Does anyone else hate relying on healers/support?

STIHL.2489 · October 19, 2018

@"Henry.5713" said:About the quote, an interesting way to read it. Though, not one I agree with. Feels more like they went backwards on that idea. The game used to be easier as far as support roles were concerned. Everyone did their small part of said support but nobody was forced to take the full responsibility. This certainly changed and keeps getting worse. The Fractal support Chronomancer (which is mostly played in combination with a warrior and three full damage dealers) comes to mind. They have absolutely everything pushed on them to allow everyone else to focus on damage dealing (outside of a few minor things).The Chronos build the entire car, set everything up perfectly to allow their team to apply a pretty paint job at the end.

You're agreement on that quote is not necessary, that it is what it is.

So moving along.

Now see, that is what is wrong with the whole role or task based system. In your explanation, everyone ends up waiting on the Chrono, just like in Archaic games like EQ, where invariably everyone ended up waiting on the Cleric. IMHO, there is no worse game design then when you have players waiting on some specific class to enable their game play as opposed to being able to just grab some friends, take whatever you have, and go on an adventure and have some fun.

See role based games are actually counter intuitive to community based games, because at the core of role games, when something goes wrong, they can't help each other, so they end up looking for the someone to blame for the failure.. who did not do their mandatory task like a good little cog!

Now, Originally, GW2 had a great design where you could play whatever class you liked, and could join your friends and go have fun, as everyone took full responsibility for the run, anyone could step in and do whatever needed to get done, needed some support, healing, buffs, DPS, whatever, anyone could handle it for a bit, so unlike role based play where everyone only focuses on their task, it was a team of people all actually working together towards a common goal, and could back each other up as needed, if someone made a mistake, others could step in and carry, recover, and move on. If someone died, the rest of the team was not hapless to continue on and finish the encounter. Which is really what a good team play is about, where no one is stuck waiting on someone else to enable them to keep going.

Which, going back to EQ, which started this whole strict role based classes, if while doing a dungeon crawl, like in lower Guk, for example, if the Cleric or the Enchanter Died, it did not matter what other classes made up the party, you were suddenly at a choice of two, die where you stand, or flee. That was to me, the worst way to build class design that I could have ever thought of. I mean, the whole "Trinity" ideas as it were, was horrible at it's core, it basically meant if anyone single one of them failed, everyone failed. Really? This is what people find fun? Being hapless and helpless if someone else makes a mistake? That is what people think is good team play?

No, Good Team Play, is where we as a team can work together, we can cover for each other, and we can get the job done, that means we can all step up or step in for any role to keep things moving along, to assist each other.

To give an analogy.

Role Based Play is like a Professional Sport Team, where you have a bunch of entertainers that are getting paid to do a specific task, each one basking in their own glory about how well they can do their specific chosen task and the rewards they will reap for doing so. All the wile they never actually need to care about the other members of their team, or what they are doing, since they are myopic in their task, they are powerless to do anything if another team member screws up anyway.

I really don't see the attraction to that kind of game play, but obviously enough people must love this.

Team Play or Team Work, as it were, is like a Military Unit. Yes, they may have a demolitions expert, but everyone else on the team is also trained in Demolitions, just in case they need to step in and handle the situation, or just help the expert out getting things done faster. Equally so, everyone is trained in Combat, Physical, Blade, and Gun. The whole team work in this venture is that each person on that team might excel and be the best at a specific task, all of them are cross trained so that all of them can cover for each other, in case something goes wrong, as such, all of them are looking out for each other and assisting each other as needed.

I for the life of me, cannot fathom why anyone would not want to play that kind of game, which is what GW2 was at first made to be like.

With that said, as odd as this may be, people hated being able to step in and step up to help each other so much, they got the game to become where everyone is now waiting on a chrono and/or druid.

And for the sake of fairness, I sometimes miss the former focus on combo fields and finishers even if I do not dislike how things work now.However, evolution is simply inevitable if we wish to stop anything from stagnating. We'd still be using horse carriages if we had refused to let our system of personal transport evolve. There are many downsides to cars but they still allowed our society to do a huge leap. People might dislike certain changes or features introduced with the expansions but they were ultimately needed to allow the game to evolve.

The thing here that you seem to miss, is that GW2 was an evolution from it's predecessors like EQ and WoW, as such, seeing people want to go back to Role based Classes, is a devolution, it akin to watching angry masses unhappy with their Tesla Roadster and demanding we go back to Horse and Wagons.

I don't get it.. I will never get it.. and I cannot for the life of me see any benefit to what happened to this game. It's a sad tale.

maddoctor.2738 · October 19, 2018

Relying on a healer? Yes I must admit I don't like it much, although it does make fights much easier, including certain Raid bosses. But why hate "support"? Even when the game was young, you didn't just take 5-dps. There was always some variety and more than enough support around, stacking might, stealth (for dungeon skips), reflects, condition removal and so on was ALWAYS part of the game.

Ralistu.1965 · October 19, 2018

@"STIHL.2489" said:

I'm not quoting a particular thing you said, because, well, everything you said i can see and feel.

It's the reason I use GW2 as a main (now) or second MMO to play. I play WoW as well. Thats the holy trinity game where you absolutely need a healer or GG. Raiding becomes a second job. It's actually pathetic. I play games to relax and have fun, not work. (which is why i can never be a youtuber. twitch maybe, but not a youtuber). tanking (at least back in B.C. and WotLK) was so exhausting and stressful that it made me quit for 2 years.

GW2 for me is or was so completely different that it became a shining example of, we can be different and still be good. Action based combat, no need for a dedicated healer, when played right all classes should be able to take a hit and keep themselves alive. If you wanted to be a more supportive player, go for it. Sold on the spot. Seriously, I preordered off of what they said they wanted to do for GW2 (it also helped that I played GW1 for a number of years as well lol).

Then they added stand alone raids for like 5% of the player base. Why they did this and not more open world stuff is beyond me. There are 2 wickedly good raiding games out there right now in both FF and WoW. Why the player base cant go back to those is beyond me. GW2 is not those games.

I refuse to raid in this game. I refuse to help it get better. I bash it everytime i get the chance. if i want to raid, I go play WoW, and even then.. what if im not in the mood to raid at 7pm on wednesday? or what if i dont want to play my chrono today (in the case of GW2).

Now that being said, i do like the fact that supportive roles are better off now. It was pointless to have a water based ele with healing gear pre-HoT. I think the player base of any game generally wants "easy mode". I remember the zerker gear craze to speed clear runs pre-hot. and now, people just want to watch t.v. while they play so they need that "back up support" because they arent really playing...

paying attention use to be the most important aspect to this game

Laila Lightness.8742 · October 19, 2018

@Ralistu.1965 said:
@"STIHL.2489" said: