Health Regen and Merc "strength".

(Protekt1) #61

I think they’re trying to do roles differently but there is so much opposition to force them to do the same old. They still have ways to make each character unique and fill a role in a match, they’re just trying to take the focus away from something as simple but absolutely necessary as always having a medic or always having a field ops by your side to function well.

I think the proficiency system is the correct way to approach this game. You might want it different, but that doesn’t mean it is the right way to do it because the product is designed to meet many hands. We’ve known for a long time now that they aren’t making ET2.0.

(PixelTwitch) #62

That is not what I am trying to promote at all mate…

All I was saying is that rather than having something waving in your face and forcing your hand into a certain play style, my idea does it more subconsciously. I am myself actively trying to recommend ideas that add complexity and depth while still being simple to understand. Noobs that use my suggestion poorly are going to be punished more than they would be in the current system. It is a very small change that I believe will better direct play, increase mastery and individualize the Mercs a little more.

The thing we need to try and remember when dealing with Dirty Bomb is that its Free 2 Play and by the same right, Free 2 Leave/Not-Play. This is not like the old days where a game was completely free so player numbers did not matter… Or a full priced release where even if the drop off is huge online, at least the people had already paid for the game. Just because things are made simpler at the base of the games design does not mean they need to be simpler at the top. Hence games like DOTA and Starcraft would not exists in the way they currently do. Barrier to entry and skill ceiling are completely different things. The goal has got to be, lower the barrier to entry as much as possible at the same time as raising the skill ceiling. Health Regen currently has a very binary effect on play and there is a section of the skill ceiling that is being limited by it. Raising the skill ceiling while lowering the barrier to entry is what I am attempting to push forward as a suggestion. I am not saying its 100% the right way to do it and I am certainly not saying its going to make a huge difference to overall gameplay, its not. Its all about subtle pushes in interesting directions that will give this game its heart and soul. Until this game is fun in a public/low skilled environment, the general public will not care about a possible competitive scene or the game in general. Less people = less content = less people = less content.

A community does not stand on its own, it stands on the shoulders of its entire player base. If them foundations are not solid, you can only grow it so big.

(Sun_Sheng) #63

Agreed in part…but, :wink: i’ll bore you a bit with some of my gaming history/landmarks

I first started really playing online in the days of Unreal and Quake. I dipped my feet in the water and didn’t understand it much other than that it was a bit of fun to deathmatch but more fun to play the singleplayer (for those who haven’t played the singleplayer Unreal, it’s still highly recommended … and massive!!

After that, I got into Unreal Tournament playing CTF and being instakilled by people with a translocator blew my mind. I’d be shooting like hell, then instantly dead by someone who vanished and reappeared. Mind-blowing. I played CTF for many years, dabbled in RTCW, then along came ET. ET was the next step forward to me and a massive learning experience that was doubled when I started playing for TFA in clan matches. Seriously owned in the beginning, holding our our own/pretty decent by the end.

After that, Black Ops 2, and from being a decent low/mid player I was back to being a noob. totally owned by more experienced players, so I adopted shotgun classes and stuff until I learned. By the time that ended, if I wasn’t accused of hacks twice in a night, I thought I must be playing badly.

What i’m trying to say is that online gaming for me, is about getting pwned and learning from it. It’s what happens along with the sun rising each morning. Yes, there should be an entry level which is enjoyable, but at the same time, the tutorial should go something along the lines of

“Repair that turret over there!”
Bloke goes to repair turret and dies instantly.
Up pops sign saying “No numbnuts, you’re a med. Physician heal thyself!!”
Right, now you know what your role is!

The game shouldn’t be based around everyone being able to do everything. Ok, I understand that’s not what SD want, they want everyone to be able to do everything and just have different abilities like dropping a turret or a healing station, but if they want that, then they also need to realise that you can’t go around giving everyone the ability to revive themselves anywhere, any time, whilst giving assault classes 130-150hp and med classes 80-100hp, If you do, you get the situation that is in place now which is just a spam fest because nobody wants to die often so they either sit there sniping or go out with 150hp and smg deathmatch. The answer to that is go as Nader and spam the hell out of everyone, then everyone whines and/or leaves.

Ok, i believe the patch will be rolled back a degree or two next time around, but there comes a time when you have to point out that taking two steps forward and one step back when you are going in the wrong direction, will still take you to the same wrong place. Albeit a little slower.

Give us variety, give us depth give us flexibility in abundance along with individuality and all the other good things, but don’t ignore basic fundamentals such as medics heal, engineers build, etc, etc. The ability to build my own PC will never make me a heart surgeon. If SD wants to have mercs that can pretty much do anything, then I personally think they need to have a sit down and a rethink about what they want the game to be. Forget things like blowing objectives and building walls. Stick to doc runs that are logical for everyone to be able to do. Forget mercs like “Hi, my name is Arty and i’m a lone guy wandering about, but I just happen to have access to an entire Heavy Artillery battalion in my back pocket” or “Hi, i’m Skyhammer. You see that former RAF squadron over there? That’s mine!..along with the ground crew and all the rest that goes with it” etc, and go for a CTF style game rather than an objective based assault game.

At the moment I can only assume that the attack/end of world event which led to the storyline and merc situation, was a big logic bomb dropped in the middle of the SD office :frowning:

(onYn) #64

So I have played recently some DB again, and had to think about this merc discussion all the time, because something is really bothering me. And that is the fact, how much people tunnel vision on KDA in public matches. As far as I know, one of the main focuses of this game is to be highly team oriented. Because of that, taking any specific stats like KDA from unorganized pub games and tunneling on them in order to ballance out mercs, and there powers are not going to help at all.

I want the mercs and there respective abilities to be usefull and viable as much as possible, but that mostly in organized teamplay. Obviously there shouldn´t be any uberly overpowered merc, that can stomp a properly matchmade game (what we don´t have, so there can´t be any discussing done about this at the time). I think, that if mercs get ballanced for the casual games, they will be heavily out of balance in a more competitive environment.

I think that there are two factors that would cause that.
First of all, a good reason for why the medics are having a higher KDA is the fact that they can heal themselves, because of that obviously aren´t dying as often. That however is going to become much less relevant when playing in smaller, more organized teams. It will be much harder to just run back and heal yourself up, since you will be responsible for your team and fight and die with them. Only in few cases you will be able to just cheese the enemy out with healing yourself, and in even fewer cases it will give you and your team a real benefit. So if you now nerf the medics, to a level where they deal less dmg, so that there KDA gets “average” in pub, they will become dog**** in competitive I think, because there will be much more viable team comps then those with a medic.
At the same time, you need to consider what kind of people play medics. Besides the usual medic you can encounter in DB there are also the so called “rambo” medics, who are people who enjoy shooting the most and don´t really bother about special abilities and what not. They just want to shoot some, while having enough sustain to not wait for the auto regen for 20 seconds to get healed up after a rough fight, and at the same time maybe even contribute something more to the team then just killing power. Who do you think is going to play the role of those “rambo” medics? Because I think, that in most cases this will be individually skilled players, with aim, movement or a combination of both that is above average at least. That may be a good reason for why medics have a better KDA then other classes as well.

What brings me to the question, have you thought about what will happen when the medic becomes so much inviable that the KDA of a medic will be at the desired “average” mark? I think, that no matter how much you balance one mercs KDA, the community will allways find a merc that will be best suited for casuall individual pewpew. Everyone who just wants to shoot (and most likely is good at it as well) will most likely play this class then. And while a medic is a target that you can still take down, and at the same time easily can contribute to the team while playing his selfish role of a rambo, overnerfing the medic could actually bring up something much worse then the “rambo” medic.

And to wrap this up, until we have a final setting of gameplay and a pool of maps for the release, that show us exactly where we are going to play at, I feel like any specific balances, are simply wasted time. Instead I woud rather like to see new mercs, new features or new maps instead. Following the moba genre made me understand, that balancing playable characters and there abilities in a rather organized gameplay while actually being played on a map that remains the same over years is very challenging. And please consider, that Riot and Valve are actually very experienced in doing this kind of stuff. Because of that I don´t think that we can expect SD to ballance the mercs for a much more hectic and dynamic game like DB, with maps that are continuously undergoing changes and are maybe not even released yet at this point. This becomes even more clear when you consider the fact of no existing relevant data due to too few players (everything under 1k is statistically worthless) or not even having the needed circumstances like matchmaking and organized games on a regular basis in order to gather any statistically significant (for specific ballance that is) data. And no, I don´t see scrims as organized right now and would rather count them as matchmaking.

(tokamak) #65

Well said!

It’s simply impossible to have a diverse set of roles if all mercs need to have an equal KDA. Some jobs simply require more dying, some require less dying, some jobs require more killing, some require less killing.

If certain mercs end up having disastrous KDA’s then that’s fine as long as their average xp-min is holding up right then that’s even better. That tells us they’ve found a useful niche that involves something else than direct combat.

(montheponies) #66

I dont think that’s fine, I also dont think that was what Onyn was driving at…

Natural selection (the theory not the game) will lead to those mercs that routinely get pwned being less played to the point of being redundant - why? because no one likes to get pwned, no matter what the XP meter tells them. Try to remember this is a First Person Shooter - it will tend to attract people how like to shoot others in the first person…

Going back to Brink you could make your Merc to suit your playstyle - funnily enough that ‘playstyle’ turned out to be light body with a Carb-9, simply because it was the one most capable for killing in the majority of circumstances, irrespective of class.

EDIT: I shudder to think of what a mess RTCW would have turned into if it followed the theory crafting on these forums. Let’s make something simple, complex and then layer more tinkering on that to fix the complex behaviour and make it less challenging…

(onYn) #67

Well, I haven mentioned this, because I didn´t think of it, and I even would say that this is very true… if it wouldn´t be for the classless objectives (can non medics still pick everyone up?), and on top of that with maps that allow next to no flanking/sneaking. This factors pretty much makes this idea of someone being usefull without the team without being involved in as many kills as possible next to useless.

Most of the game decisions will be about how to get the best firepower into one team. That however is going to be different I think for a merc depending on the environment wether it´s more or less organized/competitive.

(onYn) #68

Until today, I wonder why you are forcing this so much. Not only that you have next to no way to say how fun this game is for a n00b - or did you have a significant amount of people (1000+ AT LEAST) thrown into a proper matchmaking over couple of games/days, who then told you that this is what they think? And the CC guys, who got mostly stomped by someone who played this game for longer then 1 week doesn´t count :).
According to your theory CS shouldn´t be a thing at all… Everyone who starts playing CS without knowledge of the spread, that you can control it etc. will have a hard time killing an enemy with an entire magazine, including the pistol (basically what you say about DB…). At the same time every moba has just no reason to be succesfull as well, with a skill ceiling that makes me just laugh about a the idea of that being the issue in DB. You even mention Dota yourself, have you played it yet? 300 DB and Dota games, and I guarantee you in DB you will realise much more improvement then you probably ever will in Dota.
And to wrap this wrong idea up of the game being noob unfriendly: I have introduced many friends to ET:QW (basically the core of evil of DB, and tracking aim etc.) as well as to lol/dota (with no experience in similar games before). And everyone who played ET:QW with me became quiet good in a short amount of time, unlike in any moba. After 2 weeks of playing (about 30 games) I even played with some of them in competitive matches, against people who played the game for thousands of hours. And yeah they struggled, the missing experience was obvious, but they learned fast how to shoot, and with the right calls I truly enjoyed playing with them and didn´t experience them being a burden what so ever. In a moba I wouldn´t play a competitive match with someone who has below 700 games in total and I am not even exaggerating here. I even struggle to have fun playing normal moba games with them…

So how can what you say be true, when all what I say is true as well?

(tokamak) #69

Balanced KDA
Diverse tactical roles

Pick one

To say that all players want out of a game is to win tapdance duels is doing them a disservice. Large portions of gamers are perfectly fine with doing something else than just that, even if that means that they won’t always be able to go toe to toe with combat-oriented mercs…

(Sun_Sheng) #70

[QUOTE=onYn;515279]So if you now nerf the medics, to a level where they deal less dmg, so that there KDA gets “average” in pub, they will become dog**** in competitive I think, because there will be much more viable team comps then those with a medic.

At the same time, you need to consider what kind of people play medics. Besides the usual medic you can encounter in DB there are also the so called “rambo” medics, who are people who enjoy shooting the most and don´t really bother about special abilities and what not. They just want to shoot some, while having enough sustain to not wait for the auto regen for 20 seconds to get healed up after a rough fight, and at the same time maybe even contribute something more to the team then just killing power. Who do you think is going to play the role of those “rambo” medics? Because I think, that in most cases this will be individually skilled players, with aim, movement or a combination of both that is above average at least. That may be a good reason for why medics have a better KDA then other classes as well.

What brings me to the question, have you thought about what will happen when the medic becomes so much inviable that the KDA of a medic will be at the desired “average” mark? I think, that no matter how much you balance one mercs KDA, the community will allways find a merc that will be best suited for casuall individual pewpew. Everyone who just wants to shoot (and most likely is good at it as well) will most likely play this class then. [/QUOTE]

This is basically what worries me.People who want to tdm and spend all their time worrying about kdr, will always play the most kdr-useful class. That’s why we’re seeing loads of Rambo Fraggers etc at the moment. Almost double the health points, better weapons, the works. Meds are now useless so few people play them or, like myself, only play them when I have a few players on my side who will do or support the objective, and might appreciate the med backup. Outside of that, I just get Nader out and annoy the Rambo’s with spam.

Playing with a team or playing competitively is a completely different environment to pub. I try to play with a decent attitude as far as I can, so spamming spawn and generally being a **** are something I try to avoid. Put me in a match situation though, and I will happily airstrike spawns and mortar the hell out of exits (in ET) as and when it is required, with a bit more added on for good measure. Two different games, two different rule or moral approaches. In matches, if the mercs are balanced as they are now, it will be soul destroying to try and play DB anything like an objective based game

(montheponies) #71

[QUOTE=tokamak;515289]Balanced KDA
Diverse tactical roles

Pick one

To say that all players want out of a game is to win tapdance duels is doing them a disservice. Large portions of gamers are perfectly fine with doing something else than just that, even if that means that they won’t always be able to go toe to toe with combat-oriented mercs…[/QUOTE]

Yet empirical evidence would show that isnt actually the case - also it’s not a case of picking one over the other - that’s your view on it. RTCW was able to balance both without resorting to hobbling one class just to force it into a pre-defined role. I guess that’s my frustration, a game that was made 13 yrs ago and that i played for 5 or 6 years could manage this without any drama.

Plenty of other games manage it as well, CS1.6, CS:S, CS:GO - oh and look they dont bother re-inventing the wheel everytime they release a new version.

(tokamak) #72

RTCW offered only different flavours of tapdance duels and if DB can’t break that mould then we’ll have to wait for Blizzard to actually do it.

(montheponies) #73

Not sure how much or if ever, you played RTCW but tapdancing simply denigrates the skill involved in the aim and tracking used by that game. Of course it wasnt the only skill that could be used, as it pretty much set the standard core elements used by W:ET, ET:QW, Brink and now DB - and without exception each iteration has missed the essence of what made the original great (and fun). It also had a variety of weapons for those not interested in simply using the SMG;

Soldier Class;

  • Sniper - long distance nightmare.
  • Flamer - close quarter nightmare (and frame rate killer)
  • Venom - heavy weapon, choke point
  • Panzerfaust - choke point clearance
  • Plain Old SMG if you wanted it…

However if you want to just dismiss this then perhaps the same thing could be said of CSGO, damn it’s just a simple case of recoil control…

(tokamak) #74

I’m not disputing the amount of skill it takes, the high league matches are impressive. The type of skill however is becoming more and more trivial. Old games are all micro and no macro and let’s forget about creativity and improvisation entirely.

(Sun_Sheng) #75

[QUOTE=montheponies;515294]Yet empirical evidence would show that isnt actually the case - also it’s not a case of picking one over the other - that’s your view on it. RTCW was able to balance both without resorting to hobbling one class just to force it into a pre-defined role. I guess that’s my frustration, a game that was made 13 yrs ago and that i played for 5 or 6 years could manage this without any drama.

Plenty of other games manage it as well, CS1.6, CS:S, CS:GO - oh and look they dont bother re-inventing the wheel everytime they release a new version.[/QUOTE]

This +1 … in fact +2 since it doesn’t allow a message less than 10 chars :confused:

(Protekt1) #76

[QUOTE=montheponies;515294]Yet empirical evidence would show that isnt actually the case - also it’s not a case of picking one over the other - that’s your view on it. RTCW was able to balance both without resorting to hobbling one class just to force it into a pre-defined role. I guess that’s my frustration, a game that was made 13 yrs ago and that i played for 5 or 6 years could manage this without any drama.

Plenty of other games manage it as well, CS1.6, CS:S, CS:GO - oh and look they dont bother re-inventing the wheel everytime they release a new version.[/QUOTE]

Except this isn’t just a release of a new version of a previous game. I think they’ve pretty much made that clear.

(Sun_Sheng) #77

[QUOTE=montheponies;515297]Not sure how much or if ever, you played RTCW but tapdancing simply denigrates the skill involved in the aim and tracking used by that game. Of course it wasnt the only skill that could be used, as it pretty much set the standard core elements used by W:ET, ET:QW, Brink and now DB - and without exception each iteration has missed the essence of what made the original great (and fun). It also had a variety of weapons for those not interested in simply using the SMG;

Soldier Class;

  • Sniper - long distance nightmare.
  • Flamer - close quarter nightmare (and frame rate killer)
  • Venom - heavy weapon, choke point
  • Panzerfaust - choke point clearance
  • Plain Old SMG if you wanted it…

However if you want to just dismiss this then perhaps the same thing could be said of CSGO, damn it’s just a simple case of recoil control…[/QUOTE]

I missed RTCW really, or rather I stopped playing it after the first new map release. Not sure what happened, I think I went back to QIII Arena or UT.

In the context of ET though, i’d certainly echo the thoughts. As a clan we’d spend weeks practicing maps, literally. Even the initial tactics would take about a week to work out before they got to discussion level. Ok, you needed to be able to back the plans up in 1v1, but at match level it was closer to chess than an FPS at times. One of my biggest memories of starting to play clan matches was how easy it was to beat people you’d played on pubs and thought of as skilled, and how easy it was to get beaten by people who you thought weren’t as skilled, but they had solid, drilled tactics.

As for pub play, completely different, but you could own a server or create a nightmare for the opposing team, whatever role you chose. Mortar was a personal favourite that could own any map (Think Adacore for example) Panzer (Think Winghaven) … or you could go rifle nade (Ngotie), sniper, smg, flamethrower, whatever. Each could be used however you wished, but the important thing was that a defence made up of 6 of any would be an instant loss. The game was balanced beautifully. Each role needed the other. You had to pick a balance team, or you would lose. DB by contrast, and 6 of any of the assault classes is a major nightmare and a spam fest. Nothing gets done, not because the attackers don’t have the ability, they just don’t get the chance.

(Sun_Sheng) #78

True, and personally I wouldn’t want it to be. ET died off for me for a reason. What DB is turning out to be though, is like saying I had a car before and it had 4 wheels. This time I don’t want the same old car again so i’m going to get one with one wheel and nothing to steer it with. It’s ok to change the bodywork, nobody wants another Ford Capri, but equally, let’s not have a Messerschmitt KR200 just to be different. Some things are prerequisites

Edit: for the sake of research I just opened the game and went for a look. Every Rambo class from Arty onwards, has 120-160hp. Every objective class or helping class, has 80-110 with only one at 110 which is Sawbonez. At worst that means TDM classes have double the health of objective based classes. At best, they have an extra 10 health.

This is an objective based game how?! This is TDM with distractions for gullible victims.

(tokamak) #79

I’m still not sure what the actual objection is.

Say we’ve got a pure support class, like that Zen Robot in Overwatch. He’s not going to score a whole lot of kills, I’m not even sure he actually has any offensive capabilities at all. That makes his KDA pathetic.

So far I’ve heard you say ‘Nobody is going to play that guy because nobody wants to get owned’.

Yet, in the video we hear one of the journalists proudly boast how he was able to let his team sustain a choke indefinitely simply because he was healing them up like that.

I’m not buying this notion that mr. Zen robot guy will be an unpopular class. Actually, we can already know this because there’s enough healer classes in MOBAS and all the top WOW Arena teams have at least one healing class right now. And TF2 medics aren’t rare either. They’re fun and deeply fulfilling to play.

So I don’t think this is your real objection. I don’t think your problem is that healing classes may be useless or not worthy to play. I think your worry is that these mercs may actually start to play a much more disruptive role than you’d like.

(Szakalot) #80

[QUOTE=tokamak;515305]I’m still not sure what the actual objection is.

Say we’ve got a pure support class, like that Zen Robot in Overwatch. He’s not going to score a whole lot of kills, I’m not even sure he actually has any offensive capabilities at all. That makes his KDA pathetic.

So far I’ve heard you say ‘Nobody is going to play that guy because nobody wants to get owned’.
[/QUOTE]

This can apply to a moba game, or at least a game where spam>aim. So in QW you would also have dedicated engy drones taht run around to repair stuff, set mines; and only ever fight from a tank.

In DB you die within first few seconds of a shootout, thus lack of aim will feel very punishing to the player, no matter how supportive his role, unless you go down back on TTK again.