Please fix Phantom and Hunter

(CheapSauce) #1

My issues:

  1. No delay between when Phantomunter can decloak and attack.
  2. No footsteps when Phantom is running, the merc is invisible, not weightless.
  3. Phantom can kill Aura with one katana cut.
  4. Hunter doing 80 damage body shots = instant Aura kill.

Proposed solutions

  1. Implement a 0.5 second delay after Phantom de-cloaks until he can attack.
  2. Introduce some muffled footstep effect when Phantom is cloaked, (the merc is invisible, not weightless, he would still generate sound).
  3. Implement the change that to kill a sub 100 hp merc it takes two katana strikes to kill them.
  4. Implement that hunter charged shots take two charged shots to kill an 80 hp merc.

Effect if implemented: Happiness.

(K1X455) #2

SetRenderScale <NN.nn> in console is a magical command that shows you what brand of underwear Jesse H. Pierce is wearing. I do apologise if you see more than that.

(TheStrangerous) #3

they still didn’t balance him?

(Chris Mullins) #4

@CheapSauce said:
My issues:

  1. No delay between when Phantomunter can decloak and attack.
  2. No footsteps when Phantom is running, the merc is invisible, not weightless.
  3. Phantom can kill Aura with one katana cut.
  4. Hunter doing 80 damage body shots = instant Aura kill.

Answers for you!!

  1. We did try this, but every implementation we did felt really janky and wasn’t comfortable to play with
  2. Phantom’s quietness is a bug and will be increased with the next update. He’s also becoming more visible
  3. With the above changes Aura (and the other Mercs) will have an easier time telling where Phantom is so they can prepare and engage
  4. Passed this on to the dev team for comment, but it does take skill to hit a fully charged shot on a moving target. If the aura (and other Mercs) are stationary they deserve to be shot!
([ *O.C.B.* ] Wildcard) #5

@stayfreshshoe said:

@CheapSauce said:
My issues:

  1. No delay between when Phantomunter can decloak and attack.
  2. No footsteps when Phantom is running, the merc is invisible, not weightless.
  3. Phantom can kill Aura with one katana cut.
  4. Hunter doing 80 damage body shots = instant Aura kill.

Answers for you!!

  1. We did try this, but every implementation we did felt really janky and wasn’t comfortable to play with
  2. Phantom’s quietness is a bug and will be increased with the next update. He’s also becoming more visible
  3. With the above changes Aura (and the other Mercs) will have an easier time telling where Phantom is so they can prepare and engage
  4. Passed this on to the dev team for comment, but it does take skill to hit a fully charged shot on a moving target. If the aura (and other Mercs) are stationary they deserve to be shot!

I’ve never not heard his footsteps, so I have no clue what you’re going on about; and I can hear his de-cloak audio cue just fine, most players just aren’t used to having to listen for ability-based audio cues in casual matches and so they often won’t connect the dots on that one. Phantom killing Aura in one hit is only possible via a heavy melee swing, something that is admittedly more cheap feeling currently due to the overdone buff to his cloak (and the slight quirks that make it extremely hard to pick out from the backdrop with lower graphical settings). His footsteps and cloak have always been very quiet with the 1st Edition cards with the Sneaky Augment, almost the exact same as it is now, so in the end the only thing that’s going to save people is actually learning to keep an ear out for the audio cues. Making him more visible and louder is only going to force players to play him more carefully again, with a heavier focus on camping spots and ambushing; ultimately making the planned change worthless if players don’t bother to develop a habit of listening for the audio cues associated with him.

@stayfreshshoe
Nothing against you folks and the Dev team, but no matter how much you tweak Phantom he’ll always be a source of belly-aching from the casual scene if you intend for him to be viable in competitive; so you really should “stick to your guns” this time, so-to-speak, with regards to how you balance him. The casual scene’s whining over anything that can 1-shot them, or forces them to take the game more seriously, is nothing new to Dirty Bomb or any other game with a competitive scene (even when the action that would do this is blatantly telegraphed via audio cues/warnings, etc.). It will always be easier to whine and complain about something, as opposed to actually having to make an effort, both in games and in life; something that we’ve seen is the status quo time-and-again, throughout history, but seem to have trouble acknowledging and learning from.

With regards to Hunter’s crossbow, my only complaint is the damage returns for hip-fired shots isn’t justified considering how easy it is to spam the weapon; not to mention that is basically Grandeur headshot damage without the requirement of spread or recoil control, something that every other gun of that kind requires of you. Its rate of fire is far too high on hip-fire to justify the damage, especially without there being any drawback to spamming shots; it needs to be brought into line with the alternate options that it competes with, namely guns like the Grandeur and Dreiss AR, instead of blatantly outshining them (something very basic in concept that every other weapon in the game seems to abide by).

P.S. @stayfreshshoe I have no clue how this got overlooked during play-testing, because this is something that should’ve been impossible to miss, but it’s in the game now so the damage is done; best thing you folks at Splash Damage can do is take a closer look at it and adjust it accordingly, because it currently requires only aim to shoot from the hip (this is something no other gun of its category, or of similar handling, has).

(bgyoshi) #6

@-OCB-Wildcard said:
Its rate of fire is far too high on hip-fire to justify the damage, especially without there being any drawback to spamming shots; it needs to be brought into line with the alternate options that it competes with, namely guns like the Grandeur and Dreiss AR, instead of blatantly outshining them (something very basic in concept that every other weapon in the game seems to abide by).

Will have to test this. I always love seeing crossbow spammy hunters because they always miss and are basically a free kill. But I didn’t try spamming myself because I always seemed to kill a lot faster and more consistently with his unique primary.

(woodchip) #7

Yeah, just “stick to your guns” so competitive players might have 13 viable Mercs instead of 12.

This is tremendously bad advice. You can’t trade casual players having fun and feeling like the game is basically fair for incremental improvements in competitive merc diversity.

Which is why they are going to nerf him this week.

Sorry to be so blunt but this attitude of “casual players just need to learn to put in some effort to deal with XYZ” pops up quite a bit here, and it is completely wrongheaded. Competitive and casual balance are always in tension, but they should never be so mutually exclusive that you ever have to consider breaking one for the sake of the other.

([ *O.C.B.* ] Wildcard) #8

@woodchip said:
Yeah, just “stick to your guns” so competitive players might have 13 viable Mercs instead of 12.

This is tremendously bad advice. You can’t trade casual players having fun and feeling like the game is basically fair for incremental improvements in competitive merc diversity.

Which is why they are going to nerf him this week.

Sorry to be so blunt but this attitude of “casual players just need to learn to put in some effort to deal with XYZ” pops up quite a bit here, and it is completely wrongheaded. Competitive and casual balance are always in tension, but they should never be so mutually exclusive that you ever have to consider breaking one for the sake of the other.

Yes but with something like invisibility you unfortunately don’t have that luxury, and by “sticking to their guns” I’m referring to them sticking to the original driving concept behind the game; being a competitive and fast-paced shooter, as opposed to going the route it seems to be going currently towards being a casual shooter. I’ve never had problems with Phantom when the players actually pay attention and back each other up; he may get one kill but he won’t always get a finishing swing, and sometimes he won’t get any at all. So I’d have to disagree with you that the attitude is completely inaccurate, because having been around for at least 3 years in this game I can tell you that the majority of casual players have the awareness of a potato while playing; which allows him to be extremely effective, and this comes from someone who experienced dealing with him in all his forms (launch, post-nerf, post-buff).

There are flaws I never said there weren’t, but there is a large amount of whining that comes from what amounts to players not knowing how, or being used to doing what is required, to handle him; such as having to actually put in the effort to pay attention to your surroundings constantly while working together. Such concepts are something that is inherent to playing a “team-based objective shooter” which is what DB is at its core; you are supposed to be paying attention to these details and backing your team up. There will be occasions where the large skill gap between long-time players and newcomers, something that has been a problem for years here, that will inevitably create uproar amongst players; but getting your ass handed to you doesn’t always mean imbalance, something most casual players seem to have trouble grasping from what I’ve observed over 3 years in this game.

Not to mention SD nerfed him into the ground before because of precisely this reason; newer players and those who hadn’t figured out how to deal with him whined so loudly that SD nerfed him as a knee-jerk reaction. I admit I was one of those players a long time ago, but I eventually figured it out and regretted having complained when I saw the degree to which they nerfed him the first time around. The casual playerbase has a history of “jumping the gun” on these things here, and there comes a point where the developers are no longer the ones ruining the game; especially if they have to appease a playerbase that can’t be satisfied, while keeping DB’s fast-paced gameplay and low TTK values, almost 24/7.

(Gire) #9

@CheapSauce you are literally forgetting everything else in the game that can insta kill you, even another Aura can 1 shot 80 - 90hps with the small knife with chopper (cricket bat doesnt probably even need chopper).
Phantoms katana has like 5dmg more than cricket bat but the katana is slower

(watsyurdeal) #10

@stayfreshshoe said:

@CheapSauce said:
My issues:

  1. No delay between when Phantomunter can decloak and attack.

Can you clarify what yall did exactly?

All it would take is animations to play, so you have to wait till Phantom finishes turning cloak off, then pulling his weapon, then firing, the whole process should take only half a second.

(Press E) #11

@stayfreshshoe said:

@CheapSauce said:
My issues:

  1. No delay between when Phantomunter can decloak and attack.
  2. No footsteps when Phantom is running, the merc is invisible, not weightless.
  3. Phantom can kill Aura with one katana cut.
  4. Hunter doing 80 damage body shots = instant Aura kill.
  1. Passed this on to the dev team for comment, but it does take skill to hit a fully charged shot on a moving target. If the aura (and other Mercs) are stationary they deserve to be shot!

There’s always an amount of luck involved with shots though. It’s not as noticeable on low damage weapons, but a lucky shot that can instantly kill an 80hp merc is pretty bad.
Yeah the hunter deserves the kill if it was legitimate skill, but shouldn’t the aura or sparks also deserve a chance to fight back or at least run away? The bolts are silent, and it’s not hard to not notice when a hunter is taking potshots at you. Not to mention he’s not punished for missing in any way. No ammo unlike snipers, no cooldown unlike sparks, and no sound to alert people.

Regardless of whether or not the shot took skill, even ignoring lucky hits, in a game with a generally high ttk, it’s just not fun at all to fight a hunter as a low HP merc, let alone one with 80hp.

([ *O.C.B.* ] Wildcard) #12

@Gire said:
@CheapSauce you are literally forgetting everything else in the game that can insta kill you, even another Aura can 1 shot 80 - 90hps with the small knife with chopper (cricket bat doesnt probably even need chopper).
Phantoms katana has like 5dmg more than cricket bat but the katana is slower

With the Beckhill Knife you don’t even need chopper to one-shot Aura and Sparks :stuck_out_tongue:

@CheapSauce
On a side note there’s lots of things that can one-shot the 80-90 hp Mercs in the game, they’re supposed to be squishy and easy to kill if you land the shots; it’s why they have such high movement speed in the first place. Nader’s grenades can 1shot on a direct hit, Fletcher’s sticky bombs as well; Phantom is actually too slow to catch up to an Aura who is mobile being as he’s a full 50-60 units slower (I forget if he’s 410 or 420), meaning if you die to his Katana like that it is your own fault (assuming his cloak isn’t buggy or broken like it is now but that’s a special case that will be addressed next patch), because you aren’t making use of that movement speed and are staying put for too long.

Yes Aura’s healing is limited to her station’s aoe radius, sure that much is true, but that doesn’t mean you need to sit on it like a Mother Hen; you should always be keeping mobile and providing backup fire for your team when you aren’t busy reviving or healing, both yourself and others on your team, otherwise you’re just making a target of yourself. If you’re staying in one spot or small area for too long of course you’ll get picked off like that; you’re a medic, and a priority target after all, and if they down you first they have that much less to be concerned about in a team fight.

Medics can kill in this game, something that isn’t always the case in other shooters, so that may take getting use to; you need to take more advantage of your Merc’s inherent strengths, to minimize your weaknesses, or you won’t see much improvement on this situation even after the upcoming change. I’ve had several games where I top scored, and was among the top-frags on my team, quite a few times as Aura with just a Blishlok; just mentioning it as an example, purely to make the point that being a Medic doesn’t mean you don’t fight.

Ultimately, if this persists as an issue for you after the patch, this is more likely a matter of experience, as opposed to game balance, and is just something you’ll need to work on.