Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread

The tele nerf isn't even just affecting Cybran, it's making every faction less fun imo. People are biased against snipes as a way to win games it seems, it's more upsetting to get sniped than to execute the snipe for most people, so all the sniping cheese in the game is getting normalized. Boring.

@storm said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

Salvation, mavor or sats and YOLO will always win against a scathis

I've honestly seen the opposite in plenty of games. I'm not convinced that scathis is worse for its mass cost, compared to the mavor, salvation etc.
Not that I'm an expert - my games are over WAY before that stuff hits the field!

It's starting to sound like your biggest issue is telesnipes - from what I've seen, they tend to be used by players that are fed-up and want to go to bed. I agree with the comments about them being more annoying to receive than rewarding to execute.

Still, if the issue is scathis, I think scathis are great, especially when people know how to power-down shields.
If the issue is HARMs, HARMs are honestly still amazing when assisted vs navy at my level, and without compare from any other races.
If the issue is telesnipe, telesnipe can still end games quite easily.

If the issue is cybran losing identity, I honestly don't see it - deceivers still make the race SO different than the others, and satisfying to use, not to mention mantis being so dominant at T1 with micro, and ACU stealth being critical (admittedly my games tend to have far less players than average.)

Are you SURE you weren't just a bit of a fan of suiciding to end another player's game because it was your bedtime? Because that seems like the biggest change that cybran have been hit with lately (and sadly, it stills seems incredibly easy to do with only a little setup (basically just a t2 transport an 40 seconds)) - I'm asking this honestly; I don't play lots of team games, I just watch them, and see lots of telesnipes knock players out that definitely wanted to keep playing, having invested 10's or hundreds of minutes into queuing and setting up the game prior. I mean, I know you can defend with 30 seconds of point defense spam, so I don't have much sympathy, but still... Is it that rewarding to do damage in that way? Is that really the lynchpin of cybran racial identity?

I don't shield all my mexes when I see a novax, waste of resources. Cheaper to just rebuild the mex after novax leaves. Shield grids and larger mass fab farms. I'll make a shield if it can protect at least 3 mexes, though.

Scathis is only worse than the Mavor in some situations, and it's better in other situations. For example, I can just out build a Mavor if I've got map control and am going for nuke subs (setons). Did that as recently as today without much trouble, though tbf the Mavor didn't live super long. Can't really do that with a Scathis, it'll wreck all my power and is virtually impossible to shield a large base against especially after the last buff to narrow the spread a bit.

No competent player would go into a game expecting to rely on harms for their navy unless they're trolling or being really obnoxious.

At this point I don't remember the last time I died to teleport it's quite easy to counter usually. The most depressingly strong tele isn't even cybran imo, it's multiple sera rambo bois. A few of those going at once is very hard to deal with with how tanky they are + the damage when they die. 3 of those well placed are very hard to kill in before they kill the game ender/smd/whatever their target is. I don't think I like the range nerf yet but I'll hold judgement on that until I can play with it some.

EDIT: While it's easy to not die to tele, it still takes a disproportionate amount of mass to defend against so it's quite strong. It's a bit like an SMD where you have to do it in certain games.

@ftxcommando said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

That's approximately, at an utter minimum, 10k mass in t2 PD and I think another 3kish in ACU upgrades? Now put that across 4 slots, and you have around 52k mass in defenses.

Water, t1 pd and shields you can walk through

It was mentioned at the time harms were to be nerfed that if the nerf was too much then it might be tweaked in a later balance update. I've yet to see a harms in a game I play post-nerf but then since I'm usually playing TMM naval based maps aren't that common (and I don't tend to play Cybran now). Are they seen in games where they're effective (rather than e.g. being built by someone who didn't realise all the nerfs they got who then sees them easily killed by long range naval units)?

While I'm not suggesting they go back to pre-nerf levels it'd be sad to see them go the way of the beetle and mercy (two other faction specific units that got nerfed for being too strong which I don't see now).

@shadysocks said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

@ftxcommando said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

That's approximately, at an utter minimum, 10k mass in t2 PD and I think another 3kish in ACU upgrades? Now put that across 4 slots, and you have around 52k mass in defenses.

Water, t1 pd and shields you can walk through

Water covers ACU, doesn’t cover smd/air grid/large mex congregations

t1 pd is often times more expensive because if you really want to cancer with laser, you can get gun and laser critical things right outside of t1 pd range

shields: yes, but that still makes the cost insane factoring in 4 bases and multiple teleport targets and makes the calculations so tedious for no real change in reality.

I should also say your “just make tml” solves nothing really because an air grid or half of one being sniped late game is well worth an ACU dying and if you’re telling me you perfectly time your TMLs for when right when the ACU pops in, I want 3 replays of it happening in real games.

Hey, a general balance thread. Adding my two cents.

• Telemazer ACU and Novax aren't really comparable since Novax isn't putting itself in harm's way. Once you kill the ACU that's it. So arguably, we should compare the cost of shielding everything with Novax not against "kill ACU before it does damage, everywhere" defenses, but against "kill ACU before it does damage in the few places where it can lose me the game, and kill it before it teleports otherwise" defenses. AKA packs of TMLs here and there rather than PDs and shields all over the place.
• Nerf to mazer damage also nerfed non-tele strategies, which is sad.
• It's weird for a naval equivalent of a T3 PD to be outranged by regular lower-tech units. It's as if Ravagers were outranged by Hoplites, except you also can't build shields in the water.
• When talking about T3 arty, remember that when it comes to arty duels Cybrans have the most inaccurate T3 arty and the worst shields.
• I lost all hope in the balance team when they made a blanket 15% increase in vision for all units without a warning, passed it off as a minor technical fix and increased deceiver stealth radius by 15% to "compensate" as if it was an equivalent exchange in any way.

@mazornoob said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

Once you kill the ACU that's it

Full share.

Maybe we should make full share illegal.

It's still being down a player. I recall reading someone on the forum making a case for full share in team games, saying that being down a player is still a big loss. That's why people switched from no-share to fullshare teamgames. Wouldn't this argument work here as well? Unless killing your target wins you the game, you're still behind.

It is a big loss, but min 28 ur base runs itself so losing a player is trivial. No mexes to upgrade, minimal scale to keep going beyond dumping more mass into the mass fab grids you are already scaling in your home base.

As another aside, what if teleporting to within omni range gave a warning?

@ftxcommando said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

It is a big loss, but min 28 ur base runs itself so losing a player is trivial. No mexes to upgrade, minimal scale to keep going beyond dumping more mass into the mass fab grids you are already scaling in your home base.

How is it both a big loss and trivial, what? I’ve always been generally against fullshare, especially on non-Setons maps, but now you’re admitting that it’s actually not a big loss at all once a certain state of the game is reached? (Obviously map dependent) You didn’t use to argue in those terms on the topic of fullshare.

Edit: just to prove I’m not going crazy, this was just a year ago

https://forum.faforever.com/topic/4608/full-share-cannot-avoid-reality-of-math/49?_=1695818543382

@mazornoob said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

Telemazer ACU and Novax aren't really comparable since Novax isn't putting itself in harm's way. Once you kill the ACU that's it. So arguably, we should compare the cost of shielding everything with Novax not against "kill ACU before it does damage, everywhere" defenses, but against "kill ACU before it does damage in the few places where it can lose me the game, and kill it before it teleports otherwise" defenses. AKA packs of TMLs here and there rather than PDs and shields all over the place.

You should also factor in when you need to start making those defenses, which is once you see the novax, then you might loose a few mexes if your too slow (so he already put his 50k mass in)
vs
once the game launches and your opponent has cybran, because scouting the enemy ACU making tele and/or laser isn't really feasible and if you start making defenses once the upgrades are done, you already lost the game. (you need to preemptively spend mass to prevent the eventual laser snipe)

@mazornoob said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

Nerf to mazer damage also nerfed non-tele strategies, which is sad.

They are worse, but cloak-laser is still kinda doable or not?

@mazornoob said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

It's weird for a naval equivalent of a T3 PD to be outranged by regular lower-tech units. It's as if Ravagers were outranged by Hoplites, except you also can't build shields in the water.

I don't think it's fair to compare torp launchers to pd, as even in the t1/t2 stage they just function very differently

@mazornoob said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

I lost all hope in the balance team when they made a blanket 15% increase in vision for all units without a warning, passed it off as a minor technical fix and increased deceiver stealth radius by 15% to "compensate" as if it was an equivalent exchange in any way.

I also think the vision upgrades were handed out a bit too liberally with the argument of fixing the vision bug. I think structures and some units that already have a vastly larger range than they have vision should be exempt or at least be argued for differently as to why the change is made.

@zeldafanboy said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

@ftxcommando said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

It is a big loss, but min 28 ur base runs itself so losing a player is trivial. No mexes to upgrade, minimal scale to keep going beyond dumping more mass into the mass fab grids you are already scaling in your home base.

How is it both a big loss and trivial, what? I’ve always been generally against fullshare, especially on non-Setons maps, but now you’re admitting that it’s actually not a big loss at all once a certain state of the game is reached? (Obviously map dependent) You didn’t use to argue in those terms on the topic of fullshare.

Edit: just to prove I’m not going crazy, this was just a year ago

https://forum.faforever.com/topic/4608/full-share-cannot-avoid-reality-of-math/49?_=1695818543382

Because 90% of games are decided before min 28

I have always held this opinion, teleport suicides are one of the few situations full share is worse because there is just not much of a cost in losing a player that late generally. In the other 90% of games it’s still nearly universally better than no share and you can just house rule teleport cancer away for the other 10%.

@melanol

LOL. This is a joke right.

@Sladow-Noob

Hey! Just another quick question...
Anything in regards to the UEF Bubble Shield?

I recall @TheWheelie said in their stream, a while back, that the values for it were identical to the Personal Shield because there was really no direction for it just yet.
The values were practically 'arbritary' and would need more feedback to adjust.

Now that more feedback and info has been obtained, will there be more adjustments in this next balance patch?

~ Stryker

@clyf said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

Was there much exploration of changing teleporter balance on a per faction basis (cost, range, etc.), not just in regard to synergistic upgrades?
 
@relentless, @FtXCommando
For a variable cost, you could have the number popup next to the cursor. Looks cool, very intuitive, technically easy.

I would much prefer an approach similar to how Aeon gun range was changed recently.

All factions have a cheaper short range teleport. Aeon and Sera have an additional upgrade to that which is much more expensive and allows global teleport. That's much more clear and bypasses the issue of seemingly identical upgrades having wildly different costs and capabilities depending on the faction.

@mazornoob said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

I lost all hope in the balance team when they made a blanket 15% increase in vision for all units without a warning, passed it off as a minor technical fix

This bothered the hell out of me, too. I'm still hoping that it gets re-visited, but it seems like discussing it just isn't desired!

@deribus
Personally i think every fraction should have access to unlimited ranged teleportation. Making multiple separate upgrades is a good idea, but making it expensive can mess with telesacu.

Imho if some specific upgrade interactions have to be changed from balance perspective better to focus on target nerfs. For example maybe we could add downside to laser and billy upgrades: reduces the teleportation range to 350. It even makes some sense since both upgrades consumes a lot of energy and tele depends on energy a lot.