I will say, with a dose of salacious irony, I’m glad to see prologue healing gone. It is nice to see a change that screws the mid-tiers for once, instead of just the vets.
OK, now that I’ve made new friends, here’s the idea:
Get rid of event healing completely. When a character goes down in an event, he/she is done. Period. No health packs, nothing.
If you want to implement a P2W mechanism, give a boost that temporarily INCREASES a team’s health. Recommend you only do this for PvE, to prevent riots.
Separate the three tiers into a genuine 1*, 2* and 3* tier. As soon as you use ANY character from a higher tier int he tourney, you’ve graduated. Shard based on tier, not performance. This gives players motivation to rise up and master a tier before moving on, amd incentivizes building 1* and 2* competence and rosters. Get rid of the terrible, terrible 1* and 2* rewards for everybody. Nobody thinks that’s a good idea and it can’t lead to any monetization.
The above would force/reward:
Roster diversity and depth, and even multiple copies of chars as a viable tactic (albeit unlikely since it would cripple your versatility)
Player strategy about whom to pit against whom at what point of their run
Elimination of grinding while still incentivizing boost purchasing and character development
Increased tension and strategic analysis of playstyle
Shorter bursts of play with higher reward potential
Most important of all, it would make the game fucking interesting again. People would have to use a variety of characters and strategies, and make some unlikely or sub-optimal pairings in order to advance their best teams.
If people are really loathe to give up on healing, set it to a 24hr basis or something, so you get your chars back after a day.
This game could be so much better with so little effort. You’re never going to monetize health packs–doing something like this would encourage people to spend money on short bursts of play, improve their rosters, and reduce burnout.
Honestly, guys, try something. We’re tired of ‘changes’ that no-one in the community wanted or asked for, overnerfing critical characters (yes, CStorm, Rags, Thor and Spidey all need to be nerfed, but every time it’s been overkill) and lame PR justifications from IceIX for the dev team (really? you’re making the game less boring for us? I like you, but that’s the worst line I’ve ever been asked to swallow from a dev/mod).
Make a better game, and we’ll pay you. Make us want to give you money again.