Discussion about Medic's Infection
 

Infection currently has no real defined purpose or role. You run up and smack someone with the medkit and they become infected indefinitely, taking 8 points of damage every two seconds. They also become very audible, meaning you can pick out their location without having to see them, and last, as the Wiki states, their character becomes surrounded with green particles (which tends to disturb your vision a bit!) [Wiki]

The infection has the de facto job of making the fight easier for those fighting the infected — whether the player is discovered easier or dies quicker. Is this sufficient? Is it too much? Should it serve some other purpose? Do something other than just draining health? Perhaps the way it works should be reconsidered. For instance, someone mentioned an implementation along the lines of: "Have the infection deal x amount of damage over time until it has damaged for [max damage]. If the infected manages to survive the infection, he is rewarded with some of his health back." The idea here, I think, is that it becomes a helping aid in killing the enemy only if you can also complement it with enough skill to bring the enemy down to a point of health where he's guaranteed to die. It makes sense. You can't infect someone and expect them to die. You have to help it along. What do you think?

Infection is somewhat cheap, too. It has an infinite duration. Many beginners take the intuitive step toward their spawn hoping a medkit or a touch of the respawn strip will cure them, but it doesn't. The only counter to infection is a medic. You need a medic handy. The only problem with that is 1. Medic is an offensive class. He infects the defense. So, your own defense is going to be asking for some heals. Being an offensive class, expecting the Medic to run about healing defenders makes little sense. The other problem is 2. If there is no available Medic, at-least one person is always asked to go Medic. That person kills himself and respawns as a Medic and heals his team mates over and over to counter the offensive Medic from the other team. This wastes a slot that could be used playing Medic as intended at the core: offensively.

What do you think?

An offensive medic is nothing more then a slow scout with better armor and nades. He should either be an evil doctor (spreading infection) or a good doctor (supporting healer).. but the current mix is a bit off.

BRING BACK INFECTION SPREAD!!!

That is all.

For a guy who has Мне похуй вы as their user title, you care about too much stuff. :rolleyes:

I don't remember where this idea was brought up first, but I liked it then and still like it now. It makes since that you should capitalize on the infection, not rely on it for a kill.

The idea of spreading infection and gas grenades wasn't to get a kill, it was to create confusion and disrupt the plans of the other team. Some players like a little more variety then just "ok we have a perfect defense and can clearly see all players coming, and you have a perfect offense let's see who gets through and who doesn't." A gas grenade here, an infection there, creates a dynamic in TFC that goes beyond brute force and conc flying. The game has losing that.

Scuzzy

Yeah absolutely. Infection has substantially lost meaning due to lack of infection spread and the awful hit detection. What's worse is that many times as soon as an experienced player is infected, he'll immediately suicide, because he doesn't want to deal with it and see how much damage he can do before dying.

How does this idea sound as a compromise:

Bring infection spreading back, but make it unable to kill anyone. Have the infection bring the health down to maybe 10-20%, then just linger there. This way infection isn't guaranteed death, a player infecting others won't increase his kill count any, and it brings back the tactical element of infections, which is currently lost.

I like the idea. However, I would modify it so it works this way: The infected player CAN die. While infected, he damages all team mates within the area. His team mates are the ones who do not die. They merely fall down to a percentage of their maximum health (any lower than this and they don't take infection damage unless directly applied to them via an enemy Medic.) There could even be a punishment for purposely damaging a bunch of team mates: The more people you are damaging, the quicker you die.

Even if this were abused, I think it would be much more obvious who was abusing it. Infection spread does more than in-game confusion, the admins have to sort through all the infected and figure out who's making the first move.

I highly doubt you will ever see spreading brought back. That's just my opinion though, other devs may disagree with me on that.

I dont want any spreading to come back. Griefing is the main reason, and the 2nd, almost just as important reason, is that a player can have a negative effect on his team by accident. A stance the dev team has now, is that we believe no player should have the ability to hurt his team just because of some lack of knowledge or lack of skill. A player must always be, albeit small, positive force on your team.

If you want a totally noob-friendly game, TF2 is where it's at. Griefing is something Server Admins should deal with.

I like the modified infection spread mentioned, but I still think the person initially infected should be able to die from it(unless a medic heals them, of course). Perhapse no one it spreads to.... that would prevent griefing(for the most part), but still allow the infection to cause the disruption it should.

Gas nades were inneffective because they failed to cause confusion. The green misty screen was annoying, but didn't really DO anything.

I think the argument 'That's what admins are for!' is a cheap one. You acknowledge there is a problem, and instead of addressing it in the code ("the first line of defense") you pass the problem on to server admins who are not always available to keep the game fun and fair for everyone.

So is using a car to kill a pedestrian... should we make cars illegal?

this

whether or not admins are on hand to stop griefing, nothing about spreading is "noob friendly." With spreading, you can't control the new player who has no idea what is happening. So he runs around spreading the infection. Which means he ends up hurting his team simply by not knowing something, and that is not something we want to encourage ever.

That's an easy problem to solve: If you're the primary infected your subseptable to friendly fire to anyone you spread the infection too. If you're a griefer you're going to die quick, and it brings another element into the game: Infection now helps you turn someone else's team against a member.

As for a new member, that's additionally easy, a sound/message that says, "You've been infected by a medic!" And, "You infected a fellow team-mate, your score is lowered!" during "noob mode" which could be like a training flag for newer players while they play.

Scuzzy

That'd heighten the problem. The best thing to do in that situation would be to kill yourself immediately upon infection (a counter-intuitive thing to encourage, to say the least; plus, the infected doesn't deserve such a huge punishment for something so easily done by a medic). Players without that knowledge will either get killed by their own team or hurt their own team (a lose-lose).

Honestly, the medic's infection has no precedent in the game. The medic is the ONLY class that has the ability to deal damage to a player until they die. It doesn't fit the mold and so it must be removed or nurfed. While we're at it, see my discussion about the spy.

• 6-8 damage/tick, similar to what it is now, maybe a bit less.
• Infection works best when the medic is in close proximity.
• When medic leaves the area, or dies, drop damage to around 2/tick.
• Infection ends after around 15 seconds regardless.
• (Debatable)Can be spread, but has minimal effect regardless of location of medic.
• If spreadable, give immunity to infection for 15-30 seconds once over. This is to make it harder to grief.

Could still have some use, infecting the defense when they're going to be tightly clumped together, but it's not as irritating as it is now, where it's just a timer that you can't stop without a medic on D.

This is ALREADY what many players do upon being infected, so I don't see this is as a very valid argument against the changes. That's a little like saying changes to the sniper would encourage them to camp more.

Without spreading, there is some depth (this might not be the right word) in the choice of when/if to kill yourself when infected (would it help me if I killed myself now? when should I kill myself to minimize the impact of my death?). With spreading, you are automatically doing your team a potential disservice if you choose to stay alive (and with Scuzzy's "fix", your team would be making that choice for you by trying to kill you).

That aside, this is ridiculous:
If a change were to encourage sniper camping more, it wouldn't be "invalid" to argue that the change encouraged sniper camping. It'd be the truth. The prevalence of something doesn't change the fact that the prevalence can be influenced (unless you're saying that sniper camping and instant suiciding when infected are at their maximums; snipers couldn't camp more and infected players couldn't suicide faster).