Oct 11, 2011

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Halls Of Healing: The Healer, The User And The Interface – Part 2

Each week or thereabouts here at Ask A Jedi, we’ll meditate on the finer points of the healer’s role in Star Wars: The Old Republic. No matter where your allegiance lies, you’re sure to find guidance here in the Halls Of Healing!

Last week in part 1, we had a look at the User Interface in The Old Republic and the importance of it to healers. If you haven’t read part 1 yet I suggest you do so prior to reading this one! Don’t forget to check out the comment section there as well, as there was a lot of great ideas and thoughts on the matter.

This week we will take a closer look at the key features that a good MMORPG healer user interface needs. I apologize for the length of this article, there was so much I wanted to say and didn’t want to split this topic in two. I’ve done my best with the formatting to enable those who want to skim the article quickly, to do so. On with the show…

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Oct 5, 2011

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Halls Of Healing: The Healer, The User And The Interface – Part 1

Each week or thereabouts here at Ask A Jedi, we’ll meditate on the finer points of the healer’s role in Star Wars: The Old Republic. No matter where your allegiance lies, you’re sure to find guidance here in the Halls Of Healing!

The User and the Interface

Some time ago, we ran a poll on whether you think add-ons and User Interface customization should be implemented in the game. It is one of the most hotly debated topics of all time in the world of MMORPGs and there are many good arguments both for and against the idea.

For those of you who are completely new to MMORPGs and gaming in general, the interface is made up of the parts of the game that connects you (the player) with the character. In general “User Interface” is directed specifically at the layout and design of the game controls. In reality, the User Interface is everything from the way key bindings works  to how certain elements in the game give you signals in form of sounds and much more. It’s how you communicate with the game, and how the game communicates with you.

In part 1 of this series, we will take a look at how the visual elements of the user interface are designed in the game, compare it with the User Interface of the largest MMORPG, World of Warcraft – all from the perspective of a healer.

Anyone who has spent a decent amount of time healing in an MMORPG, or any game for that matter, has probably realized that healers needs to rely on the User Interface much more than any of other roles. We constantly need to keep track of current health levels of the entire group while still doing everything else that pertains to raiding. It’s also widely known that the good healers aren’t the ones who just stare at their health bars, but rather the ones that keep their eyes on what’s going on in the encounter.

This being said, the quality of the Interface is a big concern to us healers.

The Interface of The Old Republic

Earlier this year Michael Voigt, the Lead UI Artist at BioWare wrote an extended blog about the progress of the User Interface in Star Wars: The Old Republic, explaining the process from original thoughts to what we currently see.

In this blog he touches on several key elements in building a great User Interface, such as the layout, grouping of elements containing the same information, and many aesthetical aspects.

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Sep 21, 2011

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Halls Of Healing: Healing In The Sith Empire

Each week or thereabouts here at Ask A Jedi, we’ll meditate on the finer points of the healer’s role in Star Wars: The Old Republic. No matter where your allegiance lies, you’re sure to find guidance here in the Halls Of Healing!

Last week we dissected the healing advanced classes on the Galactic Republic side, this week we will take a closer look at the Sith Empire.

The advanced classes have been confirmed to be mirrored with the opposite side, however, it has not been confirmed how much mirrored they will be. Looking over the known abilities for each class you can see a pattern of abilities that are similar or identical to everything  but the name and animations however there’s some abilities that are entirely different. How BioWare will handle this will be very interesting, on one side you have the lore and story of each class and on the other pure balancing and gameplay mechanics. It’s going to be very difficult for them to balance the classes if they are entirely different on each side.

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Sep 6, 2011

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Halls of Healing: Healing In The Galactic Republic

Each week or thereabouts here at Ask A Jedi, we’ll meditate on the finer points of the healer’s role in Star Wars: The Old Republic. No matter where your allegiance lies, you’re sure to find guidance here in the Halls Of Healing!

Since this is my first post I’ll start by introducing myself. I’m Reedyn, a new columnist here at Ask A Jedi and I will be covering the healing related topics. I’m also the chief-nerfherder of a healing community known as Force Heal and a general contributor over at R2-Db. If you want to get in touch or discuss anything feel free to send me a message to my twitter @Reedyn or just leave a comment below! I also want to specifically thank strawbeki for the artwork you can see in the banner above.

Healing in Star Wars: The Old Republic

Star Wars: The Old Republic is a game that, similar to the many other MMORPGs out there, is built upon the traditional class trinity with the roles that we are so familiar with: the tank, the damage dealer and of course, the healer.  The healer’s job is to keep the group alive, while the tank holds aggro and the damage dealers kill the target. More or less.

To the majority of people, keeping the group alive consists of using skills that restore the health of your fellow players. This is how the vast majority of MMORPGs are built when it comes to healing, and it’s a concept that works. However, to the more advanced players, keeping the group alive involves much more than simply using your healing skills. It can involve using cooldowns on your group, reviving a party member back to life, crowd controlling mobs and even in some situations damage dealing and tanking.

For Star Wars: The Old Republic, every class has a wide variety of supportive abilities and damage dealing skills that don’t necessarily fit the mold of healers past. All of these things allow healing advanced classes to have a much more engaging playstyle than players may be accustomed to in previous games.

In this first article we will dissect the surface of the healing advanced classes of the Galactic Republic. Keep in mind, most of the data is missing and probably subject to change!

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