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There was a good thing I read a while ago (might have been a twitter thread, I don't even remember where I saw it) where healer is often a thankless job because it's necessary, but does not actually advance the primary goal of a raid (kill the boss). Playing DPS is fun because you contribute progress towards the goal, but all healers can do is slow progress towards failure. You can always stack more DPS to make a raid go faster but stacking more healers ends up just being redundant and too many just slows things down. So they get treated with an attitude of "you are only here because we couldn't get away with fewer healers".
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Feb 12, 2021 03:32
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The Cheshire Cat posted:There was a good thing I read a while ago (might have been a twitter thread, I don't even remember where I saw it) where healer is often a thankless job because it's necessary, but does not actually advance the primary goal of a raid (kill the boss). Playing DPS is fun because you contribute progress towards the goal, but all healers can do is slow progress towards failure. You can always stack more DPS to make a raid go faster but stacking more healers ends up just being redundant and too many just slows things down. So they get treated with an attitude of "you are only here because we couldn't get away with fewer healers". That's why in tabletop rpgs they can usually also do other cool poo poo like obliterate the undead at a glance.
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Feb 12, 2021 03:38
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IronicDongz posted:I feel like "healers should be more appreciated" type stuff is way more common than healers actually getting ragged on. like, healers/support roles are frequently the people who're calling the shots since they're in a position where they're already watching what other players are doing Plus people usually play DPS classes because they don't want to have to think, so you certainly can't put them in charge.
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Feb 12, 2021 03:39
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Skwirl posted:That's why in tabletop rpgs they can usually also do other cool poo poo like obliterate the undead at a glance. A good tabletop RPG doesn't have a dedicated healer class. Just a different kind of wizard who may also do healing.
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Feb 12, 2021 03:39
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Cardiovorax posted:I haven't played any MMOs in over a decade, but I vaguely remember that back in the day, there was an equally strong stereotype of healer classes all being self-important assholes who think they're the most important part of any group. I mean they literally are if nobody else can heal properly, you can do without any of the other classes but you can't do without the person that gives you infinite health as long as you don't take damage too quickly. Some games might allow other classes to perform that function too, but in games where you have a healer, who heals, and everyone else, who doesn't, the game absolutely requires the presence of a healer because that is simply a bar you have to clear because the game doesn't work without them, the ability to recover health is a qualtitative yes/no on whether the game is playable because it is so significant. You could as easily argue that is a bad design for a game though. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 03:45 on Feb 12, 2021 |
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Feb 12, 2021 03:41
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Back in City of Heroes there was technically a healer (Empathy-specced Defender) but they were uncommon because everyone has self-heals, and buffs/debuffs from a something-else-specced Defender or a Controller would be every bit as useful.
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Feb 12, 2021 03:47
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^^^Hah, we both had the same thought at the same timeOwlFancier posted:I mean they literally are if nobody else can heal properly, you can do without any of the other classes but you can't do without the person that gives you infinite health as long as you don't take damage too quickly. One of the reasons why I like City of Heroes so much is that it never had a dedicated healer class. The game was specifically designed to work without one. There are dedicated support classes, but even in the support power set that has the most direct healing, said healing is the least useful thing that power set can do. Buffs and debuffs are much more valuable and even the support classes can blast enemies so they have something to do after dropping all their buffs/debuffs. And although they are helpful, they are still not mandatory - basically any team composition is viable since every class is fairly self-sufficient and teams are just force multipliers.
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Feb 12, 2021 03:48
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Probably the most recent one I played that reminded me of that problem was Dragon's Dogma where you can only have four people in the party and one of them has to be the only type of mage that can cast heal, because otherwise you end up spending a fortune on items and also die a lot anyway. They aren't really useful for anything else, it's just that only one class gets a heal spell, you would love to have a proper wizard that can cast giant meteors at people instead but you gotta have the lovely wizard and hope they have a few other utility spells or can poot fireballs at poo poo occasionally.
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Feb 12, 2021 03:51
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The Lone Badger posted:OTOH from a social dynamics perspective isn't a capable healer a way more valuable and desired member of the guild than yet-another-DPSer? Second only to Main Tank in prestige. 
Jackard fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Feb 12, 2021 |
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Feb 12, 2021 05:50
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The Cheshire Cat posted:There was a good thing I read a while ago (might have been a twitter thread, I don't even remember where I saw it) where healer is often a thankless job because it's necessary, but does not actually advance the primary goal of a raid (kill the boss). Playing DPS is fun because you contribute progress towards the goal, but all healers can do is slow progress towards failure. You can always stack more DPS to make a raid go faster but stacking more healers ends up just being redundant and too many just slows things down. So they get treated with an attitude of "you are only here because we couldn't get away with fewer healers". Says you, in FF14, where I main healer, my job is to plate spin healing as little as humanly possible with anything that isn't essentially "free" (eg. abilities that don't trigger the oGCD) and otherwise slamming out respectable damage that is roughly on par with the tanks, depending on the exact fight (some of the recent savage fights have been extremely rude about forcing GCD heals through sheer volume of outgoing attacks). Also, the design is such that for difficult content you'll always be paired with a second healer, so optimal play is basically achieving a mind meld with each other. Edit: Point still stands that you get more benefit out of stacking DPS though. solo healer clears of just about everything are definitely a thing. Obligatum VII fucked around with this message at 06:34 on Feb 12, 2021 |
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Feb 12, 2021 06:27
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The Cheshire Cat posted:One of the reasons why I like City of Heroes so much is that it never had a dedicated healer class. The game was specifically designed to work without one. There are dedicated support classes, but even in the support power set that has the most direct healing, said healing is the least useful thing that power set can do. Buffs and debuffs are much more valuable and even the support classes can blast enemies so they have something to do after dropping all their buffs/debuffs. And although they are helpful, they are still not mandatory - basically any team composition is viable since every class is fairly self-sufficient and teams are just force multipliers. Not only that, but they deliberately designed the game so that the holy trinity was not mandatory. Granted, a team with tank/heal0r/DPS was ideal, but you could hop in with eight blasters and kick rear end. Or even eight controllers.
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Feb 12, 2021 06:32
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Moving out of red circles is a net DPS loss, healers adjust.
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Feb 12, 2021 06:47
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Leal posted:I coulda sworn someone got poo poo for playing overwatch with something like this and talking about it with the other players. You're thinking of the woman who wrote about hooking her vibrator up to Fall Guys which prompted a pretty good discussion about consent and boundaries wrt using random anonymous players to get you off without their knowledge. The answer of course is no, don't do that, especially in a game targeted at and largely played by children.
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Feb 12, 2021 07:28
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The Lone Badger posted:Plus people usually play DPS classes because they don't want to have to think, so you certainly can't put them in charge. Eh, I always saw it more as the DPS classes are actually fun to solo with whereas the tanks and healers are usually a slog to solo with. And most MMOs are terribly designed so you spend 80% of your time soloing or in tiny groups doing soloable content until you hit max level then there's no or almost no solo content left at all and you're forced into raids to have any further progression.
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Feb 12, 2021 07:41
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OwlFancier posted:I mean they literally are if nobody else can heal properly, you can do without any of the other classes but you can't do without the person that gives you infinite health as long as you don't take damage too quickly. similarly there are pretty frequently DPS checks and if you don't take DPS classes(or they're just not playing well enough) you are again guaranteed to fail
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Feb 12, 2021 08:26
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Yeah, I mean, the most important lesson of most MMOs is that you do genuinely need everyone equally to succeed at the most difficult kind of content. Healing does you no good if you can't damage the boss fast enough to kill it, and damage is useless if you don't have enough tanks to survive to get healed. No role is really the most important role.
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Feb 12, 2021 08:27
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An incompetent DPS tends to fade into the crowd but a bad healer or tank can singlehandedly cause a wipe.
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Feb 12, 2021 08:48
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The Lone Badger posted:OTOH from a social dynamics perspective isn't a capable healer a way more valuable and desired member of the guild than yet-another-DPSer? Second only to Main Tank in prestige. Henceforth comes the healdom
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Feb 12, 2021 09:20
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Cup Runneth Over posted:Henceforth comes the healdom We just call that American Health Care.
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Feb 12, 2021 09:25
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good games let healers play as green dps that also babysit people's health bars bad games make healers use *only* heal skills, and that's bad and stupid. the best online pve games i played are DDO, GW2 and FF14, and in all three of those, healers/tanks aren't even strictly required outside top end raids (but can make poo poo much easier)
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Feb 12, 2021 10:29
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Truga posted:good games let healers play as green dps that also babysit people's health bars I used to love playing as a chloromancer in Rift. All your dps becomes smart heals at a low rate, or tank heals at a medium rate. Then the game stagnated to the point people were farming dungeons and raids without healers. Bleh.
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Feb 12, 2021 21:12
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The best healer/support is Hunting Horn in Monster Hunter. DOOT
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Feb 13, 2021 20:25
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IronicDongz posted:No you can't. Not in a lot of games anyways. If you play for instance WoW and do any of the harder content without tanks, you are mathematically guaranteed to fail What a fuckin' lovely design philosophy, no wonder I'm not a big MMO jockey. Bending raids over our collective knee with eight Radiation Defenders (buff/debuff focus, only one low-power heal) was one of the great joys of City of Heroes.
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Feb 14, 2021 12:58
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In guild wars there might have been high level bosses with DPS gates but you literally couldn't go outside without bringing a monk with you, because you would get nibbled to death by the first group of enemies you encountered, which I think is the big difference between healers and other classes.
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Feb 14, 2021 13:44
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McSpanky posted:What a fuckin' lovely design philosophy, no wonder I'm not a big MMO jockey. I mean, you say that but one of these games still exists. Edit: also being one of the people who played CoH when the private servers opened up and got to 50 and did endgame content: it really doesn't hold up that well, although I did enjoy my time there
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Feb 15, 2021 15:36
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The original CoH end game raid was the Hamidon or something, right? I remember getting people organized to kill it, and it often came down to "do you have enough health regen debuffs from radiation specifically to actually DPS it down." Rad controllers/defenders were kind of key to actually beating the open world bosses, least in my experience.
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Feb 15, 2021 15:49
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John Murdoch posted:I can't tell if you're just joking but it's because support roles in games are often depicted as and/or considered to be A) feminine, and B) unable to meaningfully contribute to the game beyond a subservient role of filling up health bars. It's combining a lovely design trend with lovely attitudes about women to make it a kink thing. I have not played a lot of mmos but I generally go for a support role or some role that isn't super combat focused. I don't want to let people down and I don't want to be the one to be blamed for screwing something up.  My fear of letting people down has prevented me from enjoying MMOs for the most part.
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Feb 15, 2021 20:51
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The Titanic posted:My fear of letting people down has prevented me from enjoying the internet for the most part. 
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Feb 16, 2021 01:17
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my favorite part of any mmo is helping people in mundane ways, like casting buffs on other players as you cast them in the middle of an open field, grouping up randomly to beat some miniboss or whatever, swapping crafting ingredients, etc. incidental cooperation. that kind of stuff usually doesn't last long past the early days of mmos though.
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Feb 16, 2021 02:49
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Ooh, me too. Destiny 2's constantly-rotating zone events were the thing to really nail that vibe for me, but that's ultimately in service of endless grind so meh. I'd also love to say that's why I grew so fond of Dark Souls co-op, but I was never summoned a single time and I only summoned other players all of like, twice. 
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Feb 16, 2021 03:39
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The Titanic posted:My fear of letting people down has prevented me from enjoying MMOs for the most part.  You shouldn't have to live with social anxiety. I'm saying this as someone who used to have this too and got help about it. (although the fix is basically just expose yourself to it until you learn that it's not that bad) Flannelette fucked around with this message at 04:02 on Feb 16, 2021 |
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Feb 16, 2021 04:00
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Glagha posted:I mean, you say that but one of these games still exists. Material corporate success is the only way I define happiness too
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Feb 16, 2021 04:38
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The Titanic posted:I have not played a lot of mmos but I generally go for a support role or some role that isn't super combat focused. I don't want to let people down and I don't want to be the one to be blamed for screwing something up. The first thing to remember is that MMOs are easier than you think and/or the average player is worse than you'd think. The other is that if you care to improve, then you probably will, since, as mentioned earlier, the game is usually not that hard, and more importantly there is almost always an abundance of online resources to check. And, at least in my experience with FFXIV, players tend to be patient and helpful with inexperienced players who want to improve, since by now we've all seen far too many experienced players who don't care to improve, so an earnest attitude is almost always welcome.
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Feb 16, 2021 04:52
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McSpanky posted:Material corporate success is the only way I define happiness too Same, which is why GME is gonna rise again
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Feb 16, 2021 05:32
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lightrook posted:The first thing to remember is that MMOs are easier than you think and/or the average player is worse than you'd think. McSpanky posted:What a fuckin' lovely design philosophy, no wonder I'm not a big MMO jockey. The first is the classic "imposed cooperation" sort of design, where specific classes offer things that are desirable and not freely available to other classes. Like for instance the cleric who can heal a lot of damage. When the other classes can't do that, it makes the healer desirable, and that's how that player finds groups. Other players want to invite them to their group because they offer something the group just won't have otherwise. The non-healer players are incentivized to seek out and communicate with them, and the healers feel good about providing something valuable. Same goes for classes that do big damage or can soak a lot of damage, or whatever other useful unique attribute. This is how players are encouraged to work together-not just because they feel like it, but because they need to in order to succeed. When you have things out in the world that require teaming up with others(who are running different classes) to get done, you wind up cooperating a lot more with your fellow players. The second closely related thing is difficulty. If you want to offer your playerbase challenge-particularly as the years go by and the playerbase gets better at the game over time-you are going to wind up creating encounters that are less doable for "do whatever we want lol" type groups. The harder the content gets, the more important it is to take advantage of those unique attributes that the different classes give. You can't have raids with encounters that are really challenging to experienced players running a well-thought out combination of classes, and have those same raids be reasonable for groups running very suboptimal combinations. Keyword very, there's always gonna be variation in strats but full meme teams with 0 tanks or whatever aren't gonna be getting things done. To be honest if you can clear raids with 8 of the same class, either that class was overpowered or(more likely) the raids were just on the easy side in the first place. Which is fine, and to be clear there's content like that in any MMO. But players are gonna want harder stuff too, and clearing harder stuff doesn't just mean "press your buttons better", because there's a limit on how much better you can do that. It also means having better builds and group composition, which are just as significant a part of games like that if not more.
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Feb 16, 2021 06:10
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The Titanic posted:I have not played a lot of mmos but I generally go for a support role or some role that isn't super combat focused. I don't want to let people down and I don't want to be the one to be blamed for screwing something up. My fear of letting people down has prevented me from enjoying MMOs for the most part. 
Jackard fucked around with this message at 06:14 on Feb 16, 2021 |
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Feb 16, 2021 06:12
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DPS being bad is kinda expected.
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Feb 16, 2021 07:09
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One of the hardest raids in FFXIV, Ultimate Coil of Bahamut, has been beaten by a tanks-only comp. There's still a bit of funny composition leeway in the game, at least.
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Feb 16, 2021 08:38
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I hear FFIV has a bit more of that than is usual for MMOs, from what I hear, both because it's Asian (which means it doesn't always adhere to the typical "division of labor" that Western RPGs have followed since early D&D) and because the easy class switching means that people become less invested in any given class so there doesn't have to be the same kind of 100% parity-at-all-times between all of them.
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Feb 16, 2021 08:41
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Anyway mods Here's a deathclaw companion wearing a suit. 
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