I noticed this earlier today and I just now came to the point where I need to ask someone else if they have this same problem. Okay, you know how base assaults usually come down to a sort of siege like thing, and that most battles take place near large structures and complexes? There's sunderers around behind the hills, various troops camping around them and providing firing support to the hordes who charge the biolab or whatever. Well, has anyone noticed that, as a medic, most of your worth is depleted by the very presence of sunderers (on offense) and base terminals and solid spawn zones (on defence)? If you ask me, sunderers are probably one of the few truly over powered vehicles in the game right now (simply because they do so many things and they do them efficiently, not because of any radical super duper awesome developer bias thing or what have you). I know that it's faster to revive that dead guy there than wait for him to respawn naturally, but he's now going to be short on supplies. There's no guarantee that an engineer will answer his call for ammo. And even then, the sundy, or computer terminal, is right there for him to manually resupply himself. On top of all of this there's the fact that sunderers usually drive right up to the front doors if it's possible for them to do so. This, once again, limits the medic to simply patching wounded who are kind of uncommon if you consider the fact that most people out right die in a fire fight. Those who survive the encounter most often have a portion of their shields left if they even got hit at all. Don't forget about the personal medkits all classes can unlock with certs, which seem to allow a player to patch himself up a decent amount. I don't know about you guys, and this is why I'm bringing this up, but it seems like medics are close to irrelevant in most battles. The only times I feel truly valuable as a medic is when I am in a location which is too far away from a friendly spawn zone (all of which have soldier terminals). Places like the **** end of nowhere and the upper floors of biolabs and other large structures.
I honestly miss the inability AMS's had in PS1; I.E. not being able to deploy in an enemy bases Sphere of Influence. Some similar limitation to deploying Sundies in PS2 would go a long way I think. In beta Sundie spawing worked alright, but now with the higher population it's, imo, harming gameplay in a few key areas. Namely Transport roles and huge difficulty in defending larger outposts and bases. Essentially I agree with you in some respect, a simple change of increasing the time to spawn would possibly help absolve the issue you pointed out.
Medics have their uses, usually reviving is a lot better than re spawning. For one, you spawn a FULL 3 seconds faster if you revived. It's also very nice in that MAXs can be revived, you didn't know that huh?
And a sundererer revive is full health and shields in a probably safer place than where you died. I'd been wondering why medic revive felt a bit pointless, but that change explains it. If you needed medics to power your assault rather than save you a couple of seconds and a short walk they'd make a lot more sense.
Planetside (1) even though it had it's flaws was better thought out of in terms of ballance, bases, vehicles, roles and other stuff. Planetside 2 plan was all about the biodome, hell you might as well have this as the trailer.
It would be a step in the right direction if the revive could 'pull' the player to you - like dragging wounded out of the firefight. I mean, its great that I can be around a corner reviving folks, but a couple of insta-deaths (since they have no shields) is all it takes for them to just select 'Deploy'.
I realised it was a problem when half the time I only accept the rez so someone on my faction gets some XP. And watching medic heal parties just get decimated by one grenade or weapon salvo.
I'm thoroughly convinced this is the only reason why anyone accepts my revival attempts. Of course, I click accept too (help a brother out ya know?) but I feel so sorry for the guy for being stuck respawning in the exact spot someones barrel is probably still pointing. I did know that. It's the one and only thing that the medic is positively, absolutely, undeniably valuable for.
Much better to have an engineer though. Drop an ammo pack at a MAXs feet, keep the repairs on and a good MAX player will be the last one standing. Plus they're good cover and durable enough that the repairs over time really matter plus they can be killing at the same time. And additional engineers will stack if it's under pressure. Actually stacking is a major problem in a way. Multiple engineers are useful for keeping generators up, getting turrets up and keeping things repaired fast. Whereas revives and possibly the heal fields don't really stack at all. I'm still going to be playing my medic, but mostly because Engineers don't have Assault rifles. So that makes the medic a better grunt with a bit of bonus support.
I disagree. I think that once more medics have maxed out their medigun revive will be preferable in most cases. Also not every battle will have an abundance of AMSes. Die up in the dome of a bio lab and then respawn at the nearest AMS and see how long it takes you to get back to where you were. Pretty big difference compared to being picked up where you died. Hit a flag inside a tech with a squad of 10 and get wiped. Then once the enemies leave have a specops medic who stayed hidden come in and revive nade you all, or just pick you all up. That's a fat lot better than fighting your way back into the base and up the stairs, which you may or may not even be able to do. I sincerely hope that all of you who seem to think the medic is useless aren't TR.
I think you ought to get the XP whether they choose to accept your revive or not. You did your part and gave them the option, and that's all that you can do. I also think that the extra ranks in the med gun ought to give you more XP when you revive someone; reviving someone with a low level gun and then healing them gives you more XP than reviving them with full health using a fully upgraded medgun.
In bio lab respawn at sunderer and either jump pad or TP into the dome, and into a place your faction controls. Otherwise the combat in there is so fluid trying to rez is asking to be shot in the butt. Assuming you don't control it of course in which case respawn into the dome. .... What's a "specops" medic?
Sneaky medic. I think ressurection victims should be ressurected where the medic stands and not where he died. That would fix a lot!
Agreed, that would make the certifications for the tool that much more worthwhile. To the OP, I have to say I haven't felt that way at all. I have been playing solo so far while learning the game, and often end up following the zerg. I see ammo packs everywhere. I see people fall back and call for a medic when they take too much damage. As others mentioned, being able to revive a MAX unit is extremely valuable due to their resource cost and cooldown timer. You can keep any engineers healing the MAX alive as well. The majority of people I revive accept right away. I try to only revive if I think they won't get instantly killed again, and most people I think would prefer getting right back into the action, even if there is a sunderer or spawn point nearby.
Since the only important base defence point is the core shield where your AMS Sunderer is parked or the respawn point this is almost always the case unless you are winning the battle (in which case you roam further). In either case it's generally safer to respawn in a shielded area than back where you died, especially when you return at fractional health and shield.
I tend to play either engineer or medic and it seems wherever I go I run into someone who needs help from the class I'm not playing. That said, the medics AOE heal is valuable. When I'm medic then whenever I'm being revived I make sure to hit my AOE the moment I can to boost myself and heal any other wounded nearby. I try doing the same when reviving until I get the heal tool maxed as well. Reviving MAXs is great, though I tend to encounter them more as engie since I can heal and restock them. Like others have said, Medics should get a special messase/icon/objective to help locate and revive fallen MAXs.
Finish Certing-out the Medic Tool. With it I revive people from quite far away (usually able to sit in cover so an Inf doesn't blow my head off), the reviving takes approx 1 second (not counting them clicking accept and standing up obviously) and they get back at full health. MAX suits come back at 20% health, so still need a friendly Engineer around for them. But atleast it saves the resource costs for re-deploying as MAX. So in short: Forget other stuff, it's all nice lil things to have later, instead finish up your Medic Tool.
Hehe....yep..pretty much the reason I don't even step foot in the biodome structure. I'm happy fighting around it's support struts in my tank since I refuse to pull my weapon out for anyone including the enemy...I'm a coward. If I were a medic or engineer I would hide behind those that do pull their weapons and support them...but unfortunately there's no longer anywhere to hide or a direction to focus a defense. It's like the developer went out of their way to eliminate any hint of a defensible position almost as though they saw it as a complete failure of it's predessor. In PS1 it was possible for an entire outfit to get completely cut off deep inside an enemy base, inside a room with 3 entrances and we were happy to do it and that's when a dedicated support member with loads of inventory space full of magic repair glue was invaluable. In order for this new medic class to be useful you have to create situations where the medic is useful. In PS1 we created the dedicated medic...us the players. We didn't follow a recipe we took what useful ingredients we had and dreamnt it up ourselves and swapped combinations with other players and kept our own recipes tailored to our own specific set of skills. Here the skills are pre-determined in trees that you climb with money. There's a money tree for medic and one for engineer and so on and so on...and there's no free way to climb them all because by the time you do the graphics engine will have aged and we'll all be playing the next best thing. Ever get the feeling the dev team is overworked forcing square pegs into round holes? Seems as though PS1 was built from the ground up making the holes and the pegs and it just worked like a clock. With this PS2 game it seems the clock fell on the floor, half the parts got swept under the rug and the other half were used to re-imagine a new clock that runs faster, looks pretty and only keeps time twice a day.
Even with the presence of friendly sundy's, I find that rezzing a teammate while performing a flanking maneuvre to be extremely beneficial. I can understand hesitation in the chaos of a biodome clusterfrack, but otherwise-- seriously? Rezzing is almost always the preferred option. If the teammate is going to get instagibbed again where he stands, KILL THE BAD GUYS. Medic guns are crazy good, you are a soldier first!
