Things that need change IMO

[Ardente]

Ye ye.. I know.. doublePost.

Just wanna end the little flamewar.

I guess some of us were going kinda offtopic and meany.

Changes in my opinion.

Stealth Tank: Slightly faster, abit more range (against Air Units) and the rocket accuracy.

Rocket Soldier: Longer LockOn (If its possible). Since they hide longer for reloading than for aiming/lockon and shooting.

Patch: A bit less damage. Just for Infantry vs Vehicle balancing.

Officer: More spread at close range. Since you can easily kill infantry from Canyon Silo Cave to Tib Field.

Overall: We need splash damage that actually hit us as well. You can spam RocketSoldier, Gunner & McFarLand to the ground and get no damage at all.

FunIdea for Mines. Give it a little flag with its TeamLogo

Edited April 3, 2015 by Guest

[HaTe]

We're getting so off topic. Not even addressing or arguing the points I brought up. Everyone's just adding in their own balance input at this point. Which all differs from style, skill, experience, team play, and so much more. Honestly, and I'm not trying to offend anyone, but I can only take the players with proven skill seriously. If I see you in game and you appear to be average or worse, then your balance arguments are mostly irrelevant to me anyway (for reasons previously stated).

[Ardente]

... but I can only take the players with proven skill seriously. If I see you in game and you appear to be average or worse, then your balance arguments are mostly irrelevant to me anyway (for reasons previously stated).

Oh wow.. Even "average" players are not relevant for you? Wow.. thats wow.

How can you even rate my gameplay, If the points are kinda broken?

I can understand your point there, but thats kinda arrogant.

And please dont say you rate it by !rec 's.

[HaTe]

They're relevant, just not when talking about balance as is. I use "average" loosely because many players are new and there's only a select few that truly understand the game strategies and also have skill. Whereas there are lots of new players or players that aren't very good. I don't rate by points of recs lol that'd be ridiculous. I rate mostly by the strategies that the player is trying to get the team to use. Then of course by skill, both with infantry and vehicles. If they are suggesting a strategy that is just going to hurt the team, then it becomes apparent that they do not yet understand many gameplay elements. If they're someone that sits in the game and complains about team balance the whole time instead of playing, then it also becomes apparent that they are not very good at the game. Some players are solo players that are skilled too, but that's the rarest breed of them all right now.

[RoundShades]

... but I can only take the players with proven skill seriously. If I see you in game and you appear to be average or worse, then your balance arguments are mostly irrelevant to me anyway (for reasons previously stated).

Oh wow.. Even "average" players are not relevant for you? Wow.. thats wow.

How can you even rate my gameplay, If the points are kinda broken?

I can understand your point there, but thats kinda arrogant.

And please dont say you rate it by !rec 's.

Honestly, anyone that plays Street Fighter, a high-skill game, knows someone can be a "theory fighter" and/or a good game ideaist or programmer or designer, without being able to play well. Be honest Hate, how many Battlefield/CoD/Halo/RenX players go to tournaments or place top of the game? Kenz is good but even lacks macro-teamwork (he teams in 2-3 players sometimes and other times just snipes at junk in his teams way).

Nonetheless, these are the people that program the game, with fundamental and essential knowledge of best ways to systematically set things up to be easiest to play.

I am not the best player, and teamwork wise I play like Kenz, and aimwise I don't have a good enough computer to compete not to mention the skill. Nonetheless, even I would know that faded dark-yellow stripes around the edges of mines would help them stand out as circles on the ground where the ground is pitch black in RenX and would be light grey in RenClassic.

Even I know simplifying weapon slots and infiltration and weapon usage into reliable results and comprehensive function is a good thing, such as pulling all secondaries to one slot and all item based to another slot and even different c4 setups, the main gameplay reason especially is to seperate the repairmen and structure infiltration destruction roles.

As well as the smoke grenades, being able to pay to make one pass through the base defenses with an obvious visual to enemies is more balanced than running the base defences and getting results that are sometimes this but sometimes not this.

Same with group mines, I am not even going to say a cluster-disarm was the only way to do that, but given that 4-16 is the average cluster of mines and disarm takes 6 seconds a piece it is unreasonable to think anyone can disarm 1 mine before taking a casualty let alone 4-16 or even make small chipping progress on them, and "soaking damage by walking into them while under repair" is counter intuitive and is another reason they should disarm at least at the speed which a unit would take damage from them and then take repair.

I also made a suggestion about unit prices and scaling units so they cost the same difference apart from one another but the cheapest is 300 and the most expensive is 1k. 175 units are effective enough to use consistently without loss and are much more worthwhile 5 instead of a 1k unit, if they were 300 then more credits would be sunk out of matches and a 1k unit would be more reasonably valued against the cost of 3 cheap units instead of 5. It would also make "early game" last 4-8 minutes instead of 3-5 minutes, which in 30 minute matches is a real good gameplay change becaues playing 25 minutes of top-tier character and vehicle access is more monotonous and the buildup to get 1k units and vehicles is a blink of an eye.

Having matches build up more slowly is a suggestion that doesn't take "skill" but instead "insight". I play enough Super Monday Night Combat to know good "game pacing", if you had access to all skills and buffs 4 minutes into a SMNC match, that would be 11 minutes every match of droll death-matching. Since it takes 6 minutes just to build up a significant advantage in level and upgrades, you have 6 minutes of important early game, and even then you have 2/5 of your total endgame strength, so it takes 12-15 minutes of a match to get full strength.

Now, RenX matches are 30 minutes, so getting full strength at 8 is REAL bad, it doesn't have to be the same ratio but the average credits an average person should have at 8 minutes, depending on what they could buy during that time like secondary weapons and other money-sinks, is about 2200 in my opinion in current game. That is still a LCG/500sniper every 2 minutes. Except, it gives leeway to equipment and vehicles and donations. If you made money-sinks like classes cost a bit more and secondaries as well, as well as reduced base damage/repair income, then honestly it will make credits more competitive, and the ref giving a passive 1 credit income even when dead would be enough to "be fun to play and not intentionally afk like a dweeb" (I won't lie, I do it, I admit to it because I only treat the game like it treats me back), but not enough income to compete against a fully funded team like some people see in some matches currently in Beta4 where teams intentionally camp a ref-only and still fill the field with competitive cavalry somehow against a better funded team.

[HaTe]

I'm not talking about gameplay. Even people with no sense of the game can feel free to comment on that. Graphics, settings, character models, bugs, physics; I'll take anyone serious about that. I'm talking balance. Which team is better, which weapons are better, which weapons are OP, etc. People who don't have skill or knowledge of the game aren't taken seriously by me when discussing balance issues. The rest of the game, I'm glad to listen and discuss with average players.

Not sure if you got confused by what I was saying or were intentionally twisting it, but the above paragraph basically renders your whole post as irrelevant lol

[RoundShades]

I'm not talking about gameplay. Even people with no sense of the game can feel free to comment on that. Graphics, settings, character models, bugs, physics; I'll take anyone serious about that. I'm talking balance. Which team is better, which weapons are better, which weapons are OP, etc. People who don't have skill or knowledge of the game aren't taken seriously by me when discussing balance issues. The rest of the game, I'm glad to listen and discuss with average players.

Not sure if you got confused by what I was saying or were intentionally twisting it, but the above paragraph basically renders your whole post as irrelevant lol

Well, in that case, I still feel if you watch enough youtube and twitch, or keep track of win statistics, you can still have a fairly good understanding of balance as a spectator.

You also can NOT balance a game based on top skill. There are a LOT of newbie-friendly things that make sense, and some that dont and ruin the potential of the game, and knowing the difference is important, but in my experience, casual players will always suggest vehicle color and mine color be bright yellow and bright red teamcolored, and hardcores will always suggest automatic weapons have really low bodyshot damage and really high headshot damage and a lot of recoil after the 2nd bullet fired and everything require a 8 man team to accomplish anything.

You have to know that team colored mines and vehicles ruin game fun by trojan vehicle and blending mines into enemy minefields, and that unrealistic weapon skill and group-reliant lethality ruin fun by low skill players never accomplishing anything and leaving the playerbase with the 20 diehard fans playing amongst themselves with no new blood.

As far as balance goes, I think the stank needs more range for instance, based solely on the fact that an old ren player would expect it to reach the WF edge from the gdi base entrance, it would be nice if it reached air vehicles given the lack of Anti-Air options, and that it makes the weapon more useful in multi-vehicle conflicts where the stank can stay with the pack and still peck at enemy vehicles, as well as diversifying it from the Flame Tank which at current stealth tank missile range will always be better especially with it's new volumetric weapon which can reliably toast infantry with most of it's available dps at it's max range (at least 1 barrel).

The chaingun needing spread would make it damage infantry less at mid range or longer, that would also be expected of the weapon being a "chaingun". Giving it less damage versus light vehicles also makes sense, it does unexpectedly high damage. Giving it less bullets a clip also makes it less able to sustain multiple gunfights which is too much value for a 175 unit that accels at a single gunfight engagement as well as the officer does. This would still leave the officer as nearly-amazing as it is now at shotgun fight range.

Gunner adjustments I base entirely off the gameplay concept of "too much overlap" with Patch, rather than "balance". It is agreeably underpowered across the board, or more specifically "given strength in the wrong areas". If Patch can do consistent longrange vehicle damage on fast moving vehicles as well as infantry, give gunner more damage with a slow projectile so he can excel at structures and vehicle-fusterclucks but not at infantry except point blank in a tunnel or inside a structure (not like the currently headshot infantry down the tunnels in field).

The point still remains. You cant judge ideas or people giving ideas based on the skill of the person. You have to actually chew the idea over. If you give it a thought, theorize it, and come up with a massive gameplay flaw in it, like giving tanks passenger machineguns completely wrecking balance as we know it for instance, as cool as it sounds don't get me wrong, then it's a bad idea. If you can come up with multiple reasons to do something and no servere consequences, then it is worth a try, so you can see where the consequence lies if anywhere.

While I am ranting and mentioning balance together, I might as well also throw out again, that the grenade launcher can still reach across the cave in mesa, entrance to entrance, with like a 15% upward angle of aim. What is it's max range at a 45% angle of aim? Can you hit the Oblesk from the field tunnel with the grenadier which happens to have some of the highest structure damage and is a free unit? I think I make a good balance arguement there, it just needs a heavier projectile that travels as fast for ease of use, but falls shorter for a more limited range, and the fall also requires more upward aim at longer ranges which makes the projectile hit the ground with more delay giving infantry at least a chance to dodge it. As it stands currently, if you chunk a grenade at an enemy across the mesa cave, they are taking the splash damage at least.

[HaTe]

I'm not talking about gameplay. Even people with no sense of the game can feel free to comment on that. Graphics, settings, character models, bugs, physics; I'll take anyone serious about that. I'm talking balance. Which team is better, which weapons are better, which weapons are OP, etc. People who don't have skill or knowledge of the game aren't taken seriously by me when discussing balance issues. The rest of the game, I'm glad to listen and discuss with average players.

Not sure if you got confused by what I was saying or were intentionally twisting it, but the above paragraph basically renders your whole post as irrelevant lol

Well, in that case, I still feel if you watch enough youtube and twitch, or keep track of win statistics, you can still have a fairly good understanding of balance as a spectator.

You also can NOT balance a game based on top skill. There are a LOT of newbie-friendly things that make sense, and some that dont and ruin the potential of the game, and knowing the difference is important, but in my experience, casual players will always suggest vehicle color and mine color be bright yellow and bright red teamcolored, and hardcores will always suggest automatic weapons have really low bodyshot damage and really high headshot damage and a lot of recoil after the 2nd bullet fired and everything require a 8 man team to accomplish anything.

You have to know that team colored mines and vehicles ruin game fun by trojan vehicle and blending mines into enemy minefields, and that unrealistic weapon skill and group-reliant lethality ruin fun by low skill players never accomplishing anything and leaving the playerbase with the 20 diehard fans playing amongst themselves with no new blood.

As far as balance goes, I think the stank needs more range for instance, based solely on the fact that an old ren player would expect it to reach the WF edge from the gdi base entrance, it would be nice if it reached air vehicles given the lack of Anti-Air options, and that it makes the weapon more useful in multi-vehicle conflicts where the stank can stay with the pack and still peck at enemy vehicles, as well as diversifying it from the Flame Tank which at current stealth tank missile range will always be better especially with it's new volumetric weapon which can reliably toast infantry with most of it's available dps at it's max range (at least 1 barrel).

The chaingun needing spread would make it damage infantry less at mid range or longer, that would also be expected of the weapon being a "chaingun". Giving it less damage versus light vehicles also makes sense, it does unexpectedly high damage. Giving it less bullets a clip also makes it less able to sustain multiple gunfights which is too much value for a 175 unit that accels at a single gunfight engagement as well as the officer does. This would still leave the officer as nearly-amazing as it is now at shotgun fight range.

Gunner adjustments I base entirely off the gameplay concept of "too much overlap" with Patch, rather than "balance". It is agreeably underpowered across the board, or more specifically "given strength in the wrong areas". If Patch can do consistent longrange vehicle damage on fast moving vehicles as well as infantry, give gunner more damage with a slow projectile so he can excel at structures and vehicle-fusterclucks but not at infantry except point blank in a tunnel or inside a structure (not like the currently headshot infantry down the tunnels in field).

The point still remains. You cant judge ideas or people giving ideas based on the skill of the person. You have to actually chew the idea over. If you give it a thought, theorize it, and come up with a massive gameplay flaw in it, like giving tanks passenger machineguns completely wrecking balance as we know it for instance, as cool as it sounds don't get me wrong, then it's a bad idea. If you can come up with multiple reasons to do something and no servere consequences, then it is worth a try, so you can see where the consequence lies if anywhere.

While I am ranting and mentioning balance together, I might as well also throw out again, that the grenade launcher can still reach across the cave in mesa, entrance to entrance, with like a 15% upward angle of aim. What is it's max range at a 45% angle of aim? Can you hit the Oblesk from the field tunnel with the grenadier which happens to have some of the highest structure damage and is a free unit? I think I make a good balance arguement there, it just needs a heavier projectile that travels as fast for ease of use, but falls shorter for a more limited range, and the fall also requires more upward aim at longer ranges which makes the projectile hit the ground with more delay giving infantry at least a chance to dodge it. As it stands currently, if you chunk a grenade at an enemy across the mesa cave, they are taking the splash damage at least.

An argument that can make its point in the fastest way possible is the best argument to make. I'll start with that since reading these walls of text is more annoying than anything else.

Sure, you can have an outside opinion as a spectator, but your opinion will only be as strictly an outsider. Who can explain a situation better, a primary source or a secondary source?

I'm not talking about balancing the game merely based on top skill. I'm saying that these players understand the balance the best and are able to use the advantages the best. The best player can still understand that noobs often need the game simplified, whereas noobs won't understand the advantages that skill players use nearly as well. Again, who is the better source?

As far as specific balance tweaks are concerned in your post, I think its obvious enough that the stank needs a buff. The chaingun's issues could all be fixed by reducing the ROF marginally. Both the grenade launcher and McFarland are op against infantry as is, but I'd attribute that to ROF as well. Reduce the ROF, and they in-turn become less effective and therefore not as OP against infantry.

To not judge the person arguing about balance on their own skill level is to neglect the fact that there are different skill levels in the game, and therefore create a huge fallacy in the entire argument being made. It's like saying that a pre-schooler can have a strong educational stance on how education works, and taking that argument into consideration against a college education professor. Again, which source is better?

[RoundShades]

I am bad at walls of text. However, the great thing is, I can answer this next arguement briefly:

Which source is better? The source that contributes the highest player count.

I guarantee you, that requiring too much aim-skill, counter intuitive knowledge of how to use something besides how you would expect to use it, and making failing an unfun experience, would result in a low playercount. Nobody wants to put up with that in a game. And if they did, that crowd is already captivated with "Counterstrike".

Making it "Battlefield" would result in a low playercount because it would loose the Renegade fans but the Battlefield fans will stick to Battlefield of course, the better version of Battlefield will always be Battlefield.

You got to make it play like Renegade, while not being so obscure in function, so that a newbie can play it, enjoy, understand, not do terrible. Getting credits with a destroyed refinery means a bad player can still use classes and vehicles at half the rate of a good player. Credits being too abundant means everyone can use everything all the time despite what buildings exist, which grants no feeling of accomplishment anywhere. Gunner should probably not be a single shot infantry pecking killer, he should probably be anti armor and structure just based on what someone would expect. Chaingunner and Grenadier probably also need nerfs and I agree with the ones you say because you don't expect them to be the best building/lightarmor killers based on their bottom-tier costs.

[HaTe]

Again, I'm talking about balance. Not the gameplay or the mode itself. Both teams should be as close to 50-50 on each map as humanely possible. That's something that both noobs and skilled players want. Skilled players just understand how to get to that, better. Its literally that simple.

[RoundShades]

Again, I'm talking about balance. Not the gameplay or the mode itself. Both teams should be as close to 50-50 on each map as humanely possible. That's something that both noobs and skilled players want. Skilled players just understand how to get to that, better. Its literally that simple.

...Okay look at it this way. Balanced in skilled plays, and balanced in casual plays, is different because they are played differently. Preferably, it should be as close in both. Skilleds against casuals shouldn't be such a huge shutout for one. And skilled and casuals should both be able to play with 50-50 odds between teams.

That isn't always the case, because the autorifle for instance is harder to use for one than the other, so balancing it for one to use makes it overpowered for the other, or balanced for one makes it useless underpowered for the other. Really low bodyshot damage, veterans love that but casuals would not. It should reward skill to a limit. I could agree on less bodyshot damage than now by 10%, but any more would be RenClassic levels of skillgap, where if you don't headshot then the same class of enemy will kill you with over half health remaining.

Same with gunner, because someone is expected to land headshots with a fairly high skill level of leading the shot.

Same with per character structure damage, require too many people at once, and you encourage only skilleds, because skilleds can destroy buildings in a group of 8 but casuals can't because they try to solo. Now, encouraging group play with some sort of incentive, like assist rewards, that is a gameplay idea that encourages playing the game right and that can fix things as well.

The balance between vehicles, or anything really, in single engagements versus in group engagements, is a balancing act between casuals and skilleds, because artillery in pairs with a tech is unstoppable against even numbers, but 4 artillery against 4 meds both with a couple of repairmen will favor the meds because of the health limits. This is a balancing act in itself, a good one the way it is ingame already, but some casuals think Nod camping base entrance is OP because of how strong arty are, because they don't upgrade to the skill of moving out in a group of meds.

Another huge balance difference between skill gaps, is stealth. Sbh with nukes are OP in casuals, with how hard it is to see and how slow it is to react to a beacon and how good the odds are of a smart Sbh to kill a diffusing enemy. In skilled games, people look for sbh, sweep fire to detect sbh, can see sbh if they get in range, can react in swarms to a beacon, and the sbh doesn't stand a chance to hold the fight even if they plant it under a harvester coming in to dock (pro-move). Balancing stealth to be useful against skilleds, while not being the winning factor of every casual game, is hard. Often enough, you can balance stealth to be game-breaking in casuals and worthless in competitives, both at the same time.

If you only balance weapons and vehicles against structure damage and other weapons and vehicles, in the situations and hands of skilled players, they might be useless in the hands of casuals, end in unfun games, and again, that doesn't retain a playerbase very well

[HaTe]

A skilled team will beat the casual team 9 times out of 10 (and this is being generous). We even proved this in the original over and over again. Through both community wars and clanwars. Casual gamers don't do well against skilled competitive players. its a different pace, a different style. Its more advanced.

That's not at all what this argument is about though. The point is that skilled players understand the aspect of balance better. Obviously the casual balance cannot be ignored, such that it should be just as easy for the casual gamer to win with either side than it is a skilled gamer. Skilled players just understand that balance aspect from a wider range than the narrow casual gamer balance.

[HaTe]

watch this. Its a community war between 2 of the best communities in renegade at the time. The coordination and skill are amazing. Most casual players would say how op nod was on city in renegade. We proved that skilled players disagree. So while the stank should have been edited in the original to fix how op it was to the casual gamer on a map like this, a skilled player understands that the game can be played in many different ways to negate that. So yeah, the stank should have been less op because of how it was affecting casual game play (which skilled players also recognized), but in competitive play, it was simply a non-factor. We see it from a wider perspective.

Aiming is also more advanced.

[RoundShades]

It is. Honestly, as a player of old C&C_City_Flying, I felt the mrls fitting the narrow space that lights and arties couldn't was a good early game establishment or building kill if coordinated well enough, if not at least credit collecting cheese because it was pretty fast to earn back 450. Coordinated with an early APC rush on the bar/obby/ref (I can sorta check to see which one got mined first), and you stretch their resources to repair and defend base early thin.

Later game, stanks CAN fit through the narrow openings, and flamers were strong, I felt that Nod tanks had more openings to shoot more buildings than GDI had, and that their apc rushes were more successful than GDI's were for some reason (as well as transport heli rushes although those were almost never successful even in maps with "/p" parachutes)

[HaTe]

Statistics proved that nod won the vast majority of city/flying games in the casual server in renegade. In competitive, it was a different story. You see, competitive players play both casually and competitively, whereas casual players play solely casually. That's where the larger perspective comes from, and why I take skilled players seriously (since there is no real competitive play in RenX yet). It is nothing personal. It just gets irritating to listen to average player arguments when they simply just don't understand the game yet to be arguing about balance like they are. Its so much more complex than the simple approach that they currently see (I'm not saying this is you, for the record).