This is from a discussion between Luna, phreak_ and me on IRC. I think it has general interest, so I paste it here. (the less interesting parts removed

(no bashing of kojak intended, or ment harmful )

<Luna> Well, Nexuiz doesn't allow me to do that atm. =)
<Luna> It's just a bunch of fights between me with 0 armour and 150ish health against k0jak with 200+ health and a couple of armours that he won't let me have.
<[NSB]tChr> Luna: I agree with you thre.. a relly good player can have too much control of a map.
<[NSB]tChr> especially a smaller one
<Luna> Yeah.. 05 is pretty sick.
<phreak__> i mean fuck it, map control is part of this game
<phreak__> and kojak is a very good player
<[NSB]tChr> yes.. map control is a good thing, but the underdog shold at least have a chance to break the dominant players control
<phreak__> exactly
<phreak__> kojak is not the problem here
<Luna> I think controling the map by camping the good areas and refusing the opponent free access to get stuff is really ok.
<[NSB]tChr> noone claimed kojak is a problem.. the claim was that some maps and some of the game setup allows for too much dominance.
<Luna> That kind of control can be broken by a couple of lucky spawns and stuff.
<phreak__> agree with both of u
<Luna> But the kind of control kojak uses is to simply run around the map and pick up the armours as they spawn. If I happen to be in the way I just die because he's got more life than me.
<Luna> He's playing Nexuiz the way it's supposed to be played, and I'm not.
<[NSB]tChr> I dont think thats the intentional way "the game shold be played" Like all other projects, this kind of stuff is discoevered after testing enough
<Luna> Generally you should have hurt your opponent badly enough that he should be the one cursing you spawning next to him, not the other way around phreak__.
<[NSB]tChr> Is Nexuiz intended as a 1on1 at all? The tactic would not work with many players
<Luna> It would work really well in any x on x game.
<[NSB]tChr> but FFA?
<[NSB]tChr> 8 player all agains all... someone is bound to pick up the stuff before you get there
<[NSB]tChr> freeforall
<Luna> No, you can't win in FFA by simply running from armour to armour.
<[NSB]tChr> and I think most of the games tactics and layout (in gameplay) had FFA in mind.. now is the time to adapt changes to make it a better XonX game
<phreak__> it's not like something just changed for the worse
<phreak__> gameplay has been the same since day one-ish
<Luna> Yes, it has. But untill I played k0jak yesterday I never saw the flaws.
<Luna> Or well, I saw plenty, but not this one.
<Luna> I consider it a flaw, but it's probably designed that way for a reason.
<[NSB]tChr> I think it was just designed that way because it seemed a good way to do it
<Luna> k0jak plays Nexuiz, and everyone else I've played doesn't.
<phreak__> thats a question only devs could answer
<phreak__> lol luna
<phreak__> what do others play
<Luna> Nexuiz without item timing and hit and run attacks.
<phreak__> that's not nexuiz
<[NSB]tChr> thats kojak-style
<phreak__> that's kojaks way of playing
<phreak__> exactly
<[NSB]tChr> but Luna has a point.. If this is the ultimate way to play nex, wich it seems to be, then eventually everyone would go there.
<phreak__> i'm one of thise people with the shotgun if nothing else is available
<Luna> By definition if you win by alot over someone you're doing something right and the opponent is doing something wrong.
<phreak__> i dont see my self any less a nex player then anyone else
<phreak__> not necesserily
<Luna> Example?
<phreak__> it could also mean that you're exploiting it's flaws
<phreak__> to me, the frag count means nothing
<phreak__> i really could give two shits about it
<[NSB]tChr> flaws that has layed dorment, and needs to be fixed
<phreak__> i love playing against tChr
<phreak__> it's fucking fun
<Luna> High level play is all about exploiting flaws.
<phreak__> win or lose
<phreak__> if someone wants to make a doctorate about nex playing...fuck them
<phreak__> i assure you, they are having a lot less fun then me

Interesting topic/discussion


but it does seem towards the end, that you see my style as a 'flaw' in the game.

to me it isn't, i dont' always 'time' the armours exactly, its just coming into the room, i know its going to be any second, due to a path i take,

this is most common on nexdmextra1, this is how i can dominate, i assure you if you figure out how to stop me, or so i will just choose another route in, this is part of 1on1 (In my eyes), 1on1 is about control, you should wait, and try to surprise the opponent if you can't get into the game, or stay away from them, and spam or something, anything that puts them into your game, you dont have to listen to me, but this is just from experience.


the other maps aren't too bad on extra2, believe it or not i dont time the items all of the time...rarely, i just know when they are going to spawn from, cycle timing (order of things reappearing, and its something ive picked up on in this game). You do have to remember a lot of these maps arent JUST designed for 1on1, hence the amounts of armours on some maps, although i dont think they are overdone either.


Please post your comments anyway

By the way, i do enjoy high-level play in this game.

It isn't about exploiting flaws, and i'd be annoyed, that the gameplay was changed so much, just because people can't adapt to a different gamestyle or one persons...that is WRONG in my oppinion.


but i guess it's up to the majority, i try to explain that 1on1 is a different style of play, look at a lot of good games, ut2004/ Q3 / Q4 / QW / all of it in 1on1, a lot of it involves around item collection.

i do agree with some things, that some of the maps are 'too, dominant'

dm01 being the worst.

Quote kojak:

"1on1 is about control, you should wait, and try to surprise the opponent if you can't get into the game, or stay away from them, and spam or something, anything that puts them into your game, ..."

Full ack!

In a ladder there must always be someone leading. And it'll be some great dm fights 'til someone is able to replace Kojak there ...

I'm open to changes and I think nexuiz has been evolving nicely.. of course it can be frustrating for some to get owned, but i#m not sure the game itself is at fault. It isn't a given that someone dominates.. he does something for it ... if i want a game where the only important thing is superior aim then i play minstagib.. but in ladder dm so much more is important and makes the game more challenging. As Luna is one of the top players i of course think that he may have a point that either powering up could be modified or that the game is impossible to win against an able player with a lucky beginning...(how should i know.. i'll never win against the top 5 but I do hope Luna sees another way of getting this discussion going about maybe needed reforms without giving up this game he's been enjoying for so long til getting owned himself.

my 2 cents
the chicken

I just agrea whtih hurzel's post spraying a loud gaggaaaaaw

I'm always sad about ppl who immediately throw the towel when they recognize that they won't manage to be #1. This IMO is a main thang about life itsself, You won't get along if You ain't got this skill in RL (no, not the rocket launcher!).

Still Luna is very fair, he never offended anybody. I think he wants to quit anyway by having found a new game. This is very sad, we're all gonna miss him, but I tell Ya he's gonna come back anyway, other games might have better gameplay issues, bot none have that splendid community

Please leve at that with the personal discussion.

Whats important here is weither we need to make small changes to the gameplay to make it a bit easier for the underdog to break the better players streaks. Any ideas?

What about introducinfg the possibility for as server switch that makes the powerps spawn somewhat randomly? like standard spawntime +-30 seconds iof the switch is enabled.

What about making new maps? I think nexd18 is a map where movement can make up a lot for playing a better aimer and the opposite. thats the only real good 1on1map imho.

Why do those ppl enter a ladder competition if they arent prepared to lose heavily and remain gracious in defeat, as well as take the win if they can.

ive been thrashed like this before (non ladder 1v1) against Quizmo . All credit to him. No excuses, he wiped the floor with me.
the scoring effect is cumulative tho. Fully stacked against lazer / std health and armor. not a fun day out. One sided scoring should be expected.

As long as both players arent using unfair cheats, wallhacks, modified skins etc.

How far do you carry "fair" tho?
next will it be "of course he won , he had a better G/card / faster connection / better PC / better eyesight / the wrong colour skin .... blah blah blah

it seems 1 v 1 is about map domination. right or wrong as soon as a player establishes himself with armor+health and weapons, its hard to get back on an even keel for the one trying to then gain weapons against a fully stacked opponent.

with FFA theres always someone else being killed, and an easier chance to stack up and recoup.


just an idea:
Perhaps what some are looking for is a Duel type match where the playing field is levelled after each kill.

Maybe use "first to 15 points" format or what, and after each kill respawn both players at set locations. Then up to the individual how and when he aqcuires his weapons/armor/health before engaging the opponent.

Would it be easier too if the match report was left out? let the demo's do the talking, then theres no complaints to deal with.

no offence or disrespect intended but,
i have a feeling that the players winning now will also be winning then, and that some ungracious losers will still be crying "unfair".

Excellence doesnt come of luck. it comes of skill, dedication and practice.

gl & hf

I think the discussion really should go in the direction of weither the current gameplay does not allow for more than one playing style. Thats my real concern.

It's up to you to choose your playing style, mines based on getting armour a lot of the time, and trying to stay alive,


i think that dm18, and extra2 are good 1on1 maps..dm03 is a good map, even if i am not very good on it at the moment. I admit there needs to be more 1on1 purpose made maps.

random armour spawn timings, is bad and wrong imo, since your then taking away how i play the game, just because a good player got beaten, well in my eyes anyway.

i mean, The way luna said it before, he thought the game was about killing someone, then whoever wins takes a few powerups and goes onto there opponent...arent i just doing this in reverse, taking some powerups then going onto the opponent?

Dont misunderstand me.. I'm not saying the gameplay needs adjusting. I'm asking wiether it does

kern wrote:Excellence doesnt come of luck. it comes of skill, dedication and practice.

gl & hf

A lot of people forget i have a strong FPS and duelling background.

UT/ut2003/ut2004, i started really duelling normal weopens in ut2003/2004, and i was quite good at the start of ut2004, then i stopped for like half a year, and i always sucked and couldnt be bothered putting in the practice to duel after, although my TDM game was pretty high.

Dont misunderstand me.. I'm not saying the gameplay needs adjusting. I'm asking wiether it does

I think the discussion really should go in the direction of weither the current gameplay does not allow for more than one playing style.

Whats important here is weither we need to make small changes to the gameplay to make it a bit easier for the underdog to break the better players streaks. Any ideas?

Gameplay format looks ok, surely its about map selection and domination.

As it stands 1v1 is about map domination. if thats a "style".
Gameplay doesnt allow any other method of really winning as it stands. Quick and total domination from the start, anyway you can.
it seems that the Map choice is the main consideration here from the gameplay side.
To break this for the underdog, maybe only use maps with more "routes", distance to cover, and a random spread of health/armour. also lean towards maps that favour a good rounded player skill level, jumps, air, routes, etc.
exact opposite say, of map 1. a good mix of ranges including routes and obstacles could even things out a little.

to completely break the streaks maybe have both players respawn with max or min health/armor and at opposite ends of the map after each kill.

as both players can choose a map, ppl cant really be critical of the format too much.

afterthought:

would a league system, if enough players, work?
or
Only allow ppl to challenge other players if they are within a certain range of them positionally on the ladder?

may even skill levels out a bit.

Only allow ppl to challenge other players if they are within a certain range of them positionally on the ladder?

That's already included at the 1on1 ladder .. you cannot challenge people with a point-difference greater than 100 points. this limit goes only upward. so someone with 1100 points could still challenge someone with 999 points, but this will never happen because the ELO calculation system will have disadvantages there

After some thinking and comparing Nexuiz with other DM games it seems that this one unique feature needs tweaking: The health system. In most games you are limited to 200 health/armor and you can't even pickup item when over 100 each. Now in Nexuiz you can grap as much items as you want and get insanely huge amounts of health/armor. Especialy if your itemtiming is as good as k0jaks. A player with 150(dropping) health does not stand a chance agains an other player with 200 or more health and armor each (=400) if he just makes sure the other one does not get enough pickups. This is harder to do in other games and so both players can get pickups. Think of the green/yellow/red armor in quake, the need to selfdamage to take 25/50 health if at 100 health in quake and other games.
Nexuiz pre 1.2 (imo) had the armor/health rot immediately after pickup, 1.2 and newer has a 5 second delay for both the healing and rot. It would be good to test smaller values, 1 or 2 seconds. Maybe even different values for for healing and the rot. But i'm not sure the current code does support it. (Seems this is not configurable right now). The change was made to give people an bonus for pickup, but maybe this bonus is too big in 1on1.
Also the next version will make it possible to limit the max health/armor a player can get. But i really want to try other things first as this just fits into Nexuiz very well.

This is one of the insane cool features that I like to much about Nexuiz, that you got not any limit for the pickups.

Of course this also introduces quite a lot of problems in 1on1s, because not only is the one with good item timing always with a lot of HP and armor, but he can also ALWAYS pickup a item, nomatter he already got, which eliminates any chances for the enemy to get any powerups then. For now I think only little tweakng should be done, meaning to reduce the waiting time until it rots and to increase the rot rate itself as well.

This would be far less of a problem if the rot didnt pause for 15 minutes when you pick up something

tChr wrote:This would be far less of a problem if the rot didnt pause for 15 minutes when you pick up something

Now guess why it was proposed to changed this?

esteel wrote:

tChr wrote:This would be far less of a problem if the rot didnt pause for 15 minutes when you pick up something

Now guess why it was proposed to changed this?

Did you? I didnt bother to read your entire post

yeah i did and so did Green
You should spent more time with reading instead of spamming

Insted of blaming a great game . Its more the players fault

Most players fine Nexuiz game too fast paced and too hard
They love camping, slow game play like console games and slow sp based games, they love to snipe , if its not easy as UT2004 ONS , BF2 or CS/CSS then most players put it in its too hard and not enough bling section .

Its a shame games dont come out and wont start a MP game without at least 4 players .

All these 1 vs 1 games and one man hero's in games is making gameplay dispointing these days . No one seems to want to work as a team, play Co-op , TDM or CTF modes anymore . Most lan games only get 4 to 10 ppl . Unless its a lan game of CS/CSS, UT2004 BR/ONS or BF2

Noone is blaming the game here, nor are the people in this thread unhappy with Nexuiz. We just try to find better defaults for some things as they work quite fine in FFA play but they are a bit overpowered in 1on1. So we just want to rebalance Nexuiz a bit because we think its not perfect..
Resistance is futile, you will be nexilated

How about ramdom respam times ? (and max respam times for weapons)...
And how about this: The other dude spawns with 100 HP + MaxHP of a player in the game * SomePercentage ... (might be 100% or more for all i care)

Also instead of a delayed degeneration timer, no delay instead ...This way it's harder to keep boosting up ...

These 2 could fix it I think ...

Hm, not really a bad idea.
This would change the game play completly, so i'd need a lot of testing but it's a decent idea nontheless.
This would make accuracy top priority since I'd personaly keep my HP low so I can whack the other dude with one shot.
Stackers wouln't benefit much, although I know people who have no problems dealing 200HP dmg in a very short time

Qantourisc wrote:How about ramdom respam times ? (and max respam times for weapons)...
And how about this: The other dude spawns with 100 HP + MaxHP of a player in the game * SomePercentage ... (might be 100% or more for all i care)
Also instead of a delayed degeneration timer, no delay instead ...This way it's harder to keep boosting up ...

The degeneration (its called rot in the configs) was instant in 1.0 and it was not that good as it almost did not payoff to collect health as it was down again too fast. But maybe the 5 second currently are too high. Maybe people would like to test a value of 2.
set g_balance_pause_armor_rot 2 (or even 1?)
set g_balance_pause_health_rot 2 (or even 1?)
set g_balance_pause_health_regen 5 (1 / 2 too or the current 5 to keep the pressure??)

I do not like random respawn times as it takes away the control. People that control the items have a certain skill and its ok if the lead because of that.

The same thing goes for the respawn health. If someone is stacked because he controls the map its earned. The lowered rot pause is hopefully enough to not make it more balanced.

even if its not in the ladder map pool, i can easily reach 999 armor on Bleach...
So i would say yes, lower the rot pause time from 5 seconds to something like 2 or 3.

I doubt you have managed to do so in a real game.. Bleach should not be played with less then 4 players because of its size and then it should be really hard to get 999 armor or health which seems easier at first thought.

Guess we need 1-3 servers to test the new health/armor rot..

yeah you're right... ingame with more than 4 players its impossible to get so much armor, for the simple reason that i have to stop running to frag and if someone takes an armour during my first loop its broken.

anyway i think the idea is good to lower the delay

I like the delay, it helps new players get on their feet a bit. Also, I was just looking at all the discussions of gameplay styles that are dubbed "cheap" like camping and stealing all the armor, but there are always ways to counter this. I don't let other people's tricks harm my sense of "honor" because its a game. If you get reeeal frustrated thats why they programmed the F11 key to quit a match.

I can think of one good way to counter the armor grabbing tactic: memorize the guys path and go the other direction so you can meet him head on, or lie in wait and pick him off when he goes for the armor. Even high armor levels can be knocked back down, just use the right gun. The guys weakness is that he is predictable- use it to your advantage.

As with any game, my theory is that there is a counter tactic for anything. In some games the tactic is more "fair" and in others you need to be "cheap" but either way...

I guess you will have to play against Kojn some day and show us those magical countertactics