3709 feedback thread

[Isen]

There are multiple things wrong with this
- First of all as i said at the start i was counting from the moment pepsi shift g'd, which was around 11.15 - 11.18 (don't remember anymore) and jagged had 10k hp at the start of THAT. Jagged died at 11.34 which means that during the battle jagged has taken a maximum of (34 - 16) * 2 * 100 = 3.6k damage from the pd and no more. This means your calculation is way of the mark. I excluded the extra damage he had taken previously because he got 1. an extra hp boost from the t2 upgrade and 2 because at the moment i started the equation he still had 10k hp remaining which is normally a healthy acu.
- As i said in my last point i started counting from the moment pepsi shift g'd, and 1 to 2 seconds after that jaggeds pd started shooting units. Again it doesn't matter what happened before this timeframe.
- Also right before Jagged died pepsi still had enough units left to do atleast another 1k damage to him. This means that the impact of the t2 pd's was even less than 3.6k considering jagged likely still would've died if they only did 2.5k damage
- pepsi was NOT i repeat NOT in a defensive (winning) position. Anything but that. He was literally pd creeping onto jaggeds territory. This makes no sense whatsoever
- Bad decision where? Pushing with a bigger army with a better acu vs a faction that has a slight disadvantage defensively (because of worse pd's and worse t1 tank hp)? If this was a bad idea SOLELY because of the existance of snipemode than it is all the more reason to remove it.

First of all my calculations were made to show that all the damage jagged acu took would have been translated into tanks dying instead, so you cant ignore the fact that he took 4k hp damage before the shift-g, 4k damage would be around 13 strikers.
Espi had 2 t2 pds that had units in range since min 10:32 until min 11:34 and so if those pds were htting units instead of acu, espi army would be bigger and would have been able to defend without having to shift-g, also jagged t2pds wouldnt have been hitting espi units,
With defending winning position i meant that on this certain fight, the outcome would have been in favor for espi with those t2 pds shooting all those units while armies were around same size and jagged t2 pds werent able to shoot espi units.

The second game was an example about how snipemode influences ladder games. The reason why this is more impactfull than jester/corsair/w/e snipes has already been said before. Because it is way, i repeat WAY easier to accomplish. The main difference is that you have to properly invest in air snipes, but you don't have to invest ANYTHING in a snipemode snipe because whether you go for the snipe or not you will need the units anyway.

You invest a lot on those snipemode snipes, if you fail you are most likely fucked as you noted in the second replay, so i think losing a game is a big investment.

No, balance changes shouldn't be made to prevent people using certain strategies. HOWEVER if a strategy is super dominant to the point that a lot of people deem it gamebreakingly dominant it definitely should be changed. If this wouldn't be the case then we would still be stuck in old restorer balance where everybody said they were OP. "Want to change the OP restorer? Don't prevent people from trying certain strategies!!" As you can see this argument doesn't hold up.

Ok, so we agree on that, it would be easy to check about 100 last 1vs1 high rating replays and to check how dominant the snipemode thing is, i think the balance team should have done this before of making such change, maybe it is right but i would love to see data, if snipe mode is so relevant i will be up for the change.

Resstorers were changed because it was only winning strat and it was also only available for one faction.

So yeah as with restorers if the snipemode is clearly so dominant winning strategy and the only way to win a game because it has no counter but doing the same then it will be easy to do a database with a certain numbers of replays and to check in how many the snipemode was relevant game ender.

[Ithilis_Quo]

Also in an ideal world we could buff acu hp to have snipemode have less of an impact yes. Practically it does not work out that way though. Buff acu hp cause of snipemode > now t2 air needs a buff to offset the change > now t2 air is too strong vs non acu targets > buff other targets too > etc etc. If you ONLY want snipemode have less of an impact on the game then it's impossible to fix this with simple unit stat changes because you either will go a full loop where every unit will have higher stats, or some other kind of stat will be offset which means that in order to fix snipemode you offset other balance aspects of the game

Im not the one who don't know about this aspect. Thats why i offer simply solution - copypast equilibrium overcharge completely with 2K energy cost, and not only half of code that then need adjustment and bug fixes in like 4th patches.

This sniper mod is also copypast from equilibrium, but sadly have same problems as most of what "balance team" copypast from EQ that took only part of it and ignores rest that makes links to other future problems.

First of all the frequency in which it happens is important. If for example over 50% of all

And thats the reason why like 6th replay that was offer as proof how it change result of game was recognized as false. This is oweral problem of whole balance team, that not predict future behavior. It doesnt realy mather how offten something occur to say if it is problem or not. If its something problem then its problem even when happedn in one game from hundred, frekvency depend on actual gameplay meta. Firebeetle was not used until empire comes with new way how to use them And same will hapend with everything else if its bad and wrong. Principle is that what matther. And this has bigger level, because it try to balance game by lower impact of players decision making.

You cannot simply make more tanks and still push with your enemy because even with an army advantage you may still die to snipemode.

You simply can, your tanks are blocking enemy tanks, and destroying enemy tanks as well. It is not imba win strategy, otherwise we will not have this polemics about if 6th replay that was "proof" of how it decidesgame...

[MrTBSC]

so did the firebeetle actualy become more userfriendly to varrant it being still more expensive than the blaze and with only 500 hp?

unitlist doesn´t show anything with stealth regarding the beetle .. only that it has the emp which i still find of questionable use given how rather difficult beetles are to handle last i used them (yes it has been a long while)

i find the HP reduction on the wagner a bit hefty ... might consider a slight mass reduction ... though yes it can be very well argued that the wagner might be a bit too versatile ...

[Turinturambar]

maybe in case some of you have forgotten how it looked before the times of snipemode. Classic 5x5 gameplay (ignoring 10x10 atm, though its essentially the same, but not as bad), was 2 acus trading shots while trying to pick of enemy units. this requires you to stand in front of your army. even if you had a smaller force, if the enemy went in you can usually retreat, and if your opponent only has a slightly stronger force the attack would only result in a somewhat even trade untill you got some reinforcements and your opponent had to fall back again.
And that was a good thing!

because
1st it made it more efficient to not clump all your army near your acu, leaving more units for rading etc at other places (if your opponent pushes it would just mean losing a bit of ground)
2nd it encouraged agressive acu gameplay (because you can have your com in an agressive position without risking death at any moment)
2a especially on 5x5 maps where acus fight constantly both players often would end up in the yellow making all ins significantly stronger
3rd it makes all ins from the weaker side allmost impossible (stronger player would just trade units for acu hp while retreating and then block the enemy army/com with his units. without snipemode a snipe from the weaker side was impossible (if enemy acu wasnt terribly mispositioned)

snipemode makes it possible to to all in a player with 50 tanks while you only have 30-40, to at least force a draw, whereas in the times before snipemode you could not just all in a player who had 10 tanks less (by running in your tanks in and clicking on his acu).

the mere existance of snipemode forces the winning player to use his acu as passive as possible, while it forces the losing player to yolo (in hope of a 10% win and 50% draw). on top of that if forces both players to have most of their army near their acu to snipemode/survive snipemode (on top of that all of that also applies to perfectly even games where one player can just randomly all in).

so, snipemodes makes random, gamble style all ins possible where they were not before (these all ins do not even require much skill to execute) and lead to more passive gameplay (more units near acu, acu not in front of the army, not trading acu hp, since it makes it easier to get sniped) which are both bad things (for 5x5 even fatal).

[JaggedAppliance]

The snipemode change was also not just invented after some qualifier tournament. https://github.com/FAForever/fa/pull/2874
It was there on October 9th.

[Armmagedon]

1st it made it more efficient to not clump all your army near your acu, leaving more units for rading etc at other places (if your opponent pushes it would just mean losing a bit of ground)

for what i know when you play aggresive with a com normally you push with everything and if not is because you have a good army to cover him, i dont think you can defend for example a com with 50 tanks with a com and 25 tanks if they go all in, the result will be the same that with snipemode, the snipemode shit f*** me more cause in teamgames i get doubled with two gun coms a lot of times, and what can i do vs that alone? I try to kill one of them and thats totally impossible if I cant focus them, there is no way to defend vs a greedy com with gun with that

2nd it encouraged agressive acu gameplay (because you can have your com in an agressive position without risking death at any moment)

its harder to find a good moment to do a snipe mode attack that be "aggresive with a gun com" for me thats not a good thing

2a especially on 5x5 maps where acus fight constantly both players often would end up in the yellow making all ins significantly stronger

and? then the one that move smarter win is that someting bad?

3rd it makes all ins from the weaker side allmost impossible (stronger player would just trade units for acu hp while retreating and then block the enemy army/com with his units. without snipemode a snipe from the weaker side was impossible (if enemy acu wasnt terribly mispositioned)

ppl dont try to snipe when they are in better position they just can play safe and harrass, snipe with air tml or whatever is most of the times something desperate, why should it be different with land?

if that things were so clear should be super easy make an statistic of the last 100 games and see how many of them are finished by a sniping mode attack, this thing is just balance by some subjetive shit where we are not using units stats, dps, or any satistic just some ppl comments to justify a change

[Turinturambar]

the issue with all your points is that the "intelligence" you are refering to is not a requirement. all it takes is an acu 2 strikerleghts in front of his army (maybe 2 seconds reactiontime).
2nd on 5x5 you usually dont have all the fanvy air/tml/...
3rd as stated before the issue is not even the game ending with snipemode, the isse is gameplay becomming more passive (both players waiting for the yolo)

[Ojo]

Change advanced target priority - crap. Now in a game where the main goal is to kill ACU units do not want to kill him

[Armmagedon]

the issue with all your points is that the "intelligence" you are refering to is not a requirement. all it takes is an acu 2 strikerleghts in front of his army (maybe 2 seconds reactiontime).
2nd on 5x5 you usually dont have all the fanvy air/tml/...
3rd as stated before the issue is not even the game ending with snipemode, the isse is gameplay becomming more passive (both players waiting for the yolo)

why you think ppl play are more passive with snipemode?, i didnt see a single passive gameplay in the tourney or in ladder.

[Tagada]

Beacuse people adapt and play differently because of snipe mode.
AND PLEASE stop comparing killing an ACU with t1 tanks in t1 stage where you build nearly ONLY T1 TANKS to a fricking air snipe or tml snipe. THESE ARE COMPLETLY DIFFERENT things. The point is that gameplay on 5x5 and 10x10 maps became insanely bad and boring bcs of snipe mode. Instead of a nice unit + Acu micro and sending units to raid you have to send nearly everything to your acu to avoid getting killed by snipe mode