Where has the "gib" proposal gone in this kilometers long thread? Give people the ability to gib the fallen people to prevent revive.
I totally agree with this and I usually play medic in here. I used to play A LOT in Wolf:ET, where this system was implemented so I know what I'm talking about. In ET reviving was even istant, but having fallen people gibbed by the enemy the game was perfectly balanced. Also, it prevents crazy medics (like me sometimes ) to run in the open to revive someone that would be killed again just a second after beeing revived cause still under heavy enemy fire... I think that this change alone could heavily improve game dynamics.
I like this idea, and I think even short of that they could just make players targetable once the medic has completed the revive. Super annoying having to sit and wait for someone to accept their revive, we should be able to put them down right away.
One other thing about wolf:et medics, the revive needle was an ammo item. You had something like 5 or 6 then you /killed yourself to respawn just before the spawn timer tick to get more. I imagine a slow recharge from engineers would be ok. aoe rez is pants on head.
I don't have a big issue with the AOE rez since it's a one-shot per life (or per visit to terminal, anyway), and it fills in the 'clutch' role that a lot of the more useful grenades do. I'd want to wait to see that one changed, except to make it explode on contact.
So does anyone have any other input on this subject? I'm sticking to this thread and pushing for length rather than creating multiple threads that just spread out the suggestions and solutions. Maybe I'll take some time today and flesh out my previous ideas or at least set something up to categorize pieces of my ideas.
I do want to see your ideas fleshed out, and my use of the phrase 'nerf the revive abilities of the medic' in that other thread don't necessarily mean 'nerf the medic class'. A player-based limitation would also be a nerf to the revive abilities.
Maybe just not allow medics to take the grenade bandoleer? The way I see it, the medi-gun is fine as a revive option. I've seen much more powerful revive tools, and just the fact that you have to revive each person one at a time limits it enough in my opinion. While I've also seen games that handled a fairly milsim-style approach to revives well (limited supplies, having to spend time healing post-revive, numerous gib conditions) I don't think such an approach is particularly necessary in PS2. Revive grenades on the other hand, have the ability to instantly raise every single person in a fairly large radius with zero risk to the medic. If they couldn't take bandoleers, then attackers could at least take comfort in the knowledge that it's a one-time use. Plus, it would sort of introduce a subtle tactical aspect where people know that medics only have one grenade.
From what I gather there are a lot of people warming to the idea that changes need to be made in some capacity. What the changes may be, and whether the bulk of the weight should be on the reviver or revivee leaves a lot to be discussed.
People actually equip the bandolier while they play Medic? I find the thought mind boggling and strange since flak or nanoweave just play out better than having an additional grenade. I wonder if SOE has any stats on how many people actually use the bandolier. I will also be the first one say that I do toss revive grenades into a room as kind of use and forget tactic. But let me emphasize that this tactic is generally used in the large fights such as in a Biolab where running in or past a wall of enemy to revive folks opposite of me that are suppressing the enemy is not recommended and reviving from safety makes sense. The grenade themselves need limits in place beyond the amount that can be carried because right now they do unbalance a situation when people exploit the mechanic. I would prefer a grenade the placed a HoT (heal over time) on friendly targets as a kind of healing haze so that they could run in, get a tick, and then move on. Granted this HoT would probably be limited and the duration could be governed by the amount of time someone spends in the field. It frees me up from having to individually heal or stand in a pack of people where C4 and grenades make quick work of my attempt to support. But then again this would create another problem I'm sure. Heck another idea that just came to me in regard to offering a variety of healing mechanics could be a Medic activating a terminal that dispenses a set amount of heals to people that interact directly with it. Maybe sort of like a vehicle or weapon terminal but you open it to receive the heal and maybe get to tweak your loadout or something. While we're at it why not allow an engineer to interface with the terminal to equip "charges" of resupply or even to equip the loadout and resupply feature instead of the medic? Just something for a bit of variety!
+1 for putting the revive restrictions on the dead and not the medic himself ie. gibbing. Not to say that the act of reviving itself doesn't need to be looked at but the more punishment on the victim and not the medic the better imo.
I would oppose any nerf to the medic and their abilities, but I would nerf the patient. I think the speed of a lvl 5 revive is fine and I do not have issues with revive grenades and yes it is faster to revive than to heal, but if they healed any faster a whole new bag of worms would open up and increasing the time to revive would make medics too exposed for too long. 1. Reduce the number of revives a player can accept from infinite to 2 or 3, reduce maxes to 1 revive. 2. Give players the ability to force a corpse to respawn Those two fixes do not touch the medic or their abilities and IMO would pretty much solve the problem.
I'm thinking the same along what you've listed although i'd initially prefer a more simpler 1 revive allowed within x minutes approach across the board (irrespective of the targets class).
The gib mechanic I think since this game is on such a large scale might make it impossible to res someone just due to the sheer number of bullets and explosions constantly going on every fight. The x number of revives per x minutes approach would be nice but I still think there is no real risk for a medic to just be able to res a person mid fight in a large battle in one second from 10m away or further with a res grenade and get some really fast and quick XP. There needs to be more risk/reward balance in my opinion and it just seems to be all reward with little risk. I do agree that there needs to be more emphasis on healing people that are alive as well because they are in essence alive and are able to shoot and cover you while you have your med app out, the dead person cannot cover you and gives you more XP with very little risk.
Sincerely I do not remember if you used to get more needles when you get more ammo or not. Anyway, for the knowledge of everyone, here is all you should know about the wolf:et medic and its mechanics: http://www.planetwolfenstein.com/enemyterritory/classes/medic.shtml Although I personally find it quite well balanced and well thought, it is still far from being perfect. I remember a lot of et medics that, having to heal heavily wounded allies, always choose to TK them and then revive with the needle: it was significantly more efficient and faster than simply healing them. That's something similar to what we have here: reviving is always faster than healing and I've never been so sure it should be like this. Another good thing about wolf:et mechanics was the "you've been killed" screen: any killed player could watch the progress of the battle from there just as they were looking around, but the best thing was that if a medic was near, the killed player's view was automatically pointed to him. In this way the killed player could always know if a revive was possible or not and so decide if it was better to immediately respawn or maybe wait a little longer and see if the medic succeeds to clear the area and finaly revive him. In PS2 I find a little issue that players do not actually know whether a medic is coming to them or not: many times happens that after some fight I finally get to a killed ally, begin to revive him and he suddenly disappear due to respawn. I would bet that if those players actually know that I was coming for them, they would not have respawned so fast. The little "You've being revived by..." phrase under the respawn button that we have now is ok, but IMHO it is not enough. Mybe our "you've been killed" screen could be used better instead of just showing our corpose on the floor...
I still oppose the ideas of the revive limitations. Instead of adding a new mechanic to the game it's better to refine the current one. Increasing the revive time to five or more seconds and reduce the revive range to one meter already helps against chain-reviving. The problem isn't the possibility to constantly revive the same player but to do so in no time with a distance from four meters safely from behind cover. These changes make healing faster and more viable than reviving. Healing then has a longer range, is faster and the wounded player is still able to shoot the enemy. Limited amount of revives and gib mechanics are just impossible in this game like xJohnWayne described. We shouldn't discourage reviving but make healing more viable, while reviving becomes an emergency solution if healing didn't work and the current situation allows the medic to safely revive the dead player.
Why is this thread still going? the simple fact is that currently the game is actually quite balanced (despite forumside opinion) and very fast pace. The current revive mechanic (speed wise) fits into this quite well. SOE is not going to change this any time soon. The medic redesign month is coming up and if anything will be changed it will be changed then and most likely not based on any player suggestions on this forum, hopefully. There is absolutely no reason what so ever to call foul on the revive mechanic. A reviving medic is a not fighting medic, kill him. He doesn't have the ability to fight back. The revivie is returned without a shield and can be put down in 2 seconds with a couple bullets. Maybe toss a grenade on the dead guy? They're both glowing green most likely, hard to miss. If a guy without a weapon and a guy at half health who is dazed is a challenge for you I think I might know why you're complaining. That aside...the medic is available to anyone. Why are you complaining about this when it is readily available to every single person playing the game? If reviving was as "OP leet sauce" as many of you are making it out to be there would be about 40%+ medic population. I still see a good mix of classes with an emphasis on what the occasion calls for and most of the time still heavy assault. Maybe this is just a Mattherson thing. Most of these suggestions sound great and reasonable but you guys aren't actually thinking big picture. The smallest change has a major effect in this game as the amount of variables in play is sporadic. Limiting a person to 3-5 revives per hard spawn or limiting the number of revives a medic can make per life sounds like a reasonable idea. It really does. However, the reality of the situation is this will hurt teamwork, organized play, and small group play. If a team of guys go into a base and are able to successfully hold a room against enemies out numbering them 2:1 and everything is going well till suddenly they can't revive anymore...just...cause...that would be pretty frustrating as they are clearly better than their attackers. The larger force will have more medics with an overall net of more revives (if medics are limited to revives per life) and most likely more localized spawns (if players are limited to a number of revives) leaving everything in their favor. Are we going to limit the number of spawns at a base/Sunderer next because players just keep flooding in? With the extremely fast TTK people die frequently and often times it is not their fault or outside of their control. They were visible just barely to a sniper. They lagged up at the wrong second due to poor performance. A guy ran into the room and blew C4. A grenade went off that you didn't see. A random rocket flew into the room and luckily popped some guy or the splash hit someone in cover recovering. Death is part of the game and was intended as slow TTK and low deaths yields less enjoyable gameplay (according to most players and the devs). The medic is the counter to this to keep the sustainability and survivability high. The only change I could understand is a limit to medic juice WITH the condition that they can "resupply" it from an engineer medic pack forcing more team play. A medic could start with roughly enough juice for 5-10 revives before having to resupply. ANDDDD bring on the flames. Unfortunately my post will probably keep this thread going for a few more pages. Either way, off to work, big presentation. Just go play the game and have fun please and stop trying to fix every little thing that frustrates you and is not broken! Happy Friday!
The reality is that most of the people posting in this thread supporting a change ARE small-group-play types of people. I'm pretty sure this whole thread is flying right over your head. How do you think this worked in planetside 1? Oh wait. We had limited revives in that we had heal ammunition (which was shared with normal healing) AND it took a full five seconds. We still held of 4x our number in bases for long periods of time because we're not horrible. And you're sitting here telling me that 'It will hurt teamplay'.
Here's the problem I have, and it gets brought up every time nerfing any aspect of a support class is mentioned. Simply playing a "support" class is not teamwork. Running around with a bunch of medics is not teamwork. The current implementation of the revive system allows careless, reckless play. You don't have to worry about dying or decide whether or not it's a good time to revive because it's a no brainer. Should you fail, just do it again! No punishment, no limitations. If medics actually had to consider whether or not they should revive right now (suggestions: longer time to revive, player becomes targetable again when sitting up, cooldown on repeated revives) or the player had to decide whether or not it was a good idea to accept the revive (limited number of revives available in a short period) or the opposition had a way to deny revives (gib mechanic), we'd see much smarter play and an actual emphasis on teamwork. We don't need all of those changes, but just one or two would go a long way to solving the problem without drastically impacting the medic class.
