I've explained what I want before, but I don't feel like searching for it so I'll go again:
Shields are useful. They reflect the fact that players will be hit by random non-lethal bullets a lot. The armor system was not as lenient, nor designed with that in mind. That is to say shields should be designed to block the random few shots you take when stepping out of a doorway or running to a new position.
Health should be on most of the classes 4 times larger than shields proportionally. That is if you hit someone's shield down then you do health damage promoting skilled focus fire.
Armor should exist as both a modifier for damage and a physical bar for some classes (heavy and max) and as an upgrade via resources as a choice among better shield modules and other things.
Related to this thread.
So basically a nice shield, armor, and health system.
The other option I'd prefer is if the shield bar was also an energy bar similar to the old stamina bar where shield modules have efficiency ratings. The reason for this is because I'd prefer if the shield was partly optional acting like personal shield and a choice among powering many implants. So by default passive shields are on, but say a person had an implant that cost energy they could turn off passive shielding to use the energy for an implant or other ability.
Related to this thread. Opens up more combat choices and customization for players.
Originally Posted by Zekeen
While I understand what they are after, I myself, do not like the idea of going to shields. It takes out a LOT of tactical elements and they are making the game a bit too fast paced as is. Armor gave you a greater sense of vulnerability, made you think on your next move after every conflict cause it kept you alive. Shields just keep going and going. I makes combat too different, and that's not just nostalgia speaking. Personally, I think shields can work as an armor class of their own, but we need armor.
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I think armor took out the tactical part of combat. It was more of a logistics issue if anything. You had people taking one or two bullets and they'd feel obligated to go armor up. Shields remove that for the few random bullets you take. I agree though that shields over armor is logical. However, you might as well just have more health. As long as shields are smaller and health is huge you end up with the same system and you make the medic class useful. We don't need both engineers and medics. It got pretty retarded in PS1 having to use two tools to get a person patched up. Ideally with a lot of health a medic can handle things in a cleaner way. Armor if it exists should be unique with how it can be damaged. So you might shoot a heavy unit and do a ton of armor damage and without that armor modifier their health goes down easier. Those kinds of things promote skill based gameplay and choices.