Firstly, let it be said I am very happy to be making this thread, I was thinking that I would never make a game-play suggestion thread for this game ever again. So let me preface this post with some music in happy celebration.
Now, on to the serious matter what I think of this Hawken, this game-play is great, but it is more float-y than the early days. In part due to the air dodge mechanics put in place when Ascension hit.
This is not really directly a issue with air dodge in terms of the concept, but the air dodge, and the air dynamics in general now quite simply make hawken flow in a very very different way than it did before. While air dodge does arguably effect balance in a negative manner with weapons such as Rev Gl, my main issue with it is that it makes game-play feel a bit more spongy than I remember hawken originally being. Of course I admit it has been a long while sense I have played old hawken, but I think the focus on foot work without the extra dimension of people using air dodge floating tactics, and how this effects duels and other aspects of aim and game play sort of leads to this feeling. Moving in the air feels a lot like running in Tf2, or skiing in tribes but not quite so robust or interesting, and you can sort of tell in my view that it was added on later, with weapons like EOC that are very clearly meant for a game focused on ground work, as well as knowing that the ground work system feels more direct, and is more robust.
I would suggest trying to make ground work more central for most mechs, and having the air dodge tricks somehow limited, I personally think it hurts how abrasive the game should feel in a odd way, in old Hawken that abrasive jerky feeling made it feel much more interesting, nearly every shooter ever is float-y and flows, they own that, and it works, but Hawken was/is full of jerk dodging and therefore it danced to it's own tune it flowed in it's own way with choices being moment to moment, and still does, but the tune is blunted now with the constant way air dodge killer bees just float around in some cases, and it just feels awkward at points.
There is also the aspect of fuel management which is less important than it used to be, which I dislike, dodging used to take up fuel, which made players more thoughtful in my view, and made game play more abrasive and tense which I enjoyed. I would suggest bringing that back as apposed to allowing dodge to be used in the manner that it is. These two ideas in my view are the most important things. Hawken needs to feel a bit more like it did before in my view, cause that was when it was most unlike any other shooter I played and it hooked me like a fish hooked to fried chicken on a summer Sunday morning.
Moving on, I would like to talk about abilities lightly. Let's start with heavy mechs, these abilities are in Hawkens history the hardest to get right the old guard devs never cracked it, with only Vanguards turret mode being really good at doing something interesting and unique. Signs that Turret mode was being left behind were it's removal from Gren, and the fact that the Incen lacks turret mode and instead has a replacement.
Quite simply I disagree with it's removal from gren, I would suggest instead making turret mode for gren more support based, with it perhaps giving a limited AOE buff to mechs or filling out some other support role, it might also be a good idea to actually consider a idea where grens turret mode lets him walk at normal speed without dodge but provides a sort of buff to his firing depending on what primary he is using. Perhaps the Vulcan can fire mini exploding bullets and people down.
The point is please consider turret mode carefully for gren, I do suggest adding it back as a support focus, also consider something like that for brawler turret mode, some or of AOE healing perhaps.
Turret mode and heavy mechs overall should focus on pretty much being the core of a team with the most powerful supporting powers. Try to embody that.
Otherwise Light mechs have a good set of powers focused around more solo play, and med mechs are set up pretty well as well. It is really just heavy mech powers that are often horrid, mainly with the original three in Brawler, Rocketeer, and Gren, those are your problems in getting the turret mode powers right.
Lastly, there is the splash of secondary weapons, I sort of miss the old TOW and Nade a bit, and while I do not like the idea of them being as extreme as the game was in it's first day of open beta, I still wish the splash was a bit larger, with the better hold the game has over feathering the splash damage I think it might not be bad to bring the slow firing big TOW back, with a slightly more fast firing but bigger splash nade as well. What do you guys think about this.
Ciao- I am a tree
I love you all

Edited by deidarall, 22 March 2015 - 11:04 PM.
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