Heyas,
I just wanted to take a moment to address something that has been a hot topic among the community, the infamous "heal ball".
Healing is an important role in Dreadnought, and we will continue to support it as a fun and tactically critical component of our game. Nonetheless, a combination of community feedback, collected data, and our firsthand experience is telling us that in their current state, our healing mechanics are not generating the fun, strategic experience that we are after. This is especially prevalent in the higher tiers of play due to unique combinations of modules and access to Officer Briefings.
The goal of Dreadnought is to offer amazing counter-play when players utilize diverse builds and strategies: this is one of the fun and challenging aspects of the game. In general, a variety of different ships should be required to execute any game-winning strategy. Healing in its current state, however, does not encourage evolving strategy or have any strong counters. As a result, ships that are closely grouped with multiple Tactical Cruisers can be nearly impossible to attack or defend against.
To that point, I sat down with some of our devs to discuss our options.
We are actively working on a variety of counters to this tactic while taking care not to hurt Tactical Cruisers’ playability. In the short term, we'll be making adjustments to a variety of existing officer briefings and modules. In addition, we're investigating a wide range of new features that will provide counter-play for healing. We're working on adjustments to how the Tactical Cruisers' beam weapons currently function, which will better define their individual roles as support classes. We'll also be introducing new abilities that reduce the effectiveness of incoming healing on a target for a period of time.
Just an FYI, this will take some time but I want to assure you we're on it.
Thank you for your continued feedback and support,
Mike Donatelli | Game Director | 6FT Games - Dreadnought