SubClass Balance Issues in release 224

dom60 wrote:

ok now what if someone is in one of the turret that you try to switch to??

Dom that never happens (insert sarcasm emoticon here)

any decent level Engi can spawn multiple turrets already you just have to be quick getting to the back up one.

Not all subclasses have vehicle eject or stunt vehicles... unless it was meant to be that way.

For the engineers: The ion turret is way too slow in its recharge time for hitting monsters... although it does pack a punch it takes 2 shots to kill a titan and 3 to kill a metal titan when not linked and around 3-4 seconds to kill 1 monster. When compared to the ion tank which I presume balanced, it kills a titan in 1 hit in around 2 seconds but has to be carefully aimed and for metal titans takes 2 hits, we must take into consideration that the ion tank's damage cannot be increased, so it is fixed but the ion turrets damage can be increased. So I have no problem with the amount of damage the ion turret can do at the moment but I think the recharge time for the ion turret should be decreased to the recharge time the ion tank has. For when linked the the ion turret should deal a bit more damage with 3 linkers or so.

The goliath's shooting speed and damage has been reduced, can it be put back to normal as currently the minigun turret the goliath has, kills better than the main gun itself, which should not happen. With the reduced damage and shooting speed it is a bit underpowered.

When it comes to the sentinel specialist, you can only make 3 defensive sentinels although you have enough points for 4. If a 4th one cannot be made, is it possible to make the defensive sentinels shoot down 2 projectiles each time instead of 1. At the moment a normal engineer can make just as many defensive sentinels as a sentinel specialist can.

For the Extreme Medic: I think the subclass should be able to get xp from healing pets also... since the subclass itself cannot make pets. Also the poison blast adrenaline cost should be decreased to that of the healing blast but perhaps only in this subclass as they are exact opposites

Also as a correction to what I previously said its actually 6 second charge time for the ion turret for the first shot then every following shot takes 8 seconds to charge. While the ion tank takes 3 seconds to charge for all the shots fired.

Thanks again for the feedback Elite.

Elite wrote:

Not all subclasses have vehicle eject or stunt vehicles... unless it was meant to be that way.

Intentional. The Extremes haven't got them. After all, they are supposed to be specialising in just one thing. And also to discourage them. What is the point in an Extreme AM sitting in a turret, when he only gets 50% damage from it?

Elite wrote:

... The ion turret is way too slow in its recharge time for hitting monsters...

I will have a think about. Perhaps it needs a slight increase.

Elite wrote:

The goliath's shooting speed and damage has been reduced, can it be put back to normal as currently the minigun turret the goliath has, kills better than the main gun itself, which should not happen. With the reduced damage and shooting speed it is a bit underpowered.

The original goliath was too powerful, and had to be taken out because it was too powerful, so I can't put it back to that. However, I will compromise and set it to halfway between the original goliath and the current one. Submitted for the next build.

Elite wrote:

When it comes to the sentinel specialist, you can only make 3 defensive sentinels although you have enough points for 4. If a 4th one cannot be made, is it possible to make the defensive sentinels shoot down 2 projectiles each time instead of 1. At the moment a normal engineer can make just as many defensive sentinels as a sentinel specialist can.

For a sentinel specialist, the defense sentinels currently fire 1.3 times as often. So 3 defense sentinels are actually doing the work of 4. However, I don't see why they shouldn't be able to make 4 defense sents, so again change submitted for the next build.

Elite wrote:

For the Extreme Medic: I think the subclass should be able to get xp from healing pets also... since the subclass itself cannot make pets.

Possibly, I will think about it. The restriction was to stop exploits, so I would need to check they are all plugged.

Elite wrote:

Also the poison blast adrenaline cost should be decreased to that of the healing blast but perhaps only in this subclass as they are exact opposites

I think in general the poison blast is too expensive, so I have reduced the base cost from 150 to 100, so the Extreme AM and Extreme Medic will be able to use it for 50 adrenaline. Submitted.

On a general level, let me try to explain what I am aiming for.

In simple terms, each subclass when maxed should be able to get around the same amount of XP per map.

Now this will be very difficult to evaluate, because:

different players will get different scores. Some are better than others, some more suited to a particular playing style

It depends on the map. Berserkers will do better on smaller maps, Engineers on maps with more space for summoning things etc

It will depend who else is on. I would expect to get a higher score playing with 3 bots than with Elite, Hobo and Desert. But I will also get a much higher score if the other 3 players are Extreme Medics

High level players will do much better if there is a low level player on who doesn't die
and so on.

So my thought is to pitch the amount of XP to be gained at around 2000-4000XP for a completed Invasion map, for a "maxed" player. By "maxed" I mean the player has spent all effective points - I don't think countershove for example particularly improves your XP score.
So an ok player might get 2000 per map on average, a reasonably good player 3000 per map on average, an excellent player 4000 per map on average.
High scores I would expect to be about 1000 higher than the average, but will be seriously affected by one-off conditions.

Obviously how well a non-maxed player scores will be affected by how much non-maxed they are, plus how good they are.

So, first, do these look reasonable expectations?
Second, is this currently what is happening? What's the feedback from the players? Are some SubClasses really easy to score 4000 XP, while others even the best have to struggle to get 3000?
That is really the key information we need to get these balanced fairly.

I just figured out that a weapons proficiency maxes out at 200%. Why not make a skill that decreases the number of kills needed to increase a percentage of the proficiency. Since there is already a limit, no single weapon can be too powerful. Right now it is set at every two kills increase 1%. It could start at every 5 kills increase 1% and so there would be 5 levels each decreasing the number of kills needed. So level 2 would require 4 kills, level 3 would require 3 kills, level 4 would require 2, and level 5 would only require 1 kill. And like I said before since there already is a limit the weapon cannont be two powerful. What this change would do is have 2 really good weapons instead of 1.

Also this is more of a visual tweak suggestion... but since the monster points are shown on the medics when they spawn pets and it is very well organized on the right side of the screen, is it possible to do the same for the engineer specialists since they can all just specialize in one thing making it a bit cleaner instead of having the points on the left where the numbers overlap with the letters making it hard to read sometimes.

Szlat wrote:

So my thought is to pitch the amount of XP to be gained at around 2000-4000XP for a completed Invasion map, for a "maxed" player. By "maxed" I mean the player has spent all effective points - I don't think countershove for example particularly improves your XP score.
So an ok player might get 2000 per map on average, a reasonably good player 3000 per map on average, an excellent player 4000 per map on average.
High scores I would expect to be about 1000 higher than the average, but will be seriously affected by one-off conditions.

Obviously how well a non-maxed player scores will be affected by how much non-maxed they are, plus how good they are.

So, first, do these look reasonable expectations?
Second, is this currently what is happening? What's the feedback from the players? Are some SubClasses really easy to score 4000 XP, while others even the best have to struggle to get 3000?
That is really the key information we need to get these balanced fairly.

Now you are off by a few numbers I along with a few others score between 5k-7k xp per map at our best with our score ratio being from 3k-4k, on 1 or 2 specific maps I have scored around 8-9k xp with a score ratio of about 6k-7k but just those maps. So far with the subclasses I have successfully reached in the 4k score with the Extreme AM, Beserker, Turret Specialist. And 3k with the rest of the subclasses.

Elite wrote:

Now you are off by a few numbers I along with a few others score between 5k-7k xp per map at our best with our score ratio being from 3k-4k, on 1 or 2 specific maps I have scored around 8-9k xp with a score ratio of about 6k-7k but just those maps. So far with the subclasses I have successfully reached in the 4k score with the Extreme AM, Beserker, Turret Specialist. And 3k with the rest of the subclasses.

I am going to have to check my screen caps and go back through the scores. However, I think there are probably a few of us who are at the top end of that on average, and then a few like Elite who push past this. Shoot, just take a look at
this page on gametracker. Ignoring those folks with outrageously short play times, the top 4 are all Elite, and the score/min for his highest is 34% higher than the next (HoboJoe).

Spacey wrote:

Shoot, just take a look at
this page on gametracker. Ignoring those folks with outrageously short play times, the top 4 are all Elite, and the score/min for his highest is 34% higher than the next (HoboJoe).

Thanks for the post. On the first page, the points per minute is roughly between 50 and 70. So for a 35 minute map, this would be a score of 1750 to 2450. This is score, not XP, and there is no easy jump between the two. If we guess that XP for AMs and WMs is about 60% above the score, this gives us a range of 2800-3920, which does fit in nicely to the top range of the XP I suggested 2000-4000. And since this is the first page, you would expect it to match the upper end of the range.

So that sort of fits in. Obviously the 60% is a guess, and varies alot according to exactly how many holy kills etc you get. (Individual games will vary alot from the 60% figure - I am talking about average values, and so even 60% may be too high. Entries on the high score table will typically have too high an XP ratio, as when you get a high on kills, your bonuses go up even faster)

Unfortunately, the stats page on gametracker doesn't break it down by subclass.

Elite wrote:

I just figured out that a weapons proficiency maxes out at 200%. Why not make a skill that decreases the number of kills needed to increase a percentage of the proficiency. Since there is already a limit, no single weapon can be too powerful. Right now it is set at every two kills increase 1%. It could start at every 5 kills increase 1% and so there would be 5 levels each decreasing the number of kills needed. So level 2 would require 4 kills, level 3 would require 3 kills, level 4 would require 2, and level 5 would only require 1 kill. And like I said before since there already is a limit the weapon cannont be two powerful. What this change would do is have 2 really good weapons instead of 1.

I suspect that with its current setting of 2 kills for 1%, a good skilled weapons character could get quite a high score. So making it so a high level can get 1 kill for 1% means they would reach the 200% earlier, and so score even higher. If it is underpowered, then we can increase - but I would like to see some evidence that players cannot get a high score with it first.

In a previous post I mentioned the following.

"Of course my score is on average about 1/8th to 1/10th of what I used to score with my 380+ level medic with no monsters (never saw a need, so I never bought). This is fine though because I can now score better where it counts, in XP. With my regular medic, the XP was okay, but I had to not heal on the titan waves and kill as much as I could just to get a decent amount. With the extreme medic, I can hide at the base and just try to keep people alive (though, as Clue is tired of hearing me say, it is hard to heal a rock in the face).

Just like my regular medic, on some maps with some players, my extreme medic does well (with XP of course, not score), and on some maps with some players, I am lucky to get 1000 XP. On average though, I think I am getting around 2500 XP. This is a bit better than my regular medic by a few hundred on average, so I am happy with it. Especially since 90% of the XP is from healing."

Since posting this, I have noticed that my XP average (I guess I am watching it closer now) is not quite as high as I originally thought. The difficulty is that my XP score is more fickle than Clue trying to decide on a restaurant when we go out to eat. This makes an average difficult to come up with.

Since using the Extreme Medic, I have broken the 5k XP barrier only about 4 times, but it seems to require some special circumstances. A couple times I did it with just me and 3 bots. They killed and I healed them.

I have also done it a couple times when at least 5 or so players (typically lower skill level players) huddle in a base that is only loosely built (few blocks and only 1 or 2 def sents) and in an exposed area. This means that a lot of people are taking damage in a small space, medic heaven. The funny thing is that I look for this type of condition and get very possesive if another medic tries to come in and steal my XP...um, I mean help heal other players.

However, it is rare that these conditions come together just right. If I do find a good base to set up my triage, typically other medics or high level engineers with bunches of def sents rain on my parade. Because of this, on a typical map (minus the perfect storm conditions I mentioned) I am happy to hit 2k XP.

I have stopped looking at score, but I think my initial guess of 1/8th to 1/10th of my normal medic score is about right. Maybe an average of 200 - 300 points per map.

The score for an Extreme Medic was always going to be low, but I think it is only fair that Extreme Medics should be able to get the same sort of XP as every other subclass.

I have just reduced the cost of the poison blast, for the next build. So that might give you some extra XP.

But I think you are right - under ideal conditions an Extreme Medic can get 5k+, but typically I feel it will be more in the range 1800-2500. So, we probably need to change to give at least 25% higher XP.

So, if we are going to increase the xp this class can get, what is the best option?

I don't really want to increase the killing power of the Extreme Medic.
It has been suggested to get XP from healing pets, since you can't summon them.
Another alternative would be just to give more levels of Experienced Healing.

You are I think the main player of this subclass, although I know Painkill has played a few games. Not sure about cribbage or Ton80. So you need to let me know between you what would be best.
Thoughts?

EDIT: On a temporary basis I will take the option of increasing the levels of Experienced Healing from 15 to 20, until we come up with a better plan.

I concur with Wayno completely on the Extreme Medic
it is more challenging to heal players than kill monsters

even against monsters they do OK you can stand in a horde and fire at the ground and take down a fair amount before a LW comes around to finish them

Xp can go from minimal to HUGE depending on classes ,levels and maps

No... the medics don't need a bump IMO...

APRIL FOOLS!

I would generally agree... medics could probably use a bump up on xp rates for healing. Heaven knows, they get a chunk from me when I play my Extreme AM (I may be a bit more aggressive and in the monster's face than most AMs). But my first/second impression is that the medics who focus on healing instead of monsters or other means of killing are probably scoring a bit lower on XP. And for those classes who are not supposed to be killing, getting XP doing what they are intended to do is a good thing (right in line with my long time proposal that AMs get XP for doing things like maxing).

And as road says, XP can vary widely based on map, other players, etc. for any given player.

I don't know about other players but with ether my new general char dom60@ I'm healing myself and everyone else thats play'n unless there's a medic on even when i'm play'n my am and i have a healing weapon i'll heal others...thats part of the co-operitive play structure we are supposed to do that sooo many fail in doing! the main thing is to WIN the map and gain xp, not gain xp and MAYBE win the map... at least thats the way i see it I may be wrong

BUT medics who do spend their time healing and not killing do get the short end since it does take forever to lvl up. I make a few critters to kill and get me xp and adren while i heal ppl and it also cuts some of the pressure from the beasties.