If you’re interested in the inner workings of the medigun, there’s a new post on the TF2 Official blog that explains its healing rate amid injury factors.
While testing the game, the designers noticed that injured players weren’t running back to find a medic to heal them, preferring instead to simply keep fighting, die, and respawn since the medigun’s healing rate was uinformly slow. In response, they ramped up the healing rate based on the amount of time since a player had been injured, thus, a soldier returning for a heal would regain health at a faster rate then someone who had fresh injuries.
24 responses so far ↓
1 /AquaBlue // Jun 25, 2008 at 7:54 am
Meh.
2 Rosti // Jun 25, 2008 at 7:59 am
Medic!
Neat little feature; with any luck this is the sort of titbit we can expect in future updates of the blog. Nice to know that those burning in front of me whilst I ‘play’ my Bonesaw will eventually get a better service…
3 Pentadact // Jun 25, 2008 at 8:16 am
More importantly, they’ve now added an RSS feed to subscribe to:
http://www.teamfortress.com/rss.xml
You and I are truly redundant.
4 RC-1290'Dreadnought' // Jun 25, 2008 at 8:16 am
Wait a minute Rosti, burning people should be healed as fast as possible, because as long as they take damage, they will be healed with only 24hp/s.
And when there aren’t people close that will be healed faster, you shouldn’t wait with healing anyway.
5 Lack_26 // Jun 25, 2008 at 9:08 am
I usually run back to a supply closet or health pack, but moving back to the safety of the spawn room gives me a chance to process new enemy positions and quickly rest before entering the fray afresh.
6 Rosti // Jun 25, 2008 at 9:22 am
I -shouldn’t- wait, but I enjoy the violin-based “irony”.
Incidentally, even with an RSS feed, I’ll still be coming to 1Fort for the tags. Until Valve make with the tags, obviously.
7 Josh S. // Jun 25, 2008 at 12:11 pm
fascinating… they really put a ton of thought into these things.
8 Jake // Jun 25, 2008 at 12:30 pm
At over 20 hours playing medic I had no idea why the rates were variable and never even stopped to consider it. Am I the only one?
At least I did notice that it was a variable rate. Do they ramp up the dispenser rate as well? I hate waiting for that thing to heal me.
9 Niteowl // Jun 25, 2008 at 1:12 pm
As a perma-spy, medics are either those bastards who keep weaving, all the while taunting me that they “ARE UBERCHARGED!” or bastards who watch me burn a very slow and painful death as my skin anneals with the rayon in my blazer.
10 Lagged2Death // Jun 25, 2008 at 2:00 pm
I’ve been wondering why the heal rate seemed to vary.
I’ve tried standing closer to the target, standing farther from the target, pointing my crosshairs closer to the target, etc. Nothing I could do seemed to control it.
I had begun to wonder if the variation was just my imagination.
11 Dave // Jun 25, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Ugh, that tag applies strongest to us console-tards, where the only voice command mapped to the controller is “Medic!”.
12 Hungry Heavy // Jun 25, 2008 at 2:45 pm
No kidding niteowl. I’m a spy first and anything else second and I’ve found out that as a medic, in contradiction to intuition you want to heal the spy first!
This increased healing rate accounts for half the reason. The second reason is that a good spy is extremely valuable and should be given a little space to work. As un-teamlike as some players play the spy, a teamplaying spy can either break through stalemates by taking down sentrys or key enemies or can assassinate medics before they uber.
But since it’s frequently chosen by noobs (2 spies in a team is ussually bad, more than 2 is aweful)
13 Hungry Heavy // Jun 25, 2008 at 2:46 pm
I mean since it’s frequently chosen by noobs spies get the cold shoulder. It’s a shame.
14 nmanguy // Jun 25, 2008 at 3:17 pm
I always thought it was only 50% more, not 200% more.
15 Hungry Heavy // Jun 25, 2008 at 4:25 pm
What I LIKE is that they tweaked gameplay to a spectacular degree.
What I don’t LIKE is that I’ve been playing a game without knowing the rules.
Couldn’t they have told us? Can’t they tell all such peculiarities?
16 SmackleFunky // Jun 25, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Ah 1Fort. The blog that tells you about what is happening in all the other blogs… Who needs RSS feeds when you have Chris on the level.
17 Danielle // Jun 25, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Smackle: AMEN.
18 jordan // Jun 25, 2008 at 6:21 pm
yeah smackle I’m wid choo.
@ Dave, not true! we can say ‘Doctoor’ and ‘Come on, doc!’.
but what do you mean that all we can do is call for medic? Isnt that the only voice command mapped to pc users?
19 jordan // Jun 25, 2008 at 6:24 pm
also, chris, if you could mention the lack of all this new shit for console users, it would be great, cos they always do what you say.
20 Soldier // Jun 25, 2008 at 8:08 pm
MEH-DIC!
21 RC-1290'Dreadnought' // Jun 26, 2008 at 6:43 am
EVERYONE! I’m on FIRE!
22 Super Jesus // Jun 26, 2008 at 3:15 pm
P.C. users can select various commands to say “Need a dispenser here.” or “There’s a spy around here.”
23 Ryebread // Jun 27, 2008 at 8:39 am
Here’s an interesting thought. Waiting to heal someone would allow them to gain health at a faster rate, but that would also mean that the ubercharge meter goes from the 2.5% per sec to 1.25% more quickly because of that, unless the medic wisely switches patients at the right time.
24 jesus // Jul 1, 2008 at 6:05 am
i love healing me some spies.
especially enemy spies. heal them so they think they’re in and safe, then ubersaw them right as they’re in a sentry’s range, so they can either die you ubersaw, giving you a quick uber, or die by sentry.
so many times i’ve been attacking on dustbowl and wishing there were some enemy spies to get quicker ubers.
Leave a Comment