Balancing play around Armories
Hello, thanks EA Twitter for forwarding me here.
The armories are a great addition to Storm Point, but I think they give loot that is way too good for just killing some robots.
World's Edge/Olympus Vaults and King's Canyon Explosive Hold: quick unlock for high tier loot that maybe takes you 3 seconds to loot.
Armory: at least 25-30 seconds to fight the robots and loot
So how is Armory loot still "way too good"?
It is dynamic because your loot is dependent on your current loadout. You could get as much as 4 gold items (from my experience), sometimes my team had triple Gold bags coming out of there in Zone 1. I think gold items could receive a nerf; at most 2 gold items, 1 guaranteed helmet/backpack + 1 random gold attachment. I don't know what the code is that decides the loot, so I'll leave it up to the devs if this ever gets considered.
The time it takes to shoot robots is enough for any team close by to come and take your roof.
What's good about the roof?
- Nasty head glitches
- Legend abilities like Horizon's Gravity Lift/Black Hole, Ash's Snare, and Wattson's Electric Fences and Tridents can block people from escaping through flying with a 100% certainty.
- Players inside the armory have horrible angles on players up top. Pair that with a Black Hole and some grenades inside, you're as good as dead.
My main issue with players being able to trap the team inside is that there's almost no counterplay that I can think of. The audio sometimes just never shows up and you don't have indication of a team above, and running out from the entrance is futile because your angles on the players above goes from some to none. You can destroy Wattson fences and Horizon's ultimate, but you can't destroy Tridents or Gravity Lifts. One can describe it as smart play, but I personally believe a smart play can be stopped. Tridents just sit there, and Horizons using the Gravity Lift have no drawbacks when using their Q.
My suggestion would be when the hatch opens up top, all legends/abilities on the roof are pushed off or destroyed. But wouldn't that make getting this amazing loot unpunishable? Kind of, hence my suggestion to nerf the loot slightly. Players going up the jump pad also go up rather slowly and there's a pause before they start to fly, it requires some practice, but in practice a team can definitely knock down a person going up. Another way is to add more jump pads such that even if one is trapped, you have alternate escape routes. One more way to solve this could be to make the Armory room larger. This gives players inside a bit more wriggle room to fight.
Please give some of your thoughts!
