GreEn`mArine wrote:I won't share my opinions about the weapons here, however I wouldn't even have to say much as I like most of the weapons the way they are. Whining around and proposing odd things is ridiculous ...imo
Hrm... Maybe it's best that you do not choose to post your opinions here. People might ridicule you just as easily as you have done to them.
And please do recognize that this discussion could very well affect future versions of the game. The devs are not so aloof as to never visit their own forums and look at the discussions there... If they agree with someone here, try out their suggestions, and discover that they actually work out really well in the game... Well, you're going to be very irate, I'm guessing. The unthinkable solution would, of course, be to participate in the discussion in a respectful tone and get your genuine opinions out there. The way you decided to handle things has instead shown that you are rude, insulting, cowardly, and have little of value to say.
The best ideas aren't always the first ones tried. Sometimes you have to play with things a while before you get them right. And people discussing such possibilities in a forum are hardly deserving of such... ignorant, brutish supression.
Anyway, on with the discussion.
One thing I like about Nexuiz is its configurability. Friends can start up a server with completely different settings to better fit their tastes. It's still hard to do a lot of things though because you need a QC coder who's familiar with the game's code before you can break outside of the box (make crylink bounce, radically change a weapon, etc). It would be nice to add even more power to the config (like the ability to give any weapon bounciness, or move one weapon's alt fire to another, or change the ammo requirements) so that people could try more things and fiddle with different weapon ideas without having any coding experience. Unfortunately much of that would take considerable code changes, and I'd feel sorry for the devs trying to implement some of the more complex items (though letting any projectile be bouncy isn't all that hard).
On the crylink: I think a slower fire rate, wider spread and bouncing bullets on the crylink would do it some good. Some day I ought to hop back in the code and make it bounce 1-2 times so I can play with it a bit. A recognizably different alt-fire would also be in order.
I've spoken to people who really like the hagar's alt-fire because the gravity-pulling arc allows them to hit players much more easily (by pulling the bullets to the floor), where simply aiming down is more challenging at long range. I wouldn't mind a more functionally different alt-fire, but first I'd like a chance to hear from a few folks who really like the hagar's alt-fire as-is.
Personally, I like the hagar, but I have trouble killing non-bot players with it, and I haven't really gotten good with the alt-fire. Unlike the Arbitor in Jeht/Conquest (Quake mods I've made), the bullets seem really slow and they don't feel like they're hitting with much force at all.
Lardarse: If I remember right you've played Jeht a bit. Do you remember the Arbitor? I think I like its feel more than the Hagar's...
Does the nex have locational damage? I imagine a body shot could do the normal amount of damage, but a head shot could award the user with 500 or so damage... That way only a player with some armor and 200 hp would survive a precise aim.
What Lardarse says about the Nex is interesting. Giving the down player ways to handle a dominating opponent is really important sometimes, or the game gets old really fast for both players (unless the one that's winning is a lamer who gets thrills from that kind of thing). All too often I'll play with friends and just ream because they can't compete with me, but then I play online with people who know how to harvest the map, and I can't take them down no matter how many times I hit them. With the nex. In the balls, even.
Ways to balance out the game a little and reel dominating players in a bit to give them a challenge and let everyone else participate might be interesting to explore, and the concept has spawned a few ideas in my mind. Preferrably most of these would be server-activated mods that would be optional if not all players liked 'em.
In rune match or some other game mode, it would be interesting to give players a poison rune that poisons other players, causing their health to drop rapidly and completely disabling armor. This would affect players with lots of health much more than those who are just starting out or sitting at around 100 hp.
Even better, the grenades I made for NexTF would be fun -- if each player could pick up Poison and Disruptor hand-grenades, they could really wreak havoc against a harvesting player with tons of health/armor. For those of you who don't know, Poison grenades rapidly deal out 200 damage over 3 seconds but won't kill the player by themselves, because they cap at 10-25 health; armor disruption grenades completely wipe out armor, setting it to 0.
If put in normal Nexuiz, unless we make them off-hand with more key bindings you would have to actually take the time to select and use them, and they might not explode on impact (bouncing and exploding on a timer instead), so they're hardly all-powerful.
If the poison grenade wiped out all health above 35 or 70 health (instead of just doing 200 damage), it and the disruption grenade could be really good to toss into dm maps or to give to players if a mod is enabled. Dominating players wouldn't be irreparably crippled, but it would definitely take a chunk out of their defenses. And a fast-moving player might be hard to hit with the blast, so there is skill involved.
A game mode where your kill count gives you a handicap would even things out... but that might suck a lot. I'd rather not pursue that one too heavily unless people were interested in having it as an activatable mode.
However, a game mode that reduced your max health by 1 for every 1 second you are alive (so that your health starts degenerating faster and faster) might be interesting. It could probably stop at 15-25 hp with no armor limit. It's not so much to balance the players as to increase the recycle rate of bodies. No one player lives very long unless he's really good. When a player dies he has to go grab weapons again and restart on ammo, hp, armor, etc.
Another similar idea would be to remove all armor items from the game, and start everyone out with 50-70 armor. The armor blocks its amount as a percent in damage -- if you have 30 armor, it blocks 30% damage. You lose 1 armor per 2 seconds when you first spawn though, and the longer you're alive, the faster your armor drops. Then up the player damage modifier by 50-200% to make things interesting. This would contribute to the recycle rate of players, making a long-living player more vulnerable to death and starting over.
The Empathy curse in Rune-match also adds an interesting twist for a dominating player. In fact, all the curses do. The player carrying all the stuff is afflicted with some pretty nasty debilitations, and he's the only target left on the map. ;D This is meant to encourage frequent recycling in rune-match so that a player has difficulty just grabbing everything and becoming unstoppable, and the respawning of all but 2 runes on death makes sure that other players get a chance at glory. I haven't heard the verdict on how effective it is though.
Hmmm... anyway, these are but ruminations for the moment. I hope that one of the devs takes interest but shows some restraint in what he implements. Much of these are just ideas for the sake of discussion and refinement. ;D
I don't know if I'll ever have the energy and free time to start development again, but that's a possibility.
I welcome (non-flaming/screaming
) feedback.
