Guns Of Icarus Online
Main => Gameplay => Topic started by: awkm on April 28, 2014, 10:30:19 am
-
Flame wars here, literally.
I realize that some of you are saying that the gun is OP, some may have even participated in dev app testing. However, my impression is that most people liked the changes on dev app and therefore the changes went through to production. If you want it nerfed, it will be nerfed. If you want it to stay the same, it will stay the same. It's your game, after all. I will push back if general consensus is leading somewhere bad or something we can't do, as usual.
-
From Wundsalz:
I've flown a couple of times with the new flamer now (yesterday evening and today, about an hour ago) and toyed around with some builds. My impression is the following:
flamer qualities:
- excellent hull striper without chemspray. Still unignoreable armor damage if chemsprayed.
- excellent disabler without or partly chemsprayed equipment. the balloon takes very noticeable damage even if chemsprayed and people can easily be knocked off their guns if the flamer gunner focuses on hitting guns. When sniping out equipment the hull still takes damage due to the unique multiple-hit characteristic of the flamer. If all essential equipment is chemsprayed the damage is still unignoreable on the balloon.
- decent perma-hull killer.
- overall impression: The flamer does (too) many jobs (too) properly.
predictable impacts on the game:
- new meta builds will revolve around the flamer. So far I find gat/carro + flamer combos to be most efficient. they allow to get rid of one of the most vital ship components (hull/ballon) very quickly which binds at least one engineer to the hull/balloon. Then it's almost impossible to keep the rest of the ship sprayed - leading to a disable-lock. The ship can then be finished with rams or the flamer itself, which does a decent job at destroying the permanent hull.
- ships which have hard repair routes (mobus and spires in particular) are almost entirely unable to handle flamer builds if they get in range.
- gunners will be less viable as they either can be easily knocked of their gun or they're not able to repair it if they're on their own.
- new players will have a very hard time to deal with flamers, as organized chem-spraying is the only efficient counter to flamers once they're in range.
suggestions:
- reduce the ignition chance a lot (by a factor of 1/8-1/3)
- reduce the damage the flame-damagetype deals to the permanent hull (poor hades :().
Reasoning: a reduced fire-stack rate is more forgiving when it comes to engineering errors. Engineers will be less frustrated if they have to deal with 4-8 fire stacks on the hull rather than full 20 if they acidently over-repaired it with an additional spanner-whack. Regarding the reduced perma-hull damage: The flamer already does a great job at stripping the hull and disabling the ship. That's enough. It shouldn't be able to substitute explosive weapons as well.
-
Some have raised the question of Chem Sprayed components still receiving fire damage. This is intended. Chem Spray only stops the component from acquiring more fire stacks for its sprayed duration, it will still take damage from incoming fire.
I am also open to tweaking extinguishing tools, maybe even adding a decreased fire damage on them or something on top of fire stack prevention.
-
Heat sink does not provide adequate fire protection, It does not prevent fire stacks during the reload, a single flamer can clock up 8 stacks within the reload time of most guns.
-
@GeoRmr
That is a difficult thing you're asking for there on both code and interaction. We'll think about it though. Still, the better way is to solve this by looking at the flamer first.
-
Currently there seems to be a temporary meta revolving around the flamethrower.
Ship builds: Gat/Flamer, Carronade/Flamer and Flamer/Flamer on ships with arcs for only 2. Triple flamer for ships that can do it.
Gunner loadouts: Heatsink, with Chem Spray to cover reloads.
Engineer loadouts: Wrench/Chem Spray/Extinguisher.
Wrench because you have no time to be buffing/spannering/skygods forbid mallets anyways due to having to constantly refresh Chem Spray and repair direct fire damage. In between applications of Spray, components will have already accumulated a decent amount of direct fire damage to justify a Wrench strike.
Chem Spray because, well, no Chem Spray means that a few seconds of exposure to flamers is the end of your ship's ability to retaliate.
Extinguisher to bandage missed Chem Spray applications.
Even with this loadout I find that who shoots first (gooo Lesmok) wins the engagement as the hull armor (not to mention the balloon, guns, engines) cannot be kept up under the direct damage of 2 to 3 flamers. Or at least, I tried, and then the balloon went down ha ha ha :D
Either way, perhaps this could be kept in as a joke/fun game mode. The flamer meta is absolutely hilarious right now ;D. Just the pure panic and helplessness of the engineers (both sides, because everyone is running the flamer meta) as they watch their perma-chem sprayed components get heavily damaged anyway, and then someone misses their chem spray re-application... eh heh heh heh. Abject horror :D
And sometimes, elated triumph as you wonder how you survived the fight with 10+ fire stacks on everything and sliver of permahull left while the enemy ship vaporizes from the heat derived from the unmitigated fiery wrath of the ruinous skygods. It makes for rather fast matches :)
-
Unfortunately, if it feels like a joke then it's not really good and needs to be fixed.
Another thing I'm looking at is tweaking Fire damage multipliers.
-
Currently there seems to be a temporary meta revolving around the flamethrower.
Calling something meta after just a few hours of release is a little... silly. It generally takes some time after patches to figure out things, just like how after mines and hades were introduced pretty much everyone was like what the hell is this useless crap.
-
gonna give some early feedback here:
the matches I played was on a spire, and it felt like we were unable to fight backa s soon as those double flamers hooked in on us. The double flamer deals slightly lesser damage to your permahull than a mortar.
The matches felt like it was a matter of who fired his flamer first, I absicly ordered my crew to fire our flamer and dont repair, since the hull would go down in a matter of seconds anyway.
So yea the double flamer works like a gatling and a mortar. furthermore the fires to balloon, engines and guns also makes it feel like you are being disabled by a hwacha.
from what I can tell there are basicly 3 things with the flamer making it imbalanced.
1. the on hit damage is so high, that it wrecks perma hull
2. the amount of "bullets" in the gun is too many, and the reload speed is too low.
3. the fire stacks goes up too quickly.
of all the 3 things the last is the one that I would like the flamer to keep.
so lets say you chemspray your entire ship, ok you are immune, then suddenly chemspray wears off, if your engineer is not there on the spot at the moment to renew it you are screwed: 20 stacks incoming fast and your component is down, repairing it takes time and meanwhile your other ship parts catches fire and you are now under completely lockdown by 2 flamethrowers that never stops shooting.
are we to put chemspray on our gunners, and have chemspray on all engineers? that seems to be the only solution here if you end up in a brawl with these double flamers.
the second you start shooting back, some part of your ship loses chemspray and catches fire, you either go full dps and try to get the kill, which you wont due to the fact that your guns will soon be useless. Or you go full defense and die anyway.
also fire extinguisher might aswell be removed from the game, since your hull, balloon, engines, guns will break if you even think about extinguishing the 20 stacks.
edit:
will do more testing hopefully, but this is what I got so far.
-
The only thing I consider TOO strong about the current flamer is the ignition chance. An unsprayed component will suffer extreme amounts of fire stacks in zero time, an unsprayed ship will just be set ablaze and quickly burn out.
I'm all for a change of meta- I had huge amounts of fun playing today both using the flamer and facing it. It's not 'uncounterable', in the sense that with an average crew we were still able to survive encounters and get kills safely versus ships utilizing a flamer+something combination. It adds tension and changes the way engineering is done (different priorities, more varied loadouts depending on enemy guns etc). However I'm certain that it would be literally impossible to stand a chance against such a combination when fighting on a ship with spread-out components such as the mobula or the spire, and in any way the gun is far too punishing to inexperienced/uncoordinated crews.
I'm in for keeping the flamethrower a viable alternative to the previous meta but it would still have to be tweaked. Wundsalz's suggestions of strongly nerfing the flamer would result in it being once again turned into a low-tier gun that's only used on casual games or in very specific loadouts to disrupt enemy repairs and prolong fights. I think we should instead embrace change and see how allowing the gun to renew the meta could actually refresh tactics and gameplay.
There's a lot of ways the gun can be changed without being thrown into the pit again;
-Reduce the ignition chance to half but not any less
-Keep the ignition as is but at least have it do no damage by itself
-Reduce the range
-Reduce the rate of fire
edit:
or just completely rebalance it and turn it into a medium gun :fire::fire: :D
-
Buffing a balanced weapon as ridiculously as you buffed the flamer is mind boggling. Add the fact that it is a disable based weapon means you're going to have a lot of people not having fun.
-
Honestly, this is just unplayable.
Absolute garbage at the moment.
Making it so players on several ships are simply unable to fight back is ridiculous.
Double flamers seem to have the power of a gat+mortar AND double hwachas.
Return this to what it was or at least make somewhat playable and balanced.
-
Here's what I don't get: you originally nerfed the artemis because it filled too many roles. It could disable and kill. However it needed accuracy, time and patience. If your enemy had the person with chem spray disconnect, it not automatically mean a loss.
With that same logic, you have buffed a weapon that can do everything. One that can be deployed quicker than any other weapon can kill it via a kerosene or moonshine squid, fills more roles, and kills much quicker, and unlike artemis requires no skill. And once its on you, you're dead, skilled or not, organized or not.
And we asked for more time on the dev app. We warned that this was not ready and not tested enough.
-
While complaints are heard loud and clear, the most useful commentary so far is from Mezhu, Skrimskraw, vyew. Those are actionable and if we can create a discussion regarding proposed changes, it would be much more helpful as we try to look for next steps.
-
The issue is you buffed a balanced and well used weapon.
The obvious solution is to have not buffed said weapon. Or instead of "fixing" it simply have the way it worked, be the way it worked.
No weapon needs ridiculous fire stacks and good direct damage. Functionally every weapon in the game is about the direct damage so why not keep the flamer as it was, little direct damage but good fire stacks.
-
It got fixed because it's behavior was unpredictable, even not allowing you to hit components at point black (frame/hit box skipping). We can't go back to the way it was. It was flat out broken.
So yes, I can reduce its direct damage and even reduces it % ignition.
What about any of the other suggestions? Range? Multipliers?
-
If it was so broken, then why was it so commonly and effectively used in and out of competitive?
As per other things, love of god no. It was balanced before, why do we have to "fix" everything all the time?
-
I honestly never noticed issues with my carronade/flamer teabagging squid pre-patch. If it was missing particles, why not fix that, the buffing is irrelevant to fixing bugs.
-
Even if you had a component lined up at point blank, the flamethrower would not reliable hit it due to the way its hit detection worked. This is just a reproduction case, theoretically this could be happening at any number of ranges if the distances were lined up with when and where skipping would occur.
The goal is to make everything predictable and work the way you would expect. The flamethrower's previous behavior was not predictable in the way that we wanted. This is what we fixed.
You're right, we don't have to fix anything and leave everything bugged until people complain about it too much.
But this isn't the discussion. The discussion is what changes you'd like to see the flamethrower.
Also, it was never the intention to buff the flamethrower. Fixing it was an implicit buff since all particles are hitting now. The damages and % ignitions were all nerfed to try to compensate. However, it seems that the nerfs were not enough based on current feedback despite the testing and compliance with its last update.
So, yeah. I can nerf it more if that's the consensus. No big deal.
-
err... I don't remember a flamer being used in competitive for a looong time... Anywho, I will say that it's a great disabling weapon now, but it can also kill, which was my problem with the heavy carronade a while ago. Taking away the direct damage and leaving the ignition chance might be fine, or pehaps lower the ignition chance to 20% (because it's an even number ^_^), since it will only be able to kill if the engies miss a chemspray on the balloon.
If the direct damage is taken away, I can see double flamer pyras as a perfect "stall" ship that could make a flakfish ally viable.
I have one concern however: I'm afraid flamers might-out class the hwacha since the hwacha requires you to be very close to disable a whole ship, almost within flamer range.
-
So far I'm hearing range nerf as well as damage nerf.
-
I typed up a rant but Awkm summed it up. The gun is now consistent, and can be tuned to balance (almost) exactly the same as it was in previous production, with the added knowledge that now you can rely on every particle behaving as expected. The gun was nerfed directly in damage and fire-spread-rate: the buff was indirect due to fixing the problem. That indicates pretty clearly how severe of a problem it previously was if the fix + a nerf leaves it the most OP gun in the game. Let's find a nerf that takes it back to something comparable to the old flamethrower. :D
However, I would argue against a range nerf. As it was I used lesmok just to stay effective against everyone who was trying to stay away. Nerf it more and lesmok will be the only viable option (IMO).
I don't remember the flamethrower in competitive (other than myself) except as a side or extra weapon or on a Cake ship.
Personally I would just nerf damage back down severely and drop the ignition percentage. Try to get the damage rate and ignition rate to something approximating what it was previously. A range nerf would make it even less viable in competitive.
-
A range nerf might help, although i didn't consider that chemspray and heatsink would counter it fairly effectively. Perhaps it would be fine with only the damage nerf, as the heatsnk and chem are "loadout zoners" anyway.
-
I told ya people were going to go bonkers back when I visited, Awkm :P
Anyways, I haven't had a chance to try it out yet in live, but hopefully we'll be able to settle on a happy medium.
-
I don't think a range nerf is necessarily required. I would be happy with a further damage/fire stack nerf, so that you could still use it to effectively knock out non-chemsprayed guns, and even kill the enemy if you shot at them long enough. Maybe reduce the damage more than the chance of applying fire?
I personally would like to see the flamer in a place where I want to use it as a 3rd "backup" close range weapon on a Pyramidion or a Goldfish. A skilled pilot could effectively use it in a trifecta on a pyra, hopefully without being too overpowered. I would like to see it as a utility, not a brute force gun. And by a "brute force" gun I'm referring to a gun like the Hades, which is a very good all-around gun.. as long as you've got a decent gunner and are able to maintain range.
-
I guess it's time to nerf the Artemis flamer again! ONLY DISABLE!
Solution?
-
So far I'm hearing range nerf as well as damage nerf.
Ignition chance/time reduction! Personally I think the direct dmg of the flamer to be okay. On a chem-sprayed ship it still inflicts noticeable damage but way less than the guns it competes with (carronade, gat) - that's fine. It's the quick spread of fire stacks which turns chem-spray errors into almost inescapable lock-downs.
Also you might want to reconsider the multiple-hit characteristic of the flamer. That's a unique and quite powerful perk. Right now one can aim for weapons to knock off gunners their weapons and deal damage to the hull/balloon at the same time with the same projectiles. I see no reason why to keep it this way , "it has been that way before" put aside.
If it was so broken, then why was it so commonly and effectively used in [...] competitive?
O_o did I miss something?
-
I love everything about the current flamer except for the ability to damage. make it solely a disabler and it will be awesome! I was playing with geo earlier and explaining to him how it felt a lot like the beta flamer because the fires were catching way more consistently will bring back the heat sink thus making the gunner a viable class again!! I am really happy about the future of the flamer all we need to do is take away almost all of the dps and make it simply start fires REALLY well... also bring the range in a tad so that escapes are possible and that lesmock vs heatsink is actually a trade off worth thinking about...
-
At the end of the day, before I go home, I'll put some changes into Dev App for people to test.
-
I was playing with geo earlier and explaining to him how it felt a lot like the beta flamer because the fires were catching way more consistently will bring back the heat sink thus making the gunner a viable class again!!
Why would I prefer a gunner with heatsink over an engineer with dps-optimizing ammo and chem spray, especially when considering heatsink doesn't prevent fires during reloads?
-
I love it. Please don't touch fire dmg. It is good to have it being another viable option. I don't want fire to return to what it was for months before it was finally fixed. Fire should be king of CQC with Gat/flak/mort as it's Queen.
If you must touch something, touch the ignition chance with the flamer. Clean up the runaway stacks. A range reduction wouldn't be bad either. That or if it is possible, do something so that the stacks are applied with more intensity the closer the ship is. When a ship pulls away or evades the stacks don't climb as fast. Force the flamerboat to commit themselves to heavy CQC.
-
I was playing with geo earlier and explaining to him how it felt a lot like the beta flamer because the fires were catching way more consistently will bring back the heat sink thus making the gunner a viable class again!!
Why would I prefer a gunner with heatsink over an engineer with dps-optimizing ammo and chem spray, especially when considering heatsink doesn't prevent fires during reloads?
sorry I was using stating this with the assumption that the dps gets nerfed back down. with that done if I have a goldfish facing a flamer squid or pyra or whatever I'll go hwacha with a gunner that will have heavy/burst and heatsink. this gunner will be able to fire from long range and if a close quarter engagement is imminent he can go heat sink to protect from disable while disabling the flamer in turn. then switch to burst or charged to finish the boat off... he will use a buff or wrench depending on the opponents loadouts... if I had a blender fish I would go engi for sure though because I would just have him go full repair load out with heavy clip since no other clip is really that helpful for the caro so versatility in ammo type isn't as important
-
The point with the flamerthrower getting a "buff" was more a fix. This fix makes us expect how the flamethrower works without it being unreliable. We can rely now on its functions. And clearly, we see its functions.
Coming from conversation with skrim, the heavy ammount of stacks that the flamer thrower throws is the most unique aspect of the weapon. I almost want the damage gone entierly And keep on with the heavy stack throwing but do no real flamer hits of damage. It never seemed like a hard hitting weapon, and is the basis of the fire mechanic so weakening its use as a weapon that kills, and have it be the utility like weapon how the harpoon, flare, minelauncher are.
An example on stack heavy flamers would be to disable with Hwacha, keep them disabled with flamers.
Carronade a baloon, keep that baloon down.
Annoying close range? Fire away.
Does not really Damage the situation to glory, but rather swatting your hand infront of your opponent to sho him away.
So the only damage that would be given into this is the 20 stacks. And that damage is in most cases easy enough to combat with extinguishers or chems while the ship tries to flee. And harmfull enough to be left unattended. We may in some builds finaly have Fire Fighter engineers.
-
yup exactly what I'm saying
-
I almost want the damage gone entierly And keep on with the heavy stack throwing but do no real flamer hits of damage.
By removing the direct damage entirely, the flamer could be rendered entirely useless with chem-spray again. That's a feature which made the flamer quite unpopular in organized matches. Hence I don't like this approach to fix the current flamer.
-
But chem spray doesn't prevent direct fire damage and now, miss one coat of chem spray and it's fatal.
1.6 damage per round seems just a tad on the high side. chance of ignition with each particle being at it's current percentage should come down to under 20% (you get 300 chances to add 1 stack of flame with 1 clip of normal ammunition, when that is @ an over 1/4 chance... you should on average be stacking 75 stacks per component (capping at 20 if not extinguished) - That's far to high. Mess up your chem spray run or, need to make a mallet hit because of the flamer dps, and you can very quickly be in big trouble.
This effect is only made worse with a second flamer.
IMHO, decrease the damage per round (particle) to 1, or even less. Decrease the ignition chance to 15% or even 10% and keep the range the same. If you lower the range, it will mean that you have to get far to close for it to be of equal use than say gat/mortar, or even gat/flak. I thought the idea was to make this a viable alternative.
-
IMHO, decrease the damage per round (particle) to 1, or even less. Decrease the ignition chance to 15% or even 10% and keep the range the same. If you lower the range, it will mean that you have to get far to close for it to be of equal use than say gat/mortar, or even gat/flak. I thought the idea was to make this a viable alternative.
When considering a flat ignition chance reduction we need to keep incendiary rounds with their 20% ignition chance in mind.
-
IMHO, decrease the damage per round (particle) to 1, or even less. Decrease the ignition chance to 15% or even 10% and keep the range the same. If you lower the range, it will mean that you have to get far to close for it to be of equal use than say gat/mortar, or even gat/flak. I thought the idea was to make this a viable alternative.
When considering a flat ignition chance reduction we need to keep incendiary rounds with their 20% ignition chance in mind.
While that is true, I'm not sure incendiary rounds were too powerful in the past either. I think they applied less fire stacks on average than greased rounds, or at most an equal amount. I for one would like to see incendiary rounds as a viable (maybe even clearly superior) choice on the flamer, as it would not only be intuitive but cause more variety in ammo choices (not just greased all around when talking about light weapon brawling builds, with the occasional heavy clip thrown in).
As it stands I personally feel incendiary rounds are only decent on the gatling and the heavy carronade, and from an effectiveness standpoint one could argue that greased/charged (respectively) outperform them in most situations regardless.
-
lesmock is fairly viable for flamers and would be more so if the range was nerfed a bit
-
Testing changes have been made to Dev App. Please go to the Dev App forum and find the appropriate thread to respond to the changes there. Let's keep this thread about production only.
Changes will not hit production immediately.
-
For me, currently the gun is very frustrating to play against to the point where it isn't any fun to play the game anymore. I know some people are upset about this "balance" but i believe it was a bug fix to be specific followed by some nerfs to keep it from getting to out of hand. I did like its old niche uses and wouldn't mind playing with the old flamer (even if we nerfed new flamer to being like the old one)
Things I've noticed/ideas :
- I can only run chem spray and the 20s chem provides doesn't feel long enough for my routes on most ships specifically when things start breaking, but buffing chem sprays timer would just mean you take flamer for damage instead of for flames against well organized ships.
-the ignition chance + rate of fire is crazy to where if it isn't chem sprayed for more then three seconds it might just be dead. reducing ignition chance would be a nice breather but once you do that you couldn't reduce clip size or else you lose reliable fire starter. i.e. flipping a quarter 100 times is gonna be closer to 50/50 results then flipping it 10. hitting a part x times in a row to start a fire could be viable, but don't know how you would work that in or work with it
-6 aoe seems to be large to me, my entire ships seems to light on fire in seconds
-the nature of fire damage itself is jack of all trades with the capability to disable all components so a gun that is strong with it is gonna be on a lot of ships. Nerfing fire damage would also weaken hades, but not banshee which wouldn't be the worst result.
-I've seen the gun hit outside of the flame's visuals by spectating matches not sure if this is lesmok and visuals not lining up or something else
-there is no escape for certain ships once the flames are in range due to either speed or the ships build (compact size) : spire, mobula, galleon, junker. even the natural vertical or turning motions of these ships don't seem to help much once the flamers start chipping engines and balloon.
- haven't run any gunners, we need more chem spray with out losing rebuild power and heatsink leaves a gun vulnerable for 4+ seconds. having heatsink prevent fires during the reload after firing would be nice, but could just mean flamers + heatsink + only engis
-I haven't played to much with it and I don't think I will be doing so much more till there is a fix
-
gotta take down (or eliminate) the dps of the flamer... I do think if possible having the heat sink effects stay continuous until a different round(standard ammo included obvi) is loaded would be great
-
Never liked the dev app flame thrower. Never updated my stance on it because it never changed from op.
-
Might I suggest the buffing of the chem spray duration, along with the amount of firestacks it removes (i.e 4 instead of 3)?
-
My say on this is that, in order to keep the feel of the gun without either preventing it from being effective or being the pure Dragonfire of Death and Destruction that it is now would be to nerf direct damage to 1, or perhaps even 0.8. Another alternative would be to make the fire damage multiplier mostly innefective against armor.
I, at least, have always seen the armor as something like the metal plates on one of those Ironclad warships of the XIX century: implemented mostly for the sake of protection from fire and explosives which the wooden hull beneath was very vulnerable to. Now, armor takes 0.3 from explosives. Why in the world does it take 0.8 from fire? All the other ammo types are only good against one type of component and range from bad to useless against everything else. Why must fire be so drastically different?
-
I could totally live with fire doing shatter-ish damage and not hull(aka explosive) dmg
-
I've played a single match and I've made some tests in the sandbox with the new flamethrower. My opinion is that yes, flamethrower right now is op, but it doesn't mean that you can't beat someone using it, but surely you need a damn good crew to best it. I don't think the flamer must be nerfed like it was before, I like how it has become a useful gun, but something must be done.
Right now I think the DPS is the main problem of the flamer, it takes down hull armor too fast (and of course at the same time it disable everything, basically it's a weapon that does everything xD).
There are a lot of suggestion that could balance things back, like this one:
Might I suggest the buffing of the chem spray duration, along with the amount of firestacks it removes (i.e 4 instead of 3)?
I personally think that reducing the ammo of the flamer as long with is recharge time could rebalance things a bit, because it gives engeneers some time to counter the fires.
I preatty much agree with Skrimskraw.
so lets say you chemspray your entire ship, ok you are immune, then suddenly chemspray wears off, if your engineer is not there on the spot at the moment to renew it you are screwed: 20 stacks incoming fast and your component is down, repairing it takes time and meanwhile your other ship parts catches fire and you are now under completely lockdown by 2 flamethrowers that never stops shooting.
are we to put chemspray on our gunners, and have chemspray on all engineers? that seems to be the only solution here if you end up in a brawl with these double flamers.
the second you start shooting back, some part of your ship loses chemspray and catches fire, you either go full dps and try to get the kill, which you wont due to the fact that your guns will soon be useless. Or you go full defense and die anyway.
-
Buffing spray is by no means an answer, quit suggesting it.
It's an extremely effective tool, already far superior to the extinguisher. Besides, buffing the spray wouldn't solve the issue of mobulas/spires being unplayable and gunners being useless versus new flamethrower.
Decrease range to 80%, drop the damage to minimal, maybe also increase the reload a tad and flamer becomes a very short ranged yet powerful disabler that's still relatively easy to counter and doesn't break ships all by itself.
-
Buffing spray is by no means an answer, quit suggesting it.
It's an extremely effective tool, already far superior to the extinguisher. Besides, buffing the spray wouldn't solve the issue of mobulas/spires being unplayable and gunners being useless versus new flamethrower.
Decrease range to 80%, drop the damage to minimal, maybe also increase the reload a tad and flamer becomes a very short ranged yet powerful disabler that's still relatively easy to counter and doesn't break ships all by itself.
Mobula and spire are not unplayable... as long as they have (more) flamethrowers.
-
Well if you think you can maintain a mobula versus the current flamer as an engineer, good for you- I know I can't.
-
when flamethrower counters flame thrower lol
-
I almost want the damage gone entierly And keep on with the heavy stack throwing but do no real flamer hits of damage.
By removing the direct damage entirely, the flamer could be rendered entirely useless with chem-spray again. That's a feature which made the flamer quite unpopular in organized matches. Hence I don't like this approach to fix the current flamer.
But now in the main game, the flamer does stacks like crazy. That is because of the fix. And that is why i want the damage to be gone.
And for the one on the dev app, its better. I havent fully tested anything for real versus a ship or anything. But 3 flamers couldnt take down a dummy which should be better versus real ships... [Telefone rings] guys wanna test?
-
Just got out of a match with one goldfish opting for dual flamers and hwacha. Took a screeny:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=254480433
(http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/594783056424165780/A57204010445010A974DCDC7E38821C91CEEF796/)
Notice:
- the Blue Team's junker, behind, is disabled, only two guns up, none firing at the time.
- only the flamer is hitting the 'Mai Tai'
Video evidence may have been better, but this is the best I can do.
Does that seem out-of-range to anyone else?
-
I might just do something with damage modifiers.
I'll be playing more on dev app but what's there now is a nerfed little burnt turd.
Needs more of this:
(http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2013/240/3/b/pyro_toku_sentai_by_kaizoku501-d6k3k48.jpg)
-
I would be more hesitant about changing modifiers:
As I understand, the modifiers affect both how the particle directly damages a component, and how the firestack damages a component. So say you were to nerf the modifer on armor or balloons. Now the flamethrower not only does less damage, but the fire stacks it makes do less damage. This is basically the reason why most engine fires can be ignored while under attack: unless there are very high stacks (10+) the engines just don't get hurt enough for it to really matter.
Changing clip size seems like an interesting change to me. It has a direct effect without a direct damage effect.
Having particles pass through components is a neat feature of the gun and not one I would take away. Yes, a particle of fire wouldn't pass straight through the entire ship. But a bullet is going to get stopped dead by the armor. A jet of flames will roll around the armor and set fires past the armor, even if not in a direct line from the original stream. It makes the flamethrower viable in close quarters combat no matter what your position is. You can always hit the balloon and armor and maybe get a gun or an engine. It's a heft threat, and part of why I used it competitively before the patch.
I will bow out to people spending more time on the dev app, but I think a quick patch reducing the direct damage and reducing the ignition rate would help a lot and allow us to get more positive feedback from a much larger part of the community. Make play time relevant for now while you hammer out the best possible change.
Personally I want to be able to play using fire (like normal) without being seen as a terrible person.
-
I tested, and I'm not touching the modifiers. As you said yourself, it has too great of an effect on the fire charges. I want the charges to be devastating. So I'll just be looking at lowering raw dmg output and tweaking ignition % so it's not stupid.
-
Video evidence may have been better, but this is the best I can do.
Does that seem out-of-range to anyone else?
Almost certainly lesmok rounds. It increases the range, but not the graphical range for it.
-
Uhhhg will need to look into those particle effects then.. ahlaesijfae.
-
I was playing with geo earlier and explaining to him how it felt a lot like the beta flamer because the fires were catching way more consistently will bring back the heat sink thus making the gunner a viable class again!!
Why would I prefer a gunner with heatsink over an engineer with dps-optimizing ammo and chem spray, especially when considering heatsink doesn't prevent fires during reloads?
sorry I was using stating this with the assumption that the dps gets nerfed back down. with that done if I have a goldfish facing a flamer squid or pyra or whatever I'll go hwacha with a gunner that will have heavy/burst and heatsink. this gunner will be able to fire from long range and if a close quarter engagement is imminent he can go heat sink to protect from disable while disabling the flamer in turn. then switch to burst or charged to finish the boat off... he will use a buff or wrench depending on the opponents loadouts... if I had a blender fish I would go engi for sure though because I would just have him go full repair load out with heavy clip since no other clip is really that helpful for the caro so versatility in ammo type isn't as important
The only problem with this is that heat-sink is broken, and it has been broken for a very long time; ever since the patch that prevented forced reloading of preloaded special ammo by players without that ammo in their loadout, heat-sink does not prevent fire stacks during reloads. [5th time I have posted this please notice me muse] Since this patch I have been using heat-sink with the hades to protect from all the op flames and reduce its minimum range, however with one flame-thrower directed at our ship as soon as the reload began my gun almost instantly gained 8 stacks and kicked me off before the next clip of heat sink was loaded. I experimented taking chem-spray as my one gunner tool - which although as of this patch is the only tool a gunner should bring, the amount of direct damage from the flamer was enough to break my gun relatively quickly.
Heat-sink clip, until this patch I used this ammo frequently but never for its intended purpose - I believe that it should be fixed to once again protect from fire damage during a reload. If that is difficult to program you could implement it by allowing for 15 seconds fire protection after your clip has unloaded (the same amount of time a fully repaired hwacha takes to reload) fire protection overlapping with other clips on other guns would be an added perk. Second, make heat-sink clip gradually reduce the number of fire stacks on an already burning gun (or reduce the number of stacks once by a fixed amount when ammo is loaded into a burning gun, same as spraying it with chem-spray)
* You've been gone for quite some time Mav - gunners are a necessity for several competitively viable play styles.
-
Two fixes for the heatsink that could be easy to implement are
- Every time heatsink clip is loaded x fire charges are extinguished
- Every time heatsink clip is loaded, gun is fire immune for 20 seconds (regardless of ammo changes or heatsink clip running out). A gun with heatsink clip can still catch fire if 20 seconds have passed since its' reload
The latter might be a cool idea, it adds a time management concept to gunning that's usually more prominent in engineer roles
-
Two fixes for the heatsink that could be easy to implement are
- every time heatsink clip is loaded x fire charges are extinguished
- every time heatsink clip is loaded, gun is fire immune for 20 seconds (regardless of ammo changes or heatsink clip running out)
thanks for adding a tl;dr for me =P
-
o7 haha
Only issue is that such a change would favor guns with smaller clips or faster reloads. Still seems more efficient than its' current version though.
And yes, a change in heatsink is necessary not because of the flamethrower shenanigans but mostly because heatsink is never used for what it was supposed to be - a fire preventing clip
-
I can test Heatsink. Having it do silly things while reloading is something that we'd prefer not to do. It's a special case that would require some code uprooting, not pretty. I tried and I can't get it to work without mucking the code up.
However, I know that I can at least get the 20s immunity when it is loaded type thing. Even if you change to another ammo immediately after loading heat sink, the immunity sticks for the time I set it at. It's really weird so I prefer not to do it. It's a very opaque interaction. E.g. what is this gun fire immune? Did someone chem spray it? Maybe it doesn't matter because you don't know if an engineer sprayed something, you just know it's immune so it doesn't matter.
What I like more is every time the ammo is loaded, it extinguishes. I'll go test that.
So far, dev app tests have been going well.
Damage: 1.2
Ignition %: 18%
Ammo: 250
If you are good about chem spray, you'll be fine. But if you miss something, you're boned. So chem spray can completely counter flamer. This is fine because I don't think many boats will only have flamer, they may have other things to use to distract the engineers like gatling. Get those engineers busy repairing the hull and then unload flames on them. It's a question of what the engineer chooses to focus their attention on and how to distract them.
So this HOT HOT HOT fix shaping up to be release ready very shortly. I'll let everyone know when this happens.
-
Loading Heatsink to extinguish fire stacks works. It's live in dev app, currently extinguishing 3 stacks on reload.
Check it out.
-
You are going to need to host a test session before putting the hot fix in. For future reference, don't treat mine and Tropo's word as Godlike when it comes to fixes/changes :P Two people do not an 'it's fine' make :P
-
Ace it wasn't that, it was that all he got.. not many people emailed in suggesting that flamer is op need nerf so based on what he has heard.. it was mostly good reaction.
Loving the heatsink idea! Might need more stacks but that obviously depends on the how hard the stacks get applied inbetween a fast reload of a fully repaired gun after the the flamer.
Must find time and people to test this new heatsink clip changes.
-
It's how it is, unfortunately. It's already a struggle to get people to even test huge features like Matchmaking.
Believe me when I say it's not easy but I've got to work with what I've got, so I appreciate your, Tropo's, and everyone else's time in Dev App and posting feedback. It's very very useful. It's never the end of the discussion in dev app, it only serves to hopefully get it right and we know it never happens. To really get it right is to leave it in dev app for 3 months like Portable Flak... but I don't know if that's what we want. Harpoon, I'll admit, was a total longshot that paid off. Sure, there's a lot of complaining when things it Production but it's when the flood of results comes in. Luckily enough, I can respond fast enough and put a hot fix in and then see what happens after that.
As everyone knows, Muse doesn't have a QA department so it makes things interesting to say the least lol. I've become calloused enough to not be bothered by all the complaining. At this point, I just take what you guys say and do it. Release it, see what you say again. Keep fixing until it gets to a place. It's not that big of a deal to me. Just that everyone complains the most on day one makes for an interesting Monday morning hahaha.
Kinda makes me want to do this... but we don't have a photocopier.
(http://www.electronicproducts.com/uploadedImages/Packaging_and_Hardware/Prototyping_Tools_Equipment_Services/Office%20Space%20Gif.gif)
In fact, someone came into our office trying to sell us photocopiers and phones and we were like:
(http://stickerish.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/LoLGuyBlackTextSS.png)
LOL WHAT'S THAT?
-
New heatsink looks good. Functionality is greatly improved, now you can 'cheat' the fire stacks by repairing the gun while loading and also getting the fires removed.
I like the change but the number of fires removed might need to be tweaked. On one hand it's very decent, considering that you get a minor extinguish without setting a repair cooldown or disrupting an engineer's repair loop. On the other hand, reload times are pretty big and you also can't 'save' a gun with over 8 fires this way.
Not sure if putting off 4 fires instead would be too good..
-
can i just say
(http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3vmx5Tykj1qzi80do1_400.gif)
i'm having SO much fun :3
thaaaaaaaaanks muuuuuse <3
i luv you
-
I wonder how much did Cake Clan pay Muse to implement this "fix"? If we were to go to the Muse offices right now, would we see donuts, cakes, and other baked confections filling up their break room?
-
meanwhile at muse hq
(http://www.gurl.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/marie-antoinette-bored.gif)
-
I wonder how much did Cake Clan pay Muse to implement this "fix"? If we were to go to the Muse offices right now, would we see donuts, cakes, and other baked confections filling up their break room?
Having been there recently, I can assure you that is not the case.
-
After extensive testing conclusions are the dev app flamethrower is good. Good good. Reliable, strong, counterable. I'd still vote for a minor decrease in range but only time can tell if that's neccessary.
Heatsink does need a buff. Reloading a gun while it's being focused by a flamethrower will stack 6 to 10 fires on it so you're gonna have to time your reload with the enemy flamers reload to get it to work properly- but an increase to fires extinguished from 3 to 4 would be ideal imo (plus symmetry you know.. extinguishes half the fires that it'd take for the gun to be unusable).
Sorry for not posting this on dev forum but apparently I can't access it even though I've got the dev app :o
-
Yeah if you have forum issues, email keyvias@musegames.com
-
i know coming from me this probably sounds weird since it probably seems like i always want close range weapon buffs, but i think reducing the range a tad would make the payoff for using lesmock greater... at this point im just loading up heat sink rounds into the flamers so that they cant be taken out by flamers because the range is great in its current state
-
Im kind of new, so take my ideas with a grain of salt.
A)Change not how flamers work, But how the chem spray works: don't have it protect for a certain period of time, but have it add negative stacks of fire.
B)have the fire do very little damage, but make repairs impossible while a component is on fire.
-
Im kind of new, so take my ideas with a grain of salt.
A)Change not how flamers work, But how the chem spray works: don't have it protect for a certain period of time, but have it add negative stacks of fire.
B)have the fire do very little damage, but make repairs impossible while a component is on fire.
unfortunately gunners are already kinda unpopular to have. except for 2 or 3 guns in this game they have been kinda outclassed by engineers.
your B) suggestion would eliminate gunners even more.
further info check out the rescue the gunners thread which is very closely read by one of our wonderful most active devs, awkm: https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,4079.0.html