Phantom Complaint Master Thread

[Griflyth]

okay made an acount so i could complain about Phantom here. First time for everything i guess. i started playing DB through steam a couple days ago, and i loved it. most fun i ever had in an FPS since MoHAA. then it all changed when i hit level 6 and the phantoms attacked. all of a sudden i found myself surounded by phantoms in every friggin game. the pinnacle of my frustration was a game i just played (5 mins ago). this game… man, this game made me want to quit DB immediately. there were 5 Phantoms in the enemies team and some other mercs. Can you guess what happened? exactly… i move around a corner… stabbie stabbie, i die. Constantly!. halfway through the match the phantoms decided to go campspawning. so… needless to say, my team kept dying because some invisible dudes with long swords were surounding us, chopping us down before we could even target them or fire a single bullet. eventually i just picked Nader and started spamming grenades at my feet in hopes of hitting a phantom and martyring as soon as i died. this was no fun at all.

for people saying that: well [insert random merc here], with [insert random loadout here] eats phantom for breakfast, cool story, but i’m new, have only 1 merc unlocked and almost no loadouts. so what should i do then? In my opinion as a new player… multiple enemy phantoms does make this game shit to play.

[elfinBracket]

Every time a phantom killed me, it makes me want to quit the game.
Today I encountered a Phantom that don’t defend their objective but attempted to spawn kill us over and over again. I will stop playing this game until he is nerfed.

[Jojack]

Y’know, I keep hearing that Phantom is OP, but I never actually hear why he is OP, I seriously don’t believe it’s his shield because one heavy pistol shot to the head, or a few auto shots on him, break his shield/invis.

Ummm…you don’t read much do you. He IS over powered, but that’s not the problem. I’ll enlighten you as to why, though, since you aren’t bright enough to see it yourself apparently.

Positives:
Kek - best smg, arguably best gun in the entire game.
Katana - best melee weapon
HP/Speed - Best ratio in the game. Same HP as Skyhammer, same speed as mercs with 110 HP.
Stealth - Amazing tool for positioning.
Armor - Only merc in the game with such an amazing ability.

Negatives:
Nothing.

Every merc in the game has positives and negatives. Phantom bucks this trend. He’s broken.

But, like I said, that isn’t the problem. The real problem is he changes the flow of the game to be less fun, and when you are killed by him it FEELS like skill played no part in it and you had no chance to counter it with your own skill. So on top of being OP (which is never a problem for skilled players) he is frustrating as hell to play against and makes people not want to play.

What I really think about the people complaining that he is OP is that they are bad, I really think that. I seriously am start to believe that the amount of bad in them clouds their judgement into thinking that Phantom is the one that’s OP.

I’m not sure this pile of garbage needs a response. Yeah, the vast majority of the community just needs to get gud, huh? Brilliant. Don’t worry community, folicsomCrane has solved all your problems. Turns out, you all just suck and need to get on his level. Nevermind the fact that almost everyone in the game is not having as much fun as before Phantom. Just get gud folks.

I played a few games as a Phantom only using my primary weapon, the kek, and I dominated. I didn’t need the sword. The players are just bad and they can’t see it.

It took you this long to realize that’s how he is most powerful? And you act like you are handicapping yourelf? Dude, of course you dominated with the best gun in the game while getting first shot advantage from behind thanks to cloaking and shield! That, precisely, is why he’s OP! You’ve got to be kidding me. And you sit there and call other people dumb?

[frolicsomeCrane]

@Jojack

I don’t feel like re-hashing my older posts stating clearly why phantom is not OP. But I’m gonna do it anyway.

The reasons why plebs cry about Phantom is that they’re being punished for not playing their mercs properly.

All the mercs that get instakilled by Phantom OUTRUN him. Hell, I think someone read one of my posts because I fell for a trap when I chased a Proxy a few games ago and she got me into her whole team, resulting in my death, and the Proxy escaping without any issue.

It doesn’t take long to figure out that the players, and their inability to adapt, is the reason why they think he’s OP, and I’m gonna quote Skyhammer on this, “BOO FUCKING HOO, SON”.

Phantom has a load of drawbacks:

1. He can’t do objectives, ALMOST AT ALL, sure he can plant a C4 now and then, BUT APART FROM THAT, you’ll mostly NEVER see him carrying the objectives/escorting/repairing/or trying to disable the EV(not that he has a way to do that)/guarding a C4 site/guarding an objective from being stolen/delivered.

2. As I said above, ALL the mercs that he can one shot can outrun him. Why are not people complaining over the fact that an Aura can keep her whole team stocked up with health with a health station positioned in a good place? Phantom IS THE ONE THAT DEALS WITH THAT BY HELPING HIS TEAM LAY OFF SOME OF THE OFFENSIVE OR DEFENSIVE CAPABILITIES OF THE ENEMY TEAM. He is a disruptor of the meta people got used to and people need to adapt to that or else they will get punished for being STUPID.

3. Dirty Bomb is a game about movement, why do you think you can jump off a wall twice? Is that a thing to do for fun? No, there’s STRATEGY involved in that, the devs knew what they were doing when they added Phantom to counter people that would camp in one spot for days just racking up kills with the enemy team unable to do anything about it. (This ain’t related to Phantom, but about what the game is actually about)

4. Gonna go with the most obvious one, HIS ARMOR HAS MAKES A NOISE WHEN HE’S INVISIBLE, if you can’t listen good enough then it’s your fault for listening to music while playing. You expect to get treated seriously? Well freaking treat the game seriously.

5. Most Phantoms if spotted will still try to knife you down because they’re bad, their aim will be awful because they will panic due to OH NO I GOT SEEN, but then it just becomes a fight between you and a Skyhammer that panicked, stop crying about it.

6. He has obvious Merc counters, I’m not going to tell you who, but they’re so freaking obvious.

I could go on but I won’t. If people think Phantom is OP then they need to get off their goddamn high horse, Kira (which gets instakilled by Phantom) can take down a whole team with an Orbital Strike if lucky, or good enough. So can Skyhammer’s Airstrike if positioned well enough, a lot of this game’s merc skills are instagibs. Sparks has a REVIVE GUN that can down a Fragger with a headshot. Aura has a mad regen healing station that can make her able to fight 4-5 people at the same time by herself and she can win.

People need to stop crying over broken game mechanics. Devs stated this game is like a moba. Mobas have characters that counter each other and takes strategy to play.

STRAT-AH-JEY!

[fancifulFlipper]

Started playing a few weeks ago. I was having a good time, getting decent at the game with an average of 10:1 KD or better when playing damage dealing classes… and then phantom came and changed everything. The stealth just changes the entire way the game is played in all the wrong ways. We went from a game about aiming, movement, etc. to a game about sneaking behind the enemy team and 1 or 2 shotting people without them knowing you’re there.

It’s not fun to play against in the slightest, and I definitely won’t be putting much time at all into the game until he’s nerfed into oblivion. If that doesn’t happen, then I probably won’t get back into it the way I have been.

[Jojack]

…snip…

I never once mentioned anything about one shot kills. Nothing. In fact, I called you stupid for not realizing it’s the GUN combined with everything else that is OP. Apparently you STILL havent figured that out. I only mentioned the Katana once, and only to say it was the best melee weapon in the game and that he has it. Do you want to argue with that?

You’re post addresses nothing in my post. You just wasted your time arguing against a straw man. Go re-read my post and try to come up with something that addresses it.

Let me re-iterate, the problem is Phantom is annoying and changes the way the game is played in a detrimental way in the opinion of most of the community. The fact that he is OP (and he is) is irrelevant.

Also, this is a Phantom drawback?

5. Most Phantoms if spotted will still try to knife you down because they’re bad, their aim will be awful because they will panic due to OH NO I GOT SEEN, but then it just becomes a fight between you and a Skyhammer that panicked, stop crying about it.

Haha. I think you lost yourself in your rage man. You started out trying to list Phantom drawbacks (which you failed to come up with even one by the way) and then just started listing random nonsense about Phantom. Focus next time.

[frolicsomeCrane]

@Jojack

Oh, so you’re telling me that Phantom is OP just because he changes the old meta the game had? Well gee whiz whistle britches, that’s how games work, you add in new stuff, new stuff is bound to happen.

And yes, getting a player to panic is ALWAYS a drawback on anyone. For example they aren’t able to aim properly anymore, forget to dodge and move around, stuff like that.

Also, I’m not mad. And I pretty much think I made even an accurate drawback on point 1 of my earlier post.

I know I got off track, but oh well.

[Jojack]

[quote=“frolicsomeCrane;47134”]@Jojack

Oh, so you’re telling me that Phantom is OP just because he changes the old meta the game had?[/quote]

No, I’m telling you that Phantom is OP, but that it’s not the main point people are making. Stealth characters change the gameplay, it’s that simple. It’s really hard to balance stealth characters in FPS games.

I’m not sure what they will do, but hopefully, they manage to reward stealthy PLAYERS while making him ineffective to the mass suicide rushers that are playing him now. The way he is now breaks the game because he doesn’t require any skill to change the focus of the battlefield. He’s only truly OP if people take advantage of the Kek. He’s just annoying otherwise, which is still bad enough to drive players from the game.

And yes, getting a player to panic is ALWAYS a drawback on anyone. For example they aren’t able to aim properly anymore, forget to dodge and move around, stuff like that.

You are going to stick with that? You think that in SD’s character design meetings, they actually designed a character that was liable to be panicked, and counted that as one of the drawbacks to the design to compensate for all the powerful stuff they were giving him?

edit - And in case you are curious, here is how I would start to balance him:

1. Change Primaries - Blishlock, Hollunds, Aunuld.
2. Either lower HP to 110 or lower speed to 410.
3. Remove shield completely from the game.
4. Fix the Lunge bug to be a short range projectile that can pierce (animation-wise it would still look the same).
5. Increase damage of Katana to be able to one shot 110 HP mercs with Chopper augment.

I think that’s about it. You get a character that is powerful when flanking, but makes you play smart to get into flanking position and you are punished if caught.

[frolicsomeCrane]

@Jojack

Sorry for the late reply m8.

I’m gonna be frank about this and say what I think about the weapons DB has.

I honestly don’t really see an actual, accurate difference between them. Sure, some of them do more damage and some of them have a faster/slower fire rate, higher recoil/lower recoil, burst-fire/autofire, but for me, that’s straight up irrelevant. If you practice a weapon enough you can still use it in amazing ways.

You can call me bad for this but I honestly don’t know what stats Kek has. To be honest I didn’t even look at the stats most of the weapons have. I personally was (and still am) a Skyhammer/Fragger player so I fell in love with M4, I found out that it has less damage than the Timik but less recoil too, but that was still irrelevant to me because I liked how it felt.

Ugh, I got off track again, sorry.

Anyway, on to the 2nd point.

And yes, I am going to stick with the panic part, you can panic in any game, it’s not something to do only with Phantom, any other Merc player can panic. You know when you went behind a Skyhammer and started shooting him from behind and he wouldn’t turn but he would leg it without even looking at you? I’m sure this happened to you at least once. That my friend, is panic.

I know, I probably shouldn’t have listed it as one of Phantom’s drawbacks but an overall Merc drawback, so I guess you’re right, let’s scratch that point.

And I’m looking over your idea.

1. To be honest, I seriously don’t think that Phantom should carry a shotgun, to be honest I don’t think none of the current weapons in the game fit his playstyle. Adding a shotgun on him would give him an extra way to instantly kill even stronger mercs like Fragger if he gets close enough while invisible and blasting them to the head.

2. Thing I noticed about the HP and movespeed is that they’re relative. Speed goes down, HP goes up, HP goes down, Speed goes up, I doubt they will break this rule over one single merc. I think that he’s perfectly fine where he is, he can’t catch up to the low hp mercs so he’s all about SURPRISE, and yet he still has a fighting chance against higher hp mercs.

3. They just added the HumanShield way to earn support XP, I seriously doubt they will remove his shield and this extra little tidbit that probably took a while to implement.

4. I don’t really understand what’s the idea behind this one, care to explain?

5. Oh man, I like Phantom, but no. The only ones who wouldn’t get one shot by him at that point would be Skyhammer, Arty, Fragger and Rhino out of the current merc roster, and even they would be in trouble, because another right click and they’re all down, Sky and Arty would need only one gunshot to get down, Fragger, probably 3 max, Rhino would be the easiest to deal with another.

[Jojack]

@frolicsomeCrane

You are entitled to you opinion on guns. I would say M4 is the best gun in the game right now, closely followed by the KEK. The reason is because they both have minimal bullet spead over any range. They are like lasors. You put the crosshair on the head, that’s where almost all the bullets will hit, no matter the range.

1. The reason I chose those primaries is because Phantom is supposed to be a close combat specialist and shotguns/Blishlock are perfect for that and the Hollunds and Aunuld aren’t going to be one shotting anyone really. Right now he has no weakness, I would like to make ranged fighting one of his weaknesses.

2. You are right. The thing is, Phantom does not follow this rule. The devs have ALREADY broken this rule for Phantom, I think they should fix it. He has 120HP but has the move speed of mercs with 110HP. I simply think they should move him in line with other mercs. Either keep the health and lower move speed to Skyhammer speed, or keep the speed and move the health to 110. Right now he has Skyhammer’s health and Fletcher/Sawbonez speed.

3. The shield needs to go, plain and simple. It doesn’t fit with the rest of the game. This isn’t Halo. It’s a terrible design decision for this game. Nobody uses it as a human shield anyway. It’s stupid.

4. Really? You haven’t seen this yet?
   https://youtube.com/watch?v=hhLy2LSc3qA

My proposed change would make it so you hit what you aim for (rewarding skill, punishing lack of skill), you won’t be able to miss then just keep turning and get kills.

5. This is simply to compensate for the lack of shield and move speed/HP - and the higher degree of difficulty the lunge would require. This would make it a lot harder to get into flanking position, but more rewarding for the good players that can. I think that’s the design goal the devs need to accomplish - making Phantom fun and powerful but require some skill. Right now Phantoms just bum rush all over the map with no regard for anything. They aren’t stealthy. They are annoying. Stealthy play needs to be rewarded, non-stealthy play needs to be punished. I think my proposed changes accomplish both.

Lets be honest, Vassili is pretty annoying too but requires a fair amount of skill to be annoying. Phantom is more annoying because currently, he requires no skill. I’d like to put a skill floor in that is a decently high level to make him more like Vassili. He will still be annoying but it will be acceptable because it will require a good amount of skill to pull off.

[loonyTop]

[quote=“Jojack;47483”]@frolicsomeCrane

Lets be honest, Vassili is pretty annoying too but requires a fair amount of skill to be annoying. Phantom is more annoying because currently, he requires no skill. I’d like to put a skill floor in that is a decently high level to make him more like Vassili. He will still be annoying but it will be acceptable because it will require a good amount of skill to pull off.[/quote]

Exactly. And no matter how the pro-Phantoms try to justify themselves, that is what it comes down to. He requires no skill, yet can still easily influence the outcome of a match. That is a bad thing, simple as that. And what all those stats don’t show is how many quit a match when they see a couple of Phantoms. They will go find a match where there aren’t any. When you consider that here in the polls the number of people who state the game is less fun now is more than the other two options combined and how many people signed up to post how shit Phantom is and how badly it affects the game, it should be a no brainer. But he pulls in money, so maybe he gets nerfed but that’s it.

[EyJeenius]

I personally think there should be something like a 2 second de-cloack time.

[cornJester]

No-one needs to post their opinions and thoughts on him in this thread because it’s about 5000 threads too late. Did you even search the forums at all before posting this? You couldn’t have or you would’ve seen all the thoughts on him since he was released…

[Harlot]

Not only that it’s already been announced on the next stream he’s being tweaked (nerfed).

[Backuplight]

Can only echo @cornJester here, we really don’t need yet another post on this subject.

[XavienX]

Thx for reminding the community the 6969696969669th time.

[EyJeenius]

.

[waggishVoice]

Aimpunch, a class that can 1shot while invisible and has the best ranged weapons, performance issues, hackers, this game is going to fucking pieces

[clps]

Please remove this merc. For the sake of the future of this game.

[irishrOy]

might have already been posted, but I’ll post anyway

but wait, there’s more