Are we still not tired of healers being this powerful?

[Cake]

We've been living this loop since 2016, of depending on random strangers to pick a character that clicks the general direction of their allies, and of not being able to damage stuff because their life keeps instantly bouncing back to 100%. Wouldn't *consequence* and *impact* be more fun? I realize there's no removing player healing from the game, but it'd be nice if it weren't so overwhelmingly all-powerful.

Adam kind of... Presses a button and instantly erases everything the other team just did. Is that fun? It's almost 10 years later, what are we here for?

Edit: Yes, I'm using adam to point out a symptom of something larger. Yes, I'm trying to encourage revisions on a design philosophy level. I'm not talking about better or worse player strategies and approaches, I'm talking about how this game has done a fantastic job in differentiating itself from overwatch in many places already (e.g. spiderman's gameplay), we can keep doing better and learn from overwatch's mistakes.

A player depending on another player to have fun is only fun if that player is dependable. Push for a design of game structure that enables all comps to be viable.

[Kyutaru]

It's easy to complain about. It's hard to propose a solution. People have been debating this topic for decades because RPGs have been a thing for a long time. The holy trinity is tough to crack.

[Cake]

Originally posted by Kyutaru:

It's easy to complain about. It's hard to propose a solution. People have been debating this topic for decades because RPGs have been a thing for a long time. The holy trinity is tough to crack.

It's not rpgs, it's dota and league doing things a certain way, and everyone thinking they're divine reference just because they were successful. Overwatch was no different in copying what they *thought* worked. Marvel rivals is a chance for us to get a little more boldness in design, which we are getting!! But with giving space for things like adam and other extreme healing to exist, we're taking two steps back after one step foward. This talk of it being hard to balance is counter-productive. We don't stop doing stuff because it's hard. We voice our thoughts, we make suggestions and we keep trying to make something new and interesting.

[Genebris]

Originally posted by Kyutaru:

It's easy to complain about. It's hard to propose a solution. People have been debating this topic for decades because RPGs have been a thing for a long time. The holy trinity is tough to crack.

skill based healing, not auto aim healing. but what am I saying, this game is all about auto aim already

[pxlCorvid]

It definitely is a skill-based thing. That's probably a reason why auto-aim healers like dagger exist. For the lower skill-tier players (or those on console with bad aim/kids/ect)..
To first complain, you have to think about it in a developer standpoint.
You have to have healing, you have to have damage, you have to have tanks.
What do you do to innovate on the standards set by previous iterations?
How you combat certain problems based on feedback from those previous iterations?
For one to exist, another has to.
DPS would be next to nothing without healers. Same with tank.
Tanks protect, DPS do sharp, quick damage and healers .. well, heal.
There is a balance there but you only really see it in higher skill players.
The majority of casual or mid players will get mixed in with one good player on either team and it'll be a situation where they dominate the healing/dps/tank role and that leads to posts like this where people complain about it being a problem.
There's not "too much healing" in rivals, same with overwatch.
A lot of supports can't do much to counter a witch ult, much like mercy or moira can't counter a Dva ult.
It's a very take-give scenario and you have to look at the whole picture before complaining about a single role/character, because they're likely balanced around the entire rest of the cast/gameplay.

[Make clash permanent]

Originally posted by Kyutaru:

It's easy to complain about. It's hard to propose a solution. People have been debating this topic for decades because RPGs have been a thing for a long time. The holy trinity is tough to crack.

Make people responsible for their own healing and tanking. You assign both to two different buttons.

Boom.

The trinity is just a what happened if you took a 1v1 fighting game and split the responsibilities of a single character into 3 groups.

The REASON they won't touch the trinity is because being able to blame others instead of the system itself is core to modern AAA video game design, marketing and politics.

[Gamefreak]

I don't mind healers. What I do mind is the completely useless and unfun "stationary" sniper that every dev must add to their hero shooter for absolutely no reason whatsoever. I say "stationary" sniper because most people being useless with these characters are just afk in the back of the map taking potshots.

They aren't fun to have on your team because unless the person playing them is a 0.001% top player with god aim, they're useless and make every match they're in a 5v6. They aren't fun to play against because you spend all match randomly losing HP to an annoying gnat and they're are miserable to play against at top ratings.

Sniper heroes make me wish these games had character bans in ranked like in MOBAs.

[Big Daddy-Chan]

Originally posted by Cake:

We've been living this loop since 2016, of depending on random strangers to pick a character that clicks the general direction of their allies, and of not being able to damage stuff because their life keeps instantly bouncing back to 100%. Wouldn't *consequence* and *impact* be more fun? I realize there's no removing player healing from the game, but it'd be nice if it weren't so overwhelmingly all-powerful.

Adam kind of... Presses a button and instantly erases everything the other team just did. Is that fun? It's almost 10 years later, what are we here for?

You try killing the enemy healer before they heal their team? Works out for me every game lol It's not like adam doesn't have cds that you can make him waste on himself alone.

[Snobby Hobo]

Originally posted by Cake:

Originally posted by Kyutaru:

It's easy to complain about. It's hard to propose a solution. People have been debating this topic for decades because RPGs have been a thing for a long time. The holy trinity is tough to crack.

It's not rpgs, it's dota and league doing things a certain way, and everyone thinking they're divine reference just because they were successful. Overwatch was no different in copying what they *thought* worked. Marvel rivals is a chance for us to get a little more boldness in design, which we are getting!! But with giving space for things like adam and other extreme healing to exist, we're taking two steps back after one step foward. This talk of it being hard to balance is counter-productive. We don't stop doing stuff because it's hard. We voice our thoughts, we make suggestions and we keep trying to make something new and interesting.

I like the idea that you reflect upon the game you play, even though I disagree with your conclusion.

Dota 2 and League are both offspring from the Warcraft mod Dota - both are offspring from the RTS genre. The RTS genre has died because it does not resonate with casual players. The investment barrier is too high for most players, who instead want instant-gratification.

Overwatch capitalized on this when it released: it targets an audience that is unwilling to earn a PhD in meta-gaming to be competitive, but still have a strong drive to compete with others. The problem with Overwatch is that it made a lot of fundamental mistakes that it could not solve: the extreme stalemates of most fights, boring maps and objectives and making very little use of the geometry of most maps. At its worst this resulted in the shield meta, where games consisted of shooting into shields at the other side of the corridor without much else. Nowadays, in OW2, we have transitioned into unkillable tanks that are just slightly different flavors of the same thing.

Marvel Rivals copies all mistakes from Overwatch without batting an eye. The gameplay is still "shooting down a corridor for 10 minutes, until someone presses their auto-aim ultimate that breaks the stalemate". You can still counterswap, so drafting is non-existent. You have all these complicated, diverse and expressive heroes and all the game achieves with it is shooting down a corridor for 90% of the game.

[Snobby Hobo]

Originally posted by Kyutaru:

It's easy to complain about. It's hard to propose a solution. People have been debating this topic for decades because RPGs have been a thing for a long time. The holy trinity is tough to crack.

I disagree. The problem isn't that these problems cannot be solved - it is that nobody is willing to take the risk to try. Only Valve is doing so with e.g. Deadlock - which truly is a new spin on the pre-existing genre of mobas (even though still quite risk averse by leaning into hero shooters, as opposed to the much more daunting RTS genre).

Marvel Rivals isn't a game that wants to innovate. It wants to generate revenue. This game does not exist to become a pillar of game design - a statement. It exists so the suits can buy bigger cars at the end of the day.

[Bunny Massacre]

"We"? What's this "we" business? Do you refer to yourself as a group of people?

[Cake]

Originally posted by cooper:

It definitely is a skill-based thing. That's probably a reason why auto-aim healers like dagger exist. For the lower skill-tier players (or those on console with bad aim/kids/ect)..
To first complain, you have to think about it in a developer standpoint.
You have to have healing, you have to have damage, you have to have tanks.
What do you do to innovate on the standards set by previous iterations?
How you combat certain problems based on feedback from those previous iterations?
For one to exist, another has to.
DPS would be next to nothing without healers. Same with tank.
Tanks protect, DPS do sharp, quick damage and healers .. well, heal.
There is a balance there but you only really see it in higher skill players.
The majority of casual or mid players will get mixed in with one good player on either team and it'll be a situation where they dominate the healing/dps/tank role and that leads to posts like this where people complain about it being a problem.
There's not "too much healing" in rivals, same with overwatch.
A lot of supports can't do much to counter a witch ult, much like mercy or moira can't counter a Dva ult.
It's a very take-give scenario and you have to look at the whole picture before complaining about a single role/character, because they're likely balanced around the entire rest of the cast/gameplay.

I've been a dev since 2013. I've been here since warcraft one, seen defense of the ancients set a legacy that for better or worse still impacts the industry. I've seen quake, seen tf2. And I'm here to tell you that your generalism and pessimism is exactly the bulk of the force that stops new takes from new devs on familiar genres to be risky and new. Not only are you not voicing your interest in new things, you're instead using the power of your voice to supress the voices who ask for change. All for assumptions you make in the name of nothing in particular. If you want overwatch, we already have overwatch for that.

[Chris.T]

youd need to completely redesign the TTK of this game and changes its genre. You can't have a hero shooter with all these OP powers and no form of sustain. Half the cast 2 shots other characters.

[Fiur]

I've died as a Healer multiple times in the backline due to some Mele Hero's going bazinga.

Why are you complaining. Healers are a top priority target. If you can't deal with them - skill issue. If you want it to happen play with a dedicated group. You expect other strangers to actually focus the healers with you?

[Cake]

Originally posted by Chris.T:

youd need to completely redesign the TTK of this game and changes its genre. You can't have a hero shooter with all these OP powers and no form of sustain. Half the cast 2 shots other characters.

TTK in this format is completely volatile with all the possible factors (are healers doing their job? are they being hunted? etc). Making it more consistent does not sound bad, nor does it imply something as extreme as a change of genre lol.

Why is it so scary to ask ourselves (after a decade!), if this cat and mouse format of first disabling healers to then be able to do anything else is really all that can exist in this genre? Don't we already have overwatch for that?

[ele]

Paladins is a better example since nobody played Overwatch. Removing them cuts out a huge slice of the population and since games are only about money these days...that won't happen.