I don't like the way "exploit" is being used. To me, an exploit means something that is not allowed. It means some sort of penalty should be applied to the the people that do it. Revenant spire is not an exploit, plain and simple, because there is no penalty for doing it. I
really don't want people to start thinking there is some secret list of exploits that people should be stigmatised for using. It will cause conflict and stifle creativity.
My thoughts on this area align with
Sirlin's post on banning things. Exploits need to be clearly defined and the entire community needs to be informed about them. Enforcement of exploits is a mess even in the best circumstances, so I put great value on Zero-K's exploit-free nature. It is extremely rare that Zero-K has any banned exploits, to the point where I can only recall a single case around Placeholders that lasted for three days before a patch.
The bar for banning an exploit is also quite high. See the "Warranted" section in the post. That said, we can patch the game so we have more options than what Sirlin talks about. But that doesn't mean I consider myself to be patching exploits.
quote:
This, like snitch-launcher, were already talked about a while ago. They are results of the physics of this game, thus no exploits, thus they will not be patched. |
All of this is to say that the above is incorrect. Something doesn't have to be an exploit to be patched, and a patch doesn't imply that something was considered an exploit. I'm belabouring this point because I don't want people docking social points from anyone who was doing something before it was patched out. Well, I suppose that is already happening anyway, I just don't want anyone who cries "That's an exploit" at others to feel emboldened by the tactic in question being patched out later. And it isn't this thread that's a problem, I'm more thinking about ingame chat.
Anyway, on Revenant spire, I think the tactic is way more dumb than powerful. Take a look at this game:
http://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/1942953I didn't go through in great detail, but there were a lot of Revenant spires that did barely anything. The missiles are deceptively sparse. They killed Fleas and a few Slings almost died after a while, but most damage was repaired relatively quickly. At some density there will be an effect, but it mostly seemed to be psychological screening. The thing that shifted my opinion of its power the most was seeing three Revenants keep a few shields on low power, early in the SE.
Perhaps the shield drain was effective, but otherwise I think we're far outside the realm of balance. So is it just too annoying, with how it spams noises and explosions? Probably, yes. Revenant is loud because its shots are generally important. They should draw attention in a way that saturation artillery should not. Still, I feel like blocking Revenant spire will make ZK slightly worse.
We haven't really heard from the people doing the Revenant spires, and what do the silent majority of onlookers think? I suspect it is a fad that will pass when Revenant has a nerf. Then the special tactics-enjoyers will go experiment with something else. I don't really want to hit them with the door on the way out as it sends the wrong message about experimentation. I'd feel a lot better if the practitioners of this would pop in to say that they've had their fun but would like a nerf so they can move onto something else.
Here is a bit of a relevant thread from a while ago:
https://zero-k.info/Forum/Post/205529#205529I generally don't want to remove creative stuff unless it is necessary.
On top of this, I feel like ZK gets slightly worse because there is no nice way (that I have found or heard proposed) to block Revenant spire. Making the missiles drop down earlier doesn't work, it just increases the spread at the cost of a bit of range, which probably even brings it into the realm of viable (a few Revenants can do decent damage vs a HLT from just beyond range with 2s flight time). Burnblow, ie having the missile blow up rather than fall down, works, but feels worse in general play. Having the missiles all explode mid-air in Revenant vs. air battles results in a burst of colour and sound, when no game-mechanical thing actually happened. It breaks the link between visuals and game impact. This isn't a huge problem, but I don't think Revenant spire is a huge problem, so small issues matter.
There is also a limit to what can be done, since Revenant has cylindrical range. Make the missiles run out or explode too early, and people start reporting inconsistent Revenant behaviour when steep cliffs are involved.
I predict that I'm going to implement some sort of burnblow solution, unless I hear a better idea. This is mostly off the demonstrated effectiveness of Revenant vs. area shields, but the sound spam and incidental damage contributes too. Units should generally be able to fire in whatever ways are useful, and shooting at shields from range seems sufficiently useful.
