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No healing
Horusra
Member EpicPosts: 4,411
With all the talk of trinity and no trinity and the effects on groups (as in working together or zerg) what about no combat healing. Think about books not many have healers in combat. Most plan, cc, trade aggro, prioritize targets. Would this working in mmo's and has it been tried.
Comments
Well, many MMOers assume that managing your HP during combat instead of having constant heals would be less fun but I honestly think both ways would work equally good if they are made right.
In fact some games shouldn't have healing if the devs making them were following the lore, You don't actually see Luke Skywalker stopping up in combat to heal Han Solo in any movie after all.
I think it would work excellent, particularly in a historic or modern MMO. There are plenty of pen and paper RPGs without healing after all and they are as fun as the P&P that have healing. However do these system usually have a somewhat more complex combat system so you would probably have to have active dodge and parry or something similar for it to actually be fun. And you should let people autoheal as soon as they leave combat so you wouldn't slow down the action.
I can't think of any fantasy MMO without healing though even though it is common in single player games. But just because no-one tried something before does not mean it is a bad idea, even if you have to work out a new combat system. Just taking EQ or Wow and remove the healing would make a terrible game.
Well I dont think many books have the main characters mowing down dozens and hundreds of enemies with impunity either, unless they're Mary-Sue characters like Drizzt and Co.
I think a MMO with no or little healing would have to deemphisize combat quite a bit.
I feel like having healing around makes everything else cc, dodge, target priority, all the more valuable. Especially from a pvp perspective, but not only that but from a fight design perspective. Yes today we have scaling, but even with scaling a zerg fest is insta win - see Defiance - massive zerg battles in which you can basically close your eyes, run around in a circle and win everytime.
Now if your talking about making it more like Diablo 3 - no combat healing, but other affective methods, then you might have a valid argument, because D3 is addictingly fun and with the latest patch it just got better. No combat healing, yet decent healing and enough to keep you in the fights and make the fights challenging. - No possibility for zerging helps that tremendously though.
2 systems:
1. You have 200 HP and a healer, the healer has to keep you healed.
2. You have 200 HP and have to dodge, parry, run or whatever that makes you survive.
What makes you think system 2 would have more zerging then system 1? Of course to make system 2 interesting you need to add group mechanics to it, like giving you a buff or bonus when you work together with someone else.
Say that you soloparry, that should not be as effective as if you make a shieldwall together with a few more players.
When you play pen and paper RPGs without healing the right group is even more important than in games like D&D, the players in any multiplayer game (P&P or digital) should have to work together to overcome hard opponents. Players in armor needs to look out for the weaker ones even if the weaker player is your sniper or a thief.
I think that a historical game with knights for example would be fun, seen the knights charging in the beginning of the movie "Kingdom of heaven only good scene in the movie)? Something co-ordinated like that would be really fun and should hurt plenty of the players could pull it off.
But as I said, the key is group dynamics. A MMO would more or less have to invent a completely new combat system to pull the whole thing off. Or translate a good pen and paper system, like Iron heroes (D&D with no healings and very little magic), Call of Cthulhu (classic mind you, not the lame D20) or maybe Star wars -Edge of the empire to mention a few.
I would like to see more group dynamics similar to EQ, but tweaked.. I want to stay away anything that plays like GW2.. I wish I could go back in time, and make EQ's trash mobs soloable, yet promote the role group dynamic.. I miss playing my druid in EQ where I was the groups primary healer, but still took care of snaring, dotting and CC if necessary... OH and fun stuff like porting, and evac'ing when a fight goes bad.. LOL
Personally I like system #1 combined with system #2 which we have in place with a few up and comers, GW2 does not count because healing is irrelevant.
Not sure if I am reading you correctly but City of Heroes you could run groups without healers. The buff and debuff classes were at least a powerful as healers if not more.
Read this:
http://www.tremblinghand.net/2012/09/11-things-mmos-can-learn-from-city-of.html#!/2012/09/11-things-mmos-can-learn-from-city-of.html
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
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John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
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That is absurd on its face. You cannot simultaneously make everything more valuable.
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To take stereotypical MMORPG game mechanics and simply remove healers won't work. Rather, you have to design a game around not having healing. Players will need other ways to mitigate damage, such as by not getting hit in the first place. That doesn't work in a game where you can't dodge attacks.
GW2 has very limited healing.. So there you go.
I am telling you GW2 is the answer to 99% of design gripes because they tried to play 'opposite.' Of course lots of people don't like GW2 - and that's fine. But its an indication all these easy design changes won't help.
Good point. D3 combat is a good model to consider, particularly with a good difficulty slider, and many combination of elite powers.
BTW, the combat itself is always good. The new patch solves the itemization and AH problems, and also add unlimited progression.