Opinions: Breakable grappler

All you have to do is fly through the line to break it! COME ON!!! Give me a break! It's easy as hell to break a grappler.
You can't do that from a distance.

leave it as it is ... or drop it all together ... you will never be able to be quick enough to shoot a good grapplers "hook" and break it unless they were hanging in the same spot and you had time to aim, but they wouldn't stop the endless grappling around a map. I've seen a good grappler, even with an ammo count, grappler around cavern in a circle, and back into their base to refuel only to repeat over and over.

If you truly want to do something about the grappler, you would eliminate it from competition play. Sure, it's fun in a pub, allows new players a "gimmic" weapon, but allowing those kinds of stand offs IMHO is worst than turtling.

leave it as it is ... or drop it all together ... you will never be able to be quick enough to shoot a good grapplers "hook" and break it unless they were hanging in the same spot and you had time to aim, but they wouldn't stop the endless grappling around a map. I've seen a good grappler, even with an ammo count, grappler around cavern in a circle, and back into their base to refuel only to repeat over and over.
That's why it needs less ammo. Less ammo = shorter grapple runs = more frequent rearming = bigger chance of catching him at home

That's why it needs less ammo. Less ammo = shorter grapple runs = more frequent rearming = bigger chance of catching him at home

ya .. but all you do in making les ammo, is making it useless .. if you make something not worth using .. then why not drop it all together?

I've seen the best grapplers, they would still be able to do what they do with 5 ammo. So it would still be used. However they would have to go into the base more frequently which would result in a death eventually. As far as your average player though, they don't have the skill to use it to begin with, which is part of the problem with the entire game.

Yes the grappler can be freaking annoying. But unfortunately, it's also one of the most fun additions to T:V (for me atleast). Personally I think the biggest issue is that it's almost useless for anyone but a capper, so most of the time you can't even use the most fun item in the game.

I have no idea how you would fix this.

ya .. but all you do in making les ammo, is making it useless .. if you make something not worth using .. then why not drop it all together?
It wouldn't be useless even with 5 ammo. I don't use the grappler more than 3 times (if at all) in any route. You just gotta find a value that's enough for the roles that use it, but isn't overkill (as in allowing grapple turtling).

I've seen the best grapplers, they would still be able to do what they do with 5 ammo. So it would still be used. However they would have to go into the base more frequently which would result in a death eventually. As far as your average player though, they don't have the skill to use it to begin with, which is part of the problem with the entire game.

I agree completely. Perhaps the grappler itself doesn't need to be altered at all. (Save perhaps an ammo reduction) I would much rather see a better method of dealing with said grapple whores. Granted the CG works in many grapple situations, it is not the "Be all/End all" solution to grappling. I'm not necessarily proposing a "new" weapon addition, simply a more reliable way to stop the whores :o

It wouldn't be useless even with 5 ammo. I don't use the grappler more than 3 times (if at all) in any route. You just gotta find a value that's enough for the roles that use it, but isn't overkill (as in allowing grapple turtling).

so now you've made the ammo count so low that the newbie player that IG was shooting for now cannot use the grappler for it's intended use, and have raised the level of proficiency for the use of the grappler. Sure, it might be easy for you to pick up and use, but a new player would look at the grappler as a hindered weapon and not choose to use it. there are pros and cons with limiting the ammo count.

PRO: you limit the use of turtling and have a "chance" to kill as grappler.

CON: you limit the usefulness of the grappler, raise the proficiency level of the grappler, and turn off the casual gamer to not even bother using it.

The thing I don't get is, if these discussions are happening from players, shouldn't they have happened with the DEVs? When developing a new weapon (new game for that matter), if an item is too powerful, to limited, doesn't fit your overall design, or need to be tweaked over and over, should it not have been left on the cutting room floor? If the grappler has this type of problem of dominating the game play, or being limited to a % of players who wish to try and master it, it really doesn't fit into the new friendlier player design that the DEVs strived for. Hence being cut and removed during the design stage, and replaced with something more viable.

I understand you wish to keep the grappler in game and in competition, but if you nerf it down to where it is a useless item (to the casual player), or only used by a select few players, then if should have been removed altogether, completely re-designed, or replaced.

Just remove possibility use grabler when carrying flag. Also packs active effect should be removed when carrying flag.
Consider it as some sort of defence system attached to flag.

:signed:

A disk or two to a grappler hook should break it. Grappled shielded heavies are a detriment to gameplay.

After many many hours of gameplay, in pubs and scrimms, and being pretty decent with the tool myself, I suggest these changes to balance it out.

* Change ammo to 5.
* Increase line strength and hook stay strength by a ton.
* Make hook breakable by one disk shot.

That's it. It would help alleviate the problem of grapple whoring, while still making the hook an incredibly useful tool. Also by improving the hook stay strength, people will be able to effectively grapple onto a player and stay hooked, stay hooked to a fighter, etc. And being able to break the hook helps the whole "swing in circles" cheese tactic, while not eliminating it.

game balancing experts are we?

skiing completely unbalanced tribes 1, do you guys remember that? this guy ie natural could cap on anyone.

i recall that made for years of fun after that.

If the problem is the hanging grappler then health bar is the best option (and one disk should blow it, otherwise you're better off trying to ma the enemy), if the problem is swinging around the map too much a destructable grappler hook won't be too useful.
Swinging around the map isn't nearly as unfair tho, so maybe we should go test our "theories"http://www.tribalwar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=337090
Virus (www.virusgaming.org) server has mod running allowing you to shoot out grapple. Go play on it. Everyone keeps on asking about the breakable grapple but no one ever bothers to go test it out to see how much of a diff it makes. Rather than make the same threads over and over ppl should go test out their theories on the server.

Voila
http://www.tribalwar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=337090

I'm continually amused by people mentioning they thought giving the grappler ammo would work, then figuring out it was a stupid idea.

:shrug: I think a compounding stress limit (stretching the rope costs X amount of the total, before breakage) instead of a tinsel strength limit might help, in addition of course to limiting the number of throws to 2-3.

Oh yeah, and anyone who says the grapple shouldn't be shootable needs a curb job.

We are using the ungrapple mutator on our server and we hope that this will be included in the next patch !

sorry rayman but i played on your server with the ungrapple mutator and it doesnt do anything
so far it has been only hit by random fire which is annoying rather than useful

this breakable hook idea sounds great to alot of ppl but in fact it doesnt help at all

i stick to my idea (well not exactle mine because its how the grapple is in ANY other game):

remove the click to release !!

-looping will result in ever smaller circles thus making u a sitting duck
-being unable to hang around will make u use up ammo faster and thus forcing u to tool sooner (the moment a grappler is vulnerable)
- u can now adjust pull speed to balance the grappler
- using the grappler will be more intuitive so more ppl can use it

nerfing the line or ammo will effectively make the grappler useless so it will be like removing it

and btw yogi ammo does help, making it infinite would be a very bad idea

Just wondering what everyone else thinks on this subject.

I'm not as enthused about T:V as I was at one time and after many hours of playing and thinking about it I've arrived at one thing in particular: The grappler.

Now, I'm not saying I don't like it. In fact I love it. It's added a whole new level to the freedom of movement to the game. However, it's also added a new level of frustration, especially on pubs. I can't tell you how many standoffs I've seen where people are swinging in circles with the grapplers around some objects and because teamwork is usually poor they can swing there almost indefinitly.

I personally would like to be able to cut these guys off their protective circle of swing.

I remember in (early) beta when the grappler was given ammo, I thought it'd help, but now I don't think that helped things at all. If it went back to infinite I don't think it'd make a difference.

So I'm putting in my vote for a mechanism to cut someone down. Just wondering how many others share my opinion.
Hmmm. I like the idea of letting any explosion next to the hook itself cut the line. This would keep the grapple for its intended use but would make its secondary use as a mobile turtle shell easy to stop.

Also, I can't even imagine how sweet it would be, when chasing a capper on Junk, to predict where they're going to lay the grapple and disc it. Christ that would rock :rofl:.