Morganan

Assuming of course they don't roll down a hill like they were some type of ball, or just sink into the ground never to be seen again. I realize this is an engine thing, and not a mod thing, but it still is a "reality" we have to deal with while playing.

Wouldn't a better method of slowing down gameplay be to take the paddles out? If the medic can't help you once you are dead, you have to be more cautious with your movements which automatically makes for a slow pace to the game, which seems to be your intent with this change.

no offense meant, but spending 1 second on this is a complete waste of dev time. This mod isn't made for people who care about points and the scoreboard. The only score that matters with this game is the ticket score.

Rifleman pulling HAT rockets about of thin air to resupply is in your view realistic instead of forcing HAT to go to a supply crate?

This is difficult to argue with, but I personally feel this is the wrong step to take first. I have no clue what the actual limitations of the engine force upon you, can you reduce the amount of "self-healing" a medic can do while not removing the bag? I keep coming back to this due to so many times bandages are buggy.



God I hope you get completely away from the pure infantry maps, as the engine doesn't do infantry combat anywhere near as well as other games/engines. As it stands now, EJOD is really the only "quality" combined arms map in the game, and that one even lacks helo's. Sunset city is a distant second, with no other map even coming close to giving a true "armored cav feel".
Hrmm, in what method are things being changed? As it stands right now, the main problem that limits the vehicles effectiveness is the overabundance of cover in the "armored" maps. The tanks in many maps are nothing more then moving deathtraps due to all the cover for infantry.

I personally would like to see "infantry only" maps removed. Nobody of sound mind would say the Bf engine does infantry combat anywhere near as well as engines MADE for infantry combat. Yet Modders and even EA tries to force-feed people maps that don't emphasize what this engine does best, vehicular combat.

Headshots don't kill medics even with the bag out? I mean honestly, if a solo medic flanking your position doing 80% of his moving with the med bag out is able to take out a squad, I don't think the problem is medic self-healing...
In my humble opinion, you can get both realism and the gameplay you are looking for by simply removing the paddles. Realism via nobody is playing god, yet gameplay in that people have to be more patient and cautious, since nobody likes waiting 30+ seconds to respawn.

Sabre_Tooth_Tigger

Ticket score wont have taken them much time to change and it is slightly disheartening that the highest number of kills is what gets the best score like its a game of Nes Duck Hunt or something.

I think its been stated that they cant easily change the ammo bag giving rockets. Supply crates could be requested much more often but SL dont ask often enough, I guess because it takes so long to land.


Ive got nothing against shock paddles personally, that together with the healing afterwards is the most vulnerable situation a medic will enter usually.
Plus like you said an outright kill can be had with a headshot which irritatingly happens quite often to myself

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fuzzhead

Yea field dressings are kinda buggy but its what we have to work with... just dont throw them on steep cliffs and youll be fine. Takes a little getting used to but not a big deal. Doing anything on a steep gradient IRL is quite dangerous anyways...

Defibrillators can be understood as a metaphor. When a soldier is downed in real life another soldier will drag him to cover and begin applying bandages to keep him alive until he can get to a field hospital. Unfortunately the BF2 engine cannot handle dragging. Since in PR people are not revived with full health, they need to follow the medic who revived them and get healed up much like a possible "dragging" scenario. There is no field hospital stage in PR because that will not be very fun, just as if dying deleted your account would not be fun. This system also lends itself well to the level of teamwork PR wants to encourage.

My vote was to remove all form of personal scoring and only have a score for each squad at the end of the round, so yea I agree with you. However, currently points are still important to alot of people and they were one of the first things mentioned in ferris' post, thats why I addressed it. Personally I dont really care about points, other than a way of controlling idiotic behavior.

In an infantry section, 'Riflemen' will carry the load of the specialised kits. a heavy machine gun will be broken into man portable parts (base, gun and rounds) and dispersed to be carried. AT Rockets, mortars,etc are disperesed simularly so that everyone is carrying roguhly the same weight. So yea its prety lame that you drop generic 'ammo bags' and not specific pieces of kit like in armed assault, but unfortunately not possible. Also not possible is defininging different ammo types, so that an ammo bag could refill only mags, but not AT rockets, otherwise this would have been done long ago...


Not possible AFAIK. Ive maybe glitched the field dressing about 10 times through a building the ENTIRE time Ive played PR, which is alot hehe... just be careful where you put them and you shouldnt have problems.

I dont think v0.6 will have any 32/64 player infantry only maps. All 16 player maps are infantry only for clan based gameplay. There will be multiple combined arms maps in the future, but any map that has ALL assets does not play well, simple because there are not enough players to use all the assets appropriately. Greasy Mullet is a great example of why ALL assets in a map just dont work. That being said, check out Kashan Desert for our new combined arms map.
Also check out: Qwai River, Jabal, Kyongan Ni, Gulf of Oman, Al Basrah for vehicle asset maps.

Vehicles will now be able to engage from much farther ranges, and in Al Basrah / Kashan alot of the cover for infantry will now be destructible. I hope most new maps coming to PR will have majority of destructible buildings.

see above.

Its the attitude medics have that they can be reckless that is a concern for me. Regardless, this is something that PR has wanted to put into the mod since 0.05, but only recently been discovered how to do it. I appreciate the discussion but honestly have not seen a great argument yet to keep medics self healing. Its arcadey, creates poor gameplay habits, less teamplay, and generally is one of those immersion killers in the game that has been in for far too long. Maybe it will be reverted if its a complete failure in the beta, but chances of that happening I dont think are too high.

This all my opinion and does not really reflect the rest of the dev teams opinions, but appreciate the discussion...

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Morganan

The gradient doesn't need to be steep to have them be difficult to use, cmon, you know that!



The thing is, the metaphor seems to be implimented wrongly. Sure, the medic would drag him off, but you would need to replace him in the unit or go shorthanded. (this also depends on the severity of the injury obviously) In the game that would be translated into requiring another resource, or a ticket to be spent. I get what you are saying about trying to keep it fun, yet realistic, maybe another method would be not to allow the medic to save "tickets" by playing god, as this is the most important aspect of the actual rez.



Understood, I figured it was an engine limitation, but this displays a situation where engine limitations limit the amount of reality you could bring to the table



That's the thing, you dont have to be careful where you put the med bag. Hey, I never choose medic unless we NEED one, I typically only pick one up to rez people, then switch to another kit ASAP.


Played them all, none of them offer the balance of combined arms while still being able to complete objectives. Let me clarify, I dont want vehicle maps where every type of vehicle is thrown in there just so you can say vehicles are there, I like maps where the vehicles match the terrain and objectives and fit into what type of forces you would deploy into those types of area's in real world situations. Jabal is probably the best example of that in the list you gave, but it still breaks down to an infantry map that has vehicles. I go back to EJOD, you can keep the tanks on the west side where you need little to no infantry support, or head into the city where you need tons of infantry support. There is no "good place" to use armor on qwai (both sides dont even have armor!), or kyongan ni or al basrah. (I wont count gulf of oman as that obviously is a quick port over that eventually would be dumped from a final release) I hate to go this far back, but a map like Aberdeen is a real armored map, steel thunder is just utter crap in comparison. I realize and thank you for getting that horrible map out of the rotation, but the situation still remains.


excellent, this will alone cut down a good percentage of the issues that face armor in these maps.





A better solution to give the same end result would be only giving medic's a pistol.

As do I, the harshest criticism makes for the best end-product when you are devoloping something different as long is the criticism's aren't taken personally.

[sbf]Joeboo

To set some context here, I've played, and excelled at FPS titles specifically in highly competitive environments with a broad base of proficient opposition and allies for about 10 years...arcady shooters, twitch matches, CQB, Long range snipefests, steamroller firefights you name it. Simply put, few of the 'tricks' I learned in that trade benefit me in the realm of PRMM. There are exceptions, but in my experience with PR, team work and focus win over bold aggression, and reflexes almost uniformly, that said...

WRT medics; are the specific mechanics of the medic class, and how players typically implement them the real problem, or is it that medics seem to have a propensity to be supremely self sufficient, particularly in comparison to other classes?

For instance....if I start running all lone wolf with a <insert non-medic kit here> picking straglers or being a diversion, or whatever...and I take a hit...then i've got to apply my bandages, and wait for my bleed to stop. At this point, I've got to figure out whether or not I'm going to go for broke and do as much as damage as possible, or try to make it to some point to resupply BECAUSE if I take another hit, I'll likely bleed out and die. Wereas if I'm a medic, I whip out my bag, heal up w/o having to chase my bandages rolling down a hill and I'm on my way again.

Before going any further, I realize my example here is contrary to the TG primer. However it is my opinion that, the fact that people are still doing it, because of the unrealistic capability specific to medics that is why the discussion exists to the extent that it does. There have been many good points made WRT melding realism, with virtual action..metaphors that exist to represent r/l etc. and the difficulties associated therein.

Interestingly though, the focus seems to be on dibilitating the medic class, rather than placing responsibility at the feet of the players that demostrate indifference to the primer.

At the same time, I'm torn...because there are sooooooo many things even on the TG server(s) that take place regularly that never would in reality. Example 5 heavily armed squads....no commander. Required coordination between SL's and SM's, yet the same is not always true from SL1 to SL2. Freindly fire is absolved, or persecuted based on the speedy delivery of a 'sorry chief'. I'm not trying to be sarcastic, but these things are all realities that we create for ourselves, that aren't in anyway REALISTIC recreations of the situations are are emulating.

Anyway, I've gone on long enough...to solve this why don't we investigate whether its possible to make the medics ability to heal finite in some way requiring the medic to resupply/rearm in some capacity...this would cut down on the lonewolfing that is encouraged by the classes lone survivability, no?

TY that is all.

ChernobylKinsman

Not quite a combat medic then..

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"It's nothing to do with Stalker, really"

Ferris Bueller

Once again into the fray...
I said I wasnt going to say anymore, but I feel the need to interject.

re Fuzzhead: so after reading all of your posts and seeing the point, I get the impression that you're making this change because you feel that people are not playing medic right, and by that, i mean abusing the bag to lonewolf and such.

I can see where that would be aggravating to see from a developer's point of view, but I fail to see how punishing the people who do play it the way it's intended to be played is in any way fair or righteous. All games have in them things that can be abused by players, and if you're going to try to correct all of those, you're going to code the mod right out of existence.

As people have said very recently, it seems that the issue isnt with the mod, but with the players. This sounds like something that could be better addressed through something along the lines of hard-coding the "must join a squad" plugin into the server, combined with some good admin work to prevent people from going lonewolf and abusing the game. All it's really accomplishing is to force medics to now team up in pairs to accomplish the same goal as they did alone before.

I still fail to see how this change is going to make medics more effective or fun to play. This point has not been illustrated at all. You say you've seen no argument as to why this change should be reversed, but I havent seen any good argument for why the change is being put in other than the fact that you think it's "arcadey" and creates a cavalier attitude.

Hate to pop the bubble, but it is still a game, and as such, is going to have an arcadey feel no matter what you change. For example, isnt it kinda arcadey that soldiers are completely unable to shoot while running? I have personally run and simultaneously fired a weapon IRL, and not being able to feels arcadey to me.

As for the attitude, you're lumping the good in with the bad and then shooting us all. Is that really how it should be? Or should server admins do their jobs to make sure people are not lonewolfing and playing the game how its meant to be played? The attitude is created by a great deal of latitude thats given to the players, not by the kit, but by the servers.

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|TG-6th|Ferris Bueller

fuzzhead

Good Reasons for no self-healing medics:
- Slows down gameplay
- Prevents ghey medic healing while sprinting (the ironman)
- Retains medics ability to heal themself through field dressings
- Encourages teamwork (medic + rifleman = healing for medic, instead of simply just auto heal)
- Creates a more in-depth and skillful role for medics. Instead of just whipping out the bag and healing anyone and everyone in an area, you now have to heal each person individually by clicking and HOLDING your mouse button. This means a medic will be more involved in the healing process and will slow things down a touch. This also means you will now have to prioritize causualties, and treat the more critically wounded first. This adds depth of gameplay and simultaneously gets rid of some annoying features.
- Finally allows us to give the medic body armor, as all frontline troops should have body armor.

Cons for self-healing medics:
- Will have to re-learn and re-think the classes role and tactics involved
- Has potential to 'over saturate' medics in squads, so more are now needed.
- cant think of any others???

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ChernobylKinsman

Rifleman can now heal himself better than a medic (can heal himself..), the new lone wolf? Oh and scoped rifle and grenades =)

3 bag tossed at once refills stuff pretty fast, so the 3 - 1 field dressing thing doesn't matter much.

That said, I don't particularly like the run with bag ability, I'm guessing it's impossible for it to only heal when stationary or something (or crouched?)

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"It's nothing to do with Stalker, really"

Ferris Bueller

You know fuzz, i can think of PLENTY of ways that this could have been changed and been more than acceptable without doing it the way you did it. Matter of fact, you already DID one of them, sort of.

-To stop the medic from healing while sprinting, borrow some of the guns-dont-fire-while-running code and implement it. Done, and no medic would have cared. Also, I even if a medic is healing while sprinting currently, he's still just as easy of a target as anyone else. Trust me, it's all I play and I get pegged while sprinting with my squad all the freaking time. It definitely doesnt make you an "ironman".

-Field dressings? are you kidding? EVERYONE has them, so why bother playing medic anymore if you can get the same end result at an UNLIMITED supply, PLUS have grenades and an infinite supply of ammo as rifleman!

-Slow down gameplay? Have you ever played the 64p version of al-basrah, much less any of the new super-huge maps you guys are coming out with? I think it's plenty slow enough as-is. I dont know about you, but playing the same map for 3 hours per round doesnt sound that appealing to me.

-The part about having to actively use the bag to heal was something I suggested as an alternative and has absolutely nothing to do with removing the self-heal function. It's a completely separate change, so it cant be lumped in with the "pro" column. It just creates more work for the medic, not a more skillful role. It takes no skill to click a mouse button and look at someone. Dont try and make it into something its not.

-Medic could have had body armor anyway. It just didnt for balance reasons and nobody seemed to mind much. Also, by your own words, medics will have to play much more conservatively and stay covered more often. This kinda makes the idea of medics being "frontline troops" as a "support class" an oxymoron.

-Limited medic bag. If you had to resupply the medic bag in order to use it, dont you think that would have the same end result? I think the first time someone's squad leader died because the medic spent all his time healing himself instead of doing his job and they got an earful, they might reconsider being so selfish.

As far as the cons go, have you read anything i've written?
-Medics will now be forced to play from the shadows as coming out will likely mean death because even if you're going to heal someone, you have to now heal yourself first. So either you die while trying to heal someone, or they die while you TRY to get at your very very buggy field dressings.

-Medics have 2 offensive weapons, the knife and the gun. Most, if not ALL other classes have 3 (or more), of which 2 are ranged or deployable (including engineers who have both C4 and mines). Medics had the boost in that they could self-heal to compensate for the task they were performing while being completely defenseless. Now we have one ranged weapon, one mostly useless weapon (the knife), and the only defensive asset is the smoke grenade, which takes WAY too long to provide cover anyway.

-In addition, medics now have to actively use the bag in addition to being defenseless while healing and are unable to self-heal, which causes a serious problem with situational awareness. In case you didnt know, situational awareness is a big counter to getting your ass shot off, which happens to medics enough as it is.

-As you stated, squads will either become oversaturated with medics (guaranteed that this will be the first result of the change) or have NO medics as the class will have become no fun to play (this will be the end result).

Basically, in summation, the medic is being reduced to a toothless, shadow hiding workhorse who is dependent on everyone else to stay alive. He has to have his squad mates cover him to do his job, and if he gets shot while doing it, he's screwed. He has to stay in cover because coming out and actually providing close support to a squad means almost certain death if he has his bag out. He has a gun and a knife, no grenades, and body armor that will allow him to take what, one extra bullet? If he gets shot anywhere on the battlefield, he has a very limited supply of field dressings to heal himself with (assuming he hasnt already used them on his squadmates that were bleeding out so that the healing process could be expedited, as I frequently do) and he has to hope to god that theres a rifleman around who is paying attention and is willing to drop his ammo packs so he can resupply. Gee, that sounds like fun to me.

This doesnt sound like a change driven by necessity. This sounds like a vendetta against something that someone became disenfranchised with in vanilla bf2 and has seen people abusing in PR to some small extent. I know you play a good bit here fuzz, and i'm sure you play other places as well and it's probably worse elsewhere, but it's fairly in check around here. People play like theyre supposed to or they get the boot on a general basis. If people dont play the game right, then thats an admin problem. But instead we see drastic changes against one class when there are so many other very important issues that need to be addressed:

-How about figuring out a way to remove bunnyhopping?
-Can we say flag bugs? How about vehicle bugs?
-What about the rifleman's ability to have infinite ammo?
-Fall damage from someone running into you?
-Sandstorm effect?

I think just those few can illustrate my point on their own.

We could go back and forth like this forever because you're set in the way you're viewing it and are refusing to see any other perspective it seems. I have acknowledged some of the more valid points you have made and agreed with them, and the ones I didnt agree with, I did my best to suggest alternate means than taking such a drastic measure. But isnt it funny (and yes, i'm repeating this AGAIN) that the vast majority of the responses here, from respected players on what is hailed as the BEST PR SERVER out there are all agreeing with the fact that this is a bad change and is going to wind up making more people mad than not?

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|TG-6th|Ferris Bueller

[sbf]Joeboo

If I may summarize ferris...the cure is worse than the disease.

TY that is all.

Bobert08

I don't have much to say about the medic class, but I do agree that these field dressings are ridiculous.

Most of the time I'm on flat ground(no roof or anything) and the field dressing just sinks into the floor, and I don't get healed.


I hate the bleeding system, realistic or not.

Morganan

acceptable
I dont know about you, but I LOVE seeing medics run around with their bag out, it's a free kill to me. Am I the only one who thinks this?
Buggy pieces of crap
In theory, but in "reality" this will just mean less people play medics, so it seems counter-intuitive to your goal of creating more teamwork to prepare a situation where in most cases it will end up giving less
No offense, but this one is funny. How exactly do you "triage casualties" when YOU CAN'T SEE HOW MUCH DAMAGE EACH PERSON HAS TAKEN??? This reason is just something you made up to give you more pro's then con's, right? Or is the game finally going to allow medics to see health bar's?
Shrug, not like it makes them immune to fire or anything.

- The game dynamic you are changing might very well lead to less overall medic's. It's hard enough to get 1 quality medic, most of the ones you get are people who only take the bag to self-heal and occasionally heal someone else. Now it will be like pulling teeth to get a single medic.

In the end, the people will speak volumes about the changes, by how many play the mod.