Hello HEAT community,
As our balance patch is just around the corner, we'd like to talk about the changes it will bring and the thought processes that led to these changes. We'll also share a bit about our balancing philosophy and strategy going forward, and how we blend solid design with a bit of experimentation in pursuit of keeping the game fresh, fun and fair.
Hopefully this article will shed some light, cool some heads, and set us on a clear path for future conversations between you, the players, and us.
Without further ado, let's jump right in.
Mines, Mines, Mines, I'm looking for a good time
Alright, time to dive into the most…HEATed point of discussion we've had since the game launched: Marder, and more specifically, Smart Mines. We received a tidal wave of feedback in regard to that ability, ranging from overpowered damage that allowed one-shotting enemies to Control Points being swarmed with mines. We spent a lot of time analyzing the issue and deconstructing it into actionable points to come up with a solution that tones the ability down somewhat but does so with modicum of finesse and silver lining for Marder players. But let's start from the beginning.
Detection cone before and after the patch.
When we looked at data, we saw that Marder produces far greater than anticipated ability damage on average in comparison to other tanks. Naturally this is a problem to solve, but as it turned out, simply nerfing the output would be a superficial fix and the underlying issues would rear their heads once more, if to a lesser degree. So we turned to holistics in search of answers about what makes the mines overpowered…and we found stuff.
Let's break down the problem.
The Smart Mines issue can be best described as problematic building blocks that compounded into a fairly oppressive ability without any real drawbacks, and which did not adhere to our standards of skill combat. Those building blocks are:
- Reach
- Output
- Economy
Let's examine each of those elements.
Reach: The detection cone for mines was very long, which made the ability detect tanks at a medium distance, often triggering way before players could spot the mine onscreen. Additionally, the deployment range was too big which was an overshot compensation from the last time we changed mine placement behavior to remove verticality, in order to combat spawn camping. This made mines act as mid-range proxy RPG launchers that players could put at a safe distance, far from the actual heat of battle to 'snipe' unaware enemies.
The solution to this was changing the detection cone, greatly reducing the distance but increasing the angle at which mines spot opponents while reducing deployment range.
Mines now require enemies to be much closer but detect them at a broader angle. Marder also has to expose itself more to place them aggressively.
Output: We discovered that Fuzzer had unforeseen multipliers in perks that were exceedingly scaling the damage of all abilities done by both tanks. Added to that were higher than intended base values. Combined, mine damage was hyperscaling and reaching thresholds that we were not expecting, nor were we fine with in terms of TTK and overall burst presence in game.
This is where the damage decrease comes in. We trimmed the stacking multipliers, set correct base values and removed the explosion damage happening in direct vicinity of the mine which in edge cases led to double damage event from a single trigger (Mine shell + explosion).
Economy: Mines' functionality let players place 2 before triggering a cooldown, which meant the ability effectively provided 2 mines for the cost of 1 as you would usually see with other skills. This was further worsened by the Legendary Module which added 2 extra to the limit, allowing players to place 4 for the cost of, still, 25 energy. This led to scenarios where 12 mines could be placed within the lifespan of the first pack, thus rigging choke or Control points entirely, making it unplayable for enemies to deal with.
In order to fix the economy, we needed to change the ability's logic so that each mine would act as a charge having its own cooldown and cost. In other words, we needed mines to behave like every other skill of a similar nature. We also applied a limiter akin to HSTV-L's Recon Probes. Placing a new Smart Mine beyond the limit now cancels the oldest existing unit.
Let's bring it all together.
New Smart Mines will now have an adjustable limit to how many can exist at once, providing better control of max damage and direct influence over economy-per-mine. At the same time, Marder players aren't as safe as they were before and the mine-game is now more frequent, requiring better presence of mind and micromanagement of mines in the area the Marder player is directly engaged with.
While we will closely monitor the magnitude of these changes over time, the key aspect of all this is gaining control over individual elements of the ability which will allow us to better tune it in the future should we deem it necessary.
ALVTea time with Kent
Our jack of all trades has also been discussed as too strong. While we believe that ALVT is not the end-all-be-all vehicle, the data and holistics do corroborate that the damage output is too high, especially when ALVT can act unpunished as a firing platform. The cleave potential is also very strong so we are nerfing baseline reload time, dispersion and Grenade Cluster damage, all by a margin, to reign it in with other healthy, from a data perspective, vehicles. We will monitor how these changes impact the overall battle performance and winrate of ALVT.
But we're not leaving Kent with just a stinker on his porch. As compensation we are introducing a little bit of quality of life to his Ultimate, Contracted Strike, specifically shorter Hellfire lock-on time, which should allow Kent to produce on average fewer "wasted" Ultimates and an opportunity to make some clutch plays. Hopefully this will reduce the frustration caused by being denied a Hellfire launch at the eleventh hour of the entire lock-on time.
Hot, hot, hot, HEAT Ammo
The final change is for a type of ammunition that also caused some controversy in light of how bursty it is: HEAT shells and missiles.
AMX10 RC and Leo 2FK, two vehicles that will be affected by the changes to HEAT and ATGM HEAT shells.
We noticed that this specific ammo contributed in great part to overly high burst damage, which led to, depending on who shoots who, one shots without the chance to react or perform any counterplay. We don't want to condition our players to be grey screen enjoyers so we took a hard look at what's going on with the calculations, base values and multipliers. Part of it was already explained in the Output section of the Marder Mines paragraph but just to reiterate - we acknowledge the max damage, especially to Ammo racks, was too high and took steps to mitigate it across the board. This bundle of changes should make dealing with Ammo crits by HEATs more bearable and end the one shot fiesta, at least for the most part.
We will of course monitor the situation over time to determine whether we hit the mark with those changes or not and keep looking how TTK in our game evolves and if it is in line with the game's assumptions and vision.
Balancing strategy, philosophy & experimentation
Time to pick our brains a little bit and shed light on how we intend to act on the game's balance and what it entails.
Right off the bat: cadence. As our operations strategy was still being ironed out we settled on less frequent but more complex balance patches that would every now and then touch on as many things as they could, be they under- or overpowered, and for those changes to be as accurate and precise as possible. Now, however, we are looking into ways to adapt our strategy to be more agile, allowing us to push balance patches more frequently. Having seen your responses to our patch deployed with the start of Season 1, we are also adjusting said strategy to intertwine Module and Base tank balance together so both elements of the game are affected at once instead of being spaced out.
While we don't yet have exact details about our future timeline to share at this moment, we believe that actions speak louder than words, so stay tuned to see how the balance patch rollout plays out.
When it comes to philosophy and experimentation, the effort mentioned above allows us to lean more into the 'Revolving Doors' creed and play with it through experimentation instead of having to rely purely on its polar opposite - Tabula Rasa and trying to make it pitch perfect. You can expect some balance changes that might feel a bit experimental to spice up gameplay and open avenues for brand new play patterns, to ensure that moment-to-moment gameplay on individual tanks does not become stale. Such an approach also lets us filter out and keep things that land and get rid of elements that don't without having to entirely rebalance everything around said addition or removal, even if it may mean a temporary state of imbalance. The final benefit of such philosophy is that we can be brave with our changes as none of them has to be a long-lasting one if it misfires.
In other words, you can expect us to play with wildly renovating individual rooms of a building instead of razing it entirely and building from the ground up. Paint may spill and things may be messy but we're looking for pure fun and enjoyment of the game in all this.
Your Honor, my client would never remove fun from the game
We hope this post provides some clarity on the inner workings and belief system of our team. Stay tuned for actual patch notes with all the numerical details listed as well as commentary why we are making specific changes not covered here. Your enjoyment of the game is our top priority and we hope to reflect that in our future balance actions.
See you on the battlefield, Agents.