Guns Of Icarus Online
Info => Feedback and Suggestions => Topic started by: Safewood on June 30, 2014, 09:47:22 pm
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Short and simple. List of suggestions I feel is strongly needed in the game.
- Maps with a lot of objects to fly around, so that you can have other ways to outplay and bait your opponents.
- Gunners with only, but different benefits on ammunition. Currently there's really no need for Gunners, since you can have your alternative ammo on your Engineers, which is only needed in close range combat.
- Viewmodel and projectiles are completely off from each other. The projectiles come from the upper-left corner of your screen, while your turret and crosshair is in the middle.
- Matchmaking system with matchmaking rating.
- Visual and audible feedback when you can or can't repair or out of range with wrench, hammer, etc. E.g. highlight the machinery, different sound effect, etc.
- Either stronger colours or bigger size on the sails to easily distinguish between Red and Blue, because most ships has a red-ish colour palette already. You already have the map, but it's rather a hassle than adding to the game. Spyglass' only purpose should be to keep your opponent targetted, because you could be out of range when you try to target someone.
- Remake the party/lobby system like every other competitive game has it, such as League of Legends, Starcraft 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and so forth.
- Ladders feel really clunky, such as, you can't strafe onto the ladder (e.g. run towards the ladder pressing W and D, though I'm not talking about Quake/Source engine ladder strafing, just easier to hit the ladder that way), and you sometimes fly up in the air when you hit the end of the ladder; makes me completely disorientated.
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A few have already requested new maps, but it takes a bit of resources to make those and MUSE is limited. "Recycling" current other ones has been request as well. https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,3827.0.html (https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,3827.0.html)
Making gunners more "attractive" is currently looked into.
Matchmaking is on the way.
When you hit something with a wrench or a hammer it should make a different sounds from not hitting something. When you hit something there is also cooldown that is visible visually. When hitting something while it is on cooldown shouldn't do anything but make noise.
I am not sure, but I think all those engineering tools have their own sound too.
The enemy looking like your ally because of his color as been mentioned too. To counter this problem, for the moment I suggest, simply make more use of the map and see if your ally is over there or if he is next to you, then you can be sure it is an enemy.
As far as I know you cannot be out of range to spot something with a spyglass, however the enemy could be so far away that he isn't rendered for you and thus you don't see him. The spyglass purpose, in my opinion, is to tell your team the position of the enemy, what are they looking at and where are they moving to.
Targeting is done by communication or by the captain using a special targeting system, I believe the button for that in default is "B". This captain target thingy is not permanent though.
Alternetely you can use voice signals with through "V" and navigating through them with "WASD".
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Alright, I assumed map making was similar to other engines, such as Quake, Source, Spark, etc. Which makes map making a breeze, unless you make it incredibly detailed.
I haven't actually noticed that, except from the Fire Extinguisher, but I would then suggest to make the audible feedback more distinguishable. A clearer visual feedback when you can repair or extinguish the fire, such as highlight the machinery (similar to how Bioshock highlights items).
On a related note, they should also make a clearer visual (and perhaps audible) feedback by how much you extinguish the fire.
I've already rebound the map to the "V" key for easier access, since I use microphone anyway.
You can't use the spyglass to tag your opponents? I'm pretty sure you can tag your opponents with the spyglass, unless the timing between me trying to tag them and the captain tagging them has been mere miliseconds similar scary amount of times.
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Alright, I assumed map making was similar to other engines, such as Quake, Source, Spark, etc. Which makes map making a breeze, unless you make it incredibly detailed.
I haven't actually noticed that, except from the Fire Extinguisher, but I would then suggest to make the audible feedback more distinguishable. A clearer visual feedback when you can repair or extinguish the fire, such as highlight the machinery (similar to how Bioshock highlights items).
On a related note, they should also make a clearer visual (and perhaps audible) feedback by how much you extinguish the fire.
I've already rebound the map to the "V" key for easier access, since I use microphone anyway.
You can't use the spyglass to tag your opponents? I'm pretty sure you can tag your opponents with the spyglass, unless the timing between me trying to tag them and the captain tagging them has been mere miliseconds similar scary amount of times.
I would love some more audible feedback to the engineering tools, and some pertaining to guns. I still want to hear bullets hitting and ricocheting when someone shoots a gatling gun at your ship. Especially since gatling guns are so common, and very important to notice.Overall i feel like good sound design is under-appreciated in games.
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You can't use the spyglass to tag your opponents? I'm pretty sure you can tag your opponents with the spyglass, unless the timing between me trying to tag them and the captain tagging them has been mere miliseconds similar scary amount of times.
What I mean is, once you spot something with a spyglass it is forever spotted and marked on the map until your entire time loses visual sight of it. If you spot 2 out of 2 enemies from the enemy team then who do you target?
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Matchmaking is indeed on its' way but not with a rating system scheduled, and I'm being called a weirdo for asking for one :p
It's blissfull finally finding a stranger who would also like rated mm :D
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I don't like matchmaking at all. It's a bother to implement and I think it wouldn't really add to a game. Waiting in lobbies sucks, all right, but I think the lobby system is the best for GOIO. Suprisingly, the problem may not be the system, but the amount of players. If you have around 100 players around the world in the game at the moment - you may have to wait for a while. That's life, and there isn't much to do about it. When there's 250+ people in the game everything seems to work fine.
Going back to the subject - OP mentioned some of the obvious problems, and tried to tackle it being very general and unspecific. Each and every one of those issues is a separate problem that needs close attention. I especially like this one:
- Remake the party/lobby system like every other competitive game has it, such as League of Legends, Starcraft 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and so forth.
Firstly, many people could've never played any of those games (I'm a good example :) ), so you have to give some hint, some directions. At least you could send screens saying "you do that". Furthermore GOIO is very specific game and may need (and want!) a different lobby than those games. And the last but not least - money. Muse is a small company and they said many times that they WANT to do much, but they also need to balance it to minimize the costs. I think lobbies work good enough for now, maybe some UI tweeks would be good but those are DETAILS for me.
- Gunners with only, but different benefits on ammunition. Currently there's really no need for Gunners, since you can have your alternative ammo on your Engineers, which is only needed in close range combat.
This is a whole big problem on it's own which is being discussed over and over again (and tested also). You might want to check the ammunition ideas thread and share your thoughts. For now Muse decided that the best way to deal with it is to make ammo types that are more situational and would make gunner more useful with 3 ammo slots.
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"- Viewmodel and projectiles are completely off from each other. The projectiles come from the upper-left corner of your screen, while your turret and crosshair is in the middle."
Cant say I have ever run into that issue. Anyone else ever have this problem?
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@ Dementio:
Ah, right, I see what you mean. In that case, it's all about communication, but it would be great to have a 'prioritize target' for captains.
@ Mr.Disaster:
Lobbies are only useful for custom matches and starting a game with less than full crew.
Fair enough, however, I intentionally made everything very unspecific. Think of Extra Credits, brings up the issues without influencing specific solutions. Though I can rewrite everything with specific suggestions, solutions, etc.
@ SirNotlag:
It's sort of similar to when you fly in full speed while turning, which makes your projectiles look out of place. However, in this instance, the projectiles started from the top-left of my screen, instead of starting from the turret; though it could be networking issues, or something similar to that.
Edit: Not possible to edit the main post any longer. So I'll just add it here or in next post later.
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@ Dementio:
Ah, right, I see what you mean. In that case, it's all about communication, but it would be great to have a 'prioritize target' for captains.
there is a prioritize target for captains. haven't you ever seen the white target appear on an enemy ship? that's the captain putting that on the enemy he wants you to target.
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You have to aim at the enemy and press "B" when you're a captain (it "marks" ship this way even if it's not marked by spyglass).
I really think lobbies are useful at all, because then everyone can prepare, get right equipment (for the situation, meaning both our ship like enemies ships) and when the game starts - all the crew knows what to do and where to go.
I love Extra Credits :) Don't need to rewrite anything, I guess I just pointed it out because some of this problems are being already discussed a lot.
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@ SirNotlag:
It's the very same as Spyglass. Captains should have one that differentiate from the white box.
@ Mr.Disaster:
Oh, you would still have the lobby system like that, similar to League of Legends' champion select. It's just that you now have a queue instead of a match list. I can see now that I should've been a lot more thorough with what I envisioned, but I've already started on the rewrite (doing it between matches, so it's slowly coming together)-
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@ SirNotlag:
It's the very same as Spyglass. Captains should have one that differentiate from the white box.
It is different. I don't think you have ever seen it. The spyglass creates a white box like thing around the spotted ship, the captain's target thingy creates 4 lines around it that look like a "+" with the ship in the middle.
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I literally did not realize captain's target was a thing that existed until I had to fix a bug with it.
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@ Dementio:
Ah, made our Captain use it this match. However, I would like to add that it should have a different colour from the Spyglass, so that it's easier to distinguish it, even though it's a crosshair.
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Captain's target would be more useful if it included a verbal component, like "The Captain has targeted Spire". While not as useful if there are multiple identical ships, the marker itself helps the rest of the way. As a verbal communication, it brings attention to the fact I want this targeted over the other one. Admittedly, I just use voice chat anyway, but for those without, this would be invaluable.
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Captain's target would be more useful if it included a verbal component, like "The Captain has targeted Spire". While not as useful if there are multiple identical ships, the marker itself helps the rest of the way. As a verbal communication, it brings attention to the fact I want this targeted over the other one. Admittedly, I just use voice chat anyway, but for those without, this would be invaluable.
Captains target, and the existing voice commands, is more than enough to make your target clear even without a mic.
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Edit: Hopefully this is sufficient. :)
Maps:
Objects such as low-poly skyscrapers, summits, caves, slow-moving meteor showers, etc.
Gunners:
Exclusive passives for Gunners only, with only, but different benefits on the ammunition. F.ex. on-hit debuffs, such as slower turn rate on enemy turrets, slower movement speed on deck, vision obscuring effect and so forth.
Visual and audible feedback:
A visual feedback, such as, a red stop sign with an 'access denied' sound, played only once, with a more distinguishable audible feedback on the hammer and wrench; similar to the sound Tyrion explains about his cousin Orson from Game of Thrones ("KUNK, KUNK, KUNK").
A visual feedback about the stages of fire taking place (5 seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds, etc.); the longer cooldown, the greater the fire is. Would be great if we could see more of the enemy's fire, so you know better where they're focusing, though the visual feedback on the machinery would help a great deal, then the enemy's fire helps to see where they're focusing next.
Matchmaking system with matchmaking rating:
Steps: Dashboard -> Party -> Queue -> Lobby -> Play
Images: https://imgur.com/a/iVb6E
From the main menu, you can open up the game modes, for what you want to play and if you want to create a crew or immediately go into queue. If you choose to create a crew, you invite your friends to join the crew and then search for a queue together. When a match has been found, a lobby is created, where you configure your character and ship, and vote for a map. Lastly, you get all thrown into a server together to duke it out.
Sidenote: A 15 seconds warmup would be great, too. Within that 15 seconds period, you can not move your ship at all, so that everyone has an equal chance to start (important in KotH modes and similar).
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Maps
So basically maps such as Water Hazard, Canyon Ambush and Labirynth (but new).
Edit: And Muse is working on maps as general, we have to give them time and be patient.
slow-moving meteor showers
really?
Gunners
Exclusive passives for Gunners only
Not going to happen, at least in the near future. Long story short - it's against Muse's idea of roles being 100% equal (and breakes balance and it's a bother to implement).
Visual and audible feedback
Yeah, because everyone watches Game of Thrones and will get that reference ;) Honestly I don't see a problem, I do engineering a lot and sounds are destinguishable enough.
Why do you need a visual feedback about how long fire is burning? Who cares actually, the UI now is clear because shows you only the things you're interested in - the stacks of fire and cooldown of an object.
Matchmaking system with matchmaking rating
Well, I'm sceptic about matchmaking idea as a whole, so I'm not going to comment it, except one sentence - I think lobbies are doing good and there's no need to change.
Warmup
But what for. You can't move your ship but can move a crew? Usually maps are so big that before you'll meet the enemy everyone will easily take their positions (and buff most important parts). I think most people would find it useless.
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Captain's target would be more useful if it included a verbal component, like "The Captain has targeted Spire". While not as useful if there are multiple identical ships, the marker itself helps the rest of the way. As a verbal communication, it brings attention to the fact I want this targeted over the other one. Admittedly, I just use voice chat anyway, but for those without, this would be invaluable.
Captains target, and the existing voice commands, is more than enough to make your target clear even without a mic.
That's not what I meant. I hate the currently existing Voice Command system. It's kind of a real pain to work, and VERY easy to screw up. Unless I spent an hour fiddling with it JUST to memorize the combinations, I'd probably never have the time to use it as a Captain. Now, if I could just hit one key (Captain Target) and get a Voice Command effect from that? That I can use very easily, without taking an excess of time working at it. I am not a big fan of the whole key combination system.
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Maps
So basically maps such as Water Hazard, Canyon Ambush and Labirynth (but new).
Edit: And Muse is working on maps as general, we have to give them time and be patient.
If I'm not mistaken, then these are 6- and 8-man maps. If they could get cramped down to 4-man maps, then that would be great.
slow-moving meteor showers
really?
It's sort of like the storm, but instead of being a huge-ass cloud that clutter your vision, there's medium-sized meteors that you have to be aware of, as well as something you could potentially work to your advantage.
What's your issue with it?
Gunners
Exclusive passives for Gunners only
Not going to happen, at least in the near future. Long story short - it's against Muse's idea of roles being 100% equal (and breakes balance and it's a bother to implement).
If there's nothing going for Gunners, then there will be no use for them. One alternative ammo is eternally enough.
Visual and audible feedback
Yeah, because everyone watches Game of Thrones and will get that reference ;) Honestly I don't see a problem, I do engineering a lot and sounds are destinguishable enough.
Why do you need a visual feedback about how long fire is burning? Who cares actually, the UI now is clear because shows you only the things you're interested in - the stacks of fire and cooldown of an object.
At this point, I feel you're just trying your best to be difficult with me. There's always a reference someone might not get, there always is. However, the message I'm trying to get across should be clear enough, don't you think?
To know what to prioritize from a distance, if the health is similar each other. It's not of huge importance, but rather a nice-to-have feature. However, the UI is far from clear to a new player, because I have a full crew to play with most of the time, we were able to figure out majority of the mechanics. Though I'm sure I would have headaches to figure every mechanics as a single player.
You have a global cooldown for repairs, and you have a out-of-order cooldown which you can have as many players as you want to repair the machinery. On top of that, you have a global cooldown for fire, and stacks of fire that makes no sense to you at the start. It's just a number counting down, and you're standing there relentlessly trying to put out the fire, without understanding if you're doing something right or not. There's no visual feedback telling you if you're doing the right or wrong thing; you only have indistinguishable audible feedback, at least from my perspective.
An additional option from "Noob Tutorials", could be a text under the visual feedback, explaining the situation for you (e.g. "The cooldown is global for maintenance", "4 seconds removed from fire", etc.).
Warmup
But what for. You can't move your ship but can move a crew? Usually maps are so big that before you'll meet the enemy everyone will easily take their positions (and buff most important parts). I think most people would find it useless.
King of the Hill / Crazy King. You load in faster, meaning you get a headstart on the capture point.
Deathmatch. You group up and head towards the vicinity of your opponent.
I've had so many times, where we've loaded slower than the other team, because of latency, hardware or what have you. Point being, we spawn, I check the map, they're already heading our way without us having the time to group up with our team mate's ship, or they're already far ahead to the capture point than what we are (excl. that spawn points can be closer to the points from each other).
Besides, what does it hurt to wait a mere 15 seconds to get your ship going? It could be 8-10 seconds. As long as everyone's on an equal standing.
Edit: Rephrased slightly, and added another suggestion.
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If I'm not mistaken, then these are 6- and 8-man maps. If they could get cramped down to 4-man maps, then that would be great.
Yeah, there were such voices on the forum. I hope Muse will use this idea.
slow-moving meteor showers
I just don't see it implemented (in this game).
If there's nothing going for Gunners, then there will be no use for them. One alternative ammo is eternally enough.
There are many threads tackling this issue. This is clearly a problem and Muse is trying to fix it using firstly possibly cheapest and easiest to implement metods. Therefore a call to try make up ammunition type that would be more situational and would make gunners a better choice. My favourite idea was a kind of "turret ammo" that would make gun continuosly fire untill the end of the clip and decrease its arc but increase damage / shooting speed. Situational, useful, interesting. There are tests of new ammo types in DevApp.
About the GoT reference - it's common courtesy (at least I think so) that you try to get you reference undestandable, and if possible give it directly. In this case, I'd expect mentioned fragment from a show, to show you example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAOzMs9HbWg, around 2:28
The UI of health of ship parts is a discussed issue. I still don't get the fire problem. Usually you either prioritise things looking at distance (assuming everything or almost everything is on fire) or looking at importance of a part (for instance first hull and baloon, then engines and guns at the end - of course it depends on situation) or mostly combination of those two. I don't see how knowing for how long something has been on fire makes a decision easier. For me the fire part of UI works just fine.
When object is "alive" (not-destroyed) you have a cooldown, when object is destroyed (red) everyone can work on it and it will count. Such feedback should be given by tutorials and if not - by more experienced players. The (small) uselessness of tutorials has also been mentioned somewhere. Then there is also tons of guides on the internet; on the forum and youtube, but a difficulty in learning mechanics is a reall issue that breaks a lot of heads; it is annoying for the experienced players because unexperienced players go to non-novice games without a clue what to do and it's clearly bad for both sides. All we can do for now is provide information and guides, maybe hope to see better in-game tutorials in the future.
About the warmup - that's actually an issue that I've never had. All I can do is recommend you playing on the servers with best latency to minimize the loss.
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There are many threads tackling this issue. This is clearly a problem and Muse is trying to fix it using firstly possibly cheapest and easiest to implement metods. Therefore a call to try make up ammunition type that would be more situational and would make gunners a better choice. My favourite idea was a kind of "turret ammo" that would make gun continuosly fire untill the end of the clip and decrease its arc but increase damage / shooting speed. Situational, useful, interesting. There are tests of new ammo types in DevApp.
One thing that also makes the alternative ammo's useless, is that you have to reload a new clip when you choose an alternative ammo. For example, you want Heatsink Clip when you get close to a flamethrower, however, you don't want to use it while you're out of range, or you're running from broad side to battery, and there's just no time for you to change ammo. So you'd have to change between the actual reload time, which makes the alternative ammo's a lot less efficient.
Currently, the alternative ammo's are more or less made for each turret type. If the ammo could have a purpose of itself (e.g. reduce movement, increase cooldown, clutter vision, etc.) instead of being designed for a turret, then it would be a lot more viable. That, and the clip being unaffected by changing ammo, yet apply the disadvantages (e.g. -20% clip size on a 4/20 bullets would empty the clip).
The UI of health of ship parts is a discussed issue. I still don't get the fire problem. Usually you either prioritise things looking at distance (assuming everything or almost everything is on fire) or looking at importance of a part (for instance first hull and baloon, then engines and guns at the end - of course it depends on situation) or mostly combination of those two. I don't see how knowing for how long something has been on fire makes a decision easier. For me the fire part of UI works just fine.
An example is if the hull has 4 stacks, while the engine has 16 stacks, yet their health looks relatively the same, because of other sources of damage has been hit more on the hull. However, by the time you're done with the hull, the engine has taken massive amount of damage that you could've prioritized instead. Instead of the fire growing, the stacks could be shown in the floatable UI's.
For seeing where the enemy is throwing fire, it's confusing whether you're actually doing anything with the fire extinguisher. The "out of powder" sound effect just adds to the confusion, because at first, I was wondering if the fire extinguisher was empty. Suddenly it worked again, and I thought there might be a cooldown on the fire extinguisher, however, I eventually figured out that when fire is applied, the said tool is rendered useless. Additionally, you can see where the enemy is trying to focus the flamethrower next.
When object is "alive" (not-destroyed) you have a cooldown, when object is destroyed (red) everyone can work on it and it will count. Such feedback should be given by tutorials and if not - by more experienced players. The (small) uselessness of tutorials has also been mentioned somewhere. Then there is also tons of guides on the internet; on the forum and youtube, but a difficulty in learning mechanics is a reall issue that breaks a lot of heads; it is annoying for the experienced players because unexperienced players go to non-novice games without a clue what to do and it's clearly bad for both sides. All we can do for now is provide information and guides, maybe hope to see better in-game tutorials in the future.
A 'No' symbol (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_symbol) with a text under it explaining "Can only repair when off cooldown", "Cannot extinguish when fire is applied", "Can only extinguish when off cooldown", and so forth. In addition, a more distinguishable "klunk" sound; it would make it a lot easier to understand. An option to turn off visual feedback, if you find them to be in the way.
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Changed the list a bit.
1. Show enemy's fire projectile, or a more aggressive fire on the machinery to show fire is being applied.
Reason: Makes it easier to tell whether you can use the fire extinguisher or not.
2. Visual feedback, such as a 'No' symbol with text under it explaining "Can only repair when off cooldown", "Cannot extinguish when fire is applied", "Can only extinguish when off cooldown", and so forth.
Reason: Makes it easier to understand what you can and can not do in different situations (tailored for new players). Option to turn this off.
3. Audible feedback, such as a more distinguishable sound effects on tools when you can or can not use it, damage sounds on the different machinery, etc.
Reason: Makes it easier to understand what's going on around you, without the need of visual feedback (tailored for experienced players).
4. Floatable icons, two UI size, where the greater size also shows you fire stacks.
Reason: Makes it easier to make decisions where to prioritize the fire extinguisher.
5. Changing ammo should not force you to reload, and after you've changed ammo to then reload, should not be canceled when you leave the turret, nor should it change back to default.
Reason: Makes alternative ammo a lot more efficient and seamless to use.
6. Classes. Every class has a default tool everyone can use, but every class also has exclusive tools only their class can use.
Reason: Makes it easier to balance the usefulness of the classes. Gunners are not needed at all; note: this isn't an opinion.
7. Matchmaking system with matchmaking rating.
Reason: Makes it more convenient to get into a match, while also potentially make the match more fair (such as premades, randoms, rating, etc.).
8. Let you strafe into the ladder (e.g. W + D into the ladder).
Reason: Makes it easier to get onto the ladder.
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It's common courtesy not to post below our own post (in such case edit the previous post)
#1 - to use a flamethrower enemy ship has to be pretty close and the beam itself is pretty visible
#2 is good for tutorial purposes, I'll give you that
#5 changing ammo = reloading by definition
I see it this way: every gun has an unlimited resource of default ammunition and it is "programmed" to load itself alone - with the ammo it has. To load a different ammo you need a gunner - and he applies 1 clip of ammo at the time. This issue has been discussed, you can look it up on the forum.
#6 The Muse's idea is that every class is equal in a meaning that they have access to the same tools, the only difference is in the number of tools they can bring. This has also been discussed already and I don't see chances that it will happen (in the near future, at least).
BTW. Gunners are not needed at all; note: this isn't an opinion
- and that's your opinion ;) I can and will admit that engineers are more useful than gunners BUT the usual setup is 1 pilot, 2 engineers and 1 gunner. And I strongly believe there is a reason for that; I have some experience playing as a gunner and I know that sometimes having the right ammo and using it in the right time can win the game. Just a simple example - when flying a pyramidion and shooting hades for a long range I use lesmok (and then I can shoot effectively) and for short and ram range I quickly change to greased - because there's no problem aiming a ship being 20-50m in front of you and greesed increases your clip and fire speed. I know there are many guns that have "designed" one type of ammo that works best for them BUT depending on situation gunner can provide better firepower, and that's why there usually is one gunner in a crew. The issue of usefulness of gunner and engineer is being discussed over and over again and there are many posts and topics trying to tackle that problem.
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It's common courtesy to not assume everything, in such case, editing has a time limit. Can you please refrain from doing that in every single post, or I'm just going to completely ignore you next time.
1. No, it isn't.
5. Changing this with the class, would definitely solve the class balance. I'm sure of that.
6. If you do not change ammo between reloads, then you've effectively dumpstered your DPS. The ammo from gunners is only used once by others, which the gunner can only provide in dead time, hence they're completely and utterly useless. You have 3 engineers with 3 different ammo's. One who rotates, and two stationary. Hence, you don't need a gunner. Fact.
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I still want to hear bullets hitting and ricocheting when someone shoots a gatling gun at your ship. Especially since gatling guns are so common, and very important to notice.Overall i feel like good sound design is under-appreciated in games.
This! Fucking This! THIS THIS THIS THIS MAKE ITS OWN THREAD DO IT DO IT DO IT It needs attention!
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1. Show enemy's fire projectile, or a more aggressive fire on the machinery to show fire is being applied.
Reason: Makes it easier to tell whether you can use the fire extinguisher or not.
2. Visual feedback, such as a 'No' symbol with text under it explaining "Can only repair when off cooldown", "Cannot extinguish when fire is applied", "Can only extinguish when off cooldown", and so forth.
Reason: Makes it easier to understand what you can and can not do in different situations (tailored for new players). Option to turn this off.
I'm still really confused by what you're asking for here. The fire extinguisher and chem spray can always be applied to any component not under cooldown regardless of whether they are under fire.
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@ Captain Smollett:
If an enemy ship applies continuous fire to a machinery, then the fire extinguisher is rendered useless. You can not put out the fire, if there the fire is constantly applied. Therefore you need to put chemical spray on it, and then extinguish the fire.
That's why I would like to see a more "aggressive" fire on the machinery, or see where the enemy is throwing fire.
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As an engineer it is pretty much your job to know what is taking damage. An engineer will typically take one fire tool, whether it be the extinguisher or chem spray. And I'm sure that components on fire in fact blink when they're burning, alerting you to the damage.
Again, most ships run 2 engineers 1 gunner, 1 engineer takes chem and the other takes the extinguisher, it's fairly effective once you get it down, the one with the chem spray is the main, as they repair things they spray components, in the situation something catches fire then the other engineer can extinguish it, while the gunner, who is not needed in repairs is left to shoot things with reckless abandon.
You have 3 engineers with 3 different ammo's. One who rotates, and two stationary. Hence, you don't need a gunner. Fact.
I'll disagree with this right now. This is a rather short sighted view on the usefulness of gunners, sure I can agree that I sometimes feel that gunners don't always a have place in the action, but a good gunner provides an edge. If you have 3 engineers with three different ammo types you'd have a situation like this:
We need lesmok on the flamethrower, so we pull the lesmok engineer from his repairs to load the gun, soon we need to load greased so we pull the greased engineer from his repairs to load greased, and then we'll need the incendiary engineer to load... well you get the point. While certain builds and people use three engineers on their ship, having them load the different types when they could be doing something useful is needless tedium.
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We need lesmok on the flamethrower, so we pull the lesmok engineer from his repairs to load the gun, soon we need to load greased so we pull the greased engineer from his repairs to load greased, and then we'll need the incendiary engineer to load... well you get the point. While certain builds and people use three engineers on their ship, having them load the different types when they could be doing something useful is needless tedium.
Take Pyramidion for instance. You have two top, where one rotates, while the other is stationary until we're forced fully broadside, and last's on the deck. The one who rotates sits on the Gattling with Greased Rounds, and will reload that onto the Flamethrower when there's dead time, and the stationary will sit on Mortars with Charged Rounds while repairing the balloon whenever possible, but will rotate to the Rockets as soon as they have no line of sight.
The last Engi has Lesmok or also Greased Rounds, and will be the primary repair man. However, when shit starts to hit the fan, you're the focus and there's no point fighting back, then the time 3 Engi's beating relentlessly on a red Hull waste for the opponents is just incredible. It usually gives your team mate enough time to draw one of them away from you, giving you enough breathing room to come back into the fight and start focusing 1v2 against them.
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Again, needless tedium, and again, the point of a gunner is to provide said different types of ammo. Guns can utilize several different ammo types and being able to switch those as needed is quite literally, really useful, and the thing about pyramidions is you're supposed to fly those things head on, that's how the ship really works, great engage and if you've got your turning engines buffed or you're using phoenix claw you'll be able to keep your front guns aimed at who whoever is firing at you. If the pilot isn't keeping the ship pointed at the enemy they are doing something wrong.
Secondly, if you have 3 engineers banging on the hull and nothing else, you'll eventually lose balloon, your engines, and all guns, even if a situation like the one you described there's still two ships, if they see you're hurting they will go in for the kill and wreck you. If you're facing a Hwacha fish/spire/galleon they can keep disabling you or your ally, even with the long reload time there is still that second enemy ship to deal with. Sure three engineers work, but you shouldn't count on things going as smoothly, besides, pyramidions are not the best example of how a three engineer ammo loadout works, considering that a single good engineer can feasibly keep both the engines and the hull maintained. The engineer up top is typically told to maintain the balloon behind his gun while the gunner can use a wrench to help out the main engineer in pinch.
Now I want to know exactly what kind of gunners you've encountered that have given you this view on how useful they are.
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@ Piemanlives:
If it's close range, then of course, you're going to go down no matter what. I've now watched quite a lot of VODs from the HC tourney and 9 out of 10 teams go 3 Engi's, too. So within the competitive scene it seems to be the most popular setup, and with good reasons.
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HC? Are talking Hephaestus here?
Edit:
Of course we, it's the only tournament running right now.
2nd Edit:
You still seem to underestimate gunners, which I guess is fine, however this thread is descending into another gunner debate, which I hope we can avoid, there are far more topics with the exact same arguments as the ones we're using.
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@ Piemanlives:
Yes, Hephaestus Challenge.
Sure, no problem. I wanted to discuss new ideas rather than argument about whether it's viable or not. Thanks. :)