Balance changes in progress for "0.2"

I aint talking out of my ass, hell I'm pretty sure the dev team got a pretty good idea of what I was talking about when I filled out the survey (if they want to, they can feel free to post it somewhere so that I don't have to fully detail my view again). Most of the weapons have been turned into stuff that's just meant for all-out fighting as opposed to having situations they dominate, the hagar is a good example of this. Also, I showed you that video with me raping bots with a nex. While those were bots it should still be noted that the movement is more predictable (partially thanks to you HAVING TO BUNNYHOP and there being less aerial combat) and there haven't been any huge open maps tested that I know of, save maybe block scape which has a lot of cover. If something like Greatwall or go get's loaded up with the nex that was in the preview release, you can expect some RAGE to happen, it really is worse than the 2.5.2 nex.

This last read was funny, I actually ended up laughing out loud than rather thinking of replies, I'll just keep my popcorn and like wait for the fork or something

Fork? tZork + Samual working on balance = not necessary, these guys know what they're doing. Samual I know for sure knows what he's doing.

Finally I would ask you to be patient and at least wait for the new balance proposal to be planned, implemented and tested before you start telling the world how wrong it is.

Most of what i read here is dont do this or that. Not much in the way of suggestions on what / how to do better.

Rocket Launcher should have a decent radius too, it's the biggest projectile in the game so far it should cause the biggest explosion
i agree , old school..... ya gotta retain some of the proven stuff.

+1 for rocketjumps, even though I don't use them myself...
Rocketjumps are very much possible already.

"Rocket flying" was nerfed a little BECAUSE IT IS INSANE. As it is (was) already; after some practice you can fly from one Rifle platform to another on newtonian nightmare I'm sure.

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mate , show me please , im not joking guys , all of you have not got the rocket right , regardless of delay and balence and stuff.... , im sorry but its shithouse , and WE have tried to correct , with poor results , wtf got screwed up!?!??!?!.

So it seems then that you should move some of the rocket launcher features over to a "feature starved" boring and redundant weapon. Like take rocket guidance and move it over to hagar or electro primary.
:o

To be honest this comment , to me was a suprise , and even though it would work possibly against my love for all things rocket , i have to say this impressed me.
(yes i dont follow all threads or posts , etc , so i may of missed/ or forgot chats in the past)
(me plumber)

oh and samuel (much respect to you mate) :
Edit: Forgot to say, but... You CAN rocket fly with my rockets (though actually less easily than with default, higher refire), but they do so much self damage that you wouldn't want to do it very much.

i do want to , it wont stop me , noone will stop me flying (omg i sound like a nerd nut about this rocket crap)

but flying? , nope , sorry , you all fail at flying , its screwed , it really is screwed.

(my opinion of course , but alot have agreed in private too)

seriously when i found this feature , it made me stick to this game (i have touched no other game for 2 years roughly) (i did look at warsow , but me no like it) (30min look btw)

im not going to make this comment again from now on.
if i lose this , the game that i have donated $$ for server time and my time here and at my local server will be wasted slightly.
the people who know me , know ive fought for this 4 a while.

time to move on?

i wont.

play as much?
probally not.,

again im not going to say anymore ever again on this matter.

:^

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Most of what i read here is dont do this or that. Not much in the way of suggestions on what / how to do better.

I suggested moving the fireball secondary's "radiation" splash damage to another weapon, like electro primary. On the grounds that it is an interesting feature that would be much better utilized on a weapon that doesn't have such extreme normal splash damage.

Another suggestion is to base the rocket launcher stats on the 2.5.2 version (which had nice damage, radius and guidance) but with longer refire time (like 1 second). If that is unacceptable in the current balance, then I put forward the idea of moving rocket guidance to electro primary or hagar (or another weapon) so that the rocket's manual detonation feature can have a decent blast radius (while remaining balanced), and then another "generic" or "redundant" weapon get's to have guidance (a good feature in it's own right).

I suggest a new law that says: taking a bag of potato chips before opening a(ny) thread of this forum increases the joy when reading.

And I'm interested, Mr *scrolling up for a minute to find poster's name, and down again to continue typing* Samual whether it SURPRISES you that BOTS "suck" with some weaopns? Did you actually use bots to see how well your weapons do?

That is like ... if the army (US army of course!) gave weapons to semi-intelligent apes (no offense to the bot-coders, but your solutions aren't AI-complete) and see who wins the war.

To be serious again: I don't see any good reason to use bots to evaluate weapon statistics. Neither do maps like egg and bacon make sense. IF you wanted to collect statstics, why not run the maps in warm up mode where players have all weapons anyway, but then let them play on real maps, e.g. runningman, stormkeep, etc.

I did.............................. lawl.

Actually I did 3 collections in total for a period of 7 days.

#1: g_weaponarena_random 2 server on a collage of maps, which basically only allows players to have 2 weapons. This is best for gathering per-weapon statistics, it is the officially sponsored "Weapon testing game mode."

#2: g_weaponarena "most" server on a collage of maps, which gives every player all weapons to choose from freely. This is slightly bad for balance testing if you want to determine individual weapon balance, as it actually gives wrong information when you consider combos. Of course balancing combos are important too, but it's not the goal -- I just want to make the weapons do even damage right now.

#3: Non-weaponarena non-warmup server on a collage of maps... Just a normal DM server with no modifiers, you have to pick up weapons. This one of course gave the least desirable statistics, as it's 100% per map.

All of them had minplayers enabled -- But here's the thing, when you parse through the kill log with the script, you can select whether you want to include bots/humans in it. So you effectively can see humans alone, or bots alone. So to answer your condescending question: No, I didn't test my balance with only bots. I tested it with players AND bots at the same time. Basically, I can totally ignore kills/deaths by bots in the statistics... so it's like they aren't even there. But it helps other players to stay in the match.

So again: I SAID IT WAS INTERESTING HOW BOTS PERFORMED, I NEVER SAID THAT WE SHOULD BASE THE BALANCE OFF OF THIS OR INCLUDE THEM IN THE BALANCE STATISTICS. Also: It was not surprising, I didn't even say that. It makes perfect sense as to why some weapons are good for bots and others are not, but the interesting thing was how much so this is true.

And finally: I'm not saying it's not important to get an average of how weapons perform on all maps, i'm just saying that: It's important to get an average of how they perform BY THEMSELVES without variations FIRST.

Asking if a 'nerfed laser is adequate' is going to yield 'No' answers just from your wording. 'ZOMG THEY ARE GOING TO NERF THE LASER AGAIN!?!' (notice again, as this is what people will presume if you used that working) then they'll say no to this, and you will bump up the vertical force I expect regardless.

It will be made clear in the question (and required of them to test it) -- The phrasing I said was just to get the idea across. Even so, sure it probably will have people saying "No" just out of closed mindedness. This will forever be true, but we can still see what people can tolerate the most through a survey. Again, I more importantly wanted to ask a question which is less about balance: What to do with the laser secondary? Do we keep switch away or can we expand upon it to do something else?

Besides, that still gives us a representation of what the majority of people actually WANT -- so it is still very useful.

Atleast at the moment it takes SOME timing/skill to get the max height out of it, and since you used dance as an example I will, it is going to make this map much more, grab the flag and laser up high if you increase the vertical height push meaning it will make it easier to get away with the flag, and what with the quick physics allready, player's will be out of sight quicker and faster and also fail less to make that laser jump upto the top part of the map, even if you increase the self-damage, I can guarantee you 1) won't increase it enough as people will complain if you do. 2) It will still get used just as much to grab the flag and laser away because I cannot see you increasing the self-damage to a decent risk/reward ratio without half of the community complaining, and in a way that will stop what I just wrote happening on dance.

DO PEOPLE THINK I WANT TO MAKE IT DO 1000 FORCE OR SOMETHING? Jesus... I think the laser should just be more helpful for jumping upwards. But well, if you (As in people in the survey) really feel that strongly against it -- I won't do it!

Personally I think that it will make no difference at all on dance, as dance ALREADY has those problems. Also: About self damage, I just raised it from 60% to 75%.... The very fact that you contest it tells me you haven't tried it.

"because currently the majority of maps are corridors AND (this is what happened to a lot of things in balanceFruit) a lot of weapons will lose their specializations from being turned into all-out fighting weapons. Others (such as the nex) will become unbalanced as well. Rock/Paper/Scissors is how the game should be balanced because it gives every weapon a purpose"

Sorry, but you talk out of your ass, then again I already knew this.

Everything else I'll await to see what you do.

Be constructive kojn... -- He has a point that we should also keep weapons good in their own context, but I don't think balanceFruit really had much of a problem with this (and nor does mine).

@ chooksta: We'll see, that'll be something I determine with more playtesting on space maps and such.

@ FruitieX: I think this goes deeper than just fixing some small things about the current balance -- There's a lot more stuff that still needs fixed regardless.

@ tZork: Right, that's why I hate balance discussions like this when it's about an entire balance and not just one subject. It's a flame war, especially until people actually give it a chance....... But unfortunately, if I DON'T keep responding to these people -- then "they win" (they claim they do anyway) and suddenly i'm not listening to the community... So i'm forced to reply.


Edit: BTW, this absurdity of another fork is just plain fucking stupid. Sorry, but I hope you were joking THERE IS THIS THING CALLED A MOD SYSTEM IN XONOTIC... IF YOU REALLY WANT YOUR BALANCE/PHYSICS SO BADLY, MAKE A MOD FOR IT. Just like there is a Nexuiz mod for Xonotic, you too can have your own mod. (Although unlike the Nexuiz mod, yours can make it into the Xonotic package) -- If the default balance doesn't reflect what I want, i'll just make a mod for what I want and use that on my servers. (and distribute it to anyone else who wants to use it) -- That's how you should think too.

Finally I would ask you to be patient and at least wait for the new balance proposal to be planned, implemented and tested before you start telling the world how wrong it is.

Most of what i read here is dont do this or that. Not much in the way of suggestions on what / how to do better.

Of course I'll try it, and I try to make positive suggestions (see Rifle suggestion). But we don't want to delay the game and have work wasted if we don't have to.

I liked fruitybalance.

I just want to highlight something. you guys try to make a CTF balance. i have been a nexuiz addict for 4 years almost, played ridiculous amounts of public ctf. I have though played ridiculous amounts of DCC DM, and quite a bit casual duels.

Guess what : 2.5.2 DCC balance WAS NOT BROKEN IN DM. with tiny fixes, like fruitys cl, and a fixed hagar, the balance was great. I would also make the laser do 30 self damage. and the nex to consume 8 or 10 ammo per shot.

Short story. If CTF is the holy grail of balancing, think how many ppl actually care about it (huge percentage of ppl playing with hook and minsta and will continure to do so). DCC's 2.5.2 balance with minor tweeks worked wonders in DM...and seriously, i think i might have played a ridicoulous amount of time with it to say that safely (over 2 months real time). still haven't realized who that grain/Ion fakenicker was...(tZork? ).

Can we have back alpha to reason about balance changes?

booo's post deserves an answer.

Can we have back alpha to reason about balance changes?

Im not sure what that means. 0.1 IS a alpha, mainly because of the large balance changes that needed testing.

And no, i never played as grain/Ion. I rarely play as anything else then tZork. i too played quite a bit of nexuiz 2.5.2, 300 hrs or so worth @ dcc, according to their stats (assuming they got reset for 2.5.2). And no i did not consider the bulk of that balance broken, otoh not optimal either.

Can we have back alpha to reason about balance changes?

Im not sure what that means. 0.1 IS a alpha, mainly because of the large balance changes that needed testing.

And no, i never played as grain/Ion. I rarely play as anything else then tZork. i too played quite a bit of nexuiz 2.5.2, 300 hrs or so worth @ dcc, according to their stats (assuming they got reset for 2.5.2). And no i did not consider the bulk of that balance broken, otoh not optimal either.

He means the player named "Alpha" -- Most commonly known for generally being a massively.... eh...... "excitable person" on alienTRAP forums.

Also: I would consider a lot of Nexuiz's balance broken, especially since you really only had 3 useful weapons in Nexuiz... (Nexgun, rocketlauncher, grenadelauncher)

Also: I would consider a lot of Nexuiz's balance broken, especially since you really only had 3 useful weapons in Nexuiz... (Nexgun, rocketlauncher, grenadelauncher)

I have to agree with you on this.

Also: I would consider a lot of Nexuiz's balance broken, especially since you really only had 3 useful weapons in Nexuiz... (Nexgun, rocketlauncher, grenadelauncher)

Yes, agreement here.

What do you guys have planned for the health/armor system?

Can we have back alpha to reason about balance changes?

Im not sure what that means. 0.1 IS a alpha, mainly because of the large balance changes that needed testing.

And no, i never played as grain/Ion. I rarely play as anything else then tZork. i too played quite a bit of nexuiz 2.5.2, 300 hrs or so worth @ dcc, according to their stats (assuming they got reset for 2.5.2). And no i did not consider the bulk of that balance broken, otoh not optimal either.

Sorry m8, funny misunderstanding, it was indeed an invocation to the "extra vocative" player alpha. (who imo had a nice blog -contrary to his nexuiz persona).

I m really curious though about that grain guy, he did indeed had your skin and style(tzork). (well after a while you tend to easily distinguish style).

Regarding balance, well the good think was that in FFA DM situations, every weapon gave you an edge over the sg as it should (get a weapon, get a frag), and actually electro was very useful due to its spam. Well, "better weapons" than other exist in all games i think. in quake its rail,lg,rl I can't recall a single pro duel that someone uses another weapon. In nexuiz is nex,rl,mortar and the electro.

Still, laser selfdmg to 35 (old laser)-fruity;s cl and melle,lg rather than mg primary,nex getting only 3 shots per clip and i would be in my nexuiz DM heaven

Anyway i don't want to promote 2.5.2 DCC balance, enough with it anyway, i just want to raise a yellow warning flag that certain gamemodes were not broken. (CTF was...).
Good luck with the new balance tZork and Samual!

Also: I would consider a lot of Nexuiz's balance broken, especially since you really only had 3 useful weapons in Nexuiz... (Nexgun, rocketlauncher, grenadelauncher)

Yes, agreement here.

What do you guys have planned for the health/armor system?

Well for now I have a rather interesting system implemented... It is the only balance which allows you to have 150 health stable/all the time.

Here is every health/armor balance relevant cvar for this context:

Code:

set g_balance_health_start 150
set g_balance_armor_start 0
set g_pickup_armorsmall 10 // how much armor is given to player
set g_pickup_armorsmall_max 200 // the maximum armor this item can get you to
set g_pickup_armorsmall_anyway 1 // pick up the armor anyway even if it's at the maximum, gives no gain past maximum though
set g_pickup_armormedium 25
set g_pickup_armormedium_max 200
set g_pickup_armormedium_anyway 1
set g_pickup_armorbig 50
set g_pickup_armorbig_max 200
set g_pickup_armorbig_anyway 1
set g_pickup_armorlarge 100
set g_pickup_armorlarge_max 200
set g_pickup_armorlarge_anyway 1
set g_pickup_healthsmall 10
set g_pickup_healthsmall_max 250
set g_pickup_healthsmall_anyway 1
set g_pickup_healthmedium 25
set g_pickup_healthmedium_max 250
set g_pickup_healthmedium_anyway 1
set g_pickup_healthlarge 50
set g_pickup_healthlarge_max 250
set g_pickup_healthlarge_anyway 1
set g_pickup_healthmega 100
set g_pickup_healthmega_max 250
set g_pickup_healthmega_anyway 1

///////////// regen/rot
set g_balance_health_regen 0
set g_balance_health_regenlinear 5 // grow health until reaching a stable level
set g_balance_pause_health_regen 5 // amount of time to pause before starting regen
set g_balance_pause_health_regen_spawn 0
set g_balance_health_rot 0
set g_balance_health_rotlinear 4 // rot health until reaching a stable level
set g_balance_pause_health_rot 3 // amount of time to pause before starting rot
set g_balance_pause_health_rot_spawn 5
set g_balance_health_regenstable 100 // health will only regen to this level
set g_balance_health_rotstable 150 // health will only rot to this level (So for both, you can have stable anywhere in between 100 and 150)
set g_balance_health_limit 999 // maximum health ever allowed -- Can not be reached by items, only map editing
// the same descriptions but different implementation for armor
set g_balance_armor_regen 0
set g_balance_armor_regenlinear 0
set g_balance_armor_rot 0
set g_balance_armor_rotlinear 2
set g_balance_pause_armor_rot 3
set g_balance_pause_armor_rot_spawn 5
set g_balance_armor_regenstable 100
set g_balance_armor_rotstable 100
set g_balance_armor_limit 999
set g_balance_armor_blockpercent 0.6 // lower block percent than xonotic default (was 0.75)-- this is so that armor is less powerful and you need more of it to survive. 60% is still a large block though, so don't underestimate it.
set g_balance_selfdamagepercent 0.75 // higher self damage than xonotic default (was 0.6)-- Mainly because it's weird that a rocket can go off in your face and you come out of it with a minor scratch.

with testing this is generally very good for CTF/TDM/FFA -- but some may consider it worse for 1v1's - This is because this balance gives less importance on map control than some may want by allowing people to get health from almost anything. (You don't need megahealth to stack up ) -- Some consider this bad for competitive play with 1v1s, but here's the thing: It is FAR better for public play and such. Besides, it's a simple change for competitive communities to adjust if they want (It's not like they don't change things anyway).

It's exactly similar to the weapon respawn issue -- I changed it to respawn after 10 seconds instead of 15, and of course this is "bad" for 1v1's because players can get weapons more easily. BUT, this is fantastic for public matches as people usually have little to no weapons on public servers. With this, players can actually get a weapon.

BTW, I personally don't even agree with the claim that it's bad for 1v1's. imo I think it should be more about the players skill with the weapons than map control.... divVerent said (paraphrase) "Even if a player is really bad, he should still be able to get a kill in a 1v1 eventually" -- I made this true WITHOUT breaking the balance for more skilled players totally.

@booo: Thanks, but also: 3 shots per pickup of the nex is a bit low REALLY low even, I would be extremely frustrated with that if I were a new player.

Thanks for posting that Samual, it is much more to my liking. Being stable between 100 and 150 is going to be a nice twist. It this default (in GIT) yet?

The only thing I'm not sure on is the

Code:

set g_pickup_item_anyway 1

for everything, maybe just the smalls could be set to 0 (to help the loser of a fight get back on his feet[assuming they both survive]). Also weren't they 5 before? (I'm excited to try 10, your right it will be easier to stack without mega this way).
The only other thing that has me slightly worried is the selfdamage, and what impact this will have on laserjumping. 0.15 isn't a whole lot I guess, but I like to know exactly how much health a laserjump takes so I know when I can get to high-up megas without suiciding.

Nice work.

Thanks for posting that Samual, it is much more to my liking. Being stable between 100 and 150 is going to be a nice twist. It this default (in GIT) yet?

The only thing I'm not sure on is the

Code:

set g_pickup_item_anyway 1

for everything, maybe just the smalls could be set to 0 (to help the loser of a fight get back on his feet[assuming they both survive]). Also weren't they 5 before? (I'm excited to try 10, your right it will be easier to stack without mega this way).
The only other thing that has me slightly worried is the selfdamage, and what impact this will have on laserjumping. 0.15 isn't a whole lot I guess, but I like to know exactly how much health a laserjump takes so I know when I can get to high-up megas without suiciding.

Nice work.

Well that's definitely something to consider (pickup anyway on small items) -- not sure though, that is one thing remaining for map control allowing people to steal away the health from your enemy. But maybe it's obsolete now that I raised the max health limits to 250 -- If I did end up removing the ability to pick it up anyway, I would disable it for EVERY health pack. Which means when you're at full health you can't pick it up.

So, maybe something to consider.

-- About the small health being 10 health now -- Yeah, I tried this a long time ago and liked it.. Only problem is that some maps go overkill with small health (like stormkeep) -- but since this is still before a release, we can change the map balance to be more appropriate if necessary. Though actually a maybe another idea would be to lower respawn time of the small health and also lower its reward back to 5..... Gotta think about it.

Finally about the laser self damage: Here is a quick rundown of maximum laser self damages when the player has no armor.. In this case, worth of jump will just show what kind of ratio you can expect for jumps in these balances. They all have fairly different lasers, so that's why they were chosen. -- The higher the value, the more rewarding that laser is to you for the damage you take.

damage * selfdmgpercent = self damage... upwardforce/selfdamage = worth of jump

sorted by most to least rewarding

1. Xonotic: 20 * 0.65 = 13... 300 / 13 = 23.08
   
2. tZork: 20 * 0.6 = 12... 276 / 12 = 23
   
3. Nexuiz 2.5.2: 35 * 0.6 = 21... 400 / 21 = 19.05
   
4. Samual: 25 * 0.75 = 18.75... 350 / 18.75 = 18.67
   

As expected, mine is the least rewarding - but only little less than Nexuiz 2.5.2... Personally I just prefer penalizing the players slightly more for using something as powerful as a laser jump like this, but it won't kill you extremely quickly. tZork and FruitieX on the other hand prefer weaker laser in general. Oh and it should be pointed out, this is the MAXIMUM damage possible, so it's "worst case scenario" for the worth of the jump.


Oh and no, we're not in xonotic default yet. That'll be decided after a few more things on the todolist are completed.

WOWEEE! Tried it on your server (granted no bots or other people) runningman (only map). Your laser actually seemed to do less damage than default (<10 damage if I jumped then shot) and move me just as far/and maybe farther. This is just what it FELT like, numbers aside.

The health system was AWESOME, it really balance out that map (the megas are all stuck together).

The Bolt Electro was fine, although its primary sounds like your speakers are dying. I see you went back to one bounce with the Crylink. Also the secondary is bouncy now, that's neat but redundant with Hagar secondary. The Hagar's primary is similar to the TAG Seeker's secondary, but if these get merged it will need reworked anyway.

The shotgun's refire is higher, does it do the same amount of dmg/shot?

Also I think you should make your server voteable, that way we can try the balance out in regular DM too, and so we can add bots when no one else is around.

GLHF

The Machinegun and RL dont really feel powerfull to me. I like to feel power in my hands :B

Well, the machine gun is better than in Nexuiz, there it did: Prrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Now it does: tictictictictictictictictictictictictictictictictictictictictictictictictictictictictictictictictictictictictictic.
Not really powerfull, id more like boomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboom. More realistic, more power

And the RL is very powerfull, but is has such a tiny explosion, and the sound, again, I nearly dont use it, because my feelings say that it is very weak. That should change.


Just more noise, more BOOM!!!