[SUGGESTION] Gameplay Balances

Um...Hello!

Once upon a time, we're(our team, "The Turbo-Bears", I mean) noticed that Xonotic's weapon and gameplay balance is kinda unbalanced...
So, I decided to make a new balance config.

My config is based on balanceXPM.cfg of cource, but has some improvements.
I've heard, that many players want to decrease the damage of many guns, such as nex or electro...
I think, that's right. Yesterday, thimo in #xonotic.pickup channel wrote, that nex damage should be 55hp. I think, it's a joke, cos decreasing weapon damage from 90hp to 55hp will make a huuge contrast...

Hmm...asyyy^ asked me to write an explanation what this config do and why is it needed...well...
I've played ut2004 for a long time...~8 years, so...I like that game, and I like it's balance. Any player can rule with any gun. Not just with 2 or 3, as lead-gunz.
Of cource, you should know how to use all of them, to attack other players, or defend from them. So! Now, in xonotic, you can know how to use only one or two weapons - mortar or rocket launcher. Just fire to your enemy's legs, and you'll be sucessful. I think, it's not sporty...
So that's why I decided to write that config.

About pickups: yes, powerups respawn is 60 secs. That will force players to control them accuratly, as weapons and other pickups.
Also, the timelimit for duel with that options should be 15mins, but not 10. 10mins duel is very short. It just very hard for newbies, for example.
Timelimit 15 and powerups respawn 60 will allow loosing players to "get out of troble", take back control of powerups, and equalize the score, in my opinion.
I also don't like that superarmor and megahealth spawns at match start, but I can't change it.


Well, okay, Ill stop writing this "poem", and now you'll see the improvements with my comments.

The RED colour of values will tell ya, that this value is not changed.
The GREEN colour of value will tell ya, that this value is changed.
The YELLOW-coloured messages is my comments.


Ill also will write only about changed values of weapons. Not about all values, cos this post will be HUGE, without spoilers. And here are no spoilers, on this forum, unfortunately.

The BEAR'S DEN Config

Items
Megahealth respawn time: 60secs
Superarmor respawn time: 60secs
Weapons respawn time: 30secs
Medium respawn time: 30secs
Shells pickup capacity: 15
Shells pickup weapon capacity: 15
Shotgun ammo capacity: 60
Nails pickup capacity: 50
Nails pickup weapon capacity: 80
Machinegun ammo capacity: 300
Rockets pickup capacity: 9
Rockets pickup weapon capacity: 12
Rocket launcher ammo capacity: 30
Cells pickup capacity: 10
Cells pickup weapon capacity: 15
Crylink/electro/nex ammo capacity: 40
Armor and health pickups are not changed, they are pretty good.

Regeneration
Health regen: NO
Armor regen: NO

Misc
Weaponswitch delay: 0.10
Projectiles damage: 2
Projectiles spread style: 0

Weapon balances

Laser
Nothing changed, it's perfect.

Shotgun
Nothing changed, it's perfect.

Uzi[Machinegun]
Burst mode: 1
Burst animation time: 0.3
Burst refire: 0.01
Burst refire 2: 0.15
Burst spread: 0.02
Burst damage: 14
Burst force: 20
Burst ammo: 1

First damage: 14
Reload ammo: 00
Reload time: 0

Mortar
Primary damage: 30
Secondary damage: 40
Secondary edge damage: 35
Reload time: 3 it's no matter anyway, cos of no "reload_ammo"

Minelayer
Nothing changed...is it perfect?


Electro
Primary ammo: 1
Secondary sphere count: 2
Combo force: 100
Combo radius: 150

Crylink Very strange weapon, in my opinion...with strange fire-modes...
Primary damage: 15
Primary ammo: 2
Secondary damage: 10
Secondary shots: 1
Secondary ammo: 1

NEX
Primary damage: 70
Primary ammo: 1
Yeah, that's all =D Other options are quite good.

Minstanex
Nothing changed, it's perfect.

Hagar
Primary fire speed: 2000
Secondary load speed: 0.8
Secondary load spread: 0.045
Secondary load max: 3
Secondary load hold: 3
Secondary damage: 50

Rocket launcher
Damage: 90
Edgedamage: 45
Radius: 120
Speed 1400
Ammo: 1

Porto
Nothing changed...is it perfect?

Hook
Nothing changed...is it perfect?

Other weapons, like rifle, hlac, tuba, fireball, etc. wasn't changed cos they're not used in basic gametypes, such as DM. Rifle is removed from weapon list in Xonotic 1.0[and git], so I decided to "save their lives" =D

You can find this config working on server Turbo-Bears Laboratory.
It's now 4-players DM on Solarium.

Ill be waiting for comments and some critique. But it should be constructively, okay? =)

Regards,
Retro+Blazer

Mega Health + Armor 60s respawn is way too long for duel and DM, especially with no health regen and medium health at 30s
Those changes + Nex's current refire rate will lead to a very campy game.

Mega Health + Armor 60s respawn is way too long for duel and DM, especially with no health regen and medium health at 30s
Those changes + Nex's current refire rate will lead to a very campy game.

No =)

I have focused to duel for 15mins. Not 10, cos 10mins duel is too short.
The 60secs powerups respawn time give you ability to control them easier, than now.
The Nex's refire rate is default, I've not changed it.

Anyways, NOW it's a campy game. You can just spam through the whole map with mortal and rocket. It's cool, but players should have ability to pwn others with ALL weapons, not just 2 or 3 gunz. Aaight? =D

Oh, yes! Before write something - just try in on our server. It's for all others, not just for mega noob.

Spamming through the map is opposite of camping.

Basically: Do not make your own balance like this.

There is a reason in Xonotic we do things with a balance design group, we do not want derivative/non-default balances to pop up anymore. VERY many of your changes are quite bad too, especially with Rocketlauncher, Crylink, Hagar, Ele--- actually, just, everything. I designed the weapons to be situation specific, they "appear" un-balanced when compared in certain situations however overall are very balanced weapons in general. The only tweaks I will in fact make in the near future are to the Nex and Crylink, as well as some balance updates to the competitive health/armor system and these updates described here: http://forums.xonotic.org/showthread.php?tid=3801

Join #xbg on Quakenet if you wish to discuss this stuff, but please take down your balance, it harms the game as a whole to have split balances like this.

Glad to hear you consider modifying Nex's balance. Also different armor and health system for more difficult timing would be cool. :-)

I tried it with zykure on the server.
The server configurations are shit. no voting, no warm up and a circle of only 2 maps.

about the balance its something different, you are constantly out of ammo with Rl and mortar, the nex meanwhile is quiet strong. and the mg is very op.

I suggest to autoban every weapon balance topic starter. Srly, already boring... Do everything you want with own server just leave default game balance as it is

I tried it with zykure on the server.
The server configurations are shit. no voting, no warm up and a circle of only 2 maps.

about the balance its something different, you are constantly out of ammo with Rl and mortar, the nex meanwhile is quiet strong. and the mg is very op.

Yeah, that's true. The 60s respawn for mega and armor is not too bad actually, feels like the action moves away from those items and more into the map in general. Everyone is looking for the smaller health items all the time...

Maybe one could try changing just the pickup items, but not the weapons

I suggest to autoban every weapon balance topic starter. Srly, already boring... Do everything you want with own server just leave default game balance as it is

Why? People seem to love commenting on those and I wouldn't want to interfer with that. Just say no firmly and move on, the thread should die on its own.

I suggest to autoban every weapon balance topic starter. Srly, already boring... Do everything you want with own server just leave default game balance as it is

Why? People seem to love commenting on those and I wouldn't want to interfer with that. Just say no firmly and move on, the thread should die on its own.

I'm sure he was referring to Samual's post above =)

Suggestions/ideas are still welcome-- attempts at your own balance or private server modifications (so that everyone has a completely different experience on each server) is NOT welcome in my opinion.

Suggestions/ideas are still welcome-- attempts at your own balance or private server modifications (so that everyone has a completely different experience on each server) is NOT welcome in my opinion.

Well the server has LABORATORY in the title and a note of the changed physics... imho it's okay for testing, if you make it clear for people who join. Of course, the "official" servers should use the official balance sets.

Suggestions/ideas are still welcome-- attempts at your own balance or private server modifications (so that everyone has a completely different experience on each server) is NOT welcome in my opinion.

Isn't that what the "pure" icon in the server list is for? It's easy to filter out the non vanilla servers.

I've enabled voting and set playerlimit to 12, and timelimit to 10.

Ill try to "get into" #xbg on the weekend, and ask some guy some questions...

Suggestions/ideas are still welcome-- attempts at your own balance or private server modifications (so that everyone has a completely different experience on each server) is NOT welcome in my opinion.

Isn't that what the "pure" icon in the server list is for? It's easy to filter out the non vanilla servers.

Well, you see... Nowdays, in Xonotic, there is a... dominating majority of unpure, active servers. So, if sombody filters out inputities, he will be left with very few, and, a... actualy only 2-5 servers, and I am not sure if many people will go for that... you see?

In the future I plan to remedy that indirectly, i.e. by having promoted (and or) official servers focused on community building and further segregating the non-default mods and gameplay modes out. This will encourage more people to grow into the normal community of the game, which really is necessary for the game to survive... I've seen it happen with far too many games (commercial too, even... like Unreal Tournament) where the community just goes with the wind and sets up their own mods like crazy, completely getting away from the better qualities of the games. (i.e. instagib did the same to sauerbra-- er, sauerbraten sucks... bad example... but it did the same to Nexuiz, Warsow, etc etc)

Generally, people learn to love whatever they get accustomed to and whatever community they grow into... so I won't block mods like i.e. Overkill, as that won't do any good- I'll just simply make the rest of the game better and more tantalizing to new players to join those core servers, and in time the communities will stabilize themselves.


Either way, in the immediate situation... This balance is really just plain a bad idea.

In the future I plan to remedy that indirectly, i.e. by having promoted (and or) official servers focused on community building and further segregating the non-default mods and gameplay modes out. This will encourage more people to grow into the normal community of the game, which really is necessary for the game to survive... I've seen it happen with far too many games (commercial too, even... like Unreal Tournament) where the community just goes with the wind and sets up their own mods like crazy, completely getting away from the better qualities of the games. (i.e. instagib did the same to sauerbra-- er, sauerbraten sucks... bad example... but it did the same to Nexuiz, Warsow, etc etc)

Generally, people learn to love whatever they get accustomed to and whatever community they grow into... so I won't block mods like i.e. Overkill, as that won't do any good- I'll just simply make the rest of the game better and more tantalizing to new players to join those core servers, and in time the communities will stabilize themselves.


Either way, in the immediate situation... This balance is really just plain a bad idea.

It seems strange that you'd talk about promoting "community building" and, at the same time, segregating instagib because of what it did to Nexuiz. I agree with you in principle that it's good to promote the vanilla game modes, but I don't think the line will be as easy to draw as you make it seem.

It seems strange that you'd talk about promoting "community building" and, at the same time, segregating instagib because of what it did to Nexuiz. I agree with you in principle that it's good to promote the vanilla game modes, but I don't think the line will be as easy to draw as you make it seem.

Instagib in Nexuiz is a good example as each instagib server had its own physics/hook/weapon setting, a total mess. The reason for that was that obviously the default settings were not satisfying for the players. So "community building" in this case must include allowing the community to have a certain influence on vanilla settings. Make it a two-way road.

A negative example for this in Xonotic is the grappling hook in instagib. On default settings it is totally useless and the input/requests of those who had been playing instagib+hook in Nexuiz for years simply got ignored. So to run a decent instagib+hook server in Xonotic you need to make it "impure".

On the other hand XPM can be seen as a positive example, although I still don't see a reason why vanilla and XPM couldn't be merged.

Well I certainly do incorporate community choices into the defaults--- And for the billionth time about the grappling hook-- I NEED YOU TO SEND ME BETTER SETTINGS THEN. Seriously, last time I asked for such settings I never got anything in return, and then the minstagib communities just continued using their own garbage ANYWAY. I also notice that the minstagib communities some times alter the physics so that using the hook works better for them, but we can modify how the physics actually work while using the hook directly, that way you don't need to edit i.e. air control or such.

And core gameplay and XPM cannot be merged because they serve different purposes. XPM is bad for public gameplay, I am certain of this--- but core is bad for competitive gameplay. I keep them as similar as possible (same weapon balance, similar everything else, key differences being some minor settings and health/armor limitations) but they can never be the same without hurting one or the other grouping.

To MrBougo: I'm quite confident I can draw a fairly clear line-- In general the idea is just to make the promoted servers THAT much more enticing to the point that new players don't join minstagib or overkill or other modified servers anymore. I have studied some player psychology by Valve and other independent writers over the time that i've been a developer, and i'm pretty sure of how to make the serverlist able to accomplish this.

... and further segregating the non-default mods and gameplay modes out ...

I take it that you dont want any more developers/mappers/modders then. You are effectively trying to discriminate against ppl testing their stuff in public. May be a good time to dual license too then, so that running a non-Samual-server is legally prohibited. If i had not left active Xonotic development before i would certainly have done now.

EDIT:
Abt the OP's balance, i haven't tried it but by the looks of it its rather un-xonotic, specially dumping regen. That feature carries back to early days of the free Nexuiz (be it allot stronger there). Item time increases could be interesting, the itemspam in xono always bugged me a lil. Weapon changes looks overdone, but possibly the no regen / scarce pickups make up for the lousy DPS.

... and further segregating the non-default mods and gameplay modes out ...

I take it that you dont want any more developers/mappers/modders then. You are effectively trying to discriminate against ppl testing their stuff in public. May be a good time to dual license too then, so that running a non-Samual-server is legally prohibited. If i had not left active Xonotic development before i would certainly have done now.

EDIT:
Abt the OP's balance, i haven't tried it but by the looks of it its rather un-xonotic, specially dumping regen. That feature carries back to early days of the free Nexuiz (be it allot stronger there). Item time increases could be interesting, the itemspam in xono always bugged me a lil. Weapon changes looks overdone, but possibly the no regen / scarce pickups make up for the lousy DPS.

Certainly not, I just want people to help improve the entire game instead of selfishly developing their own thing (Like a certain group of people I can think of...)

Example: Monsters and Tower Defense mode by Mario-- that's quite fantastic and we want that into the game, but not differentiating balances which give users different experiences for every single server. The core of it is this: Inconsistent gameplay kills games. Establish the core design FIRST, then allow more diversity.