"Healing" Skill Idea

[Shurt]

Here's my Idea for a "Healing" skill if implemented:

I feel the "Healing" skill should have 2 tiers.

First tier: Ability to heal self
Second tier: Ability to heal others

FIRST TIER:
1. Allow all players the ability to buy medical bandages

2. There would be a range of bandages to choose from at a merchant for example:
Low level: Worn bandages
Mid level: Normal Bandages
High tier: Excellent bandages

3. The player will have to train the "Healing" skill by simply using the bandages over and over whether they are in combat or not (PVP/PVE).

4. The amount healed would depend on the type of bandages and skill level of healing. For example:
A player with 100 "healing" skill with worn bandages would heal for 100HP
A player with 200 "healling" skill with worn bandages would heal for 200HP

5. You will remain still and not be able to move for the duration of the "heal". This should last a maximum 3-5 seconds (flexible)

Obviously, the higher the skill and better bandages you use would factor in and heal for more.
__________________________________________________ __________________

SECOND TIER:
If a player wishes to become a full-time "Healer", he can continue to skill up and eventually hit the max in tier 1. At this point, the second tier would be become unlocked and allow the player the ability to heal others.

Basically, you will be given the option to "group heal". Certain requirements should also be met in order to use this skill suchas a certain amount of mana, wand/staff, etc.

Obviously if you go this route, your combat skills will suffer. If you go into this tier, be ready to have your friends/guildmates have your back.

__________________________________________________ __________________
CONCLUSION:
This kind of system would appeal to all types/styles of play

Tier 1 would be for the solo'ers who want the ability to heal themselves and still train their combat skills.

Tier 2 would be for the groups/guilds who have players dedicated to healing, therefore allowing others to focus solely on combat abilities.

I am especially excited about tier 2. It focuses on teamwork and a groups ability to communicate and work together.

In the end I think it makes perfect sense and would fit nicely with this game.

Your thoughts/suggestions?

Shurt

[admiralnlson]

I don't like tiers/thresholds/...

If you learn something new (by yourself or with the help of somebody else), it should be a different skill imo.


Also, I don't understand why you shouldn't be able to bandage other people when you can do it on yourself. Actually, I even think it's harder to bandage yourself than somebody else.

Finally, if healing yourself is only the first levels of a "Healing" skill, people will be able to max it out for self-healing quite easily, and you can be certain that self-heal will be used a lot for that reason. (If you ever played Guild Wars, look at all the players who play Monk as their second profession).

[Shurt]

Originally Posted by admiralnlson

I don't like tiers/thresholds/...

If you learn something new (by yourself or with the help of somebody else), it should be a different skill imo.


Also, I don't understand why you shouldn't be able to bandage other people when you can do it on yourself. Actually, I even think it's harder to bandage yourself than somebody else.

Finally, if healing yourself is only the first levels of a "Healing" skill, people will be able to max it out for self-healing quite easily, and you can be certain that self-heal will be used a lot for that reason. (If you ever played Guild Wars, look at all the players who play Monk as their second profession).

I believe the Devs were already talking about tiers of combat skills if I'm not mistaken. I will dig up the link later.

1. Limiting the bandages to self was the only way to make tier 2 work. Tier 2 is needed for guilds/friends who want that play together and get things done as a team.

2. Maxing out the tier 1 healing skill is going to inhibit your combat skills as your putting more into healing and less in combat. It will be your choice to do so or not.

[admiralnlson]

I don't think you answered what I said.

Basically you're saying we should make healing unrealistic in order to have a few people able to heal other players in the game? I don't think it needs to be unrealistic.


You can definitely have one basic "First Aid" skill that can heal you and others but that will only provide basic (as in : low) heals.

And when you have a high enough level, you can learn new skills like "Medecine" or "Surgery" that are the real deal.
If you want to be "the real deal" in healing, you will have to make sacrifices, like not being very good at fighting.

[Lyllyth]

Personally, I like the idea of both, Medic and Cleric.

The Medic,
We'll assume Medic is what admiralnlson just described above. I like it, start with First Aid and increase from there.
If anyone has read the Shannara series, they'll recall the Stors, an elite healing village. But getting accepted for training was hard, and the training itself was harder. Implementing something akin to this could allow for many, many quests and tasks. As there's no college to speak of (I assume), this could be the path of the advanced Medic.

The Cleric,
In my view, Clerics in games past have been done a bit wrong. My view of a Cleric is this;
The Cleric herself, has skill in casting her spells, but the powers of that spell are granted through her deity. If you take away the Deity, or the Deity's favor, the cleric would lose the power of those spells, even if cast correctly. So, while the Cleric could raise skills in healing through use of her healing spells (and I believe each spell should be it's own skill), the Cleric will also have to maintain favor with the Deity (perhaps a Reputation system to gauge power) to continue to be able to use her spells.

Balance,
For game terms, balance could be easy, create situations and/or afflictions that require a Medic skill, while other afflictions require Cleric skills. Say, while Clerics are able to easily mend wounds, they are unable to cleanse poisons, that would be the medicinal part of the Medic's skill set.

Both,
Seeing as this is a skill-based game, I assume most will go for mostly combat skills and a touch of one of the above healing abilities (makes soloing easier). However, you will always have players that wish to go all-out. In this case, the all-out Healing build would be the person that works to develop both the Medic's skills and the Cleric's skills to the highest levels.
Because anyone can train a healing skill to a usable level, the focused Healer wouldn't be required, but then, who would be foolish enough to turn one away if they wished to accompany you? =)

[Backstabber]

I still think they should do healing like UO. You picked up the skill from a trainer, got like 13.0 in the skill. Then, you got some bandages, started applything them to yourself and others, and the skill went up. When your skill is low, youre heals healed little to no damage at all. As your skill progressed, the amount of damage you healed increased and your failure of not healing at all went down.

Heals in UO were a one shot heal, as they healed in a burst rather then over time. Players needed to wait about 10-15 seconds for a heal to kick in. But, the more the player was hit while the heal was trying to take affect, the higher the chance of failure got.

Also, for the healing to be fully effective, players needed to pick up a secondary skill, Anatomy, which enabled the curing of poisons, increased the amount of damage healed, and eventually allowed for players to ressurect other players using bandages.

It all worked out really well, as it enabled warriors to stay alive longer without the presense of a mage healer and made solo play very viable. Not to mention, it increased the length of battles significantly. I remember one battle I watched in Magincia's Parlament house. Two guilds were fighting there, it all lasted a good 2 hours. Those were some exciting times.

[admiralnlson]

Originally Posted by Lyllyth

awesomeness

just awesome

[Traceur]

what if they both do different things altogether? the medic treats wounds & injuries, the cleric's spells wouldn't heal those at all, instead, it would just be raw life force granted by the divine & willpower granted by the act of faith - the wounds are still there & need treating, the bleeding continues, but the cleric's life force spells granted them more time until a medic comes & perhaps even more time on the battlefield fighting & functioning despite the wounds with equivalent willpower spells.

[admiralnlson]

Originally Posted by Traceur

what if they both do different things altogether? the medic treats wounds & injuries, the cleric's spells wouldn't heal those at all, instead, it would just be raw life force granted by the divine & willpower granted by the act of faith - the wounds are still there & need treating, the bleeding continues, but the cleric's life force spells granted them more time until a medic comes & perhaps even more time on the battlefield fighting & functioning despite the wounds with equivalent willpower spells.

That would be even better.

But it would be a little weird if a lot of things were possible with magic or faith, but healing wounds wasn't one of them for some obscure reason.

[Traceur]

Originally Posted by admiralnlson

That would be even better.

But it would be a little weird if a lot of things were possible with magic or faith, but healing wounds wasn't one of them for some obscure reason.

i guess that sort of goes back to the old magic vs. RL methods interloping conversation.

on one hand i still stand by what was said there, on the other since Mats whole ala "mage: the ascension" description of the religious system the possibility of a complete open mystical system intrigues me...

[OMGPIE]

What is wrong with any magical healing as well as bandages?

[egonboy]

Okay I see a few problems with this.

First a comment. The skill tier system is in use for this game sorry if you don't like it but read the skills page.

Now I'm all for the prerequisite to be healing yourself, that makes sense, and as you level you can go from band aids, to herbs and such. However tier two suddenly being magic threw me off.

Tier two should be healing others with band aids berries and then surgery.

Now there should be magic healing yes. However it should not be a level up from mundane
Tier one magic healing is a single target that you can upgrade for more healing and healing status effects.
Tier two AoE healing spells would be amazing.

Thats just my two cents though

[OMGPIE]

Originally Posted by egonboy

Okay I see a few problems with this.

First a comment. The skill tier system is in use for this game sorry if you don't like it but read the skills page.

Now I'm all for the prerequisite to be healing yourself, that makes sense, and as you level you can go from band aids, to herbs and such. However tier two suddenly being magic threw me off.

Tier two should be healing others with band aids berries and then surgery.

Now there should be magic healing yes. However it should not be a level up from mundane
Tier one magic healing is a single target that you can upgrade for more healing and healing status effects.
Tier two AoE healing spells would be amazing.

Thats just my two cents though

I think that would work just fine...except I have no clue how surgery will work in game but ya. AoE healing spells why not? I mean if you can heal in magic you should be able to heal multiple people at once with magic.

[egonboy]

Surgery i was thinking more back to basics stuff leaches cutting bits of skin off think of it as a quadrupled length bandage pretty much for massive hp restore.

[OMGPIE]

Originally Posted by egonboy

Surgery i was thinking more back to basics stuff leaches cutting bits of skin off think of it as a quadrupled length bandage pretty much for massive hp restore.

Nice!

[egonboy]

Or like curing status effects without having magic. Say you get bitten by a poisonous snake. Use the surgery skill to remove status effects and bring a lot of hp back thus making medics great to have on the field in the back lines grabbing people as they fall and sending them back forward in sieges.

[OMGPIE]

Originally Posted by egonboy

Or like curing status effects without having magic. Say you get bitten by a poisonous snake. Use the surgery skill to remove status effects and bring a lot of hp back thus making medics great to have on the field in the back lines grabbing people as they fall and sending them back forward in sieges.

That is cool its like Uber bandage. I think that would be a perfect transition into magic heals.

[Apollo]

I personally like the idea of the OP. Well at least the part about having a players skill determine the amount of HP healed. I don't want our skill to determine what bandages we can use. It may reach the same ends but I believe it is more realistic to think that an expert medic can make even a torn shirt more effective than a unskilled person with a even the best of bandages.

[Traceur]

basically i don't like the "unlockables" when you have to unlock basic interactions with the environment (use item X, etc), where all you'd need is hands and opposable thumbs. i don't mind unlockables for somethiing like "magical healing"...

basically i hope most of the secondary skill tier system is based on special actions such as this, which you couldn't otherwise do.

[Shurt]

Originally Posted by egonboy

Okay I see a few problems with this.

First a comment. The skill tier system is in use for this game sorry if you don't like it but read the skills page.

Now I'm all for the prerequisite to be healing yourself, that makes sense, and as you level you can go from band aids, to herbs and such. However tier two suddenly being magic threw me off.

Tier two should be healing others with band aids berries and then surgery.

Now there should be magic healing yes. However it should not be a level up from mundane
Tier one magic healing is a single target that you can upgrade for more healing and healing status effects.
Tier two AoE healing spells would be amazing.

Thats just my two cents though

The intent of my original post was to give "all" players the opportunity to have a basic "heal" option without going down the heal skill tree. Basically, your attributes are not going to affect how well you can heal with bandages...only the amount of skill you have will do that.

However, if you want a "magic" heal to be brought into the picture, you will have to worry about the amount of mana the player has as well as the skill. This is where the problem lies with allowing "all" players to have this magic heal. A warrior would have to sacrifice to strength for mana to get enough mana to cast.

Honestly, which "Heal" skill is a typical warrior more apt to have...bandages or magic healing? I'm going to have to lean toward the bandages.

If a player wants to become a full-time healer he must go through tier 1 first. Afterall, all healers have to start somewhere right? Once tier 1 has been maxed, he can immediately start working the "group heall" skills. Meanwhile, if he/she had been planning correctly, they would skilling up their "mana" attribute.

All in all, I would like "all" players to have the opportunity to have a "heal" skill for the reasons described in the first post.

Thoughts?

[egonboy]

Yeah what i'm saying is two basic level skills one for mages one for fighters

Because having a mundane heal tier two into magic doesn't make much sense where a completely magic skillset and a completely mundane skillset would add two dimensions to healers also giving mage healers some way to heal with no mana.

[zachrates]

Good idea, minus that it's bandages. I find that kind of lame. Why go through the trouble of having someone learn some sort of bandage use, when it can just be magic. If you want to waste your points on healing, it's your decision to do so. This system is no different in concept than just implementing healing magic in general and making them have different tiers of use.

Good idea minus that anyway.

[Traceur]

i don't know. why for that matter to go through all the trouble of aiming when that can just be magic tracking? why go through all the trouble of tactical maneuvering when that can just be magic shielding? why go through all the trouble of exploring when you can just magically get a zoomable world's map? why go through all the trouble of adventuring when you can have spells to just achieve your interests & goals automatically? why go for all the trouble of having goals & interests while needing to achieve them when you can just magically not buy the game in the first place?

because doing things yourself is fun. when you let the computer handle these things automatically or magically, your wasting fun on an electronic entity which gets absolutely no entertainment out of it, nor does it buy game products or pays monthly fees.

[Veith]

@Traceur the problem is there are folks want to play a game and others want to be entertained by the programm, want to be fed only. And those need automatisms, not only help, they need really more, the programm must control all relevant aspects of their consuming. Thats in no way gaming but its also entertainment.
Bad for folks want to play, if such content is possible to consume all gaming attempts are irrelevant.

So we must only demand devs must create a game, and not a product to consume, not a cartoon (like any MMORPG's) you can slightly change the story, all decisions are made by players, really all, And absolutely no single feed may be programmed. Only if then a game is designed we are able to play.
Thats mature gameplay, has nothing to do with visible nipples, blood or rolling heads, thats only childish halfgrown 'dreams'. Gameplay must be mature like for chess, and serious games. Thats fun for adults. So make childrens games but also mature games. There must be finally a MMOG also for adults again. And not with some for youth illegal content that has nothing to do with mature thought about.