait times shorter.

Yeah, no. Raising recovery rate and the true healing change are two entirely separate things. And the increased recovery rates were an afterthought.

Pretty sure my edit is his point, and it is absolutely true. You had to have 2 specific characters to use healing in the first place. This is a buff to everyone else.

The shortened wait times were introduced at the last minute after the "true healing" system was announced. Faster healing over time is not part of the change in healing mechanics. Saying that "true healing" makes wait times shorter is inaccurate.

So it doesn't count even if it was added at nearly the same time and edited into the original's patch notes? That is pretty nit picky. It was introduced at nearly the same time and characters who can heal faster than others in the comics regening fast sounds like "true healing" mechanics to me.

Also, those three characters healed others and kept them in the fight. Nerfing their abilities affects -all- characters.

That is a pretty big stretch. The fact is if you didn't have either character you didn't have any of the benefits period. It was not a nerf to all characters, it was a nerf to 2 who completely changed the game.

As for the rest, if the other characters were not useless, then why do you never see them outside of required tournaments. I can count the number of times I have fought unbuffed Psylocke, Daredevil, Iron Man (Model 40), Bullseye, Moonstone, Invisible Women, Falcon, Hawkeye (both), Human Torch, Loki, Dr. Doom, Ragnarok, Lazy Cap and Yelena on zero hands. No fingers necessary.

Ghast wrote:

There's no reason to keep a large stock of healthy characters when most of them are useless.

A few of those characters are debatable as being "useless". You claim that "most" characters are useless, so what do you consider most? 80%? 60%? 50%? Usually "most" would be at least more than whatever you are comparing something to, and by percentages what you listed isn't close to any of those despite exaggeration.

Unknown

Dauthi wrote:

blah blah blah

Merriam-Webster wrote:

Pedant: a person who annoys other people by correcting small errors and giving too much attention to minor details
b : one who is unimaginative or who unduly emphasizes minutiae in the presentation or use of knowledge

True healing and regen over time are two completely separate systems. Removing one entirely does not alter the other at all. Different systems.

Characters: When you have 40+ characters and only see 1/4 of them in matches, guess what?

Begone pedant. Go grumble at people who start their sentences with "so" before they misplace a few modifiers.

Unknown

Dauthi wrote:

Ghast wrote:

Ghast wrote:

There's no reason to keep a large stock of healthy characters when most of them are useless.

A few of those characters are debatable as being "useless". You claim that "most" characters are useless, so what do you consider most? 80%? 60%? 50%? Usually "most" would be at least more than whatever you are comparing something to, and by percentages what you listed isn't close to any of those despite exaggeration.

Characters I would ever, ever use without a buff or being forced to:
67/12/60/11/10/52 - 3.5 - _9/__/_8/__/__/12 - 7250 - Black Panther (Man Without Fear) 4
67/60/52/10/11/12 - 3.0 - 19/11/12/__/__/__ - 7250 - Captain America (Steve Rogers)
08/09/09/52/67/60 - 4.0 - __/__/_5/PA/__/PA - 7250 - Daken (Classic)
52/60/67/10/11/12 - 3.2 - __/_2/_5/10/__/__ - 5800 - Magneto (Classic)
52/67/12/10/60/11 - 3.0 - _8/11/__/__/_7/__ - 8700 - Sentry (Dark Avengers)
67/12/60/11/10/52 - 4.5 - 14/__/PA/__/__/_9 - 4350 - The Hood (Classic)
11/60/12/10/67/52 - 3.0 - __/14/__/__/10/PA - 9788 - The Hulk (Indestructible)
10/52/11/12/60/67 - 4.0 - __/_8/__/__/_8/_7 - 5800 - The Punisher (Dark Reign) 4
60/67/11/10/52/12 - 3.5 - 12/_8/__/__/14/__ - 8700 - Thor (Modern)
52/60/12/11/67/10 - 4.0 - PA/14/__/__/_9/__ - 5800 - Wolverine (Patch)

39/45/09/11/50/10 - 3.0 - 10/10/__/__/_5/__ - 5340 - Ares (Dark Avengers)
10/11/45/50/09/39 - 4.0 - __/__/11/_8/__/PA - 3315 - Black Widow (Original)
11/39/50/45/09/10 - 3.2 - __/14/13/_9/__/__ - 3560 - Magneto (Marvel NOW!)
39/11/45/09/50/10 - 3.5 - PA/__/11/__/12/__ - 2670 - Storm (Classic)
45/50/10/09/39/11 - 3.5 - 12/_8/__/__/14/__ - 5340 - Thor (Marvel NOW!)
39/45/09/11/50/10 - 4.0 - PA/12/__/__/_6/__ - 3560 - Wolverine (Astonishing X-Men)

And I'll even give you Nick Fury and GSBW here, too

So GENEROUSLY, 19 out of 37 characters are useless. Over 50%. That's MOST.

And in the context of "branching out" because of healing (which is what this conversation is about) for a competitive player it's 13 (including Fury, GSBW, and OBW) out of 26 because 2*s don't cut it anymore. So "ONLY" half of characters are useless. And that's assuming you have the covers for those 13.

Unknown

After a few days experience after True Healing and anger relieved, here is what I think :

They were probably "honest" with their intentions.
They wanted diversity in use. Well, the new Top Tier is Daken/Patch + 3rd character. That's not what we can call diversity.

What does that show ? Players only care about LIFE because they want to play a game they truly enjoy. So the problem is Heal/Life, whatever you call it.

Who would care about having the whole roster down (using it) if it could heal as you wish ?

So, MPQ is a Match-3 but not only, so the business model should not be copied from the one of Candy Crush IMO. It is far better than its candy counterpart. And has a much stronger potential.

You have to make a choice :

- Buy boosts, life... like in Candy Crush OR buy characters and level them (like in other RPGs or MMORPG), but combining both are not the solution. If you have to pay for your characters, you should not have to pay for time play. And vice-versa.

X-Men buy tons of boosts... but don't level the chars. Whales level the chars but don't overspend on boosts and life (otherwise they would be first, and they are not).

There must be a limit in spending somewhere.

True heal is just fine to me now, but surprisingly I am not ready to spend HP on Health Packs when I was buying tons of them when needed. I just adapt my gameplay, and that's D3P's loss.

Players will ALWAYS adapt until they get satisfied. So far, they are only frustrated (well most of them )

Unknown

arktos1971 wrote:

Players will ALWAYS adapt until they get satisfied. So far, they are only frustrated (well most of them )

I keep my position that if devs prescribe how to play the game they are welcome to play it themselves. Adapting away

Unknown

I meant adapt AGAINST the new rules. But you put it in better words than I could

Unknown

I cannot see how they would make a change to promote diversity and then "monitor" the results during a tournament that locks out the most overused 2* and two consecutive PVE events that limit the roster severely. They can obtain no useful roster diversity data from eithe rPVP or PVE at the moment. The only data point they have not controlled for is health pack sales. I call bullsnikt on D3.

gambl0r312

Ghast wrote:

I cannot see how they would make a change to promote diversity and then "monitor" the results during a tournament that locks out the most overused 2* and two consecutive PVE events that limit the roster severely. They can obtain no useful roster diversity data from eithe rPVP or PVE at the moment. The only data point they have not controlled for is health pack sales. I call bullsnikt on D3.

A Cynical view: A ploy / smokescreen to confirm what they already know?


Or perhaps worse.... to confirm MOAR changes/"features"....

Unknown

Or devs being really awkward trying to make money out of their work ?