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Developer Q&A: March 12, 2021

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https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/developer-qa-march-12-2021

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Here are the responses directly from the developers of Armored Warfare:

The T-72 Ural MBT is for some reason on the same Tier as its real-life successor, the T-72A, despite having inferior characteristics both in real life and in the game. Are you planning to address that?

Yes, in the future – we already overhauled the higher Tiers and are currently planning an overhaul of the lower ones. As for details, we don’t have anything to share yet.

Commander Ophelia Kitescu can deploy a shield when you die and this shield can withstand even a hit from a 152mm shell despite being nominally weaker. Is that intended?

Yes. The shield collapses when its hitpoints run out, or when it expires after a few seconds. If a single shot deals more damage than the shield can withstand, all the excessive damage is canceled and the tank is left alive with one hitpoint. If you want to make sure your shell does not get “eaten” by the shield, please wait a couple of seconds for it to expire.

Will you remove Ophelia Kitescu from the game?

No.

Is there a difference spotting-wise between vehicles with panoramic sights and those that don’t have them?

No. All behave the same.

By how much does RST-V Shadow reduce enemy viewrange with its special ability?

By 10 percent. We’ll add it to its tooltip.

You are introducing more Special Operations maps to the game. When will we get a new standard PvE mission?

The second half of this year.

:zzzeal:


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6 hours ago, Haswell said:

Will you remove Ophelia Kitescu from the game

They could fix certain imbalance and satisfy large group of PvP players by adding freely available commander, offering similar "shield immunity" ability. Sure, there is "no more new commander" approach, but this one I believe is counter-productive and drags this game into stagnation.

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1 hour ago, dfnce said:

They could fix certain imbalance and satisfy large group of PvP players by adding freely available commander, offering similar "shield immunity" ability. Sure, there is "no more new commander" approach, but this one I believe is counter-productive and drags this game into stagnation.

Remember that  - last we were told - PvP is like 7% of the player base.  They're loud, but they're a small minority.

At any rate, AW was talking about adding a "counter-Ophelia" commander whose special ability would, among other things, in some way mitigate Ophelia's shield.  It was a theoretical discussion, so there wasn't a lot of solid data, but there were a lot of good ideas.

The problem is that Ophelia isn't OP in PvE, and a LOT of people have paid real money for her.  They can't just nuke her, so whatever they do has to leave her as a viable commander for those who have her, but mitigates the perceived OP-ness of her in PvP.

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knutliott

just keep in mind that these 7% refer only to the western segment, there are MUCH more pvp players on the russian segment. and do not forget that 90% of vehicles are balanced specifically for pvp

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11 hours ago, knutliott said:

The problem is that Ophelia isn't OP in PvE, and a LOT of people have paid real money for her.  They can't just nuke her, so whatever they do has to leave her as a viable commander for those who have her, but mitigates the perceived OP-ness of her in PvP.

OPhelia is even viable without the fantasy shield. It would be funny if we gave all the bots OPhelia as commander then see how fast PVE only players start to change their opinion :kek:

People are not asking devs to totally nuke her but it was obvious from the start that her shield ability would be massive cancer in PVP modes (obviously bots don't give a fuck) and give their users a big enough advantage which warrants her use on nearly every vehicle. It doesn't take a mastermind to come to this conclusion even before she was implemented. It's well beyond me how such an ability passed testing (They probably didn't test it in PVP).

A counter OPhelia commander is just as dumb as OPhelia herself. In this case you'd also force players to equip this commander on near every tank just to counter the flood of OPhelia users in PVP. It's like with the CATTB. You could easily balance that vehicle by removing double-tap but the devs just insist on having it. As a consequence the vehicle is now nerfed to the ground just because it needs to keep this double-tap feature. It results in every player being unhappy regardless of owning a CATTB or not. Because first it was OP as fuck and now it's absolute trash. 

Same goes for OPhelia if you don't deal with her main problem (the shield) and just adjust everything else to somehow make it fit into the game it results in inherently flawed solutions which in the end lead to everyone being unhappy. As a nice side effect you render all other commanders nearly useless in PVP.

11 hours ago, knutliott said:

Remember that  - last we were told - PvP is like 7% of the player base.  They're loud, but they're a small minority.

Naturally this game has more PVE players because lots of them are frustrated wot or wt PVP players. It's understandable that it's more fun to win near 100% of the games compared to the usual 40-50%WR you get in wot pvp for example. At the same time decisions like adding OPhelia don't help the PVP players in the slightest and drive more people away at the cost of the players who paid money to get this advantage. It's usually small decisions which lead to people abandoning PVP or the entire game but we had lots of those and to me it's not really surprising that we had quite a long period of 5v5 Skirmishes before merge. It's also apparent that the near death of EU PVP at the time was probably one of the factors which led to the merge. At this time I was quite sure the PVP side of the game would die. 

If they actually want to keep PVP modes there's no point in telling them they're a small minority and suggesting their opinion on things should not be taken into consideration. One thing I can say for sure as a player who plays all modes available in this game, is that balance decisions have a way higher impact on PVP than on PVE. Main reason for this is that PVE is not competitive at all. You don't have any human enemies and therefore bad balancing and unfair game mechanics have less impact on the player experience. For example you can have a look at recent problems like the 152mm nuke HE. A huge pain in PVP but not at all in PVE (Bots don't care if they get nuked for 3k hitpoints on the first hit to the front). Or the Obj 490. Absolute joke in the hands of a bot but once you face a good PVP player in this you'll start loosing your mind because it's basically invincible with proper angling (still after all the nerfs).

At the same time there's obviously also a shitload of issues in PVE which need to be fixed. But to me personally it's more satisfying to win a PVE game with 3 shilkas in the team and do near no damage compared to loosing a GLOPS game against a triple T15 stomp platoon and do near no damage as well and get killed a dozen times in the process. Obviously both situations are cancer and need fixing but I'd rather be in the PVE match if I could choose.

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My major concern is PvE. But healthy and more populous PvP mode gives a chance this game won't die in agony in foreseeable future, and yields some chance for the game to be improving. I saw this pattern before. There are numerous reasons, and Ophelia is just tiny piece of big picture, both magic shield and her inaccessibility to public, why PvP population is not majority in this game anymore. 

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How about they just make the shield a PVE only skill, maybe add a PVP only skill for her to replace the shield in PVP matches.

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You could easily keep Ophelia's shield skill while seriously nerfing it's utility as blatantly a broken mechanic by adding a few extra restrictions to it.

To give an example, three possible restrictions that could be added to it (off the top of my head):

  • limit the number of times the shield can deploy in a single match (major effect in Glops, possible minor/moderate effect in PvE, no effect in PvP)
  • add a minimum time between shield deployments regardless of whether or not the player dies (major effect in Glops, moderate effect in PvE, no effect in PvP)
  • require the player to get a kill before the shield can deploy (major effect in PvP, moderate effect in Glops, minimal effect in PvE)

Having some combination of these restrictions would allow Ophelia to keep her shield skill functionally identical to what it currently is (which the devs seem to want) but would balance it by limiting the how often the shield would deploy. Personally, I think a combination of the first and third options (e.g. the shield can spawn 3 times per match, the player must get a kill before the first shield, and the player must get another kill after each shield in order to get the next shield) would be a good starting point for reducing the effectiveness of the "yolo strategy" in PvP and Glops.

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On 3/12/2021 at 11:53 PM, tahax said:

knutliott

just keep in mind that these 7% refer only to the western segment, there are MUCH more pvp players on the russian segment. and do not forget that 90% of vehicles are balanced specifically for pvp

There was no such context around the quote that I saw.  It was simply stated that PvP accounts for 7% of games played.

On 3/13/2021 at 1:36 AM, TeyKey1 said:

OPhelia is even viable without the fantasy shield. It would be funny if we gave all the bots OPhelia as commander then see how fast PVE only players start to change their opinion 

I doubt it would change my opinion.  PvE is all about DPM, and Ophelia's shield is in reality quite small.  When your team is outfitted with as many autocannons as you see in PvE, her shield would be nothing more than a nuisance.  Furthermore, since players are outnumbered 5 or 6 to 1 in PvE, you play it differently and aren't as likely to get into a situation where a bot's shield would radically swing the outcome of an engagement.

A Lieutenant with her shield?  Yeah, okay, 15% of 6k health might be a bit annoying.  But again, you have to be so careful fighting LTs in the first place that the only real effect it would have would be to boost their health by 900.  That's significant, but not a game-changer.

On 3/13/2021 at 1:36 AM, TeyKey1 said:

A counter OPhelia commander is just as dumb as OPhelia herself. In this case you'd also force players to equip this commander on near every tank just to counter the flood of OPhelia users in PVP.

That would depend on how it was implemented.  If the counter-ability were somehow useful anyway, then the counter-commander wouldn't need enemy Ophelias to be a reasonable choice.  But, sure, if they did something stupid like "Ophelia's ability doesn't work when shot by this tank" then that would be pretty stupid.

And you'd also rapidly reach an equilibrium.  It doesn't take everyone equipping the counter-Ophelia commander to make Ophelia less appealing... just enough that you can't rely on her shield.

On 3/13/2021 at 1:36 AM, TeyKey1 said:

[PvP commentary]

I hear ya.  What's annoying for PvE players is that they're expected to understand that the game has to be balanced for PvP because it's a more competitive mode and therefore the tuning is critical to game balance (which is true), but then also absorb all of the flak when AW actually does something that benefits PvE or makes it more fun.  And also just accept changes that make PvE worse because they're deemed necessary for PvP.  It's especially frustrating when those changes are forced through even when there were other alternatives that wouldn't have impacted PvE as badly... it's like they don't consider impacts on PvE at all while desperately trying to balance PvP.

Cheap, easy solution?  Make Ophelia PvE-only like they did with Artillery (as JintoLin said).  That's not an ideal solution because I'm sure there are a lot of PvP players who bought her specifically because she's ridiculously good in PvP, but you're going to piss people off no matter what you do with her so why not minimize the damage?

I mean... she has 3 main abilities, they could even make just that one ability PvE-only.

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4 hours ago, knutliott said:

Cheap, easy solution?  Make Ophelia PvE-only like they did with Artillery (as JintoLin said).  That's not an ideal solution because I'm sure there are a lot of PvP players who bought her specifically because she's ridiculously good in PvP, but you're going to piss people off no matter what you do with her so why not minimize the damage?

I mean... she has 3 main abilities, they could even make just that one ability PvE-only.

Yeah, that would be the easiest way to balance Ophelia in PvP. At the end of the day her shield skill is so broken that it seriously needs to be directly nerfed or otherwise restricted. The devs have said that they are not looking at nerfing her ability, so that just leaves restricting it.

If the devs don't like the restrictions I proposed, I would fully support simply just making her shield PvE only if it meant that it made her balanced for PvP and Glops.

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