The Direction of Xonotic

The thing with this community is there is plenty of people to show new player's how to move and what the weapons do etc so I think the new player has a much easier time then with a lot of commercial games.

+1

I am worried, though, that once Xonotic hits its first release, many players will come from Nexuiz to Xonotic that didn't know about the fork. If we don't have enough experienced players that will take the time to show the newcomers how it works, we might loose a lot of those players (which are part of the "old" Nexuiz player base). That would be very sad.

What I would recommend is that we prepare ourselves for the new players in some way. Be it a special "You are coming from Nexuiz?" tutorial or special servers that are only online ("visible" in the server browser) when a "tutor" is playing there and that are dedicated to showing new players how to play with the new physics. How about that? I'd volounteer to be a tutor (well, I'll show new players anyway if and what I can).

Just so that at least some opposite voices are heard here too. I might be representing a minority here (but maybe also the silent majority) but I welcome the change very much. Nexuiz was too "backwards", too much appealing to the Quake1 gamers in regard to the physics, at least in my not so qualified opinion

So change is good, and I think together with the art direction improvements and weapon balancing it will make Xonotic a game for a much broader (but not necessary less skilled on average) audience.

Regarding the Nex/Rifle issue: the Nex has been reoriented quite some time ago (even in Nexuiz), without anyone noticing. It has low damage at long distance, but high damage at short distance.

So actually, it no longer is a good "sniper rifle"!

Damage at point blank: 80
Damage at long distance: 20

Clearly, this no longer qualifies as a sniper rifle. Needing 5 hits to kill someone at long distance... BUT: it still is accurate at any distance, giving it an edge over the rifle at VERY high distances.

Basically:

- short range: Nex wins unless player has good aim, with great aim rifle wins (head shot)
- mid range: Nex = Rifle (except for head shot)
- long range: Rifle wins
- very long range (not possible on most maps): Nex wins

The Nex is now somewhat of an "allround gun" (like it always was used before), but not very useful as sniper gun any more. Maybe this balancing decision fixes the problems with it. None of these guns entirely outperforms the other!

Great, I think this takes care of nex issues.