Guns Of Icarus Online
Main => Gameplay => Topic started by: awkm on February 21, 2013, 01:41:55 pm
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Just to track everyone's concerns and questions. I'll be fielding answers as best as I can.
Remember, I have a strict policy against revealing meta or any kind of strategy. I will just give you the facts.
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I know in a previous blog post you said you didn't want to talk about why you do certain things, but I'm going to ask anyway. Can you explain the decision making process you went through for this last patch?
Also, should we expect any hotfixes in the next few days that adjust anything other than stability, or is this a final release?
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Also, should we expect any hotfixes in the next few days that adjust anything other than stability, or is this a final release?
From that I can tell, they are letting the players figure out the nuances of the new build and if something troubling appears they will look into it for hotfixes. Idk how long that will take, but yesterday I saw a lot of guns being tossed around.
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I know in a previous blog post you said you didn't want to talk about why you do certain things, but I'm going to ask anyway. Can you explain the decision making process you went through for this last patch?
Also, should we expect any hotfixes in the next few days that adjust anything other than stability, or is this a final release?
Well a lot of things changed in this patch in regards to balance. Fire has been something that we've been wanting to play with for a long time and finally got the bandwidth to do so. That was the biggest.
The other issue was that disabling components was not meaningful. They were rebuilt too quickly to make any sense. So the change to that was an obvious one.
I've already hotfixed the Hwacha (spread 6 from 5 degrees, AoE 7m from 10m radius... very minor changes to test out). It was far too effective with burst rounds (Zill, that's because of you :P ). It's still a very dangerous gun (as it always has been, just overshadowed by the ease of use of medium flak). However, I don't believe we're in OP territory yet. Just because you lose with it (patch has only been live for 24 hours), give it a couple more shots and figure out a counter. Hwachas have a large spread degree so keep that in mind.
And because disabling is more meaningful now... you should give it a shot in your Hwacha counter strategies.
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I've already hotfixed the Hwacha (spread 6 from 5 degrees, AoE 7m from 10m radius... very minor changes to test out).
When did you introduce that? Im just curious if I was using the updated Hwacha yesterday or not.
(Zill, that's because of you :P )
Just doing my part, haha.
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Well I'm going to keep pushing my luck on questions I wouldn't normally ask. How influential on your decisions was the Fjords tournament?
The update patch was a few days before what was almost the first week of the League, was that intentional or inadvertent?
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The update patch was a few days before what was almost the first week of the League, was that intentional or inadvertent?
GOIO just went on sale again today, so they wanted to push out the update prior to the influx of new players. The league date was coincidental I believe.
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Well I'm going to keep pushing my luck on questions I wouldn't normally ask. How influential on your decisions was the Fjords tournament?
We already knew there was something up with the flak. The tournament pushed those suspicions to its tipping point. The thing is, I really hate balancing just one for one player base. Expert players, especially in a tournament setting (more conservative in tourney DM), will use a specific strategy. It will really boil down to the circumstance. The tournament was competitive, so people are conservative. The tournament was DM, so there it devolves to DPS fights. What happened made a lot of sense, and you can still do it. Hang back and Field Gun/Flak people. It's much harder now, sure. The main issue we solved was bringing back close to midrange combat back into play. More options on the table.
When did you introduce that? Im just curious if I was using the updated Hwacha yesterday or not.
I did it at about 1pm today (2/22/13). Check it out and let me know what you think. Original Hwacha shots from yesterday felt fine but with Burst is was a little much. Do the math, with Burst Rounds you'll be back to yesterday's Hwacha but nothing more :P
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I did it at about 1pm today (2/22/13). Check it out and let me know what you think. Original Hwacha shots from yesterday felt fine but with Burst is was a little much. Do the math, with Burst Rounds you'll be back to yesterday's Hwacha but nothing more :P
As soon as you said it was changed I wanted to try it out, haha. The stat changes seem reasonable though. Burst was always pretty devastating on Hwacha, and with the new rebuild times that only furthered its potency.
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Why did loch rounds get changed where it now locks the gun in place once loaded?
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Banshees are back in full style with smaller spread, more damage, chance to ignite ships and longer rebuild time (dissable was probably it's bestr role even before).
Before getting fully hit with a hawacha mean't herculean job, to recover. I don't think I got hit with a full havacha since the latest tweak, but what must have been morning you NA people when I last played, that was literaly a death sentence, becouse there was absolutely now way of getting out of it (it too EVERYTING except the ballon out on the Pyramidion in 1 magazine, with the new rebuild time you were a sitting duck) and with new rebuild time you were hit by the time you rebuild 1 component. that WAS bronken - can't say for what is now.
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Why did loch rounds get changed where it now locks the gun in place once loaded?
A good question. It's become a realy small niche choice (poing plank sniping?)
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Why did loch rounds get changed where it now locks the gun in place once loaded?
We were basically already there. It was to tone down persistent long range abuse with Field/M.Flak. You can still do it, of course. Just harder.
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I agree with Mattilald on this one. It's absolutely impossible to hold a ship together against a Hwacha, never mind two. By the time you've fixed one component, they unleash another volley. And with the double rebuild time on guns, gunners themselves are useless at repairing. If they take a wrench, there's no way they'll have enough time to repair and do significant damage to the enemy ship before the Hwachas fire. And if they have a spanner, they'll be able to rebuild, but they'll be left with a gun with no rotation speed.
So what are your thoughts on this?
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I get te logic behind the longer rebuild time (make the effort of sniping speciffic components with mercs instead of sniping the hull worthwile), but it just seems that the same logic, forgets about hawachas bruta efficiency of destroying components (there is about 20-30% chance one of the components will not be entirely destroyed, but that still leaves you with 5 or more destroyed components). Maybe make it much smaller spread or much larger soread or someting else that will make it twice as hard to use (and therefore require that much better gunner).
Quote from: Mattilald Anguisad on February 22, 2013, 05:02:26 pm
I don't think I got hit with a full havacha since the latest tweak, but what must have been morning you NA people when I last played, that was literaly a death sentence, becouse there was absolutely now way of getting out of it
Now I have been hit with a full hawacha since that tweak, and it's till too powerfull, no mater what you do, onece you get hit with it, there is nothing you cant du, but hope (&pray) that your allies deal with the enemy with hawacha.
EDIT: I merged 2 of my posts into one
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The hwacha is still vulnerable to counter-hwacha fire directed at taking it out, and the Mercury is a valuable counter-battery sniper and should be used to de-fang any Hwacha Goldfish before it can approach. The spread if the hwacha could be further increased to reduce the chances of total devastation - as it is, a lot of the medium-range power comes from using heavy clip to reduce the spread and pack a focussed punch against the target, heavy clip is almost essential with the hwacha.
As it stands, light and medium weapons require the same effort to repair. If light weapons required only 60-70% the effort to repair compared to medium weapons this might tip the balance back to a more neutral position.
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You can still use your pilot tools to lift out or drop down giving your crew enough time to rebuild the engines.
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More than one person can rebuild stuff.
Make sure your Captain is coordinating with the other ships on your team. Your own fault for being ganged up on :P If you're alone, it's pretty devastating unless you're really good at hanging back and picking people off. I played an awesome match where all 3 captains on my team were flying in formation and wiping the floor, finding solo ships to pick on. I was a ramming ship and my teammates would help bait ships towards us and then I'd go in for the ram.
The 'C' chat key is valuable.
Either way, I have my eyes on the hwacha but I'm still unconvinced that it needs more nerfing.
The small guns SHOULD be rebuilt faster than medium ones though. Perhaps after the doubling, the gap has been reduced. I'll go test that later.
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Numerically, doubling actually increases the difference between two numbers, so your initial instinct was right @awkm. To be honest I have never noticed a difference in build times between light weapons and heavy weapons, but then again, I spend most of my at the business end of the helm rather than a spanner :P
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I raised build times because with about 15 hours on Engineer I've never noticed a difference between Light and Medium weapons when it comes to rebuilding a broken gun (I think there is a slight repair difference).
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Every repair tool adds a different amount of HP and has different rebuild power, both being discrete numbers (never scaling). The number of rebuilds required scales with HP of the component. That's why the balloon takes so many rebuild hits because it has to much HP.
Medium guns are about double the HP of small guns so they'll require more rebuild hits. If you have the small wrench (most rebuild power) you won't notice the difference between small and large all that much. With the mallet you definitely will.
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i do think the manticore is to powerfull now with the new rebuild times. before it wasnt so bad, you could rebuild the engins to avoid another volly or build a gun to try disable it but now they just blow up everything before you can repair anything.
i also think the ignition chance on the banshee is a bit to high. half the ship just bursts in to flames from a clip or two
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Agreed on the rocket carousel. I crewed on a Junker today with two double carousel broadsides, and once the enemy ship comes into arc and range there is nothing they can do. The engines and guns drop dead immediately and can't stay up long enough to have an effect, and the hull just gets progressively weakened until there's nothing left.
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I have been noticing the banshee's getting spammed now. I swear its almost like a flamethrower in rocket form. The fire takes down the hull armor pretty quickly, and then rockets on the hull just add salt to the wound. Maybe something to look at in any case.
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Well, we all knew this would happen, never a perfect build just new ways to exploit. All that aside, I dont think anything is truly unbalanced unless one ship can kill 2 ships like the old merc could months ago. Am I being niave on this?
On another thought, what about if we looked at some weapons in a different grouping like, crowd control, armor damage hull damage.
From this perspective I'm able to take a look at certain weapons and notice how they overlap into more then one category, which in my mind makes that weapon more effective then one that occupies only one of those categories. Using this kind of logic is how I usually approach ship load outs and can identify a cheap exploit rather quickly.
Thoughts?
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Well, we all knew this would happen, never a perfect build just new ways to exploit. All that aside, I dont think anything is truly unbalanced unless one ship can kill 2 ships like the old merc could months ago. Am I being niave on this?
On another thought, what about if we looked at some weapons in a different grouping like, crowd control, armor damage hull damage.
From this perspective I'm able to take a look at certain weapons and notice how they overlap into more then one category, which in my mind makes that weapon more effective then one that occupies only one of those categories. Using this kind of logic is how I usually approach ship load outs and can identify a cheap exploit rather quickly.
Thoughts?
I see what you mean. I never did say it was unbeatable. But the stacks of fire it puts out is, impressive. I just got out of a match where we got hit by one volley from the banshee. I walk up to our flaming balloon to find 12 stacks on there. I was surprised. Maybe it was the intent for, as you say, crowd control. It sure does pack a punch though.
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funny thing about this update is we actually kill ships faster then we could ever do with flaks
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Is it just my imagination, or does the mallet have a longer cool down?
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Is it just my imagination, or does the mallet have a longer cool down?
It wasn't in the patch notes, so maybe your game was just lagging.
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I've found the update to be pretty good, for what it's worth. The spread of the Hwacha means that it's pretty ineffective at medium range (without heavy ammo). Because of the reload time and inaccuracy of the weapon, it's a pretty big commitment to put it on a single-heavy platform (i.e. not the Galleon).
I feel the arming ranges on both the Lumberjack and Heavy Flak are a little far out, however. They -are- HEAVY guns. They should always overpower medium emplacements. The Lumberjack has been made nigh unusuable.
Also, having it take more than a single stack of fire to disable a component was money. Good idea!
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The banshee rockets seem to be taking out the balloon along with everything else. The fire chance might need to be decreased in favor of more shatter damage so they disable the right parts of the ship. Hull damage seems to be fine.
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The banshee rockets seem to be taking out the balloon along with everything else. The fire chance might need to be decreased in favor of more shatter damage so they disable the right parts of the ship. Hull damage seems to be fine.
Its beatable but not without the right gear (chem spray). The biggest fire starter is the 30% chance on aoe. The other 12% just adds gas to the bonfire. Unless you miss most of your shots, youre going to set something on fire. Then you add in the new buff to the fire damage modifier on hull, coupled with its already good damage on the balloon, and you got a pretty good weapon. The balloon take a lot of heat from the fire stacks on it.
Ive watch a few matches and it still takes awhile for them to actually kill someone. With proper engie work they can be overcome. Just sitting in their volleys will get you killed though, just as any other gun.
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The banshee rockets seem to be taking out the balloon along with everything else. The fire chance might need to be decreased in favor of more shatter damage so they disable the right parts of the ship. Hull damage seems to be fine.
Its beatable but not without the right gear (chem spray). The biggest fire starter is the 30% chance on aoe. The other 12% just adds gas to the bonfire. Unless you miss most of your shots, youre going to set something on fire. Then you add in the new buff to the fire damage modifier on hull, coupled with its already good damage on the balloon, and you got a pretty good weapon. The balloon take a lot of heat from the fire stacks on it.
Ive watch a few matches and it still takes awhile for them to actually kill someone. With proper engie work they can be overcome. Just sitting in their volleys will get you killed though, just as any other gun.
Well, the nerf to Explosive damage has made such weapons less suitable as primary kill weapons, leading to a greater necessity for either Flechette or Piercing to knock out armor. So, this helps keep the Banshee under control.
... Unfortunately, I feel this was an unnecessary hit to the Light Mortar, which is hard enough to use as it is. I'm not sure the slight increase in raw DPS well compensates for its poor range and difficulty of use.
I could be wrong about that, though. But I don't see myself bothering to use the Scylla anymore, especially with the Rocket Carousel being more useful over all, and the Flak still being a solid choice.
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I really like the update, except for two small things.
First, I think the Banshee is slightly overpowered in the fact that it destroys all components on your ship. The first few matches I played was against a bunch of new people who were spamming carousels and it really would destroy everything on the ship. And sure, Zill, with the right Engineers, anything can be overcome; but you have a problem when one type of gun needs a lot more effort to defend against than another gun. Honestly, I loved the Banshee before the fire chance, it laid out nasty damage at close ranges.
Second, the heavy flak is pretty useless now. The other three medium weapons can kill on their own but the heavy flak needs another gun to be effective, which is a problem. It's not very reliable on a Goldfish because it takes too long to bring your side guns to bear, and by the time you strip their armor and bring the heavy flak into position, they have fixed it. I rushed a heavy flak only galleon with a squid and killed it, THAT is a problem. The fact that a squid can take multiple heavy flak shots and be fine is kind of strange. It's just logic that any fleet's core will be made up of flak, but with the way things are now, I'd rather have a Hwacha or Hellhound.
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I really like the update, except for two small things.
First, I think the Banshee is slightly overpowered in the fact that it destroys all components on your ship. The first few matches I played was against a bunch of new people who were spamming carousels and it really would destroy everything on the ship. And sure, Zill, with the right Engineers, anything can be overcome; but you have a problem when one type of gun needs a lot more effort to defend against than another gun. Honestly, I loved the Banshee before the fire chance, it laid out nasty damage at close ranges.
Second, the heavy flak is pretty useless now. The other three medium weapons can kill on their own but the heavy flak needs another gun to be effective, which is a problem. It's not very reliable on a Goldfish because it takes too long to bring your side guns to bear, and by the time you strip their armor and bring the heavy flak into position, they have fixed it. I rushed a heavy flak only galleon with a squid and killed it, THAT is a problem. The fact that a squid can take multiple heavy flak shots and be fine is kind of strange. It's just logic that any fleet's core will be made up of flak, but with the way things are now, I'd rather have a Hwacha or Hellhound.
I have my reservations about the banshee too, but i think its too soon to render an OP judgement. Tactics are still being thrown around to counter the newer meta. Even im still figuring out the best ways to counter banshee spams. Its hard to revert from ignoring them since they were pretty worthless before, to something very usable in the game now that can kill you if ignored.
I will say it once again, that heavy flak is not useless. I do admit that using it on a goldfish is harder now. It has to be used it unison with your teammate to be at its most effective if you go that route. The side gun method does work (ive done it) but is difficult to time perfectly. Youre right that it works at its best with another gun helping it, which i dont see as a weakness for this reason. Hwacha can disable a ship pretty hard. But how many volleys, without any other intervention, does it take to kill it? A lot. You got to ram or use another gun to really get that killing power. Heavy Carronade can pluck balloons and chew handily through armor. How about that hull? It takes awhile on its own, and it is normally helped by the ground grinding through the hull with it. Lumberjack? Its hard as well, because the initial hits are easy. Hitting an out of control ship with a Lumberjack is not easy. Its best for locking down a target, and helping with other guns or a teammate to finish them. Flak is no different. Its armor damage is average. Not going to insta kill anything. But if you get 2 full damage shots of flak on the bare hull, thats usually a kill. If not just rinse and repeat. Again, it needs help. They all arguably need help to kill they way they do.
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I think the Goldfish is suffering worse than the Galleon with the cumulative changes to medium weapons. The Galleon can fall back to the long-range support role but the Goldfish was always seen as the hunter-killer able to operate very effectively on it's own. That made it first choice for a lot of Captains playing pick-up games. Goldfish Captains now have to coordinate for maximum effectiveness, and that doesn't come naturally to everyone, and isn't always easy to set-up in a pick-up match.
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I'm sure it's just my stubbornness getting in the way, I'll get use to the way things are eventually.
However, the new way that the gun's stats are displayed I do not like. I need numbers. The seconds it takes to reload, damage, and range.
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I'm sure it's just my stubbornness getting in the way, I'll get use to the way things are eventually.
However, the new way that the gun's stats are displayed I do not like. I need numbers. The seconds it takes to reload, damage, and range.
Now that I do agree with. That or an available table for us folk who appreciate hard numbers over general terms.
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I'm sure it's just my stubbornness getting in the way, I'll get use to the way things are eventually.
However, the new way that the gun's stats are displayed I do not like. I need numbers. The seconds it takes to reload, damage, and range.
Now that I do agree with. That or an available table for us folk who appreciate hard numbers over general terms.
Someone just needs to fix the table on the main website that someone broke when "Mine Launcher" appeared on it. All the details were there.
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Hi everyone,
I must say that I am really annoyed by all the rocket spam lately. Whenever I face one of those ships and he manages to hit a volley on my ship I am automaticly dead in the water and the battle instantly turns into a "how long will it take this time until they smashed us to the ground or rammed us to death"-thing. I don't see any way to counter this lame rocket spam without a perfect team setup. It's a terrible roflstomp tactic in random matches, easy to execute and way too rewarding...
Well that's my opinion anyways.
regards,
raubtier
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Hi everyone,
I must say that I am really annoyed by all the rocket spam lately. Whenever I face one of those ships and he manages to hit a volley on my ship I am automaticly dead in the water and the battle instantly turns into a "how long will it take this time until they smashed us to the ground or rammed us to death"-thing. I don't see any way to counter this lame rocket spam without a perfect team setup. It's a terrible roflstomp tactic in random matches, easy to execute and way too rewarding...
Well that's my opinion anyways.
regards,
raubtier
Are you referring to the Rocket Carrousel or the Hwacha? Or both?
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I think it is more the combination of both. Most times the Manticore Launcher (probably loaded with heavy clip) disables my main gun in an instant while dealing enough widespread damage to the other modules and the Carrousel finishes the job while denying any chance to recover.
edit: I mean they don't really deal "that" much damage, but you simply can't do anything. You can't fight back and you can't escape. They disable your entire ship with two salvoes and ram you until you're dead or smashed to the ground. So unfun...
edit2: All in all I think they are better in disabling than the Flamethrower AND have a better range.
regards,
raubtier
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I'm sure it's just my stubbornness getting in the way, I'll get use to the way things are eventually.
However, the new way that the gun's stats are displayed I do not like. I need numbers. The seconds it takes to reload, damage, and range.
Now that I do agree with. That or an available table for us folk who appreciate hard numbers over general terms.
We will make more specific information available in future level unlocks. The change to the UI is the most friendly for new players. For y'all advanced players, yeah it's not the most useful.
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Quote from: Captain Magellan on February 26, 2013, 02:37:26 pm
I'm sure it's just my stubbornness getting in the way, I'll get use to the way things are eventually.
However, the new way that the gun's stats are displayed I do not like. I need numbers. The seconds it takes to reload, damage, and range.
Now that I do agree with. That or an available table for us folk who appreciate hard numbers over general terms.
We will make more specific information available in future level unlocks. The change to the UI is the most friendly for new players. For y'all advanced players, yeah it's not the most useful.
Now I don't agree with that. I've been spending my time playing with all the new guys and they really don't understand the differences between damage types or exactly the difference between the damage the guns do. They don't know how to best utilize them but they keep getting hit with these things called "Banshees" and so they just load out their ship with these things and then they become extremely effective.
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Now I don't agree with that. I've been spending my time playing with all the new guys and they really don't understand the differences between damage types or exactly the difference between the damage the guns do. They don't know how to best utilize them but they keep getting hit with these things called "Banshees" and so they just load out their ship with these things and then they become extremely effective.
Monkey see, monkey do.
And when the start to wonder how they're getting hit from two map squares away they'll discover the Mercury.
When the wonder why their Banshees are out-of-action before they've closed to effective range they'll discover Heavy Clip and/or the Hwacha.
When they wonder why they're bouncing along the ground with a Goldfish/Squid hovering above their balloon and above the elevation of their Banshees they'll discover the Carronades.
New players will always be vulnerable to FOTM builds. You can't base you balance/patch strategy around such a fickle element of the player base. All you can do is encourage the more experienced players to pass some of their knowledge along. At the moment there are some crowd control issues in the Lobby that are inhibiting some of this knowledge transfer.
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I had no issues with the old gun stats when I was new, I had them easily memorized within a day or two. They are not complicated.
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I had no issues with the old gun stats when I was new, I had them easily memorized within a day or two. They are not complicated.
A—EFFING—MEN.
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New updates are in.
Hwacha (Previously hot fixed)
- Decreased AoE (6 from something crazy like 14)
Rocket Carousel
- Reduced AoE ( 3 from 8 )
- Increased Reload Time (6 from 4.5)
- Decrease Rate of Fire (2 shots/s from 2.8/s)
Lumberjack
- Decreased Arming time (0.8s from 1.2s)
- Increased Muzzle Speed (275m/s from 250m/s)
Harpoon
- Decreased Reload Time (4s from 5s)
- Harpoon Duration Increased (15s from 10s)
- Max Harpoon Length Increased (600m from 450m)
- Decreased Pull (40000N from 60000N)
- Changed 2nd Dmg (60 Piercing from 100 Shatter)
Other
- Flechette vs Armor Decreased (0.35 from 0.5) Data Entry Error in Last Update, this is the intended change.
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Do you mean the Carousel, not the Launcher?
Also, typing in 8 followed by a bracket gives you a smiley. Just something that needs to be fixed in that post.
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Other
- Flechette vs Armor Decreased (0.35 from 0.5) Data Entry Error in Last Update, this is the intended change.
That explains why Carronades were ridiculously effective after the patch.
I am looking forward to see how the Lumberjack and Manticore changes affect the game.
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So what about the rocket carousel?
Woops, yeah carousel.
Internal name was Rocket Launcher. Then someone decided to change it and confuse everyone in the office.
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Well, hopefully the reduced AOE of the Banshee will make it less effective. Will have to see how that goes.
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The lumberjack is already amazing in the hands of a strong gunner. This could really tip the balance in its favour.
Also happy to see the change to flechette. It's been hard to deal with carronades lately.
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Yeah we'll see. I just want people to even out the medium gun usage distribution. I rarely ever see jacks used. Ever.
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Well, to be fair, the Lumberfish was a monster when it first arrived. Matter of fact, I think I even cackled madly about it when my AI crew devastated the other testers on canyons.
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aaa so there was a change to the carranade, i kept getting my hull shredded when there was a carranade goldfish above me but i didnt know what was causeing it.
the changed to the harpoon will also hopefully make it more usefull with its longer range and duration.
i would still like to see a reduction on the carousels chance to cause fire stacks but i guess ill have to wait and see how this patch effects them
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i would still like to see a reduction on the carousels chance to cause fire stacks but i guess ill have to wait and see how this patch effects them
The reduction in the AOE will help reduce fire chances as that was a big factor into determining how many components went on fire. Theres a 30% to put one stack on AOE damage. Lower AOE radius will mean less components on fire.
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Still don't understand Muse's logic with the gun stats. Are new players less intelligent than us older players? Also, you claim that you don't want the skill in the game to be determined by levels, but if we gain more precise information on the guns that can extremely tip the game in our favor as we level up, isn't that contrary to that belief?
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Still don't understand Muse's logic with the gun stats. Are new players less intelligent than us older players? Also, you claim that you don't want the skill in the game to be determined by levels, but if we gain more precise information on the guns that can extremely tip the game in our favor as we level up, isn't that contrary to that belief?
The game benefits experience gained from playing it, not levels. There is no absolute advantage to levelling. Nothing scales or is modified by your level.
And yes, players with less intelligence will struggle - or rather, lazy players that don't investigate the community or pay attention to readily available information will find themselves disadvantaged.
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We will make more specific information available in future level unlocks. The change to the UI is the most friendly for new players. For y'all advanced players, yeah it's not the most useful.
I was referring to this quote Hubert Pickle.
EDIT:
And yes, players with less intelligence will struggle - or rather, lazy players that don't investigate the community or pay attention to readily available information will find themselves disadvantaged.
To fix the problem of lazy players, all ya have to do is implement the little explanation text into the old gun stats. "Hello all, I know ya don't want to research about the Hellhound, but that's OK! It's short range and kicks some major butt against the balloon, guns, and engines!"
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We will make more specific information available in future level unlocks. The change to the UI is the most friendly for new players. For y'all advanced players, yeah it's not the most useful.
I was referring to this quote Hubert Pickle.
EDIT:
And yes, players with less intelligence will struggle - or rather, lazy players that don't investigate the community or pay attention to readily available information will find themselves disadvantaged.
I hadn't seen that comment from Awkm, but tbh if Awkm got around to fixing the weapons table on the main website (which I think he admitted breaking himself) the data is there available to all anyway. He's only talking about a UI change, I don't think there is any weapon/ship performance data that's not theoretically available to all at the moment - has to be in theory until the website gets some attention.
However I agree with you that any change to the UI (including level of detail shown) should be an optional change available to all players regardless of their current level.. Awkm is (I think) the only member of the Muse team who has chosen to over-write his actual game levels with the impossible to achieve L99 across the board. I'm hoping that Clara or one of the other will reign in any L33T changes he might implement on the UI.
To fix the problem of lazy players, all ya have to do is implement the little explanation text into the old gun stats. "Hello all, I know ya don't want to research about the Hellhound, but that's OK! It's short range and kicks some major butt against the balloon, guns, and engines!"
That information is available now - between the current UI and the website. Again, it's a matter of fixing the website data. The website's currently so out of date it might be a different game.
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I hadn't seen that comment from Awkm, but tbh if Awkm got around to fixing the weapons table on the main website (which I think he admitted breaking himself) the data is there available to all anyway. He's only talking about a UI change, I don't think there is any weapon/ship performance data that's not theoretically available to all at the moment - has to be in theory until the website gets some attention.
Sure, all the info is out there, but seriously, should people have to go and hunt down info on some website? Why not just easily combine all the information right there in the game? All you have to do is combine the text explanation with the old numbers and everybody right there playing the game is pleased.
And an option to change the stats would be fine too but not as effective, because you would have to inform new players that the option is there.
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Sure, all the info is out there, but seriously, should people have to go and hunt down info on some website?
Yes. Life isn't a special needs group collective failure hug. Sometimes you'll have to get off your ass and go find out stuff for yourself.
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Yes. Life isn't a special needs group collective failure hug. Sometimes you'll have to get off your ass and go find out stuff for yourself.
You're right, life isn't a special needs group collective failure hug. BUT THIS ISN'T LIFE. It's a video game. And the people who don't have the time, or are wise enough to know they shouldn't spend most of their free time researching and playing this game should be able to quickly access the information they need to kick my little "can't get off the computer" butt. You don't need experience to beat people (though it helps), you need information and a good plan. People who just have the time to play one or two games a week should be able to get in the game, think "OK, so front shot gun to destroy balloon, left gatling to strip armor, right flak to blow 'em away" and see it work.
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Sure, all the info is out there, but seriously, should people have to go and hunt down info on some website? Why not just easily combine all the information right there in the game? All you have to do is combine the text explanation with the old numbers and everybody right there playing the game is pleased.
And an option to change the stats would be fine too but not as effective, because you would have to inform new players that the option is there.
You want to work for free? Do you have programming experience? Do you have UI experience?
I know I sound like a jerk but that's the place we're in. This is a terrible answer but you'll just have to deal with it for now. The format right now is the easiest to understand for newbies. Since y'all are dedicated enough to want it, you'll just have to look it up for now.
Like I've said before, we're going to offer the additional info at higher Gunner levels as a level achievement in a similar format as the manual.
That's the best we can do for now.
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You want to work for free? Do you have programming experience? Do you have UI experience?
Not that I am volunteering, but hypothetically if someone answered yes to those three questions would you let them run willy nilley through your source code?
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wait, you going to offer additional info for higher level gunners?..
as a pilot i think that its just as important for me to know as much about the guns as the gunner does.
the new layout for the guns stats does make it easyer to understand at first glance, but i would like to see some numbers in there with it like the weapons actual range instead of just '' far range'' though saying that its more of a minor annoyance than anything and i would much prefer you to spend time ironing out bugs n such, especialy that super slow mo bug in the 3v3 games
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You want to work for free? Do you have programming experience? Do you have UI experience?
I am sorry, I assumed something would be easy when I have no where near the experience you do. Forgive me, I stepped out of my bounds.
Though just to be honest, doing that (the above quote) would be pretty awesome. I'm in high school and looking to get into programming and I've been thinking about maybe volunteering at a local computer repair shop. Would it be alright if I directed an e-mail at you guys asking for some advice about things I should study, how competitive the game design business is, and the like?
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Okay let's lay off the UI related stuff in this thread as it has nothing to do with balance. Please address it in the Feedbacks sections.
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New updates are in.
Hwacha (Previously hot fixed)
- Decreased AoE (6 from something crazy like 14)
Rocket Carousel
- Reduced AoE ( 3 from 8 )
- Increased Reload Time (6 from 4.5)
- Decrease Rate of Fire (2 shots/s from 2.8/s)
Lumberjack
- Decreased Arming time (0.8s from 1.2s)
- Increased Muzzle Speed (275m/s from 250m/s)
Harpoon
- Decreased Reload Time (4s from 5s)
- Harpoon Duration Increased (15s from 10s)
- Max Harpoon Length Increased (600m from 450m)
- Decreased Pull (40000N from 60000N)
- Changed 2nd Dmg (60 Piercing from 100 Shatter)
Other
- Flechette vs Armor Decreased (0.35 from 0.5) Data Entry Error in Last Update, this is the intended change.
I think these changes look good. Thank you Muse-Team for your effort.
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Muse Clara (Jess) just notified me that someone thought I was inflammatory. If you don't know me, I'm blunt and I'll give it to you straight. I personally don't think it helps to dress things up for you (high-level players discussing balance) because y'all get it—we're all here discussing advanced topics. I don't mean to intimidate anyone. So I apologize if I frightened anyone.
To clarify, there are a lot of things that we can do to make the game better. Everyone is on point with a lot of the suggestions you make. However, a lot of the time we can't turn them into actionable tasks because we're burdened with other stuff like fixing server lag and other game breaking bugs. So yeah, I'd love a toggle to to get those real numbers in there. We had it before, but it made no sense to newbies without the proper context or experience. To us it all makes sense because we get it, we intimately know the feel of these guns. They're our babies. We know when the babies are hungry. We know when they're about to poop. We know when they're tired and want to go to sleep. We know when they're misbehaving and need a good spanking.
And if you didn't know me, I'm batshit crazy and run with metaphors. I guess it comes from looking at balance spreadsheets all day long :P
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Aww but like pooping the ballons with harpoons (pun intended ^_^). No more of that?
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How to fix unbalanced teams in AM
Quote
Here was an idea I had for fixing unbalanced teams in AM. Since in the AM pre release trailer Muse said that 16 people would enter the world at a time. I have 2 separate ideas.
1. Have 16 people in the world as in guild wars. Then have enemies balanced to your level.
2. Have a number of people per faction in the world but have them be auto selected to be the same-ish levels of skill unless invited by a friend. So everyone in the area would either be randomly chosen based on character/ship level (there should also be a way to invite friends.
Just some ideas.
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Question about AOE dammage:
You mentioned earlier that if a component is destroyed the damage is transferred to the hull. What if an AOE from a single hit catches both the hull and a destroyed component. Does the damage get doubled? That is the hull takes a hit from the AOE then the component transfers its destroyed damage to the hull as well. Also what happens if two or more destroyed components are are in the AOE?
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Question about AOE dammage:
You mentioned earlier that if a component is destroyed the damage is transferred to the hull. What if an AOE from a single hit catches both the hull and a destroyed component. Does the damage get doubled? That is the hull takes a hit from the AOE then the component transfers its destroyed damage to the hull as well. Also what happens if two or more destroyed components are are in the AOE?
Something can't be hit more than once. We have checks in place for that.
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Just something that has been noticed by a few people including myself, after a certain level of competency with engineering fire seems under powered.
Awkm
Since the gauntlet has been thrown on to the table, personally I have pretty varied software development skills (c++, c#, java, js, sql, lua, php, bash, pretty much most paradigms except those used by erlang and lisp) and in regards to UI development I've been a professional web developer by day for the past two years. I'm also aware of how painful floaters can be, and personally I dislike them for accessibility reasons.
I'm time and money poor, but I'm willing to donate time for in-kind support.
If you would like further information, contact me at my accounts email address.
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Fire is a tough thing to balance, it seems. It used to be necessary to have a flamer on every ship, since it disabled guns immediately. With the way it is currently, it's not that useful, I must agree.
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Yeah I don't know if changing the actual behavior of fire would be beneficial. Just something I thought is worth mentioning.
Is fire damage linear?
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Yeah I don't know if changing the actual behavior of fire would be beneficial. Just something I thought is worth mentioning.
Is fire damage linear?
There are two types of fire damage. There's fire damage done by the gunfire, and fire damage done by the fire stacks themselves. Basic fire damage works like any other damage type (piercing, explosive, etc), while the damage done by fire stacks works differently. It does 8 base damage per second, with an additional 2 damage per second for every extra stack (up to 20 stacks).
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I still find fire effective on my ships, but it's after keeping that fire on for a LONG time when you just happen to catch your opponent in an awkward position. But once you've spent that amount of time, you're disabling EVERYTHING on the ship, hull, balloon, guns, engines, everything is going to break and keep breaking, it's pretty rewarding for a slot that you otherwise wouldn't use. My feared Pyramidion trifecta uses flames to destroy components to either distract the enemy engineers or force them to stay in one place and take continued fire. Even if the enemy is chemspraying everything they can reach, they're going to miss SOME component and that component is going to break.
I suppose I just don't go into it expecting all the guns to be disabled like it's the light version of the Hwacha, I treat it like a very dangerous backup weapon that can become a primary weapon under the right circumstances.
Incendiaries are pretty fucking useless, though. Either you go all in with the fire or you don't, anything halfway is just going to be immediately extinguished.
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Agreed on incendiary. The only use it have right now is as a third ammo on heavy flak/lumberjack, but even there heavy's generally a better choice to account for right side hwachas.
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Hell, I just tell my gunners to bring heatsink. At least then if the Engineer goes on strike you can sorta handle the fire damage on your gun.
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I agree that incendiary ammo has more drawbacks than advantages with how fire behaves right now. Otherwise I think fire is good as is.
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The problem isn't that fire is weak, it's that chem spray is super op. A well crewed ship can make flame threat nonexistent.
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Yeah, there's virtually no reason to use a traditional extinguisher. The only time an extinguisher is better is when the fire has a huge stack, ad if it's getting a huge stack the whole ship is getting flamethrowered so it's better to just rebuild it and immediately chemspray it.
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Yeah, there's virtually no reason to use a traditional extinguisher. The only time an extinguisher is better is when the fire has a huge stack, ad if it's getting a huge stack the whole ship is getting flamethrowered so it's better to just rebuild it and immediately chemspray it.
Waiting for a rebuild though can be costly in a crisis moment where you need to be completely mobile and repairing multiple components. Once the banshees got balanced, I've been using extinguisher ever since. One-and-done to get rid of any stack, and on to repair other things.
Not saying chem is worthless or anything, just personal preference.
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What if fire that wasn't tended increased in intensity and spread on its own to other components?
Could be random, could go to the hull, then jump to the balloon. The intensity of the current stack is transferred as well? Well, maybe not the full stack.
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Clarification on how fire operates:
There is only 1 kind of fire:
- When there is 1 charge on a component, there is 8 fire DPS applied to that component (base fire DPS)
- Each additional charge applies another 2 fire DPS per charge
- A component can have a maximum of 20 charge
- Guns will be disabled if it reaches 8 or more charges and must be extinguished until below 8 charges to be used again
- As a gun takes any kind of damage, it's turn speed is decreased
Explosive damage causes a chance of fire ignition on a component depending on the amount of damage it does. The more dmg a single hit of explosive projectile does, the more chance the component will ignite with a charge of fire.
I'll double check with what we can do with fire but we've had ideas for them spreading at some point. The question is a display issue and what we think makes sense enough without being silly. Like green fire? I don't know if we would like it as far as art direction goes. Again, I'll double check.
I'll take a look at Chemical Spray.
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Isn't it an additional 2 DPS per charge? I'm pretty sure that's what it said in the patch notes.
As for chem spray, and fire extinguisher for that matter, it would probably make a lot of sense if their cooldown times actually meant something. As they are now, you just need to whack the component with a spanner and extinguish immediately afterwards, and only the spanner's cooldown will apply. Fire would be more effective if you weren't able to extinguish during cooldowns.
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I may be a bit late to the debate, but I personally don't like my crew taking Chem Spray and buff hammer because it puts a glow on your components. This glow is sometimes visible through cloud cover and makes your ship more vulnerable to "blind fire". Like wise I love it when an enemy ship has glowing components because it makes shooting them through clouds easier.
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After tailing a spire for several minutes (yes, minutes) multiple times in a squid, each time with constant flame/light carronade fire, taking no fire, it seemed to me that with even a moderately competent engineer, a ship can defeat the flamethrower.
This may not be a deep-in-the-numbers solution, but destroying a component currently douses the fire. Perhaps the fire should continue through to the hull after the armor is destroyed, rather than being extinguished? This would put a little more damage on the hull, and make balloon attacks more dangerous, since to effectively combat ground collision damage you would have to extinguish the fire and repair the armor, rather than letting the sequential armor failures extinguish the fire for you.
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I may be a bit late to the debate, but I personally don't like my crew taking Chem Spray and buff hammer because it puts a glow on your components. This glow is sometimes visible through cloud cover and makes your ship more vulnerable to "blind fire". Like wise I love it when an enemy ship has glowing components because it makes shooting them through clouds easier.
Yeah, I've noticed this too. However the flame-thrower is a short range weapon so if your engineers are using chem-spray, chances are the enemy can already see you and are flaming you, irrelevant of glow.
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Flame throwers aren't the only weapon that can cause fires. The Banshee, Artemis, Flack, and Hwacha all have a percentage chance of lighting a fire. There are times where I have asked my Hwach gunner to spray the clouds to find a target. We may only get one or two hits, but if a few seconds later we see a blue dot in the cloud my gunner knows exactly where to shoot the next volley. Also some engineers think it is a good idea to prespray components before going into combat so they won't catch fire. However this can ruin a stealth approach.
Chem spray is a fine item, but it is not the be all end all of fire control. Captains and engineers should be aware of the risks. Especially captains since it is their job to be aware of the over all situation.
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Topic has been locked, new threads started.
GUNS Balance Questions and Concerns v1.2
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,771.0.html
SHIPS Balance Questions and Concerns v1.2
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,772.0.html
MAPS Balance Questions and Concerns v1.2
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,773.0.html