[LordDraco3]

Ever since the guild update, antagging has been so horrible that I feel my time would be better served drilling a hole into my head. I do a lot of antag, and it's really noticeable when I go from winning most of my matches to losing 90% of them after this patch.

AI has shit-for-brains, and does no damage. Elites are free aleph that pose no danger and don't even present help if I am engaged in CQC right next to them. Several missions in the patch received -15% spawn rates and -15% survive timers when antag is present.....why? When I read these notes my first thought was "so 15% less than 0 is still 0" and that's pretty much how it feels.

I have had almost no "good games" since the update. When I streamed 5 hours of antag games I think I won 2 of them, maybe 3. If I play raider, I can get an endless consecutive win rate until I die of boredom because the missions treat raiders like children now.
HBaT, Low Blow, and In Shock have become impossible for antags to win, I no longer queue them up.

Raiders have gotten so cocky that I have received multiple hatemail messages since the patch. Before the guild patch, I have never gotten hatemail. It was always "GG" and friendly discussion.

This is basically how my rewards have been thanks to all the losses. All of my faction points are dried up now. Playing antag is not viable or a valid gaming experience at this time. I have over a year's worth of experience under my belt and this is the least fun I have had with the game yet, because the balance has been so massively tipped completely in the raider's favor.

[Tekato]

Even though I hate antag matches I do hope they fix this soon I definitely feel like the game goes into like 10% mmr when there's an antag. They need a more consistent spawn rate and decent Ai for these matches. It makes no sense sometimes the computer becomes godly and swarms the entire time but most of the time they're useless.

Also the rewards are still trash for both sides win or lose. Nobody plays antag unless it's for affinity or fun. I think gold and faction points need to be much higher than for normal matches to give incentive for both sides to want to play them. A good start would be 3-5k gold and 2-3k faction points.

[XjabberwockieX]

10% sounds about right lol. Whenever I need some cards on the Antag side I Q  for antag, finally get a match, get a generally very experienced team across from me, lv300+ and by the time the match starts I realize very quickly I am on my own, completely on my own. Like if I dont spawn the Raiders have nothing at all to shoot at.
  @Draco, could your bad matches be an mmr thing? I generally sit around 70mmr, many of the players I regularly play with are high 60's as well, so our maps balance to 68 or 69mmr 99% of the time. When we last played you as a team, and lost, with your mmr mid 50's or so, you had an enormous amount of back up, and they were swarming. With you being among the best antags in the game, you must have felt you had more than enough map support at that point. Has the game to your knowledge been altered from that time, or is it that you are still very often a much higher mmr than the teams you come across and its a matter of Mercurysteam tweaking the toughness and AI of the backup you expect to recieve, but haven't been benefiting from recently?

[LordDraco3]

@jab I do remember fighting you but don't recall the specifics or how long ago it was, or if it was before or after guild update. If I won, it must have been before, because I have won so few games since that update. As for MMR, I was up in the 70's, the MMR you see in that screenshot is the result of my constant losses via antag.

If I had an MMR advantage last time we fought, then it would be only 1 time of a literal handful of matches that the MMR system has ever favored me. I consistently fight teams on 10% or lower than me, but have only fought higher MMR raiders enough times I can count them on 1 hand. They are so rare no matter what I do, if I am at 70% I will fight 60. I once lowered from 70 down to 35%, and I fought a team in the 20's that had a level 300 and 400. We have all fought juggernaut AI when a weak antag invades, but since it's so rare for me, I swear I must be flagged in the matchmaking system to always be on the disadvantaged side.

But currently, even when I fight teams that are exactly my MMR, like Tekato said, it's like the mission is 10% difficulty.

Anyways I uploaded this tiny clip of one of my games last night just to display my point. Look at how many kills I got and still lose. Look at how many ads are on the field that can't shoot anything even when the raider is down for the count. Like you said, if an antag invades, the raiders have absolutely nothing to fear except the antag itself. 57 kills across 25 minutes. I have more of the match recorded but this moment just made me laugh at the absurdity
https://youtu.be/awDZfZzzdU0

Another match I had last night, the Raiders killed Marmalade within 1 overload. By the time the black screen cleared from the cutscene, they were already standing at the pig with 7 out of 8 aleph needed to win. 11% lower MMR. Then they watched the cutscene.
Fought them again on White noise and they watched the watched the ending cutscene again. Just to reiterate that raiders have become a lot more bold in their attitude since the game has been favoring them.

[XjabberwockieX]

I dont know how that Hive in the video was still standing. She was getting lit up by the adds like The Hulk at the end of the first Avengers was from all those little hoverships. Definitely shooting bb's, what a joke. If I remember correctly our match with you was after the update on Weapon from the Past and afterwards we saw that we had the higher mmr advantage and you actually got solid help, we didnt even get into the 2nd phase of that one. If a player as skilled as you is losing 90% of the time as Antag then something within the game is broken and needs to be fixed. The teams I run with always get Antags lower than us, never higher and so all I have seen from the Raider view has looked balanced but that video clip..Something is definitely off for sure. 

[MSE_Karen]

Hi guys,

Indeed, when a high level antag like Draco invades a match, the game balances the AI, but it also generates a higher number of allies. As you guys know, we are always making adjustements and we can assure you there will be deep changes related with the AI and the Antagonist in the next update.

We want the game to be a challenge, but our goal is to reward players because of their performance, not just because they win or lose a match.

[Placelord]

The problem is that the amount of ad spawns when an antag is in match is extremely low regardless of the factors. Whether the raiders team is high or low lv, whether the antag is high or low lv, whether the players mmr is high or low; every wave consists of about 3 ads an an elite. Of course that doesn't include stages where massive assaults are baked into the objective like breath of hope.

I know you're working on finding a balance but I want to put a fine point on this so it's factored in. Ad spawns are too low. When there's a lv 300+ on the field it doesn't matter how good the ai is, 3 ads is not going to slow them down. I'm just asking for a smoother gradient of difficulty.

[LordDraco3]

Not my video, but Marmalade dead in 8 seconds with antag present. Bosses in general become hilariously weak when an antag is present. Kuzmann and Aneska also become unable to kill anyone at all, because they damage gets so low.
https://youtu.be/58CGXUOE-Ck

It takes 20 seconds to respawn if you're lucky, from death to full control of character, but the mission objective is over in half that time

[ArnoldCat]

Not my video, but Marmalade dead in 8 seconds with antag present. Bosses in general become hilariously weak when an antag is present. Kuzmann and Aneska also become unable to kill anyone at all, because they damage gets so low.
https://youtu.be/58CGXUOE-Ck

It takes 20 seconds to respawn if you're lucky, from death to full control of character, but the mission objective is over in half that time

[Placelord]

Draco puts it well, the bosses don't do much if any killing. After over 40 matches as a peaceful antag it's pretty clear that the expectation is that the antag is 90% of the kill potential on the match with the remaining 10% being accidents and boneheaded play.

[LordDraco3]

I used to quick play antag. Now, under no circumstances do i queue:

HBaT, this mission is a joke. Every change that just happened to it was to raider advantage, to a MASSIVE degree. Antag spawn points are also awful.

In Shock, Beholder is weak, Kuzmann is weak and does NO damage. Even locals can CQC fistfight me in the middle of the arena with kuzmann shooting them and they take hardly any damage. Barrier also makes this fight a JOKE. Why is Kuzmann's AI the dumbest in the entire game?? Should he not advance until he can blitzfaust, instead of stopping his movement like an idiot? Also, with antag present, blitzfaust barely does any damage. It doesn't even wound most characters.

Low Blow, another joke of a mission, free raider win. It has been awful ever since the final platform antag spawn points were moved 50 miles away from the gate that dies in 10 seconds. Stalk is literally the only way to get back up to the raiders in time once they reach the end, if you're lucky.

Weapon from the Past, 0-3 wardogs on the map at any given time. They also always spawn from the same exact places, extremely predictable and easy to spawn camp.

Enemy Within, acolytes are awful support units and it's just a 4v1 tiny arena.

Destroyer of worlds, aneska is a wimp now. I once had a match where they picked all short range raiders. They messed me up easily, but barely hurt aneska, fight took 30 minutes. She used her ULTIMATE POWER 6 times or something like that, and didn't even wound a single raider in any of the attacks. Instead of covering the area with golden death balls, she sprinkles them around here and there, it's pathetic! Oh and antag spawn points are THE WORST.

My wins all feel like either A) I am being extremely cheesy, by stalling timers like Loaht's House or Schneider hacking on In Medias Res, or killing the protector, or B) the raiders royally fucked up their character picks, and can't deal with the mission or myself, or they are low levels.

My losses only feel like I have no support and just get dogpiled 4v1 the entire match with no chance of countering the raider team because my AI support does no damage, trips and jams constantly, just plain doesn't spawn, or in the case of bosses, they are armed with nerf guns and they die in mere seconds. I never feel "outplayed" anymore because I can't call 4 people punching, shooting, and grabbing you all at the same moment to be "playing better" than me, because the rest of the mission is so weak and not threatening that they can just ignore it completely from the moment i spawn, until i'm dead.

Only a few characters even feel viable anymore. Harec, Alicia, and Hans (sometimes), because they all have the power of movement. I used to play Hive and Konstantin and Kuzmann a lot as antag, but they don't cut it anymore due to mobility of being dogpiled, or in the case of kuzmann, the lichtbogen nerf ONLY removed his ability to be antag, it didn't hurt him at all on the raider side.

This is what my rewards look like almost all the time now. I have been asking myself every day I play, "why do I even bother?" because this sure looks like antagonists have been removed as a viable way to play the game and make any sort of progress.

[LordDraco3]

I almost forgot about good ol' tolchok, which is STILL a horrifically unbalanced weapon. There were so many times I should have landed a strike in this match, but all Kon needs to do is point, click, win.

Antags that use it can get ganged up on from multiple angles. Antags do not have that luxury if a raider uses it. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpUT6DD0zxU

[Lehi]

Current antag does just a community service for Raiders to gang up to kill for small amount of reward after extremely long wait.

200+ ping, you lose because shots land on you already when you see them aiming at you.

The same MMR, you lose because AIs are weaken and do not accumulate any number while they chase you.

The lower MMR, you lose because AIs become nothing.

So, now, when I play raiders, I see bunch of friendly antags, who just wait for games to give enough exp to become antag status.

[Placelord]

Yup that's what I do. I make it clear at the beginning that I mean no harm. If they are still trying to fight after I made it obvious, I'll just sit in spawn mode. I'll help if I can, but antagging is best for me when I'm left alone. I just find a spot away from the raiders to train my button execution free of ad interference. It's nice and the whole thing is usually enjoyable. But only because I've abandoned all expectations of reasonable competition. I've taken up antagging for friends who need rewards so I'm trying to get some lemonade out of this.

[Uh, ok.]

nothing speaks more loudly of the state of antagonists than the fact that friendly antag is still a thing that is done

thought they went to great lengths to fix that but apparently nothing has changed

you should turn on the game and be able to pick either raider or antagonist with a reasonable expectation that you'll have fun as either one

not turn it on just to play as a raider, eschewing 50% of the gameplay, because the other game mode is so terribly unbalanced that people will only use it to gain affinity for cards

why not just get rid of this cumbersome system? there really is no point behind locking cards behind antagonist affinity

i get that there is some high concept here of balancing your playstyle between antag and raider and some..very poor endgame where you find the best cards from each affinity, but in practice we get a lot of people playing as raider and then people throwing matches as friendly antag and the super small minority of players that antag seriously to win but get shit on by a group of raiders 30-40 levels below them because there is literally nothing to shoot except the antagonist

just seems like a big waste of time to me, especially considering how piss poor the rewards are for trying antag, you really would be better off not trying, like placelord, than putting effort into a system designed not to give one wet fuck, like lorddraco