Originally posted by Timzilla
Will be truely innovative when a dev team does away with hit points and healers. Untill then, all mmorpgs will remain pretty much just copies of each other with custom skins.

I agree 100% and am sitting back for a game that does finally rethink the entire mechancics of an RPG game.  Lets have something fresh and innovative for once.  The whole leveling (character or skills), health, mana, heal/tank, etc... system in games was stale and beat to death before even WoW came out.     Now that there are more gamers than ever looking for new games because they are tired of WoW, the problem is even worse. 

We, as gamers, need something innovative such as this.  Even if it only innovates the concept of class roles, such as healing, and group mechanics.

EDIT: Not saying I don't like healers, I've played one in most game because of their high demand.  Only saying the mechanics used in RPG games is old and we need something new altogether.

There's a reason that Halo 2 was so revolutionary...it got rid of health and gave players a type of energy bar/shield that naturally recharges.  Now, almost every single FPS uses this type of health (think CoD, etc.). 

Sooner or later this will happen with MMORPGs as well, and there will just be buff/debuff classes to make players energy bar deplete slower or faster, and I'm sure armor will effect this too...think of the possibilities.

To my mind the necessary heals are integrated well into this game. Mind that fights take comparatively long and it's not a game where you kill before you lose health (no problem here, killing the same foe over and over doesn't give worthwhile "grinding" exp, well after I killed 50 rats I think I know how to do it, what should I learn from rat 51?).

Whichever char thinks he doesn't need heal skills will have a hard time (but might be possible, not all classes skills are revealed yet, fast evading type of rogues e.g. might do it, but movement speed is a stat like "strength-like" damage output capability, it costs and it's worth more than in other games where it is just a skill).

But healing tends to support playstyles. To grasp it you have to understand the rotating skill tiers. While "warriors" can heal themselves or others early in the fight on the run doing double-effect skills that also attack, "casters" have more powerfull aoe heals but they have to "gain" them because they are more at the end of the line. There is no dumbed down gameplay with this game. You mess ist up, there is no heal, you're dead (in worst case). Mind that this is the game design which I followed for years, no breach, never played the game.

Btw. you can spec a dedicated healer, you just don't have better healing skills than Joe around the corner. There are three stats, damage output, movement speed and skill bar speed (not health or mana, same for all). The dedicated healer compromises damage output and movement speed so that he can use the heals much more often. That's what I call dedication, really beautiful, but again theoretically, we all have to wait and see how it turns out to be in detail.

Originally posted by Echograss

There's a reason that Halo 2 was so revolutionary...it got rid of health and gave players a type of energy bar/shield that naturally recharges.  Now, almost every single FPS uses this type of health (think CoD, etc.). 

Sooner or later this will happen with MMORPGs as well, and there will just be buff/debuff classes to make players energy bar deplete slower or faster, and I'm sure armor will effect this too...think of the possibilities.

Either you got time to play or you dont.

MMO without healer is no MMO just a pot spamming Diablo game

Originally posted by Ztekan

Either you got time to play or you dont.

 

MMO without healer is no MMO just a pot spamming Diablo game

Originally posted by airhead

---

From what I've read, every class is sort of a hybrid class when it comes to group roles. The devs made it sound like they did NOT want some player sitting the back, throwing X kinds of spells (heal, debuff, whatever). For example, from: http://www.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=408

We decided to make each of the 9 classes a hybrid class, each class will have access to all arch type skills and only a selection of skills will be unique for each class. This unique selection of skills is large enough to let each class have a unique purpose in combat, but it is also small enough to ensure that non of the classes can just stay in the back and throw in the occasional fireball or heal skill.

And there was some other stuff somewhere else that was more specific to that point and I just can't find it right now. The end effect, from the way I read it, was that the goal was to make everyone enough of a hybrid, where role specialization did not completely drive group mechanics.

And of course, I don't see why class X having good 'debuff' skills automatically makes them the preferred group healer. What am I confusing here? What objective do you think they have in the class skills/roles they have made?  IN other words, do you think the archetypes (tank, healer, dps) still be so defined, that groups will be formed and venture out only if they have x number of each certain type, and that the hybrid nature of the classes was defined by the devs for some other purpose? If if so, what other purpose? (links please).