CQC Devs: Please, get RID of Weapon Boost, or balance it properly!

[Psieonic]

The Weapon Boost is clearly the biggest game changer. And that's a serious problem. CQC is meant to be about pilot skill. Not who can time the I-Win buff pickup best. This is mainly problematic in Deathmatch, but it does impact TDM and to a lesser degree, CTF.

Now, before anyone jumps down my throat and tries to draw parallels to arena shooters like Quake IIIA with its Quad Damage powerup, let me stop you RIGHT THERE. There are significant differences between Q3A and elite's CQC/Arena. Let me list some...

• Level design plays a HUGE factor in how the quad damage is balanced, and itself is a huge influence on how the map plays. It's almost always placed in difficult to reach, out of the way, or highly exposed areas, making going for it risky. You will be challenged for it every time.
• The cooldown timer on the quad damage in Q3A (along with the mega health) is two minutes (iirc). This is significantly longer than the other 'standard' pickups such as ammo, armor, health, and weapons. (40, 35, 25 and 5sec respectively.)
• The duration of the quad damage powerup is 30 seconds. At a minimum, this means there will be a down time of 1min30sec where NO ONE will have the quad damage.
• The quad damage makes you GLOW BRIGHTLY when you have it, alerting other players to the fact. You WILL become a target.
• The quad damage is DROPPED when the player holding it is killed, allowing another player to pick it up to use the remaining time. Even MORE reason you'll become a target.
• The quad damage makes a relatively loud sound both when it spawns and it is picked up, again alerting nearby players to the fact.
• NONE of the powerups spawn when the map is first started! This means players won't make a bee-line directly for its spawn location at the very beginning, and gives everyone a chance to start fighting first.

All these points are facts. They are not opinion, this is how Q3A was designed.

Currently, this is how the weapon boost (and all other boosts) works in Elite CQC:

• Weapon Boost is relatively easy to get, and in many cases you can end up taking it without being seen by other players. You will usually be able to get away with it even if you have been spotted.
• The respawn timer is relatively short, and is the same for all types of powerups.
• The duration of the effect of Weapon Boost is close to the respawn timer. You can keep a nearly 100% combat uptime on the buff if you are controlling that powerup.
• There is no way to know if someone has the weapon boost, until they start shooting at you.
• Killing someone who has the weapon boost does not grant you the remainder of his boost, and no additional points.
• All powerups spawn at the start of the map. The person who gets to the weapon boost first almost always has the advantage. This means spawn location can screw you, and it means ship speed is often a deciding factor. No skill is involved here, excepting perhaps some small amount of manoeuvring for some of the locations.

And this is just one of MANY problems in CQC that needs to be addressed. But this one in particular really takes all the fun out of the game mode. The shield powerup probably shouldn't reset your shields to 100% AND overcharge it. Matchmaking issues. No chat. (except voice?!). No private games. No custom game mode settings. etc, etc, etc.

I would really appreciate, at least an acknowledgement, that this is going to be looked at. Anyone? :/

 

[dutchy2000]

Completely agree with all of that, even if I make good use of the weapon power up all the time, I don't need it and it is in fact a crutch for many players. Its actually even worse than you describe the power up has a count down timer in your hud and as soon as you see it disappear in your hud it will appear in game, so you know best when it will spawn while you have it. Some players are experts at timing this so they can have the double damage basically the entire game without anyone getting a chance to get it.

Combine that with maps where you can basically loop weapon/shield/stealth (30 seconds of killing time) rinse repeat, it can be very frustrating to try and kill these people. On the other hand if someone in a sidewinder is camping the shield power up, the weapon powerup is basically the only thing that will make them die.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Shields I think is fine - it leads to exciting chases where you try to kill someone before they can reach it, which is good whether you're the hunter or the hunted, and if it was any less powerful it wouldn't work. If you're being hit 2v1 it probably still isn't good enough to save you, either.

Combine that with maps where you can basically loop weapon/shield/stealth (30 seconds of killing time) rinse repeat, it can be very frustrating to try and kill these people.

Yeah. I think weapons works fine in an even game with all eight players at about the same level.
- all beginners, no-one's going to know its importance and anyone who does grab it isn't going to do much with it
- all mid-ranks, people aren't going to chain it and certainly aren't going to combine it with other stuff
- all experts (not that this happens much), the person with the weapons powerup gets everyone else shooting at them, and all the other powerups get grabbed by someone else so they can't combine it; further, experts know how to use chaff, evasion, silent running, etc. to not get hit in the first place so much

In a non-even game it's ridiculously good because the players you could have beaten anyway won't stop you making excessive use of it.

Now that we have the weapon special effects from Engineers in the main game, they really should at the very least use that to change weapon colour when you have that powerup, since all of the other powerups are visible from the outside.

(My preference would be to change it so that while you have the weapons powerup, your capacitor doesn't drain and firing doesn't generate heat - but no extra damage - and halve the duration. Still worth getting, but not an easy win button)

 

[tgarpestad]

Yep. I agree. Don't like the weapon boost. It does not have any negative side effects which it should have. If it was up to me, I would remove it from the game.

 

[Curtis R. Prophett]

I can agree that it does need a balance pass, but in general the power ups make the game better and more dynamic. The game would lose a layer of complexity and dynamism without them. That said, would love to see 1. some kind of visual indication when someone has the weapon's power up and 2. a random re-spawn timer after it expires, in order to keep players from hoarding it the entire match.

Because of the discord channel, I tend to get into more games with a higher number of experienced players these days, and it is a whole different game when everyone knows the importance of the weapons power up.

 

[Brimstone]

I'd love to see the weapon power-up completely removed. This power-up is literally the reason why I don't play CQC anymore, aside from the obvious matchmaking issues. I've been in matches where you have ZERO time to react and you'll be dead within a second because of this power-up. I've been in matches with certain well-known pilots, and these guys are finishing the match within a minute because of this power-up. How is this supposed to be fun?

"Oh but Brimstone did you have full pips to SYS to strengthen your shields?"

The last few matches I was in, this did nothing to mitigate the insta-deaths. Full health and shields to zero in the blink of an eye.

Aside from all of that, This type of power-up, in it's current implementation, just doesn't belong in a game mode like this, in my opinion.

 

[Curtis R. Prophett]

I'd love to see the weapon power-up completely removed. This power-up is literally the reason why I don't play CQC anymore, aside from the obvious matchmaking issues. I've been in matches where you have ZERO time to react and you'll be dead within a second because of this power-up. I've been in matches with certain well-known pilots, and these guys are finishing the match within a minute because of this power-up. How is this supposed to be fun?

"Oh but Brimstone did you have full pips to SYS to strengthen your shields?"

The last few matches I was in, this did nothing to mitigate the insta-deaths. Full health and shields to zero in the blink of an eye.

Aside from all of that, This type of power-up, in it's current implementation, just doesn't belong in a game mode like this, in my opinion.

Is insta-death a consistent problem, or was it happening since The Engineer's update? The Engineer's update introduced a bug on the heat beams that caused their damage to go up by 150%. Once you added the weapon's power up to that, the heat beam became a 2 hit kill weapon. It was very frustrating, and part of the reason why I laid off CQC for a few months while that bug was active. It is fixed now, however.

Under non-bugged circumstances, I do not find the DPS boost that the wep power up gives to be OP in and of itself. Rather, it is the ease with which it can be hogged for an entire match by an experienced player that I find the most frustrating. Full disclosure: Yes, I am one of those players who, 7/10, has the WEP power up [yum]

 

[Eminor]

... Its actually even worse than you describe the power up has a count down timer in your hud and as soon as you see it disappear in your hud it will appear in game, so you know best when it will spawn while you have it...

Cool, thanks for the tip .
Ummm, I mean yeah, should be nerfed... <whistles innocently>

Also wondered why the speed boost always seems to be over too quickly - so quickly I never use it - unless perhaps as a last resort if I was being pursued and happened to be flying near it.

 

[Tom Melegaris]

I'm no expert, but, it seems that CQC is now at the same level of play as the pre engineer patch. I played a few rounds earlier. The game play felt about right with heat beams and what nots.

 

[Curtis R. Prophett]

I'm no expert, but, it seems that CQC is now at the same level of play as the pre engineer patch. I played a few rounds earlier. The game play felt about right with heat beams and what nots.

Yes, it has been fixed for 2 or 3 weeks now.

 

[kossack]

Cool, thanks for the tip .
Ummm, I mean yeah, should be nerfed... <whistles innocently>

Also wondered why the speed boost always seems to be over too quickly - so quickly I never use it - unless perhaps as a last resort if I was being pursued and happened to be flying near it.

Hint: use it in the ice arena to get to the stealth & weapons power-ups before anybody else does.

 

[Brimstone]

Is insta-death a consistent problem, or was it happening since The Engineer's update? The Engineer's update introduced a bug on the heat beams that caused their damage to go up by 150%. Once you added the weapon's power up to that, the heat beam became a 2 hit kill weapon. It was very frustrating, and part of the reason why I laid off CQC for a few months while that bug was active. It is fixed now, however.

Under non-bugged circumstances, I do not find the DPS boost that the wep power up gives to be OP in and of itself. Rather, it is the ease with which it can be hogged for an entire match by an experienced player that I find the most frustrating. Full disclosure: Yes, I am one of those players who, 7/10, has the WEP power up [yum]

This was happening before and after the 2.1 update. I found out about the heat beam bug after a few matches, which wasn't very pleasant, lol. This would mostly happen with certain pilots though, the guys who would hoard the weapon power-up and control an entire deathmatch, ending it before you knew what happened. This would just keep repeating, and I never had any luck trying to get into a different match with new people so I gave up.

I won't deny that I'd use the weapon power up, but most of the time it was when there was a clear team imbalance in Team death match.

Maybe situations like that, where a team or one player has a clear lead, should only be when the weapon power-up spawns in a random place?