[SUGGESTION] A Few New Ideas

First off, a bit of an introduction for those who may not know me (because I'm not very active on the forums). I've been playing Nexuiz for about 3 years, and am the co-founder of the NA clan MiT. I've been keeping up with Xonotic development for a while, and think that the game is pretty fantastic so far. Here are a few ideas I would like to contribute. Note that I tried to cover all my bases with these suggestions, but I would love to hear some feedback. Thats the whole point of this post, after all.

Social Mapping

What is it?
Basically, an interface in the Xonotic menu system that would display maps made by the community, and allow players to download and give feedback. Also: A web interface on Xonotic.org for cartogrophers to submit their maps.

How does it work?
Mappers could submit their new maps via web interface on Xonotic.org, and they would be included on the list in Xonotic menu. Players could directly download and play whichever maps they wanted, and give feedback based on how well they liked it. (Maybe a 1-5 stars system, or something similar). The interface would also rank maps under categories such as: Best Rating, Most Downloads, Newest, etc. A Dev list could also be included for 'official' map releases.

Server Possibilities
Server owners could adjust their maplists based on the rankings. This also opens the possibility for servers that would have dynamic maplists, that would update along with the rankings.

I think that this would encourage more members of the Xonotic community to get into mapping, and would be a very useful and effective feedback tool.

New Main Menu Interface

As I mentioned earlier, I have been playing Nexuiz for about 3 years. Many things have changed since then, but one thing that has stayed pretty much the same is the Main Menu. I don't dislike it or anything, but it is pretty outdated now. The main menu is basically the first impression for most players, and Xonotic is a brand new game, so I feel that the time is right for a totally new interface. Unfortunately, I'm not a designer, or at all artistically inclined for that matter . So I'm hoping to get some positive feedback from this idea and get some others interested in working on it.

Other Thoughts

Regarding balance

This seems to be a pretty hot topic as of late, so I thought I would give my 2 cents about it. The probability of this turning into a balance thread is now 1.

Most of my Xonotic experience has been with Samual's balance, so I might be a bit biased, but I'm very open minded when it comes to changes in the game. In my opinion, his balance is close to perfect. I've helped test it quite a bit, and I am very satisfied with it. In Nexuiz, it seemed like the only useful, all purpose weapons were the Nex, Mortar, and Rocket Launcher. The other weapons were somewhat useful, but made it pretty hard to counter someone who was stacked with the Big 3 weapons. In Samual's balance, all the weapons feel useful. The Nex/Mortar/RL are still very useful, but they are no longer the only effective option, which I think is great for gameplay.

I have also noticed that people on the forums tend to get pretty up in arms over the topic of balance. I encourage everyone to keep an open mind and work together with this issue instead of getting in useless arguments over it.

Final thoughts

I'm really happy with how much progress has been made so far, and I think the game is great. I can't wait for the 1.0 release .

I hope that you like the ideas that I presented, and feedback (especially from the Dev's) would be fantastic.

slash

1st idea: Nice.
2nd idea: I don't know. This menu is not soooo old. I don't care.

Balance thing: Maybe cut it out of the post and post it here before this topic turns into yet another balance topic.

i love the first idea!

and for balance i think that all weapos should be balanced but the nex should still stay the more powerful and the gun that everyone has to fight for

I love the first idea too, but as for the second: WTF. How is the menu outdated? The menu in Nexuiz/Xonotic is the most creative and comfortable to use I've ever seen so far. And it does look cool with the luminos skin, although I'm not a fan of eyecandy in games. What's the reason to change it, except for "hurr xonotic is not nexuiz, it's new so it needs a new menu"?

I love the first idea too, but as for the second: WTF. How is the menu outdated? The menu in Nexuiz/Xonotic is the most creative and comfortable to use I've ever seen so far. And it does look cool with the luminos skin, although I'm not a fan of eyecandy in games. What's the reason to change it, except for "hurr xonotic is not nexuiz, it's new so it needs a new menu"?

i wish xonotic was nexuiz

Players could directly download and play whichever maps they wanted, and give feedback based on how well they liked it. (Maybe a 1-5 stars system, or something similar)

FPSBanana has that for most of content released there. Blocky 3-roomed maps shat out in incredible numbers always win. Of course, this system may be implemented, but pieces of work of a special quality must be forced additionaly. It was just so heart-rendering for me to see on many sites how really neat, nice maps, which had lots of effort put in them, are buried under daily piles of .bsp files, which abused the word "Map" itself.
I'm not against this system, but if it's running, there should be some kind of crew observing contributed content, picking out most succesful works and promoting them in some way.

slash, the menu has gotten reworked since 0.1, though not completely.
Screenshot of GIT

I always thought there should be a browser in-game that let you look at your dlcache, so you can play maps locally that you've only played online.

Alright sorry for such a long time to reply slash, i've been putting it off constantly and just now have free time/want to reply.

Anyway, there are a few main issues you brought up and i'll address each one directly:

#1 "Social Mapping":
This PROBABLY can't work the way you want it to. Well, actually it maybe can.. but it's very hard to really implement this, and also especially hard to come up with specifics on how it should work. What I instead propose FOR NOW is a website which does the same thing. An official map repo which everyone can rate maps on, etc etc etc. THAT is something which I can easily see as going to happen in the future. Whether or not we make a dialog in the menu to relate with this and automatically download maps is yet to be determined, but I suppose it is possible.

#2 "The menu is old":
Yup. Later I think we should re-organize almost everything, especially the multiplayer window (PLAYER SETTINGS TAB EWWWWWWW) and some settings window tabs for example. The key would be to make it far more usable for a player, and just plain better looking/less cluttered.

@nowego4: That is barely any change at all


Oh and finally: Mirio is right about the balance thing, maybe could be good if you move it to another post (specifically the one Mirio linked)