[SUGGESTION] Cut down on the number of weapons

He didn't say he didn't want suggestions/feedback, and already said sorry that his post maybe was a bit rude.

And I also just agree with what Samual says. Since he started to do the balance it became way better. I just really like were the game is heading now.

But of course balance is not perfect, and suggestions are welcome. But I can understand Samual saying he just won't do too big changes, because people most likely won't like them.

Did you even read his post?
e.g.

The more you guys complain about this, the more i'm going to lean towards doing ^that, as THAT is the real solution.

Of course he as a dev can do that but it's not really nice (and neither long-sighted imo). Just think about where that "Do it yourself, or stop complaing" attitude could lead us in this matter. Certainly not towards consistency.

Feedback like this always has major drawbacks -- there is no good/clear cut discussion here, and it's extremely difficult to come up with a solution that everyone can agree with. -- By extremely difficult, I mean impossible... 5 people complain about one thing, then 10 other complain when I change it. It's incredibly difficult to work with, especially when different people complain at different volumes (ie., some more loudly than others ^_^) --


Also, when I say complaining -- doesn't necessarily mean a bad thing -- but anyway, I have to get going for a bit, so i'll discuss more later.

@Samual

By core weapons you mean: laser, shotgun, mg, mortar, electro, crylink, nex, hagar and rockets?

so it too will be different from the arc cannon (lightning gun) when implemented.

Sweet.

i'm not done with Crylink secondary

Yes, yes, yes, out of current weapon set, this mode confused the crap out of me. It was sort of like bouncy machine gun, but usually does way less damage than primary and eats ammo like no tomorrow.

or hagar secondary,

IMO idea is sweet, it's like UT's rocket launcher - preload and get them. Maybe some tweaking here and there, but love the general approach.

electro cannot really be used in close combat very well, as it takes too long to set up and you may accidentally kill yourself.

Really? Two well placed hits from primary can kill an unarmored opponent. Blast radius isn't that huge either. It's one of my favourite weapons for close range, other than hagar and (of course ) melee.

Mortar OTOH is tricky to use at longer ranges (gravity + velocity) and really close ones and nex at close ones (as it should be, as it is pretty much only weapon that does work at longer ranges, maybe except rockets, if you have guiding mastered).

PS. Any word if weapon models are going to get animated? Like rotating barrels on hagar or rotating clip on mortar or pump action on shotgun and maybe dropping an used up shell. Kinda like you have an animation with melee or color changing of a little display on nex.

I like crylink secondary D: I like all the weapons really as they are now apart from...fireball?

I agree
I actually would like to keep the hlac IF its spread is cut down, and push increased (think rapid fire laser)

I am a terrible aim-er so any mess/spammy gun is absolutely necessary to me

My top gun is the HAGAR then the ELECTRO (because it has o so much splash ! )

also personally I would like to see more guns added until every number has at least two guns assigned to it... it just makes sense to me.

ps.. another reason for keeping the hlac is it was one of the guns that locked me into this game(back in the late nexuiz days) ... upon finding it I thought ... woah! an upgraded laser! I wonder what other awsome weapons there are to descover. ........

well... then ... that was when I was blown away at how more complex nexuiz's running man's graphics were when compared against bzflag.... am i rambling too much?

Little heads up:

It seems that in current autobuild, hlac is indeed removed. At least it doesn't show up in original locations on maps that used to contain it (g-23, techassault). It is replaced by Crylink in both of those.

PS. Check a secret room in Xoylent!

HLAC gone? Good! Now to do something about the rifle while still keeping the nex balanced...

Actually, on techassault, I added a rocketlauncher to replace it in the attackers position iirc, that was the only missing weapon in the attackers spawn. Crylink was placed in the defenders spawn, though.

It was also replaced on: Dance, and Courtfun. Now, there is no more HLAC anywhere by default, and it is being phased out.

That's one less pain in the ass. Now on to the next one... Currently the ammo is divided in a VERY uneven manner, we got one weapon with it's own type (the shotgun), four weapons on another type (Rocket Launcher, Hagar, Mine Layer, TAG Seeker, TAGs and Mines are rarely used but still have their purposes), one and a half lol on one type (machine gun and rifle, rifle is almost never used and feels out of place), and EVERYTHING ELSE (electro, crylink, nex, and assume if and when it's done the lightning gun) on another type. Clearly the ammo system needs to be redone, but there's a huge potential to break maps by messing with it. If breaking maps is an option, I'd suggest dividing the cell ammo and merging the shells and bullets.

I'd suggest dividing the cell ammo and merging the shells and bullets.

I guess this is going to happen (had a discussion on IRC already).
New topic to come soon by Samual so let's not discuss this now and here!

PS: You forgot the Mortar in your list.

I agree about ammo distribution.

How about bringing back tweaked Nexuiz style shotgun with faster ROF and burst alternate as a collectable weapon?

I happen to just love the melee attack of the shotgun and would oppose any plans on its removal.

Also I started to really use the rifle more frequently since I know how useful the rifle's secondary fire mode is. It truly is sort of a long range shotgun, on long ranges good for people with a lousy aim like me if you know your opponent is low on health anyway.

mg secondary <-> rifle secondary <-> nexuiz shotty secondary
too much redundancy again imo

I sure do NOT want current shotgun gone, fish icon is too amusing. I was talking about having two weapons using shells.

And I don't think it would be redundant.
I mean mg secondary? Really? It's a long range weapon with little to no spread - pretty much polar opposite of shotgun. Rifle secondary doesn't have much spread either (but it has very crappy raw damage output even at point blank range, as far as I can tell).

If anything, it would be Crylink, which would make it redundant. But not so IMO, because primary is pretty much a trick shot a bit like RL (you need to time release of primary to make balls connect for maximum damage), and shotgun is not. Secondary of crylink is non-burst like, not hitscan, but bouncy, fewer pellets per shot and again, crappy raw damage output (and shotgun differs on all of those)

Shotgun is a hitscan weapon, so is mg. Secondary would both result in bursts, on with more spread and one with less. Crylink is neither hitscan nor has a burst fire mode, I don't see how it is similar at all.

Except bursts from mg fire three single shots with good to excellent accuracy (trounced at close range by multitude of weapons, but one of the few weapons that works at all on long ranges), and burst from shotgun fires hail of pellets, which only works well at close range (try using that long range, maybe a pellet or two will hit). This is pretty major difference.

That still doesn't illustrate why that kind of weapon would be necessary, or what it would add to gameplay. Beside of that, most maps aren't that large/open so I don't think there is a "major difference" in practice when using those weapons based on their bullet spreading.

I actually dislike the machinegun secondary fire, I find it a bit useless too be honest, maybe I need to use it more??

Burst is for long range only, and it takes a while to kill sb with it. It's kind of a poor man's nex. Sure as hell don't use it in CQB like shotgun is supposed to be, or you'd get demolished. But having this kind of long range weapon seems good to me, there are not many attacks that work in such situations.

Somebody said earlier, that mg primary might get a revamp.

As for arguments pro shotgun, I already gave 2:
1)Having shells represented by more than one weapon (when as pointed out ammo distribution throughout weapons is heavily unbalanced towards rockets and cells)
2)Currently there's no true shotgun like weapon with solid damage output (starting shotgun is obviously supposed to be toned down, so that collectable weapons are hands down superior, and subject of redundancy was explained, I believe)

I actually dislike the machinegun secondary fire, I find it a bit useless too be honest, maybe I need to use it more??

It's excellent if you plan on comboing off the machine gun if you don't plan on reloading right away because it will spit the rounds out faster than the primary in that burst. Extremely useful once you learn how to use it.

Currently there's no true shotgun like weapon

That doesn't answer my question about what it is supposed to add to gameplay. It would be stronger than the sg and it would also be hitscan.. just like the mg primary. So one could replace mg with a super shotgun and tweak the rifle to take over the long-range aspect of mg secondary. That would be an option though I'm not sure if it makes much sense.

Btw, gotta love people suggesting to add even more weapons in a thread about cutting down the number of the same ^^

Edit: iirc Samual wants to change the mg into a chaingun when the lg gets added, so the new mg will probably be even more powerful in close range and less useful in long range.

@kojn: yes, I would agree with a large rifle headshot damage, BUT then we'd have to lower the body damage to get it balanced again.

@rafallus: "(if anything, I'd be for removing the rifle and adding headshots to nex)"
This basically boils down to "remove Nex, change Rifle to use Cells, give Rifle a cool model".

And yes, that's what I actually originally intended when designing the rifle gameplay mechanics, other than the Cells part.

Samual has some weapon balance ideas to fix the rifle's being "out of place", by replacing the bullets ammo type by something futuristic, and adjusting the models accordingly.

And rifle secondary is really not redundant with the MG or the SG, because it has quite low spread. The spread is about one player height when aiming from the tower to the enemy base on facing worlds. It's intended for mid-range flick shots. Also, the damage output is actually higher if all shots hit:

Primary: 40 + 40 for headshot, 1.2s refire
Secondary: 40 + 80 for headshot (but only if all bullets hit the head, i.e. pointblank headshots), 0.9s refire

To compare: Nex does 90 damage, 1.5s refire
So the rifle has higher damage output in both modes, IF doing headshots.

Maybe it would be better to balance the rifle primary for 40+80 for headshot, at 1.5s refire too. Secondary then would have identical pointblank headshot damage, but would simply fire faster. But not sure about that.

Another suggestion would be changing rifle primary to 40+60 to beat the Nex on headshots, but keeping the refire and the secondary as is. This would give the rifle a small boost for most situations. But it MAY throw off balance of the rifle too much, which would lead to increasing refire.

Note that the Nex's damage diminishes to 40 when firing immediately after a previous shot. So once you fire twice, the rifle wins against the Nex.

I would like to see it in-game. As fast as possible. I have great hopes that it will work. This is very nice solution, divVerent. But removing nex is sad a bit cause it has beutiful model Rifle isn't THAT impressive as Nex gun. I 'd vote for 50 dmg for rifle primary, 90 for headshot.

Edit: iirc Samual wants to change the mg into a chaingun when the lg gets added, so the new mg will probably be even more powerful in close range and less useful in long range.

Oh man, this sounds so sweet!! I hope this get's done

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I don't really like such a high reload time for the sniper at 1.5 seconds, I think 1.2 would probably be much better. Even though that would seem big too me, but I can see it sounds like it would make sense giving how good people are with hitscan weapons at times

Anyway, all sounds cool idea's I'll leave all the reload time and stuff and balancing etc too whoever does it if it happens.

Nice too see the HLAC got removed anyway finally

Keep the work and ideas.