Medic Suggestions

(rand0m) #101

Lol. Is there a buy back program for my alpha invite? I’ll pay a restocking fee and burn my hard drive.

(Rex) #102

Calm down dude.

(INF3RN0) #103

Gimping ammo is a poor solution imo. Throw a FOPS on there and you still get a super class. It’s not the fact that he now has to pair up with a FOPS to maintain momentum. It is the fact that the medic is still mathematically superior (as long as he has ammo) and your basically creating a TF2 dynamic where you stick a guy behind another and have him press the F button. Bullets kill people of course, but packs allow you to skew the aim game and never suffer from damage taken. Self heal can definitely exist, however the weapon must be gimped. On the other hand self heal can be removed and the weapon buffed.

When healing/reviving are important don’t just slap something in there like self heal to solve it. Look to the actual actions of healing and reviving to be rewarding rather. Imagine if I demanded soldier had an activate-able immunity from damage or timed resistance so he could plant c4 easier for one example. I could argue relentlessly that it helped him play his role more effectively, but then you would have frag hungry soldiers wrecking people simply because the game allowed them to gain measurable combat advantage. I played enough rambo medic in my lifetime to know I was putting myself at an advantage over classes that couldn’t heal themselves.

(ailmanki) #104

Either keep it Arcade like it is. Regen and packs.
Or simulate it like DayZ. Which nope I don’t like.

(Hundopercent) #105

[QUOTE=INF3RN0;455229]Gimping ammo is a poor solution imo. Throw a FOPS on there and you still get a super class. It’s not the fact that he now has to pair up with a FOPS to maintain momentum. It is the fact that the medic is still mathematically superior (as long as he has ammo) and your basically creating a TF2 dynamic where you stick a guy behind another and have him press the F button. Bullets kill people of course, but packs allow you to skew the aim game and never suffer from damage taken. Self heal can definitely exist, however the weapon must be gimped. On the other hand self heal can be removed and the weapon buffed.

When healing/reviving are important don’t just slap something in there like self heal to solve it. Look to the actual actions of healing and reviving to be rewarding rather. Imagine if I demanded soldier had an activate-able immunity from damage or timed resistance so he could plant c4 easier for one example. I could argue relentlessly that it helped him play his role more effectively, but then you would have frag hungry soldiers wrecking people simply because the game allowed them to gain measurable combat advantage. I played enough rambo medic in my lifetime to know I was putting myself at an advantage over classes that couldn’t heal themselves.[/QUOTE]

You can try going elbows deep force feeding us this crap. It’s not going to make us agree with you nor will it fix the medic problem. When you have some quality ideas to make reviving and healing worthwhile, take the time to post. Until then it would be appreciated if you would stop inflating this thread with the same long winded post reworded.

(INF3RN0) #106

If you were a SD dev it might matter. Overall it just seemed like the one thing you and Kendle were hell bent on was keeping the self heal mechanic. I wanted variances of the medic, where in self heal could exist but at the cost of weaker weaponry. I’ve already said I am mostly satisfied with the current medic, but I’d enjoy some more variations towards stronger weaponry and stronger self packing (BUT not all in one package). Kendle appears to be content with that, but you are not right? Just to be clear on what your actually disagreeing with from what I’ve said.

BTW I did offer some initial ideas on how to have a medic without self heal and still offer the medic some incentive to revive and heal other players though… (remember this medic would have a much better gun than the SMG)

-regen some health from heals/revives
-longer player spawn shields
-faster movement with paddles/med packs out
-increased action time for revives

All I could come up with in the moment, but I’ll gladly keep adding to it as the brain chugs along.

(prophett) #107

I want the medic to have the ability to self heal, and I play Field Op 80-90% of the time.

When I do need to switch to medic, my play style resembles Kendle’s (support). I agree with the point Strchzilla said about sacrificial revives that trade lives and normally ends up with both the medic and person being revived being killed. Improving the revive and revive shield would help remedy this, but in the end I want the medic to be able to heal himself. By better being able to keep himself alive he can do a better job of keeping the team/push alive.

I never did have a problem with “rambo” medics and I think some people’s stereotype of the class based upon previous games are clouding their judgement of the medic in Dirty Bomb and nerfing it (or attempting to nerf it) to a poor state as a result.

Giving the medic less ammo and letting him self-heal is worth trying (and proven). Throwing a field ops in the mix that still makes him a superior class isn’t a poor solution - it’s teamwork.

Somewhat off topic - I loved the old Fops/LT - Medic combo and I hope their role is as prominent in Dirty Domb. Field Op artillery also needs improved damage for area denial (shameless plug :P)

(INF3RN0) #108

Brink buffs were teamwork then.

(Kendle) #109

Bang on. :slight_smile:

I was too busy yesterday watching Andy Murray become the first Brit to win Wimbledon for 77 years and watching Lewis Hamilton not win the German Grand Prix, so was trying to keep up posting from my iPad.

I promised myself I wasn’t going to do this but I suppose I need to reiterate once again why the Medic must retain his self-heal ability …

Partly it’s for the reasons others have given, a Medic who can’t keep himself alive can’t keep anyone else alive either.

It’s also partly for the reasons Strych gives, the Medic must still remain an attractive class to play regardless of what gets done to it, even for those who some of us snobbishly believe shouldn’t be playing the class. There are plenty of selfish Medics in this Alpha but I wouldn’t count Strych as one of them, even if he might himself, at least the guy revives whenever I’ve played with him.

Prophett above reminds us that a self-healing Medic with low ammo is a proven solution. Not starting from that point and testing it in DB seems to be a rather short-sighted approach, especially as many of the things SD have done recently have been implementing solutions proven to work in previous games, like longer spawn times etc.

But my main reason I suppose is a kind of ideological one. Each class has some weapons and 2 class abilities. All of those are designed to help the team in one way or another. The Medic is the custodian of a team resource, health. The Medic is a member of the team, the same as everyone else, a valid recipient of that resource, same as everyone else. If the Medic couldn’t self-heal he’d be the only class that couldn’t benefit from a team resource (that everyone else can benefit from) without a 2nd of his type on the team. The F/Ops is the custodian of a team resource, ammo, but no-one argues for F/Ops to not be able to re-supply themselves.

In a game that has 5 classes and is intended to be played 5-v-5 in matches (and only 8-v-8 on pubs), can we afford this anomaly of 1 class out of 5 that requires another of it’s kind to receive the same benefits as everyone else? Would we not be forcing 5-v-5 to drop a class entirely because we can’t NOT have at least 2 Medics on the team? In practise “highlander” mode probably doesn’t work in DB (though I suspect SD would like it to), but it couldn’t even be considered if the Medic couldn’t self-heal.

There are then practical implications (on pubs) of Medic not being able to self-heal. For a start, forget Medic / F/Ops combo’s, you’d instantly see Medic / Medic combo’s, and probably far less F/Ops as a result. A Medic / F/Ops combo might be simplistic teamwork, and selfish in itself, but at least it’s teamwork, and at least a Medic / F/Ops combo has the capacity to replenish all the teams resources even if they horde the majority of it for themselves. A Medic / Medic combo is no greater teamwork, no less selfish, but certainly less useful to the team.

Edit: I see Inferno has posted while I’ve been writing this, Brink’s buffs are not a great example of teamwork, but they’re a better example of teamwork than the absence of them.

(Kl3ppy) #110

Before I want to test drastical changes to the medic, I want to test the actual medic with an improved revive shield.

(Kendle) #111

[QUOTE=INF3RN0;455250]BTW I did offer some initial ideas on how to have a medic without self heal and still offer the medic some incentive to revive and heal other players though… (remember this medic would have a much better gun than the SMG)

-regen some health from heals/revives
-longer player spawn shields
-faster movement with paddles/med packs out
-increased action time for revives
[/QUOTE]

It’d be rude not to reply to this, and I’d certainly be up for variations of the Medic class in terms of one having strong class abilities and a weak gun, and another having a strong gun and weak class ability, but I wouldn’t want either to not have self-heal (even if that means one has instant heal packs and the other has slow acting regen packs).

In particular the idea of receiving health by healing others falls over as soon as there are no others to heal. If you’re a Medic, and you’re damaged, and your team are all on full health or dead, you no longer have the capacity to heal at all (beyond global health regen of course).

(stealth6) #112

I don’t think the medic should be able to heal himself with his own medpacks, it promotes selfish playstyles imo. I do think that he should have health regeneration and possibly slightly more health or more armour. (so you have the benefit of self healing, without actually manually giving yourself a medpack)

(warbie) #113

Is that such a bad thing? This is how it was in the only game of this type that didn’t have a rambo medic problem. And so what if the medic is strong in combat as a result (something that can always be tweaked with the weapons if needs be) - the important thing is we have classes that need each other sticking and working together. The short of this is - the more you gimp the medic’s ability to stay alive the more you gimp his options and ability to do the job of a medic. Shoehorning in overly contrived healing/reviving mechanics that force medic to play how you think a medic should be played will always be a worse solution.

(tokamak) #114

It´s quite simple.

Two sides in this debate.

One side has the overall role division of classes in mind and see that a rather powerful ability is not used for the intended purposes, disallowing the rest of the class´s abilities to be expanded for the fear of further exploitation.

And another side that is merely entrenched, fighting for the only playstyle they like and invested in during the alpha.

YES if all that stands in between the medic being gimped and turning into a super solo class is the mere availability of ammo then that is quite clearly and unquestionably a REALLY BAD THING.

(H0RSE) #115

This seems to be the popular mindset among the comp/“hardcore” crowd. They approach scenarios from their point of view, and things don’t match up to what they expect or to how they think things should be, then it is obviously wrong and needs to be changed. They’ve been like this ever since I arrived on these boards back when Brink was being developed. They seem to have a very selfish mindset about things, thinking about either themselves, of only the needs/wants of the comp community.

(tokamak) #116

They’re allowed to have that mindset. There’s nothing wrong with defending your favourite style of play. I just think it’s close minded and clearly not in the interest of the overall balance of the game.

It’s very, very similar to how people are defending their favourite classes on the WoW forums. They’re also invested in a certain class, are reluctant to play anything else. In turn they then downplay the actual strength of the imbalanced features and try to make everything seem normal or even like the underdog.

Most striking resemblance of this case and the WoW forums is the notion that the class is somehow performing better than the others because only skilled players play it.

The medic’s self heal is limiting the medic’s healing power and the reduced medic healing power is in turn limiting the ways the other classes can be expanded.

(warbie) #117

I’m not with you there. Often the most important thing a medic can do is be alive to revive people. When you’re pushing through as bottleneck there’s rarely time to dish out med packs - you’re on whack-a-mole revive duty. Keeping the team rolling. Self healing and topping yourself up is the best way to support your team in this situation. And sure, you could come up with a mechanic that would achieve something similar - hp for reviving etc - but it would likely be situational and less useful. For an alternative to be as good it has to factor in the medic being able to heal himself very quickly from near death.

(INF3RN0) #118

I was a comp player and still have the mindset. The difference is that I am highly critical of even my favorite games. There’s always room for improvement and change even if it forces me to change my play style, especially when it broadens the overall scheme. All I care about is balance, freedom of choice, and dynamic opportunities.

Self packing can make the medic more “interesting”, which is exactly why I don’t mind it- however weapon gimping is the most realistic downside to the mechanic. In the past self packing was most often a means of winning a duel or allowing the medic to constantly push forward because damage taken went unhindered. Just because it could sometimes be used in a good way, it did not change the fact that it created more problems than it solved. Still when self-packing is present with balanced consequences, it almost becomes a requirement to be consistently successful. If you offer players variations of that play style then you can cater to each kind of player. Otherwise if people want a medic with all the best stuff, every other class is going to need a similar mechanism. If that were to happen though you would more than likely hear people complain.

To me it’s nonsense that a medic has to be the best class in the game. It might to be the most consistent team support class, however as far as combat it should be fairly equal to the rest. Supportive roles should only serve to give momentum to the team overall, and not allow one class to gain measurable strength advantage. If a support mechanic can be used to increase personal combat effectiveness, then expect consequences. There’s all to much complaining about how certain classes are too strong in combat, yet the medic should be strongest in combat and support… why is that so necessary? It definitely was not the key to what made these games good… not at all.

(INF3RN0) #119

[QUOTE=Kendle;455272]

In particular the idea of receiving health by healing others falls over as soon as there are no others to heal. If you’re a Medic, and you’re damaged, and your team are all on full health or dead, you no longer have the capacity to heal at all (beyond global health regen of course).[/QUOTE]

I wouldn’t mind some auto regen kick in on this type of medic out of combat. The goal here for an alt medic is simply to separate the self healing mechanics from combat. The receiving hp while healing other players is different though (before someone says something) because it would be a less abusive means of making healing/reviving more effective.

(tokamak) #120

Double post