Gameplay: Promoting Teamwork: Easy Resurrection

[dm Akolyte]

Everyone on the forums seems to be in agreement that teamwork (both large and small scale) should be encouraged. But a lot of the suggestions to accomplish this seem overcomplicated and restrictive.
I prefer more elegant solutions.

One way that I think would heavily increase the effectiveness of small team based combat is making resurrections the default way to get back into combat.

Well, not resurrection exactly. Instead of 'dying' when a player gets to zero health, have them go 'down.' Like in some of GoW multiplayer modes. They are out of combat but not dead. If not under fire, any teammate can easily bring them back to their feet.

What this gives you is a "winner takes all" system of combat, where, when two squads clash, the winning team is able to bring their wounded back up to continue, while executing the other teams wounded.

So for example, imagine a gen hold. A small, but well organized team in the gen versus a much larger mob of unorganized players.
Without this sort of resurrection system the players can just repeatedly charge in without any sort of group effort, hoping to score a couple kills. Despite the organization of the squad holding the gen, they get worn down as players inevitably fall and their advanced meds have to constantly move to try to bring them back up. Eventually, they will fall.

But with this mechanic, every time a random player bursts in and manages to get a lucky kill before dying, the squad in the gen can quickly pick them back up and get back to full strength. In order to root them out of the gen, the other team would need to get an organized push to wipe them all out.


In addition to encouraging that sort of teamplay, it would also encourage teamplay between *random* players. When playing without a squad in PS1 there is very little incentive to stick with players of your own faction unless you are actively squading together. If you go down, most players release immeaditly because they know it's pretty unlikely there will actually be an advanced med who will rez them. So there's no point sticking near your faction brothers anyway.
But if you know any of the members of your faction can bring you back into the fight if you fall, you are encouraged to stick by them and guard their back, keeping them alive so that they might do the same for you.

[Crator]

Ok, so like it was in PS1? Medics in PS1 could do this.

[Talek Krell]

No, as in everyone can do it, not just medics. I don't know if I like it, but I have to admit that it could be an interesting way to foster teamwork.

[Raymac]

I like where your head is at. However, playing devil's advocate, I could see this having a pretty negative effect on gameplay since there would be so little death. If you shoot someone, and then they are just back in the fight a couple seconds later, then battles, especially indoors are just going to be a mess. Personally, I think rezes are better left to the medics instead of making them all but useless.

[Crator]

Plus, they confirmed there will be a spawn-on-squad mechanic, with restrictions of use.

[dm Akolyte]

Spawn on squad would help a lot with this.... but only for your squad.
As much emphasis as there will be on squad and outfit mechanics, in practicality, you often end up working together with just whoever happens to be near you at the time. A res system like the one I propose would encourage teamwork across the board.

@Raymac the idea would be that they wouldn't necessarily be back immediately. Helping someone up would take a couple seconds and would be immediately interrupt-able. The specifics should be tailored so that it's really only viable to pick up allies after the encounter has been decided.

As far as invalidating medics, I think medics (and support roles in general) should be pushed in a much more active direction. Think the medic from TF2; a healing beam that keeps the target alive while in combat. This is much more fun than the 'sit in the back' maintenance of PS1


Now, one aspect of gameplay I think it may very well impact is attacker/defender balance. This sort of resurrection I think would give defenders a very big advantage. Other factors would have to be considered to balance the issue, I think.

[Talek Krell]

Originally Posted by dm Akolyte

As far as invalidating medics, I think medics (and support roles in general) should be pushed in a much more active direction. Think the medic from TF2; a healing beam that keeps the target alive while in combat.

I dislike the healing beam ala TF2, and prefer medics more as soldiers that can also heal.

[dm Akolyte]

The problem is they don't become soldiers who can also heal.

Pretty much everyone took the med gun in PS1 because, since you can't be healed in combat anyway, you might as well just heal yourself rather when you stop, rather than have to head to the back lines and wait for a medic.

It was basically just a cert sink.

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by Crator

Plus, they confirmed there will be a spawn-on-squad mechanic, with restrictions of use.

One of the restrictions was supposed to be a long reset timer right? So far it sounds to me like squad spawning will be used more as a tactical insertion method than an alternative to the spawn tube.

Anyhow, on the subject of the thread, I'd like to bring up a method that was used in Left 4 Dead. If you have played Left 4 dead, skip past the blue text.

In Left 4 Dead, everyone with a med pack counted as a medic, but that wasn't the only way you could help a fallen comrade.

When you "died," you fell on the ground where you could only shoot a pistol as you slowly bled to death. While on the ground, any team mate could pick you back up, bringing you back into the fight. This was just done by interacting with their fallen body and didn't require the use of a med pack.

In this "revived" state, you would bleed out, causing your health to slowly trickle down to zero over time until it reached 1hp. Taking a bottle of pills would temporarily restore some health, but only a med pack would fully heal you and stop the bleed out.

You could safely "die" 3 times, but if you were picked up a third time, your screen would be black and white and you would permanently die the next time you fell. Healing with a med pack would reset this counter, allowing you to be picked up 3 more times from the time you healed.

A modified version of this system could work in Planetside 2. Say that instead of 3 non fatal drops, you only get one. This would prevent a team without an advanced medic from picking each other up for prolonged periods, while still freeing up the medic to not be the only person able to help fallen team mates.

It could work something like this:

Anyone can pick up a downed ally if that's the first time they have fallen. After being picked up, the injured person has only %50 health and will slowly bleed to death.

A regular medic can heal them back to %100 health and stop the bleeding, but if that team mate goes down again, they are completely dead, maybe due to internal injuries or something that a regular medic can't fully heal.

An advanced medic can not only revive a player who has completely died, but can also reset the pick up feature on a living player who was picked up from the ground.

Med packs would be limited to restoring your health prior to falling to the ground, or as a stop gap measure to extend your life while you fought on or waited for a medic or, preferably an advanced medic.

This is of course assuming that PS2 has a distinction between medics and advanced medics the way there is in PS1. For all we know, every medic will be able to rez dead players. If that is ends up being the case, maybe a med pack could stop the bleed out but not reset the pick up limit, while every medic could function in the way I described the adv medic above.

[Crator]

Originally Posted by dm Akolyte

Pretty much everyone took the med gun in PS1 because, since you can't be healed in combat anyway, you might as well just heal yourself rather when you stop, rather than have to head to the back lines and wait for a medic.

It was basically just a cert sink.

Ya, I've never used the med cert in PS1. Always wanted the cert points for something else and used med packs mostly.

Originally Posted by Xyntech

This is of course assuming that PS2 has a distinction between medics and advanced medics the way there is in PS1. For all we know, every medic will be able to rez dead players. If that is ends up being the case, maybe a med pack could stop the bleed out but not reset the pick up limit, while every medic could function in the way I described the adv medic above.

Yes, I do like how you worded the idea. I supposed this depends on overall game design as pace of game mechanics come into play here. Who knows, perhaps they have this in-game already and this ability is low in the medic class cert tree and most everyone can obtain it easily.