There’s enough people that are willing to take that vulnerability. And if the worse case scenario really is that such a class won’t be played then it’s going to take a better reason not to go along with it.
“Let’s not waste time on that” isn’t going to cut it if you can see how much pure support classes bring to the table in other games.
[QUOTE=tokamak;515305]I’m still not sure what the actual objection is.
Say we’ve got a pure support class, like that Zen Robot in Overwatch. He’s not going to score a whole lot of kills, I’m not even sure he actually has any offensive capabilities at all. That makes his KDA pathetic.
So far I’ve heard you say ‘Nobody is going to play that guy because nobody wants to get owned’.
Yet, in the video we hear one of the journalists proudly boast how he was able to let his team sustain a choke indefinitely simply because he was healing them up like that.[/QUOTE]
well, that sounds like myself. I’m more than happy to play the healing class and not go for kills. The problem now, is that it has reached a point where even with the post patch roll back, meds are so useless at reviving that people are now here debating how they can make them even more useless by having everyone more self sufficient, and even talking about having no /kill so they can carry on a 1v1 away from the team they are supposed to be supporting and helping!!! Crazy for an objective team based game 
A team based game where everyone can do everything and don’t need their team mates :o frightening
Ok…
Looks like this thread got quite active last night… I am going to try and touch on some of the points that people have made and bring it a little bit more back onto the initial topic. I will be starting a new thread for this kinda talk as I think its got some worth and should continue.
You are correct to a degree actually…
However the one thing I am assuming against and you must be assuming for is critical mass! If DB goes into open beta and a million people download on day one and start jumping onto match making, the game should be able to sustain an active player base across all skill levels with only relativity small changes. On the other hand if the low skilled drop off at a rapid rate the bottom feeders completely and up falling away and creating a huge barrier to entry skill wise. This ends up with maybe only 1/20 people playing past a the first week. Compared to having a decent low end where that number could be like 1/4 sticking with it. The numbers I just mentioned are likely much higher than in reality but you get the picture… I think if a F2P game was able to keep 1/20 players past the first week, they would be extremely happy lol.
CS is a very different beast really… The original CS was around in a time where you had very little choice when it come to Online FPS and it was really the only choice when it came to its game modes and themes. Valve and the Community have done a great job at sustaining this over the years while keeping almost the exact same mechanics and feel. Thus today I believe that CS:GO is a game that the majority of PC Gamers know about and the series is one that a large percentage has played at some point. Due to its current player numbers, its easy to find skill based matches and so its easy to entice people to start playing. In the past year alone its seen nearly a 200% increase in its daily concurrent player numbers and is almost weekly breaking its own peak player records. Interestingly it seems a lot of their growth was due to esports.
Lets also not forget its presence on Steam as a Valve game and also on places like Twitch. The growth of CS was actually very slow and again falls under the idea of Critical Mass. You ever heard the saying “you need money to make money” the same could be said for games… “you need players to get players” so again to just underline this all argument. I do not believe that DB has what it takes currently to maintain interests of most players. I believe this is worse at the low end as there is less incentive to ignore your frustrations. Hence why I say what I say.
Let’s be fair here… DB was never billed as a real ET sequel. Also, CS made the jump between versions as each one was still in its prime. Let’s also not forget that the game you played all them years ago never had “Mercs”, was able to take risk as it was free and not free 2 play and each class had a very defined role due to only certain class can do objective, certain heal and so on. in ET the role was the balance.
DB was never billed as an ET sequel, but SD have been dropping breadcrumbs which people will choose to read into.
I wish we knew if pub servers as they stand now are the future for DB or if matchmaking like Dota / CS will become the norm. Hopefully it’s the latter and if it is then the SD can leave a lot more stuff in the game that’s ripe for abuse (like /kill). In low skill matches players won’t bother using it and won’t have to worry about it, while at the same time it’s still there for players who do want to use it. Same for watching the respawn timers: In low skill matches players won’t actively watch the timer and push at the right time. In high skill matches it’s their bread & butter.
I’m heavily against balancing the core gameplay to tailor to casual gamers. They can be convinced with achievements, awards, medals, crate lotteries, etc
I agree with Tokamak that the TF2 medic is the most satisfying medic where healing is the primary focus. You get an assist if the person you’re tethered to (healing) gets a kill (this shows up in the kill feed). Straight forward system where you easily see what you’re contributing. Healing is the main focus though, if you’re not healing then you’re not doing it right. The medics primary weapon is not very good and should only be used to flee while you look for somebody else to support. In DB we have reviving, health packs/stations & healing is not the main focus of the mercs (complications). So I’ll just align myself with the people asking to increase merc diversity & stop focusing on watering down the gameplay to TDM.
The use of ‘tapdancing’ as a constant refrain, certainly sounds like it’s disputing the skill required. Also who says that type of skill is becoming more and more trivial?
As for your point about TF2 medics not being rare - I’d love to see the timeplayed stats for all pub matches. They undoubtedly make a massive difference to the team, yet i dont ever recall having to say " that’s enough medics lads, can someone go Sniper"… as much as I like TF2 it forces players into a playstyle modelled by their chosen class, leaving little room for someone to choose dynamically how to best help the team.
So when I read greater diversification of mercs, it screams out “specialists” - forcing artificially the teamwork required, rather than letting a group of people come together and develop that for themselves.
Believe me, there was, as Sung_Shen says, no limit on the tactics used during both RTCW and W:ET. And they managed this without resorting to dictating how each class had to be played.
Anyway, just to be clear - i’m not worried about anything - this is just a game and one which SD will make irrespective of all the walls of text that are put up by armchair game designers.
Tapdancing takes an enormous amount of skill.
I just think it’s regrettable to still see people defining shooters with it. There’s so many different ways to get the upper hand that don’t involve besting someone in a jazz stand off.
There’s a huge limit on the amount of tactical possibilities in a game if a balanced KDA is conditional. All you are interested in is combat-oriented classes. The chokehold guy, the short-ranged combat guy, the sniper guy. You made your point quite clear.
Game design has moved on since that decade. We’ve invented new ways in which players are able to outdo each other. Not all of them are equally relevant. I’m not asking a merc that is able to candy-crush the other team to death. I’m asking to take what we’ve learned in the action and strategy genre and see how that applies to a tactical shooter.
Extreme specialists break up the playing field. And that’s what worries you. You’re worried that situations occur where the twitch reflexes are bested by someone who simply engaged the situation in a way you hadn’t considered yet. And a pure healer like mr Zen Robot or Teleport Chick can do that.
Teams behave differently when these type of players are on their team. If Phoenix is fighting on my side then I’m still not sure whether that guy is here for his KDA or for keeping his team-mates alive. You’d have to play on the off-chance that he’s actually there for you. Having a zen-robot on your side however, that means he’s always invariably going to be there for you. That’s not a forced gameplay role, that guy is there willingly to support you.
This completely changes the way a team engages a fight. There’s a different kind of confidence in your team when the roles are this clear rather than having different flavours of tapdancers “coming together and develop teamwork for themselves”.
No that’s just enforcing a narrow view on what the player can bring to the team. I know that Pheonix should be relied upon to revive me, but i also know that in a 2v2 he’s going to be help and not just a complete bloody ornament.
Spoon feeding players and saying ‘thou shalt play as I have decreed’ doesn’t make anything better. Saying, ‘that’s so last decade’ doesn’t make it better. The two largest FPS, outside of Valve’s CS and TF, are BF and COD both of which rarely deviate far from the core gameplay exemplified in their previous iterations. So, really struggling as to what games you are referring to when you say that Game Design has moved on?
Seriously I swear I could give you Chess and Football and you’d have both ruined in a short period of time because they are so ‘last year’.
And again, I’m really not worried about this, look here’s a smiley face to prove it 
I honestly don’t see how that aligns with diversifying mercs only based on the weapons they get to use. You’re the one pulling them all back to the mean here. I hope you’re seeing that.
Under a system that’s open to extreme specialists there will still be the common ET style classes, the majority even. What’s added though is mercs that have foregone all those options in return for a very specific role. That’s not dictating gameplay, that’s offering new entirely new ways of approaching the game.
Leaving all of that out however, forcing everyone to to play like everyone else, that is dictating gameplay.
If you could just clarify this bit for me because tbvh all i’m seeing on the servers in zero role playing and everyone playing TDM, either by sniping (same as pretty much every fps) or by choosing the merc with the most HP and spraying bullets and nades at random (same as pretty much every fps) or people choosing nader and spamming nades (same as pretty much every fps). Teamwork is at an all time low and the only approach to the game is spam or spray and hope someone else does the objective
Well that’s what you may expect if they’re all equally mediocre. There are no mercs that are better at gunplay and neither are there any mercs that are worse at it. The only thing they offer is a different subniche in the combat niche.
Closing this one. It was a good discussion but it’s going around in circles a bit now, and is somewhat off topic.
