DISCUSS: The Rock/Paper/Scissor Thread

[Mohican]

This new thread will be dedicated to Weapons/Items and their Counters.

Crosslight made a very good argument (in my opinion), that good strategy games such as Warcraft/Starcraft were developped in a way that each Tech could be countered by another Tech of the same Tier.

Please use this thread to offer ideas of Counters for Weapons/Items in Savage that are currently unstoppable.
Try to make the changes involved as small as possible, and easy to implement.

[Mohican]

To get things started, I will make the first suggestion.

Sacrifice currently has no counter (especially when combined with shield and/or rabid).
Humans need to spend money on 5 towers and a shield to counter this single item.

I am suggesting to improve the immobilizer in order to counter Sacrifice.
Instead of activating on impact, the immobilizer should be able to bounce for a few seconds, or until it hits an enemy player (like disruptors).

This would give humans a chance to stop a beast shimmying past towers against the terrain.
It would also give humans a better chance to stop a synchronized Sac Rush (currently unstoppable).

One remaining problem is that Immobilizers are Tier 2 and Sacrifice are Tier 1...
It may be beneficial to either swap Sac/Firewards round, or swap Immob/Sensor.

This last comment will be very controversial, but in truth Sac is a very overpowered Tier 1 item...

[TotalNewb]

Hmmm... switching sensor to level 2 is a really tough call. Sensors are really important early game. You need those out quick to be able to follow beast expansion movement and you definitely want them out and secure before mist shroud comes a long. Switching sac/demo to tier 2 really would be the easiest way of solving the problem, but you're likely to get a lot of backlash for that one. It would greatly change game flow and it'd take some getting used to. It'd force humans to get land mines to get to demo, which sometimes just isn't possible as human commander when you're base building on a budget. Granted humans would be given a little more time to expand and get resources since sac would be coming later. So maybe that'd even out. I dunno, tough question. I wouldn't be opposed to testing it out though.

[Trikitiger]

Hmmm... switching sensor to level 2 is a really tough call. Sensors are really important early game. You need those out quick to be able to follow beast expansion movement and you definitely want them out and secure before mist shroud comes a long. Switching sac/demo to tier 2 really would be the easiest way of solving the problem, but you're likely to get a lot of backlash for that one. It would greatly change game flow and it'd take some getting used to. It'd force humans to get land mines to get to demo, which sometimes just isn't possible as human commander when you're base building on a budget. Granted humans would be given a little more time to expand and get resources since sac would be coming later. So maybe that'd even out. I dunno, tough question. I wouldn't be opposed to testing it out though.

Actually I think switching sac/demo around (with their respective mine counterparts) would be a perfect idea, because if humans get land mines before sac, this means that they can put mines around their base to prevent a sac rush (Oh no, here comes a sac! *Boom* Haha, mine'd you) Not to mention it would give humans a good source of early gold from a failed sac rush. However, because both a demo-rush and a sac-rush would be slowed down from the tiers being spun around (sac/demo now level 2 instead of level 1), many commanders may not pull a sac/demo rush anymore due to the change. Also, that's only -ONE- item to counter a sac rush. However, beasts can just as quickly get strata up and then invest in the Storm Shield, which effectively renders land mines useless, while humans need to research dischargers in order to disarm firewards (also it's not 100% accurate like the storm shield). This in turn creates a dilemma, because now you have strata to deal with for humans, and the only thing humans can do to counter strata is really nothing, mag helps with seeing beasts movements, but that's about it, You need -TIER 3- Mag to beat out Beasts' tier 2 tempest, and even though flux does a great job beating out fire rushes (locking beasts to the ground when they use leap and preventing stamina gain... never was like that when I started), it doesn't stop strata.

So I guess from my observations I can see this as:
Fire > Mag, Strata > Elec, Strata > Chem (Storm shield nullifies all chemical weapons for 10 seconds, very effective)
and
Elec > Fire, Mag > Strata, and Mag > Ent (sensors for gates and Coil is ten times better than surge and rupture combined)

Chem and Ent really have no use on what I've seen (in terms of COUNTERS), but from what I've seen, if Fire, Mag, Elec, and Strata create a circle, where does Ent and Chem really come in? They don't really... So according to my observations you'll get a circle like this:

Code:

Fire ---------> Mag -----> Ent
^                 |
|                 |
|                 V
Elec <---------- Strata -----> Chem

*The off-shoots are what they also counter, not entirely part of the circle
(Fire beats Mag, Mag beats Strata... etc.)

But even so, you tend to get over-powered from tempest in the strata line. This is mainly due to humans needing a Tier 3 weapon just to counter a tier-two weapon... And now I'm out of ideas and observations... Mind go poopy X.x

[Cross]

After all the countless arguments I appreciate the support Mohican.

Outside of the two suggestions I made on the incinerator post, I haven't really thought of any other tier imbalances. Those have (temp and sac) have been so blatantly obvious that it was impossible to avoid or not notice but now that this topic has been created I'll start looking specifically at tier counters, but yeah all successful RTS games have counters that work per tier, and more importantly nothing is without use.

Problem is it seems some weapons or items don't have that much use, everything should have a purpose, and sadly like the incinerator this isn't the case. Rupture as well isn't that good BUT it can at least be used to distract and blind players, I know for myself that I have a very hard time blocking when it's spammed on me but I'm not justifying it, it obviously needs a boost. Human healers need a change as well obviously considering its lack of use and shamans to a lesser degree, you will at least see them being used.

Here is at least the way i see tier balance as of now. Unit wise not counting sieges I think are fine and nothing should be changed.

Let's look at tier one weapons.

Beast
Ember - Frost Bolt - Chaos bolt
Humans
Bow - Incinerator - Scatter gun - Discharger

At this point nothing is really without counter. Scatter and frost bolt are basically the same weapon, considering beast can leap, that gives FB the slight edge but it's very manageable to fight against. The only REAL weak link here obviously is the incinerator, it has no place or purpose, and it almost never used, this needs to be changed and to a lesser degree ember. So tier one weapon wise things are fine, nothing can't be countered, unless humans go chem and are screwed completely range weapon wise with the worthless incinerator, but scatter gun and discharger work well.

Tier 2 is where problems arise

Beast
Blaze - Tempest - Surge
Humans
Crossbow - Repeater - Mortar - Flux

Now the problems arise with tempest and flux. Mortar clearly is nearly useless against units and is hardly ever used even for buildings, and you can go weeks without seeing a single player actually taking mortar over another weapon to actually fight with. But anyways flux of course is very dominate up close, which WOULD be a problem if tempest was more dominating. Now flux and tempest should be worked out, flux by correcting the stamina glitch, and tempest by boosting the repeater. Not only would making the repeater more viable give humans an actual ranged counter for tempest but it would cut down on the constant flux spam and as much as I use flux, I would take repeater over it in a heart beat if the spread was toned down and made more accurate. As I posted more in-depth about the two on the incinerator post, the only NEW suggestion I would make here is to fix the flux. I would also personally tone down the damage blaze does to sieges by 5-10% the day I see a single scav kill 5-6 bali's in about 15 seconds SOLO with only blaze is when you know you have a problem and I believe I saved a demo of it. Also ImLagging can support me on this, but me and another chaplain had our healing beam on him as a bali, and I tossed a pot on him and ONE blazer still killed him.. with two chaplains and a pot, this should NEVER happen. Maybe even gives pots 5-10% fire damage protection for sieges or something, anything, it's just ridiculous how insanely fast blaze can kill sieges without really any skill involved (opposed to coil - sums especially HIDING summoners which bali's can't do)

Tier 3

Not much to say really.. outside of Rupture needing a boost, and pulse being hardly ever used considering storm shield makes it worthless, not saying to change it but if something could be done about it, it would give humans another weapon they could seriously use. How about launchers to.. how often do you ever actually see anyone using them? If it's not once every 2-3 games then you know it needs a change. Same with fireball, I'm not entirely sure what changes need to happen for either, but both weapons are basically obsolete, and thats an issue, no real counter problems in tier 3 though, would be with coil but considering beast get tempest at tier 2, as far as I see tier 3 is fine, but those 3 weapons should have some changes to them so people actually use them, rupture, launchers and fireball.

Items

Sac- well you already know I posted about it on the incin. post and you already brought it up.

relocs - I agree snare should stop relocaters, as long as the player is snared he shouldn't be able to reloc considering relocs have zero counters as of now for beast and this would be one.

Snare - see above

Mist shroud - no counters, a red beam doesn't count as a counter considering you still can't SEE the enemy. I would suggest PAINTED (not beast identified with sensors) should show an outline of their invisabile models so you can at least see something to be able to properly fight and melee them because as of now it's VERY hard to properly fight and block a red beam, how is that a counter? You still can't SEE the damn enemy, but I'm not attached to this one, doesn't really matter much to me I just think it would help. Also considering how vastly popular this is, it's very, very rare to not see a stat whoring predator take this item to sneak up and get easy kills on players.

Sensors - Not really an issue with the sensor itself, but apparently there is a glitch that when the commander jumps out of the com chair, gates on the mini-map become invisible which lead to MANY lost games because even though humans had sensors down, they couldn't be seen because of this glitch, really needs correcting, this is game breaking. As for carrying multiple sensors, I really have no stand on it one way or another, yeah it would be nice to carry 2 instead of one but it's never really been an issue, but it would help to save time, which is always nice, 2 at most would be good. One more thing I wouldn't mind changing with them, if one is under attack it would be nice to see some sort of notification on the mini map, or an alarm type sound emitting from one when it's hit.

Demos - if a game play wise change happens to sac, to nerf it (not just switching it with wards or something) then as.. I believe Bigger suggested it but, that the size of the demo should be increased slightly to make it easier to hit. I know this was on the test server, don't know if it ever made it into a patch, doesn't look like it size wise, but it would seem appropriate if a nerf comes to sac, to sort of even things out a bit.

That's all I can think of for now, I never really thought of specifics for what changes exactly need to be made for the weapons, never had a forum for something like this before, but like I said now that we do I'll start thinking and spectating games to study them more.

[shuN]

Simple sac suggestion:

Allow immobilizers to stay on the place they come to rest as a trap for a period of 10 seconds with a meter radius determined by Mohican.

This will cause a human unit to throw a immobilizer, and even though they may miss.. the immobilizer trap left will be situated on the ground for any possible enemy unit to become 'trapped' in. Essentially the saccer, if not caught by the immobilizer upon explosion, will have to dodge the trap that's set on the ground. This will cause the saccer to need to become skillful in his advancement to his or her target.

Things that may occur:

Human players will all carry immobs and throw them in a line/area which will then block anyone trying to advance forward.

Counter: smaller radius for the trap to be set.

Immobilizer effect will be to small or insignficant still for humans to use.

Counter: Allow the trap to cause a preset amount of damage if an enemy unit is stupid enough to get caught. Damage suggestion could be as small as 50hp.. or as high as 150hp. This number should not be very significant as it will end up OP.

This in term will be similar to the placement of a ward/mine.. but cause MUCH less dmg and only lay on the ground for a short period of time before disappearing (about the same time as an ammo or moneybag stays..) however, the radius should be about the size of a catapult IMO.

[Mohican]

Crosslight: That's a good start.
I follow your logics, and agree mostly with your analysis.
Please see my PM for some info I would like to discuss with you and Daemon.

Shunsui: hmmm... that would change immob a lot.
It could also be exploited to spam spawn flags and portals with immobs.
It would also not help with trying to catch ennemies that are shimmying and already out of range.
I still prefer the idea of multiple bounces for all those reasons.

[shuN]

Snare could have the same effect.

How would it exploit if people already place uber amounts of wards/mines at flags?

these would be temporary (10 seconds, similar to ammo/mana/gold) and they would do a fragment of the dmg that wards/mines do.  They also don't stack (unless you choose otherwise), so you wouldn't able to hold 5 like a ward/mine... So using 1 would be invaluable to what your purpose is.

Also, to shimmying units.. If a human player were to place one of these in front of the shimmying spot (ie: the edge of a tower/building) .. these would work perfectly, do to it being placed in the path of the enemy unit.. so when he were to be in a location just prior to where he needed to be, then he would land on this new Immob, being slowed/damaged slightly in the process.

Solved.   

[Daemon]

relocs - I agree snare should stop relocaters, as long as the player is snared he shouldn't be able to reloc considering relocs have zero counters as of now for beast and this would be one.

I have explained this on several occasions - some of the time with Tirza's help, for instance. You do not try to anticipate the effects of this change, or any other change. You just figure out THE CHANGE. But you have to look beyond the change, to its results.

So you're making 2 huge mistakes here. The 1st is affecting reloc. Every single bit of change that you do to affect reloc's effectiveness will result in humans using reloc in an increasingly pre-emptive style, instead of a reaction to imminent death.

Example: Say you got a fat-ass kid, with an eating disorder. Trying to prevent him from buying crap food from the school MacDonalds and eating it on his own, you instruct him: "You are NOT allowed to eat anything in school!" But you assume he is going to obey. Which he might. But just like any addict, he will find a way to make sure he's able to carry out his vice. So he's gonna go buy crap from MacDonalds on his way to school, and eat it all BEFORE he enters the school. Furthermore, scared that he might get insanely hungry while at school and not allowed to eat, he might over do it, by getting even more Big Macs than he used to before the prohibition.

It's the same with relocs. Humans, who have an obvious harder time getting gold, once they're out of, will stay out of range of anything that can make them unable to reloc. You hope for more melee time? You're getting less. You hope for more kills? You're getting less fights. Everyone will coil whore. If you nerf coil they'll balli whore. If you nerf balli they'll MMBow whore until there's not a single weapon left to shoot. Because once they are in range of the beasts, they know they can't escape by reloccing so, i ask you: WHAT IS THE POINT IN MARCHING TO YOUR OWN GRAVE?

Ok now the other mistake within your suggestion is that you take a perfectly good item, Snare, and you make it into a wtfstrong item, which everyone will want to have. Sure, why not, everyone has meds at hums, right? Yeah, but with such an uber item carried in every beast's pocket, humans will be even more scared to come in contact with melee beasts, and they'll just shoot their ranged weapons from afar, camp close to garrs, reloc for ammo, and then do it all over again, transforming Savage into Counter-Strike-like sniper-wars. Especially those 100-0 reloc-whores that you hate so much and you have wet dreams about killing them. Not so much with clueless noobs, no. You'll get to kill more of those.

You have to think of what the players suffering at the expense of the changes you're suggestions will react like. So if you want suggest something like having an effect that stops reloc, you have to keep it balanced. How? For example, give Shammies a 5th weapon that does that. Having Shamans won't win you the war, even if they stop reloc, so you won't see that many of them roaming around. But giving Snare this power while conserving the offensive capabilities of the Beasts using them, because every melee unit can carry it, it's the kind of reckless suggestion only a player blinded by his desire to kill, rabid and destroy every puny human on the map.

[Trikitiger]

Snare could have the same effect.

How would it exploit if people already place uber amounts of wards/mines at flags?

Easily, because immobs don't have a number restriction like mines do, humans can easily coat the map with HUNDREDS of immobs and only be burdened by the amount they need to pay for the immobs. A commander can tell his/her entire team to coat a chokepoint with immobs, thus creating a nearly impenetrable wall, it also creates more deaths on the beasts' side who have no sort of item to bring them back to their base (unlike humans who have reloc). If a human gets snared in a beast's base/sub, they reloc, and they're safe, a beast gets immobed in a human's SH/garr, they're basically dead.

[shuN]

Reloc fix:

Simple.. just decrease the range at which relocators can communicate with their transcended base.

This will cause human units to have to place a relocator closer to the location at which their path lies. If they want to descend to an enemy base.. they have the place the relocator base at say.. 500m max distance to which they intend to relocate back to it.

Example:



notice the threshold at which a unit can use the reloc.. marked as the red relocator.

If a unit passes this threshold, they will no longer be able to use a reloc and must return back within the set area.

Notice on the OJ relocator, the human unit has intelligently concealed his relocator in a location to which he is within the 500m max and can still use the relocator when attacking his target.

Ultimately, the decision for this relocator program will not nerf, or buff the relocator.. but yet a human unit must be more intelligent at placing his relocator. They will no longer (unless their target is close to a garrison or their stronghold) be able to place all the relocators at the stronghold.. and teleport back whenever they've performed their mission.. or took care of their target.

This fix is A+    

[shuN]

Trikitiger, please read my entire post before assuming through your answer to a sentence or two.

Allow immobilizers to stay on the place they come to rest as a trap for a period of 10 seconds

and

and only lay on the ground for a short period of time before disappearing (about the same time as an ammo or moneybag stays..)

 

[Cross]

relocs - I agree snare should stop relocaters, as long as the player is snared he shouldn't be able to reloc considering relocs have zero counters as of now for beast and this would be one.

I have explained this on several occasions - some of the time with Tirza's help, for instance. You do not try to anticipate the effects of this change, or any other change. You just figure out THE CHANGE. But you have to look beyond the change, to its results.

So you're making 2 huge mistakes here. The 1st is affecting reloc. Every single bit of change that you do to affect reloc's effectiveness will result in humans using reloc in an increasingly pre-emptive style, instead of a reaction to imminent death.

Example: Say you got a fat-ass kid, with an eating disorder. Trying to prevent him from buying crap food from the school MacDonalds and eating it on his own, you instruct him: "You are NOT allowed to eat anything in school!" But you assume he is going to obey. Which he might. But just like any addict, he will find a way to make sure he's able to carry out his vice. So he's gonna go buy crap from MacDonalds on his way to school, and eat it all BEFORE he enters the school. Furthermore, scared that he might get insanely hungry while at school and not allowed to eat, he might over do it, by getting even more Big Macs than he used to before the prohibition.

It's the same with relocs. Humans, who have an obvious harder time getting gold, once they're out of, will stay out of range of anything that can make them unable to reloc. You hope for more melee time? You're getting less. You hope for more kills? You're getting less fights. Everyone will coil whore. If you nerf coil they'll balli whore. If you nerf balli they'll MMBow whore until there's not a single weapon left to shoot. Because once they are in range of the beasts, they know they can't escape by reloccing so, i ask you: WHAT IS THE POINT IN MARCHING TO YOUR OWN GRAVE?

Ok now the other mistake within your suggestion is that you take a perfectly good item, Snare, and you make it into a wtfstrong item, which everyone will want to have. Sure, why not, everyone has meds at hums, right? Yeah, but with such an uber item carried in every beast's pocket, humans will be even more scared to come in contact with melee beasts, and they'll just shoot their ranged weapons from afar, camp close to garrs, reloc for ammo, and then do it all over again, transforming Savage into Counter-Strike-like sniper-wars. Especially those 100-0 reloc-whores that you hate so much and you have wet dreams about killing them. Not so much with clueless noobs, no. You'll get to kill more of those.

You have to think of what the players suffering at the expense of the changes you're suggestions will react like. So if you want suggest something like having an effect that stops reloc, you have to keep it balanced. How? For example, give Shammies a 5th weapon that does that. Having Shamans won't win you the war, even if they stop reloc, so you won't see that many of them roaming around. But giving Snare this power while conserving the offensive capabilities of the Beasts using them, because every melee unit can carry it, it's the kind of reckless suggestion only a player blinded by his desire to kill, rabid and destroy every puny human on the map.

Well I don't think it's as severe as your making it seem. I mean I know the importance of reloc I bet I've used it more then any human player..ever, and how it helps humans manage gold and prevents beast from acquiring more but as it stands now reloc has ZERO counters and that is a problem. I'm not saying this is the BEST way of making a counter for it but it is a good idea. Really think about it, how often do you actually see beast USE snare? Not often, yeah sure every now and then but, frenzy, mist, and storm are sure to be taken far more often, and as it stands now snare has NO real PURPOSE outside of stat whoring which isn't a reason to have.. anything in this game. Making it counter relocs would give it a purpose, and a counter FOR relocs, which hopefully will lead to less humans whoring relocs, humans PUSHING instead of running more ( a big cause for human losing) more chaplains to continue.. said push and more beast using LESS effective and used items like snare, giving it more life and variety.

Again this is my view, obviously yours is different, i said my piece on it and I'm not going to continue arguing about it if you still disagree, really nothing more for me to say on it unless someone else has another option on a counter for relocs.

[Trikitiger]

In terms of the reloc counter, what about bringing up the idea of the delay again? That way melee can be the counter, and snare is just the helper for that counter. Dunno, but saying the reloc doesn't have a counter just sounds stupid to me, because humans can't go and bash NPC creatures like beasts can (Carn = essentially no damage from NPC creatures, while humans need to spend money on medic packs to heal from NPC Creatures)

Trikitiger, please read my entire post before assuming through your answer to a sentence or two.

Allow immobilizers to stay on the place they come to rest as a trap for a period of 10 seconds

and

and only lay on the ground for a short period of time before disappearing (about the same time as an ammo or moneybag stays..)

 

Although that does lessen the degree of spamming, it still doesn't stop the coating of areas due to the infinite amount of immobs humans can use.

[Daemon]

Really think about it, how often do you actually see beast USE snare? Not often, yeah sure every now and then but, frenzy, mist, and storm are sure to be taken far more often, and as it stands now snare has NO real PURPOSE outside of stat whoring which isn't a reason to have.. anything in this game.

Say what? Snare, statwhoring? How on earth have you managed to get these 2 in the same sentence? Statwhoring at beast means heal, fire, heal, heal, fire, heal for a rabid pred. Dear god, when have you ever seen a beast statwhore use snare?

Making it counter relocs would give it a purpose,

But snare has a purpose! If players aren't interested in using it at its best, or they simply like to statwhore, which basically excludes having Snare with them, it's another matter. But in all this game, there is absolutely no better counter for all of the 3 Human Buffs than Snare. An elec'ed Lego wants to pwn everyone? Just snare him and let it wear off, blazing from a safe distance. A mag'ed Lego wants to break through tons of wards and beasts? Snare him and let it wear off. A Lego on Adrenaline wants to outrun ya' and place his demo? Well it's obvious, just Snare him and let Adrenaline wear off too. What more could you hope from a single item? Just because YOU don't do it, doesn't mean it's not being done!

and a counter FOR relocs, which hopefully will lead to less humans whoring relocs, humans PUSHING instead of running more ( a big cause for human losing)

Well, you "hope" it will lead to less human reloc whoring, but you should "see" it won't. It will have the opposite effect because right now, Humans can push only because they don't lose everything each time they try to. If they're gonna die while pushing, a couple of things will happen.

1. They will run out of gold and be overran in their own base full of buzzing nomads.
2. Once they get gold, they won't do this stupid thing (pushing) ever again. Ever. Cuz that means only begging for scraps (= killing the 2 oschores in their base and spamming "Request" button in hope his team gets some gold)

Again this is my view, obviously yours is different, i said my piece on it and I'm not going to continue arguing about it if you still disagree, really nothing more for me to say on it unless someone else has another option on a counter for relocs.

You really have to stop trying to get a counter for reloc. You don't know your frieds when you see them. Reloc is a friend. Reloc is the reason why humans dare to come face to face with a beast in melee. Reloc is the reason they have the balls to push. Reloc is humans' lifeline, and if you take it away, Humans won't be worth playing, except for camping around their base, out of Snare range, defending all the time and making sure no beast gets to Snare them, which would lead pretty much to certain death most of the times.

Limiting Reloc to a given range will have the exact same effect. Hums won't be leaving it for no reason. It will bring every shred of teamplay in pubs down to a halt. What motivation will any Human have for pushing, demorunning, or doing anything away from his base? What, dying?