Messages

1

Gameplay / Re: 1.3.3 GUNS AND GUNNER SKILL BALANCE

« on: October 30, 2013, 01:06:31 am »

I feel it's too blanket a statement to say that other builds/setups/strategies were 'forgotten' with point blank gat/morter. Frankly, putting it that way is simply wrong. I didn't see that at all in my experiences. Our clan was one of the only ones using it at the competitive level. In pubs, I constantly see a variety of different builds. I personally use a variety of different builds. The gat/morter was never about 'safe', it was about play style and strategy, at least to me.

At this point, I'm simply tired of trying to defend it. I personally enjoyed aggressive play and the intensity of a close, brawling dogfight, but apparently I'm in the minority, and that isn't what the spirit, nor the future, of this game is about. I'm afraid I'll have to retract my earlier sentiment, I don't feel I'll be playing this game much any more.

Muse, you've done a great job so far and I wish you the best in your future endeavors, I still respect you guys very much as a development team. I want to be clear that I'm not doing this as a way to influence or push any decisions you make with the game, I'm simply not interested in the direction the intended spirit of the game, as you described it, will be taking it and I find it disheartening that I've been defending a tactic that I and my clan mates enjoyed very much that, evidently, was 'broken'. My apologies to those I've argued with on the subject, clearly I was in the wrong.

To the community at large, I've enjoyed your company and I've had a lot of fun flying with you guys. Those who are inclined, my steam is garou1911, feel free to keep in touch, and maybe we can play other games together.

My time in Icarus was fun and I'm sad to see it end. I hope the rest of you have fun and are excited for the developments that are on the way. Keep the community classy, it's one of the better ones out there.

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Gameplay / Re: 1.3.3 GUNS AND GUNNER SKILL BALANCE

« on: October 29, 2013, 04:16:52 pm »

Play some matches and talk about your experience.  Not about what you think your experiences will be.

I'll admit that some of what I'm saying is speculation, clearly I haven't had the opportunity to play in a competition since the patch went live, however I have played some matches and my concerns about the gat in particular stem from that.

That said, I will be taking your advice, and in all fairness, it's a valid request. I'll give it a week and give everything a chance, and come back to comment then.

-Edit-
I'd also like to reiterate that despite the heated nature of the conversation at hand, I really do have a lot of respect for the Muse team. I feel you guys are far more involved than most game developers, and it's very seldom you'll see a dev actually join in a conversation on the boards to discuss these sorts of things with the community. It's a big part of why even if I find I hate the changes, I'll probably still play regardless xD

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Gameplay / Re: 1.3.3 GUNS AND GUNNER SKILL BALANCE

« on: October 29, 2013, 04:08:27 pm »

[...]

I'm not going to dignify this with a response. Feel free to message me privately if you want to hash this out further.

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Gameplay / Re: 1.3.3 GUNS AND GUNNER SKILL BALANCE

« on: October 29, 2013, 03:22:12 pm »

Unless Im fighting the Paddling, not really. Sure you seem some here and there but they are not this staple of competitive play.

I respectfully disagree. I've seen them from COx, Gent, your own clan, and the Ducks of course. Though COx isn't as involved in the competitive scene, that's more or less a who's who of the current competitive circuit. I can't help but feel I'm also leaving someone out (apologies if I am), but frankly you're going to face one, if not all of those clans in any given competition, and they're likely to have a galleon in tow.

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Gameplay / Re: 1.3.3 GUNS AND GUNNER SKILL BALANCE

« on: October 29, 2013, 03:15:53 pm »

Against a sniping team maybe, but against another brawling team I disagree.

Sniping ships have huge disadvantages that can be exploited when within 400 meters, so in that case after the "dance" you don't need to do much else but take advantage of their weakness. Though insta-killing them is still not exactly a fair fight.

That said, I don't think sniping teams should be able to insta-kill either and sniping should just be a support kinda thing. However I don't see how sniping is that much of a problem right now when all you have to do is disable them.

Go play against the Gents or the Paddling or the Merry Men or Cohort. Then talk to me about disabling them or how dis-advantageous it is to be a sniper.

Sniping is very, very potent ATM at the upper levels. Not much else is.

Yeah, the patch will bring variety to the pubs. At the competition level, not much has changed and there are even fewer counters to the galleon/junker combo. Frankly, I'm fine with it being that potent. Again, the skill/reward ratio is fine there. However, if I can close that range by a combination of skill and luck, now what? The galleon/junker can turn close range on me, and now they're even more able to completely disable me. What options do the brawlers have really? Damage output was it. Disabling ships have always had the ability to disable, against both brawlers and snipers, and a good pilot and crew have always been able to make that work. Brawlers have frankly very few viable options, and with this nerf, even less so.

To me, it doesn't make sense. If the idea is to promote variety, why not make the other guns more viable? Consider the light weapons for a moment:

Four have any real hull stripping capability: The mercury, carronade, gat, and hades. Of those only one is mid range, and now it's been nerfed to close range. Of the others, one is extremely close range, and the others are extremely long range and extremely long range with a difficult learning curve and an arming time.

Then you have your three 'killing' weapons, the explosive high-DPS that take care of the rest after the hull is down: The flak, morter, and artemis. Again, one was mid range, but is now only effective at close range. The other two are long range and long range with an arming time.

The rest I'd consider 'disablers', though I'll grant that a banchee -can- kill (in fact, I have a junker that proves it). My point is, there's very little middle ground any more. You're either long range or very close, and those who choose the latter are going to have a rough time of it with these nerfs.

The point is, while I'm all for options the close range player hasn't exactly had a ton of variety to choose from, and for the new players, a lot of the weapons either aren't that effective (disable builds take a long time to kill), or are difficult to use (ever watch a newbie ship try to pull off a flak/hades build?). If the complaint is that too many close range builds use gat/morter, then why hasn't the answer been to give them somthing else that works instead of taking away the few things that do?

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Gameplay / Re: 1.3.3 GUNS AND GUNNER SKILL BALANCE

« on: October 29, 2013, 01:29:39 pm »

This is a question for people in the competitive scene.

How do you propose to balance it so that brawling with gat/mort becomes viable once again among the upper tier teams, but not have it dominate the pub scene for the lower to mid tier teams?

TBH, that is not, nor never was it the discussion I intended to have, and seems to be a question for another thread.

My intention in referring to competitive teams was simply to eliminate variables. If both teams are on equal footing in regards to skill and coordination, it's a lot easier to discuss balance in terms of tactics and loadouts.

Now to the complaints about short vs long. Idk. Need to play and see. It's easy to look at the changes and throw up your hands and say "MEH, LONG RANGE OP." In reality, it'll require more finesse to get close and utilize the short loadouts.

Personally, at no point am I saying 'long range OP'. I feel it has a sufficient skill/reward payoff. I'm merely referring to viable methods of countering it that don't involve using it. Let's face it, if you're going to get into the competitive scene, countering the long range galleon is a thought at the front of the collective mind of any clan.

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Gameplay / Re: 1.3.3 GUNS AND GUNNER SKILL BALANCE

« on: October 29, 2013, 09:23:25 am »

Really now? If you're going to play Bf4 by all means do so, but not because of the theoretical uselessness of everything other than sniping against a handful of incredibly good snipers. Might want to actually play first and see how it pans out, maybe try some combinations you haven't before, who knows!

You don't have to justify playing some other game to us -_-

Look, do us a favor and follow the line of discussion before replying to it and making a ham fisted attempt to invalidate someone else's opinion. We're talking about the patch in regards to competitive play. That 'handful of incredibly good snipers' accounts for a solid portion of the teams currently engaged in the competitive scene. We are not talking about just hopping into pub matches and playing randoms.

If you have an opinion on the patch, by all means, please share your thoughts, but if you're going to try to tear down someone else's thoughts on the matter, at least have the courtesy to do it in context.

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Gameplay / Re: 1.3.3 GUNS AND GUNNER SKILL BALANCE

« on: October 29, 2013, 08:06:06 am »

Ok, as much as I'd like to be weighing in on this debate, I do need to take a step back here and try to keep the peace. Much of this is devolving into rather heated and pointed attacks. Keep discussions based on the patch balance, please no attacks in any direction. Ya hear?

My apologies for going off topic, and I'd like to just go on record as saying that I respect most of the guys in Cake and I have a lot of fun flying with you guys when I get the chance.

Echoez makes a lot of good points. A good LJ/Flak duo with Loch rounds and a floating engie with a buff hammer can easily hull strip and one-shot essentially anything that isn't a galleon pretty reliably. Add a merc and a tri-artemis junker to the mix and just getting into the -old- gat/mort range was a Sisyphean task. With the range cuts combined with the previous hull nerf to the pyra (really the only ship that had the speed and armor to withstand the bombardment somewhat and get into brawling range) and the bigger weapon hitboxes (which I'll concede needed to be fixed), what answer is there?

I've never complained about sniper setups (match length aside) because I always felt that with skill, tactics, and a little luck, they could be beaten or at least countered. Now, I'm not so sure. It really feels like now the only way to combat sniping is with sniping, and that's just never been my preferred play style. Again, I'm going to give the patch a fair shake, but from what I've seen so far, I honestly don't see another outcome.

And again, I'm not speaking of pubs, but rather the upper tier teams who use sniping and do it well (MM, Gents, Paddling, and COx come to mind, much respect to each). Maybe I'm wrong, but I just don't see an alternative to combating it.

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Gameplay / Re: 1.3.3 GUNS AND GUNNER SKILL BALANCE

« on: October 29, 2013, 07:24:27 am »

Additionally, given your aversion to anything 'meta' in Cake, you'll forgive me if I don't take your assessment of the skill required to use one seriously. If the topic was incendiary rounds I'd be all ears. In this case, you're talking out of the part you should be sitting on.

Let me put it this way: I don't sew, so I damned sure wouldn't give my opinion on the skill required to crochet. At best I'd be a fool for trying, and at worst I'd just be full of it. Dig?

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Gameplay / Re: 1.3.3 GUNS AND GUNNER SKILL BALANCE

« on: October 29, 2013, 07:11:47 am »

@ Garou
No, it never required skill, you are deluding yourself if you think that's the case. It just required crew coordination, minimal crew coordination I might add.
Charging in is difficult? Seriously? Going in a straight line towards an enemy ship is difficult? Exactly HOW desperate are you guys to keep the meta inside your comfort zone?

Oh get off your high horse. You know what, I'm fine with experimentation. I'm fine with wanting to try different things. More power to you. But complaining about 'meta' when you use bad ship builds just smacks of hurt feelings and a fundamental misunderstanding of the game's core mechanics. You know why you have trouble with 'meta' builds in Cake? It's because you go into a match with 3 banchees and 2 flame throwers and can't figure out why that doesn't work.

I love the Cake guys I play with, you know who you are, but I'm sick of hearing some of you whine so vocally about meta because your broken, self-nerfed builds don't work. Guess what, explosive damage doesn't work with explosive damage. Using a banchee/flamer might be fun, but it's not effective with how the mechanics are designed.

Try something that actually strips a hull some time. You'd be amazed at the results.

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Gameplay / Re: 1.3.3 GUNS AND GUNNER SKILL BALANCE

« on: October 29, 2013, 06:45:24 am »

I still haven't tested this new patch as much as others, but I think that a gat-mortar nerf was in order.
They might have overdone it though. The ideal result to me would have been no more one-clip kills, requiring metamydions and similar builds to have at least the time and skill to empty two magazines on the target before getting a kill. The range nerf wasn't really needed.

One-clip kills on the 'metamydion' (a phrase I personally loathe...) required skill. It took coordination between gunners, knowing your arcs and angles, and knowing how much clip to save for those kill shots. Gats required skill to land the shots needed for the strip and morters required patients, reflexes, and keen timing to be effective, especially at the competition level. Additionally, they require you to get up close and stay there. Charging in is difficult even for seasoned pilots, and on top of that it takes a rock solid engineer to keep the ship in one piece until you get there.

For everyone bemoaning how 'easy' gat/morter was and how 'OP' it was, I submit one simple, yet valid, question: Why are they so rare in upper tier competition teams? Let's ignore pubs for a moment and speak strictly of competitions and well organized clans, because pubs are a wildcard. You get players of varying skill and ability, and even when you get a ship of skilled players together there's no guarantee they're going to be on the same page.

Morter/gat pyras were never invincible. Granted, the ram kills needed to be toned back, but the gat/morter was neither as easy or as fool-proof as many have made them out to be, and for those who preferred alternatives there were equally effective options. There were also plenty of counters to them. Artemis, hwacha, lumberjack/heavy flak, or a skilled merc or mine gunner were all quite capable of dismantling a pyra, even pre-nerf. I speak from experience. We in Wolfpack are pretty well known for our 'metamydions', and I've been on the losing side a few times against very skilled teams. They could always be beaten if one was willing to design a ship to do just that.

I've said it for a long time, the crew makes the ship, not vice-versa. We've all seen both good and bad pyras, and everyone posting in this thread now has beaten at -least- one gat/morter pyra. They weren't nearly as imbalanced as they were made out to be, they just frustrated people because the tactic is basic: rush in and try for the quick kill. Because it's basic, everyone assumes that equates to not needing skill. However we've all seen what a bad gat/morter pyra looks like, and again I'll poise a question: If it requires no skill to use, and it's as OP as everyone says, why doesn't everyone who uses one win every time?

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Gameplay / Re: 1.3.3 GUNS AND GUNNER SKILL BALANCE

« on: October 29, 2013, 04:55:21 am »

This patch, they ignored the pyra, yay.

Not entirely. They made the guns on the pyra bigger, easier to hit targets.

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Gameplay / Re: 1.3.3 GUNS AND GUNNER SKILL BALANCE

« on: October 29, 2013, 02:35:41 am »

The hwacha has become interesting as well with the ship parts being easier to hit on ships. Any thoughts on that so far? It pounds very hard.

I personally feel that's another negative change. The hwacha didn't need the help. Regardless of what weapon you use to do it, disabling guns -should- be a skill shot. It shouldn't be 'easy', and it's another way that brawling has been made nearly obsolete. Now that it's easier than ever to completely disable a ship while it's on it's way in, why bother going in at all? Just camp on opposite sides of the map with lumberjacks and artemis rockets and go to town. Good long range galleons were hard enough to take down before, now they're ridiculous.

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Gameplay / Re: 1.3.3 GUNS AND GUNNER SKILL BALANCE

« on: October 29, 2013, 02:32:14 am »

The thing that irritates me about the gat nerf is that it took real skill to nail a gat clip from that far away (750m). I sincerely doubt that enough people were able to do it reliably enough to the point that it was an issue, and more to the point, I -liked- the fact that the gat took skill. In fact, I prided myself on it. Not to sound cocky, but very few people in the game were able to do what i could do with the gat, and it felt good to have that kind of mastery over it. Now you can only hit from so close a range that anyone can do it, and that, to me, just sucks.

As it stands, why even bother using a gat? You could take a carronade for hull stripping, and it has the added benefit of being able to pop balloons. It's only a 75m difference. I'll give this patch a chance but frankly I feel the gat had been tweaked enough by the last patch. It was already to the point that it took more than one clip to strip a hull against a moderately effective engineer.

I enjoy brawling. It's intense and it takes a skilled crew to do well. I'm all for giving long range players options, but I feel like those of us who prefer mid-to-short range engagements are getting the short end of the stick here. More to the point, look at the top competitive teams right now. They all use long range to great effect. Yeah, it takes skilled, coordinated crews, but it -should-. Do we really want the game to devolve into constant sniping matches? Matches that take 15 minutes per kill because everyone is camping, because you -have- to?

With all due respect to the programmers and devs (and I sincerely have a lot for you guys), I feel like some of these changes should get some input from the community before they go live. It's your game, but we're the ones playing it.

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Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Clan tags free for all

« on: October 28, 2013, 02:13:36 pm »

Speaking of which, I just got out of a match literally minutes ago where a group of trolls did the same thing, put on Wolf tags and behaved poorly while claiming to be the leadership. Again, they were low levels and not very good, so I'm not worried about people in the community mistaking them for us, but it does get a bit tiresome. I just logged out instead of reporting because I didn't feel like spending the energy. I'd rather do something else where I'm not being actively trolled.

I don't enjoy 'letting the trolls win' but sometimes you have to choose your battles. I'd rather just load up a different game than bicker over a few letters while a bunch of kids cackle in self-satisfaction. That, to me, is the issue. I only have a couple hours to play games before I need to get ready for work/get to bed for work the next day and that just isn't how I want to spend them. I'd rather play Icarus, but at the same time there's only so much trolling I'll tolerate before it just isn't worth it.

Please fix this.