What do you think of switching FL/GL with MG research wise?
Vetinari
Join Date: 2013-07-23 Member: 186325Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Silver
Join Date: 2013-07-23 Member: 186325Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Silver
After the Smash Hit "How is silence on shift hive still a thing?", here comes "How is silence on shift hive still a thing? 2: Electric Boogaloo; Or: What do you think of switching FL/GL with MG research wise?"
My thought process is as follows.
Grenade launchers and Flamethrowers are highly niche weapons with specific purposes, and most of the time, you don't need them. Still, inexperienced marines end up buying them once they are researched without much thought. It seems they are just looking for rifle replacements. Case in point: I just had a match where a rookie comm went AA first. Similarly skilled marines ended up buying FTs/Gls and were of absolutely no use to their team.
Usually, they end up dead quick, and a lot of pres goes down the drain.
At the same time, there's the MG. An alien killing tool that still allows you to kill structures in a ditch, an actual primary weapon and slight upgrade to the rifle (as opposed to a support weapon/sidegrade), and at the same time a criminally underused gun because it needs to be researched separately and who has the res and time to do that? And it's not like MG rushes are a thing (...that I have ever seen). Besides, most veterans will just go with shotguns, anyway.
Thus, I propose we switch advanced weaponry and the MG in the tech tree. Since you don't need Advanced Weaponry most of the time, no harm is done here, but you can still get them if your strategy includes it (GL rushes), and inexperienced or braindead players can still be of use to their team if they want to try out a fancy new gun that isn't as scary as the shotgun.
TLDR: Rookies buy shitty guns. This is bad. Make it so they can't buy shitty guns.
My thought process is as follows.
Grenade launchers and Flamethrowers are highly niche weapons with specific purposes, and most of the time, you don't need them. Still, inexperienced marines end up buying them once they are researched without much thought. It seems they are just looking for rifle replacements. Case in point: I just had a match where a rookie comm went AA first. Similarly skilled marines ended up buying FTs/Gls and were of absolutely no use to their team.
Usually, they end up dead quick, and a lot of pres goes down the drain.
At the same time, there's the MG. An alien killing tool that still allows you to kill structures in a ditch, an actual primary weapon and slight upgrade to the rifle (as opposed to a support weapon/sidegrade), and at the same time a criminally underused gun because it needs to be researched separately and who has the res and time to do that? And it's not like MG rushes are a thing (...that I have ever seen). Besides, most veterans will just go with shotguns, anyway.
Thus, I propose we switch advanced weaponry and the MG in the tech tree. Since you don't need Advanced Weaponry most of the time, no harm is done here, but you can still get them if your strategy includes it (GL rushes), and inexperienced or braindead players can still be of use to their team if they want to try out a fancy new gun that isn't as scary as the shotgun.
TLDR: Rookies buy shitty guns. This is bad. Make it so they can't buy shitty guns.
Comments
If the issue with rookies inadequately distinguishing weapon roles is that big of a problem I think time would be better spent making it more communicated or intuitive where needed.
Hiding it behind an even farther away (timing wise) commander unlock has the potential to just further confuse players since later tech is typically associated with *better* tech instead of side grades or niche tools.
For example, organise the items in different columns; something like "Grenades and Mines", "Support" (GL, FT, Welder) and "Assault" (Shotgun and MG). Additionally, I'd put a big notice in the tooltips of GL, FT and Welder that they replace primary weapon/Axe (the latter more for consistency).
Alternatively, something two dimensional (similar to a tech tree), where MGs and Shotguns are farther up or two the right (depending on how it is organised) than advanced weaponry could also work. It would be a little less clear, but the position higher up in the hierachy would imply more power. In this scenario I don't know where to place Mines, Grenades and Welders, though.
edit: play -> place
It's already far far far too common for commanders to recycle the aa the instant they drop a proto because in their minds "ft and gl are useless"
Why not just make the flamethrower useful? Give it actual utility in PvP. Faster rate of fire, reduce the structure damage a bit, perhaps a touch more range and it will be fine.
If it can ever get to a point where the flamethrower alleviates the shotgun monopoly, I believe that would be good for the game.
Honestly? Yes.
It was tried in the past, and we had a powerful FT for a few builds. (About two or three years ago, I think?)
It was pretty terrible. It blocked the vision of aliens fighting it and it didn't require a great amount of aim.
If there's a way to make the flamethrower work, fine. It's tricky, though, and it will still most likely be in a support niche. And we don't need half a team of rookies with a support weapon.
It's safer to swtich the MG.
Additionally, everything you said works as an argument for the MG, too.
No one ever researches it, right now the game is pretty indistinguishable from the weapon not existing in the first place.
Don't make it a support niche. Make it comparable to lmg dps in pvp, but with reduced range and a little bit of splash (not so much that it doesn't require aim).
Right now when you bring a ft to say deal with umbra/spores, that works fine for the first 10-15 seconds, till a random skulks just leaps on you, because you don't have the dps to deal with that, like you can, easily, with the free default lmg. If your lmg marines are supposed to keep the ft alive from skulks, then who shoots at the lerk that you're supposed to be dealing with? The flamethrower needs to have its own survivability, not rely on team mates vs basic skulks, otherwise it's a liability and a rookie trap and ought to be deleted from the game entirely.
As for the MG, I don't see why making FT, GL AND MG all unlock when the AA is upgraded... you're not upgrading ALL armouries after all, just that 1. so, why, when upgrading that 1 armoury, do you then still have to research MGs as well? they should come with the AA like all the other advanced weapons.
As far as I know MGs try to be an alternative to shotguns to spice up the game a little bit, but filling a similar role in the game.
If you unlock them with the AA, then some commanders would try to rush exos or jets even more, ignoring shotguns, because they would unlock MGs on the way. So they could save those 20 tres of shotguns without crippling their team that much in the mid game
We should probably unlock "combat weapons" (shotgun, MG) together in the same way that we unlock "support weapons" (GL, flamer) with the AA. In that way your commander doesn't need to spend tres researching another weapon that fills the same role... and neither he has a free researched combat weapon when he is rushing a Prototype Lab
The marine tech tree already is a joke and requires no strategic decisions at all, you would just make it worse.
And yes, good point. There is not end tech weaponry for marines which aswell shows how bad the tech tree is. So the right thing here would be to fix that problem instead of making it a bigger one.
It is not a problem if a rookie doesn't understand weapon roles. It is a problem when a beginner of the game who understands what is going on still haven't figured out the weapons roles. So I agree with you on that point atleast.
I like to warn people to NOT to buy the noob traps, and explain that if everyone bought a FT or GL we would be fucked. Sometimes it works, which is nice
Man, we would have so many problems less.
but just as a hint on ns1:
it was like:
Armory automatically unlocks Sgs (Grenades had to be researched for 10 tres)
Advanced Armory unlocked automatically Hmgs and Gls
So if you would do that on ns2 as well and as a tradeoff increase the cost of the Arms lab or the upgrades on the Arms lab.
you will end up with more different strategy's/Rounds and more weapon variety.
All the time on the Field.
Apples to Oranges much? In NS Comm decided who got what weapons, so there was no chance of anyone having a GL or whatever if the comm didn't drop it.
Isnt your idea kinda to turn the FT into a rifle? might as well delete it too then.
Yea it's definitely too weak in pvp.
This what I'd do:
1st - Remove the energy leech component, is there anything in the alien arsenal that takes your ammo away? no because it's dumb, it's a dumb mechanic artificially added to suplement the failings of the original design which are adressed in following points rendering this useless
2nd - Increase the damage over time component by making every tick stack. This is what define flame thrower intuitively to anyone with common sense what fight a flamethrower feels like, it also has clear gameplay value/depth, the more you stay in the fight the more the burn will bite you, unless you have a gorge. Also make it so gorge heal wave only remove a certain amount of stacks, not all of them.
3rd - Increase the duration for areas set ablaze by the FT and introduce self burn damage when walking upon these. This is to further refine the defining aspects of the FT in accordance with purposeful and intuitive mechanics that is the area denial aspect that fuses pvp and pve aspects of this wep.
4th - make it cost the same as the GL
Other than that they are kind of similar I guess?
Take GL as an example. You can simply spam them into your marines in north tunnel in tram and they do insanely high Playerdamage, so the aliens cannot do shit to defend Warehouse against Arcs, since marines have godmode on against there own weapons. Even if the damage would be only 1% with friendlyfire, it would make a huge difference in any groupfight.
One Addition:
Combined with the fact that you simply cannot dodge these "thrown" Weapons like in other games.
You see the GL Fire, but you're already hit and cannot dodge, because of the 100ms lagcompensation of the engine (or even higher with the meddling LUAcode)
In the Halflife 1 Engine (natural selection 1) if the Pings were like 50-80 I saw the fucking GL shoot or a gorge Spit from a mid-range distance and by manouvering left or right I could easily dodge midfight 80%+ of the hits ... even if the ping was higher... seems like they did something obviously right..
while in ns2 engine it's more like dumb luck in midrange... in high-range scenarios you can dodge, but only you move when the spit "started"... if you start dodging after the spit/gl already flew 50% of the distance you are basically already hit...
Another example, if you move Left you are at position A and Right you are at position B... (like 1m distance)... if a gorge is alternately shooting his spits between A and B constantly and you try to dodge these Spits by switching between position A and B - you need to walk into the spits in order to dodge all the spit's because of the lagcompensation... which feels simply wrong... and if you have different gorges with different connections it get's even weirder...
if you ever played a jump&run game you know this is fucked up
I also agree that all splash damage should have friendly fire. Also please fix the fking GL reload animation (3rd person) that is completely garbage.
And also fix the damn fade crouch animation for OP ceiling hugs broken crap since day1
These are the main factors I can think of that would affect it's power for area denial:
- The amount of time that you need to focus on a spot to make it light up. If it's instantaneous that'd be a lot more powerful than if you needed to focus on a spot for a whole second before it lit up.
- The amount of time that an area would burn for.
- The minimum & maximum size of a burning area.
- The actual DoT, the jump between each stack of damage, and the balance between player damage and structure damage.