[SUGGESTION] Laser Jump - Will it Blend?

Well of course if the flag carrier is miles away then neither electro nor rocket launcher will help you. But the mg will, and the rifle will, too.

I was talking about speed fighting, not distance fighting.

...(explanation)

Thank you, Dokujisan, for explaining this more elaborately. I see your point - but this chasing scenario, which may very well be a very common CTF scenario due to the nature of that game mode, is the only one where I can see the excessive laser movement being a problem. As many players find the laser movement very much fun, if not essential to Nexuiz (and hopefully to future Xonotic), why should we reduce this aspect to shambles as a solution for one scenario in one game mode? Xonotic is not a CTF game only. We should be careful when we fix balancing/physics issues that we do not look at one problem only but also take into consideration how a possible solution affects gameplay in other scenarios and game modes.

I don't see how an improvement for this very common CTF scenario would necessarily have a negative effect on other game modes. It might improve other game modes too. It depends on what the new weapon features are. People do fly around and speed around in other game modes.

As I always said, and as other people seem to agree, laser movement is, to many players, one of the key aspects of the game. If you make that unusable, this of course changes also DM gameplay and whatnot. The key is to find a solution that does NOT affect the gameplay in other game modes, unless the same problem occurs there, too.

I think, the laser adds a good portion of freedom to the game - enabling you to move around very freely in any direction. As always with freedom, people tend to be kind of touchy about restrictions.

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...and to kojn:

If you want to get to higher places you need to perform multiple LJs now, which make's sense when you think about it, in nexuiz there is the problem that height gives you little advantage over an opponent. Maps are not the problem, what's the point putting a powerup or strong weapon somewhere high if your just able to get to it easily anyway for example.

It may surprise you, but this is actually what I like. That height differences don't give you that much of an advantage. They still give you an advantage, but it is not the advantage that the other one can't get there, but that you are already there and the other needs to get there first.

Having seen a demo of your gameplay I can understand that easy laser jumps annoy you. You are - as opposed to myself - a very tactical player. You are calculating how long it takes the opponent from place A to B and time your shots while you are not actually moving very fast yourself. Of course laser jumps add an element to the gameplay that is less calculable and less controllable, so I understand why you would prefer the laser power being reduced.

Sorry for not yet showing you a demo of my gameplay (which is not altogether impressive but anyhow) - but imagine a player enjoying to move around the map randomly at highest possible speeds and always trying to be somewhere else than the opponent thinks - aiming at hitting him on-the-fly, possibly by surprise. Well, that's me. I am not necessarily effective, but I have tremendous fun during a game. So you can think of how incredibly essential laser movement is to my style of playing this game. I don't want to enforce my playing style on all other players, but I know some other players enjoy this, too - so I am not all alone here. I just ask for this style to be respected and allowed by the physics/balance.

Kinda funny how everybody for the nerf says that height gives you an advantage. I've almost always AVOIDED getting high (lol) because I generally catch hell from pretty much every high velocity or hit scan weapon in the game, including the laser and occasionally rocket launcher and have a tendency to be tactical if I plan on carrying a flag or covering a carrier. Other times I take my DM skills and focus on turning the middle of a map into no man's land to allow my team to advance forward.

Firstly. It's quite sad to see we don't even have a beta out yet and people are already saying there going to make changes on there server to do this or to do that, this is just really disappointing.

Well now its the best time to post critique than after a release. And finally some more guys do it.

Although CTF has been mentioned the most, because this is where the problem is the greatest, it actually has an effect over multiple gametypes.
[...]
I remember suggesting for CTF how about the FC can't use the laser, so team-mates still can and would hopefully inspire more teamplay and make it a bit more interesting, but THIS IS NOT ALLOWED BECAUSE THEN I CAN'T LASERJUMP AWAY AND TRY AND CAP IN 6 SECONDS!!!! /rant.

.. You and most of the other guys don't play on public servers (should not be offensive). (And now don't lie! )
CTF changed over the past years. You NEED the laser to gain speed, because each team got like 3 guys with a Nex (when it was less before some years -> more people with Nex these days). The teamplay aspect won't work on publics, because there are obviously some newbies and "pros" who are egomanicas and just play alone. There were several discussions how to fix the teamplay in CTF (like slowing down the FC, which did not work that well) and we did not find a solution over the years. I think: There is _no_ way to fix teamplay (or balance problems) in CTF. Thats a point which need to fixed by the players and if they can't use their brain to not join the stronger team or something similar its not the fault of the game.

And if you are in air then (e.g. an open map like Facing Worlds) its not an advantage!! They snipe the shit out of you , even if you have like 200 HP , you get double nexed in your ass and just die. The common noob who just walks normal and trys to capture ( love that anyway) can't do it anymore at the moment. IMO the Nex is the real problem and maybe increase the cost of health for a laser jump.
So its different in DM and CTF. Though I think in 1v1 its not an advantage to be in air too.

I like clanclanclans point that some people really enjoy the Laser and of course don't like this change and those guys don't want e.g. the Nex to be removed or something too - you would moan too if the Nex turns into a weapon that you don't like.
Probably need an official poll about the laser.

Well I know in the US on the HOCTF server, I'll be using experimental physics and settings to figure out what I think is best. I assume other server owners will be doing the same.

I don't know what new players think if you join server a) and then another day server b) , which is using very different physics.. "Uhm wtf happenend to the game " ? I guess merging all positive things of all the balance.cfgs floating around would be a good solution.

This must not happen, it'd be a huge problem if the community would be split right from the start. Instead of everyone creating their own balance configs, why can't everyone instead submit their changes directly to the "official", balanceXonotic.cfg. Git with it's branches allows us to do this, and doing this instead wouldn't contribute to splitting the community at all. Assuming that the changes are agreed upon of course :p

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When I'm talking about air-fighting, I mostly mean after they grab the flag and they are a handful of meters away. To me, the biggest issue with air fighting is speed. So we're mostly talking about speed-fighting. Most FC kills are probably done before they can get outside of the radius of a few meters. After they leave that radius, they are usually moving fast and they are in the air. If you don't have a nex, you just have to keep spraying them with the spray weapons and hope one of your teammates is ahead of them.

Or, you do a horizontal rocketjump and get ahead of them yourself. The flag carrier you are trying to hunt down might not be able to do this himself due to the damage he has already taken, and with a laser that's got a weaker force than the other projectile based weapons he'll clearly be at a disadvantage. I think it just makes sense that a more powerful weapon (in terms of damage) will push you further, this was not always the case in Nexuiz.

Sure, I do agree with some of the discussion here. The laser is a bit too tricky now, partly due to the increased ticrate of 60Hz from 20Hz, and due to the decreased push force of course. For horizontal movement I think it's perfect right now though, which is why I, personally, wouldn't like to affect that in any way now. Vertical jumps sometimes end up a little shorter than you would have wanted. I'm not sure how to resolve this, make the laser do more vertical push than horizontal? Would just end up odd I think... Or trust that mappers of large maps will put ramps where you'd usually laserjump so that you can get the speed of both?

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But in Xonotic, the rockets now don't take on the speed of the player. Rockets have a static speed no matter who is launching it and how fast that player is going. That means you can't chase a flag carrier and hope to shoot a rocket ahead of them. The rocket will end up behind you. This removes the rocket from any ability to stop a fast player, unless you are ahead of them. This is an example of a feature I will likely turn off on my servers, if I have the option.

Right, newtonian physics. Perhaps they should be turned on again, not even sure why they were turned off.
Edit: Doing so in git right now, in fact.

If only we could just make the game more like 2.4.2 without the problems...

There seem to be a lot of people on here concerned that giving Xonotic a Nexuiz-like laser will ruin the CTF gameplay by enabling 6-second capping. But they've got it wrong. It's not the laser's fault, it's the map's fault. Maps built so you can cap that quickly are bad designs with or without the laser.

Nerfing the laser seemed to fix the problem, but when that happened, it basically put a roof on the map, thus changing it. The problem is that this also put a roof on maps that can't function that way.

If you had a bad experience on a poor CTF map with a laser expert, don't hold it against the laser or the person behind it. Find a better map and move on. I remember when I was a newbie (one of the few who played to cap, not to frag), I disliked Dance because these other people were capping left and right while I couldn't fight my way through the lower levels to get to the flag, much less back.

So why do I like Dance now? Because I was informed. The laser experts told me about laser jumping and that it is completely applicable and more than just self-damage. Is Dance a bad design? Probably not. Most newbies don't play like I do (that is, always go for the flag, even if you only have 10 hp)

So we need to look for maps that are laser friendly but don't allow super-speed capping. This way the laser is still a useful tool of movement without ruining the non-laser guy's day.

As Mirio pointed out, public ctf gameplay changed a lot in the past!
Its often important to be fast around the map, if vertical speed, if horizontal speed/push. If the nexguns are a problem, dont know But indeed, being in air doesnt has to be an advantage

Also, I agree to nowego's point of view. We need laser friendly maps... But a map needs to be very small to be capable in just 6 seconds!? (Ok, possible, depends on the way you try to. If using the laser only, 6 seconds will be very hard, on most maps)

Sorry, but basing map design's around ONE weapon is so illogical your basically saying don't design open maps, it's obviously the weapon that's at fault then not maps. It's just because the laser hasn't been changed, even though it causes problems that no one wants to change it, sure it's fun.

The maps got bigger because of the laser's power, it didn't make anything any better it just made the maps more out of proportion, a lot of public maps also use maps like facingworlds with 2 nexgun's on each side for example.

But howcome the current maps work so well with the current laser, some are big like courtfun and open, imploded, dance but there are not the problem's of crazy lasering, it now requires actual timing to use the laser, and not many people are lasering OVER the top of maps.

Atleast with the current laser if I laser on a map such as stormkeep2 I am able to controleed laserjumps and then work it into my movement, with the old laser It rocket's me forward, I may know I will get up on a ledge, but I won't know how high or far over it I will go because it is so powerful, or I'd hit my head on the celiling countless times.

I don't approve of the change because it's not fun, I approve of it because it makes the weapon more controllable when used with movement, it gives more precision now (at a cost of being harder to use), and it requires more thought of use.

The teamplay point is a valid point Mirio on publics, the nexgun now is supposedly more balanced, but it's still not the problem, I have played several other FPS games where you don't have the ability to move very fast out of an enemy base and they have sniper weapons, you generally have to wait inside the base somewhere and pick your spots or wait for your team-mates to come further up the map.

I have played several other FPS games where you don't have the ability to move very fast out of an enemy base and they have sniper weapons, you generally have to wait inside the base somewhere and pick your spots or wait for your team-mates to come further up the map.

I know how it works, but not every player plays that good than you or me or any good player does. Just wanted to say that. And yes in other games I played teamplay worked.

Ok I understand.

I don't approve of the change because it's not fun, I approve of it because it makes the weapon more controllable when used with movement, it gives more precision now (at a cost of being harder to use), and it requires more thought of use.

Right, because the point of video games is to not have fun.




Personally I think the nexuiz laser is too fast for the xonotic physics. Since the xono physics are faster a less powerful laser does indeed make sense. However, the xonotic one as it is simply doesn't feel right. I suggest making it more powerful, but not as much as it was in nexuiz. There is a balance that must be found.

Personally I think the physics and balance are awkward and made too casual. The weapons have REALLY LOW fire rates and are balanced in a Quake 3 hierarchy fashion (instead of a true rock/paper/scissors, don't get me started on the "bonus weapons"), there's FALL DAMAGE, the game feels heavier than UT3 (in spite gravity being lower than in my config), health and armor is WAAAY TOO HARD TO STACK, the list goes on... These are WAY TOO DRASTIC OF A CHANGE FOR XONOTIC, especially for anybody that was around for 2.3 or 2.4. In all honesty (sorry if I sound like an asshole, I'm just trying to give input) the defaults feel like a cross between Quake 3 and Call of Duty and are rather irritating to those that have been playing Nexuiz for the last three years. On a less negative note, the ammo caps actually give more meaning to firing your weapon and encourage the players to move around more instead of stacking and camping.

^kojn:

If the laser is to weak to allow me to reach the upper platform on Dance even though I've stopped, looked down, and jumped 30 times with different timings to no avail, something is seriously wrong. I also noticed this painfully long amount of delay when switching from the nex to another weapon. Was this OP too? because weapon combos are a staple of this game, as is the vertical freedom. I enjoyed ctf because of the 10sec mapruns. Made the game high energy. I think were losing some info here because the current movement model allows for quicker motion, which means catching up to the FC isn't as hard as y'all are making it out to be. Using the laser(the reason I played Nexuiz) is now more of a "I've played for over 5 years without any breaks" type of skill, not a "oooh, this is fun" skill. I will end up playing on servers with the cfg more like Lee's.

Lee_Stricklin:
I agree, me coming from 2.4 is making this painful, this is not the game I want to play. And I'm stubborn, I'm not willing to change.

fuck yea, let us now throw away everything that was done concerning balance in the past months and start over. :/
WHY COULDN'T EVERYONE OBJECT TO CHANGE WHEN THE ENTIRE BLOODY FORUM WAS POLLED, NOW LOTS OF WORK MAY GET WASTED
VERY nice way to motivate the developers of this game, just throw stuff they've worked hard on in their spare time away. Doesn't help that several people apparently want to throw many weapons away too.
>:(

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I also noticed this painfully long amount of delay when switching from the nex to another weapon.

Weapon combos are indeed a staple of this game. The nex was awfully much a staple in weapon combos.

WHY COULDN'T EVERYONE OBJECT TO CHANGE WHEN THE ENTIRE BLOODY FORUM WAS POLLED, NOW LOTS OF WORK MAY GET WASTED

Couldn't agree any more, though I did post input from time to time on what I thought of it and not all may be lost. With some tweaks this would be a good set up for a more slow paced game (think tactical mods) so it would live on as alternative balance. If I'm correct, balance RZDE was built from this and I was able to make use of a few things you introduced as well. Don't panic, quite a bit of what you did was already salvaged.

yea , im sure the work isnt wasted , it may seem that way , but alot of people didnt really have the means to test in the early days , i didnt , but one would have to expect this stuff to happen anyways (we are dealing with nerds remmember?)

it will sort its self out , most of us support the main idea.

dont forget guys that we all have to practise , so the first 2 weeks or so will sux , untill we muscle into it , get use to it.

(btw my fingers hurt from this game , i think im doing more work to play than before, but ill survive)


ummm so yer , dont give up , keep praccin , keep chatting , keep listening , keep posting
ya know all that

NOONE RAGE OK?



:^

fuck yea, let us now throw away everything that was done concerning balance in the past months and start over. :/
WHY COULDN'T EVERYONE OBJECT TO CHANGE WHEN THE ENTIRE BLOODY FORUM WAS POLLED, NOW LOTS OF WORK MAY GET WASTED
VERY nice way to motivate the developers of this game, just throw stuff they've worked hard on in their spare time away. Doesn't help that several people apparently want to throw many weapons away too.
>

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Sorry FruitieX, but I for one have been saying "don't touch the laser" even before your balance was out (see here http://forums.xonotic.org/showthread.php...64#pid4964). And I have kept mentioning that I'd favor a more powerful laser time and time again, you may remember when we were doing balance testing even with kojn.

Right, I said I like your physics, and I really did (and still do like the way it was back then) - but I also always said that the laser could be stronger. I don't know why, when and how it happened, though, between my last physics test with you and kojn the physics heavily changed and now I feel like steering a tank under water. Certainly git can restore the physics settings that we had some one or two months ago?

I apologize for not having been able to test the physics continuosly and in between, real life tends to take priority and can be very persistant at this.

Also I tend to say "if it's only me, then never mind", but seemingly it's not only me.

But I don't like to give negative comments only - I know you are putting a lot of effort into this and I really appreciate that and have a hell of respect for you (and all the others that are putting work into this game). For example, I think the Nex cooling system is absolutely ingenious. The crylink is, compared to 2.5.2, a very useful weapon now. I will miss the old electro combo, but it may turn out good that the electro is now also usable in mid-air fight.

Halogene, you have been one of the best poster's in regards to the balance stuff that has popped up, we haven't always agreed but you have always been able to put your posts constructively and when you have tested in the past and FrutieX has spoken to you, you two are normally always able to come to some midway arrangement, not everyone can be pleased. Frutiex said to me maybe he should make a list of why he helped to put forward 'x' change but I don't think this will help, people are either not willing to accept change, or are worried that it won't be the same as nexuiz, and the laser is one of these aspects, regardless if it allows for very insane maneouverability in nexuiz because no other similar FPS game has a laser as a 'tool and weapon', the concensus is that it should be left as it is as it was unique to nexuiz.

What i'm trying to say is, yes it was unique, but it doesn't mean that it's balanced well in nexuiz and doesn't cause problem's like being able to laser over maps, gaining lot's of speed, powerful as a weapon, strong push. Every other weapon has been changed in some aspect, but yet people don't want the laser to be because it is unique or because they want to fly over maps, and then people complain about game's turning into nex/mg, and then it means mapper's have to try create maps without as many hitscan weapon, then people find it hard to hit people who are in the air a lot because they then play maps without as many hitscan weapons, and the other weapons are not very useful at stopping a player who is moving so fast and high. So we try these small fixes constantly and it always leads to another problem, for me it's like a vicious circle. What I want to know is, why people can't see how overpowered the laser is from that and the problem's it causes? It seems people are complaining because 'they can't laser up a tower in 2 shots' 'it's not fun'.

If the laser goes back to how it was in nexuiz, fine. But I fully expect to see all the old problems come back again, it only seems we have these discussions when someone pops up who hasn't been involved awhile back when there was a big thread about the current balance, as in the current GIT settings.

FrutieX is getting annoyed because people were directed to the balance thread, it had over 6 pages atleast? of comments, and then things are going forward, maps are being made, then one of these threads pop up and people jump on the band-wagon who were not inputting before, I often see people who contribute on threads that aren't even that important in comparison to actual the core gameplay and get more attention, then they don't comment on things such as this until months aftwards even though they are active on the forums, that is why he get's so annoyed, it's due to the fact people who ARE around and ACTIVELY posting on the forums, who then start threads up that for some reason didn't comment when there are these discussions a while back, then he has to explain everything all over again also.

Everyone says 'is beta out soon' then they want changes to be constantly made, it will keep getting delayed until if this the attitude that is taken up, so delayed that we won't see a 1st version release for a longtime.

There are a lot of things I don't agree with 100% that have been done, mostly due to personal taste but at the end of the day, everything I have seen done so far seems an improvement over nexuiz. The improvements are to improve on area's that were heavily criticised in nexuiz, nexuiz had a small playerbase and it wasn't because it was graphically crap to other similar open source games.

FrutieX has done a lot of work into the current balance, I can tell you from just speaking with him that he doesn't change things just for the sake of it, he generally has logical reasoning behind the changes to make the game better.

As of now i'll stop posting on these threads, seems to be a new one every month and the same things get repeated. 'In the devs we trust', obviously not.

At no point did we say we mistrusted the developers. If my (our) actions or posts were taken that way, then they were misinterpreted - I can try to better express myself next time.

I truly appreciate all of the effort going into the balance, and I don't think that it is being wasted. That being said, we all need to be a little bit more tolerant of each others' opinions, because we are all entitled to them. Variety is okay! Differences in opinion are okay! I'm happy that we're all looking at this stuff, because it shows that we want this project to succeed.

WHY COULDN'T EVERYONE OBJECT TO CHANGE WHEN THE ENTIRE BLOODY FORUM WAS POLLED

because:

1- you (=dev team) have overestimated the effective visibility of your polls and the average forum reader attention.

2- as a consequence, you spent a lot of time being developing solutions to problems which are not shared by the community.
I vainly tried to warn on this time bomb a dozen of times. You probably will find my PM in your trash can.

I'm both sad (for me, for you) and not surprised to read again and again this kind of threads.

Why are not we allowed to post critique now? Why? Should every stop posting his thoughts though there is not a beta or something else yet (The GIT is buggy)? I posted the same thoughs about the Laser 2 months ago already anyway. I think many people feel ignored and maybe thats why such topics come every month.
But you will get your feedback anyway when the beta or 1.0 comes. People will play it or not - this will be the feedback.
Edit: And if no one plays it: That would be waste of time and work!
Obviously there is something "wrong" at the moment if , like kojn said, every month a new topic like this pops up. Also not everyone (as you can see in this topic) sees the Laser as a problem in Nexuiz.
If new changes will come in the future there should be a public poll for _everything_ (like Music and CTF Maps)! Then you will get the opinion what the community wants. By the way, the poll in your balance topic got 30 votes (1/3 don't like it)! Its not even called "Official balance", so some people might not look into it.

http://forums.xonotic.org/showthread.php?tid=1176 <-- Not going to reply directly to this thread, however I do have a huge idea which I think could help solve this issue.

WHY COULDN'T EVERYONE OBJECT TO CHANGE WHEN THE ENTIRE BLOODY FORUM WAS POLLED, NOW LOTS OF WORK MAY GET WASTED

No no no no! Your work was wasted. If I had to estimate, I'd say the new (overall) balance is about 127.3% better than Nexuiz. The Nex and Crylink, and (re)introduction of the TAG seeker are especially nice. Consider the fact that the laser is the only major balance issue coming up to be a sign that you must have done everything else right! (mostly)

Most things have good in them if you know where to look. Just think! If the Nexuiz name wouldn't have been sold, then the community wouldn't have been stirred up like it is, and Nexuiz would probably still be the graphically-inferior game it was.

In our Developers we trust!

The reason why democracy doesn't work is the same reason I keep out of every balance discussion. It's something to do with a bikeshed... ask merlijn.

The reason why democracy doesn't work is the same reason I keep out of every balance discussion. It's something to do with a bikeshed... ask merlijn.

Yep, I made the same decision too several months ago (ok, only exception at the beginning at this thread .).
Instead, I constantly tried to point out that our problem is not a problem of ideas, but a problem of method.
Xonotic developement is not the first development which encounteres this convergence problem. Every engineer in the world has to daily face to them.
There exist methods. And we have to abandon the (seducing) idea that democracy is easy to obtain. Typically, the time ratio between phases "what are the problems?" and "what are the solutions?" can attain 50/50.
So far, 99.99% of posters doesn't get this point. Maybe because it's not that intuitive.
Another not intuitive thing: somehow, everybody (including dev team) intimately considers that the real problems of Nexuiz are clear, known and shared by everybody. Which is a fundamental error.