Random Acts of Healing

ArchivedUser

One of the things I love about some of the earlier MMOs was the ability to be running past someone, see they were struggling, and toss off a heal to keep them in the fight.  Recently there has been a trend that does not allow healing unless you are in that person's group.  Any ideas on how this will be addressed in Ashes?  I'd also be interested in hearing how healing is planned for PVP.  

What are your thoughts?

ArchivedUser

When listening to this TimeStamp bare in mind:

• What you are describing = " drive-by heals "

https://youtu.be/HZPxQAsMRfQ?t=55m26s (ends at 55:55

This next one starts at 29:45 in this link ( https://ashesofcreation.wiki/2017-11-17_Livestream 

ends at 30:34

ArchivedUser

Shout out to @T-Elf for asking BOTH of these Questions btw
: 3

ArchivedUser

My personal take on this is that everything should be able to do all of the same things weather in a group or not. It's more "sandboxy." I am a big fan of unofficial groups. You are just cruising around killing creatures and I guy comes around you can help each other out (or kill each other) all the same.

Loot should probably be different. But thats a different thread.

ArchivedUser

This kind of a thing was so much a part of my EverQuest days that I can't imagine playing Ashes without that sort of feature.  (I guess I shouldn't make assumptions it will have things like this, or I could be setting myself up for potential disappointment.)

As a Paladin, I often would see someone in trouble and stand aside and heal them during battle, or resurrect them if I didn't get there in time.  It's just part of the fun of playing a healer. 

I mean, what good is a healer if they can ONLY heal those in your "official" adventuring party? Seems such weak game mechanic to draw that limitation, as there's no real roleplay logic to it.  

By that same logic, in the original EQ, it was great for Wizards to be able to teleport someone somewhere or give them a new respawn bind point... and they would pay you to do it!  Certain skills and abilities had value, because not everyone could do them.  It made you feel good and special to help someone out in need on top of that.

I hope we can see a return to value in our character abilities in Ashes.

ArchivedUser

@Rumbleforge exactly!

It comes down to how can you build a community, which modern MMO's seem to have forgotten. Wizards teleporting, grabbing buffs from people in town, getting that random clutch heal from a passerby, a rogue opening a door for you that you were stuck at; this kind of gameplay builds community. You can meet cool people this way, find a guild, make a friend.

One of my best "online" friends I met in such a way almost two decades ago. 

tldr; don't gate everything behind a group, let us play and build a community.

ArchivedUser

While I agree giving someone a helping hand is something that should be in the game, when you start to get in to bigger scale, challenging content - things like this start to make less sense.

If the game has open world raid encounters designed for 40 people, the game needs to find a way to lock those encounters to 40 people. If an encounter is designed for 40 people, and you are able to take it on with more than that, then you trivialize the encounter.

This then gets worse. Intrepid have stated the best gear in the game will be crafted using raid dropped components. If these raid dropped components are from open world raid encounters where people outside the raid are able to assist, then these encounters - and thus the best gear on the server - will be controlled by the alliance that is able to throw the most people at it. Strategy, teamwork, coordination, raid composition and player skill all go out the window when you are able to throw a full raids worth of healers at an encounter along side the actual raid.

Basically, without controls on the high end of the game, allowing people outside of a group or raid to directly affect that group or raid turns a game into a literal zerg-fest.

On a small scale, things like this are great. On a large scale... not so much.

ArchivedUser

Totally agree besides since we know we can kill players pretty much anywhere then it would be weird if we couldn't heal them anywhere >.<

ArchivedUser

healing hurts undead so please respect our wishes and leaves us to drink poison 

ArchivedUser

I do hope that you can toggle off the ability to heal corrupted people.

One thing I liked about Revelation Online is that the healer got to set their settings to not apply AOE healing to flagged people

Archeage got stupid with the changes and people would put alts in raids to purple to flag the healers so the other raid could single target out the healers.  Your DPS couldn't defend you because you were the one flagged from healing a flagged character.  Stupid mechanics broke a lot of things.   

ArchivedUser

O, I do hope there is a way to toggle to not heal purple or reds when green.  I would only want to heal purples if I was also flagged purple and still not heal reds.

ArchivedUser

T-Elf said:

O, I do hope there is a way to toggle to not heal purple or reds when green.  I would only want to heal purples if I was also flagged purple and still not heal reds.

Based on what the devs have said about "forced attacks", it might be reasonable to assume this applies to heals and buffs also. Good clarification question for the next livestream I'd say

ArchivedUser

What you call a drive by heal i call a drive by steal. If my character has a heal ability and i see someone struggling, why not just let them die and then proceed to pick up their fallen resources? 

ArchivedUser

nagash said:

healing hurts undead so please respect our wishes and leaves us to drink poison 

You cant drink...

ArchivedUser

AutumnLeaf said:

nagash said:

healing hurts undead so please respect our wishes and leaves us to drink poison 

You cant drink...

I can try or die trying

ArchivedUser

VoidShadow said:

What you call a drive by heal i call a drive by steal. If my character has a heal ability and i see someone struggling, why not just let them die and then proceed to pick up their fallen resources? 

We don't know that we will be able to loot someone's body if we weren't the one that killed them, though. It may be that they just lose some resources.

ArchivedUser

I bet if you die to a mob you will just get death penalty and no resource loss.

ArchivedUser

T-Elf said:

I bet if you die to a mob you will just get death penalty and no resource loss.

You might lose a bit of street cred, depending on the enemy.

ArchivedUser

Drive-by heals are fun, especially with high-CD super-heals. I've made quite a few struggling players happy in my time as a healer in Rift. I hope to do the same in AoC.

ArchivedUser

As one who mains heals for the most part, ( I really suck at dps apparently ;-;) I love walking by, seeing someone in trouble and just tossing a heal on them to save their butt. Makes my little heart warm and fuzzy.