So there's an antag I've been running into all night, and he's got some good tricks. Nothing suspicious there. Well, since I was consistently running into him I started picking to counter. We start winning games against him, but something weird happens every time and only with him around. After completing certain time-consuming objectives the game would do a reset and we'd have to reconnect and do the objective all over again. When he was stomping us this wasn't happening. When we stomped him this occurs.

I don't know if anyone will even look into it, but it's way too convenient for him to have this happen consistently when he's losing. It's a PSN profile: **********

I can't report him from steam but hoping MercurySteam will look into this. At the very least I hope I've brought attention to a potential exploit players might be taking advantage of to try and win pvp.

If anyone else has ran into this be sure to share.

So, I've played this game since launch and there's been a lot of changes. A lot have been pretty good, and some I thought actually took away from the game. It's come pretty far and all the quality of life changes that have been made since launch have been phenomenal. I've been iffy about a few things, like the ammo drop that used to be a thing. Infinite ammo I had been on the fence about, but it hasn't seemed to take away from the combat as much as I had thought it would. The fact we can now drop aleph to either give to another player or use as a bomb has been an interesting gamechanger, and even these new qualities we can put on guns has been interesting.

The change to grapple is something I'm definitely against. I feel I may be in the minority here but I wanted to give my feedback. I feel so many of our options have been cut off due to the way grapple works now. Sure, I can throw an enemy off the map, but there are so many times where I would have secured a kill with a grapple that this new yeet button just wouldn't do. All the aleph an enemy is carrying is just gone too in the scenario you successfully throw someone off the map. It's not difficult to do, throwing an opponent off the map, there's plenty of places for it. But I remember the days where you could be rewarded for maintaining your stress to sneak up on an elite for a clean execution and take all his lunch money.

You can't get the drop on enemies anymore for this clean kill and I remember so many little tricks I had learned with grapple that made it so satisfying to just gank with from cheeky spots, or taking advantage of the enemy AI to grab snipers before they could teleport. Grapple just isn't something I think to do anymore outside of fighting an antag.

Granted missions have become easier. Elites can't just charge themselves and go on a killing spree, now they just yeet you and the challenge is nonexistent. At least in my experience. The change to the way they charge was a good one, I think. Now they have an actual charge-up and  you have an opportunity to stop them before they actually activate. But having them still be able to grapple-kill wouldn't change much there, in my opinion.

It seems to have largely affected pvp as well. Before you could be rewarded for reading your opponent, playing mindgames and earning a kill. I always felt cqc was a really good equalizer in pvp. Now it's too easy to just spam dodge, even if an antag grabs you if there's no ledge the fight can last forever, or until me and my team gang up on the poor guy. Pvp has been largely gun focused, with a lot of guns able to just instantly down people. But like I stated earlier, cqc was a good equalizer. An antag who played well could be rewarded for reading his opponent and could secure a kill before the enemy team came up, or even get amazing stealth kills. It's kind of neutered Doldren players, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I would always just listen for the teleport and promptly punish any Doldren that ported behind me. Honestly, I think too many players relied on his back-grapples so maybe they'e being punished.

On my end though, I've been able to dominate games as an antag by using Rak and putting a flame-spitter nearby. Then all I have to do is spam dodge and any raider trying to fight me just dies. It's kinda disgusting. There have still been plenty of kills I could have gotten with the old grapple. Sure, it's fun to just yeet someone off the map, but I just don't feel like there's as much skill involved anymore in this game on either end.

All the other changes I've been able to nod at and be fine with, but without the old grapple I kind of feel like I'm playing a different game. Pve or pvp, I feel like a snake with its fangs removed. I'll make do because ultimately I can't do anything about it, but I really hope this gets put back to the way it used to be. It's a much lazier game without it.

Can we please fix this? XD Why do I keep matching against max level players when I antag? Someone with tier4 guns and below couldn't hope to beat four max level players. Doesn't matter how low I try to bring my mmr to match against people of my level, it's still max level players. And I know for a fact players around my level are on, I keep matching with different groups of randoms when solo-queing. There are plenty around lol. I just don't get it, I can't be that good that the game actually thinks I stand a chance against these people.

Can we please just kill engineers? Why am I still seeing max tier players struggle with this concept? Defend terminals, kill the guys glowing blue through the walls. Otherwise the mission is just going to be prolonged unnecessarily, lowering your end score.

Double Agent still gives me headaches over this. I've seen this mission failed so many times or just taken an hour and a half because players simply ignore the engineers and have to backtrack to terminals perpetually. I don't know why my suggestion gets shot down so swiftly: Just have the four raiders follow schnieder and split off at each terminal. No more hacking. I believe generally we all can handle ourselves against a couple soldiers, and with players standing by terminals, and subsequently the spawn gates, it would reduce the amount of adds those still escorting schnieder would have to deal with significantly.

I understand that there are other ways to do things and that this isn't the only method. I understand that it's possible to accomplish the objecting by running around randomly and uncoordinated. But there is a way that gets things done efficiently and swiftly as well and we could all be better off for it. I would like this to catch on, but whatever. I'll just keep standing by the first terminal preventing a loss when everything else gets locked.

Nvm, I figured it out I think. You can simply destroy a gun if you don't want to duplicate it. There are parts you can use to build a gun even without it's blueprint it seems and if I recall you can get parts through missions. It looks like a blueprint negates using parts to make a gun. This is how I understand things at least, could be wrong about that blueprint thing

My biggest issue is the lack of incentive. Even with the lower rewards per mission I had a reason to play and didn't find money too difficult to get.

Maybe if they want to keep the bp so you could play any mission to get it you could earn a ticket you could choose to use before starting a mission? That would still give you the freedom to choose an appropriate mission for the raider your after and it could consume the ticket only after getting into a match, or after the gun is acquired. Idk, just the first method that pops to my head. You could sorta stockpile tickets that way though, not sure if they'd be down with that

So gonna start by saying I doubt any of what I say is actually going to help in the long run, but I want to get my thoughts out here.

I've been away from the game for a long time, got burnt out grinding for cards. I've only come back recently and seeing all these changes and all I can ask is "why?"

Starting with the ammo and aleph mechanics, I kinda like the way ammo is dropped. Allies can collect it if they need to and you don't and it can even help balance antags to some degree as someone might run into a situation where they have no more ammo to spend on the raiders but they can pick up what they kill nearby. The despawn time is a little short, but you certainly don't want it sitting there forever. My biggest complaint is that you have to go pick it up after melee. You beat an enemy down and then have to do a little dance before you get your ammo and can move on. Getting shot at durring this certainly doesn't help any, it'd work more smoothly with the old system where it got pocketed as you connected the final blow and then could run off. I figure you can make it so enemies killed by gunfire drop ammo to pick up but melee puts it directly in your pocket. Just my thoughts, but I think things will be much smoother and the devs get the desired change they were looking for.

Aleph has the same issue with the k.o. then dance about to find the aleph before you're swiss. An issue that arises with this is that all too often I'll see greedy players act like vultures and descend on an ally as they execute to pick up the aleph before they can. This seems pretty scummy and desperate, besides how infuriating it could be to the player who made that hard-earned win. Not only can your team steal it from you but so can the enemy. Watched an elite grab the aleph before a kuzman and immune himself immediately. Bubble head stood no chance. This can happen with ammo too, being denied what you need because you're playing with vultures. I like that you can drop it now, as that can help in quite a few situation. Hand it all to one player to recharge grandpa more efficiently, or pass it to your backline if you plan on doing something risky. Plus antags now have a use for the aleph they earned by passing it out to the elites, as not every mission has something they can put it into. The detonation mechanic seems kinda... lacking now I guess? It screwed me sometimes but I kinda miss the big nuke from when a player with aleph got gunned down. It made for an I interesting hazard that could even be used as a tool for both raiders and antag.

I see they're changing the aleph system again so I seriously doubt any change bringing back a few steps will happen but maybe make aleph work the way it used to, pocketed after melee but keep the option to drop it for allies. As for the detonation, I'd prefer it going back to the way it was, but I don't know if everyone agrees with that mentality.

Lastly is this sudden death thing. It makes sense against an antag, I truly believe this. A speedy raider like ginebra or Hans can just play keep away forever and the lives will keep coming back. Obviously that strat doesn't work so well in some areas but generally speaking you'll almost never win if you have to deal with a decent player controlling one of these speedy types. The immortal team right there. So yeah, it might not be a popular opinion but keep that there for antags I think. A good team working together really won't have much to worry about, even with a bambie on the team, I feel.

However this changes in missions without an antag. There's no point to it anyanymore in these cases yet it's still present. Missions with high mmr difficulties can stone wall a team at times and no matter how hard you try someone's going to die. Even the best of player get caught by the adds and when you get into a situation like this it's pretty much game over because those adds get insane at the higher difficulties. Granted I've only had this happen twice and the second time really got me thinking about it. Three guys leave after leaving me with one life and I'm playing ginebra in the tiniest space you can in this game. I can avoid the adds literally forever but can't make any progress now because if I try to do the objective I'll get caught. I can clear adds but as soon. As I finish a new hoard is on me and I'm slowly burning ammo unable to find a moment to actually collect it. Enough time to win a fifth timer twice over all the while this big "1 Life Left" is flashing across the lower half of my screen. This is rediculous. Even if my team had come back i would have even less chance of completing the mission. Needless to say, I lost. It really takes away from those moments where you're there on the revive screen, watching the seconds tick down and cheering your last guy on as they dodge mobs left and right. The tightness in your chest as they almost get caught, hoping you can get back in and release some of that pressure for them and the celebratory rush that follows after everyone comes back from a 200 second timer. Now people just give up at that point. Two sets of lives down? Jump off a cliff, we're done here. Maybe the devs were trying to cut down match times or something, idk.

So I would say just take that sudden death thing off of raider matches when there's no antag. It's pointless and just takes away from a hard earned victory. The score might suck at the end but a 5 is better than a 2 at the end of the day if you can earn it.

The absolute last thing I can talk about is this new loot system. I feel pretty mixed about it. I kinda feel like I'm getting more gold that usual but I can't help feeling it might be an illusion. Five matches a day to make 20-30k feels pretty good. I like how the faction points are all consolidated into one currency now, as that makes it less exhausting grinding for one card over the course of five months being able to play whoever I want/need. The monthly rewards make it worth trying to hit a high score in every mission. But the major downsides are leveling seems to be almost a crawl and after those five matches there's no incentive to play. At least back in the old loot system I could keep playing to keep earning 2-3k a match. It took a bit longer but I definitely played more. I think I get some of what the goal was though, as sometimes a mission would have a bp but the character you wanted it for was no good for it. At least you can control what mission you do for a bp now, making it easier to get it for someone like Ayana for example, who wouldn't be any good against aneska or the beholders. So I'm kinda on the fence about this. If anyone has an idea on how to make this work better feel free to share I guess.

That all went on a lot longer than I thought but I hope I got my points across. Nobody has to agree with me, I just wanted to get this out there. There's probably a lot of ways to improve the systems and my ways likely have flaws of their own, no doubt. Share your opinion if you'd like.

As for Low Blow, I don't generally defend levers. Usually just run around prioritizing engineers and collecting aleph on the side while add clearing. Found out the number of levers and thought "that could work." But standing by one by myself won't do much without the team being on board I don't think. (Save for that Valeria strat Engelsgaard mentioned.)