overall BETA feedback

[Krieger Blitzer]

I would finally like to provide my full feedback on the latest version of the BETA with Propaganda doctrine.

Generally,
I would currently rate the whole beta (only WH vs US gameplay of course) with something around 6 out of 10 points. And any higher rating would be considered nothing more than a compliment. There are a lot of balance issues, and many improvements to be made... I will jump straight forward on the suggestions, rather than keep talking theoretically forever.

- 1st of all, i must say that i just realized how such a terrible decision it was to reduce vehicles turret rotation speed.. or probably it wasn't that much bad of a decision itself, but then perhaps it shouldn't have been reduced that much.

A clear example can be observed from this recent video, which includes 2 different BETA games.. throughout the 2nd game, a Puma tried to flank a 37mm AT gun but failed to knock it off, due to being unable to keep firing on it while on the move, because of the slow turret rotation... Check this at 41:15 (or click the following link to directly view that part; https://youtu.be/bmnV7eAtGNE?t=2475) Pretty much handicapped Puma.

Not to mention how those vehicles (such as Puma) would be much slower at tracking down airplanes.. so, reducing the turret rotation speed THAT much DOES also reduce their AA effectiveness.

- 2nd of all, AT guns are super useless now.. the more i play, the more i just discover how the new tear-down times are just completely ridiculous...
I prefer how AT guns used to be.. with longer aim time, but normal tear-down times! Otherwise they also become so handicapped.

- 3rdly, i don't really like the new "rocket airstrike" of Airborne doctrine instead of the patrol... it's nothing more than a copy of the RAF AT airstrike, nothing new there! Basically a DULL change... Nothing creative.

- 4th, M36 jackson is actually available in AB doc for some reason! Which is a bug, i think.
While it shouldn't be.. also, M18 Hellcat should unlimited in that doc.

- 5th, Storms still have LMG btw, and to be honest.. they shouldn't lose it.
Storms generally need improvements... Probably evasive maneuvers without unlock, and maybe 2 MP44s by default instead of just 1 STG.

- 6th, MP40 and PzFaust unlock(s) should not provide upgrades for VolksSturm.
No one is going to spend ammo on these units, those weapons should be free to use once unlocked.

- 7th, remove the feature of "auto-retreat" from VolksSturm units.. it's a blatant stupidity.

- 8th, WH officer should be more unique in each doctrine.. referring to this topic; viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3349

- 9th, 37mm half-track should be moved to Propaganda doctrine... Pz3 is enough in Blitz doc, and Def doc has many good anti inf units.

- 10th, Tiger1.E should not require upgraded production in the tank depot, same with Panther.A in Blitz doc... Only the KT in Terror and Panther.G call-in of Blitz doc should require the upgraded production.

- 11th, i think this topic also has some good points; viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3361

- 12th, bug... i think AT teams are now able to detect "mines" somehow?

# Now, some points I said before, but now i probably have to repeat...

- 13th, the current ammo upkeeps are killing the game, they need to be halved.

- 14th, interesting how Stug4 nearly lost all engagements with 76 Shermans throughout the first game of the video I shared above.. in my opinion 2 things need to be done here;
>>> if you aren't going to allow Pz4.H earlier, then delay 76 Shermans as much.
>>> And reduce the re-hide times of Axis TDs.

- 15th, the so called "Tiger buffs" unlock should also allow ALRS ability to all Tiger1s.

- 16th, the Axis 37mm AT gun isn't enough to counter 50.cals early game.. a proper AT rifle squad is needed in all WH doctrines.
Otherwise, you gotta nerf 50.cals again & Recce... Which is something i don't prefer as a solution.

- 17th, Pz3.N turret rotation need to be increased from 15 to 25, not 35 as it used to be though.

- 18th, 82nd Airborne should have passive camo.

- 19th, i wonder if adding hold fire ability to tanks with big reload is still in the "TO-DO" list?

- 20th, don't start re-working PE or CW before tuning WH vs US.

That's all for now, maybe more points later...

[Sukin-kot (SVT)]

I have never played the beta, but it seems like it created way more problems than it solved. In my humble veteran opinion, devs went too far with this reworking. By looking at the list of changes, I would say that many docs in their 2016 iteration look way more playable than the beta ones. Though, the trend for making the docs well-rounded is certainly welcomed. However, it’s not implemented properly at the moment.

[Viper]

By looking at the list of changes, I would say that many docs in their 2016 iteration look way more playable than the beta ones. Though, the trend for making the docs well-rounded is certainly welcomed. However, it’s not implemented properly at the moment.

very agreed. i think too 517 has better balance than beta right now.

[Krieger Blitzer]

viewtopic.php?f=27&t=3364

As we get deeper and deeper in the reworks and get feedback from the community, I want to talk about HOW we are making decisions through this rework process. We receive a lot of offline and on-forum feedback and I want to make a couple things clear.

Our key objective through the reworks is to make all doctrines able to stand up in 1v1 scenarios against any other doctrine. Through this we will run into MANY many issues since the changes really go down to the core of the game itself. We have bucketed the issues into two categories to help prioritize the work ahead of us:

1. Structural/conceptual issues of reworks
This has to do with how we alter the actual flow of the game through capability availability. This means making factions and doctrines more well-rounded versus specialized and HOW the game can be played. Enabling 1v1s versus team games only. Updates here guide balance changes but not the other way around. In terms of how we are guiding our changes, we determine if something is an issue based on the question "Assuming all units/abilities work as intended, does a doctrine have every tool capability to handle any situation?" Solutions are usually done by including or excluding things from the entire doctrine NOT whether where something exists or how it performs within a doctrine.

2. Balance issues of reworks
This has to do with how the individual pieces of units/abilities work with how they are intended to work. Normally it comes down to the performance of a specific unit/ability and it EXTREMELY dependent on structural updates. Something can be completely over/underpowered due to indirect results a structural change.We determine if there is an issue with the question "Is this unit/ability working as intended?" Solutions are usually done by adjusting the values of a unit/ability and altering where/when it might be available within the course of a game.

Given the dependent nature of balances to structural reworks, we are likely NOT to focus on balance changes until the majority of structural changes are set and complete. Balance will KEEP shifting drastically as we go through reworks; if we keep balancing at midway points without going through all the necessary structural changes we will never reach our goal of getting a newly updated version of BK into the live version.
So when you provide feedback, keep in mind that we are prioritizing structural changes. Thus, it would be in your interests to also keep in mind that balance will be very volatile through reworks and focus on structural issues over balance issues. This will help us get things done faster.

Thank you all.

And i would like to kindly ask the devs to stand on neutral basis from all the different feedbacks that are provided, and not try to avoid any feedback that they might think of as not being in their favor.. specifically when clear points are mentioned, some of which are balance concerns... While the rest are also more of structural issues.

That said, i think devs should focus on fixing such issues as they keep going through the re-works, otherwise it becomes harder and less fun for beta testers to continue tracking down the updates due to confusion.

Lastly, i think devs should stand away from the "slow down everything" mentality.. first, they slowed down tanks and it turned out to be a disaster and then they had to increase their speed again.. and now, they slow down AT guns and light vehicles, thinking it's going to end up any better...

Thank you.

[kwok]

Before I get into detail on this post, I want to frame the convos into two separate problems that you can read about here:
viewtopic.php?f=27&t=3364
This should address your point #20. We are never going to fully balance WH vs US at this rate and as soon as we work on PE and CW, the balance between WH and US will have to start over again. We are going forward with PE and CW knowing full well there are balance issues. This doesn't mean we won't be making balance updates along the way, but we have to prioritize or we will never get done. There is a big-boss order and pressures from the community to start getting closer to pushing a live version soon. The last thing we would want is to have a very unbalanced live release because we spent too much time wasting on balance changes along the way and never finished full structure updates and only had a couple weeks to balance the new structure updates.


1. This is a balance issue. We've heard from multiple people on this forum and on direct steam messages mixed reviews of this. We are trying our best to find the right place for everything but it's not our main focus right now.
Also... in your replay the puma literally drove across the arc of the AT gun... I don't know what you expect. If anything I expected that puma to die MUCH earlier. Why should a puma punish a player who had a properly placed AT gun to defend against a puma because the puma can literaly jsut drive past the AT gun?

2. This was already discussed enough here: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3257&p=30857&hilit= ... ime#p30832. It'd still be consider a balance issue and we can adjust later if necessary. But conceptually, we have received feedback from the community that teardown times is better than long aimtimes becuase it actually makes AT guns able to do their job.
You realize that in that video clip you sent, in the past that puma would be able to run right past the AT gun without getting shot at once? I have a replay of that situation somewhere up here on the forum.

3. Structural issue, so we are looking for ideas here.
Doesn't need to be creative, just needs to work. We are making updates to make it useful. Not everything needs to be creative for the sake of being creative, we just know that the general hate towards air patrols is a way to blanket nuke a map including heavy tanks like king tigers that takes away the skill of the game. If you have more creative ideas please feel free to post it, but for now this is what we are using to get rid of an ability people absolutely hate.

4. Structural issue, will look to hear other opinions from people.

5. Half structural half balance issue. We consider stormtroopers (directly translates to assault troopers) as assault troopers and lmgs are not assault weapons. If storm troopers are still unable to properly assault, then we can look at ways to balance it so they are good at their intended role. The lmg is available for other units still including the stormtrooper path with suppression troopers if you miss the LMG so much.

6. Balance issue. We saw this feedback come in, we have some ideas on changes but still will wait for other structure changes before we fully commit to a final update.

7. Balance Issue. In general volkssturm are in a weird place where we need to better address their benefits and risks as a unit. Auto-retreat is a means of balancing the volkssturm and if it really becomes hard to balance because of this then it will be removed. But for now, it will NOT be removed as it goes towards the general theme of lower morale conscript units.

8. Yes, def doc was the test for this idea that we had for a while... propaganda doc was actually the second one to bring this idea... so I don't see how this as an issue except that we need to roll out the idea to more doctrines which has been already said as planned.

9. Structural issue. We already brought a different idea that you might see on the next beta. We can adjust from there.

10. Structural issue. This was already brought up in mefisto's topic. Discuss there please. (And in general please don't make these goddamn blanket posts.... we ignore these not on purpose but because it's too hard to track.)

11. Cool... then discuss it there....

12. Will look into it.

13. viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3365 guess how long it took for me to make this post.

14. Interesting in my games the stug 4's would average 1.5 to 2 sherman 76 kills a game.

15. Balance Issue. Get people to support the idea, but also remember the more abilities you give a unit the less UI space there is for other things like hold fire...

16. Please discuss on the other topic, like you said you're just repeating and that's not going to affect our decision.

17. Please make a separate topic about this and get a discussion going. Like you said you're just repeating and that's not going to affect our decision. We aren't ignoring, there is just too many posts on too many things.

18. Balance Issue, make a separate topic.

19. Yes. The biggest issue with this right now is the UI

And i would like to kindly ask the devs to stand on neutral basis from all the different feedbacks that are provided, and not try to avoid any feedback that they might think of as not being in their favor.. specifically when clear points are mentioned, some of which are balance concerns... While the rest are also more of structural issues.

We try to stand as neutral as possible and do not avoid any feedback. That being said we are also allowed to have our own opinions but when the final decision comes around we tend to mostly go towards the community 90% of the time and so personally despise the changes ourselves... I just had this talk over steam yesterday with someone else. If you think we are avoiding, we are not. We probably just aren't keeping up. I'm responding directly to this post point by point but this will probably be my last response here.

FInal notes: stop making these kinds of posts. We literally have THREE of these kind of posts going on now with many overlapping topics:
viewtopic.php?f=27&t=3360
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3361
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3335
Again... we are not ignoring we are just not able to keep up. The question you ask is, would you rather have devs spend time actually making changes or writing repetitive unstructured responses? It took me 20 minute to type everything out here and will take me another 20 minutes to write the same things on the other partially identical topics for each topic. That's almost a total of an hour dicking around typing on the forum where in that time we could probably actually take one of your suggestions here and actually implement it. Your choice.


Here are examples of GOOD posts:
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3344
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3354
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3347
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3330
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3242
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3358 (somewhat good)

[Krieger Blitzer]

15. Balance Issue. Get people to support the idea, but also remember the more abilities you give a unit the less UI space there is for other things like hold fire...

There are people who already agreed to this idea:
viewtopic.php?f=27&t=3343#p31321
And they also have agreed about delaying 76 Sherman as well as other points, such as number 13 regarding arty ammo upkeeps.

So you DON'T need us to create topics for those points again, do you?
Hell, i certainly don't need to create separate topics for those points. That's exactly what is ought to be a waste of time...

i can also see different topics about Pz3.N by several players stating how it's severely nerfed... i don't see how you want us to keep creating separate topics for the same points again and again.. would like us to write a song instead?
Of course repeating is nothing good, that's exactly why i am not going to repeat those particular points in any different threads.

1. This is a balance issue. We've heard from multiple people on this forum and on direct steam messages mixed reviews of this. We are trying our best to find the right place for everything but it's not our main focus right now.
Also... in your replay the puma literally drove across the arc of the AT gun... I don't know what you expect. If anything I expected that puma to die MUCH earlier. Why should a puma punish a player who had a properly placed AT gun to defend against a puma because the puma can literaly jsut drive past the AT gun?

Armored cars are faster than tanks, they aren't easily hunted with static AT guns.. but even then, the vehicle should be able to aim on targets while on the move... And reducing the turret speed would convert such mobile vehicles into "static" gun shooters, with no ability to fire while moving.. and that clearly contradicts their role.

2. This was already discussed enough here: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3257&p=30857&hilit= ... ime#p30832. It'd still be consider a balance issue and we can adjust later if necessary. But conceptually, we have received feedback from the community that teardown times is better than long aimtimes becuase it actually makes AT guns able to do their job.
You realize that in that video clip you sent, in the past that puma would be able to run right past the AT gun without getting shot at once? I have a replay of that situation somewhere up here on the forum.

Sure, the AT guns work so good right now.. to the point that they take zillion years to rotate

Anyways, i can create separate topics for the other points that are still not heavily discussed.

[mofetagalactica]

Never had problems with the new tear time for at's but i do think that the bigger ones 75mm/76mm/17p should have the same teartime than the medium ones 50mm/57mm or just one second more than those.

[Walderschmidt]

Is there a way to make it so the tear down time is half lr 1/3 if the AT gun is just rotating in place? Or give it a separate rotate command in the UI that doesn’t trigger set up tome?

Wald

[Warhawks97]

I also dont have real issues with tear down times. But i also use AT guns more in the backyard while forward AT is provided by TD´s and mechanized AT guns.

Perhaps there can be a different between medium and heavy AT gun teardown times. But i would keep the teardown time required to move the gun the same as for "only turning them arround". The work that needs to be done here ("picking up the gun") is essentially the same, no matter if you just want to turn them arround or to re-locate them


About the armored cars turret rotation: They arent modern day LAV´s or Bradley tanks. They are ww2 armroed vehicles with turrets that were handcrafted. I think any sort of "GTA driveby and shoot" maneuvers arent possible. Admitted, they could be a little bit faster, but its not such a great deal i would say.

[Krieger Blitzer]

About the armored cars turret rotation: They arent modern day LAV´s or Bradley tanks. They are ww2 armroed vehicles with turrets that were handcrafted. I think any sort of "GTA driveby and shoot" maneuvers arent possible. Admitted, they could be a little bit faster, but its not such a great deal i would say.

Well, ya... i'm not saying their turrets should be as fast as they used to be, however; not as slow as now.
Same for Pz3.N as they just went too far with the turret rotation speed reduction.

On a different note; i think delaying 76 Shermans, is becoming too necessary now...