I’m still on the fence here. I used to be flat out against it, one of the main reasons I disliked CoD. Then Tribes came along which has full health regen, and it actually works really well in my opinion. However, this is mostly because in Tribes you use explosives to propell yourself, which is necessary if you want to set up high speed flagroutes. The regen makes sure you can still grab the flag at full health if you know your route well and don’t screw up by getting falling damage that would reset the regen timer. The counter here are snipers, that can easily get 1 hit off to screw over your entire flagroute because you get no regen.
The above however doesn’t apply to DB, so as a mechanic it doesn’t add much other than the feeling that I just nearly killed a guy and he comes back a bit later with much more health by doing nothing at all. I’m not sure you want to encourage that sort of player behaviour. My vote is a slightly unsure no to regen.
Do you want health regeneration?
That is a player issue not a design issue. Introducing derpy design to deal with derpy players just… promotes derpy players.
Good discussion on this thread, I like! :stroggbanana:
I see two main issues with the system as it is right now:
[ul]
[li]Medics heal themselves over others. A ‘good’ Medic wouldn’t, but the majority will
[/li][li]Players’ average health is quite low, leading to the high lethality concerns and feedback
[/li][/ul]
We could incentivise Medics giving packs to others to fix this, but in a pinch no amount of XP is going to make a Medic not keep himself in the fight ahead of others.
We could stop Medics being able to take their own packs, but I think that’s pretty cruel. Medics need to be able to keep themselves in the fight to continue helping others.
We could do (and have done) lots of things to change movement and weapons to affect lethality, but this won’t necessarily lead to having fun guns or movement. It’s a hard balance to make when you have too few variables to change.
What I’d like to try is having full regen, to keep people in the fight longer and to make fire fights feel a bit more consistant (both players more often at 100% health at fight’s start, but make that regen take a long time to kick in after being damaged.
Medic’s health packs would trigger a fast regen immediately if picked up, once regen is triggered you cannot pick up another med pack until regen stops. Damage mid regen would stop it.
I think a system like this would make for better fights, keep people active a bit longer, keep Medics useful and ensure a better distribution of Medic’s packs among a team.
I’m hoping to prototype that with you guys soon and see how it plays, but thought I’d put it out there now to see what you think.
[QUOTE=shirosae;422546]
I also kind of want to say add a HUD icon for medpacks[/QUOTE]
i did see some appear once. not sure why not all the time. it felt like medium distance+line of sight.
atm i need the regen, the problem is getting enough new health back into the game.
maybe if medipacks stayed until used. and overall damage taken was tweeked to reduce the amount needed.
the regen is a quickfix that works atm but with a better game balance this could be removed later.
its like training wheels.
now i just cower for health instead of searching down a medic, which is what should happen. Teamplay. :rolleyes:
Do you think people are more frivolous with their health and life in general because the spawn times are so short? I myself have been close to the action, seen a medic drop some packs a little ways back, but I keep pressing on because I know if I die, i’ll spawn and be back in the action quicker than if I had run back to get the packs then joined the fight again… in which time they probably died and joined the fight with full health any way.
The low spawn time for me is bringing less value to my current situation. It doesn’t matter what happens, I’ll be back in the action quick smart. No need for planning (as some have said before, no one really speaks or organises any sort of offensive in team chat), partly because, what’s the point? A successful run just means they’ll be back biting your ass 9 seconds later. Same with protecting the engineer for a plant or defuse, he’ll be along soon enough again if he dies.
agree with the spawn times. also going back to pick up medpacks would be high risk, out of cover. im sure those pesky jack the ripper medics leave them as bait.
[QUOTE=Anti;422601]
Medic’s health packs would trigger a fast regen immediately if picked up, once regen is triggered you cannot pick up another med pack until regen stops. Damage mid regen would stop it…
I’m hoping to prototype that…[/QUOTE]
isnt that what health packs do now? but you want to reduce the amount i have to pick up by increasing health pack amount.
so 1 pack = 100% health instant full health?
at least its a direct connection to health and medics.
i can see a lot of 1 sided fights coming out of that. iv got a feeling its too severe a reaction.
just drop a few packs and fight, it may take a while.
I like those things Anti, however, both the delay as well as the regeneration rate need to be very slow and long otherwise interrupting the generation won’t be a relevant factor in the fights.
We could incentivise Medics giving packs to others to fix this, but in a pinch no amount of XP is going to make a Medic not keep himself in the fight ahead of others.
Xp is only one of multiple incentives. We discussed using self-healing for every team mate you heal and or revive as an incentive. That way medics will actually sometimes feel forced to risk their lives in order to regenerate their lives, it creates really nice dilemmas for them.
[QUOTE=iwound;422606]
isnt that what health packs do now? but you want to reduce the amount i have to pick up by increasing health pack amount.
so 1 pack = 100% health instant full health?
at least its a direct connection to health and medics.
i can see a lot of 1 sided fights coming out of that. iv got a feeling its too severe a reaction.
just drop a few packs and fight, it may take a while.[/QUOTE]
Right now packs give you fixed amounts of health rather than triggering regen, either 25HP or 40HP depending on the pack. That means one Medic on 10 health could eat all four of his packs in a single period to get his health back up.
In the suggestion one pack would start your regen through to 100%, you wouldn’t need to grab any more unless you got wounded.
most of time i dont have time to wait for med packs been in action/surviving situation …the fastest the healing go the better it is …imo
[QUOTE=Anti;422626]Right now packs give you fixed amounts of health rather than triggering regen, either 25HP or 40HP depending on the pack. That means one Medic on 10 health could eat all four of his packs in a single period to get his health back up.
In the suggestion one pack would start your regen through to 100%, you wouldn’t need to grab any more unless you got wounded.[/QUOTE]
What about the Battlefield style of medpack where you drop one and need to sit on it till your HP is full? One pack contains 100hp worth of health and disappears after it’s been used up or a specific period of time has passed. In theory, 2 people at 50HP could use 1 pack to get to 100HP each.
I actually sort of like what Anti has suggested. I like what it does to medics, it makes it so that they can’t rely on their medpacks to just run away if they are getting shot at the same time. And they can’t get full heal by getting behind a cover for just couple seconds. Because at the moment I feel medic is the de-facto soldier, simply because his self healing abilities. By limiting that he becomes more of a valuable support class, as he’s supposed to be.
As for the other classes, the no-medpack regen should take quite a while to activate if it’s going o be 100%, to make getting the medpack worthwhile. But to really make any of this relevant when it comes to the other classes, there should be longer spawns and spawnwaves.
Yeah, not bad for a try Anti. It will surely be a revolutional thing, don’t remember any games having it. Let’s just try it in a patch.
This I like right now, the other stuff I’d like to playtest before having an opinion.
My 2 pounds (yeah I’m that rich!)
I dislike regen because it gives too much weight to the escaping players and, even if its somehow some kind of a “skill” to know where and when to escape, regen put too much emphasis on escaping and soloing. I like my gaming like I like my wives : brutal, covered in blood and screaming, with a little teamplay once a month to feel good! oh wai…
Well I’m just saying that on the health pack system, reinventing the wheel isnt really needed, as you’ll cater many player with the “free to play” system, I think you can be more brutal in your approaches and be less “noob friendly” in db, regen isnt promoting teamwork at all, so yes in tdm (or you can also drop medpacks on special spots each x seconds ala quake, this will be better than changing the health system between obj / stopwatch and TDM / FFA), but not in stopwatch.
Healthpacks + crates + no instakill knives are the basics of a skilled class based teamwork game IMO, regen might be ok for tdm or ffa, and even there I dont like it, but its personal opinion indeed.
As for the “medic heals themselves” : I’m pretty sure that in 4on4 or 8on8 games, medics will quickly understand that healing their objective class mates or soldiers will ensure a quickest win than trying to rambo the whole level, you can also put a system where if the medic eat his own pack, he gain say 10hp, and if he gives a pack to another one, the mate get 40hp and the medic 20hp (numbers are to balance indeed), this way it is more incentive for the medic to heal teammates rather than himself, because he gains more xp, more health and he contributes more to the team victory.
Peace
If Im a medic and I would get a constant very slow auto rege(no pack for healing myselft) but at each pack i give to wounded teamates I get an instant 20(or do) hp boost… and maybe a 80/100% if i defrib someone …Id be happy as Medic .
Would keep me in longer to support engies and other and would kind force me to do the Job my class suppose to do
and all other class could get auto reg to a max of 50Hp and would depend on the med for healing them to 100% (as it is now i think)
I personally like the regen ability, it gives you a second chance to get in to a fight.
Brain fart: one way to achieve the TF2 healing process, no cooperation from the player in order to heal him as Stealth6 pointed out, and also allow the medic to heal a teammate from a (short) safe distance is to allow the medic to use some kind of futuristic damage enemy/heal team bullet. This way the medic shoots his teammate in order to heal him at a lower % compared to a health pack. Be it by pistol/smg/shotgun, tho i prefer pistol, not so many rounds in a clip and not to OP (like heal 3 teammates with a smg clip). So a medic would shoot to heal a teammate from a short distance to bring him on his feat and continue with health packs or follow him and keep on shooting 
heal/kill/reload/heal/heal/kill/kill/reload/noamo/needammo/reload/etc
If anything at all, I think I would demand a regen off option for clan battles and potential ranked league systems. Any type of environment that has highly experienced players or a high form of communication on a team should not need the regen feature, and instead use their medics to support the team.
If you want to remove a traditional medic mechanic, you better remove words “from the creators of ET an ETQW” from the videos as well. Coz it’s gonna be a game “from the fans of battlefield 3”.
You have a point their Kinjal. Instant medpacks are harder to balance but they do open up that typical ET style gameplay as well. Oh well that’s what an alpha is for, let’s just try.