Regenerating Health?...Why?

[Coreldan]

I looked at the regen times in this vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=Q5YLKbuda0o Around the 11:30 spot

I found the following:

Time till shield starts recharging after taking damage for the last time: 10s
Time for shield to regen full after regen starts: 5s
Time for health regen to start after last damage is taken: 25s (so around 10s after shield is full)
Health to regen fully after regen starts: 15s

Total time to go from "zomg I'm dead" to a pristine soldier: approximately 40s.

However, at the end of the "scene" when he regens his health up suddenly fast and with odd chunks, there is a player running near/almost behind him, you can see him in the minimap a bit later (sadly quality isnt enough to tell much, but thats a friendly moving blip on the map), so it could be a medic. But in the worst case scenario, it's still gonna take you 40s of not taking damage to be back into a pristine soldier.

I do not find this as a very bad thing. Taking someone out for 40s even if you don't manage to kill em ain't bad. While not a totally working analogy, but in the earlier world wars it was much more efficient to wound a soldier than to kill him. You wound a soldier and two healthy soldiers have to drag him out of there + resources spent on the wounded soldier outside the field. You kill a soldier and he is left there until the battle ends, a wooden coffin wont cost much

That said, I wouldnt mind even if it was slower. I don't like health regen, but nor do I like forced to run around with 1hp until I die (which happens cos the shootout will never be fair in a game with TTK this high unless both are full health, unlike with "realistic damage models") if there are no medics around doing their job. At least the person who got me into that condition renderered me useless for over half a minute when I have to hide and regenerate health so I won't instantly die.

[Bobby Shaftoe]

Originally Posted by Sobekeus

Time.

That's funny, it also took quite some time for the regen implant to fully heal someone on low health, infact longer than combined shields/health regen being shown in PS2 gameplay clips, all of this while it only affected one 'hp pool' in PS1.

I know because I was one of the few people who used it @BR 20 because I didn't have the spare certs for Med. (zomg, someone who wasn't a super soldier! Yet had no problem with them)

[wasdie]

I can believe there is a health regen cert. Certing into health regen takes away from other certs you can have active, thus the balance.

I do think most of the videos there are just a lot of medics running around right now. No matter how hard they try, this E3 demo is not going to come close to representing what real gameplay will be like.

[Kalbuth]

Originally Posted by captainkapautz

Ah, someone else who gets what I meant.

Yes, it's called "catering to the lowest common denominator" and it's not always a wise choice.
I'm not discounting health regen entirely, I'm just trying to see the whole picture. And I've yet to test it anyway.

I'll try to re-explain better, because :

Sorry, I don't understand what you are trying to say.

Are you comparing the current health regen in PS2 to PS1-style self sufficency?

One difference between health auto-regen system and no auto-regen system that hadn't been brought up so far in the discussion :
When you don't have an auto-regen system in place, and the healing system requires you or a 3rd party to use somme kind of ammo (repair juice, medkits, etc...) to heal you, you or the medic cannot do this indefinitely, because you or he will run out of heal ammo eventually.
It's not the case with a auto-regen system, you can stay on the field for an infinite time without preoccupying about refilling any "health ammo".

In the former case, you have to take care of your "supply chain" : how will I resupply my health ammo/medkits?
You need to take care of this before/during the fight, and it adds another dimension.
In PS1 terms, you need a nearby AMS, or adv hacker hacking a nearby terminal, or in case of generator holds, you need regular MAX rush from outside to inside with ammo in their inventory (if the gen hold is holding THAT long, usually the first rush in is done with MAXes who already have additionnal ammos in their inventory, and the gener-haters are dead before they need a resupply)

With an auto-regen.... poof! All this disappear. Everything gets easier, in fact. Again, "catering to the lowest common denominator".

I'd like to see some system which isn't hindering casuals from merely playing by making them unable to sustain a fight because they are 10% health after 20 seconds, all the while rewarding support classes (not only medic, but also the guys in charge of the supply chain for everyone).
I'd myself go for a "medkit-like" regen based on a medkit pool which is going down the more you use it, and which can be recharged, either by engies ammo kit, or some medical terminal a medic could drop in the field, providing supply for friendlies during large scale fights.
It could be auto-activated, after a period of X dozen of seconds after taking damage, until your pool is depleted.

This way, casuals can sustain more fights without hoping for the-medic-who-will-never-come, can resupply based on some fire-and-forget engie/medic ammo drop (which means, they don't need to wait for the good will of a medic around them at the time they are low on health), and you enhance the role of support players by adding a supply chain layer.
Probably a very perfectible system, it just popped out of my head

[CutterJohn]

Originally Posted by Coreldan

I found the following:

Time till shield starts recharging after taking damage for the last time: 10s
Time for shield to regen full after regen starts: 5s
Time for health regen to start after last damage is taken: 25s (so around 10s after shield is full)
Health to regen fully after regen starts: 15s

To add to these, the regen for MAX units also starts at 25s, and(at least for NC), takes roughly 3 minutes to heal to full, at a rate of 1 bar of health every 4-5 seconds.

So nearly dead max to full max in 3:30, +- a few seconds.


Entirely reasonable, imo. Gives absolutely no in combat advantage, and is a rather painfully long time to sit back not being hit.

I think the light classes could safely be bumped up to a minute, minute and a half to get full. Thats still quite a long time to go without being shot.

[wasdie]

Originally Posted by Kalbuth

long rant...

Actually, health regeneration allows for a completely different style and pacing of FPS. You're applying health regen to how you perceive FPS, and obviously your perception is of older FPS games that wern't built around regenerating health.

What you should note about health regen is how much the gameplay is modified. First off the game is going to have a much more sustained high pace, something you cannot with standard health pickups. Just play CoD 4, the game is almost non-stop with the action and has ramped up each single campaign since 2007 with more and more action. MW3 was just 100% action more or less.

The second thing you'll see is a change in difficulty. The difficulty seems a bit easier up front because games in general no longer rely upon trial-and-error to lengthen them. Now they don't have to kill you constantly to buff up the game's length. There is actually more content in FPSs today than in the FPSs of yesteryear. Playing FPSs on their normal difficulty shouldn't prove very difficult to FPS vets as they don't have to kill you cheaply to lengthen the game and they are catered a bit more towards getting new players into the game. A core FPS vet shouldn't be playing modern FPSs on normal difficulty, you should be ramping it up to the harder difficulties right away. If you find that to easy, then you need to take into account that you're also far more experienced at playing FPSs than you were 10 years ago.

The gameplay surrounding games with regeneration health has been molded to fit the game mechanic. Games are way faster paced and throw a lot more content at you a lot quicker than ever before. It's just different and it's not bad thing.

It's not called catering the the lowest denominator in games today, it's a whole different approach that allows for different gameplay.

As for how it applies to Planetside 2, DICE figured out back in BF2 that people hate running around a map with 2% health waiting to die. People would rather just get themselves killed and respawn than wait for a medic to health them.

The same mentality is going to apply to Planetside 2. You're bringing up the idea of supply chains which is completely out of context of Planetside 2's general gameplay. Just watch the videos, it's not some slow paced game where people are moving together in small, coordinated teams for 10+ minutes at a time. Spawns have been moved much closer to the action. The game is about getting to the big fight and sustaining these large fights. The supply chain concept doesn't apply here as the average solider will elect to just get themselves blown away instead of waiting for a medic to health them as dying doesn't seem to have that negative of an effect.

The MAX's are the only infantry class that this supply chain may work for because they are the only ones worth keeping alive.

So basically, you're not looking at health regen in the context of what we've already seen. It's probably a cert, so you're denying yourself some other gameplay element to get it, and even if it is not, 40 seconds for full health regen is pretty damn significant and will slow the pace of the game down considerably compared to contemporary FPSs like BF3 and CoD where health regen happens in under 20 seconds.

This game isn't being built for the niche that PS1 catered to, it has to appeal to a broader audience. If you call that the lowest common denominator then there is really no reasoning with you.

[Redshift]

In case people forgot, we had health regen in PS1 with certain cave mods..... no one gave a shit, because ultimatley it was too slow to make any difference.

You can have your entire army rely on passive regen if you want, but you'll get dicked on by the first squad with a medic. Medics will always increase the amount of uptime of your troops. PAssive regen would have to be massivly high to have any real effect on that.

[Bobby Shaftoe]

Originally Posted by Redshift

cave mods.

Something you had to actually work for to get and applied in a linked base SOI only.

Something that could be denied or even stolen from you, providing another number of tactical/strategic opportunities for you to play to.

The game is being tailored for a broader audience BECAUSE they share a common denominator.

That's the very definition, many people may share MMO as their denominators, not as many people have MMO+FPS+Tactical+Strategy as their denominators.

Just go look at some Venn Diagrams/Boolean Operators

[Redshift]

Originally Posted by Bobby Shaftoe

Something you had to actually work for to get and applied in a linked base SOI only.

Yea but my point is you never raged about the regen being over powered. It started instantly and yet no one ever cared about it. Unless it's stupidly fast it won't effect anything.

Going on the numbers someone posted above a full regen takes 40 seconds on hiding in a corner. If we say a medic heals in 10 seconds (and that seems like too long imo) a medic improves the uptime of a group 4 fold. You'll never notice that regen at all.

If someone wants to hide in a corner for 40 seconds it's not very different to healing yourself up in PS1, but your team is going to suffer because of it.

[Coreldan]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

To add to these, the regen for MAX units also starts at 25s, and(at least for NC), takes roughly 3 minutes to heal to full, at a rate of 1 bar of health every 4-5 seconds.

So nearly dead max to full max in 3:30, +- a few seconds.


Entirely reasonable, imo. Gives absolutely no in combat advantage, and is a rather painfully long time to sit back not being hit.

I think the light classes could safely be bumped up to a minute, minute and a half to get full. Thats still quite a long time to go without being shot.

Word, brotha.

[wasdie]

Originally Posted by Redshift

Yea but my point is you never raged about the regen being over powered. It started instantly and yet no one ever cared about it. Unless it's stupidly fast it won't effect anything.

Going on the numbers someone posted above a full regen takes 40 seconds on hiding in a corner. If we say a medic heals in 10 seconds (and that seems like too long imo) a medic improves the uptime of a group 4 fold. You'll never notice that regen at all.

If someone wants to hide in a corner for 40 seconds it's not very different to healing yourself up in PS1, but your team is going to suffer because of it.

Add that to the pace of the game, 40 seconds will leave you behind. If the whole squad waits for you, that's a significant portion of time they've wasted and let the defenders or attackers get the edge.

[Bobby Shaftoe]

Originally Posted by Redshift

Yea but my point is you never raged about the regen being over powered. It started instantly and yet no one ever cared about it. Unless it's stupidly fast it won't effect anything.

Going on the numbers someone posted above a full regen takes 40 seconds on hiding in a corner. If we say a medic heals in 10 seconds (and that seems like too long imo) a medic improves the uptime of a group 4 fold. You'll never notice that regen at all.

If someone wants to hide in a corner for 40 seconds it's not very different to healing yourself up in PS1, but your team is going to suffer because of it.

Yes and I also never raged that med/eng was overpowered because you were vulnerable whilst doing so, I'm merely pointing out how inconsitent/hypocritical all those people who ARE whining about self heals in PS1 are being when there's a self heal mechanic that doesn't even require you to do anything, to kick in.

It's all about the tactical decisions made by the player: Do I have time to heal/rep, am I safe, is there a cloaker about, do I go hack the terminal/console now and maybe die, or get max life/armour again and then go for the cap.
Now, oh i'll let regen kick in whilst I cap.

[MrBloodworth]

Originally Posted by Bobby Shaftoe

It's all about the tactical decisions made by the player: Do I have time to heal/rep, am I safe, is there a cloaker about, do I go hack the terminal/console now and maybe die, or get max life/armour again and then go for the cap.
Now, oh i'll let regen kick in whilst I cap.

This is the issue for me as well.

[Bobby Shaftoe]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

So nearly dead max to full max in 3:30, +- a few seconds.

Whilst in PS1 a nearly dead max... was still, a nearly dead MAX 3:30 later.

[Coreldan]

Originally Posted by Bobby Shaftoe

Whilst in PS1 a nearly dead max... was still, a nearly dead MAX 3:30 later.

Yes, and the question is.. is that a good design?