[SUGGESTION] Casual vanilla balance

To me it seems like vanilla has a few very active hardcore competitive players who are vocal about what they want in Xonotic and Xonotic bends over backwards to make them happy while completely ignoring the silent majority who are here just to have fun (and move on if they can't because they're losing all the time).

Maybe because the vocal minority are really good at kicking our asses in duel?



Jokes aside, players do indeed move on to other mods over time instead of just quitting, especially if the server they're playing on changes past a point they accept.
This is very apparent in the American community, most of whom were instagib players in Nexuiz, pulled across by an undisclosed incident, and now switching between vanilla and instagib fairly regularly. There's even been some defrag and overkill action lately.

It seems to be a common issue that people are extremely argumentative over the default game, but rarely actually play it purely vanilla.
When I do see a duelist on a public server, it's usually because they're bored. They're always tens of frags ahead of everyone else, and still end up complaining about the vanilla game's design, so it's kinda hard to see a point adjusting everything for them, even if they know what works best in XPM...

That was my idea too before I discovered jitter. Maybe your experience from Reflex is different but in Overkill we have this and I looking back feel like it mostly helps people who already care about items while newbies and lots of casuals continue to ignore them. Focus on casuals - I've seen people ignore them despite being told how important they are.

You're not painting a very encouraging picture out of this demographic you want this game to appeal to. If tutorials and waypoints/timers are not enough, then this goal is not inspiring me with confidence.

That's just plain incorrect. Most overkill players moved on to jeff's and later akimbo. About half of the initial playerbase there was from overkill. Even now (over a year later) I recognize a lot of the names when i look there

Barely worth mentioning. Half of Jeff's playerbase is not really that many people. Also, to what you referred to earlier. I'm also not entirely convinced it's the content in Jeff's server that draw those few people in. I'd argue it's rather the merit of management that brings those numbers, I don't know any other server admin that works as actively and hard as Jeff. Almost every random chance I get to play Xonotic, I see at least one person in their servers. Very often it's Jeff holding his baguette and greeting people with sloppy English. Can't say I know any other servers like that, vanilla or not.

So is it an argument that resonates with reality, when you say the type of content Jeff has is what new players are drawn towards to? It's pretty vague to say the least.

This post sounds like nitpicking. According to you it's easier to learn bunnyhopping, laser movement, combos, all the weapons AND item control at the same time? It surely can't be easier to get one thing right at a time. This problem is easily avoided by just having the differences documented in an accessible way. People who care about being competitive will learn it pretty fast.

No, do not put words in my mouth. I recognize that there are new players who are lacking in the consideration of map control and pick ups. It would not teach them to control the map if the item timers are randomized and that aspect of playing is left or intended to be left lesser effective.

You're creating a tutorial mod or are you creating a separate config that satisfies despite a lack of training in one aspect of the game, which is it?

To me it seems like vanilla has a few very active hardcore competitive players who are vocal about what they want in Xonotic and Xonotic bends over backwards to make them happy while completely ignoring the silent majority who are here just to have fun (and move on if they can't because they're losing all the time).

No I'm not falling for this guilt trip, or whatever the term actually is.
(As you can see in this thread, Antibody isn't bent over at all.)

edit: grammar

edit2: after a full re-read in the morning, ok it's not a tutorial mode. I see the idea is that supposedly beginners get a lot of negative feedback such that they quit the game because of a huge score difference going up against a "hardcore competitive player". But regardless, the nature of the game is competitive multiplayer, not co-operative in anyway at all in FFA. There will always be a loser or people on the bottom of the scoreboards, and regardless of skill, the randomizations can be frustratingly unlucky or unfair in the least satisfying case.

Also, to what you referred to earlier. I'm also not entirely convinced it's the content in Jeff's server that draw those few people in. I'd argue it's rather the merit of management that brings those numbers, I don't know any other server admin that works as actively and hard as Jeff. Almost every random chance I get to play Xonotic, I see at least one person in their servers. Very often it's Jeff holding his baguette and greeting people with sloppy English. Can't say I know any other servers like that, vanilla or not.

This is very true, but he achieves this by making others do the work so he can play with and take credit for their creations, not so much by doing much work himself.

In general, active admins = active server. Just a shame I can't personally tend to the servers as much while working on the game...

I feel like we have a misunderstanding here. Antares*, PinkRobot and maybe others respond like I am trying to create a "tutorial" mod only for beginners. No. I am trying to create a relaxed and fun experience for both newbies and casual players alike. Some responses also indicate that everybody should in the end go play "normal xonotic" which would be basically XPM. No. Why? Why couldn't people be happy without timing megas? Xonotic-casual shouldn't be a staging area - it should be the real thing - and XPM should be for the competitive minority. Casual is not ever a mod, it's only a slight variation with a bit lower skill ceiling designed to keep pros out (happy on their XPM servers) while still offering (almost) the same depth as XPM.

Yes, then I did misunderstand you. I genuinely thought that this was to become yet another subset that was dumbed down, apart from regular vanilla and aimed at new players who don't know what to do. And that whoever wanted a bigger challenge would magically move towards "normal" vanilla. I confused myself into thinking you wanted to cater for players that weren't actually here yet, but what you actually want to do is make the game more fun for players already on the servers now, even the somewhat more informed ones. Please make way for my U-turn, because I see nothing against making the vanilla balance for FFA games more casual oriented.

I do feel like that could do without some of the proposed changes that I consider gimmicks. Having item spawn times with a randomizer would be fine by me for example. But giving out random start weapons and randomizing weapon spawns would be too confusing for new players and too annoying for existing players IMO. It could be fun as a goofy fun game once in a while, like nixnex was. But I don't think such gimmicks are even needed to acquire your goal.

One thing though and I do intend to stand by that point: we would still be doing a poor job at conveying what Xonotic is about. Item pickups would probably still largely be ignored by new players (like I said: I too see this happen all the time, even with players who have been on Xonotic for weeks) They run and gun to their death and then start over until the game ends. Their experience will always be improved if we manage to educate them about the game dynamics. And seeing as picking up stuff will always be beneficial, I would still advocate to make it more urgent for players to go out and hunt for them. I have seen some suggestions here already that might help. A nag message like "You are hurt eat some cookies" would probably be too intrusive

This is very true, but he achieves this by making others do the work so he can play with and take credit for their creations, not so much by doing much work himself.

In general, active admins = active server. Just a shame I can't personally tend to the servers as much while working on the game...

Of course, your patronage of effort and versatile skills makes Jeff pale in comparison. I mean duh, we take your magical graftmanship for granted while probably not giving you all the appreciation that you deserve, BUT YOU'RE IN YOUR SERVERS ALL THE TIME TOO :D:D:D:D

I think an easy solution is just to have them play clan arena. You dont have to worry about any resource control because there are none on the map. Everyone starts with full hp and armor and all the weapons. The rest is just figuring out which weapons do what without having to worry about what spawns where and when it spawns.

We were talking about ways to make item control more intuitive and encouraging players to learn it. Hogging weapons and using them is not exactly where the problem is at, despite the utter lack of item control - I've seen many new players at least picking up weapons. Their value is more self evident if you spawn with a boomstick that is worth shit and everyone else pretty much one shot kills you with other weapons.

I think an easy solution is just to have them play clan arena. You dont have to worry about any resource control because there are none on the map. Everyone starts with full hp and armor and all the weapons. The rest is just figuring out which weapons do what without having to worry about what spawns where and when it spawns.

I was actually going to say the same thing. Or something like the pre-ready mode where everyone has everything to play with.

I thought clan arena is the mode where each player uses the same weapon at one time, and the chosen weapon rotates, no?

I believe that's referred to as "weapon arena". In addition to what SPLAT said, note that clan area also has the advantage of letting players move around before the round actually begins, so spawn-fragging is much less of an issue. I think it might be worth a try to set up "beginner" servers in clan arena mode just to see how it goes!

The trouble with clan arena is, players who die end up sitting around doing nothing for a long time.
There's also the issue of starting with all weapons not being very fun (not just because it's a vortex fest, but because one has no inclination to explore the map and discover the items - for me personally, this was a fun aspect when first playing the game).

Not to mention most maps are also built with that exploration in mind. Some have entire rooms that have value only in the items they contain, which just feels like redundant complexity in Clan Arena. Take the crylink room in Darkzone for example.

When I played Warsow a few years ago, Clan Arena was quite a popular mode on public servers.
I don't know why it doesn't work for Xonotic :/

Last year I set up a public Clan Arena server that remained online for 2 months, but nobody played here: http://stats.xonotic.org/games?server_id=4714

This is very true, but he achieves this by making others do the work so he can play with and take credit for their creations, not so much by doing much work himself.

It's a stone, Jeff. You didn't make it.

This is very true, but he achieves this by making others do the work so he can play with and take credit for their creations, not so much by doing much work himself.

In general, active admins = active server. Just a shame I can't personally tend to the servers as much while working on the game...

For the record, I'm very aware where the credit goes (especially those features obviously with some serious code behind them).

The community does need all sorts of help though. Some jobs are more foreground-y than others.

You know, I just got the semi-random thought that vanilla came across as extremely item control based maybe because the majority of maps have one set of Mega's (which is great for duel, tdm, and ctf). And in ffa when that one person keeps control of the Mega, everyone else (3+ players) are usually left with shards or stacking health between them.

The difference is less crazy for maps with multiple sets of Mega's. It'll also be harder to keep track of all of them. ffa/dm feels like that game mode that everyone throws in on the gametype line in mapinfos. Not as something as carefully designed for, most of the time.

Still, I think that stratifying players into different modes/mods is only steepening and extending the learning curve. Someone could play hundreds of ffa matches and still just hold forward and jump, meanwhile far less CTS/defrag matches is adequate and more time efficient for learning and practicing movement, which then has its perks in being able to pull off the map tricks for fragging. I think similarly something develops while dueling that doesn't in ffa.

Sorry I never implemented/finished this idea, I got distracted with other things but I will come back to it when i have time.

Umm, yeah, the single pair of megas is OP but even on e.g. runningman with 3 MA nad 1 MH I've seen some obvious dueller jump into a match with newbies and completely ruin it. Maybe wasn't 30/0 but close enough.

It's not stratifying if it provides a good balance of being casual and giving chances to improve gradually. Currently we have very casual mods on one end of the spectrum - nexuiz and jeff's, then a massive gap and on the other end vanilla+duel. We used to have rifle arena (CRA) which was IMHO nicely in the middle and was popular but server was shut down and nobody started a new one. Similarly, overkill was in the middle but lately we became competitive and now we're pretty close to vanilla+duel when it comes to ease of getting started.

Call me old fashioned but maybe forward+jump should be enough for casual gameplay. I learned strafe-jumping / circle-jumping (still not clear about the difference) only a couple months ago after playing for 3 years. Even Halogene's tut mentions it as advanced and doesn't explain it at all. For some learning new techniques is fun but it seems (judging by the popularity of nexuiz/jeff/insta) that most people are here just for a few quick frags. We shouldn't ignore that silent majority because we might not be able to keep the game alive with just the competitive minority.

For the record, the rifle servers were closed due to inactivity (for many months, not a single player, makes it hard to justify the costs).

The amount of health and armor on the map won't affect the end scores if a dueler is present.
In a game of skill, there's no case in which that dueler could lose or even be remotely close in scores to the casual players without greatly unbalanced teams.

The vocal minority tend to be extremely vocal about their opinions, while the silent majority will just stop playing if things change drastically in a way that doesn't favour them. This makes balancing the game in a sane way rather difficult, as there's always that loud obstacle in the way.

For the record, the rifle servers were closed due to inactivity (for many months, not a single player, makes it hard to justify the costs).

Not sure if there were any more recent CRA servers that you're talking about, what i was referring to was about 3 years ago when I was starting with xonotic. That one CRA freezetag server had 10-15 players pretty much every time I played, then suddenly disappeared. It was a really relaxed experience - simple gameplay with 5A and 5H only, 2 fire modes with 80 and about 15 damage. I think we had the blaster too. It was easy to get points (by freezing enemies or unfreezing allies), don't remember any invincible players. Would have a hard time not dying at least sometimes if only 2 shots took them most of the time. Physics were vanilla, not sure if dodging was enabled when not frozen. Frozen people would either chat or try to unfreeze themselves by dodging and falling down to break the ice. Obviously, the community was a big part of that experience.

Sorry I never implemented/finished this idea, I got distracted with other things but I will come back to it when i have time.

Umm, yeah, the single pair of megas is OP but even on e.g. runningman with 3 MA nad 1 MH I've seen some obvious dueller jump into a match with newbies and completely ruin it. Maybe wasn't 30/0 but close enough.

It's not stratifying if it provides a good balance of being casual and giving chances to improve gradually. Currently we have very casual mods on one end of the spectrum - nexuiz and jeff's, then a massive gap and on the other end vanilla+duel. We used to have rifle arena (CRA) which was IMHO nicely in the middle and was popular but server was shut down and nobody started a new one. Similarly, overkill was in the middle but lately we became competitive and now we're pretty close to vanilla+duel when it comes to ease of getting started.

Call me old fashioned but maybe forward+jump should be enough for casual gameplay. I learned strafe-jumping / circle-jumping (still not clear about the difference) only a couple months ago after playing for 3 years. Even Halogene's tut mentions it as advanced and doesn't explain it at all. For some learning new techniques is fun but it seems (judging by the popularity of nexuiz/jeff/insta) that most people are here just for a few quick frags. We shouldn't ignore that silent majority because we might not be able to keep the game alive with just the competitive minority.

It's stratifying as it gets to make a completely new mode and balance just for low-skill players.

And I learned to strafe and circle jump within the first month of playing Xonotic. Not because it's some kind of advanced technique and it takes 3 years to get started, its because I actually play Race CTS every now and then. This is what I'm talking about when players are stratified or categorized into game modes by skill and having the learning curve prolonged. They can play 300+ matches of ffa/dm and remain an overall mediocre/average player.

I don't appreciate this silent majority/competitive minority ordeal. I'm more inclined to believe the silent majority, think, in some combination, there's nothing more to the game than roam and shoot, reaching 30-0 takes years of expertise, being under the age of 30, yet playing DM over and over again gets old. Than they are thinking that the game needs nondeterminism and modifications to items rules.

(I did find one who thinks there should be modifications to items, but he was looking for XPM the entire time)

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Maybe its different for Europe. But in North America, we're pretty dead. We don't exactly have a duel scene like Europe does for a duelist to come in and spoil the fun for everyone on a regular basis. Even then, complete randoms are generally fine with having SPLAT around.

The trouble with only listening to the silent minority is, they're silent... The ones with the most influence over balance decisions are ironically the ones who barely play with the standard balance.
Also, SPLAT empties out public servers rather quickly when they do amass a small group. Maybe the same doesn't happen on /v/ where the players are a little more understanding of such skill.

If I can find any weapon by pressing its hotkey, and I know the map layout, how will randomizing weapons stop me from controlling the map and dominating?
If a player has a max of 100 health, and there are no armour pickups nearby, how do they benefit when I can 2shot them?
If I've spent 1000 hours (I havent) and a new player can beat me (wont happen currently), why would he keep playing a game (s)he has already seemingly mastered?
On a similar note, why is it bad if I hop into a game with people who aren't good at the game, and beat them soundly? Shouldn't the solution be to help them get better rather than handicap me for putting time in to improve?
Are they going to feel better if I win by 3 frags 100 times instead of 30 frags 100 times, even if I don't die in either case?

If you cut out stack/timers, having to pick up your favourite weapon(s), ammo, movement, etc. are you still playing Xonotic? If you successfully get people to play this new game, with little to no mechanics from the old, did you successfully get people to play Xonotic? Or your own pet project?
I'm not even the be-all end-all. Even without ping disadvantage, most/all of the EU tourney regulars would 30-0 me, and SPLAT and Sawa completely wreck me as well. You're still not going to bring me down to absolute newbie level without killing most of what makes Xonotic, Xonotic, just as you're not going to make me a pro at Go by changing the rules to benefit me (I just started and the game makes me feel like an idiot, but I love it).

The goal, ultimately, should be to get people to the point where they can play vanilla. If people want to play Insta or OK thats fine, but if we build infrastructure around the ASSUMPTION that they will never play vanilla, then why are they playing Xonotic in the first place? I can play Insta in Warsow, in Q2, Q3. Ratz, UT etc. Why would I install a game like Xonotic when I already probably have one of those?

On the vanilla front, the biggest two things for new players are items and movement. Antares has actually seen good results on his newest map, wherein shards are used to guide players through rampjumps (as an aside, I almost feel like there could be a trickjumps style mode in this manner, where instead of the usual CTS race, your goal would be to pick up a certain type of item scattered around the map. It could be a good chill-out mode to wind down between more intense matches, or a nice comfy mode for solo play). For items specifically, I think the main issue is one Antares has touched on already- people mostly just play FFA. In FFA, the game is chaotic enough that most people arent bothering with large pickups, because there's a good chance they'll be shot before they get there anyway. I don't even see people go for weapons, because they want to just dish out as much damage as possible, and nothing about the gamemode guides them to do more than that really. It's a mode without feedback, and so it's a mode that doesnt help you improve unless you are playing it knowing what the game is about already. Even something like gungame does a better job, because it at least enforces usage of the game's many weapons, instead of just spawnrushing with the shotgun. I think the "players drop stuff" idea isnt too bad, but it was done by Quake already (backpacks). That said, I wouldnt mind it if the game went down that route

On the point about nerfing the skill ceiling, I'd like to point out that there are a great many games with a skill ceiling high enough that pros absolutely body even mid-tier players, that also have a healthy playerbase. Among these are fighting games (another niche, like AFPS), which do well because of community support and involvement. Players understand that there is more for them to learn, and that it is up to them to earn a win, rather than have victory be handed to them by randomization or a low skill ceiling. I'd argue Xonotic is much easier to learn than most fighting games as well, especially for anyone who already comes from a background that involves any FPS' (read: most people who play online games). The goal should be to teach new players better, not give them fewer things to learn. Why did they migrate here when this new game has less stuff for them to sink their teeth into than the one they left?


I think suggestions about support for new players in a direct manner are great (videos, tutorials, mentorship etc). Events like weekly CTF or TDM nights would also help introduce new players to the community (especially if the game itself lists these on the main menu or something similar. For that matter, some sort of social element within the game but outside of servers could help, but I dont know how feasible that is). Xonotic has a solid foundation. While there are bits and pieces I'm not fond of (I dont know how much random spread on shotgun blasts is really helping newbies), between XPM's stack capping and the vanilla mechanics there is a very easy to learn AFPS in there. What's more, a lot of stuff can be done on the mapping end. My current mapping project does not include the vortex or crylink, so new players still have to worry about pickups, but far fewer of them (and they dont have to worry about being pixel-sniped). New content keeps people interested, and I've been trying (a little half-heartedly, admittedly) to get other /v/ server regulars to pitch in on the map making end. I also need to set aside some time to make some easily shared infographics about Xonotic skills and skill practice.

On that note, nobody knows about Xonotic either. We need to bring more people in, even if the game isn't at 1.0. I dunno if people wanna start doing word of mouth or pitch in to use the traditional channels, but Xon needs to hook new players and bring them in in the first place before they can even be put off by the game.

Also regarding the EC video, I listened to it despite my distaste for their content, and honestly most of the stuff they describe is already available in Xonotic. Scalable UI, distinct sound effects (though you could make the argument that they need to be easier to hear/distinguish) easily visible enemies and items etc. You could maybe argue that some of those options ought to be easier to find, but the priority argument is ongoing. I don't think we're going to hash it out today. I would rather just hear arguments from people than get an EC link personally though, both because it allows me to address the exact point being made and also because I think the EC guys are full of it a sizeable chunk of the time.a

Hmm, I guess there should be a cvar that disable it so you can't see item pickups through walls.

That just sounds like you're eliminating mechanics that make the game easier for newbies just so you can try to sabotage better players, who will still learn the map faster than newbies (I still know where the weapon spawns are in general and the new player either has no idea or has little experience in grabbing those weapons). Further, both that and randomized weapons are counterproductive if your goal is to teach the player where items are on the map. They hurt new players in the long run more than they do experienced players. Mutators like that are good for kicking back and mindlessly fragging, but they don't fix the issue Xonotic has currently

Lyberta

With current balance when you spawn, you have 100 hp and shotgun while your opponent has 200 hp, 200 armor and vortex. With my suggestion your opponent will have 100 hp and 100 (or 0 if we disable it) armor. You have more chances, remember that vortex is one of the hardest weapons to hit someone with.

It really doesn't take long for me to waste people in warmup (where people spawn with 100/100) and vort is one of the easier weapons to hit with because all you need is 1 pixel and no travel time. The flip side of vort is that if you miss you have to wait a bit for your next shot (but not very long because fully charging shots just isn't worth it) provided you don't just combo it (which I do)

Lyberta

There is no end to the game. You can play indefinitely. I enjoy killing people in videogames even if they are bots. I mostly play alone with bots and I have no plans to stop playing.

Are you intentionally missing the point here?
New player comes in. Experienced player comes in. New player beats experienced player, then goes "Well, this game must be super easy because I just beat an experienced player day one". New player goes to play Overwatch or whatever the FotM game is at the time. There are some people who will come in for mindless frags, but most people will just see the game as that and go for something they think is more cerebral

Lyberta

Xonotic is free software and it is developed by a community. There is no single vision of what Xonotic should feel like. Everyone has their own preferences. I do have plans for a military shooter total conversion but the current code must be brought into the 21st century first.

That doesn't mean that there aren't better or worse decisions to make for it overall. That's why this is a discussion and not people working on 8 separate mods/forks

Lyberta

And on that front we completely failed. Vanilla is very hard and boring. As a result, nobody plays vanilla

It sounds like you don't especially enjoy Xonotic and would rather that it be an entirely different game. I have to wonder what the purpose is in attempting to convert what it is (remembering that this is a discussion on vanilla Xonotic, and not Xonotic offshoots) instead of working on your own project (or converting what you've already worked on into a fork/mod). On the "hard" part, I helped train up a batch of newbies in a very short amount of time. As I stated prior, onboarding would help immensely with Xonotic's population issue. The issue is that many people don't have good learning tools at their disposal, and the game often does a poor job of communicating priorities to the user.

Lyberta

Free software has the freedom of making changes to it to suit your needs. Xonotic tries to not restrict this freedom. That is why I reject proprietary games. Warsow, Q2, Q3 and UT are proprietary (I have no idea what is Ratz) and do not give that freedom. That is why I choose Xonotic and spend months of my life contributing code to it.

Warsow is under GPL. Every classic id software release came with a sourcecode dump under GPL a few years down the road. There is nothing stopping you from editing any of these to be what you want. There is nothing stopping you from making your own Xon/Nex offshoot or Xonotic mod. The point of this thread is to discuss Vanilla Xonotic, not to discuss how Xonotic should be an entirely different game. By arguing along this line of thought you've missed my point as well. Why would a player move from any of Xon's competitors to Xonotic? If we dumb down Xonotic to the point where it's as deep as a puddle, why would people play it over the alternatives? If the main mode is Insta, why would they play Xon Insta over ratz/wsw/quake/ut Insta? The vast VAST majority of people do not care if their games are FOSS or not (thats why they play proprietary games on STEAM, Battle.net or play LoL). That is your personal preference, and it is entirely unrelated to the issue of getting more people to play the game. While the time you spend on the game is commendable and definitely appreciated, it is somewhat tangential to the discussion at hand

Lyberta

The problem is that not all people want to use their knowledge. For example, I know what strafejumping is, I have read Halogene's newbie corner, I have performed strafejumping in game to see that I understood it. But I have no desire to use in matches. It's non-obvious, it's stupid and requires tons of mental energy. As a result, I don't want to do strafejumping. And if gamemode requires me to do it to win, I will not play that gamemode. As a result, I don't play vanilla since I hate map control. The second to last match in singleplayer campaign (it was glowplant, maybe changed now) has so skilled bots that I had to do map control to win. I still remember that match as one of the worst Xonotic matches I have ever played.

This is why mods exist. However regarding the discussion of Vanilla Xonotic, there are certain mechanics that are part of the core gameplay. Even if the movement isn't/hasn't been exactly what it is now, the idea behind jumping to move faster has always been present, grabbing items for more health/armor has always been present, multiple weapons have always been present. These are core aspects of Vanilla Xonotic. The goal should be to present these aspects to new players in an easily digestible manner. If they dont want to play that and decide OK or Insta is more their thing, that's fine, but the base mode (no mods) should be properly represented and supported

Lyberta


Xonotic exists for a long time and low player count is the proof that nobody wants to play Xonotic since it is a bad game by default.

Xonotic is a game with poor onboarding and no visibility. Why would it have a large playerbase? There are thousands upon thousands of games out there and many of them are designed to catch people's attention and hook them quickly. Tons of money gets poured into this stuff every year. Xonotic could be the holy grail of gaming with absolutely perfect mechanics, but without proper tutorialization and visibility it wont hit big numbers.
Calling it a "bad game" though, speaks to a certain amount of bias, and definitely does not paint your statements or intentions in a good light. It, causes me to feel as though the discussion you're attempting to have is in bad faith

I think everyone itt wants to see Xonotic keep more of the players that try it.

Martin, I don't think a severely crippled version of vanilla is going to keep new players interested anymore than all the AAA games that take the same approach.  Nexuiz was interesting years ago because it was different from the mainstream, open source, fast, and challenging. 

If you're intent on writing new modes, play to the strengths of Xonotic.  Build new modes that keep the movement or the item timing but make these goals more obvious instead of permanently crutching players, as hook has done to insta players.  Maybe make a server with newbie-friendly modes that help them figure out the game naturally.  Weapons Arena will make it obvious to new players how to use each weapon.  Gun Game forces players to use guns they might not have any practice with.  Beemann had some really good suggestions for game modes that give you points based on what pickups you grab.  Lyberta had a spin on zombies where humans with the big guns play against zombies with vanilla weapons.  Could be good for giving new players a little more time or a chance to gang up on the more experienced.  

You can build whatever you want but I think voteable newbie servers with interesting modes and scheduled game nights would do more to bring in and keep new players than a mode that's a few too many compromises in to appeal to anyone.

As a person who uses arrow keys instead of WASD, I take no profit from those binds. Again, i don't think people should learn the position of weapons to be good at the game.

So because you haven't personally benefited from the function, it shouldn't exist? I've helped train up a decent chunk of newbies in my short time here, and I made sure they were aware of the aforementioned function so that they could get a better idea of the map layout. 
As well, personal preference is not really how a game should be designed. Please make an actual argument for the removal of weapon spawn knowledge

All you need is making sure your crosshair points directly at the player model. This is hard.

Yes, that's all you need to do. No that's not hard. That's just part of playing a shooter. Why would you expect to not aim and shoot at people when that's the genre you've selected?

Nope, if i come to the game and can instantly frag someone, I will most likely stay longer. I barely played such shit games as Call of Duty, Counter-strike and Dota 2 because they are too hard for newbies. Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead, on the other hand, are much easier.

That's not what I said at all. I said if you came into a game and instantly beat one of the more experienced players (even if it wasnt a top 10 player) would you not assume the game was extremely shallow?
Also Call of Duty is explicitly designed such that you can get frags even if you are completely new at the game. It is by no means difficult. L4D Versus, I would argue, requires much more coordination and better aim skill to match the maneuverability of the special infected (and we shouldnt be making apples to oranges comparisons of fighting AI to fighting humans)
TF2 is also more difficult, it's just that most of the people you play against likely dont know all of the tricks. It's worth remembering that 6's exist, and that people play TF2 on a competitive level (and make use of health and ammo pickups on the map, which they memorize). TF2 doesnt have as high a skill ceiling as Quake and its descendants, but it's higher than you're implying

Let's see, Xonotic, Nexuiz, Rexuiz, Jeff server, Overkill servers, Vore Tournament, who knows what else? There are tons of mods and forks.

How many of those were generated as a result of this thread? 0. I'd immensely appreciate if you would address my actual points instead of supplanting ones you'd prefer to address.

This is a discussion for a new config that doesn't exist yet

It's a discussion regarding a vanilla config, and as such addresses the core mechanics of Xonotic (since you wouldnt make your vanilla configuration something that inadequately represents your game's unmodded mechanics)

Quite a few of Warsow assets are proprietary. All id game assets are proprietary. I'm not messing with proprietary assets.

ioQ3 exists. Assets can be replaced

Because it will be easier than those alternatives. Warsow is one of the worst games ever. Only Red Eclipse is somewhat good because it has almost no pickups at all.

So why is your focus on Xonotic, a game that doesn't have what you want, and not on Red Eclipse, which does?
Further, if pickups have always been the issue, why am I not hearing massive success stories from Red Eclipse? Both games are pre-release, and Red Eclipse had its big release more recently, so if anything it should be doing amazingly well

This is about a casual mode and casual mode may deviate from default config.

The casual mode is the vanilla mode, just as CPM is not the default for Quake, and 6v6/Highlander are not the default for TF2, but the casual public mode is. The thread title literally says "Vanilla" and the argument being made is that these changes should be made to the base game. That is the default in any reasonable definition. I'm not sure why it's so difficult to get you to actually address my points instead of dancing around the issue