missile towers/missile minions

[fire]

These are essentially the reason i resent clearing in this game. I would like you to do the game a favor and completely scrap all fortresses that have anything to do with missiles that kill you in 2-3 hits, flies across half the region to kill you, and basically makes any general difficult situation 100% impossible without running or dying.

I honestly hope I speak for many other people when I say that they are obnoxiously irritating. An example of this would be when you are trying to kill a tower, and suddenly a missile flies into your screen, hits you and hp bar drops to half. At this point you would suddenly realize there is a missile tower, and your basically forced to stop killing what you currently are, to go deal with the missile tower. now that you are dealing with it, the minions from the tower you left are still hitting you, eating away at your now less than half hp bar. once 10 or so missiles are in the air it becomes increasingly harder to dodge, until you are forced to run, but those 10 missiles are still following you once you've left the area, and your going to have to dodge all of them for another 30 seconds if you want to live. If you manage to do that and survive, you go kill the missile tower and are rewarded with.....nothing or something completely worthless.

I just can't really stand it anymore personally, I don't get on that often because every time I do I end up dying 5 or 6 times to these things in about 10 minutes of playing, and when I go to farm prisms im still encountering them, and they are literally near impossible to dodge once your out of speed prisms. I hope some other people can back me when I say that it would be beneficial to just remove them completely.

[israphial]

Yep. +1. I want them to get nerfed ASAP. And not slightly nerfed, nerfed a lot. They fly too fast and deal waaaay more damage then they should.

[Ood]

Without these towers, the game is easy. While that isn't necessarily bad, I don't think removal of one of the few difficult bits of the game is a good idea. If anything, make these towers appear less frequently.

[israphial]

See, I don't have a problem with the towers themselves, it's the strength of the missiles. I'd be fine with them if their damage was, maybe, halved. As of now though, they dominate the fight when clearing, and as Fire said, they make clearing, or anything for that matter, a pain. Especially if there's like 4 missile towers close to each other. Yesterday there were 6 around a mineral and most of the group died. I just managed to origin in time. How the heck are you supposed to kill all of them without getting obliterated by their sea of missiles?

[Kelsoo]

They are pretty easy. I like them quite alot, with the removal of them tclearing would be back to the monotony that it was before, or still is, but it would be much worse. Missile towers are fine as they are and easy enough and fun to do.

Basically what you are doing in this post is complaining about being bad at dealing with them and dying. The strength of the missiles matches how easy it is to dodge them and they add new gameplay elements. The fact that you always have a danger even when all seems safe and have to go deal with that is a great thing and makes for much more interesting gameplay.

Learn how to dodge basically. If anything is in need of a nerf it's the Oblivion fortress in the maze regions. Not the cute little missiles.

[fire]

Apr 11, 2014 9:30:43 GMT -5 Ood said:

Without these towers, the game is easy. While that isn't necessarily bad, I don't think removal of one of the few difficult bits of the game is a good idea. If anything, make these towers appear less frequently.

I would be alright I suppose if the amount of the towers were decreased, last night i was constantly running into groups of 3 or 4 of them and 30+ missiles is not something that can be handled by anyone alone. The reason i wanted them removed in general is because yes, you are correct when you say that it makes general clearing difficult, and not easy. But if i wanted to do something hard, I would be doing convoys. Most people farm fortresses for either prisms/to get to region boss, and some for xp. nobody except an hour old player farms it for loot though, so why should you be forced into a difficult situation when all you really need to do most of the time is get your strength back so you can do the the other content in the game?

[israphial]

(convoys are easy, fire)

[fire]

good point. but then should convoys really be easier than basic clearing?

[Justin]

I'd like to point out a few things:

I get the vibe that it seems excessively difficult because you are trying to reprism.

How did you lose your prisms? God bombing most likely. Teleporting instadeath repeatedly would be my second guess.

If you see a bunch of butchers, is running away and/or finding a new path that difficult? And also, if you're constantly circling a butcher, most if not all of the missiles will never hit you (unless I'm just too good at dodging but I doubt that).

As for the pink missile one, if you're not using a tank that can quickly take out minions with one of its triggers, I don't know why you're complaining about these and not all fortresses harder than betas, alphas, and supply stations.

Edit: so if you lost your prisms in the way I said, it's your fault more than anything.

[fire]

actually tbh i lost my prisms to missiles because im just honestly horrible at dealing with them t.t if everyone disagrees with me then I suppose im fine leaving things the way they are. Better for one person to lose out than the rest, right?

[Ood]

Apr 11, 2014 16:18:41 GMT -5 fire said:

actually tbh i lost my prisms to missiles because im just honestly horrible at dealing with them t.t if everyone disagrees with me then I suppose im fine leaving things the way they are. Better for one person to lose out than the rest, right?

No, most of the people playing this now are not really playing it 'casually', and certainly most of those on the forums aren't. We want the best all the time, and at the same time we want the game to scale nicely to accommodate different levels of players. Currently, there is no scale... everything is easy (aside from insta-death commanders). For casual players, missile towers/minions may be too much to handle to the point of them quitting the game altogether out of frustration. I don't think Rob wants to alienate the new and more casual players by frustrating them with a difficult tower that appears everywhere. I think lowering the number of towers spawned would suffice just the same if not better than changing the towers/missiles themselves.

[Kelsoo]

Apr 11, 2014 16:45:17 GMT -5 Ood said:

Apr 11, 2014 16:18:41 GMT -5 fire said:

actually tbh i lost my prisms to missiles because im just honestly horrible at dealing with them t.t if everyone disagrees with me then I suppose im fine leaving things the way they are. Better for one person to lose out than the rest, right?

No, most of the people playing this now are not really playing it 'casually', and certainly most of those on the forums aren't. We want the best all the time, and at the same time we want the game to scale nicely to accommodate different levels of players. Currently, there is no scale... everything is easy (aside from insta-death commanders). For casual players, missile towers/minions may be too much to handle to the point of them quitting the game altogether out of frustration. I don't think Rob wants to alienate the new and more casual players by frustrating them with a difficult tower that appears everywhere. I think lowering the number of towers spawned would suffice just the same if not better than changing the towers/missiles themselves.

Playing the game casually it is still easy to deal with missile towers, the mistake would be making them easier to scale with newer players, because attachment rates on all games are low. It's a matter of learning patterns. And how long that takes is subjective. But what isn't is how easy it is to deal with them after the point.

Missile towers are very easy to deal with, and in fact I find them more fun than the tedium, utter boredom that is doing convoys. I get a very nice rush when being chased down by two or more missile towers and circling each of them trying to rotate my shields just right and killings them. The reward is arguably sub-par but then again so is every other reward in this game since there are still none basically. Currently I the only fun there is to be had in the game anymore for me is through the gameplay or dying which gives me a reason to actually play. For about 30 minutes.

Edit: I think the biggest problem with the games difficulty is the arbitrary difficulty levels and how endgame is being dealt with. It's basically "go in with other players do damage and hope your shields are just strong enough to keep you in long enough to get the reward" there really is no strategy to some of these newer "harder" enemies. Just get a beefy shield kill it and hope you are there to get the reward. Aside from Zeta's where you can have some fun circling around inside, but that only happens once in a lifetime.

[Ood]

After some further play (and deaths via misslie), I've noticed that virtually all of my deaths are from missiles. More from missiles that I do not notice than from not dodging them or having them deal too much damage.

Missiles are difficult for a variety of reasons, including:
Not seeing them based on zoom level
The damage they do
Personal tank preference (hornet is especially poor with missiles due to always lacking a frontal shield, and that is my main tank)
The lifetime of and number that are fired

In my opinion the first of these is the biggest problem. Depending on how far zoomed you play the game, you may or may not see missiles at all. Lasers differ in that you can see the direction that turrets are facing when they shoot at you, but if you play on a zoom level that is far enough out, you may not have any indication that you are in danger as they are very long range weapons.

Increasing the size/noticeability of missiles could also help alleviate some of the pain of getting 'missiled' without noticing. If the size is to remain the same, then perhaps a glow around the edges of the game when a missile is locked on to you (in fact that might be better).

I don't think missiles should be 'easy' but I think you should at least be able to see or have some warning that they are coming.

[Kelsoo]

Apr 20, 2014 23:06:29 GMT -5 Ood said:

After some further play (and deaths via misslie), I've noticed that virtually all of my deaths are from missiles. More from missiles that I do not notice than from not dodging them or having them deal too much damage.

Missiles are difficult for a variety of reasons, including:
Not seeing them based on zoom level
The damage they do
Personal tank preference (hornet is especially poor with missiles due to always lacking a frontal shield, and that is my main tank)
The lifetime of and number that are fired

In my opinion the first of these is the biggest problem. Depending on how far zoomed you play the game, you may or may not see missiles at all. Lasers differ in that you can see the direction that turrets are facing when they shoot at you, but if you play on a zoom level that is far enough out, you may not have any indication that you are in danger as they are very long range weapons.

Increasing the size/noticeability of missiles could also help alleviate some of the pain of getting 'missiled' without noticing. If the size is to remain the same, then perhaps a glow around the edges of the game when a missile is locked on to you (in fact that might be better).

I don't think missiles should be 'easy' but I think you should at least be able to see or have some warning that they are coming.

I had predicted the whole Hornet fun, it never was a problem since no one ever used it , the game has become very un-hornet friendly, especially with the range of some missile tower. My suggestion for visibility has always been the same as before, make them have a glow like your tank leaves on the backround or possibly "blink". Visibility has gotten much better but I feel doing this will stop the whole "not visible enough" argument and then give players more chance to dodge it and learn the proper patterns.

Personally though this is the only thing I would want dine to missiles because they are exciting and on of the few somewhat difficult without being complete insta-kills enemies in the game that actually make sense. I have no idea how zoomed in/out you would have to be playing at regularly and comfortably to not see them though.

[Crunch]

A large number of my missile deaths come while typing or when I'm trying to get cute with my Vindicator. The rest happen when I never even see the missiles coming. I would like to see some kind of improvement in the way missiles are shown/acknowledged by our HUD. Advanced tanks like those in Grid12 should be able to at least acknowledge a missile lock. See the gif below:

Now, this mockup graphic is too thick and has no glow, but please bear with me; I did this very quickly. I think something like this would go a long way in Grid. My idea comes with two main points:
• You would only get the "locked" graphic if the missile was actually locked onto your tank. Missiles following other players would appear as they currently do in game. This allows for both better reads on missiles which are important for you to dodge, and can still allow for some sneaky missiles to strike you if you're in between them and a teammate.
• Missile-locked graphics should both scale and vary in transparency, relative to the proximity to the locked player. This avoids clutter at the edges of your screen, gives visual priority to the missiles which are closest to hitting you, and looks fancy. 

This would likely solve the problem that zoomed-out players are having with missiles. As the graphic is more of an element of the HUD, rather than a property of the missile itself. Therefore, it doesn't need to scale up/down if you zoom in/out, maintaining visual continuity (think convoy arrows).

As an after thought, this could also be an upgrade for your tank. Perhaps it could be a consumable meant for crafting or a something perma-linear like augs/mods. 

Let me know what you think.