Changing Player Heal Mechanics

[ChronoLogic]

A friend of mine came up with the grounds of this idea (which I would also be totally for) that encourages greater cooperation amongst teammates.

Let me address a terminology I will use in this suggestion:
Heal-points: heal-points are what are consumed by the medical syringe and medic guns. For example, the syringe consumes 100 heal-points on self-heals and 50 on team-heals. After being used, the syringe recharges until it regains enough heal points to be used again (needs to regain 100 for self-heals and 50 for team-heals).

Here is our suggestion (as a suggestion, this could be modified):

Give players a maximum capacity of 500 heal-points. These heal-points can be repurchased from the trader at the end of each wave for a small price (maybe like 25 cash per 100 heal-points-amounts to 125 cash for a full refill of 500 heal-points; this will be discounted at 10 cash per 100 heal-points for medic however).

The syringe behaves the same way as it does now, requiring a recharge to be used again and the same amount of heal-points for self and team-heals, but now the number of heals per player are limited. Since each self-heal equals 100 heal points and each team-heal 50 points, with a total capacity of 500 heal-points, players can either self-heal up to 5 times or team-heal up to 10 times.

In regards to the Field Medic: Since the Field Medic's primary job is to heal, as a Field Medic gains higher levels in the Field Medic perk, they will be able to hold a higher capacity of heal-points.



Ideas:

The Syringe and Medic guns will each have their own capacities, separate from each other (otherwise, they behave as they do currently: same recharge rate + heal-amount + heal-points consumed). All of these will have full heal-point capacities starting off (Syringe and MP7M will have their maximum possible capacity upon being spawned/respawned, and all Medic Guns will have their maximum possible capacity upon being purchased).

Syringe: (Start at 500 and increase by 100 per level)
500 at unperked (5 self-uses + 10 team-uses + 125 cash to refill)
600 at Lv. 0 (6 self-uses + 12 team-uses + 60 cash to refill)
700 at Lv. 1 (7 self-uses + 14 team-uses + 70 cash to refill)
800 at Lv. 2 (8 self-uses + 16 team-uses + 80 cash to refill)
900 at Lv. 3 (9 self-uses + 18 team-uses + 90 cash to refill)
1000 at Lv. 4 (10 self-uses + 20 team-uses + 100 cash to refill)
1100 at Lv. 5 (11 self-uses + 22 team-uses + 110 cash to refill)
1200 at Lv. 6 (12 self-uses + 24 team-uses + 120 cash to refill)

MP7M: (Start at 500 and increase by 100 per level)
500 at unperked (10 uses + 125 cash to refill)
600 at Lv. 0 (12 uses + 60 cash to refill)
700 at Lv. 1 (14 uses + 70 cash to refill)
800 at Lv. 2 (16 uses + 80 cash to refill)
900 at Lv. 3 (18 uses + 90 cash to refill)
1000 at Lv. 4 (20 uses + 100 cash to refill)
1100 at Lv. 5 (22 uses + 110 cash to refill)
1200 at Lv. 6 (24 uses + 120 cash to refill)

MP5M: (Start at 500 and increase by 100 per level)
500 at unperked (10 uses + 125 cash to refill)
600 at Lv. 0 (12 uses + 60 cash to refill)
700 at Lv. 1 (14 uses + 70 cash to refill)
800 at Lv. 2 (16 uses + 80 cash to refill)
900 at Lv. 3 (18 uses + 90 cash to refill)
1000 at Lv. 4 (20 uses + 100 cash to refill)
1100 at Lv. 5 (22 uses + 110 cash to refill)
1200 at Lv. 6 (24 uses + 120 cash to refill)

M7A3: (Start at 750 and increase by 150 per level)
750 at unperked (15 uses + 187 cash to refill)
900 at Lv. 0 (18 uses + 90 cash to refill)
1050 at Lv. 1 (21 uses + 105 cash to refill)
1200 at Lv. 2 (24 uses + 120 cash to refill)
1350 at Lv. 3 (27 uses + 135 cash to refill)
1500 at Lv. 4 (30 uses + 150 cash to refill)
1650 at Lv. 5 (33 uses + 165 cash to refill)
1800 at Lv. 6 (36 uses + 180 cash to refill)

Schneidzekk: (Start at 750 and increase by 150 per level)
750 at unperked (15 uses + 187 cash to refill)
900 at Lv. 0 (18 uses + 90 cash to refill)
1050 at Lv. 1 (21 uses + 105 cash to refill)
1200 at Lv. 2 (24 uses + 120 cash to refill)
1350 at Lv. 3 (27 uses + 135 cash to refill)
1500 at Lv. 4 (30 uses + 150 cash to refill)
1650 at Lv. 5 (33 uses + 165 cash to refill)
1800 at Lv. 6 (36 uses + 180 cash to refill)

Holding the M7A3/Schneidzekk and the MP7M/MP5M, a Field Medic will have 60 long-range, 24 syringe and 5 AoE grenade heals which should be more than enough keep the team alive each wave.

The effects of these changes:
Players will make better use of their heals (will not heal themselves at say, 95 hp), and will (hopefully) heal their teammates over themselves more often to make the best use of their now limited heals.
Medics will be even more valued in the team for their greater heal capacity.
Medics now have to be more accurate with their long-range heal shots and will have to spam less to make the best use of their limited capacity and to minimize costs.
Add greater difficulty with solo-clutches.


If you disagree completely or would like to make alterations to this idea, please state why or what the change would be.

 

[Merdic]

I disagree with this because of how buggy the heal darts are. People would probably lose half their allotted healing to the green-eating monster even if they're being accurate.

 

[ChronoLogic]

I disagree with this because of how buggy the heal darts are. People would probably lose half their allotted healing to the green-eating monster even if they're being accurate.

Really? This has only happened to me a few times (but then again, I don't play Medic too often @~425K healing mostly from offperk team healing). But also, I play on <60 ping almost always. Maybe it's a latency issue?

Also, even if darts don't register, you should still technically have enough heals (~60 ranged heals) unless over half of the darts you use aren't registering, so this "should not" be an issue. Or is it the fact that you would lose money despite being on target what draws you away?

 

[legendw2008]

Interesting

Interesting

I think this will make the HoE more challenging. A lot of people asking for a newer difficulty, instead lets make the old one more challenging. HoE now days is filled with people who want to just get the achievements having no skill or teamwork as a level 3. Of course there might be exceptions but...HoE was made to be challenging, and lets keep it challenging. Easy game are not fun to play, unless u achivwhore. I am for it.:IS2:

 

[Althamus]

Heals are limited per wave - they're limited by time. While you're healing a teammate you can't be killing zeds.

Plus, if half your team gets wiped, the survivors will be left trying to survive the game with a total of 8 heals or something.

 

[SHM]

Very interesting idea, but I prefer the way it is currently. Furthermore the general skill level of the players is low, and I'm not sure that this would help in raising it.

 

[SkullFinder123]

Sounds like this should be a mutator. This would make KF extremely challenging, as players are forced to camp in easy spots and these forums would get massive flaming for this

 

[ChronoLogic]

Heals are limited per wave - they're limited by time. While you're healing a teammate you can't be killing zeds.

Well, that would just require greater synergy amongst teammates which is what I was kinda pushing for. A teammate will have to cover for another while the other is trying to heal.

Plus, if half your team gets wiped, the survivors will be left trying to survive the game with a total of 8 heals or something.

I did say that it would make solo clutches more difficult, which is partially the intention.

Sounds like this should be a mutator. This would make KF extremely challenging, as players are forced to camp in easy spots and these forums would get massive flaming for this

Well they're not technically "forced" to. If a team decides on tougher spots or kiting, they'll just need a Medic or work together more to keep each other alive to maximize the available heals.

 

[Spicy]

The effects of these changes:
Players will make better use of their heals (will not heal themselves at say, 95 hp), and will (hopefully) heal their teammates over themselves more often to make the best use of their now limited heals.

Very interesting idea, but I prefer the way it is currently. Furthermore the general skill level of the players is low, and I'm not sure that this would help in raising it.

I feel like those two kind of go together. Assuming a game of random players, there's generally a good chance someone doesn't know how to heal while 1-2 others will only heal themselves. So now the people that are healing off-perk are even more limited, even though they know what they're doing and are helping.

Medics now have to be more accurate with their long-range heal shots and will have to spam less to make the best use of their limited capacity and to minimize costs.

If you (or anyone, really) found a way to make heal darts register every single time, I'd support this. Failing that, heal points are only subtracted upon a successfully registered heal. The reason Medics spam so much is because there's the chance it won't heal the teammate. So unless you're removing points from the pool when it's successful, this would only eff over the Medic and the team, by extension.

It's not a bad idea, and the original post did a nice job explaining it. Like a lot of the other ideas on here, it would probably make a cool mutator.

 

[vealck]

Really? This has only happened to me a few times (but then again, I don't play Medic too often @~425K healing mostly from offperk team healing). But also, I play on <60 ping almost always. Maybe it's a latency issue?

No. It's not because of latency. It happens even if you're on your own listen server. And it happens a lot. One time I got 8 false positives in a row when I tried to heal a single zerk, while ping was 40-something. It is clear that you don't play medic often, otherwise you'd know that in combat situation where players actually move, over 60% of healing darts give false positives.

Your idea would force medics to stockpile all medguns at once to have a decent supply, of which 80% would be wasted on false positives and simple misses.

That would prevent medics from carrying other weapons and reduce them to mobile dart dispensers.

Also, people would be less likely to heal you when you're missing 10 or 20 health points (why to waste 50 point charge on that, when supply is limited). Also, they would be even less likely to heal you at all, seeing it as a waste of resources they would need later.

Levelling medic would be even more difficult. Some people already find it hard to reach level 6.

The whole economy of being a medic would be turned upside down. Right now healing is the main source of medic's income. With your idea implemented, medics would actually loose a lot of money every wave.

So yeah, a big 'nope' to your idea. It would be viable, if the false positives problem would be fixed. But we all know that it's not happening.

 

[OCAdam]

It might be possible to fix the darts. Instead of the projectiles working to check for direct hits, maybe it'd be better if they were to run off splash 'damage' radius instead. Of course it'd be very small, like say 8 UU radius with no dropoff in heal. Then again, that could allow for a single dart being able to get 2 people in one 'hit' if they were very close and the dart impacted between them. But I bet that'd be very rare and if anything, a reward for those who manage to get it that close. That or go to 4 UU radius.

 

[poosh]

I have fixed healing dart detection in scrnbalance, but I'm against this idea anyway. It isn't bad, it just isn't for KF. In KF you must work as a team, and when you do, you can (should) face enemy like a man, not hiding behind cover like a pussy, being afraid of taking some extra damage

 

[ElSneakyPete]

I like this idea if it was in a mutator combined with fixes to the healing dart bug.

 

[Arblarg]

I have fixed healing dart detection in scrnbalance, but I'm against this idea anyway. It isn't bad, it just isn't for KF. In KF you must work as a team, and when you do, you can (should) face enemy like a man, not hiding behind cover like a pussy, being afraid of taking some extra damage

Please don't tell me though that you dislike those who at least use cover intelligently to avoid husk / Siren / patty ranged attacks. (wall corners, obnoxiously huge props in the middle of open areas).

But yeah, this idea just isn't for KF. What is a medic to do if they run out of healing capabilities? They already are given hell if a player dies.

Also poosh - would you mind explaining what the exact issue is caused by and how you fixed it?

 

[poosh]

Please don't tell me though that you dislike those who at least use cover intelligently to avoid husk / Siren / patty ranged attacks. (wall corners, obnoxiously huge props in the middle of open areas).

But yeah, this idea just isn't for KF. What is a medic to do if they run out of healing capabilities? They already are given hell if a player dies.

Also poosh - would you mind explaining what the exact issue is caused by and how you fixed it?

Evading attacks and hiding in the corner behind a box for the entire game are different things.

I don't remember what exactly I've done - it was some time ago. Need to check the code. Healings are working and I'm happy with it.

 

[Althamus]

Well, that would just require greater synergy amongst teammates which is what I was kinda pushing for. A teammate will have to cover for another while the other is trying to heal.

That was me describing events at the moment

 

[ChronoLogic]

It is clear that you don't play medic often, otherwise you'd know that in combat situation where players actually move, over 60% of healing darts give false positives.

Really? This has only happened to me a few times (but then again, I don't play Medic too often @~425K healing mostly from offperk team healing).

Well, I already admitted to not playing Medic often. No need to be so upfront and offensive.

Your idea would force medics to stockpile all medguns at once to have a decent supply, of which 80% would be wasted on false positives and simple misses.

What is a medic to do if they run out of healing capabilities? They already are given hell if a player dies.

They'll have 60 heals for long-range, 24 for close range, and 5 AoE. There should be very few issues unless your teammates need to be healed for 700 hp on average each wave or something.

If it's the issue in regards to darts not registering, would the idea be fine if dart registration worked perfectly fine then? B/c Poosh seems to have fixed it in his mutator (stated in a quote that appears after yours).

That would prevent medics from carrying other weapons and reduce them to mobile dart dispensers.

You have like 2 Medic guns for what would probably be 6 kg of weight. That leaves you with 8 kg to carry something else, enough to carry some weapon of decent use. This doesn't change from how it has always been, unless you prefer single Medic Gun loadouts which then would be understandable.

Also, people would be less likely to heal you when you're missing 10 or 20 health points (why to waste 50 point charge on that, when supply is limited).

That's somewhat the point. To have people make better use of their heals since there would now be a greater importance from is new "scarcity", not that 10 team-heals per person when a Medic isn't around is really all that scarce anyhow.

Also, they would be even less likely to heal you at all, seeing it as a waste of resources they would need later.

Actually, it would still be MORE cost effective healing teammates since you spend fewer heal-points for an equivalent amount of healing done. Unless you have a teammate who has trouble not sustaining huge amounts of damage or teammates just hate each other on some personal level, teammates "should" start to heal each other more than they heal themselves since it actually becomes more cost-effective. Also, I intentionally made the price fairly low so players wouldn't feel so bogged down on heal-costs. If the cost is an issue, remember that I said that the suggestion is still open for modification. The costs weren't the main suggestion anyhow, it was just to limit the heals per wave (they can cost 1 cash per 100 heal-points for all I care, as long as heals are now limited by capacities of heal-points).

Levelling medic would be even more difficult. Some people already find it hard to reach level 6.

That doesn't seem to be an issue with most people. When I suggested that only the stock maps should let you level, players were against the return of the whitelist. And besides, with heals limited to my suggestion, it's still unlikely that the Medic would run out of heals at level 5 (to reach Lv. 6 since the level requirement is pretty hefty), so the rate at which they gain Medic progress should not be too much affected (unless players wanted to let a clot/stalker wail on a teammate while another sits and heal them for like hours at a time, which in that case they may as well go on a leveling map).

The whole economy of being a medic would be turned upside down. Right now healing is the main source of medic's income. With your idea implemented, medics would actually loose a lot of money every wave.

We could simply increase the income per heal for the medic or reduce heal-costs to what is basically free as I started above to remedy this if you feel that it is too big of an issue. Also 5 cash per shot didn't seem too big of an issue when I was writing this, a crawler kill is already 6 cash. Sure lethal ammo has costs included as well, but this would encourage medics to be more combative to outweigh the costs and prevent smaller threats from hurting teammates as much (basically encourage Medics to play even more actively).

It would be viable, if the false positives problem would be fixed. But we all know that it's not happening.

Then we should bring more attention to Poosh's fix to the KF Staff (if possible). Regardless on whether this suggestion gets implemented or not (well at this rate, I'm pretty sure nobody would be for this slight difficulty increase anyhow), bringing to attention Poosh's fix should still be done.

In KF you must work as a team, and when you do, you can (should) face enemy like a man, not hiding behind cover like a pussy, being afraid of taking some extra damage

Well this suggestion was with the intent of encouraging more teamwork. I suppose it may be as you predict with players "hiding behind cover like a pussy" or "hiding in the corner behind a box for the entire game", but I don't think that it'll change how players generally camp since "some extra damage" can easily be healed with the heals provided (this is just how I imagine the game to be if implemented). If players self-healed 3 times and team-healed 4 times, that would still be (7 heals)(20 hp) = up to 140 hp healed per teammate per wave, and that's with "3" self-heals; at 2, 1, and 0, we would get 160, 180, and 200 hp healed per teammate respectively. If players needed more than 200 hp healed per person every wave, they should be looking to have a Medic anyhow.



Since many of the reasons for disagreeing are due to the healing bug, how about this idea gets revisited later once patched? Unless players whose main issue was the healing bug have other major reasons as to why 60 ranged, 24 melee, and 5 AoE heals (from just the Medic alone, not including other, non-perked teammates) wouldn't be enough to keep a team alive each wave.

 

[poosh]

Only thing I would support is limiting a number of self-heals. Like remove alf-fire from the Syringe (except solo games) and add Medkit to the trader list.

 

[Undedd Jester]

Not a bad suggestion tbh, I rather like the idea, but unless the whole style of the game gets revamped I don't really see this as a worthwhile addition.

I'd adapt it to say the Medic guns have a limited supply of darts, while the syringe has an unlimited supply. However I'm massively against Medic grenades and would want them removing too, and I feel the game would be much better off losing about 50% of its current content along with them.

So my opinion probably counts for nothing.




Aside: On this false positives note, maybe its just me, but as a Medic main I've never really understood the complaint.

If you always aim hit someone dead center, like you should, you always get the heal. You only get the false positives if you hit the edge of your target. I always aim right of the middle of my targets torso, or to be blunt, their arse, cause thats where they are biggest. On stationary targets or targets moving in a straight line from me I reckon I hit it 90+% of the time, and about 60-70% on laterally moving targets. (That 10% I usually feel is down to poor aim or bad timing instead of game glitches).

The only time I find it gets tough is if someone is dancing in circles and screwing their hitboxes up, but the same can be said about loads of FPS games.

 

[ArcheKruz]

In theory, this is a good idea as long as you make syringe recharges faster to compensate for it, but practically, it's a terrible idea because medic darts are too unreliable for this new mechanic to work with it.