Planned Updates To Shields - New Start Date

mohio

Ben Grimm wrote:

Something they need to realize: a lot of us aren't going to keep spending the extra hp, we're just going to shield less or not at all. And this incredibly indirect attempt to change behavior has never worked before, and probably won't work now. True healing didn't lead to roster diversity. I want you to take this next sentence, print it up on a big banner, and put it up somewhere in your office:

snip

It's funny you say this, because I think this actually is what they want us to do. They want the guys stuck at 600 to say, "oh man, top 10 was 900, I'm pretty close, maybe I can make it there soon". Then maybe those guys will buy a couple covers or spend a little hp on shielding since they're "close". Whereas before they were seeing top 10 at 1100 plus and that just looked a lot worse. Even if the difference in today's game is negligible since it's just 2 successful shield hops to get from 900 to 1100, but for those who have never scored that high, they don't know that the only difference between 900 and 1500 is simply how much time and hp (and iso for skipping) you're willing to commit to reaching that score.

Phaserhawk

kalex716 wrote:

I don't really know how i feel about the shield changes yet...

I've been playing for a bit over a year now, rather casually, have a decently developed roster, but no playable 4 stars yet.

"Winning" in MPQ for me, has evolved into a sub mini-game of spending the LEAST amount of time actually playing it, but getting the maximum results. This means I join pvp's in the last hours, usually am only playing to get 1 or 2 covers at a rip, win packs in PVE sub events, place in top 100, always get a daily reward, and get out with my sanity.

I have to admit, the last time I've seen this many hardcores upset about something, I was really happy with the end results (healing changes).

The healing changes never bothered me except for 2 things, 1. They haven't readjusted the non true healing characters that have healing attributes, because their skills are absolutely terrible, I'm talking about She-Hulk, Spider-Man, Besat(he's just terrible on all counts), and OBW. The other thing is that they essentially made Daken and Wolverine God's as they have both the true healing in game and the accelerated healing out of game

GrumpySmurf1002

Phaserhawk wrote:

because their skills are absolutely terrible, I'm talking about She-Hulk, Spider-Man, Beast(he's just terrible on all counts), and OBW.

One of these things is not like the others...one of these things just doesn't belong.

squirrel1120

I find it odd that there is any mention of this helping a transition player or leveling the playing field at all in the OP. The fact of the matter is that each change made to this game has made it harder for that group to progress or earn meaningful rewards.

True healing changed the game the most for us, as before you could essentially 'try harder' to place decently. Timing runs could net a 2* player a top 10 finish without a shield. This change throttled that back hard, making top 25 a stretch, and removing at least 2 if not 3 of the placement rewards from our average result, one being to 50hp on 800 pts for those all important roster slots.

Changes to level shift made reaching up out of 2* land to grab some points from 3* teams once we'd hit out ceiling much harder, almost to the point of being impractical unless you were dropping cash to shield hop with stormneto.

Changes to MMR have moved the ceiling where we'd start seeing those teams in our nodes lower and lower.

The change from environment to team ups increased the damage taken in almost every single match. This is twofold pain, as you get less milage from each health pack, then lose more often by either surprise cascades giving the Ai the right ap to destroy you 1/7th more often (surprise cascades of environ tiles very seldom were a bother, or losing that one match you thought you could squeak out without spending a health pack because the Ai team had one more damage ability.

The release rate of 3* characters has accelerated to the point where I, as a transition player would not have even been able to save each one if it hadn't been for the hp refund on alliance slots (which gave me back 600 at a perfect time incidently). This means more time grinding out events in the middle class, because 'try harder' is gone. Only 'pay harder' remains. Yet questions on insane character release rates are answered with, "because new characters are aeesome!" Sure, if you ate in the top ranks of player who can have them covered in a season or two. New characters do NOTHING for a transition player aside from letting them complete essential nodes in in pve for the next event after release. Afterwards the will be dead weight, merely space holders for the next 6-12 months.

Every change to the game in my 255 days of play has made placing, progressing, and even playing, harder on the middle class. When asked what is being done about it, if a response is even fielded it's in the view of , "yeah we're considering a few things...", with no substance.

This change to shields will be no different.

At least the light at the end of the transition tunnel is becoming visible. I have fully covered characters now. They won't see the iso to bring them to 166, because the won't do much for pvp, so it would be a waste. Hulk and bp soft capped at 153 will do more for defense than having a 166 Mostorm there instead.