I thought about writing this “in character” for fun, but I’ll spare you all the misery of that. Considering the character is an insect, that would lead to internal dialogue that might… bug people. *ahem* So instead, I’ll write this from the other end of the screen. This is just a friendly note, asking you for one favor.
CUT US A LITTLE FREAKING SLACK, OKAY!?
Ok, deep breaths–lemme explain. In DC Universe Online I have a LOT of characters. One of my friends called me an “altoholic”. Most of them are fun ideas I wanted to try or mechanics I wanted to really explore, but more than a few are utility. I went out of my way to make one of each class on the villain and hero side. For this, I want to talk about YelowJak, my heroic healer.
He’s the one in the middle, with the bug wings. If that wasn’t obvious.
A quick “up to speed” part here for non MMO players. MMOs have different basic classes for their players. Each class has a role on a team when you play the team portions (instances, dungeons, raids, whatever they’re called in your flavor of game). The classic ones are “DPS” (Damage Per Second) who just beat the snot out of the bad thing, “Tanks” who absorb damage from the bad thing and keep its attention away from the group, and “Healers” who keep the DPS and Tanks standing in spite of their best efforts to go down.
Using their spells / powers / abilities they instantly heal all the cuts, bruises, abrasions, broken bones, damaged internal organs and other boo-boos that happen to the party as they make their way through danger. Players also carry potions / elixirs / sodas that do this too, but healers are more efficient and don’t need space in a bag. As you can imagine, the ability to instantly set, mend and heal all the injuries that can happen on a grand adventure makes healers a high demand item. So why don’t you see more people doing it?
Oh, please, allow me to tell you why not.
Healing in DCUO is a heck of a lot easier than in some MMOs. I remember in World of Warcraft healing was a 1 on 1 affair for the most part. You had to highlight a person (elf, cow, whatever) on your screen and cast your healing spell to make them feel all better. Very few spells were “wave your hands in the air like you just don’t care” and send a wave-o-heals through your whole party. DCUO, on the other hand, is like that. All healing affects the whole party. The down side is you only get 6 abilities on your “loadout”, so you have to choose wisely.
So here is reason number one, and you’re going to see a theme very quickly in all of these so get used to it. Unless you have the things that other people think you need in your loadout / spell bar / quick keys, you get yelled at. Sometimes literally if they have a microphone. While livestreaming I’ve had SEVERAL people come in and chastise me for not having the “right” loadout on my bar. Even when I explain that this works for me, that’s not good enough and unless I do the “perfect loadout,” then they won’t shut up. And (insert favored deity here) help you if it’s on World of Warcraft. I swear, those people have to give themselves ulcers worrying about what’s on my hotkeys.
This is a common problem in MMOs in general, in that the number crunchers have come up with the “best” design for any given character class, and if you don’t use it you, in the vernacular, “suck”. Regardless if what you’re doing is in fact working perfectly well, regardless if you know the mechanics and why you have what you have, regardless if the party makes it through in one shot, unless you’ve got the cookie-cutter spells / abilities, you are a bad healer.
It’s seriously so bad on my livestream that it comes with a disclaimer stating “My loadout is unorthodox” They still complain.
Reason number two : If you are deemed a bad healer, you will get yelled at. A lot. Now how this is determined varies case by case, but a lot of the time it’s based on what people think are cut and dry results. “We wiped, the healer sucks.”
Well, of course we failed at the mission. You didn’t cover the back where I was, I got mauled by 5 spiders who simply refused to listen to reason and logic, and once I was out of the way they decided you’d make a nicer meal as they over-tenderized me. Or you decided that, since you had a healer, you could jump head long into a pit filled with creatures that give Stephen King nightmares, assuming that I could somehow protect you from the top of the two-hundred foot lip of the chasm you leapt from. Or barring the drop, you ran headlong into that bad guy who’s 3 stories tall, has chainsaws and snickity-snack blades for arms and legs, venom injecting needles on its tail and named “CUDDLES”. Yeah, sure, you have a death-wish and I can keep you alive in spite of your best efforts to die? I have limits, you know!
Or sometimes it’s even more basic. You didn’t heal THEM fast enough, so you “suck”. Well to be honest, in many instances if I had the ability I wouldn’t heal some individual players specifically to make you shut up. Or sometimes they ask me to heal a party that I simply can’t. There’s a World of Warcraft term called “pulling the room”, or making everything angry at you so you have 50-60 enemies to fight all at once. Fast way to run a dungeon, faster way to cause the party to die when the healer screams “I CAN’T HEAL THAT!”
Seriously! NO!
Reason three : It’s your fault. Always. So you get yelled at. No, really, I’m not joking.
The old joke is “If the tank dies, blame the healer. If the healer dies, blame the tank. If the group dies, blame the hunter.” (It’s a WOW joke, smile and nod if you don’t get it) In reality, if the group dies, the healer is blamed. Always. Why? “It’s YOUR JOB to keep us standing!” Sure, you’re being gnawed on by “Cuddles” and you expect me to keep you alive, as well as the rest of the party? You didn’t tell me you were going to make everything in the world angry in an effort to speed-run this instance. I’m not really set up for that, you know.
So because you don’t have the power to make the instance end faster, you “suck”. Well gosh, I’m sorry that I’m not high enough level to cast the “make you invincible against all the things in here” spell. That’s why I’m running this damn thing, so I CAN get that spell sooner or later, thank you large! Oh, I see, you’re gonna kick me out of the group for sucking so hard, that’ll help me get the gear I need to perform at the level you’re demanding. Thank you.
Reason four : We get downright verbally abused if a player deems we “suck”. At the best, they’ll tell you “I’d rather run without a healer than with this guy”. At worst… I can’t reprint what they say in a “PG” article, let alone “R” rated ones. People see the healers as a utility, almost as a non-player character and more of an AI. So if the player isn’t robotic perfect, well, they complain as if they should be.
Reason five: Healer gear sucks, so you get yelled at for dying a lot after they make the whole world angry at your group. Healers are called, in the vernacular, “squishy”. For the most part, we’re not allowed to wear the big armor plates or the really good protection stuff. We get, well, rooked. In Warcraft (again with the WoW…) they make guys wear dresses and t-shirts and send them into battle. Now if they let us wear KILTS, I’d get into that. Umm, wait, errr… *ahem*.
In every game they do this for balance reasons. If a healer could wear that much protection and heal themselves, they’d be unstoppable. In the real world, there’s a REASON combat medics wear plate carriers! They’re not dumb!
TECHNICALLY, “Kevlar” is cloth armor…
I could go on, but I think you get the idea.
But the purpose of my writing this isn’t to just complain. Granted, it’s cathartic and feels good to get this out of my system, but this isn’t just for that. This is for you. Yeah, the rest of you people who play this game with me. The ones who celebrate when the healer arrives in an instance only to yell at me for not keeping your character alive while “Cuddles” uses you as a chew toy. You want to make my life easier? You want a better experience? He’s how to do it.
1. Lay off. Seriously. Most of the time the healer is doing everything they can to make sure you don’t “FDGB“. (See top of article, this was your memory test) I say “most” because I’ve seen people queue up as a “healer” to get into an instance faster and then not want to heal. But most of the time, we are genuinely trying, so please, lay off the insults.
2. If you’re not dying, don’t tell us how to do our job more efficiently. Results matter, not techniques. If I’m not doing exactly what you want, but in spite of that we’re still kicking tail, shut up and keep going, because we’re gonna finish the fight.
3. If we ARE dying, critique is better than complaints. If you have a suggestion, you can say it in a nice way. “You’re using your big heal too soon, wait ’till the tank is at half or so before you cast it” will get you further than a string of profanity followed with “L2PN00b!” and “LURN UR ROLL!” Related, I’ll learn my “role” as soon as you learn to “English”, ok? Ok. Moving on.
Just sayin‘….
4. Play as if we weren’t there. Too many players see a healer in the group and take it as “Oh, I can run into the dragon’s mouth and start swinging my sword without dying!” We only have so many healing points we can throw out there at a time; often times it won’t be as many as you’re going to lose while you’re attacking a dragon from inside its digestive tract.
5. Play smart. If the game has a block mechanic, use it. If you’re low on health, down a heal drink. We are there to keep you standing, but we can’t save you from your own stupidity.
6. If you actually DO want to do something stupid, let us know first. Stupid ideas work sometimes, if you let us know you’re gonna do it. We can focus in on you, prepare our strongest spells / abilities, get into a position that we can heal you better, or otherwise be braced for impact.
7. And finally, If you got nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Look, lemme turn my soapbox on its end so I can stand a little taller here and preach this. We’re playing a role in the game that everyone needs but not many people want to put up with. We’re taken for granted until we’re not doing the job up to YOUR standards.
My standard is seriously “are we finishing the fight?” If the answer is yes, we’re doing fine. We may barely scrape by because my gear isn’t high enough to carry you, but we’re fine. At the very least you can be understanding that we’re doing all of this healing with the full knowledge that most of you will be ungrateful sods who will blame us for being unable to rescue you from your own stupidity.
You want to make a healer’s day? Thank them. No, really, at the end of an instance or a raid, when someone says “t/y all, great run, great heals” that makes my night. Optimally, if people don’t even notice the job I’m doing then I’m doing it right. The better players know this, and if they don’t notice me doing my healing, they thank me for pulling their bacon out of the fire without them knowing I did it.
It won’t be pretty, but we’ll get through this.
Now as for me, well, like I said I have a LOT of characters in DCUO. YelowJak is just one. My main character is something called a “Controller” or, humorously in world, a ‘troller. My job there? I heal the power bar so the healer can keep doing their thing. Well that and putting bad guys into hamster balls, but I’ll save that for another day.
