IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
edited September 2014
They do not @Saltlick .. but fyi I've already recommended that they do, in the past.
But unfortunately every outline (weapon drops, on teammates etc) costs some amount of performance to render.
What if grenade damage increased to max as the timer decreased to zero? It would be Yet Another Hidden Mechanic, but it would make the launcher less of a noob tube while still being effective against structures. I hope I'm not repeating more ideas that have been brought up already.
They do not @Saltlick .. but fyi I've already recommended that they do, in the past.
But unfortunately every outline (weapon drops, on teammates etc) costs some amount of performance to render.
I'd take a tiny performance decrease if we can get the outlines of nades (I know that this had been brought up long ago).
What if grenade damage increased to max as the timer decreased to zero? It would be Yet Another Hidden Mechanic, but it would make the launcher less of a noob tube while still being effective against structures. I hope I'm not repeating more ideas that have been brought up already.
Nah, it'd do the opposite of what you said.
Most 'random' lifeform kills are from nades that have missed their target or were spammed at an empty corridor and just happen to explode as a retreating life form passed, if my understanding is correct. So nades that miss will still do full damage when they explode blowing unwitting skulks to smithereens and possibly getting enough damage with the AOE to take out chipped lerks and fades as they exit an engagement.
Nades that hit directly will do less damage - its only worth GLing a structure if you're hitting it directly, and this will mean the legit GL tracked-and-predicted shots will be doing less damage too.
Here is MeatMachine's great idea for GLs, plz scrutinize as long as you know what you're talking about.
Foreword (entirely optional and possibly brainsplooge):
I briefly outlined an idea like this as a suggestion for a 'burrowing' GL projectile to eliminate the spam issues, but here I'll be ignoring any semblance of the logic that my changes would imply upon the physical operation of the weapon (i.e. lets not have to re-create the projectile to have a mole strapped to the warhead) I'll just be going into more depth on the numers here.
- So currently GLs are : 165 "structural" dmg (200% to structures, 100% to players, 1/2 dmg to armor) per grenade, explode on contact or after time, will not explode within 0.x secs of being fired.
- I propose : 90 "Heavy Structural" damage (400% to structures, 100% to players) per grenade, explode on contact only, projectile disarms after 0.x secs of being fired. AOE on detonation unaffected.
Additionally - projectile speed down, revert to what it was before it was increased a few builds ago (wasn't this changed to avoid instances of nades bouncing off the back of teammates heads?) Now the hitbox is sorted out, the speed of the projectile can be reduced to increase the skill required to directly hit fast-moving lifeforms while not affecting the difficulty of hitting structures.
~~~
So, I'm proposing a new damage type especially for the GL - Heavy Structural. This allows us to reduce the true damage to slightly over 50% of its previous value while retaining the number of direct GL hits it takes to kill most structures, save for a slight DPS boost against hives (due to the sheer number of GLs required to take it down).
The new value is still enough to kill an un-upgraded skulk with a direct hit.
There would still be an AOE effect that would reduce TTK against clustered structures and lifeforms i.e. in a seige scenario, but nades would only detonate on contact with enemy structures/lifeforms making them less effective at filling corridors with explosion.
It will encourage players getting direct hits on structures, and, combined with the decrease in projectile speed, raise both the skill floor and the 'luck floor' for taking out lifeforms with GL.
This should work.
~~~
Flaw with my proposal-
My primary concern is that it will become completely useless against lifeforms, unable to 1-shot skulks with bio/cara.
If this is deemed not strong enough by the people ( or CDT? ), then I have an additional optional fixes to normalise enagement-denial capabilities against fades and onii in the late game-
Heavy Structural damage type adjustment - 300% to structures, 100% to players, 1/1 armour damage. This means it still wrecks skulks, and a full clip of 4 nades should kill a fade. I chose 300% as an estimate for the structural damage multiplier to keep the TTK for structures inkeeping with current values.
Another option here is for the damage to once again scale with weapon upgrade level.
~~~~
Hindword:
If the GL was, as was mentioned in my foreword, reasoned to be some kind of burrowing projectile, bonus points for making it explode within the alien/structure after a short delay, with scary sound effect of bomb being primed for the victim But I dont care about that, this is mainly about balance, not coolness!
twilitebluebug stalkerJoin Date: 2003-02-04Member: 13116Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
edited September 2014
Heavy Structural is an existing damage type that remains unused. I think 90 Heavy Structural damage is enough of a damage nerf in most cases, that grenade missile speed would not need to be nerfed.
It's Super Effective!Join Date: 2012-08-28Member: 156625Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
Still baffles me we're still talking about nerfing a weapon that is both relatively late game, got more expensive recently, underused, generally used poorly and is not an efficient killer. All because 1 guy had a bad day enough to want to post about it, I can think of way more consistent, globally irritating issues the CDT could actually spend their time and effort on.
Someone suggested highlighting the grenades at the cost of performance hit. What about those who cant afford that performance hit? Also, it seems silly since both you and the grenade are traveling quickly, (say around a corner like how most GLs are used) most wouldn't be able to react, and people spawing in eggs are helpless.
Ladies and gents, its called suppression, and is apart of strategy. As I mentioned several posts ago, there are many ways to kill a GLer and if they have a huge group, its called an assault to which your team needs to react in a strategic way apart from flying your face into it.
What about those who cant afford that performance hit?
I'm pretty sure rendering a few grenades a second time in orange won't affect perfomance noticeable. Good PCs will still run as good as before with it, bad PCs still bad, and it shouldn't push anyone from "barely tolerable" to "intolerable".
GL should be able to oneshot skulks, or close to. But for the love of god tone down the damage on everything else, personally i like @meatmachine 's suggestion regarding the damage input, should be relatively simple to code too(guessing here).
And btw, reason why they are more recent for change now is the timing, not cost or their usage. Because it's cheaper to research AA they are seen more often and the issues with them arise more often now, that doesn't mean those didn't exist before.
As for the "It's easy to kill GL", yeah it is if they are bad, so is with everything else, but that's not a valid argument. What is a valid argument is that they scale horribly the more you have them, on public games where you have more players than say, gather/pug/competitive, having 2-3 bombard a corridor is effectively a kill zone. Is the argument that this should remain in the game? If not, then yes it should be discussed. No matter how "other issues" there might be for CDT to work with.
Completely changing how GL works in the game, as attachment as is suggested, or any other variation is another issue, that will probaly require more work. But assessing something like how much damage a weapon does, shouldn't be that huge of a deal to change.
Still baffles me we're still talking about nerfing a weapon that is both relatively late game, got more expensive recently, underused, generally used poorly and is not an efficient killer. All because 1 guy had a bad day enough to want to post about it, I can think of way more consistent, globally irritating issues the CDT could actually spend their time and effort on.
Someone suggested highlighting the grenades at the cost of performance hit. What about those who cant afford that performance hit? Also, it seems silly since both you and the grenade are traveling quickly, (say around a corner like how most GLs are used) most wouldn't be able to react, and people spawing in eggs are helpless.
Ladies and gents, its called suppression, and is apart of strategy. As I mentioned several posts ago, there are many ways to kill a GLer and if they have a huge group, its called an assault to which your team needs to react in a strategic way apart from flying your face into it.
The idea that a lot of people are willing to accept the fact including some comp players and CDT members that GLs are not considered a fun weapon to play against is enough to warrant a discussion that you yourself don't need to be part yet you chastise other people for it. Your construed ideas of balance regarding the subject matter is not sufficient enough to discontinue this discussion, no one person is which is why its important to let people discuss it rather than not. It's not a question of whether or not you have the time or resources to make a change, its regarding taking the feedback and deciding, make a change or not but its better to raise the issue than ignore it or pass it off as irrelevant nonsense even if the discussion might be.
Some people have animosity towards the GL, not because its necessarily OP although this might be a reason for some but because its the absolute antithesis to everything else in NS2 in that it represents an aspect of gameplay many would consider not only poor design but also frustrating to play against where you in some situations, can do little about. In addition, its a topic of discussion that has relevance in the higher count public scene where GLs become exponential thus a small change wouldn't affect the ideal comp and strategic scene but have significant positive ramifications for the public scene.
I would agree with you that GLs aren't really a good weapon overall as I've lost more games to people buying them rather than shotguns than lost as aliens to them but that's not really the point, it's more that they're obnoxious to play against and to play with.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
edited September 2014
ISE: Every teammate and enemy and structure can have it's own outline and even every weapon has its own unique colored outline..(each color aggregates another render draw) and no one even noticed a decrease in fps..
Also, yes were still talking about a skill-less, luck based mechanic that leads to frustrating, unavoidable deaths. It's a poor implementation for an "anti structure" weapon - it has been since alpha days.
Also if you rush the AA you can get it in 1 minute and 45 seconds.. so it's not exactly a late game thing anymore, and is definitely worth a discussion now imo
@meatmachine
Wait, so when a player fires into a room with structures but the odd physics just bounce around and manage not to hit a structure, no damage occurs? :-t
I think that decreased player damage should be enough, we don't want to confuse the hell out of new players
I definitely feel like this is a topic worthy of discussion. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard complaints about gls when on the alien team.(read: not just rookies complaining)
Especially since it's a problem that gets larger with how big the server is....which is a staple of public casual play.
I like @meatmachine idea. Except confused about the part with no dmg when grenade missed? That sounds too much of a nerf imo.
Especially if you are considering lowering player dmg.
The most annoying problem I see with the grenade launchers are lerks and fades dieing instantly because of multiple hits.
Maybe the explosion could push flying grenades a little so that you can't die instantly by grenade spam (the first grenade would make the other ones miss).
Altough a side effect of this change would be more random luck kills by flying grenades.
Also if you rush the AA you can get it in 1 minute and 45 seconds.. so it's not exactly a late game thing anymore, and is definitely worth a discussion now imo
Come now Iron, you should know full well that Rushing AA is a death sentence for Marines, while that is technically doable, you know it isn't viable because the lack of upgrades and PG's will more often then not result in dead marines, which results in lost ground, which results in less res flow. So then they get their 0/0 20 PRES GL's and get killed easily by 0 Res 0/0 skulks, which results in a lost game which results in frustration. A troll 'strategy' at best, if it was viable we'd be seeing it in every day play.
I can see this being a much more edge case if you removed impact explosion on alien/eggs, that in itself will, as you guys demand, make it geared for structures.
Or as was suggested, make the GL attachment with 1 shot per reload, you cut down on the spam drastically, while not leaving the marines high and dry.
For everone above wondering what happens to a grenade that doesn't hit anything -
It disarms. No explodey. If you wanted to do damage, you shoulda hit your target, rookie. Seriously, thats the big whoop in my post, really.
Just edited wording in previous post to make this a little clearer.
Honestly my primary position on GLs shares the sentiment of @It's Super Effective! earlier post-
#1 GLs are a late game weapon and should be able to wreak destruction.
#2 Most people don't use GLs to their potential.
#3 If a lifeform is lost to a GL, either it's a fringe case of luck, or the life form made a fatal mistake in choosing to dis/engage how they did. It's frustrating to lose a fade to a GL, but if you did, chances are almost always that it's mostly your fault.
That is to say, I am not personally taking or giving a massive pooey shit over the current GL situation.
In fact, my MAIN and eternal gripe with GLs is point #2 mentioned above.
And point #2 basically leads on to the rest of the real/perceived problem with GLs- the spam. The pretty, noisy, scary spam that randomly takes young virgin lerks in the night.
Luckily I have spotted that in this case, we can hit two lerks with one nade, so to speak :-?
*laughs manically*
You may have noticed that amidst the numbers, taking away idle detonation is the crux of my suggested changes, and I do believe it'll fix an awful lot of the GLs image problems - mainly by making it more obvious, and indeed, crucial that direct hits are needed to score proper/any damage with the GL.
This will mean even new players learn quickly they can't spam the GL into a largely empty area and still get happy feelings from the many numbers that pop up from the idle-detonation's AOE explosion that actually is doing very little damage to any individual enemy.
My suggested changes would fix the 'spam' issue (however much of an issue it is to the players losing life forms to these invalids, its an issue for me when I'm on a team with 5 useless marines stood in base shooting at a wall in fear) AND AT THE SAME TIME deal with their misuse even when marines are trying to kill structures with them
- This further secures and promotes the GLs actual role of surgical-precision alien structure killer - you get in, you hit your target directly with every nade, it dies, you get out. If you dont use it like that, you will get no positive feedback in the form of damage numbers. The GL is useful specifically because you can take out any single upgrade or support structure with 4 direct hits. If you know the order of importance of structures in a room, you can greatly accelerate the success of a siege with hit-and-run attacks.
Yes, it'll still be possible to directly hit life forms, EVEN BY CHANCE. But you won't be taking 150 damage from a nade that was hanging around on the floor for half an hour before you flew past and lost your lerk.
@meatmachine
Wait, so when a player fires into a room with structures but the odd physics just bounce around and manage not to hit a structure, no damage occurs? :-t
I think that decreased player damage should be enough, we don't want to confuse the hell out of new players
Yes!
But what you describe is part of the problem!
People just fire into a room with structures and see damage, and endorphins flush their neural pathways... But they're not actually helping much at all. They're not directly hitting anything, but they're seeing [lots of] [small] numbers flash up on screen due to the AOE, and these numbers give the impression that this GL-buying greenie is doing something useful other than giving the nearby crag something to do for a few seconds before they die to a fade.
My argument is (partially) that the current apparent use of the GL is actually completely not what GLs are good for.
The way GLs seem like they should be used is how ARCs are used - you click, you forget, stuff dies.
But this isn't how GLs work in a real game scenario! And they shouldnt! Because then you get hallways full of flames, and there's a reason ARCs arent carried around by jetpacking A3 marines (I assume?)
I am also of the opinion that if you think grenades only detonating on hit is going to be a completely foreign concept that will totally alienate them, you underestimate them (christ, its one of the few times I can think of where its actually possible to underestimate the newbies)
Actually, I started playing Quake live for the first time ever this weekend and I can see why some newcomers might be inclined to fire the GL into an empty hallway
Changing the behaviour of the GL is one thing, but I think also changing the name could also be a powerful tool to stop people thinking of it the way they think of the GL in every other FPS ever
For everone above wondering what happens to a grenade that doesn't hit anything -
It disarms. No explodey. If you wanted to do damage, you shoulda hit your target, rookie. Seriously, thats the big whoop in my post, really.
My experience with gls and higher lifeforms is that its always a direct hit that might unexpectadly screw you over. With lerks and fades being so mobile, the chances of you being on just low enough health, going through the AoE right when it goes off, I die much more often to blindly running into mines as a cause of somewhat unlucky death, and even though direct hits can do alot of damage there so rare as well. When I die from gls its useally as a skulk, and its from running around a rines feet to kill him while hes buddy tosses a few grenades at his feet, and you should die for that! You should die if you go right head on at a shotgun as a skulk when he gets a perfect shot at you and you should die when you keep staying in a place when there are bombs right there. I think that Gls are fine, Not much skill involved doesnt mean somethings unbalanced, I dont see people complaining about mines too much yet for them its just place them around something and getting a kill against maybe even a higher lifeform when your not really even thinking about that mine at that time.
For everone above wondering what happens to a grenade that doesn't hit anything -
It disarms. No explodey. If you wanted to do damage, you shoulda hit your target, rookie. Seriously, thats the big whoop in my post, really.
My experience with gls and higher lifeforms is that its always a direct hit that might unexpectadly screw you over. With lerks and fades being so mobile, the chances of you being on just low enough health, going through the AoE right when it goes off, I die much more often to blindly running into mines as a cause of somewhat unlucky death, and even though direct hits can do alot of damage there so rare as well. When I die from gls its useally as a skulk, and its from running around a rines feet to kill him while hes buddy tosses a few grenades at his feet, and you should die for that! You should die if you go right head on at a shotgun as a skulk when he gets a perfect shot at you and you should die when you keep staying in a place when there are bombs right there. I think that Gls are fine, Not much skill involved doesnt mean somethings unbalanced, I dont see people complaining about mines too much yet for them its just place them around something and getting a kill against maybe even a higher lifeform when your not really even thinking about that mine at that time.
Mines are lit up and stationary... if you have more issues with mines over nades... idk what to tell you. Avoid mines? Play against more glers?
Easy way to solve nearly all problems about GL: detonation becomes manual ( for instance with the reload button). Primary/secondary fire could control whether or not the grenade is sticky or not, if there is some time to implement sticky nade.
Only problem i see with that is short range detonation (fire and quick reload) which could become a major problem for skulks. Otherwise it introduces a lot of nuance to GL. Want to set up a trap? Fine but your trap better works or else you are standing with your GL unloaded. Mid range support? Fire once and reload.
@meatmachine i still dont understand what is supposed to happen to nades that don't explode. Do they just lie around? Because I'm totally going to try to build a nade heap bigger than me, just for crashing the server and the lulz.
Easy way to solve nearly all problems about GL: detonation becomes manual ( for instance with the reload button). Primary/secondary fire could control whether or not the grenade is sticky or not, if there is some time to implement sticky nade.
Only problem i see with that is short range detonation (fire and quick reload) which could become a major problem for skulks. Otherwise it introduces a lot of nuance to GL. Want to set up a trap? Fine but your trap better works or else you are standing with your GL unloaded. Mid range support? Fire once and reload.
How about, let it still explode on contact but you could also detonate it with secondary fire.
@meatmachine i still dont understand what is supposed to happen to nades that don't explode. Do they just lie around? Because I'm totally going to try to build a nade heap bigger than me, just for crashing the server and the lulz.
They lay there for a second or two and then dissolve into nanobots? Or just disappear, I'm not particularly fussed. Obviously they wouldnt hang around as resource-consuming physics entities or whatnot. Nanobots is safest i think
Easy way to solve nearly all problems about GL: detonation becomes manual ( for instance with the reload button). Primary/secondary fire could control whether or not the grenade is sticky or not, if there is some time to implement sticky nade.
Only problem i see with that is short range detonation (fire and quick reload) which could become a major problem for skulks. Otherwise it introduces a lot of nuance to GL. Want to set up a trap? Fine but your trap better works or else you are standing with your GL unloaded. Mid range support? Fire once and reload.
Um... This would be an insane buff to the GL, greatly increasing its kill potential against life forms. Whut.
Which is what i wrote, let it be the same but implement detonation from secondary fire. You wouldn't be able to save them up, they would still explode when the timer hits zero, but you'd have more control over using the weapon.
As you say..
#3 If a lifeform is lost to a GL, either it's a fringe case of luck, or the life form made a fatal mistake in choosing to dis/engage how they did. It's frustrating to lose a fade to a GL, but if you did, chances are almost always that it's mostly your fault.
The thought process would then be to change the weapon in so, lowering the player damage, leaving it be the same for structures. But at the same time implementating the detonation, so you have a chance to fend of aliens with some smart nade placing.
Keep in mind, it still does damage to yourself as well, so it's not "just gain".
Comments
But unfortunately every outline (weapon drops, on teammates etc) costs some amount of performance to render.
I'd take a tiny performance decrease if we can get the outlines of nades (I know that this had been brought up long ago).
Nah, it'd do the opposite of what you said.
Most 'random' lifeform kills are from nades that have missed their target or were spammed at an empty corridor and just happen to explode as a retreating life form passed, if my understanding is correct. So nades that miss will still do full damage when they explode blowing unwitting skulks to smithereens and possibly getting enough damage with the AOE to take out chipped lerks and fades as they exit an engagement.
Nades that hit directly will do less damage - its only worth GLing a structure if you're hitting it directly, and this will mean the legit GL tracked-and-predicted shots will be doing less damage too.
Foreword (entirely optional and possibly brainsplooge):
- So currently GLs are : 165 "structural" dmg (200% to structures, 100% to players, 1/2 dmg to armor) per grenade, explode on contact or after time, will not explode within 0.x secs of being fired.
- I propose : 90 "Heavy Structural" damage (400% to structures, 100% to players) per grenade, explode on contact only, projectile disarms after 0.x secs of being fired. AOE on detonation unaffected.
Additionally - projectile speed down, revert to what it was before it was increased a few builds ago (wasn't this changed to avoid instances of nades bouncing off the back of teammates heads?) Now the hitbox is sorted out, the speed of the projectile can be reduced to increase the skill required to directly hit fast-moving lifeforms while not affecting the difficulty of hitting structures.
~~~
So, I'm proposing a new damage type especially for the GL - Heavy Structural. This allows us to reduce the true damage to slightly over 50% of its previous value while retaining the number of direct GL hits it takes to kill most structures, save for a slight DPS boost against hives (due to the sheer number of GLs required to take it down).
The new value is still enough to kill an un-upgraded skulk with a direct hit.
There would still be an AOE effect that would reduce TTK against clustered structures and lifeforms i.e. in a seige scenario, but nades would only detonate on contact with enemy structures/lifeforms making them less effective at filling corridors with explosion.
It will encourage players getting direct hits on structures, and, combined with the decrease in projectile speed, raise both the skill floor and the 'luck floor' for taking out lifeforms with GL.
This should work.
~~~
Flaw with my proposal-
My primary concern is that it will become completely useless against lifeforms, unable to 1-shot skulks with bio/cara.
If this is deemed not strong enough by the people ( or CDT? ), then I have an additional optional fixes to normalise enagement-denial capabilities against fades and onii in the late game-
Heavy Structural damage type adjustment - 300% to structures, 100% to players, 1/1 armour damage. This means it still wrecks skulks, and a full clip of 4 nades should kill a fade. I chose 300% as an estimate for the structural damage multiplier to keep the TTK for structures inkeeping with current values.
Another option here is for the damage to once again scale with weapon upgrade level.
~~~~
Hindword:
You said that they only explode on direct hits if I understood correctly.
Someone suggested highlighting the grenades at the cost of performance hit. What about those who cant afford that performance hit? Also, it seems silly since both you and the grenade are traveling quickly, (say around a corner like how most GLs are used) most wouldn't be able to react, and people spawing in eggs are helpless.
Ladies and gents, its called suppression, and is apart of strategy. As I mentioned several posts ago, there are many ways to kill a GLer and if they have a huge group, its called an assault to which your team needs to react in a strategic way apart from flying your face into it.
I'm pretty sure rendering a few grenades a second time in orange won't affect perfomance noticeable. Good PCs will still run as good as before with it, bad PCs still bad, and it shouldn't push anyone from "barely tolerable" to "intolerable".
And btw, reason why they are more recent for change now is the timing, not cost or their usage. Because it's cheaper to research AA they are seen more often and the issues with them arise more often now, that doesn't mean those didn't exist before.
As for the "It's easy to kill GL", yeah it is if they are bad, so is with everything else, but that's not a valid argument. What is a valid argument is that they scale horribly the more you have them, on public games where you have more players than say, gather/pug/competitive, having 2-3 bombard a corridor is effectively a kill zone. Is the argument that this should remain in the game? If not, then yes it should be discussed. No matter how "other issues" there might be for CDT to work with.
Completely changing how GL works in the game, as attachment as is suggested, or any other variation is another issue, that will probaly require more work. But assessing something like how much damage a weapon does, shouldn't be that huge of a deal to change.
The idea that a lot of people are willing to accept the fact including some comp players and CDT members that GLs are not considered a fun weapon to play against is enough to warrant a discussion that you yourself don't need to be part yet you chastise other people for it. Your construed ideas of balance regarding the subject matter is not sufficient enough to discontinue this discussion, no one person is which is why its important to let people discuss it rather than not. It's not a question of whether or not you have the time or resources to make a change, its regarding taking the feedback and deciding, make a change or not but its better to raise the issue than ignore it or pass it off as irrelevant nonsense even if the discussion might be.
Some people have animosity towards the GL, not because its necessarily OP although this might be a reason for some but because its the absolute antithesis to everything else in NS2 in that it represents an aspect of gameplay many would consider not only poor design but also frustrating to play against where you in some situations, can do little about. In addition, its a topic of discussion that has relevance in the higher count public scene where GLs become exponential thus a small change wouldn't affect the ideal comp and strategic scene but have significant positive ramifications for the public scene.
I would agree with you that GLs aren't really a good weapon overall as I've lost more games to people buying them rather than shotguns than lost as aliens to them but that's not really the point, it's more that they're obnoxious to play against and to play with.
Also, yes were still talking about a skill-less, luck based mechanic that leads to frustrating, unavoidable deaths. It's a poor implementation for an "anti structure" weapon - it has been since alpha days.
Also if you rush the AA you can get it in 1 minute and 45 seconds.. so it's not exactly a late game thing anymore, and is definitely worth a discussion now imo
@meatmachine
Wait, so when a player fires into a room with structures but the odd physics just bounce around and manage not to hit a structure, no damage occurs? :-t
I think that decreased player damage should be enough, we don't want to confuse the hell out of new players
Especially since it's a problem that gets larger with how big the server is....which is a staple of public casual play.
I like @meatmachine idea. Except confused about the part with no dmg when grenade missed? That sounds too much of a nerf imo.
Especially if you are considering lowering player dmg.
P.s. sorry I just repeated what ironponny said.
Maybe the explosion could push flying grenades a little so that you can't die instantly by grenade spam (the first grenade would make the other ones miss).
Altough a side effect of this change would be more random luck kills by flying grenades.
Come now Iron, you should know full well that Rushing AA is a death sentence for Marines, while that is technically doable, you know it isn't viable because the lack of upgrades and PG's will more often then not result in dead marines, which results in lost ground, which results in less res flow. So then they get their 0/0 20 PRES GL's and get killed easily by 0 Res 0/0 skulks, which results in a lost game which results in frustration. A troll 'strategy' at best, if it was viable we'd be seeing it in every day play.
I can see this being a much more edge case if you removed impact explosion on alien/eggs, that in itself will, as you guys demand, make it geared for structures.
Or as was suggested, make the GL attachment with 1 shot per reload, you cut down on the spam drastically, while not leaving the marines high and dry.
It disarms. No explodey. If you wanted to do damage, you shoulda hit your target, rookie.
Just edited wording in previous post to make this a little clearer.
Honestly my primary position on GLs shares the sentiment of @It's Super Effective! earlier post-
#1 GLs are a late game weapon and should be able to wreak destruction.
#2 Most people don't use GLs to their potential.
#3 If a lifeform is lost to a GL, either it's a fringe case of luck, or the life form made a fatal mistake in choosing to dis/engage how they did. It's frustrating to lose a fade to a GL, but if you did, chances are almost always that it's mostly your fault.
That is to say, I am not personally taking or giving a massive pooey shit over the current GL situation.
In fact, my MAIN and eternal gripe with GLs is point #2 mentioned above.
And point #2 basically leads on to the rest of the real/perceived problem with GLs- the spam. The pretty, noisy, scary spam that randomly takes young virgin lerks in the night.
Luckily I have spotted that in this case, we can hit two lerks with one nade, so to speak :-?
You may have noticed that amidst the numbers, taking away idle detonation is the crux of my suggested changes, and I do believe it'll fix an awful lot of the GLs image problems - mainly by making it more obvious, and indeed, crucial that direct hits are needed to score proper/any damage with the GL.
This will mean even new players learn quickly they can't spam the GL into a largely empty area and still get happy feelings from the many numbers that pop up from the idle-detonation's AOE explosion that actually is doing very little damage to any individual enemy.
My suggested changes would fix the 'spam' issue (however much of an issue it is to the players losing life forms to these invalids, its an issue for me when I'm on a team with 5 useless marines stood in base shooting at a wall in fear) AND AT THE SAME TIME deal with their misuse even when marines are trying to kill structures with them
- This further secures and promotes the GLs actual role of surgical-precision alien structure killer - you get in, you hit your target directly with every nade, it dies, you get out. If you dont use it like that, you will get no positive feedback in the form of damage numbers. The GL is useful specifically because you can take out any single upgrade or support structure with 4 direct hits. If you know the order of importance of structures in a room, you can greatly accelerate the success of a siege with hit-and-run attacks.
Yes, it'll still be possible to directly hit life forms, EVEN BY CHANCE. But you won't be taking 150 damage from a nade that was hanging around on the floor for half an hour before you flew past and lost your lerk.
Yes!
But what you describe is part of the problem!
People just fire into a room with structures and see damage, and endorphins flush their neural pathways... But they're not actually helping much at all. They're not directly hitting anything, but they're seeing [lots of] [small] numbers flash up on screen due to the AOE, and these numbers give the impression that this GL-buying greenie is doing something useful other than giving the nearby crag something to do for a few seconds before they die to a fade.
My argument is (partially) that the current apparent use of the GL is actually completely not what GLs are good for.
The way GLs seem like they should be used is how ARCs are used - you click, you forget, stuff dies.
But this isn't how GLs work in a real game scenario! And they shouldnt! Because then you get hallways full of flames, and there's a reason ARCs arent carried around by jetpacking A3 marines (I assume?)
I am also of the opinion that if you think grenades only detonating on hit is going to be a completely foreign concept that will totally alienate them, you underestimate them
Actually, I started playing Quake live for the first time ever this weekend and I can see why some newcomers might be inclined to fire the GL into an empty hallway
Changing the behaviour of the GL is one thing, but I think also changing the name could also be a powerful tool to stop people thinking of it the way they think of the GL in every other FPS ever
My experience with gls and higher lifeforms is that its always a direct hit that might unexpectadly screw you over. With lerks and fades being so mobile, the chances of you being on just low enough health, going through the AoE right when it goes off, I die much more often to blindly running into mines as a cause of somewhat unlucky death, and even though direct hits can do alot of damage there so rare as well. When I die from gls its useally as a skulk, and its from running around a rines feet to kill him while hes buddy tosses a few grenades at his feet, and you should die for that! You should die if you go right head on at a shotgun as a skulk when he gets a perfect shot at you and you should die when you keep staying in a place when there are bombs right there. I think that Gls are fine, Not much skill involved doesnt mean somethings unbalanced, I dont see people complaining about mines too much yet for them its just place them around something and getting a kill against maybe even a higher lifeform when your not really even thinking about that mine at that time.
Nvm, I think I get what you mean. I'll still say it though: wut.
Only problem i see with that is short range detonation (fire and quick reload) which could become a major problem for skulks. Otherwise it introduces a lot of nuance to GL. Want to set up a trap? Fine but your trap better works or else you are standing with your GL unloaded. Mid range support? Fire once and reload.
And yes, still tone down the damage.
They lay there for a second or two and then dissolve into nanobots? Or just disappear, I'm not particularly fussed. Obviously they wouldnt hang around as resource-consuming physics entities or whatnot. Nanobots is safest i think
As you say..
The thought process would then be to change the weapon in so, lowering the player damage, leaving it be the same for structures. But at the same time implementating the detonation, so you have a chance to fend of aliens with some smart nade placing.
Keep in mind, it still does damage to yourself as well, so it's not "just gain".