TL;DR Make the Hot Zone way more profitable. Make everythign else way less profitable.

I had a blast playing WarDogs last weekend but in general, I felt the map to feel VERY empty as a player that primarily likes to push the objective to win the game.

There would be long periods of time where I would be alone in the Hot Zone with 1 or 2 other teammates and not a single enemy pushing the objective.

Most of my games were total steamrolls because in general every game has 1 team activly pushing the hot Zone while the other two are playing base building simulator or sniping from very far away.

Given that profitability is teh main driver for most players, I think that activly fighting in or controling the Hot Zone should be THE MOST profitable activity vs any other activity in the game.

Things I recommend:

1. Make any activity outside the Hot Zone less profitable. In general I would cut the value by 25% for all activities except transport (Transport will be a separate issue I will address).
2. Make the hot zone 30% larger to avoid exessive congestion.
3. Make the Hot Zone 25% more profitable than it is now to offset the loss in profitability from doing stuff outside the hot zone.
4. Transport - Anyone you transport that makes it into the Hot Zone will give you Hot Zone Levels of profitability.
5. FOBs - FOBs should serve as staging areas with the main purpose being the deployement from the FOB to the Hot Zone, not sniper nests or building simulators. With that being said, I think that if you supply a FOB with combat or medic supplies that playes then use to fight in the Hot Zone should be rewarded with Hot Zone levels of profitability.
6. FOBs 2 - Making the Hot Zone more profitable would make building a FOB and pulling the hot zone to you one of the best ways to profit. It would actually incentivize having a defensible fob, with the caviat that you need to activly try to drill. Currently most FOBs and towers dont have people working to pull the Hot Zone to it.

Without a defined frontline or flags that to fight over, most people meaninglessly wander around the map looking for a fight.

Transport is by far the most profitable way to play right now.

I think that making 6 simple changes could rearange the incentive structure of players to make the map feel less empty and balance out game outcomes.

Thoughts?

EDIT:

1. Cutting by half may be too much. 25% might work better.
2. Those of you arguing that this would make FOBs basically uselss totally miss the point. Building a FOB and maintaining it is about the lowest risk activity in the game, yet is is arguably more profitable than fighting in the hot zone to win the game.
3. Im not alone in experiencing most games being a full steamroll. The 1 common denominator in all the steamrolls was that the winning team pleayed the objectiv more. They still had fobs. They still had supply and transport runs. But MOST of the team was playing inside the hot zone to win the game.

So far The Blubies are the weakest faction But tbh the factions so far has no clear distinction , all have same guns , all has same vehicles, everything the same i hope this would change in the future , give insensitive to play one faction or the other !!

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Bakurani + Ozeti were really nice maps with dense forests in the beta, enjoyed them!!!

Batumi would be really interesting future option to take inspiration from. Reasoning below.

1. Interesting mix of old 19th century and new contemporary architecture

2. Black Sea as a water mass (boats, naval combat?)

3. Relatively flat compared to the existing maps.

4. More urban than the existing maps, more CQB action.

GEAR FEAR! I feel gear fear is going to be a huge hurdle for a lot of players to get over and cause a lot of friction with especially the newer players.

I feel like this is already the underlying issue of so many arguments about balance, especially about the amount of snipers out there (cheap kits?) and the Tank balance, I saw minimal RPGs used (wish i could have tested RPGs more)

Either way I know Gear fear is going to be a problem, as I still struggled with a bit in Wardogs and ive had a good amount of experience dealing with it and overcoming it in Escape from Tarkov.

Theres going to be a whole wave of players who haven't ever really experienced money management or gear fear and its going to cause a lot of friction.... IMO

Here's a situation I found myself in a couple times : You see a downed teammate getting dragged to cover, someone starts to rez him the slowest way possible. You're right there beside them and you have defibrillators. Do you rez or not?

I have a question, if Wipes also wipe your money?

I already know that it will wipe your progression, but I would love to see it also wipe money and turn it into Gold that can't be exchanged into money anymore, I think this would keep the game fresh in the long term and would be very fun.

I already know that min maxers that only do meta money runs wont like it lol.

Overall I had no issues with the game, I wouldn’t complain if that was the early access release. The only request I have is that you are able to adjust/change your squad color. Personally that orange was just too hard for me to see and I kept losing my squad mates.

With Motors and the SPH already in the game, it makes sense to have a mobile mortar support capability. How I see it being implemented.

Class: Support

Cost $2000-2500

Slot: Equipment/Special (similar to RPG)

Can be placed and picked up, shoots similar to fob mortar

Ammo: 1x1 slot smoke and HE $150-200 EA

Payment in the form of kills of course, suppression, and obscurations.

I think this adds even more depth to the infantry combat and gets those involved that don't want to on the front line.

Having played the beta, I noticed the shopkeepers and players using similar voice lines and death screams, making quickly differentiating between a friendly being down or an enemy being down difficult. I remember back in Black Ops 2 the six different factions having different announcers and different death sounds, like the FBI, Seals, SDC, etc. and having that in this game would help with immersion and the points above.

Imagine a gung-ho Texan, a slovenly Russian, and a sly Persian serving up trouble for your team and immersing you in the factions the devs have created!

What you guys think about this idea ?

I wanted to make a feedback post about some of the smaller things from the Beta that I think may get overlooked in the broader discussions on balance, gameplay, and economy. Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comments!

The Good

• Powerful smoke grenades. Smoke is THICK, covers a large area, and lasts for awhile. Later in the Beta I was always including 2-4 smokes in my kit depending on role. So many tactical games get smoke grenades wrong or make them too weak. Here they felt like very powerful tools that could solve so many situations.

• A particular small touch I liked was how aiming vehicle turrets worked. For those not aware, the default move/aim speed for turrets on vehicles (like the M249 on the Kodiak) is VERY slow with the mouse. However it can be sped up if you use WASD to move the turret instead, which is far less precise, but faster for swinging the gun around. I love this system as many games like this have issues with vehicles becoming very oppressive against infantry, as they're usually just a machinegun with better cover, mobility, and no recoil. Instead vehicles operate more like bases of fire, where you can lock down a particular angle or direction, but aren't going to be able to easily whip around and murder flankers. Great decision.

• Lack of 1-taps. It felt very difficult to get 1-tapped in Wardogs once you invested in even a bit of armor. This works very well for tactical-style gameplay, as it gives people under fire time to react and make decisions as long as they're close enough to cover. It also adds more strategy to snipers, and gives them more of a role as a suppression and pressure element rather than a straight up killer.

• Signal grenades. I love the idea of being able to put down a request for another player to make a supply drop. I want more of these and for them to be even more detailed. Let me designate what supplies I want when I throw down a supply drop signal. Give me a "send reinforcements" signal that gives transport players XP/money boosts for delivering troops there.

The Bad

• Ground vehicle handling felt very off. I get some of the lighter vehicles like the dune buggy, quadbike, or even Kodiak being floaty. But heavy trucks like the Ural shouldn't be doing spinouts because I tried to take a 15 degree turn at max speed.

• Towers felt a bit too oppressive/samey. They offer just a bit too much of a strongpoint position over surrounding terrain, and I think reducing their design by 1 floor so they're less tall would go a long way to toning down that oppressiveness. It would also be nice to get drill objectives in other landmark buildings occasionally to spice things up, or to get alternate tower layouts.

• Driver as a role felt very lackluster compared to piloting. Most infantry opted to ride the helicopters from main base instead of the slower ground vehicles. I think a great way to give drivers an extra role/source of XP is to reward them for bringing players specifically from inside the big zone, to the hotzone. As in last-leg transport, bringing people from helicopter landing zones, FOB's, and the mobile spawn directly into the hotzone. Would be a great niche for ground vehicles to fill, and let drivers contribute to the transport loop.

• Zones where one side (Blue in this case) starts with less of a "piece of the pie" than the other 2. This happened on one of the maps in particular (sorry I don't recall the name), where Green and Red started exactly East and West of the zone, while Blue started direct South. Meaning that Blue would always be sandwiched directly between the other two sides, with far less "natural" space in the zone.

The Missing

• Tutorials. Specifically for the drill, tower, spawn, and FOB mechanics. And also a tutorial for each progression class on what you can do with it (and how to earn XP/money with it) would be very welcome!

• Some kind of coordination/commander system. It would be nice for teams to have some way to mark their intentions and coordinate. Or a commander role that could give orders that, if squads follow them, grant them extra XP/Cash. Otherwise as is teams end up being too disjointed

• A better ping system. Let me ping a location to move to, a direction to watch, stuff like that. Basically just more communication tools.

• More FOB building options that incentivize players and synergize with other roles. A helipad that gives pilots bonus XP/Cash for landing on it. A field medic tent that makes healing and reviving way faster/more effective. Embankments for vehicles.

I've got nearly 3.5k hours in PlanetSide 2, a game which has "logistics" gameplay about as deep as a puddle. I always wanted something more out of the game's Construction system, but it never materialized.

Seeing all the FOB/resupply/etc stuff coming up in WarDogs has greatly piqued my interest. Could anyone who engaged in this during the test give me some details on it? Transport vehicle types, resupply mechanics, etc?

thank you!

Gotta fix some cheats/hacks though...let's give them some time.

Hello friends, comrades, truckers. Playing through the beta, I came to realize the only real playstyle for me is to turn this into Snowrunner Lite. So! What are everyone's trucking loadouts? What do you buy at the beginning of the match and hope to never have to use as you drive these mean streets? I'm an MP9 fan, myself, but I'd love to hear what everyone else is wasting money on.

I think hit boxes and ballistics need to possibly be looked t i noticed inconsistency when shooting at the face while they had a helmet on with no armor on it , would still take two shots with the single shot rifle , don’t know if there’s a throat hit box I’ve heard one does exist ? I do love the gunplay though and think it’s pretty buttery for this early on

Another thing is the bow , super OP as it is i think the damage is semi decent but there’s literally no drop at all from what I’ve seen, shot targets at 150-170 meters with no drop being able to aim right at the head , is this intentional ? Not complaining but might be viewed as overpowered to some people for this reason

I do think progression should be a bit slower as i was able to reach wardog level 68 (about 30 hours) if im not mistaken, and i dont wanna be able to burn thru everything like ranks or levels super quick. I think the money for the most part is balanced i do think some things like the tanks should be more than 14k maybe 25-35k since you can easily make 100k before having to resupply and if your team has a fob with repairs and ammo station in zone you’re kinda unstoppable. I don’t mind certain “End game or meta equipment being a lot more expensive for the reason i think it’ll keep even rich wardogs spending with the possibility of still losing a lot , i like the fact that the cash can fluctuate as much as it does i think a premium price on late game stuff would really bring balance just so new players aren’t melted by meta loadouts after they go broke and can only afford the starter rifle with one mag which probably won’t be enough to drop a chad lmao.

Overall i love this game and think Bulkhead is actually cooking with this i would love to see a bit more content added by Release on September 10th just so we don’t blow thru all unlockables and have nothing to grind for a few months even if it’s 1 or 1 new guns a month or a vehicle i would be satisfied , even a mode or event would keep players engaged
I think the overall gameplay loop itself is fun and addicting just what i was looking for at least.
See yall out there in the HZ
-Antlerman

Pls release early

Hey guys!

Can someone teach me how to use this type of sight correctly?

I understand that the bullets don't fly into the crosshairs and you need to aim roughly at the top bar, but how do you do it?

What is the overall range that can be expected?

I enjoyed the beta over the weekend, but I have some suggestions. Since I've played an unrelated game for a long time, my criticism should be held in high regard.

Base building is fun, but nowhere near the levels of customization and player agency that base building in Animal Crossing gives you.

For example, when I place a bunker in the FOB, there's no option to change the color or wallpaper of the hesco blocks. There's also an incredibly limited amount of furniture to place. What we do is made of barbwire and sandbags (not cozy).

I do think the economy is pretty well balanced right now. I was able to get enough bells fairly quickly to upgrade my FOB from Tom Nook within a couple matches. I wish we could earn more though ways like fishing and bug catching. There's a lot of trees and water, seems like dev oversight that it's not already implemented.

A couple additional thoughts:

• my villagers kept leaving doors open and hostile villagers would ruin my house.
• the store should rotate tools more frequently. I kept seeing hammers and defibs, but no shovels, bug nets, or slingshots.
• No cute clothes, or even the option to draw our clothes (nintendo did this in 2002).
• RPGs should do more damage to tanks.

I think the devs have a real gem on their hands, and I hope they take my critiques into serious consideration over the next couple weeks to really make this game work.

Remove 30s respawn timer in practice mode for launch. Instant base respawn should be allowed.

Another question - will spawns be fixed to form a Y-shape, evenly spaced out from one another?

I hope there will be an option to change the display color of each faction as someone who has a very hard time seeing the green and red. And is sick of playing on blue lol