Build 100

[rob]

Greetings Brave Testers! It's build 100!

* Add new sounds for player guns
* Add some new sounds for Nova complexes
* Display player info on mouseover
* Fix issues with large chats (such as /shelp)
* Nerf Thunderbolt sniper gun to 60 dps (from 70)

The user-visible stuff is not so amazing this week, but we made some big changes under the hood. We spent a lot of time working on the anti-cheat system, which will eventually allow us to remove the invite codes and open the game up to a wider audience. I'd estimate that we are about one-third finished with it.

We'd like to do another round of balance tweaks next week. If you'd like to help, recommend some paired buffs and nerfs, such as "Mustang is underpowered (more dps please), and thunderbolt is still OP (shields are too thick)."

Next week (build 101) will be the last build for at least two weeks, as both Tim and I will be taking some time off work.

Thanks for playing! We appreciate you!

Rob & Tim
Jetbolt Games

[Jufda]

I'll be taking some time off internet, two months. I'm travelling to South-East Asia. I'll return to see what improvements you've made to the game in the end of July.

[Justin]

Change for the viking, although not necessary

Give the twin cannons a little more damage, but also increase their 'reload' time. Change the 3rd trigger from a fire rate/damage boost to something that removes reload time for X seconds. Maybe even weaken the shields a bit? If it is weaker though, increasing the recharge rate could compensate.

I don't see a lot of people using Viking often anymore, but it seems like the go-to tank for players who don't have the tbolt yet. Speaking of tbolt, this nerf was pretty expected, although I doubt it will change the op-ness of it.

Paladin seems pretty useless. Outmatched by guardian in group healing (I doubt a small group would ever choose pally over a tank with better DPS, or guardian, to take things on. And in a large group pally heal is pretty insignificant). It's outmatched by hurricane for situational encouters, since hurricane heals, takes down missiles, AND destroys minions. It's outmatched by avenger for convoys. I don't know what could be changed though, without making it too peacekeeper-esque (from what I've heard about that tank, at least) or too strong.

Going to try seeing what other tanks I refuse to use by playing all of them at some point if my attention span lasts.

Edit: The turret sound, ooooh this will take some getting used to. I think I like it though.

[fire]

Silver is underpowered. The other day I was told by one of the players to switch to a better tank or they wouldn't help me kill towers since playing silver is leeching apparently. (note: I have 4 lvl 5 mods on my silver and was using a level 3 enertek cell at the time) Therefore I would recommend some form of a damage buff, so that silver is considered a viable tank.

[Ood]

Buff:
Fury
Separated fire zones essentially cut this tanks dps in half. Since its shields are now lesser than other similar tanks, this tank is not used because of its underpowered nature. Buff its shields, or its dps. Oh, and give it a decent second trigger. Perhaps something anti-missile related.

Nerf:
Everything.
The game is easy.

[Duco]

When driving in double-click mode, if you move your mouse onto your tank you will stop driving, but keep turning.

You should *buff* all disarm triggers. They don't stop bombs and missiles, in my opinion they should.

EDIT: All damage over time stuff seems underpowered too. Perhaps make them last longer? Forever would be terrible, as people would just hit every enemy and wait 2 minutes for all of them to die.

EDIT2: A few white tiles appeared when I killed a drill.

[Duco]

Perhaps the game should be more... Brutal doom-ish. You kill everything twice as fast and everything kills you twice as fast. As Ood said, the game is easy. On the other hand, the fact that the game is easy makes it noob-friendlier. In order to make the game more difficult, you will have to get rid of the entire "single battlefront" idea and do what lots of games do: some areas are more difficult than others. Since enemies don't respawn, making everything more difficult the further away from origin you go isn't going to work.

I like the maze regions.

[fire]

While I can agree that the game is too easy, I can also agree that the rewards are equal to the risk. There has to be some way to allow general clearing to amass small viable amounts of wealth or else its going to continue to be a painful task which gives the person who does the most work no reward for their effort. Plenty of times one of us will spend an hour or two clearing most of a region only to leave for a while and come back to the same region to find that someone else has already finished the region boss. This in turn causes the player to feel punished for clearing because they got absolutely nothing at all in the end.

An interesting method would be to bring back the % of region cleared and distribute loot kind of like how vp were distributed, with higher percentages giving higher base loot. Or you could try something else by creating a secondary currency. Make it similar to the amount of gridshards you would earn per tower, but this currency would be used for the same thing that coins would be used for. The fact that you would be able to make a million+ of this secondary currency easily would ensure that coins would not be devalued by it, however it would probably take a while for the markets to stabilize. There just has to be some way to make general clearing worth it as many people will become bored over time of repetitive clearing without being rewarded for it.

Another thing is that I find many people become bored instantly and quit the game after 5-10 minutes of playing due to nothing really standing out and grabbing their attention. I'm not exactly sure how to fix this at the moment, but that could be a problem down the road.

Also @duco trello.com/c/0NVuEnv7/658-tickets-passes

[amitp]

I am very much looking forward to how the gameplay changes when we have lots more players!

[Will]

The Tbolt's lightning is overpowered as all hell. Make the mods do 1.07x per mod.

[israphial]

Buff:

Mustang (Inner blue shield, buff front gun significantly)
Hercules (buff gun DPS slightly)
Silver (buff small gun DPS slightly)
Viking (buff overall DPS slightly)

Nerf:
N/A

[Will]

LOL VIKING NEEDS A BUFF. LOL. You guys need to make serious suggestions here. The Viking is one of the most powerful tanks in the game, and with the Tbolt getting nerfed big time, we're gonna see it a lot more.

Also, the Viking is a very popular tank while you have tanks like the Valk and Predator (Neither are in need of a buff) that are less popular but even then are STILL viable. There's obviously some kind of bias here. Just because the Viking isn't the best tank in the game doesn't mean Rob needs to buff it so that it is. Please make actual suggestions for tanks that are absolutely useless like the Spectre (faster shield regen please), the Hurricane (Buff EVERYTHING on this tank), and the Hercules (Buff HP and shields to make it super tank w/ hardly any DPS like I put in an earlier post). I just realized I have a bunch of great ideas that I need to copy&paste here so I'll edit this post and add them in.

EDIT: Here's one of my posts from a few weeks back:

Okay Rob, I have some serious ideas to throw down here, please read.

1. Potion boost time should only go down if you are online and the boost time should be 6 hours

2. Right now the only tank that is being used is Thunderbolt. I think you need to make a serious change to the Tbolt. Here are my ideas for nerfs:

• Perhaps lower range down to 2500
• Make the gun do 35 damage with a .5 second CD, this lessens the effects of mods and prisms
• Nerf the overdrive trigger on the Tbolt to 80% of what it is now
• You could just flat out nerf the gun damage to 65 a shot like I suggested a couple months back

Make other tanks more useful, while the Tbolt is overpowered, other tanks aren't used at all because they are underpowered. I have never seen anyone who exclusively uses the Hercules, the Hurricane, or the Spectre. That case can still be made for the Kraken, regardless, there needs to be a change here.

Make the mod that increases laser damage a mod that instead increases fire rate by 1.03 per mod, this makes the Tbolt have a higher DPS, but it eliminates the issue of insane clear times for regions because it will take longer to kill a beta processor than it once did before. If this particular change is made, decrease range to 2500 and nerf the overdrive trigger to 80% of what it was before. The overdrive trigger is what makes this tank so overpowered in my opinion and the range also makes it an easy choice over the likes of the Spectre. Also, the Spectre could have its damage mod buffed to 1.06 if you ask me. Dunno just throwing that out there

3. The Kraken, as mentioned in the above suggestion, is still useless. I haven't seen anyone use it for a while now, and really I don't think it's because of the base stats of the tank, but more likely because the mods for it are useless. Perhaps change the Alphasear to an Overdrive trigger that gives 1.5x more gun damage and fire rate for 5 seconds with a CD of 35. Make the Alphasear module a universal gun damage module (increases all of the guns' damage) that gives 1.04 per mod. With prisms and 16 damage augs the main gun would do 131 damage per shot with the Anti-Minion guns doing 66 damage per shot. This would surely make the Kraken a viable tank that can still serve the role it's meant to: A minion clearing tank that can heal. I've never found the shields to be any good for this tank, despite what GridViewer says. The 100 shield that covers the back half of the Kraken really cripples its production. I mean, wow. Please nerf the main front shield to 300 and make that back shield like 200 or something. Either way, the defenses for this tank are ineffective.

4. I was thinking that since the Hercules is supposed to be a total tank, you should change the repair bot module to a hit points module. Keep the bonus for that module which is 1.0717, and the Herc can have (with prisms and level 16 hp aug) 2366 hp max w/ a 1450 or something shield. This would make it a fun tank to use and it would be really fun to run into a region boss to see how long you can live before death.

5. The Spectre is a tank that really serves no purpose in this game. I honestly think you should just scrap this thing and start over with it. It's a Tbolt that you can't aim with and a Hornet you can't use overdrive with. There is no place for it in this game. No one uses it because of its poor durability and poor gun. If a tank is gonna have a 3000 range gun, it can't be rotating because it will shoot at EVERYTHING you don't want it to. Also, the shield regen rate is too slow. 8 secs to wait for your shields to start to come back up? I mean, what are we gonna use this thing for? Perhaps you could get rid of the range and leave the Hornet to being the sniper, (it could have 2500 range) and then make the shield regen rate be 750 w/ a regen delay of 4. This would make the Spectre viable. More durability, less range. Also, it's called the Spectre so why doesn't it have a cloak trigger? Take the Spatial Extarpolation trigger and make it a cloak trigger that lasts for 6 seconds with a CD of 35.


6. The Hurricane could use a shield regen boost. Lessen the delay to 6 seconds and the regen rate to 350. Maybe buff the lightning damage to 28 per shot. That's it.


Ya, my ideas might be bad, but they are things to perhaps help you focus on some of the issues in the game. I hope I helped

[Justin]

Jun 1, 2014 20:10:41 GMT -5 Will said:

LOL VIKING NEEDS A BUFF. LOL. You guys need to make serious suggestions here. The Viking is one of the most powerful tanks in the game, and with the Tbolt getting nerfed big time, we're gonna see it a lot more.

over generalization :-(
only one person said viking needs a buff. My suggestion wasn't as much of a buff as it was a rework.

While the tanks you mentioned are pretty underused, you have to keep in mind that this game (hopefully) isn't meant to be a solo game. I'm hoping there will be another tank-rebalancing in the future after invite codes are removed, because that would be the prime testing environment for this game. (This is in response to you repeatdly using the "nobody uses it" argument for tanks not being viable.)

[trapped]

Jun 1, 2014 20:45:08 GMT -5 Justin said:

over generalization :-(
only one person said viking needs a buff. My suggestion wasn't as much of a buff as it was a rework.

While the tanks you mentioned are pretty underused, you have to keep in mind that this game (hopefully) isn't meant to be a solo game. I'm hoping there will be another tank-rebalancing in the future after invite codes are removed, because that would be the prime testing environment for this game. (This is in response to you repeatdly using the "nobody uses it" argument for tanks not being viable.)

lel

[zub]

Players asking for nerfs should attach videos of them tearing towers in speed region solo with aforementioned tanks. Thank you.

mustang - thick shields in front
predator - overdrive
hercules - the bomb should kill any minion of any tower
paladin - rollback heal gun nerf
kraken - damage buffing module