Xonotic Balance Testing DAY (Sunday 15th August)

Hi guys, testing of the current fruitbalance will be done tomorrow (15th August 2010), and will take place between 19:00 CET and 21:00 CET.

Anyone from who has taken an active role in following the thread, too people who wish to try it out and get help from player's who have already had experience using it are welcome, everyone is welcome.

Please be on IRC in the #xonotic channel for 19:00 CET.

FrutieX will be running this as I will be out for the evening.

Testing will hopefully be more geared towards getting some settings for the hagar and sniper/nex trial merge as these are the two weapons with the biggest question marks over them, and working towards factors for these two weapons primarily, but also just to generally have a tryout with the other weapons an movement also, any Qs you should probably ask FrutieX.

Will work with FrutieX today to try get some settings for the above mentioned weapons and then it's upto you guys to try them out and see what you think and give some CONSTRUCTIVE feedback on them, like I know many of you have and continue to do.

There should be people around like Antibody who have been to quite a few of the sessions, so he should definitely be able to help you with getting to grips to the movement and what each weapon does, how to get speed quickly with laser etc if you have no or limited experience with these settings.

Can I suggest that one of the maps we test on be G-23 so I can knock out gameplay testing on that as well?

And I think you need to extend the time a few hours. By the way, for anyone in America, that time in CST is 12:00 to 14:00 on August the 15th.

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/me...3=-1&p4=-1

So this is going to be with experimental rifle nex merge? I will do my best to be there.

Will there be nerfing of nex and high headshot damage and no switch delay for nex?

Ironic.

Xonotic Balance Testing DAY (Sunday 15th August)

At 01:40 AM on the 15th of August.

I love timezones (also rotating planets, what's with that?!)

So this is going to be with experimental rifle nex merge? I will do my best to be there.

Will there be nerfing of nex and high headshot damage and no switch delay for nex?

The rifle isn't going to get removed. What you just described above is what the rifle does right now. Why can you simply not use it instead of wanting to "merge" a completely different weapon with a completely different purpose?

What FrutieX said, I asked him to increase re-fire time by 0.1 on that, so it shoukld be at 0.7 now, Headshots do 115 damage.

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As for timezones, perhaps the next one we can do it to be more suitable for people in American timezone's I will look into this for next weekend.

The rifle isn't going to get removed. What you just described above is what the rifle does right now. Why can you simply not use it instead of wanting to "merge" a completely different weapon with a completely different purpose?

How do two weapons that are both hitscan, both have no spread, and both have high damage have completely different purposes? The only essential difference between them is that the crifle is YAMG (yet another machine gun), and has headshot and ballistics (which are only there because it was made later than nex - if nex was implemented later it would also have headshot and ballistics.)

Thanks to everyone who participated in collecting some useful weapons stats :p

Kojn fyi: the rifle is just fine with a 4 mag when you bind the reload key to something, and reload always when in a safe place.

Crylink seems just ok now too, people are suggesting to swap primary/secondary places.

Hagar we didn't test much, out of ideas here? Just increase radius and/or decrease spread would be my suggestion.

I'll be quite inactive in the following 2 months, good luck with getting a first beta out there everyone! :X

I think having a 4 mag seriously lacks the ability to use the weapon when your NOT playing 1on1, sure 1on1 is fine, but what about multiple opponent encounters CTF/TDM/FFA..plus it's easy to say it's fine when you have all weapons on and all ammo, but it will become frustrating if it's your only weapon, 6 mag works better for this as it gives you an opportunity to fight off your opponent/s more.

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I have no issue with swapping the primary and secondary over, I guess it make's sense, I use current primary more but I don't see an issue with swapping them over, so you should do this if people think this is better.

Well, folks... Its looking freaking awesome... i mean really , I was totally stoked with the whole feel and look of Xonotic last night.
Obviously there are problems and things to get sorted, but all in all I was blown away.
The lightning gun effect on the electro is just stunning, particle effects and sfx, the sfx are kind of raw , but it's a good raw that i hope does not get fixed.
Good work chaps, keep it up!

I've said this on IRC, but it should be mentioned here too: I want to swap the current primary and secondary on crylink because the secondary (quick bursts w/ little spread) seems to be more offense-centered, and as such should be the first option when firing. I found myself using the current primary (slow bursts w/ large spread) only when I was low on health and trying to back away from a skirmish. The spread acted as a disincentive for someone to follow me as I went to lick my wounds .

Also, swapping the two would be less of a departure from what is currently in 2.5.2. In other words, there wasn't a real reason to switch them around to begin with aside from changing their spread and rate.

i still want the 2.5.2 crylink back. the hexagonal pattern is too exotic imo, and the secondary is just another fast-firing firemode. the old primary was reasonable and the secondary was useful for more distant enemies.

I feel that the primary Electro would probably fit with the Crylink model better.
But I guess all guns will be remodeled to fit the weapon properties at some point. ;O

And the physics is good once you get used to it. There are some severe performance issues with the gibs still though.

@ Antibody: Seems reasonable, have no problems with doing this said the same to FrutieX and I know exactly what you mean, so it looks likely these will get swapped around in the balance.

@ Jaykay - I understand what you are saying, however the old crylink was very over-powered or underpowered, it was changed a lot of time's and was always the centre of debate, we went with a change for this balance because we wanted to make it something different, would be easier to use and simplify it not over-complicate. Primary although you can say it's just another fast firing firemode, the only thing it comes near to is the machinegun out of the STANDARD weapons, and machinegun is hitscan, this is not, as for secondary, this is a really good defensive firemode (as antibody pointed out) and very good for use in close-combat which is how it has been designed, slower speed, easy to dodge in open areas, but high damage..it also is not just hold and fire spam like the old crylink which had a very fast re-fire.

@ Morfar, I see what your saying, I actually prefer it on the electro as it is now, also because electro fires the balls and has the shape to fire them

@ All, thanks for the continued feedback and testing, Big thanks to FrutieX who has ran practically every testing session and put the change in place, never thought this would come so far!

Tough i missed 'testing day' heres my input on the current weapons (haven't tested much in ~4-5 days so maybe some things changed since then.. anyway)

General:
I think all weapons should have the same switch time to make game play smoother. I dont think the removal o detonable projectiles (gl sec, rl) is a step forward. Damage tough walls needs to be addressed in a way thats acceptable to "oldtimers" too, maybe a scaling factor instead of yes/no?

Laser secondary "minishaft": bad & ugly xD I really dont like this one at all; and its obsoleted by sg secondary too. Maybe a sort range tractor-beam (pull stuff and help you corner fast could work instead?).

Shotgun secondary "swipe": cool but to slow. it seems your chara it trying to lift a tank when preparing to smite with it.

Machine gun: Primary: good. Secondary: could be different (eg not range enhanced, but idk what that'd be)

Mortar: Bring back secondary nades health. It sucks not being able to detonate em. Other then that, good.

Electro & Crylink: I really rather see the shaft as Crylink primary, and the Electro have its old primary fire mode back but with a tad of gravity influence (arched shots). Id also love to see the posibility to hit & detonate electro-blobs midair (with primary).

HLAC: Not sure, haven't used it much. Proly still so castrated its pointless in relation to other guns

Nex: I still hate the enforced switch time. Its really ruins flow. Its not like this gun really packs a punch anymore, so why add this too? The push/pull sounds like a good idea, but in practice it does no work to well IMO. I suggest weapon warm-up instead, once raised it will automatically start to charge. It can be fired before 'ready' but damage will be comparatively low. Once fully charged (say after 1.5-2.5s) it should deal a good bit of damage on impact (and start to charge again).

Hagar: Sigh. no idea. I guess its a bit better now.

TAG: Primary is to castrated, secondary is totally broken.

RL: Guidance and damage are OK, but plz make rockets killable.

Fireball, Hookgun: Haven't tested recently.

Nex: I still hate the enforced switch time. Its really ruins flow. Its not like this gun really packs a punch anymore, so why add this too? The push/pull sounds like a good idea, but in practice it does no work to well IMO. I suggest weapon warm-up instead, once raised it will automatically start to charge. It can be fired before 'ready' but damage will be comparatively low. Once fully charged (say after 1.5-2.5s) it should deal a good bit of damage on impact (and start to charge again).

Even that won't be necessary with low damage and high headshot damage.

Well, with low body damage and high head shot damage, its more or less a crifle clone. The point of the charge up would be to distance it from the crifle.

But should we have two sniper weapons that are different because they have different damage? I think not.

But should we have two sniper weapons that are different because they have different damage? I think not.

Going by how it was in 2.5+:

One is harder to use, but is more rewarding. The other is easier to use, but is less rewarding. The camping rifle is also best used in medium-long range while the nex is best used for long-extreme range.

Roanake, just accept the camping rifle then, it already does what you want the nex to do.

Yes, but unlike the nex, the rifle is not placed on every map. It's a forgotten weapon, and for good reason.

It's a forgotten weapon even though it's what you want the nex to be..I'm sure it won't be hard to have the camping rifle as the nex in it's place, then it would be on maps.

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Sure it needs a new model obviously, but it is a very balanced weapon compared to the nex, has lower normal damage, fairly high re-fire and with a mag-size, and then headshot damage.