Game Balance and Matchmaking - We want your feedback!

@JadeXyan there is room for more now! 

Hearing about the sniper underwhelming play...makes me sad. Forever harder to play GDI

Hey, I just wanted to chime in on something that concerned me. To provide the situation, here is the video I recorded: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKzEbegH9Bs&feature=youtu.be

I feel that my opponent didn't really deserve to lose the match, and I disagree with the current implementation of the nuclear missile.

Please forgive the paste, but no point typing it twice.

As one of the main mechanics of dispatching an enemy, a nuclear missile silo exists that can be charged up and fired at the enemy. Charging happens by unit presence on one of three king of the hill sites. A player that controls a majority of these sites will inevitably fire a missile at the enemy base, two such firings being able to defeat them under most circumstances.

The problem I feel is that there is a mechanic not common to king of the hill style captures in that there is a final panic period where any player can quickly wrest control of and fire the missile, regardless of who actually put in the capture time. This means that holding the points as important as booting the other guy off in that split second.

I notice a trend that trivializes much of the early game battles. For example, my opponent spends his early game capturing points with mixed infantry. My first unit played is a predator tank, which is a mid game unit. Given that predators are a mainstay unit, and I have my commander power (the turret that pops up out of nowhere) I am able to pressure the infantry off of the capture points just as the missile is able to fire off, making all his early decisions pointless as all he did was the bulk of the work for me.

Late game, he starts making level 5 zone troopers (big armored guys with railguns) which is something I don't have a real answer for (it's a rare unit I don't have), so I just panic some riflemen and rhinos and keep trying to keep predator tanks alive. In the heat of the battle I toss a turret on his wolverine (mech walker with gatlings) and he micromanages it away from the turret like a good player would, except oops, he just stepped off the capture point and it was missile time, so boom, game over.

While I understand that this mechanic exists to facilitate comebacks and add some excitement, I can't help but feel it a bit gut wrenching to do 98% of the work and get dunked on. I think it needs more fine tuning.

In Team Fortress 2, KOTH mechanics involve two countdowns, one for each team, in which when one team is nearing completion, it speeds up the respawning rate of the other team, which is, imo, a better and less punishing way to facilitate comebacks.

My constructive feedback so far:

1. The only thing that really triggers me is getting matched against people 300-500 rank above me. I'm rank 400 getting matched against people 7-800. All their units are level 6-7 and I'm over here with level 2-5 and my weiner in my hand. I don't even try at that point and get steam rolled. Why even allow this, I'll wait an extra minute to have it fair.

2. NOD is completely overpowered, especially flame units and worm looking thing. NOD against NOD is just a helicopter and worm spam fest. NOD aginst GDI is a flame spam fest.

3. I'm an old school C&C player, this tech fairytail stuff kills it for me. Give a match making option to loose the tech tree and have a GDI vs GDI. Or NOD vs NOD if people like that.

4. Matches feel almost perfect, maybee slow down the nuke speed by 10-15%.

5. Matchmaking while pairing is unbalanced, I really love the speed of getting into a match, good job.

6. Every thing is smooth and optimized. Good job!

7. Graphics are solid, same with SFX and VFX. Good job.

8. No motivation to keep playing after a few games as there are no good rewards like currency as it stops giving out after a while etc.

9. Commanders are well done but overused imo. Spamming flame troopers at my base door seems a bit unbalanced.

10. Overall good job so far. 8/10. Keep tuning and give matchmaking options.

thanks for the heads up this should work better, was up all night heh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKzEbegH9Bs&feature=youtu.be

Level 5 gdi plyr. Any matchup against nod is autoloss. 

I will say the recent small patch has in fact helped for the GDI side in that the GDI Sandstorm spam can be countered more effectively by GDI Zone Troopers and Nod Cyborgs without them getting absolutely wrecked by the barrage of missiles.  They currently now after the patch are much more manageable and cost the same as another of their counters being the GDI Titan.

Balance issue I am experiencing now is that after facing the Nod Rockworm it definitely needs to be toned down a bit, it is supposed to be roughly the Nod equivalent of the GDI Titan but it does not not share the same cost as the Rockworm costs 120 to the Titan's 130 cost. The main frustration that comes from this unit is that there is no way to intercept it on its route and swarming it with anti vehicle infantry as GDI or Nod tends to not end well as it punishes you anticipating its location by doing AOE damage to all units when it emerges, after which just a swat or two is needed and it has killed the squads send to deal with it. Also even if ambushed successfully it can rapidly reburrow to reposition itself from a mistake which to me makes no sense as without a way to damage it while moving this would make air the best way to deal with it as they don't take damage when it pops up and it can't attack them. However the problem is while Nod gets their Banshee early the GDI Orca and Kodiak are epic class units with the later being an epic unit meaning that GDI outside of Zone Troopers, Missile Squads/Jump jet Troopers cannot efficiently deal with the Rockworm if they lack the GDI Orca or Kodiak.

Now that also brings me to my next point in that I also feel the GDI Orca is also in need of some sort of nerf, as currently you can rush helipad and GDI Orca fly it to the enemy harvesters fire a volley, retreat to reload then come back for an easy harvester kill that can you repeat and usually decides the match since you just wrecked the enemy player's economy with one unit. It is also hard to destroy unless you are specifically running the GDI Talon to counter it as it is a Fastest speed unit. It also wrecks the GDI Pitbull a little too hard being one of GDI's anti vehicle/anti air units, along with the GDI Wolverine another Anti Air ground unit.  Possible nerfs could be to either its damage per missile or its reloading time in between volleys.

Final balance change that should get some sort of address in the future is that GDI currently has horrible time dealing with any of late game infantry units such as the GDI Zone Troopers, the Nod Confessor Cabal and Cyborg combo as they lack any sort of dedicated anti infantry unit like the Nod Flame Troopers and Chemical Troopers, while GDI does have anti infantry tech lab units in the Wolverine it tends to lose against the above combo as the Confessors boost the Cyborg's attack speed allowing them to shred the Wolverine. The GDI answer to this of course would be the Disruptor Tank unlock but that comes at level 10, mean while Nod starts out with the answer against this combo with the Flame Tank or at level 6 they get their Flame Troopers which can toast the Cyborg meanwhile GDI's only answer to this combo would be to throw Wolverines and Rifleman at this combo unit they manage to break through.

There is of course the GDI Sniper Teams which I being Level 8 have yet to unlock but I do recall JadeXyan mentioning that they are nothing more but gloried Rifleman Squads with slightly better Health and 2+ tile range with worse damage than said Rifleman at 5x the cost! This to me makes absolutely no sense considering Nod's Flame Troopers are 4x times the cost of the Nod Militants but with superior Health and DPS against infantry which they get earlier then GDI's Sniper Teams which are not only bad stat wise but come much later in the unlock for GDI. The solution to this is to either reduce the unlock requirement for this unit to that of Nod's Flame Troopers which is Level 6 or buff their stats to that of the Flame Troopers along with a slightly reduced cost to make them even a consideration to be used over Rifleman Squads.

I take back my previous comments about snipers, I had last used them before the patch, but the patch lowered flametrooper hp which has made snipers much better against them early game and lategame they become strong enough once you get two on the field working together,  which is now actually possible against late tier infantry due to the cost increases, they just aren't good at supporting other anti-infantry units so much as bolstering one another.

My hopes for them going forward are that they receive a cost reduction to 40 tiberium to make them on par with flametroopers since they are still an extremely specialized unit that is utterly worthless against anything that isn't infantry, or, lacking said reduction, a slight damage boost so building just one feels worth it, and secondly the player level to attain them should be lowered. Otherwise with this last patch and how my games are going so far with them in the dumbest GDI loadout I've ever run that is somehow winning every match I come across I think they might just have been incidentally improved enough by the patch to be okay now.

Played a few against tiberium infantry. Must say they pack a punch and the gas stays for a substantial time which is good for map control. They seem strong. Maybe not overbearing but I know I would sure love to have them to mix up with flame troopers and scarabs, especially when fighting same opponents in a row. Maybe the gas cloud could dissipate at slightly faster rate but as I said not sure on that.