Rogatien Merc
Red Star.
EoN.
1438
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Posted - 2013.10.10 12:20:00 -
[1] - Quote
IMHO Points should be raised to 20% for 90 seconds - this means 5*20% = 100% of the average of your squad's WP gains. 90 seconds gives your squad time to fight to and through a moderately-defended enemy emplacement/objective and return to the dropship for further transport.
It seems based on previously OP DS iterations like they went conservative with points to keep DS pilots at a sort of mean-of-squad WP gain based on outlier 'best case' squad gameplay. That is, you have a balanced squad of 5x lethal, competent squadmates in your DS and you are doing pickups/dropoffs playing lillypad warfare between objectives every 60 seconds between hacks. The new crater map is actually pretty cool for this. Keeping the WP at the current 15% for 60sec levels leaves room for additional WP generation mechanics in the future - implimentation of WP for vehicle scanning, MCRU spawn points, ADS kills/kill assists (when returned), and keeping it at 60 seconds requires the DS be actively transporting people rather than transporting as an afterthought between other activities
^---- above/below are my thoughts on their thinking, not an endorsement of design choices ---v.
Their worst-case "OMFG Dropships are ******* OP!!!!" situation occurs when piloting mechanics are smooth enough that current top-tier ADS pilots are insanely scary and can stay on target killing turrets, tanks, targets on roofs and in the open while doing aforementioned "competent-squad" lilly-pad operations and passively generating WP using uplinks and hives placed on towers, a vehicle scanner and their transportation bonus at the same time as AV nerfs allow a dropship to hover over and kill a swarm launcher with minimal consideration of the swarms he is launching, then zip to the other side of the map and clear a ridge of snipers before picking up his squad to move to the next objective right before his transportation points from the last objective kick in...
The issue is, we are no where near the above 'worst case': current handling and AV mechanics do not allow superstar performances they fear, and current map design/gameplay meta do not favor suck lillypadding ... redlines are too frequent and ground-based transportation is faster than land/pickup/move-to-drop on many of the smaller maps. Which is why I think that a bump to 20% transportee WP for 90 seconds is legitimate. The community would just have to be ok with that getting nerfed in the future to keep DS WP gains within CCP's tolerance levels if other WP-accrual methods are implimented.
So yeah. For now it sucks giant balls. |