Suggestions: ranked exploits, customs and items

Figured I'd get these out now:


Match Fixes:
I'm not the match police, nor do I think reviewing matches is a good use of time for anyone .. so I'd prefer controls were in place to prevent certain things.

• Remove player and guild names from the match start screen and the match itself

(except for your fleetmate) to prevent suiciding, rivalry exploits, win trading, etc ... Instead, list ships as Shooter 1, 2, 3, Fixer 1 and Shooter a, b, c for your team. The results page could be normal.

Example:
https://replay.battlebay.net/MZDPCVDR#QGRWLZRM

This Speeder was matched against my guild in the rivalry. Instant suicide. I don't take issue with his guild loyalty. It happens often enough, although they normally make some effort to do a bit of damage first.

Either way, I do think it would improve the integrity of the matches if you removed names. Many top players often change their name to prevent teammates tanking matches or to prevent being instantly targeted by entire teams.

Likewise, even if guild leaders don't explicitly tell lower members to take it easy against their higher infamy members, it's never a surprise when you see it happen - especially if they're not pushing that season. Some leaders take ranked losses very personally.


People might complain -- but it's the easiest way to prevent the issues above without having to police matches and make judgment calls of whether someone it playing their best or not.

• Segregate player rating for each match type
• And reset that rating at the beginning of each new season.

Again, I'm not calling anyone out or taking issue with people doing it ... but I see it a lot.

Dual speeder or interceptor fleets that do a fair amount of damage but account for 6+ deaths in events in order to lose enough matches to lower their player rating for ranked.

Also, dumping several hundred infamy points at the end of each season so you start new seasons off with a low rating .. wee bit of an issue.

• At 5k+ infamy, you can fleet with a 4k infamy player (that's normally a 5k player but has been busy or not playing ranked matches) to get easier matches .. you may want to make some adjustment here.

To support your streamers/toobers:

• Add special chatrooms for customs, bigger spectator or queue lists, option to randomly select a map of those the host has pre-selected, the ability to reduced/increase waves size and speed, customize item effectiveness or hitpoints, or restrict certain ships or items, or to create a tournament standard so each player has the same level of ship and items, create a Coliseum-type oval map with no obstacles, (or 30+ more ideas).

Item Changes
Stay with me .. it might seem like an extreme idea at first, but think about it ..

• Remove all enemy splash circles and lower damage on FB and mortars to compensate

Mortars weren't very popular because they were unreliable (or useless) against the 5 nitro ships (out of 8) unless they were spammed by multiple players. Now, they still have little to no shot to hit most ships, but their buffed damage is being dropped disproportionately on larger, slower ships .. If splash circles were removed, and damage lowered, they would be more accurate and effective but wouldn't do enough damage to be an effective "spam" weapon.

• Remove turbos (and cap speed)
• Add a blue item (early warning system, radar, whatever) that shows splash circles, maybe the difference between enemy vs friendly mines, perhaps highlight incoming torpedoes, or some combination of the above.

Turbos serve no purpose anymore (and I think that's a good change) .. so send them the way of the rudder.

The extra shield and bandage would help people survive a bit longer (something most would agree is needed) or you can toss the radar on to keep track of hazards coming your way.

 

I like names, sure there is probably some abuse, but there are certain players I face regularly and even though we aren't friends I do enjoy measuring myself agaisnt them. For example I faced @YSL yesterday and it was a blast knowing I was up against one of the best.

More customization is always good. I'd love to be able to tweak more settings.

I've already said what I think about getting rid of turbo (bad idea unless the slot goes with it). But I think getting rid of the splash circles is an intriguing idea I mean there is nothing like that for torps or projectile weapons so why should mortars be at the disadvantage. (I don't use them but it only seems fair)

New blue item, meh, I doubt anyone would run it unless it did more than that. Perhaps it could also show position of all opposing ships for a few seconds or something, but even then I don't think that's enough. Maybe someone else can think of a better addition.

 

Yeah I chased her all over the map and she killed me twice but I almost had her, and my teammates almost won even though she was fleeting with another of her guild mates who was also way out of my league. Don't know if I can find the replay.

 

So, my original thought to stop everything listed above was to suggest they stop matching players in the same guild against each other and to stop placing players you're facing in a guild rivalry on your team ... but that would be overly complicated and likely make the matching queue take longer.

But, I suppose I should have said that the main goal would be to stop people from playing differently than they would based on who they're matched with.

It may be fun for players to chase YSL around the map, but it gets really annoying on the other side of that - constantly being harrassed by every Tom, Dick and Harry that wants to prove something. They pass up 3 easier targets to go on suicide runs directly at you.

They're not constantly changing their IGNs because they like blowing 1000 pearls. They're doing it so people will play like they normally would..

When you're losing up to 30 infamy for a loss (when wins give you +20), your player rating has put you with a terrible team, you're dealing with team suiciders because they don't want to see you or your guild win, then you're being constantly harrassed by people wanting to show off a replay ... it kinda takes the fun out of the game.

Anyways, everyone would still get to see the results, who they played against, and how they stacked up against them in the results screen.

As far as the radar goes, I haven't put a great deal of thought into it .. as to what you would get for leveling it up, other than maybe increased range for the warning .. but it's just a thought for something to replace the turbo.

Oh, to be clear, I have a 4-slot epic turbo with 2 legendary perks and 2 epic HP perks, or the ideal turbo, so getting rid of the turbo would take away the advantage I have over players that don't have one. Like all my suggestions, they're not something that would give me any competitive advantage but are suggested to make the game better for everyone (imo).

The main reason behind it was that weapons are too powerful right now. With my speeder, I can get to about any place on the map within 30 seconds and unload 6,000+ in damage on an enemy. If a ship is damaged, that'll likely kill them. If they were full health, I can sweep back by for round 2 to finish them off.

But, I don't believe balance changes are the right solution at this point - because there's nothing worse than being locked into a weapon that took you year to collect and build then having that weapon nerfed.

So rather than suggesting widespread weapon damage nerfs, it seems a better solution to allow players to swap out the turbo for a small shield or bandage for some extra durability.

 

Part of the problem is the fact that it's really a different game at different infamy levels. And I'm generalizing a bit and rounding things off too.

At 1k is allmost all noobs with crap stuff and no clue. 1k to 2k is either idiots with good gear that they have no idea how to use or overachievers with crap gear (and a few normally 2k+ who are having some bad luck).

2k to 3k things begin to get organized, you can plan and strategize a bit, but there will be a few overachievers who don't belong but those are relatively rare. Here you see some maxed rare gear and some epic, nothing OP really though.

3k to 4k is where you start to get into good players with weapons that are mostly high level epics. These are people who have good stuff and know how to use it. It's also where you really stat to see some real OP issues start to creep in.

4k and above, as the old maps used to say, "here there be dragons." Having fought people who consistently stay at 4k and above they generally have firepower to spare and a lot of skill. Lots of OP stuff like nearly 5k critical ex cannons and stuff like that. I think this is where health becomes a real issue. And also where 4.0 really broke the game though you might argue that it's more like 3.5k or 4.5k (Like I said I'm just rounding for discussion purposes.)

Under the old system there was some natural syncing between the mk of the ships and infamy which meant that lower infamy players had a natural learning curve while top players had a ship that matched their skill and weapon set. Also pre 4.0 there was ship defense and slighlsl less powerful weapons. Plus, let's not forget that you had to make tough choices on the training tree so you could really only max out 5-6 weapons at best.

All that is to say Indo have a proposal to fix it. At the beginning of each season lock in a set number of players into pods based on infamy and gear score. The number would have to be big enough to ensure that there would be enough to battle.

However here's the real meat of it. Each pod would be locked and members of a pod would only play each other for that 2 weeks, with an exception I'll cover in a minute. If the system thinks your tanking it puts you in a higher pod. (For example I saw a NML player with 1k infamy clearly tanking. He would be placed into a NML level pod even with 1k infamy because that's where he really belongs.) The exception would be that the top and bottom 10% of a pod could play up (or down) a level if needed to fill out matches. Players would move up or down a pod based on their infamy, gear score, and maybe based upon performance in the prior two weeks (not sure about that last one).

I'd be ok with their being some sort of tiered system for the pods. So a bottom level pod could have fewer weapon slots to simply gameplay while a top, aka NML, pod could add health to match the amount of firepower. The system would add the health or reduce the weapon slots so players wouldn't have to worry about it.

I think this more than nerfing stuff, eliminating names, or adding/removing items would level the playing field and match the gameplay to players skill level. (I'm sure there are ways that 5his could be tweaked to make it better.)