41 replies to this topic

[Devils Advocate]

I'm getting hit with two or three artillery strikes in literally every match I'm a part of whether I'm sniping or on the front lines. I have no way to defend myself from them, I can't tell who is launching them, and it's free damage in exchange for Cbills without any worry of putting yourself at risk to launch one. Can we slow it down? I just got hit with two of them inside of 10 seconds, over cover, and there was no opportunity for me to respond because I couldn't even crane my torso up high enough to see the smoke on top of the cover. Is that fun and interactive?

[Brain Cancer]

PGI wants you to spend as many Cbills as possible in matches.

"Free" damage for Cbills is like crack *******. It means people grind slower, which means more people stay in the game longer periods.

That is, until bad gameplay makes them leave entirely. But that's all systems nominal.

Edited by Brain Cancer, 06 August 2017 - 11:40 AM.

[Vxheous]

Devils Advocate, on 06 August 2017 - 11:29 AM, said:

I'm getting hit with two or three artillery strikes in literally every match I'm a part of whether I'm sniping or on the front lines. I have no way to defend myself from them, I can't tell who is launching them, and it's free damage in exchange for Cbills without any worry of putting yourself at risk to launch one. Can we slow it down? I just got hit with two of them inside of 10 seconds, over cover, and there was no opportunity for me to respond because I couldn't even crane my torso up high enough to see the smoke on top of the cover. Is that fun and interactive?

Don't poke the same place twice, don't stand behind the same cover twice. learn to move horizontally, you'll avoid many strikes this way

[Coolant]

gotta always expect them, and try to switch out of thermal every now and again

[MadHornet]

Vxheous Kerensky, on 06 August 2017 - 01:38 PM, said:

Don't poke the same place twice, don't stand behind the same cover twice. learn to move horizontally, you'll avoid many strikes this way

This doesn't help when people place strikes behind you, on the edges of buildings, or directly on you. By the time you see it, anything heavier than 45 tons cannot accelerate fast enough to get out of the way. It doesn't even take being in the same place twice for this to happen.

[Mole]

They're annoying as **** but they're hardly game breaking.

[LordBraxton]

They are terrible gameplay, and an obvious cbill sink to punish non-premum players

[InfinityBall]

Brain Cancer, on 06 August 2017 - 11:40 AM, said:

PGI wants you to spend as many Cbills as possible in matches.

"Free" damage for Cbills is like crack *******. It means people grind slower, which means more people stay in the game longer periods.

Which brings up my question of why they're not more expensive. I was in a skirmish 11-1 when someone tried to drop a strike on the last mech on the other team. He really did not care about those 40,000

[Baba Yogi]

LordBraxton, on 06 August 2017 - 03:24 PM, said:

They are terrible gameplay, and an obvious cbill sink to punish non-premum players

Exactly, it might have been forgiven if it was actually fun mechanic but quite the opposite on both ends. It reminds me of Modern Warfares predator missile. Some try to say it is supposed to break deathballs but that is the core tactic of this game for a reason. When a deathball engages a spread out team (everything else being equal) they crush them like melons, then its just mop up. In a deathball team members can cover for each other and focus fire much more efficiently because u have less targets to fire at (against a team who is not using same tactic). All this mechanic gives is ability to deal immense damage to any mech at anytime with no downside.

InfinityBall, on 06 August 2017 - 04:10 PM, said:

Which brings up my question of why they're not more expensive. I was in a skirmish 11-1 when someone tried to drop a strike on the last mech on the other team. He really did not care about those 40,000

All that would do is restrict them to premium players, which makes the mechanic even more Pay2Win.

[Mystere]

WTF?! Another one?!

Is there some concerted effort going on right now to grind PGI down, get them weak-kneed, and thus forcing them to finally capitulate?

Edited by Mystere, 06 August 2017 - 04:44 PM.

[WrathOfDeadguy]

If there is, I wholeheartedly support the effort. Strikes are poorly-implemented trash, and it's time they either got reworked or removed.

Require TAG or NARC or CC or TC or WXYZ, whatever. Put a goddamned destructible artillery piece on the map, or allow the bomber to be shot down, so that there's a counterplay beyond "don't get hit." Hell, allow strikes to be called in on the source of the enemy's strikes (in the real world that's known as counter-battery fire). Make the shells follow a ballistic trajectory so that using strikes requires some consideration for physics. Vary the strike delay based on where the strike is targeted to account for projectile travel time (ie closer to friendly spawn = faster strikes, closer to enemy spawn = strikes take longer to arrive after called in).

The current mechanic is bad. Bad mechanics need to be changed or removed where possible. It is possible to change or remove the mechanic... therefore one or the other should happen. The very last thing that should have happened was PGI doubling down on it by allowing more than one per player again.

Down with magic infinite-range teleporting smokebombs.

Up with literally anything else.

[El Bandito]

Strike cooldown for individual player is stupidly short. Almost 5 seconds between strikes.

[Brain Cancer]

El Bandito, on 06 August 2017 - 05:13 PM, said:

Strike cooldown for individual player is stupidly short. Almost 5 seconds between strikes.

That's the point. They want you to push that button till it milks your C-bills dry and not even have much time to think about it.

[El Bandito]

Brain Cancer, on 06 August 2017 - 05:16 PM, said:

That's the point. They want you to push that button till it milks your C-bills dry and not even have much time to think about it.

Doesn't have to be that way. Coolshot cooldown is at least 20 seconds. Strike should be the same--in fact players should petition Russ about it.

[Brain Cancer]

El Bandito, on 06 August 2017 - 05:20 PM, said:

Doesn't have to be that way. Coolshot cooldown is at least 20 seconds. Strike should be the same--in fact players should petition Russ about it.

But how will everyone get to use all their strikes if the timer isn't so short? After all, they can carry so many. Coolshots aren't slaved to a global cooldown, after all.

Never mind if it's good for anything. Spam those strikes, spend those C-bills!

[Alexander of Macedon]

Arty strikes would be pretty much okay if they weren't instant, infinite range, and silent. The random(ish) distribution of shells helps offset their power a lot. The biggest issue is when those other problematic traits are combined with the predictable solid line of instant damage from airstrikes, especially because it runs long enough to drop a strike on one side of a building or rock formation in order to hit people on the other side. You try that with arty and 95% of the time it won't hit anything.

Basically, arty strikes might not hit the target at all, and people can get out of them because they deploy over several seconds. Airstrikes give you no warning whatsoever unless you see the smoke the instant it drops, and even then that might not be enough to get out of the line of fire.

Still, both are in a bad spot. There needs to be a range cap for using them, it needs to take longer for them to deploy, there needs to be a longer global cooldown, and the 'shots' need to be interdicted by terrain where relevant as if they were actually shells on ballistic arcs or bombs dropped from a specific direction instead of magically appearing on the ground.

If you see the smoke within 3-4s of it being dropped, you should reasonably be able to get clear with little/no damage taken. If you don't see the smoke but have frontal/overhead cover in the direction it was deployed from, you should be safe. Basically they should only be reliable against people standing in the open in the same place for 5-6 seconds after deployment-it still punishes campers and encourages players to not cluster up or hover in place, but stops working as zero-effort free damage whenever you see someone who isn't looking at you that isn't a light moving at full speed.

[Vxheous]

MadHornet, on 06 August 2017 - 03:17 PM, said:

This doesn't help when people place strikes behind you, on the edges of buildings, or directly on you. By the time you see it, anything heavier than 45 tons cannot accelerate fast enough to get out of the way. It doesn't even take being in the same place twice for this to happen.

I avoid them all the time, if the smoke is directly on top of you, walk forward. If Airstrike, it'll miss you, if Arty, chances are you clear the blast radius.

[Dee Eight]

As was pointed out to me in another thread last week... the constant cycling "artillery is ready" cooldown clock... is because every time someone on the team uses a strike, it prevents someone else from triggering one simultaneously.

[Devils Advocate]

I don't have anything against artillery in principle. Teams like to death ball and if anything artillery should be an incentive to spread out or stay mobile. Right now it's free (opportunity cost), fast, and doesn't have a counter. Yeah you can move away from artillery a lot of the time, I don't get hit most of the time, maybe by 20% of the strikes that target me, but when I'm getting targeted 3 or 4 times every single match because every light has them and all they have to do is hit a hotkey, eventually I'm going to get pegged, and it isn't because I'm playing "wrong." I can be using cover, calling my shots, staying mobile, and still get surprised by random shells because the smoke wasn't in my field of view. Artillery isn't even useful for much right now besides harassing snipers or praying you catch a group of mechs with them. At least make them useful for more than harassment.

Edited by Devils Advocate, 06 August 2017 - 06:45 PM.

[Gristle Missile]

I like them and feel they have a place in the game, but I agree with some points. - They could be tuned in a number of ways.

Put it at the feet of an Assault/Heavy who isn't moving, and they are probably going to take a lot of damage before they can move anywhere.

Personally, I feel like this shouldn't happen without any sort of counter - Give 12 players the ability to do this 2 times each...and well, your assault lance can be gone before they even get to fire a shot.

I do think a slight activation delay would be in order - just to give players a CHANCE to get out of the way.

Second option: incorporate a longer time before usable/longer cooldown - by the time you first run into the enemy it's available. How about making it useable several minutes into actual combat - or start the cooldown when first spotting the enemy instead of at the start of the round. If there are more than one strike, lengthen the cooldown so you can't drop one after the other in such a fast rate.

Third option: make the damage more localized - splash radius reduced of individual bombs (without skills)
less random, focus shots near smoke, less near edges

Edited by Gristle Missile, 07 August 2017 - 05:30 AM.