Do you want health regeneration?

(Anti) #101

As I mentioned to some of you over the weekend the amount of time spent with people playing Medics seemed to have gone through the roof. I took a sample of 268 matches of 5v5 or more from this weekend from Echo and this is how class usage broke down:

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The Medic comes out as being used 43% of the time. Bear in mind, we have five classes, if we’re balancing them right and they each have a meaningful role then we should be seeing about 20% of time spent on each.

Now I understand Medics and Engineers could be seen as quite a bit more important to a team in some circumstances, but anything above 30% of time spent in a class is a little worrying.

The question I then asked myself is, are the health packs or the weapon causing this issue? Whilst Medic 01’s SMG is a bit better than most of the other guns according to the stats the difference isn’t radical, it doesn’t justify the overuse of Medics.

It means our gut feeling still seems to be true, that most folks play Medics for themselves, not to support their team, and that really isn’t something we want. This is a team based game and we want to encourage team play, Medics should be good in a fire fight but they should also be supporting their team, not going crazy and charging in ahead of the Assault class.

So, we’ll continue to iterate on the health system and try things out until we feel we’ve got this class in better shape, that includes looking at how regen is working.

(iwound) #102

heres some echo input j/k. i use medic very little. im not sure what the attraction is.
mind you as a swarm they work well, proper teamwork.

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(BomBaKlaK) #103

In match whatever you do in 5v5 medics can revive each others, so players always gonna use a lot of medics in match.
May the thing is in the medpacks, if there is only few med packs medics gonna use it for themselves only, to much make them instant regen every time.
it’s a big deal ! hard to find a solution

I love this class, and a big nerf of it can annoy a lot of people :wink: the gun is not really the most powerful, engies and heavies are way more powerful.
maybe the solution is to add some stuff to the less played class ? to make them more attractive and useful.

(woll3) #104

I would say its because the packs work instantly, which allows them to be effectively used during firefights, you just have to get around a corner for a second and you are at full health again, which in the endeffect allows medics to stay longer in firefights than any other class.

(Patriotqube) #105

maybe make it so the medpacks aint working on the medic throwing them? only for other teammembers incl other medics

(Mustang) #106

So it could be balanced by adding something to allow other classes to stay in the fight longer.

Examples:

  • Armor that needs to be depleted before HP starts to get impacted
  • Armor that reduces all bullet damage by X%
  • More HP for classes other than medic
  • Less HP for medic
(Dragonji) #107

I’m afraid you cannot change people’s mentality :frowning:

So called “rambo medics” are the worst thing about the small W:ET community. Almost every public server turned into “frag arena” because lots of people are just fragging to have better stats on sites like TrackBase. We obviously wouldn’t like DB to turn into W:ET in this aspect.

(RasteRayzeR) #108

These are huge differences ! Maybe you could :

- give more xp rewards for healing team mates ?
- reduce the ability to charge in by reducing the medic's hp ?
- add some armor and resistance to other classes ?
- slow the sprint / walk speed of the medic ?

Plus, health regen removes the pressure and some of the fun I believe. It gives this satisfaction when you can kill like 2 or 3 enemies with only 10 hp ^^

(woll3) #109

[QUOTE=Mustang;424932]

  • Less HP for medic[/QUOTE]

That could actually work, it would also benefit teamplay as he wont use as much packs on himself.

(RasteRayzeR) #110

Yeah, and maybe combine that with slower movement speed (95% maybe, should try it), and you get a full support class

(Anti) #111

[QUOTE=ThomasRouvinez;424937]These are huge differences ! Maybe you could :

- give more xp rewards for healing team mates ?
- reduce the ability to charge in by reducing the medic's hp ?
- add some armor and resistance to other classes ?
- slow the sprint / walk speed of the medic ?

Plus, health regen removes the pressure and some of the fun I believe. It gives this satisfaction when you can kill like 2 or 3 enemies with only 10 hp ^^[/QUOTE]

Less HP is an interesting idea, but I worry just how quickly Medics would pop in that case :slight_smile:

There is no reason why a system where regen takes a long time to kick in, like the current 10 seconds, that a 2-3 man kill spree with 10 HP shouldn’t be able to happen. Our view of regen is it’s something that’d fill time between fights, to keep you in the game, without a Medic being essential. It shouldn’t mean that Medics aren’t needed, or even that there is no cost to getting tagged in a fight.

(Kendle) #112

In general, if you’ve got ‘X’ classes and they’re all about as good (at killing the enemy) as each other, you’re going to play the one with the ability to heal itself, it’s a no-brainer.

RTCW didn’t have rambo Meds, but ET did, yet they were largely the same. The reason for this, I suspect, is that although the differences were subtle they were just enough to push the Medic over the edge from support to assault. Which would imply it wouldn’t take much to push them back again into a support role.

If Medics couldn’t self-heal that would solve the problem at a stroke, but it might be a hammer to crack a nut solution and you suddenly find you have no Medics at all.

I find I play Engineer more in DB than I did in ET because the Engie’s primary is a bit better than the Medics, IMO (or at least it suits my style, I’m more of a burst fire take time to aim kinda guy). So maybe one solution is to nerf the Meds primary a little, or beef up everyone else’s, or as suggested above, give other classes more HP or the Medic less.

Wolfenstein 2009 had a good idea in that Med packs didn’t instantly heal, they dispensed their healing goodness over a period of time (and you had to stay close to the pack for that to happen iirc). Do that, and make it a significant period of time, then Meds couldn’t heal mid-fight and would find it harder to heal between fights.

Either way the Med needs to be balanced, because pretty much every ET player is going to go Medic unless he/she has a good reason not to.

(tokamak) #113

[QUOTE=Anti;424920]It means our gut feeling still seems to be true, that most folks play Medics for themselves, not to support their team, and that really isn’t something we want. This is a team based game and we want to encourage team play, Medics should be good in a fire fight but they should also be supporting their team, not going crazy and charging in ahead of the Assault class.
[/QUOTE]

Just look at what TF2 does. Medics can only heal themselves through healing others. The moment they use their health-gun on a friendly player their own health starts regenerating as well. This is the only way a medic can regain his own health (besides health packs spread on fixed locations in the map).

And of course they need to retain their combat potency. It’s just that their combat potency needs to be directly linked to their healing performance. If they can only heal themselves indirectly through others then suddenly even the biggest rambo medics will need to keep their team-mates maintained in order to keep fighting.

You could make their own medpacks less effective for themselves but I think that if you have the indirect healing through healing team-mates handled well enough, that medics can go perfectly without being able to heal themselves at all. The only big flaw would be that they’re now highly dependant on their team and can’t go off on their own. Something which I don’t believe is a flaw at all for this class.

(RasteRayzeR) #114

Or maybe the medics healing themselves should stand still during their own healing, that would force them to find cover in the team and slow the rambo style. Once in team cover they might be more tempted to heal their team mates.

(iwound) #115

i initially said no to regen but now realise that on these larger maps with only 8 per team, not all medics, you need that. there just are not enough packs to go around. and the feeling of being in the game more is a better feeling. coming from a pub player pov. can i change my vote.

re medics, should they not take more damage from weapons as they are not heavily amoured.

(zenstar) #116

Use L4D style healing: bandaging takes time to apply. Can self heal and heal others but you can’t just nip around a corner and boost to full.
Also means you don’t need to rely on people seeing your dropped boxes. You can just run up and start bandaging. They should probably get something on their screen so they know they’re getting bandaged (just in case you’re doing it from behind).
The longer you bandage the more health they get up until full (slowly depleting the recharging healthpack bar until you stop bandaging).

Just an idea. It may or may not work, but it is a completely different way of healing and may not be suited to DB. I don’t medic often so someone who plays medic exclusively would probably have a better idea of the effects of this.

(woll3) #117

IMO, it would slow down gameplay by too much.

(Runeforce) #118

How about a medic not being able to pick up his own med-packs untill X seconds after dispensing it (but everyone else on the server could pick them up immediately including other medics,) and perhaps decrease the time for health regen to kick in for the medics…

(Anti) #119

Agreed, quick an responsive is something we are striving for with the game and I’m just not sure this suggestion fits it. Medic’s standing still to heal though is another interesting idea but it sounds like an extra button/state for the player to learn on top of throwing packs. I’d rather the method of healing be the same for he Medic as well as the other folks he heals.

(RasteRayzeR) #120

I still think lower hp for medics alongside with slightly delayed healing is the easiest to implement for a test and might already bring some good results.

For the standing still healing of the medic, why not use the left click to throw in packs for others, and hold right click to heal themselves ? Single state, double mode. They could heal themselves in movement too, but at a slower rate for example.

Some kind of regen for other classes until maybe a 40% of total HP could be nice too I guess.