category Let's Discuss Game Balance

[Pato96 1]

7 hours ago, ThirdOnion said:

If you give players their crystals back, they will simply invest in whatever is meta. If you do not invest in what is meta, you will be at a massive disadvantage. Do you really want everyone to be using the most annoying and most powerful combos? And do you really want to be screwed over if you don't want to use any of those combos? A refund will be a disaster. In fact the 2013 rebalance was a disaster from an economic standpoint.

But if there is rebalance there will be no meta. The purpose of rebalance is that to balance everything and avoid the situation where there is mamooth shaft hidden in the bush that will one shoot you 2 sec after you respawn. 

Edited November 23, 2020 by Pato96

[ThirdOnion 4,898]

Just now, Pato96 said:

But if there is rebalance there will be no meta.

Yeah well realistically that is not going to happen.

[Tokamak 1,021]

8 minutes ago, Pato96 said:

But if there is rebalance there will be no meta. The purpose of rebalance is that to balance everything and there is no mammoth shaft hidden in the bush that will one shoot you 2 sec after you respawn. 

Each time tanki introduces a new feature the whole game balance is affected.
Also how do you measure balance? Is your criterias the same as dev's? I don't think so, they also have more data than you to make a judgment.
Shaft can one-shot, freeze can't, but give it time and it can one shot you you before its energy pool run dry. Aslo new hulls are not fit for every battle modes, they would be more suited/fit for purpose on specific activity. So you can't look for an overall balance anymore.

On the other hand, to facilitate the introduction of a new feature (to reach a certain % compared to its peers), dev's would be tempted to make it potent... for a while. When Magnum was introduced I bought right away the protection module, same for Striker and Gauss. 

Edited November 23, 2020 by Tokamak

[ThirdOnion 4,898]

Something needs to be done about Incendiary Band + Heat Immunity. In my opinion the correct thing to do would be to disable the ignite targets feature if the Vulcan does not overheat. But then that would render the combo useless, which I guess is bad for business. 

Instead, I propose that instead of igniting targets, IB will inflict all status effects that currently affect the player (afterburn, freezing, AP) on enemies. That way, an Incendiary Band user will not be able to ignite targets if they have Heat Immunity equipped, but will be able to inflict freezing or AP if they are under their effect. If a player wants to ignite enemies, they will have unequip Heat Immunity. If a player has Cold Immunity equipped, they will not be able to freeze enemies. Such a mechanic would also be a decent counter to AP augments or Hornet ODs.

Of course Incendiary Band will have to be renamed to something else.

[DestrotankAI9 1,513]

That is a really interesting idea I have to say, however with the way Alternativa plan the game currently I doubt they would change Incendiary Brand to that, it would probably be an alt only available from Ultras. Reflective/Adaptive rounds or something?

However while I totally agree that something needs to be done about Incendiary Brand + Heat Immunity, lets not forget what is the real problem here - the problem is Heat Immunity, not the Incendiary brand alt itself. It was whenever Heat Immunity was introduced (changing from the Fire Module) that this combo came into existence and became a problem. Incendiary Brand was an interesting alt (when you actually took damage from it) and there is no reason to change a perfectly good augment in my opinion because of a new imbalanced feature that has been introduced. There are other problems with Heat Immunity even if Incendiary Brand interaction is fixed - it unfairly causes Firebird to be the ONLY stock turret in the game to lose it's base damage, and it makes all of Firebird's augments (Compact Tanks etc) totally useless other than one, Incendiary mix. This is a totally unfair situation, which will become worse as more and more Legend players over time get Heat Immunity from containers.

1) So the proper and best nerf to Incendiary Brand/Heat Immunity, that would solve all other associated problems - is to nerf Heat Immunity to 50% heat resistance instead of "Immunity", and call it "Heavy Heat Resistance" or whatever. Then change the lower level to become "Lesser Heat Resistance" at 25%. It was always awkward that you had to equip Fire protection to protect against many different alts, and not just Firebird - so splitting this into a hull augment is fine. But it was always ridiculous from the beginning to be able to get Immunity from Firebird's damage over time effect from a hull augment, and this should absolutely not be in the game. With Heat Immunity nerfed to 50% protection the problem with Incendiary Brand interaction is solved - it is just as before, and also Firebird is no longer unfairly discriminated against - with its stock turret and all its alterations once again useful at Legend - just as it is for every other turret and as it should be. Equally, 50% fire protection is still amazing and "Heavy Heat Resistance" would still be the best or one of the best Hull Augments in the game.

2) A second possible change that does not change Incendiary Brand's mechanics would be to change the way Vulcan heating works.

When Vulcan overheats it causes Fire damage just like every other Heat effect in the game right now, ticking for 300 damage per tick - and this was always balanced around having 50% Fire protection at Legend rank, which reduced it to 150 damage per tick before double armor. So what could be done is to create a new category of Heat damage just for Vulcan "internal heating" which deals a flat 150 damage per tick just as it did before, with 50% Fire protection, when the Vulcan fires for long enough.

This "internal heating" is unique and is not protected against by the Heat Immunity/Resistance Augments - they only protect against "External" heating, which would be everything else in the game as it is now. So with this system, all Vulcan players whether they have no Augment - or have Heat Immunity - will take a flat 150 damage when overheating, and this is in a separate category to any other Fire effects which will be applied separately. This means Incendiary Brand will take the same damage as before, and should also fix the problem.

However, doing this leaves the problems with Heat Immunity itself unresolved, Firebird will still be forced to use Incendiary Mix or nothing at Legend.

Those are my personal thoughts on how to fix this, thought sadly what I guess will happen is that Incendiary Brand will just be nerfed to the ground and become useless because of the imba Heat Immunity, which will remain. We shall see. We all agree that these problems have needed fixed for months.

Edited November 28, 2020 by DestrotankAI9

[Tanker-Arthur 2,971]

I like this idea. I was in a match and half the enemy team used Incendiary Band/Fire Immunity Vulcans. It was soooo annoying.




But to be honest, the easiest way to fix this is to remove Augments from the game entirely. Just keep "Alterations".
And if developers don't want people to get mad, just refund all the crystals and tankcoins spent on the Augments.

[2shots2kills 2,366]

I like your idea, however, as @DestrotankAI9 said, there is no reason to change Incendiary band itself, as it was perfectly fine before.

 

A simpler solution would indeed be the one you suggested first, (to disable the ignite targets feature if the Vulcan does not overheat.) but I don't know if we will ever see that feature being removed, as it probably makes some $$$...

 

[alkyng 3,080]

cool idea. but I think it's something far from applying into the game, as it's something strange and unusual... I don't know how to describe, but these kind of suggestion is something not that good to implement, at least in this period.

But about your suggestion. directly I will tell you. Developers want it explicitly to be like this.

[Person_Random 4,991]

I understand everything as to why it's still there but it still bugs me since it defies basic laws of thermodynamics @_@

 

[ThirdOnion 4,898]

@DestrotankAI9 

I agree that Heat Immunity is the main problem. But I highly doubt that it will be nerfed, ever. First, it is likely a decent source of revenue, being available for Tankoins only. Second, in the most recent livestream, the developers said that they believe being able to fire without overheating is the ideal way to play Vulcan (i.e. with Heat Immunity).

I also considered an internal heating parameter, but again, the developers think you should be able to use Vulcan without overheating. I strongly disagree, but nonetheless I had to concede that stock Vulcan + Heat Immunity had to remain as it is. So this is the solution I came up with.

[DestrotankAI9 1,513]

5 hours ago, 2shots2kills said:

A simpler solution would indeed be the one you suggested first, (to disable the ignite targets feature if the Vulcan does not overheat.) 

 

Yo, yes this is certainly the simplest way to fix the problem, but the issue with this is that then Incendiary Brand Vulcan will be the one alteration in the game which can't use Hull Fire Immunity. So that indirectly is a huge nerf, since Fire Immunity is pretty much the best all-round hull augment while it is still in the game.

Edited November 28, 2020 by DestrotankAI9

[DestrotankAI9 1,513]

1 hour ago, ThirdOnion said:

@DestrotankAI9 

I agree that Heat Immunity is the main problem. But I highly doubt that it will be nerfed, ever. First, it is likely a decent source of revenue, being available for Tankoins only. Second, in the most recent livestream, the developers said that they believe being able to fire without overheating is the ideal way to play Vulcan (i.e. with Heat Immunity).

I also considered an internal heating parameter, but again, the developers think you should be able to use Vulcan without overheating. I strongly disagree, but nonetheless I had to concede that stock Vulcan + Heat Immunity had to remain as it is. So this is the solution I came up with.

I see, I haven't seen any of the livestreams. If the developers honestly think that Vulcan with Heat Immunity is "fine" that is honestly a very worrying sign, that they don't understand or care about fun/engaging gameplay - even understand the best aspects of their own game.

The whole challenge of using Incendiary Brand was managing your own fire self-damage damage while taking advantage of the huge amount of damage dealt to enemies when you were overheating. Now with Heat Immunity, the literal best strategy is to hold spacebar and never stop firing (If you do, you will lose the overheating effect and have to wait a very long time to get it back). If the devs think that is an improvement, and "the best way to play Vulcan", then I really don't know what to say.... Not only is it so overpowered but its so boring and dull to play now I wouldn't bother with using Incendiary Brand, if I did I would intentionally not use Heat Immunity just to make it more interesting. I have seen people also posting on the forums with the same opinion, that not only is Incendiary Brand overpowered with Heat Immunity, but also very boring to play.

If they are fine with Heat Immunity, then do they really think that it is a good thing that every Firebird alt aside from Incendiary mix, and base Firebird itself will slowly become useless at Legend as more people get Heat Immunity??? There should never have been a hull augment that destroys the gameplay of one specific turret, which Heat Immunity does. The whole point of Firebird is to do damage over time, we had lots of cool Firebird alts which the devs spent plenty of development time making and players enjoying using, now they have went and wrecked it all with this idiotic immunity alt, while also creating huge imbalance issues and destroying Vulcan/Incendiary Brand gameplay.

I don't care if they have sold Heat Immunity for Tankoins, they must be willing to admit their mistake and nerf Heat Immunity, because it is bad for the game. Making a quick buck off one imbalanced item will not gain them money in the long run, if it plays a part in destroying fun gameplay - which it does. What they could do is sell the highest Heat protection for a large amount of crystals (325k say), while still selling it for Tankoins, if they did indeed nerf it to 50% protection.

But you are probably right that they will never nerf it, we can only do our best to suggest. It is sad that this game has a lot of potential, and could be pretty great - but keeps getting wrecked by bad development decisions/devs who won't listen to their player base OR get wrecked by them trying to make money in the short-term off selling overpowered items that destroy the gameplay. A better AND more profitable long-term strategy is to create a fun and balanced game, trying to make a quick profit from overpowered items will hurt the game and its income in the long run.

Edited November 28, 2020 by DestrotankAI9

[Frylock 1,617]

After the Experiment I have come to a conclusion that defender drone is now being often used a lot  making still Op Combos more OP. Despite it being back to normal HP I still can say that the defense time for it is still too long and its ability to stack upon any modual is still broken mostly on VIking and on heavy hulls. light hulls as well for its speed and increased defense with defender. I really hope the devs fix the time limit on the drone at least from 30 seconds to 15 seconds. To be more balanced. 

Edited November 28, 2020 by MysticBlood

[Shwax 64]

On 11/17/2020 at 2:35 AM, cosmic666 said:

FLYING CHEAT seems to survive quite long, way longer than any normal hull without a drone should.

Thats because you can't kill it, thats your problem.

[wolverine848 13,097]

15 minutes ago, Dark.Angel said:

Thats because you can't kill it, thats your problem.

Well, most players can't kill it - mainly because it can avoid many of the defenses.

Which comes to the complaints about it being OP... or did you not understand that?

[Shwax 64]

1 minute ago, wolverine848 said:

Well, most players can't kill it - mainly because it can avoid many of the defenses.

Which comes to the complaints about it being OP... or did you not understand that?

I don't have issues killing them. But I agree the OD is a bit too much.

[wolverine848 13,097]

Just now, Dark.Angel said:

I don't have issues killing them. But I agree the OD is a bit too much.

In CTF and Rugby battles, Hoppers are doing about 50% of the capping.

Sure light hulls might do a disproportionate amount of capping due to their speed and yeah we won't see Mammoth and Titan capping all that often. But there's 3 light hulls and Viking and Hunter are decently fast.  So out of 5 hulls Hopper stands out by a mile.

And you must be playing some pretty noob hoppers if you have no problem killing them with your Isida or Fire or Freeze.  How the heck are they letting you get that close?  Or are you just sitting on the flag and you kill them after they cap...

[Shwax 64]

7 minutes ago, wolverine848 said:

In CTF and Rugby battles, Hoppers are doing about 50% of the capping.

Sure light hulls might do a disproportionate amount of capping due to their speed and yeah we won't see Mammoth and Titan capping all that often. But there's 3 light hulls and Viking and Hunter are decently fast.  So out of 5 hulls Hopper stands out by a mile.

And you must be playing some pretty noob hoppers if you have no problem killing them with your Isida or Fire or Freeze.  How the heck are they letting you get that close?  Or are you just sitting on the flag and you kill them after they cap...

I mainly use firebird, and the afterburn almost always gets them.

[LOLKILLERTOTHEDEATH 1,921]

I think it's quite unfair that random enemies (even those who don't even own AP turret augments) can penetrate your armour. Effectively, you just need 1 enemy with an AP augment and it's instantly a waste of time to equip protections or double armour. Therefore, I think it would be best if the augments for turrets could be just for you. I understand part of the power is that you share it with team mates, but this is a bit too powerful I think. On th eother hand, I think Hornet's OD is now balanced and should be left as it is.

[mjmj5558 2,346]

3 hours ago, LOLKILLERTOTHEDEATH said:

I think Hornet's OD is now balanced and should be left as it is

The problem with the current OD is that it's not an OD, only a negative ability that motivates your allies to steal your kills.

[Picassoo 191]

The whole feature revolves around going to your garage all the time and switching equipment. Sort of like protection modules (which I personally dislike).

The whole thing is pointless even as a non-p2w feature.

[wolverine848 13,097]

10 hours ago, Dark.Angel said:

I mainly use firebird, and the afterburn almost always gets them.

So you ARE killing them after they cap...

[Tanker-Arthur 2,971]

I think the AP effects are....alright now. I prefer that some of the Augments need some extra negative side effects though, similar to how the Freeze AP Augment reduces base damage by 45%, in order to keep it balanced.

[Maf 32,300]

It's ok, all you gotta do is buy the AP immunity augment on each of your hulls for 5000tk and you'll be immune to the AP effect! /s

[Maf 32,300]

22 hours ago, Person_Random said:

I understand everything as to why it's still there but it still bugs me since it defies basic laws of thermodynamics @_@

 

I think we're way past the laws of physics when it comes to tanki gameplay