A Path Beyond Community Balance Feedback

[Coolrock]

Hello everyone!

We've recently been having discussions among the staff about balance. With the recent high amount of game nights, it’s brought a lot of attention to certain units and maps.

We’d like to ask our community to participate in giving feedback on anything you feel is off or not performing how you believe it should. This can range from damage not being high enough with a certain unit, to even prices being too high/low. Do you think a certain map has a higher advantage for one team over another? Now is the time to speak up!

Let’s get to discussing 

[NodGuy]

Make Flamethrower Great Again.

[ryknow69]

4 minutes ago, NodGuy said:

Make Flamethrower Great Again.

 

[Guard55]

9 minutes ago, NodGuy said:

Make Flamethrower Great Again.

Volkov's shotgun hand is really hard to use beyond point blank range. I've watched multiple Volkovs try and kill a single rocket soldier and it took forever.

Edited February 16, 2021 by Guard55
Remembered a gripe I had for Volkov

[Pyryle]

55 minutes ago, Guard55 said:

Volkov's shotgun hand is really hard to use beyond point blank range. I've watched multiple Volkovs try and kill a single rocket soldier and it took forever.

Volkov's napalm grenades should also explode on impact; I hate seeing them stick to the ground, and then eventually get eaten by the ground (noclipping through the terrain) just before exploding and causing little to no splash damage with a short fire proc.

On that note, since the Sergeant no longer uses its slug round as its secondary, perhaps this can be relegated as Volkov's primary fire on the AP cannon. It can serve as a somewhat compromise for the players that preferred volkov when its AP cannon was the "sniper" cannon (myself included), and players who wanted the napalm grenades back.

[FRAYDO]

1 hour ago, NodGuy said:

Make Flamethrower Great Again.

 

1 hour ago, ryknow69 said:

Make Flamethrower Great Again.

 

1 hour ago, Guard55 said:

Make Flamethrower Great Again.

Keep the LPO-50 model. It looks beautiful. Revert the Flamethrower firing mechanic to actually lobbing a ball of flame Red Alert-style. I hope we're in agreement there, or how else are we making the Flamethrower great again?

[V0LK0V]

Volkov

I don't like playing as a Volkov.  The reload times make me ineffectual at killing anything except light vehicles and small buildings (but not base defenses).

The AP rounds just don't work for me, regardless of range.  Granted, this is more I'm bad at the game.  Instead of making me swap weapon modes, I'd prefer it if his AT rounds just had a decently sized AOE that was great for killing infantry and did virtually no damage to anything else. I'm not sure how this would work mechanically, but it would give people like me, who suck at the Infantry Combat in w3d, a reason to use a Volkov aside from just wasting lots of money when my team is already winning.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Heavy Tanks

I think they need either just a little bit more durability, or a bit more DPS.  I don't feel a big difference when I fight a MT with a HT or vice-versa.

 

 

Edited February 16, 2021 by V0LK0V

[Killing_You]

2 minutes ago, FRAYDO said:

Keep the LPO-50 model. It looks beautiful. Revert the Flamethrower firing mechanic to actually lobbing a ball of flame Red Alert-style. I hope we're in agreement there, or how else are we making the Flamethrower great again?

Frankly, I agree. The new model is fantastic, but the current firing mode feels a bit weird. The classic fireball was great as a room clearer, though that's arguably taken by the Grenadier. Either way, I agree that the current firing mechanic is a bit jank and could use some investigating.

[FRAYDO]

Whatever changes go for Volkov, great, but this is by far the most important thing to fix for Volkov. Make him say his classic line again.

"Commander."

[MPRA2]

19 minutes ago, FRAYDO said:

Whatever changes go for Volkov, great, but this is by far the most important thing to fix for Volkov. Make him say his classic line again.

"Commander."

>_> close enough I suppose.

c_volkov_scorchedearth.wav

[1000MammothTanks]

1. Make Flamethrower Great Again.
2. Increase the price of Rocket Soldiers. I think they are too cheap for how effective they are at destroying tanks.
3. Increase the turn rate of cruisers. They are so frustrating to maneuver right now.
4. Killing a main battle tank should kill or do massive damage to the infantry inside.
5. Reduce the price of demolition trucks so more people buy them.

[NodGuy]

1 hour ago, FRAYDO said:

 

 

Keep the LPO-50 model. It looks beautiful. Revert the Flamethrower firing mechanic to actually lobbing a ball of flame Red Alert-style. I hope we're in agreement there, or how else are we making the Flamethrower great again?

Bingo. 

[ryknow69]

The grenadier and flamethrower sharing the splash role is fine, but they need to bring different splash to the table. Grenadier needs to be fast, cheap, and do flat average damage all around. Flamethrower needs to be slow, medium priced, and do decent damage to light armor. At the moment, I find shock troopers and flamethrowers too fast comparatively to other troops, they are meant to be the slowest boys running around, with the shock being slightly slower.

The benefit of the grenadier is he is FAST and CHEAP, but does flat damage to all armor types(meaning he's vastly better than flame against heavy vehicles)
The benefit of the Flamethrower is he has large splash, and hurts light vehicles better than the grenadier.

I am all for the abolition of the RPG trooper. I never liked it's introduction, as it overlaps the uses of the Grenadier/Flamethrower and makes it vastly harder to make them both viable(add the fact that RPG Trooper is just a long range Grenadier cause both are technically grenades)

[MPRA2]

I say we bring napalm and HE grenades to the Grenadier, and maybe MAYBE replace the RPG trooper with a cheaper "AA soldier" role? I never was a fan of the RPG trooper tbh..... I kinda liked the grenadier having napalm grenades, and grenades that did decent damage to vehicles.

[ryknow69]

The need to remove either one and folding into the survivor is what I'm getting at with Grenadier VS RPG Trooper

 

[gammelon]

Make ranger available to soviets globally.

Edited February 17, 2021 by gammelon

[GaryOak]

[SEMI LONG READ - SORRY]

One of the most important issues regarding balance for me is that I actually really dislike playing as Soviets. 

Yeah they are the slow but heavy firepower Faction, where the Allies are the quick and nimble Faction.

The thing is, though; A good working Allied team can still present a heavy frontline with really high fighting power (think of: Mobile GAP + Medium tanks, Arties and Mechanics). In fact, a really good Allied front can probably beat any Soviet front, IMO (just IMO tho, lol).

A good working Soviet team is, however, still completely tied to the fact that they are slow and that the Allies have vastly more options for moving around and being dynamic.

EG: If you're playing CamosCanyon as Soviets, and the Allies blew up all the FT's -> you need to be afraid of phase rushes. But if you want to guard against phase rushes, you need to keep some players behind to defend. If you keep some players behind to defend, your slow moving rush has so much less chance of actually accomplishing something. In the end, the Soviets will have to let the Allies make the first move and react to it.

Overall, I must say that I think that the Allies have way more ability to dominate the battlefield and determine a game's course of events. For my feeling, if the Allied team has good players, the Soviet team is almost always reactionary in play. 

Do I have any suggestions on how to 'fix' this? Nope, because I suck.
In fact, a lot of people will probably disagree with me anyway. 

And even if they don't, the stats prove that the overall balance between the 2 factions turns out fine in the end, I guess..

Edited January 21, 2023 by GaryOak

[forg0ten1]

i miss the old flamethrower so much lol. as for maps, the most blatantly imbalanced one is ridgewar. Allies seem to win that one every time. maybe bring the tesla coils back at least?

[moonsense715]

51 minutes ago, forg0ten1 said:

i miss the old flamethrower so much lol. as for maps, the most blatantly imbalanced one is ridgewar. Allies seem to win that one every time. maybe bring the tesla coils back at least?

Elevate the soviet base. Sitting at the bottom of a cliff is a sitting duck base. Also totally blind to incoming attacks. Demos can roll it from the clifftop into the base (with gap gens if hinds are present).
All the while the allies are on a clifftop, very easy to defend, see the whole map from, and it's hard to attack it.

This has been a problem since always, not Delta specific. Elevate that dang soviet base on ridgewar please.

[Coolrock]

9 minutes ago, moonsense715 said:

Elevate the soviet base. Sitting at the bottom of a cliff is a sitting duck base. Also totally blind to incoming attacks. Demos can roll it from the clifftop into the base (with gap gens if hinds are present).
All the while the allies are on a clifftop, very easy to defend, see the whole map from, and it's hard to attack it.

This has been a problem since always, not Delta specific. Elevate that dang soviet base on ridgewar please.

Tesla Coil!

[Threve]

From an outside persepective APB has been refined in my opinion to perfection. I've never honestly seen a more balanced game in my life. I am sure more of the other players that play regularly will be able to pin point the specfics. But compared with Med Mech, Ranger/M60 outranging Coils, Early Demo's, Stinger doing building damage, V sniping of the past it's pretty incredible to see how far APB has come and will be for the future.

[MPRA2]

Since we're on the topic of Ridge War, honestly the map needs a rework. Both bases *should* be ontop of a "ridge", or elevated... Also the soviets should get a single tesla coil along with the flame towers, and the allies, maybe a few more pillboxes/turrets in strategic areas (The barracks is the most annoying thing to defend, as the pillbox can just very easily be destroyed by pretty much anything, opening the entire allied base up to a kov rush that can't be stopped without the entire team diverting to defense).

Ridge war also has a special issue where you move UP into the allied base, which kinda derps the AI. Making it very easy to spoof the defenses and destroy them without them even targeting you, and the soviet defenses can't really attack the allies on top of the cliff after the one flametower is destroyed (which is VERY difficult to get to and repair, as its technically outside of the traditional "base" boundaries. This is just coming from someone who thinks defenses are pretty much useless in APB/IA/W3D Games as a whole, since 1 or 3 people can just grab an LMG soldier, or a rocket soldier, and just delete the entire bases defense grid due to AI spoofing, or just plain outranging.

Or maybe just have both bases on Ridge War be in a crater. I dunno.... Welcome to MP's 2 hour long wall of text.

Anyways APB is pretty solid as is, just needs some QoL, and some balancing updates here and there.... Its for the most part a fully complete game the way I see it.

[cnclol]

Flamethrower is wayyy too undrpowered both for its price and efectivness. If you'id add an ability for it to do more dmg ot buildings and the ability to deal way more dammage when headshotting, it would balance it out for its price (or just bring back the old one)

And Soviets not having mechanics is also a not fun thing. Im not saying you should add them to Soviets, but an allied vehicle can be just infinetly repaired for free so repairs for Soviets in the sd for free or just give soviet vehicles more hp in general to balance them not being repairable for free as the allied ones tho. (just my sugestion, i personally thing mechanic is op, idk if anyone shared my opinin tho)

[NodGuy]

8 hours ago, cnclol said:

 

And Soviets not having mechanics is also a not fun thing. Im not saying you should add them to Soviets, but an allied vehicle can be just infinetly repaired for free so repairs for Soviets in the sd for free or just give soviet vehicles more hp in general to balance them not being repairable for free as the allied ones tho. (just my sugestion, i personally thing mechanic is op, idk if anyone shared my opinin tho)

I've always said that Mechanics shouldn't be allowed to drive vehicles. It's unfair to the Soviets that you can be in a tank and attacking an Allied tank but all that allied player needs to do is go behind cover for a sec to heal his tank. I do this a lot and I always feel like a piece of shit but hey, winning's winning.

[Nodlied]

19 hours ago, FRAYDO said:

Whatever changes go for Volkov, great, but this is by far the most important thing to fix for Volkov. Make him say his classic line again.

"Commander."

It is ''Comrade'', you dunce.

[NodGuy]

2 hours ago, Nodlied said:

It is ''Comrade'', you dunce.

Yeah! I actually changed it so he says Comrade once again. Scorched Earth and the way he says it is cringe. I also took away the unique lines from the Sergeant/Starshina, Capitan/Kapitan, etc. and gave them the same generic sounds as the Rifle Infantry.

[FRAYDO]

2 hours ago, Nodlied said:

It is ''Comrade'', you dunce.

*Thank you for your correction, Mr. Testing Director

[moonsense715]

Also, nerf Tanya C4, like, right now. Split it to 2 C4s with a 5 seconds reload time so she can still solo a building. 30 seconds instantkill from full hp is absolutely uncounterable once placed. "but get better and mine the base" - did, the mines are 90% of the time killed by tha tanya transport or one single friend and from then on it's gg. No thanks.

[MPRA2]

1 hour ago, moonsense715 said:

Also, nerf Tanya C4, like, right now. Split it to 2 C4s with a 5 seconds reload time so she can still solo a building. 30 seconds instantkill from full hp is absolutely uncounterable once placed. "but get better and mine the base" - did, the mines are 90% of the time killed by tha tanya transport or one single friend and from then on it's gg. No thanks.

well I'm not sure how that'd be balanced.... Yeah I hate Tanya C4s instakilling everything while nobody can defuse it in time, but like.... Whats an alternative solution? if we split it into 2 separate charges it'll have to do 50% building health for each C4. Or we could increase the timer to 45 seconds, I dunno. Either way it'll lead to people complaining about Tanya not being effective anymore. Or we could have it be so that engineers can almost instantly defuse C4.

Edited February 18, 2021 by MPRA2

[Coolrock]

2 hours ago, moonsense715 said:

Also, nerf Tanya C4, like, right now. Split it to 2 C4s with a 5 seconds reload time so she can still solo a building. 30 seconds instantkill from full hp is absolutely uncounterable once placed. "but get better and mine the base" - did, the mines are 90% of the time killed by tha tanya transport or one single friend and from then on it's gg. No thanks.

This was actually tried out in testing a long time ago. Problem was that smart players would golden wrench the building just before the second C4 would go off. They changed it back to a single C4 needless to say.

You know what would help clear a Tanya out of a building quickly, and allow you a chance to save the building? Attack Dogs!