BL4CKST4R
La Muerte Eterna
Dark Taboo
3155
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Posted - 2014.09.28 04:59:00 -
[1] - Quote
Heavies and Scouts
The current meta of the game is heavies and scouts, with mediums thrown in for extra points. It is easy to see why heavies and scouts are just better than anything else, but it is difficult to create a solution. But if we can understand the cause of the problem, we can maybe get closer to finding a solution, and a step closer towards balance.
This is my reasoning as to why the current meta is such.
To create balance, in a simple statement, everything must have a counter, and that counter must have a counter. For example, the counter to Microwarpdrive is a warp jammer, and the counter to a jammer is a warp core stabalizer. Simple. In Dust we have and had the foundation for such balance, but we lack now it and lost it then. In Dust, in it's current state, heavies (hmg heavies) counter almost everything (shotty scouts) along with themselves and scouts counter everything along with themselves, while commando-heavies and medium suits are just thrown in the mix to fulfill a role that is, well taken already.
The situation goes deeper as we find that some suits have specific and obvious roles that cannot be met due to the imbalance
of the meta. Roles that the purpose of which was that they could only perform them have been taken up by suits who's true purpose have been obscured. Equally the roles that are meant to be fulfileld are so narrow that it leaves no room for variation, your either the best for that role or your not.
For example:
>A heavy suit is considered a CQC suit... so is an Assault suit, specially the Gallente and Minmatar, yet it is fairly obvious which is the better of the two for the role. Any suit who goes toe to toe with a heavy, regardless if both have the same "role" the heavy wins.
>A scout is considered a tactical EWAR suit, with team support and intel gathering built in, but so is a Logistics again it is obvious which one perform the better role. Not only that but scouts perform this role passively leaving room for other, functions like better damage output, or the fabled Logi-scouts. Any suit who tries to have EWAR like a scout (Gal logi Active scanners) is going to find the scout to be far superior at the role.
I can continue on with this list, but basically the majority of all roles available in the field can be done, and over accomplished by two suits leaving mediocrity to be shared amongst the rest. One might even ask, what is the true purpose of a Sentinel, what is the true purpose of an Assault, the answers will never be the same because the purpose of each and every suit has been merged into this mess that we call our Meta.
As I recall from my times in beta a heavy suit was purposed as a tactical defense unit, low mobility and team dependent; an Assault suit was the suit purposed with breaching this defense wall, or defending its weak spots able to out maneuver the heavy and lay down heavy damage to an unprepared group; and the scouts purpose was to prevent the Assault from doing so, by either using stealth techniques to slow down the enemy, using superior reconnaissance to alert his team, or overwhelming the Assaults with their superior speed, finding themselves at bay vs a heavy due to their superior damage and ROF. This was, in theory, balance. Simply put, Scouts > Assaults > Heavies > Scouts. Then thrown in the mix where the Logistics whose sole purpose was the buff the aspects of each, a group of Assaults with a Logistics would have an easier time breaching an objective, a group of scouts with a Logistics had superior intel, and we can see what a Logistic and a heavy can do now.
In my opinion we need to go back to the roots that founded this game, the majestic triage of balance that has built the meta of our parent game EVE, a balance that remains to this day and continues to change; the balance that, for a brief period, although a difficult one, was leading the future of this game.
tl;dr :
1) give every suit a specific role, that only they can accomplish
2) give every suit a counter, and a counter to their counter
3) give every role a purpose on the field, unsurpassed by another. So that when preparing a squad, the most optimal choice is not 6 heavies or 6 scouts, but a mixture of every class and role, because each one has an essential purpose in the field
** Yeah I know scouts destroyed heavies in Beta but thats because CCP didn't, and hasn't, added inertia to movement.
supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
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BL4CKST4R
La Muerte Eterna
Dark Taboo
3155
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Posted - 2014.09.28 05:11:00 -
[2] - Quote
LUGMOS wrote:I think with the ttk how it is right now is what hurts balance. Why would you ever die so fast in a "tactical" shooter?
Well the TTK isn't to crazy, it depends on the weapon and suit tier. A heavy obviously takes an extremely long time to kill, but his TTK against you is a blink of an eye, same with the shotgun in the hands of a scout. Other than that the average TTK is about 2 seconds which is fairly long considering in most FPS you die in 3 shots, even tactical ones, of course tactical also require the use of tactics a feature Dust is truly lacking at the moment.
supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
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BL4CKST4R
La Muerte Eterna
Dark Taboo
3159
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Posted - 2014.09.28 12:07:00 -
[3] - Quote
Adipem Nothi wrote:BL4CKST4R wrote:... give every role a purpose on the field, unsurpassed by another. So that when preparing a squad, the most optimal choice is not 6 heavies or 6 scouts, but a mixture of every class and role ...
I agree very much with the statement above, and I believe we're getting closer and closer to seeing this realized. At no point in the history of Uprising have we been closer to balance.
I believe one final pass to just overall balance with a goal of defining the role of each suit, their weapons, and vehicles, then looking at how each role will play within the boundaries of the game in it's current state and we could say a major improvement in the game. (easier said than done) The buff-nerf cycle that rattati has been implementing has been working, but without a direction (not to say he doesn't have one) the cycle will continue to go on forever, or it will just end abruptly and incomplete.
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