Some People Actually Like Healing
I am really getting sick and tired of every MMO turning healers into pseudo-DPS classes. I don’t know who started this trend, but whoever it was needs to be chained up with the guy who invented bind on pickup crafted items, thrown into a pit, and have lotion lowered down to them while being reminded to put it back in the basket. There are a lot of gamers who actually enjoy playing true support classes and true healers. They don’t need OMFGWTFBBQ dps to keep them happy in between times where they “have to (omg I might hyperventilate)” heal. This obsession with making healers into DPSers always causes severe balance problems. After all, why just DPS when you could DPS AND heal? This quickly results in nerfs, and for some reason developers always go straight to the heals for their nerfs. Imagine how that makes the people feel who actually play healers to… *gasp the horror*… HEAL?
(NOTE: That’s Dr. Cuddy, from House, M.D., if you are wondering about the girl<->topic connection.)
The Stupidity of this DPS Healer Phenomenon
World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, and more… all of them do this. And in every game, the combination eventually resulted in nerfs. But for some reason, probably the same short-sighted laziness that resulted in giving nukes to healer sin the first place, the nerfs always seem to slaughter the heals first. Why can’t these developers understand that some people LIKE healing. They like playing support. They like making sure their friends and allies are kept alive. They get their kicks from the appreciation of their teammates rather than from the cathartic joy of slaughtering their enemies. By turning healers into partial-DPS classes, all you do is attract people who want to be everything, and you can’t make them happy – ever.
One of the main excuses developers give for this is they are worried about attracting enough people to healer classes. Here’s a clue folks: making crappy healing classes is not a good way to attract people to them. For decades, people have played healing classes in RPGs. You won’t trick people into liking healing or support. Players either like that style of play or they don’t. If you want to make sure your game has enough people playing healers, then make those healing classes robust and interesting. Give them a lot of different ways to heal or support their team. Give them more than 1 or 2 spells to cast a thousand times per raid. Give them a variety of ways to heal differently, generate aggro differently, protect/buff differently, etc. Create spells that have pros and cons so actual decisions have to be made. Instant heals, long cast heals, HoTs, damage shields, group heals, big-high threat heals, small-low threat heals, efficient slower healers, inefficient fast heals, pre-heals, regeneration buffs, and more. Give them a lot of buffs but a limited number they can use at one time. Give them CHOICES. Give them strategies. Give them alternatives. There are a lot of possibilities.
You can make healing interesting if you just put a little effort into the design. Giving a healer a few nukes and hoping that will make them happy is just dumb. If someone wanted to nuke, they’d play a nuker. If they want to heal, they’ll play a healer. Reward them for that choice by making it interesting. Good game design requires thought, planning, and creativity. Good class design requires figuring out the types of thigns players like to do, and creating classes that deliver those opportunities.
I think it’s more a reflection of the fact that games now have a lot of solo content. If healers can’t do reasonable DPS when not grouped then they become 2nd class citizens and not able to progress as efficiently as other classes. Healing can be hard which is why the class is rare, so if it also has a disadvantage of progressing through content and farming required items, healers become even more rare as a class. I think the rise of the hybrid speaks to the same issue. Most players don’t want to feel gimped or at a long term disadvantage based on the class they selected and developers are responding to that need. However, there’s a right way and a wrong way to provide healers with decent offensive skills. I’ve seen a few right ways – Bear Shaman in Age of Conan, Warrior Priest in WAR. back in the day Shadow Priest spec in WOW.
I think you are right that the solo focus on MMOs is partly to blame here. As a developer, that just gives me more options rather than less. It means I can create hybrid healers that are solo and group friendly, and then pure healer/support types that are crap solo but great in groups.
The thing that ruins it is the extremely inflexible raid concept that requires absolute perfection in group make up. With hard caps on the number of people who can participate, you have really lame situations where someone has to sit out because there is a “better” healer to take the spot. I hate that.
That is one of the main things I enjoyed about DAoC’s RvR. However many people showed up is the number of people you used.
Even for PvE content I really don’t see why we have to stick with this cap on the number of people who can participate in content. You can design encounters to make sure everyone has a job. You can make them scale in certain ways based on the number of people present.
Or you can simply not worry so much about it, and design an encounter that assumes 20 players, but allow people up to 25. So what if some people take 25 and it is easier. Is that really a problem? People inevitably create their own goals to see how few people they can use to accomplish a goal. I remember vividly being part of the first 2 group team to take a keep in DAoC (16 people) and even better was the first 1 group team. Accomplishing player created goals almost always ends up being more memorable anyway.
The problem isn’t so much that people want to be able to solo as well as heal. Like I said on the other blog, I prefer NOT to solo, and I prefer NOT to DPS. I would like to play a full support class rather than be gimped by a DPS counterpart in my class, so I would willing give up every bit of DPS if I were excellent at two or three of the traditional support roles (buffs, debuffs, crowd control, and healing).
I find that these roles are dying because everyone who wants to be able to solo still also wants to be the BEST healer yet be competitive in DPS. The WoW Shadow Priest (which ultimately gimped the holy priest) is an excellent example of that and is actually what I feel is WRONG with healing classes nowadays.
Again, I would love to see a game that would support the role of a full support character that lives to group and groups to level.
Dr. House is really the best, i love his character and he is a medical genious too,:,