this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2024
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You have to balance that. A pure healer would need to be so strong that it would become the primary target at all times. Which would be frustrating for both sides. For players playing against it because they can't really play the game anymore. For the pure healers because they would be under tons of pressure.
Unfortunately (or fortunately) we (should) design games around a core audience. Chances are that if your ( r my) hypothetical friend isn't enjoying the competitive part of the game at all, that she (or he) is going to get frustrated at that game at some point anyways. And there are probably games that suit both your needs better to start with. Competitive games may just not be the right choice. Don't ruin the game feel of those games for those that enjoy them for the sake of non competitive players because that will just create a game that no one actually wants to play.
Mercy from Overwatch is a perfect example of why pure healers don't work too well in shooters. She is consistently throughout the games lifespan either been too overtuned or too undertuned. It is very difficult to find that balanced spot for pure healers.
They either end up too powerful and require constant tagging by the opponents team which is frustrating both for the healer player and the opponent team. Or they become almost mandatory for a team too win even in a casual setting, which is incredibly unfun for both teams.
In the case of being undertuned though, if they're not powerful enough then no one picks them as it is just not as fun or engaging to play as a pure healer.
Or finally in the case of medic from tf2. They become a fairly predictable 1 trick pony, low reward class.
Overall pure healers in shooters just really don't work well for the medium/genre. I love being a support player myself in games. But I loathe seeing pure healers in shooters. It's nearly always just a source of frustration rather than fun
I miss the medic from TFC. The double-barreled shotgun and the concussion grenades gave them options.
(I guess that's kinda proving the point against "pure healers," LOL)
Hasn't Overwatch if anything shown that focusing on the small highest end crowd doesn't actually work in the context of heterogeneous classes to play? Unlike MOBAs, so I can totally see why a dev would assume it to be the correct choice.
While I have not played overwatch myself, I have heard about a few things with it. From my point of view overwatch had it's own problems including characters that did only one thing but that one thing really, really well. Which is frustrating. It also didn't help that they tried to force things instead of actually working with what they had. IMHO it's a master class of what not to do with a game unless you want to to fail.