Suggestion for the Crylink

Haha, with all the "fix this, merge that, change this, drop that" threads around I just wanted to share an idea I had about the crylink for some time.

I have the impression many people think the current crylink primary fire is a bit too overpowered, especially in CTF. The secondary fire is, as I believe, regarded as pretty useless (though I managed to frag someone with it on Tuesday 4 weeks ago).

So here's my idea: instead of reducing the damage of Crylink primary, make the secondary shoot like the primary, but divide the damage and slow-down effect between the two fire modes so that primary does not have negative push force, and secondary has little to no damage. You can also give the particles different colorings per fire mode.

What do you think?

Crylink is one of my favorite weapons currently, primary mode is powerful but mostly at close range (same as Hagar). I don't think it need changing, if at all I'd make the secondary fire shots fly faster.

The crylink secondary can be very usefull. I once succeeded to kill unozz with that arount a corner (might come in fragmovie ).

Especially in duel it can be very good as an arount the corner weapon, since the hagar doesn't have that function any more. And if you play on DCC ctf on the map Lightspeed a lot of newbies just spam a lot through the big corridor and that actually does hurt you a lot.

Your idea is quite interesting, but would make things even more complicated. How would you ever explain to someone new why that is in the game? And how would the secondary ever be usefull outside ctf?

For around the corner, mortar secondary is far superior IMO. Not just for damage, but for the fact that it can bounce multiple times.

Crylink secondary IMO needs:
1)some damage buff
2)a bit of speed buff
3) (a big one) to consume 1 ammo unit per shot and not 2 - hagar does much more damage and still consumes only 1 ammo unit per shot.

Or make it strictly tracer gun:
1)3 shots per one ammo unit
2)3 bounces
3)Almost no damage at all.

I'm not sure about primary "pull", I have not experienced it to be a problem.

The negative push force of the primary is a unique function of the crylink and VERY useful in various situations, even outside CTF (think about pulling people that fly above the void back, or chasing an opponent that tries to flee from the battle due to low health). But, especially in ctf, the Crylink can make running almost impossible, if several people are spamming it. That's why I suggested to make the negative push force something that you need to actively choose to do. The damage of the primary fire is very high if you know how to use it, in my opinion it would be cooler if you'd need to switch to another weapon if you actually want to finish off an opponent that you stopped. Plus, I still think Crylink secondary is useless, even though I managed to frag someone with it, too :oP

Agree with rafallus.

Increase secondary damage, increase speed also. Done.
Nothing wrong with the primary damage wise, like any weapon it will seem strong when someone specialises in it, I think most would agree about the secondary get it sorted out then move onto the next job for the project.

The thread Samual started seems to have started/resurrected just every weapon to be changed which is just changing for the sake of it.

Not a dig at you Halogene either.

It's not overpowered imo. If you run with the flag, just high in air and start zigzagging, or just shoot back

Crylink now doesn't really need fix, other things are way more important now.

Ok if you all say so, just occured to me in CTF games that defending the flag with Crylink felt too easy for me. But I'm ok with that.

Well players like you I are I think above the average skill level in public servers. That probably is making it so easy

Anyway, this topic can be closed for now I guess.

I agree with halogene's idea, pretty much what i think about crylink, if u think crylink is not overpowered, go to one of the public dm servers (the one full of noobs) and u'll see the noob with top score is spamming crylink and when others find the sheer power of the weapon, its gonna be a crylink spamfest, I've seen that too many times to count it.

I like Halogene's idea too. As it stands now, the primary fire is beastly, and the alt fire is useless. His idea would bring balance to both fire modes. As for the different colors for different primary/alt fire, perhaps a purple with a bit more red for the primary fire and more blue for the alt fire. In my head red indicates damage, so it makes sense to me.

What, someone likes my idea? O.o yay! The damage of Crylink primary is ok I think, but the problem is that you can more or less nail the opponent to the floor with no way of escaping while at the same time dealing a lot of damage. I very much like the Crylink primary fire mode regarding spread control and negative push force, but it might be a bit too powerful in combination.

I used the secondary fire in various situations, but it seems to be too weak to actually kill somebody with it, while the primary attack, on the contrary, is incredibly powerful when aiming correctly. Maybe make the weapon consume more ammo for the primary fire and increase the damage output for secondary?

I'm not so sure, I would like to find SOMETHING to do with the Crylink secondary though-- it is surely essentially useless relative to the other weapons honestly.

The flaw with your idea lies in the fact that the primary and secondary then are very similar (really, they're the same- but one has negative force, and the other does damage), and i'd much rather have some very specific difference between the primary and secondary functionality... That's how the design of all the other core weapons works too- well, other than the machine gun... but that's off topic... Anyway, I could maybe consider this type of idea, but i'd rather try and find just some better way to do this in general.

Another concept I thought of was using the secondary to handle the joining method -- instead of it being based on when you release the primary button... This would be very similar to rocketlauncher detonation in concept, but I don't know if this would ever really fit the weapon well.

That weapon is redundant anyway, at least in its current state. Xonotic already has plenty of those projectile-based, splash-damage "spammy" weapons. So unless you manage to turn it into something special, it could be removed as well. [/being harsh]

When I first heard about arc cannon I imagined that it just replaced crylink secondary.

When I first heard about arc cannon I imagined that it just replaced crylink secondary.

See Illfonic's Nexuiz. It's not a bad idea tbh.

And not a new one either. Afaik the main concern with it was that the new lg/crylink weapon would be too powerful.

I also belive this weapon always was somewhat redundant.

But how about exploring the idea of negative push further? For example, remove dmg from Crylink altogether. Then, make primary only have negative push. And secondary - e.g. - sprying some kind of ice on the surface, so its gets slippery. This could be done be reducing all acceleration/friction and air control when you contact such surface - in effect, its hard to turn on it, stop, or run off it.
Now, this needs carefull balancing. The slipery sufrace can't be too large (but not too small, so you can't easily overjump it) and should evaporate quickly. Also, both primary & secondary should then have huge amo consumption. So you can use it for a sec/two and then need to run & collect amo. Amo consumption would also fix percived abuse of this weapon in the current balance.

edit: giving ice idea more thought... there are also easy conditions when it could be active. Basically it would get activated when you touch a slippery surface. Then its active untill 1) ice did not evaporate and { 2) you are on the sufrace or 3) you are above the surface but not higher than jump height }. That means you would also slip in bunny, until you use weapon move or, e.g., use the momentum on a rump to get out. Gfx effect could be some sort of glaze.

That would turn it into a TOOL, not a weapon.

Since the first thread Samual made, everyone wants to change every weapon (Again!). Whilst it's obvious the primary is under-used (mainly because it is too weak), there is nothing wrong with the primary's damage ouput, maybe the negative force.

That would turn it into a TOOL, not a weapon.

Yes. But that also means there is less redundancy. Question is, whether core balance should be made only of weapons that deal damage and movement disruptors don't count?

How about giving it a lower powered variation of the hook's gravity well that can be shot rater than dropped and doesn't do damage. It would allow someone to close in a bit to use the primary.

That weapon is redundant anyway, at least in its current state. Xonotic already has plenty of those projectile-based, splash-damage "spammy" weapons. So unless you manage to turn it into something special, it could be removed as well. [/being harsh]

Yes, you are indeed being too harsh. The weapon is not redundant with the other core weapons specifically because of its negative force an skill aspect required to actually use it properly. (If you don't time the joining right, it does a significantly less amount of damage/force than perfect timing.) It's easy to use for new people, but requires skill to master.

When I first heard about arc cannon I imagined that it just replaced crylink secondary.

See Illfonic's Nexuiz. It's not a bad idea tbh.

Your first mistake was referencing IllFonic Nexuiz as a good model to follow for gameplay design. Anyway, no -- This would greatly undermine the Crylink behavior itself. It's basically like having two primary modes on a single weapon, ONE of them would HAVE to be nerfed otherwise the weapon is just way too powerful. I don't want to sacrifice either of these modes - hence why lightning gun has its own weapon.

I also belive this weapon always was somewhat redundant.

But how about exploring the idea of negative push further? For example, remove dmg from Crylink altogether. Then, make primary only have negative push. And secondary - e.g. - sprying some kind of ice on the surface, so its gets slippery. This could be done be reducing all acceleration/friction and air control when you contact such surface - in effect, its hard to turn on it, stop, or run off it.
Now, this needs carefull balancing. The slipery sufrace can't be too large (but not too small, so you can't easily overjump it) and should evaporate quickly. Also, both primary & secondary should then have huge amo consumption. So you can use it for a sec/two and then need to run & collect amo. Amo consumption would also fix percived abuse of this weapon in the current balance.

edit: giving ice idea more thought... there are also easy conditions when it could be active. Basically it would get activated when you touch a slippery surface. Then its active untill 1) ice did not evaporate and { 2) you are on the sufrace or 3) you are above the surface but not higher than jump height }. That means you would also slip in bunny, until you use weapon move or, e.g., use the momentum on a rump to get out. Gfx effect could be some sort of glaze.

Not really possible, tbh-- in the least, it wouldn't be possible to predict this with client side movement... it would be hacky at best. It's not a very clean idea in the first place I think, doesn't really fit in a fast paced shooter like this too well.




I don't think the functionality of the Crylink is redundant with the other core weapons, the key thing is that it just needs a new secondary. The primary already fits very well into the gameplay BECAUSE of how it already works -- the negative force AND damage are essential to it being a weapon people want to use, I can't ditch half of the equation and expect it to have good results... and certainly won't be remaking the entire concept of the weapon at this point.

Yes, you are indeed being too harsh. The weapon is not redundant with the other core weapons specifically because of its negative force an skill aspect required to actually use it properly. (If you don't time the joining right, it does a significantly less amount of damage/force than perfect timing.) It's easy to use for new people, but requires skill to master.

I was playing the devils advocate there to point out that its secondary function needs to be something special to stand out as a weapon. The current secondary function is in some way redundant to hagar primary and halogenes suggestion would make it quite close to its primary fire mode.

My (probably not very exciting) solution would look like that:
- Keep crylink primary as it is, only increase the spread a little so it's limited to close range.
- For crylink secondary, first remove bouncing and lower the refire rate. Then let the plasma projectiles "unfold" into a spread of small balls (like those from crylink primary) after a short period (0.5s maybe). It would be quite hard to use and could be rewarded with a reasonable damage output. One could for example time shots in such a way that the plasma projectile unfolds into a doorway, right into the face of an approaching opponent.

Yes, you are indeed being too harsh. The weapon is not redundant with the other core weapons specifically because of its negative force an skill aspect required to actually use it properly. (If you don't time the joining right, it does a significantly less amount of damage/force than perfect timing.) It's easy to use for new people, but requires skill to master.

I was playing the devils advocate there to point out that its secondary function needs to be something special to stand out as a weapon. The current secondary function is in some way redundant to hagar primary and halogenes suggestion would make it quite close to its primary fire mode.

My (probably not very exciting) solution would look like that:
- Keep crylink primary as it is, only increase the spread a little so it's limited to close range.
- For crylink secondary, first remove bouncing and lower the refire rate. Then let the plasma projectiles "unfold" into a spread of small balls (like those from crylink primary) after a short period (0.5s maybe). It would be quite hard to use and could be rewarded with a reasonable damage output. One could for example time shots in such a way that the plasma projectile unfolds into a doorway, right into the face of an approaching opponent.

Sure -- we did try this in the past actually, it was just never good enough for me so I tried the current method as it is now... and that isn't good enough either.

Perhaps I can give it another shot... There is one distinct issue with any of these concepts though, which will require some clever solution later on: One of the key problems with it before was that, although it was balanced against players properly (due to aiming required) - it overall was a MASSIVE amount of damage for the rate it could fire, meaning it would be one of the most powerful attacks against non-player entities. Essentially, it would break game modes like Assault by making a single weapon the most powerful (and actually very quick) at destroying targets.

The solution I came up with, is normalizing all of the damages to non-player entities based on the rate of fire. So, essentially, I would make all weapons do the same damage per second to non-player entities, and that would solve this problem. Pretty simple to do, even...

DamageForAttack = NonPlayerDamagePerSecond * RateOfFireForWeapon... Lets say 50 is the default non-player entity damage per second.

Rocketlauncher:
D = 50 * 1.1
D = 55 damage per rocket fired

Machine Gun:
D = 50 * 0.1
D = 5 damage per bullet fired

etc.. all adding up to the same damage rate.


I think i'll try and implement this soon actually, i've been wanting to for a while.. it's pretty important for things such as vehicle damage and such too, it'll make that kind of gameplay far better with the normal weapons I believe.