I would hate to nerf the time for a revive, if we just had the ability to force the player we just killed to respawn, that would solve that problem without a nerf to the medic tool. I can't tell you how many times, our squad will clear a room and the enemy will just sit there, waiting for a medic to revive them. Hell, we do it ourselves, its just easier if you have a squad wipe to have one of the medics squad drop on the squad leader and bring everyone back up. However, If we cleared the room or wiped another squad and the engagement is pretty much over, we should be able to force those players to respawn, rather then sit around and wait for us to move on so their medic can revive them.
To the argument of awarding skill over numbers, I'd say it's exactly the opposite: current mechanics allow a smaller squad to have a greater impact trough proper tactics (and no, putting yourself in a position from which any enemies you kill will just get revived isn't proper tactics). Notably in galdrops, but alsp everywhere where you will flank an enemy: a medic allows you to stay and keep the position. If medics were significantly weaker, you could forget about gal drops, using smaller squads and attacking biolabs would be even harder and more annoying.
You start off talking about skill over numbers, but then you just compare small squad vs large group without any context. Higher skilled players tend to die less, requiring less use of medics and generally less of a gained affect on any of the solutions to the problem presented in this thread.
Like Tristen said, small, organized squads are going to die less, and therefore be less reliant on medics. Generally a small squad like that has a beacon and squad deploy available as well, so they've got multiple avenues to return to the fight. Large, unorganized zergs, however, are pretty dependent on the ability to spam mass revives to keep troops in the fight. The ability to rapidly revive multiple people completely devalues any individual action taken in large fights and turns everything into a numbers game.
y u no use the reply button A smaller squad operating without a reliable spawn will feel the death of one of their members far more than a large group operating with a sundy. If you're going in and taking risks, you'll die sometimes regardless of skill and you'll need those revives. A group with a spawn point playing passively on the other hand won't be affected by this since they don't need medics to keep their numbers up. When my outfit galdrops on a tech plant with less pop and 2 minutes left, yes we need medics to be quick and since we're pushing they can't revive their guys. This is just one of the many situations where better organization and skill benefits from medics, while the situations where zergs benefit from medics are much rarer.
What we're asking for is small changes that hardly impact individual medics, but would do a lot to stop the mass medic spam of zergs. Macro vs micro.
Don't take this as an attack, but exactly how many times are your guys dying in this push to the point that you'd be drastically hurt by changes to the revive system? I suspect that my definition of 'limited deaths' is different than yours. None of the changes repeated in this thread should hurt small squads in any major, unintended way.
Still trying to catch up from yesterday evening's posts, but I believe Minimum's posts across page 6 bring to light why I was on the fence about the issue a page or two back from that. I led in that I wasn't opposed to the idea of a medic nerf, but that these suggested measures might be a bit heavyhanded. What I didn't consciously consider was the fact that all these are direct medic nerfs and that all the burden leans on the helpful class; none on the recipient. It is that that I believe I was subconsciously hung up on yesterday; straight nerfing the medic doesn't sit well with me (yes, Medic is my main when I'm not in a vehicle). I'm a fan of games like Project Reality and other slower, realistic titles, but PS2 is not that kind of game. Kills come fast, revives come fast and packs of people can be wiped and brought back in a heartbeat. Like it or not, PS2 is fast paced game and to throw a ball and chain on just the medic is a lopsided fix I cannot abide. I also found the roster of those in favor of it, few actual medics, was also telling, but I'm not willing to embellish upon that much. The core idea has enough to argue against itself that I need not grasp for additional, needless debate ammunition such as that. If we're to correct this, death in general needs to have its edge sharpened; not simply attack the tools meant to combat it. If it comes down to being a nerf to revive tools combined with more painful deaths (limited revive counts, limited revive windows, longer respawn timers, whatever), that might prove to be the most agreeable solution. As it stands though, I don't see much of an issue with revives, given the current PS2 environment, both as a medic main and as a infantry player who explicitly targets enemy medics first.
PS2 is not a fast paced game just because it has a low TTK. The TTK is similar to other modern, realistic shooters and no one describes them as fast paced. Just because someone runs around a corner and gets killed quickly doesn't mean that any point up to that corner was fast paced. Changing the medic's revive functionality DOES put a burden on every single other player. You want a revive when you die? Well, you better make sure you don't die too much or you're revive opportunity might be negated. Whether this is a change to the direct revive mechanics, or a limit to a personal player's number of revives per life, this is true. Every single person in the situation has a burden on them to either not die, make smart decisions in reviving, or both.
As far as shifting weight to the recipient rather than nerfing medics, how do you feel about this idea: Once a player has been revived, but before they accept it, they become targetable again. This prevents people from sitting on revives waiting for the right time to accept and allows players to down them again without having to worry about when in the next minute that player is going to accept a revive. Zero impact on medics and reviving in a secure area, stops a lot of the mass revive nade cheesing.
I'd say 33% losses, more if it's down to a few seconds. On a 24 man platoon (what we often have) going against 48+, that's a lot and if you increase the revive time to let's say 5 seconds, you drastically reduce our staying power. Besides, we gotta take out the sundy as well. Or, when we gate shield defuse an AMP station, we again need revives or the zerg outside will eventually steamroll in. Also, good luck setting a spawn beacon inside a tech plant, biolab or shielded amp station =P But what it will end up impacting is people who play without a secure spawn point, since respawn times are short enough anyway. Making quick resecures for example. If you want to reduce zerging, there are other ways that really put an emphasis on tactics and teamwork.
This is what we do. Every day. With even less people than you use. We know where you're coming from, and we're still arguing for these changes because the current system hurts us more than it helps us. We did this same stuff in Planetside 1 for five years, which had limits on revive mechanics, and it worked way better.
Quick resecures against larger numbers is what we do 24/7. Our biggest problem is hordes of medics that do nothing but run around reviving. No shooting, just bunny hopping and tossing rez nades. Eventually, they reach a critical mass where they're reviving players faster than we kill them, and we get overrun. That's ridiculous.
I wouldn't mind seeing that added. If a body is being covered by an enemy, I see no reason why it can't be double tapped back down. Would have to make this apparent on the revivees end though; probably something simple like removing the Yes/No revive dialogue with some sort of 'You done got shot again' message.
Push out to the enemy sundy, kill it and make sure you get rid of the medics. If this doesn't work, well, you'll need more numbers. Being outnumbered isn't supposed to be easy, and I assume you're going 1v4 or more. No offense, but that takes a skill and organization level that I doubt any outfit in this game has. It's just the nature of the game: as the ratio between you and them increases, it gets exponentially harder. If you nerfed medics, you'd maybe gain a bit but end up with the same problem with enemy sundys.
We've held bases and outposts with <20% pop for extended periods of time. This isn't an issue of our organization or ability. It's about how easy it is for large groups to constantly get right back in the fight with no punishment for dying. I'm ecstatic when they're spawning from the sunderer, we can hold that off all day. It's when they're inside the base just chain reviving each other that it becomes problematic.
Defending a base and attacking or resecuring one are different things. There's a point where adding more numbers into the attacking force brings diminishing returns. It's most noticeable in biolabs where, given enough competent men, I'm confident that I could hold 10 to 1 odds no matter how many medics they have. It's just how defense works. However, when you're out there with no spawn, and i'm sure you know how that is, medics are vital and if you nerf them, you nerf that type of play. As for zergs using mass revive, I've personaly never seen that. I've seen meics revive large amounts of people, but since we try to exploit the time while those guys aren't at full fighting efficiency to gain ground and wen we succee they're just free kills. If you want less zergs, the solution is more objectives outside of bases to spread them out and prevent them from reaching a critical mass. Edit: to make it clear, I know that revivng can be frustrating when outnumbered, but changing reviving will also affect other things.
In my opinion, the reviving mechanic isnt right. To fast and to easy. Id like to see something like this: -revive penalty ("debuff" for 2 or 3 seconds like the conc for normal infanty and amp grenade for maxes) -more time needed to revive and heal -add ammo/overheat mechanic -healing and reviving makes you move normal (not able to sprint)
You just gave an example of being able to hold a biolab, and then claim you've never seen a medic train? Have you ever looked at the airpads during a biolab defense? It's one giant medic train blob.
I've never seen a force overwhelm a position with sheer medic spam, that's what I meant. It's always something else that allows the breaktrough while the medics can only help keep up some preassure.
