Improving current balance (aka FruitieX's balance)

FruitieX was the main developer of current balance, currently lacking time to continue maintaining it. Because of that Samual and tZork (probably others too) want to completely replace it with Samual's balance (merged with tZork's).

To prevent it, me and waterlaz are trying to improve existing default balance as we think it is, at it's current state way better from what Samual proposes.

If you like (or mostly like) current balance, please post about it here and there: http://forums.xonotic.org/showthread.php?tid=1542.

To address some of the main issues with weapon balance, we started to update it a little. You can see the progress on a test server at shirkhan.dyndns.org:25420 - modes and player limits are votable.

Current changes includes:
- SG, a little less damage (total 63) but lower spread
- Crylink's alt less damage, slower, smaller damage after each bounce
- MG lower maximum spread
- TAG less rockets, lower push, max 90 damage

Please note that it is not exactly the same balance as in 0.1 preview, because it was updated a few times after the initial release

Any comments are of course appreciated.

balanceShell.cfg ftw!

because I don't want to mess directly in balanceXonotic.cfg

Nice, good luck out there atheros

FruitieX, I feel they will eat me alive...

*Looks at this thread, then switches to desk 2 and looks through his balance file*

So there's three major balances now? balanceFruit/Fruitphys, balanceSamual, and balanceLeeStricklin/physicsLeeStricklin-ModdedFruit

I prefer this ballance by 2 reasons:

- I like it.
- Its phylosophy: How can we change everything??? It's better to do little changes going to the direction we want. If we change all from 0.1 to 0.2, we will have to start from scratch again.

I prefer this ballance by 2 reasons:

- I like it.
- Its phylosophy: How can we change everything??? It's better to do little changes going to the direction we want. If we change all from 0.1 to 0.2, we will have to start from scratch again.

balanceSamual has been around for some time actually... He's just recently gotten back to work on it. Mine was also built mostly from an old config as well: 2.4.2 with influence from balanceFruit, it should be noted that both my config (albeit a drastically different version of it) has been around since like April of last year and Samual's was around a helluva lot longer, both have been around before balanceFruit even came into the picture.

Lee, what's your point?

background history?

?

p.s , whats your stance 4 the rocket?

up in air? , or 2d platform style?

btw i has not checked out the thingo

:^

Rocket flying, faster physics, accelerating with laser from walls, all that is pretty nice, I like it too.

BUT...

Those things broke teamplay, 1 could decide about which team will win, just because he flew soo fast over the heads of the defends. With current physics and weapon balance, a 5v5 CTF on attic usually ends with a score like 3:2 in 20 minutes and requires lots of team work. With old physics and weapons balance, I'm pretty sure 10:2 in 15 minutes would be possible.

So everyone who can appreciate team play in a team game mode in multiplayer FPSes will say +1 to that :3

You can also ask JustinPL/JusioPL for the movie he recorded about very fast caps with current weapons/physics, you'll see it's still possible to be very fast.

Rocket flying, faster physics, accelerating with laser from walls, all that is pretty nice, I like it too.

BUT...

Those things broke teamplay, 1 could decide about which team will win, just because he flew soo fast over the heads of the defends. With current physics and weapon balance, a 5v5 CTF on attic usually ends with a score like 3:2 in 20 minutes and requires lots of team work. With old physics and weapons balance, I'm pretty sure 10:2 in 15 minutes would be possible.

So everyone who can appreciate team play in a team game mode in multiplayer FPSes will say +1 to that :3

You can also ask JustinPL/JusioPL for the movie he recorded about very fast caps with current weapons/physics, you'll see it's still possible to be very fast.

What will fix teamplay? The changes to the health/armor and making the game less aerial were intended to improve teamplay, but failed to do so while breaking other things as well. I don't remember teamplay being much of an issue back in 2.4.2 even though the game was faster with both ground and aerial movement. The only real way I can think of to fix teamplay is to fix the player base.

Xonotic requires more teamplay (in competitive games) than Nexuiz ever did. Don't need to talk about publics, because 1 person can win alone there.

Most likely wasted effort, but in case you actually get a chance:

There's still more to do: Fix health balance, and fix animtimes/switch delay, and your new crylink secondary still doesn't really fix the problem. (About the crylink: People were more concerned that the secondary is useless compared to primary.. Mine has this problem too, so i'm looking into coding a new feature for it which is similar to hagar secondary)

Those are the things which almost every core team member I know agrees with (health balance is "tolerable" to most though, so not as important as animtimes/switch delay), so fix those and you'll be better off if there's a vote

Also, there's some ammo issues... e.g. with hagar: Firing that gun for 2 seconds after pickup completely depletes its ammo. It's basically a useless gun, especially with how high of spread it has too.

Yeah, that's basically it if you just want to do a minimal fix. Good luck. I should say though: It's not just mine and tZork's balance we took ideas from, we're aiming for the goal of combining all the balances into something which everyone (almost, say 75%) can like.

Edit: I tried your shotgun, I think it's a bit too powerful -- you should keep the spread where it was before whilst still having the other change, that seems like it fixes it.

Lee_Stricklin, you don't know what you are talking about. Nexuiz never had team play requirement because everyone could do whatever they wanted and it worked. Xonotic on the other hand requires a lot of team play. because you can't get 300hp and 300 armor before for example taking the flag, you need your team mates to support your efforts. If you don't get that, I don't think we have anything to talk about.

Most likely wasted effort, but in case you actually get a chance:

As far as div said, balance change wasn't decided yet. Or maybe I'm missing something, Samual?

We can do other fixes are problems are identified and confirmed by more that one person. If hagar needs fixing, it will be fixed. But I don't get the problem with animtimes and switch delay. I know ppl are bitching a CR's switch delay, but well, that's the price you pay for using a powerfull weapon

If ppl don't see the use of crylink's alt, come spec a clan arena game from pickup, you'll see how powerfull and very usefull crylink's alt is. It's probably a matter of discovering how to use it.

Shotgun does max of 63dmg, ~9dmg at short range (something I could call 10-15m), is it really that powerfull?

I just wonna say that I agree with atheros, Mirio, waterlaz and Grunt.
Samual, cyrlink secondary isn't useless. Making it similar to the hagar secondary is pointless imo. I am already delighted using the secondary on shirkhan.dyndns.org:25420 server with atheros balance settings. Mirio has got right too. Xonotic definatly requires more teamplay and this is what I like the most.

• The changes to the health/armor -1
  
• MG lower maximum spread +1
  
• Shotgun shots reduced to 6-7 and lower max spread +1
  

Most likely wasted effort, but in case you actually get a chance:...

It's cute how you don't even want to consider this balance. Thanks a lot.

Serouisly. There was fruitexes balance which was tested and it's problems were known. Your balances are not. And though you say it balances smth doesn't say much. We started off from smth that has been tested and is alread familiar to most active players. We start from the point where most weapons are actually usefull (remember nexuiz with it's nex-mortat-RL all the time?). Yeah, currently there are problems but that's what this balance is all about, FIXING THEM. And from what I see you are just crying like a little girl whithout a doll.

*sigh* i'm just going to keep this simple and explain the problem of animtime/switch delay. divVerent already told you about this on IRC slightly, but let me just add this to the record so other people can understand.

We can do other fixes are problems are identified and confirmed by more that one person. If hagar needs fixing, it will be fixed. But I don't get the problem with animtimes and switch delay. I know ppl are bitching a CR's switch delay, but well, that's the price you pay for using a powerfull weapon

Well actually that (Sniper Rifle) animtime is okay imo, but well --

Let me quickly explain I suppose: The animtime cvars are the amount of time it takes for a weapon to play an animation, they basically are how long it takes before anything else can be done with the weapon. So: If you set an animtime of 0.5 seconds, the firing animation (and actual firing method) will play for 0.5 seconds before you can refire or switch away or etc. That is very high if you think about it, an average animation is about 0.25 seconds iirc. Nexuiz used all 0.2-0.3 animtimes for most weapons, but Xonotic currently uses mostly 0.3-0.5. Basically, if you want to keep the same effect which animtime gives (slower combos) -- then just raise the switch delay cvar (from 0.15 to 0.2 for example) and lower the animtimes, this way you have much better transitions and the weapons feel much smoother.

Though personally i'm in favor of low animtimes and 0.15 switch delay, this way it doesn't totally nerf combos... but I may re-examine that later.

But it's still "most likely wasted effort" as most likely tZork and my balance will replace it still.

And why is that? Your balance is BAD.

---

Turning electro into lightning gun was the best change I've seen in the history of nexuiz-xonotic. And it actually became a usefull weapon. Now what you do is start to take it away. Yes crylinks primary and secondary are realy alike. But that is not a bad thing. They result from using primary and secondary is very different depending on the situation. The fact that you disagree with this only means you havn't played it enough.

But it's still "most likely wasted effort" as most likely tZork and my balance will replace it still.

And why is that? Your balance is BAD.

---

Turning electro into lightning gun was the best change I've seen in the history of nexuiz-xonotic. And it actually became a usefull weapon. Now what you do is start to take it away. Yes crylinks primary and secondary are realy alike. But that is not a bad thing. They result from using primary and secondary is very different depending on the situation. The fact that you disagree with this only means you havn't played it enough.

Oh and this one isn't? This one has so many people pissed off right now (I know players that won't even touch this game because of the balance, even though they enjoyed 2.5.2) it's ridiculous and I've actually been able to go into detail as to why it's worse than 2.5.2's. What's wrong with balanceSamual? Have you actually tried playing on his server with it? The one included with the game (at least the preview) is old as dirt and no where near what it is now. The lightning gun (no need to sugar-coat this) is also a piece shit that totally ruined the electro and rendered it's secondary useless. N B 4 it's another rocket launcher argument, that's just like saying the ASMD/Shock Rifle was just like the Sniper Rifle and Enforcer weapons. btw, I've played balanceFruit and my settings almost equally, when testing the game out. Online I've obviously been stuck with balanceFruit most of the time.

Electro secondary is super usefull. And more, right now the weapon is actually used. 95% of electros use in nexuiz was ammo for the nex. You call that normal?

Think I've responded to enough troll posts as it is... Are you trying to imply that changing the electro to lightning primary will automatically make people use it? It essentially just fills a role the machine gun already does (funny I say this when people like to bring up the rocket launcher argument) at close-range while having it's original role destroyed. This used to be a good escape weapon and one for clearing out rooms. It's pretty much incapable of that now.

Wait. You compare Lighting Gun with MG? And Electro is an "escape weapon" ??

I think it's great to have a lighting-gun kinda weapon in Xonotic. But I also don't know whether putting it to the electro makes sense. I suggest to either

a) restore electro's original mode, remove the MG and put instead a dedicated lightning gun in it (in some respect Lee is right, the MG has about the same functionality as the lightning gun, and in Xonotic the MG has spread and is thus less reliable in close distance where it to be used anyway, and the MGs secondary function ... well, can you frag anything with that? I mean, I'm aware that MG is not limited in distance, while the lightning gun is)

b) restore electro's original mode, put lightning-gun beam into one of Crylink's firemodes

trolls? No trolls here. I'm pretty confused though about electro here. Electro was never used. Well ok, almost never. But that's how it was. Idk if there was some kind of statistic on that, I'd like to see it to prove my point.

So what I'm saying is. It's actually OK to move lighting to crylink or some seperate weapon but your motivaton for that is wrong. You want to restore the original electro, and that was an almost useless weapon.

The problem with MG having the same functionality does exist. Though this can be dealt with reducing spread and damage. That way MG would be a weapon of choice for bigger ranges.