New details emerge on SWTOR's healing and space components

by Kyle Horner on Jul 27th 2009 6:00PM

Interviews, New titles, News items, Star Wars: The Old Republic

So it looks like those lucky buggers over at IGN sat down with a couple Star Wars: The Old Republic developers and pelted them with as many questions from the community as possible. The results have made our day much brighter, and we're sure yours will benefit in much the same way.

While a lot of the questions were deflected in one way or another -- as this is a game that's probably not coming out for a while -- some tiny new pieces of information did surface. For instance, much of the community has been wondering about healing. Will the game go with the "Holy Trinity" or is something else planned? The answer appears to be a little bit of both. It sounds as though each class has the opportunity to invest resources into healing abilities. Although, BioWare is quick to point out that parties will definitely want some "healers" in higher-level situations.

Insofar as space combat is concerned, it appears that BioWare isn't talking about it, yet. Yes, they didn't flat out deny its existence in the game nor did they give confirmation, so for now we'll have to wait. A large part of the interview merely confirms things we've already known or suspected. Planets will have multiple zones, PvP is important to the team, customization will be very important and all the stuff you'd expect from a game this immense.

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Tags: bioware, ea, electronic-arts, group-dynamics, healing, holy-trinity, ign, lucasarts, star-wars, swtor, the-digital-continuum

Reader Comments (23)

WoW - Priest
Conan - Priest of Mirta
WAR - Zealot
Vanguard - Cleric

These were all my mains, heaven forbid some people actually enjoy healing. Most of requirement problems for groups can be solved simply by having something like a dual spec system, and before you cry WoW clone again, FFXI had a similar system.

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Self-regenerating health would turn every encounter to something like in halo: run away and find cover, or kite enemies till everyone's health regenerates. The tougher the fight, the more time you probably would spend not fighting, but doing health management oddly enough.

Medpacks actually happened. In phantasy star online if you were a CAST, which is a robot, you couldn't use healing spells. A full party of them could only heal by using bought items. It worked, but only because you could instantly telepipe back to the town hub to replenish. I'm not sure how it would work in a more complex MMO though, or a raid level encounter.

People rag on healing, but healing classes actually reduce the amount of time all players spend managing health, which is why they are so prevalent. A medpack or regeneration approach would shift healing to everyone, rather than making it less important.

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That is exactly the thing that would make it cooler than every other game out there. In a real battle, you don't have everyone taking damage in roughly the same way at the same time. Imagine a sniper off in the distance that maybe has to engage in some hand to hand with ads once his location is known. He can't possibly in range of healers. Or, how about spacecraft? Healers are going to be shooting beams up and healing them?

You say most fights would be dominated with running and hiding tactics with no healers. How about its made similar to mana management? You fight for awhile, you heal for awhile? Different people have to jump in and kite or fight during bosses where they opt to use the tired formula for boss fights used in every other mmo ever made.

My main point is that I don't think they should make two classes make or break a guilds or groups ability to progress. I've been in too many situations where a gruop of 9 or 24 people are waiting around for a tank or healer. Sometimes it's an actual lack of people , sometimes it's some healer/tank on a power trip: "You'll start when I feel like getting there!"

Every encounter should be able to be completed by any mix of players. If no healers are available then you have to use the kite and hide method. If no tanks are available, then maybe there is a strategy to kill totally from range, or some kind of timed puzzles for trapping it, or anything other than what we've seen 10million times before. Please, for the love of god, don't build every fight around the tired old "holy trinity." If they start out with the idea that any mix of players can complete a boss, then they will approach it differently and, blasphemy though it may be, we'll have something new, fresh, and different.

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