Title.
As objective specialists Sticky Bombs should stick on objectives and do more damage (200/stuck bomb and 250/mine in close proximity).
There’s a lot of noobs out there that persists on playing Proxy/Fletcher on EV defence and I’m getting real tired of telling them to switch to Fire Support to get their objective XP fix.
If they don’t wanna bother switching to take out the EV I doubt they’d bother wasting their abilities on it. Besides, I think they’re fine as is. We already have so many objective-damaging mercs, I really don’t think we need more, even if it’s just for the sake of the poor teams trying to repair those objectives.
I do agree that stickies should stick to objectives though, at least generators and whatnot if the EV isn’t possible. They make good traps, and having them just slide off is less than ideal.
Problem is, on a 7v7 server and we have 2 snipers, 1 fire support 1 medic and 3 objective specialist trying to earn their Objective XP on Objective Mode. Remember, it’s EV Defence.
Yeah but if they backed themselves into that position, then it’s their fault really. Ik it’s annoying, I’ve been in teams like that too, but it wouldn’t be practical to give vassili ammo packs just because they all refuse to switch.
There are roles in DB, and they shouldn’t be rewarded for using the wrong merc in the wrong situation. If they want objective XP, they can easily bring another merc, it’s not hard and everyone has skyhammer, so like I said, I doubt most of them would waste abilities trying to blow up the EV even if they could.
I personally don’t think things like that should be adjusted because of poor team composition, the players chose to pick bad mercs for the job over earning XP so they need to deal with their decision.
Poor team composition is one of those advanced things in multi-hero FPS that a new player needs to comprehend. I’ll be naive to practice that thing myself in public games and not tell others to switch to something else, and after over a year and a half of telling, I just don’t know what other strategy to educate the player base needs to be done. If time and again, it keeps happening something else needs to be done.
I’m just saying that the approach to the problem needs to be changed if the current solutions is not effective.
Sure, changed via incentive, but validating someone’s shitty choice with increased damage to the EV beyond their role won’t help that, it will just further nurture more shitty choices.
So how do we go about making shitty choice of merc work well for the team?
Consider this:
be, Map : Castle, 7v7 Stopwatch.
1st half
Team offence = Turtle, Fletcher, Vasilli, Javelin, Nader, Aura & Guardian
Team defence = Phoenix, Skyhammer, Stoker, 2 Proxy, Fletcher & Kira.
Offence wins because of team composition. Poor Phoenix in defence is overworked and can’t be everywhere.
2nd half
Team offence = Pheonix, Proxy, 2 Skyhammer, Aimee, Javelin & Thunder
Defence = Phoenix, Javelin, Aura, Skyhammer, Stoker, and 2 Phantoms
Defence wins despite better composition on offence. Again Phoenix is overworked.
In the first half, nearly half the team are objective specialists trying to be cheeky and using their skills to take out the EV in the spirit of helping the team. They just couldn’t get the point that objective specialists are better repairing than deconstructing the objective. They can’t plant C4 on the EV which would be another game mechanic that could be looked at, but still, if they strive to be team effective, why should their efforts not be favoured for being objective specialists?
Here’s my controversial 2 cents… you don’t, you don’t make a shitty choice of merc work well at all for them.
If your team picks shitty mercs for selfish reasons then they’ll lose, that’s a conscious choice your team has made to sabotage their own efforts. I’ve had bad team compositions and asked the player to change, at no point did I blame the merc themselves, but my team mates choice to play that merc when its clearly the wrong decision. IMO you don’t needlessly buff a merc just to perform better in shit situations because people chose poorly, this is why shotguns are in such a bad state.
By trying to make everything viable at any time you end up ruining balance and the player experience, if a player has picked an engineer on an EV defence mission and no Arty/Kira/Skyhammer then I’m completely against a balance tweak to justify that bad choice, they need to accept the loss and stop blaming the game for not making their merc better at a job they’re not designed to do.
Engineers should know EV’s weaknesses, because they know how to fix them. Just like headshots are rewarder, why not well placed sticky bombs and mines? I know this is a fantasy world, but perhaps it could balance gameplay in public. It’s not like they would pick engineer to defence in professional gameplay anyway, because of 100% headshots meta (if you dont count turtle). But instead it could make it possible for defence meta, more versatile tactics. Problem with defence bias is because attackers have to use engineer and fight 4 vs 5.
I’m not saying increase the damage of Proxy Mines and Sticky Bombs on mercs. I’m quite sure it won’t justify making more devastating SNITCH kills that does 50HP damage.
The other point I am putting across is basically allowing them to be used against Objectives, as their role implies Objective Specialists.
You’re skewing the term of ‘objective specialist’ to fit your narrative, you know fine well it doesn’t relate to destroying them. Again there are already mercs that designed and best suited to destroying them, in which case you should be choosing them and not engineers.
Well that’s just the moot point.
How about reducing Fire Support Damage to Objectives and giving it to the Objective Specialists?
If we suffer at the failure of new player education, then the game experience really is bad for the losing team and this explains why people leave 2 minutes before team loss. The team play effectivity is not promoted properly and thus the new players just won’t learn from mistakes.
Perhaps increasing the stakes at the match is a better approach to educate the new players. If they value the gains of winning and regret the loss, lessons will be learned much faster (albeit, I learn more in losing than in winning).
I don’t see the point in mixing and matching roles, there’s nothing wrong with who does what as it currently is, the players just need to make the right choices. Again you’re still blaming the game for poor player choices, this doesn’t fix bad decisions, it just adds more bad decisions to an already long list.
They don’t. They have their agenda to serve.
I guess, I should exclude myself from being mixed with the players with poor choice of mercs. This direction is pushing me towards elitism. I don’t like to go in that direction.
Yes they do, agenda or not they still need to make the right choice for the good of the team, their agenda has no sway on whether that choice exists or not, and in that case they will lose due to their agenda. I’m inherently against propping up their shitty choice due to their ignorance, stubbornness and selfish agendas.
Maybe I’m playing this game waaayyyy too much and in waaayy too many places. That’s the reason why I see this problem waaaayy too often.
really you want to change the damage because no player want to be skyhammer/arty… etc
what next… if all play vasili should vasili be able to “headshot” destroy the EV with one shot?
you are kidding us!
Regards
ASD
Why should Proxy be rewarded for suicide mines and Fletcher for spamming stickies.
Just a reminder too, DB is always getting new players. The ones who don’t know what merc to bring to destroy the EV usually figure it out eventually, whether it’s through your tips or figuring it out themselves.
But of course new players are always joining, ones that don’t know any better, so naturally you’re always going to see players who don’t know the perfect merc to choose. That doesn’t mean they’re not listening or learning by themselves, it just means that it takes time to learn to play the game. And it’s natural to not know everything about a game when you’re just starting out, and you can’t expect them to be perfect.
If you really wanna lessen the “problem”, it would be better to give new players more tutorials on objectives and whatnot, rather than simplifying the game for players who only need practice.