Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

ToeMissile said:

Yep.Class - Lotro-Wiki.com

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There was only one O in my LOTR. Not two.

The lack of combat healing in LOTR is just evidence that Tolkein sucked at writing Fantasy combat.

Kuro said:

The lack of combat healing in LOTR is just evidence that Tolkein sucked at writing Fantasy combat.

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That would have been awesome. Isildur standing there with 7 elven healers spamming greater heal on him as he fought with Sauron. Everytime Sauron struck a blow and shattered one of Isildurs ribs, have Isildur plead with them to stop healing him so he could die a peaceful death instead of constantly getting the shit kicked out of him.

Or Boromir as he lay there dying have Aragorn run up and heal him. Afterall, all he needed to do was kill 137 more orcs and he would ding level 32, then he could hearth back to Gondor and train up Heroic Strike rank 5!

Though I found the books to be completely unbelievable. See, what should have happened is soon as Frodo"s party arrived at Bree, the innkeeper should have given him a quest to go down into the basement and kill rats. Because no western fantasy/rpg is complete without you having to kill rats within the first 10 minutes of starting the game. It"s pretty much standard iconic RPG fare.

ToeMissile said:

Nobody wants rats in their basement.

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Oblivion:A Rat Problem - UESPWiki

Wrong.

The "problem" of doing away with healers is that the whole healing concept is a basics of mmo nowadays, and some people exclusively play healers because that"s what they like doing. What would they do with no healers? I"d rather simply have healing be a more general thing linked to combat abilities(think vg bloodmage/disciple, but spread around on more classes and less specialized) so it"s more dynamic and less gay, but I don"t buy the whole roleplay argument shit.

Should characters walk around because the retarded hobbits spent most of their time walking, since it"s not really possible to be running 24/7 anyway? What about eating/drinking, I mean, if I don"t drink, at some point I"m surely gonna die, and if I don"t eat for a few days chances are my combat abilities would be vastly reduced; and I don"t mean clicking some food and sitting down for 10secs, I mean a real meal where I have to light a fire, mix stuff and then eat it, for 1-3mins every 3-4hours of gameplay. I"d probably need some sleep too, and obviously fighting in wet and dirty caves might cause some serious health issues. I liked Robinson"s Requiem but I don"t see it working too well in a mmo setting.

Healing makes just as much sense as shitting fireballs or having birds drop platemail and halberds. The way it is done however is pretty crappy in general.

Edit: Oh and in LOTRO, you don"t actually heal people. Their hp bars are named Morale, and you inspire them, bolster their morale, when you reach 0 morale, you retreat, you don"t actually die. It"s exactly the same concept as any other mmo, but by renaming it they can conveniently avoid the whole "there"s no healing in tolkien" thing.

Pyros said:

Edit: Oh and in LOTRO, you don"t actually heal people. Their hp bars are named Morale, and you inspire them, bolster their morale, when you reach 0 morale, you retreat, you don"t actually die. It"s exactly the same concept as any other mmo, but by renaming it they can conveniently avoid the whole "there"s no healing in tolkien" thing.

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No, they don"t. This is an issue of mechanics, not semantics. If the concept is the same then the problem is the same.

Pyros said:

The "problem" of doing away with healers is that the whole healing concept is a basics of mmo nowadays, and some people exclusively play healers because that"s what they like doing. What would they do with no healers?

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Whatever dude, the whole 2 people in the world that likes staring at health bars everytime they play a mmo can die in a fire.

I disagree, and always have. Healers usually aren"t my primaries or mains, but I do like being a healer. I like to be that guy people depend on to "live", and that"s usually the healer.

I think most of you aren"t saying you hate healing, but rather the mechanics and game play behind healing are the suck.

I think WAR did some great things as far as mechanics go, but in the end you"re still staring at everything BUT the action when healing in large groups or raids.

You play the UI, and that gets old, fast.

I agree that WAR"s healing classes were less dull to play than other games. I played a Rune Priest and it was fun not having to deal with mana points for once. But the Bloodmage class is probably the most fun healing class I"ve ever played; the whole bloodlink design was well thought out and gave you a lot of different choices of how to heal. A well played BM could be near the top of healing and dps parses, while a poorly played one would be dead a lot.

Curt,

I"m sure you"ve commented on it earlier, but whats your feelings on travel? When going from one side of a continent to another am i going to actually control my own character and run or will i click a flight master and afk for 5 minutes?

Druid hot raid healing with grid never got old, to me.
Maybe it was because of the extreme mobility of casting hots?

The discussion Zehn and others had regarding class design and pure vs hybrid classes relates directly to the issue of healing. I think all classes should have elements of the holy trinity - CC/tanking, DPS and healing - although "healing" in this context should typically be relegated to abilities in combat that allow for self-healing or health restoration: a special warcry or execution move for warriors that "invigorates"; a rogue mechanic where, if it lands, restores health ("besting the opponent"), and so on. Other abilities might require a player or character to take a step back from combat as well and "heal" or activate a special ability and be more limited, similar to bandaging (ie meditate or centering oneself for a monk for example).

Add in occasional abilities to reduce damage to oneself or others and perhaps make them stackable. Not only would a model like this require coordination and strategy on the part of the group, but could very well eliminate the need for a healer, even in a large group/raid situation. A model similar to this one would eliminate the need for a pure healer (or other types of "required" classes for an encounter) and make combat more interesting and more akin to a lot of the fantasy combat situations we"re familiar with in other media.

Mr Element said:

Curt,

I"m sure you"ve commented on it earlier, but whats your feelings on travel? When going from one side of a continent to another am i going to actually control my own character and run or will i click a flight master and afk for 5 minutes?

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A game with "open world" flying is a completely different animal than one that is not. Something I didn"t realize, was taught, and came to learn the "expense" of having it needed to be carefully weighed against the "cost".

Basically you have to decide if the features being cut to include it, are worth having it as a core game play feature because the amount of work needed to create an open world goes into one of two things:
1) Making your world FAR smaller than you initially wanted to due to the immense amount of time/effort/resources needed to create a world that supports open world flying vs. On rails
2) Adding a ton of time to your dev. schedule to create a fully rendered 3D open world environment that will support open world flight.

We"ve certainly had conversations, lengthy ones too, about the risk/reward and cost-benefit and it"s those sort of things I refer to when talking about the "learning curve" I"ve been on the past 3.5 years.

Ngruk said:

A game with "open world" flying is a completely different animal than one that is not. Something I didn"t realize, was taught, and came to learn the "expense" of having it needed to be carefully weighed against the "cost".

Basically you have to decide if the features being cut to include it, are worth having it as a core game play feature because the amount of work needed to create an open world goes into one of two things:
1) Making your world FAR smaller than you initially wanted to due to the immense amount of time/effort/resources needed to create a world that supports open world flying vs. On rails
2) Adding a ton of time to your dev. schedule to create a fully rendered 3D open world environment that will support open world flight.

We"ve certainly had conversations, lengthy ones too, about the risk/reward and cost-benefit and it"s those sort of things I refer to when talking about the "learning curve" I"ve been on the past 3.5 years.

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Thanks for the reply. I wouldn"t even say I"m proponent of open world flying. I guess I"m just a big fan of running. I can live with it as long as theres at least *some* travel time involved.

Other than the LoLRP reasoning behind it, does it really matter if you"re refilling a bar to 100 (conventional healing), or simply keeping the same bar overfilled (preventive runes/shields/whatever). In one case you"re filling a bar to make sure it doesn"t hit zero. In the later you"re filling a bar to make sure it always has enough to cover the next hit.

Note: I like plenty of things in mmos for LoLRP reasons. Healing"s just one place that mindset doesn"t stick.