1.4.5 New Balance Changes "When Ambush Comes To Shove"

[Keyvias]

Balance Changes

Mobula
-Outer top guns fanned out 5 degrees
-Inner bottom guns fanned out 10 degrees

Spire
-Reduced turn acceleration to 10d/s2 (from 15)
-Reduced top turn speed to 10d/s from 12

Squid
-Back gun turned inwards (towards right side of ship) 40 degrees (from 0)
-Increased forward/backward acceleration to 8m/s2 (from 6.66)

Heavy Flak
-Damage moved to direct hit for a 70/30% split between direct and AoE (from 45/55%)
-Higher clip capacity to 4 (from 2)
-Damage per shot reduced (115/50 explosive, from 150/180 explosive)
-Increased RoF of 2 shots/s (from 0.8 )
-Reduced reload time of 4.5s (from 5)
-Reduced camera shake

Lochnagar Shot
-Reduced clip size reduction to -50% (from reduction to 1 shot)
-Reduced rotation speed reduction to -80% (from -90%)
-Changed damage-to-gun model so that is deals proportional damage per shot until gun is destroyed (e.g. if gun has 2 shots then each shot deals 50% damage vs a gun that has 4 shots were each shot deals 25% damage)
-Changed to -60% (from 100%)

Hwacha
-Reduced projectile speed to 250m/s from 400m/s
-Decreased camera shake

Harpoon
-Added right click and hold to reel in
-Increased harpoon force to 1,500,000 (from 230,000)

Pyramidon
-Hull health increased to 700 (from 550)
-Ship mass increased to 300000 (from 200000)
-Ship propulsion increased from 283500 to 675100

[Dementio]

Sarcastic hooray. Who didn't want the Squid to get another buff, with its monstrous hull value, while the Spire gets nerfed? And the indirect nerf to Mine Launcher, Heavy Carronade, Lumberjack...

And the Pyramidion is still not viable with its literal lack of mobility in any direction.

At least the Hwacha got nerfed.

[Atruejedi]

And the Pyramidion is still not viable with its literal lack of mobility in any direction.

I feel like the Pyramidion just went from underpowered to overpowered. Wow. All three of those changes were NOT in the dev app testing sessions... and if they were they weren't published in the notes... but now they're in-game. The Pyra was broken when three changes were made to it as nerfs when it probably only needed two. Now we have three changes made again... and it might be too much of a buff. Am I to assume propulsion equals acceleration? Did it just get a 2.5x acceleration buff? Wow! I'll have to test it out to see how it functions now... but coupled with the increased mass and hull, we may have just entered the Age of Ramming™.

Spire was the only ship never flown in Cronus League finals. Spire gets nerfed. Why? Seriously. I don't understand the logic behind this. Increase its armor or hull to compensate. Make it a floating turret. See my thread "Defining Roles for Each Ship - A Return to Our Roots" here:

https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,7462.0.html

I see Muse included the Mobula changes, which is now Junker 2.0. All fun builds broken and the real problem is not solved. Sigh... this just forces Mobula to take Mercury/Hades on top and Artemis on the wings... LIKE IT ALWAYS WAS!

Heavy flak sounds awesome. Lochnager changes are confusing and need some real-game examples provided.

Hwacha changes were NOT in the dev app testing sessions last week... yet suddenly enter the game again (after being featured the week prior). Could be a good change, though. We'll see. The mid-range dominance might be over, which is great!

Harpoon feels great now, but definitely needs a function to auto-reel so another gun can be mounted. Or needs to stick in the enemy for the entire duration of the reload. But a giant stride in the right direction.

Overall... I rate this patch 5/10. Some great changes, some awful changes, and some things that still need work.

[BlackenedPies]

bye

[Letus]

Heavy flak sounds awesome. Lochnager changes are confusing and need some real-game examples provided.

Well, it still has it's 125% damage

Every gun that fires it that has 1 shot (say Heavy Carronade, mine launcher, and merc field cannon) Blows up on that one shot.
All the other guns take damage over time equivilant to rounds in the gun: Example: Hwatcha has 10 rounds, so 10% self-gun damage per round.

Damage remains the same, just...you're gonna break your gun (which will only be a nerf to Blenderfish, but that's easy to work around...)

I never loched a Lumberjack, but now I probably might include it, 'cause you only need one shot to do good balloon damage :V

Squid....eh...Greased rounds and gun stamina can get your basic carronade + flamer + mine launcher a trifecta...which for a disabler build...adds more insult to injury.

Flack...Why does flack have AoE Arming time now?  The reason why it had the AoE Arming time was because the AoE was bloody strong.  With the strong punch in Direct...an entire clip of just burst rounds can deal 575 Explosive damage, which, yes, against armour is not much...but now you can just willy-nilly shoot flaks without thought.

Might just see Gat Hwatcha Flak galleons now.

[DrTentacles]

Haahahahahaha.

Oh. Wait. You're serious.

[Kadetti Lola Ellpuu]

This is ridiculous. Introducing changes without testing. Almost completely ignoring the feedback you got. Why did we players even bother with the testing. Feel free to ruin the game more in the next patch as well...

[MightyKeb]

To clarify, "Thrust" is an attribute that is not shown in the ship statistics directly, however, changes in mass directly affect it. So pyra's mass increasing meant less thrust, meant less manouverability in general, however, they've increased thrust instead to comepnsate for this. So now pyra's a better rammer with 700 hull, no changes in accel.

[Keyvias]

Hey guys,

Just wanted to comment on a few things.

First and foremost, this is something we're constantly monitoring and are going to be very active on. There was definitely a lot of time between the last balance patch and this one. We'll be releasing the final plans for that communication later. As I hinted on during the fireside stream even a player "elected balance president" to be the singular voice was brought up (and shot down, have no fear.) To help us cut through noise and provide better two way communication. We have a couple plans we're working on and will be introducing to try and make that communication path better.

These decisions mark a new starting point for us to look at in player feedback, win rate, and personal experience. These are not the final point, these changes are large and I have no doubt outlying cases will arise, but tell us the second you feel them. Tell us when the squid was untouchable to the goldfish or the flakfish has taken over every single game you play (just random examples)

Second, a big shout out to many people who tested and gave us feedback, Atruejedi, in particular, I know you may disagree with some changes, but you stuck with us through 3 weeks of testing and never failed to give us very specific feedback (which is a major reason many of these changes were scaled back.) It's definitely easy to say "screw you, muse," but it takes a lot of effort to explain where we screwed up and we truly appreciate it. I hope you test these changes in live and let us know if we pushed it in the right direction or if we need to go back to the drawing board.

For the pyra changes. They've been in for weeks, but they've been under a slightly different name.
-------------
Pyramidon hull health increased to 700 (from 550), mass increased to 300000 from 200000 while preserving all other steering characteristics.
-----------
Because we increased the mass the propulsion had to be increased. It moves no faster or slower than before.
I will take full blame for the change in language. The pyra was getting a lot of hate despite the buff and I thought releasing the full stats and having players do the numbers would make it go over better. It did get called overpowered so I guess the language achieved that goal, but it made you guys feel like something went in that wasn't tested and for that I apologize. I promise 100% tested that was definitely in.

On the mobula, those are the numbers after being reigned in after Saturday's test which you guys are 100% right didn't go over greatly. We have hopes that some other changes should make this ship play out differently in-game, but we'll be happy to eat our words if that's not the case.

On the spire, players have already suggested new flak will make it overpowered as all get out, some people say it's a terrible ship. It does have a definitely weakness to hades especially. We have some plans if the changes we made don't change team compositions. (side note, highest ship winrate in the game before this patch.)

For Hwacha, the changes have been in the trunk and we thought we felt them while testing. The data looks like it was, I double checked to make sure, we even got some feedback on it. I don't know where the miscommunication happened on it, but I deeply apologize. We'll keep a close eye on it.

Maybe we aced this patch, maybe we 5/10'ed it, or maybe we bombed it completely. Please let us know how it plays on production.

[Solidusbucket]

Have fun trying to flank the Mobula.

[Dev Bubbles]

Just wanted to make a quick point about testing.  We have been testing the balance changes for 4 weeks now, each time with a team review of ALL the feedback that was submitted to us post each round of testing.  And the pyra changes have been in dev app before release.  We'll of course try to do better with outreach, but we have limited means of reaching everyone during testing, so we are limited in that sense.  Thanks, Howard

[KeijoPertti]

No wonder Lochnagar changed name.

[HelFyre]

We have been testing the balance changes for 4 weeks now, each time with a team review of ALL the feedback that was submitted to us post each round of testing.

There are two issues with this finally being implemented for me:

Firstly, the patch was included even though there was a general bad feeling about the current changes. I appreciate that the patch needs to be introduced at some point, and that it's acceptable for people to be discontent, however I don't feel like it was time for finalisation.

Secondly, there should ideally be a report given for each change, how the feedback was analysed, and the processes which led to the evolution of new changes. This should not seem like a superfluous task, providing feedback to our feedback is extremely important in keeping us motivated and focused on the effects of the changes being tested, and gives guidance on what should be tested, and shows your understanding of the game, as those who ultimately have control over the balance.
I didn't feel like my own feedback would have been recognised, no matter how detailed and elegantly I was present it, and I didn't want to simply pass on ideas, for fear that it would be lost in the noise of the other feedback.

If I had seen closer and more consistent interaction, I would have gladly placed more faith and effort into working on this and helping improve the game using my knowledge and experience of the game, in its current state especially: which I imagine to be useful given the care of my analysis and understanding of the competitive and public scene, game mechanics and most other things GoI related, a result of the time I've spent here of recent, the variety of people I've interacted with, and careful thought that had been given to this.

However having said this, I apologise sincerely for giving insufficient feedback via email as of yet regarding the balance patch.

PS: In the notes, there's no mention of the jitter change for lochnagar, which is found in the ingame description

[GurasOguras]

I don't mind, really. Why there is so much hate every single patch? Releasing any changes to skirmish mode is still better than leaving it completely without any attention. We gonna see how it goes. Maybe I'll play pyramidion a bit more often. The only thing I may not like is changing spire basing entirely on low level matches results, ant not giving it any, even slightest compensation to hull or something but at least you left lochnagar mines unchanged, so good job.

[DJ Logicalia]

This update got me super salty. I'm honestly completely baffled that feedback was basically wholly ignored. The Pyra was nerfed in a way that basically everyone said was the wrong way. It's not too squishy, it's too slow. The mob was nerfed in the most frustrating way, making fun builds all but gone, leaving Hades/art still the best build. AND The Spire nerf. The Spire is my favorite ship. It's a challenge to use effectively, and it's already pretty weak. This nerf is totally unprecedented. And, added on top of all that, untested changes went in the official release, showing that community feedback is basically totally irrelevant 

I've resigned as a CA over this. I no longer feel like I can trust muse to appropriately listen to and respond to feedback. It's all the Hand of Balance running the show, sweeping feedback aside. These release notes are proof of this long help suspicion that I had.