A list of essential improvements...

From the Steam Forums:

Here are what I consider to be some key issues:

1. Low population
- caused by a few key flaws in the game (which I will make suggestions to address later).
Solution - institute balance fixes FIRST and THEN institute a simple publicity drive to encourage players both new and old to see the difference.

I propose instituting a regular (ongoing) event every Monday called "Monday Night Combat" - for a few hours every Monday night the game is free to play for one and all. It gives players a free taste, it encourages them to keep coming back, it gives the community a regular shot in the arm so that people who HAVE paid money for the game aren't always faced with empty servers, and will help generate further sales on an ongoing basis. And it's got a nice tie-in to the game. By my calculations you could have the promo ongoing for several months without even giving away the same amount of time as was donated with the free weekend.


2. Problems with the porting and user-interface; resulting in truly abysmal default control settings.
- caused by a lack of entries in the options menu, forcing convoluted ini-file fixes which are going to alienate new users.

Solution - add options to the options page to disable joystick / gamepad input (a gui toggle for the AllowJoystickInput=0 entry in HostileEngine.ini); ideally check if a "constantly left" input is occuring from the device when the game starts up, and offer the player the option to disable this input immediately on game start.

Add options to the options menu to enable mouse acceleration (a gui toggle for the bViewAccelerationEnabled=True in HostileInput.ini), and to adjust it via sliders.

Edit the default mouse settings to make them more ergonomic, as outlined HERE.

Make sure that patches don't over-write these core settings unless strictly necessary.


3. Change Juice to a more engaging and interesting mechanic rather than a flat "I-win" button.
- caused by a lack of imagination when designing the buff.

Big damage and relative invulnerability are unimaginative, boring, and just plain cheap buffs. I propose class-based buffs designed to emphasise and aide the different roles the classes fill. This would also render the previous juice nerf (reduced earnings while juiced) obsolete, and can be reverted; and allow the juice endorsements to be "retain 100% / 50% / 25% of current juice total on death" without being too over-powered.

I am thinking of:
Assassins - keep the instant full health effect of present, get a movement speed buff, RoF buff, and flat damage buff. No defensive buffs.

Gunners - Get unlimited ammo, RoF buff, accuracy buff, and damage-drop-off-range buff.

Assaults - get an all-around buff. Slight bonus to defence, speed, damage rate, skill recharge rate; but not as much of a buff to all of them as the other classes get to specific amounts. Maybe extend flight range.

Tanks - Pure defensive buffs; keep the instant health effect, keep the current damage reduction; become immune to grapples; health regens even when taking damage.

Support - technology related buffs; immune to damage from bots, turrets, Firebases, ejectors, annihilator; hack speed (especially against hostile turrets) increased dramatically, can effectively damage money-ball shields.

Snipers - Improved SR crosshair when unzoomed, better accuracy for hip-fired headshots; damage increase for body-shots.

Naturally the values for these buffs, as well as their different durations would need to be subject to a good deal of scrutiny and play-testing for correct balance.


4. Change the Moneyball shield recharge duration so that either a constant barrage of breach-bots are needed to keep it down (IE pro damage on MB can't keep the shield down); or else lower the time it stays down so that near-constant damage from pros (IE not just an occasional shuriken every half-minute) is required to keep it down. Maybe make it so the annihilator temporarily drops the MB shield to mitigate the extra difficulty this will add to scoring outright wins.


5. Change Over-time so that it only crops up if one team isn't leading at full-time. It's ridiculous that a team can be ahead for the majority of a match, but their hard-work and skill is totally undermined by a single back-dooring assassin or assault at the last minute.


6. Stop bunny-hopping from making you immune to pretty much every interesting gameplay mechanic. Just spamming your space-bar shouldn't make you immune to assassination attempts or slams.


7. Balance the Endorsements - Nerf armour and RoF endorsements; make accuracy endorsement mitigate the drop-off due to range so that accuracy is useful; make speed increase melee RoF to allow faster juice aquisition from it; make sure that the crit endorsement results in identical DPS increase to the rebalanced RoF; etc.

I can outline methods to determine the "fairness" of the balance if need be.


8. Buff spawned bots - they're too expensive and too weak. Make it so that the first bot a pro spawns follows him as a "body-guard"; with subsequent bots following the breach bot paths. Make scramblers expose cloaked assassins with their aura.


9. Buff the other turrets - the only useful ones are rock-its. Blasers are considered free juice; shave-ices are very circumstantial, and one can cover the whole base if hacked and upgrades; long-shots don't work on a lot of nodes / maps.

Give each node an "optimal long-shot firing position" so that long-shots will only fire on targets they have LoS to, and will prioritise ANY TARGET they can hit over ANY TARGET THEY CAN'T.

Give Rock-Its a "dead-zone" at point blank where they can't hit (they already have trouble hitting gremlins that are right next to them) as a nerf, making them mid-range defenses.

Give blazers a massive damage upgrade, but with massive damage drop-off due to distance, so that at their maximum effective range they barely nibble an enemy, whereas at point-blank they fry them nastily. Can nerf their build time to balance.


10. Buff deployed skills - at present deploying as gunner or tank is nearly always useless unless you're trying to quickly boost your health regen out of combat.

The tank's L3 auto-ammo-recharge when deployed should be given to the gunner L2 Deploy instead of the gunner's health recharge; the tank should get extra armour for his L3 deploy instead. The auto-ammo-recharge should be a gradual replenish rather than restoring to max every tick. This means a deployed gunner would have to use controlled bursts to give time for the ammo to replenish a little, but it would still be quicker than a full recharge.

Being deployed with either class should mean that they benefit from full health regeneration even when taking damage (as they WILL be taking damage when deployed, as they are sitting ducks).


11. Improve redundant skills: The Gunner's Grapple should be replaced with something more useful; Slam is much better anyway. With what? I am not sure, but I am sure the community can come up with a ton of exciting and interesting ideas. Perhaps a glue-grenade style mortar fire?

Make the Grapple part of the Assault's L3 charge optional (IE you use your GL's grapple at any point during the charge and it will activate the auto-grapple as soon as you hit the target), so that people who use L2 charge for mobility don't lose that functionality.

Make additional levels of an Assassin's Smokebomb reduce the "activation time", maybe make L3 smokebomb give the assassin temporary (2-3 seconds) immunity to grapples.

I agree with some of these.

It's hit-and-miss. Some of the ideas don't work, some could work if it was adjusted, some are good ideas.

Also, for the sin juice, make it so she is perma-cloaked but super loud and visible. This allows Sin to still take down turrets easily and quickly, which is her main juice target.

The support juice could be an "everything I touch kills". Hacked turrets get a buff, bots affected by the passive gets a buff, pros being healed get a buff. Firebase gets the full juice effect. I like the idea that a support juiced can drop the moneyball.

That is unavoidable with getting new players in. I find empty servers to be more boring TBH.

Fine, use other endorsements that aid your "no deaths" playstyle, such as armour or RoF, or whatever.

The game's not all about slaying; and as they are purchasable, they can't be crippling. The duration and numerical balances would effect the usefulness of them.

Your first point is not an argument against; merely an argument for its limited usefulness. This is fine, as it doesn't want to be OP.

CD on the juice vending means that it is much harder for everyone to be juiced simultaneously. Which means it's very easy for only one player to be juiced on the ball. And I'd hardly say running down the clock just to back-door unobservant players at the end is either fun or exciting. But it is a matter of personal preference, I guess.

Yes, it is an interesting mechanic IMO - it punishes people getting into melee range; pins down an enemy for your team to capitalise; and offers a satisfying animation for the perks. Hovering is fine; however hovering and fly skills are immaterial if you can get pretty much the same effect from bunny-hopping. Bunny-hopping cheapens the flight / hover mechanics.

Bunny-hopping is always lame, and should never be rewarded as a get-out-of-jail-free card. How would you like it if assault bombs, sniper flak, L3 charges of all flavours and air-strikes could be avoided simply by bunny-hopping?

Armour might be fine then, TBH been having trouble finding populated games to test. I thought I was doing surprisingly well last night though. The continued ownage of RoF is presumably what made it so cake now the key defence against it is neutered. Supports aren't meant to walk around like cocky kings safe in the knowledge their shotgun will eat alive anyone who tries to get up close and personal.

Enemy hack; own3d. Also, easy to avoid a lot of the time.

At present they just hang back out of range and kill them; hugging would tie down a player a lot worse than being outside max range. And heaven forbid players should have to protect their assets... But the idea was to turn rock-its from "what you want all the time everywhere" to "having a downside which might make you consider an alternative"

At range the slow's either useless because the wide spread and range is doing no damage; or else quickly countered by simply out-DPSing the gunner at that range.

Healers doing their job causes great win? Shocking! Kill the healer first? Besides, head-shot, head-crab, ground-zero, concerted team damage = win. And "full" health recovery is open to negotiation; 95%; 90%; 75%?

All the more reason to fix "bunny-hopping causes invulnerability"; and use mortar grapple while the cooldown ticks over? Eat them alive with the Minigun?

Fine, replace it with a nicer effect or whatever...

A lot of skills are free ring-outs or one-shot-kills; headcrab, Air-strike?

Then give smokebomb L2 / L3 a passive boost to assassin's run speed, or something? ATM they're useless...

I like it.

The Monday Night idea is cool, but I wonder if Steam would allow it

I'd add chat to the list of UI elements that needs improvement. Needing to hit ESC three times to cancel is silly

Agree that turrets need some reworking. I'm amazed that Lazers have been left useless for this long.

I'm also not in love with the juice mechanic, but I also don't really like the class-specific changes you detailed. Juice in its current form is necessary to counter upgraded rockit turrets and turtle-supports. Most classes need BOTH the increased damage and survivability to deal with them. Maybe it would be good enough if juice increased damage vs players by a smaller factor than it increases against bots and turrets. Let it still be good enough to survive and destroy turrets, but not enough to mow down an entire team with ease.

It's a team game; Support and tanks should be using their massive defences vs turrets (under the suggestions I made) to soak up the damage / hack the turrets; while their team-mates are capitalising on the distraction with their enhanced damage buffs.

Me too. Some of the gameplay stuff isn't so good. The mechanical and options stuff is great.

First 2 are great.

I dislike messing with juice because it is balanced and playable (plus uneven class buffs, you can tell someone doesn't like assassins enough to give them any survivability).

Shields are too easy to hold down from stupid stuff. Your suggestion was great.

Overtime is fine. Or, find a server without it.

Bunny-hopping again? So you can jump. It isn't like being able to try and dodge isn't in the game. It isn't pac-man. You can jump. Good players can shoot bunny-hoppers up anyway.

Endorsements have been somewhat balanced. They aren't too bad. A lot of builds aren't too overly used, a lot of things are still useful. Basically, no endorsements need nerfs at all anymore, and some could use a buff but that is it.

Spawned bots are already pretty strong if you actually push and take care of your bots (of course bots aren't going to and shouldn't get kills on their own, even jackbots). People who actually try to use bots actually find they do a great job of snagging a kill for them (assassins following gremlins as distraction, supports walking bouncers, countering assassins in bot lanes with scramblers, push away snipers within half a map's range with buzzers).

LazorBlazors could use a damage AND cost buff, making them half the price of rokkits and then actually useful. Other turrets are a bit useful, shaveices against assassins, and longshots against snipers and turtle teams when your team has map control.

Deploying already does as it is intended, if you know how to use it. As a tank, I deploy for health regen and to tag unhacked turrets outside of range with quick kill jetgun. As a gunner, any target that can't get behind cover quickly I deploy against (unless an enemy sniper says otherwise lol).

Also, gunner grapple is kind of a gunner nerf designed into the game. A GOOD gunner skill would make him TOO GOOD. Great weapons don't deserve great skills as well. Do you think a gunner with charge would be overpowered? I have nightmares about it.

The assault grapple is already kind of optional, if you press the yellow skill before a charge then you won't do the grapple (it won't grapple in the charge if you or your enemy is in the air when it connects). If any xbox player can do it quickly, any pc player can do it quickly. XBox players don't do full damage if grapple 3 does connect though. HOWEVER, I don't think assaults should always be hitting enemies with charges anyway, it is much more effective for travelling, while you use rifle or bomb for damage.

I don't find it "playable" - I find it cheap and boring. As for how "even" the juice buffs are - can fine tune the relative durations or the numerical bonuses to "even" them up. Or else come up with more entertaining alternatives.

Yes, however no matter how good you are you can't slam or grapple a bunny-hopping player; which makes several L3 skills redundant. As I said - would you consider it fair if bunny-hopping made someone immune to Flak, Air-strikes, Bombs, any Charge damage, etc?

I'd generally agree, although I am not convinced about RoF. Get two assaults - one Gold RoF, one Gold Armour - give both two irrelevent endorsements (juice and speed, for example). Get them to fire at each other in exactly the same way. If the endorsements are balanced, it'll be 50-50 which survives, if not one will predominantly survive where the other predominantly dies. Repeat with Gold Crits vs, etc.

Ejector will get you a kill or two, and hurts breach bots nearby, and costs half as much. Juice will get you several kills, possibly a turret kill, and only for the cost of four bots. And I don't like bots to determine my playstyle or route; I'd rather they enhance mine.

Except on all the maps and nodes where they either can't reach or are obstructed... Which is nearly all of them.

Charge, yes, because lack of mobility is one of the main drawbacks of the gunner; however a redundant skill isn't a nerf, as it's a load of cash you can spend on something else (Juice!), which is hardly more balanced.

Interesting; so you do a brief fly then L3 charge and the grapple doesn't trigger? Nice, but a tad convoluted.

It's also unreliable. If the elevation changes ever so slightly to make you touch the ground, you'll grapple

Screwy part is I suggested the idea of "only bots can keep the shields down" over a month ago. Not sure if it was on here or the Steam forums tho


As for bunnyhopping, never really had a problem with it. Stay close, attack normally and wait until they hit the ground. Time it right and you'll get your grapple/slam

That kind of thing has been suggested for a long time, probably before the PC version existed

The main problem is that with latency issues it can be really quite tricky to time it just right. With grappling I am sure you guys notice a lot of "WTF?!?" moments, and comfort yourselves with "well I guess it benefits me as much as the next man"; which is fine except that combined with bunny-hopping it isn't just the "I was right at him!" or "he wasn't even looking at me", it's "why are none of these multiple grabs working?!?"

But you can tell if an assassin is good by their grappling... good sins can grab me as I hit the ground, bad ones spam grapple wildly. Countering bunny hopping is less a matter of latency and more timing.

If you appear to be hitting the ground or not for them is a factor of latency, as is the server receiving the command whilst you're still on the ground.

Are you serious? No. It's 80% latency, though timing is important.

There was a time when people actually had to deal with latency on every shot

and not this silly 60ms stuff

I have NEVER had a problem grappling bunny-hoppers... maybe play on a server with less than 100 ping. There are much bigger problems in this game than something silly like this

I guess the ones that grab me (aka 9 out of 10) are good enough to grapple me:

-In the middle of my jumps
-While flying back from a level 1 or 2 Assault charge
-While they're in the air
-Almost never when I'm actually on the ground and grappleable

Of all the broken grapples that connect, I haven't seen a single one come from any other class since Beta.

I was about to call you a douche, but then the post above yours confused the **** out of me.

Air-grabs are supposedly fixed (I've not seen any go through since the previous patch with the Assault fixes), so I am not sure how recent this issue is for you; however for jump-grabs, etc it sounds like the issue is latency related.

Presumably because most classes don't tend to bother with grapples because of the afore-mentioned crippling limitations to their utility. Also, AFAIK "Lunges" don't count as the assassin being air-borne.

It was a South Park reference; the point was being that just because one person claims they have no issue with latency and grappling - that doesn't mean there is no issue with latency or grappling. Your post just reinforces how problematic the timing is.