Suggestion: Quest Difficulty Affects Personal Healing

[Wulverine]

Just throwing this out there. Now seems to be as good a time as any *ahem*
To clarify: Healing (fleshy or forged) cast on yourself is less effective the higher the difficulty.(either heroic and epic difficulty or just epic+). Healing spells/abilities cast on *other* players is without penalty. (unsure how to handle hirelings yet, but they can probably count as "other players")

Normal: 100% healing
Hard: 80% Healing
Elite: 50% Healing
"Reaper": 20% Healing
(maybe have different numbers for raids)

Obviously the numbers can be tweaked, but I hope you can see where I'm going with this. If you put work into self healing and defenses you'll be able to solo Epic Elite for example, if that's what you want, but above that difficulty (or raids) you really need to group up.

What i want to achieve with this?
More incentive for teamplay, adding challenge to endgame on higher difficulties, add more support for builds/roles other than the "selfhealing-dps-monster-hero", *without* adding back in the *requirement* for healers for most areas of the game. (a good team could still complete Reaper, *if* they worked as a team and not 6solo players)

The character creation abilities in this game have been described by the developers as the "bread and butter" of DDO, when they did the enhancements revamp. Yet the current gameplay situations completely undermine this by almost requiring characters to adhere to certain build requirements as far as selfhealing and DPS is concerned (for example).

Try to consider the implications and grouping incentives this results in for casual players, soloists, raiding, TR/ER, endgame, challenge seekers etc etc. (ie. the game as a whole and not just yourself)

Thoughts?

Thanks for reading.

[draven1]

Just throwing this out there. Now seems to be as good a time as any *ahem*
To clarify: Healing (fleshy or forged) cast on yourself is less effective the higher the difficulty.(either heroic and epic difficulty or just epic+). Healing spells/abilities cast on *other* players is without penalty. (unsure how to handle hirelings yet, but they can probably count as "other players")

Normal: 100% healing
Hard: 80% Healing
Elite: 50% Healing
"Reaper": 20% Healing
(maybe have different numbers for raids)

Obviously the numbers can be tweaked, but I hope you can see where I'm going with this. If you put work into self healing and defenses you'll be able to solo Epic Elite for example, if that's what you want, but above that difficulty (or raids) you really need to group up.

What i want to achieve with this?
More incentive for teamplay, adding challenge to endgame on higher difficulties, add more support for builds/roles other than the "selfhealing-dps-monster-hero", *without* adding back in the *requirement* for healers for most areas of the game. (a good team could still complete Reaper, *if* they worked as a team and not 6solo players)

Try to consider the implications and grouping incentives this results in for casual players, soloists, raiding, TR/ER, endgame, challenge seekers etc etc. (ie. the game as a whole and not just yourself)

Thoughts?

Thanks for reading.

But, this suggestion may make low healing amp classes suffering, but less effect on current over-performing classes(pally & barb), because of their inherit healing amps.

[noinfo]

Just throwing this out there. Now seems to be as good a time as any *ahem*
To clarify: Healing (fleshy or forged) cast on yourself is less effective the higher the difficulty.(either heroic and epic difficulty or just epic+). Healing spells/abilities cast on *other* players is without penalty. (unsure how to handle hirelings yet, but they can probably count as "other players")

Normal: 100% healing
Hard: 80% Healing
Elite: 50% Healing
"Reaper": 20% Healing
(maybe have different numbers for raids)

Obviously the numbers can be tweaked, but I hope you can see where I'm going with this. If you put work into self healing and defenses you'll be able to solo Epic Elite for example, if that's what you want, but above that difficulty (or raids) you really need to group up.

What i want to achieve with this?
More incentive for teamplay, adding challenge to endgame on higher difficulties, add more support for builds/roles other than the "selfhealing-dps-monster-hero", *without* adding back in the *requirement* for healers for most areas of the game. (a good team could still complete Reaper, *if* they worked as a team and not 6solo players)

Try to consider the implications and grouping incentives this results in for casual players, soloists, raiding, TR/ER, endgame, challenge seekers etc etc. (ie. the game as a whole and not just yourself)

Thoughts?

Thanks for reading.

While I don't think this particular implementation is the answer, it highlights what I have said for years, the biggest issue with this game has been the ease of self healing. This had led to a game where deaths occur due to massive damage spikes and where the only way for a barbarian to be able survive is with the constant healing from the enhancements.

Lower damage from mobs and far longer cool downs on healing should have been implemented ages ago.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

Why are you people always so worried about people that can heal themselves?


Healers are already useful; but I sure as heck don't want to wait around for one to do a quest....
(and I don't want to play my cleric and have people demand I heal their zerging butts either...)

[Wulverine]

Why are you people always so worried about people that can heal themselves?

Healers are already useful; but I sure as heck don't want to wait around for one to do a quest....
(and I don't want to play my cleric and have people demand I heal their zerging butts either...)

This seems like a gut reaction to me. Where do I say you would need to wait around for a healer to do a quest? Obviously I am trying to avoid that as much as possible.
I'm saying that if you just want to throw up an LFM and take people, Reaper mode should not be complete-able for you. That's what normal hard and elite (even though this shouldn't be either, we can't go back now) are for.

If you want, this mechanic could be boiled down to just applying in Reaper difficulty. So Reaper mode has reduced self healing to limit soloplay and encourage teamwork, and everything else stays the way it is.

And i disagree that Healers are already useful *in general*. You are talking about an extremely small gameplay field where this is true.

Edit: (also added to OP)
The character creation abilities in this game have been described by the developers as the "bread and butter" of DDO, when they did the enhancements revamp. Yet the current gameplay situations completely undermine this by almost requiring characters to adhere to certain build requirements as far as selfhealing and DPS is concerned (for example).

[Vellrad]

Before making healer mandatory, first ask devs for making healing anything actually interesting.

Seriously, healing in ddo sucks ass, you don't need to have skill, just target and cast quicken healed, poof, target healed to 100%.

Compare it to any MMO with real trinity roles, and all heals takes 1-2 seconds to cast, heal for 50% HP tops, and those heals have really long cooldown (1 minute for huge heal, 15-30 sec for medium, 3-6 for small), and in DDO all heals are on 3 or 4 sec cd and restore full HP while removing all bad status.

Are you going to fall asleep through each quest just watching red bars?
Good for you, but I don't know anyone that would log in to be bored and fall asleep while playing game.

[Wulverine]

Again, I'm not saying a healer should be mandatory. Also, while on that topic of "healers", sure I agree it can be made more interesting.

This change wouldn't just be for "healers" though. The crowd control build is pretty much nonexistant or mandatory right now. To me, this counts as a support role as well and would benefit.

Basically this change forces better teamplay, ideally resulting in more roles during questing and more diverse playstyles.

[Lonnbeimnech]

Before making healer mandatory, first ask devs for making healing anything actually interesting.

Seriously, healing in ddo sucks ass, you don't need to have skill, just target and cast quicken healed, poof, target healed to 100%.

Compare it to any MMO with real trinity roles, and all heals takes 1-2 seconds to cast, heal for 50% HP tops, and those heals have really long cooldown (1 minute for huge heal, 15-30 sec for medium, 3-6 for small), and in DDO all heals are on 3 or 4 sec cd and restore full HP while removing all bad status.

Are you going to fall asleep through each quest just watching red bars?
Good for you, but I don't know anyone that would log in to be bored and fall asleep while playing game.

And in most of those games you also get sp and hp back by just standing around for a while, so there's lots of standing around for a while. You want a low heal every 6 seconds, drink a csw pot.