Hey everyone,

I wanted to create a thread where the community can share ideas they’d like to see considered during the offseason. Whether it’s class balance, gameplay mechanics, league rules, maps, or anything else, feel free to post your suggestions below.

I’m also happy to implement ideas into Triple Threat as smaller test projects. We don’t always have the luxury of running mix or sb, especially during daytime or late-night hours, so TT can be a good place to experiment with changes and gather feedback on a smaller scale.

Nothing suggested here is guaranteed to be implemented. The goal is simply to give the community a centralized place to discuss ideas. I think the forums are a better place for this than Discord since conversations there tend to move quickly and suggestions can get buried.

Hopefully this gives captains, league staff, and the community an easy place to reference when it’s time for finalizing offseason discussions.

To get the discussion started, here are a few ideas that have already been brought up:

Mountain’s Suggestions

* Decrease Ranger throwing knife damage by 5.
* Reduce AT HP by 5.
* Nerf Heavy Ripper armor, or add a 2–3 second reload time and reduce bullet output.
* Buff the LAW so direct hits are more effective.
* Increase Marine shotgun damage so it can better compete in close-range 1v1s.

Other Suggestions

* Give the Ripper a minimum effective range.
* Remove armor and increase hp of affected classes
* Increase knife (or shotgun) damage against armored classes so every class has a chance against AT up close, especially while the AT is reloading.
* Rework the LAW to deal more explosive damage, less shrapnel damage, and possibly increase its explosion radius.
* Increase camping penalties:
* 1st infraction: Coordinate warning.
* 2nd infraction: -1 kill for each player who triggered the camping warning.
* 3rd infraction: Player is specced with no substitute.
* Consider a small Ranger buff to improve the class’s overall feel. I haven’t played it enough to know what to buff though.

Looking forward to hearing everyone’s ideas. Even if you disagree with a suggestion, explain why: that discussion is just as valuable as the suggestion itself.

Heres my CHATGPT summary of some my thoughts:

Marine fixes: Buff Marine SG and fix Marine reloads. Since reload issues seem to affect multiple classes, it would be worthwhile to do a full review of reload mechanics across the game.
Reload bugs: The user experienced getting stuck because everything was "on reload," suggesting there may be a broader issue beyond just the Marine class. (Played Demo and everything was on load at one point while fighting... dont know how that is possible).

LAW rework: The inconsistency (players appearing to survive direct hits while others see near misses) feels more like a server/lag or hit registration problem than a weapon balance issue. The older LAW's didn't seem to be powerful enough either. Open to some LAW buffs.

Camping penalty (-1 kill award): Doesn't support unlimited -1 kill penalties. Suggests capping the penalty (around 15 kills) so it discourages excessive camping without overly punishing weaker squads.

Spectating camping players with no substitutes: Opposes automatically forcing players to spectate and no subs. This may discourage camping, but it also:
Leads to more forfeits.
Leaves teams shorthanded.
Reduces individual playtime and could drive players away.

Game pacing: Solutions like a mercy rule or reducing match length to 20–25 minutes instead of harsher anti-camping mechanics. Camping can also be a legitimate strategy, and teams always have the option to engage instead.

Ripper/Ranger balance: Are Ripper or Ranger are actually problematic considering how few people play them?. I thought there was recent Ranger buff and it seemed like was in a good place.

Heavy Ripper suggestion: Consider removing Heavy Ripper's armor and increasing its HP to around 120–130, or alternatively give the standard Ripper a small HP boost to encourage more frontline play and improve class viability. Or equalize them both at maybe 110 hp? see if that increases usage for pass through ripper.

Remove the longer ar reload for using SG on marine. Should be no penalty for using SG while ar is loading on marine.

Every class has that penalty minus ranger

* Remove armor from everything that has it. It's already hard enough to judge if you've actually hit someone or not given that you can't trust what you see. Adding armor into the mix makes it feel like people eat infinite damage and also typically has an outsized impact on small arms like shotgun which already sucks as a weapon. It also dramatically reduces the risk of getting one-shot from all large explosions.

* Give LAWs way lower outer damage on their explosion, like hand grenades. The pass/fail on taking 50 dmg vs 0 if you're 1 pixel closer to its explosion is nonsense. Maybe give them some more inner damage and explosion radius to compensate, and maybe make less schrap too. The RNG on these things is horrible.

* Address camping through incentives to move around the map, not arbitrary rules that will inevitably be enforced spottily. Brainstorming ideas in that vein since we'll probably never have flagging:
-- Supply drops with typical explosives or unique things like one-off mortars that any class can use, temporary buffs like armor kits or stims, deployable/launchable signal flares that give vision, a consumable that gives you 3s of complete immunity, etc. The general theme here is these should help you break camps.
-- Temporary king-of-the-hill-ish objectives that reward kills for holding for a period of time.
-- Spawn these things in locations that aren't trivially defensible and are roughly aligned along the centerline of the maps. They could be announced a minute or something ahead of time before spawning so teams can prepare to fight over them.
-- The objectives need to be good enough that opting to camp and not fight over them is a terrible strategy.
-- There should be a good number of these events per game, like 10. Maybe put timers on any items/benefits they provide so you can't win one and snowball into the next one all match.

* Get rid of baselines. Adjust maps to have multiple drop zones that teams can pick from on their side so you literally can't be base raped. Leave in rules about having to leave your DS. Combined with incentives for map play, sitting at your base shouldn't be a reasonable strategy for evenly matched teams unless you're winning by a comfortable margin without much time left, which seems fine to me.

I don’t like it

* Decrease Ranger throwing knife damage by 5 - If reducing knife damage, increase sniper damage by 5 or reduce range of the knife
* Reduce AT HP by 5 - Agree
* Nerf Heavy Ripper armor, or add a 2–3 second reload time and reduce bullet output - Remove the armor
* Buff the LAW so direct hits are more effective - Agree - Too many people getting lawed on the head and surviving
* Increase Marine shotgun damage so it can better compete in close-range 1v1s - Agree, or slightly reduce the AR / SG penalty during reloads.


* Give the Ripper a minimum effective range - Disagree, removes an element of ambushes and positioning
* Increase knife (or shotgun) damage against armored classes so every class has a chance against AT up close, especially while the AT is reloading - Great idea, worth truing out - not enough people use the combat knife in close quarters
* Rework the LAW to deal more explosive damage, less shrapnel damage, and possibly increase its explosion radius - Needs less shrapnel damage

* Increase camping penalties: Disagree with all of these points. Let teams play the way they want to play.
* 1st infraction: Coordinate warning.
* 2nd infraction: -1 kill for each player who triggered the camping warning.
* 3rd infraction: Player is specced with no substitute.

* Consider a small Ranger buff to improve the class’s overall feel. I haven’t played it enough to know what to buff though.
- Ranger really doesn't need a buff. If reducing throwing knife damage by 5, increase sniper damage by 5.

The truth is that the people/powers that be want to make your game exclusive rather than inclusive.

There is an ingroup of players and an outgroup of players. People like Champion, Mecca, Eric, and Pistor don’t want your voices heard. They spend hundreds and hundreds of hours cultivating power to make sure that armor, mobility, and damage remains peak for their special little boy even when they cry, complain, and threaten to quit the league because changes are destroying “the classic USL experience.” They don’t give a fuck about your opinion and will actively spend 50 hours a week DM’ing/posting on Discord to make sure they get Adderall Curry Boy’s taint sucked so well.

You have a Deputy Admin coming into an honest and productive post (with pretty legitimate ideas) spewing a 7-word response saying: “lul, hair gel, sg always same, lolz.” What does that tell you about whether he gives a fuck about your opinion? I bet he ends up on a squad sucking off Sov.

You have a former DDOS’ing game admin sabotaging changes because his little incel existence requires herpes from the cool kids.

Step the fuck up or quit the game.

Hundreds and hundreds of hours cultivating power just to play 1 full season for the first time in like 7 seasons. That's cute. Heavy ripper has existed in its current form for almost 4 years now, yet this is the first time I ever played it. Do you genuinely think I care that much about armor? How are you going to say that I'm cultivating power to make sure armor, mobility, and damage remains peak and then contradict yourself by saying I "cry, complain, and threaten to quit the league because changes are destroying the classic USL experience." Which one is it?

I don't even think I've spent 50 hours in the entirety of USL Discord's existence, let alone for class changes that I genuinely don't care about. I played ripper for 1 season to change it up. I don't care what happens to it after that. Wild talk from a cringe alt account lol.

Revert everything back to before Emp fucked everything up (S17?), start over and try again

Keeper of Anzu, I wish you the best in this endeavor.

Address camping through incentives to move around the map, not arbitrary rules that will inevitably be enforced spottily. Brainstorming ideas in that vein since we'll probably never have flagging:
-- Supply drops with typical explosives or unique things like one-off mortars that any class can use, temporary buffs like armor kits or stims, deployable/launchable signal flares that give vision, a consumable that gives you 3s of complete immunity, etc. The general theme here is these should help you break camps.
-- Temporary king-of-the-hill-ish objectives that reward kills for holding for a period of time.
-- Spawn these things in locations that aren't trivially defensible and are roughly aligned along the centerline of the maps. They could be announced a minute or something ahead of time before spawning so teams can prepare to fight over them.
-- The objectives need to be good enough that opting to camp and not fight over them is a terrible strategy.
-- There should be a good number of these events per game, like 10. Maybe put timers on any items/benefits they provide so you can't win one and snowball into the next one all match.

* Get rid of baselines. Adjust maps to have multiple drop zones that teams can pick from on their side so you literally can't be base raped. Leave in rules about having to leave your DS. Combined with incentives for map play, sitting at your base shouldn't be a reasonable strategy for evenly matched teams unless you're winning by a comfortable margin without much time left, which seems fine to me.



I like the idea of these being into a hybrid SK zone that seems like it would be a fun idea, but I think a simpler idea would just be spawning a flag or two to have to force teams to capture point. Make it a win condition if the camping is really bad for example if a team has to capture it 5 times throughout the 30 minute game its an auto win or something along the lines like that. I am sure there could be more details worked out, but the point would be to set up an alternate win condition for it to break a heavy camping game.

I kind of figured multiple DS or entrance/exit ways would be included by now to prevent rapes, not long ago there was mention of a teleport/elevator system that would activate for the trapped team. But open to solutions to alleviate spawn raping/camping.

Abyss those are cool ideas but most would take a longer period of testing / need to be implemented and created so I wouldn’t anticipate those being implemented for next season.

Do we have any changes going live soon? We are under 5 weeks to season start with no changes yet.

Cant take credit, they were Sabo's ideas. but they are very cool though.

I am so sorry I am just remembering these forums exist, I will give this a read over today and see what I can implement while we still have time to experiment. Thank you everyone who gave good feedback/suggestions.

Let's shift the discussion for LAWs over to the discord thread https://discord.com/channels/1167380552408641567/1539757607990988921/1539757607990988921 - I like the other ideas but its hard to act on a lot of them since they're entire redesigns of how the game plays. There is a path for more heavy tinkering if people want to get into the zone dev process more, but nothing that lands in USL easily without a ton of consensus.

removing armor should remove completely remove the reload delay of shotgun for marines. this is more impactful than stated. at least, if armor is removed for all classes.