Drury
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Posts posted by Drury
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No defense turrets+flying+reasonable size+intuitive design.
That means the map isn't as prone to stalemates, is more accessible to infantry and is less difficult to learn. I'm not saying that means it's the ultimate map and that it couldn't be done better, but for a fact it has the best design of all maps overall.
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Yes, we ignore this specific issue because it's about to get fixed. There's no point in discussing it anymore.
However, there are more issues that can't be solved so easily. Design issues, not simple bugs.
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Music
in Renegade X
I like Mr. Bonder's work - the person behind main menu theme and release date trailer theme.
I wouldn't mind seeing what else he could come up with.
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GDI versus Tiberium.
They have to produce and drive harvesters to harvest all the Tiberium on the map before it overwhelms them.
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i think its a lame idea because both factions are similar enough as it is. what little differences they have are negligible.
GDI has no SBH. Nod has no mams. GDI has no Stank. Nod has no McFarland. GDI has no flame tank. Nod has no MRLS.
There's quite a bit of a difference between the two. Much more so than CnC3 and up where they are pretty much reskins of each other.
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Marathon servers prevent this.
Although "Marathon" servers wouldn't be so much "marathon" if defense wasn't so cheap.
Really, all issues of this game come from endless stalemates. If most matches could be won under 30 or even 60 minutes, this wouldn't be a problem.
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You are a sad, strange little man, and you have my pity.
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Deliberately making yourself look like a pack of elitist idiots and trolls in front of a much larger gaming community.
Good grief OP and certain members posting in this thread. You've done it again.
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There is something about this topic that makes me cringe. Techs are not OP, they get wiped by most other classes. The sidearm thing is irrelevant. Other classes can have sidearms, and don't forget the fact that they persist is a bug. Not every engie is going to have tib auto rifle. Once it's back to pistols will see who the real men are. Honestly it just sounds like much ado about nothing.
Problem isn't with how powerful they are, problem is that they can do much more than any other class.
Oversaturated, not overpowered.
50% of time you go engineer, 50% you take another class.
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Chem troopers and gunners are pretty good against structures and mendoza/mobius can kill structures singlehandedly if they get to the MCT.
Oh, nice to see someone who actually understood my issue.
Problem is, even as they do possess the same ability to destroy buildings, they don't share the other abilities, meaning Engineer is still a better choice.
All in all, I feel like the whole class system needs an overhaul. Let me just write it down now that we know the problem at hand.
Remote explosives
One of the more obvious issues is that Engineers have remote explosives unlike any other class. What do they need them for? Base defense? Mines do a better job. Those remote explosives basically just make Engineers better at everything they weren't ever supposed to be good for in the first place. They don't really need them. Goodbye APC rushes, we won't need you in the bright future where base defenses aren't invincible. More on that later
Repair gun
Then there's the repair gun. That thing is way way too useful for just one class. It should either be changed up, split and shared by multiple classes, left as is and shared by multiple classes to make them somewhat on-par with Engineers as a temporary band-aid, or outright removed. As the latter two are pretty much self-explanatory (and quite extreme for my taste), let me just explain what changes I had in mind:
Re-balancing it
I've already written down just what a repair gun can do in the OP. It basically has four basic functions: Building repair, vehicle repair, infantry healing and tech building capture.
Buildings
Engineers should no doubts have the ability to repair buildings. However, the way it works now, the offenders have an extremely hard time breaking base defense when there are multiple engineers camping the MCT. This makes vehicle sieges difficult and prompts for extreme measures like single-class rushes. On top of that, healing speed from outside has been apparently buffed in RenX, making it all that easier to turtle.
One design aspect that is urgently needed is to make more than one engineer camping the MCT redundant. If there are more camping it, it won't increase the healing rate any more. This would both prompt people not to pick Engineer when there are more than 5 on their team already repairing the buildings, and make the defense easier to break by vehicle/infantry siege. In the broader sense, it would bring more game into the game - people would actually have to go out and destroy/scare off those mams pounding on their base rather than getting 50 engineers and camp the MCT's or doing whatever else the oversaturated class can do, rather than waiting for the enemy to come up with a better plan and eventually finish them off 3 fruitless hours later. The game would also become less defense-based, more in the spirit of CnC - if you camp for too long, you lose to the team that knows that camping doesn't win games. And let me put this straight: at this point defense is too easy. There is no point telling me that you can use tactic X or Y to win easily. Defense is easy, breaking it is counter-intuitive and that is a fact.
An alternative measure would be to break building HP into segments instead. This would make chip-damage weapons more effective against buildings - only, say, 20% of building's health would be needed to empty one segment. Once a segment empties, it can't be refilled, much like destroyed buildings can't be repaired. In another case, it would make MCT campers less effective against organized vehicle pushes. The problem that exists now is that while they do usually take more than 20% of the building's health, but it always gets repaired. With segments, each push would be successful to a degree, and if defenders don't do anything about it, they lose the building after 5 pushes.
Vehicles
You just bought a Mammoth Tank, sweet. What class do you go? Sydney? Mobius? Nah. Hotwire. You don't want to lose 1000 credits and a ton of firepower just because you couldn't go out and repair it.
This is another thing that makes Engineer unbalanced relative to the other classes. They are the class you want to pilot vehicles as. Every class should have equal chances when it comes to piloting vehicles.
I hate to remove features, especially the good ones. But one way to break Engineer+vehicle relationship would be to make it impossible to repair your own vehicle. I know it hurts. I know you hate me and think it's not overpowered because you have to go out and you can have your tank stolen etc etc. But that's thankfully not the only way.
Another way would be to give every class a blowtorch that works like point-blank repair gun, but only on vehicles. You might say that I've played too much Battlefield 3, but the truth is, I've only seen a few videos of blowtorch drivebys on helicopters and such, never before have I played the game. Ahem, so basically, you could repair your vehicle as any class, but Engineer would still have a more powerful Repair Gun for that.
Infantry healing
Frankly it is pretty hard to heal infantry with Repair Gun, so I'd keep it as it is, but I have an ide-
Hello frauleins! No fear, herr Medic is hier!
Yeah we could have a Medic infantry class I guess, but that was not my initial idea. I thought it would be much cooler to have a Medigun secondary weapon that any class would be able to equip - at the expense of it not being Tiberium Auto-Rifle, and yes, it would only last one life, much like secondary replacements are meant to. Have I told you that Medics in TF2 drop like flies? And there aren't even as many snipers and sniper-friendly maps! Now you know.
And I guess passive healing inside a vehicle wouldn't hurt, at least for certain types of vehicle like APC. All in all, those things are expensive.
Tech building capture
At this point only Engineers can do it, which is, well, lame. Especially the incredible pistol fights that always occur around them as normal classes don't care for tech buildings, they can't do anything with them, they can't destroy them, they can't capture them, waiting for an enemy engineer to kill isn't as much fun as blowing up tanks. Really, what's the point of even getting near one when not playing Engineer?
I already mentioned blowtorch, that could be one way for the other classes to capture them.
TB's hilarious suicide when trying to C4 one is another inspiration. Simply damage it to capture it. I don't like this idea too much, but it could work.
Or simply use it like you would a normal purchase terminal and wait for beacon-like "hacking" bar to fill.
Tiberium Auto-Rifle super-engineers
Non-issue with the next patch, hopefully.
If you made it this far, I applaud you. Incredible scrolling skills. I wish my mousewheel was so fast.
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Just what I thought. People in this place have absolutely zero interest in reading.
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I've been trying to have this discussion in "New content" thread, but it fruitless and off-topic there, and it is big enough of an issue to deserve it's own thread.
In short: There are classes in RenegadeX that are better than others. This shouldn't be a thing, it has never been a thing in any CnC game worth it's salt, and yet it's here in this very game, and to a huge degree.
To start off with a bang:
Engineer/Technician/Hotwire
These are the classes that you want to play if you want to win. I would go as far as saying that besides these and SBH (Stealth Black Hand), there are no classes capable of effectively dealing with buildings on their own. It is no secret that an easy way to easily get an upper hand is to fill an APC with these and rush a building, then try to bomb it's MCT, due to the many explosives they carry.
As for their combat ability, they can use remote explosives as an offensive tool, throwing it at foe of any kind, be it a tank or infantry, and detonating for instant/nearly instant kill. Even their mines can be used offensively to a degree, placing them while retreating to lure the enemy onto them. They can also use tiberium auto-rifle, much like any other class - this doesn't mean it makes them balanced relative to the other classes, though. The weapon is quite powerful on it's own and makes the class that much better at defending itself without a powerful primary of their own.
Not only are they the best offensive class, they are also the best defensive class. They can repair anything, from buildings, to vehicles, to infantry. They can lay mines around their base, and even in enemy base, absolutely anywhere. They can disable any sort of explosive, superweapon beacon, and they can capture tech buildings
And last but not least, they are the class that you want to use for vehicle warfare, due to their aforementioned repair ability. Once their vehicle gets destroyed, they can just repair whatever friendly vehicle is around. And if they find themselves surrounded by enemy vehicles, they can use their explosives to take them down or at least deal heavy damage to them.
Every other class
Their worst downside is that they are not Engineers/Techs/Hotties. They have no special abilities that Engineers do. They can't capture anything, effectively destroy any buildings, they are not as good for vehicle warfare, they can't repair anything, they only carry one measly timed C4. The only thing they are good for is killing enemy troops - this is an issue in an objective-based game that RenegadeX is, where you are supposed to destroy the enemy base, not X tanks or Y soldiers. This one their attribute only helps for helping their Engineers reach the enemy base by escort so those can deal the damage there.
Their only true strength is bigger health pool and their ability to defend superweapon beacon in case the Engineers have already taken care of the base defenses, possibly by the means of APC/tank rush. Up until that point, there is no point to them, other than preventing enemy engineers from doing the same to their base. Then there are many classes that are bad even at that, like flamethower.
Why is this an issue?
You have essentially two classes in the game:
-Engineer and his upgrades, which are superior.
-Those other classes and their upgrades, which are inferior in every aspect except man-to-man combat.
Engineers are still better and more useful.
If anyone mentions faction/map balance in this thread I swear I will personally track them down and suffocate them in their sleep.
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And I said that there is also balance between different classes to consider, not only between the factions and maps.
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If the advantage of one team's infantry is successfully negated by the advantage of the other team's vehicles, then it should not matter. The overall win % is what measures this (per map). The end result is the result of every factor being used in practicd., rather than analyzing each part of the game through principle. Measurement results outweigh words always in terms of balance.
"It doesn't matter that the game isn't as fun as it could be, all that matters is this 50% winrate"
I'd agree with you if we were discussing economics here, but we're talking about a videogame. In game design terms, balance is not only the raw data that can be collected, it also reaches into game design and fun aspect.
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Overall balance should also take into factor the balance between different classes, which isn't all that good in RenX, as I mentioned earlier. You have 5 free classes, soldier, shotgunner, marksman, anti-vehicle one and engineer. Which one do you usually pick? For the most part the choice is either one of the combat ones (in which case you are likely to die and not contribute to victory at all) or engineer. And by going engineer you basically seal the deal - you want to win the game, not endlessly jerk off with the other guys. Because out of the free classes, the engineer is the one that is best suited to capture objectives - destroy bases and defend bases. Nowadays he's also the only class that can capture tech buildings. And as a bonus, he's the best class to pick for vehicle warfare, so you can also jerk off with those other engineers in vehicles not doing anything to contribute, along with those soldiers and marksmen etc.
Engineer's the class that is good for everything. Every other free class is only good for killing and not contributing anything to victory. As for the paid ones, those actually have the potential to go and do something, problem is, they need vehicles so they don't get instakilled by base defenses. And since engineer is the class you want to use a vehicle as, the paid classes end up never actually contributing either and just rack up kills. With an exception of hottie, tech and SBH.
Hate to bring TF2 up again, but that is a game where you can have fun playing any class and where every class has it's well-defined limits. You don't have a class that is a combination of Demoman, Medic, Heavy and Engineer - because if there was one, it would be more useful than any other class and everyone would play it, resulting in shallow gameplay and, seeing as all of the mentioned classes are defensive classes, very stale matches. That is a problem in RenX. It's visibly a Command and Conquer game, and as such you can't blame it for not being like TF2, but it's built on the same basis. You've always had these different types of units that were good at doing different things, but never before in a CnC game you had one that was good for anything (maybe if you excuse superunits and some horrors EA has created in C&C3). This is an interesting anomaly and I see it as one of the most major problems with the game.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not dissing the game now. I just feel like it's not as good as it could have been and it irks me, as a loyal CnC fan. I'm not blaming RenX developers for it either, it was maybe just Westwood's lack of experience with FPS games. I just thought now would be a good time to go and do something about it.
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Balance is measured by the end result. Nod could appear to dominate to players, but if the winning % is 50/50, then the game is balanced, regardless of what people think.
That's what it comes down to.
Looking at the stats is your first mistake. Balance isn't as simple as "equal conditions" and "50% winrate"
It's pragmatics. You have to look at the very core of the game and see what's wrong there, the little design decisions that make the broader image. How many of those 50% were won by a single person going SBH nuking the enemy base? How many were won by a single hottie making it into power plant and bombing the MCT? What was the point of those other 39 people playing the game then? What they do doesn't matter, they keep killing each other in tanks/repair MCT's while 2 or 3 people try and capture the objective on their own, and at one point they randomly succeed. And if they do decide to actually do something organized it's usually APC rush or something of the sort. But your average server is nothing more than chaos between an AGT and an Obelisk.
Like I said, look at the 2fort example. That map is perfectly symmetrical, has 50% winrate, everybody hates it because you can only make something happen if you either go engineer and turtle to oblivion or go Spy, sap everything and steal the flag on your own. The rest of the server has nothing to do but duel each other as Snipers or generally not going anywhere near the objective because it's impossible.
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uhm ... gather a group, buy an APC and rush a building is teamwork an requires a good team.
and as shocking as it sounds ... balance means both teams have equal chances ... balance says nothing about the quality of certain tactics
No it doesn't, but it's also not as simple as having symmetrical maps and equal teams - in fact, Renegade has neither, and yet it could be a balanced game. Compare with TF2 which has symmetrical maps and equal teams and, while being decently balanced, has some serious flaws. Anyone will tell you that 2fort (symmetrical map) sucks because it's too easy to defend, has nearly no medkits and is biased towards certain classes - which would also be the flaws of RenegadeX.
It's not impossible to solve however. We just have to be very careful not to make it even worse by adding features without putting any thought into them.
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You can only win by using two shoddy tactics to rush the objective rather than actually winning by being the better team.
What I meant to say is that playing the game normally is futile effort for the most part. You have tanks and infantry endlessly stuck inbetween base defenses until either side decides to use a superweapon/oversaturated engineer class. As ashocking as it sounds, that is not a good balance.
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No but at this point I can outright say without implying anything that you can't read.
I've never mentioned my personal views on the game. Just pointing out that one should not take TB as a credible source.
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The game is too much defense-based. It's essentially CnC without a commander and no amount of communication is going to make it work. To have people cooperate, you have to tie them together and send them to fight.
Giving individuals even more defensive options is ridiculous. Engineers are already questionably powerful, keeping the tanky stuff nigh invincible, and the weapons that are meant to counter them do poor damage. The most popular tactic is to either go SBH and place a beacon or fill two APC's with engineers and rush in like ejaculation hoping that at least some of them manage to bomb the MCT. The only infantry that's any good at putting out damage is snipers, again a defensive class. If anything that is a sign that something is horribly wrong.
Tech buildings should give the team that captures them an upper hand in offense, not defense. Defense only results in stalemates.
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Pay 1000 credits to break the game, or airstrikes 2: electric boogaloo.
I'd rather see an offensive tech building - capture it and it acts as forward spawn with purchase terminal.
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For about the turrets ...
If they have limited ammo, can not be reloaded and are not to hard to destroy by 1 or 2 tanks it will be fine
same for refill/repair/heal crates, if everybody can refill/repair/heal (even enemies) and they be destroyed easy (like 1 timed c4) it will be fine
You are talking about minisentries from TF2. They destroyed the balance.
Besides that, there are already powerful base defenses in Renegade. We do not need more defensive measures. The game is prone to stalemates as is.
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Why turrets are a bad idea:
1. They're turrets. You are going to hate them and the people building them.
2. Engineer is already oversaturated enough. He can repair buildings, he can repair vehicles, he can repair infantry, he can capture tech buildings, he can disable beacons, he can disable mines, he can disable time bombs, he can solo MCT's and tanks with remote explosives and hotties and techs can also lay mines on top of that AND NO OTHER CLASS CAN DO ANY OF THAT
This is actually one of my biggest gripes with the game. Like holy shit, every other class is absolutely powerless and narrowly specialized in comparison.
It's a bit of a cold shower coming from TF2 where every class has the same range of possible roles. Here we have engineers that have god-like defensive and offensive powers and flamethrowers that do no damage to anything at all.
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Unless Mobious had a daughter when he was 15 that isn't the "rapid aging", which is non-sensical as Tiberium causes mutation and not rapid aging. Might be a good cop out for Mobious not being alive anymore during TS (which is implied as the game and expansion focus on the Tacticus to control Tiberium and never make mention of Mobius).
He didn't age of Tiberium exposure, he aged upon realization that Tiberium is a threat rather than a gift, destroying every lifeform in it's path. It was so bad that his hair turned white in a few months.
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Umm just go ahead? Nobody's restricting you.