Build 70

[Kelsoo]

Crunch

In other antecedent builds this was the case, up until about build 68. Once that hit convoys became less and less focused on. Either no one noticed them or really had much care.

Today I did one Ion convoy. We killed it in about maybe ~90 or so seconds and got decent but not really substantial loot or reward (especially when compared with time v. reward). Every subsequent convoy that had followed after had been completely ignored. This has been the general behavior and consensus on convoys for a while now.

The convoys that had ended up being called out were met with no players and thus, left alone. Players seem to have either grown bored of convoys. Which is understandable considering that the only real dynamic one is the Quantum, and even then it really isn't worth it aside from the much needed challenge. But no one does them so those are often left for the buzzards as well.

As for my requiem on modules, they are not worth Grind12'ing convoys in any way. They give you minor at most increases in (not needed) power for somewhat major grinding (in comparison) especially when you have absolutely no use for the mods you acquired. Convoys are not difficult, while about as challenging as your average cherry picked Delta (which are also called out in a much more gargantuan manner than convoys; and often met with response) they provide not enough reward for low enough challenge that feels like Grind.

Mods are very much so not highly sought after in any degree. In fact they really aren't.
As for coins, Zeta and Omni have you covered. Though I haven't much use for them considering how inflated the market has been getting.

TL;DR Convoys are not being called out anymore, convoys are declining in favor even with rewards due to being the same thing, over, and over, and over, and over again, convoys are getting even less challenging and monotonous (exception, Quantum), convoys drop not so useful loot (while in comparison to clearing) though minor benefit (mods, though also not needed and pretty rare you get the one you want), convoys are lepers.

[Crunch]

I understand what you're saying, but I don't know where you're getting your experience from. I've been playing pretty heavily; you can check my XP levels if you don't believe me. In my experience, convoys are a very sought after and very pursued enemy. Nearly everyone I see playing, prioritizes convoys over every other non region boss project. I'm not sure why you aren't seeing the same thing.

Mods are also ~10x the potency of their aug counterparts. Which means that a voy would need to drop 10 sequential augs to equal the effectiveness of a single mod, and do so 20% of the time.

Mods are very powerful, and sought after. If they are not sought after, why isn't anyone selling them? Ask some other players if they're selling mods. They'll tell you, "no", they're hoarding them, unless they're for tanks which nobody uses. Also, why do players type, "mod!" when they drop, if they're not prized?

People do want mods. People do call out/kill convoys. I'm just sorry you've been playing with the minority who do not care. Pop on with me sometime and we'll kill some together.

[zub]

Overlapping HP bars of X-style super tanks are not really helpful with constant changing of their top-middle-bottom positions. I am not really sure what do I expect though. Different position or shape so they don't overlap? Overlapping, but sorted by % of hp so they don't change positions wildly? Not a bug, zoom in to fix?

[Kelsoo]

Crunch

3/10

[tribow]

Kelsoo

10/30

[tarbomb]

Haven't been on the forums too lately due to that mysterious force called real life, so this feedback post will cover the last few builds as well.

The sort by type/level is a very handy feature, but the toggle doesn't appear to be persistent across logons, so I have to turn it on every time I log in. It's a nuisance, but a rather annoying on since the automeld toggle is persistent.

I'm not really sure what the point of supply caches is. The loot is no better than what you get from leveling a town, and clearing a supply cache doesn't give the same sense of satisfaction that leveling a down does since clearing (a rather boring task) becomes a terminal goal rather than an instrumental goal in trying to build up a city. My impression is that the supply cache is a kludgy artifice shoehorned into the game in an attempt to reward clearing regions - it doesn't really seem to mesh well anywhere with the flow of the game (free-form expansion of territory outwards, influenced by landmarks such as towns, minerals, and convoy routes). The promise of a zeta or omicron is a far more compelling incentive than a few cheap tank unlocks.

No comment on Vindicator, since I don't have it yet. I've still got a long way to go.

Frankly, I can't tell any difference between the current phantom and the old one. It remains a competent solo clearing tank, but its scouting ability has been drastically decreased - not by the nerf, but by the minion wander increase.

The main effect of minion wander, as I see it, is that it renders (mostly) ineffective the trick of scouting in a trailblazer, clearing the minions around a building, switching to a minotaur, killing it, and moving on. That's a good thing. It does force you to rely on the gun a bit more in orbiting watchtowers, but in my personal experience, since watchtower orbits are spaced far apart, that's not too big of a change; chances are that my gun will have finished recharging by the time I get to the next one.

I finally saw an omicron the other day. It's a tremendously fun enemy - much more so than the zeta. More importantly, it's impossible (or at least very difficult) to use shearing kamikazes effectively on it, since the minions spawn from so far away that a safe anchor is pretty much impossible. I'd like to see the concept of spawning minions in response to players (rather than just having preexisting minions) be a more prevalent mechanic in the game.

The zoom levels (as of B69) are mostly adequate right now, but I'd still like to see a zoom level between the closest one and the second closest one. The innermost zoom level is too close up to do anything (and can, in my opinion, be entirely removed with little ill effect) but sometimes the second zoom level is a bit far out and lag-prone (due to the fade animation being used at the edge of visibility; a level between the two would help a lot.

Lootwise, the game seems to heavily deemphasize augments. Leveling towns? Tanks. Minerals? Storage. Caches? More tanks. The only way to get augments of any significance these days is to meld from GCT augments (impractical, since they mostly drop augments around level 6 and you'd need 128 augments - and a lot of luck or storage - to meld to a usable level 13), grab some from convoys (rare, since convoys, being invisible unless there's a town nearby, are often missed), and zetas/omicrons (obviously rare). I don't know if this is intended or not, but new players won't be able to get well-augmented tanks at the same rate that we could back before the convoy visibility nerf.

I'm uncomfortable with the concept of randomized modules. Sure, a bit of randomness makes modules less uniform, but rolling the figurative dice after each sale means that players never know what they're going to get their hands on, so short of thrashing modules back and forth between alts (definitely something that should be discouraged!) or buying an insane number of modules from the market, players won't be able to effectively control how their tank develops. I'd rather see a variety of "primitive" modules with boosts randomized on drop (so everyone gets the same kind of module), and have melding simply add the effects of two modules. The level system for modules should be done away with as well. That way, people always know what something they're about to buy will do, but there will still be a lot of variety in the module system.

[Ood]

Oct 5, 2013 22:04:31 GMT -5 Kelsoo said:

As for my requiem on modules, they are not worth Grind12'ing convoys in any way. They give you minor at most increases in (not needed) power for somewhat major grinding (in comparison) especially when you have absolutely no use for the mods you acquired. Convoys are not difficult, while about as challenging as your average cherry picked Delta (which are also called out in a much more gargantuan manner than convoys; and often met with response) they provide not enough reward for low enough challenge that feels like Grind.

Modules ARE worth 'Grind12'ing for.
As Rob has said, most modules give ~5% bonus. That's the equivalent of 10 augment levels. Apply +5% rate of fire on any tank, and you have 3 pulches instead of 2. Get a high level mod and apply 10%, 15%, or more. A similar case can be made for damage. A similar case can be made for shields. Some of the trigger related mods might be a bit less useful, but in my experience, having a trigger cooldown decrease mod can be very very nice.

And you are also flat out wrong with this comment:

Oct 5, 2013 22:04:31 GMT -5 Kelsoo said:

Mods are very much so not highly sought after in any degree. In fact they really aren't.

People want to mod their favorite tank. That's the logical progression of the game. Newb>Pulched>High Augs>Mods.

Kelsoo I really think you need to just play the game more.

[tarbomb]

Speaking of convoys, I don't think it makes sense to have them be the endgame condition anymore. Most of the time, game resets come from Rob manually resetting them on new builds, not convoys getting killed. If you can't see convoys, and you can get loot that's almost as good leveling towns and clearing minerals, convoys aren't going to be done anymore.

[quicklite]

Alright, I have 4 things to address here:

Mods: I stated all my opinions on this thread here. No need to re-post them.

The fury: Let's face it, this thing is weak now. Its dps just sucks, it's now heavily outclassed by the herc, the phantom, and to some extents the minatour when it comes to shielding, and it has the fundamental flaw of only being able to fight from the sides to top it off, which renders it quite useless for most situations. Although its earlier nerf was justified at the time, everything has gotten generally more powerful since then. So imo, the fury just needs a decent, but not too extreme, dps buff. Just to give it some firepower from the sides again, making it capable of dealing some damage again, like it used to. Not much, though, we don't want to overpower the thing, it just needs to have its guns lifted from their current state of silver-esque.

The minatour: I've said it before, and I'll say it again: This tank is OP. If I wasn't on a quest to level15 every tank there is, I would use it and only it for clearing. There's not really any reason to use anything else. Okay, I know that it can't really deal with minions, but it really doesn't need to. It can do 90DPS standard, which is almost as much as some things do on overdrive, it has enough crowd control ability to render anything that isn't airboune dead, its insta-frontal shield coupled with its potent shielding and invincibility renders it incredible at tanking fire, and since its land-only gun, its main power source, is frontal facing only and ignores airborne enemies, it is incredibly easy to focus it on the target on your choice unlike all other weapons. Combine that with its incredibly short shield regeneration times, and you have a tank whose only weakness is its inability to kill airbourne enemies, but even that doesn't matter because of how easy it is for the minatour to shrug off the blows of airbourne enemies through its survivability triggers. You've either gotta cut its dps, or its survivability. However, since this is technically an end-game tank, I would suggest the latter. Nerf the outer shields and the mino's hull, maybe even nerf the shield refill to partial. Furhtermore, increase their regen delay, and put a larger cooldown on the invincibility trigger, just because that thing is potent.


Convoys: Well, the loot buff will make them more sought after, but convoys, in my opinion, are still faulted. They are always the same damn thing, and become incredibly monotone for anyone who has played grid for a while, especially because cleared convoy routes mean that they will be in the exact same way every single time, which even clearing isn't faulted with. Of course, being...well, writing this, I have some suggestions. Firstoff, give all convoys some other thing going on with them. Perhaps give dogs the ability to throw landmines in random directions in front of them, maybe at the cost of their speed. Turn ladybugs into aircraft carriers that release minions on anyone who gets too close. Give ions another layer of missle (maybe even semi-homing missle?) launchers, or maybe a certain weapon that rarely fires, but is super effective against shields? Heck, maybe give convoys 'triggers' of sorts, random things that they could do which spice things up (for example, a ladybug could a) release an omicron-esque burst of minions, b) Glow for a second before releasing an AoE that destroys shields on impact, c) release a short burst of bombs aimed in accordance with the players movement, like ent ancient shots in realm, or d) drop a payload of slow but deadly shotgun-wielding land tanks. If voys, as well as moving and possessing badass laser guns, had some other characteristic such as minions, something that needs to be dodged, gunship-esque enemies it could throw, or yes, droppable turrets, as well as maybe a few random-event type things to keep matters changing, they would be gone after a lot more. Buff the loot on convoys, and they become a farmable blob. Buff their actual gameplay, and they become a worthwhile experience. Both would keep convoys valid, but I'm pretty sure the latter would keep players coming back.

[fire]

quicklite nerf the survivability of minotaur? you gotta be kidding me. It already got meganerfed with new wander radius for minions. This tank already sacrifices enough survivability for dps, considering i have to back away so often from any enemy that has minions, I'm already losing enough dps at that point, since its not continuous like almost any other tank where you can sit back and press a trigger, then wait and press another trigger, then repeat the previous trigger, all without backing away from your enemy. I don't know if you have actually been playing the minotaur for longer than 10 minutes, but the words you just typed make me heavily doubt it. I die already constantly because it is extremely difficult to compensate for the minions. And i cant clear through anywhere that has any small towers with minions, because by the time i reach the 3rd tower in I have to origin or die. It might provide more firepower in large groups, but soloing or duoing it is a difficult tank to use without losing all of your prisms constantly. Granted I myself use this tank quite frequently, but that is because even though it is difficult to survive many things, it has its strengths against other tanks, such as its dps, on the otherhand, most tanks are well suited against minions, which will mess you up if they are not taken care of. The only decent thing it can take out reliably without a struggle are drills. This is probably the one thing it is overpowered against. I struggle heavily against novas, and almost every small tower except beta processors, and Delta minions can be a pain as well.

This is my input, and my standpoint will not change unless you can prove me wrong in game, though I wish you good luck with that as I know near every strength and weakness about the tank due to having played it to level 106.