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Dev App Testing / Re: New Gun and Stamina System Testing
« on: February 08, 2015, 10:38:04 am »
Ships
I'm okay with the ship adjustments to this point. For the most part the changes were rather minor and I didn't feel they broke the game or its systems. I didn't notice a sizeable difference in the Spire and Pyramidion, and I take that as a good thing.
However, as a full time Squid/Goldfish pilot I am against the health increase in the Squid. I firmly believe that for the squid to be a viable choice and balanced, it needs to be able to outmanoeuvre every other ship but the consequences of any mistake must be severe and immediate. I've always seen the Squid as the Golden Gun; a terrifying weapon in the right hands but as deadly to its user as much as it is to its enemy. Newer players should be afraid of flying the Squid and experienced players should be flawless in their execution.
But if you're determined to add some health to the Squid I would prefer it if you added it to the armour instead of the hull. This way at least the Squid will still go down quickly unless the pilot and main engineer are conscious of this weakness.
With the incoming Squid mobility buffs I feel we're finally starting to get to a point of tactical balance for each role. As i've understood the roles, the Goldfish is the jack-of-all-trades but a master of none, the Junker is a light Galleon but lacking the Galleon's stoping power and endurance, the Squid is a knife in the dark but useless in an open brawl, the Galleon is the king of control but slow to a fault, the Pyramidion is a drag racer but in every sense of the word, and the Spire and Mobula are cannons but made of glass and vapour.
The Squid needs to be difficult to fly for the sake of the game's tactical balance. Otherwise with a more forgiving health increase player's will start complaining about the Squid being too OP. Then to not appear as reversing your stance, you'll inevitably increase each ship's turning speed to compensate for this. And then we'll end up exactly where we are at this point, with a Squid that is easily countered by Pyramidions that are able to turn on a dime and Goldfish that are fill the role of the Squid better than the Squid itself.
Minotaur
The potential in this new weapon is incredibly exciting. Flying the Goldfish I purposely got pinned down by two Minotaurs on a Galleon and while it was difficult to control, I wasn't in any major threat due to the low damage of the cannons. However, the gun's utility by itself is underpowered and also with a limited effectiveness on the Goldfish only. At this stage the gun has no utility on a Spire or Goldfish. I feel that an individual cannon should be able to pin down/reposition any ship (with the exception of the Galleon) with an experienced gunner but that ship should have the opportunity to escape so there is no frustration. I would suggest that the gun is buffed but handicapped with a long reload time (the Hwacha timing is a good starting point) so that a ship can escape from the Minotaur's arcs.
The question is what happens when a Galleon is equipped with two Minotaurs? I feel that to mitigate any potential problems you need to keep the Minotaur ineffective at dealing out damage. With this you can, in theory, keep a single ship locked down with one gunner alternating between both cannons during the reload cycle but you'd be unable to kill said ship. This scenario is no different from the current double Hwacha load-out that some crews use to disable a single ship and hold them in place while their team fights elsewhere.
Capture the Point Logic
Interesting ideas, didn't get to test them out completely but I think there is potential. But I do stress that there does need to be a clear indication that you know that it is your ship that is on the point and not just your allies. Plenty of games have been confusing due to a new pilot that doesn't know if they're on the point or not or even where the point is.
Stamina
I'm going to be brutally honest here: SCRAP IT
This is a terrible solution especially when simple fixes exist. This is a solution that will break the game and ruin all the game's current philosophies of class balance, ship roles, and strategic engagements.
This is an unwanted layer of gameplay complexity, it's thematically out of place, and in the end it won't solve any of the issues that it sets out to do but instead it will create a plethora of new problems. For example, already we've found that if you have stamina and apply it as you're being rammed you don't get any damage from the ram until the stamina wears off. This is ridiculous when I can play chicken with my Mobula, full speed and with kerosine, against a moonshining Galleon and suffered no hull or amour damage.
A pilot already has tools that they can utilise but if you want them to be faster then lower the penalties or increase the effects. An engineer already spends most of their time stuck in the balloon or hull so they don't need to spend time flying off the ship too. And to make the gunner viable all you need to do is add an ammo that fires normal ammo but allows the gunner to go beyond a gun's standard axis of fire or you could add a engineer tool that would have the same arc increasing effect but since the engineers already have their core load-outs it would make sense for a gunner to specialise and bring the tool instead. All of these are immediate solutions that don't take long to balance and would add to the game in a more meaningful way than this broken concept.
I don't mean to insult who ever came up with this idea but the stamina system is a bad idea and for the sake of the game, the players, and the dev team: SCRAP IT
I'm okay with the ship adjustments to this point. For the most part the changes were rather minor and I didn't feel they broke the game or its systems. I didn't notice a sizeable difference in the Spire and Pyramidion, and I take that as a good thing.
However, as a full time Squid/Goldfish pilot I am against the health increase in the Squid. I firmly believe that for the squid to be a viable choice and balanced, it needs to be able to outmanoeuvre every other ship but the consequences of any mistake must be severe and immediate. I've always seen the Squid as the Golden Gun; a terrifying weapon in the right hands but as deadly to its user as much as it is to its enemy. Newer players should be afraid of flying the Squid and experienced players should be flawless in their execution.
But if you're determined to add some health to the Squid I would prefer it if you added it to the armour instead of the hull. This way at least the Squid will still go down quickly unless the pilot and main engineer are conscious of this weakness.
With the incoming Squid mobility buffs I feel we're finally starting to get to a point of tactical balance for each role. As i've understood the roles, the Goldfish is the jack-of-all-trades but a master of none, the Junker is a light Galleon but lacking the Galleon's stoping power and endurance, the Squid is a knife in the dark but useless in an open brawl, the Galleon is the king of control but slow to a fault, the Pyramidion is a drag racer but in every sense of the word, and the Spire and Mobula are cannons but made of glass and vapour.
The Squid needs to be difficult to fly for the sake of the game's tactical balance. Otherwise with a more forgiving health increase player's will start complaining about the Squid being too OP. Then to not appear as reversing your stance, you'll inevitably increase each ship's turning speed to compensate for this. And then we'll end up exactly where we are at this point, with a Squid that is easily countered by Pyramidions that are able to turn on a dime and Goldfish that are fill the role of the Squid better than the Squid itself.
Minotaur
The potential in this new weapon is incredibly exciting. Flying the Goldfish I purposely got pinned down by two Minotaurs on a Galleon and while it was difficult to control, I wasn't in any major threat due to the low damage of the cannons. However, the gun's utility by itself is underpowered and also with a limited effectiveness on the Goldfish only. At this stage the gun has no utility on a Spire or Goldfish. I feel that an individual cannon should be able to pin down/reposition any ship (with the exception of the Galleon) with an experienced gunner but that ship should have the opportunity to escape so there is no frustration. I would suggest that the gun is buffed but handicapped with a long reload time (the Hwacha timing is a good starting point) so that a ship can escape from the Minotaur's arcs.
The question is what happens when a Galleon is equipped with two Minotaurs? I feel that to mitigate any potential problems you need to keep the Minotaur ineffective at dealing out damage. With this you can, in theory, keep a single ship locked down with one gunner alternating between both cannons during the reload cycle but you'd be unable to kill said ship. This scenario is no different from the current double Hwacha load-out that some crews use to disable a single ship and hold them in place while their team fights elsewhere.
Capture the Point Logic
Interesting ideas, didn't get to test them out completely but I think there is potential. But I do stress that there does need to be a clear indication that you know that it is your ship that is on the point and not just your allies. Plenty of games have been confusing due to a new pilot that doesn't know if they're on the point or not or even where the point is.
Stamina
I'm going to be brutally honest here: SCRAP IT
This is a terrible solution especially when simple fixes exist. This is a solution that will break the game and ruin all the game's current philosophies of class balance, ship roles, and strategic engagements.
This is an unwanted layer of gameplay complexity, it's thematically out of place, and in the end it won't solve any of the issues that it sets out to do but instead it will create a plethora of new problems. For example, already we've found that if you have stamina and apply it as you're being rammed you don't get any damage from the ram until the stamina wears off. This is ridiculous when I can play chicken with my Mobula, full speed and with kerosine, against a moonshining Galleon and suffered no hull or amour damage.
A pilot already has tools that they can utilise but if you want them to be faster then lower the penalties or increase the effects. An engineer already spends most of their time stuck in the balloon or hull so they don't need to spend time flying off the ship too. And to make the gunner viable all you need to do is add an ammo that fires normal ammo but allows the gunner to go beyond a gun's standard axis of fire or you could add a engineer tool that would have the same arc increasing effect but since the engineers already have their core load-outs it would make sense for a gunner to specialise and bring the tool instead. All of these are immediate solutions that don't take long to balance and would add to the game in a more meaningful way than this broken concept.
I don't mean to insult who ever came up with this idea but the stamina system is a bad idea and for the sake of the game, the players, and the dev team: SCRAP IT