Pineapple Jungler and Die Hard

(blonk) #1

I’d like to present two ideas that may or may not be entirely unique for your discussion and persual, or at least to bring them into one place. Since these augments have been essentially kicked to the side with the 2nd gen there’s a question if this is a good idea or not but I feel they should be addressed in some manner okay so here goes

Pineapple Juggler: Your melee attack can be used to hit back grenades and projectiles. Your melee weapon also blocks out concussive effects by 50% when swung

Try hard: You get 10 extra health for each spawn without getting a kill Your spawn wave timer is reduced by 4 seconds (@Dysfnal hinted at something similar in another thread)

My thoughts:

[spoiler]
Pros for PJ:
Players are being frustrated by the lack of a counter for Thunda’s ability. This would provide a mild way of not being totally helpless or reducing the time.
The practical reduction could vary - it could only reduce the flash or it could reduce the effect duration or even reduce the actual penalties.

Cons for PJ:
The justification for it is a bit flimsy - that the melee weapon can somehow block the effects and the augment name is a bit silly considering the main ability is nearly entirely useless
It doesn’t fix Thunda, just works around the issue a bit for people with appropriate loadouts

Pros for TH:
Adds some unique play abilities - in pubs you can get back to the frontline faster during waves and keep applying pressure without disrupting the times massively.
Throws off people being able to time nades into routes to catch out spawn waves.
Interesting for competitive play if the whole team had it, a wipe would be over quicker and could catch the other team off guard

Cons for TH:
Reduces predictability in the game, possibly to the point it really would annoy tryhards
Spawning 4 seconds early by yourself between waves might not be fun, but I imagine that’d be fine 90% of the time in pubs. The amount of time reduced would need to be carefully considered, 4 seconds may even be too much.
The current ability of Try hard isn’t actually that useless so would be a shame to lose it entirely. Possibly could co-exist with this change somehow
[/spoiler]

Thank you

(Szakalot) #2

don’t really think its a good idea.

a single perk shouldn’t be only used against one specific merc. Same reason why there are no perks like ‘receive 30% less flame damage’ or ‘destroy healing stations 50% faster’.

Spawn wave timer being reduced by 4 seconds is:

first of all - HUGE on pubs, thats one more life every 100 seconds in SW
useless in comp - there is no benefit in going alone 4 seconds ahead of your team and dying as you push 1v5 against opponent’s defense.

that is, if you have the entire clock cycle reduced by 4 seconds. subtracting 4 seconds from any clock would be the most OP thing ever.

(Eox) #3

A perk that reduce spawn rate ? Bad idea. The whole point about DB’s spawn system is to spawn in waves, along with other allies that died shortly after, so you can coordinate your next assault and you don’t get wiped too easly because your teammates are respawning one by one.

(JJMAJR) #4

My idea was better: rebalance all Season 1 loadouts instead of making a Season 2.

Oh, and have Try Hard make it harder for the player to be killed while down; Try Hard should also increase the revive animation speed.

(blonk) #5

How frequently do you see full wipes in pubs though? Especially once you get past 6v6 and into the 8v8 territory, wipes aren’t really that common. New players (that I guess get the most kick out of Try Hard anyway) would no doubt appreciate returing to the fray quicker. There’s also things like being able to reach, say, the Bridge gen room slightly ahead of schedule to try defend/build it, rather than sitting frustrated while the timer counts down.

[quote=“Szakalot;191677”]
first of all - HUGE on pubs, thats one more life every 100 seconds in SW
useless in comp - there is no benefit in going alone 4 seconds ahead of your team and dying as you push 1v5 against opponent’s defense.[/quote]

While it’d be useless if not outright awful if only one player had it in comp, if they all had the augment for a given merc (out of 3 remember) they could use it to make an unexpected out-of-sync push and catch the other team unawares. This will no doubt be raising hackles all over the place but as @amerika mentioned in another thread, the spawn wave timings can be frustrating/abusable and something to breathe a bit of life into this may add an interesting dynamic to the game.

Season 2 is fine but not fixing season 1 is a bit poor. Would have been better for them to fix the first season and then move on to the second.

(Szakalot) #6

i absolutely support asymmetrical spawn times but the perk you speak of would be an absolute must. people would even pick subpar charcters if the perk was merc exclusive. being able to push an opponent with 5sec to spawn while they have 20-25 sec to spawn is incredibly powerful, the entire meta of the game would change. perks should be choices, not obligatory picks

(JJMAJR) #7

Great, this gives me an idea for an Assault merc: a clone trooper that has halved respawn time. And it’s an extremely fast character.

(BananaSlug) #8

if you mean perk switching, they simply cant, because of laws and such,
if you mean fixing some perks, that woudnt help too much, some cards are just bad
and with season 2 they probably also made some money

(blonk) #9

Indeed, 4 seconds is my attempt at a careful figure, too low and it’s close to meaningless and too much and as you say it becomes a must have. Maybe 2 to 3 seconds would be better?

(Szakalot) #10

or just drop it completely? asymmetrical spawn times should be map based, not perk based

(Dysfnal) #11

How about for try hard, the first 10 hp you wouldn’t need to die, and after 2 deaths without a kill you’d get the second 10 hp, with nothing after that. Try hard would be a great augment at that point, though most likely too good. Or you could keep it as is, but give it to the one class that makes it useful. Imagine the pacifist medic playstyle… Oh the glory…

(Szakalot) #12

i like, but the problem here is that SD wants perks and loadout cards in general to NOT look P2W. Giving people extra HP off the bat is very much against this idea. A 130hp merc is objectively better than a base-card 120hp newbie skyhammer.

(arcaneCanvas) #13

[quote=“blonk;31134”]

Cons for PJ:
The justification for it is a bit flimsy - that the melee weapon can somehow block the effects and the augment name is a bit silly considering the main ability is nearly entirely useless
It doesn’t fix Thunda, just works around the issue a bit for people with appropriate loadouts

Thank you[/quote]

actually, when you swing the knife, your hand kinda block some of your face and thus enabling to reduce the concussion effect.

that is probably a good idea but too conditional.

what if it reduces visual distruption abilities affected to merc if the merc holding melee?

you could see thin shadows in red eye smoke, you can see things behind airstrike explosion,
you can reduce the visual concussion effect.

(JJMAJR) #14

If you mean perk switching, they simply cant, because of laws and such…[/quote]

What laws? It’s no different than rebalancing a weapon in TF2.

(Ohsnapkline) #15

I say remove theses perks completely. i remember hearing that the pineapple jug was broken and there was no loadout that hat that and the cricket bat

(blonk) #16

The idea I was going for is to add a tactical dimension to the augment, map changes wouldn’t really achieve the same. It’s not a decision you can make yourself if that spawn time change is advantageous or not if it’s part of the map, it’s just another thing that happens.

(Szakalot) #17

i want assymetrical spawns to drammatically change the push/counter push and spawnkill dynamics in stopwatch. not because of some idea of perk diversity.

the entire game would be played differently, maps would feel different

(blonk) #18

[quote=“Szakalot;192450”]i want assymetrical spawns to drammatically change the push/counter push and spawnkill dynamics in stopwatch. not because of some idea of perk diversity.

the entire game would be played differently, maps would feel different[/quote]

Would it though? If you’ve got enough brains to know that it takes a Skyhammer X seconds to get from spawn to some choke on Bridge it’s hardly a huge leap to X-5 seconds because he’s on the defending side on that particular map. If it’s consistent every time as well then it’s totally predictable and probably wouldn’t stop experienced players from abusing it.

edit: Actually I think you’re trying to address something different. Spawnkilling isn’t a consideration for me. Leading people from spawns is.

(Szakalot) #19

its much more complicated than that.

when spawns are symmetric, newly spawning players from both sides will always meet in the same areas.

when spawns are asymmetric one time defence will be able to push the frontline, the other time attackers will be able to gain ground before meeting newly spawning defenders.

moreover, asymmetrical spawns allow players to push against enemy spawn. if you have 5-10sec to spawn and attack defensers who have 20sec spawn timer, in an even trade your team will come ahead: you will be able to slowly push the opponent off the objective and plant/repair, etc.

similarly, defense can use these spawn asymmetries to counter-attack: even if they only kill 2 players for 3 lost, should they respawn immediately, the remaining 3attackers are not likely to succeed.

presently spawncamping is both unchallenging and restrictive. its not challenging cause you have a timer letting you know exactly when opponents spawn. furthermore, the spawn symmetry restricts spawncamping to certain portions of the map: you can’t just push at the enemy spawn trying to abuse their long timer (cause they just spawned) , because you have a long timer as well. spawncamping only makes sense if you can safely get away, even a well times fragger nade can be useless if you dont get gibs: fragger will die on long spawn, and enemy medics will pick everyone up, instantly making a 4v5 situation on the coming push.