This is a non-issue, I think. It is an issue if support roles are limited and pose a non-challenge to the players, otherwise, if the challenge is there, people will play them.

Most designers make the mistake of making really complex and details fighting engines for the warriors, but terribly bland and unexciting healing/buffing/support systems. It's rather sad because while the fighting for the warrior or mage climbs with difficulty, the healer will tend to plateau and just be "there" or unchanging at some point in their play experience.

Action based games (that is, games that are quicker - take quake or team fortress) healing can be dull because there's really no other dynamic to it. Run, heal, run, heal. It's lacking.

Other players get various weapons but a healer gets what? His heal wand and that's it? All I'm saying is, the support role is more bland when it is in fact, more bland. That is, it is quite obviously less challenging or rewarding as being the hero-type role.

Healers are heros. I don't know about you, but if someone saved my life, I'd rather appreciate them. That goes both ways in heroics.

Warrior saves lives via protection by the blade.
Healer saves lives via protection or curing by the remedy.

Sorry if I'm restating some other posts--I didn't go through them all. At any rate, I love playing as support characters. Here's a small anecdote.

I was having a small LAN Party with some of my friends. We were playing some Neverwinter Nights. Most of my buddies liked being the direct, kick ass players (you know, fighters, rangers, that kind of thing). I was the only cleric in the group. I enjoyed running around healing them when they needed it. Though the coolest moments is when we'd come up upon a large group of undead. They would run to engage them, but I'd just do a Turn Undead and suddenly all the undead would explode before the big tough fighters even got to them. :)

A couple things come to my mind... In the game Red Baron (~1991) you were a WWI fighter pilot, and every once in a while you'd team up with one of the famous aces. Flying as the wingman of Manfred von Richthofen (the "Red Baron") really felt like a brush with celebrity. Similarly, in Tie Fighter you play a rather minor role in the grand scheme of things, but in a couple of missions you get to fight alongside Darth Vader and it makes you feel connected to the story in a special way. It's like "Yeah, I was there with Vader when that happened" and everybody knows who you're talking about.

Now, the question is can you come up with a character that'd feel as significant to the player as the Red Baron or Darth Vader, so that he's satisfied, indeed honored to be in a supporting role? You could for example make a game about Julius Caesar's rise to power, from the point of view of a (fictitious) character working in Caesar's army, fighting under his command, protecting him from assassins and so on, ultimately becoming a close friend and advisor. It could be very satisfying if done right.

I think playing as a support character would be great in a futuristic spaceship.

For example, an engineer could start out as an underling performing routine repairs on the ship which could be fun and challenging. And then work up to helping out with upgrades and performing technological miracles to improve the ships systems.

Then during battles, they would have to keep on their toes to keep the ship running.

Also, it would be great if in addition to The Ships Resources, you could have some things for yourself and then use them to build things like anti-gravity belts or some other gadgets. Which you could show to your superiors to get promotions or training or the resources to build better stuff.

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Original post by catch Most designers make the mistake of making really complex and details fighting engines for the warriors, but terribly bland and unexciting healing/buffing/support systems. It's rather sad because while the fighting for the warrior or mage climbs with difficulty, the healer will tend to plateau and just be "there" or unchanging at some point in their play experience.

I think you've hit the nail on the head, but here's the problem as I see it: Combat works because there's an interplay between arms and armor as well as tactical positioning. This gives a wealth of choices. Medical gameplay would be a layer on top of this.

For example, I can very easily come up with a similar system for medicine which would make a healer have to make strategic tradeoffs. Like combat, some could involve varying levels of risk, and timers (like blood loss) could even add some of the adrenaline rush. You could deal with status effects which have contingencies (stabelize a wounded ally before performing surgery), diseases which require experimentation and a sort of viral alchemy, etc., etc.

But this complexity must then be overlaid on the combat model that NPCs use. I made a thread about this here, and the general response has been concern about the added complexity.

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Action based games (that is, games that are quicker - take quake or team fortress) healing can be dull because there's really no other dynamic to it. Run, heal, run, heal. It's lacking.

Agreed, but I'm thinking of support roles as stand alone gameplay in an RPG which may not always be intense action.

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Other players get various weapons but a healer gets what? His heal wand and that's it? All I'm saying is, the support role is more bland when it is in fact, more bland. That is, it is quite obviously less challenging or rewarding as being the hero-type role.

Yes, there would need to be varieties of items the healer could use, tradeoffs to using them and intrinsic strategies involved. There might be different equipment to stop blood loss, set broken bones, resist disease, detect hidden injury, etc. Each character could be a bit of a puzzle, as well, with success being based on your ability to observe the solution then apply the proper remedies.

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Original post by The Shadow Nose I think playing as a support character would be great in a futuristic spaceship. For example, an engineer could start out as an underling performing routine repairs on the ship which could be fun and challenging. And then work up to helping out with upgrades and performing technological miracles to improve the ships systems.

:) That's sort of where I'm going with this as I explore the implications of you being able to take non-leadership roles. If in multiplayer friends can crew a single ship there needs to be supporting gameplay to do this that stays interesting over time. So that implies that there should be no reason why, in single player mode, the same gameplay that was available in multiplayer can't be available in single player.

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Also, it would be great if in addition to The Ships Resources, you could have some things for yourself and then use them to build things like anti-gravity belts or some other gadgets. Which you could show to your superiors to get promotions or training or the resources to build better stuff.

Item creation, yes that would be a great way of improving yourself. Awhile back I did have an idea, not yet complete, that would sort of do this based on a point system. It didn't necessarily involve showing your gadgets off, but it involved saving time. Anything you did to save time got you rewards, but might come with consequences: If you built gadgets, for instance, that was less time you could spend allying with other crewmembers; you could cut corners on your waypoint route of assigned tasks, but that could come back to bite you later, etc.

In the model of kill monster-get item-level up, this would never work. But in an RPG which was not solely focused on combat I think it might.

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Original post by Steadtler The major downside to me is the solo play, which is often impossible as a support character. Playing in groups is fun, but I like to have my own adventures too.

I think alot of times this occurs because the mechanics for the support character are weak compared to a combat character. It's all about problem solving: In most games, the problems are a bunch of self-willed things that can do you harm. The best solution, often, is to harm them back. It's a very linear, overt relationship.

A more sophistocated system would require more variables under the hood. For instance, healing a group of opponents who happen to prize nobility might be exactly the thing that stops a battle.

Funny enough, it's sort of a real world problem: Is the root of all power a weapon?

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Original post by Way Walker I find them more interesting because their role is more passive. This usually means more forethought must be put into each action.

Right, I think one reason why they might not be as popular is this. Run and Gun players will find them frustrating, your average player may not like being dependent, and in the case of AI NPCs often don't communicate their plans, so you have no idea of the big picture of what they're trying to do.

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Original post by Wavinator I wouldn't say most don't support it, but that most don't support it well. I remember in Asheron's Call (the first) there was barely anyone who wasn't their own support character. And, even before everyone figured out the magic formula, it was impossible to get experience as a support character.

Good example. It shows that in this case experience needed to be party based, not individual action based (or there needed to be a reward scheme for healing and support that couldn't be powermaxed).

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Don't know how your game works, but that could be interesting. However, like in Infantry, it doesn't need to be detailed to be interesting. Many a tense moment trying to stay alive while keeping the troops healthy and a steady flow of reinforcements.

If you're in combat, yes this sounds right, because you'd be worrying about cover, enemy location, etc. all while trying to get to a guy who may be dying.

But what if you were not in combat? (In the example I'm working on, you'd be aboard a starship) Whatever factors that made being a combat medic cool would have to be duplicated. The random encounters would have to be biased toward medical challenges so that you'd have something to do.

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I love it! "Get them, my pretties!" I like the idea of not being able to do anything directly, but being able to slow the enemy down long enough for your friends to arrive. I also like the indirectness, sending out your pets to do the job. I imagine a tinkerer unleashing a clever new device with almost a tear in his eye over his love for his creation, or saying "I've got just the thing" as he pulls some strange contraption out of his pack.

:D Yes, alot of your gameplay might be in dreaming up gadgets before you even got into battle!

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Ya know, I always wanted to dominate Civ2 economically, but the mechanics just weren't there. I enjoy the "My strength is my friends" or "Pull a few strings" aspect of this character.

Alpha Centauri came close to this, but again, the problem is that the combat system overly rewards aggressive action. A rich banker simply gets plundered. The system should be one where a rich banker can destabelize an aggressors allies and motivate neutrals into action for fear of some consequence, just as oil rich but strategically weak nations now are able to do (as in Gulf War I, for instance)

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Quote: I think most gamers would regard these roles as too passive, or require that they be complete games in and of themselves rather than minigames or character classes in a game. In most RPGs, everyone defaults to a fighter, no matter what they are normally, because most RPGs put all their detail into combat. No, I think making them games in and of themselves, or even minigames, would make them less appealing to me. I would prefer that they work together with and enhance the more active classes. Like in movies, the hacker taking down the security as our hero infiltrates the building. Sure, there should be a specific skill needed in doing this, but calling it a minigame makes it seem like something seperate. Either don't make it feel like a minigame, or make it part of the regular mechanics (like turret placement in Infantry).

Let me clarify and see if you still have the same concern: I have in mind a bunch of representations of your skill tests that pop up from time to time. Hacking, for instance, might bring up a dialog with number combinations and a timer, which calls you to solve the puzzle before the timer runs out or you lose some resource or trigger alarms. Surgery might bring up a stylistic anatomy respresentation involving dragging and dropping remedies into key locations, again some timed. Engineering might have a mechanical diagram with a grid overlay upon which you could drag and drop items to change things like powerflow and functionality.

This would superimpose itself partially over your normal combat view, which is a fair approximation of being preoccupied and needing others to cover you while you do your work.

If you don't do this sort of thing, thing skill tests end up being a clickfest. See a door you need to hack? Equip bypass kit and click. Ally with a broken bone? Equip splint and click.

If the game's sole focus is not about combat, I think there needs to be a bit more detail (like alchemy in Morrowind or the tumbler puzzles in Dead to Rights)

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Original post by Fingers_ Similarly, in Tie Fighter you play a rather minor role in the grand scheme of things, but in a couple of missions you get to fight alongside Darth Vader and it makes you feel connected to the story in a special way. It's like "Yeah, I was there with Vader when that happened" and everybody knows who you're talking about.

Haha, I remember this. In the briefing you get the message, "And just one thing... be sure not to give the Dark Lord any orders." (I did anyway, btw, and nothing happened... I always thought your ship should explode or something ;>)

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Now, the question is can you come up with a character that'd feel as significant to the player as the Red Baron or Darth Vader, so that he's satisfied, indeed honored to be in a supporting role? You could for example make a game about Julius Caesar's rise to power, from the point of view of a (fictitious) character working in Caesar's army, fighting under his command, protecting him from assassins and so on, ultimately becoming a close friend and advisor. It could be very satisfying if done right.

I could do this if I were doing a linear game. You could hear constant stories about this hero, have NPCs mention her or him, have them even come and anonymously rescue the player for buildup, then introduce them.

But in an open ended game, you can't guarantee all of that. Sure, you could have luminaries, but you can't guarantee that the player will always be working with them.

It's a great idea, though.

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Original post by Way Walker Like I said, for me, it's not acknowledgement since I know I did my part. For me it's variety.

Gotcha!

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That said, NPC gratitude has always seemed a bit hollow to me. I know there's no one on the other side, I know that the game stuck my kill ratio, my healing rate, etc. through some formula, the number that came out was higher than some magic number, and thus it printed certain text to the screen.

Just out of curiousity, but does this apply in combat? After all, the enemies are just AI which often are given your exact x,y,z and range and sometimes even current action, even while you're hiding (RTC Wolfenstein, elite guards know when you're about the throw a grenade).

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However, I, personally, could enjoy being a support character to NPCs if their AI was good enough (i.e. they don't do anything stupid) and the support character was interesting enough (e.g. I'm not just the medic off safely in the corner; I'm the medic on the frontlines, having to concentrate on staying alive and keeping my team alive). Granted, though, that your Wild Weasel and Diplomat would be more interesting when dealing with NPCs than a medic.

Yeah, the medic actually is highly questionable in peace-time situations. The biota is pretty vicious in some places despite suits and filters, and in places whole regions are tainted with mental and physical status effects which must be warded off.

I have always seen the need for support characters to be able to do something in the offtime between emergencies, though. A robust research and item creation system might really help here, as would social leveling among NPCs (again, we're talking non-combat).