Gameplay balance and the pro vs noob argument

There is a method of giving new players a wonderfully fun starting experience...it's known to console gamers as...Matchmaking. Being a PC gamer means you are going to get pwned when you start. There is no, "matching players with equal skill." You die from the best and you learn from the best. That's how PC gaming works. It's more of an accelerated course. You start from the basics and leave them behind very quickly. A new user starts by simply running and blind firing. They die. Often. Then comes the question. "Why am I dying?" The answer comes when the new player begins to watch how they died. Now the curve steepens. They begin to pick up techniques used against them. They ask questions. They practice form and function. They improve. The thrill of mastering a technique is always present. They then begin to show some serious skill. They move higher up the scoreboard. They become well known. The game is now fun.
The alternative is to always match players of similar skill. This is similar to elementary school. You learn only what you discover...very VERY slowly. It's casual gaming...and it's laziness. It always leaves you as a median player, thus it becomes repetitive. Your only indicator is skill is a "Rank" you've earned. You can't base your skill on a match score because everyone else around you is equal with you.
Learning and mastering something is rewarding. It's hard to get that reward when there is nothing to learn from.

Interesting point, mastermind. If the community can be helpful enough to point out to n00bs what they are doing wrong and help them do it right, then we don't need matchmaking or anything.

I believe many in the community already do/did that, more so the American and Australian communities then in Europe.

Yup kojn^, that is the magic of the Nexuiz/Xonotic community. I was able to learn most of my techniques from those kind enough to stop and teach me. Pop on Xbox Live sometime and ask for tips. Keep a tally of the amount of trolling you receive in return. Sell the paper and ink it took for that list on ebay and you can restart the US economy.

I totally agree with you, master[mind]. Players more skilled than myself were a big reason why I stayed with Nexuiz even though I got destroyed every night. Little by little, lesson by lesson, I got better. Woohoo!

There is a method of giving new players a wonderfully fun starting experience...it's known to console gamers as...Matchmaking. Being a PC gamer means you are going to get pwned when you start. There is no, "matching players with equal skill." You die from the best and you learn from the best. That's how PC gaming works. It's more of an accelerated course. You start from the basics and leave them behind very quickly. A new user starts by simply running and blind firing. They die. Often. Then comes the question. "Why am I dying?" The answer comes when the new player begins to watch how they died. Now the curve steepens. They begin to pick up techniques used against them. They ask questions. They practice form and function. They improve. The thrill of mastering a technique is always present. They then begin to show some serious skill. They move higher up the scoreboard. They become well known. The game is now fun.
The alternative is to always match players of similar skill. This is similar to elementary school. You learn only what you discover...very VERY slowly. It's casual gaming...and it's laziness. It always leaves you as a median player, thus it becomes repetitive. Your only indicator is skill is a "Rank" you've earned. You can't base your skill on a match score because everyone else around you is equal with you.
Learning and mastering something is rewarding. It's hard to get that reward when there is nothing to learn from.

* chuckles * Mentoring and Homeschooling. Right down my alley.

Exactly. That is the perfect mindset to have.

Oh.My.Gawd.

I promised myself I wouldn't get into these arguments and here I am posting

OK so here's my take - Nexuiz had been hailed as a "fast and fun OSS shooter with great community contributions and excellent weapon balance". This is not an exact quote of any review, but it's about all that was said about Nexuiz v2.0-2.4. I'll break this down a bit.

Attracting n00bz (and getting them to keep playing)
I initially tried Nexuiz because it was an easy to install game in my Linux distro's repo and wasn't hard to get running. I played for a while before even going online, and when I did I got pwnt. Badly. I found the best place for me to not get my ass kicked was Galt's LMS server - mind you LMS is the mode where you get all weapons from the start, and Galt's had max ammo + hook. This is a n00b-friendly setting, and even now I find it extremely fun because of the violence (hey, I'm playing fps for a reason here). Most people should absolutely NOT start by playing CTF matches out of the gate. The lack of fundamentals of the game is going to keep the new player from having a good experience, not anything else. And in a team setting such as CTF they don't get to practice or get coached, only thrown into the mix. In my case I specifically needed to work on picking up weapons in other game modes, but that wasn't hard after I had already gained skill in using weapons, weapon combos, and movement while in LMS. This still left me to learn things like strafing and laser jumping, but it was a good start where my end score of the match wasn't totally embarassing. What this means for people coming into Xonotic is that they should be encouraged to play, however it is they do play, but complaints should be met with, "hey, why don't you try practicing _____ on _____ server," because that is how a new player can improve skills - i.e. - learn weapons from LMS, FC skills from race, and so on.

Weapon Balance
Starting in 2.4 people started complaining about weapon balance, and in 2.5 it's one of the biggest complaints. You have to think about what the changes were between 2.3 to 2.5 to make everyone think it went downhill. What I can remember is that back then you had to find the stronger weapons. Balance didn't mean "equal to eachother", it meant a good selection of weapons. You could kill someone with a shotgun, but it wasn't easy. A nex to the face was 9 times out of 10 an instant kill. Using a mortar to launch someone into the air before shooting them with a nex then throwing another grenade was just plain fun. I've been too distracted lately so I can't say much about the current weapon balance, but will probably get a few rounds in within the next couple of days.

Maps
Gradually game performance has decreased (fps lag is getting worse and worse with each release), although again I can't speak for Xonotic. Someone told me the engine has improved fps.... we'll see. Granted I'm playing on 1080p resolution, but on a XFX Radeon HD5830 1GB I can't even keep up with 120fps. On my Sapphire Radeon x1950xt 512MB I could run a solid 200fps before Nexuiz 2.5 came out. A huge reason for reduced fps is the complexity of maps, which started around the same time as those releases. That's been a lot of the reason I've been offline more lately, is I find it easier to just jump on QuakeLive. Even though it's not as fun imo, it actually performs better. The trend now is to make these huge complex maps with tons of doors, secret hallways, turrets, and who knows what else.... I'm still a fan of "less is more". Especially if we want new players to keep playing, let's not add confusing maps to the list of things they have to figure out.

Imo, any n00b who plays a PC FPS should learn to be patient and to get killed (a lot). Practice makes perfect which is something consoles can't give you (you always play with people of your skill level). Watch replays and spectate others, learn, assimilate, put into practice which takes a tad more skill and makes games a lot more fun than bunny-hopping for the umpteenth time in halo -_-

I'll echo the map complexity issue, either it's bad optimisation on the mappers part or the engine can't cope with huge levels (even though it's modified), if you want a giant level, it's gonna run like an ass in quicksand..

Gradually game performance has decreased (fps lag is getting worse and worse with each release), although again I can't speak for Xonotic. Someone told me the engine has improved fps.... we'll see. Granted I'm playing on 1080p resolution, but on a XFX Radeon HD5830 1GB I can't even keep up with 120fps. On my Sapphire Radeon x1950xt 512MB I could run a solid 200fps before Nexuiz 2.5 came out. (makr)

120 fps....... and your upset?!
chooky runs 45-70fps most days.....

anyway as far as im concerned , what ever balance , pro this ,noob that, whatever..

if you guys arnt sayin hello in game , getting involved , being nice , helping noobs.

then whats gunna change?

then again people who read this ARE involved......

so ill have to suggest more advertising in game,

<PRO TIP> HELLO NOOB , WELCOME ,IF YOU WANT TO KNOW ANYTHING, SAY HELP PLEASE AND ASK NICELY , 30% OF PEOPLE HERE WILL HELP , BUT REALISE THAT THEY MAY HAVE THE FLAG AND ARE TRYIN TO CAP , ALSO WHAT YOU ARE READING ISNT BOUND BY VOCAL TONE , SO IT SOUNDS LIKE IM SHOUTING OR BEING SERIAL MAN BEAR PIG BUT IM ACTUALLY DRUNK AND CANT SEE WORDS WELL , SO ANYWAY, ENJOY YA STAY NERD.

ya...

if u dont help , then u wont get new competition.

t


:^

Good point Chooksta, I try to talk to people who play on the balance-nl server via IRC and am trying to help newer players out also.

In the words of Maverick, "He who fights and runs away, lives to run another day"

Anyway, my experience as a newb was probably not as bad as it could've been, chiefly because I went through all of one campaign and most of the other (Nexuiz 2.5.2). I didn't really have any experience with other FPS. I wish I would have known about DCC's beginner server, but fate would have me go to HODM and HOCTF, and there I endured getting beaten up a lot, till I finally managed to get a decent spot in HODM. I could beat pretty much everybody I ran into except some guys from the MOJO clan and two or three others (please note that none of Devs or other "old" players were there, probably already working on Xonotic). Then I moved on to HOCTF, and I still don't do well there (but this is do to the scoring system, I remember once when the game ended the other team had 7 and mine had 1, which I capped, and yet I was still on the bottom because I was the only one that would take the flag. The others must have been worried about their rank in the team and not about the team's rank).

But my favorite gamemode then (and still is now) is Domination (unfortunately there's no servers with that on them and [NL] isn't programmed to vcall it yet) because it requires you to get around fast, and shoot if you encounter your enemy (although it's better than CTF in this aspect, because they're not bent on killing you as they would be if you had the flag). I think it's the best balance between race and DM that we could have.

I had an experience with a newb once on HODM (his name was "Fodder" I think), and I decided to use only laser and only that to get away (about 20 frags ahead at that time) and still voidpushed him by accident. Whatever you do, be nice to newbs and give them advise if they ask for it. If they get angry cause they think you're bossing them around, don't lose your cool.

One more thing. I think the vcalling of gamemodes is the future of servers. This way people don't have to play on some 400+ ping server to play the gamemode they want. Obviously HODM, HOCTF, eatseakittens and other popular servers might not want this, but it would be nice to have one variable server per continent for decent ping worldwide.

Happy holidays

Good post.

I think some server's should be SET gametypes though. Nothing more frustrating when you want to play DM and people vote it to CTF for example, so I think this is better rather then most servers bring varied gamemode servers.

Just one "official" variable server per continent should be enough. e.g. "Australian v1.2.8 vote-mode server", and one for every (populated and player infested) continent like this "North American v1.2.8 vote-mode server", and "European v1.2.8 vote-mode server" etc. I fully agree that servers like HODM and HOCTF etc. should be set.

Of course, we'd have to get participating people to host these from each continent.

hehhehe , me was doin some study on our issues and i would like to say post 34 (mine)
is really good and we should remind ourselves of this again.

tso tyer twhat tya tthink?

tare tyou tdoing tit?

mmmm tit

:^

Speak english seriously chooksta, your starting to tilt me (poker talk), as I don't have a clue in any of your posts what the hell your on about...


... then again your australian so I can't expect much :p

hmmmmm?

34?

34......

t?


:^

---

not my rep points (or my age) , POST 34
LOL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4fU0Ajo4RM