Grenades - Need to be nerfed

[excruciator]

Don't mind him, he always resorts to that when he runs out of arguments.

correction, I resort to that when I feel the people surrounding me has no ability to understand anything less than sarcasm/criticism.

Date Posted: April 26, 2008, 05:33:41 pm

Grenades are not as big of a deal as most people are saying. They're a part of the style and game-play we....

Sorry, I didnt bother finishing off the two line.
I've seen you play, and you can't do anything without nades and that knife of yours. Honestly, I think the minimi its just for show.

Not a big deal I guess.

And how would you know how good he would be without them? You can't compare him using nades vs. without any nades because there has always been nades(at least since I have played). Trying to rate a player's skill without any constructive criticism. Next time, don't base the total skill of a player over one dimension of the game. Have you even considered his momvement, his accuracy, and his ability to play smart?

By the way, since you seem to talking hotshot and all...
Who are you?

If people are better without nades, they will play without it. If people keep using them, I'm pretty sure that there is some kind of dependency between the player and the nade.

I'm not really a ctf player so I wouldn't know about movement. and about playing smart, are you referring to efficient play style vs "normal" playing style?

I stopped playing gather seriously when 1.5 balance was turned back on.(there was a period of down time, dunno why) Right now I just stick to DM pubs and 1 on 1 to improve my GUN aim. So I am not well known, even known in the community you are in.

[Extacide]

@Owls

Thats the problem. ALL you see are grenades. A very large majority of deaths were assisted with grenades, but aren't shown in the stats. It's been more and more annoying to have the tables turned in an encounter in a CW because all they need to do is pathetically lob a grenade at you and you just lost all of your HP. Like I said, the person running with the most speed has the advantage, all because of grenades. :/

Date Posted: April 26, 2008, 05:51:09 pm@Gato

Its not significantly different, but you can safely assume everyone has been practicing their grenades since 1.3, so they only get better and better, and it becomes more apparent how over used grenades are with each passing week; ESPECIALLY with SCTFL coming up now.

[The Owls]

Honestly excruciator, your ignorant, and you're full of yourself.  Why the hell would any player cripple himself by not using grenades.  It's just plain stupid.  And calling people who use nades, bad aimers makes you look dense and brainless.  Every semi-descent player is going to use grenades.  It doesn't matter whether or not they have good aim, or don't.

Anyway, extacide, I do agree with you that they are used in almost every encounter, and that most kills are helped by a nade hit.  While slowing down the rate of throw on grenades wouldn't really be the nerf you're aiming for, its at least a suitable compromise.  Sure you'd still see nades in most every encounter, but with a slower rate of throw, really only the better players will be able to plant them consistently.

[jerich]

If people are better without nades, they will play without it. If people keep using them, I'm pretty sure that there is some kind of dependency between the player and the nade.

Why would they play without it? If the availability is there, people will most likely use it to their advantage. And there are not people who are better without nades. It's just people who don't know how to use it.

I'm not really a ctf player so I wouldn't know about movement. and about playing smart, are you referring to efficient play style vs "normal" playing style?

Just wow. Movement is applicable in any game modes, even game modes that don't involve guns/nades(e.g. Climb). It is one of those factors that separate the experienced from the rest. As for smarts, it's the ability to make the right choice in any given situation. I don't know why you pulled "normal" playing style out of your ass, but I'm talking about Soldat in general, and applying common knowledge with common sense to play to one's potential.

I stopped playing gather seriously when 1.5 balance was turned back on.(there was a period of down time, dunno why) Right now I just stick to DM pubs and 1 on 1 to improve my GUN aim. So I am not well known, even known in the community you are in.

You can improve your GUN aim in virtually any game mode. If you don't like the grenade play in soldat, go play a game that doesn't have it. The grenades won't change significantly either way. No matter how much statistics Extacide pulls out of his ass, a small change with grenades will tremendously change the gameplay of Soldat, either for the better or worse. I don't think they will risk making a change when it seems only .0000001 of the soldat community is voicing their anger of the grenade's balance.

Just to make my post somewhat relevant to the topic:
I stand by my words. I don't really care what they do to the weapon balance. I'll just adjust to it.

[Extacide]

@Owls

Well, thats the thing. Slowing the rate which grenades can be thrown is only half the battle. The "better" players basically consist of 80% of the soldat competitive community, all of whom are very capable grenade users. It really won't change much in terms of the grenades effectiveness with their ability to hit on contact. :/

Date Posted: April 26, 2008, 09:58:22 pm@Jerich

Well, 'they' certainly didn't care when they nerfed all of the guns when no clear majority was arguing for it either. I'm not going to start an argument about the beta testers so I will leave that subject at that. Continuing however, at one point grenades weren't this powerful and useful, everyone was fine. They got buffed, everyone adjusted to it. Hundreds may cry while only a few dozen will cheer the nerfing of grenades. Really, are people going to oppose the use of a weapon that most players have come to rely on, that often help them play much more effectively than they would have without? How many people supported nerfing their favorite gun in the past versions as opposed to the vast majority that defended it to the very last minute? Do you think the entire soldat community will agree to having such an easy weapon to exploit nerfed, therefore their own ability to "own" nerfed? It won't happen. I will never convince everyone to agree to this idea, but I would atleast like to present this issue to-

Date Posted: April 26, 2008, 10:05:28 pm-the beta tester team in the hopes that they might acknowledge this imbalance and act upon it. I will however try to rally as much support as I can behind this idea.

[ElGato]

Exta, the person you need to acknowledge this is Skoskav, and as he was the one arguing with you in the first couple pages you can be sure he has at least seen it....  Also aside from testing you can be assured I have no greater say in the balance than you do.

excruciator you're an idiot. I try not to just come right out and say things like this but you really are. Me having a ruger in my sig doesn't mean I use it exclusively, nor does a ruger mean I'll never get close to someone. And unless you have also improved BIG time since we last played you have no right to say Owls is a bad player when he tears me up without a problem.

[8th_account]

I can agree with nades being whorable and maybe even overpowered. But I think that making the nades pass clean through others in close range (as in 1.3 and older versions) would be too drastic, and slowing down the throw rate would not really solve the entire problem, plus both'd have unwanted side effects unrelated to the problem areas.

Anyhoo... What would the support be for redoing the nade damage algorithm? Make it based on the speed of the nade as well? Then hard thrown nades would be likelier to kill in one hit, but slow nades that are just 'dropped' would do less damage. As we all know, in order to throw a nade hard, you have to spend considerably more time charging up.

[Kerrazyeye]

Anyhoo... What would the support be for redoing the nade damage algorithm? Make it based on the speed of the nade as well? Then hard thrown nades would be likelier to kill in one hit, but slow nades that are just 'dropped' would do less damage. As we all know, in order to throw a nade hard, you have to spend considerably more time charging up.

Why dont we turn nades into rocks? The speed of the nade should have nothing to do with its lethality.

[excruciator]

Anyhoo... What would the support be for redoing the nade damage algorithm? Make it based on the speed of the nade as well? Then hard thrown nades would be likelier to kill in one hit, but slow nades that are just 'dropped' would do less damage. As we all know, in order to throw a nade hard, you have to spend considerably more time charging up.

Why dont we turn nades into rocks? The speed of the nade should have nothing to do with its lethality.

then how would you change it.
Not changing it is not an answer

[Extacide]

That would help but, unless the damage from a medium-powered throw was nerfed to less than 25% damage as opposed to a soldat running at a boosted speed and charging the grenade full power into someones face for an instant kill, that may help alot. The only other problem is, the fact that grenades can push people with its explosion radius so even if they're nerfed to be less powerful, they're still going to be a nuisance when you get boosted way out of route and out of range to stop an EFC, etc...

I think just getting rid of the impact all together will do the trick. It will obviously have a gigantic effect but...Thats what nerfs are for, right? However if that is out of the question, I think a decent compromise is to add an air time that the grenade must proceed before it can impact. Like, it has to be in the air for atleast .75 seconds before it can make contact and explode, so that atleast the close-ranged guns will have an absolute advantage over mid range without grenades (i.e. Steyr vs HK up close)

[Kerrazyeye]

then how would you change it.
Not changing it is not an answer

I dont know if its been suggested, but I am totally in favor of having nades detonate after say...2-3 seconds. Whether they are in the air or not. Nades that hit a soldat just bounce off, drop down. It always bugged me that a nade could hit a poly, and explode 2 seconds later, but if it hit a soldat, immediately detonated.

1: As soon as the nade leaves your hand you have 1-2 seconds till detonation, midair or not. Aim, and the power of the throw have to come into consideration if you want a midair kill.
2: or have a 3 second detonation,  hold down e to cook the nade, release to throw.

EDIT: In either case, the nade doesn't detonate after contact with a poly or player. Nades can either hit a player and drop down/bounce off (still armed) or pass through the player.

[excruciator]

ehm..then the nades would be useless midair.

[Lord Frunkamunch]

ehm..then the nades would be useless midair period

[Extacide]

Grenades aren't supposed to be the main factor of midair superiority.

[Pragma]

What really separates the players from the pros with grenades, is that they're damn quirky to use:

- Explode on contact with a gostek
- Will explode after X seconds, if not detonated before that.
- Must hold fire to "throw", and can cancel mid throw by releasing key, despite pulling the pin
- Throwing animation will still play despite being out of grenades
- Bounce off of *most* terrain, but explode when hitting *some* objects
- Will explode if thrown into terrain hard enough
- Auto-kill when stepped on, or thrown at target's feet.
- Delivers less than 100% damage when hit in the head with one, despite the previous rule.
- Are given a vector based on the thrower's vector - suprisingly realistic given how everything else works
- Are still lethal to self if friendly fire is disabled.
- Damage radius incongruent with the blast radius - need to be close to die, but farther out you just get thrown
- Netcode screws up plenty and doesn't always show a grenade in time
- Hits don't always register thanks to netcode and/or bad client prediction
- Can be detonated on the fly by m79 shells, and other grenades.
- Will not react with corpses on the fly (i think - not sure on that one), but will happily gib corpses on detonation.

So it's a mixed bag, and a big one at that.   The ones in bold are the worst, and possibly the most inconsistent, which can lead to a false skill disparity based on the quirks of the game rather than the "assumed" behavior of the weapon.   That doesn't mean they should be "nerfed", but I do think that means that they're due for a tuneup.  At the very least, a list like this needs to go in the f-ing manual.

Look at it this way: what other weapon has this many quirks to it?

[tehsnipah]

It would also be nice if they make the grenade damage to all the part 100% damage. I mean only 80% damage on head and sometimes torso? That's rediculous!

[Gortaak]

The reasoning behind that is if you are in the air, above someone and you toss a nade at them and it does 100% damage ( or more) then the guy above has ALL of the advantage.

With it doing more damage to the feet, the guy who is low has the nade advantage, while the guy above has the primary advantage.

If it wasnt that way the guy on bottom would ALWAYS lose, with it this way he atleast has a CHANCE.

[excruciator]

Grenades aren't supposed to be the main factor of midair superiority.

yes but combat is mostly done midair. So people would start avoiding the ground.
Then nades would only be useful at TWs and in lagrande.

[Extacide]

...What suggestions are you even supporting excruciator? Have you even thoroughly read what my original suggestion was or are you just straggling behind the wagon looking for support for a completely different idea? My main suggestion is to nerf the grenade's ability to hit players and explode on contact, thus nerfing a grenades effective use in midair, thus OPENING up the air from the excessive grenade spam and widening the boundaries for which players can combat eachother with GUNS. When grenades recieved this buff, they were pretty much transformed into an easy to use but limited, portable M79, that doesn't take a rocket scientiest to use with moderate efficiency.

[excruciator]

...What suggestions are you even supporting excruciator? Have you even thoroughly read what my original suggestion was or are you just straggling behind the wagon looking for support for a completely different idea? My main suggestion is to nerf the grenade's ability to hit players and explode on contact, thus nerfing a grenades effective use in midair, thus OPENING up the air from the excessive grenade spam and widening the boundaries for which players can combat eachother with GUNS. When grenades recieved this buff, they were pretty much transformed into an easy to use but limited, portable M79, that doesn't take a rocket scientiest to use with moderate efficiency.

It might work.
Nade would need a blast radius buff.