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Originally Posted by CrazyCarl
Chilled: I don't know why you don't apply for the beta. You have strong opinions about the current release that you've written about extensively, so I'd like to know what you'd think about some of the changes we have now. I'm inclined to think you wouldn't like most of them. However, rolling back to what we had previously isn't going to happen.
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I was going to actually, but around that time, I was told in no uncertain terms that if in testing (or in actual games) I was able to win 90-100% of the time on O in AvD games, that would have no real bearing on balance changes. So in other words, even if I presented as much evidence as any individual could that the balance was screwed for AvD (which until recently there's been a lot of denial about), it wouldn't matter.
This was kind of a surprise to me, since while I realize my opinions would have little bearing as a beta member, I thought the dev team would at least recognize that proof of winning almost all the time as offense is NOT BALANCED. The fact that this wasn't even a guarantee highly discouraged me from wanting to participate. It's like being tasked to test a fireproof suit that catches on fire almost every time and making no promise to make changes based on that data. Also I was told by multiple people that the beta team was basically dead, which didn't add a lot of incentive either.
As for changes, it's difficult to say, I am actually very open to change, I've just seen the current direction be so completely borked, that's the main reason I'm an advocate of a rollback. Frankly, it's the easiest solution given the problems present. If there are more radical changes in mind, an easy way to test whether I'll like it is if the game has been balanced. I considered 1.0 almost balanced. I thought D still needed a little help compared to TFC, but it was still decent. Defense has been absolutely crippled since then. There would need to be counters that work for the following additions before I'd probably like it:
-increased move speeds (skim capping and shot slowing have only met this halfway. It makes a big difference to skilled players, but unskilled ones aren't bunny hopping anyway, so thus their default run speed is still faster than it was in 1.0 or TFC. Pub AvD games always have unskilled players)
-Pyro jumping (this makes a huge difference in vertically inclined maps. I can finish avanti in 3 minutes in pubs as a pyro and demo at the end. That would never happen in TFC.)
-Spy total invisibility (This has basically destroyed hunted, pure and simple. For other modes it's not quite so bad, but it removes skill from the game. There is zero skill involved trying to flush out an enemy that you can't see that may or may not be there and it's simply not fun.)
-Jump pads (Some maps they don't matter, others it's basically game over. Also being able to destroy a jump pad is not a real counter to it. You're still giving O an advantage where there was none before, it would just be slightly less of one.)
-Weaker sentries, specifically push and damage absorption. (I've never been fully happy with the FF sentry guns, they've always felt weaker to TFC's. TFC's actually had less health, but they could block splash damage, so an engineer could use them as wall and keep them up for far longer than in FF. 1.0 sentries at least had more health to compensate for that, but then that got taken away, leaving them as vulnerable as cardboard. TFC had excellent tracking, but it also had slower speeds. FF's is a little wonky. Damage-wise, FF feels weaker than TFC, but that's not a huge deal.
The sg push however is the single most crippling change I think has been done to the game's defense. The 2.1 patch is what convinced me that the FF dev team did not give a flying SHIT about hardcore AvD players. It still hasn't recovered since then. This is what allows people to cap flags and get close enough to sg's to kill them. It's made an utter joke out of defense. I've gone over it again and again and my only conclusion is that you have some extremely O-biased dev members making the gameplay decisions.
-Weaker hwguy (The hwguy is basically weaker than he's ever been. In 1.0 he was a beast, just like TFC. In 2.0 he was relatively ineffective, but was stronger than ever at point blank range if the shot was primed. In 2.1 he had better long-range effectiveness than ever before. As he is now, he simply doesn't have the stopping power he used to, so with the ng nerfed as well, it leaves demomen and sollys as the only real defenders left.
So if the next patch isn't really addressing this stuff or is giving O even more goodies and D almost nothing (or better yet, removing MORE from them), then you're right, I probably won't like it. If 2.5 has been the patch I've been waiting for for two years and will restore D effectiveness to previous levels, I may love it. Again, I'm not against change, but I am against pissing all over AvD balance, that's the main reason I ever played TFC and FF.
I actually am curious now, because if I KNOW that the game is going to keep going in the same direction that it has been, then I'll just stop bothering you guys, because then it will be obvious you simply didn't enjoy the same things I did from TFC and want FF to be a different game than I would ever make.