Unvanquished Forum

I think it would be a nice feature if guns had weight that affected your speed and jump height. For example, a human equiped with a chaingun, jetpack, helmet and larmour should move a lot slower than a guy with a rifle. This would probably have a positive effect on gameplay, making it a bit easier to get those quick humans with lucies that are otherwise hard to kill.

I disagree, I think that such an idea should never be implemented. You're trying to balance what players earned using something that would feel like an incredibly artificial change, as if stronger gear should have negatives associated with it just because it's stronger in its own ways.

A battlesuit with a luci is no harder to catch than a human with no armor and a rifle, unless the luci uses luci jumps, which have never really been practical in combat. It's about learning the proper approach and being able to make quick decisions.

I'd rather not see the game get dumbed down at all like this. People need to earn their kills and learn how to play. 1.1 was good about this with a few minor balance flaws associated with just how good players good get with certain things. And then GPP went half way to destroying this concept with all its silly changes, even if the game was still quite tolerable. You can do what you need to do in order to keep it somewhat "noob friendly," but it's easy to take away the rewarding experience of actually getting better in such a way that you have more of an impact in the game, which would be a huge mistake, as it was for GPP in the areas where it happened.

noob friendlyness is exactly what the game needs more of if it's going to get popular. A good player shouldn't have both the material advantages (good guns and whatnot) and the skill advantage. I'm not saying unv should be like cod, where it doesn't matter what your skill level is, you have the same chances of killing someone as anyone else, but a number of reasonable balance changes should be made to make the game a little more communist.

You're hurting your own cause with this idea. You do this gun weight thing and you'll have people talking about how they never pick certain things up or buy certain equipment combinations because of problems with avoiding aliens.

The problem you are saying newer players have is that it is too hard for them to catch up to humans who are wearing heavier stuff. If the problem is purely mobility, then I'll tell you right now about how I could just drop all my equipment given your solution and naked rifle enemies all over the place, as could plenty of players...and we've done it before, easily. What's your solution to that absurdity?

People need to face the fact that, given the way this game is at its core, new players are going to have to hit the game at a crawl and get raped a bit before they learn. You act like the game is being made for babies who will never improve if the game is too hard, even though 1.1 (the unquestionably more skill intense version) brought in its fair share for the earlier days of its run. People sucked it up and learned. Then GPP comes along with its "noob-friendly rebalancing," and it turned off a huge amount of 1.1 players because of these changes. That version already lets 1-week players get the upper hand on you even if you're not making any mistakes, which is ridiculous.

To add to this specific case, it helps to discuss how things were and how they are now (I'll stick to talking about 1.1 -> GPP, as Unv has more to come and no one's playing it). In 1.1, it was eventually determined by those involved in GPP's development (at what was known as MGDev server in 1.1 at the time) that it was too difficult for humans, in general, to dodge alien attacks. So, on the human side of things, dodge was added, along with various changes to alien attacks. Now, in GPP, dodge is overpowered vs. dretches, marauders, goon chomps, and tyrant slashes. Now you're telling me that it's too hard for the aliens to catch the humans, even while goons and tyrants both received enormous buffs to their movement based abilities?

Adding shit in to counter other additions has already shown itself to be the less favorable route when removal or base numeric changes are possibilities, given the states Tremulous has been in in the past. Try not to start such a thing up again. I agree that the game should have noob-friendly elements, but these should help them learn, not kill, within a balanced environment. But I think the game should be balanced for your standard players with a bit of experience, not for noobs. You balance the game for noobs and you'll either end up with no one really getting any better or players heavily exploiting the noob-friendly elements.

Don't give me that "has to be more noob-friendly to be popular" bullshit either. If people coming into the game really badly need help to play, someone can set up some kind of training server or something. But I think if I started hearing about people not playing the game because it's "too hard on humans" even while standard players vs. standard players ended up balanced and fine, I'd put the blame for a loss of new players on those players, not the game.

Anyways, while very little Unvanquished has been played, it went active with some balance changes that I predict will work out fine, though some need tweaking. The dragoon changes (chomp buff, pounce combat nerf, movement speed increase) and dodge being nerfed are the two most significant ones, though the goon movement speed could possibly use slight alterations. Me and Ishq had a devmapped 1v1 to test some things, and it's pretty much like 1.1 mixed with GPP, only humans are no longer able to just run (1.1 and GPP) and dodge (GPP) away.

For tl;dr: Don't add random shit like gun weight to counter other additions (i.e. dodge) for rebalancing purposes, and don't balance the game towards noobs, balance it towards "standard" players.

Reducing stamina by small amount, according to the weapon being held, seems more logical than penalizing human movement. Of course wearing a battle suit should negate the effects of stamina reduction, or better yet, increase the stamina.

batllesuit makes you go slower, but players still buy it. My point is not to make weight affect speed so much that everyone would ditch those heavy weapons and start running around with rifles. Every gun should have their own advantages and disadvantages and if a certain gun slows you down a bit that's not gonna stop me from buying it.

Take a look at quake 3, each gun is suited for different situations and no gun is far superior to another gun. In trem if you have a choice between a lucy and a rifle you will pick lucy 99% of the time because lucy is overpowered compared to other guns and is suited for pretty much any situation. Now you are saying that adding weight to stuff is generally bad idea, but take a look at TF2, works quite well there why not in unv as well?

Also the thing you say about making the game for standard players, not noobs. Well, most of the players are noobs. Most of the people just want to sit down and start killing shit, not play for 6 months just to get their first kill.

Personally I don't mind putting a bit of time into a game, but most of the people just want to play. And then you wonder why tremulous community is full of arrogant assholes.

If you're going to make shit up about what I'm saying, don't even bother coming up with ideas and then asserting that it will "probably have a positive impact." You're clearly doing some shallow thinking.

I may not have been clear enough about "standard" players who have "a bit of experience," but "6 months to get a kill" for a balance reference is a ridiculous exaggeration. I'm not saying the game should be balanced for pros who prioritize competitive play over public games. I'm saying "standard players," who know the basics well enough that they can make an impact in the public games they play in, even if it's not some insane rampage shit. They may very well still be considered noobs by those of higher skill, but they're not first day players either.

I shouldn't even be putting it in vague terms though. It's obvious enough that it would be difficult to pick out the "standards," since they make up the vast majority of Trem's population, if you follow my train of thought here. But I'll reiterate that the game should at least NOT be balanced towards players who are brand new. It's insulting to those who may want more out of their own roles in game later on; it ruins the depth of the game in terms of their own expectations of what kind of player they want to be. 1.1 had something really good going on for it in this way that GPP hurt badly, and I'd prefer not to see it go any further.

Give the new players access, but if you're telling me that after GPP handed out "noob-friendly" changes that fucked things up for everyone on the receiving ends, you still want more of that, then you either didn't play 1.1 enough or you're looking for a kiddie game. Don't presume that I'm speaking on my own behalf, looking for more of a hardcore game. 1.1 was enough of that and very, very slight dumbing down of the borderline aspects of that version works out well for me. But you will lose a lot of players if you go too far with such ideas.

I think the game can be made more accessible through the bots we have. If you're new, just load up a local server with a map that you have a navmesh for, and add a team of bots around your skill level. Keep on killing the bots until you start getting bored, and then increase the skill level. It's valuable target practice, one that people just didn't have available during the Tremulous years. Sure, you had the Wrath server, and while it did a fine job, it was too dependent on players being around. Bots will always be around, in any quantity you wish. They might not teach some of the more advanced behaviors required for the game, but a new player has a much better chance of survival if bots are practiced on before playing the real game. This can be made even easier if we implement a formal tutorial or single player mode, so that new players wouldn't be helplessly lost with console commands.

Besides that, I don't know how I feel about changes to existing things. You can always increase the stats of one thing, decrease the stats of another, and call it balancing, but that's really boring. I'd like to see gameplay changes that go beyond what we've come to expect over the years. New gameplay mechanics, and new game modes. The game becomes more interesting for people at all skill levels, without catering to one particular group.

In regards to balancing itself, I don't think I like the idea of giving artificial drawbacks to something just for the sake of satisfying an equation. There are many other factors to consider, such as the role of the item in question, when it becomes available, how easy it is to master, and many more. For example, take a look at the mass driver. You're guaranteed to kill a dretch with it in a single hit, and some of the other alien classes fall to it in just two or three shots. It's extremely accurate at long range, and even has a built-in scope. The question is, why aren't players switching to the mass driver the second they've scored some credits, when it provides a theoretically easy way to gain a load of funds? I believe the answer to this is due to how inflexible the weapon is, and the difficulty involved in mastering it. The mass driver may seem overpowered on paper, but in practice, it's a great way to get yourself killed in short range or by someone sneaking up on you. You'd waste less credits with a lasgun, and even the rifle is accurate enough to remain useful while other long-range weapons become available.

I think that to create a fun game mechanic, something shouldn't be overpowered or underpowered in a broad, general sense. Instead, think beyond the metagame, beyond any numerical values. Afterwards, when you have a solid idea, you can start to think of the numbers involved. That would probably be the key to producing something that feels more natural than artificial.

I am not talking about standard players who play trem. I am talking about standard players in general. There is a very small percentage of people who download the game and stay because of the reasons I mentioned above. What I propose is to make certain changes that would make the game more appealing to an average player rather than make changes that make the game more appealing to the type of people who already like it.

How about making it so that bigger guns do slow down the player, however, they actually do enough damage to be worth it?

This would also force people to work in teams, as the dude with the Chaingun would need someone with an AR/LG to watch his back.

But I don't know if that would be fun to play, and if it wouldn't be fun, it's probably not a good idea.