WILD WEEK RESULTS HellHound and Harpoon buffs + vote

[Richard LeMoon]

There is an Alliance beta coming up, so this will be the last Wild Week change for a while. The proposed changes were designed around the idea of making them useful in both Skirmish and Alliance without being overpowered. We have a choice before us. Read over the following proposals, and cast a vote on whether we should ask for these changes to be included in the upcoming Alliance Beta.

Give em Hellhound

30° up arc from 20°
35° side arcs from 25°

Includes Heavy Clip to 90% jitter reduction instead of damage/range/jitter changes.

This minor change was met with approval (where it was noticed). No vast change in usage. Minor improvement in build possibilities. General consensus is it is good to push as a proposal for Production, along with suggesting increasing Hwacha jitter from 4 to 5 (was originally 6).




Harpoons away!

TESTED Harpoon
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Piercing from 90 to 130
Flechette damage from 80 to 220
Reload time from 16s to 8s
Rope duration unchanged
Projectile speed from 120 to 335


Overwhelming positive reactions from shooters and targets. May be a little OP, so the following stats were worked out in Discord.

New Proposal Harpoon
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80 Piercing (240 armor damage when buffed 20% + Charged)
135 Flechette (390 balloon damage when buffed 20% + Charged)
10s reload
6s Rope duration
250m/s velocity
40 degrees up (reversed from 40 deg down)
20 degrees down (reversed from 25 deg up)
600m range (shorter range allows for longer rope duration due to phantom rope bug)
12m/s2 drop (this gives it the same general path it has now, but 2x faster)

Results in 6 seconds of 'usage' time, and 4 seconds of 'idle time' where you can get off the gun and fix things. This is not out of line with most other light guns.

[BlackenedPies]

Heavy carro change is good, but the actual heavy clip proposal should've been tested: -20% RoF with no clip reduction. This means if more than 1 in 5 shots miss, heavy clip is better than regular for DPS. Makes it useful on hwatcha, gat, and banshee

[Dementio]

Heavy Carro tested with Heavy Clip seemed good to me. I am not against testing Heavy Clip without clip size reduction, which had no effect on the Heavy Carronade, but would help a lot of other guns that could make use of Heavy Clip's jitter reduction.

The tested Harpoon was not good. You can snipe Squids with it at almost maximum range without Lesmok, it was constantly one-shotting Squid armors and doing out of proportion balloon damage. Carronades and Lumberjack are almost entirely redundent by bringing one quick double Loch Harpoon and your ship lost balloon and armor in that instance. Although the testing was probably bringing results that are out of proportions, because a lot of people brought either double Loch Harpoon, Loch Harpoon/Carronade, or Loch Harpoon and Hwachas (good job on testing actual gameplay, guys) and in a comp match you won't see double Loch Harpoons. But that won't mean it is going to result in good gameplay in pub matches or generally a good idea for good gameplay.

I like the sound of the new proposed stats for the Harpoon a lot more. It doesn't kill Squids by one-shotting armor, but I am not against keeping the current piercing values, the reload is a lot shorter than before, but not too short and the reduced pull duration is not too little so it still allows the Harpoon to actually pull. I don't mind a bit more balloon damage on the new proposed stats, closer even to the tested values, but not on the value that it invalidates the light Carronade.

If at all possible, I would love it if the pull was a toggle, so after pressing right click once, it starts pulling on its own, pressing it again would stop the pull. There are multiple reasons why I would consider that a good thing and only have yet only heard one counter-argument: a player didn't want it to be an idle gun. Getting on, clicking twice, and getting off the gun again almost immediately doesn't sound particularly exciting, but the Flare is no different either and both are utility guns.

[Richard LeMoon]

Just to be clear, these are the adjusted stats being voted on, not the ones tested over the weekend.



New Proposal Harpoon
----------------
80 Piercing (240 armor damage when buffed 20% + Charged)
135 Flechette (390 balloon damage when buffed 20% + Charged)
10s reload
6s Rope duration
250m/s velocity
40 degrees up (reversed from 40 deg down)
20 degrees down (reversed from 25 deg up)
600m range (shorter range allows for longer rope duration due to phantom rope bug)
12m/s2 drop (this gives it the same general path it has now, but 2x faster)

Results in 6 seconds of 'usage' time, and 4 seconds of 'idle time' where you can get off the gun and fix things. This is not out of line with most other light guns.

[Nietzsche's Mustache]

\
The tested Harpoon was not good. You can snipe Squids with it at almost maximum range without Lesmok, it was constantly one-shotting Squid armors and doing out of proportion balloon damage. Carronades and Lumberjack are almost entirely redundent by bringing one quick double Loch Harpoon and your ship lost balloon and armor in that instance. Although the testing was probably bringing results that are out of proportions, because a lot of people brought either double Loch Harpoon, Loch Harpoon/Carronade, or Loch Harpoon and Hwachas (good job on testing actual gameplay, guys) and in a comp match you won't see double Loch Harpoons. But that won't mean it is going to result in good gameplay in pub matches or generally a good idea for good gameplay.

I like the sound of the new proposed stats for the Harpoon a lot more. It doesn't kill Squids by one-shotting armor, but I am not against keeping the current piercing values, the reload is a lot shorter than before, but not too short and the reduced pull duration is not too little so it still allows the Harpoon to actually pull. I don't mind a bit more balloon damage on the new proposed stats, closer even to the tested values, but not on the value that it invalidates the light Carronade.

If at all possible, I would love it if the pull was a toggle, so after pressing right click once, it starts pulling on its own, pressing it again would stop the pull. There are multiple reasons why I would consider that a good thing and only have yet only heard one counter-argument: a player didn't want it to be an idle gun. Getting on, clicking twice, and getting off the gun again almost immediately doesn't sound particularly exciting, but the Flare is no different either and both are utility guns.

I wanted to quote this and comment because I'm the oddball that was really excited about a harpoon that did some real (or reel? You know, if you want a pun) damage, having called it a 'light lumberjack'. For my part, when I was testing on Saturday I was mostly looking at combining it with banshee and/or hades in which case it was pretty damn effective. I think you are right to suggest the harpoon should not be a replacement for a carronade or a lumberjack, which is why I'll agree with the suggestion of splitting the difference between tested and proposed harpoons in terms of flachette damage. A lot of people also suggested that 335 meters per second is a bit high and I even suggesting nerfing the arcs to something more ackin to an artemis.

One of the other things I noticed is the harpoon has the capability to play as the great equalizer in terms of mobility between a mobula and a squid. At one point, I had a janky double harpoon mobula and my gunner fired the harpoon on the opposite side from where the squid was going (to that 'squid strong side' that every mobula pilot knows all too well) and the result was me getting pulled around to maintain my own arcs on the squid. I suddenly saw a use for the harpoon mounted asymmetrically on a mobula.

So this is my thesis towards harpoon adjustments: You're looking for a sort of inverse of the minotaur. Something that can be used to disrupt enemy movements using pulling rather than pushing as well as being capable of placing pressure on the balloon. I'd emphasize that the issue be taken to the extreme: when you land a shot on a hull, shit will be torqued about. When you land a shot on a balloon, it's as good as a lumberjack shot. But you have to distinguish the difference, because that 4 second reload per one shot is something to be reckoned with, not to mention the potential detriment of hooking a hull shot when you're trying to get further away, not closer. Or when you're trying to descend for cover but the harpoon hooks their hull instead of slowing their balloon down and you get pulled upwards. All of that needs to be taken into account and if the harpoon doesn't force you to do that, then we're all boned.

another side note: I'm not sure why we're looking about buffing cannonade arcs AND heavy clip. When the Heavy Carronade was OP and people were talking about a nerf, I suggested nerfing the arcs in particular. What wound up happening was the carronade arcs, damage, and heavy clip were ALL nerfed. Only one of those needed to happen. Hell, give me heavy clip -100% jitter and take another 5 degrees off the sideways arcs off the heavy carronade and I'll be happy. That way I can have the lovely light carronade that I used to love and we can keep the heavy carronade in check.

also, let's test one thing at a time, shall we? We keep testing multiple things at a time and the results get skewed. This week the extra heavy carronade arcs may have been a little bit underappreciated because of the effectiveness of the harpoon at balloon pressure in a wide variety of circumstances. That's not to mention, I don't think we're respecting how ammo adjustments are effecting every individual gun. The heavy clip nerf was mostly aimed at the heavy carronade, but it also brought with it changes to the hwacha and major reductions to the light carronade. I heard talks of a nerf to burst rounds' clip capacity while introducing an 'extended clip'. The idea was: use burst round when you want AoE and use extended clip when you want a bigger clip. Right now Burst serves both of those functions, BUT... At the current stage of the game that change would be a huge nerf to the hwacha which isn't really necessary. Or, reverse the hwacha to older stats when the projectiles moved faster and THEN make that change. We're playing around with too many variables at one time, even in the latest testing.

[Richard LeMoon]

The issue with testing fewer things is that we will be here for years, and people think we are taking too long as it is. I have come to the mind of testing a few things, seeing if they are OK feeling, then let them loose in the Main game where actual testing will take place. If it is terrible, revert. That will happen anyways, as our devapp testing is severely limited in players and time.

[ZnC]

To reply Nietzsche, the intention of this suggestion is indeed a nerf to Artemis and Hwacha. Both of which are powerful guns which consistently dominate the meta (in pubs and competitive). Needless to say, the extra 50% AoE for both guns is already huge. Removing the extra four/one shot(s) from Hwacha/Artemis is not a huge nerf. It just removes the extra gains that they shouldn't have in the first place.

[Kestril]

basically, what Richard said

The issue with testing fewer things is that we will be here for years, and people think we are taking too long as it is. I have come to the mind of testing a few things, seeing if they are OK feeling, then let them loose in the Main game where actual testing will take place. If it is terrible, revert. That will happen anyways, as our devapp testing is severely limited in players and time.

QFT!


I mean, it's about time we had a new gun in the meta. If it's a bit much, it can be scaled back. It's fine to add in as-is to test on a wide scale I don't see what a few tweaks to the numbers will do when it's role in testing as the mid-range balloon popper and flexible gunpick felt like a great niche role.

I think the harpoon's pull is too situational to balance all the number around. Sure, it may be used to great effect, but it would require the same or more coordination between pilot&captain as a light mine launcher to get the most out of the pulls. Newpoon meets the "good enough" standard right now for a wide test and potential implementation. I don't see a reason to delay. The numbers can be scaled back slightly if suspicions are correct. I'd rather use testing time to test other potential prospects rather than fine-tune a weapon that feels mostly right in its wild week niche already.   

It's no secret that GOIO skirmish needs new content and needs it fast to keep players interested in the skirmish scene. Taking more time to tweak newpoon with such little test time doesn't make sense to me when it's almost there already. Expecially if brand new content, like the heavy mine launcher in skirmish, or long-overlooked balances, like charged ammo, need to be looked at as well.

Wildweek isn't to agonize over tiny tiny things. it's to bring potentially new things (tankspire) to skirmish or make old things that have fallen so far out of the meta back to skirmish (newharpoon), see if it might work, and then forward feedback to muse to give it an actual test in the main game if it looks promising.