Infinite revive isn't balanced for zerg/large scale play

Stardouser · 2013-07-27, 11:57 AM

Any time one force outnumbers another, but especially when talking about zerg sizes, infinite revives prevent smaller forces from inflicting losses on larger ones. There should be responsible limits of say, after 2 revives your next death must respawn (or only 1 revive for a max). I know there will be people claim this would hurt teamwork, but no, it just takes out spamming of infinite revives and supports pure numbers less - something that should fall under the "rich get richer" argument, except we're not talking about resources.

bpostal · 2013-07-27, 12:28 PM

With the state that most players revive in (slightly disorientated, no shields, possibly out of ammo, etc...) I don't see a major issue.
In my mind you have to not only destroy the enemy but move forward into their position to ensure that the area is properly clear. That is the phase of a fight were you make damn sure all their medics are dead and wait a couple seconds in case of a squad deploy.
I wouldn't mind, however, a return to the med juice system so that one medic isn't just reviving a platoon. That in turn, leads to issues then with the revive grenade and it's relative OPness if a system like that was implemented.

Stardouser · 2013-07-27, 12:33 PM

Originally Posted by bpostal

With the state that most players revive in (slightly disorientated, no shields, possibly out of ammo, etc...) I don't see a major issue.

That's an argument that supports it when there are even numbers of combatants, but when 30 are attacking 5 (or 5 on 1, or any other imbalanced fight), and the 5 kill a few guys before dying themselves, having 10 out of the 30 guys revive in a vulnerable state does not matter because by definition, there won't be any enemies to take advantage of it.

I do believe that when the game was being hyped, one of the romantic ideals, compared to say, standard shooters with 8 vs 8 or 16, or 64 player maximums, was the thought of lesser forces holding out against greater ones. Yet the reality is that the zergs are supported against that.

bpostal · 2013-07-27, 12:50 PM

When you're talking about ratios of that proportion then I would have to ask why Five people are trying to take on 30. Even with a perfect base design I can't see any kind situation where the defense should be able to hold against five or six times their numbers.
If those five were fighting 10, maybe even as many as 15 then sure...find their AMS, take it out and then swing around the other side of the base and hit 'em in the rear.
Lesser forces holding out against disproportional odds is all fine and well but not when you're talking more than three or four to one.
Besides, with the way the new resource system sounds there will be a disincentive to over pop regions with those kinds of numbers.

Stardouser · 2013-07-27, 01:01 PM

Well, I know that the romantic ideal I mention is "holding" out against superior forces, but I am not myself saying that a lesser force should be able to "hold" against a larger one. My actual issue is that a lesser force cannot even inflict mere losses on a larger one due to revives.

bpostal · 2013-07-27, 01:09 PM

Sure you can, but it's not all black and white like that.
If you toss a grenade, charge into a room and kill 2 out of 3 of the people in there, run back outside and then shooting the last guy in the face when he chases you...you've inflicted obvious losses.

If you charge into a room, kill one of the five guys in there then you've still killed one of the guys. Even if the medic has to revive him, that impacts the enemy inside the room even if the impact isn't as obvious or as direct.

You've placed the enemy off balance and it's a perfect time for a follow up strike from a different direction. Come at them from the roof or a window or something, shoot the guy who's reviving people and then fly/run away real quick.

Ruffdog · 2013-07-27, 01:58 PM

Originally Posted by Stardouser

Any time one force outnumbers another, but especially when talking about zerg sizes, infinite revives prevent smaller forces from inflicting losses on larger ones. There should be responsible limits of say, after 2 revives your next death must respawn (or only 1 revive for a max).

I guarantee those "two revives per life" will hurt the smaller forces more than the zergs.
I say its okay. Maybe tweak MAX revives into a two-component deal, (medic and engi)

One tweak they seriously need to do is up the times on AMS spawns compared to building-based spawns. Attackers should not be spawning faster than defenders. Especially when compounded with the drop podding shenanigans attackers do straight onto the center of a base/roof.

Stardouser · 2013-07-27, 03:14 PM

Originally Posted by Ruffdog

I guarantee those "two revives per life" will hurt the smaller forces more than the zergs.
I say its okay. Maybe tweak MAX revives into a two-component deal, (medic and engi)

One tweak they seriously need to do is up the times on AMS spawns compared to building-based spawns. Attackers should not be spawning faster than defenders. Especially when compounded with the drop podding shenanigans attackers do straight onto the center of a base/roof.

Sure, if a smaller force is attacking, but that's doomed to fail anyway. If you don't have a sunderer or at least a good setup of beacons you can't revive indefinitely as the smaller attacking force. However, as the larger attacking force you most definitely can hole up in a cap room and take no or meaningless losses.

Defensively it would hurt the larger force, since the defenders have an indestructible respawn room.

PredatorFour · 2013-07-27, 08:56 PM

For someone who plays as dedicated medic and doesn't want to hurt people, i strongly disagree with this.

War Barney · 2013-07-27, 09:06 PM

The main problem is the medic can get a damn good gun, hell they can pretty much go toe to toe with any class and win even a heavy (though that is tougher for em). They have this combined with reviving other people, so of course you get a LOT of medics cos they get extra exp from heals and revives, are very useful cos normally a kill matters, when a medic is around it doesn't matter at all and as well as all that awesome stuff they don't suffer a penalty to damage.

the best solution would be give the medic access to worse guns so they aren't as potent in a fight as the other guys are, hell they even have a self heal they can activate and leave on to help out which functions sort of like the shield for heavy so if anything they are the second toughest class in the game AND can revive.

How have people not seen this as a major balance issue before?

Oh and they NEED to fix people being able to squad deploy onto a dead squad leader... that is just ridiculous and I see it exploited far to much for it to not be fixed. If the squad leader is dead you shouldn't be able to deploy to him, or perhaps let you deploy but deploy dead like he is

Stardouser · 2013-07-27, 09:52 PM

War Barney, you bring up a good point. Sometimes I've seen our smaller force blast a medic or two in the charge, but guess what? There are still more medics there, because they don't really suffer combat penalties. And revives are so fast, it's not like you are going to get caught and shot while reviving that often, and even if you do you probably already got half or more of the dead back up.

5 guys in a room can easily be 3 medics, a max and an engineer. And when you've got a 30 man zerg force occupying a room they can easily be 10+ medics. Throwing coordinated grenades in and getting multiple kills won't faze them.

moosepoop · 2013-07-27, 11:56 PM

they need to tone down the healing and reviving time. when a faction population is high enoughits nearly impossible for smaller forces to defend, because they will outheal your damage.

KesTro · 2013-07-28, 06:21 AM

This is something that's been bugging me for awhile too. Unless you seriously outnumber a force there's no pushing into a position because the position never wears down. It's infintely sustainable.

Now perhaps a limit to the amount of revives on a person isn't teh way to go but what about something along the lines of diminishing returns? After the second revive each revive there after puts some sort of stacking debuff on you until you resupply/respawn. Something along those lines might be interesting. As to what the debuff would be, maybe longer reloads or a cap to the amount of HP you can regen to.

War Barney · 2013-07-28, 06:33 AM

Originally Posted by KesTro

This is something that's been bugging me for awhile too. Unless you seriously outnumber a force there's no pushing into a position because the position never wears down. It's infintely sustainable.

Now perhaps a limit to the amount of revives on a person isn't teh way to go but what about something along the lines of diminishing returns? After the second revive each revive there after puts some sort of stacking debuff on you until you resupply/respawn. Something along those lines might be interesting. As to what the debuff would be, maybe longer reloads or a cap to the amount of HP you can regen to.

Aye that could work, say each time you get revived you have 25% less shields and health or something, perhaps if you get revived twice (or even after first one) your shields don't work as they got to damage when you died.

Actual numbers and what not would need testing to make it not useless to revive people but it would work. I use to play warhammer online and they have a similar thing, when somebody got a rezz they had I think it was 25% less in every stat for a few seconds after. Despite it being a few seconds in WAR I think until the you respawn would be better for PS cos in WAR it was pretty easy to interrupt a rezz and if a healer was wasting their time doing that it meant everybody else might die due to lack of heals so there was an actual major downside to just rezzing anybody who died as they died.

I still think in combination with this though some kind of damage or defence nerf for medics is needed, this would make rezzing less useful but still wouldn't stop medics being the second best attack class in the game despite being a support.

Figment · 2013-07-28, 07:35 AM

Funny, when I said this during Tech Test, people went "but infinite revive helps small groups more!", even if it clearly doesn't since a big group has more medics, thus more chance that they can keep reviving infinitely...

Med juice and engi glue should both have limits. In fact, I'd say repairing or healing different types of units should drain med and engi supplies relative to the strength of those units.