Medic Suggestions

(Humate) #61

Ideally as the medic’s combat skill increases, the medpacks value should lessen thus allowing them to be less selfish.
That doesnt necessarily negate selfish medic play, but at least they are not forced into being packwhores. At the moment they are forced into selfish play.

(tokamak) #62

And the quickest way to do that is to completely separate their shooting and healing skills. Medic should not be able to heal themselves directly. In that way you can play with nerfing or buffing their combat skills and changing the power of their healing without the one affecting the other.

The medic simply shouldn’t be the free pass to survive more easily. There’s no reason why that class in particular gets to do that.

(Humate) #63

No point increasing the skill ceiling of a class, only for those that would play to its capacity to turn their nose up it.
If self healing was removed, you would not see combat medics playing it.

(tokamak) #64

Nobody is complaining about the lack of a healing assault so why would a combat medic be a necessity? Removing direct self-heal reduces the combat power of medics without reducing their healing capacity. People who only played the medic in order to survive were simply exploiting a non-intentional perk. I’m not worried about those players, they’ll find a class that suits their behaviour better.

(Humate) #65

Um this thread is essentially about medics not willing to play their role properly. Perhaps if the average ttk wasnt so quick, and team-shooting wasnt rewarded to the degree it does at the moment, players would be more willing to move about the map and revive people. A side efffect of altering the average ttk, is players can use less packs on themselves. :wink:

(Hundopercent) #66

Looks like you’re on the wrong forum champ.

I got you covered though.

On a more serious note, I see your point, however in this game and previous games like it, medics can heal themselves and it was only an issue because ammunition was over abundant (shrub mod + WET.) In classic RtCW medics were not OP and they heavily relied on their Lts because they spawned with no ammo (maybe 1 clip I can’t recall exactly.) They also had stronger packs, strong auras, the same primary as everyone else (side sold), and stronger revives (limted number of revives.) Removing self heal isn’t the answer and would make medics pretty much worthless imo. Their would be no point to run in and revive because you would essentially just trade lives with the person you revived.

(tokamak) #67

The ammo constraint is crap. It’s an incredibly contrived way of nerfing a class. It further incentives self-killing and you end up with a player either being lucky enough to find ammo somewhere which is his free-pass to becoming rambo OR he’ll just keep selfkilling after he’s had one or two easy kills until he blew his load.

The classes as they’re now are smeared together, there’s very little difference between them and the medics clearly are getting the best part of the deal because it’s the only class skill that can be used to such an effect to further your own ends.

It’s time a clear role is set out for each class then form each class in such a way that they become masters of that role and that role alone and afterwards we can always look how much we want them to overlap.

(INF3RN0) #68

A medic like your describing would be worth trying imo. The one difference I would demand it had was instantly restoring health packs. The new medic is a decent hybrid of selfish and non-selfish play, but you lose the ability to sustain pushes with hp packs. If a non-self healing medic had a great weapon and could heal (while they took damage) and revive friendlies there would be worth there, after all people manage with every other class that doesn’t self heal. The worst case scenario is that you might see that type of “combat medic” traveling in pairs where in they depended on chain reviving to keep themselves able. Also the auto regen mechanic would make some more sense on a combat medic type as well.

(tokamak) #69

Yes!

The only reason why the current medic’s healing is gimped is because that same healing is available to himself. That’s all there is to it. Disable direct self healing and watch how far you can go in making healing ridiculously powerful without breaking the game.

Hell the medic can even have his ammo back again.

The point is, the five classes need to be five grandmasters of their trade and be crap at everything that hasn’t to do with their job.

More rounded and hybrid type of characters should be reserved for later because then at least they can be tared on the 5 highy specialistic classes.

(Kendle) #70

We’ve had this discussion before tokamak, and you’re still wrong.

Removing self heal does absolutely and completely zero to improve the situation with Medics not reviving. Removing self heal is simply a nerf for nerfs sake and does nothing to help a Medic be a better Medic.

(INF3RN0) #71

[QUOTE=Kendle;454975]We’ve had this discussion before tokamak, and you’re still wrong.

Removing self heal does absolutely and completely zero to improve the situation with Medics not reviving. Removing self heal is simply a nerf for nerfs sake and does nothing to help a Medic be a better Medic.[/QUOTE]

It’s pretty opinionated that a medic is only capable at doing their job with self heal… if you buff a weapon and nerf a self-heal it’s definitely not a nerf for nerf’s sake. It’s clearly an option for a player (A) Do I need a mechanic to restore HP constantly at the cost of reduced team healing? (B) Do I need a weapon that kills more efficiently instead and gain increased team healing? In the end it’s entirely up to player style and it makes considerable sense logically.

The option for high kill capacity and the old healing mechanisms at the cost of low ammo simply forces you to have a FOPS TF2 mode buddy system with a medic so that they can’t rambo. Seems more potentially obstructive rather than furthering their capacity, which is what class teamwork should offer. A medic that can function alone is not a terrible concept, especially when the only thing that separates it from other classes is what it offers the team. No other class has a mechanic that increases the effectiveness of it’s role by offering base advantage, yet they still function. Instead of holding onto the self heal as the means of being proficient why not simply give the medic a sturdy weapon and increase the revive/shield efficiency instead. At that point your playing medic not because it has the best survivability in fire fights, but because your heals and revives matter to the team.

(Kendle) #72

Inferno, I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about, I’m obviously not as clever as you’re giving me credit for, so just keep it simple and explain to me how removing self heal helps a Medic revive?

(INF3RN0) #73

It obviously doesn’t and that’s not the point --> it should not be the means of helping them to be more proficient at fulfilling their role. It’s obvious why as has been discussed here many times about how it is abused. Sure you can revive and heal better when you can self-sustain, but then self sufficiency becomes so high that you end up with an imba class. You cannot give medic a balanced combat role and support role via self healing, and the way RTCW did it differently was not any better. No other support role is driven by a mechanic like self heal. Every class should serve an equal combat and team support role, which doesn’t mean your picking a FOPS just because everyone starts out with 1 clip or a soldier is required for objs, etc, etc. In the end you’d always be running an identical class set because they are requirements and nothing more. I do not want to see a “medics with one of each required lesser class”.

I would like to think outside the box a bit here. Say a medic can’t self heal with packs and has a proficient weapon. So now he has the same combat proficiency as any other class and still offers the ability to heal and revive teammates instantly. If the TTK is so high that it proves impossible to revive and heal players then you can easily think beyond self-healing as the only solution to maintain supportive momentum. Maybe the medic regens a portion of HP when healing or reviving another player so that your not just trading lives. There’s a thin line between when a medic should be able to revive someone and when they should be dead as well, but with the way that DB works I would say that it should be less frustrating to revive and you should get more out of it.

(tokamak) #74

Very well put.

[QUOTE=Kendle;454975]We’ve had this discussion before tokamak, and you’re still wrong.

Removing self heal does absolutely and completely zero to improve the situation with Medics not reviving. Removing self heal is simply a nerf for nerfs sake and does nothing to help a Medic be a better Medic.[/QUOTE]

It most certainly will. A medic that is compelled to focus on the health of his team automatically also picks up on fallen comrades. A combat medic however, does not, his eyes are completely tuned on hostile targets rather than friendly targets.

And of course I hope that this all under the premise that the revive mechanic itself needs work.

(Hundopercent) #75

As I stated before (maybe in another thread) all of these arguments are with a specific playstyle. It’s not the class it’s the player. You can nerf medics into the ground and if people do not want revive, assist team mates, or whatever other pet peeve you have they will not do it.

You want to force people into a mold you deem is the correct way to play and that is not the right approach. If games were designed like that builds like AD Janna, AP Alistar etc. would have never been created.

With the way some of the maps and gameplay are I really don’t want anymore railroad tracks to force me to play the game a certain way.

(DB Genome editor) #76

I don’t think it’s a question of nerfing them as much as balancing different functions. If the medic ended up ineffective as a lonewolf but extremely useful when sticking with and supporting the pack then it would no longer be attractive to selfish players. And hopefully the people who would continue to play medic (or start to do so to fill the vacuum left by the Rambos) would be those who find its play style match their own, i.e. people that don’t care so much about their frag count but enjoy providing a key contribution to their team. And if that side of the equation is helped a bit (through improvements in the revive and healing mechanisms) so that the medic’s overall contribution to the team remains similar, then he’s not being nerfed, he’s being rebalanced.

I’ve seen a lot of negative comments towards the TF2-style medic and I’m not saying we need to go that far. The medic should be able to hold his own in a firefight, just not act as a one man army (so maybe 40-50% of his contribution coming from combat vs 1% for the TF2 medic?). And I also think that for general accessibility this game could benefit from a class that focus less on combat skills, so that less talented players can still provide a meaningful contribution to their team.

I’m also curious to see the Medic03 in action. His weaponry looks comparable to that of Sawbonez at first glance, but if he only provides AoE healing, that should make him a definite pack animal, fairly useless on his own. Even the self revive should be of little use to lonewolves since you’ll most likely be gibbed before you can use it unless you have friendlies around to prevent that. He might naturally achieve what some of us are looking for here…

(Hundopercent) #77

[QUOTE=Djiesse;455031]I don’t think it’s a question of nerfing them as much as balancing different functions. If the medic ended up ineffective as a lonewolf but extremely useful when sticking with and supporting the pack then it would no longer be attractive to selfish players. And hopefully the people who would continue to play medic (or start to do so to fill the vacuum left by the Rambos) would be those who find its play style match their own, i.e. people that don’t care so much about their frag count but enjoy providing a key contribution to their team. And if that side of the equation is helped a bit (through improvements in the revive and healing mechanisms) so that the medic’s overall contribution to the team remains similar, then he’s not being nerfed, he’s being rebalanced.

I’ve seen a lot of negative comments towards the TF2-style medic and I’m not saying we need to go that far. The medic should be able to hold his own in a firefight, just not act as a one man army (so maybe 40-50% of his contribution coming from combat vs 1% for the TF2 medic?). And I also think that for general accessibility this game could benefit from a class that focus less on combat skills, so that less talented players can still provide a meaningful contribution to their team.

I’m also curious to see the Medic03 in action. His weaponry looks comparable to that of Sawbonez at first glance, but if he only provides AoE healing, that should make him a definite pack animal, fairly useless on his own. Even the self revive should be of little use to lonewolves since you’ll most likely be gibbed before you can use it unless you have friendlies around to prevent that. He might naturally achieve what some of us are looking for here…[/QUOTE]

But what does it matter if he lonewolfs or not? Why is that such an issue? So, it’s ok to lone wolf as an Lt. Eng. Sold. Sniper because they don’t have the ability to heal or revive? How is that any better? They still aren’t assisting the team or the objective. Again the problem is with the player not the class. I would rather not play a game that forces me to huddle around 3 - 5 people just so me, as an individual, can actually accomplish something. I am more of the flanker play style which often puts me out solo. After flanking I go right to the spawn and pick people off. I was doing it as medic, but now Lt. What i’m getting at here is you can nerf all the classes you want and try to force them to play in the way you think they should, but solo players or for some of us, flankers, will always go out and do our own thing.

(INF3RN0) #78

[QUOTE=strychzilla;455024]As I stated before (maybe in another thread) all of these arguments are with a specific playstyle. It’s not the class it’s the player. You can nerf medics into the ground and if people do not want revive, assist team mates, or whatever other pet peeve you have they will not do it.

You want to force people into a mold you deem is the correct way to play and that is not the right approach. If games were designed like that builds like AD Janna, AP Alistar etc. would have never been created.

With the way some of the maps and gameplay are I really don’t want anymore railroad tracks to force me to play the game a certain way.[/QUOTE]

I enjoy diverse play styles, however this is a case of players demanding the best of both worlds. This results in a super class, which sure you can gimp in ammo, but then your forcing them to play with a FOPS all the time. That defeats the purpose all together. The problem is that people want it the way it was previously because it didn’t seem to impose any problems, but that’s only because everyone did it. That didn’t change the fact that medic was inherently stronger with self healing because it was. Furthermore you ended up with classes being entirely necessary because if you didn’t have one you couldn’t win, which is again forceful. With multiple loadouts SD can easily support a variety of play styles, but those play styles need to be logically balanced.

What I want to see is classes being picked for more than linear roles in the team comp. I want to feel like any combination of classes offers something to the team, but sometimes you need more saturation in one area depending on the situation. I don’t want to see one super class, which then requires one support class, and then throw in an objective class. If every class has an equal opportunity at combat and support then all complaints are void. Some classes can definitely be more dependent on their weapon or tool, but as long as balance is maintained your offering a different means to the same end for every type of player. We just can’t expect to get all the good stuff on one single class without it becoming problematic. Also for objs I really like the globals such as doc runs, etc where in I feel like the obj specific tools like c4, etc would be more consistently utilized with class specific side objs.

I’d think you might be more interested in the type of combat medic described previously as there would never be much of a reason to complain about imbalanced duels and you could still play the role of a medic if the revive/shield/healing systems were improved.

(Hundopercent) #79

[QUOTE=INF3RN0;455051]I enjoy diverse play styles, however this is a case of players demanding the best of both worlds. This results in a super class, which sure you can gimp in ammo, but then your forcing them to play with a FOPS all the time. That defeats the purpose all together. The problem is that people want it the way it was previously because it didn’t seem to impose any problems, but that’s only because everyone did it. That didn’t change the fact that medic was inherently stronger with self healing because it was. Furthermore you ended up with classes being entirely necessary because if you didn’t have one you couldn’t win, which is again forceful. With multiple loadouts SD can easily support a variety of play styles, but those play styles need to be logically balanced.

What I want to see is classes being picked for more than linear roles in the team comp. I want to feel like any combination of classes offers something to the team, but sometimes you need more saturation in one area depending on the situation. I don’t want to see one super class, which then requires one support class, and then throw in an objective class. If every class has an equal opportunity at combat and support then all complaints are void. Some classes can definitely be more dependent on their weapon or tool, but as long as balance is maintained your offering a different means to the same end for every type of player. We just can’t expect to get all the good stuff on one single class without it becoming problematic. Also for objs I really like the globals such as doc runs, etc where in I feel like the obj specific tools like c4, etc would be more consistently utilized with class specific side objs.

I’d think you might be more interested in the type of combat medic described previously as there would never be much of a reason to complain about imbalanced duels and you could still play the role of a medic if the revive/shield/healing systems were improved.[/QUOTE]

As Kendle clearly stated, how does removing self heal make players heal and revive more effectively? It would only make it worse and ultimately ignored because running in to swap lives with another player doesn’t make sense nor make the medic “balanced”. I don’t even want to phrase it that way because the medic is not OP in the first place. 1v1, every other class should kill the medic and with how low the TTK is anyone with decent aim should not let a medic run and pack or “mid fight pack” like you said medics do (which is trash and you know it.)

(INF3RN0) #80

So then you would be cool with a medic with a weak weapon and self packing? I’ve already heard you complain that it shouldn’t have a weaker gun in game… Maybe you never heard of tossing down a huge pile of med packs and then turning the corner. That is one huge reason why medics were so extremely powerful because you could absorb tons of damage in a fight without consequence. Also there’s situations where your fighting multiple people and losing deserved multikills from self packing is entirely possible. The fact that it was so good in the past is what led to medics focusing less on supporting the team and instead bringing their worth as the best fraggers simply because self heal allowed them to gain base advantage. I think all the games did it poorly, where in RTCW probably did it better but via the TF2 method of class pairing.

What you and Kendle are missing here is that self heal is not a good solution to making revives and team heals happen, even if it can sometimes be used to achieve that. More often than not it won’t. It needs to be done in another way that won’t directly effect the potential for combat proficiency of the medic. I hope that makes enough sense because it should be seen as hugely problematic to anyone with a competitive mindset.