Warning: serious (& frivioulous) (& long) analysis of the support class in MMORGPs follows.
I was talking to a friend of mine about the upcoming Warhammer Online game. He is one of those people that is very excited about it & just eating up all the hype. I on the other hand am interested to see how it turns, but I still have a bit of..."cautious optomism" about it. Anyways, this particular conversation turned to class role--the game's Design Manager released an interview talking about the subject, and he said that would be no dedicated "healing" classes. There will be support classes, but every class will have the opportunity to deal damage, and the implied scenario was that it will never be desirable to heal exclusively while you can do both healing and damage.
(The interview is at http://youtube.com/watch?v=gcwJGcqjU6s if you want to watch it for yourself.)
Now, I found this logic to be a bit delusional, based on my interpretations of conventional games. Consider this: in every game, players have a finite number of actions they can perform in a given period of time. Assume for a second an imaginary simple game where there are only direct healing & direct damaging spells, and you have your choice of performing either. There are two possible conditions: either the direct healing spells are more effective than the damaging spells, or vice versa. In the case of the latter, it will almost ALWAYS make the most sense to cast as many direct healing spells whenever there is opportunity to heal, as you will outlast any opponents casting damage spells. (There can be exceptions of course--trying to finish something at low health off--but in general the fact healing pays out more than damage makes it more valueable.) Conversely, if damaging spells are almost always more effective, it makes more sense to almost NEVER cast a healing spell, as you know for sure its a losing battle. (Because it's undesirable to make healing obsolete, most games choose the former.)
Now there are of course limitations you can add to this simple game to complicate the model--e.g., abilities that temporarily increase or decrease the effectiveness of either damage or healing, diminishing returns, cooldowns, support abilties that don't directly heal, abilities that don't damage, abilties that can both and damage; etc--but you still boil down to that basic choice of whether its more effective to heal or to damage. And if the case is that latter, it makes the sense to use those abilities extensively, if not exclusively.
I play a disc priest in WoW, which is perhaps the closest balance of damage and support that you can achieve in the game, and I PvP practically every day. I can do moderate DPS; I can do moderate HPS. Every night, I have to make hundreds of comparable decisions. WoW is of course a very complicated game compared to the above model, but the gist of my game play is similar: do I cast Flash Heal on my ally for 1.5k healing or do I cast Mind Blast on my enemy for 1.0k damage? Almost always, the answer is Flash Heal, because its more effective than damaging and I can cancel out my opponents' cycles. And if the dynamics of the WO:AoR support classes are anything like this, the results there will probably be the same. Don't get me wrong--there is of course room for some very clever innovation to circumvent this logical trap--however, I think I am rightfully skeptical. It seems to me like the act of including effective support abilties almost necessitates its extensive use in basic player-versus-player interaction, especially if you can devote some allies to specialize in it.
What say you, fellow gamers?
I was talking to a friend of mine about the upcoming Warhammer Online game. He is one of those people that is very excited about it & just eating up all the hype. I on the other hand am interested to see how it turns, but I still have a bit of..."cautious optomism" about it. Anyways, this particular conversation turned to class role--the game's Design Manager released an interview talking about the subject, and he said that would be no dedicated "healing" classes. There will be support classes, but every class will have the opportunity to deal damage, and the implied scenario was that it will never be desirable to heal exclusively while you can do both healing and damage.
(The interview is at http://youtube.com/watch?v=gcwJGcqjU6s if you want to watch it for yourself.)
Now, I found this logic to be a bit delusional, based on my interpretations of conventional games. Consider this: in every game, players have a finite number of actions they can perform in a given period of time. Assume for a second an imaginary simple game where there are only direct healing & direct damaging spells, and you have your choice of performing either. There are two possible conditions: either the direct healing spells are more effective than the damaging spells, or vice versa. In the case of the latter, it will almost ALWAYS make the most sense to cast as many direct healing spells whenever there is opportunity to heal, as you will outlast any opponents casting damage spells. (There can be exceptions of course--trying to finish something at low health off--but in general the fact healing pays out more than damage makes it more valueable.) Conversely, if damaging spells are almost always more effective, it makes more sense to almost NEVER cast a healing spell, as you know for sure its a losing battle. (Because it's undesirable to make healing obsolete, most games choose the former.)
Now there are of course limitations you can add to this simple game to complicate the model--e.g., abilities that temporarily increase or decrease the effectiveness of either damage or healing, diminishing returns, cooldowns, support abilties that don't directly heal, abilities that don't damage, abilties that can both and damage; etc--but you still boil down to that basic choice of whether its more effective to heal or to damage. And if the case is that latter, it makes the sense to use those abilities extensively, if not exclusively.
I play a disc priest in WoW, which is perhaps the closest balance of damage and support that you can achieve in the game, and I PvP practically every day. I can do moderate DPS; I can do moderate HPS. Every night, I have to make hundreds of comparable decisions. WoW is of course a very complicated game compared to the above model, but the gist of my game play is similar: do I cast Flash Heal on my ally for 1.5k healing or do I cast Mind Blast on my enemy for 1.0k damage? Almost always, the answer is Flash Heal, because its more effective than damaging and I can cancel out my opponents' cycles. And if the dynamics of the WO:AoR support classes are anything like this, the results there will probably be the same. Don't get me wrong--there is of course room for some very clever innovation to circumvent this logical trap--however, I think I am rightfully skeptical. It seems to me like the act of including effective support abilties almost necessitates its extensive use in basic player-versus-player interaction, especially if you can devote some allies to specialize in it.
What say you, fellow gamers?
