Holiday event will eventually come to its end and the snowmen will disappear. It's normal that world created snowmen will disappear as they're part of the holiday event. But please, don't remove the snowman created by player (snowmen from utility slot), I wish I could have more choice than C4 on every loadout and a portable cover is just right. Also, is it possible to make it able to be spawned on any ground ? Currently you can"r spawn snowmen on bio lab, rocks, building, etc.
I would absolutely support keeping them around as long as the model gets changed to something less like a snowman.
Indeed. Why not something like these ? Fake MAX Kinetic jelly Sandbags Two modules from PMB stacked on eachothers (~same skeleton as snowmen, for lazzy devs).
The snowmen will be going away at the end of the event this time around, but this sort of deployable cover was something new for us to try out - the feedback on it (and any more you might have) is much appreciated.
i found the vertical shape of the snowman to be much superior to the horizontal one of the basic deployable cover. noone misses their target cause their knees are protected, you aim for the head anyway. so something the same size as the normal cover just 90° rotated would be great.
the 25% higher effectiveness is calculated by counting the number of times the deployable teamkills you compared to the average NC recruit.
Some feedback on snowman : It can't be placed on most ground (it should be possible to place it anywhere where you can place a turret) It give too much xp for it's destruction (must be because it's a part of the holiday event, tho) It can't be repaired by engineer It's not resistant enough, especially against bullets. Why not make it as resistant as AV mana turret ? (please don't make it too resistant or grant it immunity against small weapon, like the engineer barrier).
I think it did a good job. The resistance and that it can't be repaired was the right choice. Elseway it would be used all the time to hide behind. Or you would have to make it engineer exclusive. The xp could be toned down a bit but not too much. To rotate the current cover of engis by 90° would likely make it too strong as well. Fun would be a dummy that moves from left to right like this one(makes it a bit more skill based): http://wow.zamimg.com/uploads/screenshots/small/63128.jpg I would rather like to have it in the grenade slot tho. Given that C4/mines is basicly mandatory in most loadouts...
I quite enjoyed using the snowman and the draw fire directive basically forced me to learn how good it really is. There's really two aspects to snowmen: - They are excellent cover when a stalker infiltrator isn't handy, allowing you to effectively increase your own health substantially in a limited area, at cost of your utility slot but without either resupply or nanite limitation. The fact that it's cooldown-based, you can place two together and that it's easy to kill makes it perfect. It's a bit like fighting a Max 1on1 with tank mines, in terms of how you got to think about enemy movement to make the most of it. You can force multiply by making your squad's push stronger, you can divide and conquer in order to pick off two enemies one by one or you can just give yourself a place where you can get healed/revived. I never made use of a shield wall when I saw an engineer place it, but snowmen felt like proper cover. - They are roughly humanoid, allowing you to not really confuse players, but throw them off a little bit. I think it's a fun low-key quirk, basically the much less imbalanced version of giraffe camo or the green-tinted Vanu + EMP effect combo. Edit: Its cert pinata status is also interesting. It does work well in getting your enemies to give themselves away and waste bullets, but also obviously affects the cert economy. Personally, I say that the engineer's shield wall should be changed to be a bit more like the snowman (maybe have it extend upwards on the left and right side, while the middle stays as low as it is), while all classes gain the snowman's reskin for their utility slot. Just make sure that the engineer's option is "the real deal" (...then again, engineer tools tend to be pretty crappy, so I guess that's their theme) in comparison to the disposable version that everyone else gets.
If the snowman model is replaced with another model, could the new model have a healthbar on its back, so player will know if this cover will break at the first bullet or not. About the xp they currently give 150 xp for their destruction, engineer barrier grant something like 25 xp (totally not worth it's destruction), I agree it could be something in-between. For the unability to be repaired, after rethinking of it, I agree that was a smart decision, but I think something must be done so a damaged snowman can be back to full health faster than wasting 10+ sec to place an other one on the same position. Some suggestion to counter this problem : Give personnal shield to snowman so it regenerate itself outside of combat. While snowman creating tool are in the hand, player can repair any snowmen with a right clic. While snowman creating tool are in the hand, player can remove their snowman with a right clic. (so they can instantly place an other one on the exact same position). I did some test on the snowman resistance : I suppose it have 500 health, 75% resistance to small weapon and knife, 100% resistance to normal splash damage (and strangely sticky grenade seems to bypass it, killing it in 2-3 grenades) and 0% against any other damage type. IMO it have too few resistance to high RoF vehicle weapons, such as HMG, galting gun, ESF nosegun, AA MG and flak direct, it should be increased at least to 50% so it match infantry effective health. Against small weapon (2000 effective HP) I think something must be done : either buff its resistance so you don't need to place an other snowman between every fight, or make placing snowman faster and easier (for example, make them physical item).
I'd like to see them become a sort of Tank Trap, although more widely available than just to Engineers. There are plenty of examples of tank trap designs that could be used to make them faction specific. They'd work as cover for infantry and denial of access to heavier units (if placed with coordination). I'd like to see such barriers be more resistant than Mana turrets though since they can be shifted too easily by armour.
indeed, other examples include... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_obstacles and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon's_teeth_(fortification) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon's_teeth_(fortification)#/media/FileianDeiMortiFossato_37.JPG and https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Ww2_allied_advance_siegfried_line.jpg So long as the size and shape of the obstacles was comparable/balanced I'd not have an issue with using any of these designs. They'd need to be tall enough to prevent Sunderers and Magriders from barging over them too and it'd be great if a single player could place 2-3 of them
