balanceFruit.cfg

I have now finally been able to test the new balance (unfortunately only with mortar, electro, rocket launcher, nex, hagar, shotgun and laser involved). Here are my thoughts:

Please please please make the laser useful again. I feel like a crippled nuclear jackrabbit and I can tell you that's not a nice thing. I don't care how it's being done, make it use more health if you need to but if the laser is not useful anymore for climbing walls or getting to places, an elementary well of fun is being closed.

I find the grenades very interesting, you really need to think ahead where you place them. But this could also lead to slowing down the game, since you tend to shoot into the direction you are currently moving. Which is, as I can tell by experience now, a bit tricky with sticky grenades. It's like placing a mine field directly in front of you while running at full speed. Time will tell if getting used to this will make the sticky grenades a very useful tool. Personally I think they will turn out good. I'd suggest to use the same flying arches for primary and secondary mortar in order to avoid confusion.

I am not so much fond of the electro primary, mainly due to two issues: a) the electro combo is almost unusable now - you can spit out only one ball within reasonable time, and you need to hit it directly with primary AND you need to be quite close to do so (at least it felt like that) and then the explosion isn't even particularly impressive and b) I personally dislike those "aim and keep the fire button pressed until you frag" weapons. That's more of a personal dislike and that's also why I didn't use the mg whenever I had an alternative in Nexuiz 2.5.2. I always find these kind of weapons are totally uninteresting/boring to use. But that's more of a personal antipathy. So the way to go for the electro would be, I guess, make the electro combo useful again. Maybe by allowing to spit out more balls faster and to let them detonate when the primary beam gets near them.

I can't say anything negative about the rocket launcher, don't know if it has been tweaked at all but it feels alright for me.

I have seen the crylink on another server, where its primary was shooting more of a large, very slow circle and the secondary was shooting fast, narrow horizontal lines of little plasma balls. While not having tested this infight, I think this could be a good move for the crylink.

The shotgun needs a secondary, but I think everybody agrees on that. What could it be? A melee attack would be cool, if someone would animate it. I wouldn't object to keeping the Nexuiz shotgun secondary either, though this weapon could use some variety. The reload time for shotgun primary is quite high, but I felt the shotgun was still satisfactorily effective. Maybe reduce the reload time only a tiny bit.

I can understand the reasons behind blocking the player after shooting the nex, but while playing this is really annoying. If the nex has to be tweaked, then reduce its damage or increase its reload but personally I can't stand if that thing is sticking to my hands and I can't even laser myself away. I'd vote for weapon combos.

I think the hagar is just nice the way it is (dunno if it has changed at all).

I have one suggestion: since the mortar fires sticky grenades now there is one weapon less that was useful for pushing around people. You all know how I like to push around people (virtually, of course), and I also find it most amusing if other players do this on space maps with me. So how about introducing another weapon or a fire mode (replace mortar secondary...?) for some weapon that fires grenade like projectiles that have a splash damage and, more important, a "splash" push - just like the old mortar, or even stronger? We could make the actual damage dealt rather low or even zero for this weapon so that it doesn't become overpowered like the mortar was claimed to be. The important thing would be to have a pickup weapon that is even more useful for pushing people than the laser. I think pushing people around, placing them in a position or keeping them away from positions (mega health, armor...) is particularly funny and greatly adds to the depth of the game. I'd strongly recommend to keep this in the focus of Xonotic's gameplay.

As for the movement, I haven't got the grip of that yet. The double jump seems to catapult me at totally unexpected times into the air, and I seem to gain speed at a very high rate in some situations, while I can't seem to move fast in others. I still need to get used to those physics settings, but I do not disapprove of them.

Keep up the good work and I will do some more testing as soon as I can. I really appreciate the efforts that went already into this balance.