Attn Developers: Please expain limited use grenades. Will we lose our Orange Grenades

[Indra Echo]

My inventory begs to differ with you. While I am a self-confessed pack rat and loot *****, my overflowing inventory space still manages to hold multiples of several grenade types. On top of that, I never look at damage to decide whether or not to replace one of my current grenades. It's always Det Time, Duration, Recharge, or Radius (cluster - which ironically enough I consistently sacrifice damage for the lower spread so I get more booms closer to my target).



Maybe it's just me, but I don't miss that often. Sure there are times where I want to hit something and end up hitting something else, but whiffs are rare for me. Certainly my tendency to favor low Det Time over damage and cluster grenades as a whole might have something to do with it, but that goes right back to your first point.

Perhaps there will be more strategy with grenade stacks on a shorter cooldown, but, personally, I use my grenades for utility damage and to conserve ammo on enemies I can't reliably crit. To me, it seems you're just switching a system where ammo has to be conserved to one where grenades have to be conserved and ammo can be refilled on-demand via spike.



Someone over there at Trion also thought increasing the price of vehicles was a good way to pull money out of the economy... except it only affected new players and collectors who hadn't completed their collection, a poor decision that, to this day has still not been addressed.

In short, my faith in your (Trion collectively) ability to create meaningful and balanced scrip sinks is nil.



Now we get to the real scary part.

The percentage of your playerbase that actually has faith in your drop system is abysmally small. We get loot boost weekends and bit-store boosts and notice an increase to our Ammo drops and an abundance of whites and little else.

PS: Where's the Scavenger synergy sniper rifles?

You could probably count on one hand the number of people outside of Trion's employment that actually believe your development team has a handle on what is going on with the drop system currently on live, and you're telling us you're complicating that drop system even further with "Smart Loot" consumable drops?

Well said. This is a worthless investment in dev time, no matter if it was a really cool way to get grenades-say a pack of white elephants drops down from the sky with a full set of orange ones, including the awesome Infector Monster Grenade. I'd rather get other stuff in paid DLC or in any kind of DLC.

I'd even rather get an inventory UI upgrade as well as a more useable salvage matrix than get this new mechanic. Please.

[Xaearth]

At this point the general consensus is that we do not want game-changing mechanics, we want improvements for the existing game mechanics. With all of the current problems that Defiance has, adding or revamping systems will only lead to new, unforeseen problems. Remember the chat improvements you guys made; how'd that work out for everyone? Also, will this grenade ammo change fix the 0.0s detonation bug that causes a thrown grenade to blow up in the player's hand? Now that would be an improvement!

They broke 0.0 det grenades? When'd that happen?
(I haven't used my frag grenade in months. )

[Maitreakow]

I wish you could too.

Have to admit, this one gave me a laugh. No offense to you Krazy, but that was some funny shtako...


Edit:
I take it all back, this is the Pièce de résistance

VVVV

OMG! you totally get me! Trion is the bestest eva, like, for realz, but I don't see many people staying for, like, the non-awesomeness that this might, like, be... At least no lag!!!!

So, I wish I could, like, move words around like you, but, I can't... So, we would have to, like, pay for gernade ammoz? lol that's not fun! I shootz a gun and don't have to buy moar ammoz... IDK my BFFs... IDK... Love this game!

Translation: Totally agree with you here. However, I don't imagine the lag will be much of an issue when the time comes as there will probably only be a handful of people playing...

So, this essentially comes down to us having to pay for ammo, right? A gun is the vessel and the bullets are the expendable objects, right? So then a "grenade case" (or whatever you want to call it) is the vessel and "grenade loot" drops are the expendable objects? That we have to pay for (cases pending)? Crap on that.

[Hiero Glyph]

They broke 0.0 det grenades? When'd that happen?
(I haven't used my frag grenade in months. )

It's been like this for a while and is a result of server latency. The chance of it occurring depends on a variety of factors but it is basically a form of input lag, just as how switching weapons can be delayed by several seconds (or 20+ last week). The result is that the grenade is not yet thrown according to the game, but the player has input the command and the grenade still detonates based on its current position (which is in the player's hand). So instead of pull pin, throw grenade, detonation, the game just updates all three factors at once causing its origin point to be its detonation point once the server updates this information.

[Xaearth]

Well said. This is a worthless investment in dev time, no matter if it was a really cool way to get grenades-say a pack of white elephants drops down from the sky with a full set of orange ones, including the awesome Infector Monster Grenade. I'd rather get other stuff in paid DLC or in any kind of DLC.

I'd even rather get an inventory UI upgrade as well as a more useable salvage matrix than get this new mechanic. Please.

I wouldn't go so far as to say it is a worthless investment of dev time...

Not that it was necessary or warranted, but, as a programmer who isn't privy to the inner workings of the dev team, I can only hope that a dev team that has seen serious problems with stability and performance to the point of limiting what they originally hoped to achieve would not be so foolish and/or incompetent as to "all-in" on adding a new consumable system to what is otherwise an already "complete" combat system.

Therefore I have to assume one of two points:
1) The dev team is too ambitious and/or incompetent to realize they shouldn't be making drastic add-ons to the combat system of a game that already has significant problems and hindrances performance-wise.
2) The dev team wanted to add a new consumable system and had the clarity of mind to test such a system before committing the resources to fully fleshing it out.

I am really hoping they went with option #2, in which case these changes to grenades make perfect sense as a test-case for the consumable framework for the more design intensive spikes and stims.

[N3gativeCr33p]

Grenades had a serious risk-reward imbalance in a variety of common situations. With a fast-fire grenade thrown from a third-person perspective, misses were common and the long cooldown on grenades made this incredibly punishing. As such, grenades become something which lacked real strategic choice.

IMHO, placing a throwing arc for grenades would have helped the cause... just like so many other TPS games out there, even going back to the SOCOM games on the PS2.

[Overtkill21]

So in thinking about this Smart Loot idea it occurs to me this very thing provides some rather probable, and concerning, answers about this grenade change:

So you’re running along with your favorite Orange Fragnova STD 55Z in a Siege and you run out – an optimistic idea of “Smart Loot” says it will then grant you an orange Fragnova STD 55Z loot drop to refill you…but if Smart Loot worked that way then it would just be Grenade Ammo; something they are specifically saying this is not.

So in likely reality the Smart Loot will simply alter the game’s basic Loot Table to place a grenade, ANY grenade, at the top of the likely to be dropped next que…

Now again, if one wishes to be optimistic, one could say that it will be altered further to place the EXACT same grenade you are carrying at the top of the que but again this makes the Smart Loot into a Grenade Ammo drop – which it isn’t.

So what do you really think the odds are really going to be of refilling your Orange Fragnova STD 55Z during a Siege, Arkfall, CoOp, etc.? (In addition to the above consider that your Shield, Weapon, and Grenade Loot Drops are now going to be competing – so I’d say the odds are pretty darn small.)

So let’s say I am correct and you are now forced to choose another grenade (something they initially said they were trying to encourage but much less mention of now – curious…but I digress) – how do you do it? If the answer involves pressing the “Start” button to enter your menu then this is a ridiculous FAIL already. Do the developers actually believe you can use the menu while in an Arkfall, Siege, or CoOp?

Devs – your idea of limited grenades and Smart Loot has FAIL written all over it, though I suppose, when your paying audience is rapidly shrinking and the costs to keep the game running are running neck-and-neck with its’ profit then failure IS an option.

[Cavadus]

Yeah, I don't think this is a terribly good idea.

Case in point, Mass Effect.

ME1 had grenades exactly like what the new grenade system is being described as. It sucked. They were hard to find, we ran out a lot, and they could be spammed like crazy.

The other problem is that mobs primarily scale to players by increased HP rather than increasing the quantity of mobs. This leaves grenade damage in the dust which is why they're usually pretty worthless at arkfalls. Also, Volge laugh at grenades.

In ME2 Bioware switched up the grenade system into what Defiance basically has right now. I'd rather have extremely effective grenades with longer cooldowns rather than weak ones which need to be spammed. And even if grenades are totally dope they're still mostly worthless in sieges and arkfalls due to the mobs' HP system.

So, yeah, all in all I don't think the proposed grenade system is something I'd enjoy. Especially since other shooters tried it, players didn't like it, and then a grenade system like Defiance's current one was quickly adopted.

[August Barkley]

Ark hunters are the elite scavengers and warriors of the New Frontier. They are equal parts treasure hunter, bounty hunter, and monster hunter, and an infinite supply of high explosives really stretched this fiction and prevented a players from making significant economic decisions.

You say such grandiloquent things, while Defiance is simple shooter! Then add all of this stuff into a game!

Add more RPG elements, new occupations, quest, fractions, challenges, locations and many other things instead of yours perverting with grenades!

Otherwise, all this "poetry" is absurd.

[Arsenic_Touch]

Ark hunters are the elite scavengers and warriors of the New Frontier. They are equal parts treasure hunter, bounty hunter, and monster hunter, and an infinite supply of high explosives really stretched this fiction and prevented a players from making significant economic decisions.

Just a smidge silly to bring this up when you can jump off a cliff and keep moving. Jump your vehicle off the cliff and only have it come to a complete stand still and then keep moving, or drive full speed into a wall, tree, rock or fence and then keep driving. Then there's the infinite spawning vehicle out of thin air. Or standing behind your vehicle and getting shot but you can't shoot back.

It's not very good to bring up immersion when making a change when there are so many immersion breaking mechanics in this game.