What If We Had Health Gates?

fluffycannibalb16_ESO · March 2015

As a fairly squishy, not-always-very-good Nightblade, I seem to suffer a fair amount from virtual insta-death - there's been times in Cyrodil that, thanks to action cancelling, I've been hit by Poison Arrow 5 times in less than 2 seconds by the same player on top of all sorts of other damage coming at me, and although these situations are rare, and probably 90% of them only happen in PvP, they're annoying as hell. Basically, I'm sick of being unable to anything to prevent my own death because I'm being ganked and it's all over quicker than a virgin with their High School Prom date.

However, there is a potential solution to this: Health Gates. I'm not sure of how many games use this mechanic, but Mass Effect is one of them and here's an explanation of what it is and how it works from one of Mass Effect's developers:

Eric Fagnan wrote:

We have two damage gates in the game. When your shields hit zero, for a small duration you become invulnerable to damage preventing any health damage from taking place. Similarly, when your health gets below 5% you become invulnerable to damage for a short time. The duration of these gates change based on difficulty and they are listed below:
- Bronze 0.5 seconds
- Silver 0.25 seconds
- Gold 0.1 seconds
- Platinum 0.01 seconds

There is also a cooldown on both gate mechanics, preventing you from becoming invulnerable too often. You can only get the benefits of the shield gate once every 4 seconds, and once every 3 seconds for the health gate. This means that if your shields hit zero on Bronze, for example, you become invulnerable for 0.5 seconds, but if your shields get restored through a Geth Turret, a Volus Shield Boost, Stim Pack, or some other means, and your shields go down again after the 0.5 second window and within 4 seconds you will not get a second window of invulnerability.

Obviously if ESO had a similar mechanic then it would have to be balanced differently, and possibly weaker, because this is a completely different game, I just think (and have done for a long time that this would/could be a good idea, and would help to combat the one-button-pushing-lag-trains that are slowly taking over Cyrodil.

Any thoughts on this?

ArconSeptim · March 2015

We are not making ESO to LOL someone said

frould · March 2015

More mechanic more bugs and i don't like.

demonaffinity · March 2015

Quite frankly, it sounds like damage just need to be scaled down a bit in PvP to make battles last longer.

Nestor · March 2015

If your getting singled out and attacked, then run with a group.

Valencer · March 2015

Mass Effect 3's health/shield gate mechanics exist in a different context though. On the higher difficulty levels, even regular enemies do so much damage that for some characters abusing the hell out of health/shield gate is the only way to survive at all.

And ME3 only has co-op PvE multiplayer. Introducing health gate to a PvP environment is a completely different beast. You can imagine it might be very frustrating to not be able to finish someone off because some arbitrary gameplay mechanic gives him/her invulnerability.

Xjcon · March 2015

So because you die in pvp we need to change the mechanics of the game? I would suggest getting decent pvp gear.

Ashigaru · March 2015

I have a feeling that no matter what your health is your going to die, most people that start looking for excuses why they get rolled in pvp should start looking at themselves first.

fluffycannibalb16_ESO · March 2015

Nestor wrote: »

If your getting singled out and attacked, then run with a group.

I do, but it's a small guild-only group and when you've only got 15 players and a train of 50 comes at you, then there's sweet F.A. that you can do to help yourself. Also, I get ganked more presumably because until recently I was a significantly lower rank than my guild mates.

Valencer wrote: »

Mass Effect 3's health/shield gate mechanics exist in a different context though. On the higher difficulty levels, even regular enemies do so much damage that for some characters abusing the hell out of health/shield gate is the only way to survive at all.

And ME3 only has co-op PvE multiplayer. Introducing health gate to a PvP environment is a completely different beast. You can imagine it might be very frustrating to not be able to finish someone off because some arbitrary gameplay mechanic gives him/her invulnerability.

I get what you're saying, but I'm not suggesting something as powerful as the ME3 version, but something more scaled down, that would only really make a difference in situations where you're heavily outnumbered (I was in a small team recently trying to take a resource in Cyrodil when we were hit by a train of around 40-50 players and we just didn't stand a chance in hell of killing anyone) or being attacked by something very OP (like 20k Jesus Beams). I know the solution to being outnumbered is to find a bigger group, but PvP shouldn't be dominated by huge trains the way that it is. IMO a modest health gate could combat these trains and make good tactics more viable instead.

BlackEar · March 2015

Seems to be a problem with action cancelling more than anything.

Other than that, it also seems like you should reevaluate your gear and attributes.

fluffycannibalb16_ESO · March 2015

/facepalm

I knew this would happen.

I'm not looking for an excuse for why I die, I know that at least some of the time it's my own fault, I'm well aware that everyone's going to die eventually. I'm just suggesting an idea for something to combat those situations where the main reason you died is because you took too many attacks too quickly and unless you're a VR14 DK in Legendary armor then you're going down before you can finish saying "What the fuuuuuuu?!"

Shadesofkin · March 2015

I find the idea novel, but I would be against it in practice.

starkerealm · March 2015

Isn't there already a health gate set bonus? As in, "when your health drops below 20%, provides a damage shield for X" or something like that. I kinda remember seeing something like that and thinking "yeah, that's worthless."

EDIT: Whitestrake's Retribution. Only it's at 30%, not 20.