What do you think of my mutator? (Chaos Arena)

First off, sorry if this is the wrong forum, it was either this one or the development forum, and the development forum just seems a little too deep for something simple like this.

Anyway, it started out that I wanted a less serious game type as an alternative to DM and MinstaDM. I started out with some sort of Shotgun Instagib, but somewhere along the way I changed my mind. Soooo.....

Chaos Arena was born!

I wanted it to be chaotic(duh) while still being playable and balanced(somewhat balanced I guess). So basically, it ends up being like DM, but with superweapons and without most of the regular weapons. And a few other things as well. Keep in mind it's not intended to replace any existing game modes or be serious(though I welcome constructive criticism). So here's what it is:

The Shotgun is beefed up. It's much more powerful BUT the range is very limited and the rate of fire is slower. The Melee is also a 1 hit kill to giblets.

The Minstanex spawns in place of the Nex and Rifle. It's a super weapons, so it doesn't spawn too often and it's only available for 30 seconds. It consumes 5 ammo per shot, the max cell ammo you can have is 30, so you get 6 shots. Cell ammo pickups replenish 5 ammo a piece.

The Fireball spawns in place of the Machine Gun and Hagar. Same timers as the Minstanex.

The crylink is replaced with the HLAC. The HLAC consumes .25 ammo to compensate for the 30 cell ammo cap(in place to help balance the minstanex).

The Electro is replaced with the Tuba.

The mortar is replaced with the Tag Seeker.

The Jet Pack is on! This excites me because I never see it used. It also consumes half fuel.

The Laser does no damage.

Dodging is on, though I'm sure no one uses it

That is Chaos Arena. I've been tweaking it all day and getting feedback online, but there's not enough people on to really test it out. And if you thought the bots loved the shotty before, wait til you see them now

It can be played on my server(W4RP1G's blah blah blah) by voting (vcall chaosarena), or you can try it out with the attached cfgs. Just right click on the cfg file, save as(you'll have to change the extension from .txt to .cfg since the forum won't let me attach a cfg file for some reason), and put in your xonotic/data folder. Then when you start up the game type "exec chaoson.cfg" in the console and start a match. When you are done with it, you can either quit the game to disable it, or run "exec chaosoff.cfg" then "restart". Same thing for use on a server.

I played with the config on your server with some bots ( You are right they are pretty shotgun Happy)

I have some criticisms and some suggestions for improvements.

For one, I would not have both jetpack and hook enabled at the same time because it gets pretty redundant and can be confusing too. I would suggest either 1. only having one of these on at all, or 2. making the jet pack a collectible on the map which would replace the hook until runs out of fuel (vice versa maybe even which ever works better).

Second, I would suggest some changes to the weapons. First off I would like to add the HLAC to the weapons available, I would say replacing the crylink spawns. I know its being planned to be decommissioned as per default weapon balance, but how can get more Chaotic than a blizzard of lazers being shot at you? Also I would like to the rocket launcher to lose its guide and remote explosive in exchange for faster refire and faster rockets, with its seconday being replaced with last weapon used (Like Laser's secondary). That would also be more chaotic and fun. Also make the Tag seeker have faster refire with perhaps having a slowing down effect when the rockets hit kinda like what the default machine gun does.

Finally I would suggest maybe making the movement a little faster, especially with bunny hopping, as well as the player spawning with at least 125 Health and 50 armor to compensate for the strong weapons.

I love how the shotty slap is an insta-kill, and I do like how this could be used as a funner but obviously less balanced alternative to normal game play.

hmmmm... I like some of those idea. I had thought about adding the HLAC too since it doesn't serve much of a purpose in normal play, but it sure could work for chaotic play. And the extra health and armor on spawn was also something I was considering, but I was worried that it would make the non-super weapons ineffective. But I guess I should try it out and see how it goes.

I originally just had the jetpack until someone told me they preferred the hook. I figured there's no reason we can't have both! I can see how that would be too much though. However, the idea of not having the jetpack available on spawn irks me as I kinda designed things around it. For instance, I didn't have so many rocket launchers until I realized how easy it is to evade many weapons simply by staying in the air. I figured the guided rockets with air burst would help balance things out. I guess the tag-seeker could be used if you manage to tag them, but that's not an easy task. On that note, I will increase the refire rate and speed of the rockets a tad to compensate for the jet pack.

I'm not sure if increasing the movement would really help, since jet pack use for faster movement is encouraged. I'd like to play it a bit more with some people(not bots) to see how long anybody is really on the ground. I suppose it couldn't hurt to speed up movement a little, I just worry that if I start changing the physics of the game, it will feel less like Xonotic. I definitely wouldn't want switching between regular modes and chaos arena to be like switching between different games.

Great suggestions, I'm gonna try some of those out right now and see how things go. It will probably be just me and the bots though


Ok so I changed a few things. The hlac is now in place of the crylink. It consumes .25 ammo per shot because I needed the cell ammo cap at 30 for the minstanex(so it wouldnt be op). I removed the on-hand grappling hook because it really should be either or when it comes down to it. I decreased the jetpack fuel consumption by half. The starting health and armor are at 125/50. The seeker fires faster, as does the tag. The Fireball now replaces both the machine gun and hagar. That is so it's guaranteed on all maps(I know some maps will have 2 Fireballs, but I'm ok with that). And finally, the RL fires slightly faster and has a slightly faster rocket speed. CFGs have been edited to reflect changes.