Exactly that will be done after 2.5.2 release.

And for this I made this mutator to gather good weapon balancing data...

divVerent wrote:First of all, 2.5.2 is not getting the havoc settings.

I meant in "havoc mode". I was hoping that had been updated with the newest havoc balance and not been discontinued.

Secondly, we'll run big balancing sessions for the havoc weapon settings, as we KNOW they'll need some balancing first. To me, some weapons look clearly overpowered, and this will get fixed.

What is the purpose of havoc though?

Couldn't you just apply havoc's health system, slow the physics down like lordhavoc wants (but for some reason havoc mode lacks?) and turn the nex into a shock rifle (like it is in havoc) but leave the other weapons alone?

Because I like realistic-er physics and shock rifles just fine, but these changes really take the life out of weapons like the crylink and hagar.

I also made a mutator that spawns everyone with a random weapon, to gather weapon balance stats fast.

Very cool. IMO, that's how default should work eventually. When all weapons are equally balanced, it'd be nice to start with random weapons. Random start locations already does about that anyway.

Except that in this mutator, you also get a new random weapon assigned after every frag

divVerent wrote:Except that in this mutator, you also get a new random weapon assigned after every frag

On a side note, the problem before was there was no 25/50armours in the game, the map's could do with some re-working to put these in, like aggressor/warfare where the is 3x 100armours, otherwise there's not much value if 200/200, as you can't defend the other 100armours.

I did have a re-done armour version of warfare, with 100a above RL, 50a at nex and 25a in corner where electro is.

And yes, after so many year's of balancing this would be a silly change to just do straight away because Lord Havoc want's it as default.

Would rather see some kind of merge then straight swap, i'll wait till 2.5.2 is out then test the new havoc weapons before I comment further.

divVerent wrote:Except that in this mutator, you also get a new random weapon assigned after every frag

You mean JUST to get weapon stats quickly? or would this be permanent.

Because that otherwise is really really bad.

Also it seems havoc mode (mainly all of the weapon settings and health system?) is coming whether people like it or not, I know you say there will be lot's of balancing issues and testing etc, but this is a big change and it sounds like there's no say on it and that it's happening regardless if 1 or 100 people dislike it, it's take it or leave it by the sounds of it am I correct or wrong here?

k0jak wrote:

divVerent wrote:Except that in this mutator, you also get a new random weapon assigned after every frag

You mean JUST to get weapon stats quickly? or would this be permanent.

Because that otherwise is really really bad.

It'll be a mutator that'll be supplied with any Nexuiz version after 2.5.2, but not appear in the menu.

Yes, LH as Game Designer of the project decided so, and it's in the end his decision and not anyone else's.

However, what WILL happen in the end is in fact a merge of both worlds which will be the result of the rebalancing.

When you're done adding guided missiles, pogostick, HLAC, camping rifle as default, maybe we can add some mountable unicorns too? if that's too cliché, we could go with reindeer. I don't know of many non-Holiday games having mountable reindeer.

Nexuiz needs a melee weapon too, and I'm thinking spork, since it's such an uncommon weapon in games these days. Failing that, I say we just let the devs decide between wielding a frozen mackeral or a juicy ham hock. There's always the option of using the Tuba, since it's already coded into the game. I vote that the notes G and B do the most damage, with A and E having the largest splash area.

I think the next thing to do is to completely alter the current physics. Since we're in there tinkering around already, we might as well change all of the air/wall/floor friction and gravity. We can't keep that the same, people will get used to it and get bored. I think changing these values will draw new players to the community. Veteran players will leave but that's okay, they can always migrate to the ever-consistent QuakeLive, a horrible failure because its core gameplay never changes (BORING, who wants that anyway? Bring on the unicorns!)

Once this is all done, I'd like to propose we redo the graphics as well. It's too dark of a game and needs a lot more color. I vote that we change brightskins to display as giant Xs and Os instead of red and blue. Obviously the goal being (*fingers crossed*) that within a year Nexuiz will evolve into a fun-filled game of Tic-Tac-Toe with a target demographic consisting mainly of 55-year old women and no real gamers...

divVerent wrote:Yes, LH as Game Designer of the project decided so, and it's in the end his decision and not anyone else's.

However, what WILL happen in the end is in fact a merge of both worlds which will be the result of the rebalancing.

Yea I thought so, but why does he hardly post on the forums..I'm guessing he's a busy person but a lot of people are, and as the 'Game Designer'?

It would be a lot better if we could get his reasoning why for wanting such a change, rather then that he has said it and so it be done.

No offence to you divVerent as you do a great job of keeping everything toghether, but I think people would rather here it from him if he's the one wanting such a big change with some reasoning behind this and possibly upsetting the player-base.

As for the changes I respect that you have talked about testing and not rushing it, I just hope this doesn't ruin the game, but I can see quite a few players leaving unfortunately if this doesn't work

Well, the reasoning by LH is: so many downloads, so few players, so most people download the game then reject it. Something is very obviously wrong with the game. So his idea is to steer it back to what new players may expect...

nexuiz-251.zip has 126,186 downloads on Sourceforge.net.
Maybe 99.9% only plays singleplayer? :P

I'm not worried about changes in gameplay yet, this is targeted for 2.6 afaik, it's a long time left :P
As usual I'm concerned about the different gamemodes, It's hard to balance Nexuiz for DM and CTF at the same time.
Maybe havoc can be used for dm/tdm, while stock nexuiz is for ctf and nexrun for race/cts.

Different movement styles per game mode are a) not well supported by the engine, and b) will make life unnecessarily hard for players who'd have to adjust all the time.

divVerent wrote:Well, the reasoning by LH is: so many downloads, so few players, so most people download the game then reject it. Something is very obviously wrong with the game. So his idea is to steer it back to what new players may expect...

They expect slower, realistic movement and no 'bunny hopping' (preferably with endurance limited sprinting). It's not the weapons, its the physics.

Just look at UT3, Halo (2-3 and ODST) and Tribes 3, they are "old school" shooters evolving into a world of modern shooters and player expectations. They have slower more tactical physics but their weapons aren't really any different from default Nexuiz' (aside from the underpowered shotgun and overpowered nex and a lack of a melee and homing weapon).

Hi, allow me to introduce myself. I was called in by LordHavoc to help overhaul Havoc mode a few weeks ago, and I suggested to LH to roll the Havoc mode weaponset and health system into basenex. I won't claim to speak for LordHavoc, but I'd be quite happy to explain any of the planned changes.. But judging by some of the statements made in this thread I don't think everyone has tried the new Havoc mode yet - *please* do so.

FraNcoTirAdoR wrote:I couldnt test the new HP system, I hope finally its against stacking, so for example 1on1s will be finally interesting and not the fight of a 400/400 guy against a 125/0 player because anyone can say anything but thats not fun to keep control THIS way (especially due the pickup circles possible to make in this game)

I'm sure you'll be happy to know that this is exactly what was intended. :)

Flying Steel wrote:What is the purpose of havoc though?

Couldn't you just apply havoc's health system, slow the physics down like lordhavoc wants (but for some reason havoc mode lacks?) and turn the nex into a shock rifle (like it is in havoc) but leave the other weapons alone?

Because I like realistic-er physics and shock rifles just fine, but these changes really take the life out of weapons like the crylink and hagar.

The general purpose of Havoc mode is to reward careful positioning and map control. The weaponset was also rebuilt so that every weapon truly has a role and situation it'll shine in - you can't get away with brainlessly spamming the hagar rocket hose. :P

The intention behind the physics changes was absolutely *not* to make movement more 'realistic'. Rather, they are a part of making positioning much more important, just because it's so much harder to dodge in Havoc mode compared to basenex. That said, I disagree with LH and I think NexRun physics would suit the weaponset much better and could still keep an emphasis on careful positioning.

k0jak wrote:On a side note, the problem before was there was no 25/50armours in the game, the map's could do with some re-working to put these in, like aggressor/warfare where the is 3x 100armours, otherwise there's not much value if 200/200, as you can't defend the other 100armours.

This is a valid issue, and you're quite right that alot of maps will need tweaked armour loads by 2.6.

OHSNAPPLE wrote:When you're done adding guided missiles, pogostick, HLAC, camping rifle as default, maybe we can add some mountable unicorns too? if that's too cliché, we could go with reindeer. I don't know of many non-Holiday games having mountable reindeer. ...

Relax. Play SVN Havoc mode please. What you describe is the exact opposite of what Havoc mode is meant to do. :)

k0jak wrote:As for the changes I respect that you have talked about testing and not rushing it, I just hope this doesn't ruin the game, but I can see quite a few players leaving unfortunately if this doesn't work

Again, I won't claim to speak for LH, but please let me assure you that everything I've suggested was with the goal of making Nexuiz a better game. :) If some players leave because they're afraid of change then that's fine, because so long as Nexuiz becomes a better game in the end, the playerbase should eventually grow larger than it was before.

The overall intention of Havoc [Pro] mode is to reinvent Q3A, which was what Nexuiz 1.0 was suppose to be.

All the developments in 1.x and 2.x were mistakes, apparently.

Supa wrote:Hi, allow me to introduce myself. I was called in by LordHavoc to help overhaul Havoc mode a few weeks ago, and I suggested to LH to roll the Havoc mode weaponset and health system into basenex. I won't claim to speak for LordHavoc, but I'd be quite happy to explain any of the planned changes.. But judging by some of the statements made in this thread I don't think everyone has tried the new Havoc mode yet - *please* do so.

I have tried it, both 2.5.1 and beta.

The general purpose of Havoc mode is to reward careful positioning and map control. The weaponset was also rebuilt so that every weapon truly has a role and situation it'll shine in - you can't get away with brainlessly spamming the hagar rocket hose.

Given that it is no longer effective in combat for any purpose, no you can't really do that.

The hagar was already one of the weaker weapons do to a combination of its wide spread and slow round speed. Now its much wider spread makes it useless in any situation. Probably ditto on the machinegun.

The intention behind the physics changes was absolutely *not* to make movement more 'realistic'. Rather, they are a part of making positioning much more important, just because it's so much harder to dodge in Havoc mode compared to basenex.

The thing is, it would have been much better to have just done that and not reinvented all of the weapons. Just made physics more tactical or such.

Because now the weapon balance will have to be rebuilt over years of testing and refinement.

And because this has also made it much harder to accurately hit anyone now, unless you have the Nex, HLAC, electro, GL or RL. The remaining majority of weapons are either underpowered or spammy to the point of no longer benefiting from aiming skill. So not only has dodging skill become less important, but so has aiming skill.

That said, I disagree with LH and I think NexRun physics would suit the weaponset much better and could still keep an emphasis on careful positioning.

Since only the Nex, HLAC and RL are better at hitting fast moving targets now, that seems like it would be a more imbalancing combination.

Again, I won't claim to speak for LH, but please let me assure you that everything I've suggested was with the goal of making Nexuiz a better game. If some players leave because they're afraid of change then that's fine, because so long as Nexuiz becomes a better game in the end, the playerbase should eventually grow larger than it was before.

I am not afraid of change, in fact I might be one of the greatest supporters of it in the community. But I am afraid that perhaps in trying to appease two diverging directions (classic nexuiz versus tactical gameplay) the most valuable aspect of the game (the fun and balanced weapons) could be lost.

That said, I'll keep testing new versions of Havoc and Default with an open mind, I just hope things get on a better path because it doesn't feel like the Havoc balance changes going from 2.5.1 to beta have really been an improvement.

Note that 2.5.2 will not contain the current havoc ruleset. We're in a feature freeze, and some of the changes really are too big to get into the next release.

SVN users can test the "to-become-default" mode by deleting default25.cfg from their checkout.

Others can test it by joining the "future nexuiz rebalance" server on rm.endoftheinternet.org:26004.

I tested the havoc weapons yesterday, and i cant write a long post now, just wanna tell that nexuiz weapons felt even more spammy then ever before. Hagar, mortar, nex, mg need zero aim to hit, and with these settings electro primary is maybe the strongest weapon in nexuiz...(RL should be exactly like this)
why isnt hp and armor lowering to 100 btw? This is the biggest support nexuiz can give to campers, they can hold position forever on 400 hp together once they have stacked. Also this doesnt solve map controlling issues but makes much worse.

Mortar needs zero aim? Why that?

MG now has more spread, so what? It is a machine gun and no sniper rifle.

Hagar - okay, that may be. It seems too strong in weapon balance anyway.

Nex needs zero aim? WHAT?

I can tell you the electro is by far not the strongest weapon, but Hagar, RL and Mortar seem above it (which may need fixing). Personally, however, I'd want the electro with more emphasis on combos and less on the primary.

HP will now lower to 100 again, armor will NOT. If you are fully stacked, you'll rot down to 100 health, 200 armor, giving a total max damage till you die of 250. That should solve it completely.

Try the current settings on rm.endoftheinternet.org:26004.

divVerent wrote:HP will now lower to 100 again, armor will NOT. If you are fully stacked, you'll rot down to 100 health, 200 armor, giving a total max damage till you die of 250. That should solve it completely.

Thx for the detailed answer, that seems to be very nice even for the first look, i think that will work fantastically, it was just different yesterday.

The reason why i mean that mortar needs no aim because it works technically the same, its like a mini rocket launcher on close-medium range and now it shoots ammos like 3 times faster, it feels completely spammy, you shake the crosshair around the target and there will be 4 mortarts shot immediately in the close sorrounding of the target. What I think it would be a nice idea to make mortar shoot the ammo on even less speed or more air friction, because this way on medium range it works almost like (the 2.5.1) hagar in my opinion.

I dont really have any problem with machine gun, its spammy, but maybe thats the only weapon where its "normal". Electro felt very strong because it killed a freshly spawned enemy in 1,5 second with 2 shots right after spawn, and they didnt have to be direct at all due its huge splash.

I will go tho the havoc testing server soon, and bring some guys, lets see how weapons feel Will there be feedback topic soon where we can start talking about the idea of weapon balancing for the 2.6 version? Also what would be appriciated to post there the tunings made every time on the weapons so its much easier to test. This way until 2.6 arrives it would be a nice community collaborative solution to implement the havoc weapon-behaviour with good possibility of feedback from the community for balancing.


EDIT: After plaing lot of DM matches on the server you recommended I still keep the statement: mortar is incredibly powerful, same with electro. Camping rifle is totally underpowered, the secondary is really weak. Machine gun felt mostly okey, same with rocketlauncher, but it should have slower speed, like 1700 imo. Shotgun is absolutely okey, laser feels weaker than it was. Crylink was overpowered at the beginning, but as the weapon settings very tuned it became underpowered at the end IMO. Hagar is mostly okey on close range, also nex feels balanced, however i wasnt lucky enough to get it too many times (i got laser and rifle 99% of the time i swear )

OHSNAPPLE wrote:When you're done adding guided missiles, pogostick, HLAC, camping rifle as default, maybe we can add some mountable unicorns too? if that's too cliché, we could go with reindeer. I don't know of many non-Holiday games having mountable reindeer.

Your post is the most hilarious thing I've read all day, nicely done.

I don't have time to make a lengthy post at the moment (Doctors appointment), but I will say that if the balance they want to apply to 2.6 happens, i'm most likely leaving.

@OHSNAPPLE LOL, nice.

To be perfectly clear, I have been pushing for significant changes in Nexuiz balance for some time, these were all deflected by most of the dev team as dangerous changes, and put into my Havoc mode (formerly known as "pro", a somewhat incorrect title).

Consequently Havoc mode kept being an experimental mod in serious need of balancing, and my invitations for balance testing and serious discussion went unanswered, I had to take drastic steps to spark real discussion of a rebalance and revive the core of the game itself.

Contrary to claims that have been floating around, I have never suggested putting Havoc physics into base Nexuiz as I see that as a major point of community debate, I believe fast movement is hostile to teamplay and Havoc has always been teamplay focused, but Nexuiz has always been more of a FFA and CTF game and I do not want to "ruin" the heart of Nexuiz as we know it.

However some other aspects of Havoc are under constant balance testing leading toward an eventual release in Nexuiz 2.6 (2.5.2 will not have these balance changes), chief among these is the health/armor limits which ensure it is always possible to kill a dominant player with enough skill, running items will never get you over 200/200 health/armor, limiting map control somewhat, additionally player start health has been lowered and an invulnerability period added.

With the health/armor changes and changes in responsiveness come significant weapon changes which are nowhere near final at this time and being driven primarily by server statistics analysis.

Ultimately I want the game to be easier to pick up for newbies but still hold potential for skilled players who have learned all the tricks and tactics of the game, a rebalance is necessary for this goal.

At the same time, I have been following Nexuiz download statistics vs player counts since the original release, and the numbers are not merely disappointing but depressing to me as the lead game designer, the retention rate is abysmal, Nexuiz has millions of downloads (across the various versions) and only several hundred players, no amount of publicity will make up for a game that does not hold onto the players who try it.

Some claim that I am trying to clone QuakeLive in Nexuiz, this is not true and has never been the intent, my goal is to identify what is driving away so many players and correct the problems, unfortunately these players are not as vocal on the forums as the active Nexuiz community, and there is a significant danger of ending up like QuakeWorld where newbies are destroyed repeatedly until they give up on playing online simply because it is not fun to lose all the time. (A point that QuakeLive has tried hard to fix, with limited success)

On the technical side, I think there are a few issues:

• Unresponsive controls - Traditionally Nexuiz has used 20fps gameplay and movement, which adds a hidden 50ms latency to everything you do and subconsciously feels "bad", we're changing this in the future to 16.667ms (60fps) to improve projectile weapons and allow finer timing of shots and movement.
  The specific settings are: cl_netfps 60;sys_ticrate 0.0166667
  For comparison Nexuiz used 20 and 0.05, QuakeLive uses something closer to 120 and 0.05
• Servers offering many poor-quality maps in their rotation - it makes a very poor impression when 90% of the maps played online are worse than the official maps.
• Network issues - whether it's the netcode or the server, there have been many user-visible issues with networking in every version of Nexuiz, we need to identify and fix these where possible.

I do believe there is a significant community who play Nexuiz singleplayer only (which avoids most of the technical issues in the game), and are not particularly vocal on the forums here, but I am not sure how many.

Note: In the interests of full-disclosure I should note that I am an id contractor working on QuakeLive.

LordHavoc wrote:Consequently Havoc mode kept being an experimental mod in serious need of balancing, and my invitations for balance testing and serious discussion went unanswered, I had to take drastic steps to spark real discussion of a rebalance and revive the core of the game itself.

I'm sorry about this, I for one wasn't aware of where the balance testing or discussions were taking place or that the participation of general players was wanted in the later. I'm mostly just a forum go-er though, outside of the game, so if this was an IRC thing then that might be why myself and others missed it.

Contrary to claims that have been floating around, I have never suggested putting Havoc physics into base Nexuiz as I see that as a major point of community debate, I believe fast movement is hostile to teamplay and Havoc has always been teamplay focused, but Nexuiz has always been more of a FFA and CTF game and I do not want to "ruin" the heart of Nexuiz as we know it.

. . .

With the health/armor changes and changes in responsiveness come significant weapon changes which are nowhere near final at this time and being driven primarily by server statistics analysis.

Ultimately I want the game to be easier to pick up for newbies but still hold potential for skilled players who have learned all the tricks and tactics of the game, a rebalance is necessary for this goal.

Maybe I am mistaken, but my feeling is changes this drastic to the weapons ultimately will be as controversial and game altering as similarly significant changes to the movement physics.

And at the same time, they are only theoretically going to help the teamplay and learning curve issues, whereas physics changes have a much higher chance of achieving these goals if you look at the examples out there.

So at least as a backup plan if these weapon changes don't achieve their intended goals or alienate too many players, I would suggest to do things like reduce acceleration and remove bunny-hopping acceleration and such for Default 2.6+ while prominently supporting classic fast paced Nexuiz as a "Veteran's Mode" much like Havoc mode currently is or as a Mutator. And then leave the current default weapons to continue on their current path of development.

I do believe there is a significant community who play Nexuiz singleplayer only (which avoids most of the technical issues in the game), and are not particularly vocal on the forums here, but I am not sure how many.

Yeah I play singleplayer alot. I like to create matches against Pro bots or higher, often with different Mutators which are half the game for me. I'm not sure how many more there are like me.

@Flying Steel:
If you want a CoD physics game or similar then go create one using DarkPlaces, it's free. Don't try to turn this game into that.

For the record I hate call of duty, its weapons and its physics.

And ai is another me from a mirror parallel dimension of somekind, so whatever I say or whatever position I take he will always be there to take the exact opposite side, its just a law of the universe.

Thanks for the in-depth post LordHavoc. The thing that drove away most of (ESR/warsow/quake) players was the earlier releases were so bad with lag issues and choppy movement (as well as being totally different to quakeworld/quake3/ style movemet) that they put the game 'down' so to speak after a few minutes of playing, with new releases a few of these people have said it has gotten better, but only a very very few...So the changes you are proposing do make sense, hopefully it will attract more people to play.

As for new players' I can't really comment, but I think it will bring new players, so I'm looking forward to it.

I will try out the server tomorrow before I leave for the weekend, or later-on this evening for the new settings.

The only reason the Havoc player physics have such harsh sideways air friction (making bunny acceleration impossible, only useful for evasion or in combination with the laser to maintain momentum) is to make teamplay easier to play.

I'd really like to see discussion of this point - slow/fast physics and the teamplay impact of it, personally I enjoy FFA in Nexuiz but the teamplay always felt a bit tacked on, it's not very tactical when players can zip past an ambush or defense position.

Note: I do not mean tactical in the "realism shooter" sense, Nexuiz is not one of those cookie cutter games and never will be.