Some opinions from players of eleven years

[tanksargent2 9]

On 9/5/2021 at 10:47 PM, wolverine848 said:

Smoky does NOT work well without critical hits - unless you are using an augment with status. Which is NOT the argument you are making. The Critical hits have defined smoky since day 1.

It's like saying Shaft would work fine without a scope.  It wouldn't be even close to the same.

You keep trying to use 1 vs 1 scenario - and I will reiterate for the umpteenth time - it is pointless unless you include all the factors. Cherry-picking Critical damage out of the equation makes no sense - since it IS part of the game.

Well I'm sorry to tell you, but critical hits did NOT use to be part of the game, so I will keep ignoring critical hits since I do think they are not beneficial to the game with certain turrets like the Railgun as well as, I shall reiterate too, no turret should rely on critical hits in order to be useful.  Maybe Smoky is closer to sucking than being useful without augments, but it can still get some kills with the right support. Regardless, concerning the "critical hits have defined smoky since day 1", I guess you mean since they were added to the game right? Because, as I said, they have not been there since the very beginning, they've been added to all turrets this year, only Smoky had access to them before, and I don't think they help balance damage output especially with Railgun and Smoky since it either makes them almost completely dependant on critical hits or straight up not viable without them. So black or white, but no grey. Oh, and remember the Armadillo module, right? Even without it, with a base 700 DPS, 50% protection is enough to make Railgun hard to get kills even outside 1 on 1s.

Now, with all due respect, it feels like you didn't read my previous comment. I said that I didn't think it mattered to count the critical hits anymore given that not even landing two in a row would raise my probabilities to win a 1 on 1 with Railgun against any opponent, one of the reasons being its DPS is NOW 700, which is underwhelming for higher ranks to say the least. Oh, and the First-Aid supply doesn't help matters much either, you know. Had it stayed 900 DPS, then I would not be ignoring critical hits because with a base 900 DPS it was still possible to make some work with any augments really, and crits felt (not entirely, but more) like a bonus, not like a requirement to get kills. Now most of those augments are not of much help, since the turret definitely relies on crits more than ever before, which means it might actually work better with those augments that raise the crit damage and chance, but oh wait, they nerfed crit damage too remember? So, even if count them, they don't make a difference now. It just doesn't get many kills outside of using the Booster Drone (which helps get kills primarily because of its attack boost, not the crit. chance or damage you are so fond of) and the Viking's OD, maybe the Hornet's too.

Yes, crits are part of the game, but not a positive one for the most part, because you know why they were added right? Let me quote it for you:

"We have been actively working on turret augments that interact with the status effects. They change the characteristics of the opponent’s tank for a certain period of time. For example, they pierce the armor or stun the tank.

There are a lot of ideas to create even more interesting mechanics for such augments, but we could not work on them before because of some problems. We had to make new Railgun augments weaker so it wasn’t too difficult to play against them. Because of this, we decided we needed another solution: either introducing critical damage or reworking the damage distribution entirely. For the latter, the habits developed through years of playing with this turret would lose importance.

Because of this, we decided that it is necessary to make the balancing process of turrets and augments easier. We created a mechanism, and this is how it will work:

• Removes the random damage distribution from all turrets;
• Adds critical damage to all turrets, just like Smoky, but with different damage multipliers for each turret.

With this change, we get a flexible mechanism that allows us to add augments with status effects for all turrets in the game."

 

So, they basically admitted the first nerf to Railgun because of its augments being hard to play against (which might be true, I don't know since I don't have such augments), and then they added the critical hits to the rest of turrets (as of March 21st this year) to keep up with the power augments give to turrets. See the "[...], but with different damage multipliers for each turret" part? Why do you think Gauss, Magnum or Shaft don't have the same crit. chance or critical boost as Railgun or Smoky? Because they don't NEED them, they work fine without them. For them it is more like a bonus that may help you in certain situations where opponents may have a lot of protection against your turret, and besides 1) overall, I'm pretty sure players do not carry more protection from Gauss or Magnum than from Railgun, and 2) even withouth the 50% protection and the crits, now Railgun has a tough time getting kills because its damage output has been lowered to the point of not necessarily being a threat in 1 on 1 scenarios NOR a killing machine from the distance. Doesn't that feel like imbalanced, then, for a turret to NEED critical hits to work?

As I said in my previous comment, Railgun has the potential to be OP if not dealt with correctly from the devs end, but that is in no way a justification for the nerf it just received since it has gone from useful and maybe unplayable in certain matches in the right hands, to useless for the most part and easier to handle than ever.

Edited September 6, 2021 by tanksargent2

[wolverine848 13,097]

1 hour ago, tanksargent2 said:

Regardless, concerning the "critical hits have defined smoky since day 1", I guess you mean since they were added to the game right?

You are confusing smoky critical with "Critical Hits" that were recently added to the game.

Smoky has had (a version of) critical hits since at least 2015, if not before.

 

Whether you think critical hits are beneficial to the game or not is irrelevant when evaluating turrets today.  Ignoring them is just plain wrong.

For the record I'm not a fan of them either - well - except for smoky - since it's as integral to smoky as a scope is to shaft.

 

Edited September 7, 2021 by wolverine848

[tanksargent2 9]

6 minutes ago, wolverine848 said:

You are confusing smoky critical with "Critical Hits" that were recently added to the game.

Smoky has had (a version of) critical hits since at least 2015, if not before.

 

Whether you think critical hits are beneficial to the game or not is irrelevant when evaluating turrets today.  Ignoring them is just plain wrong.

For the record I'm not a fan of them either - well - except for smoky - since it's as integral to smoky as a scope is to shaft.

 

Well at least in something we agree. But you still seem to omit part of what I said. Yes I said I don't like the critical hit system, but I also said that even if we take it into account, with this patch's nerf it makes no difference for the Railgun anyway, it still doesn't make it consistent in high ranked battles because, for the tenth time, it's base damage as well as its critical damage has been reduced, whereas on the defensive mechanisms end, everything has remained the same, so Railgun is outright not a good turret anymore even amongst the long-range turrets. It relies heavily in the critical hits and still falls short in the damage output department. So, it may be irrelevant what I think of critical hits, but it still makes very little to no difference in the equation in the end.

[PirateSpider 1,491]

59 minutes ago, wolverine848 said:

Smoky has had (a version of) critical hits since at least 2015, if not before.

They were around on mid February of 2014.

 

I believe smoky had them for as long as the game has been around.

[wolverine848 13,097]

45 minutes ago, PirateSpider said:

They were around on mid February of 2014.

 

I believe smoky had them for as long as the game has been around.

?

[PirateSpider 1,491]

22 minutes ago, wolverine848 said:

?

Critical hits for smoky.

[wolverine848 13,097]

Just now, PirateSpider said:

Critical hits for smoky.

Sorry... I'm not following.

You have two sentences.

Are you saying smoky has been around since 2009, and in 2014 it received the critical hit parameter?

According to the "Let's discuss smoky" thread it's had critical hit as early as 2013 (if not earlier).

[PirateSpider 1,491]

54 minutes ago, wolverine848 said:

Sorry... I'm not following.

You have two sentences.

Are you saying smoky has been around since 2009, and in 2014 it received the critical hit parameter?

According to the "Let's discuss smoky" thread it's had critical hit as early as 2013 (if not earlier).

Oh. I just assumed smoky had critical hit since 09. If I'm wrong, then that's an error on my part.

[Okami 3,041]

On 9/6/2021 at 7:20 PM, wolverine848 said:

Smoky has had (a version of) critical hits since at least 2015, if not before.

I'm surprised it's been aroud for that long tbh. I thought it came around 2013-14 or so.

Edited September 8, 2021 by GrayWolf8733

[wolverine848 13,097]

1 minute ago, GrayWolf8733 said:

I'm surprised it's been aroud for that long tbh. I thought it came around 2013-14 or so.

I'm not really surprised.  But it was before my time in the game so I had nothing to base it on.