*** Daken (Classic) ***

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Comments

  • atomzed
    atomzed Posts: 1,753 Chairperson of the Boards
    Baltias wrote:
    atomzed wrote:
    Fairly new to the game (~ 60 days) and this is the first character I bought covers for that's been nerfed.

    Say what you want about General Motors' poor business model, but no one ever awoke to find their Corvette replaced with a Chevette because the former was 'just too powerful'.

    The perennial catch 22 situation in gaming. If you don't balance the characters, ppl complain "P2W!". If you do balance the characters, ppl complain " why you nerf!"

    Like many had mentioned many many times, instead of stupidly nerfing covers that are working as intended, which are only a few, D3P should BUFF the covers that are working pathetically, which are many. So, instead of spending more effort to BUFF the many uberly useless covers, D3P opts for the easy way out to nerf the few.

    Human nature? Probably. What reasonable dev would do? Absolutely not.

    At the end, the dev have the bigger picture, as they need to ensure that the changes do not impact on their future plan. They may have characters that are planned, that will have synergy with say, daredevil. Buffing daredevil now means that their plans for this new character will be affected.

    Sure you may deem that the dev is incompetent and all. But I think ppl should acknowledge that the task is not easy.

    Imho, I think they are doing a reasonable job. There are many missteps which is expected for a small company. But overall I see that the direction they are moving in is still right.
  • I've filed a complaint with my state's Attorney General's office; this is internet fraud.
    I'm interested to see how this turns out.

    Side question: if ~$20 hits you hard enough to file such a complaint, how can you afford the device on which to play this game?
  • adamLmpq wrote:
    I've filed a complaint with my state's Attorney General's office; this is internet fraud.
    I'm interested to see how this turns out.

    Side question: if ~$20 hits you hard enough to file such a complaint, how can you afford the device on which to play this game?

    If people didn't always have this attitude there might actually be a recourse against destruction of virtual wealth. I remember seeing an article of a guy filing a suit to recover his baggage fee of $20 that an airline asked him to pay when they lost his baggage, so he sued them and cost like $75 to get his $20 back. Of course all these internet wizards told him he'd never win and that it'd cost more than whatever he's getting back (he's not asking for the baggage to be reimbursed, because that'd actually be hard), but he said that studies show a monkey will never do such a thing but a human will and we need more humans than monkeys, and he did win. And if we have more humans than monkeys people might not always get bent over backwards by EULA and similar things.

    Now I don't think a Daken nerf is going to be a catalyst for virtual property rights but the underlying idea isn't bad. There are probably better scenarios to try to make such a move, though.
  • atomzed
    atomzed Posts: 1,753 Chairperson of the Boards
    Phantron wrote:
    adamLmpq wrote:
    I've filed a complaint with my state's Attorney General's office; this is internet fraud.
    I'm interested to see how this turns out.

    Side question: if ~$20 hits you hard enough to file such a complaint, how can you afford the device on which to play this game?

    If people didn't always have this attitude there might actually be a recourse against destruction of virtual wealth. I remember seeing an article of a guy filing a suit to recover his baggage fee of $20 that an airline asked him to pay when they lost his baggage, so he sued them and cost like $75 to get his $20 back. Of course all these internet wizards told him he'd never win and that it'd cost more than whatever he's getting back (he's not asking for the baggage to be reimbursed, because that'd actually be hard), but he said that studies show a monkey will never do such a thing but a human will and we need more humans than monkeys, and he did win. And if we have more humans than monkeys people might not always get bent over backwards by EULA and similar things.

    Now I don't think a Daken nerf is going to be a catalyst for virtual property rights but the underlying idea isn't bad. There are probably better scenarios to try to make such a move, though.

    I do understand the individual freedom to seek recourse for perceived injustice.

    But the perception that we "owned" the characters are an illusion. The typical user agreement will state that D3 maintains full ownership of the "properties".

    This is akin to the players, renting an apartment from D3. If D3 decided to renovate the rooms, and change out the carpet and tv, it is well within their rights to do so.

    If people are unhappy, we can always leave. But to demand that we have the rights to demand compensation.... I think it's stretching it.

    Edit:- the typical user rights are crafted to give them full ownership, because if they don't, they can't make any changes to it at all. No tweaks, no buffs and nerfs... even if the server is shut down, the customers can claim damages too. So the company *has* to retain full ownership.
  • atomzed wrote:
    I do understand the individual freedom to seek recourse for perceived injustice.

    But the perception that we "owned" the characters are an illusion. The typical user agreement will state that D3 maintains full ownership of the "properties".

    This is akin to the players, renting an apartment from D3. If D3 decided to renovate the rooms, and change out the carpet and tv, it is well within their rights to do so.

    If people are unhappy, we can always leave. But to demand that we have the rights to demand compensation.... I think it's stretching it.

    Edit:- the typical user rights are crafted to give them full ownership, because if they don't, they can't make any changes to it at all. No tweaks, no buffs and nerfs... even if the server is shut down, the customers can claim damages too. So the company *has* to retain full ownership.

    The company wants you to believe you don't own anything you paid money for, but that doesn't mean they're right. And even if your characters are just a service, you can clearly try to get your money back and more if there's reason to believe the service has unreasonably degraded compared to what's expected. If they slashed a digit off everyone's levels, isotope, and HP you should have a compelling case for that whatever you believe you were renting/owning/buying is certainly no longer what you have now and some due compensation is required. Now since people are indeed closer to monkeys than humans in this respect because it does take a lot more money to sue any company successfully compared to what you can expect to get back, they'll likely to continue to get away with it as long as they're not doing something as egregious as I described. Certainly anything that can be reasonably argued as mere incompetence, e.g., an argument like 'we were just dumb when we first designed Daken', would have little chance of actually winning in court. But I don't think game maker have some kind of ironclad clause to arbitarily change stuff people paid a lot of money for.
  • atomzed
    atomzed Posts: 1,753 Chairperson of the Boards
    Phantron wrote:
    atomzed wrote:
    I do understand the individual freedom to seek recourse for perceived injustice.

    But the perception that we "owned" the characters are an illusion. The typical user agreement will state that D3 maintains full ownership of the "properties".

    This is akin to the players, renting an apartment from D3. If D3 decided to renovate the rooms, and change out the carpet and tv, it is well within their rights to do so.

    If people are unhappy, we can always leave. But to demand that we have the rights to demand compensation.... I think it's stretching it.

    Edit:- the typical user rights are crafted to give them full ownership, because if they don't, they can't make any changes to it at all. No tweaks, no buffs and nerfs... even if the server is shut down, the customers can claim damages too. So the company *has* to retain full ownership.

    The company wants you to believe you don't own anything you paid money for, but that doesn't mean they're right. And even if your characters are just a service, you can clearly try to get your money back and more if there's reason to believe the service has unreasonably degraded compared to what's expected. If they slashed a digit off everyone's levels, isotope, and HP you should have a compelling case for that whatever you believe you were renting/owning/buying is certainly no longer what you have now and some due compensation is required. Now since people are indeed closer to monkeys than humans in this respect because it does take a lot more money to sue any company successfully compared to what you can expect to get back, they'll likely to continue to get away with it as long as they're not doing something as egregious as I described. Certainly anything that can be reasonably argued as mere incompetence, e.g., an argument like 'we were just dumb when we first designed Daken', would have little chance of actually winning in court. But I don't think game maker have some kind of ironclad clause to arbitarily change stuff people paid a lot of money for.

    You certainly can try. By all means go ahead and try to sue.

    The points that I raised is to show that there is another side to this argument, that the "contract" or "user agreement" had been designed in such a way that it gives them the rights to change things as required.

    You may not agree with what I said, that is fine. I am pointing out my reasons why I don't agree that people have a case to sue, for this specific example of change to Ldaken.
  • btw, where is such "contract" or "user agreement" located? I can find it every time I login, and certainly can't find it anywhere in the game.

    If this is a binding legal document, user should have a right to freely access it whenever they can within the software.
  • Baltias wrote:
    btw, where is such "contract" or "user agreement" located? I can find it every time I login, and certainly can't find it anywhere in the game.

    If this is a binding legal document, user should have a right to freely access it whenever they can within the software.

    Back in the days where software came in a box it's on the manual and since they always say 'return this product if you don't agree with these terms', so even if you never read it you implicitly agree to the terms by using the product even if this document doesn't exist in anywhere you can see. The user agreement/EULA is not as legally binding as the company would like you to believe but unless it said something outrageous nobody is going to challenge it in the court. I read that Apple terms of license says you agree to its terms and any future changes (that they don't have to show you) by continuing to use Apple products, so you could be using your iPhone and they can come in and collect your firstborn to sacrifice to an ancient god without even showing you the terms of agreement. But as long as Apple is not collecting your firstborn people don't really care about having such a ridiculous clause in their user agreement.

    Of course almost all the terms in the typical user agreement are stuff that would easily hold in court, but Microsoft once attempted to sneak in a clause saying you can't use Microsoft product against Microsoft, so making a Powerpoint presentation on why Microsoft sucks would be against the user agreement, and they actually lost in court over that specific clause. I certainly wouldn't recommend anyone to challenge the system over a nerf on Daken, but there isn't some kind of inherent unbeatable system. In general I'd say you've to be able to prove malice or conspiracy as opposed to just incompetence. That is, you can easily say whoever designed the original 2 AP Ragnarok was incompetent, and that'd easily pass based on any number of incompetent designs in gaming history. But let's say there was a 90% off sale for iso/HP, and then level cap was raised to 999 and cover cap was raised to 99, you can easily argue there's some kind of conspiracy there and that didn't happen just due to incompetence. This is probably why players almost never win, because usually companies aren't this greedy and it'd take something like I described for the players to have a chance.
  • IamTheDanger
    IamTheDanger Posts: 1,093 Chairperson of the Boards
    adamLmpq wrote:
    I've filed a complaint with my state's Attorney General's office; this is internet fraud.
    I'm interested to see how this turns out.

    Side question: if ~$20 hits you hard enough to file such a complaint, how can you afford the device on which to play this game?


    It's not the amount of money to me, it's the principle of the matter. As GandalfWhite said, it's like a bait and switch. Personally, I spent over $200 bucks on C Mags just before I found out he was going to nerfed. I don't really care for this, but there is not much I can do about it. If someones builds a character by buying covers with actual RL money, they should get the option to return those covers in the event of a nerf or buff. At least for a partial refund, like 80% at least. Or if the amount changes over time. Say I spend over $300 to max a 3* hero, then one week later, said hero gets nerfed, then I should be able to return the covers I bought for full price. However, if I max the charater then he gets nerfed 2 or 3 months later, then the refund per cover return rate should be about 30% or so. After all, I did get to use the covers that were purchased, not for long of course. But I did use them.

    I understand that the developers don't have to refund anything, but IMHO, it would be the right thing to do.

    JJ
  • atomzed
    atomzed Posts: 1,753 Chairperson of the Boards
    @Baltias, I clicked on some agreement when I first created the account, iirc. If you dig hard enough, you may find it in some obscure corner of the website. I certainly not try to find it. *shrug*
    It's not the amount of money to me, it's the principle of the matter.

    My last attempt at trying to explain my perspective.

    If I were to perceive the purchase of cmag and ldaken as buying a car, and they swapped the car, then I would be very unhappy.

    But if I perceive the paying of cmag and ldaken covers, as add ons for my rental flat, then it is no longer offensive. It's like I paid my landlord $10 for a one time activation fee to use the cable tv. Some time later, the landlord change the cable tv content subscription (no more DIscovery Turbo!). Will I be annoyed? Yes. But would I try to file a legal charge? I won't.

    Edit: I realised that the key reason why I not (that) angry enough to "file charges" because the I expect the industry norm to be as such. Until such time when the industry norm shift, to say like the automobile industry (where the recall of faulty cars are free), I would respond to things in the same way. So in some sense, I do agree with what phantron said, and people should try to sue/ challenge those 'errant' companies. But I won't be those first few.
  • If virtual good is supposed to be some kind of service then having a character nerfed would be like having your car's warranty revoked while it's still under the warranty period. There are plenty of tangible goods in real life that you can return after using it a period of time if you found the item to be defective/lacking while only paying a restocking fee and sometimes none at all as long as it's within the store's agreed period of time, and tangible goods do cost something for the store to restock, while if you found your CMag to be defective due to a nerf after 10 days, it sure doesn't cost D3 anything meaningful to delete undo your purchase and roll the character back.

    Let's say you've a policy where anything you bought with cash can be refunded for 30 days, and they'll just roll your account back to the time of purchase. If you managed to open 5 Fury tokens immediately after you bought some HP that's your problem. Just like in real life it might be a net positive because perhaps then people will buy more stuff thinking they can refund it and then just forgot or was too lazy, just like refunding with tangible goods. Right now almost nobody does this because they figure the players have no rights so you might as well take everything, but it's hardly the only way things need to be. Guild Wars 2 offer a refund for the game within some period of time (3 months I think) no question asked, so you can just play the game for 2 months and 29 days and then refund the game. Sure the link to do that is buried in a tiny link in the middle of nowhere, but from the people who used it, this link actually works. I found that out 3 days after the time to refund has expired, and I didn't like the game at all but knowing that they offer a refund is going to make me more likely to take chances on their future product. Does that work out in favor of the company I have no idea, but I'm sure they didn't do it just because they were crazy. They must have figured it generates enough goodwill + guys more willing to try this and figure the extra revenue you get from the people who forget/are too lazy/never found the link is more than the revenue lost from the guys who did found the link and asked for a refund, and there's nothing inherently illogical with such a system.
  • Unknown
    edited July 2014
    Many interesting ideas about my decision to file a complaint with my state's Attorney General regarding the Daken Classic nerfing (the complaint has been withdrawn as nerfing has been suspended). On some comments the best we can do is agree to disagree; but let me clarify:
    • I don't believe I own any of the app code or characters.
    • I have purchased an ability for a certain character, and
    • A business is required to provide goods purchased, real or intangible.
    The Cable TV comparison was close, but I see the comparison more that I'm buying a subscription to ESPN, and the apartment complex stating they're excluding football and basketball from the ESPN channel. It's not what I bought, and the provider needs to either continue providing the agreed upon service or provide compensation for reducing the service.

    There's also a cynical interpretation to these events.
    • D3P has made no attempt to hide it's goal is to average $1/day from every MPQ player.
    • An 'overpowered' cover like Daken Classic will generate more sales than a moderate or underpowered cover.
    So, an unscrupulous business could make overpowered covers available, generate higher than average revenues, then reduce the powers of those covers to something that wouldn't have generated nearly as much sales or revenue.

    It's up to our individual call whether this is immaterial or to be expected - but if D3P goes through with the nerf, I'm re-filing my complaint. And for those unfamiliar with the Attorney General complaint process - I'm merely formalizing my objection in addition to contacting D3P. The number of complaints received determines AG involvement, so AG action would indicate a lot of unhappy customers, not just me.
  • There's also a realistic interpretation to these events.

    D3P has made no attempt to hide it's goal is to average $1/day from every MPQ player.
    An 'overpowered' cover like Daken Classic will generate more sales than a moderate or underpowered cover.

    So, an unscrupulous business could make overpowered covers available, generate higher than average revenues, then reduce the powers of those covers to something that wouldn't have generated nearly as much sales or revenue.

    fix that for you. icon_cool.gif

    That's how D3P runs their business. icon_cool.gif
  • In terms of character design you can certainly have questionable motives. For example let's say I'm designing something and I'm on a tight deadline, maybe my boss will just say 'just err on the side of overpowered (because it generates more sales)', and it'd be difficult to prove this unless someone find the original memo where my boss told me to make everything slightly overpowered to boost sales. We can certainly argue Daken, Sentry, and Thor seems to be designed to generate sales because there's nothing fair about their abilities/durability but it's still within what can be explained by incompetence. Of course, it's not exactly reassuring if you know that the developer is merely incompetent as opposed to greedy. Perhaps having more communication toward why they're designed a certain way would help. For example, how does strong regen factor in the true healing design? Is the point that certain guys don't have to care about true healing (and we should buy them)?
  • Phaserhawk
    Phaserhawk Posts: 2,676 Chairperson of the Boards
    I look at a company that does this for the most part, correctly, and that's Riot Games and their League of Legends. Here is a company that for awhile was turning out new champ after new champ and players were getting upset as some of their older ones were just not up to snuff. But Riot would listen and adjust power levels. They claimed for the sake of balance, some could argue for money, as some new champs would come out ridiculously overpowered and then they would nerf them repeatedly until they were unplayable after people spent their hard earned money. I know this began to hurt Riot so they decided to slow up on new characters, and work on game balance issues. When they did release a new guy they gave him/her/it 2-4 weeks for players to adjust and go from there. If the character was too strong, they would tone down either power, or make their weaknesses a bit stronger. Take Daken for example. Perhaps instead of nerfing him completely, what if you made his weaknesses weaker, like his Heat. Instead of messing with # of tiles etc. which completely changes the character, why not say Heat does 4% damage of max life. That way it would take more than one Heal to override 2 Heats.

    I don't get upset with character changes if they are needed because they are either breaking the game or they are doing nothing but collecting dust. That's why I would much rather see D3 start funbalancing IM40, Bullseye, X-Force, etc. and buff these guys to playable. Sometimes the tools to beat other players are already there they just need to be updated. How fun would IM40 be if he didn't drain all your AP or his Blue was actually able to be cast? Or Recharge didn't cost so much later? I always favor buffing underpowered characters first before attempting to reign in power of stronger characters
  • atomzed
    atomzed Posts: 1,753 Chairperson of the Boards
    Phantron wrote:
    We can certainly argue Daken, Sentry, and Thor seems to be designed to generate sales because there's nothing fair about their abilities/durability but it's still within what can be explained by incompetence.

    I don't know, I don't think that Sentry is OP. He has a real bad drawback, as he deals a lot of dmg to the team. Under normal situation, without boosts or healing packs. his self dmg would have been a deterrence.

    Ldaken indeed got stronger because of the true healing change. But was he OP? He is strong but he's a strong support character and not the main offense. D3 do recognise that he is overly used, hence they are trying to rein him in.

    Lthor, I do think he is *too* strong. High HP, tiles generation and strong AoE. Which is why I am glad that the heroes released after him has been balanced (Mohawk storm, she hulk, Fury, Cpt Marvel). So in terms of character design, I am fairly confident in their decisions.

    The claims that they are releasing characters that are OP to generate cover sales, and then nerf ing them after... is plainly unfair. The health of Mohawk storm is so low that people has dissed her. She hulk, green ability has been criticized as useless. Fury yellow requires a lot of AP to be fully effective. They could have release more OP powers but they didn't, which shows to me that they are concerned about character balance and not just to release "chasy" characters.

    Also, if they wants to generate more sales for Ldaken, they would have not have 2 pvp with his covers as the rewards after he was released. Same for sentry. That's equivalent to at least 6 covers given for free (albeit to top 10%). In fact I bought zero covers for Ldaken and got my 5/5/3 Ldaken purely from tokens and rewards.

    I won't deny that some changes are due to bottom line, like the true healing change is for health pack sales (I don't think so), or the change to cover pack % is money grab (this I agree).... But to say that they deliberately released OP characters for sales, I would strongly do agree.
  • Phaserhawk
    Phaserhawk Posts: 2,676 Chairperson of the Boards
    If they want to generate sales just make a character with a unique color combination. If you released an average green/blue/purple, or yellow/purple/red etc. stuff we don't have. Holy cow will you get sales. If She-Hulk had a decent skill, she would be played all the time because we dont have that combo, but she's too weak to do so. Look at Human Torch. If they would have made him Red/Black/Yellow this guy would be seeing a lot more play. But....they make him red/black/green and he' sjust a rehash of others. Where Daken's huge power comes from right now is A. and obviously the ability to generate free strike tiles. B. He heals and C. He has a cheap active blue that does direct damage, no one has this. C.mags doesn't do direct dmg per say but is cheap and abuseable, every other blue is semi-expensive to super expensive. I use Daken to tank green to feed a green user and for an active blue that helps me put guys away. Here's the other issue.

    Black Widow Grey Suit
    Human Torch
    Ragnarok
    Sentry
    She-Hulk
    Storm
    Hulk
    Punisher
    Thor
    Patch
    Invisible Woman

    These are all the characters Daken can tank for and get them free green while generating strike tiles. Daken can tank for 10 out of 22 3*'s. That' almost half!!! 3 of those guys Sentry, Thor, Patch are top tier characters and 1 Hulk is one of the top defensive characters. So you want to know why Daken is so strong right now? IT'S BECAUSE THERE ARE SO MANY GOOD GREEN CHARACTERS OUT THERE THAT HE CAN ABSORB ALL THE DAMAGE WHILE CREATING STRIKE TILES AND GENERATING GREEN!!!! Seriously, there is no other issue. D3 has made an overabundance of green using characters, red is the other one. And people wonder why a character that essentially negates all damage done while putting more damage on the board while gathering a color. If you switch Daken's Pheromone to only work when making purple matches and not green, he goes from top tier to bottom tier instantly.

    This goes back to my earlier statement. Work on buffing older characters and increase new character diversity (ie. more color combos) and you'll see the game get better.
  • Mawtful
    Mawtful Posts: 1,646 Chairperson of the Boards
    Phaserhawk wrote:
    <snip>
    Take Daken for example. Perhaps instead of nerfing him completely, what if you made his weaknesses weaker, like his Heat. Instead of messing with # of tiles etc. which completely changes the character, why not say Heat does 4% damage of max life. That way it would take more than one Heal to override 2 Heats.
    <snip>

    I was thinking that Healing & Heat should be altered to have a minimum required AP on hand before the Healing kicks in - the same way that Falcon requires a minimum AP on hand before Redwing takes flight.

    Daken is supposed to be addicted to "Heat" right? So he starts off a match and he's "craving" a hit - taking dmg/turn in game terms - until he gets that hit he needs - X Blue AP (5? probably 5). Let Chemical Reaction work in much the same way: if it still costs 5 Blue, that will likely be enough to push him back into Heat again, and it'll actually take away some of the Blue tiles on the board, making it harder each time to get back to a "normal" state - more or less like addiction, each time you get that hit it "takes"/"requires" a little bit more of you each time, and soon you "need" it just to feel normal.

    </thoughts>
  • atomzed wrote:
    Phantron wrote:
    We can certainly argue Daken, Sentry, and Thor seems to be designed to generate sales because there's nothing fair about their abilities/durability but it's still within what can be explained by incompetence.

    I don't know, I don't think that Sentry is OP. He has a real bad drawback, as he deals a lot of dmg to the team. Under normal situation, without boosts or healing packs. his self dmg would have been a deterrence.

    Ldaken indeed got stronger because of the true healing change. But was he OP? He is strong but he's a strong support character and not the main offense. D3 do recognise that he is overly used, hence they are trying to rein him in.

    Lthor, I do think he is *too* strong. High HP, tiles generation and strong AoE. Which is why I am glad that the heroes released after him has been balanced (Mohawk storm, she hulk, Fury, Cpt Marvel). So in terms of character design, I am fairly confident in their decisions.

    The claims that they are releasing characters that are OP to generate cover sales, and then nerf ing them after... is plainly unfair. The health of Mohawk storm is so low that people has dissed her. She hulk, green ability has been criticized as useless. Fury yellow requires a lot of AP to be fully effective. They could have release more OP powers but they didn't, which shows to me that they are concerned about character balance and not just to release "chasy" characters.

    Also, if they wants to generate more sales for Ldaken, they would have not have 2 pvp with his covers as the rewards after he was released. Same for sentry. That's equivalent to at least 6 covers given for free (albeit to top 10%). In fact I bought zero covers for Ldaken and got my 5/5/3 Ldaken purely from tokens and rewards.

    I won't deny that some changes are due to bottom line, like the true healing change is for health pack sales (I don't think so), or the change to cover pack % is money grab (this I agree).... But to say that they deliberately released OP characters for sales, I would strongly do agree.

    I'd say it's common to err on the side of being overpowered. If you're pressed for time and you aren't quite sure if this ability should cost 6 or 7 AP, you might as well go with the 6 AP because being slightly overpowered tends to be better for the bottom line as opposed to slightly underpowered when it comes to a new character.

    And of course you can always explain most events by a lack of experience. Someone obviously thought 2 AP Thunderclap was a good idea in the past.
  • Mawtful
    Mawtful Posts: 1,646 Chairperson of the Boards
    Cross posting this from the Character Discussion thread for 3* Daken (viewtopic.php?f=14&t=5799&p=192149#p192149), since I do really like this idea, and figure it'll get a bit more discussion here.
    I was thinking that Healing & Heat should be altered to have a minimum required AP on hand before the Healing kicks in - the same way that Falcon requires a minimum AP on hand before Redwing takes flight.

    Daken is supposed to be addicted to "Heat" right? So he starts off a match and he's "craving" a hit - taking dmg/turn in game terms - until he gets that hit he needs - X Blue AP (5? probably 5). Let Chemical Reaction work in much the same way: if it still costs 5 Blue, that will likely be enough to push him back into Heat again, and it'll actually take away some of the Blue tiles on the board, making it harder each time to get back to a "normal" state - more or less like addiction, each time you get that hit it "takes"/"requires" a little bit more of you each time, and soon you "need" it just to feel normal.

    I feel that this is much closer to the concept that devs were aiming at with the introduction of a third ability originally. Thought? Comments?