The Legion of the Crows - Feb. Dev Letter [Forum Discussion]

The Infiltrator rework may very well be a change more anticipated than cosmetics than any other in recent memory, however fasionable they are.

It's like when Bethesda speaks about their quality standards.

Decade old bugs still not fixed, cheaters still there (yet less flying sunderers), latency issues, fishing ideas for an FPS game, messy updates with sunderers that were only fixed several days later after breaking the game... I would love to see those "quality standards" you've mentioned in the upcoming update, and I sincerely hope that people would laugh at me, saying :" What a moron ! See ? You were wrong !", rather than me being prophetic about those "standards" of yours.

Hey Mithril, can we expect the development team to take on smaller, more iterative game updates at any point?

The length of time between these large and more "destructive" updates that make extensive changes to certain sectors of the game, like the Sunderer rework, makes the game feel quite stagnant in the interim—plus issues brought up by these updates do not always feel like they are adequately solved in a reasonable time.

This focus on more quantitive updates also leads to the game's smaller issues going completely unaddressed. Players often feel like any chance of these issues being addressed, due to their unsuitability for being addressed in the large and targeted patches that the Toadman team seems to prefer, is nigh-on zero, and this has led to no end of frustration.

I, for one, personally do not feel the game is much different from almost three years ago now, the last update that affected the majority of the playerbase being March 2022's Arsenal Update, or its iterative update 7 months later in November 2022 via the 10th Anniversary, as the team's focus on large targeted reworks means the rest of the game, both during the patch that added the rework as well as in the "downtime" inbetween them, remains almost identical.

These small issues are often unrelated, but which each individually niggle at players and add up to a large amount of frustration, and they can also be issues that the team is solely leaving to tackle in larger updates that don't necessarily need to be left that long;

• Basic gun balance, such as the relative power of the GD-7F and AF-4 Cyclone/Tempest to other weapons in the game and/or equivalent weapons available to other factions, or the low power of much of the Vanu arsenal outside of their "meta" options, as well as the NSO arsenal as a whole.
• Class balance, such as the subject of the upcoming Infiltrator rework, where smaller changes such as simple numbers adjustments to abilities and tools may serve as a stopgap to increase player satisfaction pending a large-scale overhaul.
• Vehicle balance, where problems such as the ubiquity of aircraft could be addressed in smaller, more iterative ways such as decreasing ammo capacity on anti-ground weapons.
• System updates, such as the spawn system where tuning to certain hurting areas (such as Spawn Beacons and Routers) can make an impact on how players interact with the game world and attempt to mitigate the current "redeployside" where players are able to very quickly start new offensives and react to enemy attacks at blistering speed.
• UI adjustments, such as an often-requested indicator for the existence of a Beacon in the player's squad, or additions to the oft-forgotten and very obscured Codex.

And these are things that should be adjusted in small ways across multiple patches, that could go live with the common bugfixing hotfixes we already receive as a part of the team's clear goal of improving the experience. Balance, in my opinion, should be more constant and in response to both player sentiment and the data resulting from prior changes, as opposed to the current paradigm of large destructive reworks that then often go uniterated on after their introduction, with their flaws unaddressed and their room for improvement uncaptured.

The x3 denotes this is more considered a social post than not from the non other than. Last I checke on infiltrators some of the key areas were mass outages of any damage on any weapon that often transferred - probably part of the problem - to other weaps and engagements including vehicles. Dunno ya.

I'm a bit concerned about the legion of crows armor set. It doesn't seem to follow the design language of the new conglomerate faction at all. It looks vanu. It's segmented armor, round, and nature based which is heavily a vanu design trait.

NC stuff is generally square, function over form, industrial, construction, repurposed, rugged mercenary kind of stuff.

I don't get any NC vibes from looking at the examples posted other than square ammo pouches and the blue color. Please make these armors distinct and new conglomerate looking and not more hug the body could be anyone's armor if the color was changed.

http://binarycoder.info/player-studio-guide/

We love this game and want to support it but please take it in a good direction.

Mithril, it's time to open up the thread about game balance and tweaks that you were considering opening . Redditside and the people on here are more interested in core balance patches, than the "mega content" updates. I'll buy 3 bundles (including this one) the moment you guys pushout a gun balance update to fix OP sniper/scout rifles or buff NSO assault rifles!

Although certainly many years overdue, the work on the server merge is really exciting to me. Having played

this game on and off for years, I feel that I can really reintroduce more of my friends to Planetside now that the thrilling Outfit driven events of Bastions and Colossi are going to be much more prevalent.

Regarding the Infiltrator rework, I've already had quite a few discussions with other players about the efficacy

and frustration of particular items available to the Infiltrator and to soldiers as a whole. For starters, Stalker cloak in a vacuum is technically not that bad. Neither are the powerful burst revolvers like the Underdog, Blackhand, and Commissioner (most of the time. They are fun to use though). But when combined, and with good aim, those two items are the most devilish thing to grace control points and spawns.

At which point, comes out another piece of equipment from the enemies that some view under a toxic lens of

"noobish", "balogne", and "overpowered", the Darklight attachment. Though it is, practically speaking, the only way to flush out a Stalker Cloaking Infiltrator.
I've always normally ran an NSO Hunter Cloaking Infiltrator with Deep Operative, and it always feels much more interactive than someone sitting still for five years holding an Emissary in their hand. People can still notice me, they still spray and possibly tag me, I am always making noise or planting a motion detector every other moment to give away my location, there is no need for a Darklight to catch me.

It isn't bad either, it thrives in the chaos of enemies running around, no one really notices the small bump they run

into, there are mind games for who gets the drop on who, and there are really fine lines of timing to assassinate one soldier and slink back into your dwindling cloak supply. It's fun.

Stalker Cloaking with the existing powerful sidearms is not fun.

Secondary weapons with better time to kill than primaries are ridiculous if the tradeoff is magazine capacity, because with Stalker cloak, you can reload in complete obscurity and safety.

With that said, I hope Stalker Cloaking is given another tell for the location of the user at the very least,

either a subtle hum, or the inability to reload while within Stalker Cloak.

I've yet to see the practical application of Nano-Armor Cloaking, as infiltrators are normally never shot at when using cloak correctly.

Regarding the new armor set, it looks nice! With the underlay of the base New Conglomerate model I think

it'll look okay, and won't tank the design language of the NC. Except in the case of the Engineer, I feel it needs pauldrons with a more "manufactured" design, something that says "Shock Resistant Non-Slip Integrated Axillary/Subclavian Heavy Protection Gear". Otherwise, with the right textures I think the bracers and greaves of all classes won't look like they're part of the Vanu Sovereignty.

Unrelated to the main discussion:

Finally, regarding general development, I understand it's a bit late now, but a couple of the Directive weapons

are really underwhelming statistically or gimmick wise. Some examples include the NSO PMG-ARX Schrodinger and XMG-ARX Galilei, the VS Chaos, and the TR Havoc and Shuriken.

But! The time investment required to acquire these items for their quirks is not worth it. It can take cumulatively

weeks of gameplay to complete the kill directives depending on the weapon, whereas it might only take a single session of gametime to unlock a new weapon entirely using certs. My perspective may be due to my time playing on Connery.

nothing about balancing between mbt and sundy, and the same for factions. there's no dev for balance the game?

the infiltrator part is pretty vague, can you please specify the direction that is chosen for the rework:
What is the dev vision here?
Need for mechanics change?
Number balancing ?

tnx for taking time to reply.

I agree with you about the ineffectiveness of using Darklight to detect Infiltrators, it does create a bit of a toxic situation for players, as some players may use this item simply to kill all Infiltrators without much strategy or skill. I understand that the goal was to make the game more accessible to everyone, but it also reduces the possibilities for those who are trying to create an interesting and complex strategy. It might be worth revising the Darklight mechanic so that it's not so powerful, or making it less accessible, such as limiting the number or giving it only to certain classes. This could help keep the balance and give more room for maneuver to those who want to rely on their cloaking skills rather than vigilance with an item. Do you think there are any other ways to balance this situation to keep the game interesting?

joining in on ~old bugs and stuff~