Developer Q&A - By ChemZero

We have restarted taking in your questions/comment and forwarding them to the developers. They will periodically be taking in a few questions at a time from the stock which we see on the forums and elaborating on each point.


FLOOR DIVING
Floor Diving does not promote fair gameplay. My opponent can easily prone when attacking without experiencing any drawback while it takes time for me to focus my aim at him. Will there be improvements on this?


We have highly taken this into account and we have a working solution already. In our next CB phase, you should be able to see improvements that would give disadvantage to people who prone during direct encounters. On our next release, players will experience a “weapon ready” delay when they go to the Prone position.

Nickole Li: Floor diving or “dolphin diving” as noted on the forums does negatively impact gameplay. In the next Closed Beta phase, you can expect to see camera shake when diving to the ground and a weapon ready time delay. Dolphin divers will now take some time to bring their weapon to bear. Additionally, prone speed has been reduced especially when in iron sight, firing and reloading. This mitigates the annoying Ghost strafing and firing while prone.


PASSIVE ABILITIES
I want to benefit from ammo regeneration ability starting from level 1. Unfortunately, it's not available until level 9. Can we have this at lower levels?


You can already recover ammunition from dead bodies starting from level 1. We expect this to be a principle mechanic for maintaining your ammo supply.

Nickole Li: Players are already allowed to loot ammo off dead bodies, which should help mitigate running out of ammo till ammo regen is available. Ammo regen is a team device that is made available at the same time as all the other team devices, so it would be unfair to the other classes to have it earlier for the Specialists.


REWARDS
Will we be able to get rewards for team accomplishments like capturing with allies, shared kill, or skill benefits like ammo regeneration? Currently, this feature is not available in GRO.


In-game scoring is affected by individual actions such as kills, assists, headshots, captures, and capture assists. We will continue to add different scoring events that reflect team-oriented and tactical gameplay.

Jesse Knapp: One of the most exciting things about working on online games like GRO is the ability to constantly add to and improve the game. We have recently for example added Capture Assists to help reward players who are a key part of a point capture but aren’t on the point at the moment it is captured. This is currently the second most rewarding action in terms of score, second only to actually capturing the point. Situational kills(offensive and defensive) around capture points as well as assists are also currently rewarded. We’ve got a few more situational/teamplay score rewards coming soon(tm) but I won’t spoil the surprise just yet.

Joe McGinn: We do need to keep the classes balanced. For example, it's difficult to equivalently quantify the contribution of using Oracle vs. using Blitz. So some of these class-specific accomplishments are rewarded via achievements and daily missions instead, since these are custom to each class and not directly compared like your score at the end of a match.

ADS DAMAGE DISTANCE
As an Assault, I have difficulty indentifying therange of my ADS ability whenever I'm targeting an enemy.Is there any way we could determine if our opponents are within the range of our ADS?


As of the next CB build release, ADS will be able to affect opponents at a longer range and for a longer duration. We are still looking at ways to improve thedistance indicaton and damage. As an added tip, when you use this ability, zooming in on the target increases the damage dealt.

Nickole Li: The ADS will have increased range and duration in the next Closed Beta phase. We are working on improving the ADS feedback, so stay tuned for updates. On a side note, you can increase damage on targets affected by your ADS by zooming in on them (default: scrolling mouse wheel).



RECON CLASS
Is it true that Recons are overpowered? I noticed that there are a lot of them in a match compared to other classes.


Each class is designed to have advantages and disadvantages in the battlefield. A team with a mix of classes will outperform a team that is unbalanced, especially as players become more familiar with the game.Still, we are keeping a careful eye on class power and will make changes as necessary.

Nickole Li: The Recons have their own strengths and weaknesses. They are the true glass cannon of the battlefield, with high damage potential and comparatively low armor and health. This divergence in survivability only widens as the Ghosts advance, so their apparent advantages may not be as great when dealing with the better equipped veterans. For example, the Cloak device appears to be a massive advantage in the beginning, when players are new to the maps and have no experience in spotting the telltale visual distortion of a cloaked Recon. However, after playing a few rounds, players get a feel for where enemies usually come from when they’re flanking and start realizing that the slow Cloak recharge is taking its toll on the Recons: the Recons aren’t cloaking as often anymore and actually begin feeling rather squishy.

Admittedly, the “glam factor” of an invisible sniper class bearing the Recon name has a rather strong effect on player perception and expectations, making the class a comfortable first choice. However, we are also keeping an eye on player stats on the CB. So far, the K/D ratios are similar, with the Recons trailing slightly, Specialists having a slight edge and Assaults fairly even. While the numbers look fairly balanced for now, we are constantly monitoring the stats and making tweaks along the way to ensure that all classes provide the players with a satisfying experience.

Joe McGinn: We are continuing to tune Recon sniping, via features like weapon sway. But according to the data we've collected so far, no class is overpowered - statistically, all classes are very close in measurable success rates like kill/death ratio. (Believe it or not, Specialists are the most lethal class by this stat, though only by the tiniest of margins.) So we believe the excess number of recons is in part a matter of perception. Everyone understands the sniper role and how to play it, so it's a comfortable choice.

We do understand the importance of this issue (and in fact your observation is confirmed by our data: recon is indeed the most popular class, though that tends to even out the longer the beta runs). We have made some changes such as offering a choice of different weapon loadouts at character-selection time, in the hope of making the options available toother classes more apparent. We will keep watching this issue closely.




MAPS: METRO STATION
Why are spawn points in metro station so far?


The reason for this distance is for game balance. By enabling teams to spawn behind their own defending points should give each of them fair chances to gain advantage against each other.

Joe McGinn: The design principle is that if your team wins a firefight, your team has time to advance to the next combat zone (i.e., the next set of clear, safe cover big enough for your team to set up) while the other team respawns and meets you at the same combat site. The distance from each spawn point to capture zone is therefore standardized as much as possible on all Capture maps.