How do you fix a role shortage in MMOs and other online games?

[anvi]

Rift was interesting with this.

Each archetype could be any role, so Mage could be tank, dps, or healer. Cleric could be tank, dps, healer, Warrior, tank dps or healer, Rogue, same. And the classes can all do it. But it also lets you change on the fly. Takes a few minutes to swap out gear and spells but you can switch role outside of combat. It made finding a group much faster.

I liked the idea each archetype being able to do anything depending on how you build it. I didn't like the idea of switching on the fly though. To me it was weird, immersion breaking and ruins the feeling that people are a character they built, more like a mishmash of things they could respec constantly.

[swbgtoc]

Finding tanks was only ever a problem for pugs. Because it's so annoying to lead random retards. I've never seen groups of friends struggling to designate a tank. Now healing is something else... we always find some who accept the role but it's rarely because they want it.

[Norfleet]

Finding tanks was only ever a problem for pugs. Because it's so annoying to lead random retards. I've never seen groups of friends struggling to designate a tank.

Often, that's because "tank" is the first role that vanishes in a modern MMO, though. I don't mean "vanishes" in the sense of "can't be found", I mean "vanishes" in the sense of "is obsolete". An all-friends group doesn't struggle to find a tank, because even if they don't have one, they likely don't need one. Premades have a power level sufficient to not need one.

Now healing is something else... we always find some who accept the role but it's rarely because they want it.

That's because it's a rare role to main. Healers are fundamentally not effective outside of groups at all. Meaning that outside of the weird crowd of people who would actually enjoy doing that (probably women), it's always an auxiliary role. I regularly play as Healer in my premade groups, but it's as a secondary function to my primary role of being Team Leader, because I'm the sort willing to play any function as long as it's accomplishing the goal of WINNING. Of course, this applies to playing any OTHER role as well, but like you mentioned: People tend to WANT to do the other things. Also, Healer has a natural synergy with Leadership since both roles involve keeping track of what is going on with everybody else, while other roles tend to tunnel vision into their own respective functions.

[swbgtoc]

Also, Healer has a natural synergy with Leadership since both roles involve keeping track of what is going on with everybody else, while other roles tend to tunnel vision into their own respective functions.

It makes sense when you lay it like that but from my experience (mainly WoW from vanilla to BfA) healers aren't the leaders. They're busy managing the health of others which can take all of your attention depending on the fight, and when they have some respite they should dps. Tanks literally lead the way and manage the tempo of a run. And they have very little to do to manage their class so they focus on watching what the boss is doing to avoid damage so they also do the calls during boss fights.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

It depends. Small groups of friends can be pretty democratic with no clear leader. If you are in a small group of randos then yes, the tank does often wind up becoming the lead voice everyone waits on, but this is not always the case and you can have non-tank party leaders who fire and replace tanks. PUG raids can have leaders waiting on tanks to fill, and again fire and replace them. Raid guild leaders (or at the least, the person in the guild in charge of the raid team) do often seem to be tanks. But then once you start getting very large scale and/or very complex raid setups, then the tank has too much to manage right in front of him and not enough time to deal with the raid, so the responsibility gets passed to a ranged DPS who has simpler gameplay and thus more time to look at the state of the fight and what is going on around him.

[Norfleet]

It makes sense when you lay it like that but from my experience (mainly WoW from vanilla to BfA) healers aren't the leaders. They're busy managing the health of others which can take all of your attention depending on the fight, and when they have some respite they should dps.

Yes, and that means your attention is on everybody else and what is happening. It requires a certain level of situational awareness also essential in leadership. The other player role that would likely take up this job is...

Tanks literally lead the way and manage the tempo of a run. And they have very little to do to manage their class so they focus on watching what the boss is doing to avoid damage so they also do the calls during boss fights.

That. BUT, as I just previously said, this is also the first role that tends to DISAPPEAR. Meaning, the group no longer HAS tanks. In any game where the AI cannot be counted on to focus its aggro mindlessly against a single lower-threat, yet high-durability target, tanking vanishes as a role completely. Similarly, in any game where the players have sufficient durability to withstand hits, tanking declines and then vanishes. So who becomes the group's leader in the ABSENCE of tanks?

The final step is when you can entirely drop the healer because nobody is really taking any damage. At this point, you no longer need leadership because you're just roflstomping the content with all-DPS.

But then once you start getting very large scale and/or very complex raid setups, then the tank has too much to manage right in front of him and not enough time to deal with the raid, so the responsibility gets passed to a ranged DPS who has simpler gameplay and thus more time to look at the state of the fight and what is going on around him.

Once you start getting REALLY large and complex, leadership passes to a dedicated role. If your MMO has extremely large and high-difficulty raids, no individual player likely has enough situational awareness of what is happening to be in charge, and leadership is given to a person who is not actually part of the raid and makes calls off the telemetry streams of all of the raiders: The 26th man in a 25-man group.

[anvi]

I like in THJ you don't need to group with anyone. There's no shortage of anything because you do it all yourself. And yet it somehow works as an MMO. People group up for faster XP and some of the bosses are hard so people team up in duos mostly. And the world is still full of other players doing things and chatting so it still feels MMO-ish.

Maybe being able to play solo should be the baseline of these games. Have people grouping up for some stuff, and for huge open field battles, preferably team based PVP.

[J1M]

You could give tank and healer roles a squire or magical summon that only functions in solo play to bring their levelling/grinding/other play speed up to that of damage classes and give them a chance to "practice" the skills they will need for groups.

[Norfleet]

You could give tank and healer roles a squire or magical summon that only functions in solo play to bring their levelling/grinding/other play speed up to that of damage classes and give them a chance to "practice" the skills they will need for groups.

That would require that you have a bot that is somehow competitive with a player. Either it isn't, and thus the result still falls miserably short and thus the experience remains unpleasant, or the bot manages to actually outperform, and now those players are actively avoiding grouping to avoid the drag of the now lower-performing human player.

[Norfleet]

Disagree all you want, I've literally seen both cases, sometimes in the same game, where the bot manages to outperform typical players such that I don't want to replace it with actual other players AND still manages to be worse, so grinding as a healer is STILL more of a drag.

[J1M]

You could give tank and healer roles a squire or magical summon that only functions in solo play to bring their levelling/grinding/other play speed up to that of damage classes and give them a chance to "practice" the skills they will need for groups.

That would require that you have a bot that is somehow competitive with a player. Either it isn't, and thus the result still falls miserably short and thus the experience remains unpleasant, or the bot manages to actually outperform, and now those players are actively avoiding grouping to avoid the drag of the now lower-performing human player.

No different than a WoW hunter pet in terms of complexity. It's a source of damage you need to protect if you are a tank or heal if you are a healer. Balancing the percentage-damage-modifier and percentage-threat-modifier on an NPC like that which doesn't have active skills or equipment is the simplest possible thing to adjust.

[J1M]

Disagree all you want, I've literally seen both cases, sometimes in the same game, where the bot manages to outperform typical players such that I don't want to replace it with actual other players AND still manages to be worse, so grinding as a healer is STILL more of a drag.

Bad games are bad. Good design can be implemented poorly.

I think you are exaggerating the problem as it would not be feasible to use a summon to replace a group of 4-20 other players.

[Stack of Turtles]

You could give tank and healer roles a squire or magical summon that only functions in solo play to bring their levelling/grinding/other play speed up to that of damage classes and give them a chance to "practice" the skills they will need for groups.

That would require that you have a bot that is somehow competitive with a player. Either it isn't, and thus the result still falls miserably short and thus the experience remains unpleasant, or the bot manages to actually outperform, and now those players are actively avoiding grouping to avoid the drag of the now lower-performing human player.

No different than a WoW hunter pet in terms of complexity. It's a source of damage you need to protect if you are a tank or heal if you are a healer. Balancing the percentage-damage-modifier and percentage-threat-modifier on an NPC like that which doesn't have active skills or equipment is the simplest possible thing to adjust.

His point is that if the summon is not as good as a real player, then soloing a healer or tank is still worse than soloing a DPS because your summon is not pulling as much weight as you could be pulling as a DPS.

[Stack of Turtles]

Disagree all you want, I've literally seen both cases, sometimes in the same game, where the bot manages to outperform typical players such that I don't want to replace it with actual other players AND still manages to be worse, so grinding as a healer is STILL more of a drag.

Bad games are bad. I think you are exaggerating the problem as it would not be feasible to use a summon to replace a group of 4-20 other players.

Who even plays games where you group with 20 other players? I mean, I know they exist, but WHY? I don't even have 20 people I like in the entire world.

[J1M]

That would require that you have a bot that is somehow competitive with a player. Either it isn't, and thus the result still falls miserably short and thus the experience remains unpleasant, or the bot manages to actually outperform, and now those players are actively avoiding grouping to avoid the drag of the now lower-performing human player.

No different than a WoW hunter pet in terms of complexity. It's a source of damage you need to protect if you are a tank or heal if you are a healer. Balancing the percentage-damage-modifier and percentage-threat-modifier on an NPC like that which doesn't have active skills or equipment is the simplest possible thing to adjust.

His point is that if the summon is not as good as a real player, then soloing a healer or tank is still worse than soloing a DPS because your summon is not pulling as much weight as you could be pulling as a DPS.

Thread is about how to fix a role shortage, not about tricking people into levelling up in pairs.

The latter is a simple problem to solve: XP bonus for grouping. Or make the monsters too hard for soloing. Probably why it doesn't have a thread.

[Stack of Turtles]

No different than a WoW hunter pet in terms of complexity. It's a source of damage you need to protect if you are a tank or heal if you are a healer. Balancing the percentage-damage-modifier and percentage-threat-modifier on an NPC like that which doesn't have active skills or equipment is the simplest possible thing to adjust.

His point is that if the summon is not as good as a real player, then soloing a healer or tank is still worse than soloing a DPS because your summon is not pulling as much weight as you could be pulling as a DPS.

Thread is about how to fix a role shortage, not about tricking people into levelling up in pairs.

Maybe players SHOULD have to level up in pairs.

Anyway, it's just that your idea won't work to make people want to play healer or tank. It's sort of a non sequitur.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

His point is that if the summon is not as good as a real player, then soloing a healer or tank is still worse than soloing a DPS because your summon is not pulling as much weight as you could be pulling as a DPS.

Thread is about how to fix a role shortage, not about tricking people into levelling up in pairs.

Maybe players SHOULD have to level up in pairs.

You should have played Horizon with us. 6 man levelling parties!

[Stack of Turtles]

Thread is about how to fix a role shortage, not about tricking people into levelling up in pairs.

Maybe players SHOULD have to level up in pairs.

You should have played Horizon with us. 6 man levelling parties!

I think group sizes of 2-3 are ideal.

[J1M]

His point is that if the summon is not as good as a real player, then soloing a healer or tank is still worse than soloing a DPS because your summon is not pulling as much weight as you could be pulling as a DPS.

Thread is about how to fix a role shortage, not about tricking people into levelling up in pairs.

Maybe players SHOULD have to level up in pairs.

Anyway, it's just that your idea won't work to make people want to play healer or tank. It's sort of a non sequitur.

I doubt any one change would completely fix the problem. Or that everyone could agree what fixed would look like. I happen to be the type of person that would prefer to play the unpopular role in exchange for the social and temporal lubrication it provides. To me, a tank shortage is a feature.

A soloing NPC addresses two things that reduce the number of people playing certain roles. First, it eliminates efficiency concerns by evening the playing field in terms of damage output while solo. It doesn't have to be perfect. It just needs to be within 10% instead of feeling completely awful. Second, it addresses the concern of the gameplay while levelling training players for a role that doesn't exist at max level by giving them a chance to practice the actions and abilities they will need in groups.

[Norfleet]

No different than a WoW hunter pet in terms of complexity. It's a source of damage you need to protect if you are a tank or heal if you are a healer. Balancing the percentage-damage-modifier and percentage-threat-modifier on an NPC like that which doesn't have active skills or equipment is the simplest possible thing to adjust.

The difference is, a class pet is normally a core class feature, not a conditional assist provided ONLY if you do not have another player present. The Hunter always has his pet benefits. So the pet is just a class ability like anything else.

What you are proposing is an assist pet: If I am in a group, I lose access to it. So, if the pet is comparable or better than a random player would be, I am incentivized to AVOID grouping, since going through the hassle of forming a group would be a net negative. But if the pet is worse than *I* would be as another class, I am still discentivized to want to play the class. The result is that you could, and quite often easily DO, end up with a situation where both points are simultaneously true, and now you have healers/tanks that don't want to group while still also being undesirable to level up.

[rusty_shackleford]

support class with strong pet is probably my favorite type of class

[gravelord]

support class with strong pet is probably my favorite type of class

When you're a healer, the tank is your strong pet.


The best way to get people to play tanks or healers is to make the role fun. The FFXIV forum has a healer cope thread with 1,000 pages of people complaining about how bad the role is and how every expansion makes it worse. All the skills are homogenized between the different classes, and every unique feature gets ground down until everyone is playing the same class with the same abilities with different names and animations, but then the hardcore players will only use 1 healer class because it's 0.1% more effective.

Healing by itself isn't boring, I find it more interesting than DPS most of the time. Instead of autistically pressing 1,2,3,4 in a very particular order, you have to manage your threat, your mana, how much damage everyone is taking, how much they're going to take, which cooldowns to use, and then find a way to squeeze in some damage of your own. And if you can do all that and outdamage the actual DPS, it gives me a skele-boner.

Same thing with tanks. If tanks get lots of reactive abilities, like self-healing and shields, and they can keep themselves alive to an extent, that's a lot more satisfying to me than watching the green bar slowly turn red, sitting there waiting for the healer to do something.

[Norfleet]

Healing by itself isn't boring, I find it more interesting than DPS most of the time.

Well, that's a taste unique to you. Most people do not actually find a lack of agency in progressing one's own goals to be interesting. That's fundamentally the nature of being a healer: You aren't effective at doing anything unless you're being carried through it by someone else. You are a niche build that only comes into play in specific content, and are basically useless everywhere else. People don't tend to want to play that.

[J1M]

Theory: Reactively healing people is essentially the same gameplay loop as Dark Souls.

Corollary: Normies would love MMO healing if instead of a partially full health bar, the prompt to heal was a four second attack animation.

[Norfleet]

Theory: Reactively healing people is essentially the same gameplay loop as Dark Souls.

Corollary: Normies would love MMO healing if instead of a partially full health bar, the prompt to heal was a four second attack animation.

No, there's a difference: When you attack enemies, you're making progress through the game on your own. When you're healing someone else, well, THEY are making progress through the game, YOU are along for the ride. And before you mention it, yes, there's also a dissimilarity between this and running a pet class: Being a pet class means the pets remain a class feature of your character, and are always present, and can be accounted for as part of your build. Also, pets don't talk back and blame you for their failings. This means that, for the average dude, being a healer is just not as intrinsically satisfying a gameplay experience no matter how you try to spin it. You'll find this preference basically exists across the entire domain of "support" classes.

[TKVNC]

Healing by itself isn't boring, I find it more interesting than DPS most of the time.

Well, that's a taste unique to you. Most people do not actually find a lack of agency in progressing one's own goals to be interesting. That's fundamentally the nature of being a healer: You aren't effective at doing anything unless you're being carried through it by someone else. You are a niche build that only comes into play in specific content, and are basically useless everywhere else. People don't tend to want to play that.

Healing is a role carried out to support people you know. Because when they win, so do you.

It was never designed for PUGs.