Update 8 [5/18/11]

regarding OT:
before, if the team winning in normal time and loses in OT because of juice rush, they deserve to lose because they fail to secure the win
now, it's a different approach on deciding who wins and kind of defeats the purpose of OT since your goal is to destroy the enemy moneyball, not just damage it. and how often do you get an exact equal health situation?

regarding juice:
i'm not good enough to always be able to juice so i'd say it'd make juice feel less rewarding to me

regarding bots:
seems like a good change

regarding kill streak bonus:
players with good streaks will still profit so i don't see a problem, this also increases the challenge to obtain juice a little

regarding level 2 rock-its:
the kill-streak nerf was a good step to promote objective play instead of killing but this seems to just counter that by lowering the importance of upgrading turrets (to new players)

regarding joining matches half-way:
a fair change i'd say

i'd say this is a disappointing patch but we'll see how it plays out

My first 3 games after this patch have been the best games I've played to date. That is all.

Me too. I have been talking about it for weeks with my friends, but I would prefer still going to OT if the moneyballs are within, say, 25% health of each other.

As for the juice nerf... it hits some classes harder than others. Hurt gun is useless now. I used to be able to get round the horns with ease, and now I am lucky to get out alive after a double :roll:

I guess I'll just have to use the shotgun.

Also, I really was hoping that a new taunt would come with the chickey costume. Chicken dance all the way!

I can agree with this

Having been in the games you are talking about, when I have the space to:

1. Draw the game out so that my team doesn't lose beforehand
2. Get to the center passed your team (the assumption is that you are winning)
3. Buy juice
4. Waltz over to you base without running into the myriad of things that instantly kill me
5. Wait for the ball to drop
6. Do full damage to the ball without dying to turrets/your team
7. Buy juice again
8. Do another set of damage, and
9. Either win off that or pray that someone else on my team notices that it's overtime and shoots the rest of the ball

...Then no, the game was not "even", I just wasn't able to convince my team to move out of spawn at any point in the match, and don't have the ability to solo bots into your base. Keep in mind that this gigantic chain of events is only possible if your team was not even aware overtime was about to start, had not already bought juice in preparation for it, was not prepping defenses and was then also not remotely interested in acting aggressive anyways.

My team might not have deserved to win, but neither did yours; all things considered, the sudden switch to heavy aggression that overtime allowed was pretty much the only way to make individual effort and planning count. I'm just as annoyed whenever I do all of this and lose anyways because a tank/assault had the same idea but just do damage faster/didn't have to do as much damage to my team's ball. That doesn't mean that it wasn't a good play by them and there are just so many reasons not to suddenly get rid of that mechanic entirely.

And I do mean entirely. In however many games, I've seen a game go to overtime with no damage from either side maybe twice. This will probably go up severely though; with the cost of probably losing if a single push gets through there's now no incentive to be aggressive outside of just wanting to be aggressive, which pretty much means if you like to play aggressively as anything other than tank/gunner you might as well just leave if your ball takes damage cause given how players act in this game, you're on your own to start and when the ball goes down the rest of your team is going to leave anyways.

Tl;dr: Losing a 15 minute game in the first 2 minutes is a terrible idea in a game that relies on teammates you can't control. Your game is just telling me there's no point playing out a round that you ever fall behind in. And yes, I am mad about it.

The only upside I can see is that if tanks are affected as much as sins seem to be by the juice nerf, maybe there won't be the case of the random tanks just juice chaining their worth in level 2 turrets constantly. It's immensely irritating to have to always build $1000 just to put down a turret that stands half a chance. Even if they all just switch their strategy to mortar spam, at least gunner's are easier to kill.

Also that my "rush passive 3 and force a 45 minute game with minimal effort" sniper strat will be as hilariously effective as ever.

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

Calm down. If it really is that bad Uber will change it. Keep in mind we are the test group and not everything comes out perfect.

Oh hey, I was playing with you!

I agree, this patch really helped make games feel back-and-forth again. Having two Lvl2 RockIts made them not fragile to early attacks. Having OT only if balls have equal health, IMO, means that your team has to make an effort the whole game, not just during OT.

I'm not sure how to feel about the juice nerfs. I can kinda understand, since gaining juice is about surviving for longer than usual and gathering it up, but I had trouble even killing one turret as Support/Assassin, even though I could kill them fine before. I guess it's for the best though, since it's a lot less frustrating on the receiving end.

Wait, @Tikki, I don't think I realised the Tikki i've seen in the Aussie servers was you.
Sad to hear about the Aussie servers borking it up again, really was planning to play some MNC this weekend, despite Honest Hearts needing some time.

Anyway, on topic:
Level 2 Turrets at the start not only make it harder for a Sin to roll in at the beginning, but also for Assaults (a bomb-jump can get you from your ring to theirs for the majority of maps,) or anyone quick enough to get into their base. It'll also mean you'll likely need a Heavy to support to take down the initial turrets. Less than half a minute of L2-Mortar fire can take one from afar, but it would need good team-work for a Tank to Product Nade Disable one from afar while there's a Sin going for that turret. (Product Nade to disable, Sin slashes away, if needed then Smoke to disable further.

On the topic of OT, i've had games where our team has let bots take down increments of our moneyball (after the initial turrets have gone, either from player and/or bot fire) then our team being stalemated until the end. It might be different now such that we start with L2 RockIts, but over time, they still may fall. I hope this'll mean more people are aware of the bot lanes and the inherent focus they require.

Seems like the Moneyball and juice changes are the most impacting or drastic.

I'll have to see. But given the posts above I have a positive outlook. Takes cooperation to win. If only we could get some advertisement...

See you ingame tomorrow or something. I haz homework.

Now basically if a team managed to down the enemy moneyball and the other team didn't they win, which is more fair imo, you'll just have to be aware of the bots position more in the start of a game.

Well you saw the reaction of the people in the match we played together? "Did they buff gunners?" "omg they nerfed turrets!" right after you destroyed a rokit 3 with juice, kinda proves my point about people needing to understand that a juiced gunner is the answer to turtling, and that while everyone can do a bit of anything each class outperforms all others at a specific task.

that would indeed be me, send me a friend request on steam and the servers have been fixed, around 4 5 star ones, 2 3 star ones, the 3FL servers are yet to be fixed as they are all still 1 star but i am sure they will be fixed

1. That's cool. It's also unfortunately pointless information.

2. The loss of damage makes standing up to juiced players not as extremely hazardous. You'll still go down extremely quickly, but the extra amount of ammo players have to pump out leads to extra reloads and it adds up very quickly. There are two really effective weapon based counters, the deployed mini-gun and the shotgun. The gunner can actually survive some damage thanks to his damage reduction while deployed and the juiced damage reduction, and the shotgun does such extreme amounts of damage that the 7% difference actually counts, and the minigun fires so quickly that single points of extra damage add up extremely quickly.

On top of that turrets gain overall durability and the moneyball does as well, although due to the mechanics change that's not as important.


The juice nerf won't affect the better players because they know how to prioritize threats and adjust accordingly. Your average player, however, will probably find these nerfs somewhat challenging to adjust to if these tactics are applied by those better players.

Does this address the star rating issue?
Joining late no longer fries your rating?

Just curious.


L. Spiro

Yes, there's a grace period when joining late to not mess with your Star Rating.

I've been noticing that some sins seem capable of firing shurikens over and over without their cloak going down
Had one game earlier on Tully's where I was by the front RockIt, Sin was along the back wall by the right-hand entryway and I never saw her cloak come down, just a blank area with a stream of shurikens flying away from it.

Her cloak didn't even shimmer when I shot her either, all I saw was the bullet hits you see on everyone

Nice to see responses on the major changes in this patch. Uber have exceeded themselves yet again.

I read the whole topic and every post, but that was over an hour ago and I dont remember everything everyone said.
But I dont recall anyone asking a clear and calm question.
Why? WHY??, does not really need to be dignified with an answer.

Most people are just making sarcastic comments, sometimes in the form of questions that dont need to be answered.


L. Spiro

If you're being a smart *** you will not get a response from any of us.

Wait, I just responded to it. Damn! You got me!

whens the black cloud issue going to be fixed if ever (with ATI cards)