Game Balance and Matchmaking - We want your feedback!

Although I appreciate your response, you failed to read my message. I mentioned GDI units vs cyborg. They are all practically useless unless there is some unlock i'm missing, however even though i'm top 5 on the leaderboard I still dont have anywhere near the units to deal with cyborg; which draws me to my original conclusion at this point all i can do is wait for crates and hope that I get new units inside them.

@Cloudfromff7Ah my mistake, I am still not leveled up enough that I have gotten into GDI vs Nod matches yet, that sounds quite exciting. But from observing the GDI arsenal of anti infantry I do notice it is a bit lacking but from what I could see you could definitely use the GDI Rifleman as they should take care of the Nod Cyborgs with them being a better version of Laser Troopers.  To a lesser extend as a soft counter again I am speculating that perhaps the GDI Wolverine should be able to severely damage the Nod Cyborg as it does a number the GDI Zone Trooper which is roughly the equivalent to the Nod Cyborg.

Now to unlocks I personally don't have and perhaps you may not have as well there is of course the GDI Sniper Teams (If it is anything like the Tiberium Wars Sniper Teams they should shred those Nod Cyborgs), GDI Disruptor Tanks (Says they are anti infantry on the Strong vs data, GDI version of the Nod Flame Tank?), and the GDI Mammoth Tank (Says it can crush infantry, like the Tiberium Wars 3 version says "Roll Over Them")

But I do definitely see that it can be frustrating to have your progress dictated by the RNG nature of the convoy crates and whatever the Card Shop decides to sell to you. I was stuck in a similar situation yesterday trying to level up my Nod Rank and was losing terribly without the Nod Cyborg to mass vehicle spam but was fortunate to receive an Epic Crate in the convoy and be granted the Nod Cyborg. To be in the top 5 of the Leaderboard you clearly are a very skilled commander and it is a shame you are being held back by what appears to be luck of the draw in terms of acquiring new units. (Side note may I perhaps ask you who exactly you are on the Top 5?)

First off i am no expert here just giving my thoughts. 

1. Is it just me or is the gdi turret last way to long, I mean you can set that bad boy up and it will never die until you have sandstorm it seems. I also hate how on certain maps it acts as a force field. It cuts off one path and you can try to break it down buts it its like hitting you head against a wall when you can just go around it. 
2. Next thing to bring up is how to get unit cards. Why cant everything just be unlocked right away and the player decides what to level up? I would rather see a player decide what play style they want than have RNG tell them what units they can have. 
3. My next is to describe a few issues i am having mainly killing sandstorm and titans. They both seem invincible right now. You literally sac units just to get damage done it doesn't matter if it is technically a counter or not. Also the orca seems a little strong the mobility it has to unmatch to anything rn. This unit can basically be stutter stepped and it never dies, and when it does it already killed so much you have enough to remake it. 

This last point is a little selfish. I really dont like the level up system on units or the unlocking in general. I come from a lot of SC2/SC background and the worst thing is not being able to play the way you want or having units locked until you get a RNG loot box to actually use them. I would rather see everything unlocked with pre-determined dps/health/movement/etc. In regards to commander abilites they all seem to last to long imo. Maybe is just the way I play and am bad idk. This game has potential but if you keep the unit leveling and RNG unlocking it wont do well in the RTS community. 

PS: how do you get a second harvester, is it off of commander level? 

My in game name is whitemetroid, i've been bouncing between top 5 mainly due to testing out new commanders and such. I appreciate the detailed response, I will look into trying to acquire some of those counters. For now, i've decided that based on who is playing while you're searching, it's really just up to each person to micro manage their armies not only per match but in between matches; IE switching out commanders/units based on what they are facing to try and give themselves an advantage if they get matched against the same commanders in a row. I think what it comes down to, is not only do you have to manage your armies and dictate the best possible combinations of units and when to purchase them in game, sometimes you have to blind greed and go double harvesters...sometimes you have to spend your diamonds and funds in between games in an effort to further upgrade your army compositions.

While I agree Vampy, unfortunately this is a mobile model...meaning unless they charge you a flat rate of payment to play the game monthly, or have you purchase the game entirely, pretty much it's going to rely on microtransactions to get updates etc etc. That being said, some of these commanders are god awful, Dr Liang for one...80 cost to get a drone up that heals your units except for the fact that it heals far less and far slower than just buying a turret and placing it as a blocker. At least even the turret also acts as a hexagon space so you can't just walk under it, unlike the drone. The commanders for sure need some tweaking.

-also one more thing to add. The way rating is calculated in this game is also quite deterring, you have no reason to play after a certain rating if you're looking for competition unless the commanders on your same level are searching. If there was like a campaign mode, that'd be great and I would definitely put some money into this side game.

Well I'm currently sitting at the top of the leaderboard and have some balance opinions so here we go..

GDI desperately needs an infantry based counter to infantry to help deal with cyborgs, snipers might be the answer here but they come far too late in the tech tree.

Zone troopers currently feel like the needed answer in GDI mirror matches to the sandstorm, which is fine, except that they're an epic level unit, I'm sitting at 3522 points and have yet to unlock them, so I'm basically only playing nod outside of silly air rushes and the daily missions. Given how the current matchup goes I'd have GDI either get them automatically like nod gets the cyborg or lower them to rare at least so you have a good chance of getting them sometime before say, you give up on gdi, make it to the top of the leaderboard, and still don't have them :P

On the subject of GDI, I've been playing the air game there a bunch lately and the Hammerhead is basically worthless, the talon is already an excellent counter to air and more versatile, I don't know the solution to this since really its more a lack of the need for the role than a balance problem.

Scarabs are awesome, but probably a touch too strong given the cooldown on building units, at least until you get high enough up to get things with 2 range, and even then they can control a lot of the early game. Perhaps if they only had one suicidal shot rather than getting to kill two different things, alternatively removing their ability to hit and/or outright kill most air units that they aren't suppose to counter would provide a nice earlier tier way to deal with them.

Matchmaking is... not ideal. This is likely a low player number thing, but really if I'm playing at 2367 in nod I probably shouldn't be getting paired against 100-400 players who really don't have the tools necessary to fight me.

Otherwise, really enjoying the gameplay, but very concerned about how microtransactions will affect this game though because you simply can not answer some things without unlocking units and unit unlocks are completely random to the point that spending a bunch of money is the only way you can guarentee you'll get the units you need. I think for me to play this long term I'd need to either start with a mix of units that can deal with anything while unlocked increase tactical variety but don't give you nearly uncounterable answers, or you'd have to be able to spend coins to unlock units directly if you wanted to, the shop is a great for this, but it is slow to rotate and won't always have things that are relevant to you, I see little reason you couldn't make all units purchasable for coin at all times and just have the shop around to give rotating discounts. I'm also slightly worried about unit levels, but nobody has high enough unit level differences yet to know how much of an effect that has so I'll reserve judgement for now.

Three things:

First: One thing that might help matchmaking is the inclusion of NPC commanders of varying levels. Since the game relies heavily on a diverse and active player base so that matches can be found and made quickly, having a internal timer to when an NPC should be used so the game doesn't get stagnant from match lag time would probably be an ok thing to do.

Second: In a previous thread I suggested to put a cap on unit progression based on commander level. Later I found out that the game has a max level cap on units! So what about making it like a staggered roll-out? For instance, common units can be maxed out quickly (levels 1-3). Then common tanks maxed out and adding in rare infantry (4-8). Then finally elite units being maxed somewhere all the way up to commander level (player level) 15 (or whatever our max level is).

ALSO! It would be great if we could convert unusable unit cards into some gold for easier level-up time! 🙂

Third: The UI looks great! But coming into the game fresh from day one I had no idea what some of the icons were that you were trying to use! You also seem to have some dead space on the right side of the main app screen, USE IT! :P Example includes on the left hand side, the medal icon looks too much like the achievements icon google play uses and is not labeled so I really had no clue it was not going to bring me to a google landing page. The second icon indicating leaderboards? (the one right below the medal icon) I also had no clue what that did until I went into it. The last two were obvious but could use some text anyways :P

**EDIT**

Fourth!!!

A thought occurred to me while reading information on a second harvester possibility in a previous thread and the idea that EA had a missed opportunity to add blue Tiberium as the "special resource" instead of gems. While I agree that "gems" and "coins" as the in-game currencies is kinda lame (we just need to make these resources C&C theme based, c'mon guys!) I think that blue tiberium can be used in matches! why not add a way for us to see-harvest blue tiberium during matches after some such level/upgrade? it would allow (like in previous games) somewhere around 1.25/1.5 increased resource generation. Then at a higher level you could add in a second harvester for green tiberium? It would maybe balance out resource generation in game a little better without providing as big of a leap in advantage which also unbalances the games between higher and lower level characters? Having a step like this would possibly make it easier for someone without access to a second harvester to be able to beat someone who does! (Or even someone without access to blue tiberium could beat someone who does have access to it.) You could call the upgrade something along the lines of "strengthened cargo hold plating" for harvesters which would fit in nicely with blue tiberium's bit of lore :P

@JadeXyan 

First off ggs, definitely deserve to be number one. 

Second, everything that JadeXyan says is completely and utterly accurate. Although, after seeing orcas used properly I think they need some tweaking as well

Lastly, I believe there should be an option in battle to sacrifice a unit or something with a cooldown. This could be used to prevent the instant harvester harrass or possibly if you're in a heated fight and need more units. The units take forever to refresh when you have a full army and you're sitting on a 1 hp rifleman and simply lose because your opponent's units were destroyed first...thusly allowing them to have full hp units that join the fray and take the missile.

Break down of how and what should be changed:

GDI:

Riflemen-Good where they are now do their job well 

Missile Squad-Could use a buff to its overall dps as they just feel like they cant do their job:Example you need 2 of them to counter a orca rush as they just dont do enough dmg

Rhino-Fine where it is now does its job well but a small damage buff wouldn't hurt it at all

Predator Tank-Good where it is at

Pitbull-Needs a big buff to dps as it just cant do anything useful in my opinion as it cant kill other vehicles well

Talon-Does it job well no buff really needed

Wolverine-Fine where it is currently at

Zone trooper- its heal effect just feels weak or doesn't even feel like its there, could use a buff to its heal, everything else on it is fine.

Titan-Does its job well, no change needed

Jump Jet Troopers-From what i felt have done their job well

Orca-This is a big problem atm that just ends games at the start with the easy ability to destroy harvesters and makes games just not fun overall, what you should do with it is increase the cost of production, increase reload time, and decrease the speed it has as you cant really counter it unless you put to missle/laser squads up to defend your original harvester as it can just out maneuver or just out damage a single squad

SandStorm-Change the value of the bonus damage it gets as it just makes it way to hard to deal with, 50% is way to much atm and something like 15-25% would be much better and make it easier to play against

Not enough time against or with it- M.L.R.S, Kodiak

Have not seen so far-Sniper team, Hammerhead,Disruptor,Mammoth tank

NOD:

Militant-Does its job well and needs no change

Laser squad- Could use a buff to its overall dps as they just feel like they cant do their job:Example you need 2 of them to counter a orca rush as they just dont do enough dmg

Flame Troopers-fine where it is now can be countered but takes out troops like it should

Scarabs- They are useless atm unless someone isnt really paying attention, what would help with this would be just to increase its speed since it dies really quickly, which is fine, but just cant even hit their target a lot of the time as of their slow speed 

Attack Bikes- increase to their damage would help out a bit

Buggy-Increase to its damage as it somewhat struggles to kill infantry

Scorpion tank-Fine where it currently is at

Venom-a bit of a damage  increase would help out 

Banshee-Fine where it currently is  

Cyborg-i think just a change to its slow for attack speed and movement speed from 20% to 10% would help out as there is currently nothing that can really counter it atm

Rockworm-its to hard to play against it, something that would help would be giving it less damage and maybe a cooldown of how far and how often it can move around

Flame tank- its current damage is fine but the outer edges of the flame( so the 3 other tiles that it  covers with damage should only do 65-75% of its total damge as its currently a minor one man army that can do way to much

Confessor-In my opinion fine where its at currently

No experience against-Chemical warriors, stealth tank, inferno, artillery, basilisk

All the commanders play fine so far in my opinion and dont really need to be changed

Additional notes:A player vs AI option would be nice to try out an army, the AI would let you select the Army,Commander,Troop,Level of troops/commanders, and the difficulty of the AI 

A test mode that let us just play vs ourselves to try out different strategy or to counter a strategy better would help.

-Quak Whale Rank:25-1896 (written before any balance changes were announced