Messages

631

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Team Stacking - Match Balance

« on: October 22, 2013, 06:50:41 pm »

First to Geno,

I should clarify that that is a hypothetical flow chart for how a queue/matchmaking system would possibly work. A lot of those systems are in the game (and that's good) and some others would have to be created. The overarching idea is to show it's possible to let players play with their friends, while also allowing for greater randomization and fair matches.




Next to Phoenix,

"Personally I don't see a problem with the game as far as stacking is concerned. If anybody joins and they see a high level crew they usually leave which leads to an empty lobby so you have people like me who are stuck in an empty lobby because we are high level..."

"...its about creating a team and developing as a team to be the best you can be and how can your team develop if you have to split up all the time to make it fair..."


You have actually illustrated some of the problem quite nicely, thank you.

Firstly you mention how your high skill team has to split up and work with new players to actually get the match going, and how that's not what you want to do. A very good point indeed. We don't want to force players apart from people they want to play with anymore than we want new players to stop playing after getting beaten by highly skilled and organized teams.

You want to make a great team and fight great opponents, showing off your skills. Shooting down rookies isn't nearly as exciting, and you don't get to be a better player by doing so.

And that's where matchmaking comes in. No longer do you have to sit in a lobby waiting for brave souls to show up. No longer do you have split your team just to get the ball rolling. You make your team, and the system finds enemies for you. Your team doesn't have to split up, and you'll be facing people who know their Spanner from their Heavy Clip. Still not good enough? Then you can always invite another clan for a match.


"Stop trying to make this game a ladder based system just leave it as it is, is it really that bad?"

I'm with you that the game should not be ladder based. I feel that splitting up the community into various chunks just isn't the right move, and would actually make finding matches more difficult. What I'm proposing is just using skill level to balance the teams. That's not saying everyone on the ship has to be between level 4-6, but rather that the average skill rating on each team should be similar. Meaning if you go into the random team queue, you could end up with a lvl 13, 2, 5, 6; and the other ship would have a similar range. (Of course I'm also proposing for a system that does a better job of evaluating skill).

So if you make your own team, and you're all lvl 10+, the system will try to find or generate a team with a similar average lvl.



"are there people leaving by the hundreds as they keep getting pounded on by high players not really, no. I play everyday and I rarely see more than 5 10+ players on during a weekday and any lower than that are usually just messing about in an ordinary game. There is no organised pub stomping you are seeing problems where problems do not exist."
[/b]


Now here's some more of the problem. Is the supposed pub stomping causing people to leave the game? You answer no, and then follow up by saying that you rarely see lvl 10+ players. Which is kind of contradictory. If new players stuck around longer, we'd have more mid-high level players. But are there hundreds of new players leaving the game? Yes actually.

http://steamcharts.com/app/209080#1y


That's a graph showing player numbers in GoIO over the past year, you can see high spikes during sale periods, followed by a rapid decline shortly after. During the recent October sale, the population rocketed over 2,000 players online at the same time. Before then it was at a steady 300 or so. Shortly after the sale period, the population drops back down dramatically; almost to exactly what it was before the sale.

You can see that player retention is a problem, particularly new players. This doesn't mean that getting crushed by highly skilled teams is the number one cause, but it is a thing that does in fact happen (I'm currently tracking the % of 'stacked' matches as well as the drop rate of teams that lose to a stacked team. I'm also not using the term 'stacked' in an offensive manner, just stating that one team holds a distinct advantage in experience and/or organization over the opposing team). Did you know that roughly 63% of the losing team in a 'stacked' match will drop out of the lobby?





@ dragonmere,

Everytime I hit enter, someone else responds. xD

I agree with you that the community is kind of small (see above). Part of my original proposal included this in the matchmaking. Where it would try to find a good match, and then start expanding the search to find the 'closest' fit. It may very well still be uneven, and that will reflect in the changes to rank/score post game. ie: if it is forced to match a group of amazingly perfect players against a team of people who keep shooting at their own ship, the winning team will have a negligible increase (if any) to their score/rank, where the losing team will have almost no (if any) decrease to theirs (assuming the better team won. If the underdogs get a victory, it would provide a large boost to them, and large decrease to the other team).


This is why the rank/score system would have to be carefully created. As I mentioned in my original post. >.> that no one read... *depressed*.
I also mention that any change to it could only occur in the matchmaking, meaning that if you did a custom match, it wouldn't make a difference. You'd have to punish people who leave more harshly, as well as making it easier to reconnect. I'll go ahead and try to create a hypothetical rank scoring system (different for each class) as an example of what I'm talking about later.


The system of avoiding stacked lobbies hurts the stacked team (making them wait for a long time or forcing them to 'bait' players in with colorful names). While forcing them to 'balance out' can force them to not play with the friends. And a lot of new players we used to have are not aware of the vast difference between themselves and the other teams of experienced players. With a queue/matchmaking system, they can slowly build up their skill as they get used to the game, and hopefully avoid the pub stomp.

Again, player retention. Our current system isn't very good at it. Maybe making things more balanced, and easier on everyone (high and low experience alike) will change that.

632

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Team Stacking - Match Balance

« on: October 22, 2013, 04:19:07 pm »

I don't believe anyone has suggested not allowing friends to fly together, or breaking up clans to force even teams. So I'm not sure why people keep bringing it up. My suggestion is based on the MOBA type games that do matchmaking queues, and... wait for it..... also allow you to group up with friends before entering said matchmaking queue.


-------------------------------
So for example, under this system you would group up with 7 of your friends, filling up two ships. For funsies, lets say one of your friends has a sudden urge to rush off on a long bio break due to questionably cheap mexican food, leaving you with 6 friends.

Step 1:
Form Crew - Invite all your friends to that crew, and enter queue when ready.

Step 2:
Fill up remaining slots. Since your premade crew isn't 100% full, the matchmaking system tosses a compatible person in there. (ie: it won't give you a second captain)

Step 3:
Depending on how the system is created, it will find/create an opposing team of similar skill level (the entire reason I suggested the rank/score system. Since we currently have nothing that quantifies skill)

Step 4:
It places both teams in the pre-match lobby. It is here that you can set up your ships, vote on the map, and finalize your loadouts before the match starts.

Step 5:
Play the match

Step 6:
Post-game lobby. It is at this point you can re-enter the queue or exit and return the main screen.

Step 7:
If you entered the lobby, do whatever. If you re-enter the queue, proceed to Step 2.

---------------------------------

There would have to be more included to make it function well, but it fills just about every desire/need.

633

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Team Stacking - Match Balance

« on: October 22, 2013, 03:22:10 pm »

As fantastic as it would be for players to police themselves and set up only fair matches, it doesn't happen. There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly we have to point out that it's not always the fault of the 'stacked team'. In many situations, they enter that lobby as a group looking for a challenge from similarly skilled players. But with the large variety of skill ranges, it will often start to fill with people who aren't nearly as experienced and coordinated. Once that happens, another 'stacked' team looking for a match will overlook that particular lobby because there's not enough room for all of them. Chances are they'd be forced to start their own lobby, also hoping for a skilled team to appear and face them, and the problem just multiplies.

Once the teams in the lobby realize that there's a skill gap between them, they can certainly try and correct the situation. This can be done by having one of the ships from the stacked team swap with one of the ships on the other team. We do have the ability to swap ships, you just have to enter the spectate and change places. A swap ship option would only help the problem of people showing up in the middle of the swap and taking their slots. The thing it wouldn't be able to help is people refusing to change places, which can happen and prevent the swap in the first place.

Then there's the likelyhood of the stacked team not wanting to swap. This most likely is not from their desire to win, but their desire to play together. That's why they formed up on the same team in the first place. With all of these blocks preventing an even match, players decide to proceed anyways, which can cause some people to lash out at the end of the match.


After re-raising the issue of stacked teams and the desire for even matches, I've spent more time observing matches in an effort to collect information. Seeing just how many matches are 'stacked', how many that looked stacked but really aren't, the win/loss rate of those matches, and the leave rate of the losing team. Needless to say, I spent a lot of time looking at a lot of matches. In all that time, there was only a single match that tried to balance itself.


So can we police ourselves in an effort to bring out fair matches? Yes. Are we likely to do so? No.


We will need some kind of system in the game to force/encourage balanced matches if they're going to occur with higher regularity. One that still lets us play with our friends of course. It's been done in other games, it shouldn't be impossible to do in this one.

634

The Pit / Re: Day One: Garry's Incident vs TB

« on: October 22, 2013, 01:17:48 pm »

All in all it's not that bad of a game. I mean yeah, it's a -really- bad game. But even with all the insane glitches that should have stopped being well before Beta, people could still have fun with it.

The real problem is the shady, almost childlike behavior of the company (the CEO in particular). Starting off with funding their own kickstarter to make it seem people were interested in it, creating false reviews of their game giving it undeserved and dishonest praise, followed by straight up bribing people to greenlight it with steam keys. While all of that is kind of skeevy at best, the move that sent the whole thing tumbling over a cliff was taking down TotalBiscuit's video. Seeing as he had the largest following and was taking the game seriously in his review, which was quite negative.

I got interested and did some digging on the steam forums, where I found happy little quotes from the developer like this:

Stephane:
"We can't add all gameplay element in the world, we are a indie studio and this game has already cost a %?$/ lot of money and debt !!!
If we can sell enough copy, then we can add new features in the game."


User:
"why are u shouting? im checking this forum and all of ur answers are rude and with "!!!""


Stephane:
"I'm not shouting, calm you self. I'm really not rude! An exclamation is not rude!"



Keeping it classy Stephane.



All in all, it doesn't seem to have affected their trend of losing players, which has been happening since it got on steam.

http://steamcharts.com/app/242800

635

The Pit / Day One: Garry's Incident vs TB

« on: October 21, 2013, 10:43:53 pm »

Anyone else following this happy little series of poorly made decisions (on the developers part)?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjTa_x3rbJE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfgoDDh4kE0




And more fun with it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SURg-VSIq7M

636

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Join Lobby -> Game starts instantly

« on: October 21, 2013, 09:59:06 am »

That would be a helpful feature. It doesn't happen too often, but it can be pretty painful when it does. A lot of the quirks go away as you finish loading up from a late join, but not having to deal with them in the first place would be ideal.

637

General Discussion / Re: Mobula Barrel Roll

« on: October 21, 2013, 08:50:50 am »

Wait, does it still count as a barrel roll if you don't make a full roll?

638

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Team Stacking - Match Balance

« on: October 21, 2013, 01:16:15 am »

I suppose we're trying to avoid conflict on both ends. Low experience players don't like losing so harshly, and high experience players get annoyed when people complain about them 'team stacking'.

I understand that for some the team stacking isn't intentional. Players are just trying to have fun with the their friends and clanmates. Maybe they are practicing for a tournament. The reason they all stay together in that lobby is because it's just easier that way. Instead of jumping from lobby to lobby looking for one that just happens to have 8 or so slots open on one side (near impossible to find, unless the lobby is just about dead anyways, nullifying the point of looking for it). So the chances of the organized teams actually running into each other for glorious combat is low. They'd have to bump into each other, their leaders would have to set up a private lobby with a password, give that password to the other 15 people and pile in.

And for a few matches it would be fun, but then it gets kind of boring fighting the same people over and over again, so they'd go their separate ways. Once again being in different lobbies and outclassing the majority of their opponents. And the thought of new opponents every round can get a bit exciting. Things don't get as stale and repetitive for them, encouraging them to stay longer.


So really it's not the stacked teams fault anymore than it's the new players fault; because honestly, they can each see the relative experience on each team and hopefully realize the situation.


All in all it's just a symptom of the lobby system we currently have. Which is why I mentioned a matchmaking/queue system being implemented. Keeps things fresh, and fair (if used along with some kind of balancing system).

639

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Team Stacking - Match Balance

« on: October 20, 2013, 10:33:48 pm »

Once issue I see with that is it's pretty simple to work around. Once they get flagged as stacked, they might just leave and reform in another lobby.

A great team of friends/clannies isn't a bad thing. It's just that whomping on new players leaves those new players with a bad taste in their mouth. Dramatically decreasing their enjoyment of the game, and in some cases causing them to give up on the game. We still don't want to punish them for playing with their friends.


In theory there should be no special system required. In a perfect world these teams would seek each other out, or try to shuffle, change ships, or whatever to try and create fair matches. For the most part, this does not happen. Nor do you very often see players with experience banding together to try and challenge those preformed teams. In some instances, when a valid opponent does appear, these stacked teams will just call it a day. You can conclude that these teams aren't overtly interested in seeking out fair matches. Whether it's because they want to win, they want to farm, or probably it's just too much effort for them to find another organized team in a match with enough slots for them all.



So based on some other feedback, we want a system that:

-Creates fair matches
-Lets us play with our friends
-Has no (or minimal) loopholes to stack teams
-Still has a place for organized teams to get together
-Doesn't discriminate based on rank/skill/experience
-Is simple

640

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Team Stacking - Match Balance

« on: October 20, 2013, 06:13:01 pm »

I would never suggest to absolutely force even teams. Players should still be able to set up matches where they can put players where ever. All I'd like is an option that lets players get into more fair matches. Think of it like an official and unofficial match choice. Where the official uses one of the suggested methods to sort of force and highly encourage even matches, and the unofficial uses the old system of people just piling in. But you would have to have a system to encourage players to use the 'official' matches more. Such as achievements, stats, and bounty systems only working there, where the unofficial is more of a fun practice with no repercussions.


I do like Richard's idea of staggering the limits (although I'm still pushing for my overtly complicated system), as this can help prevent the population from being squeezed into little chunks. We do have lots of players, but we don't have massive amounts of them. And the more we 'cut up' the population with limits (such as only rank 1-4, 3-5, 4-7, 6-10, etc), the harder it can become to fill the matches. The staggering can reduce this, but not remove it.

For example if we have 100 people online and we use strict limits (1-3,4-6,7-10) we could end up with a group of (40, 50, 10) respectively. If we stagger it (1-4, 3-5, 4-7, 6-10) we might end with (50, 40, 50, 20), since most people will qualify for at least two different divisions. This is highly exaggerated of course. But it shows the problem we might run into, with some groups getting quite low in numbers at certain times, making it difficult to find a match they qualify for.

641

General Discussion / Re: Mobula Barrel Roll

« on: October 20, 2013, 03:16:47 pm »

Someone might be playing too much. xD

642

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Team Stacking - Match Balance

« on: October 20, 2013, 10:59:55 am »

Match count does sound like a better indication of player experience. One thing I'd keep in mind is population though. The more we divide up the players, the harder it becomes to fill up the lobbies. It is a -lot- more feasible than a rank/score system based on skill/performance. Could always consider doing that along with some kind of queue system, so that instead of setting it to balance ranks/scores, you're balancing ships based on player experience (so you could end up with ships filled with a range of experienced players, as long as the other team has players within a similar range).

This also allows for a better coaching environment, since the higher experienced players can do their best to teach the less experienced; something they may not get in segregated matches (like NoWuffo pointed out).


-----------------------------------------


Personally I'd still like to see some skill or performance based rank. Just because of the fun of trying to get that number higher, a little more competitive setting. And also that both player level and game experience are only loosely related to skill level. You can have great players that just don't bother with achievements and so end up staying low level, and you can also have players with high levels because they spend all their time just trying to do the achievements (you've met these people, they're the ones that will start a match and burn moonshine for the full 240 seconds before actually trying to play; and then they'll keep going for ram kills.) Play time/match count is a perfect way to determine experience of a player, but lots of experience doesn't make them highly skilled. It's still a good way to estimate or guess their relative skill level.

------------------------------------------------------

Upon further reflection though, ranking/scoring players by skill may also lead to a more volatile community. As nice as it would be to see how you stack up against other players, and give you something to work at beyond achievements (as well as it being a balance method); some people might end up taking it too seriously. Since your personal performance is tied in with your teammates performance. One 'bad apple' (or even just a newer player) can cause some serious problems on the ship and result in a poor performance. Despite your best efforts and abilities, you could get creamed just because your engineer just brought a mallet with both chem spray and fire ext. This can result in some very competitive and angry players lashing out and harassing other players; leading to a pretty dark community. I want to believe that we'd be above that kind of thing, with an active CA base and lots of supportive players of all ranks and skill levels; but competition can bring out the worst in people.

Still might be worth that risk. The desire to play on top and not having to worry as much about getting creamed by a stacked team might keep players around longer, and maybe even bring more in.

643

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Team Stacking - Match Balance

« on: October 20, 2013, 12:12:34 am »

The only issue with that is that player rank =/= player skill. It's just based on achievements. The novice system was put in after many of the oldies had passed that bar. And many of the novice players aren't aware that they'll be kicked out of the novice matches once they pass level three.


Once you reach a certain point, you can easily ignore the achievement system, and maintain a fairly low level while still having lots and lots of experience.


With tiers of matches (5-10, 10+) many players will try to stay below that bar, since the higher tier you go, the more difficult the matches will be. (Also another reason you see more stacked teams, it's easier to pub stomp than it is to take on another organized team).


Although it would help temporarily, as the novice players move into the next level and face similarly experienced opponents, and the already well experienced players have already passed that point.

644

Feedback and Suggestions / Team Stacking - Match Balance

« on: October 19, 2013, 10:57:26 pm »

Problem:

An issue that's been around a long time, and one I'm not particularly fond of. Essentially what happens is that groups of players 'stack' one team and devour the other team. It might be a clan or group of friends that communicate well, or just players with more experience. The problem is that the opposing team is generally less experienced players, and the absolute curb stomping they receive cause them to have a poor experience with the game. This can lead to raging, complaining, calling hacks, or simply quitting.

And while I dislike how often it happens, I dislike even more how often it happens at the same time. I can hop from game lobby to game lobby, and run into three or four different clans all stacked on the same team facing off against random groups of players significantly less experienced (and leveled) than they are. They might be practicing for upcoming tournaments, trying to rapidly increase their bounty/hunter points, or just hanging out; but I feel that they would have a more interesting time having a match against one of the other clans/groups that are more around their skill level and experience, and let the random players get some confidence and practice by playing against each other.

In an effort to remedy this, I'd suggest (like others before me) a system to more 'fair' matches and lobbies.

Considerations:
There are a few things to keep in mind when trying to solve the problem:

• Guns of Icarus Online does not currently have a system to 'rank' players by skill. (The current level system is not skill based)
• You still want friends and clans to be able to play together.
• Should it be optional or mandatory?
• If optional, how do you encourage players to play fair matches/discourage them from playing unfair matches?
• Do rank players by their Role performance, or overall performance?
• Take into account that this is a highly complex team oriented game. Player performance is directly related to their teammates performance.

Possible Solutions

The first steps to make even teams is to develop a system for ranking players based on skill. The current level system gives a general indication for experience, but it can easily be ignored or avoided to give a false impression of low experience/skill.

GoIO already keeps lots of player data and statistics, which is a great place to begin. As per the considerations, you first have to choose whether to do an overall skill rating, or one based purely on the chosen role. You might be a great pilot, but a terrible gunner for instance. Although if you tend to engineer a lot, you might have a very high engineer rank, but a very low gunner rank, while your skill at gunning might still be very high.

I would suggest using weighted statistics to give a ranking for each role. So your overall accuracy will affect both your engineer and gunner ranking, but has a much greater affect on your gunner rank. Where your ability to repair affects all your roles, but engineering the most, and piloting the least.


Then you have to take into account the team. A bad pilot can really reduce a gunner's accuracy by swinging the ship about randomly, where a bad engineer can keep your ship from staying alive, despite your great piloting skills. And a really good pilot and gunner can prevent the enemy from doing significant damage to your ship, giving you a lower rebuild/repair score.

This part is the hardest to consider, and my best suggestion would be to just use the win/loss ratio as you playing that role as a large part of your rank overall. So even if you get a low score from someone else's performance (good or bad), in the long run, your performance should level out to where it belongs. Which also brings up the point that your rank shouldn't be from the beginning of your GoIO career to the end of it, but perhaps just an average of the previous 50 matches or so for each role. Even if you do awful in the beginning, you'd still be able to get near the highest ranks by improving. (Or you can just use a +/- system to increase or decrease their score based on win/loss/performance).




Once you've hammered out a way to rank players, you need to start tossing individual players together to form teams. At this point you have to consider the desire of players to play with their friends. For this, it's pretty easy to use the 'Form Crew' and let them get into a ship (or possibly 2 ships). I wouldn't recommend letting them fill three ships, as that would make it much harder to find a match against equally skilled players.

For random players, you can have them pick their first and second role choices and then be put into a queue. Once enough players are found (8-12) they can be tossed into the 'Form Crew' lobby in their respective roles on the ships. At which point they can discuss the ships they're going to use, and the loadouts they're going to bring. I would recommend to not let them swap roles or ships, as that might change their rank/scores; and more importantly invites people to be stubborn about their role (ie: People saying they won't fix the ship as the engineer unless someone lets them be captain). At this point, they should also be allowed to vote for a map. Once they hit ready, they'll be tossed into a final queue that will pair them with an opponent, and whichever map has the most votes (total the votes from both sides) will be the one that's played. Or just do a random map.

Now that each player has a rank, and they can play with their friends, and are put into ships/teams, you have to look into how to compare ranks. Do you do it player to player? As in if you have someone with a score of 200, do you find another player with a score around 200 and put them on opposite teams? Or do you take an average or weighted average of the players on the ship, then match it by a ship to ship basis? How would you go about weighting the scores? For instance, I find that pilots have possibly the largest impact on a ship's performance. So you might give their score a higher weight than the gunners or engineers.


I'd recommend doing it on a ship average, as finding a compatible player for every player might be difficult.




Then it's a matter of playing the match, recording the stats afterwards, recalculating the ranks. Then you have to consider what to do with the players after. The people who entered as a team might want to remain a team, so they should likely be tossed back to the 'Form Crew', where the random players who were put together may or may not want to be on the same team again. I'd recommend tossing them back to the main lobby or right back into the queue if they so choose. They can always friend their previous team mates and try to form a crew after. And this helps keep the teams balanced and fresh.



Other Thoughts:

Ultimately this should be optional, allowing players to still form their own matches and go wherever they please. But to encourage for more fair teams more often, I'd recommend that the Bounty system and achievements only work in the Ranked play. This allows players to still group up for practicing, but discourages them from stacking unfair teams for 'farming' points and achievements.


Finally, the whole idea of Ranked/Fair Matches may be beyond the scope of GoIO (skirmish). These types of ranking/scores are often used in other types of games that have a much larger player base, and aren't as heavily team oriented. I am uncertain whether Muse has the resources to attempt this, or if the game is capable of using it successfully. During a sale period or event, the number of players increases to the point where it could be used, but during the lower population times, it might take far too long to get even matches. And players may end up facing the same people over and over again due to the match length and them leaving and entering the queue around the same time repeatedly.

If it were to be put into place, there may have to be other considerations, such as allowing for unfair teams during a low period. One such system might be to spend a minute looking for teams with a score within a certain range of each other, then after that minute the range increases. Thirty seconds later it increases again, after two minutes it might take anyone. At which point, the aftermatch calculations would have to be weighted. The difference between the loss and addition of points would be affected by the difference in rank. A team with a score of 1500 might not see an increase in points at all if they beat a team with a score of 300, and the team of 300 might not see a reduction. While if the team with the score of 300 won, they might have a huge increase in rank/points, where the 1500 would suffer a huge loss.

Then you might have to also have the queue system weighted to discourage setting the same teams against each other repeatedly, and even so that one person doesn't get to be the captain/pilot over and over and over again.



TLDR:
A not entirely friendly issue that is quite complicated to solve, and may never see an acceptable resolution.


Thoughts?

645

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Please Make Gunners Useful

« on: October 19, 2013, 09:13:40 pm »

I know I'm arriving to this discussion late, and also am too lazy to read through 10 pages, but I can hazard a guess of what's been said; since it's been brought up a lot.

When talking about the usefulness/uselessness of a gunner, you have to compare them to an engineer. (As the pilot is just shy of useless on anything but the helm)

The benefits of the gunner is that they can bring more ammo types.
The downside is that they can bring less engineer equipment/


Obviously the gunner is supposed to be more useful shooting a gun than an engineer, where the engineer is supposed to be more useful keeping the ship healthy.


However, when it comes to being on the gun, a variety of ammo types doesn't always prove to be a benefit. Certainly they can help if various situations, such as being on a gatling and using heavy clip for those longer range shots, and greased or such when things get close. Maybe then hopping onto the mortar and using burst or charged, or whatever really. The gunner has that variety, while the engineer does not.

In most situations, you don't see a huge benefit from a variety of ammo types. In the above situation, you would do just as well (relatively) by sticking with heavy clip at range, then using the default at close range. The TTK (time to kill) would be pretty close. And as each player can only shoot one gun at a time, you generally have each person assigned to a gun. So one can use heavy clip on the gat, and the other can use burst or such on the mortar. The difference between having a gunner and an engineer on the same gun diminishes even more.


So while the engineer can shoot just as well as the gunner in most situations, the gunner can never replace an engineer when it comes to keeping the ship afloat. The pipe wrench is ok, but can't compare with a spanner/mallet combo. And then they can't put out fires. And if they can put out fires, they can't rebuild or repair. And if they bring a buff hammer, they might as well sit in the corner when things start going critical.





This brings us to the main difference between the gunner and engineer. The engineer can benefit from using multiple tools at a time on various components, but the gunner can only use one type of ammo on a gun at a time. ie: engineer can rebuild with the spanner then slap it with a mallet, then start buffing it for good measure.


You can see it in a lot of competitive matches as well, where some teams don't even bother with having a gunner. In most matches, the gunner just acts a placeholder, someone who's supposed to be using the gun most of the time and not worry as much about fixing. It's a way for random players to help solidify their roles on the ship without having a lengthy discussion about who's going to do what, where competitive teams are organized enough to where they don't have to bother with it if they don't want to.




Long story short....

My suggestion to make the gunner more useful would actually be to undo some of the more recent changes. In the early days, gunners had items like heavy gauntlets and modified triggers, items you could use without reloading the gun. I'd either changing some of the current items, or adding new ones in that can be used in conjunction with the different ammo types. This would give gunners a definite edge over engineers when it comes to gunning, without diminishing the engineers ability to gun. They'd only be able to use two items max (an ammo and an aid).

 Items could be like the old heavy gauntlets, or perhaps a modified scope to allow extra zoom, a small ammo box to give a little extra ammo (5% or so) on top of the ammo type addition/reduction, a small heatsink that reduces the chance of fire? Etc.