More evidence Lazer-Blazers need a change

I'm seeing teams now that will specifically ignore your Lazer Blazers. If someone on your team actually builds one, the other team will refuse to destroy it. They'll take the other route to the moneyball or just control the map and build up juice and wipe you out in overtime.

Why? Because a lazer-blazer is a guarantee that nothing bad is going to meet you when you attack. It's a guarantee that a juiced player in overtime will have his way with the moneyball.

When they're so bad that enemies would rather leave them up, it's time to change how they work.

More evidence that building turrets need a change:

One bad player on my team build lvl 1 lazerblazers on ALL turret nubs. ANOTHER bad player decided to upgrade them. What did I get towards the end of the round? Useless lvl 3 lazerblazer garbage.

There needs to be a way to destroy a turret, but there is no easy way to do that without gimping a teammate.

Yeah. Changing how turrets build would solve it as much as changing how lazer-blazers work.

I figure either make them not useless, or make it so you can upgrade a lazer to a better turret.

I personally would like to see a 'Destruct' option for turrets, but I can see it being abused if someone's in a trolling mood.

I would also motion for it to give money back, but some troll [Assassins would be the major problem, along with Snipers] could walk up and destruct a turret for free cash.

So I can only see it as a free destruct, no money back, team-only [IM->IM, HS->HS]. You'd have to have a damned-good reason to destruct a turret, because you won't get anything from it other than the nub in a few moments and being able to set an actually-decent turret.

I know I've wished for this feature many times in half-pub Blitz matches where Assassins would spawn and build LazerBlazers, which the first section is horrible-ish enough and the second section is just plain faceroll-inducing.

Turret destruction sounds like it would be really complicated to implement it in a way that it couldn't be abused.

Instead, any teammate being able to upgrade a Lazer turret to a RockIt turret would be a better alternative I think. Lv 1 Lazer -> Lv 1 RockIt for $150, Lv 2 Lazer -> Lv 2 RockIt for $300, Lv 3 Lazer -> Lv 3 RockIt for $600.

I think this would keep things pretty fair, as if you subtracted the cost of the Lazer turret when upgrading then Lazer turrets would just become a down payment on a RockIt. Also that way you couldn't swap out someone's Lv 3 Lazer for a Lv 1 RockIt or something (though that would probably be an upgrade with the current state of things)

Alternatively, making Lazer turrets not suck would also be good, but I think the above would be much better than any sort of destruction/refund setup. Too much room for abuse there.

Just add the ability to replace all LazerBlazers/Longshots with something that costs more.

Basically, this:

Player 1 invests $25 into a level 1 lazerblazer, Player 2 wants a level 1 RockIt. He would have to invest now $150 to replace it.

Another example: Player 1 invests his money towards a level 3 longshot in steel peel. Player 2 wants to destroy it, well... in order to make this fair (sort of) Player 2 would have to invest in something that costs more than a level 3 longshot. So he would then be forced to pay for a level 3 rockit or something.

My idea, although it isn't great would prevent:

Having level 3 turrets replaced with level 1 turrets.
Having useless lazerblazers or longshots.
Wasting the trolls money if he does destroy the turret. Leaving him with less money to troll with.

I don't know that it's fair to lump longshots in there. Lazer-Blazers are pretty much terrible under nearly every circumstance, but longshots are fantastic in the right places on the right maps.

Yeah the only turret replacement I can see working is Lazer -> RockIt, because they serve pretty much exactly the same purpose but one is significantly better than the other.

Being able to replace other types would open up too much possibility for abuse/annoyance.

I could see it being neat to try in some custom games / organized matches, but not so much for pub servers.

Oh yea? You don't see longshot being abused? You wanna bet?

But you have to have some ability to remove them. We all know the horrors of steel peel longshots.

It might have to come down to having the devs disabled options for certain areas. Such as having longshots in steel peel, shaveice where the longshot turrets SHOULD be. Yea?

Why even allow longshots to be made on a useless spot such as steel peel?

Keep in mind that to make everything 'balanced', one should be able to change a Lv3 RockIt to a Lv1 Lazer. Everything would have to be interchangeable, and at that, the said turret would have to be Lv3 before being able to change it, or you risk making things more complicated by adding another hotkey to rewrite turrets that aren't maxed, thus igniting the fire under people to learn to use this new feature. The gap between experienced teams and non-experienced teams would further deepen, for an indeterminable amount of time anyway, and give yet another hurdle to jump over before one could consider themselves knowledgeable.

Being able to overwrite a Lazer, but not a RockIt, Shaveice or Longshot wouldn't be 'fair', thus creating another pathway for abuse; I sure as hell would be pissed if someone erased a Moneyball-nub Lv3 RockIt to replace it with a Lv1 Lazer; that's my/the team's money down the drain and a borderline-useless defensive mechanism in its' place.

I also disagree with the 'down-payment' idea, though I can't exactly pinpoint why. It just sounds.. wrong.

The reason I'm not arguing about the Lazer's strength is because it's right where I believe it should be. You pay dirt to get it to Lv3, the performance ought to be near-dirt; you get what you pay for, to make my stance known. If the RockIt, being [?]the[?] most expensive turret in the game, was weak as hell, yes, I'd be complaining about buffing it. It's expensive, the bang should be worth my buck. Imo, LazerBlazers are last-ditch defenses, something you can throw up and max quickly to repel bots as you personally repel Pros when your nubs are wrecked.

I'm sorry if newbies place Lazers needlessly, but we all started in that predicament. It's cheap to max, why not? Because it's only really any good against bots, and only when they aren't flooding at that, and Pros can flat-out abuse it for Juice. If you want to fix this problem [Juicing from LBs], lower the Juice income from turrets if at all possible.

tl;dr LazerBlazers are right where they should be, try nerfing/removing the Juice intake from turrets instead of completely rehauling turrets, adding a ProTip that procs fairly often saying RockIts are worth the money, and if needed, try the replacement strategy, though carefully.

What? No. No not at all.

Juicing off a lazer-blazer is an issue but it's not the reason I made the thread.

Check it again. Enemy teams deliberately let lazer-blazers stand because it's a free pass for juicers to get to the moneyball. If you only clear out one lane's turrets or just wait until overtime, it's better to have nothing at all than to have a lazer-blazer, because that nothing can be turned into a useful turret.

I kill lazer blazers out of respect for the other team. Just thought I'd mention it.

...but it's kinda sad that I would have to destroy their turret to actually HELP the other team out .

Lazer Blazers do need buffed. You should also be able to upgrade lvl 3 lazer blazers to lvl 1 or 2 rock-it turrets.

I say simply buff them and match the buff by increasing each stage's cost by $25 (50/75/125). They rebalanced rockits back then by dropping the price to more econo-friendly prices so why not balance LB's and balance for inflation basically?

Still, the issue at hand is that rockit lvl 1 is still better, and towards OT if the other team hasn't destroyed the lazer blazer (despite how well you are going to buff them) the team will just completely destroy the moneyball.

So either provide a way to replace lazerblazers at someone' expense, or buff the lazerblazers to slightly equal the rockit leveling system. :|

LB's now are a joke because of the s'ploits but back then they were preferred simply because they were cheaper and rockits were more expensive. I guess the problem is the perception they have now.

Back then they were cheap and effective for what they did and rockits were usually more of a luxury item. Now that rockits are far more economical, LB's now just seem useless? I always thought it was a "you get what you pay for" kind of deal but either way, turrets by and large will get wiped out come a juice rush.

I think of it as make LB's better and risk the reduced power in compared to rockits. Otherwise, you can spend $450 for a rockit 2 and get some defense but then you'll lose that money when the inevitable offensive push comes. By comparison (of my revised prices anyways) you spend 250 for a rickety defense but don't lose as much money but still have something that'll hold bots and careless pros at bay.

I think the answer is looking at it from a bigger picture. Rockits are better but you risk more money. Make LB's better and risk less money (assuming they do their intended job halfway decently).

That's my opinion anyways. Rebuttal?

What if they just get buffed against bots? That way they're still rickety trash against players but they have a purpose if you're all fatalistic like "a juicer will kill the turrets anyway."