[Feedback] Heavies (onoes), skiing and knockback

Believe the knockback IS a bit much.

Taking it down will affect diskjumping as a heavy, but if you want to get moving quick as a heavy, that's what the Epack is for. I'd have to play it from both HO and HoF perspectives, but I think it should be at least tried.

As far as HoF goes, I've yet to see a capper need ANYONE else to clear the stand of an HoF. I've tried HoF, and "standard" tactics like simply camping on the stand will NOT work, you get disced or naded and the capper goes zing... I've tried anchoring myself to the ground next to the stand, and all that does is break the line before I get moved out of the way (albeit slightly less far out of the way...). I have even been the victim of the "drive through grab," where the capper doesn't even bother to shoot, he just clips the heavy, grabs the flag and keeps right on trucking at a pace that's not reduced much.

I'm not sure how they would fix the knockback. I'm assuming that if you are within the splash of a weapon that it just applies a force away from the center. I'd guess F=ma would control the knockback then, so the only option would be to incease the heavies mass and that would completely destroy EVERYTHING else about how it behaves.
Otherwise there would need to be some cheesy hack like "if(heavy armor) explosive force /= 2;"
Cheesy hacks are never a good thing in a physics engine, they lead to exploits and weird inconsistant behavior.

re read...

Hm... I dunno about the exploit potential... doesn't SEEM to be prone to that, but I'm not clairvoiant or a coder (same thing, sometimes...)

Pyro, great points. You've sprung my memory of last night, when I tried to HO most of the time.

I think some points need to be made about heavies in general, and their roles in Tribes. I think that we can fine tune these weapons, armor and packs to allow a balance for the HO, HD and HoF.

I'd like to consider myself a T1 vet, but some wouldn't agree. But meh, playing competitive for 3 years is enough for me to voice my opinion. Now mind you, if my post seems to lean to T1 alot don't hold it against me. I try not to be biased, but when I see a very addicting game like Tribes 1; can't help it.

Points

HO:
The job of the heavy offence, should be to nullify and distract defenders from the flag or base. They should be mobile and powerful, a walking tank that should be feared. Not laughed at and then raped, as is the case in T:V. Essentially the heavy in T:V does have alot of firepower, but it seems that you can be totally dominated by a high flying light, who just floats around you knocking you off your routes. And dealing considerable damage, DESPITE the vaunted shield pack. If someone discs a heavy, they should take some damage. But remember, these guys are supposed to take alot of abuse. And it seems that it takes fewer disks to kill a T:V heavy than it did in T1 and T2.

Now it may be that I’m wrong, and the cause may be the increased fire rate that we get in T:V. Cause I know after playing T:V for a few days, and going into a T1 pub, I was hammering on my mouse button to fire. Cause it was considerably slower. Back to the point in hand, the strength of the heavy SHOULD be that is very strong, and very powerful. But that should be a weakness that can be exploited by a good defender, but then covered again by a good heavy offence creating a balance in the HO to LD encounter. Meaning, a good LD and a good HO have essentially the same chance of success which makes for a more competitive encounter. I know in T1, as a HO. I can defeat a light that’s all over me if they are too careless, and in turn kill a HO just as easily if I was a LD. But a good HO can use his armor as a strength and lure the light onto the ground where he can pummel him with his firepower. And as a light, you can lure the heavy into making drastic movements which they are not good at. I thought it was well balanced.

Okay, babble babble. Another peeve of mine is the fact that heavies are limited to only 3 weapons, despite what was in T1 and T2. Now I know this 'timelime' is before T1. But having less weapons as a HO, limits your firepower. Which should be their greatest strength, next to their armor.

And now, onto the movement issue that Pyro pointed out (Finally)

The suggestion of more forward thrust seems like a very good idea, considering that when I’m trying to reach the enemy base. I spend so much time in the air crawling along. Hitting my nice ski routes, and then slowing down as I go into the air again. The vertical thrust is way to powerful, and I believe that if you include more forward thrust and momentum (it should be given that if you're a heavy, and get going. It should be harder to stop and have more energy movement given you're mass) you will see a more competitive and faster game.

Ok so that was longer than I wanted, but I believe HO to be a big part of the game.

HD:

The main job of HD, is to maintain assets valuable to the team. The role of HD should be that he will stop enemy HO, and enterprising lights and mediums from destroying stations, generators and deployers. HD should spend most of their time in the base entrance, or even in the base itself. As to maximize damage to enemy HO, and minimize damage to teammates and team equipment. I think a big thing for HD is survivability. Staying alive means less time is wasted on re-spawning, getting your HD equipment from the station and then getting back in position. And with the given weapons and packs, HD is pretty much a joke at the present time.

A veteran HD player, will most likely spring for a shield pack. Because you want to deal as much damage as quickly as possible to the enemy before he can hurt you. And the shield pack 'should' protect you from ALL damage, until the energy is depleted. Not to say that a shield pack makes the user invulnerable to massive damage, but to say much like T1. It takes a certain amount of given damage to the wearer to drop the shield and start hitting the armor. It seems that the active, passive effect of the shield pack extremely LIMITS the effectiveness of the HD to repel multiple invaders. All you can hope for is that the next enemy wont come until your shield pack is done 'recharging' which I think is a very fatal flaw with the said pack.

The next point on HD, is the weapons. One weapon, maybe two are useful to the HD. The rest are too powerful and widespread, or just too weak to deal damage quickly. In T1, a simple mine/disc was enough to hurt a heavy enough to disc once more, or let them fall victim to turrets. Now that we have mines as deployables, (Which I think is great idea) we no longer have that ability. Now all we have is a disc, which in effect is really the only weapon that does not create a massive blast radius. But in turn, it does little damage to a HO, who cares only to get inside long enough to spew a few mortars into you're equipment. Now we used to be able to count on a second, less obtrusive weapon which used to be made for indoor combat. The plasma gun. But this has been replaced with a burner, which in all sense deals MASSIVE damage and can be extremely effective(almost too powerful). But for indoor use, the splash damage is too wide and the burn time is WAY way way too long. Meaning that teammates and equipment get caught in the burn. And despite this, the enemy heavy can still just waltz in while burning and pop off a few effective mortars before they burn up. A HD should be able to stop completely, delay or damage an enemy intruder enough, not just hurt them a bit and let them in.

HoF:

The biggest enemy to the HoF right now isn't light clearers, or Heavy O spammers which should be the case. Its just a simple disc from the capper who can completely knock even a prepared HoF right off the stand. The other enemy is the shield pack, with the useless recharge function, they are pretty much useless for about 30 seconds. And as I said above, it seems that even a prepared HoF with the shield pack on, still gets knock around. In T1, an un prepared HoF might be disced off by a capper. But a prepared HoF almost always stopped the capper. It seems that in T:V, a good capper can just dominate easily, not needing much of a team. It seems we need to reinforce teamwork, and I believe that by making it harder to grab, (Not T2 style, with a billion turrets and huge HoF's with rocket launchers) will make teams work together to grab, escort and receive a cap.

So, i've typed a shazbotload. If you read it all, I’m surprised you could stand my ranting and raving. But after a week of T:V, I can see that its not gonna be T1 and I don't want to be. But I believe that if we bring enough T1'ish elements, that made the game addicting and fun. Then T:V can be effective in being the next step for the Tribes franchise, that people may enjoy for several years to come.

:heart: Rosco.

I'd have to disagree with you on the HD thing though.
Now that anyone can carry deployables, there's no real need for a farmer. The HD can farm and defend at the same time, simply because once the offense has been slain, the HD usually has enough down time to repair/set up the turrets. Basically, one man takes over 2 positions (3 if you count repairing as a position, but I always associated that with farmers).
The burner is still useful indoors because of the fact that the assets seem to be a bit more resistant to damage, and teammates usually steer clear of the area the HO is storming (or they've already been blown up). The biggest issue is setting yourself on fire :) Another weapon that is rather good for indoors (and when you don't want to use the disc/burner) would be the blaster, which I'm surprised you didn't mention. While the disc is usually superior to the blaster in many aspects, the blaster has very fast projectiles, a decent rate of fire and deals good damage up close (and I think it goes through shields, but I'll test this tonight).
But all that is another topic altogether.

Tonight I'll be running some tests. I'm still trying to figure out how cappers going at mach 5 slam straight into me, somehow take the flag and fly off in the distance having only been slightly deflected by the encounter.

Tonight I'll be running some tests. I'm still trying to figure out how cappers going at mach 5 slam straight into me, somehow take the flag and fly off in the distance having only been slightly deflected by the encounter.


If you need help testing say so, I'm bored and can play tonight.

Though the horizontal thrust should be increased and the vertical thrust decreased, it doesn't need to be as drastic as people act. As well horizontal thrust won't allow heavies to fly indefinitely, it would do the opposite and cause them to have less air time. The knockback isn't that big of a thing to me because I don't play HoF, but I can see how it would get annoying quick.

The HO in T:V is almost perfect if you catch a heavy midfield and you are Light/med and partially competent you will win, or get his health so low that once inside the base the gen D can finish him before he does any real damage. Isle is a great example of a map that favors HO, because of the quick routes to either base (3 hills and you're there. 2 if you disc jump).

The skiing for heavies is perfect because if they were given anymore mobility while skiing they'd be overpowered. Currently if you just try to ski you aren't gonna get far. What you have to do is have a route planned and for the most part you'll be there. Change this and HO will be unstoppable.

However the thrusting can be altered slightly (For all armors) and the out come won't be so drastic. It will infact allow the heavies just enough freedom to be constantly effective without causing them to be too mobile. Besides the current thrusting causes duels to be more like a crappy western, than the jousts of T1/T2(classic).

Well me and pyro tested All this tonight and we found this
*note all these tests were done on winterlake on pheonix side
Light ramming a hof at around 110-150 blows a heavy back just enough to get the flag and run off, at 200+ speed the hof is thrown from the flag and the capper can go on easily.
Light firing a disc blows the hof off completely from the flag stand

Medium ramming into a HoF(100mph) blows him off the flagstand and reduces the mediums speed by almost nothing, leaving him able to go easily to the other side

and a disc blows the hof off totally.

those were our findings, and its really sad too because when we were doing our tests, the hof was always "prepared" meaning he was on the ledge closest to where the capper was comming from, not right on the flag, and he still got blown off the flag stand and onto the ground

The only problem I have is that if skiing makes you frictionless, and heavies weigh a LOT more than lights, then going way into the air and hitting a slope should send that heavy FLYING.I mean, the jets work in opposite than they should; the heavy launches nearly straight up with the user fighting to continue momentum, whereas the user should be fighting gravity and skiing along nicely. I dunno, I was expecting a heavy to be more like Bowser in Mario kart - hard to get moving, and hard to steer once it's goin quick.. But in a straight line with a run, she can FLYYYYYYYY

The way they fixed knockback for heavies without making discjump worthless in t2 classic was making it so that other people's discs did less knockback to the heavy but your own disc gave you a good jump. It worked very well in T2 Classic and would probablly work well in T:V as well.

Well me and pyro tested All this tonight and we found this
*note all these tests were done on winterlake on pheonix side
Light ramming a hof at around 110-150 blows a heavy back just enough to get the flag and run off, at 200+ speed the hof is thrown from the flag and the capper can go on easily.
Light firing a disc blows the hof off completely from the flag stand

Medium ramming into a HoF(100mph) blows him off the flagstand and reduces the mediums speed by almost nothing, leaving him able to go easily to the other side

and a disc blows the hof off totally.

those were our findings, and its really sad too because when we were doing our tests, the hof was always "prepared" meaning he was on the ledge closest to where the capper was comming from, not right on the flag, and he still got blown off the flag stand and onto the ground

See, I told you.
:o
I assume that was the other pyro because I was cleaning my windows (on the 20th floor, yay!).

Yea, we also did some runs on emerald. That's where I knocked him back about the full length of that fence behind the stand.

Well.. now we know.

and then we found out how to put a tank on the flag stand on isle :D

Out of curiosity, what's a buckler do to a HoF?

EDIT: At high speeds? How far does he fly?

Probably pretty far, but with the bounce caused by discs and just having people run into em, I doubt people have even tried it.

I have, but it was going forward on the Imperial flagstand on winterlake, so the heavy just got knocked into the back wall.
:)
Still, I'm surprised I don't see more buckler capping... I guess there isn't a need for it since you can just bump the heavy and be done with it.

I have, but it was going forward on the Imperial flagstand on winterlake, so the heavy just got knocked into the back wall.
:)
Still, I'm surprised I don't see more buckler capping... I guess there isn't a need for it since you can just bump the heavy and be done with it.
well buckler capping always means medium armor and i don't see many medium cappers at all.

edit: i also agree w/ the first post. the main thing i notice is that you just don't seem to carry your momentum. its not so much the forward thrust as it is just momentum not being maintained. Go to Isle, Spawn in Point #2 as Blood Eagle. Exit the base towards the catapult and bounce off the catapult straight/slightly right, and hit that first dip. When you go up try to get onto the next major hill (you'll use all your energy and be high as fuck), and if you do it right (maybe DJ to make it easier) you'll land on the downslope. Even with ALL the height from going 100000 feet in the air, you still will struggle to make it halfway up the next hill.

I posted about heavies here:
http://www.tribalwar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=319462

Could you guys please move this discussion there?
KP

The only problem I have is that if skiing makes you frictionless, and heavies weigh a LOT more than lights, then going way into the air and hitting a slope should send that heavy FLYING.I mean, the jets work in opposite than they should; the heavy launches nearly straight up with the user fighting to continue momentum, whereas the user should be fighting gravity and skiing along nicely. I dunno, I was expecting a heavy to be more like Bowser in Mario kart - hard to get moving, and hard to steer once it's goin quick.. But in a straight line with a run, she can FLYYYYYYYY

Failed physics lately?
There is no air resistance in T:V, therefor all objects, no matter how heavy, fall at the same rate. The heavy will therefor not accelerate any different when just sliding down a hill.