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True Adamance
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Posted - 2014.03.27 11:18:00 -
[1] - Quote
The first of several I have no doubt addressing the statistics put forth by CCP for their coming "hotfix".
As many regular forum goers know I am a strong advocate of vehicles and vehicle based play as well as in primacy a proud tanker despite the general "over poweredness" of the HAV in its current iteration.
Additionally as many of the Old Guard might know I am a strong advocate for balance between the two, historically, warring factions trying to be both understand and generous with suggestions that might have repercussion on HAV, my primary experience with vehicles, and by extension dropships and future lighter vehicle frames
However I feel as though CCP has once again swung the nerf hammer when only slight tweaks were required to bring AV into the fold more.
Mistake me not this is not QQ, how could it be, I haven't tested HAV with the aforementioned statistical changes, and I reserve the right to admit, when and if such changes are implemented, I was wrong.
However looking at the proposed, or slated changes I am concerned about Vehicle play in general.
My personal opinion regarding vehicles and of course HAV, the prime culprit and source of player concern, is that in many cases it was relatively balanced. In this regard I refer to vehicle vs vehicle gameplay, with the primary exception of the Large Railgun turret which has also been the source of much community wide concern.
Though I must admit when it came to AV.... well....infantry based weaponry was sub par with the exclusion of the Forge Gun, which was still practicle but typically at higher Tiers and SP investments.
However throughout 1.8 I have seen some very potent combinations and users of AV weaponry which have resulted in my destruction within very short, and IMO very balanced time spans.
Regardless I shall address the main issues as I see them.
1.)Vehicle hardeners have been reduced in effectiveness (Armour 40% -> 25%, Shield 60% -> 40%)
2.)Large and small railgun range reduced
3.)Reduced max vehicles deployed per team in Ambush and Ambush OMS to two.
1.) In actuality I had no issues with direct nerfs to the values of the hardener modules across both shield and armour. In many cases I saw the source of infantry/AV frustration with vehicles lay in the Hardeners allowing vehicles to resist insane amount of damage and for all intensive purposes remain perma hardened. However I feel other changes could have been better implemented in conjunction with a smaller nerf to dissuade and relieve the issues surrounding hardners.
On the whole I believed that Hardners should have been de-incentivised and opposed to reduced in function, tweaked as opposed to nerfed.
As in previous threads I had opened up a number of suggestions regarding manners in which we could achieve this goal without resorting to what currently is scheduled to be done.
a.) Reduced the resistance values of Shield hardeners by 10% (from 60% to 50%) and armour Hardeners by 5% (from 40% to 35%) with progressive alterations to the aforementioned values depending on player feed back. I feel like this approach would have worked better than a full and heavy handed alteration as now any such cocerns of statement from pilots regarding this subject are likely to be met with derision and claims of needing a crutch. Instead we as a community could have slightly nerfed the effectiveness and over time as CCP saw it fit to experimented with further resistance value alterations.
b.) Increase in the fitting requirements of Hardner units on vehicles. Increases to PG and CPU usage that would have directly de-incentivised the stacking of multiple modules as the higher fitting costs makes it more difficult to fit other modules and turrets of higher tiers.
c.) implemented a system akin to the Cloak field recharge time preventing further module activation until initially activated modules have finished half of their cool down timer. This is feel has some promised though feel free to disagree. It would have reinforced the waves of opportunity by preventing multiple and consecutive hardener activation, though not prevented HAV pilot from making tactical module choices to allow for secondary hardeners over other utility based modules.
What I fear the current proposed values will do are instead.
Encourage more stacking and duplicate activations of modules trying to reach previous, especially in HAV, causing more use of the contentious Nitrous Injector Modules to rush into combat and out before the 36 seconds is up.
While I feel it has balanced lower tier AV better against HAV frames..... I fear higher Tier AV for which we Vehicle pilots have no equivalent to are going to decimate the destroy vehicle combat on maps from high locations. I fear this will have a more detrimental affect on Dropships whose armour values are naturally lower and therefore more susceptible to AV.
Encourage a type of HAV and dropship gameplay that is less intense, exciting, and generally geared to exploitation of camping, duplicate module activation, and prevent continued use of HAV in support of infantry.
However at the same time I see many positives.
Pilots will now have to be more cautious and tactical with their modules.
AV values remain static for further tweaking of vehicles around AV.
HAV are less valuable on the map if a prototype AV presence is active.
2.)I have concerns about hard capping the range value of the Railgun. I feel a better balancing set of tweaks could have been applied without causing issue. I see huge logical fallacy and weakness in the fact that now Large Railguns are essentially large potato guns and even sniper rifles outrange them.
I saw no real reason to nerf the range of Rail Turrets despite their use in the redline. Instead I felt other attributes like RoF, tracking speed, and elevation should have been tweaked before touching range.
To be Continued.
"Get thine Swag out of my face! Next you'll be writing #YOLOswagforJamyl in all your posts!"
-Dagger Two
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True Adamance
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Posted - 2014.03.27 11:18:00 -
[2] - Quote
Reserved
"Get thine Swag out of my face! Next you'll be writing #YOLOswagforJamyl in all your posts!"
-Dagger Two
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True Adamance
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Posted - 2014.03.27 11:30:00 -
[3] - Quote
1pawn dust wrote:Wait does this mean Swarms will stand a chance against HAV again?
*breaks out umbrella*
In sincerely hope they do. To my understand something was amiss with the swarm damage application....though I have heard it was exclusive to dropships and that swarms were just.....naturally bad....
In any case I would definitely like to see swarms re-establish themselves as a functional and widely used AV weapon.
"Get thine Swag out of my face! Next you'll be writing #YOLOswagforJamyl in all your posts!"
-Dagger Two
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True Adamance
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Posted - 2014.03.27 11:40:00 -
[4] - Quote
1pawn dust wrote:Swarms were historically bad against shields, and ADS had that nifty %dmg reduction which meant swarms were generally bad against them anyway.
Its a shame CCP are hitting the dmg reduction of hardeners as it kills DS outright now whenever they get in range of whatever their task is if AV is around.
Also a hard cap on hardener mounted/ cycle time per meta/ more appropiate stacking penalty etc would have been better.
HAV warfare will now be reduced on *shotgun* miltia rail tanks blazing everything and AV although a long way from fixed, will be superficially somewhat improved although still fundamentally flawed.
Fundamentally flawed and only tapped up with a two dollar pack of bandages.
As for vehicle vs vehicle combat we had a nifty thing going on..... I suppose that shouldn't change a great deal with the new changes...... but I am still concerned that against AV HAV will now be untenable.....not that HAV should be able to shrug off everything.
But I would like them to retain some measure of durability and presence on the map.....we will have to see how the meta evolves and how HAV develop.
I personally cannot speak for Dropships or ADS so I will have an ask around of some that I know, other perhaps I will have to contact to find out their opinions on the matter and bring them to the fore.
"Get thine Swag out of my face! Next you'll be writing #YOLOswagforJamyl in all your posts!"
-Dagger Two
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True Adamance
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Posted - 2014.03.27 11:46:00 -
[5] - Quote
Billi Gene wrote:with any luck these changes are a foreshadow of advanced and proto tanks and dropships (assault dropships come up as standard via intel)
I already feel like HAV are slowly reverting back to 1.6..... I mean 25% hardeners? Those were the prototype armour hardeners of 1.5 and we were able to stack not just those but plates, passive resistance plating, and utility modules.
Perhaps with any luck we might see the revival of HAV with module lay outs akin to 1.6 Madrugar as our prototype gear.
"Get thine Swag out of my face! Next you'll be writing #YOLOswagforJamyl in all your posts!"
-Dagger Two
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True Adamance
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Posted - 2014.03.27 12:00:00 -
[6] - Quote
XxGhazbaranxX wrote:True Adamance wrote:
2.)I have concerns about hard capping the range value of the Railgun. I feel a better balancing set of tweaks could have been applied without causing issue. I see huge logical fallacy and weakness in the fact that now Large Railguns are essentially large potato guns and even sniper rifles outrange them.
moderately agree with most of the points except this. When a good rail tanker can kill a vehicle in 3 shots, it could hardly be called a potato gun. Their range was too much making them be able to engage without any sort of real threat. This topic has been beat to death already so overall, now railtanker have to actually get in harms way just like every other large turret user does. I use missiles mostly and trust me, they have that range and it won't make the large rails any less effective. Rail tanker will just have to get good now and risk losing it if they want map control.
My hyperbole regarding "potato gun" refers to the weapons newly halved range and nothing more.
I understand the nature of being popped with 3 shots, however I don't feel that is necessarily game breaking, however the rate of fire and elevation at which the turret could function to were indeed aspects of what made the Rail Turret go above and beyond its role.
In many cases, as you say, where and HAV or Dropship is destroyed in 3 shots you are likely hit and shaken by the initial round, as there is no real delay between follow up rounds you are likely to take 2 such rounds to the vehicle before you are able to sufficiently react to its presence.
And for dropships the speed of tracking on the rail coupled with the elevation it could aim up to meant that there were very few routes a pilot could take before reaching a "safe zone" beyond the Railguns engagement range.
I do not feel like we should penalise Railgunners for having good aim, what we should do instead is focus on making the management of the weapon and vehicles itself more difficult.
Though as you say its range still sits firmly above missiles and blasters....though I cannot help but wonder logically how a Sniper Rifle, based on the same technology can engage enemies are a further distance than a cannon 10x's its size and power.......
"Get thine Swag out of my face! Next you'll be writing #YOLOswagforJamyl in all your posts!"
-Dagger Two
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True Adamance
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Posted - 2014.03.27 12:02:00 -
[7] - Quote
Judge Rhadamanthus wrote:There seems to be some confusion with the current rail range of 600m being called long range. it's not long range at all. It's close to infinite range.
Remember our entire world is the playable map area. This is the only place we exist in. A weapon that can shoot across this entire area can in effect shoot across our entire world. Most maps are only 600 meters wide at their most distant engageable points.
That does make for some perspective.
Still, and while I can agree with what you have said, not just in this post, but in your video's which I have watched I still take issue with having a small arms rifle that can engage at longer range than its large cousin.....though I am sure there are logically ways to explain such a mechanic.
While sound....it feels counter intuitive.
"Get thine Swag out of my face! Next you'll be writing #YOLOswagforJamyl in all your posts!"
-Dagger Two
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True Adamance
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Posted - 2014.03.27 12:04:00 -
[8] - Quote
Takahiro Kashuken wrote:With hardeners will have to see how it goes
If it becomes like pre1.7 infantry will be happy again if proto AV does chew a basic tank, my most expenisve tank is 700k but if it cant stand up to 1 proto AV then give me my proto hull so i can
I feel tho that i will have alot more survivability in my DS tbh, redline rail cant shoot far/same with FG, small rails are more useless but even so to hit my DS you will have to be quick and generally come out to play but it could be weaker due to hardener nerf and if it is then it could be a big nerf to the DS again
And this is where I need knowledgeable players like you and Judge to present such opinions, to rationalise them through to me so I can then make my own opinions.
If I were a competent dropship pilot would I settle for life on the ground?
"Get thine Swag out of my face! Next you'll be writing #YOLOswagforJamyl in all your posts!"
-Dagger Two
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True Adamance
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Posted - 2014.03.27 12:28:00 -
[9] - Quote
I'm seeing very valid points from everyone.
Please if you all get the chance please post back here with interpretations of the hot fix.
"Get thine Swag out of my face! Next you'll be writing #YOLOswagforJamyl in all your posts!"
-Dagger Two
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True Adamance
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Posted - 2014.03.27 12:44:00 -
[10] - Quote
ResistanceGTA wrote:True Adamance wrote:Takahiro Kashuken wrote:With hardeners will have to see how it goes
If it becomes like pre1.7 infantry will be happy again if proto AV does chew a basic tank, my most expenisve tank is 700k but if it cant stand up to 1 proto AV then give me my proto hull so i can
I feel tho that i will have alot more survivability in my DS tbh, redline rail cant shoot far/same with FG, small rails are more useless but even so to hit my DS you will have to be quick and generally come out to play but it could be weaker due to hardener nerf and if it is then it could be a big nerf to the DS again And this is where I need knowledgeable players like you and Judge to present such opinions, to rationalise them through to me so I can then make my own opinions. If I were a competent dropship pilot would I settle for life on the ground? While I'm just a hobbyist, I'll probably keep my boots on the ground for the time being, more so because of the new suits I have and the fun I'm having super hacking objectives while a Sentinel, Commando, and a Logi create a distraction for me. On the Hardners.. I'm on the fence. As a guy who would pull out Proto Swarms and some Lai Dais, I like it. As a Dropship hobbyist, I'm afraid. I think some form of stacking penalty would have been better (fought in a game with one of those triple hardened Pythons yesterday, and, well, I stopped wasting my Missiles once I realized that was his fit). Or maybe some look at the damage mods, those seem to be one of the bigger issues when it comes to Railguns. As to the range reduction, I think with it being a hotfix, CCP is limited in what all they can change, mainly simple item values. Too much tinkering requires a patch, which requires way more time. All in all, excellent post True. And excellent feedback everyone. PS: If you get a chance, you have a shockingly high number of typos in the OP.
My apologies I have been pulling long hours and unable to sleep as long as I would like..... its 2am here and I've been up this late for the last week and still doing a 7am-5pm shift..... thank god tomorrow is the weekend
"Get thine Swag out of my face! Next you'll be writing #YOLOswagforJamyl in all your posts!"
-Dagger Two
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