Improving Healer's ingame interface

[Ebergar]

THIS THREAD IS *NOT* ABOUT GIVING HEALERS MORE HEAL SPELLPOWER!

Instead, this is all about major or minor improvements to in-game healing state.

I am one of Cannith's veteran healers, fond of doing EE's repeately, both raiding and questing (however i havent been on Caught raid higher than eNorm yet :P and done it only once ), in fact, healing is my favourite job in MMO's.

So, lets start with these (probably) nice suggestions:


Fixing major problem - targeting through walls.

Everybody knows that Your healer cannot heal him through almost *any* obstacle.

Solution:

Make Party/Raid member list responsive to this targeting mechanic. Let healers know, when they can safely toss heal to each party member!
When someone is visible for You, nothing is blocking him, make his Healthbar brighter/more noticeable for You! This can prevent such situtations, where , lets say, half of party is unreachable by spells, and you're guessing who is unblocked/reachable for your heals!

This UI feature should be disabled by default, and enabled when you're rolling any class that is considered a Healer! Or simply turned it on in Menus.


Fixing minor problem - getting ressurected gazillion times with gazillion galons of mana wasted (okey, not THAT high loss, but always... :P)

Sometimes, it is hard to notice whether You succesfully landed Your ressurection, or not. Especially in battle!

Solution:

As we know, each use of ressurection on dead target wastes spell points.
Make fact, that person has already acquired a res, noticeable, in similiar fashion as above. On his now-empty healthbar.


Fixing major problem - healing undead party members, Palemasters

This should not get any description, everybody knows that they're immune to heals.

Solution:

Pretty, climatic, and simple. Make their healthbars dark, grim and more undeadlike! Everybody should see that, and i think most of undead guys would appericate their new darker HP's, as they dont have any blood anymore!




Thanks for reading! Ill wait for any feedback on these!

[Zobi]

It was mentioned in another thread... I would like to see the blue dot in the mini-map change color if you have that person selected.

When I'm healing and I see someone dipping down on HP I want to heal them. I'll target them by clicking on their name or using the function keys and toss a heal. If I don't notice a change or get an out of range type message, I start looking for them.

If I could look up in the map and see they have zerged out of range I can decide if I need to hunt them down, or focus on the others. I hate having to turn a 360 and eyeball everyone.

I second the indicator on the player list idea to denote WF and, wizards PM or whatever state that is.

[Alaunra2010]

/signed. I'll take anything.

Removing the in-front-of-you requirement for harming undead friendlies would be nice.

[Karavek]

First I will preface this by saying there is certainly nothing wrong with enjoying the dependency others have towards a class's ability to sustain others.

That being said this is DDO not WoW. D&D is not a game built upon the holy trinity of MMOs. Outside of EE content more specifically raids, there is little need or even reason to exists as a dedicated healer. Hence why healer has largely become an insulting term to those playing clerics and FVS as well as to a lesser degree artificers and druids.

Yes its true they possess great power to heal and destroy, and thus can be a very diverse class to play. The problem lay in calling yourself a healer. For when you do you help spread that expectation among others who will use you as an excuse to call others bad players or gimp, and demand black listing of them on their servers simply because the one at the key board wants to actually have fun.

You see DDO is also a fast paced action orientated game with dynamic movement in combat, that sadly many choose to try and ignore and do the stand still auto attack while healed by support classes

Frankly for many I know, if you take away the fast dynamic play the game loses any real reason to be picked over another MMO where roles are more clearly defined, and support classes actually exist, rather then players trying to force others to.

So in the end if you enjoy healing others that is great, but the bigger need these days is to remove that sense of dependency. Play how you like but be aware it can only feed a fire that has been burning out of control now for a while between those who want to be allowed to play, and those who would force them to sit back shut up and heal.

[Zobi]

First I will threadcrap.

Really? There are plenty of other topics about being self sufficient. Please join one of the BYOH threads and leave this one alone.

[Rawrargh]

First I will derail your post with more of my nonsense

Really... this again? Is it that hard to read the original post and give a constructive answer?

As to the OP, I'd be a happy camper if the party UI would grey out when people were out of healing range... That would not only help the healer prioritize, but also let the melee's know when they're out of range.

[danzig138]

D&D is not a game built upon the holy trinity of MMOs.

Correct. MMOs are built on the holy foursome of D&D - Warrior, Wizard, Thief, Cleric. And the Cleric has been, for all intents and purposes, a dedicated healer for the vast majority of the time that D&D has been a game. So stop being wrong, and stop telling people how to play.

[CaptainSpacePony]

I love the OP's UI suggestions.

/John Hancock

[eachna_gislin]

THIS THREAD IS *NOT* ABOUT GIVING HEALERS MORE HEAL SPELLPOWER!

Instead, this is all about major or minor improvements to in-game healing state.


Thanks for reading! Ill wait for any feedback on these!

AWESOME suggestions. Thank you for using you experience to provide constructive feedback to the game. I hope the devs pay attention.

One thing I noticed is if a player chooses the option to show pet health bars in the party list they end up with a fair amount of wasted negative space around each party member. I'm sure some of this space could be reclaimed for small status update information provides as icons or even just blocks of color. Any changes would need to be accessible to the color blind and those with some level of vision impairment (according to my vision-impaired healer friends DDO is pretty accessible to them right now, but mostly because there's almost no targeted information provided to healers). This extra space can already be toggled on and off in the options.

As a very new healer, I particularly would appreciate something updating when a wizzie goes Undead. At lower levels, I can't 'see' the zombie form. When they go lich they trail a purple cloud but that's often only noticeable when they're moving. When they hold still, usually the only way I see the form is if their eyes are turned towards me. In combat, there's just too much going on for me to really *stare* at a wiz to determine their form. Instead a of a blood red health bar, it could be a black bar. That would fit the theme and provide contrast for vision impaired players.

I'm not sure what the OP means when talking about wasting sp on Rezzes. I know a problem I do have and it may be what they're talking about. I will go to rezz someone, and someone else will already be rezzing them. The "worst" is when someone has the rezz box up but is moving to a safer zone before accepting it (which can be quite a few seconds). I can waste a rezz spell and a rezz scroll before I see them come back, and then they'll thank someone else for the spell, so I know it wasn't me. If a player is being rezzed by one person (hireling or player) a second healer should have fair warning to not waste sp on them. If the OP is talking about something else I'm sorry to have hijacked this part.

Targeting through walls...I'm sure this affects a number of classes, including anyone who heals or buffs. When you select a player (using F1-12 or clicking on their name in the party list) you could get an aura around their blue dot on the map if they're within the Line of Sight rules. You can already put auras around map dots, I select a dot and put a yellow aura around it when I have to follow someone. You might make it a different color (red?) and have it disappear when a spell is successfully cast on them, to keep it from conflicting with the aforementioned yellow aura.

Edit: On a related note, I would like more audio cues as a supplement to visual information. The new chiming sound when you open a chest made me really take notice of the lack of audio cues. People can now "hear" a chest open and come running for their loot. But they still get other cues (including seeing the looting happening in the party chat window) to know it's out their if they're hearing impaired or have the audio turned down/off. This approach could be taken with providing audio clues to certain healing based events (trying to heal someone out of your LOS could produce a discouraging "bong" sound).

[Titus_Ovid]

I love the challenge in healing in this game. So I don't agree to most of the stuff. You notice if you can't heal somebody effectively if you actually throw them a heal. I don't need to know that b4hand with help of the UI, because I can't change the situation anyway.

But I would like to support the idea, that if I target someone his dot in the map lights up or changes color or whatever.

[Xezrak]

/signed

Excellent suggestions +1

[Carkolda]

/Signed

One other thing I would like to see added is some mechanic to not waste spellpoints when you start casting something on someone and, in their fits of genius, move out of range and nullify whatever it was you were casting on them (I'm talking "Target out of range"). I can't tell you how many times I'll be moving fast and loose, trying to target people and heal them, and right as I select and throw the heal, bam. Out of range. Then they die. Then they complain that I didn't heal them. HULK SMASH!

Tied to that prior suggestion is the cooldown counter. Cooldowns should only get triggered when the spell is successfully cast, not when you first start casting. Again, when you have people fighting, and then they pop around a corner as you cast a spell, the spell cooldown triggers, but you get the error "Target is blocked" and no numbers over the head.

And lastly, I think there should be some on-screen feedback for RECIPIENTS of spells that tells them that they just moved out of range or that they just moved behind a blocking item. That way they get feedback that (in effect) says, "Hey, idiot. A healer just tried to heal your dumb ass, but you did something that prevented them from doing it. Go back so you don't die."

[Titus_Ovid]

Well peeps, I think you have to distinguish between game mechanics and the "stupidity" of your fellow party members. Most of these posts here indicate human error and not anything the game could improve with a better UI.
If the healing target is moving out of the group and the mass heal doesn't reach the intended crowd, well folks, thats the game and quite frankly its part of the beauty of it.

If it makes you feel better, add to your bio the standard advise that you can't heal corners and around stupid .... erm... and you might even do it in color.

[Miow]

Good stuff, anything that is helpful regardless of the situation is well helpful.

[eachna_gislin]

Well peeps, I think you have to distinguish between game mechanics and the "stupidity" of your fellow party members. Most of these posts here indicate human error and not anything the game could improve with a better UI.
If the healing target is moving out of the group and the mass heal doesn't reach the intended crowd, well folks, thats the game and quite frankly its part of the beauty of it.

If it makes you feel better, add to your bio the standard advise that you can't heal corners and around stupid .... erm... and you might even do it in color.

Two responses to the above gem:

1) I'm quite aware of game mechanics. D&D (tabletop) is turn-based and every single rule reflects this. DDO is real time. They have taken turn based rules and shoehorned them into a real time environment. It is *not* good programming to have someone to start a "turn", pay for it (in charges or sp or cooldown or whatever) and then cause it fail because the situation has changed in the real time. The two reasonable options are to give them the success as long as the activation was valid at the start of the turn, or have it fail at no cost once the real time situation changed.

2) Activating something from your hotbars is *not* a guarantee that it will work correctly, even within the context of the poor real time costing. There are a number of bugs that charge for selected hotbar powers, but don't activate the actual power. The two I notice most often are my clerics's healing aura, and my paladin's Lay On Hands. On my cleric, I can tap f1 to select my toon and then tap 5 to activate her healing aura. I will not get any sort of fail message. But the aura will not turn on and I'll have lost a turn undead charge. The same happens on my paladin with Lay On Hands. So, I cannot 'assume' that just because a hotbar power failed, that it's because the real time situation is invalidating it. It *may* be a bug.

The actual coding fix for both issues is the same. What appears to happen right now is that you're charged for using a power, and then the code determines if the activation succeeds or fails. What they should do instead is determine if the activation succeeds or fails, and then charge for the power. That way, if a bug interferes with the activation, or if the real time situation changes in a way that shouldn't impact users, then casters wouldn't have to pay sp or charges.

[bigolbear]

/not signed.

recognising party positioning, composition and current tactical disposition is an important part of the challenge of playing a healing capable character or a buffing capable one. Infact its important to all casters and any one that takes a more stand back approach to combat.

I dont want these important aspects removed. This reduces challenge accross the board.

HOWEVER.

1.I do think that 'blocking line of effect' should be determined client side from the casters perspective. thats for both heals and offensive spells. Its very annoying to cast something justbefore some one goes out of angle/LOS/range and have it count as blocked.

2.additionaly the directional requirement on harm spells should be removed - when they are targeting freindlies.

3.bursts and auras should always go off centered on self regardless of targeting (and any other associated bugs fixed)

4. spells that fail for whatever reason other than concentration failures should not cost mana and should not start cool downs.

[Ungood]

I like the Idea of having a Pale Masters "Red Bar" turn Purple when they take form. I would also like to see a "Dark Red" bar for Warforged, and a "Gray" Life Bar if they took that WF feat that removes their ability to get healed by positive energy.

I would also like to see a Number next to everyone's name, that way I know at a glance what F to hit when they need healing, as counting spots is annoying and distracting when mid intense battle.

[gphysalis]

I like the Idea of having a Pale Masters "Red Bar" turn Purple when they take form. I would also like to see a "Dark Red" bar for Warforged, and a "Gray" Life Bar if they took that WF feat that removes their ability to get healed by positive energy.

I would also like to see a Number next to everyone's name, that way I know at a glance what F to hit when they need healing, as counting spots is annoying and distracting when mid intense battle.

/signed

All of this