Regarding Hardcore TDM...

Yea I suppose Zeus didn't fully answer the question asked. Knowing that elimination may rotate into ranked season by season provides some potential diversity. The problem remains that elimination is balanced and TDM is not... it favors certain boats and certain items, so there will be an initial shakeup in ranking, and switching in different modes season by season will keep that ranking fairly destabilized. Events already work that way for certain boats... sometimes there is an event you are good at, and other times there is an event you wished would go away.

 

I wonder how will a HCTF be like.

 

This is how I think HTDM is going to work. Everyone needs to bring 2 boats minimum. 5x2=10. There are your ten lives per side. Once your boat is sunk, you respawn with your next choice. If you die again, so on and so forth, however.....
Remember when they said you can bring your whole shipyard? I don’t think this means your guaranteed to use all your boats. If (a big IF) you manage to one life the event, this would allow another teammate to use their extra loadouts. Forcing you to assess the battlefield before respawning, because you might not get to pick another boat.

Again, just my $0.02

 

That would be a disaster, with the way some of these people play I doubt they have the tactical awareness to make that call.

My hope is that you get 1 respawn Max and can choose any ship from your shipyard that you have equipped for battle. (Minimum gs for selectable ships?)
I would hate to see some suiciders run through all of their ships that are way underequipped and throw the match.

 

The update preview video says “....bring your whole shipyard....” I take that as bring as many boats as you can/want. This gives you more options to choose from depending on how the match is going.

 

Like @JoshW , I hope everyone only have 1 respawn if 10 death is the limit. Those whose cycle through their ships are the reason the team is losing. The more ships you use, the weaker you are and you’re wasting limited lives.

 

I highly doubt it will work that way. There will not be a Reswpawn limit. That would throw off the team balance from being 5v5 in the event one player took two immediate deaths and the team would be left fighting 4v5 and almost have an automatic loss. In Event TDM, you can be losing 0-2 or 0-3 and easily come back to win in a 5v5 matchup.

The new hardcore TDM is going to work exactly like the current event TDM. The only difference being, after death, you will be able to select a different ship to respawn as.

The only question I still have is whether you will be REQUIRED to select a 3rd ship on your second respawn. Or can you select your original boat on the second respawn. This could require that you have 3 ships equipped, just in case you need it.

 

Exactly, say you run speeder first and notice your team is taking a beating when you die you can then bring out your fixer.
Or if you have mostly defenders then you can bring out your shooter for more firepower.

If you have unlimited respawns I really hope there is some system in place to dissuade multiple deaths. Such as less infamy gain for the win or decreased rewards for excessive respawns.

 

That is the problem that I and many players fear.
-TDM with multiple respawn does not lend itself to strategic methodical gameplay.
-TDM with a set number of respawns(such as 1) will not allow teams to comeback from having one bad player on the team that dies quickly.
-TDM with infamy based on performance will NEVER be perfected under the current development team. We are at how many months of events and the developers till cannot seem to figure out the coin distribution in events to make sure boats are given credit for the intangible things that help your team win. Unless you deal obscene damage, you are left at the bottom of the coin allocation. How are they all of a sudden going to have the right formula with this update? My instinct tells me the forums are going to blow up after this update drops with complaints about unfair infamy distribution. At least 4 or 5 boats are going to get screwed because they are not primary damage dealers.

 

There are too many potential issues with TDM as a ranked match type... while it's ok for Event grinding and reckless play, without limiters like respawn limits it won't work as a proper strategic match type that should drive Infamy. However, respawn limits runs a high risk of one player throwing the entire match balance off by going out early with two deaths. I think it's a little worse than team elimination where one player goes out early.

 

I agree that this change would be a horrible idea.


The Ranked Ladder in a competitive game absolutely has to represent the game's very best and most skilled players, as well as be as pure as possible from exploits and manipulation.


What's the best way to do that?

A solo queue (no fleets), single elimination 5v5.

Why?

1) Fleets:

We all love playing with our mates, and winning takes teamwork, but rankings should be the best players, not the best fleets (nor the players best able to manipulate matches with fleets).

• The rankings are meaningless when they're littered with players carried by an advantageous fleet.*
• Fleets make it far easier to manipulate matches.**
• And, some skilled fleets - loaded with upper tier legendary gear and (p2w) event perks - have such a competitive advantage that matches cannot be properly balanced without match queues taking hours.

Obviously, they could (and should) add fleet tournaments, continue to allow fleeting in events and whatever the new casual mode is, but there is no realistic way to both allow fleets and have a meaningful ranked leaderboard.

2) Single Elimination:

I believe that this thread has thoroughly covered why Hardcore TDM (an oxymoron in itself) is a bad idea.

I suppose I'll add (or reiterate) that TDM in BB has been a much lower quality of strategic gameplay. It's a welcome change of pace for events, and I love the idea of allowing players to change ships in those events, but it's the wrong format for ranked matches.



Obviously, not everyone cares about rankings. Some are content with collecting items and blowing stuff up. However, if Rovio is to successfully expand into the competitive gaming (e-sport) segment, then the leaderboard has to be a true measure of skill.

Spoiler: Side notes:

*When I said "advantageous fleet," I know I'll need to clarify a bit.

• A better player can carry an average player higher than they should be (that leads to major infamy declines when they try to play solo), which discourages them from playing without a fleet.
• One-fixer teams have a huge advantage over no-fixer teams, which is one reason there are more fixers at the top of the leaderboard (especially since the FB was nerfed to death in NML).
• A single speeder or enforcer isn't necessarily overpowered, but coordinated fleets can eliminate enemy ships in a single fly-by or liter the field with an obnoxious amount of mines.
• A single FB wasn't an issue before, but FB fleet spammers were OP - so FB was nerfed into the ground - and that's what will happen to yellow boats and fixers eventually if their fleets keep dominating ranked matches (i.e., bad for solo players with those mains).

In a team tournament, gameplanning and coordination is a must, but it creates an unfair advantage when fleets are primarily matched with solo queue players.

I know .. I know .. The counter argument here that fleeting and coordination is usually a good thing.

The issue with it for the leaderboard is that many top fleets avoid each other. It's easy enough to see who's online or in a match in your friends list, so the reality of it is that many of the better fleets are stealing easy infamy from skilled solo players or far inferior fleets.

So .. to me, it seems more important to have a leaderboard that reflects the individual skill of those players rather than an arbitrary list of fleet and match manipulators.

(I've played against everyone in the top 200 of the leaderboard and some are far more skilled than me, but many of them would be sitting several hundred infamy lower without a dirty fleet to carry them ... For skilled players not privy to such tactics, it might be a bit discouraging when they're unable to reach similar heights).

Otherwise .. If there's no meaningful leaderboard -> it's not a esports worthy competitive game -> there's no incentive to buy/earn better items for competitive players -> less $$$

** I've gone into how fleets allow for easily matching manipulation in other posts, if you're curious.

 

@xArrogance your thoughts reflect my opinions as well. Streaming whales on Twitch doesn't make Battle Bay an eSport. What makes an eSport is equal gear matches, rankings, and tournaments. That is what I'd like to see more than anything else in Battle Bay, but this multi-ship TDM is going the opposite direction.

 

I was worried about hard core mode as I only have enough items to build one ship but latest patch notes say you only have to use one ship
As for problems with players not needing as much skill in tdm I’m optimistic that normal mode match making based on infamy could counter that? Only time will tell
Anyway I’m pretty sure hardcore tdm in ranked will be a good thing for me

 

I mostly post things here that are too long for discord, but I'll occasionally skim the forums.

You and a few others are usually pretty spot-on with good, common sense thoughts. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to make any difference for the game, but I do appreciate knowing that I'm not alone in seeing the glaring issues.

 

IMO your thinking is backwards here. A meta where fire bomb is strong is advantageous to Fixers. Fixers can easily nullify fire bombs with pulses where as teams without a fixer simply melt from the strong FBs.

 

I have no idea what your legendary pulse is putting out, but let's say two pulses are putting out 2000 HPs every 12.5 seconds .. That's about the same as what a direct hit max epic firebomb was doing before the latest nerf .. obviously the firebomb flight time is so slow that it rarely gets a direct hit, but, yeah, one FB could theoretically counter two pulses (assuming no enemies dodged the FB).

When you're getting hit with multiple firebombs, you'll eventually burn down .. with everyone spamming firebombs, it's a little overwhelming.

The issue is if you make firebombs so bad that they're not worth it (which was the case before the latest nerf IMO), you have nothing to counter the fixer's ability to pump 9,000 hitpoints back into their team with two quick pulses.

It also means that more players will switch to point damage weapons, which makes it harder to play speeder, which in turn makes it easier for players to use fixers.

It's all connected ..

The other issue is that players will still be spamming firebombs because it'll take months for them to build new items (assuming the powercell issue is solved now) even after all the nerfs and the debuff spray item (whatever it's called) ... so they'll continue to nerf it.

If you don't understand why people are using the items they are (to counter something else or because they have no other option), then these "balance" changes are going to continue to violently shift metas and drive players that can't keep up away from the game.

 

The 2nd FB nerf was too much. It was already difficult enough after the last nerf to get fire to stick to anyone, now we get a damage reduction on top of that. Being that there is only FB, Napalm, and Flare as fire weapons, Flare is the only reliable Fire weapon left... so Flare it is. As for me, I'm still waiting for my 3rd RNG Flare to drop after nearly 2 years in this game.

 

I'm unconcerned with the amount of skill needed for the mode or how balanced the mode is perceived to be. The main issue with the new mode for me is the fact that you need multiple ships geared to play it, and the rest of the game discourages having multiple ships fully geared at the same time. I don't have multiple Turbos or the resources to build them. Even if I forgo Turbos on my yellow ships, I don't have enough shields and bandaids to throw around. It took this long just to level reasonably good weapons with the current RNG. I can't just magically whip up all the s̶u̶g̶a̶r PARTS I need to upgrade a whole new set of weapons to even tier 3. Plus, if it replaces the Ranked mode, which is now the only mode to give increased rewards, I may be earning less overall as well so I can't upgrade as quickly in the first place.

Even if everyone else is in the same boat (heh), all a ship needs to be usable is a weapon. What guarantee do I have that a bunch of people on my team won't literally roll out with their "whole shipyard" and give out free kills? I guess we'll see what the respawn system is and what the target score is. If it's the standard 10 kills, we're in for some big trouble. Best case scenario, it's limited respawns (I would set the limit at 2 respawns/3 ships). Or, worse, it's an attrition mode a la War Robots, where the match only ends when a team either caps or all ships on all players are wiped out.

 

im so sad...does this mean I can't play htdm because I only have enough gear to go around for one ship? (it wouldn't make sense to keep more than that imo) why can't they make it respawns including the ship you just used and died in but max respawn is 2?