Balance suggestion thread

[DiogenesDog]

Been a long time since we had one of these. Going to just post some random suggestions for balance tweaks. I'm mostly a TBD player, so not really taking Ball into account below...


Dogfighter and Recoilless
Problem: Lacks a role in team modes - needs to either have more of a presence on the battlefield OR get so good at its current role of killing single planes that it makes up for this.
Suggested tweaks: Ugh, this is a hard one. Maybe improve speed while carrying the bomb slightly and decrease energy used by all attacks. Basically make it a more viable bomb carrier + slightly more powerful overall. Idea here is to give it a role where it's primarily a bomb carrier, but more versatile than something like a TA.


Heavy Cannon
Problem: Very slightly underpowered in team games. Same issue as other biplanes, but less severe.
Suggested tweaks: Remove shoot-through damage reduction. OR take the opposite route and improve its initial hit damage to emphasize its role as a single target sniper.


Acid
Problem: Great team player, but just slightly UP overall in TBD.
Suggested tweaks: Decrease energy cost of acid - this will also make this less painful to use in those situations where you've fired a couple shots and your stupid acid won't shoot. Maybe improve speed when carrying the bomb for all loopy loadouts.


Tracker
Problem: Just a crappy plane overall.
Suggested tweaks: Increase tracking even more, really crank the **** out of this. Make this at least feel unique instead of being a crappy version of Double Fire. Then look at balance again at that point to see what additional tweaks are needed.


Double Fire
Problem: Decent, but just not quite good enough in TBD.
Suggested tweaks: No idea. Maybe increase damage output just enough to require 1 less missile to kill most planes?


Director
Problem: Great plane. Just not quite as great as Thermo or Remote.
Suggested tweaks: Honestly, my main thing here is that I think this is the most fun flavor of Explodet to play, so I'd like to see it come to the forefront again. I'd consider giving Thermo and Remote very very slight nerfs to bring them in line. Explos dominate defense in all modes anyway, so I'm not worried about making the plane obsolete or anything.


Dumb Bombs
Problem: Terrible plane versus all but the noobiest.
Suggested tweaks: Jack up damage and area of effect on bombs. Basically, right now there's no reason to risk using bombs in any situation when I can just point my nose downward and unload grenades for the same effect. Make bombs super scary and maybe players will use this as a choke defense plane. Another thought would be to slightly change the ejection point and trajectory of bombs to be more rear-facing so there are more angle situations where bombs trump grenades. One final thing that might be interesting is to give the bombs more "weight" so they reach max vertical speed very quickly - basically make it so that no matter which direction your nose is facing, you have a projectile that will shoot directly downwards very quickly. Currently they can't lob very effectively or anything, so removing lobbing altogether might be an interesting way to go with this.


Flak
Problem: Overpowered. Needs to be brought in line with Suppressor.
Suggested tweaks: Decrease range slightly OR remove AoE.


Time Anchor
Problem: Possibly too good at carrying the bomb.
Suggested tweaks: 0.3 - 0.6 second TA cooldown increase when holding the bomb.

[Stormich]

My feelings about your suggestions:

Boosting tracker is gonna make it #1 played loopy EMP+never needing to aim is just too simple to play at highest levels.

DF in good hands is a beast and it snipes any plane with a single volley using ultracap. It's by no means weak, also boosting this would just make ballers use DF even more (I feel it's present in at least 60% of all plane setups in ball)

Director is fine as is, it's underplayed cause its boring not cause its weak. People just want to be stuck on it for too long cause the other perks are just more fun.

I've always been for switching dumb bombs, meaning instead of front fire you get bombs+supressor like in old altitude.

The rest of them are fine observations

[A Nipple]

BIPLANE! kuja has an awesome idea =3 for bip which is make it harder for it to stall when bomb carrying so it has a more effective role and maybe a less energy cost and also for HC I think its way too easy to stall atm especially in cramped places.

explodet I can see director is never used in tbd reallyyy maybe a small nerf on remote and smalll buff on directors imo.

It would be nice to see loopy tracker track a bit more, just enough to make people have to debate to themselves to pick double fire or tracker. Also acid I think dio's idea of lower energy cost would be great. Personally i loveee acid as a plane and everything about it but in tbd especially in league I cant recall one regular acid player who played in a game most weeks for apl3.

My suggestion for the anchor idea is to buff the damage acid causes when the anchor has the bomb to bring acid back into the game more. Meaning rather than nerf anchor use it as an opportunity to diversify the planes used in tbd.

Laser is currently OP ( a bit) and i think it seems so widely accepted that everyone assumes people know. But it needs to be made known here where it counts.

hmm bomber a tough one for me as i play it =[ In all honesty I could count on one had the amount of people that think its OP and one of them is an xplodet the other is dio lol.
I dont think the AoE shud be touched as the purpose of flak is not to aim it pin point on a spot but escape from a tricky situation using it to propel you away and it helps kill to but infact I find when I use flak my main focus is getting out of that tricky situation not in fact to kill someone, therefore you dont have the time to aim if your focus is elsewhere. Overall I think bomber is the most balanced plane.

nip

[Evan20000]

Wait, I don't see Trick on that list. Does this mean people are finally done crying about it?!? I think I'm about to shed a tear.

[DiogenesDog]

Yeah, I don't get why no one else thinks flak bomber is OP. Everyone basically has this stance that "light planes suck", but isn't the flip side of that that heavy planes are strong? Bombers dominate map control, are probably the best pushing plane in the game, and are strong from almost any angle and any range. They're versatile, forgiving, and pack a ****load of firepower. I really feel like a team composition of 4 bombers + 1 runner is one of the strongest in the game, and that's... not good. :/

Also, they seem extra strong to me because they're very strong when you have high ping and also harder to fight against because dodging projectiles gets near-impossible. :P

[Kuja900]

I have recently shifted from thermo to director, I will be proving its not underpowered very very shortly.

edit: Balance wise my main problems, next to the overpoweredness of anchor, are the uselessness of tracker/dogfighter/dumbbomb. All three of them need some buffs to give them an identifiable advantage over their counterparts in certain areas.

[andy]

Proposed tweaks:

- Recoiless/dogfighter: Bring up piercing to 100% for second plane 70% for third plane and 50% for fourth plane (just the machinegun) so it has some effect on other planes too (atm the machinegun piercing isnt very strong and the range is so small high piercing will never be OP also if u give it 100% pierce for 10 planes)

- Acid: I actually like the energy decrease in the acid usage but also a slight cooldown decrease or a SLIGHT increase in the acid radius would bring it up to level with the other planes.

- Dumb bombs : give it tailgun or invent a new perk atm its useless.

- Biplane all perks: give it some more health (read: still lower than bomber) or make it so afterburning takes even less energy than it does now (last patch was 5% decrease only).

- Tracker/DF: make the emp do some more damage (it does 10 atm) when hit directly.

- Tracker:Reduce enrgy consumption for missiles so you can get out 1/2 more at full energy.

[elxir]

the problem is that these updates then affect ball, where acid is borderline OP, loopy in general is sick nasty, TA isn't overwhelming, and whales are so good it hurts

[Kuja900]

This thread needs more attention, some great ideas here.

[gameguard]

again i really like the idea for biplane to make them not stall as easily and recover from stall faster.

acid could use a slight decrse in energy.

this might sound overpowerd but what if tracker shots acted like the missle power up? You face someone then it will track as long as the angle isnt too much (the allowable angle should be no where near the missle powerup where they curve around 360 degrees). This would give it a different playstyle than doublefire allowing you to emp and shoot some missles then dodge other planes or what not.

[DiogenesDog]

Originally Posted by Stormich

Boosting tracker is gonna make it #1 played loopy EMP+never needing to aim is just too simple to play at highest levels.

Meh. Damage output is so important, I think the homing would have to be nasty as hell before it edged out DF. In like 75% of my fights with Loopy I have no trouble getting a lock even with DF, so I don't think this will make a huge difference in competitive TBD games. Where I actually see it being potentially terrible is ball, where you're more likely to be tailing behind targets for a significant amount of time.

Originally Posted by Stormich

DF in good hands is a beast and it snipes any plane with a single volley using ultracap. It's by no means weak, also boosting this would just make ballers use DF even more (I feel it's present in at least 60% of all plane setups in ball)

Yeah, Ball is definitely a problem for this one. But I really don't agree about TBD. It's a pretty solid plane, sure, but it's almost completely fallen out of use in TBD. Only person off the top of my head who uses it consistently is Wolfe, and he's mainly using it as a bomb runner. I'd be pretty surprised if the stats didn't back me up on this one.

[Beagle]

If you want to buff HC's sniping potential don't worry so much about damage as increasing the projectile speed making it easier to hit targets on the other edge of the screen. As of right now it takes about a second for the bullet to hit something on the other side of the screen, the problem being:

1. Unless the target is travelling straight towards you, it takes a lot of skill to properly lead the target to hit regularly when it takes a second to hit, even if they're going the same speed in a line; if they simply change speed or turn at all its all too easy to dodge

2. Targets that are travelling straight at you and are thus easier to lead are much harder to actually hit from a screen away due to the thin, narrow profile presented by every plane except possibly an Explodet, due to HC aiming at range being primarily good guesswork owing to the lack of a crosshair/aiming aperture, meaning if you are a notch above or below you will miss

The long and the short is hitting people at range is 50% skill 50% luck and 50% the other guy not doing anything about it. This may be just how the dev's want HC, to not be a sniper at all but more of a long range spammer like the other planes; if this is the case then HC definitely needs some damage buff as its spam is so rarely effective without careful aim, which misses the point of being able to spam; it also requires its old pierce back to have aoe spam like all the other choke spammers. However I think seeing it in a sniper/assassination role would be so much better than just another choke spammer.

[Evan20000]

But that's what the trickster does, Bagle. It's shot moves much faster so it can hit people offscreen reliably if you know where they are. I always thought of as HC as a sort of "DMR" plane because of the issues you listed and the fact that you can quickly fire a followup shot.

[Beagle]

Ignoring the fact that you can also fire a lot of followup shots with Trickster, "DMR" is definitely one way to look at HC

However you don't really get any benefits for being the DMR, as Trickster is just effective close and medium as well as being a fast sniping weapon; I won't even get into the warp combo because I hate that thing

[Evan20000]

Yeah, but the followup shots are really weak unless you're using properk and have 3 golds. And lol @ warpcombo

[elxir]

warp combo is amateur hour

[Evan20000]

On a completely unrelated note, increase the range of trick and HC shots. We want across the map snipes. (At least I do...)

So many times where I know where someone is and have a clean shot, but they're too far away...

[elxir]

Originally Posted by Evan20000

On a completely unrelated note, increase the range of trick and HC shots. We want across the map snipes. (At least I do...)

So many times where I know where someone is and have a clean shot, but they're too far away...

the best is when you're flying away from a randa and they snipe you but the shot fades out mere pixels from your plane

i'm like SHAZZAM and the randa is like FFFUUUUUUU

[Evan20000]

Originally Posted by elxir

the best is when you're flying away from a randa and they snipe you but the shot fades out mere pixels from your plane

i'm like SHAZZAM and the randa is like FFFUUUUUUU

Yeah.... Don't remind me. That happened like 10 times against you in ladder yesterday. D:<

[elxir]

haha i was thinking of that exactly there was one time low on space i was runnin like whoa and ur deathray just dissipated

[Smushface]

Quit trying to get trickster buffed.

[DiogenesDog]

Originally Posted by Beagle

If you want to buff HC's sniping potential don't worry so much about damage as increasing the projectile speed making it easier to hit targets on the other edge of the screen. As of right now it takes about a second for the bullet to hit something on the other side of the screen, the problem being:

Seems safer to buff its crowd control abilities. Makes it stronger for Ball/TBD without making it better for FFA/TDM. I think it also is more interesting, since it takes its one unique special ability (shoot-through) and emphasizes it more.

[Kuja900]

Bump, there has been a real lack of good dev suggestions in the suggestion sub forum recently. So I would just like to bump this thread as I feel some real problems were addressed here and real solutions as well that have not been sufficiently discussed. The biggest problem in the game right now imo is that there are multiple red perks with no practical use in competitive play. My personal biggest gripe at the moment is dumb bombs. I know that the dumb bombs are popular amongst the newer crowd but surely there is a way to tweak them to be both fun and effective. The first solution that jumps to mind is tweaking their AoE. Tracker and dogfighter are both concerns as well.

[silent skies]

Tracker could potentially be replaced with a third kind of status-effect / gas weapon.

My suggestion (which I've touted before) would be smoke-bomb (or whatever you feel like calling it), a defensive perk that gives (only) allies in the smoke field a temporary damage reduction from direct-fire weapons, and also possibly completely obscures the vision of enemy planes. Would be best to give double-missiles for this perk, since the smoke would in theory do 0 damage. I'd say that the smoke-bomb should have a relatively high energy cost so as to avoid excessive spamming

A bad plane for 1v1 situations, but would obviously be invaluable during bomb pushes.

I like your suggestion for the AoE increase for DBs.

I am not sure why dogfighter exists. Does it have higher damage than recoilless?

[[Y]]

Yes. Also less energy consumption and a more efficient afterburner.