Beam/Bolt balance

Micron(Micron) wrote:

Honestly, its always going to be something on this server, somebody gets extremely good with one technique, other players complain and the next thing you know its gone/changed.

This is the best server to play on, dont get me wrong, and I love playing here, but thats the way its been since I started playing here.

There is always something that somebody seems to think is not fair/unfair advantage-wise and then it gets nerfed/changed.

The reality of the situation is that extremely skilled players are on this server and they are going to be extremely good. Unfortunately, that always results in changes to the server to try to "balance" classes.
(It doesnt help that these players spend an incredible amount of time on this server, and when you add up the XP from all classes for one player, you would be blown away).

Skill players are not allowed to excel for one reason; players will emulate his/her playing style until everyone is playing the same. Good players will always find a way to excel above the rest!

I agree. Good players will always find ways of maximising their performance, and which techniques get them the most kills for the expenditure. And that is good.

So, whatever the weapons/skill/artifacts settings etc are, I expect Elite to come out on top.

However, when I add new things, I have an expectation as to how they will be used, and configure them accordingly for damage/cost. If in practice a method of using that comes up which I hadn't envisaged, which means that one thing starts to dominate the game play, then I have got it wrong.

For example, I had planned the bolt as a useful method of taking out things like vampire gnats that were fast and difficult to target on high ping. Or monsters that creep up behind you. One off occasional uses. Looking at high scores recently, you see players with 300+ kills with the bolt. That means AMs are just using adrenaline for the bolt. It is therefore dominating the AM arsenal - which was not my intention.
Now that doesn't by itself mean it needs to be nerfed - it is also a question of how it affects gameplay. Medics use all their adrenaline on healing blasts, but I haven't nerfed that because it helps gameplay.
But in this case, it is the fact that it is unaimed that swung the balance. I felt having something relatively skillless being that powerful was not in the best interests of the game.

Micron(Micron) wrote:

I disagree that this combo falls into these same categories. I doubt very much that a score of 5000 was possible with any of these other examples.
I believe that a score of 5000 is possible using the trip +bolt/beam.

Its possible.

Even the PPH is capped out at 9999 lol.

People fail to see what really got me that score yes i used the bolt quite often but what really got me that score was the repulsion... it got me holy **** kills every few seconds since its a fall off map.
Also i had an energy flak 4 so...
The repulsion gave me around 300 kills or so with the bolt landing around 250 or so maybe less
With the double damage appearing on both the top and bottom of the map its kinda hard to resist

Wow, some score elite!

But honestly, check other AM top scores.

I capped AM awhile ago, and consider myself an average player,

-7/13/07 Ratar_Killer maintains his slot on the table by raising his score to 2775!

And, I haven't been near this score since.

We cant compare "Elte" players (Elite,Fro,320,OOO) with the rest of us.

(2 cents deposited here)

Elite wrote:

People fail to see what really got me that score yes i used the bolt quite often but what really got me that score was the repulsion... it got me holy **** kills every few seconds since its a fall off map.
Also i had an energy flak 4 so...
The repulsion gave me around 300 kills or so with the bolt landing around 250 or so maybe less
With the double damage appearing on both the top and bottom of the map its kinda hard to resist

Dont forget to add a few player kills too

. Namely one where I repulsed a Titan and you repulsed it back at me and we both go over the edge.

Anyway, even without repulsion, I do belive micro is right that it is possible to break 5k with trip/bolt. I've seen him do a few 4500+'s on maps where there is no edge. Just wanted to post that SS up since it is 5k+ on a map, first 5k game i've been on since I've started playing on the DC server.

sorry elite..

guys next time that happens just take ur mini and u only need to shoot tittans that are falling off.. that way u get the kill not elite... easy...

Thè-Hättêr wrote:

guys next time that happens just take ur mini and u only need to shoot tittans that are falling off.. that way u get the kill not elite... easy...

Which doesnt change the fact that
1:RomaraMoonStation(sp?) is a lousy map for invasion
2:It is an abusive strategy
3:Repulsion is a broken ability/mechanic

ok, then there is 1 way to solve this..
1)u make a junkie, and get repulsion.. u keep using ur character but when those maps come just use ur new junkie.. easy as that (like have develop 1 )

3:Repulsion is a broken ability/mechanic

what u meant with that?

u must understand there are some maps that suits better to some clases, for example i feel the map where some vodka (or ron?) bottles are adrenaline and blue skulls heals ( cant remember the map name) engi's really own there ... does anybody get the point?

I think what Lt. means is it's not in the best interest of the server
that it is use of a technique that creates an imbalance in the gameplay and should be discouraged

no offense intended Elite but when the next highest score is 4000 points behind you it implies abuse of a skill/ability (and you have LOTS of skill)

thought I'd give this a bump and ask what the situation with the yes or no on your changes Szlat

I've had a couple of occasions lately were I've seen the what I shall term "abuse" of the bolt cause me to either outright leave a game or become so frustrated that I've bumped this topic.

I've watched most AMs whom have played for a long time (eg:Buster,Ratar) whom use it sparingly, if at all , but some of the others use it as a primary weapon to the point of 300+ kills with it and less than 100 kills with all other weapons.
I've come to the conclusion that it is a skill less ability and is FAR too powerful, especially for something an AM has every wave/after every death.
Give my LW a Vorp shock 10 and piercing Flak 6 every spawn and that would be less powerful .

and Yes I'm a little irritated with this lately , I watched a 60th lvl AM outscore my 200+ lvl LW by almost 1000 points today.

sorry all but something needs to be adjusted badly

lets make a poll

People go on about how all powerful the beam, bolt, artifacts, etc. are, how powerful the AM class is, etc., but I think there is a fair amount of skill and luck entering into things, and that the AM is nowhere near as powerful as many folks think. And I have lots of screen shots showing countless AMs, even Elite and Ratar or other top AMs, way down in a pack with medics or engineers (sometimes with half their levels) owning them.

Now regarding last night... I would love to know who Dragon-somebody was, and just what their skill set is (wish the player stats were working). But whoever they are, they outscored my 210+ level AM (one of the first AMs on the system) BIGTIME. I know all sorts of tricks to do damage, and try as I might have, I could not get anywhere near that score. Not even trying to use the bolt/beam, or other tricks I could try to gander from looking at the F3 breakdown for them, watching, etc. could improve my scores. No way could I kill more than a few bugs with the beam or bolt before my adren was empty, even with a Energy+4 weapon. Frustrating? You betcha... the exact words I would use would get me banned by Dru and Shan in a microsecond. But I would not use the term "abuse" with regards to the game, even though my ego was feeling abused. And regarding it being a "skill-less" ability... remember, there is still in adren management, in using your tools to their fullest, and just being able to hit the darn bugs and not have that censored gack of a 10 adren for missing... a gack which IMO should not kick in when you bump the use artifact key when there is no bug even remotely in range/view. But anyways... all three of those are skill. Just as an engineer putting a drone at a critical location is. It is all similar to the folks back in UT99 who said that the flak was a noobish no-skill weapon, as was the cutter, vortex sphere or proxy mines (chaos weapons).

And BTW... while I will do maxes, make weapons, etc., just as many AMs do, if you want to have me or some of the other AMs work less as a long-distance killer and more of a support role, I suspect making it so that we could get the same sort of XP in a game might go a long way to encourage that... of course, it still does not take into account the competition on the F1 scores.

RoadKill v3.4 wrote:

thought I'd give this a bump and ask what the situation with the yes or no on your changes Szlat

I've had a couple of occasions lately were I've seen the what I shall term "abuse" of the bolt cause me to either outright leave a game or become so frustrated that I've bumped this topic.

I've watched most AMs whom have played for a long time (eg:Buster,Ratar) whom use it sparingly, if at all , but some of the others use it as a primary weapon to the point of 300+ kills with it and less than 100 kills with all other weapons.
I've come to the conclusion that it is a skill less ability and is FAR too powerful, especially for something an AM has every wave/after every death.
Give my LW a Vorp shock 10 and piercing Flak 6 every spawn and that would be less powerful .

and Yes I'm a little irritated with this lately , I watched a 60th lvl AM outscore my 200+ lvl LW by almost 1000 points today.

sorry all but something needs to be adjusted badly

RoadKill v3.4 wrote:

thought I'd give this a bump and ask what the situation with the yes or no on your changes Szlat

I've had a couple of occasions lately were I've seen the what I shall term "abuse" of the bolt cause me to either outright leave a game or become so frustrated that I've bumped this topic.
...

does this answer your question
http://www.disastrousconsequences.com/dcforum/posts/list/3959.page

just a bit if clarification I guess...

bolt is the one that is "not aimed" did I get it backward ?
Szlat has submitted changes for some skills for the next update and has not been OK'd yet I guess as it has not yet been implemented

and as far as score ego goes I consider myself an average skilled player with some high level characters and a very good knowledge of waves and how to "work" them and I have no issue with being outscored most of the time (I enjoy playing with Elite,Micron,Ghost, so I take it as a challenge to get better) and I haven't even worried about my personal high score in a long time (trying for a BINGO really hard though)
but to watch a lower level AM Bolt his/her way around a map using next to no other abilities is frustrating. as an LW it is near impossible to build any adren for tougher waves as many of the kills I'm working for are taken away from afar with little effort, not up close or aiming at all.

I will not point fingers at specific people if it can be avoided (I enjoy this server far to much to start that) but if you watch the bolt kills specifically they are out of control. and are in need of re balancing even Szlat has said as much.
I really needed to say something and Spacey you've witnessed first hand what is going on apparently (and if Elite was way down on the list he may have switched characters mid-map

)
and I agree AMs should get more xp for team artifacts , giving DD and such when I asked I was surprised how little xp is rewarded for these

RoadKill v3.4 wrote:

just a bit if clarification I guess...

I can't really give any I am afraid.
The bolt is too powerful - especially if the AM can keep the sprees going. I submitted the changes into the source code for toning it down a bit.
To date I have heard nothing back from Druid. Whenever he gets back to looking at this server, he may decide to release a new version including the changes. (But he might do something different like remove bolt completely - his call!)
Until then, we just have to put up with it, just like the stats page not working