unfair advantages

[esteel]

Back in the old forum i did some demos to explain the weapons and some basic stuff. However if you want to explain CTF or TDM you would need to have other people also and then you would need some sort of script first. But then you could show some pretty nice stuff.

[Vendor]

This has nothing to do with money. It has to do with making the game more enjoyable. That applies to commercial or open source. You can have that as your goal without making it an issue of money. I'm sure the developers of Nexuiz want the game to be as good as they can make it, regardless of whether they are getting paid or they are volunteering their time.

I think it does have something to do with money, albeit indirectly. It is the "making the game enjoyable" part where it comes in - in a commercial game that implies "making the game enjoyable for as large a number of paying customers as possible, because that money is what drives our work". For Nexuiz, the work is only driven by how much volunteer work the developers are prepared to sacrifice - ie "making the game enjoyable for developers (to work on and play)".

That doesn't mean they aren't interested in making a game that is fun for everyone else, or that they don't care about new players - far from it, as can be seen by the huge amount of effort that esteel in particular has put in to documenting and writing guides.

I'm not aware that it is an explicit design goal to appeal to a mass market (I could be wrong!). The imbalances (between weapons, and particularly between newer and established players) are so obvious (and have been pointed out by many). Now the coders are clearly very competent, and yet haven't addressed these imbalances, which indicates that the kind of game they are trying to make, is one that isn't easy for new players. That gives them additional freedoms to take the game into areas that are new, and very interesting.

In short I think the devs are more than happy to do what they can for new players, but not at the expense of changing the gameplay they are aiming for.

As for learning the game, as with all FPS's, learning comes from playing and spectating players who can do stuff you can't. Once a newer player gets their head around the value of spectating, they will rapidly improve.

[esteel]

I kinda fail to see those unbalanced weapons. Granted http://mensa.ath.cx/~polzer/nexlog/totals.html shows that some weapons are use more often to kill someone but every weapon has its use but that statistic is heavily influenced by the ctf game mode on one of the two servers. In normal deathmatch the machinegun is fine but its too hard to aim with it while its almost an overpowered weapon in the large and open ctf maps. I'd pick the mortar or electro over machinegun and rocketlauncher in non-ctf matches. The fact that the laser and shotgun are not used often to kill someone is kinda clear too. The laser is no real weapon and the shotgun feels too much like a starting weapons although its rather strong and underestimated by a lot of people.
But maybe you can tell us what you think is unbalanced.

Honestly i really think Nexuiz is one of the more beginner friendly games as it does not use uber leet trickjumps like quake 1/2/3/4.

[kozak6]

As usual, stahl is correct.

The lack of uber 1337 trick jumps make Nexuiz a hell of a lot easier for new players, and our community is super helpful.

And, the Nexuiz weapons are generally well balanced. The Crylink isn't terribly useful, but I am sure someone is working on it. Other than that, it's pretty much fine.

To give you something to compare Nexuiz to, go install Enemy Territory Fortress (you need to install Enemy Territory first, but it's all free).

Enemy Territory Fortress is standard team fortress stuff.

To even be able to kill another player, you need to be able to bunnyhop around each map at Mach III. To capture a flag, you need to be so perfect at bunnyhopping that you can do it with your monitor turned off and a hand behind your back.

These people have been playing TF since Q1, so the concept of a new player is completely unthinkable. You will be laughed at and ridiculed, and then kicked and/or banned for not following bizarre gentlemen's rules like not being allowed to fight in the middle of a map.

Really, Nexuiz isn't that bad at all. You can figure it out readily enough if you stick around for a couple weeks, and you can actually ask questions or ask for help if you need it.

[k0jak]

I was speaking to esteel, i will look into writing a advanve tdm guide for the current maps in the 2on2 ladder, going over positions, item's spawn locations and more, if it helps to improve people's level of game and skill.

[esteel]

As i understood you, you want me to write a general TDM guide first so that you can then add some map specific things..

[k0jak]

Well yes, i was going to go specifically into each map after.

[Dokujisan]

That's awesome. Looking forward to it!

[RoKenn]

Please comment.. i'll make it look better though soon

OK, a comment, or rather a suggestion:

I have seen that you announce the CTF guide with a tinyURL.... which people with
a brain as small as mine can't remember anyway.

Wouldn't it be nice to put the learning docs (basics guide, ctf guide, links to demos...) on www.nexuiz.com/help and announce that page?

Such a URL could easily be remembered when noobs see it ingame.

[Zico]

Wasn't it esteel who made some cool demos about laser-jumping?

As mentioned above:
What about just adding them to the release as "Tutorial demos"? Probably by adding some "say-comments" in them to show *how* some things work.

Sorry if this idea is dumb, but it just jumped into my mind.

I can't do the most tricky stuff as well. I am too clumsy so I am happy when I don't kill myself.