Should Medics get regeneration in Quake Wars?

(Hakuryu) #1

Medics are definately the best class in ET. Able to fight and stay alive better than any other class, due to self healing and regeneration. But why do they get regeneration when they can heal themselves?

It’s not a big deal when your playing a 3 map campaign, since they will probably only have 1 full map to play as level 4, but 99% of servers run long campaigns with 10+ maps. People like XP save, and I bet Quake Wars will have longer campaigns as soon as someone figures out how to do it.

So my question is this. Should medics get regeneration in Quake Wars?

(Nail) #2

no, engis should :lol:

(Sauron|EFG) #3

This one is easy: they should get regeneration if it makes the game more balanced. :stuck_out_tongue:

(carnage) #4

some interestig mod i have played for ET adn rtcw give medics regenration but stop medics taking there own health packs. at first is was quite anoying to adapt to but later particuarly in the wild west mod it realy opend the way to explore the other classes and differn ways to play them. also it made medics a much more team player roll as you had lots more change bar avaidable since you dint blow it all on yourself meaning droping health for teamates didint put you at a disadvatage of not being able to heal yourself later

also since medics werent always pushing 120 hp there was a lot more caution when entering firefight and dint get the rambo types just brusting though the lines then taking a few seconds to fully heal then be back kicking ass again. having to wait for the regen means that the less damage you took in the fight rely matterd as you would health to full faster. when compared to ET all that realy matters is that you survive the fight. good player are rewarded over a play that just scrapes though the battle. alternativly its worth much more to your team if you have a realy good fight with a medic but losesince he wort be able to fully heal and jump stright back into cambat with your team

with this in mind often it was better to wait for teamates and fight in small groups. also when you are ducking out of the fight for some regen time it mean you were free to heal teamates so its not like you were just wasting time. combine this with the ET reward system and its much much more beneficial to play a suporting role

i hope there is something like this in ETQW although i doubt it. imo it realy widens the gameplay making it more of a personal choice wich calss you play and what your stengths are as a player rather than one class simply dominating the other becuase they are better. it levels the playing field in a way meaning that brians has much more importance than brawn and simple kill/heal tatics. it matter how you play the class you are compared to how good you are with the mp40 + med packs

a system where you have to activly heal other teamates rather then droping pickups would stop medics doing things but i doubt medics will be disalowed to heal themselves because it would disapoint a large number of the current ET public server player

/end_rant 1

(Hakuryu) #5

I think it was originally meant to help them stay alive as they revived and healed teammates, since their throw health packs to other players might have depleted their bar. In practice however, good medics will run around a corner when hit, throw themselves 1 med pack, and then go back to battle… counting on regen to get them back to full health.

I dont see how that could be balancing, actually the opposite. I know when I see a medic in ET I’m thinking this is going to be a hard kill (because of their extra health+regen), but as a Medic when I see 3 enemies I’m thinking no problem and I simply run into battle with them.

(DG) #6

I thought a preview suggested medics werent getting regen in etqw, but i might be making that up and anyway everything like that would very likely be subject to change up until the last minute.

anyway, wether or not they should get regen depends on everything else that goes into the game balancing mix.

(carnage) #7

regen does not kick in during battle so its not a problem. as i see it the problem is not that medics are overpowerd in single fights. its there ablity to quickly go from one fight to the next at full strength greatly improving there chances. leaving a skilled player who can come out on top of most even battles on top can just go from one to the next eliminating the rest of the team.

a skiled enginee who can also come out on top of most even battles does not have this ability even though as a player he could be as good as the medic after one or two fight his health can be pretty low and is unable to win most fight alone. the result he is dependant on his teamates. also the fact that when losing a medic can just run away round a conrent and eat 2 or 3 health packs giving himself a nice little boost making the actual damage you have to deliver much higher

SD have put a lot of effor making sure that vehicales dont give you a stright up advantage over other player so i dont see why a particular class should. i also fail to see the significance of regen compared to the speed health can be regained by pack spaming. all i use if for is to get around things like fall damage penalties that when a normal class a few can soon mount out to a significat amount of damage and disadvatage me in a fight where when im a medic it doest realy matter since the small amount of damage will heal by itself

(B0rsuk) #8

Quoted for posterity

(Zyklon) #9

Either give everyone automated health regeneration, or no one.

(SCDS_reyalP) #10

Exactly. There is no doubt ET:QW is going to be substantially different from ET or RTCW. So arguing for/against a particular characteristic when we don’t know how the rest of the game plays out is pretty pointless. I have no doubt that SD is aware of the of complaints about the ET medic. Presumably, if they agree, they will try to avoid those faults in ET:QW.

I personally think this is absolutely horrible. It means you need twice as many medics, because where one could have kept your squad going, you now need two so they can heal each other as well. Realisticly, it’s rare enough to get two people really working together on a pub, never mind 3 or 4. Encouraging teamwork is great, but hurting gameplay in the vain hope that it will suddenly make a random pub crowd work together as a well coordinated group is just silly.

There are plenty of ways to make medics less powerful, and that is one of the very worst IMO.

regen does not kick in during battle so its not a problem.

huh ? Regen operates all the time.

(MuffinMan) #11

a skilled medic on a public is definitely a difficult opponent but then again a good medic will run through any enemy fire to revive teammates - the extra hp often are what’s needed to get to the fallen in one piece

I never really understood why people hated medics so much and why there was all this pointless discussion about rambo medics aso. I played medic a lot and I played field ops a lot, both competitive, and my conclusion is: you just have to use the advantages each class has - a medic goes into infight, kills the guy and runs away to heal and find ammo. a field ops tries to keep a distance and waits for the medic to run out of ammo similar for engeneer who does more the camper-style, using mines and his rifle grenade to keep people where he wants them to be…

and don’t forget that - assuming it’s skilled players neither the medic nor the field ops will have many chances to run off to heal / reload

(carnage) #12

Realisticly, it’s rare enough to get two people really working together on a pub, never mind 3 or 4. Encouraging teamwork is great, but hurting gameplay in the vain hope that it will suddenly make a random pub crowd work together as a well coordinated group is just silly.

from my experience with the wold west mod the reason for lack of teamplay on a pub server is the amount of independance the medic class get from the rest of the team. working in a team is all about give/recive but when you dont need to recive why waste time giving. a good example of this is when you try heal a filed ops on a pub 90% of the time he will throw ammo back while ignoring the rest of the team

i never said that removing abilites woud create super cordinated players but making one player need the others more would imo will make for better teamplay

btw im not just “hurting gameplay” randomy its all based from PERSONAL experience mainly playing the wild west mod for rtcw. granted that mod did change a lot of other aspects. as a medic at first i felt like i has been underpowerd but soon realied that i was simply reduced to the same power as the rest of my team

also if you are wondering i pretty much play as a rambo medic most of the time. i only play pub’s nowerdays and with the number of medics on the servers you pretty much have to be one or lose. so its not like im bashing the medic bacuse i cant beat them, although i love being able to win in pubs i do feel perhaps im almost exploting the intended gameplay

(SCDS_reyalP) #13

My comments were based on playing etpub with that setting. I didn’t find that it brought about any more teamwork, it just made it so you needed two medics where you had one before. You might say that requires more “more teamwork” but it doesn’t. In typical pubs there are only a few people who work together, and it just requires more of them switch to med to be effective. You still have the same number of people working together, they just have to switch roles.

I don’t recall not being able to pick up medpacks in wild west, maybe that change was put in after I stopped playing.

(Nishua) #14

Medics should be able to regenerate health thats their job. As for regenerating their own health HELL NO !!!. I dont think I need to give a reason why but if you need one lets look at BF2. Where medics in that game are more concerned about healing themselves then helping out their teammates. If SD really wants to have teamplay they will make sure medics CAN ONLY HEAL THEIR TEAMMATES.

(carnage) #15

the thing i think with playing ET now without own health pickup just doesnt work becuase people have been doing it the other way far too long and probably still play with there old tatics so there isnt a great deal more teamplay

when coming to something like wild west its pretty much a whole new experience when you play the game so i think that made medics re assess there role in the game when they found they wernt a uber class. but player would have to play a no healthpack mod for some time before they realy adapt and accept the changes 100%

(HellToupee) #16

all medics need balancing is just their ammo supply, tho regen could possibly be removed, however if u remove regen medics will also be forced to eat their own packs more, if you make it impossible to pick up their own packs then they will be forced to wait around doing nothing for ages for health to regen.

RTCW medics were quite balanced because they were 100% dependant on lts for ammo, they had 30 rounds and one grenade then it was pistol at times all i had to fight with was a knife when no lt would give out ammo, et toned down the dependance on the lt for ammo a bit with ammo racks and picking up dropped smgs.

But i fail to see why the medic is so dominant, the class has the fewest offensive tools, just asmg and a greade pretty much where every other class has some thing that goes boom, panza airstikes arty grenade launcher, mines list goes on. Only medic has advantage in smg fight its just all other classes also want to have the toys eg arty and airstrikes and also dominate smg.

I would also hate medics to be made useless, no matter what class im playing, having a medic around to revive me is great, because even the most rambo of medics will take time to revive for those precious xp points.

(MuffinMan) #17

:clap: :drink:

and this (not only reduced to medics) is the reason why I never liked the XP system, it should encourage teamplay but leads to xp whoring and the longer you do it the better you get - good for noobs to get up in the ranks, bad for good players who just joined and it leads to maxed out superclasses like the medic with the adrenaline syringe who is almost unstoppable for anybody who just joined or is just no good shooter.

in rtcw you always tried to make up an lt / medic - 2 men team, in et I’m most of the time collecting stuff on the way (while still healing everybody but there are not enough field ops who give ammo instead of artillery)

(SCDS_reyalP) #18

BF2 isn’t really a good comparison, since revive in BF2 is far less effective an RTCW/ET. In many situations in ET (especially on pubs where you get full revive) packs are for yourself, needles are for everyone else. If you choice is packing yourself to get to the next revive or dying, packing yourself is obviously better, both for you and your team.

I agree that medics were better balanced in RTCW.

(kamikazee) #19

A few ways have been proposed to fix it in W:ET… But what if medics can heal with a different effect depending on the class? (Medic or non-medic)

I’ll explain by an example - suppose a med pack heals 25 HP. When a medic hands out a med pack to another class, that class gets 25 HP. However, when a medic hands out a med pack which is picked up by a medic, the effect changes.
Two cases exist:

  • The medic who picked up the medpack threw it himself. (self-heal) In that case, the medic gets 1/3 of 25 HP (approx. 8 HP) and gets an increase of his chargebar by 2/3 of the value it took for throwing it.
  • Another medic pciked it up. He gets 2/3 of 25 HP (approx 16 HP) and a chargebar increase of 1/3 of what it took to throw a medpack.

Result: medics heal themselves slower, so they can’t rush behind the corner to pump up their health in no time. However, the problem isn’t gone completely… A medic could still self-heal if he has enough time.
Camping on top of a pile of medpacks would be harder too, as those medpacks aren’t worth as much as they used to.
And last: doubling medic forces has no true advantages for the medics themselves.

Of course, just an idea which should be tested to see if this actually improves balance.

(senator) #20

Simple, take away the Medic regen and they will consume even more medipacks to heal themself instead of using that energy to heal their teammates.
Medic is also the most endangered class, because in every firefight it’s common to kill the medics first, and dashing across open field to revive that downed Engineer attracts bullets quite a lot, too.

Unless your idea of a fun class is beeing a mobile healthpack dispenser who stays behind everybody else to avoid beeing shot at (and no, I don’t think that you’ll find too much support for that idea :wink: ), leave the Medics their regen, its better for the entire team.

To further elaborate: The main concern of every player is to stay alive, because a dead player cant do anything. This is most important for the Medic, because every other class can hope for a revive if a Medic is nearby, so the longer a medic stays alive, the more his team profits from him beeing around (revives/health)

If the main concern is to stay alive, than everything that makes the medic weaker will result in him eating more of his own healthpacks to get to status quo again, which will leave less healthpacks for his team.

The best medic would be an invulnerable one, as he could use 100% of his energy to toss out healthpacks to others and he would never hesitate to dash across the battlefield to revive you.

The least usefull medic is one with low health and no regen, as he would consume healthpacks at a far greater rate, leaving little to nothing for others and would almost never dare to revive you, unless you are lying in a completely safe spot, as he would die from enem,y fire on his way to you otherwise.

Now we have to balance these two needs, making the medics survivability too good creates balancing problems, making him too weak creates teamwork problems. In my experience ET hits pretty close to the sweet spot, the medics survivability is good, so he can afford those suicidal dashes to revive fallen comrades even while under fire, yet they arent unkillable. I like the class as it is now, and if it fits into ETQWs class design balance wise… all is good :smiley: