[SUGGESTION] Some gameplay issues (0.6)

(Disclaimer: I am not a dev, just a player, so my opinion on gameplay should be modified accordingly).
Just finished playing some 0.6 and while it is greatly improved on 0.5, I still have some gripes (that may be mine alone) about general game play and some thumbs up.

Gripes first:

1. Weapons:
a) Mortar secondary, doesn't really work. I still prefer the slow moving bouncing grenades that can be used as an ambush weapon or to lay down retreat cover, or to flush out players from corridors and nooks.
b) Electro secondary. Similar to mortar above. Using it as an offensive weapon doesn't really work as the player movement is so fast now, by the time you've laid down 3 electro balls and detonated them, the enemy is long gone.
c) Hagar secondary. Takes too long to load up and the spread is too high. Could be useful as an ambush weapon, but yet to experience that against human players.
d) Rocket. Takes a LOT of practice to be useful, the extra speed makes air control difficult, and the tiny splash radius makes it impossible to 'fire and forget' at corners quake style. In fact, it makes it useless as a splash weapon generally.
e) Following on from (d), all splash radii seem to have contracted even more than 252 nexuiz, and combined with the lightening player speed, makes the splash weapons (except the mortar, which is brutal fast), .... difficult to use. Maybe that was the intention?
f) The Uzi would be awesome if the tracers had longer tails. It would then be a little like a LG, but still it's own unique weapon. But that's just like, my opinion man.

2. Physics
a) Is there some reason why you lose forward speed when you are in the air? Is the air denser at higher altitudes, causing more air resistance?
b) Is the greater air resistance at higher altitudes the reason why when you are launched in the air by weapon splash (push), it slows you down?
c) Is this intentional? Was there a reason behind it? I seem to recall FruitieX complaining about fast rabbits (who get speed with laser) making flag runs, was that the motivation?
d) Gravity still seems a little 'floaty'. I remember how much time and practice it took me to get the jumps right on Soylent in nex 242 physics, now I just aim and hold space bar down. On the flip side, floating in the air for so long makes you an easy target
e) Is the long term plan to move Xonotic in the direction of Defrag? I admit I have fun bunny hopping around maps quickly, but the weapons just seems to be a distraction. It feels like the devs can't decide if Xonotic is an arena shooter or a race game with weapons.

Thumbs up!

1) Textures and rendering. Many of the new maps look absolutely gorgeous. I played a platform map last night and the metallic textures and the light rendering were breath taking. I had to stop and look (while getting shot).

2) Items and weapons. Health and armour look great. Flags look awesome. Love the new laser, nex and machine gun.

3) Terrains. Love the new terrains, but not many maps that really take advantage of them (well, not that I have seen anyway).

Overall, the look and feel of the game is very professional, but I struggle a lot with the game play. If you are not going for a broad based appeal for a wide audience, then I guess it's fine as it is. I think the learning curve is too steep for new players, and attention spans are short, especially when quake live is free to play.

Food for thought?

M4CE

a) Mortar secondary, doesn't really work. I still prefer the slow moving bouncing grenades that can be used as an ambush weapon or to lay down retreat cover, or to flush out players from corridors and nooks.

IIRC, it explodes 0,5s from the first bounce and it was like that for a while. How does that not work?

b) Electro secondary. Similar to mortar above. Using it as an offensive weapon doesn't really work as the player movement is so fast now, by the time you've laid down 3 electro balls and detonated them, the enemy is long gone.

It is mostly escape weapon like GL in Quake 3/Live, if you use it that way. I prefer shooting one ball at the time and setting it off in UT like manner. But I still do think that if you manage to hit the ball in the air (which is very hard to do), you should be rewarded with more dmg than usual (in fact, if it was rewarded with more dmg/blast radius, you'd have an indicator, how hard it is).

c) Hagar secondary. Takes too long to load up and the spread is too high. Could be useful as an ambush weapon, but yet to experience that against human players.

Nope. One of my favourite weapons. It takes long to load, but well placed shot is a one hit kill to most enemies. High risk, high reward.

d) Rocket. Takes a LOT of practice to be useful, the extra speed makes air control difficult, and the tiny splash radius makes it impossible to 'fire and forget' at corners quake style. In fact, it makes it useless as a splash weapon generally.
e) Following on from (d), all splash radii seem to have contracted even more than 252 nexuiz, and combined with the lightening player speed, makes the splash weapons (except the mortar, which is brutal fast), .... difficult to use. Maybe that was the intention?

Bolded is pretty much entire point of this weapon. If you take time to learn, you can come up with some very impressive frags. And I think dmg/speed is fine the way it is, because RL doesn't clearly overpower other weapons.

f) The Uzi would be awesome if the tracers had longer tails. It would then be a little like a LG, but still it's own unique weapon. But that's just like, my opinion man.

Arc cannon (LG like weapon) is confirmed to be introduced, and MG will most certainly need rebalancing, so it's best to wait and see.

2) Items and weapons. Health and armour look great. Flags look awesome. Love the new laser, nex and machine gun.

MG model hardly changed, but I've seen minigun model here as WIP.

In my opinion the problem is that Xonotic stretches too much to please everyone. On the one hand you got the casual players who populate the public servers, then you got the competitive players who play tourneys and pickups and last but not least the nerds who don't really play the game but like to mess around with it like a toy (well you got that kind of people mainly in this forum ). It already begins when you start the game. There are countless options spread among several menus, many of them which overcharge the computer illiterate (=most of the (potential) casual players). On the other hand the competitive players are forced to use the console to tweak stuff like picmip, sky or smoke. Which is so 1999 tbh.
The weapons are a more difficult topic. Xonotic is supposed to be noob-friendly yet I can't name another game which is that complicated regarding weapons. Every weapon needs gimmicks and "cool special stuff". Rockets can't fly from A to B and then make boom, no they are guided (ok 1 gimmick is nice), need remote detonation (gimmick 2, why?), accelerate (gimmick 3, really?) and have their own weird physics (b*tch please). Who wants that? The casual players? From watching them play I strongly doubt that they are interested in spending much time in learning all the weird stuff - they just want to play. The competitive players? Oh please no. Same with almost every other weapon.
Movement though is a positive thing imo. It's easy and intuitive to learn. That's how the whole game should be.

For xonotic to get big imo it should focus 100% on the casual players and offer a coherent concept, no compromise. For competitive players, put their stuff (picmip etc) in one menu tab and allow those options only on xpm servers. At least that's my view on things.

I personally love the weapons. Noobs can kill with them, but completely mastering them took me months, litteraly. But learming new stuff is just a big part of the fun.
IMO they are close to perfect.

games that one masters easily become boring fast ...

games that are difficult to master ... but possible ... are fun...

I don't like games geared towered casual gamers ... they end up like misesweeper ... not very deep...

I is possible to please both groups ... just look at minecraft ... they please both the casual and the competitive ...

hutty's xonotic skill chart of greatness

LEVEL 1 -- point and shoot
LEVEL 2 -- doge and shoot
LEVEL 3 -- bunny hopping
LEVEL 4 -- trick jumping/ramp jumping
LEVEL 5 -- weapon switching (binds)
LEVEL 6 -- Item control (megas/quads)
LEVEL 7 -- COMBOS
LEVEL 8 -- ??? and beyond?

that is my current chart of xonotic's deepness ... hopefully well disconver more layers soon

I rather meant the whole concept of Xonotic, especially how it is presented and advertised. If you promote it as a fun shooter with great graphics you will target a different crowd than if you show the competitive side of Xonotic. The recent discussion of "picmip cheaters" shows the clash that can happen if you try to please both sides. I think there are two options: first, you could try to merge both groups by making "advantageous" options like picmip easily available to everyone or restrict them so that you can't tweak graphics beyond what is possible via current options, secondly you could allow advanced options like gl_picmip_world 1337 only on servers running a competitive mod.

As long as preconditions are equal for everyone I don't think that much of customizability is required for competitive gaming. If everyone is forced to a certain set of graphics that should work fine as long as a certain performance (qua fps) is maintained. So I would love to see the devs making a decision on that, at least divverent, merlijn and c.brutali seem to favor the casual side of Xonotic while Samual set up XPM basically.

LEVEL 1 -- point and shoot
LEVEL 2 -- doge and shoot
LEVEL 3 -- bunny hopping
LEVEL 4 -- trick jumping/ramp jumping
LEVEL 5 -- weapon switching (binds)
LEVEL 6 -- Item control (megas/quads)
LEVEL 7 -- COMBOS
LEVEL 8 -- ??? and beyond?
LEVEL 9 --Fisume, Kojn....

I doubt gfx settings / menu layouts are central to the casual players case. Xonotic did depart a lot from its predecessor but it still is, to large extent, an instinct/muscle memory shooter. Hardly a game for a casual players. And not because some seasoned player will have its graphics tweaked but because he will, by experience, have monumental advatnage against one that play now and then. Half of the current gamaplay would need to be choped off, many maps dropped from the public servers, and the like, to arrive at something that dont give newcomers a mighty welcome (but then, how would that game be different from dozen other labels with fancy graphics and trivial content, except for the license?).

LEVEL 1 - -
ADVANCED LEVELS

It's easy to hurt yourself (a foot, for example), weapons are dangerous.

The weapons are fine for me, I can make some nice frags with the RL by speculating where people will land, and the Plasma Cannon secondary often gives me frags too when shooting in a small room with a lot of players.

And just like rafallus said, the Hagar's secondary is really nice, I often had one hit kills with it with a well aimed shot. It's like some sort of charge-up supershotgun.

Movement speed is high indeed, I still need to get used to it, because I often leap off the edges in some maps when I'm coming at them with high speed

My only real issue is that the physics could be a little faster and encourage movement other than just bunnyhopping everywhere (this should mostly be reserved for larger distances in my opinion). However the current physics still aren't bad and another set I put together (which actually is only slightly different than the default) is included with the game and can be executed by typing in a command line (exec physicsLeeStricklin-ModdedFruit.cfg, it's a bit messy though, think I need to screw with the gravity some more) before starting a game. I would say that the ammo pool needs to be redone (so that ammo is equally distributed to all of the guns), but I think that's already planned for when the Arc Cannon gets into the game.