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.
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.