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Tarquin Markel
The Synenose Accord
Celestial Imperative
85
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Posted - 2013.01.20 19:38:00 -
[1] - Quote
Okay, so the consensus seems to be that, at the moment, the heavy is overpowered.
The consensus ain't wrong. If you ran into the average heavy in a PvE shooter, it would be a mini-boss. Its defenses are impressive, its offense equally impressive; even one, skillfully used, can apparently slice a squad of assault suits to bits in seconds; and a team is restricted in their use only by the number of players skilled to equip them. It's not uncommon to see a team with an assault force made up primarily of heavies.
Even I, stealth addict though I am (I didn't say I was very good at it, just addicted to it) have started calculating odds of victory based on how many heavies I see in the team lobby. Apparently CCP is aware of the issue and working on a much-feared fix. So, what the hell, I'll weigh in.
... Mostly with a few arguments I haven't seen voiced yet in my short time here.
Argument: heavies aren't OP; the maps are weighted in their favor.
Heavies seem to excel when they don't have to waddle too far and can either force opponents to come to them or just stump around a corner and start shredding people at close to medium range.
The maps, at the moment, are battles in bottles-- particularly that new one, yeah, that one, the one where everybody's fighting over three control points in a single building. Yes, you can put snipers outside. No, there's nothing important to fight over out there unless one team is already on its heels (though this happens nearly every match, there), so get your damned heavy and waddle forth!
If the maps were larger (say, using most of the territory they apparently possess), heavies would be less-dangerous and people would be complaining about wildernesses full of nigh-invisible snipers, so, assuming CCP plans to expand the combat zone, the fix is on its way.
Counter-argument: there are plenty of ways to compensate for movement speed on a large map
Like: dropships, tanks, and everybody's favorite, jeeps. Er, LAV's. That last has a free (really? Am I wrong about that?) militia variant that lets heavies scoot around the field like heavily-armored penguins on roller skates, running people over or just bailing out and machine-gunning them, at no cost. Sure, they can be countered, but not as easily or cleanly as the tactic itself works.
This could be solved in a few ways. Disallow heavies using vehicles (justification: they're too damn big and/or heavy; fit assault or lighter if you want to board!). Remove the damned free jeep. This would have several benefits, including making the establishment (and removal) of portable spawn points on large maps a major priority.
("Is that a squad of heavies in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?")
Argument: heavies are direct-assault killers, so confine them to that role
Expanding on the "no vehicles for heavies" thought, what about hacking? Why should heavies be able to burn through hostile defenses, then belly right on up to the objective console and whistle happily while hacking in the knowledge that only a great (and doomed) fool would try to ambush them? Sure, they'd just stand around on guard while their logistics escort got busy with the poor objective's electronics, but isn't that the way it should be? Pick off the hacker, and the heavies get stuck at an unsecured objective, hostiles coming down around their ears, waiting for the hacker to jog back-- if he even makes it!
If you want to be in any way sure of success, bring several somethings other than heavies.
While we're at it, we could deny them inventory space for grenades, though that's a whole other discussion.
Argument: how about weak points?
I don't know about the rest of you scouts, but a heavy is the only thing I hesitate to sneak up on. Unless you make your kill very cleanly (which usually seems to mean, "at point-blank range into the back of his head"), that heavy is going to wheel around and you're going to be in one desperate fight. So, supposing we do a classic "mini-boss" thing, and give them weak spots-- like the aft quadrant? Put a damage multiplier on that hit zone (if CCP can easily program that), and you'll soon see heavies walking around back to back like buddy protagonists in an action flick. Worth it for the comedy value alone.
Argument: work on risk versus reward
If heavies are going to be left more or less as-is, their suits should be very expensive, at least commensurate with their increased K/D ratio.
Counter-argument: that won't make the problem better
CCP has tried to discourage use of certain "elite" units by making them expensive, before. Anybody remember them saying that they didn't expect there ever to be more than two or three Titan-class vessels in all of Eve?
A unit that grants its owner a distinct advantage will be purchased. Period. And it will be purchased by those who already (albeit by their own merits, usually) have a sharp advantage, in order to add to it. Elite merc units will buy up the suits in bulk and swallow the cost in order to command high hiring prices: "The finest in both skills and war material."
The effect of this is to render mid-ranked mercs crunchy and good with ketchup.
Argument: well, what about the flip-side? Increase WP value to +100 for a non-heavy who downs a heavy
Ever narrowly survive a fight with one of these behemoths and then feel kind of insulted when that "Kill +50" pops up?
"That? THAT was worth 50 measly points? And there's another SIX of those mothers in the area? Screw it; gonna go hack a supply depot."
Increase the point value, and you might see a lot more concentrated fire focused on heavies.
Also: supposing we flag them on the map?
At the moment, a red's a red, a blue's a blue, a green's a green. But supposing heavies got their own color-sig? "+100 points here; come and get it!"
That's it from me, at least for now. Thoughts? |
Tarquin Markel
The Synenose Accord
Celestial Imperative
85
|
Posted - 2013.01.20 20:11:00 -
[2] - Quote
Noraa Anderson wrote:The general consensus from Assault scrubs who want to lolroll everything with ARs more like.
Perhaps that's so, at least in part. Assault w/ AR seems to be the default in a lot of places, but I find those MUCH easier to engage than heavies.
AR's are pretty accurate-- which is a weakness. A scout, strafing back and forth at random while spraying SMG fire like a mad fiend, has decent odds of winning a straight fight at close range.
In theory, at least from what I remember from the dev blogs, my scout agility should be even more of a straight counter to a heavy's, well, heavy-ness-- and in an open-air setting where I manage to close before the heavy spots me, that's often how it works.
Thing is, DUST is full of cramped spaces, and if I get stuck in a heavy's sights for more than an instant, I'm toast. The MG won't just ding my shields like the occasional frantic AR round will; it'll burn right through.
The heavy, meanwhile, doesn't need to worry much about the terrain aside from keeping it out of his line of fire.
CCP seems to have gone for that whole "interceptor versus cruiser" balance thing, but it's more like "interceptor versus cruiser in dense asteroid field."
Advantage: cruiser, absent an exceptional inty pilot. Sooner or later the inty hits a 'roid, loses traversal, and gets minced. |
Tarquin Markel
The Synenose Accord
Celestial Imperative
85
|
Posted - 2013.01.20 20:24:00 -
[3] - Quote
Altina McAlterson wrote:My question still remains what made them OP? They were pretty crappy (i.e. not user friendly and took much more skill than an assault suit) up until recently. Up until about the time they added the recoil to AR's and took away the magic dot scope in fact...hmmmm.
It seems like again and again I find myself asking the question "am I the only one that sees this?"
Possibly.
<-- rank n00b.
Don't know the history, only know what things are like now.
What things are like now is troublesome.
The origin of the problem might suggest a fix, but not necessarily-- especially if the "fix" that produced the problem was aimed mostly at other troubles, elsewhere. Unintended consequences and all that.
Also: wait. You mean AR's used to be even more accurate? Yikes. |
Tarquin Markel
The Synenose Accord
Celestial Imperative
85
|
Posted - 2013.01.21 04:41:00 -
[4] - Quote
Generally:
Eh-- fair enough. I'm certainly new.
On the other hand, the "heavy count as win predictor" does actually seem to kinda ... work. It doesn't seem like it should.
Stinker Butt wrote:I am a decent heavy and I certainly cannot do those things you speak of. It's sounds like a story about Batman.
Hm. Well ...
I guess the opposing team in one of my early rounds on Manus Peak had Batman in its ranks? I mean, obviously not. But when Objective C, in one of its basement phases, came under siege by a short-staffed squad of two or three heavies, our assault suits just couldn't spawn fast enough.
Spawn, one, two, dead. The heavies forced the assaults back in a fighting withdrawal to the objective itself, splattering any random respawners, then finished them off. It took them a bit to actually take the objective (had to secure the surface before actually marching up to the big blue button, I guess-- not easy with people in assault suits materializing randomly in a 20-yard radius).
What blew me away was how few of them there were, engaging vastly superior numbers and coming out of it with maybe a few dings on the armor.
I mean, we all seem to have our moments of greatness in this game (I've got a couple moments from matches today m'self that leave me feeling all warm and tingly), and maybe that was just one of theirs. Maybe the assaults were cowering under cover and being picked off one by one as their positions became exposed.
Still, it made an impression.
Well-- there's that, and then there's the amount of firepower I have to expend on a heavy in a freaking sneak attack (my specialty, in principle) before it folds. It's kind of a lot. At least they can't shrug off remote detonation packs....
Quote:... assaults have as much, if not more shield than most heavies....
It's not the shields on a heavy. I know those are pretty thin.
It's the goddamn armor....
Now, granted, I guess I have almost as good a record against heavies as they have against me, but a lot of that comes down to remote explosives. My main reasons for feeling that the suits are overpowered come down to having watched too many heavies stumping down too many hallways, withering all opposition before them. I can only plant so many explosives so fast, and heavies in da house tends to mean that this objective is falling, right now.
In Eve Online, you can identify what is maybe a little too good by how disproportionately it gets used. Pre-revamp, Rifters ruled, Merlins drooled. Many Rifters, few Merlins. Then the Merlin got switched to a full turret fit. All of a sudden, Caldari PvP frigates are coming out of the woodwork.
(Does space have woodwork?)
Here, the assault is kind of a default; I see more of those than anything else, and that's kind of to be expected. What disturbs me is how often that is not the case-- how often I spawn into a lobby that's 70 or 80% full of heavies (that's probably an exaggeration, but sure as hell doesn't feel like it). What's more, when that happens, our team tends to win-- unless the other side has even more.
The heavy is supposed to be especially good at killing things in a game where an awful lot of what you're doing is killing things. It does its job well. Fair enough. But that a specialist role is getting used so much, sometimes more than the generalist....
Something seems "off." I do kind of like your idea about maybe limiting their numbers, but that seems a little ... artificial.
Perhaps reasons not to constantly play heavies will develop out of the gameplay itself, especially if CCP lets us out of our bottles (small maps) somewhere along in here. |
Tarquin Markel
The Synenose Accord
Celestial Imperative
85
|
Posted - 2013.01.21 05:18:00 -
[5] - Quote
Kovak Therim wrote:As a heavy, I have so many ways that I can be countered it's not even funny. Complaining that a heavy has thick armor? Really? Wtf do you think makes us run at the speed of a snail?
Please note that I have neither suggested stripping your armor nor your weapons (though I did suggest including a "weak spot"). Confining your role further to increase the importance of other suit types, now, that I've suggested. |
Tarquin Markel
The Synenose Accord
Celestial Imperative
85
|
Posted - 2013.01.21 06:08:00 -
[6] - Quote
Hrrrrrm.
Stinker Butt wrote:... the purpose of the threads are to get people like you to catch on, and you certainly remember that one time when that heavy came in and pwned everyone real good, don't you? Yeah, we all do. that doesn't make them OP. CCP may not listen to them, but if everyone joins the fight, they will.
Point. There certainly seems to be a political element.
On the other hand, that doesn't mean that there isn't any problem. I'd like to hear your thoughts on heavy proliferation (you've already suggested limiting their/your numbers, so I presume you see the issue).
Quote:You've already figured out a couple of fool proof ways to kill a heavy. Why don't you wait until you have your prototype armor and then tell me if you still think heavies are OP.
To the latter: fair point. I -am- still new.
To the former: a remote det pack trap will kill a heavy, a scout, an assault, a logi, AND their poodles. It is not, however, foolproof if the fool is randomly slinging explosives around or happens to be not so much a fool and therefore spots the trap.
It's not anti-heavy. It's anti-vehicle and anti-unobservant infantryman.
But ... yes. Could use more data, it's true. |
Tarquin Markel
The Synenose Accord
Celestial Imperative
85
|
Posted - 2013.01.21 06:21:00 -
[7] - Quote
Zat Earthshatter:
Wow! Somebody directly addressing my suggestions! Thank you.
About the dot colors: why not? I mean, I think I can see some issues, but-- what's your concern specifically? |
Tarquin Markel
The Synenose Accord
Celestial Imperative
85
|
Posted - 2013.01.21 06:51:00 -
[8] - Quote
Zat Earthshatter wrote:Color is normally meant to indicate allegiance. Plus, different colors than red/blue are sometimes used in other games - so even having a similar shade, yet differently-colored Heavy indicator may fool a player into thinking that Heavy is on a different team than it really is, which can be bad.
The shapes allow one to keep the same colors, yet still tell the suits apart. Plus, using shapes allows you to pick out any suit type, not just pick on one version. There's also less room for confusion, as allies are still quite clearly allies, and enemies are clearly enemies.
I was thinking more of making hostile heavies, say, blood red. Current "reds" are actually orange, so that color seems to have been left open.
Friendlies, dark blue and forest green, maybe? To help you keep track of who you're flanking for?
(So embarrassing to discover the dude you were counting on for suppressing fire was the logistics backup....) |
Tarquin Markel
The Synenose Accord
Celestial Imperative
85
|
Posted - 2013.01.21 07:02:00 -
[9] - Quote
Stinker Butt wrote:Don't take it personally, but I don't trust your gut. You may perceive 80% heavies out there, but show me the numbers.
Fair enough; guts aren't to be trusted. It's also true that heavies stand out in a crowd the way a boulder stands out in a grove of aspens. Five boulders and twenty aspens = "Wow, that's a lot of boulders."
Or something.
Anyhow, you make a good point. I -do- think a little more info on the map would be nice, and I still feel like I've slain Goliath any time I manage to SMG a heavy, but ...
... well, time will tell, I suppose. I don't have the statistics, but I'll bet CCP does.
Hopefully, they'll know how best to use them, bearing in mind that graphs have sometimes been used to explain that rail guns are balanced against artillery snipers in Eve, which fits under the "lies, damn lies, and ..." heading, but ...
... hopefully they've learned from experience which statistics to look at.
Hint: it's not the kittening range/damage curve. |
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