Author Topic: 1.4.5 New Balance Changes "When Ambush Comes To Shove"  (Read 117208 times)

Offline Dev Bubbles

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Re: 1.4.5 New Balance Changes "When Ambush Comes To Shove"
« Reply #30 on: March 19, 2016, 02:28:02 am »
Omni, yeah I know what you mean, and I was trying to say that in the beginning of the process, we did try to do that.  But I do agree that as we released the actual patch and notes, we could have reiterated the context. This I talked to Matt about today and we will do better next time.

Offline Omniraptor

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Re: 1.4.5 New Balance Changes "When Ambush Comes To Shove"
« Reply #31 on: March 19, 2016, 02:31:58 am »
Loch is unusable on heavy guns.

yeah I said this for heavy carronade in twitch fireside chat but eric just said it would be fine and good as before. Really is quite frustrating :(

@bubbles thanks for the reply, glad to hear you guys are listening :)

Offline DrTentacles

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Re: 1.4.5 New Balance Changes "When Ambush Comes To Shove"
« Reply #32 on: March 19, 2016, 02:33:28 am »
This feels a lot more like post-hoc damage control than anything else.

Re: Spire

Spire has a great winrate. However, spire is incredibly easy to counter-play IN LOBBY. The in lobby counterplay is the aspect is the problem.
« Last Edit: March 19, 2016, 02:43:40 am by DrTentacles »

Offline HelFyre

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Re: 1.4.5 New Balance Changes "When Ambush Comes To Shove"
« Reply #33 on: March 19, 2016, 02:40:17 am »
News from the battlefield: Double loch gatling pyra is hilariously broken. Shreds permahull like nobodys business to say nothing of armor.

@Dev Bubbles I didn't mean specifically as a response to feedback, I meant to show your own views on the state of the game. The timing of these is before or right as you post devapp change notes. What are the problems you are trying to solve and gather feedback on? Stuff like this https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,3420.0.html or this https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,4115.msg70584.html

It's ridiculously easy to dodge too (pilot tools, etc), whilst inflicting damage against people who use this, though there are positions where it's not dodgeable, so it's useful, but not always applicable. Furthermore the self damage makes it difficult to use too. People are just adjusting to things, and it takes a while.

Specifically, double lochnagar gat is very silly and it already shredded armour very quickly ^_^
« Last Edit: March 19, 2016, 02:42:47 am by HelFyre »

Offline Letus

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Re: 1.4.5 New Balance Changes "When Ambush Comes To Shove"
« Reply #34 on: March 19, 2016, 03:34:54 am »
I don't think making the heavy flak have 4 shots makes the ceiling less.
As an example:
If a novice gunner has a 25% hit rate
Old Flak: There's a good chance he hits nothing.
New Flak: Statistically, he hits once.

If an expert gunner has a 75% hit rate
Old Flak: A good chance he hits both.
New Flak: Statistically, he misses one.

So I don't think this change sacrifices our expert gunners. People may like the feel of the old 2 shot better, and they definitely can feel that way, but I'd have a hard time believing that the weapon can be just as effective in lesser hands due to this change.

I'll throw in my two cents (other than the AoE and Direct should be either swapped around, or get rid of the arming time because nobody is going to notice / miss 50 explosive damage...)

People say I'm a great Lumberjack Gunner, but when it came to the Heavy Flak, it was a noticeable difference...mainly because 1, sights are weird, and 2.) two shots kinda...got annoying...the pressure of missing and hitting and a relatively hard visual cue...I eventually did get better, but my skills definitely shine with the Lumberjack, mostly because I have an entire clip to guage my shots, where Heavy Flak...it really felt like a hit or miss with it.

It's not a gun I got to play with, really, but with the fact that you have slightly more room for error, it'll be interesting to see if it'll get used more.

...great I have to rewrite that guide now...like...from the top...and I don't have much time except for sunday...

Offline Dev Bubbles

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Re: 1.4.5 New Balance Changes "When Ambush Comes To Shove"
« Reply #35 on: March 19, 2016, 04:02:34 am »
I'm still traveling and completely exhausted, so apologies once again for the short reply or for any incoherence. 
I do just want to quickly add to what Matt and Jub Jub said earlier.  We do look at how things trend as well as usage and win rates in pub matches overall, as well as in novice matches.  Hwacha for example was an issue area that we wanted to address.  However, we looked a lot at high level play as well.  From a data standpoint, if we were to be responsible in looking at data as a starting point to identify issue areas, we had to look at data across a longer time frame and larger data sample.  Heavy flak was an example of this.  The ships we made adjustments to followed the same arc.  Process wise, we did look towards feedback for ideas, and we came up with some ideas ourselves as well obviously.  What was also valuable was the interim feedback that ended up giving us references or ideas for week to week changes.  If we looked at hwacha, we initially experimented with the way it fired, and that didn't go over well, so we started looking at a different solution, and the current solution seemed better received.  We went through a bit of this with the squid.  While some of you are not happy with the acceleration change still, the gun arc changes did go through a few iterations, and these iterations we did do largely based on feedback. 

So I would say that we do make sone considerations for general pub and lower level play.  But we also do make a lot of considerations for higher level play as well.  Different levels of play have different issues, which add to the complexity when it comes to balance.  The actual picture for us has always been more complex. 

So I do agree with Jub Jub, but I think the actual picture for me is more complex. 

Offline Dev Bubbles

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Re: 1.4.5 New Balance Changes "When Ambush Comes To Shove"
« Reply #36 on: March 19, 2016, 04:06:11 am »
Aww really sorry for the hassle Letus.  And yeah, you did touch on some of the underlying considerations behind flak. 

I mean, we could start this type of conversation earlier as some of you guys want.  One reason why we did not start this type of discussion openly is so we don't introduce more bias into this process.  It does make communication tougher, so there's a trade off.

Offline MightyKeb

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Re: 1.4.5 New Balance Changes "When Ambush Comes To Shove"
« Reply #37 on: March 19, 2016, 05:21:01 am »
VERY IMPORTANT ISSUE.

Spire has been classified as an "Easy" ship in the game and has been allowed in novice since the last two patches. Please fix this.

Offline Kamoba

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Re: 1.4.5 New Balance Changes "When Ambush Comes To Shove"
« Reply #38 on: March 19, 2016, 05:50:32 am »
VERY IMPORTANT ISSUE.

Spire has been classified as an "Easy" ship in the game and has been allowed in novice since the last two patches. Please fix this.

I agree..

It also encourages really crap meta ideals to Novices who will not experience the pain of Hades.

Novice players will take double gunners, they will win in a Spire against other novice ships through luck, assume double gunners are a good thing, then they will face off same ship and loadouts against one hades, they will die horribly and either rage quite, accuse enemy of cheating before rage quit, or give up after two more matches...

The Spire should not be in Novice for many many other reasons..
The only reason I think it is in Novice is the "point ship forward and win" frame of mind it brings... Like the fish, and Pyramidion...

Very few Novices leave using Junker successfully, those rare few that do tend to stay for a while...

Offline Kendra Finegrinder

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Re: 1.4.5 New Balance Changes "When Ambush Comes To Shove"
« Reply #39 on: March 19, 2016, 06:39:14 am »
Mobula
-Outer top guns fanned out 5 degrees
-Inner bottom guns fanned out 10 degrees

The Mobula is boring as hell to fly for noobs and vets alike in sniper battles. In fact boring is not the important issue. It was just plain too easy - I'm pointing to the typical artemises on wings / merc or hades in middle setup you see so standardly in sniper battles. And take note when I say too easy I do not necessarily mean something is OP. I define it as super easy since, even though an experienced pilot would only be threatened by it if it was manned by a formidable crew, it's so good on so many maps that any semi-intelligent level 1 crew can win with it if they have merely one person to demystify the mobula to them.

Now I run matches on this ship often enough myself. But I don't think the laziness this super easy kind of ship encourages affects higher level people as, er, profoundly as it does newbies. Because what happens is they very quickly fight a bunch of matches, win a bunch of matches because they looked up the meta, get a super inflated ego, and then spend some time reading "Hwacha Makes Your Guns Irrelevant, and Other Valuable Lessons" in the form of a bunch of humiliating losses when they enter the double digits. Here you are in the realm of people who have figured out at least some of the fundamentals on how games are won beyond google ship builds.

Not saying there shouldn't be plenty of highly noob-accessible ships - far from it -  there should be lots. But each one should teach some kind of lesson, like how eventually anyone who changes the guns a few times when they'd been winning with a metamidion figures out what guns pierce armor and what guns kill ships. I don't think this particular build does that though. It really just makes some unfortunate new captains think they can turn their ship in the right direction in the first 15 seconds of the game and win the match.

So I guess what I like about this change is that it will keep new pilots more engaged and reduce the artemis/merc/artemis build tendency if only by a little, because the truly lazy of the laziest new captain would not want to have anything to do with something that makes you become skilled at turning your ship more precisely at long range than "the enemy's general direction." I assume that's what it'll boil down to, and the low turning acceleration with high turning speed would support it.

But the problem is then that what it'll really probably end up doing is making where mobula is played less all together. 'Cause yeah those that would find this new ranged ship too annoying to fly in general, or those that may feel now they have to make a better ship choice sometimes, are not going to take another mobula build instead. And while short range mobulas aren't exactly popular if you feel at all threatened, pre patch they were a common choice among newbies. It's not great that where they've slid by with it with enough luck and aggression in the past, now they're going to just shrug and assume anything other than a long range mobula on a long range map is basically the new squid that, within a certain range of levels, everyone will deride you for choosing.

Another problem compounding this case is that turning radius of guns in particular is not a stat people become aware of, or if they are aware of it, it does not factor into their strategy or choice until they've got hundreds of matches under their belts. I feel freaking accomplished when I can explain the difference between piercing and explosive to someone new. Explaining why the guns on the front of the ship actually suck at shooting things directly in front of them seems fairly futile.

I tried to think of the perfect solution for this but quickly shrugged and decided I don't actually care if only because I'm curious if people may come up with more asymmetrical crew placements. It's fun to see what people come up with when they're stubborn to make a ship work, and this nerf isn't near potent enough that plenty of people won't try. Maybe in a couple months from now we'll be living in a crazy nonsense world where three gunners crammed onto the left wing of the mobula is the new meta. >____>

Heavy Flak
-Damage moved to direct hit for a 70/30% split between direct and AoE (from 45/55%)
-Higher clip capacity to 4 (from 2)
-Damage per shot reduced (115/50 explosive, from 150/180 explosive)
-Increased RoF of 2 shots/s (from 0.8 )
-Reduced reload time of 4.5s (from 5)
-Reduced camera shake

Super. Yes. Good. I hated this gun before the patch; literally was my least favorite. Reason being: I don't have access to someone who's going to run the same gun over and over and over just so I can practice a gun. I was able to learn other guns that most consider more difficult - hades, lumberjack, and mining - but that was because the payoff of choosing those guns are good enough for people to give to me and give to me often. In fact I bet every gunner who says they are great with flak has a pilot friend with an all gat / flak spire fetish. So yeah, this actually not only makes it where more people will give me this weapon, but it also takes care of another compounding annoyance of the low clip and reload time which made it difficult to get used to the arcs in the rare cases someone does hand me one.

Spire
-Reduced turn acceleration to 10d/s2 (from 15)
-Reduced top turn speed to 10d/s from 12

Good. It shouldn't be a shock to anyone who has seen the hwacha + kill gun bottom deck, both taken by gunner / two gats going at once up top by engies build (and its slight derivatives)  that's been very popularly devouring ships in close quarter maps for the past few months that the spire had the highest kill rate in the stats. If I'm on that ship with a good captain & crew I feel unstoppable. It's probably the only build / strategy in the game before the patch I thought was truly broken OP (at least on Canyon Ambush and to only slightly lesser extents Paritan & Duel) ... (any chances on some win rate by map data??).

Like 1/5 matches do I feel like I really help on that ship by being a great gunner. Honestly I think this turning nerf makes a great deal of sense, since I can recall many times in the past couple months where we get so lazy on that ship that people sneak up behind us and it doesn't even matter, even against good people. And as fun as it feeling like an unstoppable godking, it's like, wow, they were clearly better than us on this, they did a great ambush, they deserved that point.

I’ll point out that any nerf to the hwacha has to be viewed as also a spire (and goldfish) nerf as it stands now, since the spire is generally very hwacha dependent. But, I guess I’m in the minority of being stoked to try the new hwacha. If how I’m guessing this will change the way the hwacha’s fired is correct, then it would probably not hurt the spire as much as I thought it would when hemming and hawwing with friends over the “is the hwacha too powerful?” question before.

However rather than explain myself I am going to stop rambling and sleep at some point… Yeah… I can dig it… Good job, probably… k love you nite
« Last Edit: March 19, 2016, 07:04:47 am by Kendra Finegrinder »

Offline SiepeAssassina

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Re: 1.4.5 New Balance Changes "When Ambush Comes To Shove"
« Reply #40 on: March 19, 2016, 06:47:17 am »
If a novice gunner has a 25% hit rate
Old Flak: There's a good chance he hits nothing.
New Flak: Statistically, he hits once.

If an expert gunner has a 75% hit rate
Old Flak: A good chance he hits both.
New Flak: Statistically, he misses one.

WHAT DID I JUST READ?
Can someone please explain me?
No?
I'll do it myself then: what you're saying is that since the old flak had just 2 ammo in one round we had a lower chance to hit due to some magical ideas.
Last time I checked the flak isn't a disposable guns SO WHY ON EARTH YOU MAKE THOSE ASSUMPTIONS ON JUST ONE FLAK MAGAZINE?
For example in a whole match I may shoot 30-40 h.flak rounds (making up numbers for the sake of proof), it doesn't make a friggin diffrence if the flak shoots 4 or 2 ammo each magazine.
I'll still hit with the (again making up numbers) 65% of them, no matther how many shots each magazin the flak has.
You may argue that 4 shots are more encouraging but still the gun has lost his charm and you gained nothing.

Keep on making this game more and more flat, no risk, no skills needed, just throw a bunch of guns and full steam ahead.

Offline KeijoPertti

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Re: 1.4.5 New Balance Changes "When Ambush Comes To Shove"
« Reply #41 on: March 19, 2016, 07:08:09 am »
If a novice gunner has a 25% hit rate
Old Flak: There's a good chance he hits nothing.
New Flak: Statistically, he hits once.

If an expert gunner has a 75% hit rate
Old Flak: A good chance he hits both.
New Flak: Statistically, he misses one.

WHAT DID I JUST READ?
Can someone please explain me?
No?
I'll do it myself then: what you're saying is that since the old flak had just 2 ammo in one round we had a lower chance to hit due to some magical ideas.
Last time I checked the flak isn't a disposable guns SO WHY ON EARTH YOU MAKE THOSE ASSUMPTIONS ON JUST ONE FLAK MAGAZINE?
For example in a whole match I may shoot 30-40 h.flak rounds (making up numbers for the sake of proof), it doesn't make a friggin diffrence if the flak shoots 4 or 2 ammo each magazine.
I'll still hit with the (again making up numbers) 65% of them, no matther how many shots each magazin the flak has.
You may argue that 4 shots are more encouraging but still the gun has lost his charm and you gained nothing.

Keep on making this game more and more flat, no risk, no skills needed, just throw a bunch of guns and full steam ahead.

Also worth pointing out, that one hit of novice with 4 ammo clip will likely do nothing if the enemy knows how to fix hull.

Offline KeijoPertti

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Re: 1.4.5 New Balance Changes "When Ambush Comes To Shove"
« Reply #42 on: March 19, 2016, 07:47:58 am »
Quick test in practise lobby, loch on carro seems useless, but not to worry, loch LJ is much better popper than carro ever was.

Also, buffed loch gats gonna be a thing.


Honestly, I'd rather have loch removed from the game rather than have this new version of it.

Or if you want this super ammo on light guns, remove the rest of the ammos, they aren't needed.
« Last Edit: March 19, 2016, 07:50:38 am by KeijoPertti »

Offline Kendra Finegrinder

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Re: 1.4.5 New Balance Changes "When Ambush Comes To Shove"
« Reply #43 on: March 19, 2016, 08:34:54 am »
Damn. Can't sleep. Guns drama too mesmerising. I feel like it probably wouldn't be if I came here more than twice a year, though. =P

Well, anyway. Here's some silly thoughts on the silly squid stuff.

Squid
-Back gun turned inwards (towards right side of ship) 40 degrees (from 0)
-Increased forward/backward acceleration to 8m/s2 (from 6.66)

I am happy for any squid boost, and anyone who doesn't think this was needed should probably get their head examined. That's probably not a bad thing for people masochistic enough simultaneously play competitive games and care, even a little. But the actual change seems to only address the issue of the squid sucking kind of indirectly. It's like.

"Psst. Hey, yeah, you. Yeah, you, Get over here. No one's gonna notice us now because they should all be rioting about the hwachas or the War On Fun. That's a real thing you know. Also no one cares about squids but you, like literally, you're the only person. Our bad I guess. Anyway, to put it in a way that is both unnecessarily and intriguingly roundabout, I'm not sayin' we're going to make you OP or anything, but we feel a certain KIND of pilot could in theory find a way to use this well enough to make people stop insisting, for a while, that squid is the worst ship of all time in all situations forever."

I can tell you I am not aboard a squid in any capacity often enough to have an opinion of how to "fix" it. Or even tell if it's really broken at all. It is a weird relative I have to live with but will admit to kind of not hating at this point. Even still, I've always wondered if maybe most of the squid's problem was pilot failure to work with ally enough to make it the effective support / opportunistic kill ship it was designed to be rather than using it as the actual answer to all questions. If that is the case it probably is weak, but not by as much as people moan about. Weak enough that people interested in being an effective support ship satisfy that urge with other ships is probably the relevant thing. And if that's true almost any small boost could make it a more popular choice.

That's what the strategy here is with this change, though, right? Giving a captain a new way to maneuver an old favorite different enough to suggest new ways of flying it that may actually turn out to be very powerful. Squid is #1 choice of captains who personify their ship as a misunderstood but despite obvious flaws nigh perfect sort of Mary Sue who needs her honor defended in lobbies. This is a sufficient amount of people to test this theory. And it occurs to me I should insist I'm not referring to anyone in particular. The captains I've met who can make the squid work consistently have at this point been stereotyped as having these traits:

- impressive flying ability (at least better than average)
- impressive ability to delude oneself that It Was Because Of The Ally every single time
- actually a pleasure to work with, but gets feisty as opposition

With a weird cult following the Squid seems to find a way to satisfy this sort of competitive idealist. I assume this is good for Muse because they get to direct the bulk of their career induced sadism at whatever cruel but fair challenge they seem like they're dangling in front of squid lovers, or those other people who don't like the squid well enough to actually fly it but Want To Believe.

I also want to believe but would also gladly settle for teaming with / blowing up zany ships manned with enthusiastic but ill-fated crews insisting stuff like "flying backward - that's the ticket!" and "squid is the new galleon." But the rest of it's like, we'll see what they do with it. Seems reasonable.

Offline MightyKeb

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Re: 1.4.5 New Balance Changes "When Ambush Comes To Shove"
« Reply #44 on: March 19, 2016, 08:44:44 am »
but we feel a certain KIND of pilot could in theory find a way to use this well enough to make people stop insisting, for a while, that squid is the worst ship of all time in all situations forever."

This is false. The addition of pilot stamina has benefitted squid the most along with 950 hull and 6.66 acceleration a year ago. There has been evidence of successful squid usage in competitive games as of late and at one point the current competitive meta was widely considered to be a circle between Mobula > Fish > Squid > Mobula.

For the actual evidence of squid being used well competitively and squid being used in general, refer to Blood and Brass tournament VODs on Muse Games' channel, as well as Cronus Leauge clips. (Prime examples from both: Team Predators in BB and Team Bumble in CL.)

The fact is, squid's effectiveness is tied to the pilot itself making minimum amount of mistakes. Those who can are feared, those who can't are shown as "proof" that squid's a bad ship. Simply pay no attention to the naysayers and realize they're stuck in a baser mode of thought.

In my opinion, flying backwards 24/7 is still as ridicilous as it was before, but it's very much possible to have an easy back-side bifecta whilst being able to rotate to the front more quickly now because you can slide by them with your side.

HOWEVER. I doubt that the average squid pilot (the one who consistently proves it's "weaknesses") will be able to abuse that as much as the vet squid pilot does. So this change didn't actually lower squid's skill floor as far as back gun usage goes.
« Last Edit: March 19, 2016, 08:49:00 am by MightyKeb »