Orthros

Somewhat Threatening Sniper
Yeah, this has been coming for a long time.

If I had to describe the Liberty Launcher in a single word, that word would be 'overpowered'. Boasting +25% Clip Size, +40% Projectile Speed, and -25% Damage from Rocket Jumps in exchange for a meager -25% Damage Penalty, this launcher is a VSH Soldier's bread and butter. Normally, all weapons have pros and cons in VSH, like in vanilla TF2, but not here. If you use anything other than the LL, you're putting yourself at a distinct disadvantage compared to soldiers that do use it.

"But, Orthros! You use Direct Hit and Stock and do just as well!"

I have almost 7000 TF2 hours. The average VSH player does not.

In VSH, every class has a few things they need to keep in mind when fighting the boss to ensure their survival. For soldier, that looks something like:
  • Keep your distance.
  • Have an escape route.
  • Maintain a close eye on your health.
  • Keep your weapons loaded.
If a Soldier with these options in mind is forced to only have a choice in his Primary weapon, while keeping stock on his Secondary and Melee, then after looking at the stats of each Launcher, he'd almost always go with the LL. It handles those points easily.

Of course, 99% of VSH players will pair this weapon with the Mantreads. In Skial, these allow you to jump very high as soldier (after a bit of testing, I believe it's similar to a 1 rocket Sync Jump, so around 2x height), which makes getting around the map child's play for even the most basic of Rocket Jumpers. While you'd normally take a lot of damage from your launcher while running Mantreads, the Liberty's RJ resistance counters this well, allowing you to make your way around the map's health packs like a runner around a track.

Finally, most bring along a Market Gardener. With VSH's heavy rewarding of slapping buff australians in the face with a shovel while flying by them at two hundred miles an hour, equipping it with a jump-orientated loadout like the Mantreads and LL creates a synergized weapon set so powerful that even the best of hale players have difficulty bringing down even a low-skilled player using it, and those low level players can do loads of damage with a single market garden crit.

Now, that isn't the only set soldiers use in VSH, and those last two paragraphs do kind of make a counter-argument, but that's not the point. The point is, compared to any other Launcher's stats, the Liberty is the absolute best at keeping you alive in VSH by far. This is most apparent in maps with large HP packs, as you can literally jump across the map to reach them in a single jump. This can cause massive delay as the boss tries in vain to catch the 5+ soldiers that just rotate around the health packs, sometimes not even bothering to do damage. I have to admit, my hatred for this weapon knows no bounds.

TL;DR The Liberty Launcher is too powerful and causes massive delay, especially on popular (and unfair) maps. I'M LOOKING AT YOU, MILITARY AREA.

That in mind, here is a tried and true set of stats that make the LL more fair to play against.
  • +40% Projectile Speed
  • +25% Resistance to Rocket Jump Damage
  • +25% Clip Size
  • -25% Damage Penalty
  • -25% Maximum Health
  • -50% Healing from All Sources
As a part of the G.S-N server Staff Team, I helped come up with these stats, along with our main Dev, FlashBackManiac (who has even more TF2 experience than I do), and our other Admins/Mods, Moof, Holdfish, Geeklord, and Explorer. They were made with the idea of limiting the movement options of the Liberty Launcher, while still keeping it on par with the other RLs in Soldier's arsenal. The suggested stats would allow players to still make use of the extra movement of the Liberty, but it would force them to keep a closer eye on their health and make them think before just mindlessly jumping. (Note that these stats were tested on a server that, frankly, has a much higher average skill level than Skial.)

Let me know your thoughts!
 
  • Like
Reactions: Gameboy.exe

chairius✿

Wicked Nasty Engineer
FF2 Balancer
personally, i think the mantreads are the source of this problem as they have a 200% air control, 75% kb resist (if that even matters) and insane jump height with no downside. i'll +1 this, but know that the mantreads are stupidly overpowered aswell
 

Cream Tea

Epic Skial Regular
Legendary Mapper
It's not the liberty launcher that's the problem it's the mantreads which let people almost touch the skybox when they jump and reduce fall damage.
 

Percilius

Totally Ordinary Human
Contributor
FF2 Balancer
-1
Seems to me that the only reason you find it overpowered is because they get paired with the mantreads.
 

Orthros

Somewhat Threatening Sniper
If you nerf the mantreads you will kill the VSH servers and get a swarm of angry players demanding to bring them back. Believe me, if I thought we could get away with any kind of nerf to those, I'd push for it. But since we can't, we need to go for something that won't piss everyone off. There will still be backlash, but far less of it, and a larger majority of players will be happy that you won't be able to delay as much with the LL.
 

Percilius

Totally Ordinary Human
Contributor
FF2 Balancer
If you nerf the mantreads you will kill the VSH servers and get a swarm of angry players demanding to bring them back. Believe me, if I thought we could get away with any kind of nerf to those, I'd push for it. But since we can't, we need to go for something that won't piss everyone off. There will still be backlash, but far less of it, and a larger majority of players will be happy that you won't be able to delay as much with the LL.
Or maybe they'll just end up using the gunboats.
 

Orthros

Somewhat Threatening Sniper
Or maybe they'll just end up using the gunboats.

The mantreads can't be nerfed because too many people like them the way they are, even if they are overpowered. By nerfing the Liberty Launcher, the issue is still dealt with, but it keeps the crowds happy. Sure, there'll be a few people who won't like it, but that's how it is for every weapon nerf (and buff, for that matter.)

If it's really this big a debate, then I wouldn't mind making a detailed suggestions thread for the Mantreads specifically. I have several ideas that could be put into effect that may or may not solve the problem. Believe me, it's not like I like them either. But my goal is to balance weapons better while still pleasing the masses. No-one likes delaying soldiers, but many people like the maneuverability provided by the Mantreads. Every Launcher does a lot of self damage on Rocket Jump except the Liberty Launcher, which limits movement (an argument could be made for the Black Box, but since you have to be shooting the boss to regain HP and you only have three rockets, it feels balanced to me) and forces you to conserve health. Using the LL, you remove these limitations, making it nearly a straight upgrade in VSH.

Whenever you nerf a weapon, you upset a lot of people. Between the Mantreads and the Liberty Launcher, nerfing the LL will anger far less of them, and it still deals with the problem.
 

Gameboy.exe

Spectacularly Lethal Soldier
Contributor
-1
Like the others said, it's not the Liberty Launcher but it's the Mantreads.
Leave the Liberty Launcher as is
 

Orthros

Somewhat Threatening Sniper
that's not a good mentality for game balance


-1
Blame the average Skial player, not me. I personally wouldn't mind seeing them nerfed. Since there seems to be a lot of interest, I'll make a thread about them sometime in the next couple of days. Even if they do get nerfed, though, I still think the LL should be adjusted, too.
 

Chance

Australian Skial God
Contributor
Blame the average Skial player, not me. I personally wouldn't mind seeing them nerfed. Since there seems to be a lot of interest, I'll make a thread about them sometime in the next couple of days. Even if they do get nerfed, though, I still think the LL should be adjusted, too.
I understand they're all dumb as shit I was a long time regular on VSH, but I still think you're playing up their retardation a wee bit much with this. They will cry and moan but there's no way it would cause the server to start losing players.
 

KinCryos

TF2 Admin
Contributor
Mapper
nerf remove the added buffs from the Mantreads. only reason they were buffed in the first place is that the 'treads made Goomba useless, and VSH players wanted to keep that stupid plugin.
 

Meowcenary

Gaben's Own Aimbot
Contributor
Having a disgusting amount of no life hours on VSH I'll give my two cents

We shoudln't nerf the loadout itself. People find it fun, and I don't want to see fun taken away from them. Especially now with community servers dying out further and further, we don't need to be giving anyone even more of a reason to stop playing on Skial.

HOWEVER, I feel we can still adequately take care of the problem in a simple but effective way: nerf large health kits on the problematic maps.

They rely on full sized healthpacks. If they were made smaller on the maps where they're a problem (urbanworks, military area for example) they won't be able to rocket jump around as much, nor can they delay the round nearly as long if they're constantly trying to rocket jump away from hale when they're the last ones left since they'll just kill themselves much quicker.

Reducing the health kit sizes to 1 or 2 small health packs rather than 1 full sized health kit would effectively nerf the rocket jumpers.

This way the market gardener isn't as OP but people can still have fun with it.