Redeye shyed away from, let's fix it

(Lumi) #1

So I’ve noticed that very few people actually play Redeye. And you’ll agree with me there. I the past two weeks I’ve encountered only one and none in comp.

Sometimes I do use him and I’ve noticed a few flaws:

-Redeye is to be handled as a sniper, as he has hard to master close range weapons and the pdp, but then again Vasilli has much better sniping capabilities, maybe a hint as to why people don’t use Redeye
-Second, his special knife (can’t remember that weird name) is the only knife hitting in diagonal, making it actually much harder to use, then a katana or any other melee for that weapon. So once more no incentive to chose him there. Why not make it hit horizontally like every other melee weapon, so that it is equal to all the other melees?
-His single smoke takes 30s to recharge, why so much when Fragger has two grenades? I feel like Redeye should get a second smoke as well. Because right now, people see a smoke and either shoot at it, or have learned to take another way around. Having two, allows for more strategic use and forces the enemy to actually dive in or use explosives against the smoke.
-His Redeye “stamina” could then also be increased to 15s so that he can use two smokes sequentially but not chain them either with the constant use of the redeye.

Maybe those changes would make him more appealing?

Discuss.

(Gi.Am) #2

Red eye in itself is fine as is. Outside of the PDP he is not a sniper. If you use the Grandeur or Dreiss your role is agressive flanker and spotter.

He has a lot of unique stuff going on for him, would hate to see this removed and turned into more of the same just for mass apeal sake.

Personaly I love the Kukri its a mean looking knife, that hits pretty hard. Granted the different hitpattern makes you miss if you are used to the thrust/slash weapons, but its an exclusive slashing weapon and that is reflected in the animations. Also they allow you to hit people in spots you would normaly miss with other weapons (rightside next to you for example).

2 smokegrenades, considering that people already hate on 1 smoke, I doubt that this would be a good thing. Besides 1 allready allowes for plenty of strategy including not sitting in the smoke and flanking everyone while they shoot into it.

Only thing I don’t like about Red eye currently is the change to his spotting in the last patch, spotting people means you are in direct fire line so in trying to spot you are risking getting shot not fair imo.

Outside of that Red eye is great and very team oriented (if played right) he could use some XP boosts to reflect that type of gameplay tho, quite often his smoke or spotting will enable important moves but is not reflected in the XP he gets.

(watsyurdeal) #3

Honestly… I’d play him more of I could have more than 3 mercs.

(Edzer) #4

I’d play him more if smokes wouldn’t get dissolved so easily.

(Lumi) #5

@Gi.Am

Still, it doesn’t change the fact that people don’t play him. what do you propose to fix that?

It’s not really glamour to be just a spotter and if you don’t back up your smoke with the red-eye. More often than not your team is going to be pissed because they as well can’t see a damn thing.

Now if I want to play dreiss I’ll chose an Arty or Kira instead and grandeur has too low of a firerate to be effective at close range.

Also, don’t get me wrong, I do play Redeye and have come to enjoy him with time, just seems like I’m never facing a Redeye myself. That’s what bugs me.

EDIT: Also why should the harder hitting katana be easy of use but the kukri not? I know the hitboxes reflect movement, but why not make all melee movement consistent and independent on weapon. Just keep the range and slash speed variances, that should be enough.

(Canucck) #6

Would like to see a couple things…

-If smoke is destroyed early, the ability cooldown is reduced by the lost duration.
-Revert the spotting change, spots should stay after death
-A way for redeye to dispel his own smoke (CD would not be reduced)

Smoke is really annoying and powerful when used right (aggressively), it should be limited imo

(Samniss_Arandeen) #7

A lower limit on the size of the boom that can dispel smoke would be a great thing. A Fragger nade or two Fletcher stickies, nothing less, should dispel smoke. Bumping up the cooldown to 35 seconds would compensate for this.

(SaulWolfden) #8

Actually Redeye isn’t meant to be used like a sniper, he’s meant to be used as a marksman as that is his role (as well as spotting enemies). The smoke is a double edged sword because it can obscure the vision of allies in addition to that of enemies, but can also be used to cover allies doing objectives. The Kukri could still use some fixing, but I still find it absolutely hilarious to get kills with it (which is why I bought two loadouts that have it). I’m pretty sure the high skill ceiling required for Redeye was intentional.

(Lumi) #9

I finally got what bothers me with the kukri: it’s the fact that it hits horizontally one in every 3 slashes while all the others are diagonal. And that lack of overall consistency is what bothers me. Either all the time diagonal, or all the time horizontal. Otherwise you need to keep track of which slash type you’re at and might be caught doing the wrong slash type for the occasion. That should simply not happen.

(CCP115) #10

I thought everyone agreed that Redeye was just a high skill ceiling merc?

I don’t think anyone buys him, because only a few people fully experience him in two weeks. I played him, and he was fine.

(Szakalot) #11

his guns are hard to use

his ability is hard to use

(Sorotia) #12

I’d probably play him if I was a better marksman…he seems interesting.

To often a problem I see is people will just chuck smoke almost anywhere…don’t use it to well and his Granduer seems hard to get used to…common complaint I’ve seen is the sight couldan be better as well.

When they see their smoke isn’t really doing squat and his guns aren’t the best I imagine they just don’t bother with him.

That or I’ve seen a lot of people using the PDP on him and playing him exactly like a Sniper (Well not exactly…I’d say a lot of them just semi-auto the PDP instead of sniping)…well his smoke is almost useless at range for everything except maybe some cover now and then…so you might as well just play Vas there.

He is kinda in a meh place…Vas is a better sniper and probably has a more effective tracking ability…and there are good as if not better merc to play as a Marksman.

(Lumi) #13

[quote=“CCP115;83412”]I thought everyone agreed that Redeye was just a high skill ceiling merc?

I don’t think anyone buys him, because only a few people fully experience him in two weeks. I played him, and he was fine.[/quote]

IT’s true. he’s a high skill merc. But how are mercs supposed to be balanced, when high skill and high reward don’t go along? I mean, if he would be tough to use but kick ass in the hands of a good player, then I’d be fine. But give a Nader, Rhino or Fragger to a good player and they’ll do better than with Redeye and with half the effort.

Hence, I think a second smoke and longer infrared ability could buff him sufficiently to have people consider him. Otherwise he just seems forgotten, just to become another member of the Phantom club, where good ideas go die as bad implementation…

(Sorotia) #14

[quote=“Lumi;83496”][quote=“CCP115;83412”]I thought everyone agreed that Redeye was just a high skill ceiling merc?

I don’t think anyone buys him, because only a few people fully experience him in two weeks. I played him, and he was fine.[/quote]

IT’s true. he’s a high skill merc. But how are mercs supposed to be balanced, when high skill and high reward don’t go along? I mean, if he would be tough to use but kick ass in the hands of a good player, then I’d be fine. But give a Nader, Rhino or Fragger to a good player and they’ll do better than with Redeye and with half the effort.

Hence, I think a second smoke and longer infrared ability could buff him sufficiently to have people consider him. Otherwise he just seems forgotten, just to become another member of the Phantom club, where good ideas go die as bad implementation…[/quote]

Part of me would think that would be cool…but part of me thinks it would just make things more annoying…as good as smoke can be…

His weapons take skill to use just as his smoke…like you said lots of skill for less reward…lousy Snipers can be detrimental to a team…just like badly placed smoke can be…he has a large deck stacked against him.

(Lumi) #15

@cherryOctagon

You bring up an interesting point: that all recons are double edge swords situations.

If the person playing Vassili, Phantom or RedEye is a very good player then you’ll immediately see the positive effects on the team.
-Vassili will clear out enemies, making each “spawn” wave reaching the team less momentum full
-Phantoms can break through enemies defense and surprise with an effective flank, giving his allies more momentum in offense
-RedEye can lock down an objective and use his two skills for a great objective control and enemy kill combo

BUT…

If the player playing isn’t very good, then the effects on a team are also disastrous.
-A Vassili who keeps missing and looking at a screen void of enemies half of the time is a player less during the CQC fights
-A Phantom not able to pull off the flankings is a phantom that ends up gibbed or lying down, miles away from any medic…
-And obviously, if the RedEye player sucks, then you end up having a smoke that obstructs your teammate’s vision rather than help for pushes…

Maybe here is where the current level and experience system should actually show some usefulness? Like locking away those mercs if you’re not level 10 at least or something like that? I mean, it’s not a glorious solution, but the issue mentioned above exists and how do we fight that? We can’t really make the mercs more accessible than they currently are or good players will abuse them. So what can be done?

(Mr.Dubstab) #16

Personally I feel like there need to be done some changes indeed.

  • I like the idea someone above stated: Reduce the cool down time after it gets destroyed.
  • Add a colour to the smoke!!! This to make sure everybody knows who threw it! Just a very slight colour would do it…
  • Grandeur recoil fix… You can only shoot once, each 0.8(?) second with a proper aim. With a proper aim from the enemy, that is already the time you have been finished. (High ranked matches…)

I would like to hear @Faraleth 's opinion on this topic (not my specific post). (Hope you don’t mind.)

(Faraleth) #17

@“Mr.Dubstab” WHO DARES TO SUMMON MEEEEEEE? :stuck_out_tongue:

In all seriousness though - The problem with Red-Eye is that he is simply out-weighed by Vassili for the less skilled players, especially in pubs. Vassili’s sniper rifles are considerd “superior” by a lot of new/average players simply because they do WAY more damage per shot, not to mention Vassili has something Red-Eye does not: decent close-range fire-power.

The best thing Red-Eye has for close range combat is his melee weapon, but his slow speed often means those who trump him in close range weaponry (such as Proxy, Aura or Fletcher, etc) will often kill him before he can get a second swing at them, or even catch them up to land one in the first place. All his secondaries are objectively worse than Vassili’s.

One might argue his smoke grenade and IR vision add a lot of “power” to him though, which he is missing else-where, and you wouldn’t be wrong, the only problem is his extra “power” through his abilities have quite a high skill ceiling (heck, I can’t master Red-Eye to save my life… I’m terrible XD ), while a merc such as Vassili have much more in the way of raw damage and fire-power, and as we normally see, to those who don’t understand “potential power” (potential power is basically power or advantages that are statistics outside of raw damage), will often see the “actual power” (damage) as the more viable option - which is why a lot of the time, Vassili will trump Red-Eye for pub matches.

His smoke grenade on a 30 second cooldown is fine to me, honesty. It’s a very unique and quite powerful asset, especially when combined with his IR eye-patch. Honestly, I think Red-Eye has a very similar problem to all other recon class mercs, it’s that in pub matches they simply don’t belong, because at their core they are designed to be scouters/spotter classes that work well with a TEAM, something that doesn’t really happen very often in pubs.

Red-Eye’s smoke is very powerful when a team works together to obtain some strategical positioning, and his spotter ability can mark the entire enemy team if they come into his vision, giving his team a HUGE advantage - but again, this requires team-work.

I’m not going to disagree, I feel Red-Eye could use a little bit of love, especially when it comes to the Grandeur rifle. However like all recon mercs, I think he will ALWAYS be a sub-par choice in pubs, that seems to just be the problem with the class design as a whole, and the nature of pub matches. :c

(Lumi) #18

@Mr.Dubstab

Talking about smoke colour. Another issue I have with Redeye is that when using his IR ability I simply lose sight of where my smoke is and when it dissipates. I think some sort of specific overlay would be required to understand when I’m not being covered by my smoke anymore. Otherwise I need to constantly switch my IR on and off to see what’s going on on the “real” world. So instead of gaining information when using IR, I’m actually trading information. I lose sight of my smoke to get knowledge about enemy position. I don’t think it should be restrictive like that.

(Mr.Dubstab) #19

@Faraleth I always appreciate your opinions, as you do not simply state “This is how I think/feel about it.”, but you give reasons as for why. In addition you add up facts, to make everyone understand from what point of view you are coming from. (SORRY!? D: )

Yes, Red-Eye really needs some love. And… To be honest… I haven’t seen MANY players using RE in battle any longer, as most people feel that the IR is absolutely fine, but the smoke is… worthless. Sad to see such an amazing merc (idea), been a quite flop.

I’m looking forward to what people say about Phoenix, next week. As usually the complaints then pop in every 2 hours… xD

@Lumi I can definitely feel you with this one. I guess the easiest fix for this, is to add like a little “pop” sound of some sort.

(Lumi) #20

I was thinking more in the line of a visual contour to the smoke rather than a sound effect, but both combined would definitely do the trick.