Jan 23 2009

Some People Actually Like Healing

54 Responses to “Some People Actually Like Healing”

1. # Longascon 23 Jan 2009 at 5:47 pm edit this

   Note: I laughed my ass off…^^

   I had a discussion at Tesh’s blog about taking away the class “Trinity” of Tank, Nuker and Healer. And I fear the first victim would be the healer class concept. There are for sure ways to incorporate more heavily armored tanks, without the artificial aggro taunt system, and more damage oriented Squishies without them being as over-specialized as nowadays. But healing as today in WoW, refill health from almost zero to max with 1-2 spells?

   I would offer “Healers” the role that in Guild Wars a Protection Monk has: buffing their resilience, taking away negative conditions and later fixing up after battle. Healers would also have to contribute to the fight versus the mobs themselves, not only stand back and focus on the life bars of the party.

   It would be up to the tanks to make use of terrain or jump in between attackers and the new kind of healers, as aggro control would no longer exist like nowadays. Just try Guild Wars, there are tricks and ways to control aggro, but it requires the whole team, not only the tank to shout some insults to make it work. Quite often less armored classes have to defend themselves or kite, on the other hand they are not 2-3 shotted like in WoW Heroic mode.

   But for nowadays MMOs featuring the Trinity, let us say WoW, which cannot be changed like this at all, or at least not easily, I have to agree with you.

   The evers tronger hybridization is taking away class identity in WoW. Hybrids are on the rise, and the moment they introduce the “Dual Spec” feature where classes can switch between two different talent builds, you will see Paladins and Druids switch from Healers to Tanks or to DDs between various bosses. This is just another form of min-maxing, which they wanted to take away, actually.

   Their latest “stunt” was to make Holy Priests crap, just ask Tobold. If the PRIEST is not the healing class by definition in WoW, something has gone wrong. The guys who liked to play Holy might have to switch to the dark side and play a Shadow Priest, which are quite good at damage dealing and healing a bit… they can even outdamage Warlocks by now.

   The new credo seems to be every class needs to be good at everything. They basically want to take away the extreme trinity focus that lead to class discrimination. But what do they do? They are taking away class identity and strengths, while the minmaxing of classes still persists somewhat. It only works so far because the raids have become very forgiving and easy so that it does not matter much if you picked the perfect combo for the encounter.

   Finally, as I said right at the start: The trinity concept that people solely focus and specialize on one task has to go away for future MMOs. The funny thing is they somehow try to get away from the concept in games that are build around it (WoW), and then you have oddities like healer classes getting weaker and healing and getting some nukes instead of healing spells.

2. # Longascon 23 Jan 2009 at 5:48 pm edit this

   P.S.: Mr. Baines is damn right. Yet you can make people do such repetitive tasks if you add a fancy title for doing them! This is even more hilarious.

3. # Peteron 24 Jan 2009 at 10:52 am edit this

   I had a Bard in Dark Age of Camelot and even though I didn’t play to max level I played enough to find a huge flaw in playing a pure support/healer in a game where there were solo content. I love to play with a group and made a spec that was pointed toward this function. The problem was that I was unable to solo anything, which is an aspect of this type of games that I enjoy as well.

   A friend was playing a priest in WoW and had the same problem. He is not much of a grinder anyway, but from time to time he was missing the ability to handle a simple quest or grind a bit on his own without having to respec.

   I like the fact that I don’t have to level up several characters to be able to handle all the aspects of the game. Pvp, Grind, Gather Components, Craft, Solo, Group, Raid… And everyone know that only having 90% usefulness due to a spec will end up being the reason for you to fail now and then. Failing in any of the above can matter to a group of people, or cost you lots of wasted time.

4. # Longascon 24 Jan 2009 at 11:38 am edit this

   @Gwaendar: Oh… I did not know that this was the “nerf”. I do not read the patch notes anymore, as I am done with WoW, or even more so any other game that closely follows the EverQuest-formula in future. I still wonder that Tobold can get so upset about this. OK, he considers himself to be more a casual player, despite talking about MMOs constantly (???…!!!). He is not the man that analyzes game mechanics and has the big picture in mind, as you are quite right, this is utter exaggeration.

   So I am sorry about the bad example! The last class I was actively playing in WoW was my Warlock, and I grew tired of single-minded dpsing. Shadowbolt spam just changed to Rain of Fire spam. And Affliction was still boss-only or levelling spec. And I totally loathed Druids, who still thought they need even more buffs.

   To come back to the topic, unfortunately still with a WoW reference: You are quite right that a pure healing build always had trouble in World of Solocraft. I played a Paladin once and did not find it that annoying that I could not kill as fast as my Warlock for instance. I could outlast mobs, on the other hand.

   People just do not find this fun in general. And they are quite right, a “pure” healer will always NEED a group, and this is why it cannot exist nowadays in games where we have a lot of solo content. Soon they will add the dual spec feature, but this is worth its own discussion, so I will not talk about it now.

   For possible future MMOs, I do not think that the pure healer that heals all the time will have its place. The main problem is that it is an extreme concept: 99% heal, 1% damage? And Tanks 99% Damage Reduction and 1% damage dealing? DDs cannot take more than a mild fart before dying, but deal around 99% of the groups damage?

   I think we can retain class roles and specialties without over-specialization like this. Right now Healers have a key role: 1 second too early, heal wasted, 1 too late, tank dead, wipe?

   EverQuest relied on grouping, WoW does not. So extreme specialization is a problem. There is a flood of other problems: Warriors level as Fury Warriors usually. They made warrior tanks now deal more damage, but still people want MORE DAMAGE.

   Where will this end? The next WoW class will be MASH: MASH can do everything, but not better than everyone else. Unfortunately they cannot remove classes, hehe…

   I see little chance for Healers of the kind “primary refiller of health bars” in future MMOs, if we want to break the “trinity”. BUT this does not mean that there cannot be ways to assist your party outside of whacking the mobs, too.

   Now read this: In Ultima Online, Healers were actually Mages, 90-100 points in “Magery” - they had solo play abilities. This was not even an issue! In combat healing was important, but you could not heal much. The lengthy fights of EverQuest Raids did not exist. -> The need for primary healers did not exist either! <-

   It only exists if we have fights were a giant boss mob whacks a tank for several minutes while healers slowly run out of mana. DDs have to kill it before the tank dies/healers run out of mana.

   WoW adds some dance choreography to this: You are the bomb, move 7 steps to the left, then re-join the dance!

   Theoretically, Cambios could become a MONK type healer. While the gallant Knight Gwaendar fights undead skeletons, he buffs him with prayers and weakens the undead with smiting prayers. But he would only cast a few greater healing spells, as they would waste a lot of mana. Is this not enough of a healer role?

   If Gwaendar dies because Cambios could not support him enough, and he would get killed, no problem either! I will come along with my Necromancer and convert you into my undead servants, and send you out to strike versus your very own home town.

   Does this not sound fantastic?

5. # Peteron 24 Jan 2009 at 12:59 pm edit this

   I still see the pure “support” class as a problem.
   If it is not better at healing than a hybrid class then there is not really any point in not having all the choices.
   If it is better than the hybrid there is seldom any reason for the group not to look for the pure healer as this class will do a better job at what they are expected to do.

   I like playing the support role, but I like having the chance to solo when I am not in the mood for grouping.

   I like crafting but don’t know if I would find it fun to only craft.

   I am sure I will try out Primordiax when it goes live, and then I will find out if those roles are for me… I use more time on these things than most in the usual MMORPG’s but I am not sure I would be ok with never being able to go kill something on my own.

6. # Longascon 24 Jan 2009 at 6:44 pm edit this

   Gwaendar has a point!

   Even if people love the “support” role, if you want them to be playable solo as well, they need to be able to do at least some quests and mobs on their own.

   How do you imagine a support role char? Are you not talking about an extreme healer/supporter, that can do this perfectly, better than anyone else, but nothing else?

   You know, Holy Paladins can kill mobs, but people still cry because they take so much longer. The same for Holy Priests. The crowed who was content did not lament, and then warrior tanks got some more damage, and the retribution tree was strengthened for Paladins. Holy Paladins also deal a bit more damage by now.

   And it was actually a positive and well received change; people were talking about it being less painful to level the class in such a spec and the improved soloing ability.

   The mentioned classes are probably already as much specialized as it is possible in an environment where soloing is important, too.

   You are of course right that healing/support and also damage dealing mechanics could be a bit more complex than the one-button spam (Paladin Healers, Warlock Shadowbolt spam and so on) that exists in the game with the three letters that I again mentioned… sorry, seems it always has to be the example.

   But they introduced some “rotations” to many classes, to make things a bit more demanding and interesting. OK, going off-topic…

   But again, Gwaendar is right: Without henchmen support like in Guild Wars or a human party you are screwed if your game offers solo-able content and you are specialized in support to the extreme. I really doubt if this is desirable to be pidgeon-holed by your spec/class.

   You are right, Hybrids are popular nowadays, and I can see why. They offer some more variety. My Warlock could only dps in 3 different flavors, my friend’s shadow priest could also help healing in shadow spec and rez after battle.

   It is okay if one class is definitely the king of healing to some extent, but it would be very frustrating for players of this class in the long run if they would not have at least some abilities to kill at least minor mobs on their own in a reasonably.

7. # Longascon 24 Jan 2009 at 6:46 pm edit this

   Please excuse my spelling and grammar, I am rather tired tonight.

8. # cydmabon 25 Jan 2009 at 12:31 am edit this

   You can build a character as full support in city of heroes if you want to. Especially if you treat crowd control as support. It will arguably have less overall effectiveness than a hybrid, but that’s more a concern about balance than non-feasibility.

9. # dreadpirateroseon 25 Jan 2009 at 1:42 pm edit this

   “You won’t trick people into liking healing or support. Players either like that style of play or they don’t.”

   EXACTLY. I know that I’m not suited to it, but my boyfriend takes to it like a fish to water. But you’re right, making a healing class that doesn’t suck is important. It doesn’t matter if someone is good at it and likes it, if the game’s healing mechanics suck they won’t subject themselves to it.

   Kelly
   http://conventionfans.today.com

10. # Longascon 26 Jan 2009 at 2:55 am edit this

    I guess I will have to wait for Primordax to see how a pure healer type turns out. I think I just cannot imagine it anymore “nowadays”. I also think it is important to move away from the extreme class roles of the holy trinity if we want to solve some class bias (this class Z does X by far better than class Y) and favor the “player skill”, plus … the so-called “soloability”. But as you mentioned, this class would just not solo, and people who do not like it would not have to pick the class.

    I just wonder if you do not somehow enforce a trinity style specialization with this, Cambios???

11. # Peteron 26 Jan 2009 at 12:13 pm edit this

    Hi Milawe, good to have you join the talk as well

    I guess my problem with a pure support mixed in with the hybrids is if the hybrid takes on the role of the healer in group/raid but does the job worse than if the group got a pure healer. Then the ability to solo things will make the amazing hybrid equal to an average pure healer.

    I can’t see how it takes something away from the healer that the class has the ability to go solo something if you get in the mood. Some people like soloing and will use the char to solo now and then. Some people like to craft or gather components and will do that now and then.
    I can’t see how it takes something away from the one who only want one area that others want one class that can do them all. If you use some time on crafting, some of your gold on Solo and so on. Then you will have to use longer time to be able to be as good a healer as the one who focus on this.

    From the post above I mainly see the problem as a balancing issue where they smash things up even worse with their nerf bat.

    I think one of the largest problems here is that you have too much classes overlapping. It’s gotten extreamly difficult to balance out all the healing classes with a huge amount of possible builds with different types of gear and grouping bonuses. It’s all gotten so complicated that even those who try hard to balance things are bound to fail in a way which ruins the fun for those who play the long hours to get the extra percentage out of their class.

12. # Peteron 26 Jan 2009 at 4:34 pm edit this

    If you are grouping or raiding in a game where your class takes on the passive healing role you have no use for being able to DPS or any such thing. Surely it should count if you Heal through DPS like Shadowpriest or that bashing fella in WAR. And if they made some healing class where you only use a short amount of your time throwing a few HoT’s and besides that have the role of DPS then they shouldn’t be compared. But if you only got time for healing when you take on the role as healer in a group setting, then I believe they have to be almost equal.

    I believe that gear, level and class playing a huge role is just what they want with this type of game. Everyone with enough time have a fair chance at handling the main part of the game. If you die you just have to use some time getting back to where you were… you never loose progress.
    I have familymembers at around 10 and 60 who play WoW and they don’t have the skill for raiding and a group where all were at their skill level would fail misserably with group content meant for their level, but they still level up and have fun with the game. MMOs have become mainstream

13. # Jarrodon 27 Jan 2009 at 12:06 pm edit this

    I didnt read through all the comments, so if someone pointed this out already, my bad.

    I would like to think I’m your average casual player, I usually game 1-3 hours on a weekday and about twice that on the weekends. I like to heal, but I wouldnt even think about playing one if i couldnt progress on my own. lfg for most of my online time, forced me to two box in Lineage 2 and eventually led me into playing a different game where i didnt have to pay for 2 accounts in order to enjoy my online time.

14. # JediOfTheShireon 01 Feb 2009 at 12:04 am edit this

    I’d like to start by clarifying a little bit. We’re talking about the death of the “pure” support class. EverQuest set the bar for MMOs way back when they were a new thing (and I believe that overwhelmingly the bar has yet to be passed) and they didn’t have this kind of “pure” exclusively support class, no class was left defenseless. The dynamics for the three most heavy support roles were as follows:

    ————————————————————————————————-
    Cleric (HEALER): Got healing spells sooner than the other classes that could heal (druids/shamans and YES classes shared some spells in EverQuest) and toward the level cap recieve more powerful healing spells than any class could ever gain access to. This made them the only class capable of healing in a raid, and by far the most preferred healer for almost every group (sometimes if the mobs were easy enough, or if you had a hefty enough tank, you’d want a little more dps on your healer). They had a single line of DD (Direct Damage) spells that could hit normal mobs- but they were so sub-par compared to other nukers that you would very rarely use them. They weren’t given this spell to “keep the healers that wanted to nuke happy” but so that they had some way to defend themselves (and because it makes sense… devotees can smite their foes with divine wrath (that’s what the line of spells was too, smite).

    The important thing to note though is how effective this class was against the Undead. They get full access to the line of Ward Undead spells (Paladins don’t get all of them) and they also can summon a 1handed hammer that has an anti-undead proc. This hammer, coupled with some supreme anti-undead nukage make them quite capable of soloing a large number of the undead found throughout the game.

    As you can see this class, while almost always filling the role of healer in groups and ALWAYS healing in raids, is still capable of solo work, albeit against a very select group of foes.

    Enchanter (CROWD CONTROL (some buffing)): The Enchanter can barely solo- anyone will tell you that. They get nukes that are on par with those of clerics (almost useless), and even though they have a fair selection of debuffs and a pet (the pet has High Damage//Low Hit Points and only attacks once the enchanter is attacked) they are extrodinarily limited in their ability to solo. Perhaps the most effective method of Enchanter soloing is charming a monster (Mind Controlling so it acts like your pet) and having it kill another monster, then when the enchantment wears off you kill the weakened mob for the xp from two kills. While that sounds all nice and good the charm can wear off at any moment and then the enchanter is almost guaranteed to die unless they have a movespeed buff (from a druid/shaman/high-level ranger) so they can get away and recast the spell.

    In true support class fashion the Enchanters usefullness is increased exponentially when in a group. Soloing is, as I just showed, very difficult, but with some skill it is possible. In a group however, mesmerize (the “crowd control” that makes a mob “stunned” until it takes a hit) alone makes the enchanter extraordinarily useful. A line of attack speed and mana regeneration buffs also help the enchanter to make a group extraordinarily more capable. The enchanter is so effective in the support role (debuffing enemy attack speed and mezzing mobs so that the group only has to fight one mob at a time) that having one can make 100% of the difference in a hard fight. [See this situation: A 4 mob pull of hard mobs. W/o an enchanter the tank cannot possibly hold the aggro from four mobs at once and the group is guaranteed to wipe if they don’t run. With an enchanter, even a poorly played one, the group should at no time be forced to fight any more than two mobs at once, an extremely manageable proposition.
    —————————————————————————————-

    This is a lot of what I now think might be useless facts, but I also feel it’s imoportant to everyones understanding of my point. These two classes are extremely extremely powerful support members of a group and no one would ever choose to play them unless their main goal with the character was to play a support role in groups. They aren’t given soloing capabilities to “keep anyone happy.” They are given soloing capabilities because they can’t be expected to group 100% of the time, and even when they WANT to group one isn’t always available. These two classes are about as “pure” of a support class as you get in any game, but they still have very viable solo capabilities to keep them from being useless outside of a group. And if we want to take this to a RolePlaying level since we ARE playing RolePlayingGames… what kind of a heroic adventurer would be unable to defend himself against the foes he would normally face?

    Part of an MMO is that characters are powerful in different situations and there has become an extreme focus on soloable leveling in the newer games and as a result all of the classes need to be powerful in the same areas so they can all solo level (at least to some reasonable extent). I think this is linked to the new quest-oriented leveling systems that are now commonplace. EverQuest ironically HAD quests, but there were VERY few that you would actually use to level, and they were practically hidden! (Anyone else remember running up to every NPC you saw and hitting ‘H’ to Hail them to find out if they had a quest!? :D) Compared to games today EverQuest had hardly any quests AT ALL.

    As a result people don’t want groups like they used to because you group for different reasons. The majority of people no longer group just to group (although it’s been my experience that a surprising number of LOTRO players do just that). They group to complete a quest. The grouping “equation” if you will has changed:

    OLD (EQ): [Player1 + Player2 + Player3] = group for as much time as possible to kill as many mobs as we can for as long as we can to achieve the fastest xp possible. helping others helps you!

    NEW (JustAboutEverythingRecent): [Player1 + Player2 + Player3] = killing does not accrue enough xp to be efficient. group for whatever quests you are all on then abandon the group to do your own quests because helping people out just slows you down!

    Any quest-based game follows this basic new formula for grouping. This SEVERELY weakens the effectiveness of a support class because the focus of leveling in the game is almost completely taken off of grouping. Yes there are instances that you can level in, but the bulk of the game is not found in the group content anymore as you level. Because of this I completely understand why there is no equivalent to the Cleric from EQ in any recent game, and that’s because the way we play is not conducive to the play style of this more traditionally “pure” support class.

    ————————————————————————————————–
    ————————————————————————————————–

    If you want to read all that to understand more completely then I encourage you to! (Please only respond to this comment if you read it in its entirety) Otherwise here is it all summed up.

    SUMMARY: The way these games are designed is no longer conducive to the traditional support roles. The games are no longer mostly grouping content. Instead you have mostly soloable quests as the main form of xp and that forces players out of groups. With such a drastic decrease in the necessity of grouping many classes would be dead in the water if they could not level like the rest of the classes (by killing quickly with powerful offensive abilities). For those of you that played EQ, could you imagine having to SOLO a Cleric or Enchanter to a high level before people wanted to raid with you!?! I’m not sure anyone would make it without PowerLeveling!

    ~Many Thanks to anyone who read all of this! I tried my best to be as impartial as possible!

15. # Anonymouson 01 Feb 2009 at 1:00 am edit this

    This is @ Milawe - Post 41. (sorry that last one was so long, i’ll keep this short)

    A differentiation of classes is definitely in order! I’ll give you two examples of games that I love(ed) for the exact thing you seemed to be asking for!

    EverQuest: Every class had roles they could fill, and because your effectiveness was based mostly on your characters skills and not gear (a foreign concept to most modern gamers) different classes (which had different skill caps for the same skills) could perform different roles better than the others. I’ll list and briefly explain the different classes for EQ if you’d like, but i’ll do it for LOTRO to show you that uniqueness exists. The thing that I like about LOTRO the most, and the reason I left WoW for it, was how unique every class was. No class is ever unimportant in LOTRO, they’re all specialized enough that they bring something unique to a group, but nothing is truly redundant. For example:

    Burglars (like Rogues): Add good dps in melee and have great debuffs, but where they truly shine is in their abilities that start fellowship maneuvers when in a group (it’s a little complicated to explain those, but imagine that every time you’re in a group you have a very small chance on every hit to do a group attack that is truly devastating- the burglar lets you do these far far FAR more often) They also have some limited crowd control ability.

    Minstrel: Pre-Expansion the only healing class. Guess what these guys do in groups…

    Loremaster: The kings of crowd control, they can also debuff and add good dps to a group. One of the two classes that can provide a supplementary healing role.

    Captain (My favorite!): The ultimate group class. Has an aura for melee dps // Max Morale (health) // Max Power (mana). They have two combat rezzes, powerful abilities that help a single member of their group that they select as their “shield brother” and they can also provide supplementary healing. They can literally bring a group back from the brink of defeat (i’ve only done it once and it was incredible) they’re kind of a get out of jail free card when things are close. This is also the only class that can summon (like a warlock in WoW, ‘cept you don’t need friends- the summonee needs travelling rations (which are very inexpensive))

    Champion: Melee dps. Can tank if you don’t have a guardian, but not fantastically. This class is actually the master of AOE damage.

    Guardian: The tanking class, but in a pinch they can dps quite well too.

    Warden: The new tanking class. All of their abilities are pulled off by chaining three basic moves together in tons of different combos. They can switch from tanking to dps in a pinch and are the only melee class to have ranged abilites.

    Runekeeper: Gains power as their spells are used. In every fight they can pick whether they want to DPS or Heal. As they Heal their nukes become less effective while their heals become moreso, and vice versa.

    Hunter: Pure unadultered dps, they have some traps and other abilites to keep things interesting though. Also they are the (i believe) sole posessors of group teleports.

    As you can see these classes all bring something different to the group, there is no real class competition for who does “this or that” the best! Every class has something different to offer that increases the groups effectiveness in different ways, and almost everything in the game can be done by almost any configuration of group! (of course you can’t raid w/o a healer, but still… :P)

    ————————————————————————————–
    So, if you want the ability to solo well, you would play a hybrid. If you were willing to give up being able to solo easily, you’d pick the pure support class. I think I’m arguing for more differentiation of classes instead of everyone being able to do everything. While I understand the desire players have to be able to do that, I don’t think it’s ultimately what players want in the end except the ones who mostly want to do everything solo. And, I think that if you want to do everything solo, maybe an MMO isn’t really the type of game you should be playing.
    ————————————————————————————–
    I love that you said this. EverQuest nostalgia is hitting me hard! The most soloable classes in EQ were the Druid (not a hybrid, but a jack-of-all-trades like class) and the Necromancer. I soloed my Druid when i played most of the time, but he was important to have so i could help out my low-level friends with quests (Skin Like Diamon + Regeneration + Shield of Thorns = walk-into-an-orc-castle-and-crush-everything! (no pun inteded for any EQ players that read this ><)) So there was enough depth to that class to be able to do enough BESIDES soloing that made it a viable class (The druid was also one of the three classes that could heal a group, albeit the worst one at the job). These classes had very clearly defined roles in groups and every class had different playstyles. I have never seen a game that balanced the classes so well against each other- and the extreme variability in races! an Ogre warrior vs a gnome warrior with identical skills and gear would win! Your race DID have an impact on your class, but nothing serious that gear/skills couldn’t cover up! Here’s a list of the classes.

    Bards could sing bard songs, no one else could do that.
    Necromancers were lords of damage over time (druids like to think otherwise but they’re wrong).
    Shamans were buffmasters.
    Druids were the closest to being able to do everything, they could solo/heal/dps/teleport (they had nukes, dots, and some aoe for dps)
    Wizards were masters of direct damage and AOE and had teleports
    Mages were second to wizards for DD and AOE but they got pets that could offtank/dps/stun
    Enchanters could crowd control
    Rangers were the only class capable of bow crits, and they could do the most bow dps, and were good melee dps
    Rogues were the only class that could pick locks and that alone makes them amazing (no more having to hunt for key drops when you have one of them around!)
    Clerics were the masters of healing. Bar none.
    Monks could Feign Death (complete aggro drop, monsters reset) for incredible pulling and had good melee dps
    Paladins(HYBRID Warrior/Cleric) could tank/half-heal/half-nukeundead/dps
    ShadowKnight(HYBRID Warrior/Necromancer) could tank/dps and cast some necro spells to help with both

    Sorry my gushing over EQ is over for now. I’ve written too much tonight

16. # Anonymouson 01 Feb 2009 at 1:02 am edit this

    So I utterly failed at keeping that short….

17. # Longascon 01 Feb 2009 at 6:17 am edit this

    @JediOfTheShire: Excellent summary!

    “EQ-oldstyle” and “JustAboutEverythingRecent” are perfect examples. JustAbout… tried to eliminate the forced grouping, but it also caused the need for support classes to be proficient at killing stuff, too.

    The real issue is the class system. It has been transferred from Pen & Paper roleplaying to computer RPG games. It was a necessary crutch to have some kind of game system, but fantasy and imagination were still the paramount of roleplaying, not the mechanics.

    And what happened on computers? The mechanics started to dominate, roleplaying in WoW is rare, I would even say unnecessary. It has a fantasy background story and that was it.

    This is a pity, as computers would allow us to get rid of the crutch, the pre-defined classes with pre-defined abilities. Again Ultima Online is my example: People could train abilities and have a certain max amount of skillpoints, 700, 100 max in one ability. Plus attribute stats.

    This is enough core mechanics! And it allows for flexibility: My swordsman Longasc became a bard and later a “fencer” (fencing is odd, it meant that I was using lances on horseback for the paralyzing blow ability of this kind of weapon. I was also proficient at wielding rapiers and kryss daggers, but lances were not in a polearm group of proficiency, but in fencing…^^)

    This system could be the basis for a free choice of how powerful your character would be in this or that situation: You could go full support and have trouble alone, but you could also decide to have at least some swordplay or magic abilities to do better at soloplay.

    We also need to get rid of the DIKU-heritage of loot and levels as motivating and core factors of gameplay. Frodo would not have destroyed the One Ring in a WoW/EQ setting. Because the quest did not offer any phat lewt quest reward, while the One Ring probably was an orange legendary item. :>

    We often have treasure hunt as the motivation in fantasy novels, but the artificial and silly hunt for experience points, fighting to level up and getting loot from dangerous foes is what I would like to call the DIKU-perversion of roleplaying.

    The problems of healers are indeed a problem of the system, as JediOfTheShire explained above, extremely well and in detail.

Leave a Reply

Name

Mail (hidden)

Website