Midair Combos (rocket MA + hand nade)

[phanakapan]

I've gotten the hang of these now, but I had a question for the devs/testers about the choices that went into how they work.

When I first played with them, I was all excited about the possibility of something similar to midair mine discing in tribes, and the first day or two I actually thought they worked like this, exploding from a certain amount of splash. Lots of times it looked like the splash would bounce the nades away instead, but i thought they just nonregged a lot of the time (after reviewing frapses, it appears either i or someone else always hit the nades or they exploded because of their timer, rather than splash).

The way the current mechanics work, you throw the nade, then must MA the nade itself to explode it. The problem with this in my opinion is twofold. First, unless you do this literally directly on a person, the amount of damage and kickback is more or less negligible. There are some instances where this comes in handy AND makes sense to do (such as nade jumping or point blank suicide blocking incoming cappers),the vast majority of the time, it's makes more sense to just MA the person directly. Second, people aim for the nade instead of the player. This just seems odd to me, and it makes midair comboing incoming players entirely about timing instead of aiming since aiming for the nades is really really easy.

My question is basically this: why cant we make the hand nades explode from some threshold of splash damage instead of only from direct hits.

I'm not suggesting any amount of damage will make them go off, in fact I think the amount of damage should make it rather difficult to make them explode from splash unless they are very close to the center of the explosion. The reason I think splash should set them off is quite simple, it would create more opportunities to use them in a meaningful way. I like the idea of being able to combo someone because you actually MA the person, and the nade has added a few percent damage. Right now, the only combo kills i ever see are on people with low health and it would make just as much sense to toss the nade alone, use chain, or just MA them. If we could actually MA the person and explode a nade close to them to tack on a few more points of damage, it would give them more utility in my opinion, and it would be a hell of a lot of fun.

I was just wondering if this had been tested and/or discounted for some reason.

 

[Propkid]

IMO it would significantly boost defence and ground-pounding, but I don't want to argue. Instead let's hear Mabel's explanation
...and praise him for he is wise

 

[DeadGuy]

It's basically because the grenades are just a side weapon that are not to change the combat completely. They are accents to combat, and an improvement to movement. Making them easier to combo makes them have greater importance than we wanted. As you know phan, mine-disc ruled the T1 CTF games and we didn't want a repeat of that power.
As is, they still favor the defense over the offense quite a bit, so with the above in mind I see no need to boost that factor farther.

 

[LunarSolstice]

As I was reading this I kept visualizing remote detonation of hand nades by shooting them with the Chaingun, which isn't even remotely viable, but still.
However, this would mean that the nades would have to be tossed fairly accurately, which means that they would go off and damage the enemy anyways, regardless of whether detonation is triggered by the MA explosion, unless you decide to tack on some extra oomph (more knockback distance) from the combo.
My opinion is neutral. Let's get some more replies in here.

 

[Redvan]

having them explode from splash would be quite excessive imo. They're already easy enough to hit directly, as you said yourself, no reason to have them getting set off easier.

 

[radiofriendly]

(...) The way the current mechanics work, you throw the nade, then must MA the nade itself to explode it. The problem with this in my opinion is twofold. First, unless you do this literally directly on a person, the amount of damage and kickback is more or less negligible. There are some instances where this comes in handy AND makes sense to do (such as nade jumping or point blank suicide blocking incoming cappers),the vast majority of the time, it's makes more sense to just MA the person directly. Second, people aim for the nade instead of the player. This just seems odd to me, and it makes midair comboing incoming players entirely about timing instead of aiming since aiming for the nades is really really easy.

Good post. But your second point, is that really a problem? You might remember the shock combo from Unreal Tournament. It's one of UT's most universally loved tactics. And yeah, even in that game it made more 'sense' to shoot a person directly, but to launch another projectile and then shooting for that caused the combo which was often very much worth it. I think it's a matter of getting used to.

I prefer the direct hit combo in Legions, by the way. The only way they are really effective in grinding the enemy's HP down is when they're reasonably far away from you (so that you don't take damage yourself). At that distance, a skilled ma shot on the grenade justifies the extra damage. In lots of other situations you can use them to surprise your enemies and throw them off course, making them cannon fodder for the next rocket in your barrel. Don't try to combo someone if you have a sure MA shot - use them to expand your tactics instead

 

[Genericusername]

my issue with them is point blank you can basically instatoss-rocket, and kill them if you have more hp and they are close.. takes 0 skill and is extremely effective