Thoughts on the Upcoming End of Story Healing

Unknown

This is one of the sole f2p games that have kept my interest. Mainly because I can keep playing it. I'm competitive in this game because I can sit there for 8 hours on a lazy Saturday and pour my time into this game. Taking away my ability to do that will probably stop me from playing eventually.

How about giving me a reason to spend money if you want to make me use health packs instead. Make a tier 1 boost for xHP that makes a 50% chance to add health packs to the rewards after you beat a story mode for a certain amount of time (let's say an hour). Then you could add a tier 2 and 3 boosts which would obviously cost more.

Tier 2 could include standard tokens and 500 ISO for that hour. Tier 3 could add a small chance to obtain heroic and the 1000 ISO to completed matches.

Unknown

There needs to be something drastic to break the going in circles problem in the end game PvP. It really doesn't matter if you're running Magneto and killing teams by turn 3 or you use prologue heal. In the end you're still running in circles about 90% of the time because you're matched up against guys who can do exactly the same thing back to you unless you've extremely favorable MMR. Prologue healing needs to go away but it is not the cure. It is only the symptom of what's wrong with the game and something else has to fix the source first. I'm sure D3 envisioned you're supposed to do PvP like 'oh no Thor is down for the next 12 hours but I got Ragnarok here, maybe he can still pull off a victory!' Of course if you actually did that you'd probably end up with a negative score the moment the pack sees Ragnarok has replaced Thor on your team. You'd need something drastic like you don't lose points for being attacked in PvP or something equally crazy to achieve what D3 wants to achieve.

Spoit

Phantron wrote:

There needs to be something drastic to break the going in circles problem in the end game PvP. It really doesn't matter if you're running Magneto and killing teams by turn 3 or you use prologue heal. In the end you're still running in circles about 90% of the time because you're matched up against guys who can do exactly the same thing back to you unless you've extremely favorable MMR. Prologue healing needs to go away but it is not the cure. It is only the symptom of what's wrong with the game and something else has to fix the source first. I'm sure D3 envisioned you're supposed to do PvP like 'oh no Thor is down for the next 12 hours but I got Ragnarok here, maybe he can still pull off a victory!' Of course if you actually did that you'd probably end up with a negative score the moment the pack sees Ragnarok has replaced Thor on your team. You'd need something drastic like you don't lose points for being attacked in PvP or something equally crazy to achieve what D3 wants to achieve.

So why are you campaigning against it so vociferously then, if it doesn't matter?

(Because realistically, you're getting hit for at least 100 points as soon as you break shields anyway)

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

If I'm running a business, and contemplating a change that will make my customers "hulk smash angry" and have them "rioting in the streets", why would I go through with it?? We know it's all about money, but does anyone think people spend more money when they're rioting?

Madness? This is MPQ!!!!

The game did a few things already and puts the brain energy to invent a more frustrating environment instead of one that is more fun.
Some suggested repeatedly that probably the nephew of the owner writes Ph.D in psychology and it is some experiment on people tolerance.

It went surprisingly far and keeps going -- even drops a ton of money apparently, so I see no limiting factor for their experimenting further.

Unknown

I honestly think someone at the company is obsesses with short-term performance and/or certain weird metrics, and that's what's responsible for a lot of the weirder decision-making. We've seen them:
- going after the $1 ARPDAU, which is ridiculous, but also isn't a good guide to revenue
- doing anything to avoid varying up the PVP schedule because the monotonous ones bring in more money
- make ten-packs valueless for a large percentage of the players because they were selling more

The first is a meaningless metric that may be useful as a comparison tool, but is a stupid metric to focus on because degrading the player base - which is essential to the game's long-term health, and therefore revenue - helps the metric. It's dumb. The other two are a hyperfocus on short-term thinking to the detriment of the long-term health of the game, because they make the overall experience worse at the expense of avoiding a dip in sales.

My suspicion is - if they're trying to kill prologue healing - is that somebody decided that they weren't getting enough health packs sales and they're going to try to force people to buy health packs. It almost certainly won't work. But they way they have things structured right now, there's not really much for people to buy once they hit a certain point that makes any sense at all. Tokens or token packs are just exchanging HP for ISO. ISO itself is a terrible deal financially. Roster slots become more-or-less self-sustaining unless you're spending a ton on shields. Boosts aren't necessary.

Even if I wanted to give them money right now, there's not really anything for me to spend it on. Health packs would actually make a certain amount of sense if they were the only viable healing option, but they're just grossly overpriced.

Neuromancer

They've split the tabs, so they'll probably split your health too. You'll have one health bar for Story, and one health bar for Versus. The healing you do in a PvE tab will only heal you in PvE, and the healing you do in PvP will only benefit PvP. Someone may have already predicted this, but this thread is already TLDR.

Unknown

Neuromancer wrote:

They've split the tabs, so they'll probably split your health too. You'll have one health bar for Story, and one health bar for Versus. The healing you do in a PvE tab will only heal you in PvE, and the healing you do in PvP will only benefit PvP. Someone may have already predicted this, but this thread is already TLDR.

The tabs have been split for ages. Things have been moved around, but the split isn't new.

Neuromancer

Thanks for the insight, Ben. I don't know if anyone mentioned anything about how new the changes were, but now that you mention it:

Less than a month ago the tabs were called "Prologue," and "Events." Now they're called "Story," and "Versus." I think they're planning to solidly differentiate the two forms of play. Healing might go along with that. This also might mean that if a character is KO'd in PvE, he may be available in PvP. I guess only time will tell.

yogi_

I know it's been mentioned nowhere and therefore probably unlikely, but do you think there is any chance OBW would be getting a nerf to some of her healing abilities (to which there would be a counter of an additional benefit)?

Unknown

yogi_ wrote:

I know it's been mentioned nowhere and therefore probably unlikely, but do you think there is any chance OBW would be getting a nerf to some of her healing abilities (to which there would be a counter of an additional benefit)?

Well if they remove prologue healing both her and Spidey's utility will be decreased. If you could only heal while doing PvP or the events this means matches lasting longer, with increased risk of cascades or mistakes on our part.

yogi_

yogi_ wrote:

I know it's been mentioned nowhere and therefore probably unlikely, but do you think there is any chance OBW would be getting a nerf to some of her healing abilities (to which there would be a counter of an additional benefit)?

How prophetic... (without the opposing benefit though).