[Whitebleidd]

Hey guys!

The new "suddenly deathly" way of losing a match is mainly meant to control a bit more match durations, in order to keep them within a logical threshold.

After analyzing data from thousands of matches we realized excesively long matches feature many issues for players and very few positive things.

When it comes to the issue of playing with new players who still don't understand the basic systems of the game, we're currently working in a better onboarding for the game. We are focusing of new players' first matches being more easily understandable for them. As always, when these new changes are close to release we'll let you know.

I had already seen this excuse being passed around the discord, and I must say it wasn’t convincing, why do all of this just to remedy the (by your own admission) very few matches that would even benefit from it, especially knowing you guys have tried finite caps on raiders before and it was terrible…

Well it seems I was simply missing a piece of the puzzle, I had yet to read the newest patch notes, for anyone that hasn’t, this is the important bit contained within the sudden death or as they call it “Last Chance Phase” section of the patch notes and is the true motive:

“- Decreased Raiders' lives from 16/16/16/... to 16/12/8 when playing against an Antagonist.”

Again it’s just about the antags, giving them easier wins, nothing more, if it was truly about not allowing a few, very rare matches to last too long, finite survivals would have sufficed, but above we can see the handout, NOT only are we talking about limited survival phases, we are talking about LESS LIVES per survival phase… SMH…

[Skyline]

...MSE do you hear us in the Tank (c) Loath

[MeleeMaster]

Why so many nerfs for Raiders? Instead implementing some bs communication system just put a voice chat or text chat, at least for people in the same group, if they're private then you guys won't have to worry about "toxicity".

First the aleph drops now this "sudden death", which only benefits antagonists.

[Skyline]

 "Buff" antagonist ? 6k damage for 3 sec not enought, need more!?
Moral :
MSE always do wrong and useless things(since "new bp system") ,-
they even not try do somethink what players like or want:)

ADD:Spacelords so not lucky with developers

[Level9Drow]

The only way I could see this truly being fair is if the antag ASLO had limited lives. But they don't and this ONLY hurts the raiders and so it's all about the antag in this game.

Think about it: they got improved spawn points, raiders get only 2 survive timers, raiders get significantly less lives, antag will soon get Master of Puppets (which will allow them to give commands to AI I assume) and finally Aurora Specters. And Raiders will get the ability to call out objectives, that's it. We get no new mechanic against antag, we get no new protection against antag (like low levels not getting slaughtered by antags), we get no "Specters" on our side, we get no anything. Absolutely all current and future advantages are going towards antag. This will make life miserable for new players and veterans who already hate mandated invasions.

This patch is terrible news.

My suggestion to those who dislike this and want to avoid the mandated PvP in a system that has poor PvP balance in the first place would be to keep your MMR really low. What this does A) Make it far less likely to get invaded, most antags son't have MMRs as low as say 20% or lower. B) Any antag you do get will most likely be lower tier and relatively easy to deal with, Sad, I know the poor guy will get slaughtered by raiders but when you live by the sword you die by the sword and no one can feel bad when you die by it and also those raiders didn't ask for the invasion, it was mandated, so fuck it. Kill the low tier antag. And finally C) In the event you do get a killer antag you will at least have the AI advantage, meaning the AI will be relatively weak and even antags that lower MMR will not be able to lower it enough to give them the AI advantage to have strong AI against you.

This is my advice on how to survive this new direction of antagonists bias. the game is going to be plagues with them after this. This is the best way to avoid the shit storm about to ensue.

TIPS on how to lower MMR: You can play as peaceful antag and lose matches and your MMR will drop, but this is a slow process. Or you can make a surrender/suicide squad where you throw matches and rapidly get MMR down, this is the fastest way. However, if you only have a group of 3 you must only surrender as the game allows a democratic vote and doesn't stipulate what situation is required for a surrender. Try to get a 4 man group, but if you can't 3 man it. You might feel bad, but it's allowed to be done by the rules just as antagging against involuntary participants is also allowed by the rules. You aren't doing anything worse than what is already happening in the game with the blessing of the devs. This game is all about antags now and causing misery so might as well lower MMR. OR you can make a 4 man group and suicide, done suicide with a 3 man or less, this is against the rules and is bad.  But a suicide group is the fastest way besides surrender group.

Good luck to all of you fellow Raiders who don't like this new direction.

[B30]

Really not liking this new direction.
So, MSE if you are so eager to push antag games even further (and drive off even more PVE players) and run Spacelords totally aground then here are a few suggestions to speed up this process (Of course, the fastest way to accomplish this would be to integrate all at once.):

The Antag can spawn everywhere at mission start
The Antag spawns with 5 aleph
The Antag is immortal
The Antag has unlimited ammo
The Antag doesn't need to reload
The Antag's special ability is always available
The Antag can equip 2 additional cards (4 in total)
And last but not least, games without an Antag, gives no rewards.

Good luck!

But of course you could also integrate more meaningful features into the game, e.g. to revise the card system (which has been demanded for ages), buff the old man in fist full of sand (is also demanded for ages), an improved cutscene skip function, … … …

[Deh_Toni]

I wonder...If MSE wanted faster matches....why didn't they force Antagonists to have limited lives?
Most games are dragged because of bad antagonists that can respawn in 10 seconds without any limit or penalty...

[Lehi]

Well, 16+12+8=36. This is not that bad. This sudden death stage only reduce a chance to have a game longer than, say, 25 minutes.
Usually, I can finish a map at 12-15 minutes with 4-5 casualty, at 40-50 difficulty, 8.0+ score. With antag, casualty can be 10-18, and 20-30 minutes, 9.0+ score. With a hard antag, this can be extended to 40 minutes, 7+ score. Some games end by defeat and 4-6 score.

Say, if I can play 4 games in 1 hour, expected total score is 8.5+8.5+5+5=27
Comparing to the current status: 1 boring no antag game, 1 easy antag game, 1 hard antag game. 8.5+8.5+5=22, sometimes, 1 easy antag and 1 hard extended antag game, 17.

I want shorter matches, and it helps me grinding. Long matches tend to give me low reward because a lot of death and stretching hour. I prefer quick death than extended suffer with a burden of being tier 1.

However, what people say here is, why we raiders have to get those negative (extended game hour, high casualty, etc.) caused by antags?

My idea to balance this, to change the compensation slope. Currently, the system adds additional difficulty to the higher MMR party. Make it like:

If antag has higher MMR, steep compensation to Raiders.
If raiders have higher MMR, mild compensation to antag.
If raiders have the same to slightly higher MMR, very mild compensation to raiders (no kidding, antagging is supposed to be a challenge).

To improve newbies experience, let them play a few solo games. Exclude them from antag game till they hit level 11. Or, allow their death not consuming the party life.

[Whitebleidd]

Well, 16+12+8=36. This is not that bad. This sudden death stage only reduce a chance to have a game longer than, say, 25 minutes.

36 lives is not that much, especially when you consider purple tier1’s farming noobs and they know it, antags know it, they are already rejoicing about it in the discord, they know the havoc they are going to bring shortly, how easy it will be.

Also having shorter but lost matches won’t make for better farming, especially when you consider this games queue times, let’s say you fail a match at around the 15-minute mark because of an antag, then wait 5-15 minutes in queue, then lose another match again (since they will be so easy to lose if you get a purple-tier1 antags while having 2-3 tier5’s or lower, which is a VERY common scenario in this game for some reason…), you will probly end up with the same or less rewards than if you simply had continued and wont the 1st match at the 30-40 minute mark.

Point is losing a match is only profitable when you do it at the very beginning, say you get an antag and surrender as soon as the surrender option is available so you can try your luck again, that’s a scenario where you have higher chances of losing less, and even then queue times alone may fuck you over, so losing a bunch of missions at the 15-25 mark will not help, and those loses will be even more infuriating than normal, just like they were in “short fused” since watching or being the last player trying to survive the timer is much better, it gives the player hope, rather than being the last player with no survives left and simply jumping off a cliff.

At least raiders will also have some small measure of power with this system, if you’re a lone purple1 with a bunch of lowbies getting invaded by a purple antag, or if you are one of those lowbies, and don’t want to lose too much time, just take a good look at cliff and I’ll let you imagine the rest 

[Lehi]

If an antag can easily exploit lowbies, and you and your teammates cannot prevent it, does it matter if you have 36 or 48 max lives? When you are matched with lowbies, difficulty tends to be low. With antag, it's even lower. Then, it's easy for you to carry them.

With sudden death, I expect shorter que time also. I cannot estimate it unfortunately... MSE???

Jumping off the cliff in a losing game?? I never imagine that.
You come up with it just because you do.
When I was a lowbie, I could not wait for a next game even though I lose to the last game. If waiting time is short, it's better.

[pululon]

I don't see this necessary... if you see that the match is long and you can't win, you can always surrender, that option is always there... but, if people want to keep playing and playing, and doesn't give a damn about low rewards, let's the guys play the game.
If you want to play fast, just do it with a group of friends, you can easily storm missions with a good squad with people that know what are they doing.
What I'm seeing with things like this, the aleph/ammunition drops... is that the rules are changing every time. You made a game with certain rules and now, when people had played with those rules, you change them with not much sense.
Example, the drops, was necessary? Did you wanted to tackle the issue about a guy with 5 aleph  or with full ammunition killing a mob and getting nothing? Don't change the actual rules, enrich them, make them drop the item when you already are full, not before that.
This is the same, after a couple of refills of lives, you have to wait a very good amount of time until Cortez returns, and any skilled antag will destroy you or the AI will swarm you (and Shae is quite dead if you are fighting Kuzmann). You have to be extremely good to survive, and if you are that good, you deserve the extra refill... now, some people can say that you can easily survive with Ginebra, right, too bad for the antag... well, too bad for the raiders when they shoot down the protector in two seconds and none give a damn about it...

[Righteous Flame]

So, I wanted to give it a whirl before I comment.  Having done that, I'm going to say that my first impression was correct on the limited spawns.

Disclaimer before I continue:  I play both Raider and Antag with a leaning towards Raider.  When it comes to choosing a character, I roll a dice.  I play roughly 4-6 matches per month normally and I've been here since the beginning.

My initial impression was that this would unfairly tilt the game towards the antag to the point that it will make my antag games a squash.  Yes, the situation of eternal stalemate has happened to me......exactly once.  I was antag and, for a little over two hours, neither side could actually move forward.  I eventually quit.   While it sucked, it is a rare enough occurrence that I do not feel it is an issue that actually needs addressing especially with a change as unbalanced as this one.

I realize that, much like offline mode (For the record, since I've seen false information on this, offline mode still doesn't work.  Disabled my internet on the XBone and it still doesn't log in.), this change is here to stay but I would request that the team reconsider this change.  All it does is unfairly penalize the raiders in favor of the antags.  I don't want my raider matches to become an exercise in futility and I don't want my antag matches to become squashes.

Thank you.