Hacking objectives too difficult?

(Kurnuttaja) #21

The speed of the hack is not the only problem: The second problem is that there are about 200% more engys on the defending team as there are operatives on attacking team. At most attacking team has maybe 2 ops while defending team consists almost 50% of engineers.

(Smokeskin) #22

Overdoing it with ops won’t solve it, you need people to guard the hackers. If the hack couldn’t be reversed, maybe operative spam could wprk, but as it is you need classes better at fighting than ops.

#23

My feelings on the matter are that it should require an Operative to “unhack” at the same speed. As an engineer is suited to defense, with mines and turrets and he can totally undo all the hacking at a much greater rate.

Engineers should only disarm HE explosives, Operatives should unhack. Makes sense skills wise and reduces the defense abilities. Having an engineer do it is just far too beneficial to the team on a defense map than having to have an operative do it.

Just my thoughts,

Thanks.

(Metal-Geo) #24

Although it’d certainly make operatives more useful for the defensive team, it’s not where I personally see the problem.

Point of the matter is that the defensive team can undo all the hard work of the opposing team. Hacking the objective now feels like trying to flip a coin and get tails 15 times in a perfect row. Flip heads once and you can start all over again.

The fact the objective is closer to the defensive team also doens’t help much,

(dazman76) #25

Distance from spawn for defenders, does seem to be part of the problem - and weirdly does seem more of a problem for hack objectives in particular. Maybe the extra (apparent) skew there is caused by the super-quick de-hack.

(solidus) #26

Interesting thoughts. I do agree that one of the inherent problems is that a defending team is far more likely to have lots of engineers than the team on offense has operatives. Because engineers are in general the more useful class.

I definitely think the engineer dehack should either not occur, be a ton slower, or have it only be able to be done in stages like once you hit 25%, 50% or 75%, it remains at minimum at those values. You couldn’t roll it back any further than those values. Also yeah I think forcing operatives to dehack instead of engineers is a better idea. Not sure why they made it engineers. Engineers already have a ton of defensive equipment so its very hard to root them out. When you have nearly the entire team play engineers, its amazingly hard.

(Saint Stunna) #27

Lets be real here.

They wont change it from engi to operative, because that would be “too much work”.

Most likely they will make it harder (longer) for engies. That’s all.

(Herandar) #28

[QUOTE=Saint Stunna;329367]They wont change it from engi to operative, because that would be “too much work”.

Most likely they will make it harder (longer) for engies. That’s all.[/QUOTE]

Of course they will, but there is no need for the negative implication that I am reading (and I assume is intentional.) They can change the dehack time by updating a NECVAR. Would take literally seconds.

(jazevec) #29

I see how it can be difficult. Hacking objectives take the longest, and unlike explosive charges they require constant attention. Operatives are unlucky in that they can’t use their abilities while hacking. But maybe you guys fixate on hacking too much ? If you see an enemy player who’s about to shoot you, do you switch weapons and defend yourself ? Or do you try to get as much progress as possible ?

(Glyph) #30

Unless you are getting close to 100% there is no reason to keep hacking. Every % of progress will be removed once you die so your best bet is to prevent the de-hack. It’s not like once you hit 25/50/75% your progress cannot be removed so even if you die at 99% you can be dropped back to 0% in a fraction of the time it required to get there.

(JaxDad08) #31

I love this game and play it daily. It is possible to win offensively with a little skill and a lot of luck. However, to encourage more team game play and requiring people to use more than the Engineer class on defense:

I feel that it should require the same class to undo anything. An Operative needs to undo a hack, a Soldier to undo an HE charge, an Engineer to repair the safe break-in (can’t currently undo this one), and a Medic to down an escort. This would balance the game more by requiring the same number of each class on each side. Right now to defend, all you need is a whole team of Engineers on most maps. Add one Medic and one Soldier, it is almost impossible to beat the defenders.

Also, the undo should be at a slower rate. If the defensive team wants to undo they will need more of that class type on the team. This will even out the field. Right now on a hack job you have 3 or 4 Operatives (to quickly hack an item) trying to take on 6 or more Engineers. That is just a slaughter waiting to happen.

(Glyph) #32

[QUOTE=JaxDad08;329450]I love this game and play it daily. It is possible to win offensively with a little skill and a lot of luck. However, to encourage more team game play and requiring people to use more than the Engineer class on defense:

I feel that it should require the same class to undo anything. An Operative needs to undo a hack, a Soldier to undo an HE charge, an Engineer to repair the safe break-in (can’t currently undo this one), and a Medic to down an escort. This would balance the game more by requiring the same number of each class on each side. Right now to defend, all you need is a whole team of Engineers on most maps. Add one Medic and one Soldier, it is almost impossible to beat the defenders.

Also, the undo should be at a slower rate. If the defensive team wants to undo they will need more of that class type on the team. This will even out the field. Right now on a hack job you have 3 or 4 Operatives (to quickly hack an item) trying to take on 6 or more Engineers. That is just a slaughter waiting to happen.[/QUOTE]

No, no and no. Using an explosive =/= being able to build one. Killing someone =/= being able to save their life. The game is fine how it exists with the exception of nerfing how quickly the Engineer can remove a hack box.

(Darksider) #33

I see nothing wrong with the hacking objectives, problem lies with the team. You’re gonna need a solid team that will cover your back when Hacking if not, then you’ve already lost the round.

(dazman76) #34

And that’s exactly what’s wrong with them right now :slight_smile: Nobody is suggesting rewarding a lack of thought or teamwork - however if you’re in a team of fairly new players hacking against a not-so-new team, it’s like climbing a cliff with a piece of string and a tooth pick :slight_smile: Compared to all other objective types, the hack objectives are the most difficult - by some way. Defending is already easier than attacking, but it seems skewed even further for hacks. As mentioned before, proximity to defender’s spawn area also plays into this on most hack objectives.

(InfiniteStates) #35

But this game doesn’t favour outnumbered guns. The attacking team already has further to run from spawn to the objective, then (assuming defence hasn’t plastered mines and turrets all over the place) they are outgunned by however many operative are hacking.

Solid team or not - you will lose the fight if you are fighting 6 v 8. Especially with defensive reinforcements arriving at a higher frequency.

(Smokeskin) #36

[QUOTE=InfiniteStates;329467]But this game doesn’t favour outnumbered guns. The attacking team already has further to run from spawn to the objective, then (assuming defence hasn’t plastered mines and turrets all over the place) they are outgunned by however many operative are hacking.

Solid team or not - you will lose the fight if you are fighting 6 v 8. Especially with defensive reinforcements arriving at a higher frequency.[/QUOTE]

Mostly agree, but you have to consider offense only has to make it once, while defense can’t fail once. If offense is stronger than defense, defense just gets rolled over. For fun and close games, offense must be fighting against the odds per wave, only clearing the objective when chance favors them. If offense can manage 10 attacks in a game, then they shouldn’t have more than 5% chance of success per attack - then you’d have a balanced map. For stopwatch it works differently, where you’d want offense to be almost sure of eventual success, so you get a time to beat.

(BomBaKlaK) #37

is there a cvar to remove the engies de-hack ?
or to keep the progress fix on the hack box ?

(Smokeskin) #38

No, at least not yet

(Singh400) #39

I think the solution is simply. Remove the ability to dehack. Just introduce a fade when a certain time limit has passed. You would also need to increase the hack speed by around x1.5 I guess. ET:QW had that system down to a T. Why change it? And if you was going to change it, at least balance it. I can remove a 90%+ hack in mere seconds with one engineer without Nerves of Steel perk, a hack that took minutes to get into place. It’s not balanced at all.

Look at it this way:-

[ul]
[li] Destruct objectives --> Engineers can disarm (which by the way, you need to show the progress of the disarm - you know like ET:QW!)
[/li][li] Hack objectives --> Engineers can dehack
[/li][li] Build objectives --> Can’t do nothing, expect kill every god damn thing (you should really introduce a fade here)
[/li][/ul]
That doesn’t exactly scream “balanced” does it now?

[QUOTE=BomBaKlaK;329598]is there a cvar to remove the engies de-hack ?
or to keep the progress fix on the hack box ?[/QUOTE]No, not yet.

(dazman76) #40

Hang in there Singh, hang in there :slight_smile: