Health/armor and healing/repairing

[Highwind]

I could support "Natural Health Regen" but it would need to done tastefully. To me this would mean learning some "survival skills" via the skill trees. Once learned it would be passive but with rules, like only working out of combat (no damage taken) for 5+ seconds, and it would heal DRASTICALLY less than the "bloody screen". In PS1 terms I would say 20 health healed per minute maybe, 1 health per 3 seconds, give or take. I could also see there being more advanced version of "survival healing" higher in the skill tree for a lot of time investment.

I think that having a subtle healing perk like that for long time players could be "fair enough", given that all other types of health including chain using medpacks should out heal it by a lot. I stress again that it should be a small heal, because at no point should "waiting to heal" be a real strategy given other options, like healing with a med gun for example. The target goal would be gain 3-8 health between small fights in the cargo rooms (of our PS1 bases) while randomly hiding to reload, nothing more the way I see it.

[cashfoyogash]

Originally Posted by FIREk

I think you should e-mail this to Smed or something. He claimed he replies to all e-mails as long as they make sense.

As for stamina, I hope it will be turned into some kind of "implant energy bar", with no impact on mobility. Not being able to run ad having to remain still for half a minute in order to run and jump again is just retarded in an FPS game. Why don't we add drinking water for faster stamina regeneration? :P
Mana breaks should definitely remain in MMORPGs, where they belong...

No soldier can sprint forever. I think you should be able to keep a slighty fast pace without using stamina, like an airborne suffle. Stamina should only drain when sprinting or jumping. I believe they said the purpose of the stamina was to keep people from bunny hopping like retards. The only time I support bunny hopping is in Halo. PS has no place for such things. Much like strafing back and forth, I hate that. Ive accumulated so much grief because people strafe right into my line of fire... but on topic stamina should be there but only used when exerted like sprinting and jumping.

Id still like to see localized armor damage for grunts and maxes though, like the vehicles are going to have. I like the idea of the wound system but I still dont want to see a bland red bar that looks like it was drew with a simple paint program.

Also I seen someone else say medi kits should not be insta heal. I support this as well It should be heal over time, Like bandages in WoW.

[CutterJohn]

I like stamina, but I'd like it to have a shorter duration and faster recharge. I.e. 10s of sprint or 2-3 jumps, then 10s of recharge back to full.

Certain implants could have a stamina cost while active, adding extra time to recharge.

[MgFalcon]

I checked off ever single box.

MgFalcon - Skewing polls since 1989.

[Sirisian]

The game had self-healing with regenerative health. It was just an implant you had to op for. I remember I ended up using it for a while when cloaking so I could carry nades and more ammo. I think with a proper skill-tree for that implant it could definitely be an effective choice for some people.

In regards for health and armor I prefer the Planetside system. It gives engineers a purpose and medics a purpose. Sadly I feel the faster TTK they're adding in will end up hurting these rolls or make them nearly pointless. I liked soaking up a few rounds in my armor and pulling back without falling dead for walking into a hallway every time. It also felt nice where you'd be standing back for a second and repair a fellow soldier knowing that each few points of armor that was being healed was actually useful. Healing someone 50% armor and knowing they can only take 3 more bullets with that armor would kind of suck.

Same goes for health. I prefer where health is much tougher than armor. Pulling back out of a hallway with no armor left and 50% health is nice. To put it another way I'd make each health was twice as much as armor so 100 health would be roughly equal to 200 armor. So someone with 100 health and 100 armor would really have 300 life.

One thing I did enjoy was how weapons would damage health through the armor. The sniper rifle was nice in this respect. It wasn't enough to kill someone's health and leave them with 200 armor, but it was nice to show armor penetration. So a round that does 50 damage might do 40 of its damage to the armor and only 10 to health. Then if they had no armor it would do 50 to health.

[CutterJohn]

Originally Posted by Sirisian

In regards for health and armor I prefer the Planetside system. It gives engineers a purpose and medics a purpose.

Medics: Heal and rez infantry

Engineers: Repair max units and vehicles, set up CE.

I'd say both have a valid purpose without making engineers into some weird half medic.

[Sirisian]

I like the weird half medic ability to repair a player's armor. Basically what I hate though is the concept of a health only system. I preferred the complexity of having armor over health with a separate way to repair each. I don't want to say removing it dumbs the game down but it simplifies it. I want health to feel different than armor basically and have the two work together.

You mentioned repairing maxes. I don't see a player's armor as any different. When an engineer isn't in the field repairing vehicles it gives them another purpose.

I personally hope that armor repair tool isn't just for engineers. I'm fine with medics needing their own tool since they're like specialized doctors, but it's nice to heal your own armor. Letting engineers fast heal armor and use the vehicle heal tool I think would be much better.

[CutterJohn]

Originally Posted by Sirisian

You mentioned repairing maxes. I don't see a player's armor as any different. When an engineer isn't in the field repairing vehicles it gives them another purpose.

So when medics aren't healing grunts what is their other purpose? Shall we give vehicles a health pool underneath the armor?


And yeah, I mentioned engineers repairing maxes, since I figure health is kinda silly on a max unit. When its destroyed, it probably wouldn't feel too good from the inside. You certainly couldn't keep moving it around by muscle power.


I just view needing two separate tools to heal infantry as rather silly. Personal preference I guess.


Since opinions seem to be split quite evenly on the subject of armor, perhaps a compromise where armor isn't another pool of hitpoints, but does suffer from degradation. Perhaps for each 100 damage taken, your armor absorbs 10% less damage due to being chewed up. If you keep taking damage and surviving, or being rezzed, eventually your armor will be rags and you should think about getting repairs.

[Sirisian]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

So when medics aren't healing grunts what is their other purpose? Shall we give vehicles a health pool underneath the armor?

Actually I was rambling in the IRC about the cert upgrades for a medic a long time ago and how many there would be if that was its own class. I randomly commented that it would be interesting to see some area heal or revive effect similar to an EMP blast but for revival. (It can be explained away by referencing the NTU warp gate bubble and how it used to revive players in the story).

Another was to open up their list of tools for area of effect healing deployables on par with the engineer's defensive deployables.

There are so many abilities a new medic role could unlock and cert into. I get that your comment was sarcastic, but it does say one important thing. That other than healing and reviving there's not much to a medic class which could make them feel worthless when gunning for a vehicle or other activities.

Also the idea should be to add to classes and give them abilities and responsibilities. If one class has too much responsibility it seems like some people want to jump on that and remove things so that players are focused on one thing. There seems to be this idea that each class or player in the game should be solely focused on one responsibility at a time. For instance, an engineer that can repair armor and vehicles and lay deployables would be going too far while the medic that can only heal players is an example of a specialized soldier. I'm not sure I agree with that. I feel that medics should be given a more responsibilities so they're on part with a more rounded character that fits into more situations in the game.

For instance, allowing a medic to cert a friendly healing affect on nearby friendlies similar to a slow loadstar heal seems fine with me. That would mean having a gunner that's a medic would be advantageous to nearby players.

[Robert089]

Originally Posted by Sirisian

One thing I did enjoy was how weapons would damage health through the armor. The sniper rifle was nice in this respect. It wasn't enough to kill someone's health and leave them with 200 armor, but it was nice to show armor penetration. So a round that does 50 damage might do 40 of its damage to the armor and only 10 to health. Then if they had no armor it would do 50 to health.

I hated this! It took me a little while while to realise why I was doing so afwul in a few 1v1 duels at the back door, I would hit them with the bolt driver reducing their health to near nothing then whip out my sweeper to take them down, but I lost every time.

Then I did some testing and realised the sweeper does barely any health damage if they still have armour, it takes 3 sweeper shots to down someone in Rexo who has just been sniped!

[exLupo]

Originally Posted by Robert089

I would hit them with the bolt driver reducing their health to near nothing then whip out my sweeper to take them down, but I lost every time.

You should kit a Squirt w/ atropine loads as your backup. Straight to hp, does it every time.

[Tatwi]

This is another subject where I feel SOE got it right the first time with Planetside and thus, they should not reinvent the wheel for Planetside 2.

Keep in mind that I started playing Planetside this year, so it's not like I have anything invested in the game - I like these things just because I like them.

I like that Planetside has both Health and Armor and one's ammo choice effects which is damaged first. This adds strategy to the game while being very simple to understand.

I like the three resource bars. They make sense to me as a long time MMO player and don't see any need to replace them with some abnormal UI that will effectively represent the same thing.

Medics healing Health and Engineers healing Armor with different tools is also interesting, given the inventory meta game. I very much enjoy this type of game play and without it, I doubt I'd even bother playing Planetside 2.

Some people think that they are the "healer's bitch", when a game has a healer in it (trust me, I've healed some where around 2 thousand WoW instances), but what they are really saying is, "I don't want to take the time to be a talented player so I need the crutch that is having a healer, but needing a healer is embarrassing - so like totally get rid of the healers and let me auto-regen my health when I suck!". People in WoW expected to be "healed through" encounter mechanics that are, as described in forum posts by the developers themselves, intended to be avoided, rather than absorbed. Why? E-peen. And it's the same thing as people who say, "I think health should auto-regen, because it keeps the pace of the fight up in a FPS". How about, don't suck you won't take so much damage in the first place? And, just be happy that you were lucky enough to live and that there's someone around who can cover up your level of suckage by healing you...

I enjoy the multi-roll team game play that Planetside offers with repairing vehicles, MAXes, armor, turrets, and placeable objects as well as the healing of health bars and the rezing of players. All of these things encourage the use of co-operative game play and the use of strategy. Without these things Planetside would be nothing more than fish in a barrel shooting each other with shotguns.

I very much enjoy the "Health/Armor and healing/repairing" game play of Planetside and without it, I doubt I'd even bother playing Planetside 2 if it ends up using some simplified system for kids who just want to run around solo pwningface non-stop rather than playing a strategy oriented, team-play game.

On a side note, as a WoW healer who can cast healing spells at a distance on players regardless of the way he is looking, I think it's hilarious when I am clearly chasing someone through a field in Planetside with my healing gun out - roflsaucer FPS: the guy can't see me chasing him, so he doesn't know he'd be healed if he'd just stop running away! It would be handy to be able to cast healing spelling in Planetside, but much like it is in WoW PvP, doing so would be far too over powered (until the healer is focus fired to death).

[millo]

I'm hoping for some streamlining (not dumbing down) from PS1. Ideally i'd like:

-Infantry: just health, no armor bar, of course different absorb level based on your current armor, healed by medic. There could be a great deal of customization here, for example being able to equip in the "tool" slot either a medical station acting like the medipacs from Battlefield games, or something requiring more focus (a gun firing healing nanites to give soldiers some kind of regeneration), in addition to a defibrillator or equivalent for ressing (with the ability to refuse the rez, pretty please. Also, i'd like some kind of death being not ressable, pretty hard to defibrillate someone who just took a 120mm shell to the face). Health should also regenerate after some time (not 5 seconds of course), maybe up to a fixed percentile, like 25% more than you currently have, tops.

-MAXes: just armor, no health, to be treated in all regards like a walking vehicle. When armor depletes, the soldier inside dies in a gruesome way. Healed by engineers with the same tool (BANK from PS1 coming back?) they use to fix vehicles. No regen whatsoever, MAXes should be depending on other team members for pretty much everything.

[Hyncharas]

I don't believe there was anything wrong with the old system; having someone on hand to repair instead of trudging back to base was useful.

As for healing, people who want to remove resurrection obviously haven't played enough of PlanetSide to know the difference... spawning back to a squad/clan in battle can be a bitch.

[Trolltaxi]

Health and armour (and stamina) for infantry!

Health should not regenerate (unless you have the implant), and let's everyone have medpacks. (PS1 system). A medic is needed to heal.

But armour should reconstruct itself using nanites in time - this may be enhanced with skills too. And you could accelerate the reconstruction with the repair thingie if you choose to support. (skills for faster repairs too!).