Being able to take ammo or health from teammates

Battlefield 1 General Discussion
321

The current playerbase for BF3 is irrelevant - you said the shift towards the casual audience kills the game shortly after release. I gave you three examples of why this isn’t true.

Bad Company 2 is where the series really started picking up popularity, similarly to how Call of Duty 4 pulled in a wider audience for its franchise. I’m not arguing that a full on focus towards a casual audience is a good thing, but rather that a balance between both audiences is needed. You can’t create a game with a high skill ceiling and a steep learning curve and expect it to do great. Devil May Cry 4 has very mixed opinions for this reason. It has an amazing amount of depth to the combat, but the learning curve is so steep that air combat can’t be achieved by a new player. Funny enough, the next installment went in the other direction and had a low learning curve and a low skill ceiling, and again it received divided opinions. It was great in the sense that, new players could perform aerial combos… but it sacrificed the depth of the prior game.

Going too far in either direction is bad for any game. Ideally, you want to pull in new players, and turn those players into invested ones. Battlefield expanding on the old formula wouldn’t be a bad thing at all, but attention still has to be given to the casual audience. For example, if they made a complete remake of BF2, then they’d have to offer an alternative ruleset for the casual audience where health regeneration, bullet counters, and full squad spawning are available (similarly to Classic vs Normal).

322

OK, I’ve purchased the $5 standard edition of Hardline and played it for a bit, and the people’s comments about health distribution in Hardline make more sense to me now, but I don’t see it as an argument for tag-replenishment in Bf1.

In Hardline, medkits are different (or at least I think they are, I use med packs in Bf4), in that they can only be thrown down once every so often, and then there’s a cooldown period of like 1 minute or so before they can be thrown down again. I’m guessing that a lot of the times when people who’ve played Hardline had issues getting health, that the person they wanted the health from couldn’t actually throw down another medkit. Because that was the situation when I was playing Hardline just now, and I wanted to throw health down for players, like I would have in Bf4/Bf3/BC2/Bf2… but I couldn’t.

That hasn’t happened before in Battlefield, and if these same people play Battlefield 4, they’ll know there’s no shortage of health distribution anywhere. So, if Battlefield 1 doesn’t use the Hardline system, then there’s no reason to have tag-replenishment, because the players are already good at taking care of health/ammo distribution, and any exceptions are just that.

Another way that cooldowns on health distribution may affect how frequently someone accommodates a request for health is that they know that once they drop it, they won’t be able to do so again for another minute. This could lead to players holding on to their health drops until they need it, or until they’re closer to a place of battle, where they think it will be more needed. After playing a single game, this is how I changed my behavior regarding my health distribution, because this was the more strategic way to use health. In Battlefield 4, and earlier Battlefields, there isn’t a cooldown on dropping health. And so people throw it down all the time, everywhere.

It sounds to me like the argument Hardline players are making for tag-replenishment is due to the particular way health/ammo distribution is implemented in Hardline.

Also, the overall player skill level in Hardline is not as tight as it is in Battlefield 4. On my very first game, in which I was seeing the map for the first time, and didn’t even know what the gameplay objectives were, I had K/D of 13/4, while just running around, exploring. On the second game I played, in another map I’d never seen, I didn’t check the scoreboard before I quit, but I think I was around a K/D of 18/8. I wasn’t playing at my top form, but it felt relatively easy to quickly target opponents and win gunfights, compared to Bf4… which suggests to me that things like health distribution might not be as focused on by the players, who aren’t playing as tightly as players are in Battlefield 4. I would think that a larger player-base that Battlefield 4 has encourages higher competitiveness, since there are more high-skill players, forcing everyone else to tighten their skills.

Also, there are hardly any players playing Hardline, and if there were truly problematic players, where they weren’t distributing health, as opposed to simply not being able to throw down a new healthkit, then it’s possible that it is the same player, or the same couple players, being encountered across games. There literally are more servers for Bf2, BC2, going than there are for Hardline.

But the biggest reason for healthkit issues in Hardline is surely due to the cooldown on dropping health. People could be asking for health all they want, but if the health carrier can’t throw down health, due to the feature’s design, then the person asking for it isn’t going to get any. That’s not because the health carrier is selfish, but because that’s the game’s mechanical design. DICE can avoid those issues in Bf1 by simply not using Hardline’s style of replenishment-drop implementation.

And since Hardline’s style of replenishment-drop is clearly dissatisfying some of Hardline’s players, and creating confusion between players, and turning players against players, who are blaming the person, rather than the game mechanic, I think that Hardline’s particular implementation of replenishment-drops is not a positive design, and should not be used in Battlefield 1.

323

yes, because the ability to camp totally defines battlefield…

so Hardline “isn’t battlefield” because you can’t camp on random mountains??

Loolzzz really!?? The value of battlefield is camping on mountains?? Haha whatever! And don’t tell me “oh…I didn’t mean camping on mountains” because it’s LITERALLY THE BULWARK OF THE CRITISM that was offered.

Can’t camp? camping. Get the off battlefield if you’re a camper.

324

I don’t do it, and there aren’t many opportunities to do it in Bf4, but camping is a valid strategy. People don’t really do it, though, because it doesn’t really enable a person to play the game. Also, the review criticizing camping is hyperbole. Snipers will camp out spots on mountains, and that’s good, that’s a part of their role. If a player doesn’t want any of that, well, that has always been a part of Battlefield, since 1942, and in every PC Battlefield game (not hardline) released since then.

325

People camp in hardline near but away from the objectives . Hotwire is a joke because people place c4 on the cars and camp waiting for someone to play the objective ( which is get in the marked cars and drive). Then they detonate the c4 trap .

326

The issue here is, you are playing that game in the first place. :slight_smile:

327

Totally forgot about this thread.

Did anyone notice if you could take ammo/health in the pre alpha gameplay?

328

This is probably the only good thing hardline got right.

329

Nope, didn’t see it and through the many vids released no one has mentioned it. So it’s my opinion and assumption that taggable ammo/meds will not be in BF1.

/thread
/anotherwinforrealBF

330

Dang it

331

It should be for Ammo, not for health.

332

You have played Hardline now and formed an opinion about why we Hardline players are probably taggable resourses. That’s fine. The only question I have for you is wether or not other players being able to tag you for health effected your game in any way? Did they get in your way, did they get you killed? Did their ability to push a button next to you and take health, not the cool down on dropping health, have any effect on you either negatively or positively?

I ask out of simple curiosity as the stream and subsequent videos make it pretry clear this mechanic will not be in BF1.

333

That’s not the correct attitude sister.

334
  • Yes it is frustrating if a Medic does not help you out but that is most likely that they are inexperienced and that the reward system is not in place to encourage medics to do their role.
  • If you start to nerf the reward system for that class you will only see less people play that class and thereby you effectively get even less healing done.
  • The same with the support class. Do not change a game mechanic that gets people to interact. Let those that are inexperienced learn how the class works and rewards them for playing the role of the class correctly.
335

It sounds as one of the worst idea ever.

336

Well, I don’t know what was going on in the thoughts of the people I played with, though at times I wondered if people were expecting ammo from me when I wasn’t able to give it, and I was trying to give it around players with low health, and felt bad because I wasn’t able to give them any, like I would be in Battlefield 4, and I’m used to being able to throw health at any time.

I have only gotten to play 3 games of Hardline, before it stopped working, and now every time I try to join a game, it loads, and then crashes with a message that says “Hardline as stopped working”. I’m not running any virus scanner, and I repaired the game in Origin, and I still can’t play SP or MP anymore. So, I think I’m going to ask for a refund from Origin.

I did not notice if people were taking health from me in the few games I played, though I didn’t have many situations where I was right next to players, and the few that I did… well, I was too busy being confused figuring out why my health wasn’t deploying to fully pay attention to what else was happening.

There was one or two cases of things being hectic, with 2 players around me, and all of us being shot at, and one of the players looking at me, and me not knowing whether it was because they were expecting health, that I wasn’t able to give, or something else. They could have been grabbing health from me, for all I know. If so, then it made their presence close to me a distraction, but this could also have been because I was unfamiliar with what was happening.

Basically, I don’t think I got enough play time in to be able to give you a full answer, but, I think it’s logical that people having a reason to be going right up to the player is going to, at times, cause unwanted obstruction of goals, shots, escape… and possibly confuse the player as to what’s happening, and why the other player is going right up to them. It’s a liability and interference, even if a small one, and one that doesn’t usually cause problems.

I don’t know if tag-health affected me in a particular way when I was playing, because the select times I had players right around me, things were chaotic, and I am unaware whether I was being tagged for health or not, and whether the players were around me for health or not, and how much, if any of the chaos of those moment was caused by the tag-health mechanic.

There were 3 or 4 of us moving around a small room, trying to find cover, as bullets were coming into the room from different directions, and I didn’t know why players were staying around the same place that I was, and whether it meant that there were enemies behind us as well as ahead of us, or that they were planning to jump out into the room the bullets were coming from to make an assault, or whether they were just trying to find better cover…

337

Its just easy if everytime a team mate runs by just grab ammo a stay topped up that way you dont need to go chasing people same with medic

338

That must be in BF1!
1+

339

Hardline got quite a few things right tbh. I feel like the game just gets a lot of unwarranted hate.

340

Yeah just make it easier! Make it easier to get kills. Add giant glowing Doritos above your enemies so you can spot them through smoke and dust. Just make it easier to fly a plane and bring it to the level of Star wars Battlefront where you do not even need to control the yawn or the roll of the plane! Make it easier! Go play some Pony Dance Party if you want an EASY game! Wait no you probably going to WHINE that it is too hard to do the timing right!

If you cannot be patient and ask your squad mate over voice chat for ammo then this is not the game for you. There is already passive healing because you people just WHINE that the game is too difficult!