Spend recharging health packs first

So I hate when I get a health pack reward from most things. The only time I ever particularly need health packs is when I'm desperately trying to fight the tide to get to 900 in a pvp event, which is a fairly rare occurrence, but it's not at all a rare occurrence for one of my frequently-used characters to get banged up a bit and for me to want to throw a health pack on them. However, whenever I am above 10 health packs already due to a "lucky" (sarcasm) pull from a Taco vault (or one of the other, more rare sources of extra health packs) I find myself in this weird position where I don't want to "waste" one of the non-regenerating health packs in case I want it for the next pvp climb, but I would really like to use a health pack to patch somebody up to keep my grind going. Essentially, unless I'm actively PvPing aggressively, extra health packs are worth negative value to me, because they represent additional stress and overhead that I have to manage if I want to preserve any health packs in excess of 10 for future pvp.

An easy fix for this would be to essentially create two "pools" of health packs. The first pool would be the "normal" 10 health packs that regenerate like normal when below 10. All excess health packs would go into a health pool "stockpile" from which you would draw only when your "normal" health packs are exhausted. Voila- extra health packs received do get stockpiled, but I as a player am not essentially penalized with the removal of health pack replenishment until/unless I work my way back down to 9 or fewer health packs.

inb4 "just use the health packs and don't worry about it"- I hate the feeling that I've gotten a reward that I'm going to turn around and throw away over the course of normal play while having received zero actual benefit from the reward. Doesn't bother you? Fine. It bothers me.

Comments

  • Jwallyr
    Jwallyr Posts: 165 Tile Toppler
    If nothing else, that proves that this is clearly something that sticks in the craw of more people than just me. On the other hand, clearly they don't consider this to be an issue worth particular attention. Maybe just remove the health packs from rewards and replace them with equivalent HP value? Win/win for everybody IMO.
  • Dormammu
    Dormammu Posts: 3,531 Chairperson of the Boards
    Decisions made by the developers time and time again show that health packs are a source of HP use, and HP use translates to real money sales. The switch to burst healing (all healing used to be 'true' healing) and the nerf to OML are two obvious examples of this. So, while I love your suggestion, I don't think it would ever happen.

    I don't begrudge the developers this at all. Character health is MPQ's 'energy', a technique abused by so many other mobile games as a ploy to encourage spending. But once a player's roster is developed a bit, health becomes less and less of a limiting factor. I could literally play MPQ all day if I wanted and never use a single health pack. Most other games restrict your play time with an energy pay wall and I am extremely appreciative of MPQ for avoiding such annoying tactics. It's one of the reasons I have stuck with this game for 5 years while many other Marvel games have come and gone in that time.
  • Jwallyr
    Jwallyr Posts: 165 Tile Toppler
    That's all well and good, but ultimately you're saying that it's ok for the health pack vault rewards to be worthless because (business reasons). That's still a crummy experience for the player to spend resources (tokens, etc.) on a pull and to get, essentially, a dud reward. I consider that a negative outcome. It might not be negative enough for the devs to care, but it's still a bummer.
  • Dormammu
    Dormammu Posts: 3,531 Chairperson of the Boards
    Jwallyr said:
    That's all well and good, but ultimately you're saying that it's ok for the health pack vault rewards to be worthless because (business reasons).
    I didn't say that in any way and I think a lot of players would disagree with you that those health packs are 'useless'. A couple of ways people have managed this issue:

    1 This is what I do: maintain an inventory of health packs ranging between 50-80. That way when I need them, they're there. It doesn't take long to gather a decent inventory out of DDQ vaults.

    2 Hoard DDQ tokens. Many players hoard these, waiting for covers they like/need to show up  in a vault. This also enables them, when they're out, to access a quick source of health packs.
  • Jwallyr
    Jwallyr Posts: 165 Tile Toppler
    edited October 2018
    Option #1 foregoes the recharging health packs mechanism entirely and removes any possibility of strategically hoarding taco tokens toward an LT or a specific desired 4star. If you're ok with that, great! Given that I am past the 2 and 3star tiers, I'd rather spend my tokens on a vault that at least has the chance of giving me a specific desirable 4star.

    Option #2 prohibits me from opening taco tokens toward a specific 4star or LT unless I also need the health packs right now for pvp purposes; otherwise I waste potential recharging health packs. There being no correlation between tough PvP events and specific covers in the taco store, this is also a wasteful option.

    Like, fine, you've figured out workarounds that are satisfactory to you. Neither of those workarounds work for the goals that I have in the game, and they usually result in what I consider to be wasted health packs. Meanwhile, addressing the underlying problem would be a QoL benefit to all players, IMO, so I don't understand the pushback.

    Edit: I don't know if it's you or someone else, but "I disagree with your suggestion because it potentially takes dev resources away from things I do care about" is a really bad reason to pick apart otherwise reasonable suggestions, and if that's your motivation... no comment.
  • Dormammu
    Dormammu Posts: 3,531 Chairperson of the Boards
    Dormammu said:
     So, while I love your suggestion...
    I said I liked your suggestion! I was just trying to give you a reasonable explanation as to why it won't happen and offer some possible workarounds.

    But, if I'm being honest, I really don't have a problem with the health pack system. It's very favorable to the player already. First of all, they're free up to 10. Second of all, there's no cap on how many we can have from other sources. Third of all, characters regenerate health naturally. I think this is very generous. I can't count the number of mobile games I've abandoned where characters don't regenerate health or there's no free 'energy' (health packs) or that energy regenerates at an extremely low rate. I look at a garbage game like Marvel Strike Force where a player burns their energy up after 15 minutes of play and then they're done... they literally can't play... for hours. Unless they pay $$$. MPQ doesn't do that.

    As for health packs above and beyond the regenerating 10 being 'worthless', I strongly disagree. They heal my characters with the exact same effectiveness.

    At some point the developers have to draw the line between 'quality of life' and making money so that the game may continue. I'm cool with that, because I'd like to continue playing this game.