Balancing changes, Guided missiles, Weapon balance tests

[divVerent]

I think teamplay in Nexuiz should be done otherwise, but not by slowing down everyone (on the other hand, I don't think the slowdown in havoc physics is too harsh - it still feels right to me).

An idea might be however to make maps with more possible teamplay elements. Sniper posts (NOT TOO MANY OF THEM) are just one of many things mappers can do to improve teamplay. Switch-controlled doors can also help a lot (but not like on mikeeusa maps where the door opens slowly and the switch is close to the door - I rather think of a switch easily accessible to people inside the base, and having additional switches outside it that also can open the door. Of course, in such cases, alternate ways must be provided to enter the base, so a single player can do it TOO - but that way should really not be the fastest one. I think the map "switches" is very extreme, but shows some things that can be done to improve teamplay. Imagine for example four pathways between the bases, of which only two can be open at a time, and "control panels" (in fact, sniper towers) that can shoot a switch for a pathway, and that one will open and another one will automatically close. Then a cooperative team can always prepare the right pathways for the escaping flag carrier, and close the door behind him, but also hinder the enemy from running away.

[Flying Steel]

I think Nexuiz' current teamplay is Tribes teamplay, in that it more or less works on large open-ish maps but not small closed in maps, do to the movement speed. And this is why you see alot of big open CTF maps on CTF servers. Unfortunately there are currently none of these shipping with the game (Reborn doesn't have a CTF tag?), which makes teamplay natively broken in Nexuiz.

Instead in official CTF maps what you have is "fog of war teamplay", where everyone does his own thing until he sees a flag or flag carrier. There isn't enough time for coordination, only intuitive situational cooperation. This isn't terrible, but I think there is room for more teamplay.


So over a year ago I came up with the idea of a "Character Class" Mutator for Nexuiz, in which each of the character classes would have its own weapon, health/armor level, and movement physics settings. On average, these classes would be slower than default Nexuiz movement, but also the fastest classes would be vulnerable enough to damage that it'd stop the constant one-man flag stealing. I thought this could be to CTF what the Insta and Minsta mutators are to DM in terms of popularity and gameplay alteration. Unfortunately, without any knowledge of code, I didn't have a way of implementing this. . .

But then a few months ago I saw Psychcf had already been creating the framework to do this and was getting close to having something ready. So I signed up for these forums and started working on player models, first and foremost with this character class mutator in mind. I have been making them strikingly different so that they can be easily distinguished even at a distance, which is a little visual technique used alot in RTS games.

I am certain such a Mutator can fix the speed/teamplay issue while also working as a balanced Mutator in FFAs, without upsetting default Nexuiz (since it is a Mutator, like Minsta is).

[TVR]

Nexuiz shouldn't change in order to suit custom Q3A CTF maps, instead the focus of teamplay needs to shifted to another game-mode.

The premier team game-mode of Nexuiz is not CTF nor Onslaught, it is Keyhunt.

Keyhunt distills the core aspects of CTF, with the addition of strategy, while maintaining exception flexibility in map design.

[divVerent]

But new players don't know KH, while they are likely to know CTF.

[TVR]

Consider Keyhunt as the showcase game-mode for Nexuiz, similar to Onslaught for UT2004, and Capture for Sauerbraten.

[divVerent]

It is not popular enough among Nexuiz players for that, although it should be.

[Mr. Bougo]

I love KH, but no "good" players seem to play it... Ronan used to, right?
I started playing nex on 2.3 with KH; it seemed to be quite popular (no idea what server I played on), and it was very fun and noob-friendly as well.

[KillaGrunt]

I used to play keyhunt with toolbox alot, I quite like it, but not enough people bother to play it.

[AnArKiSt]

I like keyhunt too.

The keyhunt matches in the campain were fun, so I imagine that it would be better with skilled people to play with.

[Flying Steel]

Keyhunt is top notch innovation that is extremely underappreciated (also Domination, Onslaught and Assault are the same situation.) I don't think there is a clear way on how to make it more popular though, except for more servers to host keyhunt games (with bots).

But either way, CTF isn't going anywhere in its popularity, it is still going to be about a third of the game, with DM making up most of the other solid third. So improving it is still important to Nexuiz.


So why not try giving Reborn a CTF tag and see what happens? Just put the flags where the generators are. Bigger, open-er maps should be similar to a speed decrease in their effect on teamplay right? Most CTF servers are already running big open CTF maps right?