True Healing: Monetization Analysis

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edited June 2014 in MPQ General Discussion
A lot of people here seem to think that the True Healing update is a cash grab via health packs, but it goes much deeper than that.

First off: yes, everyone's pointed out the obvious that it encourages the purchase of health packs... and sure, that may earn d3 a few bucks here and there. But everyone seems to be missing the real money maker here: duplicate rosters.

Let's think of this step by step
1) Following the change, it's not realistic that a large proportion of users will start using a 'diversified' roster because you stand to lose a ton of points by putting out a below-average team
2) It's more likely that this will encourage users to start building duplicate Lazy Thors, Laken, etc. so they have a spare top tier character that they can sub in when the other one is injured and healing
3) Outside of the highest echelon of the current player base, few people have multiple versions of the same 3* character

So, let's summarize the monetization opportunities that we can derive from the above:
1) Many people at almost all tiers of play will burn Hero Points for extra roster slots for duplicate characters
2) These same people will also need a ton of iso to build up these duplicate characters
3) ISO generation will be slower since many people won't be selling off duplicate covers as freely as they do now, encouraging people to buy more ISO with $$
4) Just a guess, but I'd imagine that high end PVP progression rewards will be a lot harder to reach for anything below top tier, so there will be a lot less free Hero Points being given out

The biggest impact will be on players in the mid-upper tiers (averaging somewhere in the mid 700-800 pts range in pvp) who have a good roster of 3*s and tend to sell a lot of covers they win. I'd imagine that these players weren't paying a ton before, and were just grinding for ISO to move into the top tier.

Comments

  • Unknown
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    I won't need to make duplicate Lazy Thors or anything for that matter. I don't heal for PvP basically ever. I throw the odd health pack around as needed but that's it. If things get bad i'll use Patch + Daken (or patch + c.Mags while he still works) and keep chugging on. I don't know how prevalent prologue healing is amongst "top" players (don't know if I count but i'll assume I do) but I would guess not very at all. I might use it very occasionally to heal an underlevelled required PvE hero but that's about it.

    I agree wholeheartedly with the conclusion it screws mid-tier players. That is my big issue with the change and IMO i'm pretty disgusted with players who, like me, will be unaffected but decide to cheer about the fact OBW users are now screwed.
  • Unknown
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    You are delusional. People will NOT build multiples of the same characters, except for a few crazies. It takes way too much time/effort to even build singles of 3*s. They will simply quit.
  • Unknown
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    Mid tier players already get chewed up by the top tier buzzsaws. All this change do is make you get harvested less often by the guy waiting to kick you down with Sentry + Daken or any number of broken combos.

    And of course mid tier versus mid tier is completely unchanged because they're all using very similar teams so everyone gets affected by it equally.
  • Unknown
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    I will never make duplicate characters. That's ridiculous. Idon't marathon play, I barely use health packs now as it is and I don't use OBW or Spidey.

    Just swap your characters around for the PVP climb, end on your defensive team, and work the shields.

    Big whoop.
  • Spoit
    Spoit Posts: 3,441 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Phantron wrote:
    Mid tier players already get chewed up by the top tier buzzsaws. All this change do is make you get harvested less often by the guy waiting to kick you down with Sentry + Daken or any number of broken combos.

    And of course mid tier versus mid tier is completely unchanged because they're all using very similar teams so everyone gets affected by it equally.
    How so? If anything it will encourage more tanking and skipping to beat up lower risk 2* teams
  • Unknown
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    Phantron wrote:
    Mid tier players already get chewed up by the top tier buzzsaws. All this change do is make you get harvested less often by the guy waiting to kick you down with Sentry + Daken or any number of broken combos.

    And of course mid tier versus mid tier is completely unchanged because they're all using very similar teams so everyone gets affected by it equally.

    While I see what you're saying about people in 2* land being affected equally I don't think it's unchanged. Their matchups are mirrored by neccessity (Say "roster diversity" as much as you like IceX but most 2*s are pretty much unusable in PvP unless you want to become the MMR bracket punching bag) BUT there is a huge impact when it comes to sustainability. It will be significantly harder for 2* players to get progression and/or placement rewards, especially if they have time to play once a day in a decent chunk rather than getting on multiple times when their health packs have had a chance to pop back up.

    Also don't see it reducing hits by tanked 3*s on 2*s aside from the fact their scores will be low enough to not be worth hitting. I'm not sure that's a thing most 2* players would consider much of a silver lining....

    If anything **** healing will tempt more ppl to tank to minimise health loss in the lower scores for PvP.
  • Unknown
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    After She-Hulk there will be :

    6 Million ISO
    290 - 3* covers to get

    Since they are not completely stupid at D3P, they must have a lot of newcomers (and many veterans leaving). I wonder how these new players will cope in the near future and use the "diversity" of their roster.
  • babinro
    babinro Posts: 771 Critical Contributor
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    I think people are really jumping to conclusions at how 'negative' the healing change could be for this game. Simply put....it remains to be seen.

    The posts I'm seeing here seem to imply that the majority are expecting that the top 25 in any given PvP event will be there thanks to spending 1000+ hp on health packs. They lend to the impression that everyone will instantly spend a TON more money just to compete for the same level of rewards. I have to disagree.

    Why?

    Shield hopping isn't used to this degree now. Why don't we have the majority spending 1000+ on shield hopping every PvP in order to 'pay to win'?
    It's the same advantage of buying endless health packs after all.

    There are some people who will take advantage of this and pay to win. We need to accept that.
    The rest of us will simply adapt.

    My prediction?
    PvP scores will lower as a result of less effective 'pushes' to high scores. Assuming that the average high end reward winner in PvP is 900+ points. After the healing change this might reduce to something like 700+. That's all. The majority will scale back in the number of matches they can handle and will leave it at that. The same thing we see now.

    TLDR: The healing change will NOT create a new flood of HP being spent on shields. Things will remain largely the same but players won't reward tiers as high as they did before. (Even less will make it to 900+ PvP reward).
  • Unknown
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    Scores will definitely be lower for the people not on the high end but that's probably why they also lowered most of the threshold for progression prizes recently. The most valuable award is probably the 50 HP at 900 rating. Now you can get it at 600, and if you can push an extra 200 you get 50 more. It should still work out favorable to players. 1100 is probably out of reach for a 2*, though those score generally involve a decent amount of shields to get so it's hard to predict what will happen, since shields largely negates any healing issue because you have to wait for your shield to clear out retaliations anyway.

    For the high end they're obviously not affected because a team like Mag + anyone never needed healing to begin with.

    For the low end of say the guy running Thor 2* + OBW, his opponents are likely all Thor 2* + OBW so it's still relatively the same.

    The more interesting question is what happens against someone who is in between. For example what about Punisher + OBW? Well the nerf does affect OBW user equally so it wouldn't be a gain here, so what if you ran say, 141 Punisher + 100 Falcon? How does this team measure up to a 85 OBW + 85 Thor? Is a 141 Punisher + 100 Falcon even better than 141 Punisher + 85 OBW even with the healing nerf? It seems to me as long as OBW is still the best 2* support character by far it doesn't matter too much because most teams will still need to have OBW in their lineup and any healing changes is neutral if both teams use OBW. What character will you use to replace OBW that isn't one of the top tier characters (e.g. guys who aren't affected by healing to begin with)? As long as that character doesn't exist, there's no net change.

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