Clueless Newbie wrote:Flying Steel wrote:I would agree that the the sniper and heavy would each have effective ranges where one had the advantage over the other. But the dynamics come from one trying to maneuver or find the other in a disadvantageous scenario, as well as the general evasion and marksmanship skills of the players.
Yep. But that's best sorted out in full team games, not one on ones. (Again; IMO)
Mind you, there's no reason why you can't do some 1 on 1 testing anyway, just to see what happens. Could be interesting. I just don't think that's a good way to balance the classes.
Not the only way they should be tested I mean, but I think it is a hurdle they should be able to pass, to not get run over by another class in all situations, in a 1 vs 1 scenario.
What I am talking about are classes named and seemingly based after non-combat, primarily teamwork oriented roles, like the Engineers, the Hacker and perhaps the Suicide Bomber. I want to get rid of classes like these
(slams on brakes)
Woah, wait a minute! The QTF engie was my favorite class (scout being the second). Even though the engineer — as I've outlined it — has a number of support functions, you're forgetting that they build turrets and the turrets do the fighting for them. That's the main attraction of the engineer class. The most satisfying thing about the engineer is finding a clever location for your turret and then watch as it racks up the kills. Building bridges and stuff like that is something the engy can do while his turrets blows away the enemy. TF without the engineer isn't TF, IMO.
I really don't think we should get to hung up on the nomenclature of classes and try to recreate them exactly as they were. Especially since, isn't TF somebody's intellectual property? Is this not now a commercial game series? Copying wholesale such a franchise runs at least some chance of getting Halogen'ed, methinks.
Anyway, you seem to really like that the TF Engineer can deploy turrets. So then I would put that feature into a unit (who in this case can maybe keep the name Engineer, being generic enough to probably not hold potential IP issues), give him the shotgun instead and maybe make him an octopus.
The fact that he uses a close-in (albeit effective) weapon plus the fact that he is not all that fast would mean that folks should guard him when he's in the field, and that he should rely more on his turrets to do the fighting, unless in a heavy cover situation.The suicide bomber is nothing but a combat class. No support at all. Spawn, jump into room full of hostiles, *BOOM!*, spawn. Of course, clearing a room of enemies could be considered a support function..
Kind of, but adding interesting combat features besides the self destruct would make alot of sense. A melee weapon like the 'melee laser' idea I think would be a good match, if it made it into Nexuiz.
As for the hacker, yes, it is probably a weak class the way it is now. The hacker's ability to take over enemy turrets might compensate for this — especially if the hacker can pwn an unlimited number of turrets (full game testing to find out).
I think there is an easier and more interesting way to fill this role, like a special that is basically a UT Redeemer- an extremely powerful but slow and easily shot down weapon that as a result is mostly effective against stationary targets like turrets and noobs.
Don't remove the support-oriented classes. Instead, find ways to make them fun.
I'm not really talking about removing support classes, just the opposite in fact- I want to make all classes support classes, in addition to being combat classes.
And I am fairly certain this will make them fun too. Don't get me wrong though, the differences between special equipment abilities makes some classes more 'supporty' than others. Deploying turrets and automatically revealing enemy units to your team, would be good examples of this.
and spread the special abilities over each class, so that each class contributes something actively or passively that can have a special benefit for his wider team.
Uhh.. You mean like letting HWGs build turrets?
No, the Engineer should do that if you want him to. But the Heavy might deploy a stationary shield battery, or whatever makes sense for what he does and where he'd generally be on the battlefield.
or deployable cover for a heavy class.
What the engineer can do while his turret accumulates kills..
I would say give the deployable turrets a slow turning speed so that they are vulnerable in close and from behind, and then the Engineer with a close range shotgun, can protect them from such vulnerabilities, giving him something to do when not deploying more turrets.
The heavy can have whatever support function, perhaps a passive one like the sensor package, just as long as it gets something like every other class would.
I don't think we should remove any classes until we've tested them in a full game. Then we can see what classes are fun and what classes are weak and / or boring, and maybe also get a fair idea on how to improve those classes. If they really are unfixable, then we get rid of them.
It isn't so much about fixing them as adapting them into something not unoriginal that fits Nexuiz and isn't so hard to implement that it never makes it past these forum posts (not to say it won't already be some serious work as a whole).
