Halloween Unmasking Part I Discussion

http://www.uberent.com/blog/2010/10/mon ... ng-part-i/



Welcome Monday Night Combat fans to Halloween Unmasking Week. During the next several days, well be revealing new information and showing off new content from our first free DLC that will be released in November. Along with juicy details about the free DLC, well be handing out some tasty Holloween eye candy. Theres way too much sweet stuff to eat all in one day so visit back over the rest of the week for the full experience.

Lets start things off with some balance changes that will be in the DLC:

Balance Changes

Assassin
Reduced damage done by the dagger to the Moneyball.
Increased the damage Assassins do after both dagger and sword lunge.
Normalized multipliers for both dagger and sword when doing damage from behind an enemy.
Reduced recovery time on Assassins alternate fire grapple on the Dagger, Sword and Shuriken Launcher.
Fixed an issue that caused Assassins to do too little damage from front facing, alternate fire, Shuriken face slap grapple.

Sniper
Reduced the damage the Moneyball takes from a sniper rifle.
Reduced the skill drain rate of Sniper Traps.
Reduced the amount of juice gain from the sniper rifle damaging targets.


Support
Reduced juice gain from healing with the Heal/Hurt Gun.
Increased skill recovery time of level 2 and 3 of the Supports Air Strike.

Gunner
Reduced minimum damage on Gunners minigun, making it less effective at long ranges.

Tank
Reduced the damage the Moneyball takes from the rail gun.

Other Balance Changes
Decreased effectiveness of Lazer Blazer Turrets vs players.
Increased effectiveness of RockIt Turrets vs bots.
Reduced cost of all levels of RockIt Turrets.
Greatly increased the cooldown time for Juice machines in Crossfire.

More to come this week.

Bug Fixes and Gameplay Changes
Other Fixes and Changes
New Features and Additions
Wallpaper Contest Winners

Re: Halloween Unmasking Discussion

Awesome! I thought those were worms though. :? Sorry bacon.

Changes will be great, no more attacking the moneyball from a distance men. Cannot wait to see what is revealed. :shock: :shock:

New features and additions :| :mrgreen:

Re: Halloween Unmasking Discussion

It should be noted that the sniper has only been nerfed so far, while other classes have at least had smaller things added when bigger things are taken away. Also, there have been multiple changes to other classes that give them more of an advantage over snipers than other classes (for example hurt/heal + RoF and mingun + hit detection). Because the sniper is one of the least armored classes (and the worst at evading), every time any class gets a damage buff it's basically a nerf to the sniper.

Not that I'm complaining, the sniper clearly has some distinct advantages over some classes, however I just hope you guys don't go too far with the changes to this class. I won't have a chance to test the new changes until later today, so I'm not going to get worried just yet.

Re: Halloween Unmasking Discussion

I'm actually quite impressed with these balance changes!

- I'm fine with level 3 trap skill drain nerfs because I don't buy level 3 traps.
- I'm fine with Sniper Rifle damage to the moneyball being lessened, because I can usually juice on a moneyball from a secure sniping location and empty my clip(s) before juice runs out and the enemy team usually can't prevent it.
- I'm fine with reducing Sniper juice rates because at level 3 passive, two bullets in the right spot can give full juice, and THAT **** IS BANDANAS.

- I'm fine with reducing juice gained from heal/hurt gun, because being able to juice in the first minute of the game as a reward for sitting in base and overhealing anything with a lifebar is a bit suspect.
- I'm fine with increased skill recovery time on level 2 and 3 airstrikes because...well, have you ever played a match against 5 Support players?

- I'm fine with reduced effectiveness of Gunner's minigun at long ranges, which is a problem that seems to have become a bit more noticeable since the title update.

- I'm fine with Tank railgun damage to the moneyball being lessened, for the same reason as Sniper Rifle bullets.

- I'm fine with reducing the cost of RockIt turrets across the board because they cost so much, you usually only see level 1 turrets, and level 2 and 3 turrets don't seems to have much more life for the amount of money they cost, especially given how easy it is for juiced assassins to remove them altogether.

- Juice vendors had a cooldown time? Guess I need to L2Camp juice machines.

All in all, some pretty solid changes, I must say. Kudos, Uber team!

Re: Halloween Unmasking Discussion

Eka. Is that you in the bottom left of the pic

Re: Halloween Unmasking Discussion

Sweet!! I had started a topic about seeing more level 3 rokits in a match last week! Glad this is being implemented. So many good balance changes I don't even know where to start!!

Re: Halloween Unmasking Discussion

ooOOooOOo DLC

Re: Halloween Unmasking Discussion

If that pic isn't the gunner wearing bacon on his nibbly bits, I will be highly disappointed.

Re: Halloween Unmasking Discussion

Exciting times ahead!

Nice balances there.

Re: Halloween Unmasking Discussion

Hallelujah! All of our prayers have been answered!! Now I need to do some odd job to some money so I can have Xbl for when this rolls out!

Hey I can say that we were all right in our "guesses" of what it was going to be. This is the greatest news I have ever read and wee still have 6 more days ahead of us!! I am as giddy as a school girl!

Re: Halloween Unmasking Discussion

Shiny! So wait, assassins do more damage than usual after a lunge? Not that I'm complaining.

Re: Halloween Unmasking Discussion

Amazing read so far. Buff/rework the scrambler and there won't be any issues with the sniper being "nerfed too hard."

Or don't do anything, and he'll still likely be fine.

Love the balance changes, especially the nerf to juice rates and damage done to the money ball. Can't wait to see what is in store for public/private matches!

Re: Halloween Unmasking Discussion

Every balance seems to be directly in line with most of the suggestions of the forum-going community.

The Juicemachine's cooldown will be most excellent. This will leave the Tank in #1 position to reap the benefits of deploying in front of a lazerblazer now, with their decreased effectiveness. Hopefully juice gains will remain the same

Re: Halloween Unmasking Discussion

I would kind of hate it if we received that buff and they called it even. I already despise snipers that stay in the base the whole time, if we got a decent bot then they would actually have an excuse to do so. I'd rather not have my class forced into the camping class that everyone already thinks it is.

Re: Halloween Unmasking Discussion

There is more info coming out this week. Don't fret.

You mentioned earlier that there are only nerfs to the Sniper... the reduction of the min damage to the minigun on the Gunner I'd say is a big help to the Sniper.

Re: Halloween Unmasking Discussion

"Big help" might be a bit of a stretch. I never had a problem dealing with gunners at mid to long range even post patch. It's just that before the new hit detection at mid to close range I could headshot or evade a sloppy gunner (the good ones would still get me), but now anyone can get me.

Re: Halloween Unmasking Discussion

Although I can't say I like the Support nerfs to Air Strikes, I like the majority of changes made in the DLC (especially to the Gunner's fully-automatic sniper rifle).

Man, now Sky Master is going to take forever. :/

Re: Halloween Unmasking Discussion

Overall, glad to see the changes.

Only things I'm concerned about are Lazer Blazer turrets causing less damage on pros. Pros can already take out turrets easily. I'd see them go the other direction - the base seems very fragile (coming from someone who enjoys wrecking them immensely). Wrecking the base isn't something that is too hard to do.

The other would be supports and slower air strike regen. I'm expected to keep them around to assure mutual destruction (cause hey, i'm not going to WIN if i turn the corner and meet a gunner/tank), as well as take out turrets (for which I often need all 3). "slower" hopefully isn't crazy-slower.

Also, is that a naked pit girl laying on a field of bacon, under there in the teaser pic?

Re: Halloween Unmasking Discussion

I don't know if you play the lighter classes much, but if you accidentally get in front of a Level 3 laserblaser it'll ruin your day pretty fast. A hacked one can kill you in about a second. I wouldn't have necessarily suggested the nerf, but I don't hate it, and I wouldn't mind if they compensated by increasing the health of the laser blasers.

Re: Halloween Unmasking Discussion

THIS POST. Didn't notice that the Lazer Blazers were going to do less damage until you mentioned it. Now, when you spawn one, it might as well just spawn a big coin worth $25 that only the opposing team can grab. :roll:

Also, Shotgun is fairly useful against Gunners and Tanks, but I cannot deny that the 3 Air Strikes become very necessary in certain situations. Hopefully it's not as long as the Support's OTHER skills, or I'm going to have to permanently run Gold Skill Recovery (which sucks, cuz Gold ROF is pretty much a necessity right now),