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Nova Knife
Seituoda Taskforce Command
Caldari State
789
   |
Posted - 2012.07.07 02:16:00 -
[1] - Quote
This thread actually hits the character limit of a couple post lengths. It's very long, and I apologize for the 'spammish' nature of the thread!
New map :
This map is fairly excellent in terms of design. It provides plenty of vantage points for snipers, plenty of cover for skirmishing firefights, open airspace for air combat, many diverging roads and paths for vehicle combat. This is somewhat diminished by the current draw distance, Even if the distance is being expanded later. The spawn areas for the attackers and defenders on skirmish are too easy to blockade by even a couple dudes sitting on the 'redline'.
Gameplay :
Hit detection seems much better, but the hit markers now seem to be off. The general speed and pace of the game have slowed somewhat, which is good. I no longer find myself being able to out-strafe six people and kill them all. This is awesome. Aiming down sight seems more responsive and everything is overall less 'sluggish'. Vehicles respond far better and have some measure of inertia now. Collision damage needs a lot of work and I'll get to that later.
IFF Markers:
The distance for IFF markers was supposedly cut down, yet I don't see it. I can still see the red chevrons all the way across the map, and I can still know the precise position and health of someone through a wall. 'Futurehax' aside, it is pretty silly. I like knowing where my enemies are, but knowing where they are through a wall stops them from making any successful effort to flank me or lay a trap for me just because my buddy saw them is just plain lame and boring. The issue with someone's chevron appearing for a brief moment as soon as they spawn is still present and makes it very easy to rush someone who spawns, even on ambush where it is 'random'. This is a pretty big deal, as I find that when I am in a drop ship, I can fly over and crush someone shortly after they spawn, even if they spawn halfway across the map. Why? Because I knew exactly where they spawned as soon as they spawned, even if none of my teammates 'spotted' them.
Heavy weapons & Suits :
The HMG. Previously an amazing weapon, now quite possibly one of the worst guns in the game. It is still remotely usable as a viable weapon, but it is nowhere near as good as it should be. The damage was cut by almost half. The overheat is perfect, but the reason the weapon was overpowered was -not- the damage. It was the amount of bullets you could spray and pray downrange without caring what you hit. The damage nerf simply must be reverted.
Forge gun.. I have mixed feelings. First and foremost, the old reticule needs to come back, and the screen shake needs to actually have a chance of affecting your aim. Right now the gun is far too accurate, and I can use it more effectively to snipe at long ranges than I can with a sniper rifle. (I am still pretty deadly with a sniper rifle.) The movement penalty might be a bit much, in conjunction with the overall turn speed nerf. I'm of two minds in this. Currently, it's too easy to hit people directly with the forge. Slow movement speed prevents me from getting around the map with a fully charged surprise waiting for whoever I see. I think this is good. On the other hand, it makes it nearly impossible to tango with a marauder because they just escape from my crawling pace before I can finish them off, or I can't manage cover in time to evade them.
Militia suit HP change might have been a bit too much. Now that the suits are not too bad to get into though, it is less of a big deal. I'd still rather see their base armor at 700 instead of 600. Other than that, they are in a pretty good place, and upgrading to standard still provides a benefit it did not in the last build.
Type II Suits
Heavy - Love the shield heavy. It might be a bit too tough, though. I think if the heavy is going to be shield focused, it should not have the 500 armor base HP. Re-arranging the stats to 500/350 but lowering the shield recharge to 15 might bring it more in line with the other Type II suits. Higher recharge on less buffer generally makes these things very tricky to deal with. Less recharge with more buffer would make them more manageable, as the main weakness of a heavy is being caught after a firefight with very low health.
Assault - Another shield theme suit, pretty well in a good spot as it is. Much less armor HP than a normal suit, but higher shield. I can't really suggest too many ways to adjust or improve this, you pretty much got this right on the first go.
Scout - I don't really like this one at all. Not only does it forsake the theme of scout suits, but it really doesn't get very tangible gains in exchange. You lose a huge chunk of your shield HP yet keep the massive shield regen bonus of the scout. You get much higher armor, but the lack of PG/CPU for decent repair systems makes it kind of pointless. You can't plate it because you lose the massive speed advantage, so in the end you are losing a sidearm and your most useful tank, in exchange for an equipment slot. Totally not worth it. If the suit was to have some minor passive armor recharge, or had extra more than 11/3 pg/cpu difference, I'd find it acceptable. Right now, you tend to give up more than you get in return.
Logistics - Mixed minds about this one. It has essentially the same tank stats and slot layout, except you sacrifice an equipment slot. Sort of like the scout suit, you tend to give up more than you gain with this one. An equipment slot is a huge deal for a logistics suit. Their low health stats make them sitting ducks to begin with. More mobility is good and increases survivability, but not enough to make it worth the equipment slot in my mind. If the shield/armor got a maybe 35-45 HP boost to make it a sturdier, more mobile support suit, It'd be worth it in a heartbeat. Still less HP than an assault, but more versatile and without a sidearm. Seems fair. |
Nova Knife
Seituoda Taskforce Command
Caldari State
789
|
Posted - 2012.07.07 02:17:00 -
[2] - Quote
LAVs:
Infinitely better. The controls feel more akin to how they were back in Uprising. The handbrake actually does something meaningful, and the LAV having inertia means you can pull wild maneuvers like making a 180 degree powerslide and popping her into reverse and barely losing any speed. The controls are a bit sensitive but generally very responsive. Traction is still a problem in some terrain though, and you find the LAV slipping and sliding about as you make minor adjustments to where you are steering. They are a little light on powergrid and CPU though in my opinion. It's downright tricky to fit a decent tank on one of these, even the logistics version suffers from this. Especially the logistics version when it comes to maximum PG. It is not really possible to fit a remote repair module and a local repair module simultaneously while maintaining any real survivability. The sheer awkwardness of aiming these modules and their paper thin tank makes it silly to remain still for very long.
LAV specific bonuses to logistics modules in this regard are in order, and I'll get to that in my logistics section. These need at least a small increase in maximum PG however. Methana could use one less midslot and one more lowslot, and 40 more base PG. Limbus needs one less midslot and two more lowslots and 70 PG to make it more than a HP improvement over a Methana, and the Charybdis could use another midslot, and 30 PG as long as each is expected to use highslots for shield transfers and lowslots for armor transfers. There are some issues with the built-in LAV repair modules for infantry but I'll cover these in my logistics section.
HAVs:
These scale really well in terms of Tiers. The militia are a joke and easy to destroy by even pistols and assault rifles, the standard tier are more resilient but can still be brought down by infantry with small arms and AP grenades. Marauders then progress to be very resilient, pack a hell of a punch, and are next to impossible to eliminate by a single infantry with AV weapons, barring serious driver error and excluding a well placed remote explosive trap. The secondary turret arcs are in odd spots now. The 'top' of these turrets is still massively affected by the main gun and even the slightest motion of the main gun throws the turret's aim off by a lot. The top turret's turn radius is now strangely limited as well. It is unable to turn left of where the main gun is pointing, but gets about a 120 degree turn arc to the right of the main gun. The first gun gets about the 120 degree arc, but can look anywhere to the front of the tank, left or right. This lower turret is also a bit too low. Much of the time it ends up hitting the tank itself when trying to aim to the side. I love the idea that a tank should be possible and very vulnerable to flank, and limited turn arcs prevent this.
Dropships:
My thoughts about the general flight controls are two-pronged. I love the new speed and inertia. It is too difficult to manage altitude reliably, though. The controls are inconsistent. Hitting L1 sometimes makes you gain altitude at a very fast pace, sometimes it barely crawls upward. Turning can sometimes be a chore as well, and the inertia system could use some work. Sometimes I can turn on a dime if I simply let go of the left stick and turn with the right, others times the turn arc seems very wide if I was only going a slight tad faster than before. It looks like there is some kind of mechanic where speed determines maneuverability, but it is really kind of easy to 'game it' and make it seem like you are going slower than you are if you let go of one the left stick to make the game think you are apparently decelerating or not driving?
Turret arcs are a lot better, but i think need to be moved a tad further out from the dropship, or limited when looking to the front and rear just to prevent them from being able to shoot their own ship. Collision damage needs a lot of work, I'll get to that shortly. Crashing/Exploding also need looking at. Right now, it is nearly impossible to actually kill a dropship pilot unless they seriously mess up. The dropship itself is easy to kill, the gunners and passengers are vulnerable at all times while inside the ship to swarm launchers, forge guns, snipers, and other weapons. But the pilot himself is not visible, and in almost every situation has plenty of chance to 'eject' when the ship starts to go down.
I think there should be multiple damage states. It should be possible to destroy a dropship mid-air along with everyone inside if you do enough damage, a dropship should not have to finish 'crashing' before it finally explodes. Regardless, a pilot in a crashing ship should be stuck in the cockpit and unable to eject, but the crew should remain able to eject. |
Nova Knife
Seituoda Taskforce Command
Caldari State
789
|
Posted - 2012.07.07 02:17:00 -
[3] - Quote
Collision Damage :
This actually deadly now, compared to maybe 3% at most in the last build. The problem is, that it is deadly in situations it shouldn't be. In situations it should be, you hardly take any damage half the time. This is inconsistent at best, and at most is very annoying. We're not quite up to it being a cool feature yet. Don't get me wrong. I love the idea that you can now kamikaze a dropship into another dropship, or kill a tank or LAV by running it over with another tank. The problem is, the damage seems to be random and triggers from things that probably should not trigger it. An LAV or dropship running full speed into a wall and taking massive damage and possibly exploding is perfectly reasonable and discourages 'reckless' use. However, an HAV or LAV bumping into a box or a lightpost at half speed and losing all of its shield is just plain wrong. A dropship being able to 'slide' along the ground dragging someone slowly until they get roadkilled, or at very slow speeds bouncing up and down to try to pin someone against an object without taking small amounts of continuous collision damage is wrong. A dropship ramming into another dropship will generally take more damage than the victim, which seems improper. At the very least both should take equal damage.
Vehicle Turrets :
These need some serious looking at, in my opinion. Especially the blaster and missile turrets. The small missile turrets at standard do 350 direct damage and 200 splash. At prototype they do 455 and 260 splash. This makes them nice for anti-vehicle purposes but their high ROF and large splash radius makes them absolutely eat infantry. These turrets are far too good. There really is no reason whatsoever to use other small turrets as they cannot pump out nearly as much damage nearly as reliably as the missiles. I think a reduction in splash + direct damage is neccessary to bring these more in line with the other turrets. The direct damage from the missile is more than the direct damage from a small railgun. This is wrong.
Making the missile turrets do 250 or so direct and 100 or so splash would make them still very viable as anti-infantry weapons due to the ROF and splash radius, but makes the railguns superior in anti-vehicle capabilities. That brings me to the small blaster turrets. These are utterly useless on anything other than an LAV. Maybe a little less than useless on a HAV, but they are generally worthless on a dropship. On paper their DPS numbers are amazing. In practical use, they are very difficult to track targets and do damage before they can escape. These could maybe stand to have a lower ROF but a somewhat higher base damage.
Now, onto the large turrets. Honestly, these suffer the same problem. The railgun is just unquestionably the best. It has a massive direct damage, large splash radius, and is dead accurate even at the longest of ranges. I feel that this turret is too good in comparison to the others. It turns just as quick as the blaster if I'm not mistaken, which makes it just as good as a shorter range weapon as a blaster. This is wrong. Railguns should excell at longer range, antivehicle targets. Blasters are currently terrible. The spread on the turret should be much tighter. It's very inaccurate at range, and this is proper. But it's still very inaccurate at short range, which makes the railgun far superior. The large missile launchers have a wild recoil if you're not holding L1 to 'aim' them. They should be amazing against vehicles and installations, but the low overall damage and large radius makes them very imprecise. They are great for carpet bombing an area but not really for doing actual damage.
Militia modules :
I like these, but I think some of them are a little too good. Having militia nanohives and drop uplinks is fantastic. I'm not too sure I like the idea of modules like the mobile CRU being militia items though. Some modules are just too good to get militia versions, I think. Even if they are there on default fits, I'm not sure they should be available on the market. Mostly in regards to vehicle fittings, like resistance modules and such. People should need to upgrade their modules, to upgrade their vehicles. Sure, while people who militia fit their gunloggi or madrugar are free and easy kills, they might not understand why they are free and easy kills if they never bother to upgrade their fit. These should all have a steeper PG/CPU cost to further encourage people to upgrade. Right now, you can get away with these on most fits and not worry about the fit being tight. Because of this, there is no real reason to hurry to upgrade most modules. I myself amd still using militia nanohives and uplinks. |
Nova Knife
Seituoda Taskforce Command
Caldari State
789
|
Posted - 2012.07.07 02:17:00 -
[4] - Quote
Logistics modules :
Another thing that needs some serious love. I've kind of beaten this horse dead for a while now, but I desperately want to re-iterate it. There are three kinds of repair modules in this game. Repair tools (Infantry equipment items) that can repair infantry, vehicles, and installations. Shield transporters (Vehicle module) and Remote Armor repair modules (Vehicle module) The vehicle modules can only repair other vehicles. I'll start with the repair tool. These things are just plain amazing, I've loved them since the uprising build two versions ago. They are currently removed (yet still somewhat available) because CCP is already tweaking them. I personally feel the range and amount repaired is fine. The problem is, that these modules can repair forever. There's no overheat or cooldown. That is all these guns need, I think. They should build up an overheat. They should not be an activate/cooldown module for reasons later on in this section. If they build up an overheat that has a reasonable delay before it can be activated again, these modules will be perfect.
Onto vehicle modules... The shield module stats are all wrong. They all repair 80 or so hitpoints regardless of their meta level or being a light or heavy module. Armor numbers seem fine. Regarding general usability of these modules, they are an utter nightmare to use. LAV and dropship cameras make keeping something in the reticle long enough to lock far too difficult, let alone keeping the camera having LOS on them in order to maintain the lock long enough to repair any reasonable amount. HAV's make the modules much more usable, but the short range (15-20m) makes them still a nightmare to use.
Regarding these modules, an easier to move camera and longer range (50m or so) would make them much easier to use. Making the modules lock faster, making it possible to activate a newly selected module on a currently locked target by tapping r1 instead of needing to lock it again, and making the modules deactivate on their own when a target is unlocked. Expanding on the last point, a module should not be forced to enter its entire cooldown period if it only uses one or two pulses. Cooldown should depend on how long the module is active. If it stays active for its whole cycle time, then the cooldown should be the full amount. If the module is turned off early, the cooldown should be less.
Alternatively, these modules could be replaced by actual turrets. This would fit in very well with the current idea in the fitting system is that to do one thing you generally need to sacrifice something to excell at another. To become amazing at support, you'd sacrificed some or all of your offensive abilities in this case as you would need to choose between weapon turrets or repair turrets. This would both solve the problem of making it too difficult to lock because of the vehicle cameras, and make support roles much more manageable.
Regarding the Logistics LAV... Their built-in repair tool is subject to the same nightmarish camera. Someone I was speaking with suggested that it could be repurposed to a very small AOE effect that could heal up to two friendly units at once. I think this idea has a lot of merit. Instead of making this tool a lockon which is impossible to use in any practical scenario, give it like a 120 arc in front of the LAV for 15-20m where it will automatically lock and target any wounded infantry during the module's activation cycle.
Mass drivers :
Love this weapon. Never before have I found a 'noob tube' that I could say with complete honesty I did not feel was cheap. The splash radius is very tight (3) and the damage is not enough to instakill anyone from the splash. This encourages people to actually aim for a direct hit, as opposed to aiming for feet. The splash radius being so small makes it useless to just shoot wildly, this weapon is very much a precision weapon and is far from the 'easymode kills' that grenade launchers often are in other games. It's decent at taking out LAV's and installations as well. The main problem with these though, is that they are very underwhelming when first trying them out. They shine much more at higher levels, but not a lot of people might stick with these long enough to try those.
I'd recommend changing the "Mass Driver Operation" skill bonus from 5% damage per level, to 3% per level and giving the weapon a 10% increase to its base damage. This keeps the overall numbers the same, yet makes it less underwhelming early on. The 'Mass Driver proficiency' skill should increase reserve ammunition capacity by 3 per level. Currently it increases the splash radius, but I feel the splash radius is perfect as-is, and the one thing the mass driver desperately needs is more reserve ammo, as you run out painfully fast and are almost forced to camp on top of a nanohive with them. Maybe a small increase of 4-8 to its base, then making the bonus from proficiency 2 per level instead.
"Show Info Windows" :
Some of the hidden attributes in weapons really need to be shown. The old fitting tab told how many slots a suit or vehicle had, and this is a must to have back. Stats like optimal and falloff ranges are absolutely needed as well. Currently some items have 'quirks' that don't even show in the 'description' tab, yet show up in the market's smaller description of the item. Such as the breach AR having a tighter hip-fight spread than other rifles. The info windows can be very misleading as to which guns are useful in certain areas. |
Nova Knife
Seituoda Taskforce Command
Caldari State
789
|
Posted - 2012.07.07 02:22:00 -
[5] - Quote
Scoring ("Points") :
I think some serious looks at how points are earned is in order. Dust is a game where teamwork and support roles are key. But currently, they are a joke. When actually running around with a team I've stacked with friends and am performing proper logistics (Repair tools, reviving here and there, resupplies) I can consistently get less than 1/8th of what I get when I actually run around and kill folk. My highest round ever was admittedly with a logistics suit doing this in the last build, but I was being a tard repairing/reviving my heavy teammates but also spamming a swarm launcher to steal all of their kills. I went 26/2 that round or something close to that, and earned 312k SP. When I'm not stealing all my team's kills and actually trying to play as support as opposed to being Rambo who happens to moonlight as a logistics... I get maybe 15-30k as opposed to the 110k+ I usually get killing folks. Higher point bonuses for support roles is an absolute must. Revives should be bumped up to 75 points, and heal ticks should be 45 each. It's also worth mentioning that shield repairs still do not give points. This should change as well. Resupply bonuses should kick up to 20, but be monitored so that they are not too easily farmed. If they get farmed too badly, lower the bonus or provide diminishing returns.
The same goes for dropship pilots and LAV gunners. There is very little incentive to actually fill these roles and play them as intended, as you get next to no rewards for doing so. "Winning" is a reward in and of itself but it is generally meaningless if your character does not advance. If there is an easier way to progress, people will do it. This is one of the reasons why dropship crushing is so rampant. It's the only way for them to get decent points. Drivers (Not passengers or other gunners) need to get shared credit for their gunner's kills. Both the pilot and the gunner need to recieve a kill on their stats and the 50 points. (Because stats are important to people. Again, one of the reasons why dropship crushing happens) Spawning on the vehicle needs to give points as well. Providing your team with alternate spawns is a huge deal, and you should get 20-30 points every time this happens. This goes with drop uplinks as well.
Installations, Defense relays and control points :
Models look awesome. Players are even more vulnerable now in these things, which is great. They are still pitifully weak, though. A HAV is able to destroy these in 2-3 shots. A forge gun can take them out in 4-5 shots. A mass driver can take them out easily when sitting on a mass driver and bombarding them for 30 seconds or so. This is totally terrible. No single person should be able to destroy any installation or defense relay faster than someone on their team could hack it. Right now it is -far- easier to destroy and not worry about them, than it is to hack them. These should always be much slower and less beneficial to destroy, and they should require a concentrated effort from a team if you want to blow them up in a reasonable amount of time. If you want to solo to destroy these, it should take a long time. They need at least 15-20x their current hitpoints, I think.
(Edit) Breach Variants :
Forgot to stick this in earlier. Breach variants of all kinds need some love. They are all currently amazing accurate when firing from the hip and have a higher base damage. There really is no downside, and these weapons are just generally better than the other variants. The hipfire bonus is immensely powerful as is. The massive damage bonus is just overkill. Slightly reducing the damage bonus is all that is needed to make these guns perfect. For example on the AR, a normal rifle does 30 damage. A breach does 48 and is much more accurate. Slower ROF is not really an issue since much more of those bullets their target. Reducing the damage to 40 still makes it more powerful and accurate, but not massively better than other assault rifles. The breach submachine gun does 34, the standard does 20. Changing it to 27 will bring it more in line with the others, similar to the AR.
As for the shotguns, I think this could use another round or two in the clip, and 33 damage per 'pellet' instead of 36. The slower reload makes someone vulnerable but this still does a bit too much damage. Being vulnerable isn't really an issue if you instakilled the dude you were shooting at and his friend too.
>.< Like I said. Very long post. Thanks for anyone who actually reads it all! |
Nova Knife
Seituoda Taskforce Command
Caldari State
789
|
Posted - 2012.07.08 04:48:00 -
[6] - Quote
Just so you know, both people /do/ take equal damage. There is no magical protection for the dude who fired it. He just has move overall hitpoints than you do, if he appears to be taking less damage. Pretty much anything can kill a militia or standard scout easily. They are flimsy, that is part of their role. Hitting them directly is actually very hard, especially with a mass driver. |
Nova Knife
Seituoda Taskforce Command
Caldari State
789
|
Posted - 2012.07.08 18:27:00 -
[7] - Quote
Posts #3 and #4 updated.
#3 detailing more specific slot layout changes for LAV variant.
#4 detailing method to improve built in logistics LAV repair module.
Edit ; @ Ignatius and forge guns : These are too accurate. Except for the zoom, they are exactly like a tank railgun. The screen shake currently is easily ignored and the reticle makes it too easy to know exactly where the round will go despite it. This gun needs to be harder to use against infantry. They took steps to that end by reducing the splash radius, but they ended up making it even easier to aim so that you could score more direct hits anyways. |
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