Balance Update Notes July 11th

by Redwood_MrBlack
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Balance Update Notes July 11th

EA C&C Team

Balance Update Notes July 11th

 

We are not seeing too much in the way of game breaking balance issues so instead this week we are focusing on changes to improve underperforming units and making a few targeted tweaks to units and powers that are a little too good.

 

GDI Changes

 

Col. Jackson

- Heroic charge buff decreased to 50% (was 75%)

- Heroic charge base duration reduced to 8 seconds (was 10)

 

Jump Jet Troopers

-Health increased to 240 (was 180)

 

Mammoth Tank

-Cost increased to 170 (was 150)

 

M.L.R.S

-Health decreased to 1800 (was 2200)

 

Nod Changes

 

Basilisk

-Low damage reduced to 50 (was 100)

-High damage reduced to 150 (was 200)

-Low damage vs Infantry reduced to 20

-High damage vs Infantry reduced to 50

 

Banshee

-Cost reduced to 60 (was 70)

 

Chemical Warrior

-Gas spawn delay reduced to 0.5 seconds (was 1.0)

-Health increased to 375 (was 300)

 

Oxanna

-Fanaticism attack buff decreased to 75% (was 100%)

-Fanaticism movement buff decreased to 50% (was 100%)

-Fanaticism damage taken penalty increase to 25% (was 15%)

-Fanaticism base duration reduced to 8 seconds (was 10)

 

Stealth Tank

-Cost reduced to 70 (was 80)

-Initial attack delay reduced to 0.0 seconds (was 0.25)

-Number of missiles reduced to 4 (was 5)

-Damage increased to 500 (was 375)

Message 1 of 11 (1,608 Views)

Re: Balance Update Notes July 11th

[ Edited ]
★ Novice

I never play a game that lose player points.thats like gain exp then losing it all over this stupid that only it hard to progress for new player especially when go up again lvl 6 player that can build two harvesters.

Message 2 of 11 (1,504 Views)

Re: Balance Update Notes July 11th

★★★ Novice
There is a problem with the new updates. The Stealth tanks are still showing as costing 80 instead of 70
Message 3 of 11 (1,465 Views)

Re: Balance Update Notes July 11th

[ Edited ]
★★★★ Novice

You're game balance suck. Try putting players on the same level together. Tired of getting my * kicked Everytime I try to compete. Should also stop rush attacks. I find it absurd that two people start the game at the same time and yet the other player can not only make armies and harvesters faster but over and over when you cannot.

Message 4 of 11 (1,447 Views)

Re: Balance Update Notes July 11th

★ Novice
What up with daily limit reach on coins now that crazy.Try doing some events or even a campaign mode to earns coins,diamonds and units.Before it turns to a pay to win game.
Message 5 of 11 (1,420 Views)

Re: Balance Update Notes July 11th

[ Edited ]
★ Guide

Alright, some balance thoughts now that the new meta is starting to settle in.

 

GDI first:

 

Col. Jackson didn't need the nerf, he was about equal with the rest of the GDI commanders who all saw play last meta.

 

Disruptors need to get that initial shot out faster when they reach a hex, they aren't that impactful right now unless you're ahead and holding a position and I'd never run them over snipers or wolverines, both of which are cheaper and have a more immediate impact.

 

The MRLS health decrease doesn't seem to have happened from the last patch so I'd still really like that for the next one as they are far too durable.

 

Nod:

 

Confessors should likely do a little less damage to ground vehicles, they aren't broken or anything but a pair of them can go through a number of things they probably should have difficulties with.

 

Basilisks don't do enough damage at full charge to vehicles to be worth running. The low charge damage is fine, makes them and their defenders nicely vulnerable and allows faster units to be microed against them well, but full charge needs to be able to rip through slow moving heavy vehicles like mammoth, titans, and rockworms faster than it currently does.

 

Artillery is too strong, 3 range, death to all ground units, 90 cost. The only reason artillery isn't overrunning the meta is because its so finnicky and inconsistent to use, when it works though its nearly as bad as basilisks were last meta

 

Nod air needs help:

GDI air largely works because Talons come out early enough to be impactful in holding platforms and wiping out early infantry and then orcas come out and are impactful in the midgame by sniping the occasional threatening vehicle or threatening harvesters. In nod air, venoms can be impactful but lose out on the later versatility of talons that keeps them viable beyond the first couple minutes, banshees aren't impactful at all because by the time they come out they're basically flying tanks with less hp, a slight bit more versatility, and numerous cheaper counters already on the field. Infernos are pretty much the only nod air unit worth running long term as they are impactful throughout the game in much the same way the orca is.

 

So my suggestions for nod air would be to allow venoms to shoot while moving, what they lose in versatility to talons they can make up for in ability to be microed well in response. Banshees are tough, they should still die to 2 talons but they might need a small damage buff and moving them to 50 wouldn't hurt. Infernos are probably fine, hesitant to suggest changes for them before the rest of nod air is viable since they aren't awful right now.

 

Stealth tanks are honestly good right now, I'd keep them at 80 given their present versatility.

 

The nod commanders still need some help, only Oxanna and Jade are really seeing high level play. Kane's obelisk is overpriced and map dependent as well as being worthless if you aren't ahead or in stalemate. I think they need a cost decrease to something around the 120 range, they need to have as many places you can put them on maps as strongarm turrets have, you need to not be able to place two of them simultaneously, I'd also suggest decreasing Obelisk health along with these other changes so that Kane doesn't dominate the low levels too much since this is effectively a really early MRLS.

 

Seth's has two problems, his ability costs too much and its too vulnerable in its use. I think I'd cut his ability's cost to 50 and see how that goes first retaining the vulnerable deployment then look at speeding up deployment or giving it more hp only if the cost reduction isn't enough for him to see play.

 

 

Progression & Epic Units

 

The last thing I'll address is not a balance issue but a progression one. I've spoken of this on the discord already but it should be talked about here as well. We need a more reliable way to get the epic units we want. There is just too much randomness involved here and I'm willing to bet most epic units will not be viable for the majority of people in a month as common and rare units significantly out level them since you can get alliance donations to reliably level the ones that matter to you. This is already starting to become apparent with units like Orcas and Jumpjets, pitbulls 2 levels above Orcas survive shots making GDI air as a whole significantly less viable for a number of people. Jumpjets are actually fairly viable right now and have a really nice niche build that snipes and hobo have been running, but only if you have gotten the cards to keep up with levels. The same applies to every other epic unit to varying degrees, and a lot of these units are key components in entire strategies; zones and cyborgs are pretty essential counters in a number of places, Orcas as mentioned before are pretty much essential for GDI air viability, I'm betting infernos will be similar on nod, and stealth tanks are just starting to hit this issue as well since they rely on sniping things. Even microtransactions don't fix this problem, spending my thousand survey coins has just made it all worse for my opponents as all my commons and rares level quicker while levelling very few of my epics that I'd actually run.

I don't have a great solution to propose here (lots of ideas but none of them easy or necessarily great) but something needs to be done before we're all sitting on level 15 (or really just levels 9 and 10 are likely to be where this starts being incredibly noticable) staple commons and rares while epics lag drastically behind and become unplayable.

Message 6 of 11 (1,336 Views)

Re: Balance Update Notes July 11th

★★★★ Novice
It is driving me nuts how fast other players are getting both harvesters and units out within seconds of the match when I only have one and no units on the field. You get steamrolled before you can even react.
Message 7 of 11 (1,309 Views)

Re: Balance Update Notes July 11th

★★★ Novice

 

Beating a person that's running 2 harvesters and you only have 1 is not that hard......you will get to level 6! Also running 2 harvesters isn't always good you produce units much slower....runnning 2 harvesters is a situational thing..... .. I just won a game and I never even deployed a harvester! 

Message 8 of 11 (1,299 Views)

Re: Balance Update Notes July 11th

★★★ Novice

ive played you a bunch of times, youre usually doing the steamrolling with your bs infantry spam. what are you complaining for?

Message 9 of 11 (1,289 Views)

Re: Balance Update Notes July 11th

★★★ Novice
"We are not seeing too much in the way of game breaking balance issues"

yeah i see why you feel that way: the game is now frustrating and impossible to play without paying to win, which is exactly what you want. Same garbage as every other mobile game like this. Same reasons why i always inevitably uninstall mobile games like this, and this one will be no exception. I'm out after this post. maybe ill check on it again after a month or two.

in the meantime here are all the things that suck about rivals:

Diversity of the units between Nod and GDI is GAPING making it impossible to come up with an army load out that will allow you to compete with both at the same time, especially when playing as GDI. so you're basically forced to prepare for one and hope you get lucky if you draw an opponent from the other. You should be able to set up 2 separate loadouts for each type of opponent.

Even with 2 loadouts though, there's still the big underlying source of that problem being the dramatic speed disparity between GDI and Nod units.
Every unit that does any worthwhile damage for GDI moves at the speed of dog *. Any GDI unit that moves fast enough to counter early nod units couldnt beat a snowflake in an arm wrestling match.
Nod has a cornucopia of fast cheap and powerful units they can spam in early game while outside of the rocket troopers, GDI dont have anything that can devestate until you stand up a tech factory and spend at least 80 for a wolverine. between scarabs, flame and chem troopers, and attack bikes, Nod can melt just about any unit for half price, and Nod Banshees outgun every GDI unit meant to "counter" them with ease.

Because of those two problems: harvesters are a liability. You cant open with one because your opponent will come destroy it with some impossible to counter unit and then just steam roll you with all the extra money they get from spanw killing your successive harvesters. especially if you open with two which slows down all other unit production.
So instead you open up with an offensive unit to defend your harvester, except if you open with the wrong one, you still lose because by the time you get the right thing to counter their opening rush with, they already have scores of them standing at your gate.

in essence: the whole game is reduced to a rock paper scissors match on the opening move that renders the rest of the match pointless. That's boring.

I had high hopes, but unfortunately this game is the same as all the others: once you get to a sufficiently high level, the game play is stale and progression is impossible, especially since you take points away for a loss and its so easy to go on very long losing streaks if you just so happen to keep making the wrong guess on your opening moves.

the only way to deal with that, like i said before, is to pay to train units up to such high levels that the aforementioned problems dont matter.
most often when i lose, it is due to my opponent having level 7 or 8 units when mine are only level 6. That and terrible unit AI.

i think disabling the store during this pre-alpha will be a mistake on your part. anybody who's been playing for a while should see the pay to win nature of this game coming from a mile a way and will likely gtet tired of it long before you open up the microtransactions
Message 10 of 11 (1,282 Views)