Some quick thoughts on the BW changes, and a possible rebalance

[Ismael_D 12]

BlackWaters and Feds are essentially Civilian-controlled server events. They're a few minutes for all of the top dogs to stop robbing people, to stop running drugs, and to possibly work together. The recent APD handbook update will lead to fewer people attempting BlackWaters. I don't think anyone will disagree that making it harder means less people will try. This is a bad thing, discouraging fun shouldn't be the goal of an update.

I understand the issues with BW, and why these changes were made. The rewards can be too strong. You don't want every gang to have an armed Huron flying around, shit will get too crazy too fast. Again, I don't think there's anyone who would disagree with that. These vehicles should be beyond rare, and that APD change works towards that. That's the one positive.

 

So here's what I think would be the best of both worlds - change how the BW loottables are hit. Make it have a gun/equipment loottable, a ground vehicle loottable, and an air vehicle loottable. Make each accessed through blowing through a different door, and obviously only one bomb could be set at a time. (For RP elements, I guess.. The first bomb detonating would ruin the others?)

What I'm imagining is like this - you blast your way into a dome, using a bomb with a ~5 minute timer. That's enough for Cops to get there without redeploying. Not necessarily in, but to get their bearings and have troops near where they need to be. Unless they're in Kavala with only a car  from there, you'll pick one of three doors - guns/equipment, ground vehicles, or air vehicles. The guns/equipment room could have something like a 7 minute timer, making it easier than a traditional BW, but without the possibility of some of the amazing rewards. Thermals are cool, though. The ground vehicles, say a 10-12 minute timer, and the air vehicles as high as a 40 minute timer, making it so you REALLY need to have it locked down to claim some of the most OP shit in the game

Visual aid: 

 

Obviously, balance times as needed. I think a large part of the balance would honestly be the time it takes for cops to redeploy from other servers, and getting through the non-lethal waves. Holding off 12 minutes is much easier than 17

 

Just some very rough thoughts on the situation, but all in all I think these fun events should be encouraged, not discouraged. The aim should be to staunch the flow of OP vehicles, but to also leave alone, or increase the rate at which people have fun.

[falcon 765]

what? this doesnt make sense

[Ismael_D 12]

1 minute ago, Falcon said:

what? this doesnt make sense

The idea is to open BW to more people, but to bear in mind the legitimate concerns about the OPness of the higher-end rewards which was kind of addressed with the handbook change. To encourage more gangs to do the event, rather than just balancing its difficulty around the most capable gangs

[falcon 765]

Just now, Ismael_D said:

The idea is to open BW to more people, but to bear in mind the legitimate concerns about the OPness of the higher-end rewards which was kind of addressed with the handbook change. To encourage more gangs to do the event, rather than just balancing its difficulty around the most capable gangs

we dont need more people doing blackwaters but ok

[Brennan 568]

8 minutes ago, Falcon said:

what? this doesnt make sense

How can you be so confused as to this not making sense? He made a diagram for fucks sake.

[Ismael_D 12]

2 minutes ago, Falcon said:

we dont need more people doing blackwaters but ok

Why not though? BWs are some of the most fun content in the game for Civs, and I'd imagine Cops love handling them. The only drawback to them is the high-end vehicles, so toning the amount of them spawned back, while opening up the event to more gangs just seems like a win-win to me.

 

Is it a particularly negative experience on Cop?

How can you be so confused as to this not making sense? He made a beautiful diagram for fucks sake.

FTFY

[Guest G.O.A.T.]

The first constructive post I've seen in awhile. I'm actually interested in some of the ideas here.

[Grenade65 232]

Don't understand how the new update will make people do less feds. It only clears up the time taking cops to get there.

[Ismael_D 12]

31 minutes ago, Grenade65 said:

Don't understand how the new update will make people do less feds. It only clears up the time taking cops to get there.

Not sure about Feds, but cutting travel time out for APD means BW waves will begin sooner, means there's say 18 minutes of combat instead of 14 or 15. Pretty substantial percentage.

[JebronLames 175]

Cops can't log off if theres 7 (or less) of them, because you need at least 7 cops on the server for a BW. So say at 3 in the morning, a (big) gang decides to hop on and do a BW and get an armed huron, when only 7 deputies and PO's are on. There's no way they'll be able to stop the BW, and they also can't leave for another 45+ minutes unless more cops come online.

[Tman15tmb 1829]

1 hour ago, G.O.A.T. said:

The first constructive post I've seen in awhile. I'm actually interested in some of the ideas here.

Constructive posts are so last year 

[Ismael_D 12]

1 hour ago, JebronLames said:

Cops can't log off if theres 7 (or less) of them, because you need at least 7 cops on the server for a BW. So say at 3 in the morning, a (big) gang decides to hop on and do a BW and get an armed huron, when only 7 deputies and PO's are on. There's no way they'll be able to stop the BW, and they also can't leave for another 45+ minutes unless more cops come online.

Forcing the Cops in this situation to stay a bit longer I agree is shitty, I'd imagine the idea is to avoid situations where anyone is stuck for more than 15 minutes or so, where usual RP generally times out. The only thing I could really think is to require even more Cops to be on for that specific vault, since the rewards are so great. Maybe requiring 8 or 9 online to plant the bomb, but allowing it to continue with as few as 7 online, opening a few options for officers to leave if need be.

I definitely understand the concerns of increasing the length of an RP in this situation though, and it's a great point. Would just have to balance around it though. If 40+5 is too much, 30+5 wouldn't be too crazy of a change from the current. If that makes armed Hurons too common, change the spawn rates. 

[Deathgrasp 28]

Kind dig this; would make for a more dynamic BW, more shit you want longer you stay make it like can't plant a bomb on another door until the first one is blown. So if it's held and they think they can do it, they can keep it going, with the time table you could make it gear/equip plus ground Vic stays on the about the same time as a BW now but if you want a Huron and the such gotta sit for an additional 25mins so to speak, would also open up smaller gangs trying the BW, and just going for the gear and equip for the smaller timer, more activity for Civs and apd alike

[Grenade65 232]

2 hours ago, Ismael_D said:

Not sure about Feds, but cutting travel time out for APD means BW waves will begin sooner, means there's say 18 minutes of combat instead of 14 or 15. Pretty substantial percentage.

Yeah but that really doesn't mean anything just shortens the time of the first wave.

[zeno 67]

I like the visual aids

[Guest]

On 7/11/2017 at 8:18 PM, Ismael_D said:

BlackWaters and Feds are essentially Civilian-controlled server events. They're a few minutes for all of the top dogs to stop robbing people, to stop running drugs, and to possibly work together. The recent APD handbook update will lead to fewer people attempting BlackWaters. I don't think anyone will disagree that making it harder means less people will try. This is a bad thing, discouraging fun shouldn't be the goal of an update.

I understand the issues with BW, and why these changes were made. The rewards can be too strong. You don't want every gang to have an armed Huron flying around, shit will get too crazy too fast. Again, I don't think there's anyone who would disagree with that. These vehicles should be beyond rare, and that APD change works towards that. That's the one positive.

 

So here's what I think would be the best of both worlds - change how the BW loottables are hit. Make it have a gun/equipment loottable, a ground vehicle loottable, and an air vehicle loottable. Make each accessed through blowing through a different door, and obviously only one bomb could be set at a time. (For RP elements, I guess.. The first bomb detonating would ruin the others?)

What I'm imagining is like this - you blast your way into a dome, using a bomb with a ~5 minute timer. That's enough for Cops to get there without redeploying. Not necessarily in, but to get their bearings and have troops near where they need to be. Unless they're in Kavala with only a car  from there, you'll pick one of three doors - guns/equipment, ground vehicles, or air vehicles. The guns/equipment room could have something like a 7 minute timer, making it easier than a traditional BW, but without the possibility of some of the amazing rewards. Thermals are cool, though. The ground vehicles, say a 10-12 minute timer, and the air vehicles as high as a 40 minute timer, making it so you REALLY need to have it locked down to claim some of the most OP shit in the game

Visual aid: 

 

Obviously, balance times as needed. I think a large part of the balance would honestly be the time it takes for cops to redeploy from other servers, and getting through the non-lethal waves. Holding off 12 minutes is much easier than 17

 

Just some very rough thoughts on the situation, but all in all I think these fun events should be encouraged, not discouraged. The aim should be to staunch the flow of OP vehicles, but to also leave alone, or increase the rate at which people have fun.

 

To give some perspective to folks reading this thread and to yourself, I'm going to highlight the current dynamic.

 

The Staff allows a certain level of independence to the APD and R&R to draft their own updates to their respective handbooks. In the past (Especially when you guys were around as =A=) the staff played a much larger role in dictating how the APD and R&R policies were structured. When the R&R and APD eventually ended up with leaders who were non-staff, this theme began causing issues, most specifically within the APD. Non-staff Chiefs have historically made policy updates that the staff felt were too much or too little one way or the other. This devolved into shitstorms to put it accurately. Because of the backlash of historical events we try to take a step back from the "Puppet Master" role.

 

 

Both factions are highly encouraged to bring up policy/rule changes that directly affect other factions in our bi-weekly staff meetings which the faction leaders are invited too. This is not a hard requirement though as the majority of changes from both factions have little to no impact on other factions and a requirement like that would ultimately just be a burden to the R&R and APD. Obviously because of this, there are times where an update is released by the APD or R&R that the staff approach them about after the fact to address concerns in an effort to identify the problem and find better solutions to them together.

 

This recent handbook change wasn't brought up during the staff meeting but I also don't think anyone (including myself) anticipated that it would have had a noteworthy impact on civs. After the fact, the staff approached Goat and the SAPD and we peacefully and collectively came to a resolution everybody was happy with that addresses the problems the APD wanted addressed as well as addresses the concerns that civ had for the Handbook change in addition to the Staff's concerns about balance and RP. I won't release details, but this new handbook change is temporary until a development update is released that will address the issues a bit more appropriately.

 

I am happy that the APD and Staff were able to work together to come towards a resolution that satisfies both parties.

 

In addition I would like to encourage civs to engage your Civilian Representatives on potential changes/suggestions/feedback you'd like to see with Blackwater so that your issues can be brought to the attention of a formal audience in the next staff meeting.

 

[Dangus 629]

2 hours ago, McDili said:

 

To give some perspective to folks reading this thread and to yourself, I'm going to highlight the current dynamic.

 

The Staff allows a certain level of independence to the APD and R&R to draft their own updates to their respective handbooks. In the past (Especially when you guys were around as =A=) the staff played a much larger role in dictating how the APD and R&R policies were structured. When the R&R and APD eventually ended up with leaders who were non-staff, this theme began causing issues, most specifically within the APD. Non-staff Chiefs have historically made policy updates that the staff felt were too much or too little one way or the other. This devolved into shitstorms to put it accurately. Because of the backlash of historical events we try to take a step back from the "Puppet Master" role.

 

 

Both factions are highly encouraged to bring up policy/rule changes that directly affect other factions in our bi-weekly staff meetings which the faction leaders are invited too. This is not a hard requirement though as the majority of changes from both factions have little to no impact on other factions and a requirement like that would ultimately just be a burden to the R&R and APD. Obviously because of this, there are times where an update is released by the APD or R&R that the staff approach them about after the fact to address concerns in an effort to identify the problem and find better solutions to them together.

 

This recent handbook change wasn't brought up during the staff meeting but I also don't think anyone (including myself) anticipated that it would have had a noteworthy impact on civs. After the fact, the staff approached Goat and the SAPD and we peacefully and collectively came to a resolution everybody was happy with that addresses the problems the APD wanted addressed as well as addresses the concerns that civ had for the Handbook change in addition to the Staff's concerns about balance and RP. I won't release details, but this new handbook change is temporary until a development update is released that will address the issues a bit more appropriately.

 

I am happy that the APD and Staff were able to work together to come towards a resolution that satisfies both parties.

 

In addition I would like to encourage civs to engage your Civilian Representatives on potential changes/suggestions/feedback you'd like to see with Blackwater so that your issues can be brought to the attention of a formal audience in the next staff meeting.

 

All I'm hearing is PO's will get a way to transport units via heli, to active federal events. That's what I'm picking up here.

[Guest G.O.A.T.]

TL;DR for @McDili's post:

adp wins again