Suggestion: Make Healers More Viable
There is a problem with the balancing of points and viability in the game currently. I didnt quite grasp how unbalanced the point system for healing was until i got a Challenge to get 3000 points in ...
Forum Discussion
I agree totally. A tweak or two to the way the scoreboard works is needed. It doesn't make a lot of sense to be considered one of the MVPs at the end, yet be in the bottom few players on the scoreboard.
I love playing Sunflower, but often I'm the only healer on the team, so it's extra important to try and incentivise people to play the roles that are not getting played as much in order to try and get well-balanced teams, which makes the game more fun and competitive overall.
I actually know why this happens. And the debate about the score should be elsewhere.
The reason why that person was at bottom is because of Overhealing.
- Overhealing gives 3 XP only per 35 HP (One hero's worth without the Leveling Up upgrade. Not using Cocoon either.).
- What that means is 3 / 35 = 0.08571428571 XP per 1 overhealing HP
- Let us translate that to actual "score" now... Let's suppose that someone got 7,000 Healing (in the scoreboards), that means 7000 x 0.08571428571 = 600 Score Only for 7000 Overheals!
The developers decided NOT TO give plenty of score for overhealing.
Instead, if you want to actually get more score for healing, there are 2 major scenarios you have to focus healing on:
- Heal a critically wounded ally. You will get 5 XP (I'm not sure how many 5 XPs you will get, but I assume it's more than 1.. of course it also depends on whether they keep getting damaged or not as well.)
- Heal an ally that is shooting someone and vanquishing them. You will also get 5 XP Heal Assist.
So, what that all means is... When you look at the scoreboard and see 13,000 healing.... more than half of it could possibly be just "overhealing". The developers decided not to reward overhealing that much and instead made it "skill based". You are rewarded for healing the right allies at the right moment and not for just pressing the button randomly (which I see many people do.).
I will repeat what I said at first again... The debate should be elsewhere.
- Should they even include Overhealing in the "healing" category?
- Should Overhealing XP be buffed?
- Should they remove Overhealing altogether? If they did, the healing score would be true score, and allies will get purely injured (since there won't be overheals, the actual HP would be taken away when damaged by enemy players.) And for that you will gain more score by healing the red HP and not just keep overhealing again and again (which is exactly why you see low scores).
- Should they buff other XP healing? e.g. critically injured allies and healing assist? <- I think that's what they should do. I just want healers to pay attention to whoever needs healing and get rewarded for it handsomely.
- Should there be another category? e.g. the Overhealed ally doesn't die while having less than 35 HP, manages to escape and regenerate HP. This would mean that your Overhealing had protected him from dying in that situation. <- This could be a good idea
So, here's what I'd do... Increase XP for healing critically injured allies and healing assists significantly (e.g. healing a rooted peashooter or another sunflower getting vanquishes or any other hero of course). And also buff reviving XP in general. That is because I know that some players might not be good shooters in general and they can't be assassin Sunflowers or Scientists. I'm not sure about buffing Overhealing score further. Part of me doesn't want there to be more reward for it because it's just pressing a button. Another part of me thinks that it should be increased as a thanks for being a healer and for empowering allies.
That's it, I just wanted to get to the bottom of this issue.
I apologize for any mistakes. Maybe I missed something somewhere, or I miscalculated something.
- @GammaX6 Hi, your analysis is amazing & useful as always, thank you - I very much doubt you've made any mistakes! I wasn't aware of the exact figures but I knew overheals would've played a part in that low xp. I did however, also assume it was largely down to the zero kills, so I apologise for missing the point you were making - I'm going to blame my cold for making my head fuzzy!
I completely agree that overheal xp should be lower than critical heals. My own heal figures are lower than a lot of people's because I focus on those with seriously low health - I do top people up as I pass them on my way to a player than needs help & add overheal to players in a vital defence / capture move but otherwise don't bother with it much. I would quite happily get rid of it, it's just a way of replacing the previous games character health upgrades & doesn't add a lot of value in my humble opinion.
I should also clarify for everyone that I mean you don't get enough overall reward for a character that has basically been hobbled to do little else BUT heal. Previous games healers could revive much easier, which was a valuable source of xp & BOTH were capable of getting kills as well as doing their job. I always put heals & revives over my kills but I really miss the "assassin sunflower" I could be at the same time!
@GammaX6 I honestly don't know what the best answer is, whether it's tweaking the amount of xp you get, or simply making it easier to revive or get kills (I'd like a combination of all of that myself!), but I like a lot of your ideas! I fully agree there are players who don't heal properly but there are lots & lots that do & I think the overall xp package needs to reflect that in some way to encourage people to play healer.
If anyone got to the bottom of this post thank you for reading!!! 😊 @GammaX6 Do you think you can abbreviate on "this discussion should be elsewhere"? I dont know if you mean the post or what you are reffering to. I have done some quick surface level searching and couldnt find any other posts that focuses on the xp aspect alone, its often about how healers are too weak ingame which is not the same as the xp issue at hand. If i posted it under the wrong thread then im sorry, i really didnt know where to put it.
@skybellrock You mentioned:
TL:DR healing and reviving needs to be encouraged. Currently xp and points given for these actions makes it less than favorable. A good healer can make all the difference but is not rewarded.
So, I had to investigate and answer the question of "Why do Sunflowers place at the bottom, even though they have crazy high healing score?" If I remember correctly, having a similar amount of healing in GW1/GW2 usually gave you more score points and placed you higher in the scoreboard. However, in BFN, it's not always the case.
The TL;DR of what I was talking about was: you might get higher healing score, but that's because you "overheal" other teammates and PopCap decided to give it 3 XP only. To you, it seems like 3000 healing is a lot, but most of it could be just "overhealing" only. GW1/GW2 did not have overhealing, and all your healing score was pure healing to injured allies. What I meant by "the discussion should be elsewhere" is whether they should give you more score for overhealing or not... Or if they should try to buff score elsewhere?
The scoring is fine the way it is. It incentivizes you for healing injured allies, especially critically injured ones, and rewards you less for "overhealing" because you can do it at safe places with a press of a button. Meanwhile, healing critically injured allies gives you more score. Playing Sunflower to be at top requires you to pay attention to who needs healing, who's shooting and who needs to be revived while also assisting others with shooting.
Sunflower is balanced and powerful at the moment. She can outgun most zombies with the help of certain upgrades such as Vampire Flower and Egress. But since she lacks mobility-based abilities, she can struggle with certain zombie abilities that can she cannot avoid even with sprinting. That is her only problem in the game, to me anyway.
What PopCap needs to do, regarding Sunflower, is to fix the controls so we can perform better using her. Then, I think she would become better than Kernel Corn himself in terms of usefulness. It is rather difficult aiming using her and trying to get headshots with the current controls.
I'm saying all that because I started playing based on what I posted and I managed to be top 5 as Sunflower in most games. Heal whoever needs it, revive those who can be revived while being in cover. Otherwise, Sunflower isn't the best character to revive others out-in-the-open. There are other heroes who can do it better than her such as Nightcap and Citron.
