Unbalanced Flash Grenades

(tokamak) #21

And health, grenades and ammo are replenishable in the field. What’s more, class-specific stuff, like HE charges, third eyes and smoke grenades are on a CD timer so that the class can keep functioning and doesn’t just turn into a mere grunt who gets to shoot at things.

(DarkangelUK) #22

Why are you bringing that up? You said there shouldn’t be any perks to dying when there clearly are and always have been, mentioning rechargeables does absolutely nothing to negate that except boost your post count by another 1.

(tokamak) #23

With perks I mean exclusive advantages. If the only way to obtain something in the game is through die then that’s bad. It means that the moment you’ve used that thing then dying becomes a lot more attractive option. Vice versa, if you’re about to die then using that thing becomes also very attractive regardless of the situation. This is how one-per-life items push two kinds of incentives on a player that have nothing to do with tactics.

One-per-life items are actively encouraging people to die as often as possible so they get to use that item more. It’s fun for lemmings but the rest of us rather have some teamwork and weight behind dying.

(stealth6) #24

Well I don’t like the cooldown bar. It’s either going to make them too spammy or the opposite that they’re hardly ever used. By limiting them to 1 per life the player would at least have some control over when he gets them.

Maybe chargebar reset on death + long cooldown?

Anyway if they add a respawn timer I think the selfkilling will increase, maybe it’s not tactical to you or broken, but in lots of cases it’s a viable option. For example:

  • No medic on your team (or medic won’t heal you), close to spawn, half life? selfkill
  • Running out of ammo, can’t get to enemy corpses? selfkill
  • close to spawn, run out of grenades? selfkill
    etc

Already grenades are limited to 1 per life afaik, so if I could see the respawntimer I’d probably selfkill a lot more. Adding options to refill your equipment without dying is fine, but even then sometimes you have to waste too much time running after medics or searching for dead bodies, selfkill would be so much faster (just the walk back from spawn)

EDIT: Anyway, I think it’s a moot point since I don’t think the respawning in DB even works in waves. I tried selfkilling once and I always ended up on 12 second timer for some reason.

(tokamak) #25

Grenades shouldn’t be one per life either. It’s just not right that the people who die the most get to throw the most stuff. If anything we should be looking at cooldown timers that accelerate the longer someone stays alive.

(Scrupus) #26

I vote for 1 flashbang pr soldier with long cooldown that stays over to next life, pretty much like the airstrike charge. At least for public play, server option to reset cooldown for comp play. Just my personal opinion - I always liked that option in W:ETpro where recharge bar didn’t reset when you selfkill/die.

And lower radius or less effect when you look another way.

(DarkangelUK) #27

Having a cool down for everything will just annoy people no end, no point pissing people off when grenades aren’t a problem as is. Other games gave you 2 grenades and you got them back on respawn and that wasn’t an issue. Wait, and apologies if I’m wrong here, but weren’t you all for an ammo/health crate drop that gave you this stuff? Increased respawn time will counter any grenade/flash regens when dying any way.

(tokamak) #28

Yes, regaining supplies through players and depots is the best option. Cooldowns are okay and limiting it to life is worse. I can even see a soldier spamming flashbangs by having a field ops supporting him with ammo packs as a very valid tactic. It would be amusing to see employed.
And of course there’s a lot you can tweak with the flashbangs. It’s not just the duration but also the falloff of the intensity that can make a world of difference. A short blind but a long discolouration and any other variations may also do the trick.

(SockDog) #29

Just have the FOps drop a grenade supply type separately to the ammo drops. You can then limit grenade drops to 1-2 over a period of time, good for topping up Soldiers before a big push but less useful to supply them with spam.

(tokamak) #30

I wouldn’t mind if it were a separate class specialisation for the field ops yeah. I think that trying to prevent ‘spam’ at all costs is going too far though. If two players team up and want to make it rain grenades then good on them, it equates lots of other things they could normally do together if they plan well.

In a constant bid to keep everything balanced you may end up in a system that is so restrictive that it only rewards the most basic form of play, which is boring and definitely not what made ET so good.

(Breo) #31

This means some area’s (choke points) can’t be passed if it’s possible to spam nades around the corner with a fieldsops and a couple soldiers.

(tokamak) #32

It’s not a supply crate like in ETQW, a field ops can only throw a bunch of them down and then it’s over. This means that it’s mainly a premeditated offensive strategy.

(Reacto) #33

[QUOTE=tokamak;420462]Yes, regaining supplies through players and depots is the best option. Cooldowns are okay and limiting it to life is worse. I can even see a soldier spamming flashbangs by having a field ops supporting him with ammo packs as a very valid tactic. It would be amusing to see employed.
And of course there’s a lot you can tweak with the flashbangs. It’s not just the duration but also the falloff of the intensity that can make a world of difference. A short blind but a long discolouration and any other variations may also do the trick.[/QUOTE]

Amusing? With these small maps you can cover all the crowded areas with flash in just 1 nade, if you’d have a field ops to support you you could just keep spamming the nades all the time, would just kill the fun for public players. Might be a viable option for competitive games (barely), but it would ruin the game for the casual players. I don’t really mind if soldiers only had 1 tactical nade and couldn’t resupply them, but I think a cooldown could work too (if you only have one tactical).

(tokamak) #34

If two players can cooperate to such a high level in which they can use such a nade barrage cost-effectively then good on them. I don’t see it happening that easily.

(INF3RN0) #35

Repeating myself, single nade and a longer c/d. If it is popularly viewed as needing more development, then I would advocate either a special nade that requires precise aiming to be effective with the c/d or just a single nade that is consistently effective in ideal circumstances but is more of a timing skill.

(tokamak) #36

On the surface the choice between a strong one-time and a weak repeatable nade seems obvious. But with the short lifespans in DB it really doesn’t guarantee that one-time grenades are being spammed less.

(INF3RN0) #37

I assumed longer spawn times was already hard-written into a future patch.

(Reacto) #38

Have you played on a full server yet? If so you should know that a lot of the maps have choke points where people are usually stuck for a while before the fight moves on. If there’s at least one assault here and one field ops it wouldn’t take much cooperation at all, similar to how medics drop out med kits at the “choke points” now.

Just because some people die a lot doesn’t mean the life span is short. It really isn’t.

(tokamak) #39

A field ops supplying a flashbang barrage seems like an excellent way to break through such choke points. Where as for defenders they would only win 10 extra seconds doing the same.