[SOLVED] Blaster horizontal push

A recent bugfix introduced a balance change - we want to gather community feedback about which behavior we want to keep.

What happened:

The blaster has two cvars to control its push: g_balance_blaster_primary_force (300 by default) and g_balance_blaster_primary_force_zscale (1.25 by default). Zscale scales for force along the Z axis (up/down) by multiplying.

In 0.6 (I tested this one) and probably 0.7 (released in 2013) everything worked correctly: blaster's horizontal push force was 300 and vertical was 300*1.25=375.

In 2014 a bug was introduced during a rafactoring which caused zscale to multiply all 3 components of the force vector instead of just Z. Therefore blaster's push was 375 in all directions.

Recently the bug was fixed which means blaster feels weaker when using it on walls.

You can test both versions by compiling Xonotic on the commit which fixes it and the one before. However that is slow and requires a map restart every time you toggle between the two versions. A faster way is to compile just the new version (the fix or any commit after) and toggle just the cvar values:

g_balance_blaster_primary_force 300; g_balance_blaster_primary_force_zscale 1.25 will keep the new behavior

g_balance_blaster_primary_force 375; g_balance_blaster_primary_force_zscale 1 will give you the old behavior (from 0.8 until a few days ago)

Note that changes to weapon cvars in general take up to 5 seconds to take effect.

All feedback is welcome.

Personally i am strongly in favor of 375 horizontal push (old behavior) for multiple reasons:

1) The physics (especially aircontrol) were nerfed in 0.8 (you can test 0.7 values using physicsX07.cfg) and the blaster buff (although unintentional) somewhat counteracts it.

2) It feels really bad if you're used to the stronger push. People won't complain if you buff something since all their previous movement tricks still work, probably are easier and some others may be newly possible. A lot of players might not even realize things changed, things just feel easier. OTOH nerfing means frustration since you have certain expectations and you get something less. Fewer jumps are possible, the ones that are are harder and you are in general slower.

3) I dislike specialcasing one axis - it makes the weapons unintuitive to learn just like other exceptions (e.g. reduced selfdamage, different damage values against vehicles).

Well, since you insist...
I support keeping 375 in all directions. I even support increasing it further.

The blaster's horizontal force was weakened to give the crylink's specialized secondary more emphasis on fast ground travel, while the blaster's jumping ability was kept with the upwards force scale.
To keep the higher value in all directions will most certainly mean reconsidering the crylink's movement abilities (and potentially rebalancing/removing them).

Oh c'mon you just made that up because you want 300 horizontal push. Crylink still accelerates more reliably/easily than blaster and can be used to climb walls. Any change to that would be subject to the same community feedback.

I'm very much in favour of the old balance (375 for all directions).

1. Having different push forces on different axes feels awful (I weep for all pre 2014 players).
   
2. I like xonotic feeling like CA in every mode :>
   

You could buff crylink pull too :>

Movement - and, above all, blaster movement - is an essential part of Xonotic gameplay, at least for me. After all, movement is what I explain even before weapon usage for fragging to any newbie I encounter (as I do in the guide). So yes, I support blaster as a powerful movement tool. Do we need to make the gap between blaster and crylink movement bigger? I think Crylink running is still accelerating faster from 0 than wall blastering?

My vote actually goes to consistency (keeping the increased value on all axes).

The Crylink may or may not need adjustment (it hasn't been much of an issue - though I will admit I barely use Crylink for movement due to the damage cost), but that can be decided in a later thread if it comes to that.

Blaster is restored to old behavior in master now.