The " F " autofocus is a serious problem for Medics. Especially the Medics.
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As a Soldier, your teamate can move away from the pack to get his ammo. He can wait a few seconds.
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As an Engineer, your teamate can live without the buff. He can wait a few seconds.
However, as a Medic, each seconds are precious :
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your incap teamate can NOT move.
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your teamate can be finished by incoming bullets/grenades.
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your teamate can decide he waited enough and respawn instead.
. . .
I just played several (something like 5) hours, mainly as a Medic :
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more than 10 times I couldn’t revive a downed pal because other teamates were there, trying to gain some ground. I waited for an opportunity… then gave up or died without reviving these poor teamates.
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4 times I buffed a teamate instead of reviving a critically-important teamate.
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We lost 1 time due to this : one of our 2 operatives finally reached the point, but was incap at 93% of the hack. I buffed the wrong guy because of the autofocus. When I could finally get my supply point and revive the Operative, enemy swarmed in and cleared the zone.
The morale shock and the lack of time prevented us from reaching the zone again.
. . .
And it gets worse : the " F " lag for revive-syringes makes reviving much more difficult (but the wrong kind of difficulty). You need to run to the guy, wait 0.5 / 1 second for the F lag, then press F, THEN you can run away.
Since you never know if the " F " is still lagging or not, you need to SEE it.
average human reaction time : 200-250 ms
- network latency : 50 to 100 ms
- average frames per second : 50 fps (+ 20 ms to meet the next frame)
- monitor lag : + 2-5 ms
= 270-370 ms
In the end, the time between you standing near the patient and you running away, there’s at least 1 to 2 seconds. It’s more than enough to take more than 100 HP damages.
On one hand, the pace of the game is kinda fast, the Light body is a rocket on shoes, we can climb on everything (or almost everything, as heavier body types), we can slide and shoot at the same time, there’s explosions and bullets flying.
On the other end, the Medic has to run, stop, stand still, wait for the interface lag, throw his syringes, then run away. It doesn’t fit with Brink pace at all.
If we could “prepare” or “predict” when the " F " for the revive appears (like when you have a syringe slot), we could run to our patient, predict the lag+fps+monitor lag, and click the syringe at the right moment.
. . .
Possible solutions (imho) :
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deactivable autofocus (in the option, as a key in “Misc Controls”, as a console command)
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give priority to Revives over Buffs (make it a togglable setting ?)
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bigger revive range (= bigger syringe throwing distance)
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bigger F range (= you can get the “Revive” F stuff from further away, when you press it sprint you to the position)
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take the F lag into account when calculating the revive range (predict player position and allow syringe throw before the player reports being in the range)
. . .
If Brink didn’t had all these problems (crashes, ATI performance issue, no sound bug, invisible players, chokepoints map design), it would be the GOTY for me. I hope things will get better 