Baffling Design Decisions
Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2017 10:28 pm
Hey all,
There are a number of design decisions in Long War 2 that really confuse me, and I was hoping somebody could shed some light or point me in the direction of some answers. Please feel free to answer some subset of these! I have a huge number of questions, and I'd love to hear any answers people have; you don't need to deal with everything!
Why did they change the promotion mechanics away from the old "Pick from 2 sub-classes or completely random"? It made a lot of sense, and was an excellent balance between randomness and control.
More importantly... WHY ON EARTH IS THE SOLDIER+ENEMY INFO PANEL GONE?!?!?!?! The original Long War allowed you to inspect your soldiers or the current enemies, which would reveal things such as perks and abilities that those enemies had (after you had completed the autopsy). I find it awfully irksome that I can't access this information- for instance, what does an ADVENT engineer do differently to a base soldier? Do their stats change over time? What are the exact effects of a flashbang- how much does it reduce aim and movement? Is it simply due to mechanical impossibility that the Long War team didn't include this feature?
If I recall correctly, the rocket when fired will provide you with the max scatter distance, which I assume is probably close to a normal distribution; however, what was behind the design decision to no longer provide the odds of a direct hit?
Why does flanking not always give +50% crit chance? I've commonly seen +33% before and I have no idea why- and why does low hit chance lower your crit chance? I've had 100% chance to hit before, but still had -4 crit due to "to hit"... I'm confused. Even flanking shots seem to commonly have ~17% chance to crit.
Why was height advantage nerfed so heavily, so that it only gives +10 aim now as opposed to the old +20?
Why has the damage range of so many weapons increased drastically (without damage roulette on)? Grenades used to be 3-4 damage scaling down with distance; now they're 2-5. Shotguns used to be 4-6 damage, and now they're 3-8. While this is technically a buff, the increased unreliability is horrific- I can have an assault from point-blank range fail to instantly kill a 4-hp engineer. The standard assault rifle, though, still seems to have the exact same damage range.
I'm not too far into the game so it's possible that I simply have yet to see certain features, but a lot of these design decisions baffled me; can anybody explain a few of them to me? I've done some light work with game design and written a relatively complex strategy mod before, so it's not like I have no idea what I'm talking about.
There are a number of design decisions in Long War 2 that really confuse me, and I was hoping somebody could shed some light or point me in the direction of some answers. Please feel free to answer some subset of these! I have a huge number of questions, and I'd love to hear any answers people have; you don't need to deal with everything!
Why did they change the promotion mechanics away from the old "Pick from 2 sub-classes or completely random"? It made a lot of sense, and was an excellent balance between randomness and control.
More importantly... WHY ON EARTH IS THE SOLDIER+ENEMY INFO PANEL GONE?!?!?!?! The original Long War allowed you to inspect your soldiers or the current enemies, which would reveal things such as perks and abilities that those enemies had (after you had completed the autopsy). I find it awfully irksome that I can't access this information- for instance, what does an ADVENT engineer do differently to a base soldier? Do their stats change over time? What are the exact effects of a flashbang- how much does it reduce aim and movement? Is it simply due to mechanical impossibility that the Long War team didn't include this feature?
If I recall correctly, the rocket when fired will provide you with the max scatter distance, which I assume is probably close to a normal distribution; however, what was behind the design decision to no longer provide the odds of a direct hit?
Why does flanking not always give +50% crit chance? I've commonly seen +33% before and I have no idea why- and why does low hit chance lower your crit chance? I've had 100% chance to hit before, but still had -4 crit due to "to hit"... I'm confused. Even flanking shots seem to commonly have ~17% chance to crit.
Why was height advantage nerfed so heavily, so that it only gives +10 aim now as opposed to the old +20?
Why has the damage range of so many weapons increased drastically (without damage roulette on)? Grenades used to be 3-4 damage scaling down with distance; now they're 2-5. Shotguns used to be 4-6 damage, and now they're 3-8. While this is technically a buff, the increased unreliability is horrific- I can have an assault from point-blank range fail to instantly kill a 4-hp engineer. The standard assault rifle, though, still seems to have the exact same damage range.
I'm not too far into the game so it's possible that I simply have yet to see certain features, but a lot of these design decisions baffled me; can anybody explain a few of them to me? I've done some light work with game design and written a relatively complex strategy mod before, so it's not like I have no idea what I'm talking about.