Medic Archive
Thread: The Mind Damage issue (CUTTER's thread): Please read
I read most of the thread that Cutter started, and I completely agree that there is a serious problem when a certain player (rifleman) can specialize in a type of damage that has no cure, and there is no player in the game that can address that damage in a fight. Bravo to Cutter for bringing this up!
HOWEVER, one simple change could fix it all.
Why should a depleted Mind pool *incapacitate* a player in the first place? It doesn't make logical sense. Ponder this a second.
If a player's Mind pool was depleted, then why not just have it so that player can't do his special abilities. He doesn't fall over incapacitated because his mind is not "focused", but now his effectiveness is greatly hampered. Ergo, he can't deal as much damage or have as many options in dealing damage. Ergo, the rifleman can still "disable" his quarry with a powerful Mindshot, and reduce the effectiveness of the opponent, but can't outright incapacitate/kill the victim with something that NOBODY on the battlefield can cure. The rifelman will still have to use HA dmg skills to actually incapacitate players, but mindshot will be useful to "gimp down" his opponents in preparation for killing them.
The rifleman then doesn't have a way of dealing incurable damage.
The Medic then doesn't have to watch his entire group get wiped from mind wounds, feeling utterly useless in the end. In fact, his healing will be severely taxed when all of his team have lost their ability to deal their best damage.
The brawler that mismanaged his mind pool doesn't *die* from it, but he is just far more dependent on his team to help him finish the fight.
The Entertainer can stay safely in the cantina doing what he was born to do.
Then, you won't have to change/add healing lines, or nerf mindshot, or require entertainers on the front lines to stay alive, or introduce an entire myriad of possible other things that could unbalance things further (see DAOC).
Just make it where nobody *incaps/dies* from losing their mind pool. It doesn't make sense that a warrior would fall down and die because he couldn't take the mental strain of fighting. But sure, it's logical that he could lose focus and be distracted, and lose the ability to perform his best moves.
Seems like a simple solution to a real problem to me. But I'm sure there's something I'm not thinking about that somebody will be happy to point out.
LOL lancer. Shell-shock is a little different than "concentrating so hard that you DIE". heh
I dunno, the whole thing seems odd to me...that you lose your mind pool and you fall over. I could see being incapacitated for action damage. And imo, death should only occur when health pool is gone.
I mean, it just makes logical sense that:
1. Lose your mind pool, lose all the abilities that use the mind pool. But you still live.
2. Lose your action pool, you fall down incapacitated from exhaustion. But still live.
3. Lose your health pool, you die.
The logic behind incapacitation and then possible death for losing any one ofeach pool is beyond me. But if the devs insist it'sa good model, the least they could do to solve the utter uselessness of a Combat Medic is to not have players incapacitated or dead because they were thinking too hard.
That was one of my suggestions as well. However, that particular solution affects the rifle profession a bit more than some of the other potential solutions.Riflemen need a "Some Body Part Shot" that is equivalent to pistol's Body Shot and Carbine's Leg Shot. Currently they have this, but if mind damage no longer kills, then something would need to be given to rifles to compensate for the imbalance this would cause.
My suggestion was to not allow rifles (or anything else for that matter) to target the mind, instead having them target health/action. If the mind can't be actively targeted, then it's totally acceptable that it can't be actively healed.
GPF.