Gameplay: PS 2 medic combat abilities

[Benny Blades]

Ok to start I played PS1 and I have to admit that I felt the class needed something. Now to clarify in PS1 the medic could heal other in a very short range and they could not heal themselves. They could res players that haven’t released and had reduced weaponry for those abilities. Now I agree that the medic should not be able to heal himself, that could easily make him over powered (Pop up and trade shots, drop heal, repeat). But the class did always seem pointless and boring. you could heal your team mates after combat but with low healing range and low combat abilities (lower grade weapons + lower armor and health) you were useless during a fight and most of the times if you tried to help you were the one who didn’t make it. This meant the poor guy stuck as medic to support his team had to hide during combat and if they won healed every one up and revive those that died just to have them start fighting and hide again.

Here are my ideas

short-mid range Nano-medic beam. You can heal your team mates in a fight but you will have to keep the beam on them to do so. Yes this will mean that the enemy will turn there focus on you but that will be part of the game and you can have some effect on combat without being point blank. It should take a bit and it can’t be a heal over time due to the healer making super solders that can’t be killed.

nano-medic bot. You release a small bot that will move around healing your team mates around you. This will give you the ability to heal as you’re shooting at the enemy and not exposing yourself to insta-death. Enemy tactic - kill the bot but making it smaller will mean it can be stopped but it won’t be too easy. Of course you would have to have a limited number of times you could do this and a cool down timer on how often you could

nano-Enhancement. Have a short ranged dart gun on a cool down that you could shoot one of your team mates with that will give them a boost in some way for a short time. Make them move faster, shoot more accurately, more damage resistant, (short term cloaking, cloaked as long as they don’t move or shoot). This would give the medic the feel that they contributed to the fight even with their limited combat ability and without making them over powered (they also can’t use these on themselves).

[SKYeXile]

god no, no nano beams, if you put them ingame you put a requirement in on having a medic and lets be serious, its boring running around with a beam locked on somebody.

[Immigrant]

I want a decent rifle nothing more. Imo medic should be regular soldiers (LA) with healing equipment and without jetpacks to balance them out.

[kunzadar]

This is kind of speculation at this point. We really won't know what abilities medics do or don't have until beta, and we certainly won't know what squad based tactics they have to employ until then.

[Benny Blades]

Originally Posted by SKYeXile

god no, no nano beams, if you put them ingame you put a requirement in on having a medic and lets be serious, its boring running around with a beam locked on somebody.

ok this game is designed for you to NEED every class and that makes it to where one class cant rule the battle ground. medic's still cant kill aircraft, or tanks but this would make them usefull to those who can.

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by Benny Blades

ok this game is designed for you to NEED every class and that makes it to where one class cant rule the battle ground. medic's still cant kill aircraft, or tanks but this would make them usefull to those who can.

As long as every jackass with a spare 3x3 grid slot can't just carry around a medical applicator to heal themselves and even revive anyone around them if they happen to feel like bothering, medics will be valuable. Of course they also should be fun to play, not just useful, albeit fun is subjective.

I'm not against medics having more abilities, but I think that stuff like healing grenades are going to be a lot better than needing to constantly keep a beam on a team mate.

The healing bot seems okay to me. It could be sort of like an auto heal implant, except that it can be used by everyone, not just those who have it equipped. Similar to an auto repair, I would put a limitation on it where it would be incapable of healing a team mate for a certain amount after the team mate took damage. Perhaps the robot getting shot would also temporarily disrupt its ability to heal, assuming the shot didn't immediately destroy the robot.

The nano enhancing darts could be good, but I'm not sure. I get the feeling that it would either tend to be overpowered, or not be worth the trouble. I'm sure there would be some middle ground, but it may be more trouble than it's worth to strike the balance. Still, I'm open to the idea.

Another medic ability I wouldn't mind seeing is the ability to deploy a repair station which players can retreat to and heal themselves. Seems like sort of an engineering type of a role in some ways, but I don't see many good reasons not to give it to the medic to increase their value and usefulness.

I've also been thinking about some kind of deployable device that can only be used to revive the medic who deployed it, to make medics be able to be a little less timid in battle. It would have to have some pretty significant restrictions to make sure it didn't just become a default item that every medic used so that their team could apply the "one survives, all survive" mentality.

[SouthernGoods]

It sounds like your a big team fortress fan

[SouthernGoods]

Originally Posted by Benny Blades

short-mid range Nano-medic beam. You can heal your team mates in a fight but you will have to keep the beam on them to do so. Yes this will mean that the enemy will turn there focus on you but that will be part of the game and you can have some effect on combat without being point blank. It should take a bit and it can’t be a heal over time due to the healer making super solders that can’t be killed.

Sounds like your a team fortress 2 fan...

[Benny Blades]

no i have never played fortress 2. was there something like this in there?

[SKYeXile]

Originally Posted by Benny Blades

no i have never played fortress 2. was there something like this in there?

err yes...yes there was...that and global agenda...lets leave the nano beam to those games.

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by Benny Blades

no i have never played fortress 2. was there something like this in there?

It's f2p. Download steam and then download TF2 for free and try the medic. It works okay there, but I still can't stand to be glued to someone all the time. It would be a lot worse if you weren't constantly dodging rockets and ubersawing spies.

Another game that I believe uses it is the other recent MMOFPS project Firefall. Personally, I think it would look ridiculous aesthetically in PS2 compared to some of those games, although that in and of itself isn't a strong reason not to have it. I just think there will be other alternatives that fit better though, such as the aforementioned healing grenades.

[Talek Krell]

I'd say we wait until the game is out before we start trying making decisions on which classes need to play differently.

Originally Posted by Benny Blades

Now to clarify in PS1 the medic could heal other in a very short range and they could not heal themselves. They could res players that haven’t released and had reduced weaponry for those abilities.

Are you sure that you played the same Planetside I did? Because neither of those sentences is accurate, and the game didn't actually have a class structure to begin with.

[Maverick]

I think just as all other classes have a general role they play with different flavors to choose from, medics should also function in this way.

- Healing: fast single target focus, slow multi target focus, Medic transport (heal those that get in your vehicle)
- Anti Infantry: biological warefare, CC effects(slows, stuns), microwave gun/grenade (aoe damage over time)
- Buffing: Different stim packs for: speed, fire rate, melee damage (only class willing to melee a max perhaps? powered butcher knife anyone?)
- Defender: wield a metal shield (loved the riot shield in Call of duty, Phalanx anyone?), Short term energy shield (2 dimensional barrier or halo style bubble, for those cases where you and your buddy are toe to toe with a tank or air craft in the open and no where to run or hide/ more of a engineer thing i think though)

I Havent at all thought of the gameplay/balance issues for any of these ideas. Just some ideas off the top of my head. Was trying to think of some of the non-lethal equipment used by military and police for some inspiration.

Not a big fan of ranged healing though, would just look a bit on the silly side to me.

[PlaceboCyanide]

I can see the game getting a bit silly if several medics were to all put a beam on a max unit blocking a doorway. I applaud your enthusiasm and effort to come up with ideas, but lets see how beta plays out before deciding to change that class.

[mirwalk]

The auto heal implant gave me an idea.
we have seen in the videos of the power meter for the jetpack. May want one that controls an AOE heal around the medic. Flash it in a firefight for heals, help sustain the group but limited power...
I kinda like the heal station, kinda like the medic bag in BF3. Though in PS I can see some exploitation of that.
The repair station would be a decent ACE use. For MAXes and vehicles.