Do you like the current med pack mechanic or want changes?

(warbie) #81

I see the arguments for removing self healing, but we should bear in mind that without it the medic won’t be as effective at doing his job, nor will his job be as interesting/rewarding. I’m talking purely support here, not combat effectiveness.

(Raviolay) #82

So can you agree that medics should have health regen, and be the only class to have it, and also field ops have ammo regen likewise they are the only class to have ammo regen. Neither can pick up their respective packs for personal use.

On a side note I think field op’s should have LMG’s & the Soldier could have as a replacement (I have a feeling it’s going to be terrible with no explanation as to why) in the form of a china lake with 2/3 rounds or RPG. Giving the solider all round deadliness as he can knock out the EV with it, while the other team screams noob tube, or rocket fag. I think I have answered why it will be terrible :D, however I still have this notion that the guy who carries the ammo should have the biggest gun.

(Kendle) #83

No, I still think that’s a bad solution to a problem that doesn’t really exist. I only think health regen for Meds is acceptable if you take away self-heal. I just don’t think self-heal is the problem, unlimited access to free ammo is the problem (as far as rambo’ing is concerned), in my humble opinion. And I base that opinion on the evidence of past games, RTCW Meds had less ammo, they didn’t rambo, ET Meds had more ammo, they did rambo, both could self-heal.

As a principle I think if a class can drop a pack containing some resource the team needs, then he should be able to pick up that pack as well (he is after all a member of his own team, just like any other).

Not being able to pick up his own pack means the team either needs 2 of that class (so they can supply each other) or he needs to auto-regenerate that resource, which brings in the need for additional balancing to make it work, as in exactly how quickly should the resource regenerate, and how does that compare to the current time it takes to select pack - drop pack - pick up pack - re-charge the charge bar when it’s depleted etc.

It’s much easier to balance packs, because you can tweak them individually and adjust the recharge time, bringing elements into play like choosing when and where to drop them, and how many etc. If the resource the pack contains regenerates for the class that drop them, they have no control over their own resource management (they get the resource back whether they choose to or not, and at a fixed speed they can’t control), and if their ability to regenerate their own resource is linked to the ability to provide that resource to others they have no control over resource management period, and the game will have lost an important tactical element.

(tokamak) #84

I find an ammo limit a more superficial constraint on the power of the medic than removing self-heal is. It would still mean that the class is relatively easy to play as long as you got bullets.

[QUOTE=Kendle;437125]That would be acceptable, everyone else being able to regenerate negates the need for a Medic as it is, take away regen for everyone else and the Medic becomes a valuable support class. However it’s pretty close to that already, Med packs already don’t heal instantly and stop healing if damage is taken.

If Medic became the only class that could regenerate then I’d want 2 other things to be in place:-

  1. The old style instant healing to a fixed HP Med packs (currently everyone is being punished to stop rambo Medic’ing).
  2. Regen must be less than the amount of damage a bullet can do within TTK, i.e. if TTK is 1 second and a bullet does 20 hp damage (for example), regen must be less than 20 HP per second.[/QUOTE]

Granted!
He could have the regen currently in place, one that starts with a delay and cancels upon damage.

‘Currently’ is the keyword here. Of course you don’t want a class that will hardly receive any ammo at all. We need to look at expanding the role of the Fops as well. The Fops for example could be the only class that could get ammo from fallen players, take some for himself and convert the rest in supply for ammo packs.

(Kendle) #85

You can find it whatever you like, I’m using evidence from past games. Actual, demonstrable, this is how it did work rather than this is how I think it might work.

As for the rest, I’ll use an analogy I’ve used before. Once upon a time there was a game in the DB genre that had round wheels, now some people want to try oval wheels and a complicated suspension mechanism to make the ride acceptably smooth. I say put the round wheels back on, the ones that worked and didn’t need a tweak to a tweak to a tweak.

(tokamak) #86

It was sufficient back then, I give you that. I just think we can do better and I´d say we almost can´t afford not to push the envelope and bring something new to the genre.

(spookify) #87

Wasnt the most played class in RTCW and ET, Medic? It is the most important class in SW game play. With the medics current setup I will not play it. I will go Soldier. No reviver protection when hiding behind the player either. More balance, I would rather have my shot kill someone rather then a better gun. This doesnt include a Panzer or Mighty Weapon type.

(Raviolay) #88

As for the rest, I’ll use an analogy I’ve used before. Once upon a time there was a game in the DB genre that had round wheels, now some people want to try oval wheels and a complicated suspension mechanism to make the ride acceptably smooth. I say put the round wheels back on, the ones that worked and didn’t need a tweak to a tweak to a tweak.

So you want a re-skin of an old game wonderful, mind you call of duty does it on a yearly basis. I think you should try your hand at preaching religious dogma you could be pope one day:D.

As for resource management, running away spamming med packs & hiding is not too different running & hiding waiting for a health regen. If you feel this class is weak, you could just add additional escape mechanics for the class. Like being able to do short hop with followed with a CD, by double taping one of your WASD keys. Albeit you appear so opposed to change (in fact most are it seems) I feel this is all moot.

(INF3RN0) #89

[QUOTE=tokamak;437137]I find an ammo limit a more superficial constraint on the power of the medic than removing self-heal is. It would still mean that the class is relatively easy to play as long as you got bullets.
[/QUOTE]

This is exactly what I see. I seriously find it impossible to understand how medic becomes dysfunctional without self heal??? No other class can regenerate health mid-fight on its own. All it does is make it function equally to every other class in a general sense. Don’t say FOPS can give ammo to itself as a rebuttle because ammo is a non-factor currently- heck even removing self-ammo giving would be fine since FOPS get’s the most starter anyway. People are just too used to self healing to admit they are addicted to the self healing play style and nothing more. With no self heal how would you become a lesser medic for the team? No point in running away because you can’t self heal and no reason to not heal teammates because you can’t self heal.

Plus to top it off your not depending on a FOPS to make you function as a class overall. RTCW just forced the medic to play with an LT, which seems to me to be a TF2 style system. So now there’s a contradiction in the reasoning. Classes shouldn’t be fully dependent on another class to function, but other classes should only improve their functionality. Self heal DOES NOT make the medic functional. Toka has it right with what he said and just saying that “RTCW didn’t have a problem, just do it that way” isn’t a very valid argument for what is the more sensible choice just as much as if I said “Do it like ETQW because it didn’t break the game”. Do we simply want to preserve the self heal mechanic because we like it?? If so, then we can try to make it work better for that reason.

(INF3RN0) #90

So do you think that self heal belongs on a support medic (with less combat effectiveness ofc)? That’s what I think because I don’t expect to have the best of both worlds. Surely the opportunity for a separate loadout rather than defining the standard.

(INF3RN0) #91

[QUOTE=Kendle;437122]

Take away self-heal and now every member of the team can still perform the same 2 functions, either to advance the team or to help a specific team member (including themselves), all except the Medic, who can now only help his team, not himself.

See the difference?

Take away self-heal and you must take away the ability of the F/Ops to give himself ammo (after all, no other class can give itself ammo), forcing a 2nd F/Ops so they can supply each other.

Do that and you’re adding problems and complexity that doesn’t need to exist and doesn’t address the original problem it was supposed to solve.

edit: And if the reply is F/Ops giving themselves ammo isn’t a problem, then Medics giving themselves Med packs isn’t a problem. It’s a balance issue that is more correctly resolved some other way.[/QUOTE]

I’m sorry but saying that a class that can’t support itself requires another class of the same kind to be functional doesn’t make sense. A single non-selfsupportive class still provides something to the entire team. Really only FOPS and Medic provide anything specific (hp/ammo). Medic get’s improved regen to compensate, and FOPS has the highest starter ammo and biggest capacity. If FOPS couldn’t give themselves ammo, you wouldn’t even hear a single complaint because they rarely run out before they die anyway. I see what your thinking is, but the real balance issue here is that only FOPS and Medic have self-sustain abilities and thus the imbalance lies with the other classes. Not to mention ammo and HP are two very different things, where HP greatly out weighs ammo in significance. So for me the solution is to either (1) bring equally significant self-serving abilities to all classes (2) remove self-use from all classes (3) weaken a class accordingly to allow for self use of abilities .

(Kendle) #92

I’m tired of arguing the point, partly because it’s moot, since the last few patches the Medic is no longer the de-facto soldier so we’re debating a problem that no longer exists, and no-one posting here lately except me and Warbie played RTCW so you don’t see the beauty of the class inter-dependency it produced, and not just Meds + Lts, Engies needed Lts for ammo too, and Medics for health, the only lone wolf in RTCW was the soldier, who almost always played Panzer and was acknowledged as the maverick / do his own thing team member.

DB comes no where near that level of class interaction, but by all means continue to try and figure out how it could :-

(INF3RN0) #93

So how does self heal connect with what your saying? I only see that interdependency stemming from the fact that RTCW medic had limited ammo… I just want to understand why self heal is so important to the medic functioning. I have yet to hear how it does a better job at balancing the class and encouraging it to serve it’s purpose for the team.

Why does medic need to be the class that get’s more combat advantage in DB also? Maybe that should be the soldier having to depend more on other classes for improved capabilities. I’d like to see most all classes being equal in terms of lone-wolf potential, however the benefit of class ability support making the difference. This doesn’t mean that classes can’t function without a counter part either. A medic that can’t self heal or a FOPS that can’t give ammo to himself are still equally capable to any other class.

(Kendle) #94

I don’t know any others ways to explain it Inferno, I thought I was pretty good with the English language but you’ve got me stumped, all I can do is repeat myself, which isn’t helping either of us.

At the moment the Medic can self-heal and isn’t the de-facto soldier. If you want to continue trying to convince SD that mustn’t be the case I can only hope you fail. :slight_smile:

(tokamak) #95

Right now you’re marginalising the problem and saying that it isn’t worth changing anything about it. It’s a valid point and I can respect it but it doesn’t demonstrate any harm in trying to change the medic further.

(Nail) #96

[QUOTE=Kendle;437217]I’m tired of arguing the point, partly because it’s moot, since the last few patches the Medic is no longer the de-facto soldier so we’re debating a problem that no longer exists, and no-one posting here lately except me and Warbie played RTCW so you don’t see the beauty of the class inter-dependency it produced, and not just Meds + Lts, Engies needed Lts for ammo too, and Medics for health, the only lone wolf in RTCW was the soldier, who almost always played Panzer and was acknowledged as the maverick / do his own thing team member.

DB comes no where near that level of class interaction, but by all means continue to try and figure out how it could :-

can I thank you for being a voice of reason in these turbulent places, I’d up rep but I can’t this soon

(Breo) #97

The game mechanics need to be easy to understand (for newbies/casuals) and most “workarounds” in this thread makes it too complicated.
It’s confusing when a medic can trow packs and those don’t work for themself also the ability slot is wasted when the player is the only one alive or when there are no teammates around (death/other side map).

(INF3RN0) #98

[QUOTE=Kendle;437224]
At the moment the Medic can self-heal and isn’t the de-facto soldier. If you want to continue trying to convince SD that mustn’t be the case I can only hope you fail. :)[/QUOTE]

I don’t really want you to keep repeating yourself because that’s not giving any answer to my questions. I just simply want to know why you think self-heal is required to make medic functional? If medic can’t self heal does it no longer serve its purpose? You keep saying that you would always need 2 medics for it to work, but for what to work? Ramboing? Keeping the medics healed too? Do you really think that having 2 medics to keep each other healed some times is worse than having to always make a FOPS follow a medic? Why shouldn’t the medic have to rely on another medic for healing the same as every other class does? Doesn’t that make sense if the medic is on an equal combat level as the rest? Is FOPS giving ammo to himself comparable to the medics self heal considering all classes start with so much ammo? Medpacks directly add to combat effectiveness, but do ammo packs? These are the questions I am asking in terms of how much sense it makes for the game, not whether or not it worked in RTCW- I don’t have to have played the game to know how it works.

Right now we have a pretty functional medic with self heal, but not everyone likes the play style and I see its support ability being drastically weakened even with it being innately weak in the combat department too. We could indeed have a weak combat high self-support support medic, medium combat self/team support medic that has ammo dependency, and a strong combat non-self team support medic. I just see the non-self healing medic being the least problematic and intrusive on individual players, as well as being completely team oriented simultaneously. Anyone who hadn’t played an ET game before would probably never once see it as an issue that they couldn’t self heal as long as they still were able to support the team and have equal killing ability. This just seems like having a hard time breaking old habits to me instead of seeking more logical solutions.

(Rex) #99

Vote for: Other: as explained in your detailed, well thought out post.

I can’t understand why this new mechanic was implemented at all. Despite the medic being much weaker now, I see no reason for keeping this system, because the community doesn’t want auto regeneration anyway, according to the poll here: Do you want health regeneration?
So what’s the point of doing something for a “feature” which gets removed later anyway? Or maybe I’m wrong and it will stay. Which would be really bad. :mad:

I couldn’t vote for “old mechanic” either, because it made the medic too powerful. Wasn’t it like one medpack and you were ready to fight again with full hp?
So I suggest, as I often do, a mechanic from your former games. A divided health pack bar with a certain delay between throwing multiple packs, so you can’t pull them all out at once. Each pack should only give a small amount of health, like for example 20hp. Furthermore I got a new suggestion to add to this mechanic: Your team mates should get slightly more hp from a medpack, for example 25hp. This would encourage the medic more to heal his mates rather than himself.

(ImageOmega) #100

I would think this would force a selfish medic to use more of his own packs to heal himself rather than others, since he needs more to heal himself.