1.3.3 GUNS AND GUNNER SKILL BALANCE

[geggis]

Meant to add that the reduced jitter on the gat seems to make lesmok viable now as you close in, without putting heavy out of a job. I'm betting heavy would be great for surgically shattering certain components, what with its increased clip size, before focusing the hull. Charged, greased, heat-sink, incendiary -- I think they might all have a place now with the gat.

[Devinstater]

I just got my first win as a pilot in the Pyramidion with Hades and Light Flak. The Hades having a faster projectile speed really helped make it more reliable to score a hit. If the enemy just rushes you, or if your partner is wont to abandon you like a Squid then light flak just doesn't have the damage output, Hades + Gat worked fairly well (banshee side and shotgun rear). We played with incendiary on the Gat and it seemed to work really well. Maybe not against experienced crews but at the lower levels Hades is really good. People have trouble prioritizing repairs and fire fighting.

Not sure what to do as a Goldfish now though, I am really messed up by the time I shoot down their balloon and the other guns don't seem to have killing power.

[-Mad Maverick-]

good feedback guys!  hey I was wondering awkm, can you please post the usage and win % stats for each ship please?  I would really like to see the hard numbers on this.

[The Djinn]

good feedback guys!  hey I was wondering awkm, can you please post the usage and win % stats for each ship please?  I would really like to see the hard numbers on this.

I'm not sure how much these numbers will actually help. We'll be looking at the entire spread of skilled and unskilled players (with a skewed number of Goldfish and Pyras due to beginner games), ship popularity varies by ship based on ease of use, necessity of a skilled crew, and so forth, and even then we'd still have to account for gun choice, gun placement...and that's still not very accurate, as it's all crew dependent in the end.

It'd be interesting, certainly, but I don't think those numbers are particularly good to work with unless we see some really skewed win rates for certain ships or guns.

[-Mad Maverick-]

good feedback guys!  hey I was wondering awkm, can you please post the usage and win % stats for each ship please?  I would really like to see the hard numbers on this.

I'm not sure how much these numbers will actually help. We'll be looking at the entire spread of skilled and unskilled players (with a skewed number of Goldfish and Pyras due to beginner games), ship popularity varies by ship based on ease of use, necessity of a skilled crew, and so forth, and even then we'd still have to account for gun choice, gun placement...and that's still not very accurate, as it's all crew dependent in the end.

It'd be interesting, certainly, but I don't think those numbers are particularly good to work with unless we see some really skewed win rates for certain ships or guns.

from what I understood the use of pyras were so skewed and dominant something "had" to be done.  I just wanted to see the numbers to prove that, and hopefully to keep us informed on decision making moving forward.   I would hate to think that these stats are not recorded and we have been making choices based on our anecdotal experiences.

[Imagine]

They're recorded, but afaik, never released because that sort of stuff really doesn't have anything to do with us.

[zlater75@hotmail.com]

I feel obliged to give my pov of the hades as it's my favourite gun since it was released.
So i've played some matches with it and this is what i think of it atm tbh:


It shoots with very little drop now and the ammo feels faster. With greased and lesmok it's a close/medium to medium/long like range weapon. You can hit very far with it if you get the drop right. I would like if the following changes to make it feel right for me (in general something in between before and after patch) :
- slightly slower ammoflight time. The fireballs feel just slightly too fast.
- the arc on burst and heavy is so similar to lesmok i can't see the different. i don't have to adapt to a dropchange with heavy or burst. Like before the patch and that filled in the gap between close and medium.
- greased is fine as is but the incendiary i haven't tried yet but in range i'd like it to be (from short range to long range) greased, charged, lochnagar, heatsink, incendiary, burst, heavy, lesmok. All with a slightly different yet noticable drop and arc.

With this it would be a compromise in between and feel better as hades. i like how the ironsight blocks the view a bit so the gunner has to become a bit creative when he fires on a ship flying to the left.
It may sound crazy to like the hades and want it nerfed back a little but i wouldn't want it to be a sniping weapon either.

[dragonmere]

Played as a Junker last night. Artemis Front, and both right side slots. Gat mortar left side.

Problem is, there was absolutely 0 reason for me to go in and use my close range side. Every time I tried it, I found it too 'sloppy'. There is no good way to hold yourselves within ~450m of an enemy for the  ~20-30sec it takes to strip armor now. So any time an enemy would engage, I would simply back out and snipe. Played the entire match in reverse. Actually found the Artemis to be a better weapon as we escaped from  the closer encounters.

To me that's a problem. If my ship has a mid/long range side, and a close range side, the benefit of getting in close to use the close range side should be a quicker kill, correct? It's not there. No reason whatsoever to try and use actual piloting skill to 'get in there' and get a kill. Just sit back and snipe snipe snipe.

The way the expanding hit boxes on shots appear to work, combined with new gun hit boxes, the amount of disabling was too damn high. 2-4 components per clip of greased artemis. It was nearly as effective as the time Artemis got 'buffed' for 5 days.

Finally CA THomas jumped in on the other side and gave us a good run for our money on a gat/mortar/flame (?) pyramidion. Problem is, I seriously don't think his WEAPONS took down our armor. There was not a single time where our armor dropped and I felt like it was due exclusively to his shooting. Not once.

What did? Ramming. Constant ramming. Ramming from the pyramidion, and ramming from his junker ally. The match before that, I witnessed a goldfish ramming, excessively. I've seen galleon rams being used extensively too. Without a clear way to take down the hull armor at a close range, it appears ramming randomly is now the best option. I thought constant ramming was a bad thing, bad enough to take down a huge chunk of Pyra health and mass last patch?

And as far as making engagements last longer, and giving the defeated a sense of 'deserving' to have died; nope. First few matches last night I took Sniper Spire. 1 clip of merc, 2 clips of artemis, 1 clip of heavy flak, all at the same time, the enemy is down. They don't know what happened, and they never had a chance to react. This is of course, assuming the same level of competition where players used to be able to strip armor and health with 1 pass of gat/mortar. Same problem, different range.

These are all problems with what awkm said the aim of balance is, in my opinion. There was no requirement of ship positioning, no teamwork, no defined roles of long/medium/short. Just snipe sniper snipe, get engaged close quarters-nothing happens, snipe snipe snipe, get rammed.
========

They're recorded, but afaik, never released because that sort of stuff really doesn't have anything to do with us.

We're the QA team. It does have to do with us. We need all the information possible to help make informed decisions.

[-Mad Maverick-]

They're recorded, but afaik, never released because that sort of stuff really doesn't have anything to do with us.

so they are "relying on us" for feedback but our feedback shouldn't be informed?  I don't know about you guys but if I am going to be lobbying for the changing of the mechanics of a game i would want all the info.  especially if the basis of the change is something being over used.  I would def want the numbers that proves that it is before I made any decisions.

[Imagine]

They're recorded, but afaik, never released because that sort of stuff really doesn't have anything to do with us.

We're the QA team. It does have to do with us. We need all the information possible to help make informed decisions.

Current stats really has no bearing on finding out potential bugs/problems with new changes. All it would accomplish is more complaining and/or arguing about what to change.

[dragonmere]

Current stats really has no bearing on finding out potential bugs/problems with new changes. All it would accomplish is more complaining and/or arguing about what to change.

This is a balance thread, not a bug thread.

If the goal is to balance the distribution of weapon and ship usage, I really can't see any way this information wouldn't help us. awkm himself said we ARE the QA team. If we're talking a huge AAA budget studio, if the professional QA team went to the project head and asked for usage stats do you think they would be told 'Nah, you don't need those, get back to work'.

[Imagine]

Current stats really has no bearing on finding out potential bugs/problems with new changes. All it would accomplish is more complaining and/or arguing about what to change.

This is a balance thread, not a bug thread.

If the goal is to balance the distribution of weapon and ship usage, I really can't see any way this information wouldn't help us. awkm himself said we ARE the QA team. If we're talking a huge AAA budget studio, if the professional QA team went to the project head and asked for usage stats do you think they would be told 'Nah, you don't need those, get back to work'.

Uhhhh yeah. They would.

QA teams don't make balance changes. They're just there to make sure the current ones work as they should.

[-Mad Maverick-]

when I was in beta with HoN (there was actually a time when that community was nice) I thought I was always fighting against a certain character in every match.  I was ready to say that this chard needed to be nerfed but then I went to the stats and was surprised by how wrong I was.  when I saw how average this specific character'a usage was and how mightily  low his win % was I realized I and my team were doing something wrong because our loss % to that char was was abnormally hight to the rest of the community.  so we asked around for tips and got better. 

anyway for a multitude of reasons, for giving accurate feedback to the devs,  for learning how to play the game better.  these stats should be made available.  I shudder to think though that they have possibly not been recorded.

[Subarco]

good feedback guys!  hey I was wondering awkm, can you please post the usage and win % stats for each ship please?  I would really like to see the hard numbers on this.

I'm not sure how much these numbers will actually help. We'll be looking at the entire spread of skilled and unskilled players (with a skewed number of Goldfish and Pyras due to beginner games), ship popularity varies by ship based on ease of use, necessity of a skilled crew, and so forth, and even then we'd still have to account for gun choice, gun placement...and that's still not very accurate, as it's all crew dependent in the end.

It'd be interesting, certainly, but I don't think those numbers are particularly good to work with unless we see some really skewed win rates for certain ships or guns.

from what I understood the use of pyras were so skewed and dominant something "had" to be done.  I just wanted to see the numbers to prove that, and hopefully to keep us informed on decision making moving forward.   I would hate to think that these stats are not recorded and we have been making choices based on our anecdotal experiences.

I trust that Muse as professionals would know enough not to make decisions based solely on anecdotal experiences. Also, I rarely see the developers release such stats to the public.

[-Mad Maverick-]

good feedback guys!  hey I was wondering awkm, can you please post the usage and win % stats for each ship please?  I would really like to see the hard numbers on this.

I'm not sure how much these numbers will actually help. We'll be looking at the entire spread of skilled and unskilled players (with a skewed number of Goldfish and Pyras due to beginner games), ship popularity varies by ship based on ease of use, necessity of a skilled crew, and so forth, and even then we'd still have to account for gun choice, gun placement...and that's still not very accurate, as it's all crew dependent in the end.

It'd be interesting, certainly, but I don't think those numbers are particularly good to work with unless we see some really skewed win rates for certain ships or guns.

from what I understood the use of pyras were so skewed and dominant something "had" to be done.  I just wanted to see the numbers to prove that, and hopefully to keep us informed on decision making moving forward.   I would hate to think that these stats are not recorded and we have been making choices based on our anecdotal experiences.

I trust that Muse as professionals would know enough not to make decisions based solely on anecdotal experiences. Also, I rarely see the developers release such stats to the public.

most devs don't rely on its public for feedback as much as muse does

literally every single Moba does