1.10 analysis and recommended changes
Posted: Sun Aug 07, 2016 7:27 pm
Sweet christ, this update broke SFD. It's a good thing it's so fun because otherwise I'd be really frustrated.
THE ANALYSIS
So before I get into the thick of things, I'd like to state where the game was at one update prior and what happened to make this update so absolutely bonkers. Last update, the game was fairly alright. I'd say it favored defensive play (quite heavily in my opinion; it's harder to be aggressive). That's not to say players couldn't make a solid push, it just took more prep, perhaps more items, and a lot of skill. Lots of tough timing to get down to break through someone's line of defense. That, or used some careful positioning to slowly chip at their health/cover so that you could more easily break in. I'd call this defensive play since you aren't really putting yourself at risk anyways.
This update? Throwing took a single look at the metagame we have right now, ripped it out of the ground, and spat in its grave. This update is nuts, if you guys wanted true chaos in every match then I think you outdid yourself. If it moves, it hurts, and if it hurts, it stuns. Like, this patch is just crazy.
Switching to throw mode is FAST. Lightning quick. Throwing your weapon is just as fast. You can jump and throw without any landing cooldown, throwing is super fast and leaves no vulnerability since you can punch/block directly out of throw. It deals huge damage (most melee weapons and sidearms do about 20; knife deals fucking 40 lmao. Other sharp weapons seem to do between 25 and 35). Not only is switching to throwing mode for a melee weapon quick, you can throw a melee weapon faster than you can swing with it for more damage. Melee is officially dead; melee weapons have become pocket projectiles to fuck with people. There is pretty much no reason to melee right now since you can do more damage, fulfill the same role (stun, disarm, hit through dodges) quicker with more damage, bigger hitboxes, virtually no vulnerability/endlag, AND you can do ALL OF THIS without losing forward momentum. I hardly ever even bother with melee combat now. I run forward, do a couple kicks (which aren't unique to melee combat, they can be used at any time) and then throw my weapon really quick while they're trying to recover. Melee is only good any more for a desperation attempt with fists and while you're falling off an object; throwing your weapon is just overall better.
Next, we have debris. Oh my god, the debris. Every time a pebble shifts slightly near a fighter, they take damage and stagger like someone punched them. This is also bonkers hahaha. I like the idea but at the same time we already have enough to worry about when it comes to things breaking and exploding around us, getting showered with little bits and pieces and taking any damage at all as a result is too punishing. If you get enough little bits of debris together in one spot and kick them at someone, they can die or go flying. Sometimes both! Of course, kicking while near someone with debris in the way can be used to override a block and mix up the opponent. Then you can haul back and throw your big damage! Explosive barrels spawn shrapnel as well, and anything they blow up will also spawn shrapnel, which can cause you to be stunned into a falling barrel or Johnny's shotgun blast you were trying to roll through. Just getting stunned by a slow-moving piece of wood is cause for fear.
And then the grenades. Oh my god the grenades. Cook these bad boys for half their timer and then hit someone. Spam the rest of your nade count too; once they're stunned they can't get out. Even if you only landed one impact and the explosion from the grenade (assumed point blank since grenades drop at their feet) you'll deal 90 damage. Ninety fucking damage, out of 100. You can stone someone to death with grenades or mines without the boom at all. I understand what was being attempted here but these explosives already did enough damage; giving them more lethality was far from necessary. Grenades were unique projectiles that could be used to set traps and mixup your opponent. Cooking a grenade as someone came close only to throw it at your feet gave you space, and since grenades were so strong it was very risky to challenge someone's grenade placement. 70 damage is a really large amount; you don't want to catch any of it. You could throw them at walls as you walked through doors or down stairs, you could throw them ahead of you without cooking and run by them so that they'd stop at cover and detonate on anyone chasing you. It was a good tool for creating space; it could be used to flush people out of cover; it can surprise people that are focused elsewhere or are focused on a big team fight. Grenades have SOOO much utility as it is. Now they can stunlock someone and instant kill them with one pickup.
But do you want to know the biggest kicker when it comes to this god tool?
It only has one counter, and that's blocking. You know, the move that has a big cooldown after use and relatively short active frames? If you want to catch someone's thrown weapon/take no damage from debris/stop someone's grenade in it's tracks without stun, you have to block at JUST the right time and hope to hell that it was the only thing coming at you because a rain of debris can leave you in stun for 1-2 seconds depending on how much is falling on you. Overall, the only way to stop something from hurting you when it comes in your direction is a block, and while I like that blocking gets to be the counter to this otherwise unstoppable move, throwing is just so fast and easy that baiting out a block is super simple and players have no other means of avoiding the damage. Since there's such a large cooldown on blocking, players better hope they correctly time their stuff or have a slomo because once they fuck it up the thrower gets a free hit. Better mixup that jump because otherwise you'll be eating at least 15-20 damage, depending on what's thrown, and that's being generous. For reference, a katana does 15 per melee swing, and I'm talking about throwing pretty much any weapon.
Now, I love throwing. I repeat: I LOVE throwing. This powerful option opens up a new world in SFD that allows newer approaches, lightning fast combat, and highly aggressive play. Guns will always reign supreme at medium to long distance, and the shotgun will always dominate CQC, but throwing has revolutionized the game and will continue to as players learn to work around it and optimize damage and combo potential. I've already devised a couple of combos that utilize throwing, and between a couple other ideas I have and the highly anticipated (by me) grabs we'll be getting later, I only see throws as growing more powerful from here on. This needs to be addressed; objects as projectiles and throwing weapons in general are just too strong. Keep the aggressiveness at all costs but tone it down.
THE SUGGESTIONS
Now that I've covered all of THAT, let's get down to my proposed changes. Some of this is probably repetitive by now.
-Throw damage is too high. Most weapons when thrown at point blank or even footing will deal 20 damage. Sharp weapons (katana, fire axe, machete) deal some 30 or more damage! This is understandable for strong weapons like the katana and fire axe but it's still too much damage! The knife does just over 40 damage at even footing, and while this is understandable since it's a special weapon quirk, it's still an enormous amount of damage. A sawed off blasts twice for 44.4 damage, throwing a knife is basically two shotgun blasts. It happens quickly, can be drawn fast, and if you're lucky enough not to hit yourself off the bounce you can pick up the knife again before your opponent can steal it. Sidearms can be thrown for 20 damage, most all melee weapons at least 20, and considering that's a huge boost over their usual damage values (we're talking a maximum of 11.5 for blunt weapons) with added mobility and damage (all of that stated above when it comes to the benefit of melee vs just throwing) throwing has been made too powerful. Halving damage across the board would help this mechanic imo. I don't want the damage to become negligible - a player should be properly punished upon being struck. However, no player deserves the fate that awaits them when they're hit repeatedly by a thrown pistol or pipe wrench. At most I'd like to see these weapons do 15 damage, 10 at the lowest for their base throws. Of course, if your throw has some form of acceleration factors behind it and it gets faster, it should do more damage. But 20 from the get-go is just nuts.
Objects should move a certain speed before they become a projectile. Some things move very little before they are a projectile, damaging players that they touch. Some examples include:
--Dead players drop items and then they hurt nearby players.
--Just dropping an item injures players that are near you as it spawns.
--Throwing a weapon at very close spaces will have it bounce off the victim and damage the thrower.
--Kicking a piece of debris will cause it to impact anyone nearby. Slow movement speed and small movement time yet it still strikes players.
Throwing straight out of hand is one thing, it starts with all that momentum. Having very little momentum as something spawns should not damage nearby players, let alone stun them. To accompany this change, I'd recommend a slight graphical cue when a weapon is travelling fast enough to hurt a player. Perhaps a windy little woosh or shine effect can surround a weapon or it can sparkle as it flies through the air to indicate that it will in fact fuck you up.
-Debris, the nearly impossible to see killer. Generally roams in packs dealing very little damage over 20 little bits, kick the pile with someone nearby and laugh. While generally dealing low damage per hit, it's still a very annoying feature to know that I'm at my last 5 health and an errant splinter could travel in my direction and end my game. It also deals stun and goes through rolls, which means that my well-timed dodge gets interrupted and I eat shit as Ivan pumps me full of Magnum. I recommend either lowering/removing damage, removing it's collision with players, or removing it's stun. All of these together create a huge annoyance that can hardly be taken advantage of by the player. This goes beyond dumb luck for the kill, this is dumb luck for sheer annoyance. Unless they have like legit no health, it won't kill, and currently explosions already deal enough damage; cover breaking is punishment enough when you're on the offense. This is overkill in a way that manages to be less overkill and more overall awful.
Thrown gear has practically no solid/reliable counter. Guns? They have a great counter: Rolling and diving. Rolls have ok dodge frames while dives have superb safety, covering great distance with a large amount of time safe from bullets. Of course, you still have a 10% chance to be hit through dodge, but that's much more manageable since you still have the odds on your favor. What makes this defensive tool strong is how long it's active for and how prominent guns are. I'd say dodging in this fashion is in a good place, with very few weapons hitting guaranteed through a dodge. Currently, throwing weapons can only be blocked or completely avoided, there is no other way to prevent yourself from taking a hit or protecting yourself. I've seen others recommend adding the ability to use melee attacks to block thrown weapons, but I don't see it. Instead, I propose we have the ability to use the pickup key to catch gear by increasing the pickup range subtly. You could also have gear that's moving fast have a larger grab box so that players have a better way to grab items. The problem I foresee is players spamming the pickup item key to prevent themselves from ever getting hit by a thrown weapon. My proposition is definitely a start; I'd be sad to see some cooldown applied to any part of what's going on with throwing gear. Hopefully we can figure something out, as just increasing blockframes will cause more problems elsewhere if you don't overhaul and revamp how blocking works to allow for a constant block. If you have ideas to better stop a weapon throw, let's talk about them! Grabs could possibly catch weapons thrown at them, giving them a solid use for when someone wants to toss things at you. Definitely not a fix in the now, though.
If grenades/mines are going to do impact damage (usually about 20 each impact) they need to deal less explosion damage. Currently, both of these explosives deal 70 damage at the middle of their radius, which is a game-ender in most scenarios. Directly hitting someone stuns them, deals roughly 20 damage, and allows you to just spam your grenades at them while they have no legit hope of getting away. Even if they turn tail and run, it's likely you'll hit them in the back on their way out since you can keep moving during your throws, causing them to trip near enough to the first grenade that it sets off a chain reaction on the other grenades closer to the victim. This will kill him instantly pretty much every time. Lower throw damage, lower explosion damage, or make it harder to stun with grenades. Currently, grenades feel like Superfighters (Flash) Molotovs took several dangerous experimental steroids and came back with bazookas over each shoulder.
As a final note, after this update, melee feels more than just weak. It feels even more than obsolete. It almost feels like it doesn't belong! Melee is so slow with throwing being better in every regard, that using melee is either a team tactic or a desperation attempt/mixup. Using melee straightforward or even just... Using it as an option over throwing, is limiting yourself. You stand to gain more damage, more quickly, with better ability to position and less to worry about when it comes to the things around you. To keep up, melee really needs a speed boost! Even just a slight one. I'd be super happy to see melee actually do less damage as a result, as it would freshen up the melee fighting in general. Leaving melee as it is right now will kill it entirely, though. If you don't plan to buff melee combat at this point, you don't even need to add grabs. It will be a waste of your time. Unless it counters throwing in the method I described above.
It's 10:30 and I'm exhausted, I have work in ~6 hours so I need to get some sleep haha. Hoping to spur some discussion on the balance state that is throwing, really hoping for solid ideas and input. Thanks a lot for reading! I'll see you all soon.
THE ANALYSIS
So before I get into the thick of things, I'd like to state where the game was at one update prior and what happened to make this update so absolutely bonkers. Last update, the game was fairly alright. I'd say it favored defensive play (quite heavily in my opinion; it's harder to be aggressive). That's not to say players couldn't make a solid push, it just took more prep, perhaps more items, and a lot of skill. Lots of tough timing to get down to break through someone's line of defense. That, or used some careful positioning to slowly chip at their health/cover so that you could more easily break in. I'd call this defensive play since you aren't really putting yourself at risk anyways.
This update? Throwing took a single look at the metagame we have right now, ripped it out of the ground, and spat in its grave. This update is nuts, if you guys wanted true chaos in every match then I think you outdid yourself. If it moves, it hurts, and if it hurts, it stuns. Like, this patch is just crazy.
Switching to throw mode is FAST. Lightning quick. Throwing your weapon is just as fast. You can jump and throw without any landing cooldown, throwing is super fast and leaves no vulnerability since you can punch/block directly out of throw. It deals huge damage (most melee weapons and sidearms do about 20; knife deals fucking 40 lmao. Other sharp weapons seem to do between 25 and 35). Not only is switching to throwing mode for a melee weapon quick, you can throw a melee weapon faster than you can swing with it for more damage. Melee is officially dead; melee weapons have become pocket projectiles to fuck with people. There is pretty much no reason to melee right now since you can do more damage, fulfill the same role (stun, disarm, hit through dodges) quicker with more damage, bigger hitboxes, virtually no vulnerability/endlag, AND you can do ALL OF THIS without losing forward momentum. I hardly ever even bother with melee combat now. I run forward, do a couple kicks (which aren't unique to melee combat, they can be used at any time) and then throw my weapon really quick while they're trying to recover. Melee is only good any more for a desperation attempt with fists and while you're falling off an object; throwing your weapon is just overall better.
Next, we have debris. Oh my god, the debris. Every time a pebble shifts slightly near a fighter, they take damage and stagger like someone punched them. This is also bonkers hahaha. I like the idea but at the same time we already have enough to worry about when it comes to things breaking and exploding around us, getting showered with little bits and pieces and taking any damage at all as a result is too punishing. If you get enough little bits of debris together in one spot and kick them at someone, they can die or go flying. Sometimes both! Of course, kicking while near someone with debris in the way can be used to override a block and mix up the opponent. Then you can haul back and throw your big damage! Explosive barrels spawn shrapnel as well, and anything they blow up will also spawn shrapnel, which can cause you to be stunned into a falling barrel or Johnny's shotgun blast you were trying to roll through. Just getting stunned by a slow-moving piece of wood is cause for fear.
And then the grenades. Oh my god the grenades. Cook these bad boys for half their timer and then hit someone. Spam the rest of your nade count too; once they're stunned they can't get out. Even if you only landed one impact and the explosion from the grenade (assumed point blank since grenades drop at their feet) you'll deal 90 damage. Ninety fucking damage, out of 100. You can stone someone to death with grenades or mines without the boom at all. I understand what was being attempted here but these explosives already did enough damage; giving them more lethality was far from necessary. Grenades were unique projectiles that could be used to set traps and mixup your opponent. Cooking a grenade as someone came close only to throw it at your feet gave you space, and since grenades were so strong it was very risky to challenge someone's grenade placement. 70 damage is a really large amount; you don't want to catch any of it. You could throw them at walls as you walked through doors or down stairs, you could throw them ahead of you without cooking and run by them so that they'd stop at cover and detonate on anyone chasing you. It was a good tool for creating space; it could be used to flush people out of cover; it can surprise people that are focused elsewhere or are focused on a big team fight. Grenades have SOOO much utility as it is. Now they can stunlock someone and instant kill them with one pickup.
But do you want to know the biggest kicker when it comes to this god tool?
It only has one counter, and that's blocking. You know, the move that has a big cooldown after use and relatively short active frames? If you want to catch someone's thrown weapon/take no damage from debris/stop someone's grenade in it's tracks without stun, you have to block at JUST the right time and hope to hell that it was the only thing coming at you because a rain of debris can leave you in stun for 1-2 seconds depending on how much is falling on you. Overall, the only way to stop something from hurting you when it comes in your direction is a block, and while I like that blocking gets to be the counter to this otherwise unstoppable move, throwing is just so fast and easy that baiting out a block is super simple and players have no other means of avoiding the damage. Since there's such a large cooldown on blocking, players better hope they correctly time their stuff or have a slomo because once they fuck it up the thrower gets a free hit. Better mixup that jump because otherwise you'll be eating at least 15-20 damage, depending on what's thrown, and that's being generous. For reference, a katana does 15 per melee swing, and I'm talking about throwing pretty much any weapon.
Now, I love throwing. I repeat: I LOVE throwing. This powerful option opens up a new world in SFD that allows newer approaches, lightning fast combat, and highly aggressive play. Guns will always reign supreme at medium to long distance, and the shotgun will always dominate CQC, but throwing has revolutionized the game and will continue to as players learn to work around it and optimize damage and combo potential. I've already devised a couple of combos that utilize throwing, and between a couple other ideas I have and the highly anticipated (by me) grabs we'll be getting later, I only see throws as growing more powerful from here on. This needs to be addressed; objects as projectiles and throwing weapons in general are just too strong. Keep the aggressiveness at all costs but tone it down.
THE SUGGESTIONS
Now that I've covered all of THAT, let's get down to my proposed changes. Some of this is probably repetitive by now.
-Throw damage is too high. Most weapons when thrown at point blank or even footing will deal 20 damage. Sharp weapons (katana, fire axe, machete) deal some 30 or more damage! This is understandable for strong weapons like the katana and fire axe but it's still too much damage! The knife does just over 40 damage at even footing, and while this is understandable since it's a special weapon quirk, it's still an enormous amount of damage. A sawed off blasts twice for 44.4 damage, throwing a knife is basically two shotgun blasts. It happens quickly, can be drawn fast, and if you're lucky enough not to hit yourself off the bounce you can pick up the knife again before your opponent can steal it. Sidearms can be thrown for 20 damage, most all melee weapons at least 20, and considering that's a huge boost over their usual damage values (we're talking a maximum of 11.5 for blunt weapons) with added mobility and damage (all of that stated above when it comes to the benefit of melee vs just throwing) throwing has been made too powerful. Halving damage across the board would help this mechanic imo. I don't want the damage to become negligible - a player should be properly punished upon being struck. However, no player deserves the fate that awaits them when they're hit repeatedly by a thrown pistol or pipe wrench. At most I'd like to see these weapons do 15 damage, 10 at the lowest for their base throws. Of course, if your throw has some form of acceleration factors behind it and it gets faster, it should do more damage. But 20 from the get-go is just nuts.
Objects should move a certain speed before they become a projectile. Some things move very little before they are a projectile, damaging players that they touch. Some examples include:
--Dead players drop items and then they hurt nearby players.
--Just dropping an item injures players that are near you as it spawns.
--Throwing a weapon at very close spaces will have it bounce off the victim and damage the thrower.
--Kicking a piece of debris will cause it to impact anyone nearby. Slow movement speed and small movement time yet it still strikes players.
Throwing straight out of hand is one thing, it starts with all that momentum. Having very little momentum as something spawns should not damage nearby players, let alone stun them. To accompany this change, I'd recommend a slight graphical cue when a weapon is travelling fast enough to hurt a player. Perhaps a windy little woosh or shine effect can surround a weapon or it can sparkle as it flies through the air to indicate that it will in fact fuck you up.
-Debris, the nearly impossible to see killer. Generally roams in packs dealing very little damage over 20 little bits, kick the pile with someone nearby and laugh. While generally dealing low damage per hit, it's still a very annoying feature to know that I'm at my last 5 health and an errant splinter could travel in my direction and end my game. It also deals stun and goes through rolls, which means that my well-timed dodge gets interrupted and I eat shit as Ivan pumps me full of Magnum. I recommend either lowering/removing damage, removing it's collision with players, or removing it's stun. All of these together create a huge annoyance that can hardly be taken advantage of by the player. This goes beyond dumb luck for the kill, this is dumb luck for sheer annoyance. Unless they have like legit no health, it won't kill, and currently explosions already deal enough damage; cover breaking is punishment enough when you're on the offense. This is overkill in a way that manages to be less overkill and more overall awful.
Thrown gear has practically no solid/reliable counter. Guns? They have a great counter: Rolling and diving. Rolls have ok dodge frames while dives have superb safety, covering great distance with a large amount of time safe from bullets. Of course, you still have a 10% chance to be hit through dodge, but that's much more manageable since you still have the odds on your favor. What makes this defensive tool strong is how long it's active for and how prominent guns are. I'd say dodging in this fashion is in a good place, with very few weapons hitting guaranteed through a dodge. Currently, throwing weapons can only be blocked or completely avoided, there is no other way to prevent yourself from taking a hit or protecting yourself. I've seen others recommend adding the ability to use melee attacks to block thrown weapons, but I don't see it. Instead, I propose we have the ability to use the pickup key to catch gear by increasing the pickup range subtly. You could also have gear that's moving fast have a larger grab box so that players have a better way to grab items. The problem I foresee is players spamming the pickup item key to prevent themselves from ever getting hit by a thrown weapon. My proposition is definitely a start; I'd be sad to see some cooldown applied to any part of what's going on with throwing gear. Hopefully we can figure something out, as just increasing blockframes will cause more problems elsewhere if you don't overhaul and revamp how blocking works to allow for a constant block. If you have ideas to better stop a weapon throw, let's talk about them! Grabs could possibly catch weapons thrown at them, giving them a solid use for when someone wants to toss things at you. Definitely not a fix in the now, though.
If grenades/mines are going to do impact damage (usually about 20 each impact) they need to deal less explosion damage. Currently, both of these explosives deal 70 damage at the middle of their radius, which is a game-ender in most scenarios. Directly hitting someone stuns them, deals roughly 20 damage, and allows you to just spam your grenades at them while they have no legit hope of getting away. Even if they turn tail and run, it's likely you'll hit them in the back on their way out since you can keep moving during your throws, causing them to trip near enough to the first grenade that it sets off a chain reaction on the other grenades closer to the victim. This will kill him instantly pretty much every time. Lower throw damage, lower explosion damage, or make it harder to stun with grenades. Currently, grenades feel like Superfighters (Flash) Molotovs took several dangerous experimental steroids and came back with bazookas over each shoulder.
As a final note, after this update, melee feels more than just weak. It feels even more than obsolete. It almost feels like it doesn't belong! Melee is so slow with throwing being better in every regard, that using melee is either a team tactic or a desperation attempt/mixup. Using melee straightforward or even just... Using it as an option over throwing, is limiting yourself. You stand to gain more damage, more quickly, with better ability to position and less to worry about when it comes to the things around you. To keep up, melee really needs a speed boost! Even just a slight one. I'd be super happy to see melee actually do less damage as a result, as it would freshen up the melee fighting in general. Leaving melee as it is right now will kill it entirely, though. If you don't plan to buff melee combat at this point, you don't even need to add grabs. It will be a waste of your time. Unless it counters throwing in the method I described above.
It's 10:30 and I'm exhausted, I have work in ~6 hours so I need to get some sleep haha. Hoping to spur some discussion on the balance state that is throwing, really hoping for solid ideas and input. Thanks a lot for reading! I'll see you all soon.
it's not that hard to do it just train . I go ahead and Melee my opponent who has no choice now but to Melee or die ? The end