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Ok, Neverwinter, either you're a trinity, or you're not, make up your mind.
lordomedon
Member Posts: 30 Arc User
Ok, first constructive criticism of Neverwinter: In queueing for groups, I haven't felt "needed" as a tank, which is good, I don't WANT to be needed as a tank in an action combat game where the trinity isn't hardline adhered to. I mean, I still try to hold aggro and keep my shield up, but I feel another DPSer would make the fights go faster, and I'm fine with that, because the group assembling system doesn't treat the game like a trinity. It just throws together 5 people, and away you go.
Which is the problem: A tank isn't needed, but a healer ABSOLUTELY IS.
Case in point: I just ran a skirmish, and while every other group I've run with all night has had at least one healer (which I thought was good, and required) I just had one with NO HEALER and it was an entirely different game. With health bars going in only one direction (unless players burn their potions... which just isn't the understanding in these things) the game goes from a fun, evenly balanced romp to something requiring more co-ordination than you will see in these functions with 5 strangers.
As a result, the major advice I can give anyone just randomly queueing to run group content with 4 other strangers is if there is no devoted cleric, watch the health bars, and if the group is too "level dynamic" in the wrong ways, and if health bars are plummeting, save your potions, leave and re-queue. I haven't seen any healers overtly taxed or challenged to keep a group alive, because of the nature of the class as an aggressive healer, but if there is no healer in the group, it's a whole different ballgame, and that's ridiculous when the group finder isn't putting one in every group.
The takeaway from this observation is that the game needs to decide if it's a dependant trinity (at least on healing) or not, and run its group finding engine accordingly. Sure, it's all doable if everyone just chugs healing potions like mad, but honestly, if it's a difference between healing potions, (which are a dear resource with the game having no default passive out-of-combat health regen mechanic) and re-queueing for a group with a healer... all I can say is there's no "deserter" debuff.
As an aside, if this means I become "needed" as a tank, I'll happily accept that, but the presence of a healer is TOO weighty for the system to flippantly and drastically alter the tone of a random group by leaving one out.
Which is the problem: A tank isn't needed, but a healer ABSOLUTELY IS.
Case in point: I just ran a skirmish, and while every other group I've run with all night has had at least one healer (which I thought was good, and required) I just had one with NO HEALER and it was an entirely different game. With health bars going in only one direction (unless players burn their potions... which just isn't the understanding in these things) the game goes from a fun, evenly balanced romp to something requiring more co-ordination than you will see in these functions with 5 strangers.
As a result, the major advice I can give anyone just randomly queueing to run group content with 4 other strangers is if there is no devoted cleric, watch the health bars, and if the group is too "level dynamic" in the wrong ways, and if health bars are plummeting, save your potions, leave and re-queue. I haven't seen any healers overtly taxed or challenged to keep a group alive, because of the nature of the class as an aggressive healer, but if there is no healer in the group, it's a whole different ballgame, and that's ridiculous when the group finder isn't putting one in every group.
The takeaway from this observation is that the game needs to decide if it's a dependant trinity (at least on healing) or not, and run its group finding engine accordingly. Sure, it's all doable if everyone just chugs healing potions like mad, but honestly, if it's a difference between healing potions, (which are a dear resource with the game having no default passive out-of-combat health regen mechanic) and re-queueing for a group with a healer... all I can say is there's no "deserter" debuff.
As an aside, if this means I become "needed" as a tank, I'll happily accept that, but the presence of a healer is TOO weighty for the system to flippantly and drastically alter the tone of a random group by leaving one out.
Post edited by lordomedon on
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Which is what I thought this game would be... until I ran with no healer.
Make no mistake, if I had any reason to expect coherence, communication or cohesion from the other four people I'd get in a F2P dungeon/skirmish finder, the scenario you lay out would probably work, but let's be real, that's not happening.
The sheer weight of a healer changes the game from "everyone go nuts and have fun" to "EVERYONE PAY ATTENTION! WE NEED TO-screw it I'm out," or you all just put your potion beer-hat on. The group assembling engine needs to acknowledge this, in my opinion.
Good.
It will hone the skill of players so that they are not fully dependent on healers, and over time the healers will be grouping with people that know how to avoid damage, making the whole of the group more effective.
OR:
Every group without a healer falls apart, and every healer that queues randomly walks into a situation where everyone is dependant on them, and perhaps stop queueing, and the "finder" features collapse.
The alternative is to put a healer in every group, and standardize the difficulty, as the community will perceive it, around the presence of a healer.
Gamers are trained to take the path of least resistance, given the choice between "Oh look, there's a healer, game on" and "everyone get ready to co-ordinate and-WHERE ARE YOU GOING-I'm out," which do you think will happen? What will that do to the culture of the random group assemblers? The time-sensitive completion quests?
Me, personally, if I could expect communication, I'd be down with "communicate, adapt and overcome," but I know the reality here, and I'll be saving my potions.
Healers aren't "too weighty," they're too weighty in the context of what we can expect in this game, free to play and wide open for random groups.
This right here, so tired of people talking about not needing potions, or not using them, and seeing people not use them in dungeons. If i ever play a cleric, and i don't see people using potions at least to top themselves up between fights, i'm going to stop healing them at all. Maybe then they will learn the use of them.
Which is absolutely your right. It's also everyone else's right to leave if they feel they're using too many personal resources with a walking fountain of health in the party. And I haven't seen the finder fill gaps in an existing skirmish.
See I actually think you really do have a right to your perspective here... I'm just putting it in the context of "how it will go down," based on what I've observed in games of this ilk.
Good luck with that. :-P Most of our spells are semi-passive healing we can't control.
That too.
Good point
I'll just say this - now that you know how badly it sucks not to have a Cleric around, please protect your Cleric.
That sounds like you want everyone in the game to be on assisted living.
That's the problem with requiring a healer on every team. It's a 'path of least resistance' solution. Why learn how to play when you know a cleric will always be there to make up for your lack of skill.
You're asking for an easy way out solution.
Of course you can control them. Or, do you just wander around aimlessly, never using any of your powers intentionally, and have them somehow set up to fire themselves off at random intervals. One just has to learn how to best control this method of healing.
Actually, in my experience, a Cleric can't make up for a lack of skill. What we mostly do is "maintenance" because if a party member stands in the bad, we really can't burst them back up very well. Healers aren't a "crutch" carrying bads. They're an integral part of a healthy team.
My first cloaktower run, I made sure to be encouraging to the healer, largely because, well, I'm a nice guy, but also because of my observations that they are NEEDED and are in for a rough ride in this game because of how contextually weighty they are. Earlier in the evening, a skirmish run fell apart because the healer was less active. When I noticed that the bailers weren't being replaced, I also left. I'm far, far less cool with running anything with a "less than par sized" group (it feels like wasted, uphill effort) than I am attempting things without a healer.
Explain to me how I can tell my main healing spell - Astral Seal - to not heal one person out of the group? Sure, I can choose not to debuff the lone mob the dude is targeting, but most of the time people are hitting everything in a massive pile. So are you saying I should just not use Astral Seal because I'm having a hissy about one person not using potions? Really? Well, perhaps you buy into the idea that you're some kind of a god and it's totally cool to screw over your party members, but I come from the school of healing that says that you don't **** over the people doing the right thing just because you're having a snit fit over one dude.
Noooo, I want the game to come to grips with how it has scaled itself around the weighty presence of a healer, OR change that weight, and the tone of the entire game. I'd be cool with either solution, but blinking at each other in the middle is going to get a lot of groups bailed on.
A lack of skill is much easier to accommodate when you have a Cleric on board than when you don't, assuming everything else being equal. You're right that Clerics can't bring back from catastrophic instant damage. However, the ongoing heals from the Cleric will still help as it will cover the recharge of the poor player's potion cooldown, which will be counting down more often than that of a good player.
To you a Cleric may hold a weighty position in the party. I don't know that everyone feels this way. I think the best solution is for people to raise their skill so that Clerics don't hold a weighty position for them.
That's kind of not the point, though. Even if you are correct - and I'm still not certain that you are, as I manage to avoid nearly all of the big bads (minus being stunned in the middle of them -_-), and I still have to massage my potion button even as a healer - but even if you ARE correct, that doesn't invalidate what lordomedon is saying. He IS correct when he says that many people will simply quit if they realize they can't easily clear a place without a Cleric (in the case of a skirmish) or a tank and healer (in the case of dungeons). If you were talking about pre-made 5 mans, I could kind of see your point, but Lordomedon is talking about completely random pugs. Hell, they may not even speak the same language. I had a guy in a pug earlier who only spoke broken English at best and misunderstood half of what people were saying. And you're expecting 5 random people to be on part with a pre-made 5 man?
Thank you for underscoring the distinction of premades Vs PUGs, and yes, knightfalz, you are absolutely right in every way when it comes to guild groups and premades, where you have a degree of... cohesion and an expectation of communication, but my entire point addresses the tone of the "grab and go" nature of neverwinter: there is no deserter debuff, and the tone of the game is DRASTICALLY altered by the absence or activity level of the healer. It will QUICKLY catch on, in the context of the current game that "no healer, no go," and, again, I haven't seen the system fill gaps in an existing skirmish. One person leaving starts the domino effect.
The answer is for Neverwinter to acknowledge this dependence (put a healer in every group) or change the weight of the healer through encounter design. If there is a path choice of "burn potions or just flow," people aren't going to burn potions as a rule.
What you control is whether you apply Astral Seal or not. When there is a large group of targets you control applying Astral Seal to the lot, or doing something else you feel may be more helpful, depending on the situation. I didn't say anything about not using Astral Seal because people don't use potions. That was someone else.
When I play my Devoted Cleric, I don't bother spending a lot of time watching what other people do. I focus my attention on doing the things I need to do to keep the team up and running.
Having said that, my issue with the above is that bosses in epic dungeons have too many hit points. They're snoozefests, grindathons, terribly boring. Every 25% (or whatever) a vast wave of adds run in. Dodge red area on ground, kill adds, then hit boss. Repeat for about five minutes. If the bosses relied on more challenging mechanics instead of VAST AMOUNTS OF HEALTH, the situation referred to above would be less of an issue as endurance wouldn't be so critical.
It's not just skill, it's resource management, a cornerstone ethic of any RPG.
Healer present = reasonable resource management. Most healing is in ever-replenishing resources.
Healer absent/inactive = resources consumed at an alarming, solo-like rate. Potions going like candy
There is no deserter debuff, the healer-less group isn't entitled to anyone's presence. That will be exploited. Count on it.
The thing about quitters is they always find a reason to quit. There is no fix to the game that will changer their nature. I'm not talking about pre-mades. I'm talking about any group. If someone can't play his character unless a Cleric is in a group, then they don't know how to play their character well enough.
I have yet to run a group with any companions. Just hit 15 today. I personally am seriously considering the zen-purchased cleric companion, but the official wiki itself cautions not to buy it lol!
OR they're being "effortconomical" and realize "this will be harder than it needs to be (because it will). Next."
Yes, having healers present is better, absolutely. However, they shouldn't be required.
When I solo I don't consume resources at an alarming rate.
What was proposed was requiring a Cleric on every team. That turns the Cleric into a crutch, and it turns everyone else into someone that can't walk without a crutch.
Players also don't have to use the random queue. They can try to form their own group, via looking for group, if they absolutely need a character of a particular class to help them along.
There is no need to force each randomly created team to have a Cleric.
We are in agreement on this.
That being said, MMORPGs have taught me that there are two definitions of "required:" what the devs tell you CAN possibly be done, and what the unquestionably min-maxing (in resources and in effort) gamer community has largely decided SHOULD be done within the perceived value of their time. (and, well, that "value" is an ENTIRELY seperate ball of wax that I won't derail this thread with hehe)
Guess which definition rules these community-powered group assembling scenarios.
The zen-bought cleric is apparently very bad. The cleric you get in a quest at level 15 is amazing.