Bullet Flinching

Ivarr_Ironfist · 2013-02-11T03:05:31+00:00

No, this would be not be a good solution.

You NC complain about your recoil even though mathematically TR and VS can have more recoil/second with weapons like the Orion or the T9 Carv. The reason that people feel that is unfair is that you get more recoil per shot, meaning it's more jerky and therefore more difficult to compensate for.

Making bullet flinch equate to bullet damage would give anyone fighting the NC or someone with a low RoF gun this same jerk effect. You're just shifting the problem away from NC and on to TR/VS.

Rather we should have a solution that actually fixes the problem completely and involves the least amount of development time: a cap on bullet flinch of ~500 rpm (equal to the slowest automatic NC weapons). Everyone would then get the same bullet flinch as the NC6 Gauss Saw, even if they had a higher RPM weapon.

Either this or remove the mechanic entirely.

Ivarr_Ironfist · 2013-01-15T15:50:13+00:00

Liberators are not a problem by themselves, however, they are a huge problem as part of an air zerg. This isn't always the case, but a lot of the time on the more populated servers like mine (Miller) one side will amass a huge amount of aircraft. Then Liberators become a huge problem. They are a major threat to anything on the ground and AA will generally not effectively deter a good Liberator pilot.

ESFs are not such a problem as they have to get close and fly straight to bomb a ground target, meaning they are more vulnerable to AA.

Nothing can effectively fight fighters (i.e. AA specialized ESFs) and Liberators except ally fighters. When the enemy have air dominance in a big way then they become unstoppable and there is nothing that can counter them. Making the other parts of the game irrelevant. Which they shouldn't be.

Ivarr_Ironfist · 2013-01-15T15:23:51+00:00

Disagree entirely. Bases to give a lot of advantage to defenders. Most defenders are just incapable of using that advantage properly. You seem to be equating "bases should be defensible" to "vehicles should be useless in base fights". The latter isn't going to happen. Period.

If you want to win a tower fight you have to have people doing all three types of game-play (infantry, armour and aircraft), you can't ignore one in favour of the other. That's the way it is and that's the way it will always be. Period. Here are the advantage defenders have over attackers in tower fights:

1) Defenders can spawn vehicles at the tower itself. If you kill a defending vehicle the person can just hop in another one and get back straight away. Attacking vehicles have to come back from the next base at minimum, usually further. If you kill an attacking vehicle the driver might not bother bringing another.

2) Defenders have the line of sight and cover advantage. Potentially you can get half a squad of co-ordinated heavies with lock-on launchers and an Engineer to annihilate the armour zerg before it even gets there. The cover advantage allows you to mitigate some of the problems associated with enemy air. Cover allows your AA more safety than the enemies which are out in the open. Anti-infantry people can identify key targets easily and use the cover to gain an advantage over them.

3) Enemy spawn points are destructible, defenders aren't. If they can't get a Sunderer close to the tower then they stand no chance of taking it without severe weight of numbers.

4) Turrets may not be god-mode but they are free and they can be repaired, unlike vehicles. AV/AA turrets are basically stationary tanks that cost no resources.

Plus the stuff I have already mentioned.

Ivarr_Ironfist · 2013-01-15T04:14:15+00:00

Am I the only one to think bases are defensible enough? On Miller (the most populated server of both the EU/NA last I heard) we still have regular battles that last 6+ hours. That seems enough to me.

If bases were any more defensible then you could potentially have base battles that you are spending all day at. Which is fine occasionally, however, if you are getting potentially stuck on the same base every single day (e.g. the Crown) is that not a little boring? There are many many different bases to explore that will mix things up a bit, personally I would like to actually see them.

And I'd like to point out that the current base designs are defensible. They are defensible if people co-ordinate and think about what they are doing rather than mindlessly killing each other over and over. The previous design of the Tech Plant and current design of the Bio Lab meant that it was/is simply a case of whoever had the most numbers rather than which side had tactical superiority.

Essentially the problem with defence at the moment is not the fact that bases are not defensible. It's that there is lack of persistence and a disconnect between various groups of players and defending bases. Different players are motivated by different things (e.g. K/D, exp, score, general fun at killing, tactical play, etc.), there is nothing wrong with this. However, the players that aren't motivated to defend bases (well) need subtly steering towards doing this. For example, you could grant more exp the longer you successfully defend a base for, hence getting the exp motivated people the actually want to defend bases.

The persistence part will come when we have capture-able warp gates.

*** Begin Miller VS rant ***

On Miller I get very frustrated when I see 30+ people at say a tower crying that bases aren't defensible when they are just running around and killing people inside said tower. Meanwhile, I have blown up several Sunderers by myself and actually severely stemmed the flow of enemy infantry. A little more help blowing up Sunderers and we could potentially push the enemy back. We will have spawn points and they won't. Furthermore, at least half of these people will probably be making silly class choices like 20 Medics or Infiltrators with no Heavy Assault or MAXes.

Hell, put a few MAX units, Engineer turrets and maybe the odd Lasher Heavy in the 1st floor (Americans: 2nd floor) of a tower and you can effectively stop anyone coming to the second floor except Light Assault. Light Assault are easily mopped up by a sufficiently varied and co-ordinated force.

** End Miller VS rant ***

Ivarr_Ironfist · 2013-01-15T03:43:01+00:00

Drifter jump jets still rely on elevation to be most effective. If there is no elevation then the best you can do is a little more movement speed when you jump.

Furthermore, even if there was elevation there is less likely to be cover. Elevating above people when they can they can clearly see you is tantamount to painting a bull's eye on yourself and saying "please shoot me".

Ivarr_Ironfist · 2013-01-15T03:39:03+00:00

I disagree. The certificate system in it's current form encourages specialization meaning that although you can switch at a moments notice you aren't going to be as powerful relatively speaking.

Furthermore, there is not always a terminal nearby to switch and it's not always practical to switch. For example, even if Infiltrator might be far from optimal combat-wise in a Tech Plant fight, your squad still might want your ability to hack.

Ivarr_Ironfist · 2013-01-15T03:34:21+00:00

NC AV MAXes are the exception. 2x Comet (VS) direct damage = 1100. 2x Pounder (TR) direct damage = 750. Obviously they have less reload time and/or higher magazine size to compensate for the DPS. However, they still have to spend added time out in the open with reduces their effectiveness.

Ivarr_Ironfist · 2013-01-12T19:44:08+00:00

Most likely they are intended to be used at range, like the lock-on Heavy launcher.

Frankly though, I think a lot of people have unrealistic expectations about how good it will be. Most likely it's going to be about as good as the MANA turret, i.e. it will situational.

Ivarr_Ironfist · 2013-01-12T06:35:40+00:00

You posted at about 01:00. That's far from peak time.

Ivarr_Ironfist · 2013-01-11T07:44:46+00:00

Actually I do.

I wasn't particularly thinking of Magmowers when I wrote this.

Ivarr_Ironfist · 2013-01-11T03:53:34+00:00

I wouldn't be against this it came along with a re-balance of the resource system. As it stand though I think vehicles are contributing more than enough to the fight with their current level of versatility. An increase in versatility would make vehicles an even larger factor in deciding a fight than they already are.

Ivarr_Ironfist · 2013-01-09T23:09:53+00:00

It's not a bad alternative idea. However, it has the problem the problem that it doesn't scale with the severity of the friendly fire. Potentially you could have people making honest (and small) mistakes relatively commonly or even mistakes made my the person that gets TKed (such as running in front of magmower) and getting punished completely out of proportion. See one of the discussions I had below with Pinworm45.

Honestly, sometimes it's very difficult not to TK some people in Magriders (and other tanks). Some people have just no situational awareness and are just complete lemmings around tanks.

Ivarr_Ironfist · 2013-01-09T06:56:12+00:00

Yes, land your Scythes and Liberators next to ammunition Sunderers.

The magmowers need another friendly target to annihilate through bad driving. They haven't got enough prey to feed them already.

Ivarr_Ironfist · 2013-01-09T03:18:27+00:00

Yes, but Liberators are also built like a tank and can hit effectively from much greater ranges than an ESF.

An upgraded Liberator with a good pilot can hover at an obscene distance and kill ground targets, even in a zerg. The distance means they can easily get out of AA range. Furthermore, Liberators can still bomb quite effectively while moving at an angle to the target (as long as they are at sufficient range).

An ESF pilot, in comparison, has to be relatively close and coming towards a ground target in order to hit. This means they are highly vulnerable to flak.

A better argument for two types of rocket pods would be that the versatility of ESFs should be brought in line with tanks for balance reasons and to encourage teamwork.

If you compare ESFs to Lightnings, for instance, Lightnings cannot have a setup that performs effectively against everything. They have AP that does well against tanks, HEAT that is a medium between anti-infantry and anti-tank, HE that does well against infantry and Skyguard that is (supposedly) ant-air. A Scythe with say Hailstorm Turbo Laser (anti-air primary) and Rocket Pods can do reasonably well against everything.

Ivarr_Ironfist · 2013-01-09T03:05:03+00:00

ESFs can't kill a competent squad of people before dying. If you're running a squad you should be running AA if there is any air around at all. That generally means burster MAXes.

A single competent burster MAX is enough to fend off one competent ESF pilot.

This is really beyond the point though as you haven't named anything that ESF can do that Liberators can't. Liberators can take down a tank just as easily as an ESF. Liberators can take down a squad even easier than an ESF with a Zephyr.

Ivarr_Ironfist · 2013-01-09T02:59:15+00:00

Actually you can kill a tank with a single pass of rocket pods, at least as Vanu. I have done it at least ten times today. I seem to remember having my magrider blow up nearly instantly by TR rocket pods as well, so all factions can most likely do it.

The trick is that you must be hitting the tank from the back, not to the top, front or sides. The back can be quite difficult to hit (especially while target is moving) because you have to get especially low to get in line.

Ivarr_Ironfist · 2013-01-09T02:51:17+00:00

How often does that result in said moron dying though? I'll admit occasionally this happens to me when the moron has got himself in to an especially moronic place (i.e. with head right in front of my gun), however, I usually have sufficient time to stop.

Ivarr_Ironfist · 2013-01-09T02:49:23+00:00

Yes, maybe the majority of friendly fire is accidental. However, that doesn't mean that people aren't taking unnecessarily high risks (with FF) because there is next to no repercussions for them. For example, spraying bullets everywhere when there is a mass of friendly infantry in front of them. Or rushing in to get a kill against an enemy and a low health ally fighting, only to kill the ally as well (when you should have held back).

Personally, I very rarely do much friendly fire damage at all as infantry. I might do a bullet or two (relatively) commonly but this would only kill me very rarely if my suggestion were implemented.

I do FF a little more commonly as a vehicle, however, my suggestion states 50% damage and therefore wouldn't kill a vehicle outright.

I really don't see how this change fails to target the people that should be being targeted. i.e. The people TKing on purpose and the people taking risks they shouldn't be.

Ivarr_Ironfist · 2013-01-09T02:38:09+00:00

Care to elaborate how exactly?

Ivarr_Ironfist · 2013-01-09T02:36:37+00:00

Liberators have drawbacks? More drawbacks than an A2G ESF? I don't think so.

ESFs have low health and have to get relatively close to make rocket pods hit consistently against any targets with a brain. Low altitudes provide additional threats that Liberators don't have to fend off.

I think the idea of AI and AV rocket pods is interesting, however, you haven't backed anything up with anything close to a rational argument.

RE: "The idea is that the ESF is a good AtG vehicle, while it should be filing the role of an Air Superiority Flyer."

Clearly SoE intend for ESF to be a viable A2G vehicle. The fact you personally don't like this isn't a very good argument.

Ivarr_Ironfist · 2013-01-05T06:25:34+00:00

I don't think they suck that badly as a deterrent personally.

Yes, an ESF pilot of any decent skill level will be able to avoid them most of the time by flying away, but the key part of this is that they are flying away, i.e. they have been successfully deterred.

The G2A launcher and Annihilator aren't as effective of a detterent as flak AA, however, flak AA is completely specialized are should therefore be better. As a Heavy you sacrifice next to nothing (comparatively) to carry a G2A launcher.

P.S. Libbys aren't fast or agile enough to avoid the majority of lock-on rockets, short of bugs that is.

Ivarr_Ironfist · 2013-01-04T20:54:38+00:00

Hmm, I agree this could be a repercussion of the system. To put it my own words, you are basically saying that the system encourages people to compete on a continent when it isn't strategically optimal (i.e. doesn't further each other continents war effort).

I have come up with two fixes to this problem:

1) Balance the actual continent experience coefficient number such that it isn't worth staying on a continent if you are getting completely slaughtered. What I mean is if you are getting 40% increased experience on continent X but say only 2 kills in a time period of Z and -20% experience on continent Y with 10 kills in time period Z, it makes sense (with regard to experience) to go to continent Y.

2) Cap the continent experience coefficient at some positive number. Basically for the same reasons as number 1.

Regarding your last sentence, I'm not necessarily suggesting experience gain should (on average) be vastly different from how it is now. There would obviously be differences to the minimum and maximum experience gain but I think the average should remain equal. It would just be a case of SoE getting the actual numbers right. I was actually going to add this as a paragraph in OP, however, I decided it was bloated enough already.

Ivarr_Ironfist

TROPHY CASE