One way to breathe a new life into multiplayer shooters could be removing any guns from healers.
Make them potent, but vulnerable!
Why is it important:
- Players that don’t like shooting, but love teamwork would finally be represented (yes, I’m speaking of your girlfriend!)
- Having to protect healers would benefit more organized teams, rewarding teamwork
- Healers would have a more dynamic gameplay revolving around avoiding damage: stealthy movement, ability to quickly traverse dangerous zones, coordination with fellow teammates are all required to benefit your team as a healer
What might need to be tweaked:
- Healers should be made into the only revivors, and we should either punish death more (which we’d better be careful of if that’s a dynamic game) or give buffs on revival
- Healers should get more movement abilities to increase survivability. They may also get speed boost when running towards teammates (similar to Conduit Savior’s Speed in Apex Legends)
- Team compositions should accommodate for several healers as to not introduce a single point of failure
Overall, I think it could introduce a new dynamic to team arenas and skirmishes, as winning now requires more coordination within a team and better understanding of everyone’s roles.
Play squad or Arma.
Dreadnought had a support cruiser what was like that. Wasn’t super boring either.
So basically Mercy from Overwatch? I think most games have versions of this type of healer. Medic in TF2 etc. They basically have guns that can’t do much other than be used to shoot your teammates in the face to get their attention.
Have you never seen a battle mercy wipe an enemy team?
I enjoy playing support classes, you want me to stop Playing support classes? Make it so that they are utterly defenseless and rely solely on others to stay alive.
Ultimately, it will play absolutely terribly if all you can do is run away unless you are playing with a well organized team. And then you may find that all your team mates get to have all the fun in the game while you get stuck with only the boring stuff.
No thank you.
There could be options. You can get some sort of a balanced healer/damager, while someone else would pick a pure healer. It’s just that there should be an option to heal only.
You have to balance that. A pure healer would need to be so strong that it would become the primary target at all times. Which would be frustrating for both sides. For players playing against it because they can’t really play the game anymore. For the pure healers because they would be under tons of pressure.
Unfortunately (or fortunately) we (should) design games around a core audience. Chances are that if your ( r my) hypothetical friend isn’t enjoying the competitive part of the game at all, that she (or he) is going to get frustrated at that game at some point anyways. And there are probably games that suit both your needs better to start with. Competitive games may just not be the right choice. Don’t ruin the game feel of those games for those that enjoy them for the sake of non competitive players because that will just create a game that no one actually wants to play.
Mercy from Overwatch is a perfect example of why pure healers don’t work too well in shooters. She is consistently throughout the games lifespan either been too overtuned or too undertuned. It is very difficult to find that balanced spot for pure healers.
They either end up too powerful and require constant tagging by the opponents team which is frustrating both for the healer player and the opponent team. Or they become almost mandatory for a team too win even in a casual setting, which is incredibly unfun for both teams.
In the case of being undertuned though, if they’re not powerful enough then no one picks them as it is just not as fun or engaging to play as a pure healer.
Or finally in the case of medic from tf2. They become a fairly predictable 1 trick pony, low reward class.
Overall pure healers in shooters just really don’t work well for the medium/genre. I love being a support player myself in games. But I loathe seeing pure healers in shooters. It’s nearly always just a source of frustration rather than fun
Hasn’t Overwatch if anything shown that focusing on the small highest end crowd doesn’t actually work in the context of heterogeneous classes to play? Unlike MOBAs, so I can totally see why a dev would assume it to be the correct choice.
While I have not played overwatch myself, I have heard about a few things with it. From my point of view overwatch had it’s own problems including characters that did only one thing but that one thing really, really well. Which is frustrating. It also didn’t help that they tried to force things instead of actually working with what they had. IMHO it’s a master class of what not to do with a game unless you want to to fail.
The only reason I start shooting is if my team isn’t doing their job. You want me to go out there and heal with no protection from the enemy? They already focus on the healers as it is, and we get left behind often. I honestly would never play healer again. All the stuff you’re explaining already happens. My goal already is to avoid damage, my team is already supposed to protect me (and when they don’t/can’t, I have a weapon for that).
also, not only “girlfriends” dislike shooting, there are plenty of guys who are main healersGirlfriend joke was just a light pun :D
I respect healer main guys, and often am one :)
Went over my head. My bad.
So you’re respawning and no DPS are near you and you encounter an enemy DPS in a narrow corridor. No thanks.
Team Fortress is built off the idea that no class can’t do something, some just do it way better.
Team Fortress ain’t perfectly balanced and thoroughly thought out though. It’s just a fun meaty shooter, that’s it, and it’s alright :)
Oh no it is very ballanced.
if you use 6s rules
Casual is more balanced actually
Huh?
Casual is more balanced due to the amount of people. It’s more viable to play other classes.
That’s not really any sane definition of balanced.
In that sense Highlander would be the most balanced because every class is always played.
The whole idea of different kits in a shooter already precludes balance though. That’s an accepted loss for more enjoyable gameplay.
That would just make them even bigger targets than they already are. And now they won’t have a way to defend themselves? That sounds like a nightmare. I used to play Overwatch and would always play support. There’s no way in hell i’d trust my team to help me if I’m being attacked. They’re probably just gonna jump ahead and say “I need healing!” fifteen times and call me a trash healer as I get the shit beaten out of me with no way to fight back. If this is how support roles worked nobody would play them. I already get left to my own devices as the rest of the team ignores me getting attacked in the back line. It’s already a thankless and painful role to play and this would make it unbearable.
I like the idea from a roleplaying-POV.
However, as someone who loves to play medic since BF2, I can tell you that I’d stop playing supportive (medic) if they’d remove the guns from the class. It sounds like it’s just half as fun.
It would exclusively work for competitive eSports.
Many people play just for fun, don’t want to focus on teamwork
Some people’s definition of “fun” may differ, and it would be cool to serve them too. But still, healers must be equipped with abilities that would grant them some level of survivability on their own - particularly those helping to escape the fight and reset.
It’s just that teams that play tactically will be rewarded.
What If “healer” was assigned at random at the start of a match of no one picks it, healers weren’t on either team, land were scored separately by how many people they revived?
Neutral medics? That would likely be a shitshow to balance, but I would actually be interested in trying that. Lore accurate Swiss Mercy!
Battlefield does most of this, except medics csn defend themselves because people already rarely play support. As seen by the endless rage and whining, the ad-hoc emergent teamplay doesn’t work as often as it does.
If healers are unable to harm others, then maybe add a scoring system which penalizes people for harming/killing healers. Taking “kills” away or whatever.
ugh. why?
In reality, it’s a war crime to fire on medics in combat zones. That doesn’t always stop people from doing it, but it’s still frowned upon. Same rule could apply to unarmed medics in games.
There should be some penalty for shooting unarmed healers. Just to let others know that you’re a dick.
I think it’s okay to gain score by killing enemy healers - this puts them in danger and forces more tactical gameplay. In a more realism-focused gameplay, though, this might be an option.
This almost seems like healers would become the main focus of the game. Some might like it some may not. But it would change things. It almost seems like you want healers to be so core that you will basically auto lose a fight due to a lack of revival and sustain. So if your healer gets caught out of position or sniped you just have to back off or otherwise just lose. To me that does not sound like a fun game loop.
A better option would likely to be have a multitude of different style of healers that can fulfill multiple different styles of gameplay. Sure have one that can only heal and not dps and has to be protected by teammates, but also have a healer that can Frontline and half allies when they do melee dmg. Have are healers, have single target healers. Have dot healers, have burst healers.
Of course it has to be somewhat balanced - healers should not get super OP, but they should be good enough for players to give up damaging abilities and still be important in a team.
There could be an in-between option added though, fair enough.
I think a mix of healing and damage through curses is better. I haven’t played wow in like 20 years, but my favorite was the shadow priest. Both a healer and a strong damage dealer.
I don’t think the MMO setting is the right fit for my idea anyway.
Though priests are undoubtedly great. Had much fun damage dealing with Shadow priest, especially in the WotLK era. Consistent damage, decent control, practically endless mana pool.
