My feedback

(Sun_Sheng) #1

Feedback

Sys Specs:
i7 2600k @ 5Ghz
Palit GTX 660 Ti Graphics Card
16Gb Corsair Ram
Installed on OCZ Agility 3 SSD
Gigabyte z68ma-d2h-b3 motherboard
Internet 150-60Mbps down 11-12Mbps up

General
All is fine, runs smooth @ 1920x1080, no noticeable lag in game, pings vary from 15-50ms for Eu servers

Gameplay
Pros & cons:

I like the med configs - the ability/handicap of choosing meds with different abilities works well
Movement speed for meds seems ok over long distances, but getting a revive in can sometimes be hard as they don’t seem too quick from a standing start making it difficult to get multiple revives in or get to someone who is a few metres away

That could be down to a decrease in movement speed when charging the paddles? (not sure if that’s the reason or not) but the idea of charging the paddles is something I like as it forces you into decision making

Ammo levels are probably about right, but another 5 or 10 bullets in a clip would come in handy as some of the other ranks feel a bit over-powered i:e 4 headies and the guy turns around and shoots you :confused:

Aiming in general seems a bit lotto although I just read a post that seems to indicate that could be a known issue? Sometimes it feels like my aim is Godlike and headshots ring out like Big Ben, other times, if I don’t get a hit with the first bullet, then I don’t seem to get a hit at all before being taken down, no matter whether I am at head, body, or just spray and pray

Field Ops - FO needs some definite work and as one of my main classes it feels terribly handicapped. I usually use Skyhammer but the airstrikes are close to a waste of time. I’ve thrown airstrikes that i’ve seen land a metre or two away from someone and still they’re stood there shooting at me. Add to that, you can throw a strike and the opposing team has time to wander off and make a brew before it lands. Even if you disguise the location it shows a great big line where it’s going to land, then drops in some small hitmarkers, then actually lands. If you get killed by an airstrike then it must have landed right on your head and you were daydreaming about something. Other than that, there’s really no excuse for getting one on the bonce.

Arty is much the same, the damage radius is negiligible and i’ve seen people almost run straight through it or past it with limited damage taken

Health regen needs to be removed completely or something needs to be done about the map design and/or gameplay. I don’t know if it’s the influx of new players but recently, if you end up on a team that doesn’t know what it’s doing, you’re screwed. Quite a few games recently i’ve been on the wrong side of idiots padding themselves up with the strongest possible class and then just sitting in spawn shooting everyone that respawns. With the aforementioned problem of a lack of damage from airstrikes and stuff, it makes breaking out really difficult when you only have a couple of players able to deal with it. Sure you can Rmabo and take out 2 or 3 of them and die in the process, but when the med then self-revives and picks up the others while your team is sniping from the back of spawn, you’re back to square one. Spawn camping numpties ruin the game so it needs a way to stop them, even if it’s just basics like stopping them placing turrets in the middle of your spawn etc.

Afterthoughts: Additional class choices would be welcome. 3 is enough for comp play, but at extra one or two would be good for pubs. Config scripting aka binds would be handy too. Option to add friends so that you can see if they are playing or which server they are on would also be useful

Anything I haven’t mentioned, I probably like. On the whole things are balanced and the objective-based gameplay is a much needed oasis in the desert of useless shooters that are currently available. Even in beta the game is good enough to put my COD + Season Pack into the bin. As an ex Wolfenstein & ET player, the finished game can’t come quick enough!

(Smooth) #2

Thanks for the feedback, fresh opinions like this are very important to us! :smiley:

(Glottis-3D) #3

agree on most.
about health regen - i dont like that you never can punish that basterd who killed you with 5HP left. when you next meet him he’ll be full HP again.
coming from Quake games, it felt very satisfying to deal much damage before death so that you could finish crippled opponent in 10 or so seconds.

i think only medics should be able to heal you to full.

(.FROST.) #4

Under the bottom line I’d also vote ‘NO’, for health regen. Or at least max. 50% health back. Medics would play a even more significant role then and I think it would even increase the pace(in terms of map progress) of the whole match, since this could really work in the attacker’s favour.

(Glottis-3D) #5

45% for Rhino
55% max for Heavy guys.
65% max for mid mercs
75% max for small mercs.

(.FROST.) #6

[QUOTE=krokodealer;502096]45% for Rhino
55% max for Heavy guys.
65% max for mid mercs
75% max for small mercs.[/QUOTE]

Sounds about reasonable^. I’m curious as to what SD thinks about partial health regen.

(Glottis-3D) #7

smthng like this:
“Will those basterds [betatesters] EVER STOP???”
:smiley:

(Bitey) #8

I don’t really see how health regen is contributing towards a negative gameplay experience. If someone could formulate a strong reasoning as to why it needs to be removed I’d really like to hear about it. My person view is that it gives players the opportunity to make plays without having to rely on the medic hobbling around near by. However it’s important to realize how much more having a medic near by assists yourself and teammates in fights.

Is there really any strong reasoning as to how it’s negativity effecting gameplay? The most I can think of is someone getting shot down and diving behind cover which if you REALLY want the kill you’ll need to deal with it. Otherwise that enemy is out of commission for quite the time if you were able to land some head shots. If he’s left with 5HP that means he’ll need to heal for almost 40 seconds before he’s able to be at full strength or run to the nearest medic.

(.FROST.) #9

[QUOTE=Bitey;502101]I don’t really see how health regen is contributing towards a negative gameplay experience. If someone could formulate a strong reasoning as to why it needs to be removed I’d really like to hear about it. My person view is that it gives players the opportunity to make plays without having to rely on the medic hobbling around near by. However it’s important to realize how much more having a medic near by assists yourself and teammates in fights.

Is there really any strong reasoning as to how it’s negativity effecting gameplay? The most I can think of is someone getting shot down and diving behind cover which if you REALLY want the kill you’ll need to deal with it. Otherwise that enemy is out of commission for quite the time if you were able to land some head shots. If he’s left with 5HP that means he’ll need to heal for almost 40 seconds before he’s able to be at full strength or run to the nearest medic.[/QUOTE]

Lol(sry, had to), that’s the whole point in this game(and every other SD game), that every class has its purpose and is needed; in this example, medics. And as krokodealer said; it’s hella annoying to be killed by someone who has only 1-5% HP left, but when you return for a vengeance he’d be back at his full 100% again. And not only that, if you have a bunch of gatling wielding mercs and a couple other heavy dudes pestering the objective, you wish they wouldn’t have this health regen thing on top of their superior firepower and their already very high amount of HP. At least that’s what I’m thinking.

PS: If you get killed right after the end of a spawn wave and have to wait the full time and you were shot at the other side of the map it could almost take you 40secs (including limbo) to get exactly there.

(Smooth) #10

In my personal opinion, Medics are already highly valuable to the team with instant revives and much faster healing. They also happen to be the most played class as it stands.

As a design goal we want all Mercs to be equally viable and effective, but never an absolute requirement when it comes to winning a match. This is so players can feel free to play how they want and it keeps Merc selection as diverse as possible. This should in turn generate more interesting competitive games that aren’t just the same 5 characters over and over.

To attain this, we have introduced several global methods of performing core/vital actions (recovering health, getting ammo, performing objectives etc.) but we always provide a clearly more effective version for any Merc that specializes in that area.

Another reason for introducing a slow health-regen was to make combat feel that little bit more consistent (players are generally at or closer to full health when you meet them) and to prevent players hiding scared in a corner with 5hp for minutes at a time.

A side-effect of missing health-regen would be players dying significantly faster on average since they start more fights with reduced health.

(Mangosteez) #11

Medics are used plenty, maybe too much. Taking away regen would slow down the pace of games, since players would be less likely to engage in cqc and camp more. IMO.

(Sun_Sheng) #12

Edit: btw, cheers for the replies/discussion :slight_smile:

The idea of health regen in itself I don’t mind as long as there are pro’s and cons. After I stopped playing ET a few years back, the only games i’ve played online were BO2 and Ghosts from the COD series. Both had regen and it didn’t really affect gameplay too much once you got used to it as players would have to take themselves out of the firefight to regen, allowing you to move on while they hid. ET was not much different in so far as if your med wasn’t laying down four or five medpacks for you to run over once you took a few bullets, he wasn’t doing his job. There was a wonderful script program called statwhore that we used to look at after matches sometimes and on average (from what I remember) most players were taking 150-250hp of damage before you put them down.

Ok, there’s an argument that it makes the meds less effective if you can regen yourself without them having to put the packs down and I can agree with that, but I tend to see that as ‘different’ rather than an advantage or negative since the end result is the same. The problem at the moment is there is no real way to counter it. In ET you would target the meds and gib them, in this at the moment, it’s only a very slight advantage to target the med since he/she has revive potential. In terms of decreasing the opposition strength, there’s not much advantage to targeting the med because some of the players have the HP strength of a normal player plus 2 or 3 med-packs built in i:e they start around 150% health.

Give me a more potent airstrike (or arty with a wider impact zone and longer duration) or a rifle-nade that doesn’t leave someone standing even after it’s hit them clean in the face (double the damage but halve the loadout) and I can deal with a couple of idiots in spawn even if I die myself in the process, but ultimately help the team break out. Without that power to hit back hard and quick, it needs a full 6 working together to have any effect. That’s something that rarely happens on a pub with randoms.

The players regenerating that you meet on the way to the objective, that’s not so much a problem as the general player class pros and cons (slower/faster movement, more accurate weapon etc) help you to get past them and become a part of the tactics i:e take a chain gun on at distance as you’re walking up a street is not so easy. Circle strafe him at close range and going for the head and he’ll go down quick enough 5 times out of 10 which is good enough.

my £1.50 fwiw

(Scarhand) #13

I feel like meds are played a lot is because:
Lots of W:ET players here
Generally the most consistent weapon behavior
Higher skill ceiling
People don’t like waiting to auto heal

They are weak and don’t perform well in combat, but they are simply more fun to play as.

(Kendle) #14

[QUOTE=Scarhand;502126]I feel like meds are played a lot is because:
Lots of W:ET players here
[/QUOTE]

I think there’s a lot of truth in that, many people I feel simply can’t get their heads round not being able to heal themselves between gunfights.

The problem with DB at the moment is it falls between 2 stools, it doesn’t have it predeccessors class inter- dependence, and is a poorer game for it IMO, but it still yearns to be a class-centric game. It needs to make up it’s mind what it wants to be.

brw, “sun_sheng”, sure I know that name from somewhere?

(Sun_Sheng) #15

OMG WTF!!!Keeeeendddddle!! How you doing m8y?! Good to see you still around! You started thinking about what to do with your bus pass yet or is that only me? :wink: :smiley:

(Kendle) #16

Heh heh, thought it was! :smiley:

Still alive my friend, though not so much thinking what to do with the bus pass as trying to remember where I put it :slight_smile:

(Glottis-3D) #17
  • I dont like full-health revives.
    can be easily abused in small corridors. especially with heavy mercs. i mean noone even has that amount of bullets to kill rhino two times in a row!! one will prbbly lose his last bullet while trying to gib him.

just mark my words:
reduce health regen. and you find ppl to actually ask for medpacks and search for a medic. OR /kill for the fullhealth respawn.
all this is good in my book.

(Glottis-3D) #18

if regen stops at 50% and doesnt regenerate further ppl will have to fight with what they have, or ask for medic.
and actually ppl will start fighting faster - no reason to wait several seconds more for 100%.

the waiting comes from 6 seconds delay.

i think:
-reduce delay to 4 seconds
-reduce max HP
-balance the regen speed (slower at start, faster after couple of seconds)

and here comes the medic!! :smiley:

(Mustang) #19

Now imagine a team without a medic, how would that work?

(Glottis-3D) #20

/killllllllllll