Rival wings consolidated feedback

[Khalithar]

Didn't see any threads about it yet so I decided I'd post something after some matches today to share my feedback and initial thoughts.

First map design, visually I really like the place and I really enjoy the little side ramps and paths that you can find that yield CE and allow you to flank and sneak up on people that aren't paying attention to their maps and I enjoy playing the various machina after having gotten a chance to try them all, Cruise Chaser is my favorite thus far. The extra side paths make it a lot more fun in my opinion and give you an option to just fighting on the road and having the chance to change the tide of battle with one well placed stealth Oppressor.

Two, soaring buff. I'm probably in the minority here, but I really don't like the entire concept of the killstreak bonuses we have in the frontlines, I feel they provide an unfair advantage especially if the person has a healer babysitting them. But I actually like the way they do the Soaring as it's very easy to lose and pretty quick to gain, so the constant fluctuation keeps it balanced in my opinion.

Three, specifically the War Machina. Let me say I really enjoy piloting vehicles as a concept and I appreciate the strength of them. First match I played was against a healer heavy team (something I've been vocally opposed to from the beginning) but we still won as two cruise chasers supported by other players made short work of them. Cruise Chaser is a lot of fun to control and Brute Justice is an absolute joy to pilot, but I think the Oppressor maybe needs something else besides being good at killing structures. I'm not sure what, I just feel like something's missing from it, maybe it's just me. Oh, I also think that each cannon should be able to shoot as far as it's closest tower. I'm also not sure how I feel about the CE you gather being solely for your own party. Finally, THANK YOU for not allowing players to heal/shield the machina or for providing the machina a way to recover HP, I really appreciate that.

Four, I think the matches drag on a little too long. Trying to kill towers with anything but an Oppressor takes forever and considering how slow it moves it can be a real drag as you basically just stand there and wail on the tower endlessly and wait for the Oppressor to show up and assist in killing it. I believe to remedy this we need to do a few things, towers need less HP, killing players should generate CE, generator should produce CE at triple the current rate, have players that die in a tower's field cause the tower to lose HP, and the match duration should be cut by at least five minutes or maybe even ten. A ten minute duration is much more reasonable than a 20 minute duration. This will make the matches more fast paced with a greater emphasis on actually killing players. Outside of the soaring buff, killing enemy players or mammets doesn't really provide any tangible benefit or accomplish anything and I believe this should be fixed.

Six, I think we need some new PVP armor themed around Brute justice, Oppressor, and Cruise Chaser. Make it happen SE! Huge new pvp mode with no armor to go with it? I'm disappointed!

That's my main points around the new mode, I'll probably add more as I think of a few things.

[Rufalus]

Agreed on pretty much everything especially letting non-oppressor methods be a bit more effective/useful at damaging towers. Can't have many oppressors out at once so the current balance really puts a lot of faith on a small fraction of your team members using those appropriately and not wasting them. Machina-theme armor sounds great.

[Ultimatecalibur]

I don't think Oppressors move to slowly. I think players need to realize that the Oppressors are not a supermode like Cruise Chaser and Brute Justice. Oppressor is a payload that needs to be escorted or snuck into position to attack the towers/core. New player misuse of Oppressors is probably the biggest problem right now. Big explosions look cool and make you feel powerful even if they are not doing anything.

Match time has been pretty good so far in making certain that a good match with back a forth happens. 10 minutes would be far to short.

I also think the Towers having the current amount of hp is a good thing. The mode ends up mostly being about protecting the two towers the best rather than being about which team can knockdown the towers the fastest and then destroy the core. Fights tend to be centered around the north and south lanes rather and are very heavily focused on working on your objectives rather thank pking.

[Sailysium]

As a healer my annoyance is the lack of a visual queue that one of my party members is in a mech. If we’re not meant to heal them please don’t allow me to target them in the party list and waste heals/cooldowns on them. It takes me 5 seconds too long to realize why my heals don’t do anything and why I can’t find the player.

[Airget]

There is a visual cue, they have a Buff on their status bar on the far left that shows they are in a mech.

[Beckett]

I almost felt the matches were too short. I played 5 matches, and only saw a core get destroyed once. Sure, there was a bit of turtling to run out the clock, but for the most part it was just that there wasn't enough time to take out the cores. Maybe the solution would be lower health bars, all around.

There is a visual cue, they have a Buff on their status bar on the far left that shows they are in a mech.

That's good, but it would be even better if that person's health bar and/or in the party list or when you target them was a completely different color. Or had a border around it. Something to make it obviously visually distinctive at a glance, without having to hunt around for a tiny buff icon.

[Bernkastelx]

Ok I guess i'll point out the flaw in this mode. Mechs straight up are handled very poorly in who gets in them. Nothing is stopping a person from just afking near the terminal and constantly getting one everytime.

[Cidel]

The mode is pretty much what I figured it would be; over-reliance on the Alexander boss mounts to get much accomplished. Here's the things I want to note:

1) Non-mech players are more important than people seem to think. Of course, that depends on how productive said player is. If they're going to be constantly attacking some random tank when the enemy has like 2 healers near-by and a mech or two, then no, they're fairly insignificant. But players are actually very dangerous to Chasers and Oppressors. All it takes is one fairly focus ranged DPS to stay on a Chaser and unless the Chaser wants to be dead within the minute, they need to respect even that just 1 DPS and back-off. Especially since Chasers have no real defense against 1 highly mobile player.

2) Matches seem to depend largely on how skilled players are in the Mechs. If you got people grabbing Oppressors thinking its some weapon of mass destruction vs other players and mechs, that's a waste of a spot that could have been for someone who knows what to do with it. I could almost eat one of their giant target AoE at point of impact and it's nothing a single heal won't undo. Often times I see people grab Oppressors asap and sit on it/can't do anything because they have nobody to cover it and it goes to waste before it can even get near an enemy tower. Or my personal fav, people in Oppressors running point-blank to towers with enemies. And then there are the Brute Justices....

3) The mid is more important than people realize. The generator is a CE tic for the whole alliance (which usually just sustains Mechs for when they need to replenish their TP-stuff) and the stash of tanks on the bottom gets your team's mechs out fast. I've seen matches get turned around simply because an alliance is starved on CE and most of the parties can't summon a single mech and the other teams controls mid and has momentum with several mechs. Yeah, there's a bloodbath at the generator at the start, but give it like 3 minutes or so, and most occupying teams either abandoned it to push elsewhere or barely have anything defending it.

As for the Oppressors and the Chasers, I like how they have strategical use that does not allow for "zerg" tactics against players who understand how squishy they are. Chasers are my favorite because you need to be smart with them. As much as people think it's good for "defending," it really shines as a "hit-and-run" unit; not too unlike "zoners" in fighting games. Of course you can't just spam their Optic AoE (it doesn't do any real big dmg alone); I get the most use out of it against players by playing mind-games with them (most simply will run out of the AoE so you need to work with your team to herd them where you want them to be). You bide your time until you can run in (relatively) safely to use it's charged conal attack- which makes it an absolute threat to healers and casters who need to eventually stand and cast something. If you have other mechs backing you up, Chasers are also crucial to dealing with Brute Justices because of their mobility. You wait for the Brute to do anything and stay out of it's "sweet spot" (large conal AoE) and whittle it down. Ever seen 2+ Chasers kite an unsupported Brute Justice? It's hilarious.

[Masekase_Hurricane]

Personally you have won me over, as I haven't been into pvp since the game was released.
That said, I would like more structures added to the map maybe extra cannons at the towers? Would also be nice if SE added in trees to add camouflage to the area and underground tunnels heading to the middle.
As others have said, it would be nice if we got CE from player kills too.

[Ekimmak]

A Chaser alone isn't going to intimidate me as a healer.

Sure, they hurt, but I need to be suffering before those can actually finish me off as a SCH. Otherwise, I'm just going to chain adlo through the whole thing and wait for their ceruleum tanks to hit empty. It's when I get hit with a silence, then a stun, followed by a bind, with Laser X sword at any time... that's going to do the trick.