So I know that very little gameplay is going to be changed before 2.0 is released now, it's all optimizing and bugfixing the combined 34 versions. Plus the test forum is going to be closed forever. So here are some things that I feel should be addressed or fixed once the ball starts rolling on balancing and improving 2.0, after it is released. If you guys have any to add, feel free, I'll edit the post. Obviously these are all 2.0 critiques, not 1.071 issues. So infantry and tank weapon balancing issues are not applied to 1.071. 1-13 are in order of importance (which screws with some posts that were made before prioritization); after that, I just had to start adding stuff in. 1. Scouts in general are still infrequently played on classic maps, indicating (to me, at least) that they're still rather useless in this situation. [bear in mind that they are perfectly fine on conquest maps, so the solution is not to improve their combat prowess but give them more strategic significance. And of course I list it first- if 25% of the choices you are presented with BEFORE ALL OTHERS in-game are wrong, that's a pretty big issue.] 1b. Scout Sticky Stun grenade is underpowered and fairly useless. [it's only useful if you have someone else immediately nearby to kill the tank, as a strategic asset, it's minimal.] Note: i said concussion. I meant sticky. Concs kick three types of ass. 2. HE cannon still used far more then any other cannon, suggesting other cannons need buffed/HE needs nerfed. (Maybe not the rail gun, but CERTAINLY the plasma cannon is crap, and I don't see the ranged used much.) My suggestion: make the ranged cannon the best damage ESPECIALLY for tank combat but also against buildings, make plasma not suck (this should be the best at tank combat, anyway), and make HE the weakest BUT useful against everything (as it already it). I don't know where the rail gun would fit on this pattern. I don't know the numbers, someone who knows the weapon stats should take a look at it. If what I described is what is intended right now, it's not the case. Plasma sucks and no one uses ranged. Ever. 3. Generally, and this is a very broad, very weak statement, the advanced coolant is the best choice in tanks, afaik. I rarely see gas turbine, I NEVER see fission, and bio and 3-phase are secondary at best. You almost always see coolant researched first, if any others are researched at all. 4. Plasma Cannon vs. Plasma Machine gun- MG is stronger, cannon is a P.O.S. 5. Melee skill is totally useless in classic maps and fairly useless in conquest maps- you only take this when you want to screw around. In serious games no one EVER takes this. Like the scout, the problem is not combat prowess but strategic significance. Just being a deadly melee master (which you WILL be with the current skill) isn't enough to justify taking it. 6. Rifleman Improved Vehicle Damage skill is still useless, i don't think anyone changed it since i brought up the issue: observe. (Despite the damage statements made by a variety of people in this thread, dizzyone's calculations in the thread mentioned in problem 11 prove that the added damage is negligible) 7. The commander mass-enemy-select skill: imo, way overpowered. Should be limited or restricted somehow, and perhaps the comm should be given some other ability to compensate. 8. Glycen City mini-flags have no affect noticeable effect on resources after the first minute, and are useless as resource flow points, only as tactical infantry stations. 10. Make the armor and certain weapon descriptions in the VF not suck- [current flavor text will only confuse and frustrate people. The description of the vehicle armors in the customization screen should either include the strengths and weaknesses of each armor in the description, or just eliminate the flavor text altogether and ONLY keep strengths and weaknesses. MGs suffer likewise.] 11. To a lesser extent, these skills need buffed: Stamina Upgrade, Regen health. AND FOR GOD'S SAKE, RADAR STEALTH. (that 'skill' is so damn useless.) [Dizzy brought it up here. If there are others, mention them, but I can't think of them right now.] 13. 28.5% of District402 is useless and pointless- by the time either team breaches the middle and gains the next flag, the game is essentially over, or it's significantly leaning towards one side. By the time either team reaches the next flag, the game is over. The losing team will NOT bounce back and recover middle without suffering a fatally large ticket loss. Ticket bleed ensures that it is virtually impossible to reach the last flag for either team before the game ends. This seems like an awfully big waste of map. This is not judging ticket bleed in any way--I'm just saying that, as is, 2 of the 7 flags in district are pointless except for making one team spawn further back (which just makes it that much harder to bounce back from a loss, anyway). 15. Emp_escort needs balancing. Without nukes, BE can not win. However, people who don't want nukes outnumber people who do want nukes by a factor of six to one. So the answer must be re-organizing the map, or some other solution. Numerous re-maps already on the table, solokiller probably has something in the mapping forum somewhere. 16. Plasma weaponry can be cheap or detrimental to gameplay. At least a sizeable portion of people feel this way (although I am still undecided on the issue), because all they do is cause both tanks to mutually stall resulting in a stationary exchange of intermittent gunfire, which I don't think anyone likes. I have no solution to this, to fix the problem would require changing the very coding of the weapons (one assumes) to make them affect tanks in ways other then adding heat. Sandbag mentioned maybe halting the tank's turret/crosshair movement temporarily, for example. Without the balancing in problem 4 and a larger number of people demanding plasma be changed, this will probably remain a miner or even inconsequential issue. Deleted/Non-Issues: 9. NF heavy rifle balance: no community demand 12-server plugins: are for servers 14-new tech icons: rejected by developers
1b. Conc disables turrets. (AFAIK) 2. Either you're retarded or you want to nerf everything. Try to play 1.07 and 1.08 and you'll instantly see that games that should be won after 5 minutes take 2 hours in 1.08 just because SC sucks. The answer is to unnerf SC (leave the weight changes) NOT TO nerf the HE. Otherwise we'll end up with a game that every idiot can play for hours BUT it will last hours even when 1 team is 100 times better than the other. No fun at all. 3. 3phase got nerfed as a side effect of slowing it down so people won't slide. It isn't faster than bio diesel now. 6. It is useful but 10% seems quite small and you won't notice if you don't count the shots needed to destroy enemy. This small 10% of damage changes balance of the tank fight and gives you much bigger chances to win. 7. it's fine. I can do that with lots of clicking anyway. Camera was changed so you won't see enemy all the time. I don't know if commander spotting wasn't already changed that way. 9. it isn't 12. server mods like manimod are for that.
1b. typo, i meant stun stickies; concs kick ass and do not affect tanks at all 2. people who want to unnerf standard cannon are in the minority, and the answer, as i add to my post, is not nerfing HE to the point where they all suck, it's nerfing HE slightly but making the other cannons much MUCH more effective. You yourself would have to be retarded if you deny the fact that any good commander researches HE cannons, and doesn't worry about anything--ANYTHING--else in cannons, and most of the time, in other weapons, too. That signifies an imbalance with the HE. I would go so far as to argue to bring back the old plasma cannon that utterly decimated tanks-- at least then people would have some variety, and some sort of option in research. Furthermore, making the standard cannon an effective killing tool against everything would again make medium tanks and heavy tanks utterly useless, and we'd be back to 1.07, where the LT just pwned everything else in existence. Buffing the standard cannon would have the following result: people use standard, then HE. Then ignore everything else completely, all the time, because now they have a good advanced weapon AND a good basic weapon. 6. look at dizzy's thread I mention in 11- he does the math. That 10% is almost completely ignored, and any affect it has is all in your head. The numbers add up, and even if they didn't, it doesn't matter because no one uses the skill, which means something needs changed. also, thought of another one. Added as #13.
2: I'd like to see plasma cannon damage increased to something slightly below HE and doing a lot of damage to infantry like HE. I don't know why not many people use ranged cannon. Does almost as much damage as HE and the shell practically flies in a straight line now. 3: I personally prefer bio-diesel in tanks. 13: I'd like to see only the 2nd last flags of each side bleed tickets. That way, you can't just hold middle for the win and it provides an end to the stalemates that usually occured before bleed was introduced. District was more fun with longer games and the 2nd last flag ticket bleed will prevent the end game, revive stalemate thing.
I think maybe some alleyways that open into the middle flag for District would make it less of a stalemate Also, tank weapons, HE should be an all round weapon, while Plasma should be close range anti tank, ranged anti tank at a distance, and rail should be good against buildings, okay against tanks.
and whatever happened to those custom engine and armor icons? that would add some nice polish to things. Added as #14. [warning, the thread is freaking huge.]
Personally, I would like to see HE nerfed so it's useless against tanks, but great against infantry and buildings, because that makes more sense. Range Cannon should be powerful against tank, since it fires a higher velocity shell. Standard cannon is suppose to be the base of all tank cannon, therefore, it should be just a balanced tank cannon which can attack everything effectively, but not as much good as specialized cannon (such as HE against infantry). As for plasma, it's primary purpose is to deal heat damage, but PMG does a much better job, so either PMG be removed, or the overheating effect should be longer lasting (this will also make bio-desel engine useful) Rail gun in current version of the game has no clear role. Can't offer any suggestion to fix it though.
Plamsa Idea How about plasma also has the added effect of a 1-2 sec emp on the enemy tank every time it hits? This would make it more usefull as the enemy would not be able to do anything (including moving his turret) allowing you to move around him where he cant hit you. But maybe balance it so the emp cant stack and have tanks be permenantly disabled by continuous fire (some sort of time between emps maybe).
Ranged doesn't fire a higher velocity shell atm(if it does it is a marginal increase in speed). Plasma overall is just lame. It does nothing for tank combat. Having a weapon that stalls an enemy tank a bunch is no fun. It slows tank combat to a crawl. So much has been changed with pricing and vehicle weights(and other things) that boosting SC isn't going to make it like 1.071. LTs have too little armor and it's not like you can straight tech to arties for late game pwnage.
ranged doesn't have a higher velocity shell, it just has less gravity. funny huh? well it does actually make sense as aerodynamic shells will dip less i guess. I agree that HE should be "nerf'd" by increasing the other other cannons. I also entirely agree with simon: slowing tank battles to a crawl is exactly what plamsa does, which isn't fun for the tank being shot or the tank doing the shooting, which gets almost as much heat itself. this means that when plamsa cannon is used, both tanks just heat up to the point that they are just sitting opposite eachother, stalled, occasionally getting off a shot and then being stalled again. Lets look at what plasma is meant to do: give the enemy more heat than yourself. if the plamsa cannon, as it is in it's current version, gives you almost as much heat, then given occasional misses on your behalf all the cannon is at the moment is mutually assured stalling. what if instead it stuns the enemy, preventing them rotating turret and giving them a little bit of heat, the amount that the railgun currently gives in one shot, while heating you up only a tiny bit, as the railgun does. this would be much more fun for all involved. better damage vs infantry isn't a bad idea either. currently the railgun is all about heat. the railgun currently gives you more of a heat advantage (i.e their heat aquired minus your heat aquired) than plamsa does. also: what is with the ability to fire off a shot when you don't have the required heat for it? this game would be much much better if you had to have the required heat to fire a shot. less sitting stalled because you overheated shooting a ref. no more getting one heat bar free even though your enemy is constantly firing plasma shells into you, and then firing a nuke off. nukes. there's another thing i've got grief with. currently they seem only good because of the heat that they give to the target. although they are good against infantry, they seem to do terrible damage to tanks and buildings.... really terrible. given their weight, cost to research and sacrifice by using them, they should certainly do double damage to structures and 1.5x damage to vehicles than what they do now. ------------------------------------------- i also prefer bio desiel... i hate getting stalled and then just sitting there while i get pounded. --------- I think district would be better if instead of ticket bleed, there were other sanctions for the loosing team. I'm thinking double respawn time, perhaps to x3 when they're on the last flag.
One of the BIGGEST issues on the table right now--- ESCORT! Also plasma weaponry being cheap, total overhaul of the game mechanics needed? Idk, this idea requires serious debate and discussion. added.
