Declined Vsh Hale rebalancing (1 Viewer)

[Brick]

Hi its Bricke

Back a few months ago i took a little break from playing tf2 and ive returned to vsh only to notice that playing Hale has become wayy too difficult. You barely see anyone win rounds anymore, and if there is a win its like 23-1. This is not only with amateur or new hales, ive seen incredibly experienced and good players just being pinged around and stunlocked in corners while their health rockets down. In my opinion this is mainly because of the knockback caused by engineers with sentries, (which are decently outplayable on their own.) Heavies, and snipers, Heavy used to be rarely played but now on open maps there is always 2+ Heavies crouched around an amplifier absolutely demolishing you if they have decent aim and you are close, it is also nearly impossible to get close because of the knockback and sometimes there are pyro's and/or medics covering them aswell. Then there are snipers, which there is enough threads about how stupidly OP his ass is. This results in an incredibly frustrating time playing as the hale. Imagine playing a 200+ kg australian demigod and getting blasted by a construction worker and two fat russians. For now i've just turned hale off just like the many other regulars on this server until something gets changed.

my proposal is decreasing the total knockback a hale recieves, especially from snipers, and amplifier crits, and adding the ability to strafe jump if you are airblasted. That way a good hale can move around well, not without resistance, but if you are good at least in control. This will make it overall easier and more fun to play hale and will iprove the balancing of the versus saxton hale gamemode.

This change is one they have already done in other server communities, where there is is mostly positive feedback, except for skial who went wayy too far with the no knockback rule and you just feel like you are a 200 tonne truck swerving trough the air popping peoples foreheads with your massive fists. This is in my opionion a solution that solves many problems, and will make those pesky vsh regulars stop bitching about their gamemode for a while, including me. But this is my opinion. and yours may vary, if i missed something ar i'm just plainly wrong in your opionion please let me know in the replies.

 

[tres]

Older post that suggested a sniper nerf:

Declined - VSH/FF2 sniper nerf idea

Decrease sniper rifle knockback as number of snipers increases e.g: 1 sniper: 100% knockback 2 snipers: 50% knockback 3 snipers: 33% knockback 4 snipers: 25% knockback etc. I know theres a cap limit in the process of being added for sniper but 3 good snipers is still enough to make it hell...

www.panda-community.com

Completed - Nerfing Sniper on VSH

Hello. I'm here to make an important suggestion for VSH: Nerfing Sniper. In particular: Change "All rifles do 3x dmg bodyshots" to "All rifles do 2x dmg". Initially, I didn't even realize we had this big issue, cause I never play as Hale. Then, during days and weeks, I've got several...

www.panda-community.com

 

[Racer911-1]

This Needs a poll.

Im pretty sure everyone already knows what i think about because i cant complain enough about certain things i want to have adressed and fixed.

As its pretty clear im just pissed of from knockback all the time. While i've been maining pyro lately (ironic), i still understand and feel other people being pissed of after being blasted by snipers, critted heavys, Sentrys and Pyros. And limiting the Snipers themselves wont do it. Others say "Lets just first get a class Limit and then we'll see next" which i see as bs because there are multiple rounds where there are between 2 and 4 snipers. Snipers should imo have a much bigger nerf than just a classlimit since they dont deserve to get such high amounts of damage just by standing around in a certain spot doing the lock and shoot stuff.
the 2nd part is that i suggested to have the climb ability removed but even this is where its being disagreed with (im not suggesting to remove it right here right now), because once again "Lets just first get a class Limit and then we'll see next". I've read examples of Scenarios where Snipers are completely on their own having no one to support them. The problem is that ofc they have a lot of other classes being able to support them. A single 1 or 2 lvl sentry could prevent this hale from getting to the Snipers due to the knockback additional from the snipers themselves.

I've also noticed the same of what you mentioned Brick. The more players there are in a server, the harder it is to Win. Giving Hales More HP and rage wont do it anymore because there will be multiple Medics, pyros and battalions backup sollys that can easily prevent the hale from getting any kills.
The More Hp Parts gets easily canceled out from Backstabs and Marketgardens since low hale hales only recieve atleast 600 damage while they recieve over 2000 when at very high hp.

Kinda got lost what im even trying to point out but ill just try to make it short here.

Hale needs a complete revamp. At very few players the Hale has a much better chance at winning than with a lot of players, Skilled or not.
Oh and one more thing. You hale to hope to get a certain hale otherwise its practically impossible to win

 

[Matth]

Hello Brick. I agree with the general problem that winning as Hale is being very difficult recently and this is discouraging people to play it.
Still, I gotta say this... Taking -or even thinking to take- any other action for VSH balancing is totally useless at the moment.

There are actually two very important open tasks that concern VSH balancing, not related to buffing Hale but to nerfing the RED team. These tasks are:

• Add pyro limit to 3 (only on VSH) - task #98
• Add sniper limit to 3 (only on VSH) - task #171

And we VSH players know how much they are important for Hales, even more than knockback itself (which would be even harder to imagine and set).
Hales can't do much with a big amount of pyros -airblasting and defending massively- and snipers -jumping around and dealing massive damages.

So ye, we are waiting for @Kevin . The sniper limit was requested 2 months ago and ok, the pyro limit more than 1 year ago.
Let's optimistically see how this goes.

 

[Heather]

If I was to choose how to nerf sniper, i'd ban the sydney sleeper and increase the damage taken from wallclimbing a considerable amount, both of these changes i'd imagine would pretty easy as they're only single value changes. Preventing sniper from spam climbing in rapid succession but still allowing them to setup seems like a feasible compromise, as for the sydney sleeper, sniper doesn't need to be getting the 25% faster charge + ability to headshot for 100-150 extra damage.

In regards to other classes mentioned, Pyro just needs an airblast cooldown and I think that should go without saying, pyros spamming airblast have dominated the server without any incentive to do otherwise, if this comes in the form of a cooldown on airblast, so be it. Though as for other alternatives to nerfing pyro, it might be an idea to buff other primaries of pyro, such as the phlog to maybe get players using a larger variety of weapons.
I wish I had a solution as to how to deal with the issue of Amplifier heavies, but frankly i'd seek @Abject 's opinion on that as i'm sure he has a few ideas as to what could possibly change.

Outside of classes, Goomba needs to be removed already

 

[Brick]

If I was to choose how to nerf sniper, i'd ban the sydney sleeper and increase the damage taken from wallclimbing a considerable amount, both of these changes i'd imagine would pretty easy as they're only single value changes. Preventing sniper from spam climbing in rapid succession but still allowing them to setup seems like a feasible compromise, as for the sydney sleeper, sniper doesn't need to be getting the 25% faster charge + ability to headshot for 100-150 extra damage.

In regards to other classes mentioned, Pyro just needs an airblast cooldown and I think that should go without saying, pyros spamming airblast have dominated the server without any incentive to do otherwise, if this comes in the form of a cooldown on airblast, so be it. Though as for other alternatives to nerfing pyro, it might be an idea to buff other primaries of pyro, such as the phlog to maybe get players using a larger variety of weapons.
I wish I had a solution as to how to deal with the issue of Amplifier heavies, but frankly i'd seek @Abject 's opinion on that as i'm sure he has a few ideas as to what could possibly change.

Outside of classes, Goomba needs to be removed already

Although i agree with all the things you said, i believe that making the hale recieve less knockback would cover the most ground qua balancing, and i would at least reduce the heavy/amp situation's severity a bit too. i don't know how hard it would be to add but ive seen it on skial and the creators of skial don't strike me a geniuses so it should be possible

 

[Madact]

I can tell you all ready goomba will not be removed. It can be nerfed however.

So what is the issue then, is it the knockback? the high damage? Or both?

I've been on the vsh servers recently. First I thought it was the map barn that hale was not winning at but then we was on errrr dunno what map name and only the most experienced would win.
Would love someone to do a tally of their experience, how many times hale wins and hale loses. Cause I fear hale doesn't win as often as they should.

And it's gotta be either one guys first, not both at the same time. It's either the damage or the knockback. Knockback had a setting correct? Does damage as well?

 

[Heather]

I can tell you all ready goomba will not be removed. It can be nerfed however.

So what is the issue then, is it the knockback? the high damage? Or both?

I've been on the vsh servers recently. First I thought it was the map barn that hale was not winning at but then we was on errrr dunno what map name and only the most experienced would win.
Would love someone to do a tally of their experience, how many times hale wins and hale loses. Cause I fear hale doesn't win as often as they should.

And it's gotta be either one guys first, not both at the same time. It's either the damage or the knockback. Knockback had a setting correct? Does damage as well?

in regards to Goomba, damage is the issue, scouts entire meta has shifted to purely running winger and focusing on spam goombas for a lot of scouts.

 

[Madact]

in regards to Goomba, damage is the issue, scouts entire meta has shifted to purely running winger and focusing on spam goombas for a lot of scouts.

Then I'm up for goomba suggestions too., but only ones that nerf the damage. What is it currently I wonder...It's probably a percentage based on how many players are playing. I'll see if I can find the pluggin setting change for that one. Or does anybody else know where it is?

I think VSH really needs to look at all it's suggestions and pick one thing to do instead of asking for a multi things to happen cause Kevin won't do it. But not to say Kevin would do this any faster.
Whatever you guys pick ,you need to make sure you pick the correct thing to nerf thats easy to change the setting of. Class restriction is one. I think knockback can be one too, but not at the same time. At least one of these will make it work.

Maybe doing a poll on this? Anybody else have anything to say?
Also sorry about my lack of knowledge or sticking myself into this, but VSH hasn't had an update in a looooong ass time

 

[Heather]

In my honest opinion class restrictions to sniper and other problem classes will only restrict who plays the class, it won't prevent the actual problem itself. But yeah it'd be a good idea to put it to a poll either on this thread or a new thread wording it clearly

 

[Brick]

I can tell you all ready goomba will not be removed. It can be nerfed however.

So what is the issue then, is it the knockback? the high damage? Or both?

I've been on the vsh servers recently. First I thought it was the map barn that hale was not winning at but then we was on errrr dunno what map name and only the most experienced would win.
Would love someone to do a tally of their experience, how many times hale wins and hale loses. Cause I fear hale doesn't win as often as they should.

And it's gotta be either one guys first, not both at the same time. It's either the damage or the knockback. Knockback had a setting correct? Does damage as well?

Thats what i was saying, knockback is the most inclusive and transformative of these suggestions so imo that should be the thing

 

[Madact]

I've made a poll, one of these has to be picked. Maybe one can come later if the first most popular suggestion doesn't help with balancing VSH.
I've include goomba in damage output for now.

Feel free VSH staff to edit this as seem fit.

 

[Racer911-1]

Normally i want to pick the first 3 options since they are the ones i want to have fixed but 1 for now then x).

I thought i could post my reason here for others to read and comment on.
I think Knockback should be the first thing that has to be fixed because you mainly get damage thanks to the Knockback made. If it was the other way around things wouldnt really change much exept it takes longer to kill the hale because he still cant move freely.

 

[Abject]

Regarding amplifiers and heavies:

There is a reason why most hitscan weapons in this game mode don't have permanent crits. It's impossible for hale to dodge them and hitting airborne hale is hilariously easy.

Amplifier is best abused by heavy because of his powerful hitscan weapon which can keep shooting uninterrupted as long as he has ammo.
The only real trade off to amp is having no dispenser which barely matters thanks to the metal regen engineer has. By destroying teleporters, a single engineer can provide heavies with limitless ammo without the need for dispenser. Amplifier also has the health of a lvl 3 building when fully constructed which means hale needs to hit it twice to destroy it. This seems highly unnecessary because of the power of crits it provides and the fact that other buildings need to be upgraded with 400 metal until they can survive a hit from hale.

Amplifier has weird interactions with some projectiles. It is completely immune to CBS's arrows, and bolts from crossbow and rescue ranger get stuck to it. Also if shot from certain angle, the projectiles bounce off the amp and float away slowly until they hit something. It's possible to have an entire map cluttered with floating projectiles.

Imo, removing the amplifier is a good idea. This will reduce the power of big sentry nests.

Since removing amp will affect heavy the most, I think a slight increase to his taunt crit duration would be nice to have. Most of his taunt crit time is wasted on the spin up + accuracy ramp up. I used to play heavy in vsh a lot and I have seen him be perfectly viable without amp. Relying on taunting or ubers for crits seems more fair to me as there's chance for hale to attack when you are mid taunt or after the crits wear off, as opposed to the constant crit boost from amp.

With all this said, I don't see amp as the highest priority change that should be made. It would merely be a small nudge into the right direction.
Sniper and airblast are the biggest issues on the server right now.

Spoiler

Also goomba needs to go.

 

[Matth]

The point is: Reduce knockback? Ok. Reduce goomba damage? Good. Reduce sniper rifle damage? Very well.

Now to be practical... How much less knockback? How much less goomba damage? Like, quantifying it for the coding, since this hasn't been discussed yet.
So ye, in my opinion, before even opening a very generic poll like this, we need to discuss and clarify these important things.

After this has been sorted out, then there is the most important of all questions: WHO makes the code for Kevin, as he needs one?
We had the same problem for the sniper rifle nerfing after it got voted for example, and that's why we then suggested the two class limits.
Since these exist already, it's just an easy copy-paste from other classes to snipers/pyros, isn't it? I ask cause I'm a noob on this, but I think so.

 

[Syntex]

In my opinion the normal goomba damage for every class should be 500 and for scouts with the one pistol (don't know the name right now) it should be 1000.
Then playing goomba scout is still viable but not op and for other classes its nice dmg but you should not focus on goomba.
How much less knockback is the big question here and hard to answer, also annoying for sure is the question who is gonna make the code.
Thats what is said in discord aswell, when we talked about all this. The vsh regulars all agree that we need those changes but getting them is the hard part. First of all its a lot that needs to be changed, till vsh is balanced again and second who is gonna code/make the changes. Sadly i don't have an answer to that.

 

[Brick]

The point is: Reduce knockback? Ok. Reduce goomba damage? Good. Reduce sniper rifle damage? Very well.

Now to be practical... How much less knockback? How much less goomba damage? Like, quantifying it for the coding, since this hasn't been discussed yet.
So ye, in my opinion, before even opening a very generic poll like this, we need to discuss and clarify these important things.

After this has been sorted out, then there is the most important of all questions: WHO makes the code for Kevin, as he needs one?
We had the same problem for the sniper rifle nerfing after it got voted for example, and that's why we then suggested the two class limits.
Since these exist already, it's just an easy copy-paste from other classes to snipers/pyros, isn't it? I ask cause I'm a noob on this, but I think so.

imo 25-30% knockback would be ideal, its just enough for a significant cut in power for knockback heavy classes but shouldn't penalize classes who need it like Medic too much.
@Heather Since you are the main medic what do you think about this?

 

[Brick]

The point is: Reduce knockback? Ok. Reduce goomba damage? Good. Reduce sniper rifle damage? Very well.

Now to be practical... How much less knockback? How much less goomba damage? Like, quantifying it for the coding, since this hasn't been discussed yet.
So ye, in my opinion, before even opening a very generic poll like this, we need to discuss and clarify these important things.

After this has been sorted out, then there is the most important of all questions: WHO makes the code for Kevin, as he needs one?
We had the same problem for the sniper rifle nerfing after it got voted for example, and that's why we then suggested the two class limits.
Since these exist already, it's just an easy copy-paste from other classes to snipers/pyros, isn't it? I ask cause I'm a noob on this, but I think so.

Also why i am against class limits, like it says in the name, its limiting. if we put in class limits on pyro and sniper wouldn't fix much and would also be two less extra dump classes. in total we would have limits to:
-Scout
-Soldier
-Pyro
-Engineer
-Sniper
-Spy

That leaves only demo, heaby and medic as dump classes.
My prediction would be that if a large part of the people can't play what they want people would start leaving, resulting in less players on average on the server. I can't predict how hard this would hit but it would have an impact for sure.

 

[Heather]

I'm still not fond of the Goomba scout meta. Goomba is problematic for 2 reasons, the damage and the inability for hale to superjump, we're already nerfing sniper for the very same reason of preventing hale from superjump, it seems strange to me to allow every other class the same opportunity, be it clumsy falling on hale, or being the one scout glued to his head and well the damage speaks for itself, its far too much for the effort/skill required to pull it off, especially when it comes to chute camping/accidental falling on hale.

As for the knockback, it's not something that's easy to blanket change, if you reduce it enough for sniper to not cuck hale every time he jumps, you might also cause Engineer's sentry to be a push over/make medic or soldier airshots barely nudge hale the way they should. the knockback value is definitely something that requires fine tuning, otherwise you just dumpster the other classes that weren't needing changes.

As for the coding for a lot of these changes, idk about the files for VSH, but I'm almost certain there would be some line somewhere along it dictating the values for knockback. I'll probably glaze over it in my free time to see if it isn't something that's easily changed.
If anyone is able to help me figure out the exact version of the VSH plugin on the server, please do share

 

[Heather]

Update on the coding front
Found the file I was certain existed, I can change weapon values as I please, gonna keep looking into being able to change more hale focused stats.
Going to @Madact @Racer911-1 @Matth to ask if there's anything I should be keeping an eye out for specifically that isn't just knockback?