Yes, anything that forces people to stay in one area or completely still is not good.
And also giving medic less health is not a good option IMO, it’s essentially like making his gun weaker so that he looses fights more consistently and it becomes too hard for him to survive in general.
I would like to bring up the idea what Timestart and shirosae brought up earlier, that medics have a separate gauge that fills when they heal/ revive others and by maybe right clicking medic would start a slower self healing which depletes that other gauge.
Or if having yet another item/function is a nono, just have it so that meds can only get health by healing and reviving others, and possibly with regen that takes time to kick in, similar to how the regen is in now
Do you want health regeneration?
[QUOTE=Anti;424920]
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. [/QUOTE]
The reason is both in combination. I think that removing self-healing from medics would be a too dramatic change, totally spoiling the typical ET/RTCW gameplay. TF is another game, another story. This has always been there so, but I doubt that fits to our game, one of the resons being that DB has no armor.
I think the tuning should be very carefull and smooth. IMO, both healing and guns of medic should be nerfed, but very slightly. The main point would be to test your medpack idea in a patch first.
Regarding other classes, the picture seems logical to me too.
Fieldops in attack is more needed since one has to damage EV. Indoors it is less useful because of the large ammo clips and relatively short life of players (it is not more than 50% of the spawns that one empties all available clips. As for outside areas, using field ops as airstrike anti-infantry asset, is a very silly idea because airstrikes currently are of 0 use for that purpose. Solution for airstrikes: improve blast radius, damage and especially the delay between beacon explosion and airstrike. Possible solution for being a better ammo asset - I see no other way than increasing the TTK/STK, which may be achieved by decreasing the RoF.
Engineer - use of turrets on defense is less favourable since the turrets have been nerfed. They can hardly stop any offense for long - they can stop an attacker only when he gets caught unaware by a new turret location. Next spawn the turret gets eliminated. Normally turret can be killed by half a clip shot with IS. On the other hand, in offense the turrets are useful for annoying the defense by placing them in unpredictable locations or spawn camping or getting rid of a chase in corridors.
Another reason for lesser use on defense is that the mine-girl is unavailable. Regarding the current state of turrets, she’d be actually more useful on defense. Solution - hmmm, hard to say. Place turret-forbidding masks around enemy spawns and buff the turrets again a notch.
Soldier: the machine gun has been nerfed, resulting in it being useless with IS, whereas hipfire is still more or less ok. This hasn’t perhaps been recognized by most of people yet. Solution - increase MG damage or improve IS accuracy for MG. As a balancing touch, decrease the movement speed a notch.
Recon: well, if one doesn’t intend to snipe all day, recon isn’t a class that is much fun to play atm - no useful tools. Also breath control and zoom mechanics are somewhat awkward right now. Solution: diversify recon tools / nades (disguise, smokes, hax obj., etc.) and improve/simplify zoom/control.
I’m sure this isn’t a major contributor, it’s just an observation really, but I think the game throwing you straight into a class may at least be adding to it a little. Does DB set you as the last class you were? I’ve joined a few times and been put straight as medic, I check the scoreboard and see there’s maybe a couple of engineers already so I just go with the med. Are there plans to have a joining limbo menu to begin with, you’re automatically placed in spec until you choose a class and a team? Currently I join, hit Esc, run and shoot.
The medic shouldn’t be the go to combat role for players. Defending the status quo to enable this is pretty poor. I don’t believe I seen many, if any, arguments for the current system being good for the team or game as a whole. As it stands you could argue that all classes can throw down their own medpacks, why should just one have the ability to survive fights and dodge death more effectively that another.
So all that said, I say break the medic until supporting the team is the primary reason for picking it and QQ to players who only play med to get kicks from long kill streaks.
And this. I have to admit doing the same at least until I get a lay of the land and can switch to a class that is most needed. Limbo screen seems pretty broken right now although I know this is the first iteration of the new design so that should be expect.
On Medic 01’s SMG it does seem quite powerful atm, in tonight’s games it felt like I was (despite my rusty aim) losing to it in a fire fight more so than others… but this could just be a side effect self-healing…
Maca has already touched on this point and has a interesting idea about getting health from providing it to others. One similar alternative to combat the excessive self-heal, would to introduce a cool-down on how quickly medics can pick up their own packs, rather than limiting them entirely. This way there would be more packs left on the ground for those (non-medics) that needed them.
[QUOTE=zenstar;424960]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.[/QUOTE]
That’s pretty much the same as the way it worked in Brink, which I was fine with.
It really is a very strong parameter on how supportive you want your medics to be. The more they gain from healing others, the more harsh you can be about healing themselves directly. I personally really like distinctive roles for each class so I’m perfectly fine with generous indirect healing by healing and no direct-self healing at all.
I really think this is case for baby steps. As I mentioned previously ET has rambo Medics but RTCW doesn’t, and on the face of it they’re not a lot different, so I think only a subtle change is needed. The healing from healing others idea sounds good but could be a bit too radical.
I can also see a scenario in which it could be counter-productive, such as when your team has only one player left alive, and he’s a Medic, on low health. Currently he could pack himself up and go do some damage, maybe turn the game in his team’s favour (stopping the EV, or getting it home).
Besides, 2 Medics working together could easily get round the healing from healing others mechanism whilst still each enjoying all the benefits of being Medics.
I think whatever is done to the Medic it should be something that affects the Medic in isolation, like less HP, weaker gun, packs that take longer to dispense health (though you might then want the Medic to draw health slowly but other classes get the full boost straight away) etc.
Personally I’d favour the less HP / weaker gun approach, because I think that’s the fundamental difference between RTCW and ET. In ET the guns are weaker than in RTCW, and as a consequence the Medics health advantage becomes significant enough to turn him from support to rambo. Reverse this, give the Medic a weaker gun, or give everyone else better guns (though that would need more balancing) or give him less starting (and max.) HP.
Just to clear something, if medics were to get health just from providing it to others, that would also mean that medics could not be healed by other medics, only revived. One reason is that if two medics throw med packs on the ground, and they can only take medpacks thrown by the other medic, what would be the visual way to distinguish them? The other reason IS to stop a group of medics from bypassing the self-healing issue the way Kendle said.
And in your scenario of the lone medic, I don’t see a problem there, he is in the same position as any other class is. This could be prevented by giving the medic slow regen, almost as it is in the game now, but as I said, I don’t see the problem there
The most unobtrusive way currently to change them is to have the med packs work slowly for medics. Because that is the problem, instant healing whenever they want. Although you talk about baby steps, I would see making the med packs work slowly on meds is a much smaller change than reconfiguring the guns
Well this is only a bit inconvenient, not a game-stopper.
And in your scenario of the lone medic, I don’t see a problem there, he is in the same position as any other class is.
Exactly, and that means the medic can no longer be used to fulfil roles it wasn’t designed for in the first place. Staying alive on your own is a covert ops job, not a medic job. A medic belongs with his team and nowhere else. If you want to play lone wolf then pick a different role.
I personally think the idea of medpacks working slowly for the medics is better, because if they were limited with a cool-down, medics could still do it in a fight, even though it’s just for 40hp, that’s almost half of their health already. And I have nothing against medics healing themselves in between fights, so it would be simpler to just have slightly slowly working medpacks, than trying to figure out what would be the good cool-down time.
And what I mean with slowly working medpacks, is what Anti originally suggested, that when medic picks up one med pack he starts a slow regen which is stopped when he receives damage again.
The task at hand is how do we stop people playing Medic for reasons other than supporting their team, the role the Medic was originally supposed to perform?
We do that by limiting the Medic’s offensive capabilities.
Preventing him from healing himself, or slowing down the rate at which he can, in or out of combat, may achieve that, but it seems somehow “wrong” for a pack to act differently on one class compared to others. It’d be like an ammo pack that gives one class 20 bullets and everyone else 30, it doesn’t make sense. We could do what Wolfenstein 2009 did, make the med pack heal slowly for all classes, but then we’re back to square one, the Medic would be no more or less disadvantaged than he currently is.
We promote the use of the Soldier class by giving him a stronger gun, why not simply dissuade people from playing Medic on offense by giving him a weaker gun?
Healing others to gain health is only good if there are people to heal. You’re also looking situations where the medic is required to jump into a firefight just to heal another player rather than risk them dying and going for a revive and heal later. I just think that beyond the surface this fix could break a lot of underlying stuff. Also what about FF ON servers? Chip team to heal will be great fun.
FTR - I like the cooldown on self use and the pack to trigger regen ideas. Think these need to be given a whirl.
That’s exactly the point.
You’re also looking situations where the medic is required to jump into a firefight just to heal another player rather than risk them dying and going for a revive and heal later.
Then the indirect healing bonus only helps because the medic is healing two people at the same time. Indirect self-heal promotes these risky triage actions.
Chip team to heal will be great fun.
Easy, no healing bonus for healing damage you inflicted yourself same like xp really.
[QUOTE=tokamak;425283]That’s exactly the point.
Then the indirect healing bonus only helps because the medic is healing two people at the same time. Indirect self-heal promotes these risky triage actions.
Easy, no healing bonus for healing damage you inflicted yourself same like xp really.[/QUOTE]
You’re ignoring the issues and just ploughing on with what you want as usual.
The mechanic promotes the need for your team to take damage in order for you to repair you own. In many circumstances this would be fine but there will be situations where a player wants someone to be damaged in order to heal themselves. We don’t need that kind of thinking or all out hoping a team is always being chipped by the enemy so it never comes up.
Why do you want to promote people needing to jump into a fire fight just to repair damage. They may block their team mate, one or both may die. You’re promoting a poor behaviour out of necessity and justifying it with some romantic imagery.
Excellent. More rules to back up another system.
Honestly. I liked the idea initially but the more I think about it the more I think it’s bringing more baggage along for the ride and will just cause poor behaviour of a different kind.
Maybe just lower their damage and give them 0 xp for self heals and leave it at that?
That should be easy enough to test to start off with. If that doesn’t work (or work as well as we want) we can iterate and discuss further?
The mechanic promotes the need for your team to take damage in order for you to repair you own. In many circumstances this would be fine but there will be situations where a player wants someone to be damaged in order to heal themselves. We don’t need that kind of thinking or all out hoping a team is always being chipped by the enemy so it never comes up.
I’m not sure about this. I mean, I agree with that it will eventually result in this type of thinking. I’m only wondering whether this kind of thinking is actually a bad thing. I personally can’t really conceive of a scenario where this attitude becomes a problem.
You give two examples but I don’t find them all that feasible. As far as I’m aware you can’t really block players or influence them otherwise. In other words, there’s very little a medic can do to get his team-mates harmed when they’re not.
That would be almost useless on decent pub servers and absolutely useless in matches.
An individual Medic, on a random pub server, with no-one he knows, maybe. But it would definitely happen eventually, possibly a fair bit once the idea gets into people’s heads, and certainly when you have friends playing together. In matches they’d refine it down to a fine art in no time.