Since Matt and Smed seem to suggest taking inspiration from Battlefield 2 and Bad Company 2, I can't help but wonder how health and armor will work in PS2.
H E A L T H
Will we see passive "thumb sucking" health regeneration (also known as "BLOODY SCREEN! SO REAL!"
)? If so, will the Medic's role essentially be limited to reviving and dropping medkits like in BFBC2?
Health points seem to be a thing of the past, not to mention slowing the game down and punishing non-medics for fighting (so what if you just killed 8 NC/VS in a row? now you're left with 4 HP until you find a medic).
I think Matt did mention medkits, which might suggest health points, but passive regeneration doesn't necessarily rule these out.
If we do get health points again, how will Medics heal? Hopefully the patient won't have to be perfectly still this time. I wouldn't like to see TF2/Global Agenda-like healing beams in PS2, though, for aesthetic reasons...
A R M O R
Will armor have hitpoints again? In PS1, even if you were an ubersoldier with Adv Med and Engy, having to stop and repair slowed the gameplay a lot. In PS2 you would be gimped after taking a few hits, until you found an Engineer.
What if there's no armor hitpoints and different classes will simply have a different damage threshold? This would speed up the game, but limit the Engineer's usefulness indoors a lot. This could however, be offset by making the Engineer the AV (and anti-MAX by extension) class of choice.
With no armor hitpoints, wouldn't MAXes be buffed to high heaven (which may not be a bad thing)? Their biggest weak point now is being very dependent on engineers. If they had unlimited armor (and therefore resilience) all the time, they would be unstoppable if they were accompanied with a Medic to revive them.
What are your thoughts on this? Do you prefer the modern passive regenerations? Do you want armor to become damaged, necessitating repair? Is it for any rational reason, or just because you're used to it in PlanetSide 1?