Rups

I agree with Dakuja on the note that artillery also has specific niche areas where its curvature really lets it shoot at things without exposing itself much, much like the curved missiles of the MRLS do. Also, the artillery generally performs better than the MRLS, especially at recruit ranks (not to mention MRLS having serious issues in areas with a low ceiling, like the tunnel on snow). For the above reasons, I'd quite like to see MRLS keep its curving ability to give it its own unique ability. Nonetheless, it's obvious that curving missiles can create some issues on specific maps. In my opinion, the most problematic aspect is hitting buildings from around a corner, as shown on that screenshot. While it would be a drastic and partially unrealistic solution, how about we vastly reduce (or even completely remove) the damage curved rockets deal to buildings? I feel that that would at least prevent the worst of unintended use of the MRLS curvature. Removing it altogether would be..... shit, quite frankly.

I understand that some people consider it a fair trade-off (power vs effort) since you have to gather a bunch of people for it, but in reality all the buff powers were was a direct buff to rush strats. Double buffing is pretty silly given how overwhelming it can get if you have enough people clumped together. If people would be given the ability to stack 2 offensive buffs, then that would literally be the only thing we'd see from then on. As with many other mechanics, commander buffs generally benefit the winning team more. Limiting buffs to only affect a limited amount of players would be a good idea though, or perhaps the cost of the buff should scale with the amount of players? (the latter obviously being much harder to implement). All it currently does is encourage big blobs of people rushing together.

Not a bad idea, but the main issue with teamswitching is when it starts (further) unbalancing the teams (skillwise being more important than numberwise). While it can be considered a dick move, a low skilled player switching at, say, 40 min because his team lost a building really shouldn't impact the teams that much (and therefore, isn't really that big of a deal to begin with). Nonetheless, transferring money from one team to the other is kinda silly by concept, so implementing this seems very reasonable. Just as a suggestion tho, but what about blocking teamswitching altogether and instead creating a vote option to balance the teams? (preferably combined with a system taking skill into account). Would kinda help block stacking/crappy teamswitching while focussing on restoring teambalance. Main downside obviously being that people generally wouldn't enjoy being switched to a losing team. Then again, that IS a necessary evil at some point.

Interesting read, although the results do not surprise me. Just to add to that a little: When you're losing, you lose map control, which includes tib fields (if present in center of map), tech buildings, crates, etc. Attackers gain bonus points for killing people in their base. Winning means more VP which results in more veterancy. If the teams get stacked intentionally the impact goes up even further. Losing means you have less money, your soldier deals less damage and has less armor on average (due to veterancy AND money advantage), you're locked in a base where the defenders are at a disadvantage when they try to break out...... Once you lose a building everything just spirals downwards even further. Losing bar/hon usually effectively ends the game. All in all, the game has some massive snowballing mechanics. Combined with an utter lack of teambalancing and a rich history of rampant and pretty hardcore teamstacking, the results Tytonium showed really aren't shocking. In fact, I expected the amount of *balanced* games to be lower. The amount of snowballing needs to be toned down significantly. Veterancy just has a habit of screwing over the losing team and new players. The impact of losing a building certainly could be toned down a notch. Bases in general should be a little easier to defend (and by that I mean, make the attacker have less of a stranglehold on the vehicle exits). I understand a lot of these mechanics were implemented to avoid stalemates, but man, I'd love some stalemates over one team stomping the other repeatedly. And to be honest, I think repairs are an underlying issue in this game in general. Repairs are so effective that a team can siege the enemy base for 60 min straight. (And repairing isn't exactly fun gameplay in general from the perspective of the engineer/hotwire, just think of how many games have AFK repairs in them). tl;dr: teambalance is badly needed, but tweaking/changing game mechanics would certainly go a long way in decreasing the detrimental effects losing has on your odds of winning. A combination of the two has the best chance of making the average game less one-sided. A lot of people care very strongly about it. The only thing I'll agree with on you is that games that are a clear loss that still last 60 min are a waste of time. However, I do feel that that can be changed with better balance and/or tweaking some game mechanics. A small percentage of shitty games that are sort of a time waste are unavoidable and acceptable, however it feels like currently only a small percentage of games is interesting, balanced and truly worth playing.

Certainly one of the more interesting points that I took out of this discussion: Agent is the vast minority of people who think stacking doesn't exist or is mostly perceptual. Even with poi himself agreeing that stacking is harmful to the game. Sadly, with Agent fighting attempts to resolve the stacking problems, this is the end result of years of stacking-related issues. What can be easily dismissed as "toxicity" is often the result of years of pent-up frustration. While you can argue that all of this is directly the fault of the people who stack, and it certainly is, a good chunk of the blame should also be directed at the dev who single-handedly blocked most attempts of resolving issues. Under the guise of "playing with friends", any criticism or actions aimed at stackers was shut down or labeled as toxicity. And yes, most of this was done so in order to specifically protect Agent's own clique - who were the most prominent stackers. It's easy to claim that all Agent's efforts were done to protect people who just like to play with friends, while in reality, it was all aimed at this specific group. In fact, in many cases, the damage stacking caused was ignored and, instead, the stackers were labeled the real victims, due to the resulting backlash. As a result, the entire community was thrown under the bus while they keep being told that all their frustration with stacking is simply between their ears and that they're just being toxic. Let's not confuse toxicity with backlash here. Sure, not every single claim ever made about people stacking is true. However, that is not an argument that diminishes the impact of stacking (as it does happen frequently). It also doesn't diminish years of extreme stacking. It just tries to obfuscate it. So, Agent, even if you really do feel that stacking is mostly perceptual and that most people are crying over nothing, you are the vast minority. Stop trying to block any attempts to address it and stop trying to push the narrative that complaining about toxicity is toxic (and punishing people accordingly). I also don't think it's unreasonable to ask Agent to stop moderating people whom you personally dislike/hate. Even if Mint crossed the line, your personal grudge against him means someone else should be passing judgement. A simple example was Agent's offer earlier for Mint to report abuse to Agent, though Agent did add that she already assumed it was going to be a false report to begin with. How could anyone reasonably expect Agent to be fair on the matter? Similarly, I was recently punished in extreme fashion when someone from Agent's own clique decided to start taunting me. (And in the latter case, there were plenty of mods online to moderate if things truly got out of hand). All in all, the recurring pattern is that the vast majority has a (legit) problem with a very small minority. The very small minority essentially has always had a veto right in the form of Agent however. It's time to break the loop that we're in. We NEED anti-stacking measures and actual team-balancing (that isn't circumvented by teamswitching/rejoining).

What is also interesting is that the term "toxicity" seems to start being equated exclusively to complaining about stacking and/or calling people out on that. Of course some people cross the line into harassment, but it also feels an effort is made into generalizing anyone doing so into one big (toxic) group. Let's not forget to attribute toxicity to intentional teamstacking when it results in one-sided games. It's no secret that a large amount of players do not enjoy getting destroyed repeatedly in one-sided games.... yet, causing this to happen repeatedly and intentionally is to be considered fair game? In fact, if anyone were to present this as an attack on "people just wanting to play together", I'd feel that would be an example of (intentionally?) misrepresenting the whole issue. The limitation on playing together seems to be "as long as it doesn't ruin the game for large groups of people. You refer to the poll, which does have a community option (which would be the obvious vote if toxicity from the community is your big deal), but if a seperate toxicity option were to be added, would people not vote on that as another way of voting for teamstacking? It also sounds like you're dismissing the fact that most votes are for teambalance. tl;dr: teamstacking is incredibly toxic if not dealt with properly.

Well, to add to this: people talk about stuff that might happen once, coincidental or not, like letting a hotty live because it's funny. That's fine I guess. So in case anyone is still under the impression this is something that just happened once or was a coincidence: What we're talking about is a systematic problem that has been going on for a long time. It's not something that happened *once* or *only in one game*. It happened consistently on virtually every single match these 2 play against each other. It's about breaking the fundamental rules of a team vs team shooter like this so you can farm more kills and pad your kd better. At the cost of others.

Witnessed this many many times before. Calling them out on it gets you the typical "no we don't" reply. Asking them to not do it also doesn't work.