Really loving these interview videos! I’m also a gun only player. Just last night I queued a world tour with randoms and got a riot shield med and a sledge heavy on my team and had a great time with them. I liked being able to rat around with an AR while other teams were focused on my melee friends. I think the melee weapons have a place in the game but I agree I prefer them as niche picks instead of meta.
They need to fix it. One of the things in the game that I TRULY do not understand why it's in the game. Has no function other than to make it hard to see what you are shooting
@@The-endless-learningand if it’s fixed it won’t make emeralds better, It’ll just make it better for everyone equally (especially those with low vision, me). There’s already games that have a steady reticle that stays in the middle at all times, don’t see why it’s not already like that on here.
I think Embark just testing out very small movement speed difference on different weapons would be a good idea, even if its just for melees to help them close the gap. I also really wish the would try buffing the S2 guns a lot (93R/FAMAS/KS-23), even if they become the best in class for a bit. The FAMAS is arguably the best AR rn, so it might not need a big push, but feels like no one uses it over AKM/FCAR in most tournaments. The other 2 have been considered troll since release. I feel like a meta of those 3 guns could be super fun to try, since none of them were even meta in their own season.
6:00 completely disagree with him on that point. Over nerfing all weapons and increasing TTK just makes the game less enjoyable on the long run. I would rather go back to S1 where everything felt strong, than now where everything feels watered down and "weak". Having a lot of strong options pushed players to find counter plays rather than cry for a nerf. This also allowed way more freedom in terms of loadout choice, whereas now we're almost forced toward the same few weapons / gadgets by the meta because the rest isn't up to par. Appoh mentioned the model and that's a perfect example of what to NOT do in a competitive game when it comes to the balance : if you nerf all viable options, players will use the more balanced weapons that weren't as popular before. It doesn't mean they're strong, but just that other options have become too weak. So then, why the hell do they decide to also nerf them ? The model became popular in season 3 because other mediums guns (except for the AK) were too weak. It doesn't mean that the model was OP, just that players felt 'forced' by the meta to gravitate more toward the model, and that's entirely Embark's fault for nerfing everything else. The model has always been a very punishing high risk-high reward gun. It is strong only if you can land your shots consistently, which isn't the case for the most casual players (who are the majority of the playerbase). So yeah, nerfing it was a mistake imo, just like nerfing the AK by reducing its mag size made no sense, or nerfing the V9S by reducing its dps by 10% and greatly increasing its TTK vs medium and heavy, or nerfing the sledge hitbox, etc. Those are a few examples of unnecessary nerfs that happened because of a popularity bias, not because those weapons truly were 'OP'. They just felt better to use than other options, and unfortunately, Embark seems to be on a crusade against anything that feels remotely as satisfying to play as during season 1. nt. : also, his talk about longer TTK being better for the game is not a stated fact, just his opinion which once again I strongly disagree with. I'm not asking for COD-like fast TTK, but I don't want longer TTK either as it makes everything feel worse and the game becomes more boring.
Referring to what he said around @18:31 I don’t mind charge but what he described is exactly how I feel about the wench claw. Even when I’m playing heavy if I know I’m about to lose a gunfight I wench to turn it in my favor. I think wench isn’t overpowered but the reward you get for using it is a bit much for how easy it is to use. For being able to hit one shot you can pull someone running away, pull them from the air, reset the entire fight, take them out of position etc. That’s just too much power for simply hitting one shot.
@BruhExe-kh2bv Idk if it was the spin itself or my game was bugging but every time they use that spin it's like I don't get a hitbox for a lil bit while he's just going berserk swinging
Praises for having this conversation and talking about some of the sore points. Got so fed up with how long it takes for things to change that i uninstalled to force myself to stop playing the last couple of weeks. Was becoming truly miserable to play the game.
need more of these kinds of videos... super enlightening and entertaining to someone trying to understand the game from the perspective of someone at a much higher elo!
As a Heavy Sledge main I approve. Personally being able to use the destructible environment to create chaos very often aids my team in winning. Plus there's something so satisfying about a team stealing your cashout and bringing down the entire building everyone's fighting in.
17:28 i think they should make the stun instant. like you shoot and the player gets stunned for one second and can’t use anything but his gun. just so you can still stop steals and snatch the box. i think it would be better then being stunned for a long time
i believe its getting worse and worse. its at the point now where their nerfs are leading to nerfs to weapons that have been considered fine for 3 seasons. while other unused weapons are left untouched. and some things are nerfed too much in the way they try nerfing but its always not enough, leading to a rework nerf but they leave all the nerfs in from when it was strong. class balance itself is wacked. mediums a bit overloaded while everything light can do mediums can do as well and heavys are just a big stat check.
@@daahorse1652beam still needs nerfs, and so does the defib, jump pad and zip lines. And that's just the gadgets. And the sniper either needs it's playability back, or the halfwit devs need to follow their own precedent and make the pike projectile as well.
Yeah, visual recoil is 🐕💩, but personally don't agree with the passives idea, it would be just more confusing especially for low elo. Depending on how they would execute it, if they don't tell players about other players passives before rounds it would be awful. Also what happened to the teamwipe punishment? I thought that 10% was fine? What I think would be a nice thing is them redoing the defending buff (spawn time reduction) but instead of how it was, it would just allow teams if they hold an objective to have like a 5 sec reduction on their spawn after teamwipe.
Having an option for an always on crosshair would be a good and easy solution to the visual recoil issue, it let's guns keep their character and heft whilst letting you actually aim where your shots are going
Totally agree with the counterplay existing for many things in the game, but players don't know how to actually go about countering at low level. I think a lot of balancing the game revolves around pain points of the community; the pike doesn't feel good to play against at long range, fighting lights with stun feels bad, etc. Since the game is so skill expressive, those things can feel worse or better depending on your skill level and awareness of counterplay. There will always be stronger weapons and equipment, but I would much rather them be things that require a lot of skill to use, so the meta naturally filters out weapons to different people based on their skill level. This definitely isn't a great permanent solution but it would probably help in making some things feel less oppressive
Your suggestion of perks giving weapons slight passive changes is cool but it reminds me of experience on Dead By Daylight. I have a lot of hours on that game, it’s a niche Asymmetrical game with a unique gameplay loop, but the main point is they’ve slowly added so many perks and powers for each of the characters it’s impossible to keep track of for newer players. I worry for The Finals it’s already tricky for newer players to get into, movement speed differences within classes and damage resistances would do more harm than good, due to how inconsistent so many interactions would feel
As someone who’s a casual player I think the point that spoke to me the most was the point on player experience. Especially on visual recoil. It’s consistently awful in every game that uses it and as someone who has poorer aim it just increases the difficulty of hitting shots while not really adding much to the skill gap of the game in a healthy manner. It’s also just not intuitive alongside non centered scopes and I don’t really get why developers keep using either of these given they seem to always have negative effects on game feel/user experience while seemingly benefiting no portion of the user base. I also like the perks idea but unless the game has tighter balance it will become an issue not because it’s a bad idea but just because adding more variables and complexity requires more attention to balance and we already have issues that have lasted too long before, which makes the confidence in balance a bit lower.
Heavy's Winch should be balanced like either Pudge from DoTA or Roadhog from Overwatch: 1. Make the cooldown 15 seconds, but also increase the range to pre-nerf levels like Pudge, or... 2. Keep the same range and cooldown, but instead of being pulled to the user instantly it will take some time to reel them in, like Roadhog Honestly both are great examples of the hook archetype being balanced in different games, with risk vs. reward incentives in different ways.
It should need a short spin up time too (0,5s) instead of being shot out instantly. Either that or you should need to switch to it from your main gun to use it (like the goo gun)
I feel like a lower ttk across the board would just make dagger and double barrel either really broken or worthless. I like high ttk, killing fast sets the stakes really high and it makes team wipes occur more
sword has a very high ttk idk what he was talking about at 5:59 even the one tap combo on light still takes about 3 quarters of a second including charging up the lunge and the lunge actually reaching the light. I'm assuming that because he plays the riot shield and spear his opinion on sword may be biased since those weapons struggle against sword.
He's probably not counting the first charge up time of right click, which is fair. With all the tools you have it's more often than not possible to charge in safety before engaging.
If The Finals actually blows up in the future you are putting yourself in the position blow up like crazy right with it, because of the great informative content.
I think the problem could be the lack of supportive/movement gadgets for other classes. Light and heavy both have a breach c4 style ability, and there should be some sort of health bomb or heal stim that lights/heavies can use (not as much direct healing as health gun but would eliminate the problem of the medium support)
IMO I’m not playing as well or as much as I did in season 2 so my balance opinions could reflect a lower elo. How I feel now is we are a sword dash and model nerf away from really good balance. Maybe I’m wrong, but it’s so bad that’s it’s hard to log on each day anymore.
I always find the opinions on TTK interesting. Because we never have any idea where the devs want the TTK to be. If they can find it with certain weapons. Hopefully they can mould other weapons towards that TTK also. Got to be the hardest thing to do though.
6:00 horrible take. Is he on Embark payroll or has he just taken significant brain damage? Maybe he just didn’t articulate his point well, but I think that was good clarification and slight push back from Appoh
@@TROOPERG I wouldn’t say a long to makes most games boring, but the game had a long trek at launch. Slowing down movement and then gunplay from the original vision which objectively received more positive feedback during the betas is not the move. They are just making things worse. Halo has a long ttk, that doesn’t mean you can’t kill “quickly”. It’s clear embark doesn’t know what they’re doing with balance
@@SmokinTonic in the video I was more saying guns should be around the power of rifles and we shouldn’t be buffing weapons to be as strong as the model cause that would just introduce power creep
On the idea of passives, I think it would be just much better if it was tied to specific weapons instead of being choosable like specialisations. TF2 does this a lot and it definitely helps with giving weapons unique identity but also a way to balance things. explosion resist with the dual blades wouldn't be that strong, but it would be really annoying on something like the Pike where now you're even tankier as a sniper. 10% more movement speed for dagger wouldn't be too terrible to fight against but absolutely would be on sword. It could even be tied to the identity of the weapon, for example you can keep the shield up in your left hand at all times even when reviving or holding cashbox, or being able to dual wield a grenade and the revolver at the same time.
I remember SR -Sniper- Marksmen Rifle having visual recoil off-center in the ADS scope reticle **when A and D side strafing** ...the biggest joke is any light using a sniper rifle missing 3/6 shots in the heat of battle
I think if they remove stun it would be nice to still have something to counter winch/charge, like a glitch gun that does nothing but cancel abilities and specs and lasts slightly longer.
I love the balancing, I just wish there were better assault rifle options in the game, I feel like all the assault rifles in the game all shoot INSANELY slow like even the fastest firing one (Akm at 600) feels like such a slow fire rate, and it feels like it shoots peas. I wish we had like an M4 or something, or honestly any assault rifle that packs a punch or has a way faster fire rate, because 600 for AKM and 540 for FCAR just feels way too slow and both feel like such pea shooters. FCAR pre nerf didn’t feel like a pea shooter, but how the assault rifles now currently all feel like pea shooters and I wish there were way more and better assault rifle options to choose from is all that would be pretty fire
i really loved that when i first played the game the time to kill was really slow for all the weapons not all the weapons have a quicker time to kill and some are actually far behind and havent been touched since a few seasons that what i loved about the finals but now everyone dies so quickly id say the best way is to nerf a all the guns lmao as silly as it sounds it actually sounds like a great solution
I think the issue with burst weapon balancing is largely caused by the existence of the light class and the faster TTK of non-burst weapons. The existence of the light class places a sort of cap on the damage a burst weapon can do, as one shots are not fun at all to play against, and this can be seen in almost every burst weapon there is, but at the same time, this means burst weapons are less powerful, and require much higher accuracy for lower reward (see the slug-shotty), almost negating the purpose of burst weapons in the first place. The faster TTK of non-burst weapons is also an issue, as it means burst weapons have much less margin of error when put in comparison, missing one shot on a burst is a death sentence, but the high mag count and fast fire rate of non-burst weapons means that the margin of error is much higher. I think this main balancing issue with burst weapons can be solved with a longer TTK in general. A longer TTK would mean more margin of error for burst weapons, and less issue with the light class's frustratingly fast TTK and burst.
Troop if you see this, please pet the dog for all of us! I love these interviews, not because it's figuring out what's right, but for showing that there are so many types of players and opinions. Everyone has different loves and hates in this game. I have to autisticly let this out or I'll explode so ignore this: I mainly want QOL stuff. I would definitely love to see all the sights aligned. If you use the sniper and strafe left, you need to aim an entire head width to the right. I don't care how much recoil something has (I remember the MG from DoD) just make the dot stay centered. If it's realism they're after, then it's also realistic to have the red dot aim where the bullets go. Honestly the random crits in TF2 were better at balancing skill discrepancy. Smokes being volumetric would be awesome. Make them more consistent. I don't know if they've considered it for something like the Pike, but in recent Battlefield games, they made snipers have a sweet spot. Damage would ramp up and then down again, making certain guns perform better at very specific ranges. I also don't think it's a bad thing to have the meta change from season to season. Keeps things fresh and prevents people from auto-piloting. Once people have mastered something that's considered the go-to, it's easier to burn out doing nothing but that. I think the assigned rolls are just for people starting out. But I don't think the game should be balanced around it. Having the lines blurred leads to emergent gameplay. My favorite things is when something hasn't changed, but someone discovers a new way to use it. I think perks would feel wrong in The Finals. BUT, since it's and objective based game, it might be neat to have side objectives that gave temporary buffs/boosts? In the game Dirty Bomb, the side objectives allowed flank routes to be opened or extra resources and it was SO fun!
I don't know if the current shield balance is right or wrong, but I know that I haven't seen anyone use it in the last 84 hours of gameplay (to be honest, finding a heavy is becoming really difficult in general)
I'd love to see for ranked (maybe test it first in world tour) a rule that doesn't allow repeated equipment or weapons. I think this would make the game easier to balance at the top end. I would love to see an end to multiple defibs, all invisible lights, multiple mesh shields etc etc and it would encourage experimentation. Other than it potentially being problematic programming in a easy to understand pre-game screen and may lead to awkward standoffs between players or longer queue times, I'd love to see them give this a go to mix up the meta. IMO the finals is at its best with diverse playstyles and strategies, and FPS gamers are so vulnerable to defaulting to meta's all the time. This may be an artificial way of bringing about variety but I really think the balance is good across the board and this would be the best way to balance the game.
I was thinking about Passives too -- what if Passives took up a Gadget slot? Do you give up a Grenade for that? Or what if Passives had a single dedicated slot, and you had to make a choice? In either case, Passives could be powerful and tweak the gameplay of a build, without having too many of them active at once. Most players might take something like Explosive Resistance or Gas Resistance, but then they give up Debuff Resistance or ADS Strafe Speed in the process. Etc etc. Different passives that could trend with the metas around them and let players give themselves some agency, at the cost of a different vulnerability.
You mentioned perks and somethin maybe good came to my mind. Imagine that each class has specific perks that don't stack, but apply to every member of your team. For example, light could have 3 perks to unlock, and when the light has that passive perk, its applied to every member of the team.
@@Appoh Yea. I feel like implementing it in that way would create a push for LMH while not allowing the stacking effects of what makes these hypothetical perks good.
The golden rule a lot of games can't figure out is high skill weapons need to be more rewarding, but have a harsher penalty for not optimizing ( high recoil fast killing) and low skill weapons should have ease of use but kill slower.
They should keep visual recoil, it makes guns unique and requires skill. But also it isolates casual controller players. Best thing Embark can do is separate mouse/keyboard and controller players. COD Mobile does this perfectly. Warzone has an option to choose movement from a controller or a mouse/keyboard. I believe this will fix balancing in a major way. Also it would be great if they can bring the game to older consoles.
@@Appoh fair enough lol, I don’t watch a lot of streamers live so I wasn’t aware that it was still going on. I kind of just remember the crosshair drama with Ottr around season 1 and stopped using an onscreen shortly thereafter
im a riot main. the shield needs a nerf, but it also needs a buff. sometimes when you are in buildings people really cant survive. u see them. u walk up to them while looking right and you w+m1 them. the m2 ability only works when there are like 300 players and even if you use it you will either die because someone shot your feet or head or win because they are stupid. also the shield has many bugs that need to be removed
I want to get back into the finals again but the lack of mnk support on console is pushing me towards black ops 6. And I fear by the time I get a pc to play mnk on the finals the game will essentially be dead
As a light swordy with maybe 800 hours on sword. I can say that high elo sword is very different to low. Vsing people that know what theyre doing makes it super rough to even play sword even when it was at its peak. Every class has a hard counter to sword now (stun, model/glitch traps, charge n slam) and it makes it super hard to play when they run these very common counters. On top of all that it gets done super dirty with a massive nerf that makes it basically uplayable in my lobbys anymore making you run right into their sole just to damage them, which at 150 hp is almost not possible. Idk why they even touched it this season with the buffs tbh it was fun where it was. MAKE SWORD GREAT AGAIN!!!!
What do we do about the toxic positivity in some areas of the community that gives a reinforced feedback loop to the devs making them think they’re doing a good job?
With all the shit they get, the devs deserve positive feedback, even if you disagree with it. Give them a break, of course they could do better but I think they're doing a good job. I'm actively playing and enjoying the game. Fixing toxic positivity seems really low on the priority list regarding community behavior imo.
@ no one “deserves” positivity. It’s a job and it should be done well, so we should give valid criticism. What I’m critiquing is that some people refuse to ever speak critically about any decision they make. Ofc the devs should get props when they do well
@@Pizza_Dough1 balancing, lack of new playable content outside of quarterly season drops, and recently it was somewhat debatably scummy to put an unaltered battle pass s1 skin back in the shop and have an RNG based wheel for a cosmetic event which is essentially a loot box.
I think Stun sucks to play against because (at least in my experience) it's combined with an invis camp. Full invis light sits still then you get stunned and mag dumped and you'll die 9/10 times without even really being able to put up a fight. I think if invis was reworked to be an escape tool similar to wraith's ability in Apex would make it more balanced. You pop it and it increases your movement speed or jump height but you can't shoot or attack while the ability is active. Invis bomb should potentially stay as is but change the invis spec so that it's more of an escape tool.
Riot Shield is extremely strong for me. I'm no ranked player or anything, but I'd say like 60% of my games I'm getting 8-22 kills without being killed half as much. The negative play experience though is the sniper rifles and hammer heavies. It's not fun getting shot by an invisible guy from across the map, or winning the fight against a heavy hammer to be just be killed by a panicked smash. The smash ability is way too strong in aoe damage. Also, you have to use the dematerializer with riot shield to get any angle of attack or escape to be succesful.successful. I find the dash to be mildly annoying as a melee, but honestly if your with your team it just stays an annoyance bc your just getting the assist. I find the cloak to be toxic, bc you have to immediately disengage and reanlge your attack bc you dont have the speed to chase them down. I also think high gravity is bullshit for a melee. I normally switch to a gun for that. It's very annoying to fight in those conditions as a melee
I'd play a melee only game mode. I'm a heavy main and I stopped using melee weapons I use the SA and the .50 pistols but when the spear came out I went 22-2 with them and I'm still chasing that high. I'm also a solo player so it's so much harder when people fight in the open and I am charging in with the spear or a sledge lol
I see people freak out a lot about balance and as someone who sucks at the game I’m fine with where it’s at. Yeah shits cheap but you start listing everything and you realize everything is busted. There’s ways to make everything work and that’s great, it contributes to a fast paced game that requires you to get creative and collab with your team. It challenges you to get good with the game and the controls and all the mechanics so you can get value out of playing. The things that need buffing are the things that are harder to make busted. You can spend all day playing whack a mole with stuff that’s “OP” when in reality maybe bringing up a few smaller things might prove a good counter. The only big thing I want is proper match making, because I feel this game is very hard to learn in with such huge skill disparity. I’d like to know where I stand and play with people my speed rather than get stomped by people with God aim or get paired with people who just picked up a controller for the first time in their lives
People scream nerf sword because they can't handle losing to melee. It feels unfair to them since they have to aim and the sword user doesn't and they don't understand how much other skill is involved. Low key melee racism
Idk man. It seems that way on the surface, but with utility and specialization tailored to it, combined with all the players huddling around the same general area, makes it pretty easy to just farm kills as a melee light with not much skill at all. Really the only thing I have problems with are the hit registration on the sledge and the charge attack on the light sword. Ive seen several half health mediums die to an animation that was essentially over. I think some kind of drop off as the animation comes to an end would be appropriate. Either way, balance changes are something I look forward in new seasons of pvp games. I enjoy a good meta change. Also, medium shotgun. Great counter to melee lights. If you can hit them
what a great interview, i like the points this guy brought up, agreed with most things. i also thought i was the only one using data reshaper until now. wish he spoke more on dual blades as i loved them since drop but they are god awful. if they don't buff them soon this game will die.
Can some of the more obnoxious weapons be banned in ranked? The only one's that truly come to mind are nade launchers. They are just spammed everywhere while at the same time screwing over your own team in some cases.
i just want input based matchmaking already, xdefiant does this and it feels great. when i want to chill jus pick up the roller and have fun, when i want to sweat with perfect accuracy and instant 180s i use mnk
Honestly you do have to aim with the sword since the best way to kill efficiently is to dash and lunge which requires some serious aim at times. And i stg whenever i use the sledge sometimes even when the hammer goes straight through someone it just misses. Melee weapons require a lot of other skill and positioning too. Aiming is not all that should matter. Speaking of aiming, winch claw needs a buff I think. Its meant to counter distance but i can get myself killed before i even get a chance to attack since the enemy that gets winched can shoot me WHILE they're being pulled in. As a sledge main it SUCKS.
Variety is the spice of life. I use it all, “sword op” folks should run it for a day. When you get shut down that’s your template when you yourself want to counter it.
I've been using the sword since Closed Beta 2, clocked around 1200 hours with it, and i think i can say that the sword feels like it's in a really good spot right now, after the most recent nerf. Its hitbox has been changed to the point where it feels like it lines up with the sword itself, which means you can whiff A LOT. Combine that with the lunge timer being reduced, as well as the range nerf, means multihits are orders of magnitude more difficult to pull off, but also much more rewarding. It feels like the weapon takes true skill again, and its forcing me to rework a lot of bad habits i picked up from its extended range (the wiggle, etc). I would like to see how the weapon shifts in overall balance in the coming weeks, so i'm hoping they aren't too hasty with any more nerfs.
I don't really think the ballancing is getting worse as it's been pretty bad since the beginning. It's just more apparent since season 4 has devolved in to shotguns only in higher elo and shotguns and melees in lower. Says a lot about the ballancing when shotguns and melees dominate the take rate in a "shooter".
I don't know if you noticed that you talked about the model for 40 minutes without ever realizing that the reason why it is meta is none of the things mentioned (people didn't suddenly understand that it was powerful or other things) the model is meta because no one uses heavy and shield anymore (the model wasn't that great against them unlike assault rifles which have been nerfed several times in the meantime) the game came out with a certain TTK and the weapons were almost all very powerful, the continuous nerfs did not improve the balance and changing the balance just to change the meta is wrong, players will always find a slightly stronger combo and focus on that in top 500 (shocking I know) one last thing regarding usage statistics and win rate: if something is used a lot and wins a lot it means that it is popular, it is strong and it is probably meta if something is used a lot but with not too much win rate it means that it is strong, people like it but it is not meta if something is used very little but wins a lot it means it sucks but there are few one tricks that succeed and I want to use it anyway (yagorath in paladins, doomfist in overwatch 1, the MGL-32 in the finals) personal note: you said that you want a slower TTK and less one shot, but there was no mention of a nerf to light which disintegrates everything in less than a second at all distances (SH doesn't have counter play, basically you get hit and die) for me it works in its current state which is stronger than day one and the beta but the other classes must also receive some buffs (a balance similar to titanfall 2 where everything is OP if nothing else it's more fun)
whenever a heavy says that the game needs a longer time to kill I find it hilarious and it makes me glad that they're not a member of the balance team for the game
As a total casual payer I don't want to dig my heels in too deep in an argument but all i heard in this video is that skilled weapons feel like shit if you're shit with them or don't have much experience and are overpowered or straight out oppressive otherwise if you can play them properly or your opponents don't know how to counter them. Personally I think the game is in a good state and if they could smooth out the visual recoil the game would be nearly perfect but balancing the game on vibes and placebo effects is a bad take, playing chess is a terrible experience if you don't know how to play and your opponent is better but that's not an excuse to nerf knights, you can complain about hard counters making some weapons feel hopeless like melee vs stuns but i feel like these things help induce more skilled gameplay like proper position and teamwork so you are forced to play in a manner where you are not a free pick with the extremely strong but easily countered melee weapons, I completely disagree that the TTK should be increased, this would gut any sort of high risk high reward gameplay and it would make it nearly impossible to 1 vs 3 specially for lights that rely on burst or taking out enemies out before they can revive each other, this would encourage medium and heavy metas to an oppressive degree since they have better ranged option and more sustained damage, not to mention shields and heals. Also the more frequent patching and harder nerfing of meta weapons and gadgets take is pretty bad, if the argument is that you do not enjoy seeing people running a weapon you don't like so gut it or players will leave, then you have to consider the players that like to play it, would you keep playing the game if your favorite weapon was useless, the model being the most prevalent example of a weapon that suddenly became op despite going untouched since release is proof frequent balance patches are not healthy for the game and Embark is right for being reserved with the nerfs, this is a clear example of what i like to call nerf creep which is pretty common in games like league or R6, this is a phenomenon that goes unacknowledged by whinny communities that cry for nerfs until what was once shit is suddenly op because everything else got nerfed and is now objectively shit, in my humble opinion the best way to balance is to introduce new counters or buff weaker weapons into the meta so everything doesn't progressively get nerfed into shit and cause the game to be a worse overall experience, there's a pretty good video called Rainbow Six Siege's Balancing Is A Disaster that showcases why proactively nerfing the meta will turn a game into shit. TLDR: Don't encourage nerfing meta because it's a slippery slope that will make this game less fun to play, fix the visual recoil and buff shit weapons so there is more gameplay variety.
They’ve just ruined the sword tho, I’ve maimed sword since open beta and it’s unusable now. They should bring back emote cancel and remove the multi hit like before season 3
Duuuuuude. You have SUCH an Ira Glass from "This American Life" cadence to your speech. It's HELLA pleasant to listen to, when one of the biggest complaints I have about TF channels is the lack of effort in the VO quality. It makes a huge difference* when we're talking about being able to sit through static content like gameplay or metagame conversations. Take advantage of that shid dawg!🤘 Keep up the great work!
If the game wasn't mid the devs would remove all the guns and make us use melee weapons bc we all know cavemen are superior
caveman event would be insane, imagine a lobby full of melee weapons
@@Atom1cAtomit would immediately become a light sword-fest
Peaches and creamville
@@Atom1cAtom Like an Gladiator gamemode with only melee weapons and specific balance changes for that mode so all are viable against each other
if this game wasn’t mid lol, must be a warzone player
Really loving these interview videos!
I’m also a gun only player. Just last night I queued a world tour with randoms and got a riot shield med and a sledge heavy on my team and had a great time with them. I liked being able to rat around with an AR while other teams were focused on my melee friends.
I think the melee weapons have a place in the game but I agree I prefer them as niche picks instead of meta.
Most based comment I've seen 👌
19:40 Yes! 🙏 F visual recoil. I avoid all machine guns in this game because they feel horrible to shoot.
Visual recoil is so terrible I decided to put tape and draw a marker dot in the middle of my monitor.
@@zsideswapper6718 lol I had a friend that did that for quick scoping in og MW2 😂 Classic.
@@user-ne9sd4ow1o Modern problems require old solutions 🤭
They need to fix it. One of the things in the game that I TRULY do not understand why it's in the game. Has no function other than to make it hard to see what you are shooting
@@The-endless-learningand if it’s fixed it won’t make emeralds better, It’ll just make it better for everyone equally (especially those with low vision, me). There’s already games that have a steady reticle that stays in the middle at all times, don’t see why it’s not already like that on here.
I think Embark just testing out very small movement speed difference on different weapons would be a good idea, even if its just for melees to help them close the gap.
I also really wish the would try buffing the S2 guns a lot (93R/FAMAS/KS-23), even if they become the best in class for a bit. The FAMAS is arguably the best AR rn, so it might not need a big push, but feels like no one uses it over AKM/FCAR in most tournaments. The other 2 have been considered troll since release. I feel like a meta of those 3 guns could be super fun to try, since none of them were even meta in their own season.
6:00 completely disagree with him on that point. Over nerfing all weapons and increasing TTK just makes the game less enjoyable on the long run. I would rather go back to S1 where everything felt strong, than now where everything feels watered down and "weak". Having a lot of strong options pushed players to find counter plays rather than cry for a nerf. This also allowed way more freedom in terms of loadout choice, whereas now we're almost forced toward the same few weapons / gadgets by the meta because the rest isn't up to par.
Appoh mentioned the model and that's a perfect example of what to NOT do in a competitive game when it comes to the balance : if you nerf all viable options, players will use the more balanced weapons that weren't as popular before. It doesn't mean they're strong, but just that other options have become too weak. So then, why the hell do they decide to also nerf them ? The model became popular in season 3 because other mediums guns (except for the AK) were too weak. It doesn't mean that the model was OP, just that players felt 'forced' by the meta to gravitate more toward the model, and that's entirely Embark's fault for nerfing everything else.
The model has always been a very punishing high risk-high reward gun. It is strong only if you can land your shots consistently, which isn't the case for the most casual players (who are the majority of the playerbase). So yeah, nerfing it was a mistake imo, just like nerfing the AK by reducing its mag size made no sense, or nerfing the V9S by reducing its dps by 10% and greatly increasing its TTK vs medium and heavy, or nerfing the sledge hitbox, etc. Those are a few examples of unnecessary nerfs that happened because of a popularity bias, not because those weapons truly were 'OP'.
They just felt better to use than other options, and unfortunately, Embark seems to be on a crusade against anything that feels remotely as satisfying to play as during season 1.
nt. : also, his talk about longer TTK being better for the game is not a stated fact, just his opinion which once again I strongly disagree with. I'm not asking for COD-like fast TTK, but I don't want longer TTK either as it makes everything feel worse and the game becomes more boring.
Referring to what he said around @18:31 I don’t mind charge but what he described is exactly how I feel about the wench claw. Even when I’m playing heavy if I know I’m about to lose a gunfight I wench to turn it in my favor. I think wench isn’t overpowered but the reward you get for using it is a bit much for how easy it is to use. For being able to hit one shot you can pull someone running away, pull them from the air, reset the entire fight, take them out of position etc. That’s just too much power for simply hitting one shot.
it would be funny if they removed spear right click and instead made it a throw move like throwing knives
Nah, spin is funnier than a lame ass throw
@@BruhExe-kh2bv That shit is broken there's no way that should be on a heavy
@@Yeboii_Pig you unironically think the spin is op?
@BruhExe-kh2bv Idk if it was the spin itself or my game was bugging but every time they use that spin it's like I don't get a hitbox for a lil bit while he's just going berserk swinging
Praises for having this conversation and talking about some of the sore points. Got so fed up with how long it takes for things to change that i uninstalled to force myself to stop playing the last couple of weeks. Was becoming truly miserable to play the game.
need more of these kinds of videos... super enlightening and entertaining to someone trying to understand the game from the perspective of someone at a much higher elo!
As a Heavy Sledge main I approve. Personally being able to use the destructible environment to create chaos very often aids my team in winning. Plus there's something so satisfying about a team stealing your cashout and bringing down the entire building everyone's fighting in.
17:28 i think they should make the stun instant. like you shoot and the player gets stunned for one second and can’t use anything but his gun. just so you can still stop steals and snatch the box. i think it would be better then being stunned for a long time
in the beta it was like 5 seconds but if you took damage youd get unstunned, i think thatd be a fine way to have it work
i believe its getting worse and worse.
its at the point now where their nerfs are leading to nerfs to weapons that have been considered fine for 3 seasons. while other unused weapons are left untouched. and some things are nerfed too much in the way they try nerfing but its always not enough, leading to a rework nerf but they leave all the nerfs in from when it was strong.
class balance itself is wacked. mediums a bit overloaded while everything light can do mediums can do as well and heavys are just a big stat check.
@@daahorse1652beam still needs nerfs, and so does the defib, jump pad and zip lines. And that's just the gadgets. And the sniper either needs it's playability back, or the halfwit devs need to follow their own precedent and make the pike projectile as well.
😊 its strategy. Use your head
Yeah, visual recoil is 🐕💩, but personally don't agree with the passives idea, it would be just more confusing especially for low elo. Depending on how they would execute it, if they don't tell players about other players passives before rounds it would be awful.
Also what happened to the teamwipe punishment? I thought that 10% was fine?
What I think would be a nice thing is them redoing the defending buff (spawn time reduction) but instead of how it was, it would just allow teams if they hold an objective to have like a 5 sec reduction on their spawn after teamwipe.
Having an option for an always on crosshair would be a good and easy solution to the visual recoil issue, it let's guns keep their character and heft whilst letting you actually aim where your shots are going
Totally agree with the counterplay existing for many things in the game, but players don't know how to actually go about countering at low level.
I think a lot of balancing the game revolves around pain points of the community; the pike doesn't feel good to play against at long range, fighting lights with stun feels bad, etc.
Since the game is so skill expressive, those things can feel worse or better depending on your skill level and awareness of counterplay. There will always be stronger weapons and equipment, but I would much rather them be things that require a lot of skill to use, so the meta naturally filters out weapons to different people based on their skill level. This definitely isn't a great permanent solution but it would probably help in making some things feel less oppressive
+1sub
Im all the way here for this kind of content
17:30 it doest surprise me the melee player has strong opinions about the stun gun
Your suggestion of perks giving weapons slight passive changes is cool but it reminds me of experience on Dead By Daylight. I have a lot of hours on that game, it’s a niche Asymmetrical game with a unique gameplay loop, but the main point is they’ve slowly added so many perks and powers for each of the characters it’s impossible to keep track of for newer players. I worry for The Finals it’s already tricky for newer players to get into, movement speed differences within classes and damage resistances would do more harm than good, due to how inconsistent so many interactions would feel
As someone who’s a casual player I think the point that spoke to me the most was the point on player experience. Especially on visual recoil. It’s consistently awful in every game that uses it and as someone who has poorer aim it just increases the difficulty of hitting shots while not really adding much to the skill gap of the game in a healthy manner. It’s also just not intuitive alongside non centered scopes and I don’t really get why developers keep using either of these given they seem to always have negative effects on game feel/user experience while seemingly benefiting no portion of the user base. I also like the perks idea but unless the game has tighter balance it will become an issue not because it’s a bad idea but just because adding more variables and complexity requires more attention to balance and we already have issues that have lasted too long before, which makes the confidence in balance a bit lower.
I main light class with a dagger! Very challenging but i find it best to stay near your team and flanking with back stab is my preferred technique lol
Heavy's Winch should be balanced like either Pudge from DoTA or Roadhog from Overwatch:
1. Make the cooldown 15 seconds, but also increase the range to pre-nerf levels like Pudge, or...
2. Keep the same range and cooldown, but instead of being pulled to the user instantly it will take some time to reel them in, like Roadhog
Honestly both are great examples of the hook archetype being balanced in different games, with risk vs. reward incentives in different ways.
It should need a short spin up time too (0,5s) instead of being shot out instantly.
Either that or you should need to switch to it from your main gun to use it (like the goo gun)
I feel like a lower ttk across the board would just make dagger and double barrel either really broken or worthless. I like high ttk, killing fast sets the stakes really high and it makes team wipes occur more
sword has a very high ttk idk what he was talking about at 5:59 even the one tap combo on light still takes about 3 quarters of a second including charging up the lunge and the lunge actually reaching the light. I'm assuming that because he plays the riot shield and spear his opinion on sword may be biased since those weapons struggle against sword.
He's probably not counting the first charge up time of right click, which is fair. With all the tools you have it's more often than not possible to charge in safety before engaging.
If all these weapons are so strong but a nerf might ruin them like it's on a knife edge then maybe it's actually well balanced.
Great vid, love the longform talking back and forth.
If The Finals actually blows up in the future you are putting yourself in the position blow up like crazy right with it, because of the great informative content.
He's the best. Great player and informative.
I think the problem could be the lack of supportive/movement gadgets for other classes. Light and heavy both have a breach c4 style ability, and there should be some sort of health bomb or heal stim that lights/heavies can use (not as much direct healing as health gun but would eliminate the problem of the medium support)
IMO I’m not playing as well or as much as I did in season 2 so my balance opinions could reflect a lower elo.
How I feel now is we are a sword dash and model nerf away from really good balance.
Maybe I’m wrong, but it’s so bad that’s it’s hard to log on each day anymore.
My favorite matches are when I notice all my heavies and lights are using spears and bows
love it when you ignored that invisible player at the start of the video
I always find the opinions on TTK interesting. Because we never have any idea where the devs want the TTK to be. If they can find it with certain weapons. Hopefully they can mould other weapons towards that TTK also. Got to be the hardest thing to do though.
6:00 horrible take. Is he on Embark payroll or has he just taken significant brain damage? Maybe he just didn’t articulate his point well, but I think that was good clarification and slight push back from Appoh
Thats me how's that a horrible take?
@@TROOPERG longer ttk makes most games boring, plus finals is fast paced at it's core
@@TROOPERG I wouldn’t say a long to makes most games boring, but the game had a long trek at launch. Slowing down movement and then gunplay from the original vision which objectively received more positive feedback during the betas is not the move. They are just making things worse. Halo has a long ttk, that doesn’t mean you can’t kill “quickly”. It’s clear embark doesn’t know what they’re doing with balance
@@SmokinTonic in the video I was more saying guns should be around the power of rifles and we shouldn’t be buffing weapons to be as strong as the model cause that would just introduce power creep
@@arcanum3882 I cannot read this
On the idea of passives, I think it would be just much better if it was tied to specific weapons instead of being choosable like specialisations. TF2 does this a lot and it definitely helps with giving weapons unique identity but also a way to balance things. explosion resist with the dual blades wouldn't be that strong, but it would be really annoying on something like the Pike where now you're even tankier as a sniper. 10% more movement speed for dagger wouldn't be too terrible to fight against but absolutely would be on sword. It could even be tied to the identity of the weapon, for example you can keep the shield up in your left hand at all times even when reviving or holding cashbox, or being able to dual wield a grenade and the revolver at the same time.
Dayum that target switch at 18:02 was clean.
I remember SR -Sniper- Marksmen Rifle having visual recoil off-center in the ADS scope reticle **when A and D side strafing**
...the biggest joke is any light using a sniper rifle missing 3/6 shots in the heat of battle
I think if they remove stun it would be nice to still have something to counter winch/charge, like a glitch gun that does nothing but cancel abilities and specs and lasts slightly longer.
Defibs???
32:05 the cashbox bounce off the lamp is crazy
I totally agree that charge and the model are too strong. F the model. It makes other picks feel like wet napkins
I still cant get over your voice. Its majestic. The way you talk *Chefs kiss*
I love the balancing, I just wish there were better assault rifle options in the game, I feel like all the assault rifles in the game all shoot INSANELY slow like even the fastest firing one (Akm at 600) feels like such a slow fire rate, and it feels like it shoots peas. I wish we had like an M4 or something, or honestly any assault rifle that packs a punch or has a way faster fire rate, because 600 for AKM and 540 for FCAR just feels way too slow and both feel like such pea shooters. FCAR pre nerf didn’t feel like a pea shooter, but how the assault rifles now currently all feel like pea shooters and I wish there were way more and better assault rifle options to choose from is all that would be pretty fire
I would love a fast firing gun on medium something like the AS VAL or Vector would be my dream weapons
@@JDPONFORTNITE Yeah me too dude I wish the assault rifles in this game had better fire rates and that there was more of them
i really loved that when i first played the game the time to kill was really slow for all the weapons not all the weapons have a quicker time to kill and some are actually far behind and havent been touched since a few seasons that what i loved about the finals but now everyone dies so quickly id say the best way is to nerf a all the guns lmao as silly as it sounds it actually sounds like a great solution
I think the issue with burst weapon balancing is largely caused by the existence of the light class and the faster TTK of non-burst weapons. The existence of the light class places a sort of cap on the damage a burst weapon can do, as one shots are not fun at all to play against, and this can be seen in almost every burst weapon there is, but at the same time, this means burst weapons are less powerful, and require much higher accuracy for lower reward (see the slug-shotty), almost negating the purpose of burst weapons in the first place.
The faster TTK of non-burst weapons is also an issue, as it means burst weapons have much less margin of error when put in comparison, missing one shot on a burst is a death sentence, but the high mag count and fast fire rate of non-burst weapons means that the margin of error is much higher.
I think this main balancing issue with burst weapons can be solved with a longer TTK in general. A longer TTK would mean more margin of error for burst weapons, and less issue with the light class's frustratingly fast TTK and burst.
Troop if you see this, please pet the dog for all of us!
I love these interviews, not because it's figuring out what's right, but for showing that there are so many types of players and opinions. Everyone has different loves and hates in this game.
I have to autisticly let this out or I'll explode so ignore this:
I mainly want QOL stuff. I would definitely love to see all the sights aligned. If you use the sniper and strafe left, you need to aim an entire head width to the right. I don't care how much recoil something has (I remember the MG from DoD) just make the dot stay centered. If it's realism they're after, then it's also realistic to have the red dot aim where the bullets go. Honestly the random crits in TF2 were better at balancing skill discrepancy.
Smokes being volumetric would be awesome. Make them more consistent.
I don't know if they've considered it for something like the Pike, but in recent Battlefield games, they made snipers have a sweet spot. Damage would ramp up and then down again, making certain guns perform better at very specific ranges.
I also don't think it's a bad thing to have the meta change from season to season. Keeps things fresh and prevents people from auto-piloting. Once people have mastered something that's considered the go-to, it's easier to burn out doing nothing but that.
I think the assigned rolls are just for people starting out. But I don't think the game should be balanced around it. Having the lines blurred leads to emergent gameplay. My favorite things is when something hasn't changed, but someone discovers a new way to use it.
I think perks would feel wrong in The Finals. BUT, since it's and objective based game, it might be neat to have side objectives that gave temporary buffs/boosts? In the game Dirty Bomb, the side objectives allowed flank routes to be opened or extra resources and it was SO fun!
dog is pet
I don't know if the current shield balance is right or wrong, but I know that I haven't seen anyone use it in the last 84 hours of gameplay (to be honest, finding a heavy is becoming really difficult in general)
I'd love to see for ranked (maybe test it first in world tour) a rule that doesn't allow repeated equipment or weapons. I think this would make the game easier to balance at the top end. I would love to see an end to multiple defibs, all invisible lights, multiple mesh shields etc etc and it would encourage experimentation.
Other than it potentially being problematic programming in a easy to understand pre-game screen and may lead to awkward standoffs between players or longer queue times, I'd love to see them give this a go to mix up the meta.
IMO the finals is at its best with diverse playstyles and strategies, and FPS gamers are so vulnerable to defaulting to meta's all the time. This may be an artificial way of bringing about variety but I really think the balance is good across the board and this would be the best way to balance the game.
Another banger interview. Really enjoyed this discussion and am looking forward to more of them!
Shout-out the riot shield gang 🛡️
I was thinking about Passives too -- what if Passives took up a Gadget slot? Do you give up a Grenade for that? Or what if Passives had a single dedicated slot, and you had to make a choice? In either case, Passives could be powerful and tweak the gameplay of a build, without having too many of them active at once. Most players might take something like Explosive Resistance or Gas Resistance, but then they give up Debuff Resistance or ADS Strafe Speed in the process. Etc etc. Different passives that could trend with the metas around them and let players give themselves some agency, at the cost of a different vulnerability.
You mentioned perks and somethin maybe good came to my mind. Imagine that each class has specific perks that don't stack, but apply to every member of your team. For example, light could have 3 perks to unlock, and when the light has that passive perk, its applied to every member of the team.
@@Caperdiaa i see where ur going, i dig it
@@Appoh Yea. I feel like implementing it in that way would create a push for LMH while not allowing the stacking effects of what makes these hypothetical perks good.
I'd love to see more discussion content like this. 👍
I need to listen to these high ELO heavies and start following my teammates like a baby duck
The golden rule a lot of games can't figure out is high skill weapons need to be more rewarding, but have a harsher penalty for not optimizing ( high recoil fast killing) and low skill weapons should have ease of use but kill slower.
This is literally what killed Rust for me.
They should keep visual recoil, it makes guns unique and requires skill. But also it isolates casual controller players. Best thing Embark can do is separate mouse/keyboard and controller players. COD Mobile does this perfectly. Warzone has an option to choose movement from a controller or a mouse/keyboard. I believe this will fix balancing in a major way. Also it would be great if they can bring the game to older consoles.
It's NEVER a good idea to separate an already small player base. COD mobile can do that caus they have millions of players
@ it’s already doing by only catering to high skill players, this why many casuals don’t pick up the game.
@@iproblumanno huh?? They're not catering to high skill players. This is a weird take. WT wouldn't exist if they were catering to them.
@ this not new every competitive fps cross platform has this issue
@@iproblumanno you're not saying anything right now. Every game caters more to casuals than the 1%. This is a fact. Casuals are more of the population
I never knew there was an attic in the big Kyoto building 😅
i feel that it’s only fair if he now talks about the flamethrower
20:55 They allow “on screen” cross hairs now?
I didn’t know, I was worried it was still a bannable offense. Is there a source for this policy change?
half the streamers who use one that the devs sub to and fully support is proof enough lol
@@Appoh fair enough lol, I don’t watch a lot of streamers live so I wasn’t aware that it was still going on. I kind of just remember the crosshair drama with Ottr around season 1 and stopped using an onscreen shortly thereafter
im a riot main. the shield needs a nerf, but it also needs a buff. sometimes when you are in buildings people really cant survive. u see them. u walk up to them while looking right and you w+m1 them. the m2 ability only works when there are like 300 players and even if you use it you will either die because someone shot your feet or head or win because they are stupid. also the shield has many bugs that need to be removed
They gotta stop nerfing everything and buffing things equally if anything
I want to get back into the finals again but the lack of mnk support on console is pushing me towards black ops 6. And I fear by the time I get a pc to play mnk on the finals the game will essentially be dead
31:07 sheeeesh this play was beautifully executed 🥹
I really really hope that this vid reaches the devs
how about we buff aa from 33 to 35% for controller players
As a light swordy with maybe 800 hours on sword. I can say that high elo sword is very different to low. Vsing people that know what theyre doing makes it super rough to even play sword even when it was at its peak. Every class has a hard counter to sword now (stun, model/glitch traps, charge n slam) and it makes it super hard to play when they run these very common counters. On top of all that it gets done super dirty with a massive nerf that makes it basically uplayable in my lobbys anymore making you run right into their sole just to damage them, which at 150 hp is almost not possible. Idk why they even touched it this season with the buffs tbh it was fun where it was. MAKE SWORD GREAT AGAIN!!!!
nerf the model to 110 damage. simple fix
Type of convo Balise couldn’t never understand
I feel like if they let shotguns do headshot damage and reduced the base damage, it would allow for easier tweaking
Please make a video about Flamethrower
Specifically while using Mesh
What do we do about the toxic positivity in some areas of the community that gives a reinforced feedback loop to the devs making them think they’re doing a good job?
With all the shit they get, the devs deserve positive feedback, even if you disagree with it. Give them a break, of course they could do better but I think they're doing a good job. I'm actively playing and enjoying the game. Fixing toxic positivity seems really low on the priority list regarding community behavior imo.
@ no one “deserves” positivity. It’s a job and it should be done well, so we should give valid criticism. What I’m critiquing is that some people refuse to ever speak critically about any decision they make. Ofc the devs should get props when they do well
How do you think there doing a bad job?
@@Pizza_Dough1 balancing, lack of new playable content outside of quarterly season drops, and recently it was somewhat debatably scummy to put an unaltered battle pass s1 skin back in the shop and have an RNG based wheel for a cosmetic event which is essentially a loot box.
@@arcanum3882 Ah you're one of those. You're a shit human, calling other people's opinions "toxic" because you disagree. gtfo you narcissist
At first I thought this was finals balance from the perspective of a melee player (smash) lmao
I was interested.
Taser should be reworked to require the user to keep the stun gun out and hold down the trigger to maintain the stun.
Thanks for the interview!
I think Stun sucks to play against because (at least in my experience) it's combined with an invis camp. Full invis light sits still then you get stunned and mag dumped and you'll die 9/10 times without even really being able to put up a fight. I think if invis was reworked to be an escape tool similar to wraith's ability in Apex would make it more balanced. You pop it and it increases your movement speed or jump height but you can't shoot or attack while the ability is active.
Invis bomb should potentially stay as is but change the invis spec so that it's more of an escape tool.
Riot Shield is extremely strong for me. I'm no ranked player or anything, but I'd say like 60% of my games I'm getting 8-22 kills without being killed half as much.
The negative play experience though is the sniper rifles and hammer heavies. It's not fun getting shot by an invisible guy from across the map, or winning the fight against a heavy hammer to be just be killed by a panicked smash. The smash ability is way too strong in aoe damage.
Also, you have to use the dematerializer with riot shield to get any angle of attack or escape to be succesful.successful.
I find the dash to be mildly annoying as a melee, but honestly if your with your team it just stays an annoyance bc your just getting the assist. I find the cloak to be toxic, bc you have to immediately disengage and reanlge your attack bc you dont have the speed to chase them down.
I also think high gravity is bullshit for a melee. I normally switch to a gun for that. It's very annoying to fight in those conditions as a melee
Wait they allow crosshair overlays now? Re: the visual recoil segment
theyve been allowed, people just took the4 crazy pill and believed the wrong people spreading rumors
Thank you for the clarification!
Even the dog wants model nerf
I'd play a melee only game mode. I'm a heavy main and I stopped using melee weapons I use the SA and the .50 pistols but when the spear came out I went 22-2 with them and I'm still chasing that high. I'm also a solo player so it's so much harder when people fight in the open and I am charging in with the spear or a sledge lol
I see people freak out a lot about balance and as someone who sucks at the game I’m fine with where it’s at. Yeah shits cheap but you start listing everything and you realize everything is busted. There’s ways to make everything work and that’s great, it contributes to a fast paced game that requires you to get creative and collab with your team. It challenges you to get good with the game and the controls and all the mechanics so you can get value out of playing. The things that need buffing are the things that are harder to make busted. You can spend all day playing whack a mole with stuff that’s “OP” when in reality maybe bringing up a few smaller things might prove a good counter. The only big thing I want is proper match making, because I feel this game is very hard to learn in with such huge skill disparity. I’d like to know where I stand and play with people my speed rather than get stomped by people with God aim or get paired with people who just picked up a controller for the first time in their lives
People scream nerf sword because they can't handle losing to melee. It feels unfair to them since they have to aim and the sword user doesn't and they don't understand how much other skill is involved. Low key melee racism
fr, and i never use melee. would much rather die to a sword dash player than a crutch model player
Nah i use it lol it's dirt easy against any team that's not communicating. Charge is dumb easy to hit even after hitbox nerf
Idk man. It seems that way on the surface, but with utility and specialization tailored to it, combined with all the players huddling around the same general area, makes it pretty easy to just farm kills as a melee light with not much skill at all.
Really the only thing I have problems with are the hit registration on the sledge and the charge attack on the light sword. Ive seen several half health mediums die to an animation that was essentially over. I think some kind of drop off as the animation comes to an end would be appropriate.
Either way, balance changes are something I look forward in new seasons of pvp games. I enjoy a good meta change.
Also, medium shotgun. Great counter to melee lights. If you can hit them
what a great interview, i like the points this guy brought up, agreed with most things. i also thought i was the only one using data reshaper until now. wish he spoke more on dual blades as i loved them since drop but they are god awful. if they don't buff them soon this game will die.
Can some of the more obnoxious weapons be banned in ranked? The only one's that truly come to mind are nade launchers. They are just spammed everywhere while at the same time screwing over your own team in some cases.
The higher TTK made the longer and farther respawns bare able. The 1-2 shot meta and fast respawn.
Stun gun is awesome and totally belongs in the game. I like how it feels to use it and if I get hit by it, it’s my fault bc bad positioning.
Troop made me get a lvl 8 Riot shield its funny.
we need grenade indicators
17:55 ain't no way they talk about how annoying taser is to play against and don't even mention the always-meta-pick defib. It's so much worse.
whatever weapoon and skill that is seeing every round needs a nerf for sure
i just want input based matchmaking already, xdefiant does this and it feels great. when i want to chill jus pick up the roller and have fun, when i want to sweat with perfect accuracy and instant 180s i use mnk
Honestly you do have to aim with the sword since the best way to kill efficiently is to dash and lunge which requires some serious aim at times. And i stg whenever i use the sledge sometimes even when the hammer goes straight through someone it just misses. Melee weapons require a lot of other skill and positioning too. Aiming is not all that should matter. Speaking of aiming, winch claw needs a buff I think. Its meant to counter distance but i can get myself killed before i even get a chance to attack since the enemy that gets winched can shoot me WHILE they're being pulled in. As a sledge main it SUCKS.
Variety is the spice of life. I use it all, “sword op” folks should run it for a day. When you get shut down that’s your template when you yourself want to counter it.
I've been using the sword since Closed Beta 2, clocked around 1200 hours with it, and i think i can say that the sword feels like it's in a really good spot right now, after the most recent nerf. Its hitbox has been changed to the point where it feels like it lines up with the sword itself, which means you can whiff A LOT. Combine that with the lunge timer being reduced, as well as the range nerf, means multihits are orders of magnitude more difficult to pull off, but also much more rewarding. It feels like the weapon takes true skill again, and its forcing me to rework a lot of bad habits i picked up from its extended range (the wiggle, etc). I would like to see how the weapon shifts in overall balance in the coming weeks, so i'm hoping they aren't too hasty with any more nerfs.
as a sword main i agree with what you said
I don't really think the ballancing is getting worse as it's been pretty bad since the beginning. It's just more apparent since season 4 has devolved in to shotguns only in higher elo and shotguns and melees in lower. Says a lot about the ballancing when shotguns and melees dominate the take rate in a "shooter".
embark needs to look at halo and the way how they balance the game
I don't know if you noticed that you talked about the model for 40 minutes without ever realizing that the reason why it is meta is none of the things mentioned (people didn't suddenly understand that it was powerful or other things) the model is meta because no one uses heavy and shield anymore (the model wasn't that great against them unlike assault rifles which have been nerfed several times in the meantime)
the game came out with a certain TTK and the weapons were almost all very powerful, the continuous nerfs did not improve the balance and changing the balance just to change the meta is wrong, players will always find a slightly stronger combo and focus on that in top 500 (shocking I know)
one last thing regarding usage statistics and win rate:
if something is used a lot and wins a lot it means that it is popular, it is strong and it is probably meta
if something is used a lot but with not too much win rate it means that it is strong, people like it but it is not meta
if something is used very little but wins a lot it means it sucks but there are few one tricks that succeed and I want to use it anyway (yagorath in paladins, doomfist in overwatch 1, the MGL-32 in the finals)
personal note: you said that you want a slower TTK and less one shot, but there was no mention of a nerf to light which disintegrates everything in less than a second at all distances (SH doesn't have counter play, basically you get hit and die) for me it works in its current state which is stronger than day one and the beta but the other classes must also receive some buffs (a balance similar to titanfall 2 where everything is OP if nothing else it's more fun)
I would love to challenge this best melee dude. Because I'm the best melee player. I will drag his corse through the beaches of Troy style.
I want more viable weapons: the less meta / garbage weapons to get buffs or the meta weapons to get nerfs.
whenever a heavy says that the game needs a longer time to kill I find it hilarious and it makes me glad that they're not a member of the balance team for the game
How is my opinion wrong?
As a total casual payer I don't want to dig my heels in too deep in an argument but all i heard in this video is that skilled weapons feel like shit if you're shit with them or don't have much experience and are overpowered or straight out oppressive otherwise if you can play them properly or your opponents don't know how to counter them. Personally I think the game is in a good state and if they could smooth out the visual recoil the game would be nearly perfect but balancing the game on vibes and placebo effects is a bad take, playing chess is a terrible experience if you don't know how to play and your opponent is better but that's not an excuse to nerf knights, you can complain about hard counters making some weapons feel hopeless like melee vs stuns but i feel like these things help induce more skilled gameplay like proper position and teamwork so you are forced to play in a manner where you are not a free pick with the extremely strong but easily countered melee weapons, I completely disagree that the TTK should be increased, this would gut any sort of high risk high reward gameplay and it would make it nearly impossible to 1 vs 3 specially for lights that rely on burst or taking out enemies out before they can revive each other, this would encourage medium and heavy metas to an oppressive degree since they have better ranged option and more sustained damage, not to mention shields and heals. Also the more frequent patching and harder nerfing of meta weapons and gadgets take is pretty bad, if the argument is that you do not enjoy seeing people running a weapon you don't like so gut it or players will leave, then you have to consider the players that like to play it, would you keep playing the game if your favorite weapon was useless, the model being the most prevalent example of a weapon that suddenly became op despite going untouched since release is proof frequent balance patches are not healthy for the game and Embark is right for being reserved with the nerfs, this is a clear example of what i like to call nerf creep which is pretty common in games like league or R6, this is a phenomenon that goes unacknowledged by whinny communities that cry for nerfs until what was once shit is suddenly op because everything else got nerfed and is now objectively shit, in my humble opinion the best way to balance is to introduce new counters or buff weaker weapons into the meta so everything doesn't progressively get nerfed into shit and cause the game to be a worse overall experience, there's a pretty good video called Rainbow Six Siege's Balancing Is A Disaster that showcases why proactively nerfing the meta will turn a game into shit.
TLDR: Don't encourage nerfing meta because it's a slippery slope that will make this game less fun to play, fix the visual recoil and buff shit weapons so there is more gameplay variety.
They’ve just ruined the sword tho, I’ve maimed sword since open beta and it’s unusable now. They should bring back emote cancel and remove the multi hit like before season 3
wait they ALLOW onscreen crosshairs now?
Duuuuuude.
You have SUCH an Ira Glass from "This American Life" cadence to your speech. It's HELLA pleasant to listen to, when one of the biggest complaints I have about TF channels is the lack of effort in the VO quality. It makes a huge difference* when we're talking about being able to sit through static content like gameplay or metagame conversations.
Take advantage of that shid dawg!🤘 Keep up the great work!