Bump for important test server patch.
Oh wow, I'm glad I already auraxiumed the Lightning HE. I'll also never get the Vanguard HE. The Vanguard HE could have used a buff instead of a nerf. I hardly ever see it used but I see the Lightning HE being used very often by the NC. Lightning HE on live is comparable to Vanguard HE but it's overall better due to low profile, agility and speedier reloads despite having slightly lower inner radius and maybe slightly lower damage, can't remember. In the Test notes the splash radius is the same but the Vanguard reloads a second slower. The main advantage of the Vanguard HE on live servers over a Lightning HE was the secondary weapon, but it pays for it by being a tall, sluggish target. The shield can make up for that sometimes but so can the Lightning's agility and ability to hide behind low terrain.
Splash is the most important aspect an HE cannon has. Now Dasanfall will be able to do their firing line thing with the whole outfit in two story point buildings covering all the doorways with no way except a ridiculous mound of corpses at the door to remove them. This significantly reduces the main counter to that. You can't even get a grenade toss you've started while still in cover to complete before being mowed down through those doors when they do that and you can't bounce them to where they are; they stand on those stairs in two story buildings so you have to turn the corner into the door and be shot by 5 people at once. If they don't like being splashed to death then they shouldn't pile into the same building and also use more LAs to kill my lightning instead of 40 HAs and support inside pointing their guns at the various entrances to mow down any infantry trying to get in.
Ground bulldog is fine; air bulldog is too strong and I agree with that one's nerf. The reason is air bulldog has a backdrop to shoot against infantry with, while ground bulldog is a lot more horizontal.
The rocket change doesn't seem like a bad change to me. When I kill someone with a rocket it's usually a direct hit anyways. It will have an effect on engineers repairing maxes though; rockets tend to fly nearby when you do that and I take a lot of splash damage doing that even with flak armor.
Some really bad changes here though in my opinion.
Test Server Update Notes : 7/1
Edit for clarity: This update is focused on the primary tank weapons, we will have some subsequent adjustments for the secondary tank weapons
Similar to the adjustments made with the Liberator belly guns, we are making adjustments to tank primary weapons, rocket launchers and the bulldog to make them less effective against infantry.
For the bulldog, blast damage is being adjusted so that the weapon requires more accurate shots. The air version will see a reduction in velocity, making it identical to the Zepher in that regard.
Blast damage reduced from 600 to 500
Inner blast radius reduced from 2 meters to 1 meter
Outer blast radius reduced from 6 meters to 5 meters
Air version only: Projectile speed reduced from 250 to 200 mps
For most Heavy Assault rocket launchers, the standard blast damage and inner blast radius are being reduced. This will make them incapable of a 1 hit kill against full health infantry with splash damage alone. In addition, this will cause max rank flak armor to prevent a 1 hit kill with direct hits:
Blast damage reduced from 1000 to 750
Blast radius reduced from 0.5 meters to 0.35 meters
Affected launchers
S1
Nemesis
Hades
Hawk
Shrike
Crow
Grounder
Skep Launcher
ML-7
Annihilator
Decimator
Blast damage reduced from 1000 to 650
Blast radius reduced from 0.5 meters to 0.35 meters
For tank primary weapons, we want to reduce the blast effectiveness of HEAT and HE, but this is problematic when effectiveness against infantry is typically what is considered to define them:
AP is anti-vehicle
HE is anti-personnel
HEAT is in between the two
Instead we want to push all three variants towards anti-vehicle with HEAT being the base line. Infantry effectiveness is reduced, but so is the anti-vehicle damage trade-off. This means:
AP
Direct damage will be reduced in cases where AP can destroy a tank in 2 less shots than HEAT (down to being 1 shot less).
HEAT
Inner blast damage is brought in closer and is no longer be able to 1 hit kill infantry
HE
Remove reload speed penalty
HE blast size reduced, but retains the ability to 1 hit kill infantry.
The size reduction will require more accurate shots than before to obtain the 1 hit kill
There are a few cases where direct hits from HE takes 2 additional hits to destroy a tank compared to HEAT. These will be increased so they just require just 1 additional round.
Line item changes:
Lightning
AP
Direct damage reduced from 1600 to 1400
HEAT
Blast damage reduced from 1000 to 750
HE
Time to reload reduced from 3750 to 3000
Direct damage increased from 1000 to 1100
Outer blast radius reduced from 8 meters to 5 meters
Inner blast radius reduced from 1.5 meters to 1 meter
Viper
Blast damage reduced to 450
Magrider
AP
Direct damage reduced from 1865 to 1600
HEAT
Blast damage reduced from 1000 to 750
Inner blast radius reduced from 1.5 meters to 1 meter
HE
Time to reload reduced from 4750ms to 3750ms
Outer blast radius reduced from 8 meters to 5 meters
Inner blast radius reduced from 2 meters to 1 meter
Vanguard
AP
Direct damage reduced from 2075 to 1800
HEAT
Blast damage reduced from 1000 to 750
Inner blast radius reduced from 1.5 meters to 1 meter
HE
Time to reload reduced from 4750ms to 4000ms
Outer blast radius reduced from 8 meters to 5 meters
Inner blast radius reduced from 2 meters to 1 meter
Prowler
AP
Direct damage reduced from 1250 to 1200
Blast damage reduced from 500 to 250
Heat
Blast damage reduced from 650 to 375
HE
Direct damage increased from 725 to 775
Time to reload reduced from 3500ms to 2500ms
Blast damage reduced from 650 to 500
Outer blast radius reduced from 8 meters to 5 meters
Inner blast radius reduced from 1.5 meters to 1 meter
Test update notes: 7/2
d_carey Developer
New faction pistols. Note that these are in an early state and may have missing animations or other bugs.
NC08 Mag-Scatter
The NC08 Mag-Scatter’s powerful tungsten buckshot and compact frame make it an excellent close-range sidearm that can quickly dispatch nearby targets.
T4 AMP
The Terran Republic’s Automatic Machine Pistol functions similarly to an SMG thanks to its lightning-fast, fully automatic fire.
Spiker
Reverse-engineered from ancient Vanu tech, the Spiker’s hovering powercore allows the standard 2x burst to be held and charged into an accurate 4-round salvo.
Known issues
Animations and final looks are still in progress. We are putting these on test server early to get feedback on the general directions of these weapons.
Tank/AV Adjustments
Tank primary weapon direct hit damage changes added to test last night have been reverted. In addition, the Prowler blast damage will not be changed as much. Finally, the tank reverse speed, projectile velocity and other changes previously on test have been reverted to live values.
These changes are part of an overall goal to improve combined arms gameplay. Removing some of the instant twitch kills that tank primaries can dish out is part of that. These won’t be the only changes in this regard; this is just a first step and more changes will be coming, likely on both the infantry and vehicle side of things. We are discussing the tank secondary weapons as the potential next step, such as improving the anti-personnel effectiveness of Canister and Marauder.
Here is how the list of changes appears now:
Lightning HEAT
Blast damage reduced from 1000 to 750
Lightning HE
Time to reload reduced from 3750 to 3000
Outer blast radius reduced from 8 meters to 5 meters
Inner blast radius reduced from 1.5 meters to 1 meter
Lightning Viper
Blast damage reduced to 450
Magrider HEAT
Blast damage reduced from 1000 to 750
Inner blast radius reduced from 1.5 meters to 1 meter
Magrider HE
Time to reload reduced from 4750ms to 3750ms
Outer blast radius reduced from 8 meters to 5 meters
Inner blast radius reduced from 2 meters to 1 meter
Vanguard HEAT
Blast damage reduced from 1000 to 750
Inner blast radius reduced from 1.5 meters to 1 meter
Vanguard HE
Time to reload reduced from 4750ms to 4000ms
Outer blast radius reduced from 8 meters to 5 meters
Inner blast radius reduced from 2 meters to 1 meter
Prowler AP
Blast damage reduced from 500 to 375
Prowler HEAT
Blast damage reduced from 650 to 450
Prowler HE
Time to reload reduced from 3500ms to 2500ms
Outer blast radius reduced from 8 meters to 5 meters
Inner blast radius reduced from 1.5 meters to 1 meter
If this is how the blast radius will be, I'd suggest that the new blast radius currently known as outer stop at a low amount of damage that can slowly overwhelm medic shield thingies over consecutive shots instead of 0, and adding a large 3rd radius larger than the outer on live now that does that small amount of damage that goes down to 0 at it's limit.
A suggestion I was going to make before I read these notes after dieing over and over to the Orion and SVA-88 tonight was to add significant inertia to adadad strafing, so once you start strafing in one direction it slows down over a period of a second or so before going the opposite way. I'm getting kind of sick of being killed by adadadad macroers and even people without macros spamming those keys. It looks stupid. I'm guilty of doing the same thing, spamming adad and quick stop crouching because it's too effective not to do it; infantry one on ones with equal weaponry and both people aware of each other usually comes down to who can screw up the other guys aim with changing strafe direction. I'd gladly give up my ability to do it to screw over people who use macros to move back and forth so fast that even if you can track them I think it messes up hit detection. It also really hurts guns that are best used when stationary and really encourages the use of .75 ads movement speed guns.
Glad to see a mention of Cannister and Marauder buffs though. It'll be nice to spam AI secondaries at those most deserving Vanus after all the PPA I've seen the last couple months, assuming the buffs aren't under-done.
Canister and marauder definitely need big magazines, the same size as a PPA's. They need to be able to kill infantry that run out into the open at mid range with ease and be possible to kill with at long range if the target does not change directions or otherwise start juking towards reasonably close cover and the gunner can lead a target like with the PPA. They need to be able to lock down doorways and chokepoints in the same way PPA does. If they can't do that PPA will still be the undisputed king of AI secondaries. I'd suggest a choke toggle with a lower rate of fire for the canister to be able to be used at long range. If Canister really has to be short-mid ranged via pellet spread it would be forgivable as long as it can kill infantry in the open at mid range (150ish meters) in a reasonable amount of shots/time and aim upwards as far as the kobalt. If it has no pellet spread toggle it should have decent splash damage to be able to lock down doors with the few pellets that would hit at mid-long range. Remember, the closer a tank gets to infantry and the structures and terrain they like to hide in, the more they are asking for a C4ing so Canister does need to have long range punch, or at least a fire mode that has it.
For Marauder I have less ideas due to not having used it at all. I think it would be neat if it had firing modes that change the arc of the projectile though, so you could arc it over cover to maraud enemies with or have it fire on a much straighter trajectory for direct firing. It would take some serious practice to turn it into a mortar or howitzer type projectile and have it fall accurately, but it would be possible and cool. I do it with smoke launcher underbarrel attachment fairly well; I aim up as far as possible to have the smoke round land maybe 30 meters in front of me (never measured, I just know how far it goes) and then de-elevate slightly if I need it to land it slightly more distant. You can shoot it over buildings doing this and have a perfectly placed smoke cloud for when you turn the corner. With a small radius damaging grenade it would be much harder to put it to use rather than placing a big smoke cloud, so don't build the weapon around indirect fire unless it has a large radius and can only shoot up with either a slow rate of fire or low damage per splash to limit it's power despite a large radius. An alternate fire mode that can arc it that way in addition to a straighter trajectory fire mode to be used for direct fire would be cool even with a small radius though, as direct fire would probably be the mode used most often.
EDITS: Many typos, more ideas and then more typos.
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Topic: Planetside 2: Free-to-Play MMOFPS. 2000 players/server. (Read 1132815 times)