Change Medic Revives

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Tristan, Sep 3, 2013.

  1. Tristan

    The Basic Premise
    Player's, either solo or as a group, contributions to the battle should not be very easily negated a majority of the time. The current mechanics for medics create a situation where dying can mean very little in a game mostly about shooting people.

    A revive should be a luxury, not expected every time you die. You got yourself killed, whether it was through poor positioning or simply getting outgunned. By all means, you should be revivable, however it shouldn't be as easy as it is now. This is an FPS, deaths should carry weight. Not in the sense of stats, that's a non-issue. When you die, you've been removed from the fight. It is far too easy in the current state of the game to bring players back into the fight. This makes everything an issue of numbers and devalues player skill. How is it reasonable that I kill four people and die to a fifth who happens to be a medic, and in less than ten seconds he has all of those players back on their feet at full health?

    Revive Mechanic Problems
    These do not all need to be fixed, as they're not all big problems by themselves, but lumped together they create a ridiculous situation.
    - Medics can almost instantly revive downed soldiers
    - Medics can revive soldiers at a generous range
    - Medics can revive while moving
    - Medics can revive MAX suits
    - Medics can revive an unlimited number of times
    - It is faster to kill and revive someone than it is to heal them

    Anecdotes
    1) A squad of 6 against a squad of 20 can take out 15 of those 20 before dying, and have all of their effort reversed in an extremely short period of time over and over again. This does not encourage teamplay, which the smaller squad is obviously doing a better job at than the larger squad. Teamplay would be the larger squad taking very limited deaths from a squad 1/3rd their size.

    2) Yesterday I was in a tech plant at the top of the stairs leading to the capture point. At the bottom were five troops and a MAX. Collectively, I killed them 15-20 times, including the MAX twice. Within a few minutes they were at the top of the stairs like nothing happened.

    3) At the same tech plant, a group of 10-15 enemies were sitting outside one of the vehicle entrances trying to get in. Looking at my killboard, I killed 27 of these people, and probably contributed to killing others, while only dying once. Yet, they just kept getting back up to resume the fight because of the unlimited revive mechanics. All of those kills were 100% meaningless, other than annoyance for them and experience for me.

    What these anecdotes show, of which were all taken just from this weekend and happen every single day, is that 'teamplay' isn't the issue. Neigh unlimited revives discourage teamplay and skill because they render deaths near meaningless.

    Solutions
    Games, including the predecessor to this one, have all successfully limited revive mechanics while still keeping the class viable. In PS1, an average loadout for an average player allowed that player to perform about four revives. These revives could only happen right on top of the corpse and took around five seconds. This meant that medics NEEDED to clear an area before reviving, and that the enemy could restrict the application of revives if the area was still contested. It was simply too risky to try to revive someone in the middle of a fight. THIS is teamplay. Keeping the enemy from being able to revive due to reasonable gameplay restrictions, and needing to clear out the enemy to perform your own revives.

    Other games solve the problem through allowing the gibbing of corpses to disallow a revive attempt, or allow only an extremely limited amount of revives allowed on a single player per spawn.

    Either way, the state of revives right now allows for ambivalence to death, can easily render individual skill meaningless, and grossly advantages the side with the higher numbers.

    Change it.
    • Up x 20
  2. TheBloodEagle

    I don't agree, I think it's fine. Sometimes it's hard enough to find a dedicated Medic (outside of the hardcore outfits). Making their job tougher isn't going to make the game any better. People would most likely just Respawn at a Sundy, Base or Squad Beacon since it would be quicker than waiting for a Medic to be exact or realizing whelp...ran out of revives..which would negate the bigger point of the Medic being the one helping push the advance. If they really wanted to make death be more painful..have a bigger penalty and make you more cautious then they'd lower the TTK and make it more like Red Orchestra.
    • Up x 4
  3. Sock

    PS2 is not a fast paced game. Just because there are low TTKs does not mean we need instant revives to compensate. As is, individual contributions to any fight past a squad size are almost always pointless. C4 three maxes camping a door? All revived a few seconds later. Medics' effectiveness scales exponentially in numbers. Having lots of medics in one area reviving isn't teamwork, it actually hampers real attempts at teamwork.
    • Up x 6
  4. Sock

    The problem right now is that there is essentially no penalty for dying. It's not like we're asking for anything hardcore, but death needs to carry some weight.
    • Up x 2
  5. Chinchy

    Just add a mechanic where you can despawn "dead" opposing players on the ground, Problem solved.
    • Up x 7
  6. axiom537

    /Agree

    I think a few minor tweaks would do the trick, without taking anything away from the medic.

    #1. Limit every player to 3 revives / respawn
    #2. Limit Max Revives to 1 / Spawn
    #3. Add a mechanic for the enemy to force the dead to re-spawn.
    • Up x 3
  7. Tristan

    This is one of the reasonable solutions, and would definitely be worth trying.
  8. Tristan

    The biggest problem with putting the limit on individual players is that there's no elegant way for the medic to know if the person they're moving towards to try to revive is revivable or not. I think that solution would actually make a medic's job unreasonably more difficult.
    • Up x 3
  9. Flapatax

    It should be clear that no one is saying to nerf the heal tool on living teammates-if you are good enough to not die a medic could still top you off. I'd say speed up the rate, even.

    Maxes should not be revivable, or one time per pull at most.
  10. axiom537

    Actually it is real easy, when you die after your revive limit has been reached you immediately despawn.
    • Up x 4
  11. Sock

    On this note, one of the other big problems currently is the ability to "hold on" to revives. Receive a revive, then sit there as long as you need before you accept because there's nothing your enemy can do, so they have to sit there and wait to see if you accept it. Players should be targetable when they're on the ground.

    Also, I'd definitely like to see a simple mechanic like knifing corpses to prevent revives.
    • Up x 1
  12. Rene Korda

    Agree 100%.

    Instant unlimited revives are one of the reasons for the combined arms being so badly balanced. Instead of being forced to depend on sunderers, that are vulnerable to vehicles, or even spawnbeacons (though these need to be made visible from much longer ranges and larger, so that they are properly vulnerable to vehicles) organized infantry attacking the point can become completely self-sufficient sitting right on that very point with a bunch of medics, completely bypassing all vehicles. This basically robs vehicles of their role in the game.

    Typical scenario: squad leaders fly over the point in their ESFs, get killed there by enemy interceptors. This should've put a stop to the attack - instead, a couple squads deploy right on those dead SLs (how come deploying on dead SLs is still in the game?), run into the room with the point and just sit there being ressed by medics all the time. This should've been stopped long ago. Limit squad deploy drastically - preferably make it spawn the person onto the nearest available spawnpoint - and put countdowns on medic revives.
  13. Tristan

    ... good point. =P
  14. TheBloodEagle

    Well considering it's a game, there will never be an actual fear of death and the ultimate penalty of actually being dead. I feel like these suggestions are more annoying rather than balancing. The two big penalties are having to wait and having to travel, which can create a loss of momentum & ultimately make a faction in the region lose its footing, get flanked, overrun, etc.
    • Up x 1
  15. vincent-

    Make the medic gun erase a corpse. I don't even care, I also think it's a waste of time until we are on the medic update. Devs have better things to deal with.
    • Up x 1
  16. Sock

    Isn't that the point. You should eventually win or lose and get overrun. Medics in their current state stagnate fights unnaturally.
    • Up x 1
  17. Tristan

    You just listed some examples of the penalty for dying.
  18. Flapatax

    Like? Other than optimization, medics are the most broken thing in the game in terms of metagame.
    • Up x 2
  19. TheBloodEagle

    Yeah...that was the point? Pretty much all games have those two big penalties...waiting & traveling..they just have different ways of implementing that.


    Honestly I think it's the opposite. The Medics progress the fight, keep it moving, keep it advancing. I think most fights would fizzle out faster without them. Ultimately we are here to shoot, kill and outplay other people...not wait around and/or go on road trips...to an extent of course.

    Example: 75% fighting / 25% waiting & traveling instead of 25% fighting / 75% waiting & traveling
    Most people I would think probably want to at least spend 75% of their time fighting.
    • Up x 1
  20. vincent-

    I play a medic and let me tell you there are several ways of shutting us down. I have more of a difficult time with heavies alone.

    A good team will always wipe the floor against any opponent.
    • Up x 1