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Ground PVP Concerns Directory 1.0
mrkollins
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
Based on the Thread by Naz and since all the Ground post end in oblivion or deleted by discussions of ego, it's time to make one post with all the current issues concerning Ground PvP. It's a good idea to have a maintained thread where issues are kept centralised on the first post
Please mantain this thread clean and keep discussions out of here. Please start an alternate thread if you wish to discuss anything further.
Posting format:
Ground ability / Item / Trait / Race / Other
Perceived issue summary
Towards a better game, let's start this:
01. Item: Compressed Cryo Launcher
Issue: No exist Armors with resistance against Cold, it makes all the other Pulsewaves useless regarding damage
Status: We are considering a solution, and would appreciate feedback...
Our plan is to examine the max Cold Resist a player can reasonably obtain (probably via Nukara EV Suits), and we will then use that as a baseline for Max Resists when compared against what can be obtained for a standard energy type like Phaser or Disruptor. From there, we will tune the damage this weapon deals against PLAYERS ONLY, to approximately match the DPS of a comparable weapon of a different energy type, based on that upper limit. The weapon's effectiveness in PvE will remain unaltered.
Fix: The damage dealt TO PLAYERS by the Cryo Pulsewave weapons has been reduced to 75% of its previous output. (Damage output vs. NPCs is completely unchanged.)
02. Race: Caitian/Ferasan
Issue: Jump height can be used to exploit pathing mistakes on Shanty Town to access areas where other players cannot follow and to directly cross obstacles that should be impassible. Even if it were not for this, jump height would be a powerful ability: you can evade most of the damage from engineer mines and bombs by jumping over them, jump to evade the damage from a grenade or an orbital strike (even if you are rooted).
Status: The jump height pathing exploits are very difficult to address, and artificially limiting a Trait of this type on a select subset of maps just doesn't make much sense. We are exploring our options.
Roots should prevent jumping, but it's an animation issue. We are working toward a solution to that (and a few other movement-related inconsistencies) but they are unlikely to go live before our May update.
03. Trait: Pounce
Issue: It is an Exploit attack, it is a high damage knockback attack, is not affected by holds and slows, it does not share a cooldown with Lunge, its cooldown is too short.
Status: I can't yet offer any feedback about it's combat functionality, but we're planning to add a category cooldown between Pounce and Lunge, such that using one ability will put the other on a half-duration cooldown. Owning both powers will still allow you to use them twice as fast as a non-Felinoid, but not back-to-back.
Fix: Lunge and Pounce now share a 6.0 sec Category cooldown
04. Item: Romulan Xenobiologist Kit Mk XII
Issue: Doesn't represent an option for PvP like the Fire Team XII or the Fabrication Specialist MK XII
05. Ability: Pets not despawning after Engineer death
Issue: When an Engineer Dies, their summoned objects remain allowing them to summon even more of those objects, allowing a lot of spam.
Status: It is not our intent that pets summoned via Kits should remain in the world once that Kit is removed from an active inventory slot.
In other words, if an Engineer summons a Phaser Turret, then swaps kits, that Phaser Turret should be removed from the world. This is not currently working as intended, and is a major boundary to a fair-and-balanced Ground PvP environment, that we intend to address in the near future.
If removing this multi-summon ability renders any associated ability undesirable as a result, we will examine their effectiveness of each ability in more detail only after the ability to stack them is fixed.
We're focusing on kit swapping in this fix, but intend to adjust how death interacts with these summoned turrets, as well.
The intended behavior that we're aiming for, is for turrets to be allowed to linger after the Engineer's death, but get replaced if s/he summons a new one after respawning.
06. Level Design: Invisible Walls in Shanty Town
Issue: Shanty Town is having a number of invisible walls that don't do much against the major pathing exploits in the map, but do make it harder for everyone to navigate around except for Caitians/Ferasans
07. Trait: Feline Instincts/Predatory Instincts
Issue: This trait is the only one on ground that provides a dodge bonus.. since dodging (taking-half damage) is the most important stat on ground caitians/ferasans are the only races that have access to it and thus are more durable then any other race. The difference noticed by a cat stacking up: trait bonus + omega + gambler + crouch/sprint + additional dodge from teammates with omega is so huge that it may also be worth looking if dodging is maybe stacking to good in general
08. Level Design: Running Virus in Shanty Town
Issue: The virus in shanty town is like the flag in capture the flag games, yet most people don't even notice whats going on there because the virus can be moved while under perfect cloak (covert trait + stealth module) and can be captured while under cloak (omega cloak+covert trait).. thus the virus carrier is never ever showing up on the minimap, the base turrets will never see anything either, making this totally unintuitive and hard to handle
Fix: Players in possession of the Virus on Shanty Town will find themselves unable to activate Stealth abilities until they get rid of the Virus. Or die.
09. Doff: Diagnostic Engineer: Chance to increase ranged damage with Equipment Diagnostics
Issue: The equipment diagnostic doff dmg proc can be stacked, equipping 3 DE doffs while switching through multiple Equipment Technician kits rebuffing equipment diagnostic allows to continuously increase ranged damage (this includes gunfire and orbital strike damage). This allows engineers with enough kits to swap to increase dmg to get close/surpass even tac dmg and for more then one shot even.
10. Ability: Nanite Health Monitor
Issue: Buffs stay around on ground after switching kits.. means a science medic switching kits buffing his teammates while staying out of combat can buff 5 people with NHM compared to one on just one kit only being able to buff 2 people within its cooldown duration. In comparison when trying the same thing in space swapping a boff cancels transfer shield (or similar) even on the target. This very same issue may affect a couple more buffs.
11. Ability: Plasma Grenade
Issue:When a grenade is thrown while under cloak (covert trait + omega + enough range so the victim can't see) the victim will not see a grenade impact circle, the one throwing it will see one however. Those "cloak-nades" are thus hard to dodge and when fully buffed present a way to one-shot people with no time to react/counter - cause they don't even know whats coming.
12. Ability: Suppressing Fire
Issue: The description for this power indicates that it debuffs All Damage. This is not correct. Suppressing Fire does not debuff the damage done by melee weapons, Lunge, or Pounce. This is a balance problem, not just a display problem, because it falls under the category of an intended counter that does not actually counter the powers it is supposed to.
13. Ability: Dampening Field
This power debuffs all energy damage. Historically, this was identical to debuffing all gun damage, but with the emergence and popularity of highly effective guns that do non-energy damage, this power is no longer doing its job. Dampening Field, which used to be a sci's best defense against a cloaker's oneshot, is now entirely useless against it, because neither the cryo pulsewave nor the lunge are debuffed by it.
Status: This sounds reasonable. It would make sense to add all Environmental damage types to Dampening Field (Cold, Fire, Radiation, etc).
Fix: Dampening Field now reduces Environmental Damage, such as Cold, Fire, and Radiation, in addition to Energy Damage.
14. Ability: Stealth module
Issue: The animation of stealth module is slow enough to allow dmg to be dealt (either directly or by ability) while the fading-out process has already started. This means cloak users can time their attacks within this fade-out duration and deal attacks while being already within the process of fading out and will even after going invisible still finish their dmg animations
15. Trait: Covert
Issue: In the past covert was a trait that allowed cloakers to get few meters closer undetected then cloakers without this trait, after covert was buffed covert + stealth module are so powerfull that even when you exactly know where some covert cloaker stands no amount of perception seems to overcome the cloak value, only debuffs will. Perception abilities abilities and traits are thus a lot less usefull those days then they used to be and theres no real counter to cloak anymore
16. Weapon Ability: Photon Grenade Launcher
Issue: The KHG and Adapted MACO weapons secondary fire "Photon Grenade Launcher" draws no impact circle on the floor, thus when making fully buffed shots from range in a crowded pvp provide an easy way to deal severe area effect dame (up to even one shots) without giving the victims of this tactic much chance to dodge it
17. Item: Ophidian Cane
Issue (1): While Tactical Initiative is active, this item's special power has no cooldown, and can be triggered repeatedly for the duration of tac init.
Issue (2): While the Cane is active, the player is supposed to be locked into the animation and unable to act. This is not the case. Triggering any kit power or attacking will clear the Hold effect but not the health drain effect on enemies, and allow the user to shoot and buff normally, although the user cannot move while the animation is in progress. In conjunction with (1), this allows someone to theoretically trigger the Cane, hold their oponent, shoot them, hold them again, shoot them again, hold them again, etc, for the full duration of tactical initiative.
Status: Activating Tactical Initiative (Ground) will no longer allow the Ophidian Cane to be infinitely recast without a cooldown.
Fix: Activating Tactical Initiative Ground will no longer allow you to infinitely re-use the Ophidian Cane without a timer.
18. Item: Stasis Pistol
Issue: The Stasis pistol generate a Guaranteed extended Hold. During this hold the target is suppose to receive a damage immunity. But under the effects of a Weapon Malfunction or the Lobi Store grenade this Immunity can be removed and the target can be killed while they are being held
http://youtu.be/EzH4S9N3Byk
Fix: Weapons Malfunction no longer eliminates the Damage Immunity portion of the Stasis Pistol's secondary attack.
19. Ability: Transphasic Bomb
Issue: Since Season 7 this ability has a proximity detection radius making it go off by itself if an enemy gets close, resulting in no cooldown after explosion. If trigger it manually the ability enters in cooldown as intended.
20. Item: Omega PSG
Issue: Wearing the Omega Shield will result in receiving exposes when taking damage. Instead of the Damage Dealer receiving an expose
http://youtu.be/L973L0NTdvM
Fix: The Omega Force Personal Shields will no longer proc an expose on the wearer rather than the attacker.
21. Mechanic: Knockback Resistance
Issue: Knockback effects can be chained back to back essentially indefinitely, resulting in a fight where one person is unable to take any actions from the first hit until he is dead. There is supposed to be a resistance to knockback that procs when you get knocked, but it doesn't work.
http://youtu.be/w6nnusE6eT4
22. Mechanic: Hold Resistance
Issue: The resistance that should develop against holds it's not working. This can be from Stun affects or Root affects.
http://youtu.be/baWmNqd2UJs
23. Ability: Reroute Power to Shields
Issue: Activating Reroute Power to Shields will cause the user to receive an expose effect instead of the damage dealer.
http://youtu.be/BkETv1ymfOE
Fix: Reroute Power to Shields will no longer expose the player rather than enemies that were firing at the user.
24. Item: Omega Gun
Issue: The Omega gun has an Immobilize proc that is very high. This proc develops no Immunity. Using multiple Omega guns in a team formation allows a team to lockdown other teams and allow AOE damage to kill the opponents. A team format using this would use two engineers with Mortars and 3 Science officers. Charging in they can use the Omega Guns to hold their targets in place indefinitely while the mortars do their damage
http://youtu.be/PkcLgSi8III
25. Ability: Weapons Malfunction / Polaron proc
Issue: Once an enemy is hit by it, after the weapon disable effect wears off by itself (or on usage of a power cell), it triggers an immunity effect that lasts for 60 seconds. This timer is not on par with other immunity procs (20 seconds). Additionally, if the ability is used again within that period of time, the timer is reset back to full 60s, making it difficult to use the skill to keep pressure or to more consistently reduce damage output from the affected target. A misleading effect of this is that while the target is immune to further effects of WM upon re-application, the target will show the orange lightning effect but their weapons will work as normal.
26. Ability: Orbital Strike
Issue: The targeting recticle that shows up on the floor prior to Orbital Strike landing has disappeared for federation characters. Oddly, KDF orbital strike still shows normally. This was reported on Tribble before Legacy of Romulus went live but wasn't addressed.
27. Trait: Medical Vanguard
Issue: This trait remains active for the duration of nanite health monitor when a science officer casts it on them self. When cast on another player it counts down correctly. Medical vanguard also stays active indefinitely while wearing elite fleet armor allowing a science officer to have perfect shields until nanite generator triggers
Please mantain this thread clean and keep discussions out of here. Please start an alternate thread if you wish to discuss anything further.
Posting format:
Ground ability / Item / Trait / Race / Other
Perceived issue summary
Towards a better game, let's start this:
01. Item: Compressed Cryo Launcher
Issue: No exist Armors with resistance against Cold, it makes all the other Pulsewaves useless regarding damage
Status: We are considering a solution, and would appreciate feedback...
Our plan is to examine the max Cold Resist a player can reasonably obtain (probably via Nukara EV Suits), and we will then use that as a baseline for Max Resists when compared against what can be obtained for a standard energy type like Phaser or Disruptor. From there, we will tune the damage this weapon deals against PLAYERS ONLY, to approximately match the DPS of a comparable weapon of a different energy type, based on that upper limit. The weapon's effectiveness in PvE will remain unaltered.
Fix: The damage dealt TO PLAYERS by the Cryo Pulsewave weapons has been reduced to 75% of its previous output. (Damage output vs. NPCs is completely unchanged.)
02. Race: Caitian/Ferasan
Issue: Jump height can be used to exploit pathing mistakes on Shanty Town to access areas where other players cannot follow and to directly cross obstacles that should be impassible. Even if it were not for this, jump height would be a powerful ability: you can evade most of the damage from engineer mines and bombs by jumping over them, jump to evade the damage from a grenade or an orbital strike (even if you are rooted).
Status: The jump height pathing exploits are very difficult to address, and artificially limiting a Trait of this type on a select subset of maps just doesn't make much sense. We are exploring our options.
Roots should prevent jumping, but it's an animation issue. We are working toward a solution to that (and a few other movement-related inconsistencies) but they are unlikely to go live before our May update.
03. Trait: Pounce
Issue: It is an Exploit attack, it is a high damage knockback attack, is not affected by holds and slows, it does not share a cooldown with Lunge, its cooldown is too short.
Status: I can't yet offer any feedback about it's combat functionality, but we're planning to add a category cooldown between Pounce and Lunge, such that using one ability will put the other on a half-duration cooldown. Owning both powers will still allow you to use them twice as fast as a non-Felinoid, but not back-to-back.
Fix: Lunge and Pounce now share a 6.0 sec Category cooldown
04. Item: Romulan Xenobiologist Kit Mk XII
Issue: Doesn't represent an option for PvP like the Fire Team XII or the Fabrication Specialist MK XII
05. Ability: Pets not despawning after Engineer death
Issue: When an Engineer Dies, their summoned objects remain allowing them to summon even more of those objects, allowing a lot of spam.
Status: It is not our intent that pets summoned via Kits should remain in the world once that Kit is removed from an active inventory slot.
In other words, if an Engineer summons a Phaser Turret, then swaps kits, that Phaser Turret should be removed from the world. This is not currently working as intended, and is a major boundary to a fair-and-balanced Ground PvP environment, that we intend to address in the near future.
If removing this multi-summon ability renders any associated ability undesirable as a result, we will examine their effectiveness of each ability in more detail only after the ability to stack them is fixed.
We're focusing on kit swapping in this fix, but intend to adjust how death interacts with these summoned turrets, as well.
The intended behavior that we're aiming for, is for turrets to be allowed to linger after the Engineer's death, but get replaced if s/he summons a new one after respawning.
06. Level Design: Invisible Walls in Shanty Town
Issue: Shanty Town is having a number of invisible walls that don't do much against the major pathing exploits in the map, but do make it harder for everyone to navigate around except for Caitians/Ferasans
07. Trait: Feline Instincts/Predatory Instincts
Issue: This trait is the only one on ground that provides a dodge bonus.. since dodging (taking-half damage) is the most important stat on ground caitians/ferasans are the only races that have access to it and thus are more durable then any other race. The difference noticed by a cat stacking up: trait bonus + omega + gambler + crouch/sprint + additional dodge from teammates with omega is so huge that it may also be worth looking if dodging is maybe stacking to good in general
08. Level Design: Running Virus in Shanty Town
Issue: The virus in shanty town is like the flag in capture the flag games, yet most people don't even notice whats going on there because the virus can be moved while under perfect cloak (covert trait + stealth module) and can be captured while under cloak (omega cloak+covert trait).. thus the virus carrier is never ever showing up on the minimap, the base turrets will never see anything either, making this totally unintuitive and hard to handle
Fix: Players in possession of the Virus on Shanty Town will find themselves unable to activate Stealth abilities until they get rid of the Virus. Or die.
09. Doff: Diagnostic Engineer: Chance to increase ranged damage with Equipment Diagnostics
Issue: The equipment diagnostic doff dmg proc can be stacked, equipping 3 DE doffs while switching through multiple Equipment Technician kits rebuffing equipment diagnostic allows to continuously increase ranged damage (this includes gunfire and orbital strike damage). This allows engineers with enough kits to swap to increase dmg to get close/surpass even tac dmg and for more then one shot even.
10. Ability: Nanite Health Monitor
Issue: Buffs stay around on ground after switching kits.. means a science medic switching kits buffing his teammates while staying out of combat can buff 5 people with NHM compared to one on just one kit only being able to buff 2 people within its cooldown duration. In comparison when trying the same thing in space swapping a boff cancels transfer shield (or similar) even on the target. This very same issue may affect a couple more buffs.
11. Ability: Plasma Grenade
Issue:When a grenade is thrown while under cloak (covert trait + omega + enough range so the victim can't see) the victim will not see a grenade impact circle, the one throwing it will see one however. Those "cloak-nades" are thus hard to dodge and when fully buffed present a way to one-shot people with no time to react/counter - cause they don't even know whats coming.
12. Ability: Suppressing Fire
Issue: The description for this power indicates that it debuffs All Damage. This is not correct. Suppressing Fire does not debuff the damage done by melee weapons, Lunge, or Pounce. This is a balance problem, not just a display problem, because it falls under the category of an intended counter that does not actually counter the powers it is supposed to.
13. Ability: Dampening Field
This power debuffs all energy damage. Historically, this was identical to debuffing all gun damage, but with the emergence and popularity of highly effective guns that do non-energy damage, this power is no longer doing its job. Dampening Field, which used to be a sci's best defense against a cloaker's oneshot, is now entirely useless against it, because neither the cryo pulsewave nor the lunge are debuffed by it.
Status: This sounds reasonable. It would make sense to add all Environmental damage types to Dampening Field (Cold, Fire, Radiation, etc).
Fix: Dampening Field now reduces Environmental Damage, such as Cold, Fire, and Radiation, in addition to Energy Damage.
14. Ability: Stealth module
Issue: The animation of stealth module is slow enough to allow dmg to be dealt (either directly or by ability) while the fading-out process has already started. This means cloak users can time their attacks within this fade-out duration and deal attacks while being already within the process of fading out and will even after going invisible still finish their dmg animations
15. Trait: Covert
Issue: In the past covert was a trait that allowed cloakers to get few meters closer undetected then cloakers without this trait, after covert was buffed covert + stealth module are so powerfull that even when you exactly know where some covert cloaker stands no amount of perception seems to overcome the cloak value, only debuffs will. Perception abilities abilities and traits are thus a lot less usefull those days then they used to be and theres no real counter to cloak anymore
16. Weapon Ability: Photon Grenade Launcher
Issue: The KHG and Adapted MACO weapons secondary fire "Photon Grenade Launcher" draws no impact circle on the floor, thus when making fully buffed shots from range in a crowded pvp provide an easy way to deal severe area effect dame (up to even one shots) without giving the victims of this tactic much chance to dodge it
17. Item: Ophidian Cane
Issue (1): While Tactical Initiative is active, this item's special power has no cooldown, and can be triggered repeatedly for the duration of tac init.
Issue (2): While the Cane is active, the player is supposed to be locked into the animation and unable to act. This is not the case. Triggering any kit power or attacking will clear the Hold effect but not the health drain effect on enemies, and allow the user to shoot and buff normally, although the user cannot move while the animation is in progress. In conjunction with (1), this allows someone to theoretically trigger the Cane, hold their oponent, shoot them, hold them again, shoot them again, hold them again, etc, for the full duration of tactical initiative.
Status: Activating Tactical Initiative (Ground) will no longer allow the Ophidian Cane to be infinitely recast without a cooldown.
Fix: Activating Tactical Initiative Ground will no longer allow you to infinitely re-use the Ophidian Cane without a timer.
18. Item: Stasis Pistol
Issue: The Stasis pistol generate a Guaranteed extended Hold. During this hold the target is suppose to receive a damage immunity. But under the effects of a Weapon Malfunction or the Lobi Store grenade this Immunity can be removed and the target can be killed while they are being held
http://youtu.be/EzH4S9N3Byk
Fix: Weapons Malfunction no longer eliminates the Damage Immunity portion of the Stasis Pistol's secondary attack.
19. Ability: Transphasic Bomb
Issue: Since Season 7 this ability has a proximity detection radius making it go off by itself if an enemy gets close, resulting in no cooldown after explosion. If trigger it manually the ability enters in cooldown as intended.
20. Item: Omega PSG
Issue: Wearing the Omega Shield will result in receiving exposes when taking damage. Instead of the Damage Dealer receiving an expose
http://youtu.be/L973L0NTdvM
Fix: The Omega Force Personal Shields will no longer proc an expose on the wearer rather than the attacker.
21. Mechanic: Knockback Resistance
Issue: Knockback effects can be chained back to back essentially indefinitely, resulting in a fight where one person is unable to take any actions from the first hit until he is dead. There is supposed to be a resistance to knockback that procs when you get knocked, but it doesn't work.
http://youtu.be/w6nnusE6eT4
22. Mechanic: Hold Resistance
Issue: The resistance that should develop against holds it's not working. This can be from Stun affects or Root affects.
http://youtu.be/baWmNqd2UJs
23. Ability: Reroute Power to Shields
Issue: Activating Reroute Power to Shields will cause the user to receive an expose effect instead of the damage dealer.
http://youtu.be/BkETv1ymfOE
Fix: Reroute Power to Shields will no longer expose the player rather than enemies that were firing at the user.
24. Item: Omega Gun
Issue: The Omega gun has an Immobilize proc that is very high. This proc develops no Immunity. Using multiple Omega guns in a team formation allows a team to lockdown other teams and allow AOE damage to kill the opponents. A team format using this would use two engineers with Mortars and 3 Science officers. Charging in they can use the Omega Guns to hold their targets in place indefinitely while the mortars do their damage
http://youtu.be/PkcLgSi8III
25. Ability: Weapons Malfunction / Polaron proc
Issue: Once an enemy is hit by it, after the weapon disable effect wears off by itself (or on usage of a power cell), it triggers an immunity effect that lasts for 60 seconds. This timer is not on par with other immunity procs (20 seconds). Additionally, if the ability is used again within that period of time, the timer is reset back to full 60s, making it difficult to use the skill to keep pressure or to more consistently reduce damage output from the affected target. A misleading effect of this is that while the target is immune to further effects of WM upon re-application, the target will show the orange lightning effect but their weapons will work as normal.
26. Ability: Orbital Strike
Issue: The targeting recticle that shows up on the floor prior to Orbital Strike landing has disappeared for federation characters. Oddly, KDF orbital strike still shows normally. This was reported on Tribble before Legacy of Romulus went live but wasn't addressed.
27. Trait: Medical Vanguard
Issue: This trait remains active for the duration of nanite health monitor when a science officer casts it on them self. When cast on another player it counts down correctly. Medical vanguard also stays active indefinitely while wearing elite fleet armor allowing a science officer to have perfect shields until nanite generator triggers
Post edited by mrkollins on
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Comments
Pulsewave is most powerful ground weapon, it is insane to have one that ignores armor, it needs to be brought completely in line with other pulsewaves. This can only be done by changing its energy type or adding cold resist equal to other energy resists.
Issue: When an Engineer Dies, some times their summoned objects remain allowing them to summon even more of those objects.
Think about this:
American Football has been in open beta for 144 years. ~Kotaku
We are considering a solution, and would appreciate feedback...
Our plan is to examine the max Cold Resist a player can reasonably obtain (probably via Nukara EV Suits), and we will then use that as a baseline for Max Resists when compared against what can be obtained for a standard energy type like Phaser or Disruptor. From there, we will tune the damage this weapon deals against PLAYERS ONLY, to approximately match the DPS of a comparable weapon of a different energy type, based on that upper limit. The weapon's effectiveness in PvE will remain unaltered.
Does that sound like an agreeable solution to the Ground PvP community?
The jump height pathing exploits are very difficult to address, and artificially limiting a Trait of this type on a select subset of maps just doesn't make much sense. We are exploring our options.
Roots should prevent jumping, but it's an animation issue. We are working toward a solution to that (and a few other movement-related inconsistencies) but they are unlikely to go live before our May update.
I can't yet offer any feedback about it's combat functionality, but we're planning to add a category cooldown between Pounce and Lunge, such that using one ability will put the other on a half-duration cooldown. Owning both powers will still allow you to use them twice as fast as a non-Felinoid, but not back-to-back.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
You forgot that the CRM-200 is in the same boat. It deals Cold damage and unless you're in an EV suit, you have no defense against it (other than trying to not be in LoS of the player using it).
The biggest "exploit" on Shanty Town for Caitians/Ferasans was a little nook on a wall by one base which let you, though a carefully measured jump, get up on the debris above the console. That would let you use it as a sniper's nest and there wasn't much you could do against that besides counter-snipe and hope you can get a good Lunge in to get up there with 'em. Recent patches from a month or two ago (when the queues were disabled for patching) fixed that one.
The only other one I am aware of involves the roof of a building near the bridge in the middle, but its not really that terrible. Tacticals can get to you with Lunge kicks, other players can easily shoot you, and crafty engineers could just put a Cover Shield at just the right location to jump up to the roof with you and beat you in the head with a sledgehammer for being up there in the first place.
I'm not terribly against a cooldown for the two. I'll just admit that I find it frustrating if they resist knockdown from Lunge somehow and I need them in a bowled over state..thus Pounce. Or if they interrupt my Pounce and it goes into cooldown anyway thus leaving me with just Lunge. Not a scenario that actually happens often, I've noticed (you need either luck or great timing to interrupt either of the two skills while they're in animation). But again, the fact you can chain them back to back isn't a good thing in PvP. I'll certainly miss it greatly in PvE, but I'm still okay with the cooldown idea.
If it's the one I'm thinking about, you don't need to be a Caitian. I did it with my Liberated Borg Engineer. And saw another Engineer use it as a perch for deploying Mortar pets.
Think about this:
American Football has been in open beta for 144 years. ~Kotaku
Sounds reasonable considering I Think the highest cold Resist I've seen from looking at Exchange EV suits was about +5% ish.. And the C-store ones was around +15% maybe? Memory doesn't work that great on the exact figures but that sounds right.
Think about this:
American Football has been in open beta for 144 years. ~Kotaku
Adding an accolade that you could earn that gives us innate cold resistance, maybe 5% or so would be great. Combined with an added cold resistance to the EV suits I feel would fix the problem, in case people felt like they needed more resistance. I doubt people would like fighting a ground pvp with an EV suit. The Breen are the only cold users (as far as i know) and apart from the episode missions, you only encounter them during the ground colony invasion fleet mark event. I will die more fighting the Breen during the colony event then I would in an elite ground STF. It wouldn't break the PVE or PVP balance the game currently has but will only improve on it.
In regards to the jumping caitans/farseans all you would need to do is to reduce their jumping height. The pathing fixes previously added to the assault map with the invisible walls was not done well.
04. Map: Assault
Issue: More assault like maps. Not enough.
05. Allegiance: Queues
Issue: There aren't a lot of ground pvp'ers. Instead of limiting it to FED vs. FED, KDF vs. KDF, or FED vs. KDF. I would also like to see a ALL vs. ALL.
That sounds like a good solution that will leave the cryo gun powerful and unique in pvp but not badly overpowered, as it will become weak against shields but remain stronger against health than an energy pulsewave. Note that it will be stronger even comparing enemies with energy resistance armor to the energy pulsewave and cryo resistance armor to the cryo pulsewave if you make this proposed change, because damage resistance debuffs effect a higher percentile shift in resistances at low numerical resistance values than they do at high numerical resistance values, because of diminishing returns. In addition, please consider adding Cold Damage to the list of damage types debuffed by Dampening Field. This loophole-ing of the sci's best defense against pulsewaves is part of what makes the cryo gun overpowered, and contributes to the balance mismatch of tac vs sci.
towards the OP
Level Design: Invisible Walls in Shanty Town
The season 7 (I think) changes to Shanty Town added a number of invisible walls that don't do much against the major pathing exploits in the map, but do make it harder for everyone to navigate around... ironically, many of the invisible walls don't actually make it much harder for caitians to move around, but do prevent normal people from moving freely around the map WITHOUT exploiting unintended pathing methods, and some of them are completely counterintuitive, with obviously open paths like the gaps under the ramp leading up to the overlook of the spawn point being closed off by invisible walls that don't seem to serve any purpose.
This sounds reasonable. It would make sense to add all Environmental damage types to Dampening Field (Cold, Fire, Radiation, etc).
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
How would that make sense in the STO universe, though? I don't see how you can "dampen" cool, heat, and radiation without shields or EV suits.
Don't forget winter tribbles.
Although I would say the general idea of a Tac being able to use any type of shotgun and one shot anyone except a person running all their defensive buffs at once is a bigger issue than the cold gun.
If you do something that involves adding walls, please make them visible. The corners of some buildings in Shanty Town in the main bridge area that used to allow players more room to go around them got invisible walls added, and it's very annoying to run into something you just have to know is there, without seeing it. It also makes it so that people can't use what looks like a viable way to get up to a higher level, because it has an invisible wall blocking it.
Speaking of Shanty Town and blockages, there's a lot of little spots where ramps that should allow people to just run straight up to the next level require jumping. There's some sort of invisible step in these places that causes annoyance every time.
entnx01:
Technobabble solution: Dampening field drains the energy from the attacker's guns, diminishing their effectiveness at shooting people.
Rhetorical question: How do you "dampen" antiprotons, plasma, or relativistic pulses of subatomic particles (polaron, tetryon)? So far as I know, only phaser and disruptor actually fire a phase-locked wave that could be "dampened" using an inverse waveform, yet Trek's dampening fields reliably disable weapons that, from their names, should be powered by pure brute force.
It turns into another balancing nightmare though, which I can understand why it wouldn't be completely overhauled like that. But this is a good thing to do for this weapon. Will this also affect the CRM-200 you get from the Breen missions? I'll assume so, but I'm not sure it would since you mention "this weapon".
The issue with that gun is that it does pitiful amounts of damage compared to even an Mk X blue weapon. It's only really effective in slowing a target down if two or three people use it. It's mostly a parlor trick weapon, but can be extremely deadly if used by the right person against the right target.
Fanfiction! ZOMG! Read it now!
kate-wintersbite.deviantart.com/art/0x01-Treachery-293641403
Just don't take the easy way please (nerfing jump height). It's fine in most areas of the game.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
Rather than trying to address the exploits directly, either by changing the passive or by radical map redesign, how about working through the map with an experienced caitian ground pvper who can show you all the places where cats can get up the walls, flagging those locations, and then going through in a map editor and adding a little ladder or stacked boxes in that place, so that anybody, not just cats, can path up or over that obstacle? The big issue isn't that cats can do it, but that everybody else cannot.
Issue: the caitian trait feline instincts is the only trait on ground that provides a dodge bonus.. since dodging (taking-half damage) is the most important stat on ground caitians are the only race that have access to it and thus are more durable then any other race. The difference noticed by a cat stacking up: trait bonus + omega + gambler + crouch/sprint + additional dodge from teammates with omega is so huge that it may also be worth looking if dodging is maybe stacking to good in general.
Map: shanty town
Issue: The virus in shanty town is like the flag in capture the flag games, yet most people don't even notice whats going on there because the virus can be moved while under perfect cloak (covert trait + stealth module) and can be captured while under cloak (omega cloak+covert trait).. thus the virus carrier is never ever showing up on the minimap, the base turrets will never see anything either, making this totally unintuitive and hard to handle. Cloak debuff on the virus plz?
Doff proc: Diagnostic Engineer: Chance to increase ranged damage with Equipment Diagnostics
Issue: The equipment diagnostic doff dmg proc can be stacked, equipping 3 DE doffs while switching through multiple Equipment Technician kits rebuffing equipment diagnostic allows to continuously increase ranged damage (this includes gunfire and orbital strike damage). This allows engineers with enough kits to swap to increase dmg to get close/surpass even tac dmg and for more then one shot even.
Ability: Nanite Health Monitor
Issue: Buffs stay around on ground after switching kits.. means a science medic switching kits buffing his teammates while staying out of combat can buff 5 people with NHM compared to one on just one kit only being able to buff 2 people within its cooldown duration. In comparison when trying the same thing in space swapping a boff cancels transfer shield (or similar) even on the target. This very same issue may affect a couple more buffs.
Ability: Plasma Grenade
Issue: When a grenade is thrown while under cloak (covert trait + omega + enough range so the victim can't see) the _victim_ will not see a grenade impact circle, the one throwing it will see one however. Those "cloak-nades" are thus hard to dodge and when fully buffed present a way to one-shot people with no time to react/counter - cause they don't even know whats coming.
Ability: Ambush
Issue: Ambush is not consumed on use of grenades. While this wasn't that much of an issue yet and changing this will put tacticals on fireteam kit on serious disadvantage as they won't be able to bite through a good healers healing anymore without this spike damage it may now (while looking at tribble) become an issue. The separating of the adapted maco/KHG pulsewaves grenade launcher's cooldown from the grenade cooldown system means tacticals will be able to chain 3 fully ambush buffed hits in a row: weapon grenade-launcher + fire teams kit grenade + normal shotgun hit and thats a bit much so this needs to be looked at now.
Weapon ability: Photon grenade launcher
Issue: The KHG and adapted maco weapons secondary fire "photon grenade launcher" draws no impact circle on the floor, thus when making fully buffed shots from range in a crowded pvp provide an easy way to deal severe area effect damage (up to even one shots) without giving the victims of this tactic much chance to dodge it.
I like that suggestion. Either those places need to become accessible to everyone or alternatively just put some huge invisible boxes above each and every roof (or lower the ceiling dramatically) and block roofs off for anyone.
Yes!, thank you very much!
Thread updated.
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not really.. the kit-ability triggered red-alert is what... 3 seconds? If we look at NHM here with its 100 seconds duration on the target adding a couple seconds downtime won't really fix it.
Looking at space and switching a boff they also seem to have the tech to cancel buffs on the target on boff switches already so it could be a better solution.
Hey Subu can you please elaborate a little -since you're very good at this- about the Cover Trait?.
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Issue: The animation of stealth module is slow enough to allow dmg to be dealt (either directly or by ability) while the fading-out process has already started. This means cloak users can time their attacks within this fade-out duration and deal attacks while being already within the process of fading out and will even after going invisible still finish their dmg animations. (a covert trait may be needed to take fully advantage of this).
Trait: covert
Issue: In the past covert was a trait that allowed cloakers to get few meters closer undetected then cloakers without this trait, after covert was buffed covert + stealth module are so powerfull that even when you exactly know where some covert cloaker stands no amount of perception seems to overcome the cloak value, only debuffs will. Perception abilities and traits are thus a lot less usefull those days then they used to be and theres no real counter to cloak anymore.. maybe covert is a bit to powerful? (this one may be a controversial topic)
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theres also two about the photon grenade of the KHG/adapted weapon and ambush that i sneakily edited in, in my first posting after you added most of em and thus didn't saw it yet i think, sorry
Done .
www.divisionhispana.com
If it's an easy solution with the tech, yes, I agree that that would be cleaner. I thought red alert lasted 15 seconds when triggered by a self ability (rather than a team ability), though.
We'd still have the problem of kitswitching to a fresh Operative to clear cloak, with either solution method. I think the ideal solution would be to make all kits Unique, if that would be possible. Kit stacking can't be a problem if you physically can't have more than one of each kit.
Issue (1): While Tactical Initiative is active, this item's special power has no cooldown, and can be triggered repeatedly for the duration of tac init.
Issue (2): While the Cane is active, the player is supposed to be locked into the animation and unable to act. This is not the case. Triggering any kit power or attacking will clear the Hold effect but not the health drain effect on enemies, and allow the user to shoot and buff normally, although the user cannot move while the animation is in progress. In conjunction with (1), this allows someone to theoretically trigger the Cane, hold their oponent, shoot them, hold them again, shoot them again, hold them again, etc, for the full duration of tactical initiative.
Item: Stasis Pistol
Issue (1): Weapon Disabled effects break the damage immunity associated with the stasis effect, allowing a target to be killed while unable to react.
Issue (2): Hypos are stated to clear Holds and Stuns. They also clear the Stasis science kit ability. They do not clear Stasis Pistol, and they probably should, given the description, the relationship with similar powers, and the long duration of the disable effect.
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Attaching an immunity to Weapon Malfunction debuffs (like the one granted by Equipment Diagnostics) to the Stasis Pistol secondary fire should solve problem (1). Since the target is supposed to be in temporal Stasis, it might actually make sense to make the target immune to all debuffs for the duration of the stasis effect.
The problem with switching items to unique after-the-fact is that players will keep extra unique items - same as in the past; they switched already a couple rewards to unique afterwards, extras were staying... if they wouldn't they would need to find a way to reimburse players for losing extras.
Another solution to take care of kit-switching once and for all (at least with the current durations on buffs) could be to put every ability on a newly switched kit on a 1-minute cooldown. That way switching kit's would either be disadvantageous or equal to waiting for normal cooldowns. And the tech to trigger something on a kit-switch event seems to be already there? At least it seems so with engineer pets.. although it works kinda faulty there (not taking care of doff proc pets and pets that were spawned before a death).