Interactive healing

[Kyraal]

Initial thoughts

Considering we all seem in favour of interactive hacking/cracking, I would like to see how we think about having some kind of interactive healing. This is a trickier balance to walk, as having healing too interactive could possibly slow down the pace of the action, when we don't want it to.

My thoughts surrounding this subject have made me think that we should probably have a way to quickly heal someone the way it's done in PlanetSide, although introduce a mini-game once you want to REVIVE someone.

The logic behind quick health replenishment could be that you inject yourself/someone with stimulants (basically pump them full of drugs) to keep them going despite their wounds, alternatively (and perhaps a bit more politically correct) introducing nanobots that rebuild damaged tissue.

Incapacitation and critical damage

The human body is a wonderful thing, and it can take tremendous amount of punishment. However, once your body takes damage to a certain point, it simply breaks down, no matter how many nanobots you've introduced into your system. You get incapacitated; but you do not die until you 'tap out' or your timer runs out.

Using the right equipment (and more importantly skills) a medic can get a soldier up and going again, by intensive treatment of the critically damaged areas on your body, via a sort of mini game. I am not as of yet entirely sure how to do the mini game. We probably don't want to create a surgery simulator (as cool as it might be), but possibly a little game which makes you have to use the right instruments, in the right order, on the right wounds.

A quick dirty example

I don't know how many of you that's played [Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/action/metalgearsolid3/)] on the PS2, but it has a very simple kind of medic minigame, where you need to field-dress your wounds, apply antiseptics, and so on, to fully heal.

http://davidostman.com/altps/damage1_t.jpg
Click for bigger picture (http://davidostman.com/altps/damage1.jpg)http://davidostman.com/altps/damage2_t.jpg
Click for bigger picture (http://davidostman.com/altps/damage2.jpg)

There's a lot of ways to approach this, if interactive healing is what we want, and I'm sure we could come up with an effective, streamlined, and fun mini game for this. Wouldn't have to use a lot of server resources since I think the client could randomly choose critical damages that need to be treated, once you initiate contact with your patient.

This are by no means a concrete suggestion I'm proposing, just tossing this out here to start a discussion :)

[Cl2v2r]

Well, it'd be interesting. What exactly would the medic be doing while reviving though? What sort of mini-game?

[Kyraal]

I'd imagine he would most likely treat the critical injuries on the body, so perhaps a 'match game', where he identifies injury_1 as type_of_injury4 and as thus needs to apply remedy_1, remedy_7, and remedy_9 to it, to completely heal it?

The more I think about interactive healing, the more obstacles do crop up. I'm positive there's a good mini-game to be made, though :)

Edit: Just have to point out that my primary role when playing PS is as a medic, and while it can be gratifying, reviving someone by just pointing, clicking, and holding, -is- definitely something that could be improved.

[Cl2v2r]

Yeah... we just have to work out what is easily done and still engaging.

Need more ideas, where's everyone else when you need them. ;)

[NasyVealisanoob]

Fast rezes are better then slow rezes imo.

PS rezing doest really help keep squads together under fire. Its really only usefull in indirect combat situations like gen/cc holds or tower drops where there are pauses in combat. My tr was adv med and Id only get to rez someone every once in a while (without getting killed doing it or getting us both killed right after)

Where as in BF2 rezes are pretty much instantanious and as a medic you rez people all the time. It helps keep squads together in any kind of combat situation. Overall I think fast rezes are much better to promote teamwork and moveing as a squad. The only real problem with rezes in BF2 are medics trying to point whore which wouldnt work in this game becuase if the dude died right after they rezed them, the medic wouldnt get any points.

I guess you would also have to consider TTK's though. If it takes a long time to kill someone it might not be a good idea to be able to instantly bring them back to life. But if TTK's are relativly quick then I think being able to rez quickly is the way to go.

Also if you could drag/move the dead body and rez them at a safe location then slower rezes might not be that bad.

[Cl2v2r]

Ooo, moving the casualties... I likey. Have the medic stay back, and the rest of the squad does the rescue mission.

Coolies.


As for res timings, it depends on how long it would take a person to respawn, reup, and return to the fight. In BF2/ET it only takes 10-30 seconds to be back in the fight. PS takes anywhere from 20 seconds to 2 or 3 minutes.

Fast game = fast res
Slower game = slower res


But perhaps we can balance it somewhere.

[Kyraal]

There's actually nothing saying a mini-game would be any slower than than watching the bar fill up in, say, PS. It would just mean you'd actually have to get good at what -should- be the difficult art of reviving someone from the land of the near-dead, to be an effective reviver in the heat of battle.

[abathur]

A lot of this depends on locational damage, and we haven't really gotten into that technical aspect as far as I've seen. It's all fine and dandy if we do, but if we don't it's kinda moot.

As for a quick minigame, if we had locational damage:

Two devices, one for doing a quick body scan to determine which was the fatal wound, and another tool/shot to rapidly/instantly bring them back to life. The scan takes several seconds to complete, but as a reward for situational awareness--if you were paying close attention and know where they took the fatal wound you can forgo the scan, stick them and move on. Rezzes themselves are super fast, determining what the problem is takes the time. Additionally, allowing the scan to be manual rather than point click scan top to bottom would allow someone who knows he was hit in the arms or torso to just scan that area for the fatal wound and stick it in. Highly rewarding for a medic who can fight with his squad and maintain the situational awareness to see their injuries as they happen. Still, of course, reliant on locational damage.

[GreatMazinkaiser]

So we're using player hit boxes now?

Isn't that a bad thing?

[abathur]

PS is currently using whole-body hitboxes, the implication being that damage tracking for a few hundred people each having at least a head/torso/rightarm/leftarm/rightleg/leftleg hitbox gets problematic. I don't know what cogburn is planning on, but it does have a large bearing on something like interactive healing. I wouldn't mind hitboxes I guess, but I've never really had all that big a problem with single-hitbox. (getting gibbed is rarely fun in any game, methinks, even if it isn't hyper-realistic)

[Kyraal]

The lack of multiple hitboxes on characters does not have to have an impact on interactive healing. With no hitboxes on characters you can't have true locational damage, but such damage can still be simulated clientside in the mini-game. It is, after all, just a mini-game made to make the reviving process interactive. Made to let medics actually develop a PLAYER SKILL (opposed to character skill) which they can get good at, and excel at -- just like it's been discussed in the thread about interactive hacking (http://www.markovforums.com/SMF/index.php?topic=2280.0), for hackers.

Could even just be a game which simulates a dna sequence (see the attachment), having to rearrange it back into its original form. Doesn't have to have anythin to do with critical damage, or damage locations, as long as the PLAYER has something he needs to get good at :)

[DrJoker]

Not sure if you're thinking about making Adv Medic certs, but how about an AoE heal that eats 50% stamina but heals everyone in a 5m area 50hps? I've always thought Adv Medic wasn't worth 2 points just so you could make yourself a sitting duck while trying to rez someone.

[UGoBoy]

Could just make the "mini-game" practicable.

1) Ascertain what killed the patient. If you saw it happen, you've saved a step. If not, you have to analyze and get a result (puncture, severe burns, electrical trauma, etc)
2) Apply proper medicinal treatment for the appropriate fatal blow. This could be represented by patches, injections, or MAGIK LAZARS, depending on the damage type.
3) Restart the heart. Give the medic feedback about patient...if they're shocking the patient too fast, they could permanently kill them and force a respawn. If they're too slow, it will prolong the revive.

In that kind of environment, experience and observation would cull out good medics from bad. If you're a good medic, people will know, because you'll be ready to treat the appropriate wound almost as soon as the victim goes down, and will get their heart started as quickly as possible. An inexperienced medic will fumble around, and could cause you undue downtime, or a trip to the respawn station.

Also something to think about with medics...would they be able to heal themselves in this game? Would players? I think there should be probably a way for players to heal themselves, similar to a medpack. However, it should take time to ramp the health back up.

The logic behind this: The medpack-equivalent is a "smart" nanopack that applies a swarm of nanites to your body that find and repair damage. Because the nanites are non-specific to the injury type, they take time to ascertain and repair the damage. So...you apply a nanopack, and it slowly brings you completely back to full health. A medic can use their medical kit to treat the specific wound type, and speed up a nanopack's work. This would make being a medic even more interactive. I think if the medics could only operate on other people, you'd increase group cohesion and stave off a certain percentage of the "one-man army" mentality.

[Cogburn]

Ok... I like this... A few things...

No hitboxes on players.* There will be "damage areas", but nothing so specific as hitboxes.* It slows down framerates so much that its not worth it in an FPS.* What the engine can do, is call the top 10% of a character model the "head", from the "head" to the waist is the "body" and from the waist down are the "legs".* That is done so that a headshot kills, and a shot to the body is more deadly than a shot to the legs.* It's basically a simple mathematical equation as opposed to hitboxes.* Its faster, but not as accurate.

That being said... Damage can be tracked as to in which areas it occured.* Can a player be rezed from a headshot?* I'd say no.* Like wise, a body death should be a slow rez, but a minimal damage leg death should be a quick rez.* This means skill = kills and the badguys stay down.* If you take the cheap way out by aiming bazookas at their feet they can be back in your face in a moment.

About AOE healing/Rez: IF we were to include something like that it would be REALLY expensive. That is SO powerfull in an FPS I'm almost loathe to agree to even say maybe... but by the same token if balance properly it could mean a bunch of free kills for the lucky guys who run in at the right time. ;) The balance of couse, would be armor. Even at full health in PlanetSide, if you aren't armored you are dead in under a second against all HA and 1.75 seconds versus all empire MA. If you AOE rez/heal, I'd take off some portion of armor as a tradeoff or a massive warmup/cooldown. That way you can't just sit and spam it without consequence. It would have to be used at very specific times or you could do more harm than good.

Thoughts?

[abathur]

I've always kind of liked the PS single damage whole body system. Mostly because one-shot-kills are frustrating against anything. Not that having the jump shouldn't be an advantage, but it doesn't really promote competition between two people, which is what they want. I think it'd be fun/interesting for there to be _other effects_ but unity of damage for hitting different zones. Ability/time to rez is a good example, as are temporary run-speed slowdowns for leg shots, bleeding damage for large thoracic wounds, concussive effects from headwounds (or any explosion if we can, I thought that was a nice touch in BF2.) Not that we have to do those in particular, or anything beyond the rez stuff, just that, even as a sniper who could REALLY benefit from headshot kills on the unsuspecting, I've preferred the extra challenge uniform damage provides.

[Cogburn]

With the sniper rifle, a headshot is a 1 shot kill w/ the sniper rifle only. Heavy Assault weapons should also be one-shotters to the head due to the difficulty for accurate aim and the damage the weapon does. Beyond that I'd save instagibs for vehicles.

The blurr from explosions is BF2 is not only extremely easy, its a damn nice effect and I think we should plan on doing it.

[DrJoker]

About AOE healing/Rez:* IF we were to include something like that it would be REALLY expensive.* That is SO powerfull in an FPS I'm almost loathe to agree to even say maybe... but by the same token if balance properly it could mean a bunch of free kills for the lucky guys who run in at the right time. ;)* The balance of couse, would be armor.* Even at full health in PlanetSide, if you aren't armored you are dead in under a second against all HA and 1.75 seconds versus all empire MA.* If you AOE rez/heal, I'd take off some portion of armor as a tradeoff or a massive warmup/cooldown.* That way you can't just sit and spam it without consequence.* It would have to be used at very specific times or you could do more harm than good.

Thoughts?


Reduce AoE to about 3 meters, make the warmup time similar to surge or PSw/ and say drain 50 stamina points per area heal. Make it an implant that's available only to Adv Medics and have it only heal for 25 hp like a medpack. Does that sound better?

[abathur]

With the sniper rifle, a headshot is a 1 shot kill w/ the sniper rifle only. Heavy Assault weapons should also be one-shotters to the head due to the difficulty for accurate aim and the damage the weapon does. Beyond that I'd save instagibs for vehicles.

The blurr from explosions is BF2 is not only extremely easy, its a damn nice effect and I think we should plan on doing it.


Right, and I just said that, even as a sniper who would in reality grossly benefit from 1 shot kills, I think the unidamage is more fun and competitive. Likewise, if the heavyweapons are too inaccurate, accidental headshots are going to be really common and not really increase skill much as you just have to sorta "aim around the head" and fire 3 times for the same effect as firing 4 precise body shots...

[Cogburn]

With the sniper rifle, a headshot is a 1 shot kill w/ the sniper rifle only.* Heavy Assault weapons should also be one-shotters to the head due to the difficulty for accurate aim and the damage the weapon does.* Beyond that I'd save instagibs for vehicles.

The blurr from explosions is BF2 is not only extremely easy, its a damn nice effect and I think we should plan on doing it.


Right, and I just said that, even as a sniper who would in reality grossly benefit from 1 shot kills, I think the unidamage is more fun and competitive. Likewise, if the heavyweapons are too inaccurate, accidental headshots are going to be really common and not really increase skill much as you just have to sorta "aim around the head" and fire 3 times for the same effect as firing 4 precise body shots...


Hmmm... I hadn't thought of that.


We don't want to fall victim to making things overly complex for the sake of "coolness".*

Perhaps, in the end, a unidamage system and a one-size-fits-all healing system is what we should plan on for now.* On the subject of resurrections, I am still intrigued by the idea of a difference in rez times.* Without a area-of-impact or hitbox system, my first thought is the amount of damage done OVER what it took to kill that person.

Example:
A guy gets shot with a gun and dies.* Perhaps the damage done by the projectile was 20, but the player only had 10 health.* That means there were 10 points of "overkill".

If we add 4 levels of rez time (instant, 5 seconds, 10 seconds, forced respawn), we could then watch the average amounts of "overkill" damage once the game begins to be played and adjust the requirements for each rez time accordingly.* If you get shot on the field, you could probably be rezed rather fast.* If you died to a grenade or a rocket your chances slim.* If you die to a tank or to some other heavy damage field piece, you are probably just dead and should respawn, although there is a slight chance of the possibility of revival.

Now that I've typed that all out I wonder if that isn't the smarter way to go afterall.

Thoughts?

[UGoBoy]

If we add 4 levels of rez time (instant, 5 seconds, 10 seconds, forced respawn), we could then watch the average amounts of "overkill" damage once the game begins to be played and adjust the requirements for each rez time accordingly.* If you get shot on the field, you could probably be rezed rather fast.* If you died to a grenade or a rocket your chances slim.* If you die to a tank or to some other heavy damage field piece, you are probably just dead and should respawn, although there is a slight chance of the possibility of revival.


Sounds like a reasonable system. If you could represent this in-game with the player avatar flying apart from an explosion, it'd be even more obvious :P

Any thoughts on a damage-type tracking system? Thus a medic wouldn't simply "heal" a player with MAGIC LAZARS...they'd have to treat different wound types to restore "fidelity". Being able to scan an avatar and see that 80% of his bodily injuries resulted from machine gun fire, then treating them for piercing wounds would allow you to speed up the effectiveness of something like a medpack.

All this talk of revival does sort of raise another question I haven't seen answered in any other threads...would this game feature the #1 "Zerg Helper", an AMS equivalent? Personally, I think AMS are a pretty rotten idea, but I'd like to see what the think-tank thing about them. Having them in-game would directly affect how important revives and field repairs are.

[Aftiel]

Very interesting point UGoBoy. I'll have to ponder that one at work :D

[Kyraal]

Depending on how fast we want the gameplay to be, 'magic lazers' could both be the best solution, and a not so good solution.

Although.. 'Magic lazers' could be used either way:

- Used to heal someone up to a certain amount of percentage.
- A full 100% heal can only be achieved at a greater level of medical treatment (e.g. surgery, misc. medical techniques (mini-game)).


The "to be or not to be" discussion of the AMS should preferably not be discussed in this thread, but would make an excellent thread on its own :)

[Cl2v2r]

Overkill damage would be unbalanced, unless damage can also be caused to corpses.

Take an MCG for example, it normally does a small amount of damage per shot.

A JH, does a large amount of damage per shot.

This means that the JH would do more overkill than an MCG consistently, not a good idea.

Even with a damageable corpse, the MCG users would have to spend a couple of seconds firing at a corpse to acheive the same effect as the JH normally.

Maybe instead of overkill, the DPS that they suffered or something, though that can still be slightly unbalanced.

[Aftiel]

I think if you put it into categories of type instead of damage it could work, for example:

Infantry weapon (JH,MCG,Lasher,Cycler,etc, etc)
Vehicle weapon system (secondary - 15mms, 20mms, PPA, etc.)
Vehicle weapon system (primary - so 100mms, 150mm, Magriderfaggun)
Other categories?

[abathur]

I might almost suggest making rezzing really easy but not having AMSes. Run by stick a needle in, 5 seconds later they pop up full health full stam, but no non-hard spawnpoints...

Well, fuck. I guess I did suggest it. ;)

[Cl2v2r]

This also has something for it... hmm.

[Aftiel]

With your idea Ab attacks would either succeed or fail very quickly IMO. I think this would be a bad thing.

[NasyVealisanoob]

With your idea Ab attacks would either succeed or fail very quickly IMO. I think this would be a bad thing.


Depends on if there are capturable spawn points (like towers) and teleport devices like routers. If there where several capturable spawns, maybe even inside large bases or atleast in the courtyard and a way to teleport people where you needed them to go, not haveing mobil spawns would not be a big fight breaker if you had fast rez's.

Also you could maybe have a "spawn on squad leader" feature like BF2.

This would mean that to effectivly attack something it would be best to be in a squad and have a few adv meds.

[Iceonix]

I say keep the mobile spawns in. They add a support variable to the game. Without them most assaults would fail. This makes them important and worthy of everyone's attention (friendly and enemy). Like I said in the XP Economy thread the mobile spawn should have a skill cost to it because it is so vital.

Maybe a lvl 3 medic could erect a "medical tent" that provides a spawn point inside an enemy facility? Or maybe have capturable enemy spawn points within the facility.

I don't think we should have headshots in the game at all. In PS you can go up a hallway against 4 or 5 enemies blazing away and have the chance to come out on top. If one of them gets a lucky headshot then you are dead. And as an infil who takes so much stray fire it would just be annoying. Otherwise I am fire with hit-localization as far as effecting your abilities goes. Shots to the leg could slow movement, torso could cause slow loss of health, head could knock out Psionics or blur vision?

I think self-healing should be quick to keep the action moving. I already hate seeing the circle-jerks in PS where everyone falls back to touch up their little wounds. This slows progression into capturing the facility. Everyone should be able to heal/repair themselves to avoid the circle-jerks.

As far as a mini-game for medics go... I am so-so on it. If it could be intuitive and possibly quick I am for it. But I don't want to stare at the same stupid grid every time I go to rez someone. Quick rezzes would be nice but like it was said TTK should definitely determine the rez time.

[abathur]

I've actually got an amusing concept for a mobile spawn vehicle in the context of respawning really being consciousness placed in a new body. Requires just a little bit more work than deploying... (I'll start a thread for the concept in the vehicles forum and edit this with the link when I get it up.)

http://www.markovforums.com/SMF/index.php?topic=2492.0

[Cl2v2r]

With your idea Ab attacks would either succeed or fail very quickly IMO. I think this would be a bad thing.


It would help prevent stalemates at a single base, and more likely help the outdoor 'no man's land' battles that PS has so very few of.

[UGoBoy]

Again, this is something that is going to somewhat depend on gameplay flow and base design. If there's nothing as mundane as having to push past a spawn room with it's never-ending supply of enemies, how would assaults be effected? In the case of something like the more outpost-based bases with multiple targets, having *both* sides of a fight have to move into position to gain and maintain their hold on areas would *probably be preferable to the Planetside base design, where spawns are in the middle of everything and tend to cause clusterfucks.

[Cogburn]

Another simple solution is to give the defenders TWO spawn points (randomly chosen when spawning if both are available) and give attackers DEPLOYABLE INDOOR spawn points (with deployable equiment stations being seperate) AND multiple base capture points (see our conversation on Interactive Hacking) taking a base becomes a much more tactical exercise... Especially if you are creative about the jack-in terminal placement.

Mobile spawns could easily be an extension of Abathur's idea of a "body farm"... Mobile and deployable spawns would work like 3D fax machines, a technology that is currently available. A body is rendered in the field from the design of the original...

I dunno... I'm not the kind of guy to make stories about why shit works like it does... I just make sure it works like its supposed to :)