Improving current balance (aka FruitieX's balance)

Stop arguing here Samual, let them do as they please.

Stop arguing here Samual, let them do as they please.

This is not supposed to be arguing and aside from Lee's posts it is mostly not. This is supposed to be a thread gathering ideas, suggestions and feadback on the current balance status.

The bolt alone would never be used compared to the LG,

Obviously you could balance the range, speed, refire, damage, etc. of either or both fire modes so that they would both be useful and thus both get used.

It is totally ridiculous to say something absolute like this when there are so many tweaking options on the table.

Not to mention that the effect for the bolt and the LG are really different...

Like the shock rifle or link gun fire modes are really different. . .

So having diverse fire modes on a weapon is automatically bad somehow, we are to assume.

Besides, the minelayer fills a different role than the electro secondary - Minelayer especially has a much longer lifetime and is much more useful for setting traps, whereas the electro is mainly useful in actual combat.

Once again, that is totally changeable, the minelayer can have two firemodes, one laying long duration mines and the other setting them off in an electro combo style way or any other way. The minelayer can function however it needs to function, to fill an intended role however that is defined (as long as it is some kind of a mine layer, as the name suggests).

Basically, not only do I think that idea for the electro is bad, I totally reject it. And I find it hilarious how FruitieX supports it...........

So he laughs at and insults people for having totally reasonable opinions about balancing that he happens to disagree with. Does this help facilitate the balance design process or is it just obnoxious?

@ Flying Steel

I think I'm done responding to you as you've failed to bring up a valid argument as to why the electro was bad with it's original primary and have accomplished little more than pissing people off in this thread. I'm gonna tweak my balance, let Samual and tZork tweak theirs and atheros and waterlaz tweak the current one. I'm pretty sure between all of us, we can find something solid that will work in the game.

and i say you nerds have a week to finish!

so finish ya work now , submit , then the community votes.

regardless of whatever gun/movement nerd tweek.

its about time we all crossed over to the new game,
then we can all see in a proper enviroment (duh).

after that if a server admin boss wants to make their own changes , then so be it.

shift now , play game , give yaself time (two weeks) to properly practise , THEN if you have some ideas let em be known.

i shouldnt have to say this btw , it seems perfectly clear to me (im a f,,kin plumber ffs)
you all know this is the way , nerd chat and insults always waste time.

t

ftx (for the xonotic(game)

:^

(hai everyone reading this <3)

@ Flying Steel

I think I'm done responding to you. . .

That's the greatest gift you could ever give someone, thanks!

Samual - what's wrong with the health system?

As for the bolt + shaft that would be cool I guess, I like how you say it's ridiculous though and that you laugh at FruitieX, are you able to compromise on your balance or not.

He's probably got the same problem with the health system I do. The problem is that it's inconsistent with there being different limits on each of the health types (too much like Q3A, it doesn't really suit this game well), it gets REAL ANNOYING REAL FAST. It's also irritating that you cannot grab it all to deny a player access to it as well (N B 4 teamplay argument). One other problem I have with it are the regenerating part being pretty much useless due to how slow it is (might as well be removed all together with the current way it's set up). Making one universal cap and fixing the regeneration would solve a lot of problems.

As for the lightning gun- I think experimenting with hacking the machine gun into a weapon that spits out a beam of burning thermite (so that it still uses the same ammo) or something be interesting to experiment around with since the lightning gun has mostly been used to fill a similar role to the machine gun anyway and the HLAC is currently very similar to the machine gun outside of it not being hit scan and having a different secondary.

I actually quite like the health/armor system in fruitiex's balance. I might be biased because it's something I missed ever since I started playing nexuiz (coming from qw where it's a similar system as q3a). In any case you can't deny that it is a proven system, it's been around for ages and simply works better for balancing a map. However I guess alternatives are possible, it worked in nexuiz (admittedly not that great) but who knows.

Weapon balance has gotten much better in the last couple weeks but I definitely think that the current health/armor system in samual's balance still needs work tho, that's what in my opinion still needs a lot of testing in different game modes.

Samual don't make some stupid cap with health to like 250, 150 max please.

nifrek weapon balance in regards to 'fruitbalance' or ?

@kojn: it was in regards to samual's.

Honestly, in either fruitiex or samual's balance, even tho they're different, all weapons are pretty much the same. Some have slower/faster projectiles, lower/higher damage but in the end the mechanics are the same (samual's is only missing the lg, which he's going to add soon). But both balances are nicely balanced in terms of weapons right now, I would probably be fine with either of them. I'm currently playing with both. I play pickups with euros with fruitiex's balance, then on samual's servers with his balance and I can't say that when I switch between the 2 there's anything that make me go "dammit, this was much better in the other balance" whatever balance I'm using.

Well since this discussion is now back in respect to mine/tZork's balance, i'm going to reply

I actually quite like the health/armor system in fruitiex's balance. I might be biased because it's something I missed ever since I started playing nexuiz (coming from qw where it's a similar system as q3a). In any case you can't deny that it is a proven system, it's been around for ages and simply works better for balancing a map. However I guess alternatives are possible, it worked in nexuiz (admittedly not that great) but who knows.

Weapon balance has gotten much better in the last couple weeks but I definitely think that the current health/armor system in samual's balance still needs work tho, that's what in my opinion still needs a lot of testing in different game modes.

Personally I think my system is fine, especially for public play and even for 1v1's. The thing is that you guys are so used to dominating with map control that this makes you dislike the fact that I level out the playing field a little. It really is mostly the fault of the maps though, maps which place rows of small health. Basically, if a map isn't balanced for my health, then it obviously will perform badly -- the same can be said for ANY balance configuration.

I won't back down on some changes just because maps like Stormkeep are broken -- instead I would fix the map. The very duel maps we use weren't made for xonotic from the get go, except for e.g. Downer -- There's a reason it's so nice The part which is broken about stormkeep is how many small healths it provides, by the way. Several other maps fall under the same trap now too -- This would be broken with 10+ health on each small health. Here's the thing: I think 10+ health is better for small health than 5+, so that's why I would insist on changing the map instead of changing the balance to hinder progress.

But well, I still think you're missing an important aspect in your argument - I'm making a balance specifically for public and non-competitive play. Hence why I have weaponrespawn time at 10 seconds instead of 15, and why I don't have very low caps on health pickups. I WILL make a competitive version of this balance once it is done, but until then it will have features which benefit the majority, not the minority.

@kojn: 150 is a bit low, I maybe would go for 200 -- But well, health rots quite a bit faster than in default, so actually it's not as if keeping the whole 250 is easily done. (Unless you're on a map like stormkeep)

My biggest problem with the default health system is how there is such low caps on pickups like medium health. You can't pick it up past 100? wtf is this, quake? THAT itself breaks several maps TOO. Like Dance for example, where 90% of its health is in medium health pickups. Now, you could argue to just fix the map there too (Which I would then probably be more okay with the default balance), but it depends on whose balance ends up as default. The maps surely will follow that.

But, I still wouldn't like it because I hate how inconsistent the caps feel. I say if you're going to have caps on health pickups, make it apply to everything just the same.

Well, true I admit it makes sense to have +10, +25, +50, +100. But indeed maps will need fixing.

About making 2 balance sets for public vs competitive, I guess that works but it seems it would make more sense to have one set that works for both.

Well, true I admit it makes sense to have +10, +25, +50, +100. But indeed maps will need fixing.

About making 2 balance sets for public vs competitive, I guess that works but it seems it would make more sense to have one set that works for both.

But then you make compromises which may hurt both at the same time.... Well, I don't know - health balance is something which can easily change though, so if a different system really is better i'll just adapt that instead.

@ Flying Steel

I think I'm done responding to you as you've failed to bring up a valid argument

did you never heard of rule #11?

All your carefully picked arguments can easily be ignored.

@ Cortez666

I've heard of rule 34

About making 2 balance sets for public vs competitive, I guess that works but it seems it would make more sense to have one set that works for both.

If we would have done this right from the start then we probably wouldn't even have any of these balance discussions today.

But there were several reasons not to split everything up, for example what would happen to the balance that were not the default? Assuming it would be the competitive mod, it'd end up like CPMA in Q3 where only the elite plays the mod, and basically a new player trying to learn the mod has no chance to do so when everyone is so much better at it. Also, splitting the community that early on seemed like a very bad idea: most people would only stick to the mod they are used to.

Now I haven't seen the survey results and am eagerly waiting for them to get published but it looks like a split like this indeed is necessary then. I can't speak for the pickup community today (effectively the competitive community in EU), since I have been inactive for a number of weeks, but the pickup community I knew from weeks back seemed like it was very happy with the balance as it was, with minor tweaks that I suppose the Shell clan now has applied to their balance. So should we go with Samual's/Lee's balance by default, and make the balance by the Shell clan an "official" competitive mod of the game?

Havoc mode dejavu anyone?

---

did you never heard of rule #11?

rule #25: "Relation to the original topic decreases with every single post"
rule #26: "Any topic can easily be turned into something totally unrelated"

Looks like the Xonotic forums comply with the rules of the Internet.

I believe the weapon balance and physics should be the same in publics and pickups/competitive games. A new guy can't really get into the pickups if he has to play with the "public balance" and then tries the "pickup balance" and get probably totally raped. As for me, I would stick to publics only or pickups only then. To play only 1 thing.
Pickups should only differ in stuff like weapon respawn, quad on/off etc. IMO.

What Mirio said.

But just to note, allowing every health pack to be picked up until 200 or over health is going to go back down the nexuiz route and be all about picking up every single item on the map, then that in turn leads to hugely powerful weapon's to combat it with (or atleast you will need to in the future as people will say a/b/c weapon is too weak will be my guess, then they will want them stronger..then 100health player's will say too strong etc) and start throwing more changes & crazy elements back in, it's just a really bad idea and I've seen enough of a difference in Xonotic to nexuiz to tell it's a bad idea.

Samual, it looks like you want to go back to a nexuiz style setup for health and armour all I can see is it causing the same problems in the past, but I doubt very much you will be willing to 'compromise' on it regardless. I'm looking forward once again to seeing CTF especially turning into a grab and dash with loads of health and rocket jumping.

P.S Why is dance always used as this like comparison tool to any setting changed to try to show something works.

I don't really feel like commenting on these threads anymore, it's always forwards then backwards, good luck with your work anyway.

I'm looking forward once again to seeing CTF especially turning into a grab and dash with loads of health and rocket jumping.

^ yay!

ITS ABOUT TIME!



:^

When properly capped and the average health per player increased, the ability to grab all the health isn't such a bad thing and it acts as incentive to keep moving through the environment and/or try to control the arena. Same goes for being able to pick up weapons and armor at all times.

No, just No.

About making 2 balance sets for public vs competitive, I guess that works but it seems it would make more sense to have one set that works for both.

If we would have done this right from the start then we probably wouldn't even have any of these balance discussions today.

But there were several reasons not to split everything up, for example what would happen to the balance that were not the default? Assuming it would be the competitive mod, it'd end up like CPMA in Q3 where only the elite plays the mod, and basically a new player trying to learn the mod has no chance to do so when everyone is so much better at it. Also, splitting the community that early on seemed like a very bad idea: most people would only stick to the mod they are used to.

Now I haven't seen the survey results and am eagerly waiting for them to get published but it looks like a split like this indeed is necessary then. I can't speak for the pickup community today (effectively the competitive community in EU), since I have been inactive for a number of weeks, but the pickup community I knew from weeks back seemed like it was very happy with the balance as it was, with minor tweaks that I suppose the Shell clan now has applied to their balance. So should we go with Samual's/Lee's balance by default, and make the balance by the Shell clan an "official" competitive mod of the game?

I too would like a balance that is suited for competitive play, but I think it would be very bad for the game having 2 completely different sets for balance, precisely for what you said in the beginning of your reply. The competitive community in Nexuiz never really took off because it was too "underground", which from the outside made it look very elitist (that always pissed me off because it simply isn't true). If Xonotic is going to have a balance for "regular" play and another for "pro" play, I can imagine it would be even worse than what happened in Nexuiz. That would be just sad. Even if you make the most amazing game for competitive play, I'd almost go as far as saying that it's a waste of time to work on getting good at it if you're just gonna play the same 10 people in duel and the same 4 clans in matches over and over again. I know that I wouldn't stick around for that again

I think the way to go is pretty much what Mirio said, having only slight differences in settings that affect only the rules of the game rather than the mechanics. So having one set of physics/weapon balance (whichever is decided, like I said earlier personally I'd be fine with either at this point) would make more sense.

My question now is, does the health system fit into the "rules" or the "mechanics" part of the game? More specifically, having caps on hp and armor?

Fit's into mechanics definitely.

...

I think you rather missed the point FruitieX (Well, almost all of you did)-- I was saying that the competitive balance should be basically exactly the same as the default balance, but with tweaks which competitive players would want more. For example, if we were to do some kind of weaponstay thing by default (I'm not arguing FOR this right now btw, just an example), competitive players probably wouldn't want that. Health balance can also slightly fit into this range, but that really shouldn't be too different. So in summary: Weapons and weapon behavior should exactly the same, but only details like health balance or ammo balance or other such things would be changed (if necessary) and ONLY to a small extent which doesn't totally change the balance.

Basically i'm just saying that the health balance needs to be good for normal players mostly, and it needs to not be confusing. With default balance I hear lots of "Why can't I pick up this health?" etc etc, and the survey kinda reveals that people don't like the default health limits either. So what I proposed was 250 health limits with 200 armor limits (Which are consistent for all pickups), and more generous rot than default balance. This along with some other small changes makes up what I did for the health balance.

So @ kojn, how is that going back to Nexuiz really? It honestly isn't. Stop throwing red herrings If anything, you're going back to quake the other way

BTW, havoc mode TOTALLY sucked, NO ONE _ever_ (Except LordHavoc) liked it... Well, that's not totally true, but it mostly is Anyway, in this case for competitive balance, the competitive community would be playing it and would use this instead.

Regardless, I don't think there's any real issue with my health balance right now. But again, if it REALLY IS broken, it will be changed. -- However, to me the current default health system is clearly broken... So it probably will never be changed back to that (Not with inconsistent caps anyway) either if that's the case... It also will never go back to limitless like in Nexuiz... So we'll see what ends up -- it'll probably be a compromise between current health balance and my health balance.




For everyone who has been asking, results for the survey will be released soon I think -- we've been waiting so long because we still got quite a few respondents per day, so we wanted to collect as much good data as we can. Right now we have 253 respondents, and it has been slowing down a little each day, so I think maybe we could calculate the data here soon and release some time this week maybe.

"P.S Why is dance always used as this like comparison tool to any setting changed to try to show something works." -- In this case I used it to explain why default health balance sucks with low caps, that's all. Why did I pick on dance? Because it's true and everyone knows the map.