Higby Asks : Balance Changes

The NC max is incredibly OP compared to VS & TR maxes. So my suggestion is to give the TR & VS maxes shotguns too and the NC max gets LMGs.

Three things I'd like to see.

A rebalancing on .75ads weapons between empires, more so of a spreading around of them.

The Valkyrie. It needs a lot of attention. Mostly the main cannons, but survivability and maneuverability as well.

And a good look at long range infantry and max based AV weapons. Between weapons that can easily kill you from far outside of render distance, and one faction in particular having a distinct lack of long range AV capability compared to the other two.

AV Mana turret... or more specifically, the frequently invisible missiles of AV Mana turrets

I'm still waiting for any evidence whatsoever that this actually matters in the big picture. People like to ***** about it, but anyone with a brain probably knows that it's just a way of saying 'OMG NERF VANU' without actually saying that, because it angers some people that the Orion is not the worst LMG in the game, which is where they'd like to see it.

The Orion isn't even the best. If we can ***** about the Orion because it's slightly good, then I expect the Anchor to be nerfed. Yet, not one post about that. WEIRD.

Honestly, all infiltrator cloak should be changed to Deep Cloak. Anyone who's played any other game with any sort of 'stealth' mechanic (using these same stupid cliche shaders that they all do) would know that it's MOVEMENT that gives you away while moving. If you were able to maintain Deep Cloak while running, you would definitely not be an invisible, unkillable god of war. It would simply improve your survivability when it comes to some ******* 150m+ away.

People hate cloakers because they get frustrated when they're "ganked" by them, and I understand that, but you're ******* nuts if you think that CQB infiltrators are winning wars out there, or are even remotely close to being a critical part of the team. It's an entertaining playstyle, but that's it, they rarely are capable of doing much on their own that's of any significance.

Cloaking is already massively penalized. I would like to see cloaking playtested in a manner that operates much more closely to the Crysis cloak mechanic. Remove both Hunter and Stalker cloak and turn it into one system that drains almost no energy while you're stationary, but drains more the faster and farther you move. However, the rates would be set so that you can move the same distance regardless of your movement speed. So cloaking and crouch-walking would be nearly totally invisible, and maybe let you cover 100m... but if you sprinted, you would still only be able to cover about 100m.

I wouldn't even mind being allowed to fire from cloak with a serious penalty - maybe your cloaking device overloads, covering you in sparkly ******** lightning making you as stealthy as Super Saiyan 2, drain the capacitor completely, and disallow cloaking recharging for five seconds or so.

Yeah, imagine the gall of using the official forums to discuss that game's changes and potential impact - and being silly enough to expect the company's developers/director to actually use them. *rolls eyes*

Well said. The only thing I would add is that chances are, in most situations, the person would have been killed by any class that got that close - they're just frustrated by the "you're about to die" notification that decloaking gives. There are the rare occasions that a stalker infiltrator can successfully camp an area or move around and get a few kills - but being limited to a sidearm vs most classes primary? Still not always a guaranteed kill.

- Nerf Pounders. They're more broken than the Ravens are. Admit it.
- Nerf Banshee (incoming).
- Nerf Ravens (incoming).
- Buff Magrider speed so it's not literally as slow as the Vanguard. That's ******* outrageous.
- Nerf physics / friendly vehicle collision damage.
- Nerf ESF secondary weapon ammo amounts. Hard-set it to however many of that weapon you can physically actually put on the aircraft. If there's only room on the pylons for 6 Hornet missiles, that's all you ever get until you go back to rearm.
- Nerf fire suppression.
- Nerf bailing out of ESF. As in, eliminate it entirely unless you've taken the Ejection Seat thing.
- Nerf hot-swapping vehicle seats from driver to gunner and back.
- Nerf Liberator's flying agility, making it extremely unstable the less it's flying straight and level. Nerf its thrust:weight ratio so it begins to freefall out of the sky if it's pointing too far upwards without enough initial forward speed.
- Nerf redeploying.
- Nerf 'clown car' Sunderer spawning, add a spawn queue to every Sunderer that limits how fast people can squirt out of them.
- Nerf Galaxy 'air beacons' and their ability to drop people from the edge of space until they're shot down.
- Nerf firing arcs for Liberator and Galaxy weapons. Any sort of heavy A/G weapon should be severely restricted to firing arcs aiming down.
- Buff Skyguard firepower against extremely close-range air targets.
- Nerf C4.
- Buff Light Assault by giving them faster, 'jumpier' jetpacks and a plethora of tools that allow them to fill all roles albeit with reduced effectiveness.
- Buff Light Assault base movement speed.
- Nerf Heavy Assault shield insta-activation.
- Nerf Heavy Assault LMG + AV combo. Force them to take any weapon BUT an LMG if they want to carry an AV weapon, no AV weapon at all if they want an LMG.
- Nerf Heavy Assault base movement speed.
- Buff Heavy Assault base health.
- Buff infiltrator cloaking (less noise, MUCH less visibility, allow firing from cloak with limitations).
- Buff infiltrator base movement speed.
- Buff semiauto-only primaries slightly.
- Buff semiauto and auto buckshot shotties (Jackhammer, maybe?).
- Buff TR MAX AI weapons, or nerf NC MAX AI weapons.
- Buff or replace ZOE (gimmie back my MAX jumpjets).
- Buff PPA.
- Nerf Marauder (it's as good as the PPA has ever been, why isn't it 'game-ruining'? Oh right, because the TR do 90% of the whining)
- Buff VS 'faction trait' by actually giving them one that's consistent.
- Nerf (buff?) directive requirements.
- Buff and NC and TR LMG by giving it 0.75 ADS, watch as nothing changes, because 0.75 ADS doesn't actually matter much.
- Nerf the Anchor. If the Orion deserves to be nerfed, then the Anchor absolutely deserves to be. It massively outperforms every other LMG in the game.
- Nerf Prowler main guns, bring them in line with other MBTs.
- Buff Lasher, or add a new 'heavy weapon' to all three factions - give VS a powerful direct combat weapon (pulse laser?), give NC and TR some sort of gimmicky 'support' weapon.
- Buff Valkyrie by any means necessary.
- Nerf resource income rates.
- Nerf MBT and ESF costs.
- Buff engagement radar.

I'd also add that the people who can consistently do well with Infiltrator in CQB are few and far between, and are statistical outliers. The vast majority of the time, your average player is going to kill one person, and then immediately be killed, and that's frequently simply because the types of weapons that an Infiltrator carries generally only allows him to kill one target before reloading compounded by the fact that most fights in this game now have so many people crammed into such a small area that you're going to pretty much be seen by at least one random ******* any time you decloak. Infiltrator is absolutely not like any other class in that you can just grab it and do well, certainly not to the EZ MODE degree that Heavy Assault is.

Also, it's worth mentioning that a significant buff to cloaking would have pretty much zero impact on the effectiveness of snipers, which is all most 'average players' do with the class anyway.

Yeah, let's eliminate any difference between factions! Let's give everyone every weapon.

These are definitely more urgent than any other nerf / buff cry.
In many cases imho players just pretend weapons to perform the same in all factions and this is freaking wrong: factions are different, and this diversity must be saved. I.e. NC should keep their uber shotguns, while TR should keep their Pounders as they are, and so on.

But redeploy, valkyrie and resources should come on top of the devs agenda IMMEDIATELY.

And in the meanwhile they could buff Battle Rifles because they all suck for all the 3 empires. They could also take the chance to make those rifles more empire specific by adding the so famous faction traits (i.e why does the Eidolon has to be a reskinned version of the Warder / AMR-66?).

Make AV mean AV
Increase AV damage from dumb fire rockets by 25%
Decrease AI damage on rockets by 75%
Change HE to Airburst; think an oversized Skyguard shot exploding for big area effect with flak in the air with proxy that can one shot kill ESF
Buff HEAT's splash range
Remove AP one shot kill ability; require at least 3 AP shots to kill infantry
Reduce AI damage on all MAX AV weapons by 75%
Change ESF nose cannons into three clear damage categories (AI, AV or Air) and reduce the other two damage categories by 90%, individual weapons may need to be buffed to be brought up to an appropriate level
Change ESF secondaries into three clear damage categories (AI, AV or Air) and reduce the other two damage categories by 90%, individual weapons may need to be buffed to be brought up to an appropriate level
Change Liberator nose gun into three clear damage categories (AI, AV or Air) and reduce the other two damage categories by 90%, individual weapons may need to be buffed to be brought up to an appropriate level
Change Valkyrie nose gun into three clear damage categories (AI, AV or Air) and reduce the other two damage categories by 90%, individual weapons may need to be buffed to be brought up to an appropriate level

The goal of all of these changes is to make a specialization rather than have every gun be able to do most things to an acceptable level. If you go AV then you should be neutered against Air and Infantry but if you roll Infantry load out an AV loadout should make you run away screaming. This forces you to make choices rather then simply roll AV and one shot kill infantry by direct hits and add clear drawbacks.

Balancing ES items
Replace ZoE effect with something situational useful
Add ES sniper rifle for TR
Fix Phaseshift to a real sniper rifle (one shot kill head shot, long range)
Add ES scout rifle for NC and VS
Fix PPA to be in line with Marauder performance
Reduce P2-120 damage and buff secondaries to compensate to put them at a 50/50 split in damage
Reduce lock down effect by 50% but allow effect to work on secondary weapon

The point of these changes is simply to keep faction variety but fix some glaring omissions; I'd remove NC shot guns or add shotguns for the other two factions with a long range alternative for NC but I simply don't see it happening and it would remove faction flavour.

NS fixes
Add effect "while in smoke reduce damage taken by 25%" to all vehicle smoke
Change IRVN to be glaringly bright ala Esamir during daytime and reduce sight range to 100m
Change nightscope to have better clarity and increased view range
Make ejection seat a default function of the Valkyrie

The goal is to add variety and make things situational rather then IRVN being the "default" option over Night scope or vehicle stealth/Nano regen over smoke.

Lol, reading some of this stuff make me think : i'm glad stupid players don't balance the game.

Good work devs.

Reasonable balance suggestions ?

Nerf Ravens dmg or range (planned)
Buff Striker velocity not by a huge amount
Buff Fracture velocity not by a huge amount
Buff Magrider PPA accuracy a little ?
Buff Prowler Vulcan accuracy a little ? (planned ?)
TR needs a Specific 125dmg LMG (800/125 ?)
Change ZOE (accuracy buff ?)
Add an afterburner to the Pheonix
Add a zoom to the Lancer maybe

That's all i can think of.

Oh and make the valkyrie usefull lol : cloak mode like in PS1 ?

Why, thankyou. I just love to wake up in thje morning and be directly insulted.

You NC need to give up on that. The Commissioner is an NS weapon and it will ALWAYS be an NS weapon. You would be better off just asking for a completely new high powered pistol, Not asking them to suddenly lock thousands of players out of using a weapon just because you think it belongs to the NC. We have ALL had our traits stolen by the NS. Don't even bother with no bullet drop, That trait is made useless because our horizontal recoil is so high that by the time it kicks in to be a benefit, It doesn't even matter.

Buff magburn duration to 3x. Buff magrider recharge rate to 2x.

I'm not NC player though But I do agree that NC needs a powerful pistol. Supposed to be the hard hitting faction but NS pistols hit harder.

Um do you realize that bullet drop is only partly useful for VS Infiltrators right?
TR is OP NERF THEM, HIGHBY PLS!

Dont buff my lasher plz, its Perfect as it stands.
Give TR some decent long range AV weapons, raise the MCG ammo to a 150-450 For the stock/laser/darklight model, 300/300 for the ex mag and 100-300 For the brrt one
Redo the striker.

Buff triage heal rate by 2x.

So basically make more things into cert pinatas for the anti-everything HA? Where's their specialization tax?

AV weapons can fight back against infantry because infantry can almost always carry at least some kind of tool to fight against that vehicle. Do we really need infantry to be even less scared of vehicles?

That would also encourage even more farming with AI weapons.