SFJake

Oh god no, we just barely got it back. And anybody could use a program that just puts one on the screen for you. Or just tape a dot on your screen. No escaping this one. I'm referring to the new maps. They are too big and they make snipers a problem. The old maps don't. The remade original maps are pretty much all fine in size.

I specifically said this: I know very well the small nerf to spread doesn't do that. Big maps are terrible in Renegade. Blame the maps, not the snipers. You need heavy covers for infantry and maps that don't make them vulnerable from snipers from a thousand direction while having no covers to run to. UT is equally awful in maps that are too big, in my honest opinions. Maps are a huge balance factor in games like this. By your logic, the 500$ sniper would rule the battlefield because he can single-shot anyone. He does not. The mechanics aren't much of a problem in most maps, but there's some things that are lacking since Renegade to help balance things up. -The automatics have spread. This makes them worse against single-shots for no reasons. -With the damage nerf, Mobius is crazy strong against ramjet. -I still think splash-damage through walls should come back, or at lesat an algorythm that allows explosion to reach a sniper on a hill, for example. This sort of covering fire was ridiculously useful in Renegade and was of a HUGE importance to keep snipers at bay. Now they have no fear. Instead, they can hide in their perfect spots now and still take perfect shots at infantry, because the splash damage will never reach them. -If we have to consider other nerfs, maybe make snipers go out of scope when damaged. Make long-range sniper shots less effective if you're not using scope. At least, this would mean people could fire on a sniper with automatics to kind of force him to stay covered and unable to snipe, giving yourself some cover. With the hipfire long-range nerf, it might work. Snipers are scary, but they should be. They're the only class that can control the flow of infantry. Its kind of necessary. As long as the maps are good (walls, islands), snipers aren't the answer to everything and if you can consider other original alternatives, we don't have to make snipers feel bad, while giving players more ways to counter them. I personally like ideas of suppressive fire (either from tanks or infantry) to be effective against snipers trying to snipe from long-range. But snipers being good up close is just what Renegade is. The damage nerf is enough to make them more in-line but they ARE the anti-infantry role. Sydney is a field-vehicle harass god that should never, ever die to a vehicle. Mobius is a damage god that can rip vehicles in 5 seconds and infantry in 2. Heck, the game has 1 class made almost completely invisible. There are lots of crazy things in this game, but the game as a whole isn't broken for it. I think if we stick to nerfing the frustrating parts (body one shots, and now 1000$ have the edge requiring 3 shots), the game still works out perfectly.

But Renegade X is still a game with arcade-like shooting. IN fact its the only reason I like it at all. I despise any and every shooter where movement makes aiming more difficult and where shooting isn't accurate (from CS to CoD) precisely because it makes the shooting feels like complete crap and makes movement feels like an handicap. Only games like Renegade makes me feel like I'm in "control". In all other shooters I feel like I'm severely handicapped and there isn't a worse feeling in the world. Thats all the "arena" Renegade is. Its not an arena shooter, it just embraced the non-garbage mechanics that all shooters love nowadays. Its true that snipers as a result have the highest skill ceiling and can technically win any encounter by simply succeeding a single headshot. But the only real problem was the one-hit kill to body shots. Headshots are VERY difficult, and movement in this game can be fast and heratic. Heck, with some sprinting you can be godly unpredictable. The only moment they become broken is in maps like Lakeside. I'm sorry, yes, games like Renegade needs a certain sort of maps, otherwise snipers do become completely broken. I feel bad for insulting maps because I don'T want to attack the map makers personally but there's a reason infantry fights are absolutely terrible in big maps, to the point I wish the big maps were permanently removed from rotation. But I still want to live with Renegade, not with modern-shooter mechanics that ruins the mechanics of anything. We just need to understand to make maps accordingly. I'd never play a sniper ever again if I couldn't hipfire at close range, for instance. You'd have just killed every ounce of fun I have in the game's fights. Close-range fights with a ramjet or a sniper are insanely intense. I'm just saying all this for the sake of discussion, not as a direct response to anyone's argument. I'm in total defense of how Renegade handles snipers mechanically. I would basically puke if it changed. Games with innacurate movement hipfiring on any weapons are garbage in my eyes, no matter the reason. So I say lets go from these mechanics and balance as much as possible, but while keeping this "arena" influence, always. I mean, its not like we need bunny hoping to have a game where you don't feel handicapped. Heck, I always thought bunny hoping was really dumb.

We really need to stop with the compensation mindset. A nerf is a nerf because a class is overused. It does not need compesation. Its absurd. The 500 sniper has been nerfed in this game since you can the trail of his shots, even though they are harder to see than the ramjet's, and headshots are more difficult in this game than in the old Renegade. Plus they have a lower fire rate. The 500 sniper is perfectly fine. Some maps are too open, particularily the new ones, but thats a map flaw. There's a reason I don't like those maps. You don't just redesign the entire game just because the mappers didn't make their new maps accordingly. There's really no sniping problem (besides the 1-hit kills) in the vanilla maps.

I don't think a single person in this topic was against the ramjet damage nerf to infantry. Thats the core nerf that most people seem to have wanted. Not everyone is in agreement with the exact damage nerf but thats another thing. The other changes about the ramjet is what created the reaction. The ramjet against free classes was definitely unfun to play against and too powerful. The damage nerf to 150 also means 1000$ classes take 3 body shots to kill. Thats fine by me, though. Without the other changes, it would make the class a proper sniper & anti-light vehicle thats actually vulnerable. A sniper king of close range and king of one-shotting free classes is just too annoying. Plus you can still pull off clutch headshots and kill anything in one shot.

Great, play the condescending tone just to piss us off for real and derail the actual point further. You haven't seen a tantrum from me yet. What am I supposed to say? I hate the things you've done that have no basis or reasons that makes sense and go against the Renegade spirit but I'll be an hypocrite and say nothing about it? Sorry if I'm a ridiculously blunt guy, but I don't know any other way, and I convey the feelings I get, good or bad. I'm passionate about this game and I don't want a core balance that existed for over a decade to shift radically, for the sake of a "commando-class" that hasn't been given a good reason to be done. I can't relay that any other way than exactly how I feel it.

So you ignored everything thats been said. From who, exactly, (not anyone that actually plays this game) have you ever got the impression that the ramjet's anti-light and anti-air abilities were overpowered? Or that the game has very effective alternatives? You do know that aircrafts are crazy strong already, and ramjets are already their only effective counters? Why use a havoc for infiltration when you have mobius? Even with 2 C4, the Mobius is probably the better unit for the job after the nerf to ramjet, especially when they don't pretend they don't need to get techs along, which are far better to actually take down anything. The ramjet is the only viable anti-light vehicle option. You did not add anything in return. Light vehicles are all crazy strong options that only have one effective long-range counter, the ramjet. Aircrafts are actually too powerful. The commando role already exists in the form of Mobius. Etc etc. The fact that the ramjet damage to heavy vehicles and long-range hipfire is even considered proves how disconnected you seem to be with your own game, and you keep telling us the same wrong things over and over. This is unbelievably frustrating. Can you communicate instead of rehashing the copy-paste arguments you already gave each other that we're already way passed.

The part I do like about your idea is that you want to essentially add a class in the game instead of replacing one. The ramjet has a very important role that we are having trouble balancing (the air unit need to lose their HP buff and the ramjet needs to stay the same towards light vehicles), but if all we want is to try entirely new ideas, then fine, at least they should be that, new class or sub-class that you can choose. I mean, I'm not sure if the idea is good or not, but at least it would be an addition and not a core replacement. Honestly, the weapon shouldn't do more damage than the normal automatic rifle. Its a special backup weapon and it has HITSCAN bullets which makes it way too easy to hit with. Or at least, make the bullets have travel time instead of being hitscan.

My point with Mobius was just that they already filled the commando role. You're right, they don't need another C4, but why make Havoc do what Mobius does better? I'm not assuming all changes are extreme, but you don't need extreme changes when you change the class which might be the very core of the game since 2002 and any changes to it can shift the balance of the entire game. I'm simply looking at the core balance changes that all this brings: -Heavy vehicles loses an important benefit of heavy armor, that is, that nothing fast and long range can get you. Instead, all that can hurt you is either close range, or missile-based, in other words, can be avoided. That is the reason why PICs are very powerful against heavy vehicles, but thats fine, because they have many weaknesses for that one strength, and still PICs aren't very long range. Now, despite using a heavy vehicle, you can get harassed from any range, and yes, the ramjet doesn't fire fast, but 30 damage per shot gives them a more significant DPS than it looks that is FAR enough to force heavy vehicles to stick to cover for them. This is a very serious difference. -One ramjet can barely put enough pressure on an artillery being safely repaired. Any nerf to the damage changes their effectiveness quite a bit because of that. -Good air-rush are incredibly powerful and underestimated. Lowering the damage of ramjets does a lot of bad. The only other non-sniper counter are rockets, but they have a lower DPS than the ramjet had, even against light vehicle. They can also be avoided. It -is- a significant change to air balance. -The change to infantry damage dramatically reduces their effectiveness. That is the one change (we) both accept. There are lot of shifts in balance you don't discuss. But what I don't understand is, what for? All of this for a commando role that is already filled by Mobius? Whats wrong with Havoc being the long-range anti-light vehicle and anti-infantry its supposed to be? This is a very important question, and I cannot for the life of me figure out. Besides all the questions of game balance, I don't understand why any of it was deemed necessary. All we ever wanted was to make the Havoc class less frustrating to play against. Hence, we nerf the damage to 150. Everyone agreed the ramjet was overpowered because of one shotting kills. But thats it. You're shifting the game's balance dramatically for reasons that I can't understand. Even the nerf to damage might be too much. The game's balance is perfectly fine with it, but not everyone loves it. So we change it, but even just that is a risk. I even accept trying smoke grenades, I'm skeptical, but maybe it'll make defense-maps more fun. We're already taking a lot of risks. But we need to keep the game together.

Which means you overlap the roles of anti-vehicles to multiple high-cost infantry, make the PIC even less attractive, make heavy vehicles' health go down from ramjet spam and make light vehicles tougher to take down. Artillery spam is incredibly dangerous and a havoc alone can barely harass them with repairs already. All that for a commando-role that is FAR better attributed to mobius/mendoza, which already serve that role for powerful infiltration and might even have deserved the 2 timed C4 buff. And why would you want a commando that can't even hipfire his ramjet effectively at close range? Move the commando role to Mobius (though they don't even need 2 C4 either) and keep the light nerf on Ramjet against infantry and nothing else, so as to not destroy the vehicle balance and high-tier character balance.

There's a lot of good changes, I pretty much agree with every single thing that I do not mention in this post and there's a lot of great stuff incoming, and way too many improvements to talk about them all. Great work. WeaponDrop: Woohoo. Too bad its not on by default. I hope our popular servers all use it, but you don't give any details on how it works. My hope is that we can carry 2 primary weapons. Smoke Grenade: Seems a bit insane. The problem I see is that there is no direct counter to this. People simply will need to use smokes to attack as infantry, but other than having a brutal defense your base defenses themselves will be useless. Its beta, so we can give it a try. We always have mines... but wait. EMP Grenade: I thought there was a pretty heated topic on that discussion against this change. Mines being disabled by EMP grenades is just a gigantic no-no. Mines, if nothing else, LACK power, they need to more reliably deal their damage. This is a big nerf to mines. There are plenty of ways already to go around them. Mines are there to prevent solo infiltration to be too powerful and its very important in a game like this. Why is the Flak Cannon getting buffed of all things? That seems very, very odd. Why in all heavens would Sakura and Havoc get an additional timed C4? Again, a very odd decision. The decreased ramjet damage against vehicles also makes little sense. The primary role of ramjet is to keep light vehicles at bay, prevent mindless artillery and air vehicle spamming. You added nothing to fill that role. The nerf makes no sense at all. The ramjets gets a double nerf, and thats bad. You nerf the damage against infantry a lot. Thats fine, you were done. The nerf is over. Taking 3 shots without headshots for tier 3 infantry and 2 shots to kill anything else is a lot to make the class a more sniper-class and less of a can-do-anything class. Unfortunately you also completely nerf the hipfiring ability. Which is a HUGE nerf on its own as well The ramjet deserved a nerf, but this is way too much. Every single aspect of the weapon was nerfed for no reasons, plus you're killing the arcade nature of the weapon. My suggestion: Don't give it hipfiring spread, don't nerf anything but the damage against infantry. If you want a middle-ground suggestion: Only give it spread when hipfiring while moving (so you can stop moving and shoot with perfect accuracy). With this, the gun is not made useless in an arcade-speed battle, but has a bigger risk ratio (and requires a bit more skill). EDIT: And forget entirely about giving the ramjet damage to heavy vehicle. Thats crazy. The release is still a month away so I hope those things are analyzed and maybe tweaked before release. Otherwise, thanks for the 100+ good changes and fixes this patch brings, its quite a lot and I'm excited about weapon drops.

Fine. I know I'm being a bit of a dick but I wanted to go elsewhere than airdrops. But fine. Lets see a way to work with aidrops, and with the delays and the cooldown. This is based on what you were saying already. -Every air drop has a DELAY (the time it takes for you to receive the drop) and a 5 minute COOLDOWN (which starts AFTER the air drop) -Different units or vehicles force a different delay -Every building destroyed allows a different sort of drop When the Refinery is destroyed, a player can call for a Resource Drop. When the Barracks is destroyed, a player can call for a Class Drop. When the Weapons Factory is destroyed, a player can call for a Vehicle Drop. -Resource Drop: Contains 200 credits, 15 seconds delay, 5 minute cooldown. People can use their airdrops on resources when the refinery is down to gain some minimal amount of cash. -Class Drop: This varries depending on the class. Tier 1: 1 minute delay, 5 minute cooldown, normal price Tier 2: 2 minute delay, 5 minute cooldown, 1.25x price Tier 3: 3 minute delay, 5 minute cooldown, 1.5x price Tier 3 gets a price increase to make destroying the barracks particularily valuable. For the sake of balance, the Stealth Black Ops is considered Tier 3 for airdrops. Technicians should probably also be tier 3 because of how important they are. -Vehicle Drop: Also depends on the tiers. Tier 1: Humvee, Buggy Tier 2: APC, MRLs, Artillery Tier 3: Light Tank, Medium Tank Tier 4: Stealth Tank, Flame Tank, Mammoth Tank & Air Vehicles Tier 1: 1 minute delay, 5 minute cooldown, normal price Tier 2: 2 minute delay, 5 minute cooldown, 1.25x price Tier 3: 3 minute delay, 5 minute cooldown, 1.5x price Tier 4: 4 minute delay, 5 minute cooldown, 1.75x price You only have 1 airdrop per player, no matter how many buildings are destroyed. If you call for a vehicle drop, you need to wait out the delay and the cooldown before calling anything else. You can always reduce the cooldown slightly when both barracks and factories are destroyed, but keep the delay. As for HOW the airdrops themselves work, I think the enemy should have the opportunity to steal what you get, but thats about it. This... -Gives the losing team something to do, even without buildings, and even without a refinery they can use their drops to gather some credits so that they eventually gain something -The price increase on higher tiers and the high delay makes them much harder to use, so the barracks and weapons factory are still important targets. I guess this could work. I went into details because details matters, though I'm not saying I have all the right numbers. I'll stop worrying too much about the refinery. Although I always want a way for players without credits to gain some. Likewise, players can get so much money if they can an early lead. Maybe we should have a cap on how much credits players can have? I don't know. That part confuses me.

So with the airdrop idea, play on Islands, kill the WF and you basically didn't kill it at all as they keep getting vehicles constantly. Unless the cooldowns were huge, or team based, which wouldn't work. So how do airdrops make any sense? I don't see it. And vet points have the issue of helping the winning team as already described.

Honestly, the refinery is a lackluster powerplant, like the gdi infantry or nod air is to the opposites. Being more important is possibly a better change to the game, by that theory. Honestly, credits get abundant not a few minutes into a match, it would be better if there were more things to spend credits on. Like secondaries. Xept, not all like the carbine. Variety leads to everything being worth spending money on, to compliment the advantages of the other weapons/tools/situations in the game. ...or team pool funds for large purhcases, such as to reestablish some structure function. Like Goku said, it was and would be badass if base defences could be half-powered by some game mechanic. Matter of fact, to humor you, a second idea to reverse structure death, that doesn't depend on credits, could be like Goku said. You could be able to "repair" the MCT and the structure work at half-power. Make it so the MCT can be repaired, and fills to full health, but its health decays fast so you have to repair it constantly or frequently. I figure, if it has to be constant, then small games will be difficult as it takes at least 2 people to use a structure, while if you could repair it yourself and then use it then it then you are less dependent on a team. Because teamwork should help, but a lot of things that "require" a second teammate means it fails once the game gets too small or reality kicks in and nobody wants to have to repair the mct 100% the time. Like you said, people already have to do tedious jobs of sitting in front of MCTs to repair. Add that and it kind of becomes ridiculous. No, its not a good idea to make the refinery even more important. Not because of the Power Plant, but because of the barracks and WF. We want those to be primary targets, too. If you have ways to still buy them and make an entire comeback mechanic based around credits, then only the refinery matters. And thats not good. I'll recycle my favorite idea: -When a building is destroyed, a timer of 15 minutes starts. -After 15 minutes, the building is restored at 1 health, and made invulnerable for 30 seconds. The team needs to repair it and get ready to defend the building. The building is only usable after those 30 seconds. -If another big building is destroyed while a timer was running, the timer goes back 10 minutes (but not above the maximum time, in this case 15 minutes) -When more than 1 building is down, the people can vote to decide which building will be restoryed at the end of the timer. If no vote is made, the first to be destroyed is the first to come back. -Small buildings can be restored using credits. There is a delay of 5 minutes before they come back. Go in front of them and press E to invest. This idea is my favorite simple because: -It does not make killing the refinery the only important target -It does not make building loss pointless. You are still forced to deal without the building for a time. -It encourages the other team to keep attacking to try and destroy more buildings and keep their advantage. -It should not be too difficult to implement. If that isn't enough for you, you can always make it more complex and allow people to spend credits to lower the timer, but only to a point, say half the timer. Obviously you can change the timer here, 15 minutes is probably too short, I don't know. I just cannot stand ideas that are based entirely on credits. Refinery dies too early and its game over. Why? Thats not fun. The other way around isn't fun either. You play maps with big income of money, building is destroyed, and people just ignore the drawback. Thats why I like my idea. Imagine crippling the enemy base, even though its a marathon, people are incentivized to attack, and create even more intense scenario, because you know one day they'll just get their buildings back, and start building more vehicles. You can't let that happen! It would more intense, and the feeling that you can comeback would be much stronger. Marathon shouldn't be a game where one team becomes hopeless while the other team takes it easy for hours. Anyway, I don't think I can make my point more than that.

The beacon ideas are pretty neat, but most suggestions have the same problem of making the refinery an ever more important target than it ever was. (unless the impact of the refinery was lessened so that people could realistically still get credits at -some- rate that isn't 5 credits per kill) IMO, I like the idea that you can call for a class or vehicle of your choice, but at a higher cost and with a delay since the game would take a few minutes to actually deliver it to you. (maybe how long it takes would depend on how expensive it is?) The general problem, again, is we'Re trying to put a comeback mechanic but we make it about credits. Which makes one problem clear -> no matter what solution you add, the refinery is still a completely crippling blow. So while we could circumvent the barrack or weapons factory loss, a refinery loss is still pretty much the end. Which means all these solutions are not very good unless we also change something about how we gain credits when the refinery is dead. (unless you use a comeback mechanic that is not tied to credits) My main idea to accompany any of those being that when the refinery is down (and only then), credit gain from actions are increased quite a lot. Getting a full kill from full health to 0 even on a basic class should feel rewarding in credits when its your only potential source of revenue. Otherwise the problem will always be the exact same. Kill the refinery, the team eventually can't do jack.

He's not right at anything. There's no illusion in place where my change wouldn't change the game. Of course it would. Thats the whole point. And my personal suggestion has none of the drawback you mention. The point is to have a separate system that still makes a building loss painful and temporarily crippling (and by crippling I mean no buying things at all) and that doesn't make the refinery an even better target. If you want to throw around the argument that "it wouldn't be balanced", any one of us can actually sit down and think about the simple ways to balance this and make it a fun marathon alternative.

*deleted cause of strong language violation*

I'd prefer ways to gain back a building but I think we talked about this already. My mindset is: -If its a timed game, resisting until the last minute against overwhelming forces is one of the point of the game. -If its a marathon game, they would be more fun with long-term comeback possibilities (such as the idea of restoring 1 building after X game-time, so the survival of the base means buildings can start coming back, or replace X game-time with a separate credit system people gain (with or without refinery they'd always get some) and they spend to rebuild buildings. This is my personal opinion on that. I don't like the idea of being able to still buy everything at a bigger price, except the very basic stuff (hum-vee). Another random idea is to put a crate spawn point in every destroyed building (next to the MCT), allowing the losing team more opportunities to get something. I don't know, I'd play so many different marathon ideas.

Why would we want all the bad things MOBA do to the game? Dedicated games where players have to stay in for the entire game and things like leveling and any sort of AI-controlled stuff to kill are all things that are -awful-. Do we really need to inspire ourselves from the worst overdone genre of multiplayer games of the modern era?

The problem isn't balance, and the problem aren't stalemates. The problem are options. The map should basically force itself out of rotation if there are more than 16 players in the game. Otherwise it needs more paths, more options somehow.

No, not even close to overpowered. The Volt Rifle's range always was a severe handicap. It runs out of ammo like crazy and requires constant line of sight to do its damage, making it far weaker than other weapons on the field. Effective in rushes in some maps, but the range is still very crippling. The gun is at its best as a base defense weapon, and even then only against actual invasions. Its not anywhere close to overpowered. It gives a fighting chance against rushes. It doesn't outclass the other 1000$ weapons. The PIC/Railgun is a FAR better field weapon. The case for the Ramjet doesn't even have to be made. If nothing else, its the weakest of the 3, by quite a bit. To expand upon its weakness, the fact that you need constant line of sight to deal good damage makes it quite weaker because it makes you ridiculously vulnerable to counter fire, particularily snipers. A PIC/Railgun can jump in and out of cover and harass very effectively, and it can do it all day because it has more ammo and can deal out more damage overall before a refill. The PIC/Railgun has more range, as well, which also makes the PIC/Railgun a better weapon to keeping vehicles at bay (but far worse at defending rushes) I'm not even done yet. The Volt Rifle was severely nerfed by the (AWFUL) automatic nerf that is generally part of Renegade X. The spread and the knockbacks have zero effect on the PIC-Railgun and they are just direct weapon that have no issues aiming. The Volt Rifle however suffers greatly from those and it makes it surprisingly weaker against infantry unless you're very close to them. Not only am I waiting for a buff that removes ALL spread & knockback from automatic weapons, but it would still not make the Volt Rifle a better general pick than either of the other 2. I'm not saying it should be buffed further than that, but it is far from overpowered. I hope you learned something here.

Yeah, unfortunately this sort of behavior has been around for a while and its honestly just dumb. I mean, no offense there, you did what you could to defend and all. Tanks win over better tanks by using their speed and the terrain against their enemies, not by slipping under or right through them. This is a 2-sided problem as well. The 2 unfairness here, being able to harass a tank like a mammoth from under them and they can't do nothing about it, and being unable to block vehicles (which is a huge tactical thing) brings a lot of imbalance to this game. Rushing is just kind of dumb dumb in tihs game is the real problem. This getting fixed should be high priority, in my opinion. And maybe even add a few quriks to the vehicle game. For starters, you should be able to fire your cannons if they are obstructed or just too close to a target. If vehicles blocking a flame tank or a mammoth couldn't harm each other, that would also make rushing less of a dumb thing.

You can put your own timed C4 on the vehicle. (which will not hurt it if you're back in 30 seconds) and you can even put remote C4 before going out if you were ever so inclined to it. There are ways around it, otherwise the ability to steal vehicles is a very core part of the game. Self-destruct is a terrible idea as a result.

Which will be the next update. And the game needs to get back its 64 player count as well. Anyway, I agree that a Steam release should be only for the full release, basically. We're not out of the beta yet. But a Steam release would also serve at making this game a bit more popular, which is only great when the game is done.

EA stopped putting their games on Steam because of Origin, no? Regardless, this is already using Steam to a small extent. Steam integration seemed more a matter of doing the work than getting permission, though I'm sure they would (or did) ask first to be sure. But this is a non-profit games which EA doesn't touch in any way and I don't see them just denying it on Steam as a completely free title.