New weapons (and some old one) don't fit Nexuiz

[Flying Steel]

This is a flawed approach. I explained this pretty well in IRC yesterday in the dev channel. The reason why this is a flawed approach is that the goal should be to have EVERY player become an advanced player (someday). However, if the game is not setup with very much depth of gameplay, then there is nothing of interest for advanced players.

But how is depth of gameplay being undermined? The HLAC and Fireball can't be powerful enough to do that, some folks have even said they find the HLAC underpowered.

Plus when did Nex have more gameplay depth? When it was dominated by MG, NEX and RL back in 2.3? When you could circle jump faster? Where's the depth in that?

What I'm getting at is the new weapons aren't necessary evidence that the gameplay depth and balance is degrading. IMO, it actually seems to be improving, though the havoc balance might change this come 2.6, if it does not go through some heavy changes before then.

So the theory of lowering the ceiling to make it fun for new players will eventually result in those people being disinterested in the game over the longterm (much like a lot of Nexuiz regulars have started to become recently).

What might look like lowering the ceiling might only be lowering the floor. The default crylink people said was spammy, but you'll still be at a severe disadvantage if you wield it against an experience player and you can't accurately lead him and guess his moves. This applies to all the spammiest weapons in my experience, if they can't be wielded accurately they won't do enough damage to save your ass against an opponent with moderate skill.

Instead, the goal should to properly develop the gameplay so it does have depth to it, but also work on ways to more quickly bring new players up to intermediate skill level so they can actually enjoy the game for its depth.

Well it should also be the kind of depth that is fun, and there's nothing wrong with a self described "simple shooter" being "easy to learn" (while hard to master) either, methinks.

[SavageX]

Well... from my point of view as co-leader: I share the view that apparently currently something is broken with the game and I *welcome* shifting towards a "friendly to new players" tuning.

While I can absolutely see this may upset some players (and I'm sorry for that) I'd hope we could simply try things out without being crucified beforehand (nah, that's too strong a wording, but you get the idea).

What I don't get is that apparently nobody realizes that weapon balance is something easily changed by some cvars and that the "pro community" could simply provide something fitting their needs that fits like a glove - that'd be a really simple mod. That'd be constructive and I'd even vote for including it with Nexuiz and e.g. give it a different color in the server browser (if possible).

So if the "pro community" can actually decide on something they like that could be something constructive. If most servers would happen to use that mod... well, that'd be some sort of community vote, too.

We can have the pony AND the cake.

[pain_fedora6]

francotirador means sniper in spanish : ) think of that and correlate with the kitty in the avatar : D . And the associations become even easier if you have played with him not fake-nicking ^^

[nifrek]

They never help other people in a game, as all they care for is winning.

Wait, what? I'm sorry that you're feeling attacked, but this is nonsense. That's pretty insulting and that definitely shows you are completely ignorant about those "pro-gamers". First of all there's no such thing in Nexuiz anyway, there's merely a competitive community slowly growing and dying at the same time, and for that reason those players are acting opposite of what you are saying, they want more players to join in so they're happy to help newbies learn the game, give them lessons on how to use weapons, etc. There are exceptions of course, but very few of them. It's unfortunate that you had to deal with a couple of those "exceptions" in the last year on the forums and on irc (not going to mention names), but looks like you made your mind already that those couple people represented all of us.

In fact, nexuiz's competitive community is so amazingly healthy, it can't even be compared to what it is in other games. Not in the sense that it's very active or that there's a lot of players, because that would be a lie. But in the sense that those players are very respectful and helpful to others. The only times I seen those "pro" players be rude to newbies, is when those newbies come from other games saying that nexuiz sucks and that they can beat anyone in this game, that does happen from time to time. Those "newbies" rarely stick around more than a couple weeks and usually go back to whatever game they were playing before. Maybe that's bad, but most people's reaction to shit-talk is shit-talking back. Otherwise, to be honest I think have only ever seen ONE player be rude to a newbie without reason and that player is known for his bad attitude. Of course, I'm not on all servers at all times, but from my experience that is how things are and I've played a LOT in the past 2 years.

Note that I am talking about the NA scene, maybe things are different in other parts of the world and other Nexuiz communities.

Anyway I remember having conversations about this with you before, trying to explain to you how the "elitists" playing on scary private servers actually worked hard helping out new players and were not as evil as you seemed to think.

[Yoda almighty]

depth of gameplay

this term got me thinking. how are we defining depth of gameplay? cause by my definition, nexuiz really doesn't have any. most people's strategies seem to consist of grabbing the first weapon that comes to hand and shooting at people until they explode. now this is fun and everything, but it could be so much better.

for example, think about variables. right now, it seems to me that all we are doing is changing the weapons damage and fiddling around with a few things like range, but if we wanted REAL balance, all the weapons would do the same damage, same range, same speed, and that just wouldn't be fun at all.

so how about we add some more?

speed:
i have heard people mention that nexuiz is a little too fast. well how about we have weapons effect your speed? guns are heavy, and a big gun is a lot heavier than a small one. so you could have a big, clunky, death-dealing laser that does a lot of damage, but slows you down, so that players with lighter, faster weapons have a slightly better chance of being able to pick you off.

weapon properties:
maybe wielding an energy weapons makes you slightly less (or more) vulnerable to other energy weapons, so you would want to use ballistic weapons against them. not so much that you couldn't still kill someone with an energy weapon, but just enough to make it a little easier.

size:
another thing i have noticed is that all of the weapon sprites are the same size. I think that weapons size should effect how powerful they are, also sacrificing visual range for a more powerful weapon. (I also think that we should experiment with the rocket launcher being an over the shoulder weapon, but that's just me )

we also have to think about how vehicles are going to effect the game play. a friend of mine mentioned that if this game is going to put in vehicles, it should also have some sort of anti-vehicle gun. like a relatively slow firing gun that is easy to dodge when you are on the ground, but not quite as easy in a vehicle. also, maybe redo the turrets a little bit, so instead of just being automatic, you can actually get in and control it manually.

another idea would be EMP weapons, that effect the vehicles electrical systems, making them harder to use/less responsive/totally inoperable. maybe it can depend on the accuracy of the hit. maybe also, the vehicles have weak spots that do more damage when you hit it there.

also, maybe the EMP weapon can effect player weapons too. if you hit a player with it, it deals no damage, or very little, but disables their current weapon, either for a certain amount of time, or maybe permanently, so they have to pick up a new one.

just some things to think about

[Dokujisan]

This is part of a conversation from the dev IRC channel. It might explain a little more of what I mean.

<Dokujisan> I wasn't that impressed with Nexuiz when I first played it (much like Nifrek). I played it for months on occasion just out of boredom. I felt like the game was... "eh...alright" but nothing to write home about. I didn't start REALLY enjoying the game until about a year after first playing it. That is when I started really learning what you can do in the game. <<--- This is what EVERY player wants out of a game. EVERY player...even
<Dokujisan> the casual ones really want a great gaming experience. They just don't realize it yet until it happens
<nifrek> heh, that's sound exactly how I felt Dokujisan
<nifrek> it seemed like a game you play for fun and then you throw away after a while and try something else
<Dokujisan> yeah...so the problem was that I didn't know about all of the advanced things you can do. I had no idea.
<Dokujisan> I was totally oblivious. In fact, I thought I was pretty good at the game a few months into it (coming from my quake experience)...and I really wasn't. I didn't know anything about the game, really.
<Dokujisan> people all the time join the HOCTF server and play for a couple days and then finally ask "hey, how do you guys jump around so high?"
<Dokujisan> Why do they even have to ask that question?
<nifrek> yeah exactly, you play a few months and you end up with best score on public servers, then you get bored because it feels like there's no more progress to do
<lda17h> yeah, nexuiz should have a really prominent tutorial mode
<Dokujisan> 1) design the game around depth of gameplay 2) put forth lots of effort into welcoming new players and getting them to learn the game faster
<Dokujisan> 3) that is how they get hooked
<Dokujisan> I feel that most players give up on nexuiz before even learning the game
<Dokujisan> if you dumb the game down so much to make it easier for them...then there will be nothing for them to learn. There will not be very much depth of gameplay.
<Dokujisan> that is why I think that is the wrong approach.
<Dokujisan> the game should be designed to build a huge base of people who are hooked on the game. You should *want* to turn everyone in an advanced player.

[FraNcoTirAdoR]

About the speed of the game: actually i dont think so the game is freaking fast because of the movement physics. The real problem is that technically ALL the weapons have such a gigantic push that people are just contantly flying around all the time (especially in a close ranged DM match). If a rocket hits you you fly like 20 meters and thats just absurd, same with the HUGE push of mortar, nex and the laser too. Players are lasering all the time around the map, it gives a very strong push for technically no HP cost. You just get the boost and then flying all over the place on extreme speed spamming with all the weapons that gets in the hand. Maybe for most people its okey, actually i got used to it (not that i would like it), just telling this side not for those who think the game is too fast, well this is the reason in my opinion, the HUGE weapon push

I agree with Dokujisan, its really important to give new players as warm welcome as possibly, trying to show some depth of the game that will encourage them learning these cool stuffs. Its important to show them that there is learning curve in the game not just pressing the forward key and rushing with shotgun primary In the last 2 years i taught at least 12, maybe 15 guys on a seperate server, they were completely new, and i spent 3-4 hours showing them all the basic stuffs, how weapons work, what they are good for, whats bunny hopping, how laser jumping works etc etc etc. And half of them are now frequent players, because they werent ignored, but got a welcome from the community (or just 1 member of the community), they can think "okey there are some nice people around, also i saw there are many cool game i will return for sure". If a new player gets a welcome like "AGY, SUK MI D**K AHAHAHAH))" and stuffs like that he will certainly look for some other game instead.

[PCLizard]

They never help other people in a game, as all they care for is winning.

I'm sorry, but I couldn't let this fly by me. That is incorrect and completely biased. I have helped many players, some of them now regular players. We "pros" aren't afraid of change, but we don't like to see what was once nexuiz to us change for the worse. Worse as in jetpack servers taking over regular unmodified servers (This HAS been changing for the better though) for example. I used to care about winning when I first starting playing this game (wouldn't be surprised if most noobs only cared about that), but as I got better, I really started caring less and less about winning, to where the ONLY thing that mattered was that I played a game and I had fun, regardless of who won.

[Flying Steel]

depth of gameplay

this term got me thinking. how are we defining depth of gameplay?

I'd really like to know what this means exactly myself.

How is exploiting an ancient glitch like strafe jumping equal to depth of gameplay but sniping someone flying by on a jetpack at 40 meters per second not? Or wasting everyone with the 2.3 machinegun or rocketlauncher or nex?

About the speed of the game: actually i dont think so the game is freaking fast because of the movement physics. The real problem is that technically ALL the weapons have such a gigantic push that people are just contantly flying around all the time (especially in a close ranged DM match).

Personally I have a problem with the opposite- bunny hopping and/or strafe jumping to incredible speeds with no counterbalancing drain on limited health or fuel. You should get to move fast, but not all the time.

I agree about the laser though, it should do more damage both to make it useful as a weapon with the new armor system and to make it cost more to do stunts with it.

[ai]

Just so you guys now. The Lasers purpose IS to make it easier to move and faster. It's meant to do little damage and push you forward. It isn't meant as a weapon or anything like that. This is one of the most basic principles to Nexuiz, heck, this is what MAKES it Nexuiz.
Laser should never ever be changed to something that hurts you very much or pushes too little.