Cooldowns


(Raviolay) #1

OK this is a short one but why not take a leaf out of Titanfalls book so cooldowns become reduced for performing actions. Such as kills, giving support Items, reviving & help up & objectives.


(Kl3ppy) #2

I wanted to say that all abilities which get “deployed” need a cool down, abilities which are get thrown don’t. But this wont work, for example the Molotov then has no cooldown.

The idea of the titanfall cooldown system isn’t bad, but I think it would casue too much spam in DB


(tokamak) #3

YES!! I love merit-based resources.

The ace up DB’s sleeve is that the augmentation system can do that.

On top of the ordinary perks, cards (or maybe separate tokens) can grant the player the ability to reduce the cooldown of his ability, or the regeneration of his health, by performing actions.

What those actions might be depends on the card (or separate token). So one player may reduce cool downs by making head shots, one by making kills, the other by taking damage, by objective attempts, and another by healing or reviving players.

This means that players can commit a merc to a role before the match start. Not be limited by that role during the match, but definitely be more effective if he focuses on the playstyle that suits the CD reducer.

I’ve been building presentation slides all night so I might have been ranting. I’ll elaborate in a more structured fashion after I’ve had some sleep.


(onYn) #4

sounds interesting


(Rokkamaisteri) #5

Ammo and medic stations resets their cooldowns if you pick 'em up. Isn’t that already some kind of help to ease moving the stations?


(tokamak) #6

Yeah true.

Merit-based proficiency doesn’t have to stop at cool-downs though.

What about a health station that starts healing players a bit extra over max hp for every player that the medic killed during the time it was set up?

A drone strike that lands a second faster for every ammo crate the field ops dished out to a player running on their last clip.

A minigun that spins up slightly faster for ever 50hp of damage taken by rhino.

Proxy receiving an extra mine for every five kills she made during that life.

A HB sensor that renews it’s life or even increases it’s area of effect for every enemy spotted.

It’s like COD’s kill-streaks except that the results are subtle bonuses and the streaks can be obtained in different ways (according to the cards picked for that merc).


(montheponies) #7

If you were to do it, I’d change the emphasis to non lethal criteria - so in your medic example, it may be that the healing station heals 5% faster for every revive (rather than kills) that the medic makes, up to a max of say 20%.

Problem I have with making things relating to killing is the fact that you tend to find a couple of things happen;

a. folk concentrate on the kill or other action streak, to the detriment of the obj.
b. the players that are already at an advantage (skill wise) just get ever more powerful.

And please god dont make the HB sensor any more annoying than it currently is…


(tokamak) #8

Preferably each card one criteria, and then the base criteria (damage taken, damage done, objective done, kills, headshots) plus extra merc specific ability criteria (preferably several for one criteria).

The idea is that you then can augment your merc to either deviate or focus on the inherent role. A medic can go for kill criteria if you, as a player, find yourself locked in combat more often than usual. If you want to be ’ the good medic’ then you try to obtain the healing augmentation cards.

You could even call these cards differently. There’s ‘augmentation’ cards and there’s ‘prestige’ cards. Augmentation is a basic buff, and the prestiges are bonuses that accumulate based on the criteria they mention.

AND THEN:

There’s the ‘grand prestige’ cards. These cards are rare or payment only. They’re entirely the same as ordinary prestige cards. However, the grand prestige cards publicly announce when a player reaches a high prestige streak streak (ULTRA REVIVE!!!) or sets a new high score for his prestige streak (NEW RECORD!! MONSTER REVIVE!!).

They’re only cosmetic in nature but I’m sure that there are players out there who would like to pay extra to show off their mad prestige like this.


(INF3RN0) #9

Don’t ammo packs reduce C/Ds by 15% on direct hits still?


(Alchemy) #10

While I like the idea of promoting good ingame actions, having played a LOT of titanfall it could be just a spam fest real fast(titans every 1min30). Not sure if I want airstrikes every 20seconds.


(Protekt1) #11

I’d imagine they would adjust the starting timer so that average performance is about the same cooldown as it is now and if you over-perform you can use your ability a bit quicker which could be a pretty big swing.

I think the downside is potentially allowing a team to snowball out of control a bit too easily, although the potential to snowball isn’t necessarily a bad thing.


(tokamak) #12

Keep in mind that in DB it’s very hard to rack up any streak of any kind due to the small teams and short average lifespan of players. So the possibility of a spamfest can still be retained as long as it means that it would be a very rare thing.

And yeah I agree that a snowball effect is not a bad thing. The skill ceiling only increases.

You can even get pro-teams start employing tactics that involve protecting mercs that have grown their streak so far that they’ve become highly valuable assets worth sacrificing streakless mercs for. Though that would of course be a bit extreme.


(Alchemy) #13

It’s hard to get a 10 kill streak, but getting the ace badge is really easy. Maybe instead of airstrike/nades, Faster cooldowns on ammo/med packs/heartbeat if you rack up ace badges.


(Glottis-3D) #14
  1. increase the default cooldown times hugely. like +35-45% from current times.
  2. then reduce it for:
    -completing sideobjs and objs
    -health and ammo
    -kill streaks.

OR
reduce cooldown for XP earned.
200Xp = -10 seconds of current cooldown


(tokamak) #15

Yeah that’s the point where we have to depart from the titanfall example.

The streaks should be tied to a single life of the merc. It resets on respawn.

We should also look at cards that grant team-wide bonuses that accumulate per ‘streak unit’

Like a merc that decreases the cool down of any ability of everyone in his team by a small margin. Or a small team-wide health bonus per streak-unit.


(prophett) #16

My issues with cool downs is I can go afk for a few mins but it seems like my ability cooldown timer only starts when I spawn back in :/. It should be x amount of time whether you are alive or dead.


(Smooth) #17

Being alive or dead doesn’'t matter. Spawning in and playingas a new Merc will mean the cooldown for another Merc is ‘paused’.

This is to prevent cycling through long-cooldown Mercs and avoiding things like the 60s cooldown ‘penalty’ of having used an Airstrike.

In the future we’ll probably change it to still tick-down but at a much slower (33.33%?) rate when you’re not playing that Merc :slight_smile:


(Mustang) #18

Was about to suggest a 25-50% rate, so this sounds perfect.


(Raviolay) #19

[QUOTE=Smooth;510227]Being alive or dead doesn’'t matter. Spawning in and playingas a new Merc will mean the cooldown for another Merc is ‘paused’.

This is to prevent cycling through long-cooldown Mercs and avoiding things like the 60s cooldown ‘penalty’ of having used an Airstrike.

In the future we’ll probably change it to still tick-down but at a much slower (33.33%?) rate when you’re not playing that Merc :)[/QUOTE]

I think a pool of airstrikes say six, that can be used at given intervals (a set block of time that get refreshed during the match) with the players in the match having to perform better to get higher in the pecking order to get a strike. Would be better IMO this would prevent a match full of the same merc and near constant spam.


(tokamak) #20

I don’t think we should aim at preventing ‘all eggs in one basket’ builds. At least not by limiting the one thing that makes them good. Instead the weaknesses they open themselves up to should become more relevant. IE a team without medics, assault or simply a team that isn’t as diverse should feel the lack of those mercs.

One of the best ETQW matches I’ve ever played was on one of those formido friday sessions. We managed to go all opressor on Salvage and the map was one giant violator fest. Then we all switched to infiltrator, hid in those air shafts only reachable by teleporter and flyer droned the hell out of the GFD

It was amazingly powerful. The defenders had no idea what hit them. But at the same time, had they actually been able to anticipate it, they would’ve stopped it dead in its tracks.

It’s situations like this that make a game worth playing.