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.
Fuck no.
As someone who loves maining healers, I would never play one again if my only hope for defence was my team mates.
Healers are already are hard role due to lack of support and cover, making them more dependent on it would be worse
You’ll just die all the time because hardly anyone would help you, and as a bonus you get yelled at by your team for not healing them. Sounds like fun.
As one of the commenters has put it, there could be options, like having more of a “field healer” that is armed but has less healing-related abilities, and a full healer that only heals but has unique options.
You could pursue the former.
Also, movement and stealth abilities are a must for a defenceless healer, so you could still protect yourself in other ways.
like having more of a “field healer” that is armed but has less healing-related abilities, and a full healer that only heals but has unique options.
And this differs from most existing games how, exactly?
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
Or finally in the case of medic from tf2. They become a fairly predictable 1 trick pony, low reward class.
I miss the medic from TFC. The double-barreled shotgun and the concussion grenades gave them options.
(I guess that’s kinda proving the point against “pure healers,” LOL)
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.
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?
Mercy got that Glock delivered straight from the angry hands of God and it shows
Kitsune Angel combo, unlimited ammo delivered at high speed
Medic mains when their “useless” ubersaw crits for the 12th time in a row
Last time I played Overwatch I was healing as Mercy and our Roadhog just watched as I fly past while getting chased by someone on the other team and kill the guy chasing me. Then he bitched me out for fighting instead of healing him. I was like mfer if you don’t want me to fight keep them off me. Then everyone acted like I was the toxic one.
Medic in TF2 is a pure healer. The only time their weapons come out is if they get separated or get surprised by a spy. In high-level play, basically never.
Same with Mercy in Overwatch. She has a little peashooter pistol but is effectively defenseless. This already exists.
There are pure healers in wow too for example.
None of them are totally 100% healers. Even Holy priests can cause some damage.
Yeah by switching to a farm-stance, but when healing they do super little damage (and if they do they aggro hard so not very useful).
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.
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.
This is coward talk. Healers should be given silver bullets for their guns with badass names like “Spectre Covenant” and huge medieval maces.
Sounds like you want OG Mercy from Overwatch, who didn’t work out btw
No, FPS players tend to be the “killer” type of player who play to score and win, they are rarely the “socialite” type of player who are in it for teamwork.
Simply put, this is the wrong audience to implement this idea in, there are gaming communities where this works but FPS just isn’t one of them.Since so many people played the original overwatch at it’s prime, it was a good way to see what people played and how. The dps queue was sometimes 30 to 40min, while as a healer you got into a game instantly. When Ana dropped, people just played ana and didn’t heal people, because she had a sniper rifle. When moira dropped, people just played her as a dps who could heal herself. Support is very niche already, making it more niche, and only a handful of people would even consider support.
I think the finals did a good job in giving the medium class a healing beam. It’s supper powerful on it’s own, and if your team dies, you can still whip out a very good if not the best gun.
Yeah, Mercy was one of my inspirations.
I feel like one of the reasons FPS scene is like that is exactly because players have no choices left but to pick up a gun and shoot enemies. Without that, you are useless in any classical FPS composition, regardless of the role, which alienates players that want to see other types of gameplay.
Simply put, if you are not a “killer” in an FPS game, you have nothing to do there, and that’s why only those players remain. Something has to be changed inside the genre.
and continuing my thought, overwatch was literally what you wanted in them first years. But it turned out that the main game group was not interested in playing for healers or tanks without damage, and as a result, the bias in choosing these roles was more than 3 times. This increased the waiting time in the queue quite a lot. As a result, everything returned to the option where each role can cause damage.
I think it goes both ways; FPS games attract “killer” type players, so designers design the games to cater for them. Because designers cater the game more to them, they attract more of those type of players.
Like a spiral only spiraling into itself~
Mercy so easy only in low ranks.
If you have good move you can do teamkill by mercy under ultimate skill… Especially if your DPS no have damage. In overwatch you should kill by any role, but in healer mode you should don’t die at first, heal you team at second and do damage in third. That’s true less for mercy, because she has damage increase bean and you should change to it for support ultimates for example, but more on Birgit or for new healers.
And with tank too. You should protect your team, know all mechanics and do damage for enemies. For example sigma, you can eat Moira orb and Zarya ultimate skill by bullet protection skill. that is literally black hole. And if tank don’t do that you team in pain. And if you don’t damage targets you team lose.
But Overwatch bad example because that more arcade shooter. Many moves depend by skills, not for headshots. You literally have melee characters without any targeting.
Was with you until you thought you were speaking of my girlfriend being a support role.
Dude, I’d be willing to bet she’d eat your lunch in a multiplayer shooter.
Maybe lose the sexist shit and I’d say you’ve got something here!
Sorry if this sounded offensive, I thought it could be a light pun. My apologies.
In any case, I know plenty of girls that would absolutely kick my ass in shooters and that actively take offensive roles. I never meant to say all girls are opposed to taking a gun!
You’re all good.
Nope, I’m cancelling OP. He’s cancelled. He’ll get the paperwork… Eventually.
That’s not what a pun is anyway tho
Wouldn’t shooting them violate some kind of convention (like Geneva, idk) in this case?
If shooters were played by Geneva convention, where would be the fun? :P
I try to play my Arma 3 abiding to Geneva convention and is quite fun
Arma is a full blown simulator, which is an entire different story :)
But I should have clarified it
I feel like there’s already lots of things in lot’s of games that violate a variety of conventions
buT THInk aBOUT wHaT KINd oF exAMpLe it pReSenTS TO THE cHILdREN
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
