Healing Compromise [With D3 Q&A]
Comments
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Technically speaking, Hulk should have this "true healing" thing. It is a known fact that the Hulk has a healing factor FAR greater than Wolverine. So, great it is that it heals so fast that it cannot even be cut. So, THERE D3! Get your facts right and give Hulk his TRUE HEALING! I'm serious, I've been a big Hulk fan and that is how they explained it. Now, if it was grey Hulk then his healing is on par with Wolvie.0
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roippi wrote:- The bad
You'll notice all of the above is "meta" discussion - derived from knowledge you and I possess from outside of the game. What I don't care for at all is the gameplay experience of True Healing when you take all this meta knowledge away.
Say I'm a new player, who has never experienced pre-nerf healing. Why is some of my health transparent? Once I figure that out - why is some health restoration temporary, and other permanent? How can I tell which kind of healing a given character has? (again, without applying meta knowledge) None of this is explained to me in-game, of course. This should be explained better to the player, both textually and UI-wise.
Your whole post makes sense, thanks for sharing!
I also take the opportunity to support you on the obvious lack of some explanation of game's rules (combat mechanica, or event mechanics)0 -
bonfire01 wrote:Strategic play (no idea **** that's supposed to mean. I can only imagine playing when your health packs refresh) has not been buffed. It works exactly the same as before. VOLUME play in one go (by choice or neccessity) has been completely gutted (nerfed doesn't do it justice) UNLESS you have a solid 3* roster (mine is a decent example) then you don't need to be "strategic" and can play how you like.
And this I am going to lift out and am going to ask Demiurge and/or D3P for a response again.
(I apologize up-front for the all-caps, huge red font, but as this is the third bloody time I'm asking this, I now want to make sure that any employee visiting this thread will actually notice.)
HOW ARE YOU GOING TO ADDRESS THE INBUILT HANDICAP THAT TRUE HEALING FORCES ON PLAYERS OF THE GAME'S PC/STEAM EDITION?
PC players are now at a natural disadvantage as our play patterns naturally centralize on a small morning push before leaving for work and a single concentrated longer push in the evenings after returning from work. That single longer push needs to be assisted by in-battle healing. (Smart and dosaged use of regular in-battle healin though. Not taking characters into the prologue after each and every match to heal up. That was probably murder on your MMR anyway, so the joke was on you if you ever did that...)
The regular 5 health-packs simply don't cut it for that particular morning+evening play pattern. For most PC/Steam players it is simply not viable to quickly log-in during a lunch or coffee break to make use of regenerated character health and regenerated health packs. (You cannot realistically expect people to work around IT policies that prevent them from installing the game on their workstations or expect them to resort to such hairbrained schemes as installing an RDP client on their phone to remote into their home system...) That places PC/Steam players at a distinct disadvantage against mobile grinders that do have the ability to make full use of health & health-pack regeneration.
Infact, this problem is even compounded by the fact that PvE node point refreshes were brought down from ~8hrs (which is just about a working day and damn near perfect) to ~2.5hrs. That not only gives mobile players roughly 3x more playing time (thrice the healthpacks and thrice the native health regeneration over the span of a working day), but also gives them 3x more the chance to sweep around the entire board and grab maximum node points. This is substantially unfair!0 -
_RiO_ wrote:HOW ARE YOU GOING TO ADDRESS THE INBUILT HANDICAP THAT TRUE HEALING FORCES ON PLAYERS OF THE GAME'S PC/STEAM EDITION?
By giving you the opportunity to re-buy your roster after earning the first cover of each color of each character on the Android/IOS version and resume play there.0 -
Team Healing did need to be addressed, but not how it was.
True Healing should have been something like this:
1) Healing functions exactly as it did pre-True Healing, but characters cannot end a fight with more Health than they started with.
This changes the definition of what "Team Healing" is in a more understandable way. It is still healing (in the current for it's not, but advertised as healing), but with a limitation that Self Heal doesn't have (cause it's regeneration wounds, etc.).
This would mitigate that "top off heal" at the end of every fight. Sure, the first few times it would be nearly back to max health, but not always. After multiple fights, each "top off heal" will not heal character back to full Hit Points, so eventually it will be less and less effective. it is possible that the amount of Health that Team Heal skills heal would need to be lowered a bit to prevent perpetual "top off" healing. Closer to She Hulk's Team Heal values, but not that low (as that's all the Spidey's does honestly. At least OBW increases enemy countdown tiles too).
2) If you win a fight, all character that survived receive a "Victory Heal". The "Victory Heal" gains back X% of the Health they lost during the battle (not a % of their max Hit Points). So, if a character lost 100 Hit Points during the battle, and X is 40, that character would gain back 40 Hit Points as a reward for being victorious and surviving the battle.
This would not only improve roster diversity (because team healing wouldn't be as mandatory as it was in the pre-True Healing days), but also make it more forgiving for those matches where you got hit with some **** cascade or one or two of those big damage skills like Headbutt, Sunder, Devour, etc. Knowing that if you win you'll regen some Hit Points when you win, these instances won't feel as cheap as they do now. When this happens, it's like not only might I lose, but now I also can't use that character for while or burn a Health Pack. "The Double Deuce!" At least before when **** happened I could Prologue heal and fix it. Not possible now, but with this at least I'm somewhat protected against it, depending on the percentage value (determined through play testing/balancing).
With the points #1 & #2, it would be pretty easy to include a "Hit Point Recap" screen to show the post-match Hit Point values of your characters. This would be an update to the "here is your ISO reward" screen. It could even look similar to the pre-match scree, where your team is shown along the top of the screen and the reward/UI buttons are along the middle/bottom. It would clearly show the result of any in-match healing (including "over healing" that was lost as in suggestion #1) combined with the "Victory Heal" regen as mentioned in suggestion #2.
The fact that the current True Healing implementation doesn't have anything like this only contributes to it's confusion = "Where did all that extra health go that I just had?". For me, it helps make True Healing feel like it's a rushed implementation and cludgy band-aid attempting to address a fundamental system to the game, which is persistence/attrition from match to match.
3) Regen times are not only slightly increased (more than post-True Healing values), but also changed to be percentage based off of the character's Max Hit Points instead of a gaining back a flat per rarity. Flat values completely ignore Max Hit Points. This can still use character rarity as a base like the current system = X% regen per time interval for a 2 star, Y% regen per time interval for a 3 star, etc.
This would prevent high Hit Point guys like Thor taking significantly longer to regen than The Hood, and also not take 3+ hours to fully heal with the slight increase. Of course the devil is in the actual numbers/balancing, but there's a lot more to tweak with here than the current system. Also, when you think about it, it kinda doesn't make sense lore wise for weak guys like The Hood to regen back to full Health faster than tanky guys anyway.
4) Slight refactor to some Health Pack variables, which helps out PVP more than PVE.
- Increase the Max number of Health Packs from 5 to 6. This would be enough to full revive from 2 complete wipes/losses. The Current max of 5 feels odd because after a second wipe you have that 3rd character that can't revive.
- Allow Player to permanently increase the maximum number of Health Pack from 6 to 9 total with a premium purchase, either using HC or real money only. This would be enough to revive from 3 complete wipes instead of just 2. Optional additional purchase to increase it to 12. This starts to approach P2W though, so the second upgrade should perhaps not be needed.
- Any consumable Health Packs earned are only used if the Player does NOT currently have any auto replenish ones available. I HATE HATE HATE getting these when I'm at a my health Pack max, because it feels like a waste, because I am forced to sue it when I have a batch of them that auto replenish that I should be using first.
- Slightly decrease to the Health pack regen time. Even 5 or 10 minutes less would make a big difference.
Sure, some people would still find ways to try and combat the limitation in suggestion #1, but Team Healing makes much more sense this way. Sure, people would still probably bring OBW or Spidey into a fight just so that they "top off" health, or finish the fight with very little damage taken, but eventually it would be less and less effective, as you couldn't go over the max you had when the battle started, which means you can't take heavily damaged characters into a fight just to heal them. Combined with the "Victory Heal" bonus, it will be a much more flexible system. Plaeyr won't feel like Team Healers or Self Healers are mandatory like they have been up to this point.
Case in point, I can STILL Prologue Heal with Wolverine/Daken. If anything, roster diversity even LESS than it was pre-True Healing. All I see now is some combination of Patch and Daken, and I personally exclusively use my max level Patch every single fight, PVE or PVP. I basically try to have him take as much damage as possible because he can heal it back, either in battle or with a quick prologue battle. So the "problem" is still there.
In a specific example, I've been getting through The Hunt with little problems this way. I have Patch pretty much in front almost exclusively, and the only time he's not is when I make a blue match with my 3 star Magneto. Patch takes all the other damage, and once I have Magneto's Blue power changing, I use Patch's green, and then the fight is over. The only time I use Health Packs is for Magneto, as attrition from the few times he is in front after about 7 or so fights adds up. If Patch gets too beat up and is at about half health, I just go to some easy Prologue level and heal him up. I should get top 10 easy if I care to maintain it (I have a max 3 star Cap, so I only really care about the progression rewards). But I'm basically only using 3 to 4 characters. Over and over. I'd love to use more, but with the current implementation Health persistence between multiple fights, I could only change things up once or twice before I reach the "health pack or stop playing" crossroads.
Most other players are using the self healers for reasons like mine, and so roster diversity is at a near all-time low. I feel like I have less roster choices compared to pre-True Healing. One AI cascade or Headbutt, Sunder, Devour, or other high damage skill and that character is unusable for 2+ hours (unless I use a Health pack). Self Healers feel Mandatory, and 3 star Magneto almost just as important to get matches over quickly before the AI can use their high damage attacks, which causes long regen times on characters, which stops me from playing.
To sum up:
This whole situation should really be thought of as "How to address Team Healing?"
I've got a few suggestions here that I've already seen other places. Just wanted to voice my support of them and explain why I think they would be an improvement over how True healing was implemented.
I'd like to think they are not done with it just yet, and are thinking of solutions like these that don't present themselves as confusing/complicated to the player base.
That is all.0 -
_RiO_ wrote:HOW ARE YOU GOING TO ADDRESS THE INBUILT HANDICAP THAT TRUE HEALING FORCES ON PLAYERS OF THE GAME'S PC/STEAM EDITION?
Not a steam player, but would this work as a compromise?
Health pack max increased to 24, health pack regen time increased to 1 hour.
As a mobile player, I tend to play a little bit every 3 to 4 hours, so I could use 25 health packs in a day during 5 sessions. This gives all players access to 24 health packs every 24 hours, but at their schedule.0 -
papa07 wrote:_RiO_ wrote:HOW ARE YOU GOING TO ADDRESS THE INBUILT HANDICAP THAT TRUE HEALING FORCES ON PLAYERS OF THE GAME'S PC/STEAM EDITION?
Not a steam player, but would this work as a compromise?
Health pack max increased to 24, health pack regen time increased to 1 hour.
As a mobile player, I tend to play a little bit every 3 to 4 hours, so I could use 25 health packs in a day during 5 sessions. This gives all players access to 24 health packs every 24 hours, but at their schedule.
Yes, this is pretty much what I've advocated before as well in several threads on the the Suggestions and Feedback forum section.
It should be ridiculously trivial to implement as well. But apparantly the developers don't care about the small remaining segment of Steam players.
Well, on the plus side; if they keep up not caring, then pretty soon they won't have to bother any more, because the game will be dead and buried for PC players anyway.0 -
We PC player look like a small percent of the population and too money-aware in general for DU taste so we don't count no matter the color and point size.0
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How about applying health packs to our damaged heroes automatically every ~30 min when health packs are full. (when we are away - for when our high hp heroes are downed and we are out of health packs, and stay away for 4 hours, our high hp heroes are still healing but out health packs have returned to full)0
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papa07 wrote:Health pack max increased to 24, health pack regen time increased to 1 hour.
This is such a good idea that it's close to what we first tried
We experimented with a bunch of different health pack caps and regeneration times when the game was live in a few territories, before worldwide launch, including a high cap/high regeneration time. Players who experienced a system like that felt like the game was harder (subjectively, the punishment for losing a character was worse, and it felt like the game expected you to play for ~90 minutes at once), and reducing the cap and regeneration time by itself increased how much fun players reported having and how accessible the game was.
Some players (on whatever platform) will play more times throughout the day in shorter sessions; some will play fewer, longer sessions. Both groups won't necessarily have success in the same way at the same things.
For what it's worth, we still see PC players having significantly more success on the leaderboards than mobile players, on average.0 -
Demiurge_Will wrote:For what it's worth, we still see PC players having significantly more success on the leaderboards than mobile players, on average.
And the most basic design principle of MPQ is still "the better you are the more punishment you deserve".
To add some constructivity, Will, could you please drop a line on Season4 -- when it starts or is it canceled for good?0 -
Demiurge_Will wrote:For what it's worth, we still see PC players having significantly more success on the leaderboards than mobile players, on average.
No offense, but the worth of that particular statistic, depending on how it is measured, can be pretty close to zero. As the PC game has currently plummeted to a point where you have barely enough daily average PC players to fill a single 1000 player bracket , if even a few of those players have fully matured 3* rosters to push themselves to the top, or are cruising the easy lane of a recently started 1* player, then their success on the leaderboards could already significantly skew the 'average success' of the PC player population as a whole due to unusually low sample size compared to the mobile population.
I'd be more interested in a metric that isolates those players with a 2* -> 3* transitioning roster, which is where the health-pack use hits hardest, and compare the mobile and PC space for those segments.
Also of note is the fact that many PC players frustrated with the healing change have already up and quit the game. That has created a temporary natural bias towards succeeding PC players (that have remained with the game), meaning any statistic based on recent data gathering is probably skewed and needing to be compensated for. (Probably by comparing against population size pre-healing change and post-healing change.)
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics." comes to mind.0 -
Just for the record, TH doesn't only affect steam players in the way being discussed above. I work a full day nearly 7 days a week, and just because the game is on my phone which is usually with me, doesn't mean I can just drop my butt down where-ever I happen to be for the moment and play a match every so often. Indeed I can not. Thusly the 'short morning push' and 'extended evening playtime' also used to be my experience, despite being on android mobile.
It irks me that being able to play every few hours was listed as a 'buff'. That only makes me feel even more that things are 'working as intended', despite the change having cut harshly into my playtime. It also makes me truly feel disgruntled that a company would shoot me in the foot in this way, simply because I have a job/ family.0 -
Accidental double post.0
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I am one of those steam players who've stuck around. And it's mostly because of inertia. I have a bunch of time invested... but I'm on the verge of giving up because I see no changes for the better. I stopped recommending the game to my friends after the healing change as it makes it nigh impossible for new players to advance.
Anyhow pre-nerf... I could burst up to 600-800 points on the ladder in my limited PC playtime without grinding (I was very good at popping heals right at the end of a match so my combat team would come out lightly damaged and ready for the next match). Post nerf... I'm hard pressed to get to 300!!! without others mauling me. (they still are... for my dinky 150 points... from guys way above me & more points... I can only retaliate one and they are many).
Anyhow, why do I say new players can't advance easily now... because how do you make ISO? Generally the best way is to grind it out on the PvP ladder... Each match average 100+skip bonus ISO. Toss in all the random covers (which are effectively random 100 or 250 iso awards when you sell them). But with the healing change you can't grind out ISO this way. So if you have a 166 roster... nice... if you don't... you're even more behind the 8ball because it's even harder to earn it to level up the covers you do have. Without healing... you can't grind, and I refuse to support the game with $$$ after a change like this, while before I would buy some HP here and there to support the game.
I see the devs point about only things which work get used... so hence why people object when they're changed. But at the same time. The net sum of all the recent changes is hard to see as anything other than a money grab.
Healing changes... 'nuff said... sorry it has made Health packs far more important.
The level shift... sorry that's what seals my opinion the devs are either incompetent or out to make HP's even more important. (we'll increase health totals and damage amounts by ~10%, but not increase healing rates...). Translation it now takes longer to heal between matches than pre-level shift. Making health packs again more important.
That and I'm sorely disappointed that nothing is in the works as per the dev. The matching hell is particularly galling. Why is it a guy with only one maxed char sees nothing except max level teams?! Trying to fight your way out of a 125 level handicap non-stop is taking a lot of the fun out of things.
And to give a firm example... tonight... go to get in my *ONE* Heavy metal match for the night. After clearing the attackers (plural of course). I get one decent matchup (hood/punisher/im40)... setup my full health pun/lthor(10cover)/im40(level 100'ish). I do very well... deny hood the ability to steal my stuff while mauling him. Kill him... only to have the AI pull some **** match cascades (match 3... then the RNG drops 3 yellows in a row... giving him a freebie... repeatedly...). Finally forced to retreat IM40 has his blue charged... courtesy of his yellow of course... so no one died... but they might as well have given the healing time needed and bed time.
Last series... I go for a top 100... use 4 health packs only to get repeatedly and maliciously attacked every time I edge over the 100 mark. The last one from someone who didn't even play THE ENTIRE TIME while I'm fighting someone else for the points to push me back over the 100 mark. (literally he had 38 points total... after attacking me with 300'ish). Understandably given the point difference... that took off a ton of points dropping me to 103 right as the match ended. That kind of **** matching is really starting to irk me.0 -
Demiurge_Will wrote:papa07 wrote:Health pack max increased to 24, health pack regen time increased to 1 hour.
This is such a good idea that it's close to what we first tried
We experimented with a bunch of different health pack caps and regeneration times when the game was live in a few territories, before worldwide launch, including a high cap/high regeneration time. Players who experienced a system like that felt like the game was harder (subjectively, the punishment for losing a character was worse, and it felt like the game expected you to play for ~90 minutes at once), and reducing the cap and regeneration time by itself increased how much fun players reported having and how accessible the game was.
Some players (on whatever platform) will play more times throughout the day in shorter sessions; some will play fewer, longer sessions. Both groups won't necessarily have success in the same way at the same things.
For what it's worth, we still see PC players having significantly more success on the leaderboards than mobile players, on average.
Interesting.0 -
Does that include the people with mobile linked PC accounts? Because with the steam numbers being so low, that actually might start being a significant number of hardcore people0
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_RiO_ wrote:
I'd be more interested in a metric that isolates those players with a 2* -> 3* transitioning roster, which is where the health-pack use hits hardest, and compare the mobile and PC space for those segments.
Also of note is the fact that many PC players frustrated with the healing change have already up and quit the game. That has created a temporary natural bias towards succeeding PC players (that have remained with the game), meaning any statistic based on recent data gathering is probably skewed and needing to be compensated for. (Probably by comparing against population size pre-healing change and post-healing change.)
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics." comes to mind.
Sample size of 1, but I'm a Steam player with a 2* roster, and have had little issue maintaining top 20 finishes in pve (mostly top 10) and top 10 in pvp (occasional top 5, but getting hit hard by the transition wall lately). Will be even easier (I think) once I get my 2nd OBW up and fully functional.
Usually do a quick sweep at 5-6p when i get home from work, and then after 9pm for final sweeps.
Biggest difference between then and now is now I put the game down with 0 health packs and about 12-15 wounded/dead characters. There were times before the change where I still had a fully healthy roster, I just decided to stop playing for the night.0 -
Will's back in the Hizzle (well, was - I've probably missed the boat again).
Any word at all on changes to event ending times? It's a huge handicap for Euro/Africa zone players to be constantly saddled with 5am/6am finish times for events (especially any PvE with rubberbanding) so in order to be competitive we need to set our alarms at 4am at the latest in order to place well. This finish time seems to be in place for almost every PvE event's main bracket.
It isn't ideal for PvP either, but at least with shields you have some way of protecting yourself against huge ranking drops.
Are there any plans to throw the Eurozone a bone? Either through allowing people a choice of finishing times (and creating the brackets before the event starts) or a bit more rotation on the current end times?0 -
pasa_ wrote:To add some constructivity, Will, could you please drop a line on Season4 -- when it starts or is it canceled for good?
Season 4 starts later this week. We're experimenting with some downtime between seasons where we can run more varied/experimental PvP events.0
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