Gameplay related suggestions/recommendations/urgently needed fixes. I try to stay away as far as I can from merc balance, as I believe this is going to be an ever on-going thing depending on the game’s meta and newer released mercs. You will never find the right balance, something or the other will always be better than the next.
Do note that these are my opinions towards the COMPETITIVE aspect of the game. I have no interest in casual or for that matter even your very own “ranked match making”, these are not competitive to me in any sense or style.
Spawntime Synchronization:
As of right now the spawntimes are perfectly synchronized between both teams, which is… horrible, I reckon ECHO should show enough data to prove this accusation without having to go further into detail.
Another related concern, please do force the spawning in competitive games at least. Being able to delay your own spawn by seconds is unneeded and misleading, what do we even have waves for when people are allowed to spawn at any given time? We already have spawnshields.
We WANT spawnkills in competitive games, I get that this feature is very beneficial to public games, but for the sake of competition we need forced waves rather than… a guideline as to when someone can respawn.
Selfkill delay:
The delay on your selfkill is atrocious. You’re required to selfkill up to 2 or 3 seconds before your own spawn if you want to make it into the next wave.
We should be able to use as much time as possible without having to be penalized for selfkilling a second or even half before the spawn only to miss it and end up being full, the timer is there for a reason, if I die before it resets to 24 or 0 I shouldn’t be put into a later wave, this whole system seems to contradict with itself.
Instant gib snipers:
Snipers are too strong. Either the instant gib needs to be removed or a penalty to movement while shooting (strafing/jumping) is absolutely necessary. Essentially, vasilli is… a Railgun with an instagib on headshot. Way too broken for the pace of the game. I get that you’re trying to make him as viable as possible, but he… just wont ever be. There will always be a map or a specific stage one can be useful in, even without the instagib. It is way too easy to hit, without any penalties, for it to be justified that you instagib a person. This breaks gameplay way too much.
Separation of sounds, voice chat, announcer, cutscenes etc.:
The Dialogue volume slider bundles all of these, I’d much like to be able to turn off the in-game chat sounds as well as cutscenes and the frequent, unnecessary yelling of my character without being penalized at the loss of important objective announcers.
Hit sounds more distinguishable (louder?):
Perhaps a slider? I feel like the hitsounds aren’t loud enough, others want them lower, some are happy with the current state. I see no issue with adding an option to its volume.
Separation of loadouts, augments vs weapons vs cosmetic:
Competitively speaking, this game will never have a future if you’re sticking to your current system. A requirement to have grinded the game, traded and bought cards and what not to find a valid augment setup, IN COMPETITION, will never be accepted.
For the sake of your business model: Separate augments from weapons. Weapons will be wanted, needed and even required. Give the players a free choice to the weapons each merc can use. This way, certain mercs will remain balanced and not be entirely worthless in a competitive environment. Shotguns? No one will ever use shotguns.
Cosmetic vs Augments, again… a separation, keep the skins away from the perks, skins are your money makers. Look at CS:GO’s weapon skins, or LoL’s… or Dota’s… Absolutely no impact whatsoever on the game, no character changes, buffs, perks or any other stats that would gain a person any sort of advantage over the other, yet all 3 games run entirely on the revenue generated of such.
Hell, augments could be argued to be completely removed from the game even. All you need are skins, but even so, bundling the two together, you will never see either in competitive play or have any promotion of such from streamers/pro players.
Or delve into the other countless of suggestions offered on this topic already: http://forums.warchest.com/showthread.php/43284-Pixels-Opinion-On-The-Whole-Loadout-Card-Monetisation-quot-Stuff-quot
ZoomFov and Sensitivity:
Self explanatory. Either keep a 1:1 Sensitivity for scopes or give us an option for such. FOV can be argued an intended feature, I leave this up to you. The sensitivity however is an absolute must.
Viewmodel aka drawgun:
Any possibility at all to be granted a feature that removes the gun and hand models from your screen entirely? They take up way too much screen space, block important information and are otherwise just utterly obnoxious and intrusive.
Spawnshield and Reviveshield:
I’m all for having the shields, love them in-fact. But please make them a fixed value rather than a dependable. Freeze a player on revive if needed even, but losing the shield upon performing an action is silly. Especially so in Spawnshields. You want to avoid spawnrape? Don’t take away their shields by them performing an action. Leave them on for the entire duration.
Less linear maptype models, more objectives:
Select-able spawns/multiple spawns should be a thing. It’s not a very friendly concept to master for new players, I guess, but if even Battlefield can get away with it, so can you.
Right now there’s no real benefit to them given the maps we have access to and that’s alright, but… sooner or later, I’m willing to bet that maybe, at most, only one or two of your original maps will ever be adapted into competitive play because community designed maps are more viable, or faster paced, or better suited, or for whatever else reason.
It’ll happen and there’s no reason to be delusional about it. Giving those map creators, at the very least, the option to tinker with capture-able spawns, be it in the form of flags, command posts, building some random structure, whatever, can lead to meta changing gameplay - which is exactly what we’re aiming for, right? Keep things interesting, switch around in meta, etc.?
I don’t see this happening on your type of maps. They’re too forced, nothing else to do other than be forcefully pushed into “DO THIS OBJECTIVE, NOW THIS, NOW THIS, FOLLOW THIS PATTERN. NOTHING ELSE.” Where are the different attack routes, where are the primary objective independent side objectives?
Or… even now, losing a stage and having been forcefully spawned onto it, by… yet again, random chance and the inability of selecting a spawn could potentially lose you the entire map, merely by having been in the wrong place at the wrong time and it was impossible for you to avoid a full spawn.
Give us the option for selectable spawns, avoid this. People aware of the map and what’s happening can use this to their advantage and set up a defense or even an attack if the map routes allow for such, on later objectives. It opens a whole new world for map designers and gameplay.
Gun sentries and health stations blocking explosive damage:
Intention or bug?
Sentries and healing stations, both, soak up any and all damage from nades. A player sitting right behind a sentry, will very likely not get damaged. Where as if the sentry was another player, both would have died from that specific grenade.
Fragger nades, bugged?:
As of the last patch Fragger nades VERY frequently tend to explode in your hands after being cooked for 1 tick/second or alternatively, not explode at all. Also I have a theory that when a player steps on top of a cooked nade, it very often behaves as an airstrike and results in being “cancelled” out?
Stopwatch system:
A team should NEVER win a map merely by having acquired one more objective than the other. I get that your maps may be too big, or too long lasting, but that’s a design flaw, not a gametype flaw. Look at your map designs if you want to force shorter rounds, especially if you want to avoid double-full hold scenarios.
Having a team declared winner merely because they got one more side objective than the other, but ultimately would have lost just the same… Seems utterly idiotic to me. They didn’t finish the map, they didn’t set a time, they never completed the PRIMARY objective required to win the game… they merely got one more necessary side objective out of the way that opens the path to, whatever it is we’re here for.
Again, this is nothing but a map design flaw, if you don’t want your maps to take up to 15 or 20 minutes for a single round, don’t tamper with the gamemode, shorten your objectives.
Especially given the amount of random factors no one can even account for, many of the defenses in this game, as they do in ET and RtCW are entirely spawntime dependent, if you have a favorable spawn, defending objective X may be a lot easier and quite plausible to fullhold rather than objective Y, and vice versa. Which will very often result in a stage being lost within seconds if not the first 2 minutes of the game, but later stages held at ease. Should the attacking team have won at this point just because they got to build a, not game necessary side objective such as the command post, while we still would have ended up winning the game by holding them from getting to the primary objective and effectively shutting down any and all of their pushes? Hell no.
Stages should NEVER declare a winner. There’s too much random stuff going on in a game, that is not in the player’s control and is nothing but a roll of the dice. We have multiple stages for a reason, a defense does not get broken up until the point where the attacking team has been declared winner for having completed the ENTIRE map objective.
I get that this may very well be favorable to public matches, might even be an excellent idea. But it has absolutely no place in Stopwatch and competitive play.
Netcode/Antilag:
It feels way too favouring. I don’t mind the antilag, I benefit from it even - considering I’ve had a horrendous ISP for years and average 70-100ping on the majority of EU servers, but the amounts of times I end up dying 20 meters behind cover or having traded kills with another person is more than upsetting. On a good day, with 60 or even less ping, the game still feels like I was playing on USWest averaging 200+.
Falloff damage on Gibbing:
Feels unrewarding, especially as a SMG to have to shoot up to 20-30 bullets into an already dead player just to gib. The fall off damage, on gibs, should not be applied. A static amount of bullets (ie 8 for body shots, 3 for headshots) seems the most logical for gibbing.
Video cut scenes:
Please. Please don’t make me watch them anymore. I beg you
Accessibility to seeing opponent team classes:
I should not ever be able to see my opponents team’s selected merc by a simple press of TAB. I can understand wanting to see the loadout POSSIBILITIES the opponent has, but not the currently selected merc. This is similar to the spawntimes, too much information is being handed out for free.
Rotation of airstrikes:
Any possibility of being able to rotate/steer airstrikes in the near future? You kept similar in the way ET/RtCW handles, by striking in a 90° angle from the originating point, but left out the ability to rotate the airstrike by switching one’s position before it’s being fully executed or called in. Would be great to have but otherwise not too crucial.
Remove cancellation of abilities (ie nades/airstrikes):
Being able to cook a nade or anything else and having it cancelled and preserved with a single weaponbank switch is silly. If a Fragger starts cooking a nade, make him use it. Don’t allow him to just switch guns and cancel it out. This applies to every ability really.
Empty/Local servers, possibly Binaries release even? /switchlevel method not sufficient
Friendly Fire…
Unit collision…
Grenade travel speed and AoE:
I’m all for grenades, love and abuse 'em, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to dodge even if you see the opposing fragger throwing it. The grenades travel too fast for you to really do anything about it, you’re basically left with nothing to do but stand still and hope he misses. Increase the flight duration a little, will keep the desired affect and you may just receive less complains about fragger’s OP’ness.
As for the AoE, it seems random, I use a fragger with M4 and Explodydendron, but I genuinely can’t judge the splash, at times it’ll kill a person half a mile from it, other times it barely even damages a merc when being hit in the face by one. A little more consistency would be great, perhaps even a slight reduction in landmines/healing stations/etc being detonated by a grenade landing nearby.
MG Mechanics(?):
Consistency issue, again. Shooting a player in an MG nest is hit or miss, there seems to be an invisible wall that more often than not soaks up any and all of your bullets, at times they can’t be hit at all, at others, using the same positioning, angle and weapons, they go down instantly.