Disclaimer: during the last play session I recognized many things that need to be optimized and corrected with the implementations of the Sovjet machines. I don’t intend to badmouth the new machines but provide feedback to finalize the mechanics that come with those machines.
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Steady feet skill: the char gets knocked off it’s feet easier by the grenades from the new machines.
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Permanent respawn of Wolf: When you down a Wolf from a certain distance of it’s spawn point it will immediately respawn. I don’t know the exact distance the char needs from the spawn point but I would say it’s less then 100m. When you’re too close no respawn will happen (at least I didn’t had the opportunity to recognize it otherwise) but once you’re away far enough the machine will appear out of thin air.
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Healing: This makes the machines way to overpowered. The Swedish machines usually have no chance against such a strong enemy. The healing should be limited to a certain amount of uses (I would suggest less then 10) and increase the time the machines can heal to once every 30-60 seconds. That should at least reduce the overpowering a bit.
Another option would be to apply the healing option to rivals and/or tanks and harvesters as well to provide a more equal balance. At the moment the balance came a bit under the wheels and I think this needs to be corrected. I often find Wolfs roaming the area leaving a trail of downed harvesters, tanks, hunters and more behind them. I don’t know whether this is intentionally. If this is planned so I would vote for a reduction of the Sovjet machines in number. Aditionally with advancing time Swedish machines should vanish completely leaving the player alone to fight the eastern invasion forces.
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Speed of grenades: While the grenades are very slow overall in the game (fortunately for the player) for some reason the grenades fired from the Lynx are faster then those from the Wolf. I would expect a speed difference reverse to that.
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Granatgevär vs Lynx: I tried fighting Lynxes with the Granatgevär and found them a bit too stable against the explosion from a grenade. I would expect that they would get knocked off their… erm ball quite easily since the balancing act would be heavily impacted when hit by an explosion, while a hit with a bullet could be balanced more easily.
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Granatgevär vs Wolf: I tried the same against a lvl1 Soldier Wolf. It took me more then 50 HEDP from the Granatgevär before I switched to the AI 76 to speed this up a bit. The healing of the Wolf is way too strong and often and makes those fights tedious especially when considering that this Wolf respawned immediately afterwards (not as a rival fortunately).
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1 Wolf vs 2 Harvester: It took me about 10 minutes to down a Soldier Wolf. Shortly afterwards two harvesters approached the area. One prototype, one military. It took me less then 2 minutes in total to destroy them both. The time difference is quite astonishing showing that the Swedish machines look extremely weak against the Sovjet machines.
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Bumping Lynxes: One common movement pattern of the Lynx is to strafe the player. This results in a lot of bumping into each other. For some reason this catapults some of them in the air. While this seems very strange why this should happen, the machines fall down very slowly like they have a different type of gravity. While I think bumping into each other should reduce their hit points this would be too easy (and too much fun just to watch). In my opinion the Lynx should not propel upwards when bumping.
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Noise: Since the drawing distance for machines is 400m, the fights also start at this distance. This results in noise spikes when such a fight begins. While I do not think raising the drawing distance of the machines would help the sometimes already struggling game engine, the noise spikes could be reduced a bit. Additionally I have the feeling that hills and forests between the player and the fighting machines do not reduce the noise. I think, this could be improved as well (the game needs a lot of audio fixes anyway).
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Pulling the char into the fights: Last but not least, I already mentioned this in an earlier bug report (Getting XP for fights between machines). When machines fight, the player gets quite often pulled into the fight, even when he is not in the line of sight. This results sometimes in getting XP for a fight the player didn’t even participate. Additionally this prevents the player from fast traveling. I think the line of sight should be considered and when machines fight each other this should provide the player to slip by more easily since the machines focus on each other. It seems illogical when a machine is threatened by another machine that it ignores this thread and turns it’s focus towards the player, especially when the player is far away and/or not participating in the already occuring fight.
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Couldn’t agree more!
The healing has to be adjusted in some way. Either as you proposed or like that only armor can be (slightly) regenerated but components don’t?
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The healing is pretty insane, but you can shoot off 2 of those 4 contraptions on the side of the Wolf to stop him from doing that.
Honestly I really like the Wolf, I have more of a problem with the Lynx. They’re tiny and have no lights on them like other machines, so they’re super hard to spot in the woods. And their weapons are pretty nuts, even with +30% health and Vanguard the burst rifle Lynx absolutely shreds you apart. The grenade launching Lynxes are really annoying too, constantly getting knocked done by an unseen enemy when I’m fighting Wolves is frustrating.
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Yes of course you can!
But this doesn’t mean that the “healing function” as its implemented now is good.
With the balance knocked off I wonder how the devs would implement a new thing to counteract this if they would not nerf the healing.
Would this lead into a Swedish-Russian arms race? Would a knew class above Apo fix this? What would the next time iteration (like the Resistance update which propelled the time forward to April 1990) mean for the existing Swedish machine classes?
The thing is that new players who emerge from the Archipelage soon find themselves battling against machines that can down FNIX tanks with ease.
I think there is no other way then to nerf the healing to eliminate the difficulty spike there. Maybe similar to the harvesters where the Proto class can drop 1 hunter, the military class 2 hunters etc., the Scout Wolf can heal 3 times, the Soldier class 6 times and the Speznas class 9 times.
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Just one thing I disagree with:
The wolves are one of the easiest enemies in the game. There are always just a few steps needed.
Here a speznaz wolf - I use the exp pvg:
- Take out the two healing-pods (1 or 2 shots each)
- Take out the two mine/missile launchers (1 to 3 shots each)
→ the wolf will stand up and show you his “crown jewels”
- Target this “ball” under the wolfs head (about 5 shots)
With just a single magazine I destroy every wolf, except the rivals.
2 Likes
So basically you are fighting an op machine with an op weapon. I use conventional weapons which results in prolongued fights.
While the player might make a pile of metal quickly out of the Sovjet machines with op weapons, the Swedish machines appear to be basically cannonfodder. And this antagonizes me a bit because it seems that in the near future the island will be overrun by Sovjet machines.
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From what I can tell the Soviet machines are far faster to take down.
I do not even need to be using an “OP weapon” for them to take more than a few moments. (barring healing).
You mention HEDP against a wolf taking around 50. This is odd since I observed that the wolf was the only large machine vulnerable to the GRG. Taking far less hits than a tank or harvester.
The only thing I can agree on would the be the Lynx eating HEDP. They seem to be resistant to that.
Maybe. But I wasn’t going for a speed record in destroying the Wolf. It was more a comparison of Wolf vs. Harvester.
Unfortunately I ran out of HEDPs which means I couldn’t count the number of HEDPs vs. the harvesters. Here I used a 5* AI-76. I did not shoot very precise towards the harvesters to somewhat reproduce the overall damage of a HEDP.
In general I’m more worried about the fights between RU vs SE, which is at the moment highly in favor of the foreign intruders.
Yeah, this is really weird.
So many weak points that even a lower quality pvg90 can quite easily pick off even the Spetsnaz Wolf tanks.
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It’s almost the same with a 5c pvg…
I had almost the same situation as you just with a granatgevär and an ai76. But just because I just shot on the wolf without targeting its key-components. That’s ok, and I think that works as intended.
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The player must evolve, much like their enemy.
The players can of cause evolve and adapt their tactics (Git good!).
There are known weak points that can be exploited, for sure.
But it is not unusual to see wolves in pairs or having a second wolf entering a already ongoing battle, making it not so unusual to count 2 wolves and 18-20 lynx in the ashes.
All this can of cause be done single player on guerrilla difficulty, without any experimental weapon, ammo or meds, or use of any adrenaline or ”respawn at the nearest safe house”.
With no Swedish machines present to act as diversion, so It’s 100% enemy focus on “Player 1”.
With both wolves being lvl 4 rivals.
So it can be done! But is it fun? Maybe?
People play Dark Souls games for entertainment, so I guess there is a audience for that kind of game play.
I only question the level spike introduced; with it many players will have to resort to a “magic build”, with all experimentals, stocks of adrenaline and advanced med packs to pop as candy. Shouldn’t this build just be the crutch to lean on when nothing else works?
Nerf the healing down to something as proposed above: a set number of uses / reduce the effects by 50% / only heal itself / only heal armor / etc, whatever is easier to implement.
Funny how of all the things I listed, only the time needed to destroy a Wolf as a player seems to be worth discussing. It was never my point to define a “Guiness book of records” type of time. The time I listed was just as a comparison between RU and SE machines and the balance that got thrown out of the window.
I don’t know why I even bother -.- Maybe I should stop caring about this game.
The Sweden machines at one time were not so easy to destroy and they really did attack. But due to a few players wanting them to be easier to destroy they kept getting adjusted down to the weak machines they are now. The same is now happening to the Soviet machines.
Wanting to use a nailfile to sand a large area floor does not mean the floor needs to be smaller, but the choice in sanding tools needs to match the job at hand.
Why are these “OP” weapons in the game if not to be used to fight “OP” machines? Matching the correct weapon to the enemy is the basics for any battle. If you know something is not effective on a machine why keep using it? Why must the machine be watered down to match what you want to fight it with?
@knobitobi
Maybe I came out a little bit to the left side in my last post, but I do agree with the balance problem between the Swedish and the Russian machines, that has to be addressed.
This not only, as you pointed out, a healing problem, but also attack patterns, input damage taken!
I don’t use e plosive weapons when I play, so for these points I don’t have any opinion, but I agree with all of your other points listed above! Good analysis and summary!
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I agree.
There are still some problems. Even without the healing ability the wolves are much stronger in direct comparison to the swedish machines.
I’m not meaning the strength in a battle against us players, but against each other. The swedish machines are just too often too idle.
Maybe there is an explanation for that. Maybe fnix didn’t expect to have to fight against other heavy armored machines.
One of the best and most important points of GZ is finding and attacking the weak points of the machines. That works good for us players, but it seems that they didn’t think about that as much when introducing a new enemy even for the swedish machines. The swedish machines seem to be confused about other machines with their own weak points. They didn’t have to target special weak points when fighting humen.
The soviet machines instead have heavy armor and their weakest point is hidden as long as they are in driving mode. They are easier to destroy, if the missile/mine-launchers got destroyed and they are forced to stand up to be able to shoot.
If the swedish machines would have a chance to target especially the weak points of the soviet machines, they would have much better chances to win a fight.
The soviet machines don’t need this ability as much because the weak points of the swedish machines are easier to hit.
On the other hand the soviet machines are being sent there to defeat fnix and should therefore be optimized to destroy them.
I think one of the greatest problems here is that explosive weapons don’t do as much damage as you would expect. On the other hand… An explosion just above the armor doesn’t deal much damage. The projectile first has to penetrate the armor to be as devastating as expected.
The player just uses grenades or rpg (rocket propelled grenades), but what about the machines missiles? As even the swedish machines had to fight human tanks they should have the ability to destroy heavy armor, too.
You see… Many thought just about one little topic which all belong to one certain question: balancing.
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I agree with what you are saying, but it is not that the Soviet machines are stronger compared to humans, they are still weak and, when you use the correct weapon in the correct spots, are easy to take down. But it is the Sweden machines that have been made so much weaker at defending itself and attacking humans or other machines. When the Sweden machines dis-engage in the middle of combat, is there any hope of them holding up to another machine?
The Sweden machine have became to weak for even a non skilled human, they are unbalanced even to humans, why make the Soviet machines also even more weak to humans. To balance the whole game, turn the Sweden machines back into the fighting machines they were before.
The Soviet machines, Lynx, come out in swarms, just like the hunters and runners once did. Switch the Sweden machines back into attack machines!
The Soviet machines are easier to destroy than the Sweden machines when it is human verses machine…human being the player and the machines are not the players, why should all the machines be so easy to destroy with std weapons and ammo?
I normally shoot off both missile launchers and finish them off by shooting the gatling gun, yet once I got the companion, I had to figure out how to disarm a Wolf without destroying it. I found out you only need to remove 1 missile launcher to get it to stand up so you can safely remove the chain gun. And from there the poison gas canisters and the healing modules I always assumed were shield generators like the Reaper
