Intro;
From veterans to regulars to newcomers, I've been hearing an increasing pattern of the same viewpoint: Hale's gotten harder over time. Hale's getting less fun to play. Hale isn't worth playing anymore.
This gamemode was meant to be a boss battle against one of the most popular, most intimidating figures of Team Fortress 2. Back in the first few years of this gamemode, the flow of gameplay was far different.
You fight Hale to see how much damage you can manage before your inevitable death, you are rewarded for your damage equally with queue points, and then you get to play the Hale to beat the crap outta 31 players. And, once in awhile, Hale would lose, and RED would celebrate over impossible victory. And Hale often did not lose. In this regard, the gameplay system rewarded good players by letting them play Hale. You worked hard to try and stop him in previous rounds, and for your efforts, you would get to play him, and enjoy destroying REDs.
Now? Playing Hale is no longer a reward. It's a challenge. Hale doesn't win all the time. He loses all the time. There are RED players that 1v1 Hales with ease. It's no longer about when RED can win. It's about when Hale can win. And when the main reward of playing VSH, the part that's supposed to be fun, is now so un-fun that people don't even want it, that people are OPTING OUT of it HALF the time, what was supposed to be the best part of the gamemode, why even bother?
This thread is for figuring out ways of buffing Hale and Hale variants for the sake of fun and increasing his chances of winning to the point that he wins more than loses, and for making it so more players want to play him.
For the sake of simplicity, these buffs are geared toward the stock Saxton Hale, but most of these ideas are general enough to be applied to all or most of our VSH Hales.
Here are some ideas I'd like to put forth to start the discussion;
1) His Health.
This one's easy, but crude. Saxton Hale's stock health currently for a full server of 31 REDs is 44000. A small increase to this number would benefit the Hales who get close to winning, but don't quite secure the victory due to a lack of remaining HP. Since RED has mechanics that do percentage-based damage, such as backstabs, market gardens, etc., I would recommend a generous buff of 25-50% (55000-66000 health max.)
2) His Melee.
Hale's current melee deals 202 damage, and is stock attack speed.
We could increase his rate of attack to better dispatch crowds of players, and consequently change his damage if needed.
We could increase the knockback of his melee attack. This is one idea in particular I would like since you could use it to knock away ubered Medics, overhealed players, Battalion's users, Heavies, Phlog Pyros, the list goes on. This would, in turn, create a new dynamic where players who can tank a hit can't just get up in Hale's face without consequence.
3) His Rage.
For Saxton Hale, he scares people near him, takes no knockback, and reduced damage. This sometimes doesn't do very much, and it's not always the worst thing in the world to get raged unless the Hale is really targeting you. Most of the time, people nearby get stunned, a couple people die, and that's that. Sometimes even, nobody dies, because a Medic jumps in with Uber, or a Battalion's user jumps in, or a Pyro comes in to airblast, etc. We could make this rage actually scary.
We could give him increased damage, like crits, during his rage.
We could give Hale a faster running speed during his rage.
He could take far less damage during the rage duration.
He could have a longer duration of knockback resistance.
4) His Mobility.
Especially on larger, or more elevated maps, it can take awhile to get around as Hale. Hale's mobility also becomes an issue when dealing with extremely mobile classes, such as good Soldiers, Scouts, Demomen, etc. This type of change would be focused on alleviating that issue. We could increase Hale's running speed slightly, to better chase down fast and jumpy opponents.
We could reduce Hale's superjump cooldown, good for quickly traveling large distances, and chasing explosive jumping classes.
5) His Knockback Resistance.
This is a suggestion I hear a lot, or rather, knockback is a common complaint of Hale players. It's not an uncommon sight to see Hale getting pushed away hard from crowds by RED's damage, or even floated, suspended in air, by this knockback. We could give Hale a passive knockback resistance, for example, of 50%, to cut down the effects by half. We could also give Hale a passive knockback resistance specifically for being airborne to better help him get to where he wants to go during superjumps.
6) His Weighdown.
This goes partly with the previous point, but making it easier for Hale to weighdown by reducing the amount of time needed to weighdown would reduce the amount of times he's just getting floated in the air by incoming damage.
Ending notes:
We could make an shorter AFK timer for BLU team to reduce the amount of times Hale is just idle the whole round and RED just farms him for damage.
+1 if you want to buff Hale! If you have any other ideas about buffing Hales, PLEASE post it!
#MAKEVSSAXTONHALEGREATAGAIN #MVSHGA #GAMING
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