Juice - the slippery slope. No chance for come back.

So I got some games going with some friends... it took us several matches just to find a game without 2 seconds of lag... only to find the juicing is completely out of control.

Here's what happens...

We'd get pushed back in to our base.
The other team would keep pushing.
At any given time 1 player on their team was juiced in our base.

This happened over 4 different games. with different players.


Juice is gained too easily now. I know how to do it. It takes 20-30 seconds and 3 blackjacks to do it. The problem is, once one team gets control of the map, they can keep it. There's no getting past it when someone is filling their juice bar at any given moment while your team is constantly stuck respawning because they're dieing to the juicer.


It's not even fun to play now. I was hoping it would be okay. With teams seeing juice a little more often... but this is just stupid. Something needs to be changed or more casual players like myself are going to give up before the free DLC can pick up the user base dealing with this.

Are you talking about meleeing blackjacks with any class? That has been around since the beginning of the game, and you are incredibly vulnerable while whacking on bots in melee range.

The only classes which can gain juice remotely quickly anymore are the assassin who is allowed to farm bot waves and the tank deploying in front of lazer blazer/bot damage.

Maybe the sniper against large enough bot waves.

Juicing was REDUCED in the DLC. I don't know why people are saying they see more juiced players now.

Maybe more players are trying different tactics?

I have never tried the melee thing, but I just might. Last night there was a support that juiced at LEAST 6 or 7 times on Spunky. That is just what I saw, too, it could have been more.

I'm still waiting for a Juice-free playlist. Fun game but bacon, speed boosts, and now churros should be the only powerups.

In my opinion the only reason it is broken is due to the defensive bonus it provides. The damage bonus is fine, the speed increase and full health recovery is great as well. The problem comes when a Juiced player can walk into a defended position and tank huge amounts of damage. If you want to give Juice a small damage reduction that might be alright but currently it is simply too strong. Add to this the ways to exploit Juice gain rates and as the OP stated it simply goes from bad to worse.

The funny thing is that if the teams are close to balanced Juice is never a problem. Only when one team has a distinct advantage does Juice ruin any balance in the game. Juice should maintain balance, not offset it; this is why it fails currently.

I was hoping the juice cooldown was going to be waaaay longer. What is it now 45 seconds or a minute? I say make juice $1000. I have noticed less juicing, but I haven't really played against too many good players who can juice themselves up quick and fill in the downtime with bought juice.

juice is def not easier to gain...it honestly feels the same to me but no easier...

the cooldown doesn't need to be longer...it was an effort to stop juice chaining now people don't hover around juice buying it back to back. I think it's fine the way it is and the cool down is more than enough. and no it doesn't need to be 1k,$500 is fine

Note: I tend to disregard what Hudson has to say since he's always partied up.

Anyway, I agree with all of this. I was so excited for the patch but holy god the prevalence of juicing seems to be better than ever. The day the DLC dropped and I played on Grenade III, we had a fellow playing assault and we were pushed into our spawn by their team of assaults and supports.

This certain individual that was playing assault juiced around 10 times through the duration of the match, give or take. Once his juice would be almost out, he'd hop and charge away only to come back juiced. The match ended with him going 40+ kills and below 5 deaths. Keep in mind that this is just one example; it's not like it happened once, lol.

My third match that day was when I got joined into a Steel Peel and right as I leave the spawn, I'm juiced on by a gunner. I left that match instantly. This past Wednesday, the long awaited day for the patch and dlc release, was not about to be ruined by crap like that.

Oh and be careful with the suggestion of a new playlist. The people around here like to shout "splitting the playerbase" a lot. I got that a lot when I suggested a new playlist or matchmaking option that would not match me up against or with parties in-game. The community just loves their juice and stacking of teams.

But yeah reading the forums and seeing all of the complaints and problems with the game has seriously soured my will to play MNC right now.

Hiero Glyph and th3cozy speak the truth as well.

had a support juiced in our base at 13:40 today :?

I have to disagree. And as someone who has been pretty vocal about the need to balance juice, I have to say that I have found the patch to be an excellent balance fix. My own anecdotal experience is that the frequency of juicing is about where it should be. It happens, its tough to deal with (as it should be), but I rarely run into endless waves of juiced players as I did pre-patch. If I had my druthers, I would still recommend a modest reduction in the damage that assassin swords do to turrets (but only to turrets), but after the other balance changes, even base wrecking assassins seem less frustrating to me.

Just my $0.02

Note: I tend to disregard people who ignore the teamwork required in a multiplayer class based shooter. If you play solo, you reduce the list of things you can consistently accomplish to only the skills associated with your class. If you play with a group, your capabilities effectively increase by an absurd amount due to the synergy between your class and other classes played by competent players.

The DLC made this game even MORE team oriented than it was before. Snipers and Supports can't juice rambo every 15-30 seconds. Tanks and snipers can't solo melt a moneyball. Gunners don't have one weapon that is the answer to long/short/medium range problems. Turrets are cheaper and AWESOME to see when properly supported. Juice is not readily purchasable and bots have an increased role in both juice gain and pve importance (as bots are now a very strong source of Moneyball damage now that the sniper and tank have been nerfed).

Also Roy, everything I said in this post deals purely with juice gain rate mechanics which were nerfed across the board. This applies whether or not I'm partied up. The only class which should be juicing more is the tank due to the debuff to lazer blazers basically making them a juice battery, and even then, this requires the other team building a LB in a really dumb spot and not noticing the fatass immobile tank slurping down a quick juice meter.

Also, I've played quite a few games solo (which I can only accomplish by showing offline now-a-days) and I'm absolutely in love with the fact that I can't single handedly push into the enemy base and melt the enemy moneyball with juice in 1:00 of game time. It now takes a genuine team effort to kill the moneyball. I don't notice any class juicing often other than assassins and then occasionally late game someone works out the juice stand cycle so they can get a chain going.

Ill be posting a video at some point of me CCing two juiced players in a row as an example of how even 1 player can stop a two man juice chain. This was while I was playing solo AGAINST TWO MEMBERS OF OXYTEAM ON THE OTHER TEAM.

Yes, if you left/played the game less because you had problems with PRE-DLC juicers, you probably still think juicing is a problem post DLC. If you stuck it out, adapted and learned to play against more frequent and practically INVINCIBLE juicers as a lot of us did Pre-DLC, you laugh at how easy it is to kill/control juiced players when they enter your base.

It's still tough to take out juicers unless they're an assassin, assuming they're aware of their surroundings. I myself think that juice is a bit too strong. Maybe make each class have different damage reductions during juice? Y'know, the tank would take the least damage while juiced, followed by the assassin (the two 'wrecking ball' juice guys), then the other classes and yadayadayada. This is just off the top of my head.

Juiced assassins without armor can still be one-shot killed with shotguns. Nice feeling when you see that assassin trying to shred your turrets up and you walk up to her and go "Hi! BAM!"

I think juice is where it should be...it doesn't seem to happen that often at all but then again I did play a select group of Supports that make it their mission to heal everything and then go on a juice rampage(simple fix kill them as much as possible while not allowing to to kill or heal bots and or team mates

The rate has been reduced (so far) and aside from that it is much easier to kill juiced players than before. MUCH easier. Also... kill people, they won't juice as often.

As for seeing a Support juice early (13:40 or whatever was mentioned).. that doesnt reflect against earning juice taking longer.. its just one of the old strategies. Spawn as an Assassin (or whoever else), get some really quick cash... die, switch classes, go buy juice. Use the gained $$ after juicing to juice again if theres a banner left, or to buy the upgrades you skipped over when the game started. The continuous cycling by multiple players at the same time has been broken though, and that was the major issue. Juice now feels more accurately a part of the game IMO than the continuous unstoppable wave of OP monsters over and over (taking precendece over the rest of the game mechanics) like it used to be.

And 1 more time for emphasis.... killing juiced players is MUCH easier than before.

I'm still in the Juice is too frequent camp. However it is nice that the everflowing health bug is gone. I can get juice fast too. Woo. It still sucks and makes the game less fun for me. BUT, I deal, because you can't always get what you want.

THIS IS A LIE. MY FIRST GAME POST DLC YOU STEAM ROLLED ME AND MY TEAM OF LEVEL 0s AND THOSE WHO SHOULD HAVE BEEN LEVEL 0s BY YOURSELF.

And as far as juice. I spent the time and took the effort to go and get juice. I deserve all the bonuses it offers. I think it's fine as it is. When I'm juiced as an Assassin, a single competent player can still easily stop me. Note the word "competent." Unless the juiced player is a Tank, I'm going to face charge them and at the very least, waste some of their juice.

Oh you can definitely still kill entire teams by yourself, but I can't kill you all AND kill your money ball alone in the first min of the game anymore.

Yeah well not everyone can be as good as me....

lets bargin and make it 800. cmon, you earn 400 from juicing. making it 800 would stop chain buying and make it rarer, since it would be a luxury instead of a inexpensive tool to abuse.

meleeing bots is hard to do against a competent team, but maybe for the assassin it should be reduced by 20% of what it currently is. i dont think its that big a deal tho.

but juice is better, lets not complain too much. i stopped playing the game, and i started back again, didnt i? i think its better.