27 replies to this topic

[BIsmuthZornisse]

Added following suggestion:
Sharpshooter
Replace AM-SAR with Explosive ordnance link rifle (EOL rifle)
Fires a single mine that sticks to surfaces. Unlike EOC repeater etc., it is hitscan, but deals less damage on direct hit and has a reload time somewhere between slug rifle and ke-sabot to make up for the explosion radius.
Looking at the AM-SAR's stats, it seems to be kinda redundant with, if not strictly worse than, the SA-Hawkins. So I thought up a weapon that can somewhat help attack enemies who hide behind cover (due to the blast), which should make taking the AA/a missile silo a little easier for the sharpshooter.
The "link" in the name is because it fires one piece of the explosive ordnance chain at a time with lengthy reload in between.

@ BurnsHot:
Yeah, players not knowing how to play the mode is, i think, the most frustrating thing in siege for me. Which is why i want the devs to include a "manual" section in the game. Sure, other people have posted various tutorials on the forums or on steam, but i think i should not require information from a "third party" just to play the game. The in-game tutorial and the little boxes on the garage screen before a match are just not enough.
Regarding coop-siege, do you think that reducing the base hitpoints to half or a third of the standard value would work_ Though the rewards (including the daily one) would probably need to be adjusted accordingly.

The ship arriving at the base with basically full health is a pretty good point, maybe the engine should also become vulnerable when the ship is, say, halfway between the defending base and the AA area_ Like, have the base use some kind of emp weapon that makes the ship drop the shield.
Although i kinda think that a team that can NEVER get the AA silo under their control has no hope of winning, anyway, since the enemy team would just get the weaker team's ship shot really fast, possibly before it even can open fire on the base. Though maybe i'm interpreting your message too literally. I'm bad with that kind of thing.

Moving the base turrets a little bit further outside might actually help with approaching the AA silo reasonably safely, although long rangers could still be a problem without the shield, although i'm wondering if implementing BOTH would be overkill.

About that the dominatong team being able to launch their next ship much faster, yeah that's completely true, i can't believe i never really noticed that until i read your post. It's because the other team's players, when attempting to take the silo, would spill whatever eu they are still carrying upon death,for the dominating team to easily collect, right_ But i don't like the idea of the ability to collect eu just being "magically" disabled, i'd rather have that be a last resort, if nothing else works.
I thought of something i could suggest (but i don't think it's sufficiently thought through to "officialy" add to the opening post):

Have the EU that gets spilled inside the AA area, as well as a little distance outside of it, absorbed into the AA silo, without being able to be collected, while the AA is active/capturable. This increases the capture rate for the team trying to shoot down the airborne ship, but the defending team will still require having at least 1 player more on point than the enemy team to capure at all. The eu would be gradually used up during the attempted capture. Maybe have 250 eu (a full c-class load) result in 150% capture speed. if you implement a cap for the speed increase, the superflous eu should be saved up, maybe until there's no ship in the air.

@Amidatelion:
Yeah, it took me a LONG time to understand some of the siege mechanics, i'm probably even still missing things. It wasn't until, like, one or two months ago (i've been playing for over a year) that i realized that the AA silo is really more important than delivering the eu. I think I used to more or less prioritize collecting and delivering eu over everything else. Stuff like this is why i'd like to have an in-game manual.

@Odinous:
Well, the "not staying together" issue in tdm (and siege and missile assault, to an extent) is really not helped by the game respawning players all over the map. I think i heard or read that the idea is to keep the respawning player out of the enemies' line of sight, but it can easily result in the rest of the team getting killed by a dominating team before the respawned player can rejoin, followed by the still grouped up enemies (i think that's called "deathball" around here) picking of the seperatedly spawning players one by one for the rest of the match. I which is why i made a suggestion for a new spawnsystem, it's one of the urgent ones, even.

[Meraple]

BIsmuthZornisse, on July 28 2014 - 08:10 AM, said:

Added following suggestion:
Sharpshooter
Replace AM-SAR with Explosive ordnance link rifle (EOL rifle)
Fires a single mine that sticks to surfaces. Unlike EOC repeater etc., it is hitscan, but deals less damage on direct hit and has a reload time somewhere between slug rifle and ke-sabot to make up for the explosion radius.
Looking at the AM-SAR's stats, it seems to be kinda redundant with, if not strictly worse than, the SA-Hawkins. So I thought up a weapon that can somewhat help attack enemies who hide behind cover (due to the blast), which should make taking the AA/a missile silo a little easier for the sharpshooter.
The "link" in the name is because it fires one piece of the explosive ordnance chain at a time with lengthy reload in between.

GIMME

[BIsmuthZornisse]

Made amendment to the suggestion about reworking the spawning system. Additionally the following suggestion has been added under sytem/other:

There should be a button and/or console command to enable/disable vulnerability to friendly fire for itself. Death by friendly fire is treated like suicides: Assuming the player is not was not at full health, the enemy that scored the last hit gets the kill for the purposes of points/experience.
This is mostly to enable the team to destroy a player that got stuck somewhere in the map geometry (like in the eu delivery things at the team's base in siege) and that doesn't have explosive weapons to kill itself with (like a reaper).

I don't know how to prevent griefers from abusing this function during tdm to more easily feed the enemy team points, so i might need some feedback on this one. Although, i don't think i've ever actually seen someone intentionally feed in tdm, does it actually happen often enough that this function might cause problems_

[Infyrno]

BIsmuthZornisse, on August 02 2014 - 07:57 AM, said:

Made amendment to the suggestion about reworking the spawning system. Additionally the following suggestion has been added under sytem/other:

There should be a button and/or console command to enable/disable vulnerability to friendly fire for itself. Death by friendly fire is treated like suicides: Assuming the player is not was not at full health, the enemy that scored the last hit gets the kill for the purposes of points/experience.
This is mostly to enable the team to destroy a player that got stuck somewhere in the map geometry (like in the eu delivery things at the team's base in siege) and that doesn't have explosive weapons to kill itself with (like a reaper).

I don't know how to prevent griefers from abusing this function during tdm to more easily feed the enemy team points, so i might need some feedback on this one. Although, i don't think i've ever actually seen someone intentionally feed in tdm, does it actually happen often enough that this function might cause problems_

No thank you

They can shoot themselves, unless they're a g2 assault.  Then too bad for them

[SoldierHobbes11]

You really need to make it easier to read. Instead of color coding things, just bold or underline the important bits. And you really need to make it shorter. The developers have even less time on their hands than we do to read these things, so I don't think they're likely going to read something this long. Not trying to rag on you or anything, I'm just trying to increase the chance that the Devs will read it.

It's very clear to me that you really love this game since you've clearly spent a lot of time thinking about how to improve it. Out of the things I was able to read, while I may not agree with all of it, you still have quite a few good ideas.

And not to sound elitist or anything, but you said you were fairly new to the game. I suggest you play the game a little more and try to get better with what you have at the moment before suggesting a bunch of changes to the current balance of the game. But a lot of the other ideas that you've suggested that weren't about mech and weapon balance, I think are pretty solid.

Edited by SoldierHobbes11, August 02 2014 - 10:06 PM.

[BIsmuthZornisse]

Changed suggestion of g2 mechs mechs starting with mk2 versions of g1's starting item to starting with a different mk1 item than the g1.

@Infyrno:
Well, that suggestion is for the case of mechs without explosive weaponry getting stuck, so they can't kill themselves. I think that is currently G2 Assault, Sharpshooter, Reaper, and maybe the Technician (i don't remember if the redox' splash deals damage to the user besides applying the debuff). Maybe the ability should only be usable if the stuck player is currently piloting one of these_

@SoldierHobbes11:
Okay, so reading colored fonts is appearently just hard for other humans. Well, my brain doesn't quite work like other, "normal" humans' do, so maybe i should have expected discrepancies in perception. So how about i make i change it so that the actual suggestions normal text, and my thoughts behind the suggestions italic, with all of the above in "automatic" color_ And each section is in its own spoiler box that can be open and closed. Like so:

MECHS

Spoiler

Bruiser
Flak instead of vulcan
Since the hellfire isnt particularly suitable for close range, i think that the bruisers close range weapon shouldnt have spinup. Also too many mechs have a vulcan anyway.

ITEMS

Spoiler

When maxing a mechs level, that mechs starting item should be unlocked globally.
Have the g2s start out with different mk1 items than the g1 versions. (like the g2 raider currently does)
I originally wanted the g2s to have mk2 items, but if the global unlocking of starting items comes back, then buying items altogether shouldnt become basically obsolete, so i changed it to this.

Would this be better_ The suggestions marked as urgent could probably also go in their on box, too, that comes before the others. Feedback, please!

I think i started playing this game shortly after the facility map's release, i don't know if that counts "fairly new". However, this is my first "real" fps (i've played the metroid prime series before, but besides shooting things from a first person perspective, it's not comparable to this game at all.), which is most noticable in my horrendous aim. I haven't even successfully committed leading shots with non-hitscan weapons like the HEAT-cannon to my subsconcious yet. I do try to think about how much my failures are due to a mech possibly being underpowered/the enemy mech being overpowered and how much is due to me being an fps newbie/using the mech incorrectly. I also try to think not just think from the perspective of me using a mech/ anything else with these changes, but also from that of having to deal with enemy players using these mechs/other things with applied changes, if that makes sense.
And yes, views on balance can totally change with experience, i used to think that flak scouts are overpowered as all hell, but honestly, it's probably just a matter of getting good at hitting small mobile targets, since the a-class mech's armor value is pretty much "wet paper", so really, a good c-class and probably b-class should be able to reliably win against a-classes just by attrition, that is, outlasting them. Of course, this assumes that a) the a-class didnt get the drop on its enemy and B) the a-class doesnt run away and instead fights to the death.
And aside from the things marked as urgent, i don't think anything else is really gamebreaking as it is now.

If you don't agree with my (re)balance (or any other) suggestions, can you tell me why that is_ I'm not an expert after all, and probably lack perspective on some things, so feel free to give me feedback.

[SoldierHobbes11]

BIsmuthZornisse, on August 03 2014 - 06:30 AM, said:

I think i started playing this game shortly after the facility map's release, i don't know if that counts "fairly new". However, this is my first "real" fps (i've played the metroid prime series before, but besides shooting things from a first person perspective, it's not comparable to this game at all.), which is most noticable in my horrendous aim. I haven't even successfully committed leading shots with non-hitscan weapons like the HEAT-cannon to my subsconcious yet. I do try to think about how much my failures are due to a mech possibly being underpowered/the enemy mech being overpowered and how much is due to me being an fps newbie/using the mech incorrectly. I also try to think not just think from the perspective of me using a mech/ anything else with these changes, but also from that of having to deal with enemy players using these mechs/other things with applied changes, if that makes sense.
And yes, views on balance can totally change with experience, i used to think that flak scouts are overpowered as all hell, but honestly, it's probably just a matter of getting good at hitting small mobile targets, since the a-class mech's armor value is pretty much "wet paper", so really, a good c-class and probably b-class should be able to reliably win against a-classes just by attrition, that is, outlasting them. Of course, this assumes that a) the a-class didnt get the drop on its enemy and the a-class doesnt run away and instead fights to the death.
And aside from the things marked as urgent, i don't think anything else is really gamebreaking as it is now.

If you don't agree with my (re)balance (or any other) suggestions, can you tell me why that is_ I'm not an expert after all, and probably lack perspective on some things, so feel free to give me feedback.

yes putting things under spoilers will help it feel a bit shorter and not look as intimidating at first glance. As I said, you want to make it look much more inviting and easier to read. Keep things as simple as you can and most people won't have a problem digesting the information you're trying to convey. You don't have a problem of lacking things to say, you just need to work on presenting it in a way that's simple and easy to process.

And okay, you're not that new to Hawken itself, you're just not too familiar with arena First person shooters. That's cool, arena FPS games are pretty disorienting and fast paced to most people, so if you're having trouble don't feel too bad. If you want to work on your aim, do the CO-OP TDM against the AI so you can focus more on improving your aim rater than outsmarting a fellow pilot. If you can't hit the AI, real players won't be any easier. Plus, it will help you get a much better feel for the controls and how mechs operate.

Anywho, moving on to the balances changes that I disagree with:

Currently, the rear damage penalty is significantly less than it used to be so I think it's fairly balanced out as they stand. Trust me, in a team engagement, that rear damage is the only real edge you can use against a turreted heavy. That rear damage bonus only tends to be a hinderance when you're separated from your team. Turret modes are mainly meant for more defensive engagements, and the way they're set up now better fits that role, even if some are more effective than others.

Bruiser doesn't need a flak cannon. The Vulcan is actually much easier for most new guys to use in a cqc scenario. Besides, the bruiser wasn't meant for cqc. The bruiser was made to be a mid-range bully. Giving it a flak cannon would hamper that effectiveness, becuase while both the Vulcan and flak are horrible past close range, the Vulcan is a bit more effective at mid range. Also, the default play style of the bruiser is mid range harassment with the hellfires and periodic Vulcan bursts. The Vulcan is mainly there in case someone gets close to you and you need to chase them off. Plus, the bruiser is a suppression mech, and a Vulcan fits the role of suppression much more than a flak cannon. However, the flak/hellfire and the Rev-GL/hellfire combos aren't bad, but they sound like they belong on other mechs, not the bruiser. Also, the ability as it is takes getting used to. If it lasted as long as the breserker's, I feel that the mech would lose some of it's character. The ability is used similar to a block or a parry in a fighting game. A quick and fast counter to negate a large burst of damage and you can use it frequently. Most mechs already have abilities with long cool downs and it's nice to have a mech that has a shorter one with an ability that takes more thought to use correctly.

Yeah, the brawler's turret is fairly useless, I agree. However, the devs have said in the patch notes when the grenadier had it's ability changed that the brawler will likely get a similar change. Also, replacing the Vulcan with the B4BY wouldn't work out so well. The B4BY was tailor made to work in combination with the SAARE launcher on the incinerator while the Vulcan was made to be a generic weapon that would work well with most mechs.

The Vulcan grenadier has always been a bit odd to me, but since the ability change, it's found a much better role. The Vulcan grenadier nowadays is much more of an assault mech than suppression. In fact I think of it as a heavy berserker, now. Also, giving the Vulcan explosive ammo, that's a bit to complicated for just one thing. Besides, an explosive, hitscan minigun is not something people would find fun to fight against.

Lastly, the predator has gone through a lot of changes since it's inception. Some of dedicated pilots told me that they feel the predator is in a much better place now than it used to be. It's not that your ideas on the predator are bad, it's just that people may not want to put an idea into place that would throw off it's current progress.

Now for the weapon suggestions, I couldn't read them because on an iPhone, that was yellow text on a white background. Guess I'll have to give my thoughts on those later.

But like I said, you don't have bad ideas and you clearly love this game. I may not agree with some of them but both of us are entitled to our opinions. I'm just glad that these ideas were created out of an intense love and care for the game and not some childish flash of rage.

Also, I like you. If you want to add I me on Steam of Hawken, feel free. My Steam name is the same as my Hawken Callsign.

Edited by SoldierHobbes11, August 03 2014 - 11:20 AM.

[BIsmuthZornisse]

List has been almost completely decolorized. Sections are now in spoilers. Maybe other humans can actually read this list now!

@SoldierHobbes11
Ive been pretty busy lately until now and it's pretty late in my country right now, so i probably won't post a proper response until tomorrow or the day after or something. Also in case you havent noticed, i have other (preliminary) suggestions in some of my other replys.

here's the proper reply:
I guess i'm using the bruiser's ability wrong, since i generally use it when, while trying to destroy an enemy, another one starts shooting me from the side or behind, to buy myself a little more time to finish of the first enemy.
my main issue with the vulcan on the bruiser, i suppose, is the spinup, which combined with the relative unsuitedness of the hellfire for close range, would leave the bruiser in a rather bad position when ambushed or when it has to fight within an capture area. Do you think it should have the burst vulcan (described under the g2 assault) instead of the "flak"_
Could you please explain why the rev-gl wouldn't work on the bruiser_
My problem with the bruiser in general is that, right now, the bruiser's weapons loadout is too similar to the recruit/assault, and also that its lefthanded weapons are, from a gameplay (and probably coding) standpoint, the same weapon with slightly modified stats (and added delay in the case of the vulcan), which i guess is fine for the straightforward starting mechs, but i'd like more varied distribution of weapons.
I would prefer all the mechs having different weapons, even if it's in the end just modifying existing weapons' stats to suit the current mechs role better.

About the babybear not working for the brawler, i do want that weapon to be reworked so that it can work with both the brawler and the incinerator. as explained under incinerator, increasing the range and damage per shot, but reduce the heat generation to "slightly more than normal vulcan".

I don't really see how having that effect would be too complicated to add, but maybe you're right about it not being fun to face. My main gripe here is that i just dont like the ability not fully working with ALL of the grenadier's weapon. maybe replacing its vulcan should be replaced altogether.
Maybe something like Metroid Prime Hunters' battlehammer weapon would work. Basically it would be like the redox gun with more damage but a stronger arc and no debuff or like a faster firing rev-gl, except the projectiles would explode upon touching anything instead of bounce, with arc and damage output adjusted to be comparable to the vulcan.

Also i have an idea for the reaper (i don't think it's sufficiently thought out yet to put it into the OP's list):
"Precision overdrive" doesn't seem very use on a mech with weapons that have very little deviation to begin with. So i came up with an ability that might fit the "reaper" nicely:

Ability: death knell
Upon activation, the reaper's entire team is pinged the locations of any enemy (within a "portable scanner" range, centered on the reapers position) that is at "critical" armor value (meaning their "low armor" alarm is active). This position is marked for a duration as if the detected mechs just fired or stopped boosting/flying.
With this ability, the reaper, or another allied mech (especially raiders and infiltrators), can more easily find wounded mechs that are hiding to repair.
The detected mechs should be notified, maybe the should hear some bell sound, that sounds distorted or obviously artificial. Just to be spooky, i guess.

Speaking of spooky, there totally should be a "spree nemesis" chassis piece for the reaper.

Edited by BIsmuthZornisse, August 14 2014 - 01:08 PM.