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Victor Moody Stahl
Amarr Templars
Amarr Empire
48
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Posted - 2014.10.24 17:10:00 -
[1] - Quote
I'm halfway liking and halfway not-liking this... but it mostly comes down to preference, if I'm honest.
On the whole- I really like heavies with heavy weapons being effective over range. That is, IMO, something that's also logical. Any argument of "a heavy at range will be impossible to kill" is very effectively neutered by the fact that heavies that are speedfit are also not as durable, and will want to be closer, where you can probably shotgun them.
Heavies that are not speedfit are therefore slow, which means that if you're smart you could probably either run a heavy down, or more likely just avoid the area that heavy is in. That being said... I'm not sure that a turnspeed limitation would be necessary.
Consider that, at present, a shotgun (or RE) user can pretty effectively kill heavies anyways, then I do think a turnspeed limit falls under the umbrella of "we may not need it". If this is implemented, I would heavily advocate not including the turnspeed limitations... at first. Then CCP could gather data and figure out if it was needed, or if the other changes you suggest would be all that is necessary.
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Victor Moody Stahl
Amarr Templars
Amarr Empire
74
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Posted - 2014.10.24 22:46:00 -
[2] - Quote
Bradric Banewolf wrote:Cost change could help with managing spam. Why would a player run proto assault when he can get more for the same price with proto heavy?
A medium suit with less going for it cost as much as a heavy suit. Same goes for the light suits. I always thought it was weird, and poorly planned?!
If you want the maximum damage output of the heavy dropsuit you should pay more. Before scouts were buffed to predator statistics this was my same argument. Since they would die so much more often, and had low ehp, why dI'd they cost just as much as assault suits?
The same can be said for the weapon classes. We see that sidearms, shotguns, kn's, mass drivers, and swarm launchers price tags vary from other weapons. My guess is they lack in one area of another that warrants cheaper pricing. So why doesn't the suits get the same consideration?
Clearly the assault and logi spend and loose more money than the heavy, and that's why everyone is running them. Will it stop heavy/scout spam? Probably not, but it will make some think twice before risking so much isk to run some suits. A true assault player could afford to loose the suits they do in PC.
The game has changed tremendously over time, and it's time for a price overhaul.
In open beta heavies were, in fact, costed higher than everyone else. It also wasn't just the suits, it was the weapons too. The end result was that heavies were far too expensive, and offered almost no benefits when compared to other platforms.
I'll certainly allow that during Chrome assaults/logis were often able to rival heavy eHP, the HMG was only somewhat useful compared to the greater damage projection of the AR, and forge guns were considered undesirable due to platform limitations (as in, a slow, difficult-to-turn, overly expensive heavy suit) as an AV system.
Even so, Breakin is right- pricepoint really isn't an overly effective way to balance things. My personal opinion on the matter is that it is ideal to reference ISK pricing in balance, but it should really be the case that it's one of the last things looked at; IE, we have given the players item xyz with abc capability, similar items have efg price.
This is especially the case when one considers the increasing solvency of many- though certainly not all- veteran DUST players- more and more of them either still have or have gain hundreds of millions to billions of ISK- the price of their gear no longer matters to them, because they can afford to sustain a "negative" income stream for years to come.
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Victor Moody Stahl
Amarr Templars
Amarr Empire
93
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Posted - 2014.11.04 01:27:00 -
[3] - Quote
Breakin Stuff wrote:Meee One wrote:I can see them now... Sentinels on rooftops camping with HMGs...  And charged sniper Rifles instapopping the ones stupid enough to do it. Forge Guns finding easy targets. It wouldn't be any worse than sentinels on a roof with an assault forge. Only difference is the HMG won't be able to kill vehicles while being a rooftop tard.
I have to agree with Breakin as to how that will work out; roof camping is one of the few things that, IMO, should be a binary situation (unlike, say, EWAR or AV). I will elaborate.
Let's assume something like the proposed changes happen, and suddenly HMG rooftop camping is a thing. In pubs, the following will happen:
1. Nobody will do anything, at which point HMG roofers will be murderizing lots of things, much the same way that they would do so with any other fit and any other long-range weapon.
2. Somebody will do something, which will result in a significant impedance to outright denial of an HMG roofer team doing anything useful.
I can safely say that even one person with as little as L2 Sniper Rifle Ops, a Tac SR, and a moderate degree of intelligence in terms of awareness of target areas and basic positioning can quite handily suppress multiple enemies attempting to roofcamp.
For reference, I can say this because I've actually done it. Had a fairly entertaining match on Manus Peak Skirm (which I usually hate), where I sat at C with a TacSR and picked off a few enemy snipers on the B-side mountains, while also harassing some swarmer on a B-point socket roof, and generally making an unpleasant time for various enemy players who attempted to approach C-point, or camp on the B-point roofs that faced C.
Magnus Amadeuss wrote:Here is something nuts.....
Don't allow sentinels to get into vehicles.
I somewhat disagree, depending on your meaning. What I think you mean is that sentinels should not be allowed to drive vehicles, which is a somewhat valid idea. If you are being quite literal... then I thought you were much more reasonable and analytical than that Magnus.
Now, for the latter possibility, there's not a lot that I'm interested in saying simply because most of it boils down to insulting you heavily for something so obviously dumb. I'm assuming that the latter isn't what you mean, and so I won't waste any more of my time or yours on such.
So, for the former, more likely, meaning: I disagree somewhat. I'm actually fine with sentinels being prohibited from flying dropships or driving HAVs, but quite frankly the main flaw of the generally hated "HMG Heavy in an LAV" problem is that it ultimately stems from forcing the sentinel into the CQB dominance role. Heavy suit users look at their HMG, and just how unhelpful it is on larger and/or more open maps (IE, Border Gulch, Manus Peak), and they look at how slow their suit can walk/sprint places.
So somebody way back in the misty sands of time that shroud the closed (or open) beta era decided to buy some LAVs to drive around in while carrying an HMG as a heavy. Lo and behold, we have the original incarnation of the so-called "Murder Taxi". It's very simply just the result of somebody coming up with a way to take advantage of DUST's sandbox nature to counter some of their dropsuit's weaknesses.
In a way, we should applaud this sort of breakthrough in player thought and intelligence. It's the sort of thing that would pretty much never happen in Battlefield or Planetside 2- the part where players figure out how to work around weaknesses using other mechanics, that is.
I'd actually argue that changing the HMG to a long-ranged weapon role will generally remove the attractiveness of the drive-by HMG heavy as a tactic; the weapon will lose some of its CQB dominance, meaning that it will be more likely that a heavy would use an LAV to get into position or rapidly change position to react to changing combat conditions. Or maybe he still drives around, but instead he only occasionally runs people over or stops and switches to the turret mount to shoot stuff.
Either way, HMG heavies doing a drive-by using an LAV becomes something of a relic of a forgotten era- something like the stories of dumbfire swarms.
With that said, I'd like to pose two questions to Breakin:
1. How would we differentiate the Assault and "basic" HMG variants?
2. Would a turn-speed penalty be absolutely necessary?
For the latter, I'm not sure that it's needed- obviously it existed in Chrome, and was bad, but that was due to the ultimately flawed decision to chain heavies to CQB dominance- a role they are not necessarily suited for. But HMG heavies being a long-ranged fire support platform, somewhat in the vein of a LR user, it doesn't quite click with me that such a penalty is actually necessary.
After all, heavies are slow. This will by nature make them more defensive in deployment, which will in turn indicate a more static deployment strategy- you'll probably throw some HMG heavies in an LAV/derpship to get them from point A to point B really fast, but other than that, you'll want them in a good position that provides excellent overwatch potential. This will also mean that they will end up having a limited field of fire- simply because they will mostly pay attention to the direction enemies are most likely to approach from.
Which in turn means they are very open to flanking maneuvers; it also means that HMG heavies will be more desirable in outdoor areas rather than the current building-humper paradigm.
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Victor Moody Stahl
Amarr Templars
Amarr Empire
94
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Posted - 2014.11.05 00:55:00 -
[4] - Quote
Breakin Stuff wrote:In short, not putting turn speed penalty on a long range heavy means there is no impetus to STOP spamming them in buildings. We get the new FOTM whose only weakness can be subverted by dropping an LAV.
Enter the omni-slayer.
Mostly I'm just quoting this part because it's a succinct summary of your explanation, but you've adequately explained your reasoning. I fully admit I still don't like turnspeed penalties very much... but in the interests of balance and overall gameplay experience I will fully understand and probably advocate it.
That being said... you didn't give any ideas about Assault HMGs. Which, having settled the turnspeed issue, seems to really be a big thing to figure out as part of this proposal.
Assault variants of a weapon tend to nearly always have a higher rate of fire. Then it filters down into one of two paradigms:
One is a higher-capacity, lower-damage version, such as the assault variants of the racial rifles and the assault MD. Assault forges mostly fit on this side of the fence, trading clip capacity for splash damage.
The other side that is reduced capacity, but slightly increased range. Which is where the scrambler pistol and SMG fit in... and quite frankly I find it rather strange that an assault variant would be associated with "reduced damage, reduced capacity, increased range", since all three don't really go together. It's sort of a pick two-out-of-three thing, IMO.
So, that leaves us with a bit of a quandary. Given that weapons that have what could be considered a "long" range and also sport assault-type variants never use the second paradigm, and your proposal is for the HMG to be a long-range fire support weapon with a turnspeed penalty and the Burst HMG to be a door-kicker heavy weapon of choice, that then leaves us with a slight pickle of where to put the Assault HMG.
Perhaps for the Assault HMG we keep the current damage but give it a 50% increase in clip capacity, putting it at a solid ~650 round capacity? If we assume that the current spread mechanic of the regular HMG is kept (which I think would be cool), then the Assault could have a similar time-to-max-accuracy, but a significantly slower accuracy decay, then this makes the Assault HMG a superb pure-suppression weapon- it would literally be the highest-capacity weapon in the entire game, but with somewhat low-ish DPS and an incentive to fire to nearly-overheating and then backing off a bit.
It seems like it might give the Assault HMG an interesting dynamic with the regular and Burst variants. What have you considered for differentiating the Assault and regular HMGs?
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Victor Moody Stahl
Amarr Templars
Amarr Empire
94
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Posted - 2014.11.05 01:10:00 -
[5] - Quote
So, double-posting here because I'm replying to some other people rather than giving suggestions about certain parts of the OP.
Aeon Amadi wrote:*snip really well-written, informed, and thought-out post*
So, I'm not sure quite what you're saying as relates to the OP's proposal. At first it seems like you're somewhat in favor, but then it seems like not... which is it?
Also, I'm curious as to how people will "find a way around" a turnspeed penalty? Quite frankly, the current drive-by HMG heavy phenomenon would probably vanish overnight if HMGs were more limited to long-range fire support and door-kicker's best friend, depending on the variant equipped.
Leadfoot10 wrote:So you want to make heavies even more susceptible to fast moving scouts and turn them into long-range killers ala Heavy RR scrubs?
I can't say I agree with that.
What's wrong with a heavy playing point defense as a role? Really?
Do you, by chance, play solo a lot? Because when you're in a half way decent squad it's pretty rare that the other team gets dug a spot so much as you can't get them out...except perhaps Domination if you're going against an entire team. And in PC if they get dug in like that, and your team can't get them out, it's generally because they are simply better (or you didn't bring enough clones).
If getting heavies dug out of their entrenched positions is really our goal, a DPS/dispersion nerf and/or a rep tool nerf (along with an assault suit bonus to something like damage) would seeming be an easier way to accomplish it without completely changing the heavy's role on the battlefield....and the assault suit with it.
I agree with Aeon.
I don't know about Breakin, but I personally do play mostly solo. With that being said, I will agree with him- Point Defense isn't the same as CQC dominance; the latter is really what heavies are right now, not the former.
This was actually something I believe was brought up during the beta- that you can't do point defense if you cannot keep people away from a point. HMGs being the CQC "god gun" means that a heavy who's busy humping a point is not "point defense", he's really just "I shoot you while hacking the point"... which is helpful, to be sure, but isn't point defense.
Point defense would be an Amarr Assault/Commando with a LR burning dudes down from 70+ meters away from the point, preventing them from ever getting close in the first place.
Moreover, right now the heavy role is quite frankly stupid. You're either the supposedly most-awesome AV around... which is cool, and Forges are undeniably awesome... or you're supposed to be busy point-humping and shooting hackers off the console. Sure, most squads will generally keep people from getting to the console to hack it anyways, and they usually use heavies to do it... but that also tends to include digging in.
A heavy in an entrenched position should be difficult to displace, certainly- but the nature of that entrenched position should not boil down to "point humper".
It's also the case that the proposal laid out in the OP suddenly means that CQC Gallente Assault will suddenly become a thing, which is good. I honestly don't notice GalSalts around that much- it's either scouts, the odd CalSalt/whatever Logi, or heavies. Sometimes there'll be a pretty good AmSalt/MinSalt, or a Commando, or a murderlogi, but mostly it's the others.
Part of that is scout balance problems, but that's not relevant to this thread/proposal. The other part is that HMG heavies are ultimate murder-death-kill machines in CQC, when it quite frankly makes more sense that they would be long range fire support in the style of the LR.
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Victor Moody Stahl
Amarr Templars
Amarr Empire
94
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Posted - 2014.11.05 05:34:00 -
[6] - Quote
Breakin Stuff wrote:I laid out that I would make the assault HMG the advancing fire support version. In between the burst and standard for range and raw damage with a lesser turn peenalty.
Also making the weapon like a heavy rifle is not the intent. The only universe in which the rurn speed penalty is justified is if the unholy DPS is left as-is. Lowering the DPS would beg the question "why bother?"
I think we ended up sort of saying the same thing but in a slightly different way. Incidentally, do you think a magazine capacity buff would be well-suited to the "Assault HMG=advancing fire support" concept? It might fit pretty well, since advancing fire support would want to continue firing for as long as possible, and a higher capacity might be a way to do it.
Breakin Stuff wrote:And as to doubling the laser rifle optimal?
HELL YES! I always thought that the Laser Rifle should have been the amarr snip
Well, it's not quite doubling the optimal; currently the evidence is pointing to something that starts at 40 or 50 meters and then ends at about 105 meters. So it'd be more like a 20-50% increase over the current.
So we definitely agree on LR optimal getting longer, though I don't necessarily agree that the LR should be the Amarrian sniper weapon; it seems a lot more likely that it was always intended as the precision vs AoE counterpart to the MD IMO.
Cat Merc wrote:I like this, but it will require a shift of thinking on the part of the community.
Well, I wouldn't say a shift in the community's thinking, so much as just convincing Rattati that this is a great way to diversify some roles and even bring a few underused ones (like CQB GalSalt) into greater usage/prominence.
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Victor Moody Stahl
Amarr Templars
Amarr Empire
95
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Posted - 2014.11.06 00:13:00 -
[7] - Quote
Aeon Amadi wrote:Take it as you will. I can't say that I'm for anything that affects Heavies or Scouts in any negative way because the community will automatically outcast me if I do. /sarcasm
The problem is that I refuse to "take it as I will", because I asked what you actually think about the issue at hand. If I did as you suggest, then at that point I'm basically just deciding what you think for you, or even going as far as claiming that you're saying something that you aren't.
Yes, yes, I realize you're being a bit sarcastic, but really. You can't just say straight up what you think about it?
el OPERATOR wrote:The heavy, from what I've seen of them in both PCs and PUBS, accomodates either of these playstyles just fine with no other accomodation being needed. If the HMG isnt giving you the range you want to be able to not "hump the console" put on your RR and block everyone else in the match so as to not get the hatemail bombardment you'll be due.
The heavy suit as a weapons platform has traditionally been defined by, *gasp* the ability to carry heavy weapons. Saying "just throw a RR on that sucka and ignore the hatemail if you want range" is asinine. The point is that the HMG is ultimately a flawed weapon concept, for two reasons:
1. Logical consistency; HMG-analogues have never been a close-encounter ordnance, and likely never will be; they are heavy, cumbersome weapon systems with fantastic range and firepower that are far more usefully deployed in more open terrain conditions.
2. A lack of additional heavy weapons. This isn't quite as big a deal in terms of HMG role, but there would honestly not be as many complaints about this issue if the Sentinel class had more heavy weapon variety. Moreover, light weapon heavies are only a thing because there is no long range anti-infantry heavy weapon.
There's also the issue that the whole "durable enough to go toe-to-toe with vehicles" thing that's part of the description seems to imply more of a "I keep people far away from the point", not "I hump the console and shoot hackers in the back". There currently is not any ability for a heavy suit user to be an effective long range combatant, unless they do one of two things:
1. They fit a light weapon to their heavy suit. Which is something that CCP is trying to discourage through the use of the heavy weapon fitting bonus and the accompanying reduction in fitting resources that Sentinel suits have.
2. Use a different suit that is more suited to light weapon deployment.
In other words, for a heavy to, in current patch state, be useful over range, they have to either sacrifice heavily on their fit to accommodate something like a RR, or they have to change role entirely. Is this seriously acceptable to you, or are you too busy hating scouts?
I mean, I get it, I don't much like scouts in the current patch state either, but it's possible to work through multiple issues simultaneously you know.
Breakin Stuff wrote:Why are they not being screamed about being OP?
Because Rattatti somehow managed to do what no other Dev could. This right here frightens me.
Out of curiosity... what is it that Rattati did? I wasn't playing between just after 1.8 dropped and just before Hotfix Delta dropped, so I am probably out of the loop on that.
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Victor Moody Stahl
Amarr Templars
Amarr Empire
95
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Posted - 2014.11.06 00:28:00 -
[8] - Quote
I don't know about Breakin, but personally I consider "point defense from afar" to be within 50 meters of a point and then keeping other players away from the point.
I will use Manus Peak Skirmish as an example; When defending C, the heavy will most likely be within 20-30 meters of the console; I will assume that the socket in this example is the mini-bridge/wall thing that basically keeps the console/null cannon and CRU on the side closest to the ridge, while the side facing the A/B points has the supply depot and turret.
With this proposal, I would envision the heavy on top of the bridge, firing at long range to prevent enemies from getting close to the point. The heavy is still "on the point", defending; however, rather than staying behind the wall and gunning down randumbs that try to hack the point, he's actually on the wall preventing said randumbs from getting that close in the first place.
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Victor Moody Stahl
Amarr Templars
Amarr Empire
95
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Posted - 2014.11.06 04:48:00 -
[9] - Quote
Breakin Stuff wrote:Annnd Moody makes my point right as I do.
This right here is essentially correct. Difference is, need more than 50m. Laser rifle is a good example of a suppression weapon. a 50m machinegun with a turn speed penalty would only have an effective engagement window of about 25-30m. The range would need to be longer to compensate for close quarter engagement vulnerability.
I just want to clarify that I mean "heavy is within 50 meters of objective", not "HMG range is 50 meters". I merely noted that as a measure of how close to an objective a heavy would probably be when conducting long range suppression fire. So I absolutely do agree that a 50 meter range would be much too low.
My bad for not making that clear.
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Victor Moody Stahl
Amarr Templars
Amarr Empire
95
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Posted - 2014.11.07 00:16:00 -
[10] - Quote
Except that throwing RE's into a group of heavies is 99% ********. This is not BattleDuty 15, this is DUST. If at all possible "stupid" should not be actively discouraged, so much as brutally punished.
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Victor Moody Stahl
Amarr Templars
Amarr Empire
166
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Posted - 2014.11.27 22:28:00 -
[11] - Quote
I'd argue that has more to do with the current map design paradigms than anything else. As an aside, one of the new Caldari sockets has a very exposed console that in theory allows players to actually snipe a would-be hacker off of the point.
Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be seeded heavily enough for that to be a thing.
There's also the remaining issue that a heavy's disadvantages are 99% nullified in the confined CQC conditions it presently dominates in. Furthermore, it is still preventing assaults from being anything close to "useful" in actually assaulting stuff (like objectives), and is chaining logis to the eternal hell of the "walking rep tool" stereotype.
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Victor Moody Stahl
Amarr Templars
Amarr Empire
166
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Posted - 2014.11.27 22:53:00 -
[12] - Quote
I do as well. That perception is actually half of the reason I do not have any SP invested into rep tools, but have proto nanos, links, scanners, and proto AmLogi.
The other half of that is that I also find repping to be insufferably boring. As an aside, I wish DUST had more offensively-minded support options for equipment slots, since that would help flesh out the "Combat Engineer" side of the Logi paradigm.
We have amazing "Combat Medic" options. We have hardly any "Combat Engineer" options.
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Victor Moody Stahl
Amarr Templars
Amarr Empire
167
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Posted - 2014.11.28 04:50:00 -
[13] - Quote
Breakin Stuff wrote:Sentinel is somewhere between devastator and terminator.
But unfortunately the sentinel is vulnerable to weapons that can't go into it's preferred combat area.
And we seem to lack a "bumrush with fifty hormagaunts" option.
Have a like for the emphasized part.
This being said, it's also absolutely true. The weapons which excel at killing heavies are simply unable to compete in any way resembling an effective manner in the preferred engagement area of the heavy suit.
LRs are pretty good at killing heavies- it'll take a while to melt that megabrick AM/GA sentinel, but if he's megabricked he's also got a slower sprint speed than the walk speed of some dropsuits, so you've got all the time in the world to cook him to perfection.
Forge sniping? If you've got the aim for it, it's quite excellent (and entertaining!) at removing heavies from the field. If they're crossing open terrain, that is. Same goes for any variety of sniper rifle- the charge SR is the most optimal heavy-killer, but all of the sniper rifle variants can do it.
Vehicle-wise, it's become increasingly rare in my experience to find sockets which have null cannon consoles that are exposed to "open air" environments that you can see with ease. One of the new Caldari sockets does have this, but it seems to spawn infrequently and it's usually in a spot that precludes the hacker from being sniped.
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