Re: Sprinting is fine, nerfing it will cause more issues

@ToastedSarnie It's too late! People had already bitten your head off violently in a PEGI-18 way inside their minds xD.

To all people who complain about "others keep sprinting away" what heroes are you playing exactly? And what heroes are escaping, anyway?

If you're playing Super Brainz, you jumped into someone dealing damage to them, and then they just sprinted away... Well, that's because they made a wise decision... Their heroes aren't designed to counter you, so why not sprint at all? They know that you have OHKO abilities too...

If you're playing Snapdragon, you sprayed fire all over people, and then your victims just sprinted away... Why is this a wrong tactic? You suddenly jumped into their faces and you set them on fire obstructing their vision with your flames...

If you're playing Foot Soldier, shooting someone near a cover and they sprinted away... So what? They could have been healed by others behind that cover even if you chased them, you'd be at a disadvantage. That's on you for miscalculating and judging the situation. If you were a better Foot Soldier, you would have foreseen them escaping and engaged them in a different manner.

Even if they removed sprinting... People will ditch heroes with shaky escaping abilities in favor of those who have reliable ones.

[Cat A] Escape Artists:

• Scientist
• Nightcap

[Cat B] Heroes that can escape with abilities:

• Rose
• Engineer (Using his speed boost) (He also has an upgrade that boosts movement speed once damaged, good luck shooting him!)
• Electric Slide
• Super Brainz
• 80s Action Hero
• Chomper (Burrow to escape rather than swallow)
• Deadbeard (Barrel, can be speed boosted as well)
• Acorn (should we count that as an escaping ability?)
• Space Cadet (Can be considered "shaky" but the ability can be buffed and works on all directions while having higher speed than usual.)

[Cat C] Heroes with situational escaping abilities:

• Foot Soldier (with the rocket leap that can be buffed) (Situational)
• Kernel Corn (would leap once panicking, low ceilings might obstruct proper escaping.)
• Imp (Being small, having longer double jump time? nah he'd be a victim of sprint reduction)
• Cactus (Highly situational)
• All-stars (Sprint Tackle isn't really the best escaping ability but it can work in certain situations, they have to increase aim sensitivity for it to work properly)
• Citron (Same as above, but at least both heroes have shields)
• Snapdragon (Not a reliable way to escape but his ability might work)
• Peashooter (Can just reach higher places with minor speed buff. He is a harder target to shoot overall.)

[Cat D] Heroes with no escaping abilites:

• Sunflower (Has no escaping abilities at all. But can be buffed using upgrades, wasting precious slots.)
• Imp (Being small, having longer double jump time? nah he'd be a victim of sprint reduction since he has 75 HP only and there are too many splash damage weapons or damage sources.)

If they added a sprint penalty for getting damaged... Sunflower will be the main victim alongside the Imp, perhaps. The best winners will be Scientist and Nightcap because they will be able to chase slowed down targets easily as well as evading any danger better than any other heroes. All Engineer's turret victims will be punished severely by being unable to sprint after getting damaged. Once Crater Maker hits you, you will get annihilated since you won't have the chance to escape. Snapdragons would thrive as well as Chompers with their Grody Goop. Because of those 2 heroes only, capturing objectives would become a true nightmare ...etc. (Sorry, won't be talking about all heroes here)

The thing is... Most of the heroes I usually pick are from [Cat A] and [Cat B]. They have the best escaping abilities because this game has too many OHKO abilities and you can't do much without escaping.

At the end of the day, people will always find ways escape. Regardless if they implemented sprint penalties or not. Players who would hate the new system would most likely pick Scientist or Nightcap or just pick long-range heroes. 

In a game that has too many OHKO abilities, I don't really think it would be a wise decision to remove sprinting at all. It would further increase players' frustrations rather than ease them. There are too many posts in here about OP abilities. I think if they wanted to implement this system, they should inspect OHKO abilities and tune balance heroes first. Otherwise, it will be a major buff to certain heroes and a nerf to others. And the overall balance would crumble.

Sorry for the long post...

The more I play (and for full disclosure, I default to TT for most of my PvP matches), the less the sprinting away bothers me. However, they do mention fixing the aiming for jumping and sprinting since currently you actually go faster while jumping and sprinting. If they fix the aiming issues and perhaps the jumping while sprinting giving more speed than just sprinting, it shouldn't be as big a deal in the first place.

I also don't think it would be a big deal if they tweaked it a bit; make it harder to engage when in battle (like the self heal timer), break out of it with damage, or something. I don't think it would be a good idea to remove it from PvP altogether. 

To summarize; either just fix the issues with aiming and the sprinting runner and see how that pans out before doing anything else or give it a minor adjustment. I think we should wait for the results of the general control/aiming changes they are talking about before doing anything else with it.

@ToastedSarnie Many kids don't know how to make their characters sprint.

😊👍

My kids and their friends certainly know how to sprint 😂 I'm finding the argument of hold-still-and-let-me-kill-you largely unpersuasive anyway. If you are in a situation where you are at low health, especially in team vanquish or somewhere else where kills matter, you may owe it to your team to attempt to keep the other team from scoring by killing you. If that means strategic retreat, so be it. He-man-ing it out in an overwhelming encounter to die with dignity seems out of place. It is frustrating when you lose a kill to it; it's frustrating to lose kills to a variety of things, but that has to be part of the game. When frustrations > fun, time to turn it off for a bit. Maybe we should have He-man mode where all sprinting and any means of escape are turned off. I wouldn't play but it may be someone's cup of tea. I'm all about having choices to play the sort of round that you enjoy so I really hope a multiplayer portal with tons of great game customization options is on its way.

My only complaint with sprinting is that I dislike the mechanic of pressing down on my controller’s joystick to sprint. I have a tendency to engage sprint accidentally in heated combat (if you see an engineer pogo jumping on and off his jackhammer, it’s probably me), or struggle to engage sprint when I *am* trying to run away. But I’m getting used to it.

What if people simply get a "chaser boost" if they are sprinting after an enemy who is sprinting away from them, based on line of sight? This would allow people to catch up to someone who was sprinting away from a bad position, but if they were right next to cover, they could use the cover to break line of sight to the chaser, rewarding good positioning by denying someone getting a speed boost.

Resetting spring when getting shot is perhaps the most unfun thing I can imagine to play. Turf Takover alone is a 12v12 where you almost always will get shot by someone, especially when contesting the objective, so players would inadvertently get "trapped" on the objective. Worse yet, I would dislike it even more if I played PvE and needed to take cover to regen hp for once, but suddenly that aimbot AI hits me out of nowhere and I die because it resets my sprint. The only people profiting from this is whoever happens to chase as noone who gets their sprint reset will have an enjoyable experience. Less than 50% of the players actually will enjoy this (for each player sprinting away, there is one player shutting down their sprint), and it is less since even AI could reset the sprint, and the AI doesn't even have a concept of "fun" or "no fun".

And then even the one who chases after someone can get their sprint reset, which causes their target to escape yet again and we are back to square one.

I like the sound of stamina bars more as it is at least in the hands of the players to manage this and the ones managing it well (or in luck) will have enough stamina left to run away. However, I can't help but think that this is a lazy approach to this subject, as people with equally optimal stamina management will end up never chasing down the other, which is also the main problem of the whole story. Hence my suggestion above about adding a boost to the one who chases.

To me the inherent problem is that characters feel like they walk super slow. You can't really dodge someone that aims somewhat decently, your only saving graze being jumping around like a maniac or server/input lag on whoever is trying to shoot at you (or being near cover, which is not always a given). If characters simply walked reasonably fast then there would be more opportunities to take down a low hp target before they sprint behind a wall, and sprinting itself would then only be used to cover larger distances (like when running to the objective all the way from the spawn or quickly trying to go through a flanking route). Heck, with faster default movement speed, people may not feel like they need to sprint at all and instead shoot back while trying to walk behind cover, resulting in less "cheap" escapes.

But that's just my opinion on the whole thing.

I hate sprinting in this game with a passion and it made what was working perfectly well (movement in GW1+2) unnecessarily more painful.

With that being said, they should at least reduce the ridiculous high jumps with any character. Because while sprinting away is annoying, the real pain is that characters are able to jump 3 meters into the air in a wobbly, stuttering way and THAT makes them really hard to hit.

I think your chaser buff idea is great.