Don't quit playing just because of Phantom

(watsyurdeal) #1

Seriously, I’m seeing all these complaints, “I’m going to quit this game now”, “he ruined Dirty Bomb”.

First of all, get a hold of yourselves, you guys said the same thing about Nader and Rhino, and now they’re not as much of an issue.

Second, he’s definitely going to get nerfed somehow. I’m calling that one now, I don’t think he’ll lose the smgs or the katana will be nerfed, but I do think his cloak is going to be tweaked a lot more till they are fine with it.

And third, if you’re really going to stop playing over one merc, rather than manning up and actually figuring out how to deal with them instead of just avoiding him entirely, then you’re not nearly as good as you thought you were. If you aren’t willing to accept new challenges because it causes your score to dip, then you were way too comfortable in your strategy, and that’s the whole point of mercs being added back into the rotation. To change things up a bit and see how people handle it.

As for the argument of counter play, most of the mercs that would straight up shutdown his cloak aren’t here, so I’m thinking they wanna see how he plays out in a standard scenario. Where those mercs aren’t always available. Smart counters are always better than a direct counter, since Smart relies on the player’s knowledge of how a merc works, rather than “I’ll just use rock to beat scissors”.

So, tl;dr, don’t quit playing just because of one guy. This isn’t an argument, this is more of plea, don’t let this game die because you can’t handle something new.

(Hibbsan) #2

i said the exact same thing to some guy in another thread. it really is sad that so many people are saying that they are going to quit beacuse of Phantom. Atleast try to learn how to counter him, atleast try to beat him your own way. But you know what? Let them quit. Those kinds of people are only going to abandon the game eventually when someone new that is not Phantom comes out as well. if a new character that is strong comes out and is not getting destroyed by other characters, they will be whining. always.

(RuleofBooKz) #3

omg u have a Phantom forum alias image u are in league with the devil!

(shroudedMacadamia) #4

The “I will quit” posts are just unnecessary drama stirring and far to common in gaming communities in general. Dont give them the attention, ignore, move on.

Defiance mods banned people from their forums for making posts like that, sometimes I wish others were just as strict. Its just unneccessary drama that doesnt add anything to the community.

And not to derail your thread but I disagree with Nader and Rhino not being a problem anymore. Besides hackers, if there is anything in the game that makes me log off in disgust its those 2 mercs.

(Daergar) #5

The most glaring problem is that we lack Red-Eye (and maybe the fire-fella) to counter Phantom.

Vassy’s heartbeat sensor works bloody wonders, to the point where I feel he should be able to have two of them active at the same time.

Naturally the cloak needs adjustment, I’d prefer a cooldown increase rather than removing the damage mitigation. Being able to take a hit while you close the distance seems fine to me, but able to do that, kill one to three people with a stab, start running and engage your cloak as you do so is a bit broken.

If he went lower health and more speed I’d say it would be even worse, being able to actually catch up to most other mercs from behind would open another can of worms.

He’s definitely not as overpowered as people claim, but he certainly needs tweaking and counter-mercs.

(litheJacket) #6

lol are you kidding me? just stop playing zorro and play on other merc and learn us counter him. he’s waiting on your opposite with smg when you can’t see him he shoting your head you are dying in 1 or 2 seconds how you can counter him? he’s attacking you with katana if you change your weapon to melee you will die even waiting for change, or use your gun you will die in 1 or 2 seconds again. if you are talking about eveybody can notice running phantom and kill them from behind, here we are talking about counter attack.

(Amerika) #7

Phantom is definitely more annoying than effective. I do think that his shield is mostly fine but that his base health might be a bit too high but that is the only thing I’d change if I was to change anything.

Also, something that I started doing last night was pretty effective. If you see a shimmer near you then long jump past them. They might hit but a lot of times they will miss, the cloak drops, they are stuck in a swing animation and going slow and you just laser down their heads. Did that many times last night.

Also, when playing Phantom, I found the most effective use of his abilities was to rarely go for melee kills unless they didn’t leave you open because, again, if you melee somebody you are wide open for a long time and can be easily shot. I used the shield to gain entrance to areas undetected, shoot people and then vacate with the shield absorbing hits. However, due to this play-style you may or may not be that effective compared to playing another offensive class. I had quite a few good games as Phantom last night but nothing outside my norm and definitely below what can be done on Fragger.

(frzn) #8

Agreed, especially when you would have to buy the characters to counter him and equip them in your limited loadout slots. This game can’t rely on rock-paper-scissors.

(misspo) #9

I find him fine. I don’t know what is your problem to all.

(B_Montiel) #10

No, the big difference here is that both Rhino and Nader have pretty much always been there in older beta states. The balancing took several months, especially for Nader. Except the slight tweaks they made right after, they were pretty much balanced at their beta release. And to be honest, those balancing tweaks were so slight compared to what some other mercs REQUIRE (Fletcher, Arty just to mention two). Phantom we just received here has been available like 2 weeks through nexon’s beta (which went from mid 2013 to end 2014). It caused as much drama with a 500 players community back in those days. Personnally, I went on the “that sh!te is OP” wall when fragger was. I might start again with Phantom upon further testing and expected balance.

And there we have Phantom fully released, certainly modified, but with blatant problems still remaining, which should have been directly shown upon strong play testing. And yes, he does need some balancing. He does have so many advantages with so few drawbacks right now.

So to a lot of players who consider balance’s sake is a priority, they are regarding this as a “shut up we grab some money” move. SD and Nexon are indeed making good bucks from people who will buy the freshly new merc, and more if he’s clearly overpowered. No matter what happen, a good part of players will buy such mercs, not for testing purposes, but just to stomp pub servers during two weeks before he gets nerfed.

Hi-Rez already did this back when they released some new weapons on tribes : ascend. For those who played it, you know where it ended. I put bigger expectations of success on that game than I am doing on Dirty Bomb right now. Mistakes can happen, that’s normal, but here, I completely understand why some people consider that merc release as a cash generating big fat finger. DB is still in beta, I agree, but hey, they’re already taking a lot of money from it. Don’t be fooled.

(watsyurdeal) #11

First of all, don’t bash Splash for the sins of Hi Rez, they are a repeat offender with their games. Splash hasn’t given any evidence to me so far that they don’t care about balance and only care about money.

We complained that the grind was a bit too steep with credits, so they upped the gain

We complained that certain cards were better than others, and affect gameplay, so not only did they make all cards available at bronze, you can pay credits for them at reasonable prices, so now silver and beyond truly only offer cosmetic gains, nothing more.

The reason Phantom disappeared was because he was at both ends of the spectrum, he was clearly overpowered at first, then clearly underpowered. They add him back in without any of the mercs that directly counter him aside from Vasilli, just to see how he plays out without as much rock paper scissors element thrown in.

The result is pretty clear, he’s effective at his job, but he’s hard to kill, hard to punish. From that, SD should take that his cloak solves the issue of him getting in close to be effective, but he does not need to be able to tank or minimize damage with it.

I think that is pretty obvious from the complaints, even if they don’t quite know how to put it.

I already posted my ideas to fix him here, whether they do that or not is up to them. But I do not think they are as greedy as you make them out to be, they aren’t as bad as Hi Rez, not by a mile.

(Amerika) #12

Splash Damage has done a pretty fair job of balancing so far. I’d wager if it turns out that Phantom does need adjustments he will be adjusted. And considering the light touches SD has had on Nader both in reduction and increasing of power along with the revive changes I’d trust them. Screaming “cash grab” after day 1 isn’t very fair.

Let things sort out over a while and give it time. People still yell about how “OP” Rhino is or Sparks is but most of us on this forum know better that, at best, those mercs are balanced but most likely are a bit weak.

(GeNKi) #13

I like this community! Totally agree and well, I got wrecked badly few times yesterday :slight_smile:

(Szeg007) #14

How to deal with phantom in 2 steps:

1: open your game library
2: right click on dirty bomb and select delet local content

I just wanted to share this with you guys because it worked for me.

(murkyCook) #15

A levle 7 Phantom just did 55-6 at pub server

yeah he’s not OP at all.

(Frogteam) #16

[quote=“murkyCook;41643”]A levle 7 Phantom just did 55-6 at pub server

yeah he’s not OP at all.[/quote]

That’s Anecdotal

http://forums.dirtybomb.nexon.net/discussion/13809/phantoms-not-op-fletcher-is-m8

(B_Montiel) #17

@Watsyurdeal @Amerika
I totally agree with you both. I’m just relaying some thoughts some people might have. But to be honest, SD are usually not going premature this far, especially since open beta release. Hence some interrogations I have. So my comparison with Hi-Rez is just pinpointing that there’s a thin sheet of ice between being fair to players and just consider they’re cash cows. Don’t forget Nexon’s implication. Let the time do its work. We may find out later.

(Alphafox) #18

[quote=“murkyCook;41643”]A levle 7 Phantom just did 55-6 at pub server

yeah he’s not OP at all.[/quote]

Yup, he can’t be better than all of you of course, that’s totally impossible right?

(Amerika) #19

[quote=“murkyCook;41643”]A levle 7 Phantom just did 55-6 at pub server

yeah he’s not OP at all.[/quote]

94-20 with 30k score while learning Phantom. To some that might make it look like Phantom is “OP”. But that was a pretty average score and below average compared to if I was using Fragger, Skyhammer or Vassili and I honestly didn’t feel as if much could be improved beyond my decision making on some maps overall.

In other words what you are saying isn’t really accurate since competent veteran players can pull those scores with just about any class fairly easily and it’s not indicative of a mercs power overall. Let things play out a bit, let people get used to him being in the game and start to notice pick up on how to spot him easy and then let SD adjust if it’s needed.

(Alphafox) #20

Some tips for people who have no idea on how to deal with him:

Tip #1: Vassilli players, use your heartbeat sensor, it’s something you should always do.
Tip #2: In future update when the other snipers will be released ALL of them will have a way to make his stealth 100% pointless.
Tip #3: Back away when you see a Phantom rushing you, Yes. It works.
Tip #4: Just like every merc, headshots do extra damage, yes I know it’s obvious, but I see most people panic, when 2 shotgun shots should kill Phantom.
Tip #5: Use your eyes, he can be spotted quite easily if you pay attention to your surrounding.
Tip #6: Play the merc, you will learn his strength and weaknesses.