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Haswell

Arty Buffs (and GlOps)

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Something something #REMOVE_ARTY_FROM_GAME

https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/development-artillery-global-operations

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As we announced during the Spirithaven season launch, artillery would be making a comeback to Global Operations along with the re-implementation of its special shells (smoke and illumination rounds). This is a significant change to this mode’s gameplay, so, as you can imagine, the decision wasn’t taken lightly or out of the blue.

Over the last couple of months, we’ve carefully analyzed both your feedback and our data regarding the balance of the Global Operations mode. It’s no secret that with the introduction of several vehicles and features (such as the LOSAT kinetic ATGMs), the gameplay balance of – especially high-Tier – Global Operations was somewhat disrupted, leading to teams full of one type of vehicles (such as the Wilk XC-8 situation before American Dream season).

This was, of course, not the intended state of things. The thing about Global Operations is, not only does this mode sort-of magnify specific vehicle traits and, subsequently, the impact of said vehicles on gameplay; it also favors long-range encounters to close combat in an effort to emulate the feeling of a real, open battlefield. This is, on the other hand, is intended, but one has to find the right counter to the vehicles that tend to outperform the most (and are therefore the most popular) such as various long-range Tank Destroyers that have:

  • A lot of firepower
  • Good camouflage (very useful at long distances)

Very simply put, the best counter to such vehicles is artillery. But not the way it is right now, since just dumping a PvE class in a PvP mode wouldn’t be very useful or fun for either side. That is why we will be making the following changes to the Self-Propelled Guns as a whole:

  • Accuracy changes – we’ll be taking a look at the entire class to make sure it’s not overpowered but, generally speaking, we’ll be increasing the accuracy to make the class useful in Global Operations
  • Aim changes – SPGs will take aim somewhat faster than the way it is now
  • Special shells – smoke shells are making a comeback
  • New shell type – white phosphorus shells (overhauled illumination shells)
  • Switching between ammo types will be practically instant

Special shells existed in the game in the past, before they were removed during the overhaul of the entire class. Simply put, the smoke shells allow the artillery to deploy smoke to a certain position, blocking enemy lines of sight or covering your friendlies when they get exposed too much. It’s worth noting that artillery shell smoke will stay around for far longer than standard tank smoke and also fly a lot faster than before, so the deployment is nearly instant.

The white phosphorus shells, on the other hand, are new and represent a significant change to the previous illumination mechanics. Before, the artillery would just fire a flare over a certain area and would spot everything there instantly. This wasn’t really all that great for gameplay because there was no defense available against this kind of mechanic and even if you did everything “right”, you could still get spotted this way, often resulting in your vehicle’s destruction (in PvP, at least).

The way the WP shells will work instead is they will deploy white phosphorus to a certain (rather wide) area. This area will, of course, be visible to everyone (burning ground is hard to miss). Anything in that area will get covered in burning phosphorus, suffering from the following effects:

  • Camouflage factor reduced to zero for the duration of the burn
  • The vehicle will start taking damage for as long as it is in the affected area
  • Engine starts overheating and will start to burn if you in the area for too long

Additionally, any infantry caught in the zone is not going to have a good day, to put it mildly. However, the phosphorus disappears as soon as you leave the affected area.

They will also have reload times independent on the standard ammunition (will therefore act more as an ability than an actual shell).

Basic shells will also be available, but these will not do a whole lot of damage and will serve either to suppress the enemy or to finish off almost destroyed vehicles.

In other words, the artillery in Global Operations will serve mostly as a support class that will aid your team in victory by providing cover and additional spotting abilities. With that being said, we do not want the class to have too big of an impact, which is why we will be introducing the following restrictions:

  • No more than four artillery vehicles per match (two per team at most)
  • No artillery platoons

Last but not least, given the special nature and abilities of this class that would become too overpowered in regular PvP without respawns, we do not intend to return this class to Random Battles.

Currently, the plan is as follows – much like the Mechanized Infantry feature, we will release this feature for one week in the near future to gather your feedback. If the feedback turns out to be positive, the feature will be launched permanently or, possibly, removed for further work.

The buffs will definitely make it less unbearable in PvE, but I shudder at the thought of poor PvP players being punished by something they can't fight back against.

WP shells in PvE might be hilarious, considering how bots tend to clump up in certain areas and don't attempt to avoid damage.


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My concern is that the largest problem with arty isn't that it doesn't have utility - It's that the shell arc is so low, and so blocked off by map bits that you can't *use* it as an indirect-fire weapon in most maps if you want to actually accomplish anything.  And by dropping the damage of the HE shells, it removes the ability to go to TD mode as a HE derpgun even, which is currently the most effective way to use the class by a fair bit. 

It needs a higher shell arc pretty badly, so it can actually USE the nifty shell types.  

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22 hours ago, LeoAegisMaximus said:

Oh god that White Phosphorus shells best cap denial for pve especially with those AI PL-01s.

That's actually why I'm super concerned that this comes to GLOPS. I can already imagine Artys effectively perma-blocking Caps.


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I strongly doubt that the splash will be anything special, and the reload will likely be a very long one, given what they did with the QN spotting missiles.

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We'll have to see.

But it will be very hard to balance it just right because the margin between "complete crap" and "too strong" is very narrow in this regard.


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Something just occurred to me, though, that's gonna be a problem... WP can cause team damage, probably, and persists.  How much griefing do you think we're gonna see, with people driving into the WP splash deliberately, just to get Arty players penalized? And it's not like the arty player can just turn it off once it's out to prevent that.

Edited by Komitadjie (see edit history)

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3 hours ago, Komitadjie said:

WP can cause team damage, probably

Easiest solution: No WP team damage.

But who knows what the devs have in store... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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3 hours ago, di_duncan said:

Easiest solution: No WP team damage.

But who knows what the devs have in store... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'd actually hesitate to do that as well, since it'd let you cap points really easy, just drop the WP on it, and your team can drive in while the other team can't.  Basically the same as grenade-spamming in BF with FF off.  That one is going to be tricky.

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Not to put too fine a point on it, but as a former M48/M60 tanker on both 90mm and 105mm guns, WP is smoke, not an illumination round.  I've fired WP; it's great for forming an instant smokescreen at the point of impact.  The only illuminating effect is from the flames emitted by the stuff it sets on fire.  Arty illum rounds are typically magnesium flares that hang from a small parachute as they burn, throwing a bright circle of light as the round drifts downward.  That was how we conducted night gunnery with the M48A1, M48A5, and M60s before the M60A3s were issued to us.  The devs have the effect of illum and WP exactly mashed together, not even backwards or correct.  Just wrong.

Reading the devs' discussion of the mechanics was painful, because they clearly have not only no clue on how to even read basic tank gunnery documents that are open source, much less have any of them ever watched video of night firing or even talked to former tankers who were sober at any point in their service.

I get that spotting mechanics are a joke in this game, but geez, if you're going to say anything about how smoke and illum work, at least read how it works before you make crap up instead or just don't say anything at all.

Edited by ASAtanker (see edit history)

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Demo

First impression is that the AoE for WP is absolutely tiny, doesn't seem terribly useful for cap denials or burning bots that are somewhat spread out. The damage output is also pitiful, but that's to be expected I suppose.

The fast-ish reload looks nice though, and can be buffed further with crew and commander skills.


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The amount of time it took to kill there... That's going to kinda make it pretty much useless, I think.  And forget TD mode, did you see how little damage those HE rounds did?

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500 damage ish feels about on par, seeing the rounds hit the thick turret front instead of the more sensible roof. That 25 damage per tick with WP though... bleh.

What I'm really interested in are the supposed aim time buffs. It's hard to tell from the demo, but I don't see any significant difference from the way things are now.

Someone raised a pretty good question: if WP is supposed to spot target and smoke will hide them, what happens if another arty pops smoke after your WP shell landed? Will the shells get overridden by whatever comes later, or do they follow a hierarchy  system?


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3 hours ago, Komitadjie said:

The amount of time it took to kill there...

Given that it should be a support class only I think this is justified at least for GLOPS. It's still sufficient to reset a cap (aka support). As well he is shooting an Abrams here so who knows what happens if you shoot something with paper armour. The smoke shells will be very useful if there is an arty player who can read the battle.The phosphorus stuff looks better than expected. I tought it would be much larger.

2 hours ago, Haswell said:

Will the shells get overridden by whatever comes later, or do they follow a hierarchy  system?

I hope that the smoke will have priority in this case. This feels more natural to me and seems to make more sense in general.


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I think that we have really to adapt to the new arty to see how it works, i am not talking of a single player, that maybe can be enough good, smart and intelligent to do it in few battles, i am thinking of the whole players base, that on average has much more inertia, let's think about how long they took to adapt to the missile spam when in PvE missiles was introduced also for the bots, while the best ones almost immediately changed their play style so many continued for months to be destroyed by Swingfires and T15s and whine without instead changing their approach to the mode.

If the new arty will make less productive the TD style i am personally happy, not for the reason that for me is really difficult to play in that way, for a combination of aging eyes and small monitor that make for me really hard to aim in over the shoulder, changing the view field angle (that is annoying as i have to go to the settings each time i want to play an arty that way) i could do it. But i think that a class that is intended to work for utility and long distance fire support should shine in that role and not as a short distance glass cannon with a burst of some high damage shells.

Maybe the new arty implementation will give back the intended role, and i think that potentially can be a really interesting and useful class to play in both the modes.

In PvE not only it can be useful to defend caps, but can protect party's tanks, thing that sadly is not very rewarded as credits and xp gain. But it can also spot for the other tanks, bringing in some maps potentially a lot of spots and spotting damage, that are well rewarded.

In Glops it is almost the same, with the difference that here defending a cap is more rewarded and the human players are somehow less predictable then the bots, but are still very predictable. once an arty driver guesses where in some maps the enemy snipers are hidden behind bushes with an illumination shell, if the party mates are ready, he can spot them with the same consequence that to be spotted by an helicopter or drone has, instant death  by receiving the fire of many tanks in a split second. With the difference that a situation aware sniper knows when an helicopter is approaching and will get a cover for the time he is been spotted, while the illumination rounds are not predictable, and this is a very relevant difference.

But this all works only if both the arty players adapt to the new arty and if the parties also do it, as the illumination rounds can be devastating, but only if there are other players ready to use the spots. And I think that the single week of testing will give distorted results because the time on average the player base needs to adapt to something new is much longer, even more if the focus is also on 3 different high tier progression tanks introduced in the same patch.

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Not tried arty in GLOPS yet, but in PVE arty mostly unchanged. I did notice that the spread of dots shrinks a bit faster, but that's about it. 

WP does not illuminate anything, but is very useful on Snakebite to stop a cap when the bot decided to sit in around the corner for a building where there is no LOS. With maximum of 10 shots I don't see them being OP, area affected is pretty small really, and if it works in glops like it does in pve not illuminating anything, meh.

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WP can cause 11 ticks of damage in total. The damage depends on tier, 25 (max 275 damage) at tier 10; 11 (max 121 damage) at tier 3.

Size of the circle isn't huge as it only covers about 1/4 ~ 1/3 of a cap circle, but it does it job in defending caps. I kinda wish you can get assist damage for spots caused by the WP's camo punish though.

The smoke shells feel more or less the same. However, unlike pre-Balance 2.0, they share the same shell type as WP shells, so you can't just switch to whatever support shell you want and fire them right away, and instead you'd have to load a whole new shell when going from WP to smoke or vice versa. This would make me want to stick to one type of support shell only.


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When i first posted i was still downloading the patch, now i did try the new shells, at least in the Alabino ground, not yet in a real game as yesterday i had other things to focus on.

From my Alabino testing i would say that the WP are mainly geared to decapping, or to avoid that a high camo squishy caps, as the MBTs usually don't have good camo any way so if are not spotted before WP it is unlikely that will be spotted after it. It will surely be more risky for a Sphinx or a PL01 to rush into a cap, while if you do it in a MBT i would say that nothing will be really changed. And i personally think that it is not an improvement for the GLOPS as it further reduces what a fast tank with good camo can achieve, and i am not talking only of the main caps, but also the ones that unlock bombing runs, the drones and the pill boxes, as it is easy to see on the mini map that something is capping them a WP round fired on them will only delay a little the capping by a MBT, that has the HP to survive to the puny damage, but for a Sphinx to be spotted in that cap loosing all the camo when he is still in a cap can be instant death.

As i like very much the concept that the squishy and fast tanks that rely on camo to survive are very rewarding, but only if played by skilled players, i don't like the present implementation of arty in GLOPS, when i will have actually played some GLOPS i will have a more informed opinion about it, but from my Alabino test this is my present, not so informed, opinion.

Edited by BumbaX (see edit history)

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The aim time buffs seem to be the biggest benefit for PvE players so far. It's not much different than before, but being able spend less time aiming in make arty a bit more comfortable to play. WP giving a bit of extra DPM is also nice, but still not too useful in terms of spotting stuff because there's really no need for that.

The supposed hard cap for arty in GLOPS don't seem to be working.

Screenshot_240.png


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Maybe in PvE the WP can be marginally useful also for spotting in some maps and certain situations, like on the second Starry Night cap, when you have only MBT snipers and squishies not able to go to spot, not only you can maybe decap but possibly make the tanks visible, even if that cap point seem to me somehow rigged, i often don't spot even tanks that i should spot at a certain distance, like the MBTs that lack of camo, then i suddenly spot, going only a little closer, each tank in the cap, not only the ones without camo, but also the ones that should have it, like the AFVs, TDs and LTs.

But i still have to actually try the new arty in a real battle, also yesterday i had other more urgent things to do.  Anyway the better aiming time is a big improvement.

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9 hours ago, BumbaX said:

Maybe in PvE the WP can be marginally useful also for spotting in some maps and certain situations, like on the second Starry Night cap, when you have only MBT snipers and squishies not able to go to spot, not only you can maybe decap but possibly make the tanks visible, even if that cap point seem to me somehow rigged, i often don't spot even tanks that i should spot at a certain distance, like the MBTs that lack of camo, then i suddenly spot, going only a little closer, each tank in the cap, not only the ones without camo, but also the ones that should have it, like the AFVs, TDs and LTs.

But i still have to actually try the new arty in a real battle, also yesterday i had other more urgent things to do.  Anyway the better aiming time is a big improvement.

WP is handy for spotting at the crash site  on Cavalry in PVE,  Yes Starry night is weird for spotting on the 2nd cap , WP would be useful there, 

 



 

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The one big issue I have with WP is that it doesn't have the same spread as a regular HE round.  You pretty much dial in the exact spot you want to drop it in at.  Face hugging a storage container in a cap and they can't hit you with HE but they get you with WP seems counter to what the intent is behind what they are trying to do.


 

"If you were not birthed with claws or fangs, store bought will do just fine."

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For me, arty is good, I liked playing arty generally, and I play glops preferably, so this should be great.

The thing is, since the arty is effectively direct fire now, as far as regular shooting at Glops enemies is concerned, it's just a crappy TD.
To hit someone in the refinery on Roughneck, you have to have direct line of sight, so that very much restricts where you can go, to get an effective shot in, or at a cap, since you can't shoot over anything ... except maybe 1 tank, directly between you and the target, if your target is 200m away.

The WP rounds and smoke are a nice tool to use, I like these.

Still no HERA shells tho :-( , so the arties i have because of HERA shells, (eg the Paladin), I should have traded them for arties with autoloaders

Edited by Lenticulas
Spelling, punctuation, the devil made me do it (see edit history)

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There's now a brief report on the Arty @ GlOps feedback:

Quote

We are pleased to report that we have gathered thousands of pieces of individual pieces of feedback that we have carefully evaluated over the course of the test. Based on your reports:

  • Roughly 75% of you welcome the idea with roughly 20% being against it (16% were strictly against it)
  • More than 80% of you welcomed the Smoke rounds and more than 75% of you welcomed the White Phosphorus rounds

Based on your feedback as well as our own investigations into the issues reported, we have come to the following conclusions:

  • For the future, we’d like to keep the Self-Propelled Gun class as a part of Global Operations
  • Overall, the support shells work well and as intended, although some partial problems with them need to be addressed
  • There are issues and bugs that we also need to address before officially allowing the class in this mode

We’d like to thank you all for your feedback. The Self-Propelled Gun class will return to the Global Operations mode in due time, although it may take us a month or two to address the abovementioned issues.

https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/artillery-global-operations-results


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From what I could observe during the test phase the artillery was mostly utterly useless. It might be because there were probably lots of players playing it who were new to GLOPS or the artillery class.

It happened to me only two times during the test that the arty did something useful with its supporting rounds. Otherwise it was very frustrating to have arty players who placed counter productive smoke-screens which actually obstructed the view rather than gaining valuable cover.

What I could aswell observe, as I expected, is that lots of arty players tried to blind-shoot caps. This is just frustrating as there are some caps that do not have any arty-safe spots at all.

I'm curious on what changes will be made but for the last week arty was mostly just a deadweight for the teams.

Along with arty implementation in GLOPS it would be cool to have some additional fast-communication-buttons to ask for smoke or phosphorus rounds..


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