How to make field ops more useful?

(titan) #1

In 5v5 field ops are really useless (Excluding swapping them out to keep the EV down as long as possible which is still a pretty awful mechanic and really needs to be addressed with maybe a global airstrike cooldown?)

Ammo can be gained by suiciding or from ammo crates and air strikes aren’t useful vs teams who are on the ball. They also have no special guns other than artys Dreiss AR which for me bounces between totally useless or seriously good but still not consistently good enough to make him a real pick.

So what do?

A few ideas I have are:

  • Give field ops better weaponry
  • Nerf ammo crates hard or disable in competitive
  • Expand on the current system of direct ammo pack hits lowering ability cooldowns, maybe making it so all ammo packs regardless of direct hit or not lower cooldowns? Instead of a medic sitting behind a fragger we could see field ops throwing packs to get the nade back up? Might be awful, just an idea
  • More consistent air strikes. Right now the trajectory of the air strike seems random? Might be wrong but if theres logic behind it I havent figured it out personally and having them come in from 1 angle when you wanted it to come from another can be really infuriating.
  • Make the air strikes less about kills and more about area denial. What about an incendiary strike that’s quite large and lasts on the ground for 10-15 seconds.
  • Speed the air strikes up.
  • Slow down engineer defuse times. I like to bring arty in when defending a c4 plant on terminal stage one but for reals in the time it takes for an airstrike to be called in and to arrive an engineer has already done 75% of a defuse, it’s just way too quick
  • Have players start with less overall ammo, to make suiciding a less than ideal choice

What are your ideas? Were they more useful in rtcw / et? If so how? :slight_smile:

(poiuasd) #2

[QUOTE=titan;527359]

  • More consistent air strikes. Right now the trajectory of the air strike seems random? Might be wrong but if theres logic behind it I havent figured it out personally and having them come in from 1 angle when you wanted it to come from another can be really infuriating.[/QUOTE]
    If you throw the beacon right in front of you the strike will come in at a 90 degrees angle with the beacon marking the center point of the strike. I’m not sure how it works when you bounce it of a wall though.
(ragnak) #3

[QUOTE=titan;527359]In 5v5 field ops are really useless (Excluding swapping them out to keep the EV down as long as possible which is still a pretty awful mechanic and really needs to be addressed with maybe a global airstrike cooldown?)

Ammo can be gained by suiciding or from ammo crates and air strikes aren’t useful vs teams who are on the ball. They also have no special guns other than artys Dreiss AR which for me bounces between totally useless or seriously good but still not consistently good enough to make him a real pick.[/QUOTE]

If fragger wasnt this potent at killing (as if field ops had any other role, when you can selfkill and regain your ammo) you would see more of them. As long as mercs like fragger exist i dont see this changing.

[QUOTE=titan;527359]

  • Give field ops better weaponry[/QUOTE]

Like what ? Skyhammer already have access to the best guns aside from k121 (which i do think is overpowered) so should they add even stronger guns now ?=/

[QUOTE=titan;527359]

  • Nerf ammo crates hard or disable in competitive[/QUOTE]

Would probably help a bit but as long as you can selfkill and respawn with ton of ammo it would probably stay the same way most of the time.

[QUOTE=titan;527359]

  • Expand on the current system of direct ammo pack hits lowering ability cooldowns, maybe making it so all ammo packs regardless of direct hit or not lower cooldowns? Instead of a medic sitting behind a fragger we could see field ops throwing packs to get the nade back up? Might be awful, just an idea[/QUOTE]

You already figured that its an awful idea, lets leave it at that 8D.

[QUOTE=titan;527359]

  • More consistent air strikes. Right now the trajectory of the air strike seems random? Might be wrong but if theres logic behind it I havent figured it out personally and having them come in from 1 angle when you wanted it to come from another can be really infuriating.[/QUOTE]

As far as i know its not random, it all depends on your character position when throwing it. I didnt test it or anything but i think that it always starts from the same horizontal direction but im not really sure now that you mention that ;p

[QUOTE=titan;527359]

  • Make the air strikes less about kills and more about area denial. What about an incendiary strike that’s quite large and lasts on the ground for 10-15 seconds.[/QUOTE]

I would be happy if air strikes did work the same way as they did in et. Instant throw (without that silly animation we have now), red smoke so enemy team can see it (and it would lie on the ground longer becuase you dont need to lose 1 sec of that animation), meaning that it would work better as area denial than killing tool. Arty could use ET style artillery as well ;( .

I would agree with that if there was a smoke indicating that air strike is coming, right now i often die to “invisible” air strikes because those red spots on the ground seems to be bugged as hell.

[QUOTE=titan;527359]

  • Slow down engineer defuse times. I like to bring arty in when defending a c4 plant on terminal stage one but for reals in the time it takes for an airstrike to be called in and to arrive an engineer has already done 75% of a defuse, it’s just way too quick[/QUOTE]

Fields ops aside, i agree with that. 25% slower defuse time at the very least (for engineers).

[QUOTE=titan;527359]

  • Have players start with less overall ammo, to make suiciding a less than ideal choice[/QUOTE]

As long as its not for public servers, i already run out of ammo constantly because no one like to drop ammo ;(

[QUOTE=titan;527359]
What are your ideas? Were they more useful in rtcw / et? If so how? :)[/QUOTE]

Fraggers cant be this good at killing, so nerfing them should already help with the problem as for fields ops being useful in ET (didnt play rtcw), you always had one in the team unless it was indoor map and even then people often took him for ammo alone. Fields ops in ET were great, especially that they had both air strike and artillery fire so you had a choice (and it was great artillery fire unlike that abomination that arty have 8D ).

(INF3RN0) #4

Some ideas;

(1) Increase c/d reduction on direct hits to 20%.
(2) Ammo packs also increase clip size (varys per weapon type and default clipsize is decreased accordingly, resets on respawn)
(3) Cooked airstrikes are called in faster, but have a reduced AoE
(4) Ammo dumps are empty until filled by a FOPs (side obj)

(titan) #5

Agreed that fraggers strength still remains a problem especially when having to chose between him or a field ops. Without nerfing fragger the airstrikes would have to get to a level where they could be as consistent at getting picks as a grenade, not to mention his increased hp + great LMG.

I’d like to see the dreiss ar, m4 and AK all buffed. Right now I would seriously take a krotzni over any of these rilfes if the option was available. dreiss ar is mental at close range because of the dmg but without iron sighting it doesn’t work at medium / long range which is a real shame when smgs DO work at that range. The spread needs to be dialed way back. The m4 needs a higher rate of fire (slowest firing m4 in any game ever?) and the AK needs the recoil reduced drastically for them to become strong guns. This would also give fraggers a choice between LMG and m4… choices are good right?

You’re probably right… an ammo giver may just never be necessary in this game

Smoke instead of a line sounds good. The line currently makes repositioning easier as you know where it’s gonna land. A smoke would really force a team to move away… nice idea i like!

Me too they do seem a tad buggy, like I said the smoke idea is great

Glad it’s not just me who thinks this I been meaning to make a thread for a while but didn’t want all the angry proxy lovers to come after me with cricket bats. The defusal and plant speeds are both a bit ridiculous right now and it all stems back to making every class do every obj. If everyone can plant why take an engi… let’s make them plant SUPER fast. Bad idea if you ask me you barely have time to react to a plant / defuse to stop it. Not to mention all these insanely fast ninja plants which are happening. Not necessarily saying ninja plants are a bad thing if you can sneak through the lines but you shouldn’t really be able to plant when there’s enemy players in your very close proximity, who just don’t have time to kill you in the 2 seconds it takes to plant.

I agree running out of ammo on pubs would suck but at the same time it would be nice to have pub and compet play with similar rules. I suppose there’s no friendly fire in pubs tho so having different starting ammo wouldn’t be the end of the world either.

(titan) #6

Nice idea they definitely need to bring more to the table than just ammo. Maybe simplify it and do a straight up 10% dmg increase from a pack instead of having each gun get different amounts of ammo.

(Mustang) #7

With regards ammo specifically isn’t the issue that you spawn with enough ammo to last a wave (or two) and have enough time to respawn and get back into position before the enemy team arrives.

So really the fix is either:

  1. Spawn with less ammo - This is really just a quick fix and I think less desirable as many of the lower skilled players already complain that they tear through ammo too fast
  2. Move the spawn points further away - This makes it more risky to kill out because you won’t be completely re-setup when the enemy team arrives

Regarding making the mercs more appealing, yes I agree they are less appealing than other mercs, they’re never going to deal more direct damage, heal better, repair faster, etc. so really it’s their abilities that need improving.

The need (or lack of need) for ammo was already considered, so now I’m thinking about their unique ability. When you say make them more about area control than kills I agree to some extent, that being that I think the killing potential is just fine as it is, but it’s the area control that needs to be improved, then again the two area control mercs are the two that currently aren’t available, so maybe it’s a non-issue. When Stoker and Kira return with their less about kills more about area denial abilites this one will probably resolve itself.

That said I wouldn’t be opposed to more frequent, lower damage (slightly) airstrikes from Skyhammer. And Arty needs to deal more EV damage and maybe have a larger or more accurate artillery, or maybe even make each ability use a barrage of 3 smaller strikes nearish the same place for added denial and consistency.

Speaking of consistency Skyhammers airstrike doesn’t feel consistent at all, it’s half a case of it not going where the player wants it to go, maybe this could be improved by allowing the approach angle to be altered after throwing it (à la ET/ETQW), and half a case of the position looking perfect but the damage just not reflecting that. Also doesn’t help that it’s got the cancel->recharge bug at the moment.

(ragnak) #8

[QUOTE=titan;527371]
I’d like to see the dreiss ar, m4 and AK all buffed. Right now I would seriously take a krotzni over any of these rilfes if the option was available. dreiss ar is mental at close range because of the dmg but without iron sighting it doesn’t work at medium / long range which is a real shame when smgs DO work at that range. The spread needs to be dialed way back. The m4 needs a higher rate of fire (slowest firing m4 in any game ever?) and the AK needs the recoil reduced drastically for them to become strong guns. This would also give fraggers a choice between LMG and m4… choices are good right?[/QUOTE]

I honestly think that k121 is simply too good, i dont want other weapons this potent. While i do think that at least m4 and timik 47 are stronger than smgs because of damage and damage drop off i find it kinda annoying that they are hard to use at range (especially timik 47 where i can barely hit anyone while using iron sight). Dreiss is also strong but inconsistant from the hip, i would rather see his damage lower but more accurate from the hip, right now its too much of a risk to use it over most guns. Wont comment on burst based guns because i dont use them.

I wouldnt mind assault rifles doing less damage but being easier to control, but im honestly fine with them for now (it easier to make multi kills with assault rifles, thats kinda important as well ;p).

[QUOTE=titan;527371]
Glad it’s not just me who thinks this I been meaning to make a thread for a while but didn’t want all the angry proxy lovers to come after me with cricket bats. The defusal and plant speeds are both a bit ridiculous right now and it all stems back to making every class do every obj. If everyone can plant why take an engi… let’s make them plant SUPER fast. Bad idea if you ask me you barely have time to react to a plant / defuse to stop it. Not to mention all these insanely fast ninja plants which are happening. Not necessarily saying ninja plants are a bad thing if you can sneak through the lines but you shouldn’t really be able to plant when there’s enemy players in your very close proximity, who just don’t have time to kill you in the 2 seconds it takes to plant.[/QUOTE]

Longer defuse/plant time and no blue bars showing disarm progress, its kinda silly that you dont even need to watch objective to know if its getting disarmed. I would welcome some loud sound when someone is arming/disarming c4 tho(i think that there is something already but audio in this game is overall meh).

(fubar) #9

Your position. Specifically, the original position you threw the strike from.

I wish airstrikes were rotatable as they are in ET. They follow the same… “throwing mechanics”, however in ET and RtCW, we have the added benefit of being able to steer them in a different direction by changing our position shortly before the actual airstrike gets called in.

As to how to make fops more useful? Simple. Stop spawning people with 3 full clips worth of ammo. You’ll become reliant, especially given the current spawnsystem and very… very long walks to and from the objective for both teams.

Not a huge fan of splitting arty’s and skyhammer’s ability into two mercs either. They’re essentially… the same thing, just seems very desperate of trying to get as many mercs out there as is: Either way, the current artillery in the game (Arty’s ability, not sure what it’s called) is… too short lived, it doesn’t offer much but a single burst, the damage isn’t nearly good enough and the duration is pointless. Increase the cooldown to a minute, as is the airstrike, and instead of a single shell, have it throw out multiple delayed shells. Four seems like a good number. I like four shells. It’ll make arty instantly more useful, as it offers a huge potential for area denial and… well, spawnrapes. Also makes him a lot more potent on E.V maps.

Also work in a proxy/fragger change. Don’t have their ability be refreshened by cooldowns but much rather ammo packs. Give them a static amount of uses on spawn, ie Fragger gets 2 nades and refills them with ammo packs. Same for Proxy mines (perhaps 3?). Which makes nades in a general a lot more predictable too, you’ll know whether or not your opponent fragger has a nade.

(titan) #10

So many great ideas in this thread hope atleast some get implemented. My favs are:

  • smoke on skyhammers call in grenade instead of a line for better area denial
  • multiple delayed shells on artys call in for better area denial + ev destruction, offset with a longer cooldown. (this would make arty soo much better!)
  • lower starting ammo
  • % damage increase on ammo pick up

these changes would make field ops an essential pick on any map!

(titan) #11

i think we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one :stuck_out_tongue: statistically they’re better but in-game I’d take an smg all day. AK in particular although super strong on paper is just impossible to use at long range.

Agreed on the dreiss ar though I’d also like to see it viable as a hipfire weapon… ideally with lower rof and higher damage, don’t really like weapons where you spam mouse 1 and pray the spread works in your favor

(mccrorie) #12

I completely agree with people suggesting lower ammo on spawn, and for criticizing Arty for his short duration ability.

Also I like that this thread highlights the fact any class can plant/defuse. Further, any class can revive a downed player. And then there’s health regen. It’s all the same difference - one of time. Ammo resources can be expanded to position+time, depending on the map.

(Glottis-3D) #13

how about this:

Redeye’s smoke, when thrown over the airstrike marker in the right moment cancels it.
A nice counter, and not very easy to perform (you have only about 1 second to make it)

i know this is mostly not about making Sky usefull

(Humbugsen) #14

I would hate damage increase on ammo pickup and lower starting ammo (is already low i think)

I think the best way to make field ops more useful, is to give fragger less HP, he should have the same as skyhammer or maybe just 10 more than him
fragger still has a better gun and his grenades, don’t know why he needs that much hp to be honest. Or make fragger slower, he doesn’t really feel slower than sky at all.

(NeroKirbus) #15

dunno if this has been addressed, but when rhino was in the game ammo packs would reduce the heat of his mini gun. Really neat team work mechanic. More of this would be ideal.

Red eye’s smoke already does that and it cancels stoker’s Molotov as well.

(LiNkzr) #16

I don’t think we need to see teams with 1 fragger 1 sky 1 aura 1 sawbonez 1 engi nor I think we should be forced to do so. Yes, it would be ideal to have nice balance among the mercenaries but having the light - medium - heavy classes already make it so that it’s not going to happen, other classes will have advantages over another and will have better utility over another (for example people like sawbonez more since he is more mobile than aura currently) and the last thing I want is the classes to being copies of each other. Players will always themselves decide which is the best and will use that, and if we just balanced again, it wouldn’t be any different, for example if aura gets a buff next patch and sawbonez a slight nerf, we might see 2 auras again on every team.

If we really wanted to force teams to use sky / arty they should just remove ammo boxes and/or make it so that when you suicide you don’t get ammo, if you get killed and spawn you have full ammo. Then killing out secures the good spawn but no ammo. They could also try moving ammo boxes to better locations so both defenders and attackers wanted to contest it maybe? Now most ammo boxes are at edges of map or at some weird locations where people rarely fight, or they are at such positions it only gives advantage to defending and when attackers finally get to them it’s irrelevant.

I personally think one of the biggest problem is just the map design, not spawn timer, locations or merc balance currently. I usually try to be really innovative with tactics and such, but in this game i became very perplexed about the fact it lacks tactical depth, side objectives / forward spawns can most of the time be ignored and some maps are just made so that you have to slaughter whole enemy team to accomplish anything. I know it’s an FPS game but it just feels odd or maybe i’m just dumb :>

from what I played any game I know balancing stuff is really hard, especially in game that tries to aim for different kind of mercs or heroes or what ever it may be.

(titan) #17

I agree there will never be perfect balance and there totally doesn’t need to be a perfect mix of mercs on every team but I think it’s important that if mercs are seeing zero play they should be looked at. Vasili, aura, bushwhacker all see play in competitive games but fops are just massively lacking (again excluding for evs). Just feels like they bring very little to the table and could do with some work :stuck_out_tongue: Also nader… not really getting played cause again she’s just another merc that doesn’t frag as well as fragger and brings an inconsistent dmg / area denial ability to the game, much like arty and skyhammer.

The lack of tactics in this game is mostly due to map design I guess but at the very least if we had a full set of viable mercs strats could atleast become interesting in terms of picks. Someone taking a sniper over a fragger is already sort of interesting but what if we had 20 mercs who could all be viable. You would atleast see some interesting matches every time. And this is a realistic possibility which is quite exciting to think about. Games like LoL have such massive rosters that some characters can be left unviable for years but for db with a smaller roster i really hope SD works on making every merc a good pick. Will make playing and watching 5v5 games a lot more interesting.

Having the ammo boxes be contested is an awesome idea but would only work if suiciding didn’t replenish ammo. Ofcourse in that case teams would team kill to get ammo so I duno it’s all a bit complicated. Maybe spawning with less ammo is the best solution in conjucition with highly contested ammo crates. That way teams have to either go for a fops or fight for the crates… tactics! sort of

Also quoting someone from another thread can’t remember who ‘all mercs should feel great to play’
This philosophy should be applied to arty, skyhammer and nader who all currently feel inconsistent and weak. Easiest way to make a merc fun is to give them more impactful ways to effect the game and calling an artillery on an ev just isn’t that fun. Things like the suggested area denial on artys call in would him much much more fun :smiley:

(matsy) #18

I’ve been playing with Skyhammer for nearly my entire time in Beta, although I haven’t played in a competitive match yet.

I feel like I have air-strikes down now, just frustrating with the cool down bug.

Since the latest update, I’ve found it more annoying throwing air-strikes e.g. not being thrown when I expected which is annoying.

Especially when you use it in doors as a grenade, which I think should do more damage as it makes him more useful indoors.

(LiNkzr) #19

Some arty buffs that I have had in mind for longer time now

Make it so that when people hit you it doesn’t interrupt the ability (i think it’s something to do with the targeting getting thrown off by getting shot at)

Increase the damage so that 3 strikes will destroy a EV. (not sure if 3 or 4 was needed atm :D)

Add a secondary ability, which would work like this: Add a marker to the ground, it stays there for 10 seconds, and when using the secondary ability you instantly calldown a blast (or 0.3sec-0.5 delay), this way you can use it as good area denial. 30 second cooldown. This way you can use as effective long-range area denial who don’t get **** on by getting hit and you can be more useful than just sub-par EV destroyer.

(prophett) #20

[QUOTE=INF3RN0;527370]Some ideas;
(1) Increase c/d reduction on direct hits to 20%.
[/QUOTE]

Best suggestion.

Being able to control the direction of the strike like you could in previous games would make the strike much more deadly.

ie; I normally go the long way around on final Chapel objective to ensure my strike blows across from the back of the bus to the back of the rock. If I go main and throw it it blows in a line back through their spawn (good for spawnkilling, not so good for clearing bus and rock).