Ok this may sound strange but the easiest way to counter clubbing in this game other hten you know basic map knowledge would be to give easy to gain and use counter items.
Like want to counter spears and melee, an active protection system a 1 power per module defense item that detonates in an area if it takes damage damaging a cone area outward. More or less a directed explosive part with ballistic and explosive resistance but a melee weakness.
Want to counter sideways hovers… sadly that can’t be done as those are skill counters.
Want to counter dogs, give a low PS low energy cost frame mount item that allows one to burst there way out of it.
oh wait all of these can be done already in game.
Spears and dogs, melee resistant bumpers in the right place, anything that screws with mobility, MGs and thrusters… seriously basic thruster use breaks one out of kapkans.
This is why I never use shotguns anymore. I didn’t like the maps or all the melee I was getting. Some matches were comically melee. Just a bunch of Small-track-melee clones going at each other in frequently the exact same builds; either shotgun wedges or melee-small-tracks…and my poor shotgun Camero.
I feel like I should go get some small-tracks and some saws, just because I know if I do, then they’ll nerf them. That’s how it goes.
Dah, saws won’t get touched again. Druzbahs have been nerfed a lot and lacerators have received many buffs. I think they are finally in a good place. Devs won’t touch them. There’s also no way Devs will nerf small tracks. And I just realised you were being fascecious…
Ps I wouldn’t be surprised if sabbath wheels get a nerf down the line.
Seal clubbin isnt same as meta.
Shotgun wedges or small track melees are a type of meta
Putting a fused parser on sprinter cabin is seal clubbing because you can’t counter a parser at 4k PS armed with vectors.
Fusing in general is slope to seal clubbing as new player at same PS will be facing much more powerful builds.
What about simply buffing the rare and special items that are clearly underperforming vs their epic counterparts? I’m thinking about the rare ammo box, the three special engines, Ampere and Gasgen, and some of the worst sub-epic wheels specifically.
“seal-clubbing” in XO terms is the practice of bringing some high tier, silly underpriced item at low PS to obliterate people. This only happens because PS values do not reflect the actual performances of an item. We used to have tons of relics sealclubbing, it stopped the moment Targem raised their PS by 50%.
RN the only things that grossly outperform lower-tier equivalent for almost no PS increase are Hermits, extended ammo boxes, and epic engines. It can be that epic engines are underpriced, or special engines over-priced. The end result is the same: a Dun Horse is nowhere close to being as good as a Hot Red, for nearly the same PS.
If every item was properly priced, there would be no seal-clubbing. Wether you price it properly by tweaking its stats to match its PS, or tweaking its PS to match its stats, is kinda irrelevant.
Yes 100 times.
Question is - performance of any item is depending on the overall build. There are very meta combinations (lets think of all beloved Trucker-Borer combination) or Bastion with Goblins. Do you “price” PS based on the meta performance, effectively making any other combination overpriced?
Given the flexibility of XO builds - I do agree the PS values are not good, but I really dont have any ideas for a robust system.
I really think the only reasonable way is to “safe-space” lower tier PS until 5-7k and just accept that balance in mid+ tier is “weird”.
I believe items should be balanced around their best performance, but also that efforts should be made to not force them into 1 specific configuration, or build diversity dies out. This is mostly the problem with ranged weapons, which are balanced around hovers. I think instead of nerfing cannons into oblivion, the smart move would have been to give them nerfs that were more hover-specific (more spread on the move for example)
Yeah I loved assemblers on my wheeled build, look what happened… They’re the only weapon I’ve had to sell due to being nerfed too hard, it’s wild how many items have been castrated due to hovers alone
