Healing Compromise [With D3 Q&A]

TheBaku

So my name showed up in the "GONNA DELETE YOU" thread... I guess I gotta post.

A proposal: How about the member of your team who gets the "kill shot" regains 25% of the damage taken as "true healing"...

This adds a level of complexity as you plan which team member gets the final attack, extends play time a bit and negates the "everyone has OBW" dilemma we had a couple weeks back.

Thoughts?

Kiamodo

Great first post! It's an interesting mechanic that will never be implemented.

Jonny1Punch

Great first post and a very cool idea I would love to see. Nice!

Unknown

Or here's a crazy idea. If the point of the True Healing changes was to eliminate prologue healing, how about putting it back exactly the way it was and disabling healing in the Prologue. See how easy that was?

Makes one wonder if maybe this wasn't ever really about prologue healing at all. That perhaps there were other motivations for such heavy handed *co-money-ugh* and widely unpopular *co-greed-ugh* changes.

And how about that "conversation" we got to have about it. "Hey, were're making these sweeping changes to core game mechanics soon. What does everyone think? What's that, you hate it? Okay, cool. How about if we try to explain why it's good for you in the lamest way possible which doesn't stand up to any kind of logical scrutiny? Still hate it? Okay, cool. Well we're doing it anyway. In fact, we already did it. Boom! Also moving forward we're going to ignore you completely in every way. Buy more stuff! Money! Yay!"

And for the record, I have a full roster. I hadn't done a lot of prologue healing, except maybe in heroics, in quite some time. If anything the changes have helped me because it's made it much harder for the people who were relying on it to compete with me. So take that for what you will.

Unknown

If I were the one spinning the benefits of the heal changes I would have said healing characters had become a crutch for a large portion of the player base and those with healers could play indefinitely and those without were severely disadvantaged by this, and these changed were made to make the game more fair across all players for the long term health of the game. Sorry if you don't like the changes but they are for the good of the game, deal with it.

Lines about no one enjoyed prologue healing sound like made up excuses that no on actually believes.

Unknown

Cryptobrancus wrote:

If I were the one spinning the benefits of the heal changes I would have said healing characters had become a crutch for a large portion of the player base and those with healers could play indefinitely and those without were severely disadvantaged by this, and these changed were made to make the game more fair across all players for the long term health of the game. Sorry if you don't like the changes but they are for the good of the game, deal with it. Lines about no one enjoyed prologue healing sound like made up excuses that no on actually believes.

The problem with that logic is that the healer most people were using was OBW, a 2* character that anyone who's been playing for more than five minutes has access to. With the way 2* covers drop in PvP, you could probably have her fully covered in a week of nothing but seed teams between LRs and regular events, not to mention token rewards (because you're certainly not getting any 3*s from them). So claiming anyone was disadvantaged by not having a healer is not a valid point.

As for being able to play indefinitely, that should be a good thing. It's a game. It's supposed to be fun. You're supposed to want to play it. The only reason being able to play indefinitely is a bad thing is if you're running the show and you think people should have to pay to keep playing, which is what nerfing healing combined with limited health packs does. It's a way of pushing people up against the pay-wall more regularly, and a clumsy one at that. Or maybe they thought the grinders were stopping paying customers from getting rewards and this is a way to stop them so they could keep the fish on the hook a little longer to buy more roster spots. Whatever their reasoning, this was never about the health of the game. And yes, claims that this was done to help us somehow because prologue healing was a great burden we all had to endure are so thin they disappear completely when turned sideways. Nobody believes this was done for our benefit, because it wasn't.

The problem with this change, and all the various little tweaks and alterations they make, is that they aren't additive in any way. There's no attempt made to give us things we want to pay for, only bully tactics and mind games intended to squeeze more money out of us for the exact same experience. If we change the drop rates will people buy more packs? If we mess with MMR and rewards structures will people buy more shields? etc. etc. If people healing in the prologue was really the problem they could have stopped it without fundamentally changing the way healing works in the rest of the game. Clearly they had another agenda. The usual one. Money.

Unknown

Oh I don't doubt one of the motivations was money. It could even be argued that more money for the developers should be good for the health of the game. If I am being honest the number of covers I have been able to win since true healing started has gone up so ~maybe~ this change was good for me in some ways, but it still had negative impacts on the way the game was played. It seems like the real underlying target of this change was what it would do to MMR(and yes also money), but I have no idea why they wouldn't have just said that up front.

Unknown

My thought has always been:

If you want to get rid of Prologue Healing, lock out the Prologue nodes once they have been completed and all rewards have been attained. This way new players can still go through the prologue, get their ISO, covers, etc. and still get to know the story of the game. Also, to encourage locking out the nodes, increase the drop rate for rewards in the Prologue. New players can quickly get up to speed, lock out the nodes, and then no more Prologue Healing. Experienced players cannot go back in to the Prologue to heal their team as the big red circles/check marks will be all over the place.

Seems to me to be a win/win for everyone. Then the community isn't mad about True Healing and maybe sales would go up instead of everyone boycotting purchasing health packs. If they would keep the players happy, I bet they would see a rise in sales.

I sent in this in to the devs as a suggestion. It took them over a week to reply with a canned response saying something to the effect of, "Sorry we can't offer refunds" and "This is for the good of the game". I didn't mention a refund, or anything about money, just a suggestion about how to fix something people are not enjoying, It seems more and more likely that they A) Don't care. or Aren't paying attention. I used to play this game as much as I possibly could, but now I am limited to play when I have health packs available. I have made purchases before, as the game was fun and I wanted to give some back, but won't be anymore.

TheBaku

I get that nobody likes 'True Healing'... I think that goes without saying...

But what about the original proposition here, 25% of damage taken refunded to member of your team who gets the last shot it, the "kill shot". This lessens the blow of the true healing change, while still making prologue healing obsolete (its % of damage taken).

This "Kill shot bonus" would add a small new wrinkle, causing you to deliberately plan for who gets the final blow...

Thoughts?

Unknown

Maybe if it was some vampire character like Morbius? It'd be neat to have some sort of drain moves.

Unknown

TheBaku wrote:

But what about the original proposition here, 25% of damage taken refunded to member of your team who gets the last shot it, the "kill shot". This lessens the blow of the true healing change, while still making prologue healing obsolete (its % of damage taken).

So let me see if I understand what you're proposing here. Let's say I have a fight where all of my characters enter at 100% health and finish at 50% health. Take that same fight under your system and now I come out of the fight with two characters at 50% health and one who got the "kill shot" at 62.5% health (25% of the 50% health lost being 12.5%). Do I have that right?

Unknown

I think for one event the rate of healing is appropriate. If you are trying to compete in PVP and PVE your resources simply are not enough to go around. Throw in some lightning rounds and you can wipe your whole roster pretty quickly without actually making significant progress towards anything.

Each event should have its own pool of healthpacks. Make each progression award come with a bonus healthpack or something like that. Find some way for us to share the love across every event.

TheBaku

Thugpatrol, yes that is what I"m proposing, a health bonus for the member of your team who finishes off the enemy... adjust the values up or down if you want, 25%, 33%, 50%...

Unknown

To be honest I don't love it.

If it were implemented I think it would feel clumsy and tacked on.

I do like that you're thinking outside the box though. True Healing is here and we can't complain it away, but maybe, just maybe, the devs will give us something to soften the blow. I'd suggest a daily number of health packs given all at once, or a slower refresh rate with a higher number available. Something to let players choose to play all at once or spread out throughout the day.

And in the spirit of roster diversity, how about lowering the Iso required to level? Many of us are playing fewer matches since true healing, and between that and the level shift my roster of usable characters has gotten smaller. Speeding up leveling by, say, 20% would still leave me leveling slower than before, but it would help me get a couple of my marginal 3* like Loki or IM-40 up to their max and in to my rotation. At the current rates I'll probably have a better character fully covered before my so/so fully covered 3* have the Iso they need, so they sit firmly planted on the bench.

killerkoala

RockMonster wrote:

To be honest I don't love it.

If it were implemented I think it would feel clumsy and tacked on.

I do like that you're thinking outside the box though. True Healing is here and we can't complain it away, but maybe, just maybe, the devs will give us something to soften the blow. I'd suggest a daily number of health packs given all at once, or a slower refresh rate with a higher number available. Something to let players choose to play all at once or spread out throughout the day.

And in the spirit of roster diversity, how about lowering the Iso required to level? Many of us are playing fewer matches since true healing, and between that and the level shift my roster of usable characters has gotten smaller. Speeding up leveling by, say, 20% would still leave me leveling slower than before, but it would help me get a couple of my marginal 3* like Loki or IM-40 up to their max and in to my rotation. At the current rates I'll probably have a better character fully covered before my so/so fully covered 3* have the Iso they need, so they sit firmly planted on the bench.

lowering iso cost would go against their grand plan, less playing cause of true healing, higher levels for higher damage and higher health of AI teams, reliance on health packs to continue to play. less playing = less iso generation. in their eyes we should buy iso to level our characters.

Unknown

To soften the blow I think they should sell extra health pack slots.

Unknown

killerkoala wrote:

lowering iso cost would go against their grand plan, less playing cause of true healing, higher levels for higher damage and higher health of AI teams, reliance on health packs to continue to play. less playing = less iso generation. in their eyes we should buy iso to level our characters.

Well, I want to believe them when they say it was all about game balance, and they haven't been selling any more health packs than normal. The powers that be knew True Healing was going to bring a lot of rage with it. I'm really surprised they didn't lower leveling costs or something like that to "buy us off." They could still do it, but it might be a little too late for some.

RageFace wrote:

To soften the blow I think they should sell extra health pack slots.

Hah! Somehow I don't think a cash grab is going to soften the blow.

Unknown

Cryptobrancus wrote:

Each event should have its own pool of healthpacks. Make each progression award come with a bonus healthpack or something like that. Find some way for us to share the love across every event.

Ha-ha, and you think it's just coincidence the ending time is shared by as many event as possible?

When boosts turned to HP they at least put some of those boosts in the prizes. With health packs nothing similar. I take it as good indication everything goes just as planned and intended.

Unknown

TheBaku wrote:

Thugpatrol, yes that is what I"m proposing, a health bonus for the member of your team who finishes off the enemy... adjust the values up or down if you want, 25%, 33%, 50%...

I think you're definitely going to have to tweak your numbers if you want this to have any real impact, because where you are now is way short of being called a compromise from where healing used to be. It's more like asking the bully who just stole your lunch if it's okay for you to pick up the baggie full of sad vegetable slices he just threw on the ground while going for your sandwich and your chocolate milk (with apologies to anyone who really likes vegetables).

If we're talking just about the last game-winning hit, 50% or even 75% healing of the damage lost would be way closer to something that's going to do anything meaningful in terms of extending play, which is what we're really talking about. Alternately, if you're talking about the final hit on each enemy, you could have 25% or even 30% per, which could be as much as 90% for one character if he was your team's appointed executioner. This could lead to some interesting bits of strategy and team composition. Could you have a tank take most of the hits AND get all the killshots? If so you could extend your play time considerably. But at what cost? How much longer are your matches because of it? Some interesting things to consider.

Lore-wise I'm not sure it makes much sense. As daibar said, it sounds more like a passive power for a character with some kind of life/energy drain, rather than a game mechanic in the Marvel Universe. You're basically saying knocking someone out is the same as Wolverine's healing power, which is a little thin.

TheBaku

Well, i never really considered the "lore", but I would say its more like the guy who ended the battle gets a bit of an adrenaline boost...

If you ended on a cascade, you really couldn't control who got the last hit in, but this change would add a bit of nuance to "end match" strategy...

Unknown

As for going through with their changes: It takes time to implement and see the results of sweeping gameplay changes. Rest assured that if people leave the game en masse over true healing, it will likely change again. If the game keeps healthy (and noone knows the numbers apart from demiurge) and it has the desired effects, it will probably stay (for longer anyways).