Suggestions to improve gameplay based on complaints I've heard in alliance

[DaSud]

Complaints regarding the new economy.

The current economy is not exactly great. While it does allow for more unit coverage early game and a small rush potential, every game ends with a 400 tiberium surplus, and it is actually in your best interests at around mid game to send your harvester off to its death so that you can have more units on the field.

Economy is something that you should always be left wanting just a little bit more of. Too much economy leads to imbalances in that cost effective units tend to fall to the wayside as cost efficiency isn't an issue. Commanders with low cooldowns and higher ability costs also become more useful than those without.

Feeding into a no harvester build is kind of like not building SCVs in Starcraft. Besides being necessary, they are a strategic target for the other player. In this current patch we're seeing things like a missile squad walking into a tank, and then there being a boring unnecessary game of chicken as both sides don't build harvesters. Having no harvesters in play really screws up many map, commander, and unit dynamics.

Complaints about the new units.

The Juggernaut and Giga Cannon are not balance tested. These units are both superior derivatives of other existing units (Juggernaut being a superior version of an MLRS, Giga-Cannon being a superior version of the Basilisk). The Giga-Cannon, despite not being strong against infantry, still practically insta-kills them anyhow.

Complaints about reasoning of unit rarity changes.

It seems there is a bit of circular logic at foot here. For example, in the Disruptor comments, it is said "Simply being a long range unit isn’t enough to be considered Epic", and yet, Sniper teams were upgraded to epic? Another comment, "Making Sniper Team Epic also frees up space for a different Rare anti-infantry unit to join the Barracks", why would there be any limit to units that you can develop? The only thing that should seemingly need changes is the UI to accommodate the new portraits. More, "The Confessor’s breadth and unique buff to allied infantry make it unique and impactful in a way that warrant its rarity increasing" which really doesn't match up to its real world status of getting chewed apart by two venoms, or being handled comfortably by two rhinos. In my eyes as a player, they require an expensive tech building, are expensive themselves, are a very niche unit, and suffer the opportunity cost of much more playable and affordable units, not something I would hope for from a rare unit.

Fairness in matches.

It was unfortunate timing to go into release mode before implementing the fair play patch that was being alluded to. Currently, people are being put into all sorts of squash matches. Even one unit a level above can make a huge difference, just ask the guy trying to use lv7 missile troops to ward off lv8 rhinos, or ask anyone that has lv7 attack bikes what they think about lv9 banshees and pitbulls (which kill 1 bike per shot).

With currency involved now we are seeing people with entire lv9 loadouts - and being matched versus them. Pretty much a waste of time, and we are still in need of a concession button, no reason to have to close the game to try to get onto another match.

The one that is going to suffer from not doing this ultimately isn't going to be us, it will be the dev team. The amount of bad press and user dissatisfaction with the game being mobile is more mammoth than the tanks. To quote a very random comment to a very random guy on my YouTube channel "I say go f* yourself both of u for playing this s* game". That's the attitude that you have to overcome, and you need to do your very best the very first time or there will be an absolute s*storm of bad sentiment from people that aren't quite as sympathetic as the pre-alpha players. Every day counts.

This also extends to mechanics within the game itself. We really don't need instant 180 snap around nukes, for example.

I'm sure Jade and others will be able to comment more.

[Reldan71]

Everything said here matches my impressions. I'm now facing players with multiple level 10 (and everything else level 9) and it's not a "challenge match" it's just a drubbing.

The level system needs to be rethought. It shouldn't be a strict stat buff, but instead be about giving units more options with tradeoffs. There's no strategy involved in "my bikes beats your rocket squad".

[EA_dance210]

Hi @DaSud,

Thank you for your feedback. We always appreciate hearing for our awesome players and I will pass this along to the rest of the team.

We're actively monitoring the effects of changing the Tiberium economy and can always make additional changes if needed. This is also true for the new units that were introduced in the last update. While they were extensively tested before being released, we will continue to monitor how they work, to ensure that they are balanced and fun to play and play against.

There are many variables that go into deciding what rarity a unit should be. While we explained our reasoning behind changing the units, we didn't go into a full list of all the variables that help determine unit rarity. For the Sniper Team (which is part of the Barracks), the impact that these long-range units have on the match justified changing the rarity from Rare to Epic. In contrast, the Disrupter is a more expensive unit in the Tech Lab. While it is also a long-range unit, the cost and location are also taken into consideration for the rarity level. In this case, we want Epics in the Tech Lab to feel very special, and just being a long-range unit isn't enough to justify being Epic. Hopefully that helps make it a bit more clear why Sniper Team is Epic and Disrupter is not.

I look forward to hearing more feedback or suggestions

[EA_dance210]

Hi @Reldan71,

What level are your units at when you see the level 9 and 10 enemy units?

While they aren't active yet, we have some Rivals Fairplay features planned that should make the matches feel more competitive and fair. We're also constantly looking at how the game mechanics are working and will adjust them as needed, so if you have any suggestions please let me know!

[Reldan71]

Mostly level 7 and 8 units.

While I understand the desire to have a progression system that provides measurable benefits for paying real money, the current system of simply making units do more damage and have more health is ultimately unfulfilling. I don't want to win a game because my units pound-for-pound just beat my opponent's, nor do I want to lose a game for the same reason.

What would be competitive and fair would be to simply have units have stats based upon what you designers determine is balanced and fun. My only real suggestions would be:

1) Come up with a different mechanism for what leveling up units does that makes them more interesting rather than simply more powerful. Similar to how TF2 handles weapon balance across its classes. This could play into allowing commanders more control over implementing their specific tactics.

2) Allow a matchmaking queue for Friendly Rules games. Something anybody can play rather than just within Alliances.

You all have created a really fun game that's biggest weakness is that the monetization scheme doesn't allow the gameplay to shine. It's a shame and I know it's not your fault, but having been playing a lot since the debut at E3 this is the least fun it's ever been in spite of what in general are a lot of improvements to other systems within the game.

[Reldan71]

I'll add one thing, and I think this is the crux of the issue with the unit leveling and the flattening since 1.0.

So when a unit levels it gains a boost to both its damage and its health. How much more powerful are we talking? In practice it seems like units get around a 10% buff with a level + gold boosts.

So what's this look like? Let's say we had a unit that did 10 damage and had 100 hp at level 1. At level 2 that unit maybe does 11 damage and has 110 hp. In a fight against a level 1, the level 1 unit has to hit 11 times to get a kill, while the level 2 unit needs 10 hits. A bit of an advantage, but not insurmountable.

The stated change of the linearization of leveling was to make it so each level was the same amount better than the prior level. So how's this look with our example? Well, to be 10% better than level 2, our unit now has to do 12.1 damage and have 121 health. In a fight against a level 1 unit, the level 1 unit now needs 13 shots to kill, while the level 3 needs just 9.

Huh.

That's... a lot more powerful. That's beyond what even a reasonable skill gap is going to be able to close. Since the game effectively has a unit cap, you generally get forced to have to make the most out of a small number of units, and the individual strength of those units matters a great deal. My army of dudes that kill your guys in 9 hits but can take 13 themselves will slaughter you. Heck, at that point I can just walk through your defensive advantage and beat you with the "same" unit you're fielding. And that's just a two level difference.

[benf1211]

Suggestions are welcome and appreciated but no matter what is done with any game there will be people complaining about the game so no matter what there will be complaints I personally think that a lot of complaints will be cleared up with the fair play release these games are a work in progress and it will always be a work in progress even after release

[JadeXyan]

Alright... since you called me out, lets take each of your complains slowly.

I agree the econ changes don't quite work. I get the idea behind them but there is basically no penalty for rushing now and on top of that double harvester builds are generally worthless, decreasing the variety of gameplay we were seeing pre-patch. Personally I like a solution mav proposed of having the base income start higher and then quickly decrease while the harvesters increase, it would give you some extra strength/recovery for a rush but then drop off so you can't just run a cheap build without ever building a harvester or without building one until fairly late.

The new units are fine, the Juggernaut I can't judge much, haven't played with it or against it, but it fills a different role than the mlrs what with being a tech unit and doing less concentrated damage over a large area, good design really, hoping to try it with an air build someday. The gigacannon has a very interesting gameplay to it that I quite like playing against, it is however too strong with Oxanna's ability and could probably lose a bit of damage against infantry, the basilisk in general just needs a buff of some sort, like keeping its charge as the cannon does and something else

The rarity changes I'm relatively happy with, we got a rare in the tech lab for tech builds, that was desperately needed and the kodiak is a very good choice for that, scarabs not being common anymore is amazingly good, and, while I do think nod needs a common unit in the temple (and really they're missing some unit roles there as well), the confessor being rare makes sense, its one of the most complex units nod has access to, I just wish cyborgs and zones were also made rare as relatively key counter-pieces at tech level. Snipers at epic is fine if/when they fix the epic unit bug, they're certainly impactful enough to earn it. Pitbulls at rare is another "finally this got changed" thing because really it was imbalancing the factions a touch to have bikes at rare and pitbulls at common, MLRS deserves the epic rarity for how impactful it is and then it matches up with its nod counterpart - the gigacannon (whose name I dislike)

And yeah, fairplay can't come fast enough, but I think everyone knows that, and they were smart to talk about it a bunch before this update so that everyone knows that it is coming. My biggest surprise of microtransactions thus far though is how nicely it has levelled the playing field at the top end of things, yeah its causing chaos lower down and the medal compression definitely will make things bad around 2k for awhile, those awful large medal gaps protected a lot of people from the top end for quite awhile, but its also shaking up the meta down there, which is good, and it will solve itself given time. Though I will say the compression happening now with microtransactions appearing at the same time and no fairplay makes the unit levels problem seem way worse than it is because yeah a ton of us with level 9/10 units got in range of folks at 6/7/8. Another thing that will even itself out a bit before fairplay with fairplay hopefully fixing the last bits of it.

[Mavster07]

Agree, the Economy changes need to be addressed.