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View Poll Results: What do you think?
Overpowered 1 3.57%
Balanced 4 14.29%
Underpowered 23 82.14%
Voters: 28. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 07-17-2010, 11:17 AM   #1
Bridget
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What do you think of the Sentry Gun?

Following in Chilled's footsteps, I'm going to see how divided the community is on a particular issue that I have. What do you think of the Engineer? More specifically, what do you think of his gun?

UNDERPOWERED:
The gun is weak, the gun has no push, the gun goes down easily, etc

BALANCED:
It's perfectly balanced or close enough.

OVERPOWERED:
The gun is strong, too much push, stays up too long, etc

You should try to outline your reasons in a post.

Last edited by Bridget; 07-17-2010 at 11:23 AM.
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Old 07-17-2010, 11:53 AM   #2
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but I think we're all in agreement that the SG ain't right - hence why stuff is being tested in beta. And I think we all agree that it's not working in beta either... Something has got to change and I think we all agree.

This isn't going to help much.
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Old 07-17-2010, 02:05 PM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Elmo View Post
but I think we're all in agreement that the SG ain't right - hence why stuff is being tested in beta. And I think we all agree that it's not working in beta either... Something has got to change and I think we all agree.

This isn't going to help much.
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Old 07-17-2010, 02:43 PM   #4
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Elmo: No, I think this is a great thread. You have to look at things from our perspective. We don't know what's going on. In 2.1 the sentry gun was incredibly weak and stayed that way. If you look at the old threads, the majority of people talk about how weak it is, with a few people claiming it's overpowered.

2.2 comes out, no change

2.3 comes out, no change

2.4 comes out, the push is finally increased from 2.1, but it's still weak as hell, a joke compared to 1.x or TFC. In a way this is almost worse, because a change this small made me think anyway, that this is the dev's idea of balance. That the existing sg was so close to perfect, this is all they thought needed to be changed.

2.1 came out in September of 2008. So we're approaching 2 years that it's been weak as hell. We don't know at what point the devs apparently stopped fighting us and now agree it's too weak. Until you made your statement, I assumed that the devs we're still heading down what I consider a delusional route. I'm actually very curious at what point a decision was made that finally made the team say that this change was too weak.
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Old 07-17-2010, 04:16 PM   #5
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Makes sense why you believe that. If I didn't know better then I'd be in the same boat as you I think.

It's because we don't believe it only lies in fire power and there's greater mechanic change that needs to take place. Before now I think we've been too afraid of changing such things if we could help it - or maybe we just didn't have the idea *shrugs* I'm guessing.

The idea we were playing with currently was to make it significantly more powerful but ensuring that it WOULD go down after continual battering. If we kept the mechanics as they are but ramp up the overall power the chances are that we get multiple sgs locking down areas and making them impassible and making FF boring.

If we ensure that powerful SGs WILL go down after continual battering then even with multiple SG's there's a positive feeling that you can make a hole and take them out - even if one by one - they will eventually go down.

I'm not the best at explaining things but I had a go.

I could agree a few extra dmg wouldn't have gone a miss in previous pratches but I do feel the general mechanics of the SG need to be played with.
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Old 07-17-2010, 04:19 PM   #6
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Engeneer is one of my favorite classes and tbh isnt underpowered at all, it powns all dudes that dont conc slide properly, and in adition to that engeneer can defend vs any class with his supershotgun and grens. And gets impossible to off in several maps with a lot of sentrys.
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Old 07-17-2010, 04:28 PM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by zE View Post
And gets impossible to off in several maps with a lot of sentrys.
yep, hence not overpowering the SG previously. It's better to be underpowered (although maybe frustrating to the single player) than to overpower the sg lock down maps and piss off multiple people.

^^ tl;dr
at least this way it was 1/9 people rather than 8/9 lol
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Old 07-17-2010, 04:46 PM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Elmo
Before now I think we've been too afraid of changing such things if we could help it -
I can believe this, but 2.0 and 2.1 were such massive changes gameplay-wise, I don't understand why the dev team was afraid of completely changing the game afterwards when they had done it already.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Elmo
or maybe we just didn't have the idea
I can GUARANTEE this wasn't the case. If it was, you guys should just be shot in the head, no offense.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Elmo
If we ensure that powerful SGs WILL go down after continual battering then even with multiple SG's there's a positive feeling that you can make a hole and take them out - even if one by one - they will eventually go down.
Again, I'm confused by this. Even in 1.0, FF sentries succumbed faster than TFC ones. They offer no splash protection, so if you fire at them continuously, it will usually take out the sg and rockets will shove the engineer back unless he has kung-fu timing. A medic with a supernailgun can often overwhelm an ng's ability to keep it repaired fast enough. An O sniper (this is more for AvD) can take out an sg in one hit. Spies have more abilities than ever for messing sg's up. I'm not sure why you think the current sg's don't topple under fire, that's something the soldier excels in.

One thing I thought TF2 did right, was to have powerful sentries, but have them also slow to go up, like it's an investment. It's also much more satisfying when you take them out, because then, like you said, it punches a hole in defense and creates a window of opportunity and feels like an accomplishment. If that's really what you guys want, why the hell did you decrease the build time so they can be almost immediately after one's been destroyed?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Elmo
I could agree a few extra dmg wouldn't have gone a miss in previous pratches but I do feel the general mechanics of the SG need to be played with.
It sounds like you weren't the one who nerfed the sg in the first place. Just remember it's the PUSH that's more crucial for sg defense than the DAMAGE. This is what keeps people from capping flags.

Quote:
Originally Posted by zE
Engeneer is one of my favorite classes and tbh isnt underpowered at all, it powns all dudes that dont conc slide properly, and in adition to that engeneer can defend vs any class with his supershotgun and grens. And gets impossible to off in several maps with a lot of sentrys.
Well you're looking at things from a CTF perspective, where typically the worst thing sentries are dealing with are scouts and medics. I'm looking at this from AvD perspective, where you have demoman flying in with mirvs, soldiers bombarding them with rockets, and even heavies sometimes outgunning them. Out of curiousity, how did you deal with sentries in TFC? Those were MUCH more powerful than FF's and much better balanced for AvD play.
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Old 07-17-2010, 11:53 AM   #9
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i think its a decorative object which you place anywhere you like, and then few moments later it disappears for reasons beyond my comprehension.
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Old 07-17-2010, 01:00 PM   #10
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Really underpowered.
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Old 07-17-2010, 07:02 PM   #11
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I wouldn't mind the push being upped a tiny bit, but I do not want it to be like it was before where it was nearly impossible to get past.

But I agree that it's underpowered as far as its strength and bullet damage are concerned.
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Old 07-17-2010, 07:38 PM   #12
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only things I dont like is it goes down do easily and the explosion damage is a bit to powerful in my opinion
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Old 07-18-2010, 12:21 AM   #13
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The rate at which you can get a sentry up and upgraded is completely dependant on the metal supply. That, in my experience, is what makes it ineffective on AvD maps and why it is so hard to balance on all maps. If they are weak, but quick to build, then they are not underpowered.

One thing we may do is remove the explosion from when the sentry dies. We don't want the engy to be afraid to repair his gun.

Quote:
Originally Posted by chilledsanity
I'm not sure why you think the current sg's don't topple under fire, that's something the soldier excels in.
He's talking about the stronger one we wanted to make. Much stronger, but eventually will die even if you repair its armor. If the solution is a simple matter of damage/health/push, then our beta testers can tweak those numbers, then report them to us so they can be hard-coded for the next patch.
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Old 07-18-2010, 12:34 AM   #14
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I think that the sentry needs to be faster at locking on to an enemy, and maybe have it so if it would have to fire to near another sentry have it stop shooting as to not hit the other sentry.
If you speed up the rounds it shoots & lower the damage a bit then you would have better chance at hitting almost all classes but still be a challenge getting ramp sliders & kamazi mirv throwers.
Yeah lower the explosion damage by about half imo.
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Old 07-18-2010, 02:46 AM   #15
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The sentry doesn't miss once it's locked on to a player. The limiting factor is its turn speed. The sentry will fire (and miss) an instant before it has locked on, as a sort of warning that it's about to hit you (this was added in 2.4, I believe), but upping the rate of fire won't help its accuracy.
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Old 07-18-2010, 06:38 AM   #16
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There are not enough options in the poll to make the results useful at all. There should be at least 5 options, but 7 would be ideal (overpowered, somewhat overpowered, barely overpowered, balanced, barely underpowered, somewhat underpowered, underpowered). Forcing hardline stances on something so obviously nuanced is ridiculous.
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Old 07-18-2010, 08:12 AM   #17
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Quote:
Originally Posted by squeek. View Post
There are not enough options in the poll to make the results useful at all. There should be at least 5 options, but 7 would be ideal (overpowered, somewhat overpowered, barely overpowered, balanced, barely underpowered, somewhat underpowered, underpowered). Forcing hardline stances on something so obviously nuanced is ridiculous.
The point was to prove that the community can agree on some things. It would have been overcomplicated if there were that many choices. People should be supplementing their vote with an explanation that explains the degree of how badly overpowered or underpowered they see it. Even if I had added those options, you would still be reliant on an explanation of why people choose it, which ultimately reveals that same degree. Lol inference!
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Old 07-18-2010, 10:18 AM   #18
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Quote:
Originally Posted by squeek
There are not enough options in the poll to make the results useful at all.
Wrong. If you were to act on the results of this poll (I'm assuming it will have no impact, but just speaking hypothetically), you could assume that you should not weaken the sg any further.

Quote:
Originally Posted by squeek
here should be at least 5 options, but 7 would be ideal (overpowered, somewhat overpowered, barely overpowered, balanced, barely underpowered, somewhat underpowered, underpowered).
That wouldn't be very useful. If I think it's relatively balanced against scouts and horrible against all other classes, what do I pick? What if all I play is scout? What if I never play scout? The poll wouldn't allow any consideration. You just get a mess of obfuscation on the issue and no agreement would be made.

Quote:
Originally Posted by squeek
Forcing hardline stances on something so obviously nuanced is ridiculous.
Not when the changes to it have become so blunt, it's no longer something nuanced.

Squeek from posts I've seen you make, you tend to drift to the perfect solution fallacy. By that I mean you see an issue that there's not going to be a full consensus on, so rather than try to ford a solution that will compromise and please the maximum amount of people to some extent, nothing is done instead. It's sort of a variant of the Polish Parliament mentality.

Here's what I would do if I were in your shoes:

Start a thread asking the community what they think the biggest problem areas are of the game. Get as many specifics as possible. Some problems may only apply to people playing O, some may only apply to pickup CTF, some may only apply to AvD, etc. Look for trends to see if there's any overlap. Also look at the quality of the explanation. If somebody just says "x class sucks, we should get rid of it" and nothing else, that should carry almost no weight compared to someone explaining in detail why X problem is a problem, specific situations it occurs in, what can be done to fix it, etc. Once you identify some trends, ask people to propose solutions to the problems that have gotten the most attention. You can take the top solutions and make a poll out of that. For ones without a clear majority, you can either force one solution that makes the most sense or attempt a compromise between two.

Finally, I'd make all of this very public. I'm not saying make the mod completely democratic, but you can use people to determine where the problems lie and what can be changed to stop more from leaving the mod. If someone's proposed change is in a minority and/or is problematic, have a trail of evidence showing it. Don't have total clandestine development of ideas, with people left completely in the dark, thinking they have zero influence. They don't know if devs are ignoring their ideas, are even aware of them, whether their ideas are in the majority. The tracker system supposedly solves the "aware of" problem, but since we never know what happens as a result of that (whether it's ignored, devs don't want to work on it, one guy overrides the idea, etc.), it leaves us just as much in the dark. Whether it is or not, FF certainly LOOKS like a one-way street.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bridget
The point was to prove that the community can agree on some things. It would have been overcomplicated if there were that many choices. People should be supplementing their vote with an explanation that explains the degree of how badly overpowered or underpowered they see it. Even if I had added those options, you would still be reliant on an explanation of why people choose it, which ultimately reveals that same degree. Lol inference!
Yeah pretty much. The votes would have been more spread out then, thus re-enforcing the concept that nothing could be agreed on, and fueling the perfect solution fallacy further. I guess I see now why the decision making process takes a long time.

Last edited by chilledsanity; 07-18-2010 at 10:29 AM.
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Old 07-18-2010, 08:31 PM   #19
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Perhaps "useful" wasn't the right word (though I still think it may have been). The results don't provide us with any new information. Okay, the community agrees that the SG is underpowered. So, what now? Does that require a drastic overhaul? A few small tweaks? Changes to the SG? Changes to other classes?

I understand that the responses to the thread will provide that information, but then why even include the poll? If you are going to point to the poll to prove any point you may have, it's just not going to help (even if the point is "See, we can agree on something!"; you're not showing that the community is at odds with the dev team). If there were more options, and, say, "Barely underpowered" got a large majority of the votes, then it'd be quite obvious that a small damage increase/push increase might be a decent quick solution. If "Underpowered" won, then it'd be clear that we'd need to look at testing more drastic changes.
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Old 07-18-2010, 11:49 PM   #20
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Quote:
Originally Posted by squeek
The results don't provide us with any new information. Okay, the community agrees that the SG is underpowered.
It's "new" enough. At what point was there a recognition of this trend in the community? A month ago? This year? To me, these are the same old arguments ever since it got nerfed heavily 2 years ago. The main difference is now there seem to be less people saying it's fine (if they left FF, the irony on that would be pretty thick). Also I address this question to any dev, not just squeek.

Quote:
Originally Posted by squeek
] I understand that the responses to the thread will provide that information, but then why even include the poll?
My guess is without the numbers of Bridget's poll to back it up, some devs would still be saying there's no consensus in the community on the issue, thus undermining action and direction on the issue. So this does accomplish something. While it's a small sample (but hey, FF has a small playerbase), 85% is pretty damn high.

Quote:
Originally Posted by squeek
] If there were more options, and, say, "Barely underpowered" got a large majority of the votes, then it'd be quite obvious that a small damage increase/push increase might be a decent quick solution. If "Underpowered" won, then it'd be clear that we'd need to look at testing more drastic changes.
This won't help for two reasons:

One: say you play primarily as a scout. The sg is ALWAYS going to be overpowered. You play the weakest class in the game, your opinion shouldn't count for much on this issue. Now say you only play pickup CTF as engy where you only have light classes to contend with. You'll probably think the sg is great, since you don't have to deal with heavier classes. This is worth noting for that game mode, but a bad basis to make a whole decision on. Now say you're like me and focus on AvD where you think the sg has become a joke and almost never see the situations where it's actually effective. That's also worth nothing for that gamemode. It's essential to consider the source and the situations where it is or isn't working so you can get the full picture. "Slightly underpowered" just doesn't do that.

Two: Pretend 70% of people put "majorly underpowered." Decisions made primarily off that can be just as bad. Say the pickup scout selects that, because he can never outrun the gun. That suggests that the tracking speed should maybe be lowered. Now say the AvD defense guy selects that because the gun doesn't stop head-on attackers from capping, even though they die. That suggests the gun needs more push. Now say the dev team sees "strongly overpowered" and increases the gun's damage and rotation speed, but leaves push the same. This would indeed make it stronger, but would still not help either party who selected the option. Then you get more people complaining because the problem wasn't solved and the dev team sees this as the FF community not knowing what they want. Hard to imagine, I'm sure.

Quote:
Originally Posted by squeek
] If "Underpowered" won, then it'd be clear that we'd need to look at testing more drastic changes.
Well since "underpowered" with 3 options won, I think drastic corrections make sense since it was drastic changes that made it underpowered in the first place.

Last edited by chilledsanity; 07-19-2010 at 12:02 AM.
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