topic says most i guess.
one idea would be to have your mate look for the poison dart or a tracking device. another idea would be to implement healing needles as a gadget like in scda that allow you to slowly regain your or you partners health, but in order not to make it a hard counter against poison mines you should need tons of them in order to survive a poison dart.
so let's do some brainstorming here =)
I don't think healing should be in the game at all. Remove poison effect/traps with a cooldown limiting how often you can do it, but no heal. We have health boxes for a reason.
Along those lines, auto-regen should be removed entirely, too.
Why all the big change? This would differ too much from the core game imo. That was 1 reason to stay with your partner, why kill an aspect of cooperation gameplay? I know it sounds cheap to auto heal someone but it's part of working together. However, you could slow the healing process. You can still heal your partner all the way, but it would take like 10 seconds to go from 0 to 100% health. You shouldn't have to sacrifice a gadget slot for needles either.
Auto regen is definitely something I could live without. The only way to heal YOURSELF should be a medkit or needles that you take along with you. The needles could maybe auto heal your partner, as well as slowly heal yourself.
As for removing traps/darts, I think it's fine the way it is. It's also one of those reasons to stay together.
QuoteWhy all the big change? This would differ too much from the core game imo. That was 1 reason to stay with your partner, why kill an aspect of cooperation gameplay?
Because there are plenty of other advantages to sticking together that you don't need to act as an instant and infinite healthbox for your partner. It encourages carelessness.
Quote from: Spekkio on March 15, 2008, 04:51:28 PM
I don't think healing should be in the game at all. Remove poison effect/traps with a cooldown limiting how often you can do it, but no heal. We have health boxes for a reason.
Along those lines, auto-regen should be removed entirely, too.
If no healing by partners and only by health boxes, mines can't be placed near them. How do you stop that one? "Slow walk" You aren'tgoing to slow walk if you're poisoned.
I'm cool with your partner taking the health-shot from DA as filling a gadget slot.
Quote from: Spekkio on March 15, 2008, 06:18:31 PM
QuoteWhy all the big change? This would differ too much from the core game imo. That was 1 reason to stay with your partner, why kill an aspect of cooperation gameplay?
Because there are plenty of other advantages to sticking together that you don't need to act as an instant and infinite healthbox for your partner. It encourages carelessness.
Why not? Someone gets shot so they say "well, see ya later man. I have to go run around the map until I find the health pack so I can come back and help you." That's stupid. You should both work together to find a safe spot to heal eachother. Encourages carelessness? It encourages cooperation and sticking with your partner, nothing wrong with that.
Quote from: Westfall-US on March 15, 2008, 06:40:23 PM
I'm cool with your partner taking the health-shot from DA as filling a gadget slot.
Yeah, why not just make heal capability a gagdet?
Medi belt! Oh yea. Basically a belt that gives you 5 or so medikits that heal you and your teammate all the way (all the way maybe?). Or just give the spy syringes like DA. ;D
Take out self regen and let your partner heal you 1/3 of the way w/ or w/o the syringes for every life they have.
You ever play against havoc and weezer when they go nuts on you. Their team work is so affective you are possible to run out of bullets before you take one down. They go agressive then all hell breaks lose. the moment you as a merc escape from the smoke and flash, they heal themselves, and renew the attack. The moment your reload they heal. It's almost like fighting a spy with infinite health.
I'd be happy with a compramise. Instead of needles taking up a slot, you each get two automaticly. They could heal you completly or stop poison, but not both. If you were poisoned you'd have to use two needles to keep full health.
As for health boxes, you'd be able to reload. But wouldn't be an instant heal. You'd have to get the needles then use them. Meaning you'd have to manage your time heading to a heath box. This could work for both teams.
Perhaps a poison dart for spies could be implemented that doesn't knock or kill the merc, but disorientates him. Dizziness and hearing things could be a result. The spy would have to have a low limit of darts. Just an idea.
The needles, then don't distract from well thought executed team work such of that of Havoc and weezer but does limit the length in which it occurs before needing to refuel.
I think the only way to heal should be with needles which are limited and take a gadget spot.
Healing should have an action and the ammount of health you get depends on how long you kept the ''action'' on
QuoteWhy not? Someone gets shot so they say "well, see ya later man. I have to go run around the map until I find the health pack so I can come back and help you."
Here's an idea: be more careful.
Quote from: Westfall-US on March 15, 2008, 06:40:23 PM
Quote from: Spekkio on March 15, 2008, 04:51:28 PM
I don't think healing should be in the game at all. Remove poison effect/traps with a cooldown limiting how often you can do it, but no heal. We have health boxes for a reason.
Along those lines, auto-regen should be removed entirely, too.
If no healing by partners and only by health boxes, mines can't be placed near them. How do you stop that one? "Slow walk" You aren'tgoing to slow walk if you're poisoned.
Well, first of all I hope that PS fixes the fact that you can place mines inside geometry. Secondly, what's wrong with a mine near a healthpack? Just shoot it or chaff it or whatever. If the merc uses a poison/proxy combo, he's using 2/3 of his mines to get one kill...maybe. Better yet, be a little more careful and don't rely on getting shot up and running to heal to bail you out, or focus on sneaking in to remove traps like seefoo used to do for the first half of every game.
QuoteI'm cool with your partner taking the health-shot from DA as filling a gadget slot.
That is a solution, but I'd rather just have it done away with, period. Keep in mind that this also applies for the mercs....instead of them just insta-healing each other anytime it's convenient for them to gang up on the spy (or spies), they would have to go back to the healthbox and sacrifice coverage. Would definitely help out paired with better jump detection and on maps where the mercs take falling damage frequently.
QuoteYou ever play against havoc and weezer when they go nuts on you. Their team work is so affective you are possible to run out of bullets before you take one down. They go agressive then all hell breaks lose. the moment you as a merc escape from the smoke and flash, they heal themselves, and renew the attack. The moment your reload they heal. It's almost like fighting a spy with infinite health.
Havoc and Weezer aren't the only ones who do this, and it doesn't necessarily have to involve going straight for necks. You're right though in that a well-coordinated team can survive a lot longer being careless due to infinite insta-healing.
QuoteAs for health boxes, you'd be able to reload. But wouldn't be an instant heal. You'd have to get the needles then use them. Meaning you'd have to manage your time heading to a heath box. This could work for both teams.
I don't think this is necessary -- I have no problem with healthboxes being quick, especially when most of them are out in the open. It's just that people rarely actually have to go to healthboxes to begin with.
QuoteI'd be happy with a compramise. Instead of needles taking up a slot, you each get two automaticly. They could heal you completly or stop poison, but not both. If you were poisoned you'd have to use two needles to keep full health.
I'd be a fan of 1 trap removal or poison removal per life, but no heal. On the merc end, though, it's a little more complicated: mercs don't die as much and spy bullets are much more plentiful. Perhaps limit them to one removal every 2 min or so? But then there needs to be a way for the mercs to know if the time is up or not.
My whole reasoning for being a fan of removing healing is because the meta-game in most maps where the spies just run around to "kite" the mercs is pretty damn gay. It takes the stealth out of "stealth-action." You'll still be able to cover your partner just fine, and you'll still be able to get away from the mercs. Hell, a lot of spy maps have a healthpack near spawn which the mercs can't access. You just won't be able to run around with no care for being spotted because you have a get-out-of-jail free card. On the merc end, it's very rare where you'll be killed via a jump or other damage because it's very easy to get healed.
this sounds like the best solution to me:
-no auto healing
-no mutual healing
-only 1 mutual spy trap removal / life
regarding mutual bullet removal: it's balanced if the ps map layout has no op central camping points where the mercs can easily meet
EDIT: had a conversation with spekkio.
It's not perfect for two reasons:
1. Healing yourself = gay
2. Refilling the healing ability = gay
It's not like healthboxes are these hidden, inaccessible things where refilling the health "needle" will be difficult. Healthboxes are all over the place, and rightfully so. Use them. I don't see why the spies deserve a get out of jail free card for being careless because his partner is around. The fact that you're together means that you should be able to take on a lone merc pretty easily without the need to heal each other. Hell, you could be far apart and then meet up in a "safety spot" like under the floor in Club. And don't say "but gmo the maps will be different." I'm pretty sure there are going to be vents in PS which the mercs can't enter. Oh, so now you gotta go to the healthpack to get a refill...that's a real challenge with a full health bar, isn't it?
As far as poisons/spytraps, learn to use thermal.
I'm leaning on spekkio's side now. Damn you!
Then again, when I played, I tend to rarely do these things. So it's not a big gameplay change for me and to that affect everyone. Because I wasn't that bad, and i never ever did these things. lol. So ya, I found it pretty gay.
I say you get 2 syringes per life, that's what someone else said, forgot who. They don't take up a slot and they heal you all the way and take away poison. Maybe if phosphorous nades are added it would undo those effects? There's an idea. So, you've got no auto self regeneration, health packs, and 2 syringes per life. Which means your partner can sacrifice one of his syringes for you if he is nice.
Quote from: Papa Skull on March 15, 2008, 09:19:48 PM
I say you get 2 syringes per life, that's what someone else said, forgot who. They don't take up a slot and they heal you all the way and take away poison. Maybe if phosphorous nades are added it would undo those effects? There's an idea. So, you've got no auto self regeneration, health packs, and 2 syringes per life. Which means your partner can sacrifice one of his syringes for you if he is nice.
Why?
Quote from: Spekkio on March 15, 2008, 09:24:38 PM
Why?
you won't get proper reasoning by papaskull. i guess the answer will be something like "because it's cool" or because "it's my opinion" XD
I'm OK with 2 syringes but they need to be refillable by healthpacks. Which is instant.
Note that Healthpacks do NOT heal Spies :p They only 'give'/refill the syringes instantly.
Healthpacks only heal Mercs.
I think getting to healthpacks is kinda hard, but that depends on the level design and the amount of them.
Spy Summary:
- 2 syringes, which either gradually heal or take away poison
- can heal teammate
- when you have 0 syringes, you need to go to a health pack (which is generally in Merc territory) and you get 1 or 2 syringes as a refill.
Why do I think this is balanced?
It takes time to heal, and there is no infinite self-healing or teammate-healing. It encourages teamwork but it's still risky to get a refill.
Merc Sumumary:
- instant healing at healthpack
- no teammate healing
it's better to leave this to the map designers: lots of easy accessable medkits = aggro map, few hard to acces = stealth map.
i first thought about giving 1 needle to every spy and needing 2 to counter poison, but after a long discussion with spekkio i saw the beauty of not having any healing possibility besides medkits.
That's an awful idea because you can self-heal poisons. "Omgzorz a poison mine...wait, kekeke i has syringe *runs through poison and instantly heals self."
A syringe, even if it's just 1 or 2, gives you a get out of jail free card. Even if it takes some short time, you can get to a safety spot close to where you are rather than having to make your way to a healthpack. "Oh, I gots shot up by a merc, but good thing I made it to this vent so I can just heal myself and start again right next to where I have to go."
Also, why make it that complicated to go to a healthpack to get an item that heals you later? Just make healthpacks heal and be done with it.
Finally, what about those people who go "pubbing?" Not everyone plays this game with a set partner. Imagine sitting there going "heal plz!!1" constantly while your teammate just sits there.
Healthpacks are by no means hard to access in any map made in PT or CT -- at least not the ones worth downloading. I think we can assume this will continue to be the trend in PS. So healthpacks heal, and that's it. Fin.
There are plenty of things that "encourage teamwork" in PT/CT without healing your partner. Adding more things like a mandatory syringe will change that word "encourage" to "absolutely require to stand any sort of chance of surviving."
i say they have an innate ability like the one dude said, and have 3 or so needles, and as a gadjet, you can carry more needles as an option. oh, and needles dont count for getting rid of spy traps, etc like that.
we gonna do co-op moves in PS?
well I was thinking that the healing syringe just worked on your partner. Not on yourself like in DA. Though i gues sthat wouldn't be worth a gadget at all, so maybe it's not suhc a great idea.
Quote from: Gawain on March 15, 2008, 09:56:53 PM
Quote from: Spekkio on March 15, 2008, 09:24:38 PM
Why?
you won't get proper reasoning by papaskull. i guess the answer will be something like "because it's cool" or because "it's my opinion" XD
Why you ask? To limit the amount of times you can heal your teammate and yourself. Isn't that what you want? You want it to be out of the game and my suggestion is closer to what you want than what we have now. You are just biased and probably didn't take the time to think my suggestion through, but rather, you just saw I posted it and thought it was an idiotic suggestion.
Fuck you Gawain.
dude, i talked about this topic with spekkio for like an hour, and you can be sure that we thought way deeper than you can imagine. of course we thought about healing needles and other stuff ::)
k, then don't talk to everyone else like they knew what went on in the discussion. And whatever you guys come up with doesn't mean it's the final decision. Hopefully you guys can give us some advice because 2 heads are better than a whole bunch of single heads :D sometimes
Everything that everyone has suggested up to this point all seem like good solutions to something that isn't that much of a big deal. Not much to discuss, it just needs some playtesting.
Spekkio makes a good point about the healing your own poison. That shouldn't be alowed even though I mentioned it. As i think about team healing and such, it can be over powered when used so perhaps limit team healing to poison only and not health.
I rely heavily on auto gen as I tend to get shot a shit load. most of that time is when running away from a merc. If i lost enough life, i'd concentrate on finding more before continuing to the objective, this in my opinion would slow me down even more than usual. And Spekkio, for the times you've played with me, (shut up with the gay jokes) you know how long I take. (no seriously). As a casual gamer, this would be trippled.
So my final thoughts on this is.
-remove team healing, except for poison.
-keep autoregen
-health packs do the same as always, heal and remove poison.
As for trap removal, keep it. If you remove it from spies, you'd have to remove it from the mercs too. And that's not cool.
I actually would really like that Daybreak. Sounds like the best solution so far. If you are able to escape the merc and hide from him you should at least be rewarded with 1/3 of your health back from auto-regen. But not as much as CT gives you, imo, it makes it easy to gain health and quickly.
Quote from: Gawain on March 16, 2008, 01:17:37 AM
dude, i talked about this topic with spekkio for like an hour, and you can be sure that we thought way deeper than you can imagine. of course we thought about healing needles and other stuff ::)
Just because you talked for an hour doesn't mean you see the fuckin light. "I talked to Spek and he said this so I knows this already so stfu." Just because you discussed something does not automatically mean it was biblical. Fuckin hell...
Spekkio has said this quite some time ago, and it was never a bad idea. Syringes just seemed nice. With the way PS is coming along, and how intense it seems like it will be, Spekkio's fix seems to be a necessary and well thought adjustment. Frvge's caught me for .2 sec, but the whole rolling through poison/heal really turned me off. I wasn't thinking str8. Daybreak's thoughts are spot on too. Dev's better be paying attention. ;)
Quote from: Gawain on March 15, 2008, 10:09:15 PM
i first thought about giving 1 needle to every spy and needing 2 to counter poison, but after a long discussion with spekkio i saw the beauty of not having any healing possibility besides medkits.
did you actually read this? this needle solution is way superior to the one frvge suggested, but i even dropped this idea.
Needle sucks, it's fine as it is. Period.
QuoteSo my final thoughts on this is.
-remove team healing, except for poison.
-keep autoregen
-health packs do the same as always, heal and remove poison.
Daybreak, I know that you like to play stealthy most of the time, but the fact is that most players use auto-regen as one of the many tools that allows them to run and "kite" the mercs rather than be sneaky. If you get shot up by a merc, then you already screwed up. You should not be able to get 50-75% of your health back because you made it to one of the ten billion spots on every map where spies can sit around unimpeded by mercs. It may slow you down for 10-20 seconds, but it also gives you your health back to try again without making your way to a healthbox.
Team healing and auto-regen
could be balanced -- hell, you could argue it's balanced now. You could even balance rocket launchers for spies if you wanted to. But that's not why I'm against it. I'm against it because I believe it is one of the many factors that pretty much take any incentive for being stealthy out of the game completely, and separates the difference between people "pubbing" and people with set partners even more than it needs to be. In summary, I don't like what it does to the game, whether you have 1, 2, or infinite amounts of it.
As far as the traps thing: On the merc end, they can't avoid getting spy bulleted. You WILL get tazed in a match, so they should have some way to remove the bullets. However, a careful spy should not be tripping any traps. The fact that a spy can purposefully run through 3 spy traps and meet his partner in a safety zone to remove them is just dumb. Most people want to keep trap removal in the game, but there has to be a way to limit it a bit more so that a spy can't waste all your spy traps 30 seconds. I could see the need for this if the game were like PT where you always had to deal with 10 spy traps on the map, but nowadays you usually deal with just 3.
You make good points. If auto gen is removed, i'll find a way around it. As for the traps ya, a spy shouldn't be able to remove the trap. If he runs through multiple traps, the time should just add together.
So if he trips one trap, and is on it for 35s and decide, fuck it i'm already trapped, and runs through a 2 more, the time he's trapped for would be up in the 1m40s range. Without having the ability to removing the spy trap. Serves him right, stupid carless spy.
While the spy probably shouldn't have got shot in the first place, I believe it's fair to give a spy 1/3 of his health back for escaping from a merc and finding a place where the merc can't find him. With only 1/3 of his health back it's not going to allow him to make a gigantic frantic aggro run against the mercs. It would maybe allow him to escape if he's found again, but that's it. 33% of your health isn't that much, especially compared to the amount CT gives you back.
QuoteI believe it's fair to give a spy 1/3 of his health back for escaping from a merc and finding a place where the merc can't find him.
Lol..."it's fair?"
Man, I wish all other mp games thought it "fair" to allow the player to regen 33% of their health by camping in a hiding spot.
/sarcasm
"Finding" a spot without the mercs? You don't exactly have to go out of your way to look for them.
I don't feel like auto regen is that bad. It takes a while to work and you've got to be standing still. If people are willing to pay time for health, that's really not terrible. We may want to slow down its speed though, sio the time tradeoff is bigger.
I think there is also a other aspect to Healing... there is also the Damage... I think damage from bullets should be increased
the damage is just fine, the problem is hitting with that amount of lag.
Yea, you can often see how good host's accuracy is.
Damage is fine...the merc weapons just need to be adjusted to be more equivelent, with the rifle serving as the baseline.
Quote from: Gawain on March 16, 2008, 01:17:37 AM
dude, i talked about this topic with spekkio for like an hour, and you can be sure that we thought way deeper than you can imagine. of course we thought about healing needles and other stuff ::)
poor guy .. :-\
Quote from: Spekkio on March 16, 2008, 08:53:00 PM
QuoteI believe it's fair to give a spy 1/3 of his health back for escaping from a merc and finding a place where the merc can't find him.
Lol..."it's fair?"
Man, I wish all other mp games thought it "fair" to allow the player to regen 33% of their health by camping in a hiding spot.
/sarcasm
"Finding" a spot without the mercs? You don't exactly have to go out of your way to look for them.
You kidding me? Don't compare this game to other games, they are much different. First of all, it's not always that easy to escape a merc that takes away most of your health, is it? ESPECIALLY not a spot where you can sit there safely and where a merc can't nade/shoot you. It's not smart for a spy to camp, so what's the problem with that? It's not like he'll win the entire game by sitting in fear waiting for his health to recharge so that he has the slightest chance at making a run across the room. Auto regen is like saying "Hey man, that was stupid. You shouldn't have rushed the merc. But since you were able to escape the deadly merc's clutches I'll give you a chunk of health out of pity." :D
It's not a big deal really. It's really a way for lone spies to recouperate after being shot without having to run across the map to get to a well guarded health pack. And even then, it doesn't give you a lot of health.
Quote from: Daybreak on March 16, 2008, 04:40:22 PM
You make good points. If auto gen is removed, i'll find a way around it. As for the traps ya, a spy shouldn't be able to remove the trap. If he runs through multiple traps, the time should just add together.
So if he trips one trap, and is on it for 35s and decide, fuck it i'm already trapped, and runs through a 2 more, the time he's trapped for would be up in the 1m40s range. Without having the ability to removing the spy trap. Serves him right, stupid carless spy.
No stacking, each one has its own timer. The last trap hit would last the longest.
As for needles, it would be ok if each spy had 2, had to be refilled at medkit or death. They heal over time. 1 needle can get rid of poision but wont heal you. Like an antidote. Mercs should not be able to self heal. When a spy trap is on the wall, you should be able to see the option to remove spy trap from partner. That is just gay.
omg. mutual poison healing is already pretty gay, but self-healing from poison is way more retarded. if you really wanna go for needles, take my idea, it's really the best for needles: 1 needle/spy that allow slowly healing (51hp) oneself or the other spy, but in order to remove poison you need 2 needles so you can't do it on your own.
yea actually i dont like antidote lol. but say poisons rate was 10hp per sec, the needle would heal at 2.5hp per sec, so if u were at full hp, hit a poison and used needle u would be 1/4 hp or 1/2hp if u used both needles.
Being able to remove poison without anyone's help is terrible idea.
Stacking the Spy traps should be enabled.
Currently a spy could quickly survey a hall way or entire floor and just run through disabling all traps almost instantaneously, but only have the last trap register as a hit. That in my opinion is riddiculous, the spy is rewarded by taking down all traps only to have a penalty of hiting one.
The only way time stacking for spy traps would be bad is in this case.
QuoteAs for needles, it would be ok if each spy had 2, had to be refilled at medkit or death. They heal over time. 1 needle can get rid of poision but wont heal you. Like an antidote. Mercs should not be able to self heal. When a spy trap is on the wall, you should be able to see the option to remove spy trap from partner. That is just gay.
If you're gonna do it this way, you may as well not bother changing anything. It's not that hard to make it to a healthpack. It's especially not that hard to make it to a healthpack after you've given yourself or gotten full health instantly from your partner.
As for auto-healing: your reward for making it to safety when a merc is shooting you is that you're still alive and have the opportunity to either go for the healthbox or go back for the objective.
And yes, the fact that spies can purposefully trip all 3 of your spy traps on purpose and get them all removed simultaneously is a little...gay.
What about having just like a 1-2 second animation to heal or remove traps?
Quote from: InvisibleMan999 on March 18, 2008, 01:24:43 AM
What about having just like a 1-2 second animation to heal or remove traps?
spies usually remove spy traps in safe-zones anyways so it makes no difference.
Quote from: Rambo on March 18, 2008, 02:43:05 AM
spies usually remove spy traps in safe-zones anyways so it makes no difference.
Well sure it does, at the very least the 2 second timer gives the mercs a chance to see where the spies are and while they've removed the trap, they've also given away the position. Of both spies. Because once you see the trap go off, you know that both spies happen to be there.
So that's pretty important actually.
Quote from: Rambo on March 18, 2008, 02:43:05 AM
Quote from: InvisibleMan999 on March 18, 2008, 01:24:43 AM
What about having just like a 1-2 second animation to heal or remove traps?
spies usually remove spy traps in safe-zones anyways so it makes no difference.
naah .. it would take the ability to heal away from aggro-spies. They could not quickly heal each other when traced by a merc, which is not the case right now.
Quote from: BurningDeath on March 18, 2008, 11:10:02 AM
Quote from: Rambo on March 18, 2008, 02:43:05 AM
Quote from: InvisibleMan999 on March 18, 2008, 01:24:43 AM
What about having just like a 1-2 second animation to heal or remove traps?
spies usually remove spy traps in safe-zones anyways so it makes no difference.
naah .. it would take the ability to heal away from aggro-spies. They could not quickly heal each other when traced by a merc, which is not the case right now.
I don't see a need for a 1-2 second animation. Just more work for the animators :D If a balance issue arises during testing/developing then it could be needed somehow, but I don't really see it happening.