Medic is too strong due to his equipment

[median helm]

So guys. In current state of the game Medics have too much, and they are choosed because they are able to place, use explosives but also they are able to heal and revive. in battlefield 4 for example we need choose between two, (we want heal and revive, Heal and explosives, revive and explosives.. Removing most of explosives and giving only granade launcher would be a way other classes would be picked ok?

[trim valley]

All classes can revive

[bronze sentinel]

I would be open to removing frag/impact nade from medic

and maybe c4, but other classes would really have to feel good. Otherwise vehicles could become a problem as everyone would still play medic

[drowsy frigate]

Biggest take is that medic is the class that really will do good in most of fights, where as for example support is the actual least played class(excluding squad leader, nobody uses that lol), And then assault, engineer And sniper are classes in between those. IMHO medics need to have 10 bandages And one medkit, while supports really Just need more guns And some gadget. Feels like game would benefit if supports would get their shtuff fixed first And then we would have to see. From my point of view, I really go on bigger killstreaks as medic than assualt or any other class, And I think that speaks volumes.(runnin And gunnin while still healing whole team)

[plush knoll]

Since this game is mainly about soldiers shooting at each other, it is no surprise that the medic, who can heal, is often used. Assaults have grappling hooks and engineers have RPGs and other advantages that medics don't have, but the problem is that supports have crappy advantages.
Support LMG is powerful in defensive battles, but in CQ no one defends their bases😢

[median helm]

Medic is able to destroy walls And kill people With claymores c4 and mines

Oki need to add 40mm granade launcher to medic And delete other explosive equipment

[plush knoll]

All classes can do that.

I don't see what's wrong with having more medics in the first place. If medics were nerfed, it would just make lots of RPGs fly.

[median helm]

Medics can heal them selfs

Other classes can't

[plush knoll]

Why is the medic weakened by explosives rather than by a reduction in its ability to heal, etc.?
What effect do you think it causes?
Those are all I want to know.
Medic is a powerful gadget in close quarters combat, while hooks, RPGs and sniper rifles are useless at close range. So weakening the medic will reduce the number of people attacking the base and increase the threat of snipers. I am basically against weakening the medic because I hate snipers.

[median helm]

You know that medic has explosives and medic bag also is allowed to revive that's too strong to be honest

[trim valley]

Support can revive and have explosives, also ammo box

[median helm]

But no healing

[trim valley]

But ammo box and exo armor

[median helm]

As medic you can destroy wall With c4 set traps with mines and claymores that sounds like support equipment

[trim valley]

Its base infantry equipment

[median helm]

Nope

Other classes would be picked up because of that

[trim valley]

Why

All classes have explosives

[median helm]

@trim valley because of bad game design

[trim valley]

Nope

[median helm]

Main reason medic is picked you can use c4 claymores and mines while being able to heal them selfs

Removing explosive equipment from medic would force playerbase that want one of playstyles they need to change their main class they want

I rareliy see support player

[trim valley]

Because support have only 2 weapons

Medic have wide selection of weapon and all meta guns

[patent hedge]

I like support but I'd rather there be an incentive to stack medics.
Semi auto with support LMG is really great for suppressing firing

Cover your ass and flank with some mines and setup shop next to a piece of terrain like a non-driveable truck

[median helm]

right now i'm not talking about weapons. i'm talking about equipment

[trim valley]

you talking about

They are choosed because weapons

as val, honey badger, kriss vector

[median helm]

nope they are picked because you can heal your self weapons and explosive equipment

[trim valley]

Lol
All classes have explosive equipment

Its not argument

[median helm]

who can heal them selfs?

[trim valley]

Medic and what?

Who have ammo boxes?

Who have rpg?

Who have zipline and hammer?

[median helm]

only medic

ammp i can get from air drops

[trim valley]

it's a unique class feature

[median helm]

yes]

thats why there should be no explosive equipment on medic

@trim valley how much hours you have in this game

[trim valley]

~60

[median helm]

i see 60~ is not enough to understand how this type of the game works

[trim valley]

Hahah

As you say

[median helm]

yeah if you look at battlefield this is good equipment distribution on each class

[trim valley]

As you say, but medic too op because meta vector, val, badger

[median helm]

ok remove explosive equipment and that would be a great change

[dim olive]

medic shouldn't have c4/claymores/mines. but otherwise i think the class is fine.

[tacit tinsel]

I feel that the Medic highlights class imbalance issues. You have more access to things than you should. Do you need medic to have access to
Advanced Bino
AP Mine
C4
Claymore
SuicideC4
and M320 Smoke
As well as all but 2 classes of weapons (Snipers and LMGs)

It has more weapon access than Assault, Leader, Support, and Recon.

Add the weapon access to the fact that you have faster bandage/revive, are the only healing capable class, and have almost 10x the bandages of other classes (results in less resupply for mass cas). The link is a screenshot of just roughly charting out the access of each class.

https://i.imgur.com/bkZ6tyH.png

[abstract arrow]

The medic can't use dmrs though.
I might be tripping, idk

The problem with the medic is that it is not only the only class that can prevent death and increase the chances of the whole team winning an engagement, but it is too good at other things as well, such as solo pushing, self sustain and has access to the ranger vest.

If the medic had greatly reduced self healing, the same self bandaging speed and no ranger vest, it would be A LOT more balanced.

And reducing the reliance on medic by adding much weaker, alternative methods of healing, would make people play other classes more often.
On domination, for example, the best team you can get is a team made of about 90% medics, cuz support, assault, engineer and recon are barely needed if at all.

[plush knoll]

Zip lines and amo boxes are gadgets for squads, and solo players have almost no chance to use them. Most players only use medics or engineers.
I still feel that the problem is not so much that the medic is strong, but that the other classes are unattractive.

[tacit tinsel]

Yep, sorry, my mistake, but still the amount of weapons engineer and medic have access to is way greater than any other class.

Another part of the issue is there is no perm death system, I can blow myself up with sucidec4 and be revived.

Support has ammo
Assault has ammo and smoke launcher
Recon has a decoy and snipers
Leader has a drone

Medic has 2nd most weapons, healing, fast revive, smoke launcher
Engineer has the most weapons, RPGs, Repair tools

There is nothing outside the sniper rifles that makes me want to pick anything other than medic. Engineer is great for AT, but still outclassed. Sure a skilled assault player could top the board all day long, but a shitty medic can be right on his heels all day as well.

One idea for balancing medic is to add a small self healing option to each class. As well as opening up the weapon access for Assault and removing ARs from medic. This would reduce the pressure to be a medic for self healing, which would reduce the overall number of medic players, with the player base of medics swinging from meta following to I want to do this for fun and to help the team.

Assault should be the "Basic" class, consisting of broad weapon access, but limited gadget access with 1/2 assault only gadgets. Moving into other classes your weapon access becomes more restricted but you have very specialized gadgets (big ammo, healing, heavy AT, idk for recon). This gives a clear role to each class and helps to restrict the classes from out preforming others. Leader needs something more than a pair of binos that have a range finder that can zoom in. (frankly this is not squad or arma, the maps are not 1000sqkm).

[craggy mulch]

A part of the creative decisions that I think Oki has taken is to not limit the "fun".

I honestly don't see Oki doing any changes whatsoever to how classes work and will remain as so maybe forever

Alas the game has some mixed signals with that and does restrict certain things, but as far as 90% of the gadgets they are unified which is interesting in some cases and in others makes some gadgets probably have 0% usage rate

I would say rather than limit things to balance the game, limit things according to what people use the most to reduce the amount of wasted space in the UI with a gadget nobody uses

[tacit tinsel]

The problem is that they went too far with not limiting fun, besides the stuff that was stated to not come to the game (shotguns for example), the medic class is currently THE CLASS, besides sniper and engineer, the other classes are not fun because they are limited by the health mechanics (healing, bandage speed, bandage number, revive speed), and they are limited by weapon choices. Assault is the anti-fun class, the most restricted weapon access and while im close to unlocking the shield, i have never seen a shield in the wild and I feel with the amount of rockets and nades, they wouldnt be that useful.

[craggy mulch]

I think the dilemma is what makes it such a challenge that I don't see Oki bothering with anytime soon, you either allow every class the freedom to use most of the equipment for the sake of "fun" or you create a framework that balances which class can use what based on performance

I think this middle ground is what we'll get

[tacit tinsel]

I dont see this as a middle ground, I feel its kinda just "there its done", and dont get me wrong, I fully understand the challenges of making this game with 3 people and a budget that cant buy a beer at a ballgame (not bashing the devs), but this current ground feels like its on a list to change somewhere, but its not any sort of prio currently. Which I understand, but bad balance of classes can hurt the game. Maybe a quick fix would be to just remove ARs from medics, give Assault more weapons (DMR, PDWs, SMGs, idk). Then down the road they can address the underlying issues of why so many people play only medic (OP class, EXP farm).

[craggy mulch]

I think this encompasses the entire BBR experience pretty well, when you stop to think about the game like that you realize what we have right now is actually the baseline, a blueprint or foundation for many mechanics that could become something greater and deeper for the game, but when you start realizing those, you see there's a ton of work, too much if we wanted to tackle it

the prioritization of tasks in this project is very real

I think a reevaluation of classes for instance would take easily a month or two of work, more or less the same as helis

I'm not saying it's great to have many mechanics that are barebones and very plain, but it's laying the ground for further cohesion of those mechanics

god knows when tho

[tacit tinsel]

The problem is a game can and will die because of balance issues, with the current state of medic, it has changed how the whole game plays and what players think towards classes. If the starved classes are not fed sooner or later the playerbase mindset becomes "Why not medic" when it comes to the whole game. And it won't be long after that the playerbase mindset changes to "why have other classes at all?" and sadly the current state of other classes is supporting that. I feel that they should bump up class balance on their list sooner rather than later or embrace the uniclass idea and kill off classes.

[craggy mulch]

I agree totally, classes in particular drive the dynamics of the game a ton and are what people see first when they enter the game, I'd consider it like a very important thing to have polished, I'm not happy either at all with classes

[glossy knot]

I see other classes needing a buff rather than medic a nerf like completely removing explosives.
If there were a nerf, maybe a limit. Limit explosive inventory space, (you can currently hold 4 infantry mines, so have less), or look, as someone mentioned earlier, at how medics have a large weapon range access.
(RIP Support's two guns)

I think it would be cool if instead of having two medical boxes in inventory by default, you can replace having set ground explosives with a spare or two medical boxes to drop for others to use.

[tacit tinsel]

How do you buff other classes to meet the standard of medic? That is a bigger challenge than taking medic down. The current issue is the healing and weapon access. We can't touch healing (leave that for more fine tuning) so we take some weapons away, and give them to others, and yes RIP support, they need a lot of love.

[craggy mulch]

Medic should be more specialized, no explosives, less guns

maybe buff the amount of healing bags it can throw

make medics want to focus more on healing large groups of people rather than chasing down individuals

[tacit tinsel]

Throwing healing bags? Is there a mechanic im unware of ?

[glossy knot]

I would merely like to see the other classes (I often see complaints on Leader, Assault, and Support) get to a healthy state first.

Then bring medic down a few more levels than a smaller limit if it is deemed too OP even after the buff, so as to avoid going back and forth on buffs and nerfs on medic.

You can throw you medkit as medic

That's what I mentioned in my "limit" earlier to replace explosives.

[tacit tinsel]

What does throwing your medkit do?

[glossy knot]

You have two medkits by default, so it's good practice to always throw one

People can heal themselves, similar the the supply kit of a Support giving supplies

[tacit tinsel]

Let me make sure im understanding this, because clearly I missed this info after 72 hours of playing. You can toss your medkit on the ground and it will auto heal players?

[craggy mulch]

no, players can use it to heal themselves

[tacit tinsel]

how did I not know this

[craggy mulch]

probably cause Oki didn't think about giving that sort of depth to classes and a Medic just seems like a great killing machine

if the game drove people to actually be healers with medics everyone would know and do that

you would have seen it around

[tacit tinsel]

because medic is the best solo class

[craggy mulch]

I really want to see the game and team grow a ton if launch goes well, but I honestly don't know what the plan is

there's so much work that could make this such an improved version of the game

to the point I consider maybe mod support would be the best choice

[glossy knot]

Well, you can see a cycle from updates and whatnot
I generally see functional fixes (server side optimization, etc) followed by content for testers to try, repeat

[tacit tinsel]

They need help, no doubt, its a massive game. I worry about them getting help and their ideas changing, or they get finical help and that puts pressure on them to do things for more money. Its all one big slop and one wrong step could hurt the game.

[craggy mulch]

very real

[tacit tinsel]

looking at you squad with your announcement about micro-transactions

[craggy mulch]

thankfully BBR is quite mainstream

unlike squad which just looked like it for a while, but actually being uber niche

[tacit tinsel]

I think the testing is making it more mainstream, people want to play 24/7 but cant, but if they could they would burn out sooner (as everyone does)

[craggy mulch]

I honestly hate not being able to play when I want so I hate the playtest dynamic, actually driving me away from the game, I'm tired of testing games

but I guess it's doing its marketing work

[glossy knot]

Just think, if this were another game, another set of devs, most wouldn't get to test at all q.q

[craggy mulch]

I truly hope it pays off at launch

a bad launch would deal serious emotional damage if you think about how much anticipation has been put into it

https://tenor.com/view/emotional-damage-emotional-damage-meme-funny-gif-24332819

[covert niche]

medic is a better assault

something needs to be done

i’m hesitant to say that it shouldn’t be able to heal itself but

idk

give Assault SMGs first of all

[bronze sentinel]

That would make medic feel horrible like all the other classes. Instead I’m starting to think that bandage should heal a player overtime to 70% health or something.

Giving assault double primary would also set it apart. And maybe even 2 grenade slots (maybe limit it to 1 max of each type so no frag and impact together)

[cunning vigil]

Where I see the problems with Medic.

Most medics don't revive or even heal/finsh healing.
That is a big problem.
How do you get players to focus more on the class' job? Used to be crazy amounts of xp for reviving and healing (It was too much) but got nerfed.

I think the ability to selfheal (as much as want this to stay and not be nerfed) is probably the issue.
On top of that. They have access to the top weapons. You get "selfish" medics who focus kills and soloing.

They should try a playtest or two with self-healing removed.

Another issue is proper medics will get nerfed with whatever gets removed. Potentially reducing medic count... (I'm talking about the actual medics that do the job) Maybe they could add something like faster dragging speed and/or drag someone but not have to face them?

Things I would take away from medic:
SMGs. (Most if not all of them)
Suicide vest. (A medic having this is just weird)
Claymore.
Maybe C4 (I always used it for escaping or getting to a player, but since smoke laungher released I use that. Could give sledge)

I dont remember who said it but I do not believe bandage amount should be reduced. If your on the frontline. You will run out quickly.

[bronze sentinel]

I say remove explosives from medic and see how it feels. If vehicles become a big problem maybe add c4 back.

[tacit tinsel]

The biggest driver to medic is the self heal, followed quickly by the access to tons of weapons.
Engineer's biggest driver is RPGs followed by the weapon access

Remove ARs from Medic, add weapons to assault, lots of them, and see where that leads us.

[cloud storm]

Hoiw to self heal in medic

[tacit tinsel]

Press 5, Hold left click

[cloud storm]

Okay2 thank you

[patent hedge]

tbf ressing doesn't do you much good if someone comes around the corner to blow both their brains out. Sometimes you have to sort of fake res then gun 2-3 people down that advance up on you and THEN turn to the downed guy.

Also frags.

[cunning vigil]

Aye, but when there are no hostiles and everyone and the 10 medics run over the 3 bodies...

[patent hedge]

Oh no I res then.

That's silly.

Preventing ticket bleed is like one of the most important jobs.

haha.

[cunning vigil]

Fr, my pet peeve. Or when a different class res you, lol or you end up playing medic as a different class! 😆

[patent hedge]

I mean I understand if another class resses you might as well get value out of the 5 of so bandages they have right?

[cunning vigil]

Well yes, but I talkin when medics ignore bodies. So other classes do the job 🤔

[patent hedge]

Sure yeah I can see why that's annoying but i'm not always able to locate people around me even as a medic mostly because I didn't see them go down at the time.

I think a stronger visual indicator would help

[cunning vigil]

Oh yes that would help!

[patent hedge]

At least for the medic class itself

sort of like how you can see health circles from a certain distance away

[cunning vigil]

Yeah when the ruble and bodies pile up. It can be rough

[patent hedge]

Just make it like a broken heart icon or something of similar size.

Or a blood drop

[cunning vigil]

Yup. Ik some games do ☠️ on bodies

[craggy mulch]

believe it or not the hud would be filled with skulls then

I advocate more for players pressing space or something when they're dead to scream MEDEEEK

[sonic girder]

1. Remove Squad Leader
2. Combine Assault & Support

Every class has a niche.

1. Assault/Support - Utility (Ammo boxes, zipline, hammer, LMG for cover fire)
2. Medic - Healing teammates
3. Engineer - anti/pro vehicle
4. Recon - surveillance & taking out entrenched enemies

[craggy mulch]

I think this would be nice ngl

if I was Oki and I was taking notes I'd put this in the fridge and think about it

I personally think some minor further tweaks would be needed even with this idea but I think it's a great place to start that wouldn't be as time consuming

It's either that or create a giant puzzle to make Assault relevant

[thick plaza]

what i think is the problem is that the medic has too much equipment. if u take the AR's and the Carbine out i think they wont complain anymore. . . sure , the Vector is there. but i dont think that take the claymore would be good.

Sure, the other classes dont have much to differenciate. but the game isnt complete. and i'm sure that each class will have their unique equipment that can make diference .

[craggy mulch]

I think the issue with medics isn't so big with how strong it is but instead is how good it is at everything but healing

If better and more ways were given to medic to heal better and more, even if it involves a point gain nerf or a limitation of guns nerf, I think the focus would be clearer for people

[cunning vigil]

Planetside 2 does crossbones. That can have well over 300 players in a fight at times. But I get you and agree

[novel heart]

I asked a question about the current state of healing in today's Dev talk stream. If your interested, it stats at 2.27.00 and until about 2.30.00 when it essentially devolved into "Is the player(s) even good enough to listen to their opinion"

I really liked your ideas regarding class balance so I decided to @ you if you wanted to hear an update on what the devs had to say..

Stream:https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1738106248 Time: 2.27.00

Also I know the question I asked was pretty general but with it being a livestream I didn't want to put a whole essay down just to be ignored or spam filtered.

[craggy mulch]

New Gadgets.

YES.

Tis confirmed

[tacit tinsel]

I see the devs point about how they want to add things to other classes to make people want to play them, but they are against adding health regen (staged regen might work) and against adding some type of healing to all classes. Which leaves us in this power pickle still, but where we make other classes interesting is by first giving them damn weapons, adding SMGs to assault could work to draw people away because assault has ammo. Todays playtest I went Support (98% of the time) and I was up there on the board with some of the better players, and I really wanted to go back to sniping or medic with my vector, I was killing it, but I felt my kit was fairly useless. Some players really needed that ammo, and it was fun, but most ignored the ammo and I felt like if I had the same gun on medic I would be more useful to the team.

And one thing that really helps push medic and engineer is the Vector, that gun is flat out OP.

[sonic girder]

I would be interested to see how swapping support and medic weapon type availability would affect the popularity. Locking a specific type of weapon to a role would be interesting too (similar to how bfbc2 did it) i think all roles were balanced between weapon power and kit power

[novel heart]

I also agree when it comes to diversifying the other classes. But I really disliked how repulsed the devs sounded on the idea of having even the tiniest amount of regen.. I'm glad that someone saw my additional comment about Bf5's healing system, but it seemed like nobody was interested in engaging any further. I have no idea where the devs built up this biased hate of healing from, I just hope I doesn't hurt this games balance/enjoyment in the long run.

If they won't ever change their stance in the future, the best thing they can do is at least allow community servers to adjust or disable some values so the many players that don't agree can still enjoy the game on a server of their choice.

just like bf did.
EX:
Bleeding: Enabled/Disabled
Regen: Off/Slow/Fast
Regen amount: Half/75%/Full
Etc etc

Ill probably make a post about community server options like this when we actually get closer to receiving them just to revisit the argument

[tacit tinsel]

@novel heart Its more than likely just the devs feeling overwhelmed with the same general questions over and over and over. I feel like there needs to be a mega list of things the devs have taken a stance on. So that everyone can get up to speed and stop asking the same things.

Part of the issue with their team size is that they take on more roles than it appears, so while X is doing level design, they might also be keeping track of bugs and feedback, while Z is coding and dealing with the finances.

As long as the devs are open to talking about things, even if they do not want it, they are doing 1000x better than AAA devs.

[novel heart]

@tacit tinsel Yes, yes, of course. Let's pray for the developers sanity.

[lost shoal]

the grappel hook makes other classes useful

medic doesnt really need a nerf, other classes should just be able to regen health slowly after being out of combat for 10 seconds or so

[patent sorrel]

ye that shouldn t be a thing either

[craggy mulch]

I personally never felt the need to heal me like it was life or death, there's without a doubt dozens of medics running around you all the time that will heal you rather quick, that's literally what they should be good at, people dont ask to be able to self refill ammo, just like you shouldnt self heal, there's roles for that

this makes the entire team work together, instead of having flankers that can go deep as heck behind enemy lines cause they can keep healing themselves

which would be horrendous

[tacit tinsel]

Full self healing is bad, but if we broke the health into segments of 20% for example, you can make it so that you can only heal from Xz to Xy (40 to 59). Which can be tweaked as needed, and this allows for a small self healing but encourages a player to seek out a medic for full healing. But that also encourages the thinking of "why not play medic instead?"

Self healing is one idea to tweak the demand to play medic, but I feel it has to wait for other changes first so that it doesn't reinforce the "why play anything else" idea. Which is kinda what I got from the devs from the stream.

Self healing also has the nasty side effect of "I dont need a medic, I have my own healing" and hurts the role dynamics more.

They should beef up the other classes and think about limiting medics weapon access. (Devs dont want to do that because they feel it will be anti fun to be forced to play Assault to use assault rifles).

[craggy mulch]

I honestly think the current healing system is fine as more obvious/intuitive ways of doing it have been done in Battlefield or CoD, but there might be a third option, maybe.

I agree there should be stuff done to make Medic a more specialized role and give room to other roles to become more the "general" class.

Whatever is done with the self healing idea I just hope it doesn't bring up more issues or makes the experience feel more like other games

I like the idea of quickly becoming stuck cause of either lack of health or running out of ammo, I like players moving as entire elements/units (Words are hard?) not just individuals

I just see the game becoming less about teamwork when players are in any way more self reliant, I love the dependency in BBR

[dense oxide]

Imagine oki seeing this and be like
"Na"

[median helm]

That's Great idea

Suggest it

[novel heart]

@median helm Oh I definitely will. I'm just waiting till we get a little bit closer to community servers actually being a thing. I feel like the community will be much more interested in talking about server customizing then, where as right now it probably will just get lost in playtest suggestions.

[high pivot]

Great idea and nice presentation, did you make a thread for this?