Ryzom

1ender wrote:First off let me say I realize these changes aren't bad - in theory. I think if the game's population was larger this would strike a very good balance.

Secondly, I see all these people in the forums saying that these changes are welcome, however no one I've talked to in game, so far, thinks this. In fact all I've talked to have been opposed to the idea. Maybe it's just us, the isolated few, those who play at off-peak-hour times who are against it because there just aren't enough of us to make playing at these times fun anymore after the changes. Is it worth it to isolate this group of people? Only the official server population numbers can tell us that.

I imagine the reason you haven't met many people happy about the change is because you are hanging out with relatively low-level people. Many of the people hanging out on the forums are high-level folks. After about level 100, heal is way way overpowered. At lower levels, it is much less so. I would get to about level 50 before evaluating the change, that is about the lowest level (45 actually, I think?) where healing can be realistically evaluated. Also keep in mind using range credits and time credits will help a lot. At level 50 with max stats you should be able to keep a small team up for free. At level 105 keeping a team of 105s up for free goes without saying.

However you are absolutely correct. The healer economy drives leveling in this game. Cutting healer power in half will also halve the healer economy. Healing needed to be overpowered, because only one "class" could heal. Many people are raising quite a few combat skills, and healing magic is the only one needed. Even if everyone raises heal to level 250, each player can only do so once - while they may raise a dozen other combat skills. Once the skill is up to 150, it can't be used any more to support a level 100 party. And healers tend to be in high demand and gain levels very quickly.

The level of population isn't the problem, it is the proportion of healers in the population. If there were 3 people, and 2 of them were healers, this wouldn't be a problem at all. If there were 10,000,000 people, and only 3,000 of them were healers, it would be a huge problem. But assuming everyone raised 9 disciplines on average, and healing is always one of them, that means the average group must have 9 members in order for the economy to be viable. That is basically impossible. As it is now, people seem to be raising about 3 disciplines and on average one of them is healing about half the time. This means we need an average group size of 6. But a large proportion of healers are raising heal to 250 in groups of only 2! This removes them from the pool. The average group is less than 6 even without this issue. What this means is that parties either need to find some alternative to healers (enchantments maybe), or they need to find someone willing to heal out of group at high levels, or they need to compete for the relatively few healers currently in-game.

This solution does solve some of the problem - it will probably make nuker/healer combos impossible, and that should have a "trickle-down" effect that will help everyone. But the immediate fact is that there are too few healers at lower levels - the fact that they are overpowered is the only thing keeping things going!

Still, I'm sure it will be possible to adapt. Keep in mind that area heals are better, and the lack of area heals has been a really major problem (the ability for one healer to keep up 8 teammates would help tremendously). Find larger teams to capitalize on this. Also the stam/sap heals are heavier, so you can change your credits to be more stam/sap intensive and that should help. All in all though, this change doesn't target the biggest problems - weak tanks and too much demand for healers.

lillaryn wrote: 4) I mean....hello.....MORE SAP AND STAMINA on every heal!! How is that bad?

I've said it before, I'll say again here for those of you that missed it:

More sap and stamina does NOT balance less HP. You can't DIE from lack of stamina or sap. You certainly CAN from lack of HP!

At the end of the day, we don't really know how good or bad an effect this change is going to have on the game and the population until it goes live. All I'm saying for now is, if it messes things up, all you pro-change players better not start whining about it! Only the people against it can complain afterwards.

philu wrote:More sap and stamina does NOT balance less HP. You can't DIE from lack of stamina or sap. You certainly CAN from lack of HP!

Of course, you are right, and I see your point... but I also think that players will adapt and modify their behavior, e.g. how they set up their stanzas, increasing the sap and stam credits and reducing the HP ones where applicable.

As many other posters, I'll refrain from judging before having really tested all the changes and, on the other hand, a change in fight dynamics can be interestng too

@madnak: I appreciated your post about healer economy, and I agree I was discussing with a friend and we were talking of low level healer players as a "ressource" needed to work on branches.

Jup, that´s a very real problem over here to.

Newbees come in and beginn to lvl fight skills, and complain about the game being too hard, because they can´t self heal good/fast enough.
The strange thing is that only a VERY small percentage of them even considers lvling HEAL.
Quote from a Noob I helped out the day before yesterday: "I don´t heal. Thats dumb. I just lvl Dmg-spells. They´re cool."
I tryed to explain to her that without healing there would soon be a problem for her. She´replyed: "Everyone needs healers. They just want to get on with their dmg skills. And I don´t like to be expolited, ´cause healing sucks. Now, would you heal me off team?"

As a lv 195 Healer I was quite stuned to hear that ammount of rubbish from a noobs mounth...
And it´s horribel to see that most Newbees seem to follow that demented pholosphie: "I don´t Heal, `cause everyone wants me to."
And at the same time thinking: There are so many healers around, why don´t they take them?
AND
"Why doesn´t anyone heal me? I´ll get frustrated with the game and quit if nobody heals me..."

The above mentioned Example was the only one that happend to me. But I heard simmilar stories all over Atys lately...

Acridiel

acridiel wrote:Jup, that´s a very real problem over here to.

Newbees come in and beginn to lvl fight skills, and complain about the game being too hard, because they can´t self heal good/fast enough.
The strange thing is that only a VERY small percentage of them even considers lvling HEAL.
Quote from a Noob I helped out the day before yesterday: "I don´t heal. Thats dumb. I just lvl Dmg-spells. They´re cool."
I tryed to explain to her that without healing there would soon be a problem for her. She´replyed: "Everyone needs healers. They just want to get on with their dmg skills. And I don´t like to be expolited, ´cause healing sucks. Now, would you heal me off team?"

As a lv 195 Healer I was quite stuned to hear that ammount of rubbish from a noobs mounth...
And it´s horribel to see that most Newbees seem to follow that demented pholosphie: "I don´t Heal, `cause everyone wants me to."
And at the same time thinking: There are so many healers around, why don´t they take them?
AND
"Why doesn´t anyone heal me? I´ll get frustrated with the game and quit if nobody heals me..."

The above mentioned Example was the only one that happend to me. But I heard simmilar stories all over Atys lately...

Acridiel

And the problem will only get worse my friend. With HP heal weakened, the demand for healers will be higher not lower.

The problem with heal is that its one branch and actually I have the same problem sometimes finding a "nuker". The problem is trying to find a healer / nuker that is within the lvls needed. The changes since beta to experience with the delta lvls for skills used and mobs are more the problem then changes to skills.

There are numerous fighting skills and even two affliction skills. There being only 1 elemental branch and 1 heal branch makes those skills harder to find within a range cause people usually level them up quickly. I'm a Nuker but it quickly got to the point where i just use it for survival. I'm a healer but I really dont feel like healing in Steroid teams to get those last few levels for my Celestial Guardian yet since I have the 250 heals. I really dont care if they nerf my double heal of 6960 hp.

There will be the same amount of healers but finding one near your level when you want to level something fun is the difficult thing. A pure healer working on one branch will quickly outgrow their friends working on mele and elemental. Or even faster if their friends are working on multiple meles, elemental and afflictions. Soon the healer will be nerfing experience and the afflictors damage dealers will complain about not being able to find a healer when in reality they ditch theirs trying to find a lower level one that wont cap experience.

Lastly lets remember base amount of heals at lvl 250:

1. HP 1740
2. Sap 619
3. Stam 619

The heal look odd? Yes it does....does anybody remember why?

answer: Patch 1.

HP heal was never meant to bet his powerful at release. The problem was patch 1 and balancing caused one of the quick fixes to be HP heal. Personally I'd rather have HP heal halved again back to pre patch 1 levels and have amp bonuses with working bomb/spray/ricochet.

nice that constructive things are coming out of a negative first post ;p

so we have broad agreement that a lot of the problem with healing is it's only one branch.. which would suggest to me a new split would be nice. Could be something very simple like healer/group healer with xp for AoE's going to different tree. would slow down healers levels and provide many more low level group healers to go around

rushin wrote:so we have broad agreement that a lot of the problem with healing is it's only one branch.. which would suggest to me a new split would be nice. Could be something very simple like healer/group healer with xp for AoE's going to different tree.

Seems like it could be more interesting than this. One direction could stay the same as is, another could be more mental allowing for quicker heal spells, or cheaper credit wise as you work up some other credit that could be used on a staff only, etc. Another branch could allow for more combination or experimentation with healing maybe it would be without amps. but have some other actions that would make it interesting.

Noin. (I'm back)

marct wrote:Seems like it could be more interesting than this. One direction could stay the same as is, another could be more mental allowing for quicker heal spells, or cheaper credit wise as you work up some other credit that could be used on a staff only, etc. Another branch could allow for more combination or experimentation with healing maybe it would be without amps. but have some other actions that would make it interesting.

Noin. (I'm back)

Good suggestion. Intriguing.

Oh, and WB.

P.S. I always though 1 handed healing would be cool. You would get half of the bonus that your amps give. Imagine like dagger and sword, I could be shield and 1 amp, 1 amp and 1 bare handed heal, 1 amp, 1 staff, etc. Gets pretty interesting mixing acitons and stanzas then.