Alright, Feedback time!
Bug report(ish) about a resolution and rendering issue:
! There’s some sort of auto-resolution scaling bug in-game that’s incredibly annoying. It was turned on RANDOMLY as in I didn’t personally enable it, and it had been bugging me for a week… turns out there’s this slider that even AFTER I disabled it, and it FELT like it sorta worked, kept the game at 50% rendered or something. It was terrible. I’ll be posting a bug report the moment I see the bug form with additional details.
Thoughts on Dome Redux
! Dome’s first objective is definitely MUCH more hectic and “Dirty Bomb feeling,” however it’s kinda hard for attackers/unco-ordinated attackers at least. The third one seems the same. I think all in all a small look at some graphs of where the movement is being stopped, or maybe it was just team balance in Dome… (that first objective seems only SLIGHTLY in favor of defenders… unlike vault which is hugely in favor of defenders) will be very useful in the time to come.
CMM and "highlights:"
! CMM is still in need of work, those “highlights” especially. You highlighted someone on my team for being the best turtle that played turtle for like 14 seconds… he put down one shield. I’m guessing your filter goes by exp/class/time… in which case you should probably add a minimum time, or just change how that is chosen as a highlight. CMM as itself, I’ve actually only had two STOMPS out of the 10 roughly games I’ve played tonight. Which has been awesome! Not everyone’s been getting those results though. Furthermore, the party creating thing was kind of hard to get my head around with ZERO explanation, as in you make a party before launching ANY gamemode now. But, that’s kinda of a nitpick I guess.
Some small tutorial feedback that I just feel is necessary:
! I went through the tutorial just to see how it felt, and honestly, there’s a ton you guys DONT say that should still be said. Mainly: Charging Defibs, holding ‘z’ to see teammates and their health as ALL characters more clearly, giving ammo to other players (isn’t really stressed enough) AND healing characters taking time… ALSO, that medics are more aggressive than in other games.
Server Browser and Stopwatch Feedback
! I also played some stopwatch and for some reason the huge amount of servers were filling up really fast and it was awesome. I’m guessing the removal of all of the excessive execution servers allowed there to be an abundance of servers to actually enjoy, and you could even start an empty one and have it fill in a minute or so! (US EAST EXPERIENCE HERE…) Sad to see those maps go to waste though, still holding out for a different gamemode or those to be incorporated when you allow rentable servers… GREAT PINGS on almost EVERY match I played today, really it was wonderful! Despite the first few matches having that rendering bug… gosh that was annoying, took me an hour to fix… BUT, I got 4-6 quality hours of playtime in today to test everything! 
Feedback on weapon balance changes
! Shotguns: I’m actually dying to shotguns a lot less, so either whatever you did WORKED, or it was done too well… OR maybe I was just running into plebs with them, as I didn’t even touch a shotgun today. I DID run into Sagan on roids, was nice seeing him, but he didn’t even TOUCH a shotgun more than once today, and I don’t recall him living very long with it as his team was kinda crap.
! Snipers: They seem to be slightly weaker… as intended. However, the amount of bullets it takes to kill people is still a joke, except for grandeur. Grandeur feels like it’s in a good spot now. PDP is still a pain to go against, and any good sniper is still a threat, so over-all I’d say the changes were OKAY. Nothing to really talk about in all honesty. The sniper players are sniper players still
! Burst weapons: Lol - You can barely tell anything changed, they BARELY feel weaker. The one I was seriously using was the br-16, but honestly, they DO feel more in line, just… not by much. Does that make any sense? Like… I dunno. I’m still killing people with the BR-16 pretty well. I did find myself whipping out my pistol a tiny bit more though… Again, too early to really be able to tell.
! Revolvers - Honestly didn’t touch them, but wasn’t dying too much to pistols and junk like that anyway, changes seemed to have small effect? Good or bad still not sure. The deagle still feels clunky to me, wasn’t happy to have that on Javelin in all honesty. Speaking of Javelin…
Javelin:
The new Gun (tl:dr heavy blish, it’s balanced well I think.) -
! Her gun is just weird, takes some getting used to, but it FEELS balanced… Kinda like the assault rifle equivalent of the blishlock. Slightly weaker than Machine Guns and I honestly prefer the Crotzni or the Br-16. The dreiss on her isn’t my style, but it was being used effectively by many other players today. The sound is nice, but a little oomph lacking, wish it had a litte bit more of a crack to it. Again, kinda like a heavier blish - Balanced
Abilities TL:DR - (rockets and ammo - a bit much? - she’s only “OP” when there’s more than one of her imo. Her ammo giving DOES have a weakness, currently it’s her only real one.)
! Her rocket launcher and ammo ability on the other hand… not so much. She feels easy, like, not the 50k price-point EASY. Always full ammo (unless you’re firing an absolute ton of lead) and her rocket launcher is a little bit more spammy Or damagey than it really probably needs. I think if there were a merc cap (which I am NOT a fan of) she’d be a perfectly balanced unit. BUT, on her own when you can run several of her, she just kinda… wipes teams. Like they’re a joke. She’s a really sweet ammo support unit to have if you don’t feel like running an assault merc. Her ammo ability does seem like a solid upgrade, but it DOES have a weakness that becomes more apparent when there are few of her. Her biggest weakness, which isn’t MUCH of one (SO FAR as most matches have 2+ of her), is having to run to her to get ammo, or having to run to stupid teammates across streets to give ammo. It IS annoying when you have to do that as her radius is rather small.
My general opinion about Javelin…
Basically, she feels like the Phoenix of the Fire supports… she’s the best one there, the most dangerous/useful one in the right hands. But when you have more than one, it’s just a bit much. Constantly on the front-lines and constantly an annoyance. She’s not great at destroying EVs, but her damage potential is very solid in co-ordinated teams. Her guided missiles take a LOT of practice. And her RPG killing people instantly WITH gib might be a bit much. But… compared to laser of death, or constant arty spam from good arties, I’d say she’s actually balanced. Barely “better.” And again, her main problem is when you can run 3-4 of her. Even having two means there’s no point to have other ammo givers, and her ability puts her on point of half an assault unit.
What would I do to balance her IF she IS going through balancing?
! If you just nerfed her hp to 110, she would be better balanced. Just like how Phoenix has slightly less hp than Sawbonez, she should have less hp. If you make her slightly weaker IN THIS WAY then you enable people to better kill her as she’s charging a direct rocket or even a guided one. AND it makes it harder for her to survive without a good team and smarter play. This move would increase the skill component of playing with AND fighting against her. AND this still enables her to pack a nice punch in team fights. Maybe even increase her rocket cool down by 3 or so seconds, OR increasing her time to fire it by another half second or so. Again, she’s REALLY close to balance, and currently I don’t like her when there’s MULTIPLES of her. This same complaint is against several different mercs anyway, proxies, vassilis (slightly different reason :D), and auras, rhinos, etc) Which just also happens to be really common right now. She is NOT like Phantom or Thunder when they were first added, she’s actually close to balanced and I can see that you guys TRIED to balance her WITH her role and character in mind.
Truly, it’s rather early to give a full opinion about ANY of these changes, but I think after my ~6 hours this is pretty close to accurate. So far this update IS a move forward for SD and DB. Javelin’s in a slightly powerful position, but with a small change to her, and maybe to Dome, and probably MORE changes to CMM this updates additions will really shine… I’ll be making a video over this update after I get some sleep, tonight’s been fun SD
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