One second.
That's how long you have to wait after a nex shot before you can switch. Compare that with the old value: 0.3 second.
You can try ingame how it feels, even without a svn nexuiz. Just type this in the console
g_balance_nex_animtime 1
and start a local game...

This new animtime breaks weapon combos: usually, when you shoot with the nex, it's a good strategy to switch to something else right after the shot instead of being idle for 1.5 seconds. Now you're forced to wait, and I'm not sure that's the point of a fast-paced game.


The problem comes from the new nex anim, which is 1 second long. To be played correctly, it needs the animtime to match that length, and that cvar is also used for switching prevention. It's not possible to switch while the firing anim is playing. That's too late to change now, Nexuiz is in feature freeze.
What's needed is a new anim.

Agreed. 0.5 to 0.7 seconds seems like a good interval for it to be in. It is good for weapon balance to weaken nex combos - but maybe not by as much as 1 second waiting time.

The current anim looks somewhat okay-ish (but not really good, as it still is cut off then) at an animtime of 0.65. If no new anims are made, that could be tried.

First of all if that were to change, the weapon anim itself needs to be tuned.. so if you do not like this talk to morphed to change the animation.
And then i think the increasing the nex animtime in general is good and will reduce its usage as all around gun as its combo-value is reduced. 1s might be too much though. I have not test played the change enough to be sure.
Take a look at the crifle.. its hard (almost impossible) to use it as second weapon in a combo because of the automatic reload when switched to. NOONE ever complained about it. Guess noone even thought about it yet? But now as something CHANGED a bit people complain.

The problem is it didn't change "a bit".

When changing such things, one should think about the users' habits. Messing with them is not so wise IMHO, and that's what happens here: tripling the delay is quite radical, I'm not sure it will be globally accepted.

There's no problem with the camping rifle delay because it's always been like this. People are not used to put it in a combo.

Anyone who wants can make an anim that lasts 0.5 seconds... the thing is, the source of the latest anim is not available, so that would have to be made based on the old anims.

Im totally against this 1 second long animtime, the original 0.3 was okey, 0.5 doesnt seem to be bad for balancing, but what nex really needs is a slightly increased refire time, and not lowering its role in the weapon combinations.

Even more increased refire time? No, that'll switch the focus to nex combos even more, and will require also a damage reduction.

I actually wanted to start this thread, but well, MrBougo was faster this time

Summary of my post: I do not agree to this change and would prefer to have the the old reload animation time and/or switch time back to 0.3 sec as it used to be.

When I quit playing an old tactical shooter several years ago I wanted to start playing FPS games like quake or UnrealTournament. Games, that allow you to pickup items, to respawn, and all that. I was having a close look at both UT99, Quake3 and disliked several aspects of both games.

Then I stumbled across Nexuiz. The game felt so awesome, because it has (had?) so many little elements that add an arcade factor to the game. It removed realism or limitations or depth/difficulty from game elements of other games. This includes:
- no health and armor restriction
- no ammo restriction / shared ammo
- no need to wait for the weapon to reload before you can switch

And I really like that this is the way Nexuiz works because it adds a certain feeling to the game.

Now, all of a sudden, a weapon modeler, together with divverent, decides to change that fact again, shortly before the new release, and with no announcement whatsoever (*sidenote). I am wondering what drives you game developers to such a decision. I'd like to hear proper arguments why this change was made by either Morphed or divverent. I'd like to hear the advantages this change introduces, advantages that outweight the fact that this changes a key-component of the game, being arcade and having fast gameplay.

I can imagine one of the pro arguments for changing the anim/switch time to a longer amount:
It would add difficulty to the game, because you'd have to consider much more carefully when to use the nexgun, probably only in situations where you can back off and watch for cover until your reload time is over. This is also certainly one of the reasons why games like Quake3 are working that way - and to the ones who are experienced (>3 years) 1vs1 players and also played and watched Q3 matches, you'll see that such a gameplay element slows the game down (which is intended for Q3 gameplay) and makes it much more tactical.

However, as I said at the beginning, Nexuiz is an arcade game for me and also many others. It should not need to add such artificial reloadtimes, and especially not just for one weapon. If at all, then for all weapon, or for none of them (in our case, the latter, of course). The ones who want to weaken the Nexgun: the damage of the nexgun has already been weakened from 140 to 130. Apart from that, using nexgun in the infight is already hard enough anyway, since you are pushed around a lot by mortar or rocket launcher already. Also, keep in mind that many players became skilled in using combos that include the nexgun in the combo chain, and why would you want to ruin that practice (and please don't come with an argument that you can simply use nexgun as last weapon, that "wouldn't work").

esteel wrote:Take a look at the crifle..

Well, the camping rifle is a very strong weapon, since it is antilagged again at least. When having a good aim, you can be much more effective with it when doing headshots, as it has a higher refire rate. Just to provide the maths: with one magazine you can do 8(mag size)x160(headshotdmg) = 1280 damage in 8x0.7(refire) = 5,6 seconds. With nexgun, in 5,6 seconds you can do only three shots, each shot does 130 damage, so even if you interpolated the damage (130 / 1.5 * 5.6) you'd do 485.3 damage in 5.6 seconds. Therefore, adding penalty such as auto reload to the CR is perfectly fine, because it is basically the BFG in Nexuiz now anyway...

*Sidenote:
But, actually, I do now even think that it isn't that bad that new, game changing features just get in without annoucement, as long as the players have the change to complain about it, just like we did for the change of removing antilag for projectile-bullets, which turned out to be reverted again, thank god.

GreEn`mArine wrote:Now, all of a sudden, a weapon modeler, together with divverent, decides to change that fact again, shortly before the new release, and with no announcement whatsoever (*sidenote). I am wondering what drives you game developers to such a decision. I'd like to hear proper arguments why this change was made by either Morphed or divverent. I'd like to hear the advantages this change introduces, advantages that outweight the fact that this changes a key-component of the game, being arcade and having fast gameplay.

Fact is: it was not my decision. Morphed wanted a longer animtime, and I told him "try something between 0.5 and 1.0, but note that it'll weaken combos". Weakning combos a bit probably is a good idea, as the Nex is the one strongest weapon of all. But did he have to go the full way to 1.0?

Also, the damage change from 140 to 130 didn't do anything at all to the weapon balance.

OK now I'm confused as to the use of the nex...... someone want to explain to me its purpose? Because I know it is not one of the two following:

1.) The nex is NOT a weapon to be used in combos, hence the weapon switch time will be reduced.
2.) The nex is NOT a sniper rifle, even though it has a scope with zoom, because "camping is bad" and we're already trying to prevent it.

So when am I supposed to use the nex?

Uh? Who said that, MaKR? Here I'm saying it should be usable in combos.

First of all you should not listen to too many other people, use a gun when YOU think its useful!
However the key is balance and many people think the nex gun (or rather hitscan weapons in general) are too easy to use. And indeed with the 2.4.2 animtime you had a 'good chance' to do 140 damage and then switch to an other gun in 0.3 seconds and inflict fruther damage. Combined with other guns that did lead to insane damage in a short time. Reducing the damage the nex gun does without adjusting the reFIRE rate would have beeen bad. In fact the next version will have a gun that DOES exactly that. The camping rifle. So whats left to change was the animtime. The amount of time till one can switch to an other gun after firing. While 1sec (which came from Morphed new animations) is too long a slightly higher one would have worked quite well and just reduced the combo value a bit. Then one would still be free to use the nex when feeling like it and only be a bit restrained.

I just tested a 1-second animtime on my local machine and I'm sorry to say, but it's awful.

There are four things which keep me in Nexuiz and prevent me from leaving for Quake Live:

- The people
- The movement and physics
- The laser
- The fast switching/combos

These things differentiate Nexuiz from any other FPS game out there, and if any of those was to disappear from the game it would be enough for me to quit. Weapon switching is the reason I don't even play Quake Live, even though I've had an account for months.

Please don't make me leave Nexuiz. I've grown very fond of it and it's the only game I play.

EDIT: And for what it's worth, I'd honestly rather see the nex damage drop than to have nex combos nerfed. I think the drop to 130dmg was a good one even though it weakened the nex/shotty combo, which was my favorite.

From what I gather here, there is actually a general consensus that 1.0 seconds animtime for the nexgun is too long, so I guess for 2.5 the animtime will be shorter. I appreciate that the nex combos are weakened, but not being able to laser yourself someplace immediately after a nex shot is a thing that worries me I think that 0.5/0.6 animtime would be a fair compromise, though I did not yet have any time to test these timings.

First we'd need the have the exact timing agreed on, then one can make the animations. So, instead of saying 1 sec is too long, come up with how long it should be.

I think all the weapons are pretty much as balanced as they can be in comparison to each other before the anim time change, nexuiz has never been so good as it is now, so good work!

The problem I have with this change is, not only do I disagree with it, is that it was done so close to release without the knowledge of anyone, not even mentioning it to the other devs. I simply cannot understand what kind of reaction morphed expected from players but honestly when the news got out, I've NEVER seen such a strong reaction from players about a change being made in GAMEPLAY. And yes, we can all agree that sometimes we have strong reactions to tiny changes, but I've never seen so many people pissed off at the same time.

The animation needs to look good, of course. But this affects the GAMEPLAY way to much.

Well I guess morphed didn't bring this up so late in purpose, so as to annoy everybody. After all all this is done in people's precious spare time, isn't it? So most probably he didn't manage to finish everything earlier.

ai wrote:First we'd need the have the exact timing agreed on, then one can make the animations. So, instead of saying 1 sec is too long, come up with how long it should be.

I have a suggestion. 0.3 sec. D'oh

hmm yes very sensible subject. that shows how much everyone like the nex gun

my opinion on it is keep the the delay and damage like they are right now. But i agree that with the new antilag, the nex as gotten a lot more powerfull. It is now relatively easy to land 2 shots in a row. Something thats was much harder with the 2.4.2 nex on a sever that has a average ping (50-70).

I would not mind having a longer refire time on it. that way , in a 1v1, when u land a nex shot u can still attack the person with ur other guns, but it leave him more chances to run away and not receiving a second -130 shot while doing so.

if this option is considerable, i would be please to test it with other prae's on the server that we mostly play on and give some feedback.

Mr. Bougo: I was agreeing with you. This goes back to the thread by alpha about nerfing the nex. Nexuiz is about fast-paced high-damage weapons and movement. No matter what the weapon rules are, they are equal for both players, both teams, or, in ffa, all players. Everyone has the same weapon rules so deal with them, don't keep changing them.

liolak wrote:hmm yes very sensible subject. that shows how much everyone like the nex gun

my opinion on it is keep the the delay and damage like they are right now. But i agree that with the new antilag, the nex as gotten a lot more powerfull. It is now relatively easy to land 2 shots in a row. Something thats was much harder with the 2.4.2 nex on a sever that has a average ping (50-70).

Keeping them like in 2.4.2 or 2.svn? personally i find it easier to hit with the 2.4.2 antilag, but that's proly just because im more used to it. also ping dont enter into it if antilag works.

I would not mind having a longer refire time on it. that way , in a 1v1, when u land a nex shot u can still attack the person with ur other guns, but it leave him more chances to run away and not receiving a second -130 shot while doing so.

if this option is considerable, i would be please to test it with other prae's on the server that we mostly play on and give some feedback.

The thing is, with a long animtime you CANT use other weapons. think of it as a global gun block. until the animtime is over you cant do anything with any gun.

Now there is the also possibility to let the animation be as it is but allow gun switch anyway. The worst thing that would happen then is that the guns fire animation are interrupted and replaced by the weapon switch one. However, it also kills the animtime's role as a weapon switch timer (something im not sure many ppl knew it even did). Personally id rather see a single cvar for a minimum time to switch after fire for weapons.

I also agree with what GreEn`mArine said, its the same for me. I prefer simple "arcade like" gameplay in Nexuiz.

Finally id like to add that I don't think there's anything wrong with that some guns are stronger then others (in combos or not) and if they are way to strong it better to remove some damage. else it just makes the game slow and frustrating.

tZork wrote:Keeping them like in 2.4.2 or 2.svn? personally i find it easier to hit with the 2.4.2 antilag, but that's proly just because im more used to it. also ping dont enter into it if antilag works.

Might be a bit off topic but antilag in 2.4.2 definitely had a bug which made it unreliable. The current development version has that fixed so antilag should now simply work However as the ground de/acceleration was raised a bit it might be now harder to hit people running in zigzag or in general trying to be harder to hit. (Which is good imo)

Somehow I managed to hit with the bug. Now the game feels like playing in 20 fps -> unplayable.

I do not see that the one has to do with the other.. but feel free to try the beta release, maybe its just that compiling Nexuiz yourself was bad.. http://forums.alientrap.local/viewtopic.php?t=4321

Might be a bit off topic but antilag in 2.4.2 definitely had a bug which made it unreliable. The current development version has that fixed so antilag should now simply work

thats exactly what i meant by relatively easier.

we tried to play a game yesterday with a switching delay of .5s, its surprising how just .2s can make a noticeable difference when u are used to something. It requires u to change ur attacking tactic, because you need to take some cover after a nex shot. If it is to stay like that, im sure ill get used to it, but without a doubt i will change my play a bit. I think it will require me to fight my opponent from a further distance and also will reduce the number of rushing attacks in a game.

liolak wrote:

I think it will require me to fight my opponent from a further distance and also will reduce the number of rushing attacks in a game.

I agree on the rushing bit

Could this "animtime" stuff be the reason why I have problems with laserjumping since the very first 2.SVN I tried? When I'm doing that in the speed I'm used to from 2.42, I shoot myself into the feet or completely blow up

Urmel wrote:Could this "animtime" stuff be the reason why I have problems with laserjumping since the very first 2.SVN I tried? When I'm doing that in the speed I'm used to from 2.42, I shoot myself into the feet or completely blow up

Same.

It's not a bad compile or OS, it performs bad on any svn server.

But please do not try to find funny reason as of why.. in THIS case all that was changed was the time of the fire animation of the NEXGUN model and and make it look nice the configured time (which is also the time you can't switch away from the gun after a shot)

Also alien: have you tested the beta release or 'just' checkouts? Well rather answer that in the thread about the beta release..