Combat and Restoration

[Slamz]

I've never been particularly pleased with the typical MMORPG model of health, damage and healing. For one thing, I think it over-emphasizes healers, as any ability that can restore 50% of your health is obviously going to be super powerful and ultimately the game gets designed around that, and if you don't have enough of it, you probably can't play the game very effectively.

I think I prefer the HALO/POTBS system. My game would have no "healers".

Your health has two components:
One that regenerates very quickly (HALO: Shields / POTBS: Balance).
One that does not regenerate (health).


So to kill someone you have to batter down their shields and then do damage to their health. So let's say you have 100 shields and 100 health. I do 180 damage to you, but you win the fight. Your shields quickly regenerate and you are left standing with 100 shields and 20 health.

This allows some degree of "the Rambo effect". If you can defeat an enemy without losing too much "health", then you'll regenerate your shields quickly and won't be at such a huge disadvantage against the next guy.


I also thought the POTBS method of healing health was good. In melee, you would simply have to avoid getting hit long enough to bandage yourself. There was no "healer". You just had to break combat long enough to do it.



Although I'm not sure if I like the POTBS or the Halo method of shield regen more.

POTBS: Shields ("balance") regen constantly at a modest pace during the fight.
Halo: Shields do not regen while you're being hit. If you can go for a few seconds without being hit, shields will recover very quickly.

[Dustie]

The problem I see is that a good 30% of the MMO population will come into a new game and say, "what's the best healer class in this game?" and then proceed to pick that class. I personally like your idea but I think we'll need to make it draw in those, "I always play a healer" types. I think you can do it with your balance idea, make "healers" become "blockers" that help negate negative effects to their team members balance or shields.

[Thudz]

The problem I see is that a good 30% of the MMO population will come into a new game and say, "what's the best healer class in this game?" and then proceed to pick that class. I personally like your idea but I think we'll need to make it draw in those, "I always play a healer" types. I think you can do it with your balance idea, make "healers" become "blockers" that help negate negative effects to their team members balance or shields.

Healing should only occur out of combat. Both the healer and healee need to be out of combat. It should only be used to decrease any downtime between encounters. Release your hate for the healer, it will make you powerful.

[Slamz]

I don't see why people can't just all heal themselves.

If this is a skill based game (as opposed to class based) then maybe everyone has a "Medical" skill, and higher medical skill lets you cure wounds faster but everyone has a medical skill of "1" and is capable of doing it.


Basically I don't want to log on and feel like I must find a healer. If 6 of us are on and none of us are healers, we should be able to go pick fights and not feel like we're at a crippling disadvantage because of it, either in combat or twiddling our thumbs out of combat waiting for hit points to slowly come back.



Now, what MIGHT be interesting is to steal an idea from Dwarf Fortress and build on that...

Your body has hit locations. Left hand, right hand, left arm, right arm, head, neck, etc. Dwarf Fortress even keeps track of injuries to your liver. If you take a critical hit to your left arm, your arm is broken and you can no longer use it in combat. You would have to go find someone with a proper medical skill to increase the healing rate if you don't want to have a broken arm for the rest of the day.


Maybe that would be an interesting thing to offset the "shield" idea. After a big 30 vs 30 battle, your guild is victorious and regenerates their shields quickly, ready for another battle, but you may have a number of specific, crippling wounds that need to be tended to before you're really ready to move and fight again. People with broken legs can't run, people with broken arms can't swing weapons...

[Diggles]

there will always be combat medicine

the degree of how effective you are should depend on the amount of skill you've invested.

Everyone knows you put bandage on a wound to stop the bleeding, but crimping off a cut artery so you dont bleed to death is a hole other story.

likewise, someone with a broken artery isnt going to back in action anytime soon

[Slamz]

Yeah, maybe something like...

If you take a critical hit to your neck, it might start a bleed that's going to kill you in 30 seconds unless someone with serious medical skill is there to help you immediately, and if either you or the medic gets hit during the procedure, he has to start over.

So maybe a medic with high skill is basically using magic with his healing and he can heal your gushing neck wound in 5 seconds. A medic with moderate skill takes 15 seconds. A medic with low skill takes so long, you'll die before he's done, or maybe he simply can't fix "critical" wounds at all.

[Vllad]

As long as it remains skill based.

I think the primary healers should be NPC based not player based. I like the idea's of keeping the shields up and even having full health gains (out of combat) however having and curing disabilities from previous injuries should be done by NPC's only.

The higher the medic skill means PC's can reduce the severity of the disabilities or even add some health. However if you want full recovery I would suggest that you have to go visit NPC's that do that. Make the NPC's exist at spawn points.

If you die all disabilities are reset.

This way you can have pvp that means maintaining zones of control.

In a nut shell, you have your guys at the front fighting. If they need to regen their shields and health they pull back out of combat. A medic can heal them and maybe lessen their disabilities. Afterward they can move to the front again only with lesser abilities.

After a while however hopefully their will be some sort of attrition rate.

The key to zone of control pvp is always going to be how you use the spawn mechanic.


Vllad

[Slamz]

Could do something like the SWG (also UFO: Afterlight) concept of "temporary" and "permanent" damage.

Something like every 20 points of damage you take will also subtract 1 point from your max health. Eventually you reach a point where your max health is so low that you have to take a break and get it fixed to continue fighting.


Or maybe something like....

Balance - all damage goes against your Balance, which regenerates constantly at a moderate pace

Health - When Balance hits 0, additional damage goes against your health

Critical wounds - When you take health damage, there is a small chance that you will also take a critical wound which can cause a variety of debilitating effects (reduced movement speed, reduced attack speed, reduced defenses, etc).


Player characters with the Field Medic skill can cure health damage.
Only NPCs can cure Critical wounds.


This gives you a good ability to keep fighting but eventually you need to take a break and go get fully cured. e.g., maybe a highly skilled Field Medic can resurrect you and keep the fight going, but that still won't remove your Critical wounds, so you still eventually need a break.

[Hoofhurr]

Trying to marry this with the theme concept... If you make it a skill based game does it water down the classes? If you have a minotaur that's just as good as healing himself as The Pope because of the skills they chose to develop does that unravel the player's attachment to their character? Does the physical presence and graphic of the avatar of the character have 'anything' to do with what that character is capable of doing? Should you have vampires that go around healing humans and angles that suck their blood?

[Slamz]

If we're talking about a game where the player physically turns into something else (like human to vampire) then I would say you'd have "racial modifiers" on top of the skill system.

For example, human weapon skill may be capped at 100, but vampires can go to 200. However, human medical skill is capped at 100 but vampire medical skill is capped at 10 (it's hard to heal those holy water burns).


Or in this case it could even be related to the powers of the faction leader. The Red Court vampires are masters of direct combat and their skill caps are higher in those areas. Black Court vampires are masters of stealth and their skill caps are higher in those areas. Everyone under the Archangel Michael can call holy fire onto his weapon for a bonus.


You could do a lot of fiddling like that to make factions much more unique.

[Vllad]

Trying to marry this with the theme concept... If you make it a skill based game does it water down the classes? If you have a minotaur that's just as good as healing himself as The Pope because of the skills they chose to develop does that unravel the player's attachment to their character? Does the physical presence and graphic of the avatar of the character have 'anything' to do with what that character is capable of doing? Should you have vampires that go around healing humans and angles that suck their blood?

IF we were to use the heaven and hell concept I think the original concept is everyone starts out as human.

If you work really hard with raising your vampire faction then one day you could become a vampire. I suppose this could be done with any faction. Becoming a Zombie, Vampire, Werewolf, Seraphin etc.

However if you morph your human element into the bastardized forms of humans even in a skill based game you don't change your skills, just some of the base benefits or penalties for being these things.

Maybe a Vampire starts with some basic head starts in some skills and has some increases in Strength etc. While he could be very strong the penalties are he could not walk in open daylight etc. Their are risk/rewards for being a Vampire.

That still doesn't mean that a Vampire couldn't be very skilled at healing or using any paticular type of weopon.

In other words he starts at a different base then your normal human but the skill levels still apply.

You might just get access to a different skill set then a Human does. It is still skill based however.


Vllad

[grizzle]

I don't see why people can't just all heal themselves.

I think one of the biggest bottlenecks in MMO fun is the healer class. Sure, there is a rare breed of player who enjoys playing the pure healer, but they are few and far between, especially in MMOs where pure healers can barely defend themselves and cannot offensively win.

Typically, no one wants to play a healer class for these reasons. I agree that it would be great if all players could heal themselves, but set up their skill tree in a tiered hierarchy, such that while basic healing is natural for all players at toon creation, they can spec into it, to certain degrees, in each tier, which allows them to find their perfect balance between offense/defense/heal specs.

Now, that being said, there is a place for a pure healer, (my fav is the cleric in EQ with Complete Heal - remember that 10 second cast bombastic healicious spell? - utter sweetness), which is in any MMO that has boss mob events. The more DPS a mob puts out, there has to be a way to replace that massive loss of HP, and 40 players stacking on the main tack each bandaging him probably won't cut it.

There are ways around that, such as designing bosses that dish out smaller damage amounts but in AE form, so everyone has to heal themselves, and the main tank takes less overall damage, etc., but there will have to be some really hardcore re-design of the stereotypical End Game Boss Event to make it work, or else design the game without those sorts of end game bosses.

[Diggles]

none of the fantasy games have any element of realistic armor/weapons

you wouldnt need heals unless someone attacked the weakness of your armor.

if you are a lowbie and fighting something in plate, you'll need to use speed to take him down. use your rope to trip him down and then stab him in the face.

if you only have a slashing weapon fighting someone in chain mail, you'll have to go for unprotected parts of his body because your blade will do nothing

hitpoints in any form are just kinda lame, I like injuries and strategies/tactics...no game has even come close really. M&B was a weak attempt. your armor should be the one taking dmg, not you.

combine armor that has realistic strengths/weakness and then add stances and styles that modify your abilities

Ie. I'm wearing field plate, so I play defensively and try to counter attack my enemy, saving my stamina (it drains faster)

Ie. I'm in chainmail and my limbs are exposed, I keep middle stance so I can quickly defend

Ie. I'm in leather armor and need to use my energy on primarly dodging attacks, I cant afford to get hit

[Vllad]

Grizz,

Their should be no room in a skill based game for Clerics and Tanks. Think of Planetside or POBS. People may play different rolls but everyone fights. We have to get away from the past of class born rolls that people play.


Vllad

[Zouji]

I would enjoy just about any combat system so long as it is skill based such as Planetside or even Ultima Online. It would need the ability though to allow you to change up your skills like in Planetside. That way there isn't very much of a penalty in changing out your skills. But, you can't change them out every 2 minutes simple because you might have in game money or whatever the equivalent is.

[Vanraw]

As far as healing goes, I disagree with most here. Some people like to play support roles in games like these. So having an active healing role in encounters is just as critical as having DPS. But I agree there are some bad things here.

Healing should require some sort of skill beyond target / push button. It should also not so effective that one push of a button heals someone 100%. A bad example; EQ Cleric healing chains.... That sucked. 5 clerics push a button every 10 secs when its their turn. Really stupid too.

Also I don't see a problem with healing during an encounter / battle. Just make it strategic and more then a target / click process. Here's an idea.

Use something like the TF2 solution.

- Let the healer / player create a destroyable stationary NPC station (ala tf2 Engineer) that people can run to to get healed. But make is so you have to stand by it for say 5 seconds before it heals you and if you take any sort of action, such as an attack or get attacked, it will stop. So you need to leave combat for 5 seconds for it to work. Also it should take a bit to heal you. HOT for full health takes say 1 full minute.

- Let the healer to a targeted HOT based heal that only works as the healer is processing it. Like the TF2 healer, you have to be targeted, and actively healing for the HOT to work. But the HOT is gradual, and not a EQ cleric style 10k heal.

- Make both healing devices more then a point and click. Force a process. Like a which doctor would need to perform a dance, sprinkle some stuff in the air, and then drop to your knees and heal, followed by the sopme sort of chanting. What ever, more then target / click.

- Make it so healers cant heal them selves. In fact, to poor more strat into the picture, make so the healer cant be healed by other healers, but the healer can be protected by others. Now a PVP or NPC encounter requires more then beating ont he target. It requires active protection of a healer.

- Finally combine this with some limited self healing capability such as POTBS or WOW potions. These all need to be HOTs and not instant heals.

[Vanraw]

Grizz,

Their should be no room in a skill based game for Clerics and Tanks. Think of Planetside or POBS. People may play different rolls but everyone fights. We have to get away from the past of class born rolls that people play.


Vllad

I don't really agree with this all or nothing concept as far as classes go. (Read above post related to healing). But I do agree the "Tank / cleric Healer" concept should be thrown on the floor.

Classes can be simplified, and perhaps not chosen at character creation but equipment or skill trained based. Only a couple options though. Say Soldier / medic.

[1000xZero]

As someone who plays a healer, I think it should be a part of the game. I do like the idea of HoTs, Shields, Buffs/Debuffs instead of direct heals.

I like to fight too.

[Vllad]

I don't really agree with this all or nothing concept as far as classes go. (Read above post related to healing). But I do agree the "Tank / cleric Healer" concept should be thrown on the floor.

Classes can be simplified, and perhaps not chosen at character creation but equipment or skill trained based. Only a couple options though. Say Soldier / medic.

Their are to many good games out there now that don't incorporate healing as part of their combat engine.

As soon as you have characters dedicated to full time healing in combat you need tanks to protect them. That means going back to the old Agro management system. Eventually you end right back up where you started. A class based game.

This is not to say you don't have medics. This is just to say that healing isn't part of the combat process. Self consumables etc can take that over.

I know you love healing the classes and you are very good at them but in a skill based game they just aren't neccessary.

[Vanraw]

I really don't agree. Your alternative is basically the creation potions that heal. I for one think that the effort put into crafting and gathering is a huge bore. If this is the the only restoration method, then you just move the effort to a farming and economic status. In PVP that would mean the guy with more potions wins.

There are 3 options.

1. No healing ever, no restoration period. Most FPS games fall into this category. This is fine though. You die, your dead, you respawn.

2. Potion based (Call it what you want, power ups, med kits, potions). These would be either found on the ground, or crafted in advance. I always thought finding power ups on the ground was kinda silly, though L4D did a good job in that you had specific location in which went to for med kits. This could be done effectively. If they are crafted, then you have created a farming , gathering, skill based activity that frankly is what I dislike the most in games like WOW. It also creates the problem of "biggest or most potions wins". Of course timers could be implemented to limit usage.

3. Change how healing is done today. If not class specific perhaps every class has a innate ability to heal some. Sort of a "charge up over time" that once available could be used to restore health. It could be that the "heal source" only charges in combat. Also make it so that a single person could not come close to healing someone to 100%. perhaps 25% or 50%. Again make it only HOT based, and only when targeted, so it takes a focused effort that can not be interrupted.

[Diggles]

I really don't agree. Your alternative is basically the creation potions that heal. I for one think that the effort put into crafting and gathering is a huge bore. If this is the the only restoration method, then you just move the effort to a farming and economic status. In PVP that would mean the guy with more potions wins.

There are 3 options.

1. No healing ever, no restoration period. Most FPS games fall into this category. This is fine though. You die, your dead, you respawn.

Several Day of Defeat: Source servers run 'realism' mods that allow you to heal after non fatal shots. Some require that you stand still for 5 seconds and your screen blacks out some, and also enemies can hear you yell 'medic!'.

[bonestomper]

it is still all about the end game.

do we have 'bosses' that have to be healed against? do tanks just become pawns because we let them die in major fights because we have more of them to throw into the fight?

with healing there is time, skill, potion, medic (healer) NPC or PC, individual stats, ect.

to me as long as everyone works under the same rule set it is fair. EQ both sides had Clerics, but not everyone had access to Rangers.

[Jakensama]

I also like the idea in games where you (and opponents) become less effective in combat as you are more and more injured.

[Diggles]

it is still all about the end game.

do we have 'bosses' that have to be healed against? do tanks just become pawns because we let them die in major fights because we have more of them to throw into the fight?

with healing there is time, skill, potion, medic (healer) NPC or PC, individual stats, ect.

to me as long as everyone works under the same rule set it is fair. EQ both sides had Clerics, but not everyone had access to Rangers.

I always like to think how a fantasy game handles fights vs large creatures, ie...dragons or the largest giants.

I would imagine as a tank you would get tail whipped/wing buffeted/clawed aside, throwing you back 20ft or so...leaving you with massive injuries that someone would need to help you with, after a minute you could probably be back to 75% effectiveness.

Or if you get flame breathed, you'd be knocked unconcious, with a countdown timer til death. But if someone aidded you, you wouldnt die...of course you wouldnt be rejoining the fight either.

[bonestomper]

then no one will be tanks. and if we don't have traditional healers, fewer people will be those.

if the strat from the game developer (in this situation us) is to slant the game to a Rambo taking on multiple targets and winning; that is what everyone is going to be.

from the end bosses everyone has fought, imagine the zerg you would have to use without 'traditional' healing if the bosses were the same or worse more 'realistic'. instead of a Cheal rotation it would be a tank sacrifice rotation; and that doesn't appeal to me.

one idea i might throw out is the standard bearer in WAR. they become the traditional healers, have standard abilities and it is the 'medic' station. you could incorporate the standard 'slam' and make it a very ineffective offensive weapon at the same time for the player that wanted to skill up in 'healing'.