Splinter Topic: Do I Need To Heal That Yet?

A discussion of what I consider compelling Healer gameplay.

Comparisons (in responses) will generally be FF11 vs FF14, and Ashes Alpha-1 extrapolation vs Neverwinter.

So recently some topics have brought up the fact that in many games, the healer's gameplay is very reactionary. The thing that is treated as 'skill' is 'noticing that damage has happened and clicking the anti-damage ability'. Fail to click it and people die (Neverwinter).

This doesn't work well in Action games I think, because it's binary, and if a player misjudges something and the healer wasn't expecting them to misjudge it or fail, it's easy to blame the healer for not healing enough, particularly before the player has learned that the thing they did was a mistake (Overwatch).

There are other things I consider the job of a 'Cleric' or 'White Mage' (notice I don't say Healer here) which are explicitly buffs, but many of those are just 'hitting the anti damage ability before the damage'. For many games, these have to be easy to predict, to avoid passing the average player's difficulty threshold, for those to be easy to predict. I don't want to discuss those in this thread too much.

• For healing to be compelling to me, Cleanses need to be part of the class that does it. Otherwise I am just playing a character that sustains. Because 90% of debuffs don't need to be cleansed, they just lower performance of the group if you don't.
• Additionally, if I need to choose between healing HP and removing a debuff or status, but the HP damage doesn't imply that death is imminent, this is a judgement call based on what else is happening (best example is any defense debuff on the tank)
• I also like when I can get some benefit from specifically choosing to not use a particular healing ability for healing, whether that's 'using it to do damage' or 'using it to trigger something else' (e.g. FFXI Divine Veil, which allows you to use a skill normally meant to increase an HP healing ability, to instead make your status removal AoE).
• I don't mind games where three different problems are presented to the player at once and they must choose a priority order for resolving those problems within 2 seconds or less.

I feel like recent games have moved away from these. I have many unfounded opinions about why, but I think we can mostly agree that increasing the mass appeal of games involves making them easier, almost by definition.

This means I associate 'normal' MMO gameplay now with 'none of the above' until endgame, and certain games (Neverwinter and FFXIV) don't even start doing those at that point for most content. It's still just more 'see HP bar drop, click healing button'. I watched a video awhile on the Neverwinter one awhile back that I'd link for those who aren't familiar but I can't find it now.

I've basically concluded in my time that if a game doesn't throw enough debuffs at a group to make the 'Healer' have to make a choice, it's not going to interest me. And if all debuffs are removed using the same cleanse, or worse, 'Choose one to remove randomly, or press a button to remove two or three to make sure', I'm going to like it even less.

Other games are usually 'Hey Healer, pls also do action game stuff and also occasionally hit your anti-damage button', which I think has become a default for 'compelling'. Sometimes you get an AoE ground target Regen. These are okay.

Basically if the game does not make me ask the Title Question, it hasn't made me feel like a 'Healer'. Ashes hasn't actually implied this even once yet. There's hints that it might get there, but nothing concrete about the 'direction' they want to take with it.

There. Status removed.

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You say 'instead of' but that's based on an assumption that I don't share.

FFXI Bard has 1 Single Target sleep and one AoE sleep, resisted by building resistance to Light element.
FFXI Black Mage has 2 Single Target Sleeps and 2 AoE Sleep, resisted by building resistance to Dark element.
FFXI White Mage has 1 Single Target Sleep, resisted by building resistance to Light Element again.

If I were to blindly go with the 'But MY old game did it THIS way' then I'd just assume that Cleric, Bard and Mage all get Sleep.

I'd probably like a "bomb defuser" type of gameplay, where all dots/debuffs have a growing effect on a timer, which can be sped up by recasting the effect. And at the end of the timer there's an "explosion", which could be anything from direct damage to the victim to smth like "sap mana from all target's allies within a range and deal damage to them all based on the amount of mana sapped".

Cleric would have different ways of addressing different bombs. Smth like: stopping the timer for a bit, reducing the growth lvl, redirecting the effect back onto the enemy caster, taking the effect from the target, exploding the bomb at will, reducing the effects of the explosion, changing the effects to smth positive (heals included), etc etc.

Link those debuffs to synergies sometimes and you have yourself a huuuuuge well of design space, which makes the cleric a very active archetype that has to constantly monitor the situation in more ways than one.

Different archetypes could have self buffs that address certain types of effects (just as Noaani described), but clerics would have all the tools. And cleric augments could then help distribute those tools.

Healers , would this be interesting gameplay? Obviously the healing part remains, but as pointed out several times, healing can sometimes take a background role. Oh, and of course all the mobs would have those debuffs as well, and ideally they'd have interactions amongst each other that can speed up timers or maybe even enhance effects or put anti-cleric protections on the target.

I found it, I think!

Context for Neverwinter. It's obviously quite long, but the Content Creator is pretty clear, I think.

Neverwinter's depth in Healing is not so much that you need to have played the game to understand what she's saying.

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I'd be okay with having cleanses be spread amongst Archetypes overall, it's all balance overall.

I guess I'll continue to assume FFXI is the best since it sounds like it has 'everything that EQ2 has but without the pain points'.

I've mentioned various aspects of the White Mage from there in different threads but for those who are encountering all this only through this one and also read Noaani's post, just assume that's the description of FFXI's White Mage. EQ2 has the 'class variety', and FFXI has the 'combinatoric' style that Ashes sorta-has.

So you'll get the WhiteMage Primary BlackMage Secondary who had sustain and lower MP costs, the WhiteMage Primary Summoner Secondary who had decent special buffs and a few more AoE cleanses/slight DPS options, etc.

But they always had the full kit of elemental defenses, cleanses, etc. No 'class variety' here except 'where the focus of your energy' is, but this is due to the explicit intention to make it so that if you like to do those things but don't want to be a 'Pure Healer' you use the White Mage as the 'Secondary' for your other Mage Primary, and you just lose your higher healing spells and some stronger buffs/debuffs (depending on which Mage you chose as Primary).

So, no respec since you just always have everything, and you're only manipulating 10-15% effectiveness in any direction.

NiKr wrote: »

I'd probably like a "bomb defuser" type of gameplay, where all dots/debuffs have a growing effect on a timer, which can be sped up by recasting the effect. And at the end of the timer there's an "explosion", which could be anything from direct damage to the victim to smth like "sap mana from all target's allies within a range and deal damage to them all based on the amount of mana sapped".

Cleric would have different ways of addressing different bombs. Smth like: stopping the timer for a bit, reducing the growth lvl, redirecting the effect back onto the enemy caster, taking the effect from the target, exploding the bomb at will, reducing the effects of the explosion, changing the effects to smth positive (heals included), etc etc.

Link those debuffs to synergies sometimes and you have yourself a huuuuuge well of design space, which makes the cleric a very active archetype that has to constantly monitor the situation in more ways than one.

Different archetypes could have self buffs that address certain types of effects (just as Noaani described), but clerics would have all the tools. And cleric augments could then help distribute those tools.

Healers , would this be interesting gameplay? Obviously the healing part remains, but as pointed out several times, healing can sometimes take a background role. Oh, and of course all the mobs would have those debuffs as well, and ideally they'd have interactions amongst each other that can speed up timers or maybe even enhance effects or put anti-cleric protections on the target.

The problem here is that unless a Developer is experienced with this and implements it VERY precisely you'll get something bad. In a simplistic design, the choice of 'if' to deal with it is reduced to the same as 'high HP loss, must react to avoid critical problem' rather than 'issues with effectiveness, choose which malady to heal'.

Not as a CORE feature of the concept, just the 'dev who doesn't understand all the nuances required for what you wrote' problem of the '10s.

Azherae wrote: »

The problem here is that unless a Developer is experienced with this and implements it VERY precisely you'll get something bad. In a simplistic design, the choice of 'if' to deal with it is reduced to the same as 'high HP loss, must react to avoid critical problem' rather than 'issues with effectiveness, choose which malady to heal'.

Yeah, it'd be a tightrope walk of balancing and proper interconnected design that's somehow not super boring and overcomplicated.

I imagined it kinda like a whac-a-mole gameplay, but instead of using the same hammer for all the different moles, you'd have several hammers that led to different effect changes. But I can definitely see how this kind of gameplay would be super frustrating to any semi-casual player, not only because you'd need to juggle this decision making with proper healing, but also because those effect changes' results would also rely on your mates' proper movements. And that is if the system itself is designed well enough to even work properly.

In other words, it's just yet another overcomplicated suggestion by me

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

The problem here is that unless a Developer is experienced with this and implements it VERY precisely you'll get something bad. In a simplistic design, the choice of 'if' to deal with it is reduced to the same as 'high HP loss, must react to avoid critical problem' rather than 'issues with effectiveness, choose which malady to heal'.

Yeah, it'd be a tightrope walk of balancing and proper interconnected design that's somehow not super boring and overcomplicated.

I imagined it kinda like a whac-a-mole gameplay, but instead of using the same hammer for all the different moles, you'd have several hammers that led to different effect changes. But I can definitely see how this kind of gameplay would be super frustrating to any semi-casual player, not only because you'd need to juggle this decision making with proper healing, but also because those effect changes' results would also rely on your mates' proper movements. And that is if the system itself is designed well enough to even work properly.

In other words, it's just yet another overcomplicated suggestion by me

It's moreso tuning/growth in content.

If you start healers off with 'enemy weakens something so the party is low efficiency', and they don't keep up, the party is slow. The learning process is then better. They can 'have an effect that isn't binary' and 'probably get to see it'. Other players can 'afford' to be kinder even to new healers, because it's their speed that's suffering, not their ability to play.

At endgame high difficulty/raid tier, do whatever you like in that regard, but I'm currently talking about the 'base/midgame gameplay style' because my philosophy on design is always to design based around the midgame experience (where 70% of casual players play).

Azherae wrote: »

It's moreso tuning/growth in content.

If you start healers off with 'enemy weakens something so the party is low efficiency', and they don't keep up, the party is slow. The learning process is then better. They can 'have an effect that isn't binary' and 'probably get to see it'. Other players can 'afford' to be kinder even to new healers, because it's their speed that's suffering, not their ability to play.

That's exactly why I had the "growth" part. On cast the debuff would have a fairly small impact on the target, but with time it would grow and then "explode". In theory, the healer would have enough time to not only notice the debuff, but also to decide what exactly they want to do with it considering the current party's situation.

The debuffs themselves could sometimes not even impact the victim all that much. Or, well, not impact directly. Say, a bleed just drains their hp by a bit, but it obviously synergizes with any ability that's related to bleeds, and on explosion instead of directly damaging the target it might just heal the caster for the amount the target bled out. So impact of the debuff itself would be somewhat low, but the caster would still benefit.

And the healer could have a ton of way to change that effect. The healing could go to the target. Or bleed could be turned into a slow hp regen with a burst on explosion. Or mirror it on the caster and use your own bleed synergies on it (this could potentially be used in some pve encounters that are known for their specific debuffs, so the party members can avoid getting that debuff themselves, but have synergistic abilities for it, because the healer would mirror the effect onto the mobs). And I'm sure there's at least several other interactions that could be interesting and useful.

And pretty much all of that would be a proactive move on the side of the healer, because it'd be a decision that impacts the future, even if the reaction to the effect came at the present.

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My experience with what people consider 'CC' is that it's often too short duration or too difficult to cleanse in the timeframe required, so it gets into 'high chance of no noticeable effect'.

So for clarity, in general in this thread when I say 'cleanses' I mean things with long durations (7s or more) but 'inconveniencing' problems being presented.

I feel like you're talking about many of the same things (or play games where certain CC is quite long duration? Roots, maybe?) or count certain things that I don't count as CC.

I've got no issues with the 'charged Cleanse' concept, and now I'm actually wondering if the one Ashes showed has the ability to bounce between the Cleric and some initial target one more time if in a group of just 2 (to remove two effects).

A 15 second cooldown on a single sorta-all-purpose Cleanse might be a problem in Ashes, I think, since the number of status effects possible might be quite high.

I don't really mind 'every class being able to Cleanse one thing relative to their gameplay type' but at that point, by 'removing it from the Healer' you create a type of gameplay that in my experience, people eventually dislike. That's just anecdotal though, so if you enjoy it, I think Intrepid can count you as at least one counterpoint to my perspective on that.

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Do you know anything about how it was in EQ1?

I definitely expect that Square Enix iterated off someone or something (based on what I know of their data) but FFXI is before EQ2, so I presume they both just 'iterated off EQ1 in divergent ways'.

I happen to prefer the FFXI iteration over the EQ2 iteration from the sound of it, but quite possibly EQ1 was better than both.

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You save the one in your party, as should do the other 4 healers, because every party should have at least one healer in their setup during a raid. And if those 5 players are all in your party - you better figure out why that's the case, because they're fucking up your gameplay. Your responsibility to heal them doesn't remove their responsibility to make your life as easy as possible.

And if the dmg was inevitable, you choose the one who helps your party's gameplay the most. And in the context of having combat rez class abilities and rez scrolls on top of that - you should heal the one who has the best scrolls, so that they can rez the others in the best way possible.