Sharecads, Shareheals and Shares

I had the idea of creating in-game support for sharecads-like healing, but I remain unconvinced that it is a good idea.

I assume that most players are aware of sharecads, but if you are new to Clan Lord and never heard of it: sharecads is a macro (originally written by Prince Valiant) which enables a player to automatically share with the healer who is healing that player.  Gorvin has written a sophisticated, updated version of this macro and has it available on his web page.

The sharecads macro is very clever in its application, but it has numerous limitations: it only works if a healer is healing a player with the caduceus (or "cad" for short, hence the macro's name "sharecads"); the macro does not support those healers using the moonstone, nor is there support for the asklepian; and the functionality of the macro relies on scraping the text log for keywords via the macro variable @env.textLog.

For a long while I had felt that the ideal sharecads macro would be more of a "shareheals" macro, in which the macro would be aware of all healing sources and enable the player to automatically share with healers supplying the healing.  I had envisioned that this healing information would be supplied by the server – not the text log – in the form of the macro variable @my.heals.  This value, in theory, would be updated every frame and it would contain a list of the last five healers to provide any healing to the player, either by moonstone, caduceus or asklepian.  New healers would be added to the front of the list, and healers that have ceased to provide healing would be removed from the list.  In theory.

I was initially excited about the potential of this macro support.  A macro scripter could compare the list of names held within @my.shares_out to the list of healers held within @my.heals and determine which healers required a share and which ones could be unshared and delegate a new share as desired and ––

And then I paused, stepped back from this idea and asked myself exactly what problem am I trying to solve?  I became so caught up in the technicalities of the design that I had lost sight of its purpose.

At its core, the purpose of sharecads is to facilitate efficient healing.  The healer using a cad (typically) gets a share from the player running the sharecads macro, and only five healers may benefit from this macro.  I may be wrong, but sharecads seems to be a situational macro, one that is used under a specific set of circumstances.  I can't speak for the frequency of use, but it has been my observation that sharecads is most popular during invasions and events where a large party consists of more than five healers.  I imagine that this macro is less popular in smaller parties that consist of two or three healers.

This lead me to think: instead of relying on a macro to haphazardly share the last five healers to heal a player by a caduceus, wouldn't it make sense to offer an option of allowing more than five healers to efficiently heal one player – without the need of sharing the healers?  For example, suppose that players had access to an item, something like an orga eye, which when held in the player's right hand then that player would be healed almost as efficiently as if that player had shared the healer?  Would such an item be a reasonable alternative to the sharecads macro?

I see pros and cons for such an item.  The pros are that the unsharing player gets healed almost as efficiently as a sharing player, and all healing styles (stoners and cadders) may equally enjoy the benefits of this efficiency.  Players using this item also retain control over their shares instead of relying on the disorderliness of sharecads-assigned shares.  The cons are that such an item requires inventory space, and cadding healers would not automatically receive a share from healing a player holding this hypothetical item.

Allow me to be clear: this idea is no where near to being "on the list."  This is all vaporware, and I view this example as an interesting challenge in design.  And as I stated, I am not convinced that my idea is a good idea.

But I still think about it.