I'm really thinking that a complete revamping of the teamwork system is in order for BF2, and SF seems to be adding to the problem. In general, many roles are simply sitting in the shadow of plain old killing, and this is truthfully just pathetic.
As a basis, let's review the reward for a kill:
+2 points
+1 ticket
+1 kill on the player's stats
+1 death for enemy soldier's stats
Unrewarded value: -1 enemy attacker on the battlefield
Not bad, not bad at all. In fact, for the amount of effort involved, that's pretty good. Depending on the class, kills can come easier than others, but in general, a kill can be had as easily as instantly blasting someone in the head. You can rack up 3 of these with a hand grenade in the right place at the right time. You can round a corner and mow down two people with your support gun. You can toob someone that rounds a corner on you. Kills can be had in so many ways and provide such a large amount of score that they are the basis for which the game is dictated.
Now, we get into the support classes, and their role.
=Support=
Reward for a bag:
+1 point (if it gives a sufficient amount of ammo)
Unrewarded value: potentially allow teammates to get kills with ammunition that they would normally would have run out on (low likelihood/opportunity) or with "low ammo consumables" such as grenade launchers (low/medium likelihood/opportunity)
Conclusion:
Support can pick up a few extra points by resupplying teammates, but it's never going to be the focus of the class. You'll never see a support dedicated to keeping his allies topped off at all times. Why? 1. Killing is better, 2. ammo is not generally needed in any great amount, except when grenade spamming or other consumable item tactics are being used. The opportunities to get points by ammoing up are somewhat sparse
Suggestions:
- Medium increase the ammo restored to point reward ratio
- Allow supports to bestow extra ammunition for all teammates that he uses the SUPPORT BAG on. Not the dropped one, but the actual bag. Thus, assaults would gain a max clip capacity of 1-2, 1-2 extra grenades, if the support gave these resources to them via the bag. This is to promote actual use of the support bag over simply throwing them everywhere and fighting while it regenerates.
=Medic=
Reward for a bag:
+1 point for each full life restored
Unrewarded value: Potentially prevent the death of a teammate, as well as an enemy soldier picking up score and tickets (high likelihood/opportunity)
Reward for a revive:
+2 points
Prevention of a ticket loss for the team
Prevention of a death on allied soldier's record
Unrewarded value: Helps to keep the front strong and allows for cohesive continuity
As far as support classes go, Medics are the most endowed. However, Special Forces is working hard to ruin that. The SAS gun unlock provided in SF is simply too good, and with the extra killing power, the Medic's comparative abilities are much less useful. In general, the medic's abilities may not turn the tide of a battle, because they are very team dependant. If teammates are dying in an area it's impossible to heal or revive them from, and just in general the personal risk it takes to revive someone, makes medics want to fight instead of do medic support duties.
Conclusion: While Medic is good at its role, Special Forces has dealt a blow against the class by giving them the best rifle in the game, making the already hard decision as to whether to kill or med even harder to make with this new tool.
Suggestions:
- SAS rifle nerf
- Revive points increased to 2.5 or 3 to reflect the personal risk involved. If you die reviving someone, the enemy gains +4 score, and 2 kills (and your team takes two deaths and loses two tickets). If you successfully revive someone, you gain +2 score, and your team damage that is undone is 1 ticket and 1 death. The enemy still gets the point and kill credit for the kill, however. Optionally, instead of the point increase, a revive can be changed to remove the points and kill from the enemy soldier, which would put more emphasis on actually making sure the target you took down stays down. As it is, the risk involved in reviving the person is more than the risk involved in trying to hunt down and kill the killer.
- Heal points increased to 1.5 per full life healed. This is to reflect the fact that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. When you heal someone, you potentially prevent their death, which means that an enemy that may have scored points will not. Again, the idea is to make this a viable supportive action in relation to the amount of points someone gets for a kill.
- Medic can give allies 20% additional health if provided through the (weapon 5) medikit. This is a small buff to your adjacent teammates (it counts as normal healing) that would encourage more use of the actual medikit in a supportive environment rather than throwing bags everywhere and immediately going to fight. It would also allow a medic to gain points from teammates who are not necessarily damaged.
=Engineer=
Poor Engy. He gets the shaft totally when it comes to his supportive role.
Reward for repairing:
+1 point for full restoration of damage vehicle/command resource
Unrewarded value: Remove interruptions in proper commander support (low/med likelihood), keep valuable armor alive on the front lines (high likelihood)
The engineer gets almost no recognition for the job he does, thus one of the reasons you see almost no engineers. It's ridiculous that in certain badges the engineer's repair points are considered equal to a medic's heal or support's ammo points. First off, the engineer gets NO "bag" abilities. He gets his melee wrench, which he must use on anything he wishes to repair (unless he is in a vehicle using aura repairs). He is completely helpless during that process if someone would want to shoot him in the back. On top of it, his wrench "ammo" runs out on a single repair for a vehicle/structure to full (medics and supports generally get 3 bags worth of ammo), and he repairs god awfully slow (unlike medic and support that can insta health/supply with a bag) and on one target only (medic and support can do their duty in an area of effect with their "active" support weapon). His reward for this headache? One measly pathetic little point.
Conclusion: Buff Engineer's support abilities immediately!
Suggestions:
- Engineer gets a "bag" ability that he can throw around called metalworking patch, or whatever you want to coin it. This is for armor and other vehicles to pick up in the same manner that infantry grab medkits, except that the metalworking patch only restores 25% health to a tank, and does it as a heal over time (50% speed of repair). The bag costs him all of his wrench ammo (and he can thusly only throw one).
- Repair point value significantly increased. A repair on a tank to full should be worth about 3-4 points, an APC worth 2.5-3. Commander resources repair value greatly increased. 3-4 points for a command asset completely repaired. The special forces who destroyed them gets about as many points, and he can do it almost instantly with C4. Reward engineers who put in a good effort keeping their command support up flawlessly!
- Wrench ammo exhausts slower on aircraft (helis) that repair slower.
- If a vehicle is manually wrenched by an Engineer (not metalworking patch), then the quality of the vehicle is temporarily enhanced such that for the next 5 minutes (or so) that vehicle is immune to "burning" damage caused by low hitpoints. The vehicle must be finished off for it to be destroyed.
=Commander=
- Just one suggestion. In the same way that commander doesn't earn kills for artillery (just points) neither should the people killed by artillery earn a death on their permanent records. Why? Because artillery is an instant, uncounterable death that no amount of skill can save you from if that first thing is destined to crash on your head. If this is not possible, then modify artillery such that it becomes a projectile that you can see streaking through the air (if you look up in the sky), and actually have a chance to see incoming and avoid. I prefer the first, however, as artillery is meant to bust apart fortified enemy lines, it's just in the skilless way it operates, it shouldn't count as a death to the people affected.
Edit: Forgot to add engineer special ability. Added.
As a basis, let's review the reward for a kill:
+2 points
+1 ticket
+1 kill on the player's stats
+1 death for enemy soldier's stats
Unrewarded value: -1 enemy attacker on the battlefield
Not bad, not bad at all. In fact, for the amount of effort involved, that's pretty good. Depending on the class, kills can come easier than others, but in general, a kill can be had as easily as instantly blasting someone in the head. You can rack up 3 of these with a hand grenade in the right place at the right time. You can round a corner and mow down two people with your support gun. You can toob someone that rounds a corner on you. Kills can be had in so many ways and provide such a large amount of score that they are the basis for which the game is dictated.
Now, we get into the support classes, and their role.
=Support=
Reward for a bag:
+1 point (if it gives a sufficient amount of ammo)
Unrewarded value: potentially allow teammates to get kills with ammunition that they would normally would have run out on (low likelihood/opportunity) or with "low ammo consumables" such as grenade launchers (low/medium likelihood/opportunity)
Conclusion:
Support can pick up a few extra points by resupplying teammates, but it's never going to be the focus of the class. You'll never see a support dedicated to keeping his allies topped off at all times. Why? 1. Killing is better, 2. ammo is not generally needed in any great amount, except when grenade spamming or other consumable item tactics are being used. The opportunities to get points by ammoing up are somewhat sparse
Suggestions:
- Medium increase the ammo restored to point reward ratio
- Allow supports to bestow extra ammunition for all teammates that he uses the SUPPORT BAG on. Not the dropped one, but the actual bag. Thus, assaults would gain a max clip capacity of 1-2, 1-2 extra grenades, if the support gave these resources to them via the bag. This is to promote actual use of the support bag over simply throwing them everywhere and fighting while it regenerates.
=Medic=
Reward for a bag:
+1 point for each full life restored
Unrewarded value: Potentially prevent the death of a teammate, as well as an enemy soldier picking up score and tickets (high likelihood/opportunity)
Reward for a revive:
+2 points
Prevention of a ticket loss for the team
Prevention of a death on allied soldier's record
Unrewarded value: Helps to keep the front strong and allows for cohesive continuity
As far as support classes go, Medics are the most endowed. However, Special Forces is working hard to ruin that. The SAS gun unlock provided in SF is simply too good, and with the extra killing power, the Medic's comparative abilities are much less useful. In general, the medic's abilities may not turn the tide of a battle, because they are very team dependant. If teammates are dying in an area it's impossible to heal or revive them from, and just in general the personal risk it takes to revive someone, makes medics want to fight instead of do medic support duties.
Conclusion: While Medic is good at its role, Special Forces has dealt a blow against the class by giving them the best rifle in the game, making the already hard decision as to whether to kill or med even harder to make with this new tool.
Suggestions:
- SAS rifle nerf
- Revive points increased to 2.5 or 3 to reflect the personal risk involved. If you die reviving someone, the enemy gains +4 score, and 2 kills (and your team takes two deaths and loses two tickets). If you successfully revive someone, you gain +2 score, and your team damage that is undone is 1 ticket and 1 death. The enemy still gets the point and kill credit for the kill, however. Optionally, instead of the point increase, a revive can be changed to remove the points and kill from the enemy soldier, which would put more emphasis on actually making sure the target you took down stays down. As it is, the risk involved in reviving the person is more than the risk involved in trying to hunt down and kill the killer.
- Heal points increased to 1.5 per full life healed. This is to reflect the fact that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. When you heal someone, you potentially prevent their death, which means that an enemy that may have scored points will not. Again, the idea is to make this a viable supportive action in relation to the amount of points someone gets for a kill.
- Medic can give allies 20% additional health if provided through the (weapon 5) medikit. This is a small buff to your adjacent teammates (it counts as normal healing) that would encourage more use of the actual medikit in a supportive environment rather than throwing bags everywhere and immediately going to fight. It would also allow a medic to gain points from teammates who are not necessarily damaged.
=Engineer=
Poor Engy. He gets the shaft totally when it comes to his supportive role.
Reward for repairing:
+1 point for full restoration of damage vehicle/command resource
Unrewarded value: Remove interruptions in proper commander support (low/med likelihood), keep valuable armor alive on the front lines (high likelihood)
The engineer gets almost no recognition for the job he does, thus one of the reasons you see almost no engineers. It's ridiculous that in certain badges the engineer's repair points are considered equal to a medic's heal or support's ammo points. First off, the engineer gets NO "bag" abilities. He gets his melee wrench, which he must use on anything he wishes to repair (unless he is in a vehicle using aura repairs). He is completely helpless during that process if someone would want to shoot him in the back. On top of it, his wrench "ammo" runs out on a single repair for a vehicle/structure to full (medics and supports generally get 3 bags worth of ammo), and he repairs god awfully slow (unlike medic and support that can insta health/supply with a bag) and on one target only (medic and support can do their duty in an area of effect with their "active" support weapon). His reward for this headache? One measly pathetic little point.
Conclusion: Buff Engineer's support abilities immediately!
Suggestions:
- Engineer gets a "bag" ability that he can throw around called metalworking patch, or whatever you want to coin it. This is for armor and other vehicles to pick up in the same manner that infantry grab medkits, except that the metalworking patch only restores 25% health to a tank, and does it as a heal over time (50% speed of repair). The bag costs him all of his wrench ammo (and he can thusly only throw one).
- Repair point value significantly increased. A repair on a tank to full should be worth about 3-4 points, an APC worth 2.5-3. Commander resources repair value greatly increased. 3-4 points for a command asset completely repaired. The special forces who destroyed them gets about as many points, and he can do it almost instantly with C4. Reward engineers who put in a good effort keeping their command support up flawlessly!
- Wrench ammo exhausts slower on aircraft (helis) that repair slower.
- If a vehicle is manually wrenched by an Engineer (not metalworking patch), then the quality of the vehicle is temporarily enhanced such that for the next 5 minutes (or so) that vehicle is immune to "burning" damage caused by low hitpoints. The vehicle must be finished off for it to be destroyed.
=Commander=
- Just one suggestion. In the same way that commander doesn't earn kills for artillery (just points) neither should the people killed by artillery earn a death on their permanent records. Why? Because artillery is an instant, uncounterable death that no amount of skill can save you from if that first thing is destined to crash on your head. If this is not possible, then modify artillery such that it becomes a projectile that you can see streaking through the air (if you look up in the sky), and actually have a chance to see incoming and avoid. I prefer the first, however, as artillery is meant to bust apart fortified enemy lines, it's just in the skilless way it operates, it shouldn't count as a death to the people affected.
Edit: Forgot to add engineer special ability. Added.
Last edited by Sud (2005-12-01 21:34:09)