Hot take.
Healers shouldn't be a thing. Not enough players to bother with an outdated mechanic, and it bottlenecks group content queues
It would be more engaging if every player had their own method of health management, with a few classes that provided SOME support.
Nobody wants to heal, the 1/1000 people that enjoy healing do so because they developed a Stockholm syndrome relationship towards the role.
Even hotter take.
All MMORPGs are garbage and you should not play them and the world will be a better place once all MMORPG developers have gone out of business
Hot take, Tab target MMOs are still fun. It's basically real time turn based combat
A take that bad should be illegal
Tab target MMOs were never fun and have no right to exist anymore
how about i take a hot shit down your throat?
MMORPG fans be like: let me play 200 hours of mindbogglingly boring grinding so I can get this one item no one is impressed with me having
That's not a hot take, it's just the truth.
truthnvke
WoW of all games solved this with the Dracthyr, they had access to some pretty mid tier healing that I was always spamming at both myself and my party members whenever I remembered to
I hate Medic in TF2, but I like healers in MMOs.
Diablo 2 unironically did the healer right. Just give the healer a constant AOE heal like with the Paladin. All it does it encourage staying with the team and requires no special effort on the part of anyone. If someone rushes in and takes massive damage they can't just turn around and blame the healer when all he has is a heal over time aura.
aren't there like 10 different dead MMOs that did that already? Why aren't you playing them? I only enjoy support (pre 2004 mmos) and healing (2004-present). We need more roles, not less.
I really miss the attention I got from healing in MMOs back in the day, and just talking to people in general. Are there any games like that anymore? All the games I've tried recently are completely silent, to the point where I wonder why there's a chat in the first place.
Potions, every class and character can use them. The thing is, healers not only heal, they buff. The point of a healer is to keep the party alive, mostly the tank as well as buff party members. So why separate them at all? ESO kind of solved this by making most healing skills for healers AOE HOTs, but classes can still ultimately heal in some cases through their own skills. Sorcerer has a skill to restore health, but it will never heal as much as much as an actual healer. Part of the problem is also global cooldown, some games won't let you spam potions or certain skills. And why should a tank be focusing on his own HP? He can let the healer do that for him, that's the point.
Make healing weak, give healers ways to deal damage, balance the game so the weak healing isn't required. Every class should be "DPS + other thing" instead of the trinity and if there's a class that isn't DPS-oriented they need to be balanced very carefully to not be mandatory
That just makes it an MMO where group play is completely useless.
MMOs haven't been social for ten years, let'saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
anon, you okay?
WE NEED A HEALER HERE
you would sitll want to group up to kill things faster. healers would let you take on more challenging content with a bit of a saftey net, pure dps groups would let you beat that content faster
They would have to balance the game around that aspect, of course, but what would be the point in picking a Tank+whatever or healer + whatever if a full group of DPS would clear content? If 'well, you would also need a tank + healer to clear the harder content' is the answer, then we've come full-circle.
>what would be the point in picking a Tank+whatever or healer + whatever if a full group of DPS would clear content?
to make it easier. balance the content around it being so hard that most people will need tanks or healers, but people who are good at the game can go full dps
high skilled dps get their dumb rpg grinds over with fast, lower skilled gamers can use all party roles to beat content
Noooo... not at all
>damage + buffs for team
>healing + buffs + damage
>summons + buffs
>damage + debuffs
>damage + aggro
>damage + healing
A party like this becomes the wrecking crew especially when you can crank the difficulty up for ludicrous payout
I don't have City of X pictures but this is close
I'm op and I agree with this, every class should be a mix of DPS and some fun niche mechanic that supports the overall group, and diversity of classes wouldn't matter, bonuses stack and having a party of all 1 class would still be effective, even optimal
(I'm op and I'm 100% straight not gay or trans)
>diversity of classes wouldn't matter
People will quickly figure out what's truly optimal and demand it, you really couldn't see that coming?
>LF3M NEED DEFENSIVE CLASS, NICHE MECHANIC AND PURE DPS
or worse
>LF3M NEED PURE DPS ONLY OTHER CLASSES FRICK OFF
We were having an objective conversation about the merits of a game mechanic.
What I'm about to say will be entirely subjective and you can call it shit I don't mind.
What I think is that all classes should be flavour, with a universally well designed playstyle that makes it so players aren't forced into an aesthetic they dislike. I would like it if all players could just choose their own aesthetic and not worry if the class playstyle doesn't work for them.
It's like how people in FFXIV want to play samurai but the playstyle has a steep learning curve. So they either wash out and switch classes or they never get good. I'd want it so it's like Elden ring where there's no dramatic switch in playstyle
I just don't see the point in that. I saw in GW2 that when there's no class which interacts with the group's healthbars instead of the enemies', everybody else becomes irrelevant and/or a liability. It's boring and makes it so you have no recourse when shit starts going wrong.
The class that heals - and there inevitably will be at least one - should be focused on doing that, not having it tacked on as a minigame over the 'regular game' of hitting enemies
He does make an interesting point, which ironically enough GW2 tried to do. I do agree with him that having a wide variety of playstyles available to a class is a fascinating idea. GW2 itself had funny shit like healing necromancers (though the theme was dogshit since it was just sand ghosts pulsing sand barriers), healing thieves, even healing warriors. It was a noble goal to allow a wide selection of archetypes for each theme, since a lad can enjoy being a brooding darkage edgelord but still want to be a support for shits and giggles. GW2 in the end is a shit game but I do enjoy some of the ideas it had.
>It's like how people in FFXIV want to play samurai but the playstyle has a steep learning curve.
Black person samurai is the easiest melee DPS in the game.
And who gave you the n-word pass around here?
I stole it. I figure that makes it legitimate because it's what a Black person would do.
I like being a healer :3 it’s fun I like how you have lots of utility and I get to play something completely unique since 90% of the game is dealing damage
More like:
>Thank you for popping your mitigation and pulling Rogue, it made it easier for the tank
>Tank please go faster I don't want to be here anymore than you do
Crap opinion, healing is fun and cool.
Also there's more than just MMOs with healers, you know. Dota and even LeL (in s0) have had some fun healers over the years
The only time healing has been fun is in TF2
Yes, Medic is a lot of fun too, but that's exactly the point I'm making
There's lots of games with fun healers
Even something like EQ's healing is fun after a fashion, because even if it's boring as frick you know when you're doing a good job by the wheels staying greased and the AA exp flowing in
Your opinion is a super minority.
There isn't an MMO that exists with an abundance of healers, where dungeon queues are instant for DPS because there's more than enough healers.
There's enough evidence to show that healers are so few that devs prioritize getting players to pick them over others with incentives.
Healing is decent enough in MMOs.
Playing support in DOTA though is so fricking rough. Your job sucks, you get no money, and your impact on late game is so negligible that you're never going to climb mmr even if you play really well.
Thankfully you need less healers and tanks than you do DPS
You haven't played Dota for a while, have you? Supports are still poor in general, but they're billionaires compared to what they used to be
You can generally expect to have force/glimmer and at least one other mid-priced item by around 30 - 40 minutes
I haven't played since large dota with extra large map
But that's the patch before last, they literally just expanded the map to have two rosh pits, a pair of waygates, and extra jungle camps/objectives
Games shouldn't let you heal on command at all.
why have cooperation if every character is a jack of all trades?
Removing unnecessary dependencies on tanks and healers wouldn't remove cooperation.
Healers exist because enemy AI will always be dumber than humans
>if we gave the human and enemy equal footing in this RPG, the enemy AI flowchart will never outsmart the human (there are too many RPG builds and choices to account for)
>uhhhh how do we make this challenging for the player if the enemy is so dumb?
>crank enemy HP and stats up a ton of course
>uhhh but now player HP is small how does he compete with big HP???
>player has to manage his HP carefully while the enemy can not do that
bonus
>can we give enemy healing too?
>no, enemy is too dumb to use healing correctly and play around attrition/mana/etc
basically it all just boils down to enemy AI versus player agency
Hot take.
I hate Black folk and trannies.
>Tanks
Players should be expected to split responsibility with aggro being a mix of dynamic management and choices, and RNG
>Healers
Replace them with buffers which leads into
>DPS
DPS should be mainly well-rounded classes with some specialties and weaknesses and then some more selfish classes who are more specialized than others
It's as shrimple as that
It really is as shrimple as that
Blade and Soul did it right. Top DPS aka best player tanks. Damage is all avoidable by blocking/dodging/iframes/cc'ing boss. You heal slowly from crits so you have a margin for error. If person tanking fricks up and gets hit by a cc the next person takes agro.
Classes are not made to be equally difficult.
City of Heroes sets an unreachable standard for MMOs in a lot of areas but a lot of defensive options for melee classes had sets with built in regen. You could make a tank with 'regeneration' has his defensive pool and it may have been one of the stronger options if kitted out
>Healers shouldn't be a thing
but the entire point to healers is to allow devs to restrict healing to a specialized role so not every character single can just break out some HP potions. It also allows enemies to shut down healing via silence.
The alternative is healing cooldowns or inventory limits + heal block (or unhealable damage).
The alternative is designing encounters in a way that expects the parties total damage absorption potential to be 20k instead of 200k
>absorption potential
healers don't increase your HP pool. if enemies overpower your healing, you'll die long before the healer's MP falls below 90%.
as I said, without healing, side that deals the highest %HP damage wins, period. healing lets you play with the numbers to prevent things from getting stale, and also promotes cooperative play.
What kind of man plays as a healer???
A high T man who yearns for the homosocial brotherhood of his fellow men.
Where is the original where he's taking it up the ass?
These threads are hilarious when you realize they're constantly being made by whiny DPS homosexuals stuck in a 20+ minute queue because they can't find a healer
Encounters should be designed so that you can take them on with either a healer or an ample supply of potions. Don't want to bring a cleric? Pay your local potion seller.
Healer should work like a DPS class that occasionally throws out heals/buffs instead of playing constant health bar whack-a-mole. FFXIV does it pretty well imo
>FFXIV does it pretty well
You haven't played it since Stormblood then
The only game to ever have done healing correctly: balancing whack-a-mole with prevention abilities based on the current mission.
>all classes should have ways of healing that remove all the need to playing with others or actually think for a nanosecond
but that image is right, most healers in MMO games have sticks up their asses
I think MMOs should be more lifesim-esque, and healing should be more of an out of combat role, while supporting in combat should rely on gaining tactical advantages, improving positioning, herding enemies, etc. I want an MMO where a trucker sim autist will hire me on caravan guard duty where I will play the local guard game with the other guard to pass the time until we get ambushed by mountain trolls and I have to defend my paycheck. And then once I'm done, I want my HP and crippled limbs to slowly recover thanks to the medic that the trucker autist brought with him while he plays the bard rhythm minige to speed up the recovery.
MMO game design ruined every other genre's game design. The microscopic DPS/Healing/Tank buffs you get from gear or levels is so fricking BOOOORRRRIIINNNGGG. WOW! 7.5% more damage on critical attacks!!!
Min-maxing freaks destroyed emergent gameplay and player expression.