WARNING: These are my own opinions and my own experiences. In no way shape or form am I saying this is for the entire player base as a whole. A little backstory about me. I main healer and troll (sometimes) only. I cant tank I'm terrible at it but I still try. Cant DPS worth **** but I still try when the ROLE is NEEDED. I've been here since launch and I had quit DC (unfortunately) for about two years because I couldn't afford for DLC's/memberships and I needed to focus on school. So I just came back last December (2017) and it's like i've returned to a clown fiesta. 1. Que times are ridiculously long. 2. Everyone either sits in HQ/police stations/nightclubs DOING NOTHING. (Nothing new, but at least they que'd back then.) 3. There's no communication within alerts and raids (IF I get a ******* que.) 4. Lastly, if/when I do get into a que, no one wants to play support roles. I have no problem solo healing/trolling. But if there's no tank, no heals, or a troll everyone just leaves after one wipe. I mean I've practically sat there and waited for an hour or two just to get a que, but if no one is switching roles or at least trying to make the alerts/raids smoother and less of a headache, everyone just quits. Everyone wants to DPS but then they all want to ***** and complain that there's no power in the group or no tank or no heals when their all sitting on roles that they can switch to, to fill in that missing role. It's really starting to piss me off, honestly. It's taking 10X longer just to gear up then it did before because no one wants to switch off DPS and its like why am I even paying for membership at this point. I probably sound like some whiny spoiled brat, but I have searched through the threads and some of the things I've mentioned have also been talked about, but me being me I had to make my own thread...to blow off steam I guess xD. But if you read all of that thank you for listening to me and I wanna hear you guy's feedback and see if you feel the same way. Thank you!
I noticed lately a drop in the healer population, last few times I ran elite it was always the healers that were the last to be found, and I usually end up getting stuck healing (I main as a dps, I don't want to heal most of the time) because it takes forever to find two healers. Perhaps the power cost problems with healing are finally starting to catch up and people just aren't being vocal about it.
Support roles were never liked by the community and in most of the games there are fewer support players (compared to dps). The changes to the support roles made some players change to dps, but i don't think it's the only factor (ofc, if they reworked the support roles and made them better to play (with agressive and defensive styles), there would be more players trying them, also if trolls weren't just batteries and healers didn't require a lot from the trolls(the lack of one may cause the lack of another, even if by a small degree). Since the population decreased, you'll also see a decrease in the support mains numbers, ofc many DPS players left the game, but it's not as noticeable, because there were a billion of DPS players in the game. In most of the games we have the "no1 likes to play a support" issue, and it usually never changes. Even if the devs do something about it, we'll just see a small increase in the numbers. Unless the population increases, you'll still have a hard time trying to find a support. The only thing i can think right now is the common and dumb answer of: Join a Good League, i know it's not really a decent advice and barelly of any help, but theres almost nothing we can do at this point, and asking the players to play a support in roles in the forums won't help a lot either, since most of us who take our time to write here have a good knowledge of the game and play multiple alts/roles.
new player I play as a water healer on everything, I dont like being a dps for the fact that I only have one armoury, I am not going to buy one, I am using the free one, they need to make it to where you can do more damage in the support role so when you are soloing content you can get thru it fast. the damage output is like at the cr39 level like omg, but I love healing, water all the way aqua man, but none the less support role is always my thing.
Three thing i think would help make support roles more appealing: 1. Make all healer powers heal, like how all troll powers restore power 2. Make trolls only be used for crowd control and not as batteries/ energy restoration 3. Give tanks taunting powers. Just add extra aggro to certain powers This probably should have been done during revamp as it would take a reworking of the entire roles but it would make them easier to pick up and master. I'm not 100% sure about the tank thing but it seems to work in other games.
I feel the way the game is set up now compared to what it was like at original release lends itself to a diminishing support role base. I’ll make an assumption that people who take pride in running support roles only do so for their friends or league, maybe because it’s more appreciated? This is my list of things that in my opinion have directly, or indirectly, affected how people view playing support roles; i) the DPS strength side of a power, ii) DPS role being more power self sufficient than in the past, iii) lack of dmg dealt by support roles in general. iv) Demise of PVP activity. I feel people used to take support a bit more seriously when it was always highly sort after in arenas. v) Difficulty of current content.
you do know that all powers that do yellow damage on enemy take agro when in tank role right? even if you have some iconical power and you are in tank role it will take agro... if it doesnt then its a bug or scripted that way. and your first point... which of the healing powers doesnt heal lol? im really curios... exept if you ment like every healer power having a HOT which they do... all having same supercharge? all having same healing effect just diffrent animation?... whats the point of picking power then , every power should have something special.
I sense slight snark in this comment... I prefer solo healing, others always want a second heal for back up. Which leads to a sticky scenario because if you wipe, the first thing they'll do is blame the heals saying "told you we should have got a second heal" when really it's because of people not paying attention.
You hit it on the head with heal troll tank 4 league and friends. Their is only 2 ways i play support one league. Second if that role is knocked out. I often if asked if i can heal troll tank say i only have one armory but truth be told have 63 between 21 characters. For me im comfortable healin 4 my league i know there game play no what is expected of me.
Where to begin? This game has been pew pew centric since the beginning. 1. The first role you see is the damage role after character creation. 2. What is supposed to be your primary role for your power is introduced at lvl 10 as an after thought, even though its built in the power's description. 3. The first page you see on the SB is damage points. 4. Dmg is the first thing people praise or complain about about on successful completion of (or during) a run...ad nauseam. 5. There are no dummies made in war room.. etc for support..they are there to measure dmg. 6. The common reason (most not all) people switch powers..is for dps AKA FOTM. Devs put a huge claim and livelihood on it. 7. Support holds no challenge or is boring( especially the troll role..mindless one button spam) 8. TCs and other money grabbing BS chased ALOT off.
This game, as mentioned, has always had a definite lack of interest in developing the support roles properly. Mosquito hits home with the problem.. Until level 10 absolutely no one in this game is anything but a DPS.... no armor drops before that for any support role and even after you finally get that RING in the mail from Oracle or Calculator more often than not if you have 2 or 3 pieces of support gear by the time you hit level 30 you were VERY lucky. Hey look at those early, below 30 level alert, for a clear indicator.... Okay so we don't even have that RING until level 10... yet at level 9 we can join a team and go do Area 51. Now these days by the time a player completes that first story arc after leaving Brainiac's ship they are at level 10. So is it unreasonable to assume that Area 51 is designed to be accomplished with absolutely NO SUPPORT roles at all? To answer that YES IT IS because i have been on any number of team that did just that. NOW ever wonder where players came up with the idea of less support and more DPS on alerts and raid. 'MORE BURN!!" ? Look no further than Area 51. If it works there why not do it on everything? As Mosquito mentioned .. how do you test your powers to see which one's work best? A DPS goes to the War Room and attacks a sparring dummy. A HEALER? joins a team and gets to see how the powers work while 3-7 other people are depending on them to keep them all alive. Trolls? same thing and a TANK? When you consider we have some bosses out there that are designed to pretty much ignore aggro and hop around attacking anything and everything just exactly how do you TEST to see how well your aggro is working? Now with my Atomic tank I can tell when I enter a room use my combo melee attacks and suddenly ever member of every mob in the room is huddled around me getting knocked on their butts and taking HUGE amounts of damage but what about the other tank power sets? In the past ??? years what is the biggest issue the DEV team is working on and we see countless threads on the subject.. Power Balance... This power does way more damage than THIS power FIX IT! And of course we also had that whole era with WM and Am where "what do we need a troll for we can create our OWN power" Yeah if any of those players ever bothered to learn how to actually use those powers right. heck I have seen players that don't even know how to use a healing barrel much less use their weapon to produce POWER. And these days? I have trolls that put out a good deal of power but to be perfectly honest i am not even sure where it comes from? There is no one or two "special" powers that produce power over time .. now supposedly every attack does that but wouldn't that mean as long as I am attacking mobs I should be seeing little blue numbers constantly ticking above everyone's head?
Traditionally, people are always gonna go dps. Its more fun and action packed. People like me have a thankless job because im always doing everything except dps because everyone else wont make an effort to dual role. On a game already low population, things just are what they are.
There is also the problem of no in game tutorial to help the newer players even know what the other roles do. DPS pew pew pew. OH you say i can heal, troll, or tank ? Where can i get the stuff to do that?
Power doesn't have to do damage to generate aggro in tank stance. Even shield or healing powers will generate aggro.
The revamp really pushed me away from support roles which pushed me away from the game altogether. I login about 3 or 4 times a month and since the revamp they have still not fixed healer power cost outside of electric, Hybrid vs superpowerd, or the other key fixed people complained about months ago. I was a healer main who did everything that required 4 or more people, but now I only dps because healing has gone from being fun to being a pain in the **** on any power besides electric. I want to enjoy the game, but with all the gear costs, loot locks, TC, artifacts and money grabs to call DCUO a superhero clone of Neverwinter, the fun of the game has been removed for me at least. To the OP dps is fun. But like myself and others found the revamp to be a bit harsh on support roles which led many people away from the game or switch to dps permanently.
One thing that wasn't mentioned, support roles always got all the abused. If a group wipe, it was a tank;s fault, or healer's fault. If the group has no power, it was the troller's fault. Never a dps fault for doing terrible damage or spamming powers.
It could be an issue of when you're running the content. Usually the heavier activity is between rest Thursday up to Saturday...after that, a lot of the healers out there will have already done their raids, and most of them are putting groups together for the alerts. Trolls are the hardest to find on most days because of the un-fun state of trolling. To the OP: Part of the problem is that unless you're joining pre-made groups, you're gonna get the runts of the DCUO litter. With Earth 3 being the top of end game, everybody else gets shot up CR wise till they hit T6-T7, and then things slow down to a crawl. When queues do pop, the majority queuing don't have a second armory properly set up....they're going up the ranks too fast to really bother with one. On top of that, a lot of people are terrible at their secondary roles...and they know it (well, some do). Unfortunately the problem is not so easy to fix. They could slow down progression at the lower tiers, but that causes two problems. For starters, anything that slows down new or returning players will also slow down experienced players looking to speed level to end game. The second problem is that it'll mean a smaller pool of players getting into end game content, keeping our player pool small. I don't think anyone has suggested any fix that wouldn't hurt all players. I'll keep reading responses here in case somebody does come up with something worth supporting.
