I can't heal you, I'm poison/shadow spec
I've run into this before, but this afternoon in Global Agenda was the latest example.
While defending our base, my Assault got pretty banged up between control points. I ran up to a nearby medic, who was plinking at the oncoming horde with his Agony gun, and waited for a quick heal. When that didn't come, I hit the Call Medic button (which puts a big MEDIC! sign over your head) and stood nearly in front of the medic. Nothing would sway him from continuing to plink at the oncoming enemies. Frustrated, I attempted to retreat, only to get gunned down seconds later.
Frustrated, I asked in chat if he could please heal injured teammates next time instead of plinking at the enemy.
"let me think"
"um no"
"im poison, not here for heal"
"i dont care what u want, i played 35 levels with healing, so its my god damn right to do what i want :> play a medic if you want heal"
Now, I get that, since AD&D if not earlier, playing the healing class has been considered "boring" by a significantly large enough percentage of players, that designers frequently find themselves adding some sort of offensive perks to the class in order to entice more people to play that class. I also get that, in examples where your character can specialize to any degree, that it's possible to build the healing character in such a way that they can be as effective offensively as any other class, even if they never heal a single point of damage (at least to anyone other than themselves).
That said, it's usually impossible to build these characters in such a way that you are in fact incapable of healing someone else in the field.* And yet, I've frequently played with "battle clerics" whose predominately reviled trait is that they refuse to help anyone around them. To be honest, I just don't get the mentality of refusing to heal anyone, ever.
I do understand some of this: most people don't like tagging along while someone else is awesome. You want your character to do what it was built to do. You can get frustrated when people assign you responsibilities just because the character build that did just what you want is a subset of an archetype that is dominated by an activity you don't really want to do. But I'll tell you this: If my assault, or my fighter, or my Demoman had the ability to heal a nearby teammate with a press of a key, I sure as hell wouldn't yell at someone for asking me to press that key once in awhile.
So, I'd like to solicit discussion as to what constitutes good teamwork, etiquette, etc. in these situations. To be clear, I'm specifically talking about the following circumstances:
* A damage-spec, healing-class character is still capable of spot-healing teammates, ideally at little personal cost.
* The person playing the damage-spec character decides they will not heal teammates under any circumstances, as healing teammates is "someone else's job."
To me, it's bad teamwork not to make full use of your abilities. I'm not asking anyone to follow me around (healing people who invite more pain than they're worth is another subject entirely), but if you can take a second and get a teammate back in the action, why not do so?
*(In retrospect, there's a slim chance that this individual was so commited to offense that he completely unequipped the basic healing gun so he could spend one more point on poison offhands. I'm surprised someone might do that though, since the basic medigun is terribly useful, if only to use it to heal yourself via healing others.)
Cyranix wrote:
[RukiTanuki] once hit Chuck Norris with a crit wrench, and Chuck Norris died.
RukiTanuki wrote:
"'Ruki, where are you going?' 'Don't worry, I'll catch up.' And that was how we almost lost a round of Hard Rain 4."
This is my take on Team work:
I'll spec whatever it takes to win, people don't realize this in GA. I had a 3 star rating at level 20 because I support the team as recon I'm not out there for kills but for pure disruption. I bomb a target, set traps and cause general chaos.
I'm planning on going medic in a week or so and I'll be full healing because I love to heal people. To me it's a better badge to say " you lived and we won because i kept us alive" Then " Yaaaar I killed everything!"
"We are at war, and the enemies are...the publishers. No, they're not. It's not that easy. The enemies are mediocrity, laziness, and fear, and they exist in all of us." - Tim Schafer
XBL- Devmani
PSN - Devmani
Steam - Devmani
Wow! Two posts/rants on healing in Global Agenda in a week. It seems there is some friction there that is in other games but more prevalent or more apparent in GA.
I think that they could have gone two better routes with the healer class in Global Agenda. They could have gone a more pure healer route where the healer can't really defend themselves with more than a pea shooter. I hope I'm not wrong in assuming this is how the medic? class is in Team Fortress.
The other route they could have gone is more like the robotics class where you have a wide variety of support abilities in gadget form except that they are healing related. They could keep the healing wave and grenades, and expand on them. They could make drones that pulse an aoe heal or a beam heal or multi-beam heal that would target the most hurt players. The same abilities could be given to planted turrets. Grenades could also leave a healing field for a few seconds like a fire wall/field that heals. All of these abilities of course could be altered to be life tap abilities that both heal friends and hurt foes so that the healer gets in on the killing too.
I think the latter class sounds like a lot more fun, but either way would leave no room for doubt.
I also think that the biggest problem healers face currently in Global Agenda is assault class players. I am totally not talking about you Ruki. But there are a lot of assault classes who think that because there is a healer in the group, they are the god tank and they can go wading into dozens of enemies with impunity. And if they die, it is solely the healers fault. They have no clue how much strain this puts on the whole team and the healer in particular. The rest of the team has to make sure they kill off all the stragglers so that the assault doesn't get surrounded. And the poor healer has to run around like mad trying to keep the beam locked on the assault without running into the enemy's line of fire.
It can't be a coincidence that everybody seems to bring their A game or plays above their potential when there is no healer in the group. Its also why I play robotics. To me its the perfect balance between being able to support and protect my team mates and being an offensive powerhouse.
Being fangoriously devoured by a gelatinous monster.
Gah, but all this talk is making me want to play my healer.
I'd also like to reiterate what Devmani said. Play/spec to win, period.
Being fangoriously devoured by a gelatinous monster.
The Medic in TF2 is moderate speed/health, whose melee weapon is effectively identical to everyone else's, with one gun that shoots rapid-fire, low-damage projectiles. They can defend themselves but you will almost always see a Medic retreating as he shoots.
I've seen that far too often myself. (My situation was totally different; we lost one point, and I met the medic at point 2 with a few baddies behind me.) The Assault class' tanking power lies specifically in weapons, defensive offhands, and a few skill points. At base, they're as easy to kill as anyone else. I've seen idiots in every class; what got me here was someone who actively decided they weren't taking the time to heal anyone regardless of tactical benefit.
And I'm completely about that. I just can't figure out how deliberately choosing not to tag a nearby, injured teammate with a split-second heal beam gets you any closer to victory. For the record, we were completely crushed in that map and lost that point less than a minute later, so his pew-pew Agony gun sure as hell didn't make the difference.
I guess my question is this: Is there any point where a class with healing abilities is excused from ever using them? I'm a fan of contributing the team every way you can, so I just can't excuse it myself. This guy in particular struck me as odd, just because of how vocally he defended his decision.
Cyranix wrote:
RukiTanuki wrote:
I totally hear what you are saying. I'm not trying to refute you at all. The idiot may have right click unequipped his/her healing beam for the 1-4 points to equip a better poison aura for all I know. I know you are a smart player, I was just concurring with devmani and I don't think that healer you ran into was speced to win.
So I was so fired up about this post that I figured I'd fire up my healer and man I am mediocre at best. I was in really bad groups to be honest. I say this objectively because we actually lost a medium security PvE missions. (a first for me and I've probably played over a hundred by now) We were so inefficient that we got to the boss with 10 seconds left. I want to clarify that I did group twice with someone from that forums who's name escapes me now. Those groups were fine. But even then I was having trouble keeping up with everyone. Playing a healer is really hard in this game and I don't suck. I'm just far better with the robotics class.
The only time healers should be allowed to not heal is when there is another healer in the group. Otherwise they shouldn't play a healer, or they should solo or expect spurn.
Being fangoriously devoured by a gelatinous monster.
FYI here is the companion piece to this post =)
http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/48916
Being fangoriously devoured by a gelatinous monster.
I played a medic to level 10 in the beta. I played all three other classes to 21 or 22. I have played healers in other games, but rarely (Tree!). Support/tank/DPS, I'm happy with those roles normally, and happy with them in GA.
I would not play a medic in GA. Period.
That said, if I'm playing in a PuG PvP game in GA, I'm playing to have fun. I am not worrying about winning, or teamwork, or anything but having fun. Why? Because its a PuG!
Winning can be fun. Its nice to win. Winning is not necessary to have fun.
Teamwork can be fun. Its nice when there is teamwork. Teamwork is not necessary to have fun.
In a PuG PvP match, you can't count on winning. You can't count on teamwork. You can, however, go in and have fun.
As a non-healer in any PuG PvP game I have zero, zip, nada expectations that the healers will actually heal me. They are there to have fun. Their fun may or may not involve healing, may or may not involve healing me. I have no right to impose my expectations of how they should play on them, just as they have no right to impose their expectations of how I should play on me.
Am I normally interested in working with my team to win? Yep. Would it be nice if they were interested in working as a team to win? Sure. If they do, though, then its a bonus, plain and simple. All I really expect is that they don't teamkill. After that, its up to the individual player, and you can't count on them for _anything_. Because (chant with me!) its a PuG!
In a co-op PvE encounter, that's different, everyone has a role to play there, and I expect people to be able to fulfill their chosen role. But that's not a PuG PvP game.
Steam LtWarhound
Eve: Morgen StMichael
GPGNet: LtWarhound
If you're playing an online game, and you're not playing to win, you are wasting the time of the other people on your team. If you want to just dick around, play a single-player game.
Staats wrote:
Plus, I just noticed this post you made in the main GA thread:
So you're complaining on the one hand about people sucking, and then on the other hand you're saying that nobody has the right to tell you how to play, and that you don't bother to play to win. Don't you realize that the people on your team then get exactly the experience you so despise?
Staats wrote:
Ah, but there's the rub, at least from my perspective. If one can claim that I have no right to any outwardly expressed opinion regarding the gameplay of others in a team-focused environment versus human opponents... why do I suddenly have a right to express my opinion on their gameplay in a team-focused environment versus AI opponents?
I get the idea that you can't "make" anyone do anything on the Internet. There seems to be some consensus, however, that it's perfectly valid to call out/kick players whose actions are contrary to the team goal, whether it's by blasting music on chat, sabotaging teammates, carrying the enemy intel/flag/etc. to the darkest corner of the map and sitting there.
Can you elaborate on why it's okay for one person's un-team-like gameplay is okay when it's affecting ten players in a PvP game, but is wrong when it's affecting three players in PvE? I just don't understand why I can't expect everyone to have a role to play just because there's more people.
Cyranix wrote:
RukiTanuki wrote:
I think you're making a stretch when you compare the actions of the person you described (Not healing teammates because he's busy shooting his gun) to actions of those intentionally trying to sabotage their own team. In the first instance, he's merely not doing what you want him to do. In the second instance, they are actively trying to harm their own team.
Granted, it sucks that he won't heal you especially when it's really easy for him to. But that's his call to make. He obviously doesn't want to do that. Complaining about him not healing is like complaining about the recon dude that sits up on the tower and snipes the random doorway that a person walks through ever 2 minutes. He's not really helping the team, and you're right to be frustrated, but in the end he's playing the game how he wants to play it, just like you.
XBL: Tkkyl | Steam: Tkyl
The best solution is.......get 10 people(friends) and PvP that way so you never have that random ass-hattery going on. The more I play GA the more I find this to be true. The game is built on not Pugs but premade groups. If you can get such a group then you will do much better in the long run.
"We are at war, and the enemies are...the publishers. No, they're not. It's not that easy. The enemies are mediocrity, laziness, and fear, and they exist in all of us." - Tim Schafer
XBL- Devmani
PSN - Devmani
Steam - Devmani
Heh. Dev, does that mean that I am back in your good graces after torturing you with 2 attempts at high security missions where one member (I'm looking at you buckdharma) crashed out at the start?
They totally nerfed the rocket turrets and I am not saying it wasn't warranted but those they have become paper cannons. I may switch out turrets altogether for the sensor drone. It provides a 25% (ranged only?) damage buff to team mates within 50 ft at level IV.
Being fangoriously devoured by a gelatinous monster.
I don't really have Bad graces lol. I got two people from work that may join up if I can catch em online.
"We are at war, and the enemies are...the publishers. No, they're not. It's not that easy. The enemies are mediocrity, laziness, and fear, and they exist in all of us." - Tim Schafer
XBL- Devmani
PSN - Devmani
Steam - Devmani
Terrific... I hope we get a good crowd for this game through word of mouth.
BTW the sensor drone is actually a turret and it rocks! It turns your whole party into autocannon IV turrets. Its going to be great for PvP.
Being fangoriously devoured by a gelatinous monster.
Hey now! I will apologize for being a pretty bad player/medic (and not knowing how to crouch, yeesh - where's the bloody manual anyway?!?!) but I absolutely refuse to be held responsible for my fancy new computer crashing me out of the game!
On the other hand, while I'm not great, I'm a big proponent of winning to have fun and look forward to actually getting in some more missions with you guys - I'm still having loads of fun and looking forward to settling into some good load outs and getting my skills, such as they are, up to snuff.
Cheers!
Sigh, nothing clever to say here...
Back in the olden days (2001-2004) when I actually played with other people, I tended to play healers in MMO's. I was regularly told I was a fantabulous healer so I'll take their word for it. One class I played also did crowd control while another had buffs and some damage spells. That being said I always viewed healing as my number 1 priority. Of course I also expected certain behavior from my groupmates. If bad guys are pounding on my head it's your job to get them off me so I can continue to heal you, of course I'm also not supposed to run around like my head's on fire just because I'm getting hit, I have to stand still so you can get to me. If you run off into a crowd of enemies without waiting for everyone or if you continue to pull enemies when everyone's yelling for a break I likely wouldn't heal you. Mind you, I'll give a warning first but still. No heals for you. In good groups all the players know what is expected of them, they all do their primary jobs well, and everyone still has fun.
Having said all that, it's still any players right to be an absolutely horrible player. Choosing not to heal simply because they'd rather shoot poison, throw grenades, cast lightning, whatever... is just a stupid move for a healer. It's akin to playing a mage and saying you're not going to use any spells and only attack enemies by whacking them with your staff. It's stupid. It's going to get people around you killed. But it's your choice. Just like driving your car into a brick wall is your choice in real life. it's stupid, but you can do it. The only way you can expect someone to behave a certain way in an MMO is if you have an agreement with them beforehand. Simply expecting a random player to perform his role in the standard way is unrealistic. Especially in GA. Since this is a hybrid FPS/MMO you're likely going to get a lot of people whose primary experience is going to be CoD or Halo with absolutely no exposure to standard MMOs. To expect a tea-bagging bunny hopper to suddenly become a conscientious healer who's only worried about helping his team is a bit of a stretch.
Double post? But how! I only hit it once! I ONLY HIT IT OOOOONCE!!!
Here's my thoughts:
On WoW, I play a rogue as my main. Purely damage, not intended to heal or tank. I carry around bandages. If I see someone in need of healing, and nobody is healing them, I'll pop off a tick or two of a bandage if I get a free moment from stabbing away at whatever my current target happens to be. Yeah, maybe it's not exceptionally effective, but every little bit helps right?
"Certis is not awesome, and the sooner that silly rumor is squashed the better! ;)" - Elysium
"Dhelor + intarwebs = Great ideas." - wordsmythe
"It wouldn't be the internet if we weren't all dicks." - Minarchist
That is definitely one thing of note in this argument. It would have taken less time and less resources for this "healer" to top off Ruki than it does to even bandage someone in WoW.
This isn't your typical mmo where they would have had to waste dozens of seconds regaining mana. It would have taken the "healer" probably 3 seconds to heal and 1-2 seconds to gain back the energy.
Being fangoriously devoured by a gelatinous monster.
Damn, Malor, be careful. Matching a stretch like that without warming up first, you could pull something.
I highlighted the point of my post on the GA forum that you tried to take out of context. No where in the rest of the post does it once talk about anyone's skill, sucking or not. I don't like some of the PvP maps. I don't like being forced to play on those maps I don't like.
Nice job at completely missing my point, here and there.
Steam LtWarhound
Eve: Morgen StMichael
GPGNet: LtWarhound
Wow, today this just came out in droves. I've played for about an hour and I've run into two DPS medics, on either side of the "what if" I posited originally.
The first one actually stated that he didn't have a medigun equipped, and had a friend on voice chat back up his decision. (For those who don't understand the ramifications of unequipping a Rank 1 weapon: You normally have enough points to set your equipment to Ranks 4/4/4/2/1, however you like. The only thing to gain by unequipping a weapon is to go 4/4/4/3. So, this person has given up the ability to heal themselves by pointing a gun at a teammate, in order to make their least powerful ability 10% better, which is about the difference in ranks.)
The second, when someone else pointed out that we were five minutes into a Breach map and he hadn't healed anyone, admitted that he had the medigun equipped but that he wasn't using it. I was out-DPSing him by an order of magnitude, while maintaining my own five-digit healing.
I'll admit, healing is aggravating in GA in addition to being less interesting than having my Assault rapid-fire nine grenades into a cluster of enemies, destroying everything. But if I didn't want to heal, I wouldn't play the class. Mind you, I'm Poison spec, and two of my three offhands are the Poison AOEs. But my third one is Healing Wave, I have a Mark IV medigun equipped, and frankly, I feel I've found the balance in play style I want. I find a cluster of baddies, splash them with poison, retreat, and come back with friends who are now at the advantage.
It's just this idea of "WON'T heal" that I just can't wrap my head around. Healing is the only advantage the class holds. DPS is done better by everyone else. The medic DPS has debuffs that are better than the other classes, but removing healing entirely from your spec in some sad attempt to min-max won't really improve the debuffs one bit; it only barely bumps up your worst DPS. (The debuffs are mostly improved via skillpoints, so unequipping your medigun has no effect.)
For those reaffirming that you can't tell anyone they're playing a game wrong until they're deliberately, physically preventing your own character from doing something, there is one more problem I've noticed. GA's matchmaking tries to even up the teams by class, not by spec. Thus far, any team I've played with a medic who refused to heal, has been a loss. Their red-team counterpart is healing, and the difference is noticed, particularly with how few medics are in any match. The other team getting healed twice as much as ours is a difficult obstacle to overcome, and I haven't seen anyone's kill sheet make up for that, let alone cause us to achieve our objective better.
I still maintain that playing Medic, and never healing anyone, is more of a "wrong" way to play than a Recon sniping in a non-essential part of the map. The intent behind the post was to find consensus in that regard, so I'm curious whether others actually find that form of play completely acceptable, and not whether it's merely something you can't do anything about.
Cyranix wrote:
RukiTanuki wrote:
Here's someone else's thoughts on GA's DPS Medics in particular, with some discussion in the comments:
http://www.thatsaterribleidea.com/2010/02/global-agendas-design-failure-...
Cyranix wrote:
RukiTanuki wrote:
Hmm. Pretty sure I've heard that whining before. Yeah, yeah I have.
Unfortunately, if I slash my wrist with my lightsaber it cauterizes instantly. - PurEvil on emo Star Wars plots.
Libertarianism would be a lot more palatable if Ayn Rand hadn't decided she was the world's greatest living philosopher - Robear
Poison based Medics should be a Debuff based spec not a damaged based one. Make poisons do Protect dmg, aim interruption or something of that sort. Harassment Dmg is fine but nothing as grand as the current layout.
One thing that bothers me is that DoTs from medics hit harder and longer then any other class. Powerdrain IV can kill me from full health while using REST. Now I'm not saying that REST should counteract the full effect but what I am saying is that Poisons that strong should make you choose between using REST and ending up with very little HP and a cool down, taking the death or hoping to get healed/health pickup.
As it stands right now Poison grenades are a little too strong, my Fire Bomb IV's don't wreck as much havoc as a poison grenade will and it's a dot based attack, I haven't unlocked Venom yet as I'm 2 levels away from it but I'll be sure to make comparisons to that as well.
"We are at war, and the enemies are...the publishers. No, they're not. It's not that easy. The enemies are mediocrity, laziness, and fear, and they exist in all of us." - Tim Schafer
XBL- Devmani
PSN - Devmani
Steam - Devmani
I still think the error Hirez made is in implementing a direct/active healing class. They should make all healing indirect/passive like healing wave, healing grenades and med stations or an aura. Either that or remove the beam gun since it causes the most balance issues and it creates the role that bitter poison medics run away from. I can't think of a single aspect of another class that a portion of your player base deems not enjoyable or at best, repetitive.
I think they should have a gun that does half damage and radiates the other damage as a pbaoe heal around the healer if it hits. The right click fire does centers the heal around the target to heal the allies engaging the enemy at melee range. Or the right click fire does pbaoe damage and heals the healer half damage but is energy intensive and can only be fired 4-5 times before running out of energy.
Being fangoriously devoured by a gelatinous monster.
The frustrating part about the healgun, to me at least, is that you have to actively focus on maintaining the link. Team Fortress 2 got the medigun beam dead to rights: I can click on someone once, spend a minute amount of effort maintaining line-of-sight, and spend almost the entirety of my focus on the battlefield and everything around me. The GA gun works in a controlled environment (say, QA testing) but is much harder to use effectively when the movements of your allies are utterly chaotic (such as when a sniper can see you, which is always).
If a developer asked me for a five-minute change that would dramatically improve this entire predicament, I'd tell them to remove the code that causes the beam to break if the target isn't in a 30-degree cone in front of the medic.
Cyranix wrote:
RukiTanuki wrote: