1.3.6 Hotfix Flamethrower

[-Mad Maverick-]

ANOTHER Ryder wolf agreement!

[awkm]

Read everything.

Just letting everyone know.  Poking around to see what's possible... in dev app

[SirNotlag]

I don't really mind where the flamer currently is sitting its no longer unstoppable since the nerf and it might be best to wait a little before tweaking it again.

An idea i had for perhaps making it less frustrating to newer players would be a buff to the extinguisher. The previously mentioned idea of having extinguisher take immediate effect and just adding the 3 second cooldown to the already existing cooldown sounds interesting, but hard to code and could lead to 15 second cooldown timers if you keep getting doused with flames. Perhaps reducing the cooldown for extinguisher by a second and increasing the time it gives fire stack immunity by 1 second so it has a 2 second cooldown but gives 4 seconds of fire immunity. This makes the extinguisher better at nursing components and slightly reduces the fire stacks that could be added if the engineer acts quickly, without moving into the chem sprays turf of immunity for the whole ship.

The main reasoning for this was to be less frustrating to the newer players as they might not have the skills to keep everything chem sprayed or know how to prioritize repairs when a flamer squid gets on top of them. This would just allow their engineers to fight the fires a little better without reducing the weapons capability, still rewarding good engineers and punishing those that just to ignore fires.

[Imagine]

Y'all act like the mere presence of chem spray stops flamers.  What is not being understood is what is lost by chemming. Typically a repair means someone jumps off gun, whacks the hull with a mallet and goes back to the gun, not having the ability to do anything more for 9 seconds. However a hull that is taking flamer as well as damage means that repairs mean cheming and then waiting for chance to mallet. What was spending an instant off the gun, the engineer is forced to babysit for a little over three seconds. This may seem small but it definitely adds up over time.

To achieve the goals of the flamer, weaken the repairs and force engineers to repair over shoot, the flamer doesn't need the current ridiculous stack throwing.

Now to the crys that a tool shouldn't negate a gun. Functionally all guns, with the exception of flechette and shatter guns are functionally negated by tools when they are used alone. All guns need, and should need to be paired with another gun. I'm not afraid of a gat and I sure as hell ain't afraid of a mortar. However, the two of them being used in conjunction is deadly. Flamers are best paired with gats or carros because like every weapon combination, they overwhelm engis on two fronts. This is what made the Rainbow Crash the most effective brawling pyramidion in the competitive scene of late.

A good conceptual way to see this game is that destroying a ship is not overcoming its natural defenses but instead as overwhelming its crew. The flamer has been able to do that for months now. Competitively speaking I've been forced to respect the flamer as a competitive weapon since I first faced the Rainbow Crash back in January.

I don't see how having to adjust your gameplay style due to a change is a catastrophic thing.

[Sammy B. T.]

It is if that change means you need to run all primary engi and sacrifice trifectas and even simple bifectas because a balanced weapon needed its ability to put stacks down tripled.

[Dementio]

It is if that change means you need to run all primary engi and sacrifice trifectas and even simple bifectas because a balanced weapon needed its ability to put stacks down tripled.

You don't need to. Aren't you famouse for playing Junker and not letting enemies know your current positions? Isn't that effectively fighting the flamethrower? And what about your ally? Does he have to watch you helplessly die in fires? Come on man, let's be real, this is not the end of the game, it has yet to ruin everybodies fun and certainly it's not the only gun used in the entire game.

Just sit back for a second and watch the community play. You have been complaining about it the second the patch came out and even after the nerf came. I wonder, have you even tried play this game the same as before? Is that really not possible?
I still believe it doesn't matter. The gun got more useful and not more gamechanging. The old flamerthrower had the same problem, but because of chem spray people didn't care too much, why care now? What has changed?

[-Mad Maverick-]

agreed with DAN

[XtremeNameX]

Concerning normal matches, and I am saying this again just to make sure, we have to rely on the tutorials teaching new players what to do in case of fire.

No offense but this is a really terrible philosophy Any game developer can tell you that 90% of users will never read the manual/play the tutorial, let alone pay attention and remember everything it teaches you. Tutorials are just not a very effective method of instruction. Relying on a tutorial to teach new players a relatively complicated strategy isn't going to work, and if failure to understand/deploy this strategy results in the ultimate frustration of your entire ship being on fire, a lot of new players are going to prematurely pass on this incredible game.

To put things in perspective, and since the 'greenhorn' perspective is definitely needed Here's a little tangential tale: I'm a relative noob; my crew (all friends who got in on the 4-pack sale) and I have been playing fairly often for the couple months since the sale. We have a pretty good understanding of the mechanics, and can almost always go 5-0 against teams of randos. We, like almost everyone ever, didn't bother with the tutorial; just jumped in, excited to explore this game, and had no issue with that. This game is a great example of "simple to understand, hard to master" and we picked up on all the important mechanics within the first few games. Sure we had some frustration the first time we ran into a blimp popper, but it wasn't game-breaking; there were clearly things we could do to counter it (better communication with teammate-ship, keeping distance, clinging to every meter of altitude like its divine). That kind of introduction allowed us to fall in love with the game, and binge on it for hours whenever we get the chance.

The very first night the 1.3.6 flamer hit, we played 3 games and quit in frustration, and have only bothered assembling to play once since then. We did better in that second time, but only because we equipped every single crewperson to counter the flamethrower, and planned against it every second of every match. The presence of 1 single gun on the enemy ship dictated every aspect of our strategy. Now maybe our relative lack of experience played into this; maybe the elite players don't have to work so hard to deal with it. But I would guess that the majority of players are closer to our skill level than to the elite players' (who seem to be the biggest contributors in this discussion). And again, we are fairly decent-- couple months worth of experience, and a much stronger crew than most of the people we face in the game. How can you honestly expect any real noobs, let alone (and god forbid) first-timers, to figure out enough of how the game / metagame works to deal with the flamethrower? For such a frustrating weapon to be so easy and effective is just going to be a major deterrent to a growing community.

TLDR; The flamethower is just way too easy to use and hard to counter for anyone but the most coordinated and elite players. You can't count on a tutorial to fix that. If my team of relatively experienced friends was frustrated out of the game in 30 minutes, new players are in for a very rough time.

Does this end the discussion? Please let us be more professional and refrain from moving in circles or does somebody have something to say that hasn't been stated before?

I haven't seen anyone concretely respond to Sammy B.T.'s mathematical breakdown of why requiring engineers to chemspray + repair is an alarmingly huge efficiency slowdown. Maybe I've missed it; there are a few comments anecdotally suggesting otherwise, but this looks to me like an unexpected side effect of the new flamethrower that makes it even more powerful than intended... I don't think the discussion can be wrapped up until that's actually answered (and Sammy has numbers backing up his argument so any counter-argument should have them too

[XtremeNameX]

Just sit back for a second and watch the community play. You have been complaining about it the second the patch came out and even after the nerf came. I wonder, have you even tried play this game the same as before? Is that really not possible?
I still believe it doesn't matter. The gun got more useful and not more gamechanging. The old flamerthrower had the same problem, but because of chem spray people didn't care too much, why care now? What has changed?

In the experience of me + 3 friends (in the 1.3.6 and hotfix version) 'sitting back and watching the community play', every ship we face has at least one flamethrower on it. This one flamethrower dictates our ship's ENTIRE strategy to counter it. So in my experience (which I'd daresay is gonna be a lot closer to the 'average' or new player's experience ) the flamethrower is prevalent, frustrating, and dictatorial.

It is the very definition of gamechanging!!

When ONE weapon demands an entire crew's equipment and strategy to counter it, that is OP. Whether or not this is the case at the highest competitive level should not be as important as the fact that it is VERY true at the low-to-average level of gameplay.

[Dementio]

To be honest, I haven't played too often lately so I have no idea how many flamethrowers there are.

And now a warning: I will now try to summerize the majority of arguments and statemants against flamers and try to counter it with my own. If you wanna read this, it might take a while and is full of stuff I already mentioned. I only want to make others see what I see, because that's apparently not the case. At the end is a little summarization and I hope I got it all down, if you really don't wanna read this.

Argument #1: Flamethrower dictates an entire ship in order to counter it.
Counter argument: Every other gun in the game requires my entire crew to bring repair tools. Else there would be more gunner with buff tools. I need a repair tool to counter shatter damage on engines and guns, I need a repair tool to counter flachette damage on balloons and I need a repair tool to counter piercing damage on the armor. There is no difference between this and the flamethrower.
The flamethrower does fire damage, which can't be countered with a repair tool, so you have to bring either fire extinguisher or chem spray, maybe even both. Even a gunner can counter it with heatsink, but heatsink isn't always the best type of ammunition for guns so the gunner has to know when to use it, and god forbid if it's too late.
The flamethrower does a lot of fire, if not perma chem spray/heatsink and if things go problematic you have to let the fire kill whatever is on fire or use a fire extinguisher if one is around.
If countered correctly you can almost nullify the damage output of this gun, no other gun in this game gives you the privilege of countering it to such a great extent.

Argument #1 can be seen as either entirely invalid or valid when it takes every other gun into account too, since you have stuff to counter every gun in the game to some extent.
For carronades there is even a pilot tool (drouge chute) and no engineer in the world can keep up with the gun AND at times requires the entire crew repairing balloon and hull to stay alive. Is that not op? At least I can beat the flamer without having to fear the ground. This effectively counters every flamethrower on the enemy ship, without the pilot actually having to do something and still have somebody shooting without disturbances (e.g.: Gun destruction, balloon destruction leading to the gun to be out of arc).

Example: Enemy pyra has double flamethrower
Once my crew gets going I see an enemy being useless, thus allowing my team to effectively beat up his ally in a 2v1 scenario which leads to a 5:0 victory.

Example: Enemy pyra has flame/carro combo
The carronade will fuck me up before the flamer gets in range. Therefore I will make use of special pilot skillz and teamwork for suprise attacks or to disable the enemy guns before they even get close to me. This is basic piloting with strategy, not necessarily a flamer counter.

Example: Enemy Spire has flamethrower and 3 more guns to back it up.
Same as before. Don't give the enemy the opportunity to even use it.

Last Example and very often mentioned: Triple-quadritruple Flamer Squid Trifecta of Fire.
Squid with their high manouverbility can counter almost any ship in close range. If it gets close to me I will be forced to tank the fire if I can't kill it from the very beginning. While tanking I hope my ally gets my message and goes for the squid. The squid with its low armor health will naturally escape, this is where it loses flamer arcs and I can effectively concentrate on shooting it down.
Double flamer squid? Go long range and camp in a corner is the easiest counter strategy. You don't even need anti-fire tools for it.
If you think that is just stupid: Charging headfirst into a flak spire while at least 1km away is stupid. Long range is a tactic and squids are known for not being good at long range. This will lead to victory.


Argument #2: With the new power of the flamer a 3rd engineer with either chem spray or fire extinguisher is obligatory, at least on certain ships that to some are hard to repair in general.
Since it never actually became harder to counter the flamethrower Argument #2 lacks arguments. The real problem here is that more people have started using it and you are just not used to the amount of flamethrower, does not used to keep up with perma chem spray.
Let me tell you that before the buff Flamer was still devastating once a chem spray has been forgotten or missed. Again, only more people use it, thus you will meet the flamer in situations where you once thought you wouldn't meet a flamer. Get used to it.

This is like the artemis hype all over again. Too many people used the artemis thus everybodies guns and engines were down, even from a longer distance. It eventually led to death. The artemis then got a nerf in which it didn't really get weaker, but harder to use.
The flamer is a close range gun and close range gun are usually easy to use, the best counter to it is long range. This applies for all close range guns like the famous gat/mortar combo.


Argument #3: Less experienced don't know how to deal with flamethrower.
Again this was a problem before, but now that this gun actually gets used, it deserves to be mentioned.
I stated that we have to rely on tutorials on this one. Of course not everybody takes a look at them. But from personal experience I can say that I am glad to have a decent tutorial showing all the basics I need to know to play this game correctly. When I started playing this game, the tutorials lacked content. I had no idea what my pilot tools did, because I had yet to earn the ability to read the description. And some point I got it down, read the forums for guides, asked other player what to do and learned. Now people say I am a good pilot. You start every game low and you have to learn stuff to become better.

Biography aside, it is up to the new players wether they want to learn how to play this game correctly or just have fun by doing what they want to do.
The latter is often not widely supported, but I feel MUSE does its best to enable this feature. If somebody decides quit playing this game because of one gun that they have yet to learn how to counter, it does require some tuning, without a doubt. Maybe this gun just requires such a high amount of teamwork to counter that it should be locked for less experienced players, but is certainly doesn't deserve another nerve regarding % of stack, damage in general and range.

Concerning Argument #3 I have to be honest: I have no idea what do to in this situation. All I can say is that the gun is fine as it is and changing it's ease of use is no ease task, since it is close range and in close range everything is easy to use (e.g.: Hit the balloon with a carronade, hit the hull with gat/mortar. Not the hardest things in the world).



To summerize a bit of what I wanted to say and maybe a bit more stuff, I dunno:
- Every gun needs to be countered, the flamer only has it's own tools for it.
  - And Fire extinguisher usually isn't the way to go against a Flamethrower, so there is only 1 tool being used that has been used for forever.
  - Fire Extinguisher might need a buff
- If counter is successful: Flamer is useless and can render an entire ship useless (Double Flame Pyra)
- Strategy is always a counter to flamer (long range), which does not negate the usefulness of the gunner
  - The gunner himself can use heatsink to not worry about his main gun or other guns getting set on fire.
     This does replace an engineer circle of chem spray for guns only. But it also depends on the gunner to know when best to use heatsink, if the pilot is busy.
- A flamer squid catching you of guard is like a mine or burst Hwacha hitting you while you are off guard. Stuff is destroyed and without help from your ally eventually kills you. "How to teamwork"
- Flamer was always devastating. Because of the the lack of use nobody ever paid it any heed.
- Subconcious/Psychological bullshit going on where excessive use of flamethrower gives it special powers, which it doesn not possess

- More nerf might push the flamer back to the corner of never used guns
- New players have to learn the game in order to defend their fun, somewhat. If you happen to not know how to shoot a gun in (example) counter strike, you will not have fun.


_{Please consider that it was rather late when I wrote this and thus might lack some clarifications here and there.}

[XtremeNameX]

I've got a more thorough response coming but one main question that sticks out (and I've been meaning to ask this whole thread):

- More nerf might push the flamer back to the corner of never used guns

Was the flamer really such a useless gun before? Obviously the glitchiness needed to be fixed, but as far as it's overall effectiveness, it seemed to have a pretty good role.

I'm brand new to following the competitive scene, but from watching the last few rounds of the Sky League finals there was at least one team (Overwatch) that used a flamer very effectively. They gave the Mandarins a better challenge than the team in the finals did. In addition, Sammy B.T. (whose recent & history of championships should earn him the title of "Foremost Expert" !) is in here arguing that the flamer DID have a role at the highest level.

IN ADDITION, in my 'noob'er games, I used to see the Flamethrower about as much as any other gun. And it seemed very well balanced-- especially with the relatively low level of play in public games, it could be very dangerous if the other team wasn't prepared for it with a good chemspray rotation. As many people have said here, the flamer was quite punishing/frustrating to unprepared teams before, and there were plenty of unprepared teams amongst the general population of the game. So even if Sammy is wrong (and I'm afraid the burden of proof is on you for that one!), and it was a bit too counterable for high level matches, it was at a pretty perfect level of 'counterability' for most of the population of the game. Why would we move away from that??

IN CONCLUSION: If it served it's purpose in public/lower level games (punishing but counterable), AND had a role in high level play (source: Sammy B.T., Sky League champion, Probably Top-5 Player, Leading Expert in Mathematics of Engi Efficiency), why would it need any kind of buff? Why would returning it's functional damage/flame output back to pre-1.3.6 levels be such a terrible nerf?

I get the sense that a lot of the pro-flamer people had a special place in their heart for the flamethrower, but regretted how counterable it was (...if the other team devoted 3+ tools just to counter it..) and now that it's very effective they're afraid of a return to how it was. But how can "how it was" be so bad if it worked well in noob games and took a team to the semi finals (& effectively the finals) of the most recent tournament?

[Dementio]

Yes, thank you for pointing out one of my missing clarifications. I thought I had mentioned it somewhere, but I will do it now anyway. I agree with you on the point of the flamerthrower always being a powerful gun. But for some reason not many have used it.
Might I add, that adding the flamethrower does not necessarily beat the Mandarians. Overwatch had demonstrated great teamwork and managed to split the mandarians up, went out of their gun arcs and just picked at the ducks one by one until they died. The carronade alone did the trick, the flamer only added disabling power while everybody was busy on the balloon, effectively rendering their entire ship useless if they managed to get the balloon back up without somebody destroying it again.
The Mandarians needed one another and since they choose the same ship, they had the same weakness in common. Overwatch could effectively beat them in any 1v1 scenario once the carronade went down. Mind you, the carronade did most the work, not the flamethrower.
There is a lot of other stuff that can be said, but I think that's enough to clarify that the flamethrower was not THE gun that led ovw to victory on that one match.

Now, I don't know if you actually know why it was in the patch at all, but I will try to explain it to you why it was:
As most know by now, the flamerthrower's particles have the ability to go through components and the flamethrower shoots tons of that particle stuff at once. These particles had a problem, namely - and I am honestly not sure if I got that entirely correct either - they were traveling so fast that some of these particles weren't calculated correctly, leading to an unpredictable behaviour of the gun. A buf which had to be fixed.
Once this topic was brought up MUSE "fixed" the gun, ergo every single particle hit correctly. This in turn led to a tremendous amount of damage that nobody could deal with it. Before the nerf it was said that double flamer rivaled the power of gat/mortar, which is pretty damn strong.
Now after the nerf, I don't see that problem anymore. It wasn't about the community, it was about fixing a bug and MUSE did fix a buf. This fix however led to an imbalance of the game resulting into a discussion on how to "balance" it again.

I say, it already is balanced and thus won't need more nerf, although I would accept having it's firening speed or AoE decreased, but that's about it.
This "fix" made the gun look more appealing to more people and when more people use it, MORE people use it as well! Spreading like virus.

Really, I think that gun is fine and a damage reduction of 1% won't change anything. Heck, I bet MUSE could say that the damage has been reduced by 25% without actually having reduced the damage (a Hoax!) and most would not know better...

I do believe that those who still are against the flamethrower believe it to be too strong compared to pre-1.3.6 because it gets more use than before. Simply because people use it more.
Let me tell you about ANOTHER one of my experiences in the game:
I once did double flamethrower pyra BEFORE the flamerthrower buff, more than once, and, by the gods, did we annhilate the opposition! If I wouldn't know better, I would say that the Flamethrower is even weaker than it was before the patch! But that might just be subjective gibberish...

Anyhow, I stand and say that this gun is fine for the time being.
If the noobs didn't know how to fight fires before 1.3.6 than they have as much of a chance against it as they did before.
Same with competitive gameplay. If higher levels were beaten up by a flamer before 1.3.6, there wouldn't be much difference to now either.

Nothing changed and if people think that the gun was fine before, it is fine now.

[macmacnick]

Anyways, if Sammy wants more fun, I can always arrange that...
                                                                                              ...for a price...
                                                                                                        ...I assure you, it shall be a proper trial by FIRE!!!

[Spud Nick]

One good thing about this flamer buff is that we are seeing more squids fly around.

[macmacnick]

So, Spud, shall we set the world on fire with our cake front/back flamer side banshee squids?