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.
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!
Play squad or Arma.
Dreadnought had a support cruiser what was like that. Wasn’t super boring either.
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 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
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?
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 :)
So you’re respawning and no DPS are near you and you encounter an enemy DPS in a narrow corridor. No thanks.
Wouldn’t that mean death for you either way? Unless the healer has a massive weapon, I guess.
See team fortress 2 for healing done properly
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).
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.
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.
The dispenser tf2
Need a dispenser here!
MVP
Dude, in even MMOs or other party-based games healers can defend themselves.
But also: ARMA 3 with the DLC that adds in the humanitarian aid and rules of engagement stuff. Medics aren’t allowed to carry weapons, IIRC, and all the milsim servers tend to enforce real life rules like that. You could be a NATO medic and not even be given a gun.
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.
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.
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.
