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Edited by Razurusz: 7/20/2014 11:44:50 PM
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Action, Armour and Appropriateness: Multiplayer Balance Suggestions

Having sunk in a ludicrous amount of hours during both Destiny's Alpha and Beta, enough to get myself an armour shader and min/maxed my armour and abilities like crazy in both. All this in such a short time has brought up a few things I feel need tweaking and changing for PvP purposes. Some things just don't translate over very well to PvP where they may still be appropriate in PvE,. This post addresses two of the more major issues. [u][b]Recovery, Agility, and Armour - Some Second Winds Blow Faster[/b][/u] Titan's Unstoppable skill (Harder to kill during Fist of Havok) as an example relating to super armour, and Warlock's Recovery rate, are fairly glaring issues in terms of balance. The former increase in armour is part of a larger issue I'll address second, but the latter is something I feel needs to be inactive during PvP. [i]Recovery[/i] is one of three main statistics, governing the speed in which lost health is regained, the other two being [i]Armour[/i] and [i]Agility[/i], which cover damage resistance and overall speed/jump height respectively. Warlocks are naturally able to gain the most in the recovery stat compared to the other two classes, and as a result can regenerate their health roughly two seconds faster than Hunters/Titans after they stop receiving damage, when under the last 1/3rd of health (8 seconds cut down to ~6 seconds). They also shave off roughly a second of recovery time after losing anything greater than the last 1/3rd of health, turning a ~4.5 second recovery time to a ~3.5 second one. Classes having different downtimes in a supposedly level PvP field is a big problem. Especially when no hunter outruns me - a Titan - with their superior agility stat, nor has any titan taken more bullets to bring down than any other enemy, even in Iron Banner, in spite of titans having the highest natural armour stat. [u]For levelling the Crucible playing field, all classes should either have the exact same health recovery speed (preferable), or armour and agility should factor into PvP gameplay as well (not my preference, but would at least allow different classes to have various edges).[/u] [u]The Armoured Pain Train - Super Ability Armour in PvP[/u] Super abilities naturally come with their own increased armour stat during their activation, allowing a player to reduce incoming damage while their super ability is starting up. When the ability is an active state, such as Hunter's [i]ghost/golden gun[/i], the player is [i]only[/i] invincible during the start-up, and is as vulnerable as any other player while holding their weapon of mass destruction, minus the fact that they have said WMD in their hands. This allows careful or crafty players to take out, dodge or outmaneuvre a Hunter with their super activated and bring them down with several bullets to the face. A fair contest considering how deadly GG can be. [i]Fist of Havoc [/i]and [i]Nova Bomb[/i] are another tale entirely. Both have super armour during their entire activation phase, Warlocks becoming vulnerable once the projectile leaves their hands, and Titans becoming vulnerable after their fists have lifted themselves off the ground. Vulnerable here meaning that their super armour deactivates and regular damage values are applied. This turns both of these abilities into an essential 'I win button.' Titan's Striker tree also includes a buff to Fist of Havoc that increases the efficiency of your super armour even more than the base level, making it possible to jump into a group of enemies with raining gunfire upon you, fists blazing with arc energy, 2/5ths of health remaining when you activated it, and promptly zapping every one of them with your shockwave. Cry Havoc. Nova Bomb shares roughly the same principle, with Warlocks being just slightly easier to kill during super activation, but still a very difficult task. The issue here is that, while supers are being used as offensive or defensive tools in order to further the goals of your team and/or place in the current match's scoreboard, Super Armour allows them to be used without tact. I've thrown out a Panic Fist of Havoc enough times to be sure that the sheer amount of super armour I have during is absolutely ludicrous, survivability skyrockets, and 'outplaying' your opponent becomes a press of two shoulder buttons to completely negate an enemy outflanking you, gaining more precision shots than you, or even having a teammate or two backing them up. All fall before the super armour. I propose that super armour be removed or heavily toned down for supers during PvP, leaving the effects of the supers to do the talking. Cleverly launching an arced long-range nova bomb or surprising a group of opponents with a fist of havoc from their flank will be the kind of tactical decisions that win battles, instead of grinning to yourself as you pull off a Breaker medal simply for being very difficult to kill. [u]Supers should indeed be super, but their efficiency should be as super as the player using it. Not the attributes that make it negate other forms of outplaying.[/u] Of course I can't take into account how things will work when all the classes have access to their skill codexes to alter their recovery/agility/armour stats, various subclasses having different supers, and the difference between the test versions and the final game, this is simply my view on how things have played out in both the Alpha and Beta for these issues, and I hope that they are addressed.

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