MMORPG Healing: Evolution?

[jpark]

Healing in MMORPGs, many seem to hold, is a necessary evil in game design until some work around can be found.  So long as grouping as seen as an important experience in MMORGPs, the holy trinity of tanking/crowd control/healing cannot be avoided until alternative mechanics are found.  The dim view of the role of healing, I contend, is not a symptom of bad game design, but of bad players.  Players that join in a chorus of bean counter activity who are mesmerized by the dance of numbers across their screen when they inflict their damage on their opponents giving them their fix of "fun".

To each his own, but I do not share the company of this phalanx of damage accountants mesmerized by criticals, nuking graphics and attack speeds.  I have no interest in fighting the "mob" but in the battle itself.  The healer is entrained by the symphony of the battle as his intervention greatly determines its course and outcome.  To me the role of a healer in battle is "management" of the confrontation, whether or not the priest in question has been canonized as the "leader" for the conflict in question. 

We are the self sacrafice class.  And that will always give us broader political power in an any conflict.

EQ

What was fun.  Vastly underpopulated the clerical order wielded immense power in this game - I doubt a single character class will ever wield this much power in any MMORPG again.  Their unparalleled healing power, that ebbed and flowed with the balance of patches for other classes depending upon your level, in the end remained largely unchallenged.  The defining vision of this class by EQ was its ability to wear plate armor and offered considerable durability vs. other casting classes.

What sucked.  For the healer - not much since clerical power was at a zenith.  Variety in combat may have been a problem.  The existence of complete heal irrevocably changed the dynamics of high end content as clerics chained their casts to sustain the tank to damage levels SOE likely never envisioned possible.  This chaining really reduced the variety of the combat itself.

EQ2

What was fun.  The ability to wear heavy armor as a cleric was welcome.  There seemed to be a bit more variety in the heals that could be used during combat.

What sucked.  Healing was commoditized.  Most classes could heal equally well but your typical group really needed at least 2 healers.  Problem is that few people like to heal in the first place, so the moral rewards for performing this act were now diffused among several members, rather than one, who assumed this responsibility.

CoH

What was fun.  The empathy defender, the purest healer available, had a twist with a massive healing ability called absorb pain.  The twist was not the mana required, or the aggro, but the fact this massive heal did damage to the healer himself.  This offered a different type of risk for the healer.  This may seem odd - but in CoH style the kinetics of healing made for fun.  For example, if you targeted someone for a heal behind you, and commenced the act, your body would assume a crouched position as you released your energy, and then proceed to rotate the avatar 180 degrees in the direction of the target.  It made the process feel "active".  Healers also had a lot of variety in abilities through secondary power sets and tertiary power pools.

What sucked.  Missions were generally easy as were most TFs, so unless you picked a tough street fight, dedicated healers were not needed.

Shadowbane

What was fun.  SB's character template system with all its options and flexibility ensured no 2 healers were exactly the same.  That was a lot of variety.  Healers could wear medium armor which was welcome.  With the right build, (dwarven healer) the priest could not only heal but TANK pvp encounters.  Literally 10 opponents would focus their attack on the healer and he would stand his ground.  EQ may have been the zenith of a healer's political power, but in shadowbane in pvp the healer was the best tank around.  He needed to be, since he was top of the hate list in any fight.

What sucked.  Healers lacked variety in things they could do other than heal.

WoW

What is fun.  There is decent variety in what a healer can do in WoW (shield, heal, shackle, damage, fear etc.).  Unlike EQ2 and like EQ, there is a singular class who's forte is healing - it has not been commoditized.  It's great to be known as being the best for something - in this case healing.  While WoW offers nowhere near the flexiblity of Coh or SB, the allocation of talents does make a difference in customizing your ability to heal, survive or do damage.  Specific powers based on your class / race choice combination is also a nice touch (e.g. Devouring plague for undead priests).  WoW has an unusual ability in its talent tree - that bears mention because to goes to the heart of the self sacafice nature to the healer:  upon death a redeeming spirit eminates from the priest that causes immediate healing followed by healing over time for all remaining party members.

What sucks.  Priests are cloth wearing in WoW with as much durability as a mage.  In pvp priest should be public enemy number 1 on the hate list - currently they are not, unlike shadowbane.  This reflects poor skills of people in WoW in general, but also the tendency of most priests to be "shadow" and focus on damage over healing.  So priests, for Now, are spared the fate of public enemy number 1 in pvp since most do not heal during these conflicts.

Where are we going?

I applaud EQ for it vision of the priest as a plate wearer.  I laud CoH for giving more active elements to healing activity with different risks.  I enjoy the options WoW has added to the scope of activities encumbent on a priest.

Looking to WoW for our clues.  The added element of some crowd control to priests in the form of fear and shackle is a nice touch.  Also, Priests have enough variety now that if they choose damage over healing they can go that route.  They are not great damage dealers, but do enough such that many priests are tempted by this route.  Ironically this is a good thing since it compensates for the bad design choice of making priest cloth wearers.  So long as the priest player base in pvp in wow does damage over healing, they will not climb on the hate list like an actual priest would who does real healing.  At the high end this may change in Alterac valley.  Priests who actually heal will become known, and immediately taken down in fights.  This might force us to revisit the idea whether it is appropriate to have demoted this class from plate to bearers of cloth "armor".

[tazelbain]

GW makes some advances in making Healing and Buff Healers more active.  They so powerfull that Tanks are optional.

[HaemishM]

Healing in MMOG's is borken. Totally fucked up borken. It is the poster child of Borken Frau.

The simple fact is that just about every RPG-based MMOG makes a healer mandatory for grouping, or some form of healing mandatory in character creation. IMO, the only one that got it close to right was COH, which made healers give groups a significant boost, but did not absolutely require that a healer be present to complete missions.

EQ1 SUCKED for healers. SUCKITY SUCK SUCK. Healing was boring as fuck, and as a consequence, clerics were rare. Rare to the point that most of the uber guilds snapped up as many clerics as they could, and any other guild trying to do anything had slim pickings for healers.

Shadowbane gave them the summon ability which pretty much made them even more mandatory for sieging and PVP. Which was fine, except the process of healing still sucked for most. Healing is, on the whole, way too passive an activity for most people to want to do it night in and night out in an MMOG.

Combat shouldn't be about who has the most or best healer. Combat should be about COMBAT. In-combat healing is a kludge of the worst kind, it's an attempt to make combat exciting by artificially allowing the player to almost die but be restored with proper healing. I'd rather that a player's skill with his weapon allow him to avoid blows, parry, etc. And I do mean the PLAYER'S skill, whether that be twitch, some form of turn-based dodging, or some form of RPS-style combinations.

And don't even get me started on MMOG-style healing in sci-fi settings. That's just beyond retarded when laser rifles are involved.

[Nebu]

Looking to WoW for our clues.  The added element of some crowd control to priests ... is a nice touch. 

If you're even remotely suggesting that WoW was revolutionary with this, you haven't played enough MMOG's.  WoW really has done nothing but polish the ideas of others.  Hell, it's pretty much what Blizzard does best. 

If the MMOG industry continues to look to WoW and EQ for their cues, we'll continue to see shitty MMOG's for eternity.  Just say no... and save a kitten.

[Xilren's Twin]

Would you consider most "healing" primary classes fun to play in todays game?  I wouldn't.

Healing in MMORPG's is an artifact of the class/level "Big Bag O Hitpoints" approach to rpgs.  And Haem is right, most healing roles are boring as crap.  Hell in most of the games you listed, if the healer ever dares to do anything active in combat, they get yelled at by the rest of the group that their not doing their job (i.e. standing like a lump and healing THEM when needed).

I'd much rather see a different approach to the rpg systems making healing different.  How about a static Hit point number for ALL characters, regardless of epxerience or ability, and combat much more about avoiding, blocking, reducing attacks with more tradeoffs in between skill choices.  Ie.  Heavy metal armor is good for blocking/absorbing more attacks, but reduces your accuracy, move speed and makes you prone to electricity, magnetic and knockdown attacks  (note, even on the ground, attacks would still have to get through your armor to hurt you).  So instead of the rock paper scissors of tank priest mage you could expand into more options to keep everyone active in battle.

SWG's attempt to at least have 3 different pools of HP and different healers for each was at least an attempt to break the mold, even if it didnt work particularly well.

Any mmorpg game when you can talk about hit points in the thousands just makes me cringe.

Xilren

[HaemishM]

Also, WoW was NOT the first game to give healers crowd control abilities. The early days of DAoC saw the Midgard realm get the title of "Stungard" because of the preponderence of the Healer class, which was not only the best healer in that realm, but had a number of REALLY GOOD Crowd control abilities. I think every third player in Midgard in those days was a dwarf healer, little fuckers.

[Mr_PeaCH]

DAoC:  w00t for smite clerics!!!1   

[Sunbury]

Asheron's Call 1

   Self healing.  Any character can take healing (using kits) or life magic for healing (or both).

  Unlike all other games, one can heal endlessly with kits (assuming enough in inventory), its a manner of timing the heals, since it pauses combat, increases damange chance, and has a chance to fail.

   This is countered by lower hitpoints.  At start its 5-50, at high level 250-400, not 3000 like most games.

   Life magic can also provide stamina and mana to themselfes or others, and drain health, stamina, mana from mobs.

[tazelbain]

DAoC:  w00t for smite clerics!!!1   

I had smite cleric and healer cleric, before Mythic decided to nerf smite to uselessness.  I don't think it had anything to to do clerics being overpower, but the fact smiters didn't need a group which offended the "clerics must be group bitch" model.

I don't think its about clerics being more or less boring.  Its about there are more people who desire to be DaLeetKiller then there are people who want be the guy who protects DaLeetKiller so he can be be more effective. Monks are the overpowered super class of GW, but we still can't get enough people to play them because they aren't sexy.

Haem, you are so pro-warrior; I think it makes your opinion on this subject bias. The reason we haven't seen another model is no one has created one with same diversity as this one.

Combat shouldn't be about who has the most or best healer. Combat should be about COMBAT. In-combat healing is a kludge of the worst kind, it's an attempt to make combat exciting by artificially allowing the player to almost die but be restored with proper healing. I'd rather that a player's skill with his weapon allow him to avoid blows, parry, etc. And I do mean the PLAYER'S skill, whether that be twitch, some form of turn-based dodging, or some form of RPS-style combinations.

Ugh, I couldn't imagine a more boring combat than a dozen warriors standing around trading love-taps til one sided died.  Sure, I guess there is room in market for low-powered fantasy, but I wouldn't want to play it.

[eldaec]

Also, WoW was NOT the first game to give healers crowd control abilities. The early days of DAoC saw the Midgard realm get the title of "Stungard" because of the preponderence of the Healer class, which was not only the best healer in that realm, but had a number of REALLY GOOD Crowd control abilities. I think every third player in Midgard in those days was a dwarf healer, little fuckers.

Not a just number of really good crowd control powers, but a power line that was strictly better than any other cc line in the game until bolt range mez arrived. And even then, arguably better.

[sidereal]

So long as grouping as seen as an important experience in MMORGPs, the holy trinity of tanking/crowd control/healing cannot be avoided until alternative mechanics are found.

As has been touched on, it's not grouping that leads to the boring trinity, it's hit points.  In fact, it's any system of complex competition where the primary component is one or two numbers.  Given combat based on hit points, your options are to a) make the number go down faster (DPS), b) make it go down slower (armor/dodge), c) make it go up (healing), which conveniently matches up with the trinity.  You can add more numbers (rage, mana, energy), but the same three interactions are available.  Most games throw in timers on abilities and abilities contingent on game events.  That's it.  That's the tactical complexity of nearly every MMOG out there (and, to be fair, nearly every computer or console game that involves combat.  I'm so tired of hit points).  Spamming out the buttons that make the numbers go up and down.  As far as I'm concerned GW is the apex of this genre of combat.  There's a ton of abilities that interact with each other in non-trivial ways to allow you to make the two numbers go up and down.

There is, needless to say, fertile ground outside this rather narrow conception of how combat works.

Fucking D&D.

[sidereal]

Ugh, I couldn't imagine a more boring combat than a dozen warriors standing around trading love-taps til one sided died.

Massively Multiplayer Tekken with swords?
Moneyhats.

[Krakrok]

Crowd control is so fucking stupid it makes me cry.


Most healer classes I've played I take a lot of damage spells and just solo. The sad part in GW is that my Monk out damages all the other classes in my groups but I usually have little enegry left after healing all the shitty rangers to really fire it up. Rangers think they are the "puller" in GW for some reason and they suck at it.

[Polysorbate80]

"Crowd controller" shouldn't even be a type of class.  It's something everyone does (or should) do cooperatively through their actions--a warrior keeping the big bad guy busy, the thief sapping someone over the head and tying them up, or the dress-wearing mage running around in circles screaming their fool head off while monsters chase them; they're all manipulating the crowd in some way without the kludge of having one person to keep everthing but the target du jour standing around drooling mindlessly...

Going back to the musty archaic old standard of D&D, clerics had a different role.  Sure, they did virtually all of the healing, but it was typically post-combat and was only a fraction of what they did--a little nuking, some 'crowd control', turning undead, buffing, and plain ol' butt-whipping (they had the second best combat tables and hit points behind fighters, after all)

[jpark]

To clarify - I am pointing to WoW for one primary reason - it is the most recent MMORPG.  Talking about trends guys, not who did what first.

More to say about the above, but I liked this point:

Going back to the musty archaic old standard of D&D, clerics had a different role.  Sure, they did virtually all of the healing, but it was typically post-combat and was only a fraction of what they did--a little nuking, some 'crowd control', turning undead, buffing, and plain ol' butt-whipping (they had the second best combat tables and hit points behind fighters, after all)

[XMackenzie]

I've always sort of gravitated towards healing classes - At the same time whack a mole health bars is really kinda of boring - although when "really" needed I don't mind doing it.

UO - Never like the mage type class (ie In Vas Mani Heals) but nearly every character I had took healing up to at least 80.1-90ish skill points.  I really liked the dynamic of cross healing with bandages - course AOS sped up the combat such that it wasn't really very feasible in PvP anymore.  Was a nice skill that really any character could take up without TOTALLY dedicating their character to it.  Difference of a skill based game I suppose.

DAOC - Played a Friar - and loved it.  Flucuated between a 18-25 rejuv spec, found I could single target heal fairly decently but the lack of spec group heals higher up hurt when trying to take care of multiple targets.  The killing ability of a Friar was pretty great too.  Of any class I've tried in online games the Friar is probaly my favourite.  

Also played a Shaman which was a bit different although pretty much the same hybird class level of heals - Frigg's were kind of useless.  My biggest complaint about the class was that actual PvE melee combat was dull as could be.  Bolt, DOT, DD, Disease, then auto-attack melee.  The lack of any kind of effect "in-combat" to change the course of battle was sort of annoying.  No "Styles" to pull out and couldn't cast becuase of interrupts.  Bleh.  PvP was a bit more enjoyable - mainly due to MASS AE DOT DAMAGE SPAM heh.  Healing power seemed even worse off than the friar though.

Rolled up a Cleric too and found group healing to go a lot better than with the Friar.  Chain did not translate well to survivability as there were no good escape options.  (5 minute timered short duration PBAE mezz doesn't count)  The 9 second stun could work all right and the low level spec smite spells could work effectively for spell casting interrupts on enemies.  Biggest complaint about that class was that no one would let you do anything but "HEAL 1one1!11, OMG NO HEALZZZ! kind of crap.  Also puttered around on a Druid, Bard and even Mentalist (liked this the best of the Hib psuedo healing classes) but didn't get high enough level to really get a great feel for how they played.

WOW - First character a priest.  Mainly levelled to 60 via duoing, so didn't have a major amount of grouping with restricive "you just heal boy" type of stuff, so lots of opportunity for playing around with damage spells, mind control, etc.  My end game spec (this week) is mainly discipline with Shadow up to Shadow reach to enable longer range shadow spells for honor point zerg fighting in BG's.  A lot of the comments in the initial post are about WoW priests preferring to go solo versus grouping up to heal.  Really it comes down to the mechanics of the BG (Alterac for this case although the TM/SS Shuffle is just as applicable)  Realistically the BG is reputation and honor point farming.  There is no REAL movement one way or another far outside the Field of Strife (midpoint).  As such I could sit in a group PERPETUAL drained of mana - not just from heals, but form recasting gawdawful Prayer of Fortitude every two minutes as people die over and over again.  Or I could run solo and cast damage spells, heal myself and rack up honor / kills much faster than in a group.  If there is a strategic objective I have no qualms about playing healbot - but for throwing each other at the enemy lines for hours on end with no advancement I'll just be more efficient with my farming.  I've tried to play the BG with a number of different approaches:  in a random group in a raid group, in a group capturing objectives (GY / mines), solo focusing on kills, solo focusing on random healing, grouped in a guild group.  For farming honor - focusing on damage solo nets the best results.  I don't mind grouping with guild mates, becuase, hey I like them and the bullshitting in chat makes up for the loss of efficiency.  Healing outside of group is also problematic becuase if one person in that darn group has aggroed a guard in about 2 minutes I'll be steamrolled.  Healing lolrogue234 who is demanding "HEAL PLZ" is really not very high on my list either.  Far as PvE post 60?  Well shackling is interesting.  Mind control / mind soothe are situational - maybe I cast a dot, wand changes are a bit nicer now.  Primarily it's healbot time heh.

Err anyways that's priest and BG action from my vantage.  I like that bandages are back in WoW, although the 1 minute timer on application and interrupt on damage makes them a lot less usefull than UO bandages.  The other healers I haven't had a lot of experience with (highest 20), but Shaman seem to have the most going for them as far as class playstyle options.  Druids are a bit too jack-of-all trades for me to fully get a grip on yet.  Pally I'm not to interested in - lack of ranged options makes me think they're a pretty useless PvP class unless they have a suitable roll in a group.

[ajax34i]

combat much more about avoiding, blocking, reducing attacks with more tradeoffs in between skill choices.

Most annoying thing in CoH is having your accuracy reduced, or monsters with high dodge/defense, like them Rikti Drones.  Argh.  A system where you don't stroke the ego of the combattants by letting them see phat dmg numbers will generally not attract a big audience.

Self-healing and dispersed crowd control (where anyone can do a small bit of it), EVE has that.  Roles in a fleet?  DPS and tackling.  Only need frigates for tackling or battleships for DPS, tyvm.  No cruisers, no support ships, no nothing.  Blobs everywhere, the bigger the better.  Numbers = teh win, medieval army style of fighting.

I look at it differently:  what is your role in trying to kill the other guy?  You can do damage.  Most efficient, thus everyone would go that way if they could.  Healing, crowd control, all that got started because someone said "If you could not do damage, what could you do instead?"  An attempt to provide more roles and more variety, and to FORCE people to choose these roles over the more efficient "do damage" one.

[Toast]

Healing is one of the worst things about MMORPGs. It is the biggest and shittiest diversion from the fun of single player games. I will never, ever play an online game that explicitly requires "healers" to do anything. EVER.

[HaemishM]

Haem, you are so pro-warrior; I think it makes your opinion on this subject bias. The reason we haven't seen another model is no one has created one with same diversity as this one.

I've never hid my biases in discussing combat. I'm pro-warrior because that's what I like. Unfortunately, playing a warrior/melee-only type in MMOG's is generally boring as watching paint dry. It's auto-attack-taunt-style-auto-attack. It's uninventive and lazy-ass game design.

Combat shouldn't be about who has the most or best healer. Combat should be about COMBAT. In-combat healing is a kludge of the worst kind, it's an attempt to make combat exciting by artificially allowing the player to almost die but be restored with proper healing. I'd rather that a player's skill with his weapon allow him to avoid blows, parry, etc. And I do mean the PLAYER'S skill, whether that be twitch, some form of turn-based dodging, or some form of RPS-style combinations.

Ugh, I couldn't imagine a more boring combat than a dozen warriors standing around trading love-taps til one sided died.  Sure, I guess there is room in market for low-powered fantasy, but I wouldn't want to play it.

Sure, if you took healing out of MMOG's now, it would be immensely boring. Why? Because combat is fucking boring. There is almost no positioning, just stand your tank up to the current target and have him hold it up while the nukers flame it and the healers keep the tank alive. BO-RING. Even with GW, it has barely progressed beyond EQ. WoW and GW are only more interesting because they either give you more options (GW), change the dynamic of doing special moves (Rage in WoW, Adrenaline AND Energy in GW), and allow you to take on multiple targets at once. CoH improves on the formula by not only giving you assloads of enemies (thus upping your perception of personal power), but giving you enemies that can and will work on the z-axis and have interesting abilities, not to mention the fact that all archtypes really are effective in lots of ways. So yes, if you just took healing out of current MMOG combat, it'd be two brutes pounding each other like pistons in an engine. Very boring.

But the combat we have now isn't the end-all be-all. There's twitch, an almost totally untouched design tool. Hell, look at Phantom Dust or Tactica Online for examples of more "card-based" MTG style of combat, where each action is a strategic choice not shackled to a hamster's life span timer. There are many ways to make a low magic setting FUN and interesting, but doing so is going to require dropping this insistence on DikuMud bases to build something fucking new. Or at least new to MMOG's.

[Kail]

I will never, ever play an online game that explicitly requires "healers" to do anything. EVER.

I dunno, I've seen healing work in some games before... just not the "Bang, you're fixed" kind of thing that most MMORPGs employ.  The instant heals really kill the flow of combat, in my opinion, because hit points are (in most cases) the major indicator of "who's winning" a fight.  So, you're fighting someone else, maybe they take a few hits, maybe you take a few hits, but then BAM, suddenly they're back up to 100% health.  It just seems to me that the idea behind having "hit points" or "health meters" or whatever is so that you can see which way the combat's going (so you can adjust your strategy accordingly), but if you can instantly bump someone up to 100%, that information is meaningless.

I have seen it done well, though, when it's included as a tactical consideration.  For example, in Tribes, you can pull out a repair gun that will heal your teammates, but takes time, so it's risky to do in combat (because it requires the healer to remain relatively still, which is a virtual death sentence in that game).  Or in Advance Wars, there are no healing units, but if you can capture and hold cities, units defending them will regenerate over time.  This, I think, is how healing should be handled, if you're looking for an interesting game.  It's something that can change the flow of combat, but not completely reset it.

[chinslim]

Just add in life leech/stealing Diablo-style and you can have your big-bag O' hitpoints on mobs and have no healers.

[Arnold]

Asheron's Call 1

   Self healing.  Any character can take healing (using kits) or life magic for healing (or both).

  Unlike all other games, one can heal endlessly with kits (assuming enough in inventory), its a manner of timing the heals, since it pauses combat, increases damange chance, and has a chance to fail.

   This is countered by lower hitpoints.  At start its 5-50, at high level 250-400, not 3000 like most games.

   Life magic can also provide stamina and mana to themselfes or others, and drain health, stamina, mana from mobs.

You forgot UO.  AC1 and UO were alike in that every combat character was also a healer.

[jpark]

Healing is one of the worst things about MMORPGs. It is the biggest and shittiest diversion from the fun of single player games. I will never, ever play an online game that explicitly requires "healers" to do anything. EVER.

I am looking for a game that does not need tanks.  I hate tanking.  It's boring and yet the whole group is beholden to the skills of the tank.  A group with a bad tank is going nowhere, and wiping is an absolute certain.

Notice any parallels Toast?  You don't like healing and that's cool.  But some of us do.  It's that difference in game styles that makes these games possible.

Crowd control is so fucking stupid it makes me cry.

To each his own.  Some enjoy it.  Implementation is also key - the Ice Controller in City of Heroes is a hell of a lot of fun.  First controller I ever played.  The visuals of ice, the types of different control (root, or encasing in ice) combined with a neat Ice pet... lots of fun.  The Fire controllers in CoH are also quite popular.  The point of course is not about controllers per se, but with the right implementation support classes can be a lot of fun, but will not appeal to everyone.

Asheron's Call 1
(snip)

You forgot UO.  AC1 and UO were alike in that every combat character was also a healer.

I am not familiar with those games.  What was the dynamic like?  If everyone one was a healer you found this enjoyable?  In EQ2 many classes had the ability to heal.  Two things resulted from that:  first difficult encounters now required more people on heal duty when in EQ there was only one healer per group typically; second, it diminished the credit for doing the act of healing since so many group members involved.  It also creates diffusion of responsibility, when a lot of people can heal, it is not clear who has committed themsleves to this task and it can be left unaddressed.

II have seen it done well, though, when it's included as a tactical consideration.  For example, in Tribes, you can pull out a repair gun that will heal your teammates, but takes time, so it's risky to do in combat (because it requires the healer to remain relatively still, which is a virtual death sentence in that game).  Or in Advance Wars, there are no healing units, but if you can capture and hold cities, units defending them will regenerate over time.  This, I think, is how healing should be handled, if you're looking for an interesting game.  It's something that can change the flow of combat, but not completely reset it.

That's interesting.  I can see it in an RTS like Warcraft III.  I might be able to see it in a pvp instance like WoW's battlegrounds.  But in the normal course of adventuring where players are constantly advancing / moving, it is not clear to me how that implementation might work.

EQ1 SUCKED for healers. SUCKITY SUCK SUCK. Healing was boring as fuck, and as a consequence, clerics were rare.

Haemish what exactly are you trying to say?  :-D

As has been touched on, it's not grouping that leads to the boring trinity, it's hit points.  In fact, it's any system of complex competition where the primary component is one or two numbers.  Given combat based on hit points, your options are to a) make the number go down faster (DPS), b) make it go down slower (armor/dodge), c) make it go up (healing), which conveniently matches up with the trinity. 

Not sure I would say things today are quite so metric.  In WoW look at the rogue.  He builds up combination points (and I infer power / damage) with each attack enabling more lethal attacks.  That might be the seed of new way of looking at combat where support classes could play a role outside of healing.

Of what has been said about healing so far, I find this point by far the most compelling as a healer myself:

Going back to the musty archaic old standard of D&D, clerics had a different role.  Sure, they did virtually all of the healing, but it was typically post-combat and was only a fraction of what they did--a little nuking, some 'crowd control', turning undead, buffing, and plain ol' butt-whipping (they had the second best combat tables and hit points behind fighters, after all)

For healing to be meaningful between combats - this would get into more advanced mission types.  Missions with timer limits (they exist of course, but are not common) or those involving incoming waves of combatants (which also exist just not too common).

[Pococurante]

I am not familiar with those games.  What was the dynamic like?  If everyone one was a healer you found this enjoyable?  In EQ2 many classes had the ability to heal.  Two things resulted from that:  first difficult encounters now required more people on heal duty when in EQ there was only one healer per group typically; second, it diminished the credit for doing the act of healing since so many group members involved.  It also creates diffusion of responsibility, when a lot of people can heal, it is not clear who has committed themsleves to this task and it can be left unaddressed.

UO and to a lesser extent AC1 were not interdependent class-based games were grouping was calculated into mob design.  It was liberating in that you could balance your skills to match whatever your monthly playstyle was like.  Or to create hybrids that could do much.

The underlying design goal was actually a business goal - the assumption that subscribership retention is most served by enforced grouping so that people would make the social bonds that keep them paying.  (Implicit was the assumption only addictive behaviors/game mechanics made for profitable games, since well-refuted by CoH and WoW)  There might have been something to that when the early market were techie geeks with no social IQ.  It does seem that developers are again acknowledging that there are more well adjusted people using their services than formerly realized.

[Kail]

II have seen it done well, though, when it's included as a tactical consideration.  ...<snip>...  It's something that can change the flow of combat, but not completely reset it.

That's interesting.  I can see it in an RTS like Warcraft III.  I might be able to see it in a pvp instance like WoW's battlegrounds.  But in the normal course of adventuring where players are constantly advancing / moving, it is not clear to me how that implementation might work.

Well, if I had to put it in MMORPG terms, I'd look for two factors:

One, the healing is not instant (that is, heals function over time, like a regeneration buff).  If you're looking to make combat strategic, you don't want something that will break the flow.  You don't want, in other words, one guy to be winning, winning, winning, winning, almost won, and then suddenly BAM, his opponent is back up to full.  You need an indicator of how well you're doing so you can gauge if you need to change strategies or not.  Instant healing takes away most of that; the only indication you've got is after the fact.  If your opponent is dead, you did well.  If he's down even to one measly hit point, who knows, the next turn, he might instantly be back up to full.  Instant heals don't allow you to say "we're winning" until after you've already won (at which point your strategy is kind of irrelevant).

Two, the healing can be countered somehow.  Depending on how interdependant you want the classes to be, this might be something as complex as giving a specific class cheap "anti-healing" skills, or something as simple as making all healing spells automatically interrupt when the caster is hit.  Either way, there needs to be 1) something you can do to stop your opponent from healing his way out of every situation, and 2) some kind of risk associated with healing, in order to balance out the risk/benefit analysis (which, right now, usually has no risks at all, meaning it's always a good idea to heal anyone who needs it).

[Lum]

At the risk of being mocked for posting a link to my blog, I'll post a link to my blog where I talk about the Three Boring Classes: http://www.brokentoys.org/?page_id=6696. If you dont' want to bother trudging through my prose, read on for a summary.

Basically, the "state of the art" for class and skill based MMGs both is that you have three basic archetypes, and then various hybrids on top of them. The basic archetypes either hurt things, get hurt, or heal things. Hybrids combine the various 3 and occasionally add something new, such as pets or crowd control.

The problem is that with the basic archetypes, you can do everything. As long as someone is getting hurt, someone else is hurting, and someone else is healing, you can win every encounter you face. It all breaks down to getting enough hurt/hurting/healing. Once you do, you win. It's basic math. The religious debate (and don't kid yourself, it's a religious debate) comes down to whether or not the hybrids steal enough or too much thunder from the base (what I call the TBC - Three Boring Classes).

The TBCs think they have an unspoken agreement. They play the Boring class/archetype, and in return, they're the best at it. For being the guy who can only heal, damn it, I should be the BESTEST at healing. If anyone else can heal better, I'm negated. If anyone else can heal as good as I can, then there's no reason to pick me because the other guy can heal AND do something else, so I'm negated. Everything else in "class balance" discussions regarding hybrids and bases comes from that argument.

For those of you who think skill-based systems are a panacea to this? They're not. They're simply a way for min-maxers to build their best classes. You think Dex Monkey or Tank Mage weren't "classes" in UO? They give you flexibility, but the math behind the game systems still forces you into the TBC paradigm. Either you mix enough so that you're a hybrid (and diluted) or you're a specialist (and boring).

There's no good answer to this. Basically, you have a mathematical problem. Someone needs to heal the hits. Someone is going to be the best at healing the hits. There's no way around it. WoW's solution of having only a few classes is probably the best in this regard, since it makes everyone equally hybridy. But in that sense it also locks you out of a lot of choices (if you heal, you're either a priest, a druid, or a shaman/paladin).

I eagerly await the responses telling me that thinking like this is why MMG design is dead! Bonus points for no concrete examples of solutions included with said flames.

[Shockeye]

No mocking from me, but MMO design is obviously dead. Get a shovel and dig the grave.

[Trippy]

At the risk of being mocked for posting a link to my blog, I'll post a link to my blog where I talk about the Three Boring Classes: http://www.brokentoys.org/?page_id=6696. If you dont' want to bother trudging through my prose, read on for a summary.

I like your distillation of (MMO)CRPG mechanics but I don't understand how you are measuring "boredom" and therefore don't necessarily agree that those three archetypes are the most boring. As a simple example, while I would agree that an EQ Cleric is mind-numbingly boring to play (unless you are being overwhelmed by a train in which case it can be kind of fun) the Guild Wars Monk is from my limited experience the least boring class in that game.

[Margalis]

There's no good answer to this. Basically, you have a mathematical problem. Someone needs to heal the hits. Someone is going to be the best at healing the hits. There's no way around it. WoW's solution of having only a few classes is probably the best in this regard, since it makes everyone equally hybridy. But in that sense it also locks you out of a lot of choices (if you heal, you're either a priest, a druid, or a shaman/paladin).

I eagerly await the responses telling me that thinking like this is why MMG design is dead! Bonus points for no concrete examples of solutions included with said flames.

My old high school CS teacher used to say, and I agree with her 100%, that every question has an answer, as long as you ask the right question. The point being that you can phrase problems in such a way that they have no answer, but there always IS an answer for the REAL unstated problem. It's like a guy asking "how do we speed up our database 10000%" when the real question is "how do I prevent people from getting stuck in the flower picking pose for 20 minutes?"

It is a mathematical problem, so change the problem. If you define the problem as everybody has X HP and the goal is to get that to zero and there are really no other variables then yeah, it's pretty simple.

I would agree that skill-based sytems are no panacea, as a few more useful templates will emerge. In order to make things more interesting you have to have some more axes, more variables.

For example, how come the tank never has to MOVE to actually block an enemy from moving onto the casters? MMORPG combat is 99% really basic number calculation, my damage = my strength + my weapon - your defense. It's never an issue of hey I'm really strong and tough, but I'm really slow so agile enemies just run around me and fuck up our casters before I can reach them. Or wow, this polearm really kicks ass when I'm fighting in a canyon and standing behind a guy with a sword but not so much when I'm fighting in a field without a guy with a sword in front of me.

Most MMORPG combat is a whole bunch of "good guys" take on one bad guy and gangbang him. And most games have only a few real types of enemies. (WoW has basically 2, guys with long range attacks and guys without) The only way enemies differ for the most part is one guy has higher defense and another has higher attack speed, again it's just raw numbers.

What about different enemies that have fundamentally different behaviors? Enemies that always attack casters first? Enemies that can't be taunted. (Or whatever stupid contrived shit "aggro control" the game has) Aggro control itself is retarded in most games - prevent the enemy from acting even somewhat intelligently. In a real life scenario if an enemy has a brain and figures out that my ultra-mage is doing tons of damage to it, it's probably going to attack the ultra-mage unless I bonk it in the head, chop off it's leg, etc, not just taunt it and make it say "ooh, you Paladins make me so mad!"

As long as combat is just my 5 or so relevant stats vs. the enemies 5 or so relevant stats then yeah, the character types are going to be pretty basic.

---

If you look at a game like FFXI, there is some stuff there that separates out into more than 3 classes. The thief is basically just aggro control. Doesn't do damage, doesn't heal, doesn't take damage, just makes the job of the tank easier. There are also certain classes that work better with certain other classes, and certain skill chains that can be done by certain combinations of classes that work better on certain enemies. So Monk + Samurai + Ranger may be the best at fighting class A but worse than another group at fighting class B. (Of course, in most MMORPGs including FFXI each zone only has a couple types of enemies) Then there are the Red Mage and Bard, both of which do some healing, some support, etc. FFXI actually has maybe 5-6 real classes: White Mage (healing), Red Mage and Bard (support), Theif (hate control), Paladin (Tank), Ranger (Damage), Black Mage (Magic damage). Actually that's 7, not bad. Of course most of the other classes are just bad versions of the above. (Monk, Dragoon,Samurai and Dark Knight are all basically just worse rangers, Ninja and Warrior are basically bad Paladins, Summoner is bad white mage + bad black mage)

----

Another thing to think about is that "aggro control" allows people to slot into very specific jobs.  In a lot of games it's ok to be a glass cannon, because if your tank is doing the job right you will never get attacked. And it's ok to be a guy with great tanking but no attack power because your DPS guys never become incapacitated. The jack of all trades is basically useless, whereas in real life in the chaos of combat a guy who is good at a lot of things is a great commodity oftentimes. In MMORPGs you rarely if ever need a plan B. For example in a group you expect your healer to never get attacked, and if they are killed your group is often dead in the water. But you don't plan for that case because if everyone is doing their job it rarely happens. When having a plan B detracts from plan A and plan A works 99% of the time it's pointless to have a plan B or characters that allow for a plan B.

---

It's not as simple as "someone needs to do damage, and someone is the best at it." Maybe I have a rapier and the guy I am fighting has armor that works well against rapier. Maybe I am slow and do great damage but the guy I'm fighting can dance around outside of my range, or just run around me, or I just miss too often. Maybe me as the big, slow, strong guy is great against enemies with high armor and low evasion but crap against the reverse.

Again in real life there isn't one class of "guy" (tank, bomb, solider with gun, whatever) that is just the best at doing damage. But in MMORPGs nothing is situational, it's just numbers. If you take real life and say a guy with an AK is a 10, a guy with a dart gun is a 3, and a guy with a tank is a 100, then everyone should just drive a tank and infantry is obsolete. And if you want to assasinate someone, rather than a poison dart just drive a tank over them or something. You know, combined arms and all that exists for a reason.

---

Ask a boring question and you get a boring answer. The question here is "ok, so I have a game where you 'pull' one enemy at a time. This enemy is incredibly stupid and can be tricked into attacking the toughest party member forever. The enemy has three relevant stats, and we have three relevant stats. How do we form a party?" Well, the answer is have one super tough guy, have a guy that can heal him, then have a bunch of damage dealers, and min-max the stats. Oh look, I just described basically every party formation in every MMORPG!

The question is wrong.

Edit: To clarify, the guy who can only heal, and therefore should be the best at healing, is a guy who probably shouldn't even be on the front lines of combat because they would be instantly killed. One of the rules of combat that MMORPGs tend to miss is that if you are doing something very useful yet standing out in the open with no cover and no armor you should probably be instantly one-shotted. That's why when humans play PvP the first rule is always kill the healer. Too bad enemy AI is purposely retarded in this regard. The only reason the typical healer archetype exists at all in games is that enemies and combat are designed to make that viable when it really shouldn't be.

This is the typical MMORPG enemy:

Ouch, that black mage just hit me for 5000 damage.
Wow, that white mage just healed the guy I'm attacking back to full life.
Guess I'll keep attacking the guy I can barely damage, yet does no damage to me.
Oops, I'm dead. Boggle!

Want to break up the three classes, how about this:

MY SUPER-SECRET, SUPER-ADVANCED AI ROUTINE THAT TOOK YEARS TO FINE-TUNE:
First, attack the guy that heals the most.
Second, attack the guy that damages you the most.
Third, attack the guy who serves no purpose other than to be attacked once all his healing and damaging friends are dead.

I think you'll find that making enemies behave somewhat logically would totally change the dynamic. Maybe the guy who is just tough would actually have to, you know, protect his buddies somehow, rather than spam taunt over and over - or else find heartier buddies.

The implicit assumption in the "tank, damage, healer" paradigm is that the good guys can dictate what the bad guys do. (Namely, attack the tank) If they can't and the enemy has a brain suddenly the black mage who dies in two hits doesn't look so hot anymore.

[lamaros]

holy rhetoric overload.

[Margalis]

Yeah, but at least I use paragraphs. 

[Alkiera]

I agree with everything Margalis said.  PnP RPG systems were too complex for humans, so we made them really simplistic.  Then we gave computers the task of handling all the numbers... and still use the same really simplistic systems.

Blah.

Alkiera

[Lum]

So the problem with this is that when monsters are coded to use "smarter AI" (sometimes tearing after the casters, healing smarter, etc) the players consistently hate it, and vote with their feet to the areas that have monsters with the least amount of AI. Stupid monsters mean lower risk, which help skew the risk/reward ratio in the players' favor.

Damion Schubert has a good discussion on why we don't really want good AI here: http://www.zenofdesign.com/?p=337  Basically, players are already very well trained to break combat down into a problem that CAN be easily solved. If combat is changed so that it cannot be easily solved, players will either solve it easily anyway (ie raiding in EQ1) or decide that your combat sucks and refuse to play.

That being said, things like adding situational awareness, more things for the players to do, etc are all good ideas, but they won't solve the problem of min-maxers breaking the game.

[ahoythematey]

I think pre-1.1, pre-Hell D2 had combat solved as far as PvE goes.  Swarms of shit, most of which can be dispatched easily by any of the classes, the occasional hardass monsters that can take a pounding, and the oh-my-fucking-god-kill-it-kill-it-KILL-IT shaman-types that can really terrorize your players if they don't pay attention and work together.  You take that half and combine it with the other half of meaningful rewards(d2 loot system) and PvE should weather time very well.  That's my wholly uninformed and bias theory, anyways.

[Sky]

So the problem with this is that when monsters are coded to use "smarter AI" (sometimes tearing after the casters, healing smarter, etc) the players consistently hate it, and vote with their feet to the areas that have monsters with the least amount of AI. Stupid monsters mean lower risk, which help skew the risk/reward ratio in the players' favor.

My favorite topic that I'm far too ignorant of! :(

Anyway, this point is often brought up, but is simplistic, imo. And really a good cop-out for programming good AI.

Good AI doesn't mean it always outsmarts the player. It means the AI can be believable fooled, not by bad pathing or some lame deficiency, but because the player tricked them, as you would sucker another player in pvp. It's not coding AI to shoot /better/, but to miss better, or more realistically. Yes, this allows you to utilize the AI to be a smarter and better player, but it could also mean the AI can exhibit personality quirks to realistically lose or be more vulnerable (like a guard who falls alseep or goes to the bathroom ala NOLF2, which had some fun AI, though rudimentary still).

I guess I'm just saying AI should be "smarter", more robust, more of a "jam band" than a midi loop. Not necessarily better, but a whole lot more fun to play with.

Healing? Give me a couple heal potions or something, don't make death shitty. I don't like the idea of having to spend time finding someone to bandage my ass just so I can play a game. Although there is that part in Conan the Conqueror where he spends three days in Nubia LFG...