Resurecct Skill

Trooper wrote:

I like the life link.... dmg gets shared between the 2. example:

player 1 is medic, player 2 is wm. player 2 gets hit for 10 dmg. life link splits the dmg 5 and 5 between both. player 2 shoots the monster and gets 5 xp. medic gets 2.5 or whatever. makes it so the player can take more dmg but also makes it so too much will kill both if they are both taking dmg.

2nd example:

this is more of an idea. link the 2 not just in dmg but also in damage reduction and damage bonus, kind of like linking a turret makes it double its damage. now wm has dmg redux of his + medic's. makes the wm tank like it was designed to.

question: should the medic healing split as well? medic with medic rocket shoots feet while in a "safe" corner. medic weapon heals for 10 health per hit normally. link makes it do 5 per person. thoughts?

I have wanted to implement a Life Link sort of skill for Medics for awhile now. I have concerns about how to implement it though -- For example,
if a WM gets hit by a rocket doing 100 damage, do we split it and send 50 damage to the WM and 50 to the MM, and then apply damage reduction to each?

I think with something like Life Link we should only be using one person's damage reduction. When the WM takes the 100 damage rocket, the final damage should be calculated using his DR and then split between him and the MM. Doing it the first way I mentioned could often mean neither player is taking any damage.

Anyway, I think any experience given should be via damage transferred, not by their damage output. Seems a lot simpler to me to catch the amount of damage being transferred, and more appropriate. It's only being useful when the other person is taking damage.

Healing the other person through the link it also something I'd like to see, but have concerns about. Hiding in a corner somewhere and infinitely healing another player is definitely something to keep an eye on.

actually grizzled suggested it... I jest expanded the idea

@wail it actually wouldn't be hard. use something similar to retaliation. 50% of the damage gets done to the other. the harder part would be making it so the player taking the dmg took much less. I suppose we could have the "life-link" increase the damage redux by a % of the player's dmg redux already and make the retaliation dmg 100% of the damage taken. example:

wm has redux of 80 (or 40%) and takes 100 dmg before redux. his redux would make him take only 60 dmg of the 100. life link doubles redux, making his redux 160 or (80%) and 20 dmg gets done. the retaliation effect of the life link makes the medic take 20 as well. I don't know the retal code but I would bet that we could modify the life link one to ignore damage redux and dmg bonus for this idea.

I think szlat said something about putting info into a "fake" player for temporary storage. could the life link transfer the dmg to the fake player, devide it by 2, then send it on its merry way to both players?

I believe we need to think very carefully before implementing something like this.
A) It could upset the difficulty balance and make the game too easy.
B) We need to make sure the way resurrection is implemented does not encourage low levels to give up their play for high level players.
So as of yet I am not convinced we should be implementing it.

Points to consider

At the end of the wave, any player would normally restart. Therefore any effects/links/benefits for the medic must end at that time.

Normally, the dead player would get zero xp until the end of the wave. To give 50% of the xp earned to the medic would be good for both parties.

But what cost to the medic? A healing blast costs 50 adrenaline. How much xp does the medic get? Say 4 people healed of 150 health each gives 600 healed. 10% xp means 60 xp. How much xp from a player resurrected for on average half a wave? If the player's game xp is 1600, then half a wave is 50 xp. And only half that will go to the medic. So we could charge the medic 150 adrenaline, then give him 30xp straight off and half the revived player's xp in the rest of the wave? And in total the medic would get the xp from a healing blast for triple the adrenaline. Mmmm.

Can the medic select who to revive, or is it random, or do we have a list and the person at the top of the list gets revived first?

What happens if the medic who revived someone dies? Should he still get xp transfered to him? And what if it was a medic he revived, and now that medic revives the original medic. Who gets what xp then?

At the moment it is a lot more difficult to do well if medics are not on. This would further increase the discrepancy

If a player automatically revives at the end of the wave, then this skill will only bring him back on average 1 minute early. Is it worth it?

Will this change mean we win more matches? I do not know. Having a player back from the dead can make a big difference - especially if they have Ghost. However, so can the 3 healing blasts that are forfeited for the resurrection.

At the moment it is a players responsibility not to die. Already some players are getting at medics saying why didn't you heal me in time. I do not want another pressure to be put on medics, so that they feel duty bound to revive someone who has just deemered themselves

So, all in all, I think implementing it will not really bring much in the way of benefits, will introduce a greater contrast between having medics and not having medics, and will not really improve gameplay. And since the benefit to the medic is not exceptional, I doubt if it will get used much.
So to me the benefits are not worth the probable imbalancies it creates.
just my opinion

Trooper wrote:

actually grizzled suggested it... I jest expanded the idea

@wail it actually wouldn't be hard. use something similar to retaliation. 50% of the damage gets done to the other. the harder part would be making it so the player taking the dmg took much less. I suppose we could have the "life-link" increase the damage redux by a % of the player's dmg redux already and make the retaliation dmg 100% of the damage taken. example:

wm has redux of 80 (or 40%) and takes 100 dmg before redux. his redux would make him take only 60 dmg of the 100. life link doubles redux, making his redux 160 or (80%) and 20 dmg gets done. the retaliation effect of the life link makes the medic take 20 as well. I don't know the retal code but I would bet that we could modify the life link one to ignore damage redux and dmg bonus for this idea.

I think szlat said something about putting info into a "fake" player for temporary storage. could the life link transfer the dmg to the fake player, devide it by 2, then send it on its merry way to both players?

Well, the most obvious way to handle this to me is to have the medic shoot the link off, and then pass an inventory object to the targeted player. That's a very simple way to do it but [I think] the inventory's effect on any damage to the player takes place before DR comes into the picture. So doing it that way would split the damage up before DR gets applied.

I'm not sure how difficult it would be to catch the damage after DR is applied.

You mention Retaliation, but I'm not sure if it's the same thing. First off, I don't recall whether Retaliation comes into play before or after DR gets applied.
I don't see why a monster wouldn't get its DR against Retaliation damage (unless there's an exception for Retaliation damage to bypass DR). So using that approach would also lead to a double-DR situation. On the other hand, you could modify the Retaliation-ability approach by passing along the damage against the Medic simply by subtracting Health instead of calling TakeDamage. It's hacky but it'd work.

So then my question is, can we add an ability like this with a player? I haven't seen anything that involves adding actual new unpurchaseable RPGAbilities to a player before, and I assume that's for a reason [I would think this could cause problems with saving characters, since you'd end up getting a temporary ability written to your savefile. Getting rid of that might require adjustments to UT2004RPG.]

Eh, I'm still not all that big on giving a resurection skill.

1 is sounds like a coding nightmare and
2 would think it would make the game easier.

I was thinking the life link would work like remote max, using an atrifact. I go up to a player and BAM linked. I guess we could have an "inventory item" that does the following:
1: reads damage done
2: divides by 2
3: applies damage = to dmg/2 to the linked medic like retaliation does
4: heals health of player = dmg/2

I think that it is an interesting idea, but I think that it would change the game dramatically.

The skill level of the levels would have to be increased to compensate, which would be a nightmare for teams that have little or no medics.

Second, I played on a couple of servers that had the reserection skill, and a lot of the chatter was not in good form, there was no cheering for the last person alive. The chatter was, "why arn't you resing me?" and "res idiot!!!" This is why I didn't want to stay on those servers that had res.

This IMHO, is bad for the server community.

Also, if a medic chooses to life link with another, that is favoritism and there would be requests all around, "link me!!! Why arn't you linking me?" This could cause strife within the community and IMHO is bad for the community.

If this is implemented, I will have to see what happens to the community and the server. However, I will most likely leave, because there is way too much whining and arguing and trash talking, with little cheering.

I like this server because the people on it are mature and fun to be with, and I know this may seem dramatic, but I think that a reserection skill could change that.

I could see that happening. but as my medic plays I would like with a lower level to help them out

When I suggested the life link skill. I had in mind that the medic would be helping out a lower level player, not a maxed out WM with vamp and regen.

I guess that's what I get for not thinking.

Its still not a bad idea, but would take too much trouble to balance unless it was nerfed to the point where it would only help under 60 level players.

Grizzled_Imposter wrote:

When I suggested the life link skill. I had in mind that the medic would be helping out a lower level player, not a maxed out WM with vamp and regen.

GASP!!!!!!!

YOU ARE JOKING HUH

(DC)DEMONSLAYER wrote:

Grizzled_Imposter wrote:

When I suggested the life link skill. I had in mind that the medic would be helping out a lower level player, not a maxed out WM with vamp and regen.

GASP!!!!!!! YOU ARE JOKING HUH

Well, no, I'm not joking. That's how I play. I mostly heal people first and ensure that they live.

Of course you can see the fallacy with that when it takes me over 2 years to hit level 106 and other medics are passing me in level.

I on the other hand am not that concerned, I play to have a good time and I like healing and saving people so it works for me, even if it is not the best way to make exp.

yeah my engi could rack up lots of points by running offense sents but I prefer to let a lower level take my ball turret and run a defense sent with him. ask dommi about last night

Ahem!! I think you guys are going away from topic when you say

yeah my engi could rack up lots of points by running offense sents but I prefer to let a lower level take my ball turret and run a defense sent with him. ask dommi about last night

Keep it on the topic (Resurrect Skill)