Xonotic's Direction? What do we have to do Learning from nexuiz's mistakes.

Ok, I decied to put this here, because I believe it's a seperate topic and I believe more people would view it, but I believe it's a VERY important issues.

Flying Squirrel wrote on the 'simple conversation thread'

"I don't see this being about advertising or traffic necessarily, more so about holding on to a larger, yet still single digit percentage of the number of folks who download the game (that traditionally don't stick around for very long at all). I'd say market research, rather than advertising, could be very useful here. Trying to figure out what could have held onto the players who disappeared; what were they looking for that they didn't find here."


Which is exactly what I have pointed out before but people seem to ignore it.

Take ESReality for example (Yes I know it houses a lot of trolls but it also houses a lot of competitive players, and people who go there to read the news on gaming news in general).

This for example from the nexuiz 2.0 release link on there.

"They actually got pretty far on completing something, which is great....

And I'd feel bad about all the bashing, but it was pretty much self-inflicted with the first release that was posted on ESR.... it was blatantly unfinished with missing graphics and the like. First impressions are everything and nexuiz threw their's away. "

First impressions are everything.

Now have you ever even looked up the releases of nexuiz, the new's posts for them, go through it and should be all too clear that movement and balance were the two main reasons why people were put off with the game.

Read these before you comment against me, and see the responses:-

Nexuiz 2.0 release -> http://www.esreality.com/index.php?a=post&id=1109057

Nexuiz 2.2.1 release -> http://esreality.hexus.net/index.php?a=post&id=1277035

Nexuiz 2.3 release -> http://www.esreality.com/index.php?a=post&id=1395778

Nexuiz 2.4 release -> http://esreality.hexus.net/index.php?a=post&id=1517883

Nexuiz 2.5 release -> http://www.esreality.com/?a=post&id=1676923

Nexuiz 2.5.2 release -> http://www.esreality.com/?a=post&id=1762846

Nexuiz going to console -> http://www.esreality.com/?a=post&id=1845817

Now the one thing I DO see in those comment's is that most people agree that the graphics are really very very good and it's the best thing about 'nexuiz', however as I said before re-packaging xonotic as nexuiz under a new name is NOT going to work. The proof is there.


Actually a few of the die-hard Quakers actually still tested out the later versions and said that it had massive improvements over prior releases, but the movement still wasn't good enough to make them play it in any long term sense. Which is exactly what flying steel is on about, when he says people who just play it once and that's it.

The first few releases really pissed a lot of those players (and trolls) off, first impressions and all, and they didn't see the reason to spend 300+mb of there bandwidth on 'oh not that game again'.

Now yes a bigger playerbase will result in more trolls, but what's new?
Anyone who has a ounce of sense will just ignore them anyway, you only make it worse when you decide to initiate a verbal gunfight with them.

All i'm saying is, ignore comments from one of the biggest ESports sites at your peril, but your basically sticking the nail in the coffin otherwise in attracting a big possible playerbase, if xonotic doesn't do such things and has another small playerbase i'm not sure i'll be sticking around purely because there's not enough stuff to keep me interested, I would like to play DOM, Keyhunt, assault etc but again there's no point trying to make more game-modes if no one's going to be playing, it's a waste of resources.

What i'm saying is we should be picking out the bad points and working on them, and picking out the good points and keeping them.

Good point's seem to be in the later versions graphics, and SOME of the weapons.
Bad point's seem to be GAMEPLAY, poor/sloppy movement/lack of strafe movement.
Overpowered weapons.

Now people can bitch all they want about changes and say take a bit from nexuiz 2.3 and use this from 2.4.2 etc but this isn't going to fix any problem of why the game isn't getting players to play, the proof is in the pudding as they say, and I believe in that sample of links and comment's it's there for all to see.

Another problem is, the lack of decent video's that showed someone who had played 'nexuiz' and was pretty competent at it in each release, except 2.5 I believe it was with frutiex's.

Please don't make the same mistakes nexuiz made, there's so much feedback in those threads amonsgt many a troll comment I admit, but ignoring it is just asking the same to happen to xonotic as nexuiz.

If this can't be drilled into the mindset of the people who want xonotic to be like nexuiz then fair enough, I'll shut up and put my efforts elswhere.

I totally agree with kojn. Rebalancing the weapons is very important, as well as adjusting the physics. I personally prefer quake-ish/nexrun movement as the nexuiz 2.5.2 somehow soon gets boring. What i dislike about the nexuiz one most is the fact that you easily get stuck everywhere, especially if you jump on stairs (which really frustrates). So the movement does not feel smooth for me. In terms of the weapon-balance i think the push-factor of all weapons is slightly to high (but that's maybe a special aspect of nexuiz).

And of course what all players want who are also interested in competitions is a bigger player-base. That's way I think it's very important for xonotic to focus on enhancing the gameplay, to make it more attractive for a bigger community of players.

yeah that's what really necessary imho. changing it into a more simple way (like its supposed to be) so that there is no more need to rebalance every aspect due to bad features in the game. the rocketlauncher is a very good example of this and honestly: the rockets being destroyable so easily makes the game just random. how many times have you been killed when you were full stacked by just one mortarhit or whatever?!

I totally agree with kojn. Rebalancing the weapons is very important, as well as adjusting the physics. I personally prefer quake-ish/nexrun movement as the nexuiz 2.5.2 somehow soon gets boring. What i dislike about the nexuiz one most is the fact that you easily get stuck everywhere, especially if you jump on stairs (which really frustrates). So the movement does not feel smooth for me. In terms of the weapon-balance i think the push-factor of all weapons is slightly to high (but that's maybe a special aspect of nexuiz).

And of course what all players want who are also interested in competitions is a bigger player-base. That's way I think it's very important for xonotic to focus on enhancing the gameplay, to make it more attractive for a bigger community of players.

Stairs have been fixed in the latest svn versions, there are just no servers with them. On another note I agree about the movement, it get's boring quick, qw is 1000 times better and i dislike that movement but it's never ever boring. I personally would prefer a more interesting movement, some tutorial can be made for people to practice and see everything that can be done, we have dodge, walldodge, strafejump, doublejump and all we use for movement is an overpowered push weapon that feels lame because of lag.

Weapon balance is another thing that needs to be taken into account, first and foremost on the top of my head is the rocket launcher(thryne got the better of me) rockets blowing up and being able to detonate them at will AND control their path is just plain imba, it should be simple and require some skill to hit something, not just fire and blow it up when it's close and guide it too. The other weapons are just spammy imho, this all turns out to be the problem of the health system, you need a way to kill players that are hugely over stacked, it's also the reason for all the nex whine, it either is too strong for freshly spawned players or too weak for people that took one armor.

The above two will attract both high skilled and people new to shooters to play Xonotic for more than one test match. The other thing that will keep people around is the presentation things like maps, graphics, in-game awards, customization and ladders pop into my head now, I mean sure I'm sure everyone is thrilled about playing mentalspace, eyecancer, facing, pushme, soccer, dusty and other maps once for fun, but nexuiz holds these maps for regulars, I'm not saying it's just the looks, they all play, look and feel bad and any good maps we had were replaced by these.

I really hope something good will come out of this game.

Now yes a bigger playerbase will result in more trolls, but what's new?
Anyone who has a ounce of sense will just ignore them anyway, you only make it worse when you decide to initiate a verbal gunfight with them.

Yes, this is true, but as I said in the other thread, we need a way to deal with them (passworded servers, client side mute, more server admins (hoctf)).

I would like to play DOM, Keyhunt, assault etc but again there's no point trying to make more game-modes if no one's going to be playing, it's a waste of resources.

I agree, no point in having any gamemodes beyond ctf and dm if nobody will play them.

Bad point's seem to be GAMEPLAY, poor/sloppy movement/lack of strafe movement.

I believe that these elements were, at some point, good, but they were good at different times. It could be just a matter of resurrecting configs from different periods.

Now people can bitch all they want about changes and say take a bit from nexuiz 2.3 and use this from 2.4.2 etc but this isn't going to fix any problem of why the game isn't getting players to play, the proof is in the pudding as they say, and I believe in that sample of links and comment's it's there for all to see.

As far as I know, configs have never been combined in that way. That could be the solution to those links and comments (they can't comment and hate on things that have never happened).

Another problem is, the lack of decent video's that showed someone who had played 'nexuiz' and was pretty competent at it in each release, except 2.5 I believe it was with frutiex's.

Do you mean super awesome frag videos? Or just videos of people who know what they're doing playing a standard game like morphed did a while back? I think the latter are better for our purposes of illustrating the game.

how many times have you been killed when you were full stacked by just one mortarhit or whatever?!

never

Weapon balance is another thing that needs to be taken into account, first and foremost on the top of my head is the rocket launcher(thryne got the better of me) rockets blowing up and being able to detonate them at will AND control their path is just plain imba, it should be simple and require some skill to hit something, not just fire and blow it up when it's close and guide it too.

I see what you mean here. Removing autoguide should fix this, however, keep the laser guidance mutator.

The other weapons are just spammy imho, this all turns out to be the problem of the health system, you need a way to kill players that are hugely over stacked, it's also the reason for all the nex whine, it either is too strong for freshly spawned players or too weak for people that took one armor.

Not all are spammy. Mortar and nex are not spammy. The nex needs to be a hitscan weapon effective over long distances that deals high damage to actually be used. Now, if your team cannot take out a sniper, then that's the fault of your team, not the game.

I mean sure I'm sure everyone is thrilled about playing mentalspace, eyecancer, facing, pushme, soccer, dusty and other maps once for fun, but nexuiz holds these maps for regulars, I'm not saying it's just the looks, they all play, look and feel bad and any good maps we had were replaced by these.

I don't think they were replaced. If you go on HOCTF, you can't even play those maps. Of course, HOCTF has coral_ctf, which is worse than all those maps combined...


I think I see what you mean.

Now people can bitch all they want about changes and say take a bit from nexuiz 2.3 and use this from 2.4.2 etc but this isn't going to fix any problem of why the game isn't getting players to play, the proof is in the pudding as they say, and I believe in that sample of links and comment's it's there for all to see.

As far as I know, configs have never been combined in that way. That could be the solution to those links and comments (they can't comment and hate on things that have never happened).

The problem with that assumption is folks in those links weren't only saying "this game sucks", many/most actually commented on specific things the didn't like, such as weapon concepts, weapon balance, movement traction, lack of movement features, etc.

So trying different combinations of things they've specifically said they won't like, will almost certainly lead to more versions they don't like.

I see what you mean here. Removing autoguide should fix this, however, keep the laser guidance mutator.

Also actually removing the detonation and rockets volatility would fix this, I have no problem against a guided rocket, i do have problems when rockets blow out in my face dealing out tons of damage at random intervals or are impossible to dodge.

Not all are spammy. Mortar and nex are not spammy. The nex needs to be a hitscan weapon effective over long distances that deals high damage to actually be used. Now, if your team cannot take out a sniper, then that's the fault of your team, not the game.

Mortar and nex are overpowered, mortar is the weapon for close combat right there with nex, you have mortar and nex and you basically are ready to take out almost anyone. First off mortar is easy to aim once you get the hang of it, good refire, damage, projectile speed and push make it the weapon of choice for close combat, div0's stats proved that, I have no problem with the nex itself it's just hard to balance right with the current health stuff, I've never had problems in taking out snipers then being called a cheater and other nice things, making the weapon not obliterate freshly spawned players while giving fighting chances against stacked guys is impossible, and no reducing damage with range is not an option, limiting stacking abilities would allow a far better balance of all the weapons because there are limits to how strong your opponent is, sure he'll be way more tough than a freshly spawned player, however it's not by a huge margin.

I don't think they were replaced. If you go on HOCTF, you can't even play those maps. Of course, HOCTF has coral_ctf, which is worse than all those maps combined...

I always liked HOCTF for having good maps on, I just can't play well on 200 ping, I still hang around there from time to time. My complaint is mostly directed at european servers where that is all we have nowadays, it used to be way better tough.

Anyways Killgenerals we do not want more quake or less quake movement/physics, we just need a good damn version of it. The one fruitiex/kojn came up with in the other thread was really good and simple, it allows for way more tactics and tricks than any Nexuiz version, either 2.4 or 2.5 which are not that different. Movement in Nexuiz is just too limited and shallow, the only way to accelerate is by bunny hopping and a circle jump and turning in the air becomes dull, it's really really slow, the only thing that gives Nexuiz some speed are weapon boosts, heck it'll be even faster and better if there was some depth to movement, heck i'd give up boosting for that.

As for the ownage(teh irony) problem, that always happened, always happens in quake, warsow, unreal, doom or any other game, people that don't have experience playing shooters or are new will get beat up a lot, the newbies only server is a good idea, however we do not have the resources to do a skill matching game like quake live has, even there mishaps happen, it's a problem we can never avoid, having information for the new guys on how to get better or ways for them to train would be awesome tough. Limiting the game so that new players have a "easy time" learning stuff will never help, no matter what is done on that side it will just have bad repercussions on the game itself and it's playerbase. I've personally always found it good to play against better players, getting owned helps a lot. The basic idea is that a game that has depth and balance in it is way more appealing to play than a game that looses it's charm after a week or a month of playing and that's not going to happen by using dumbed down movement or other "ease-of-use" ideas.

To be honest in two years of playing Nexuiz I never saw the rock-paper-scissors analogy, some weapons are too overpowered, others too annoying and others just plain spammy. They all have their uses but none feel really good to be honest. Having annoying weapons is bad for any game, they must have a certain feel to them, to sorta seem natural to use(not meaning realistic). Rockets for example are wildly imbalanced, they are both too strong and both too weak at the same time, crylink is just plaing wierd and hard to aim, has insanely fast projectiles, electro is sorta like a mix between a rocket launcher and a grenade launcher, all's well and fine but it has 0 edge damage, mortar will always best it. Also there are too many similar weapons and they are all adjusted to be a sort of mid range guns. Doom II had a wider variety of weapons that feel and act differently from one another, a lot of the weapons in Nexuiz feel like variants of the same weapon and there are like 12 of them(double the number, half the differences from a 1994 game). Some weapons could do some really cool things with some tweaking and testing, a plan and concept ideas just need to be made.

P.S. We need super-weapons, fireball is a good example, remove primary, make it spawn once every 30 secs or more, make it shoot once and make that ball really really strong(Q2 BFG anyone).

P.S.2 Faster weapon spawns will also help, in duel, ctf and ffa most of all, these game types are not about controlling weapon spawn points, they should all allow you to easily get a weapon and get into the fight, having to wait 15 seconds for one is just wrong, also adding classic ctf as in NO TEAM DAMAGE or REFLECT DAMAGE would help, nobody seems interested in that, you should be able to help your fc not kill it and die for a random shot.

I see you point kojn, but i must also say that esr and similar sites tend to hold the largest concentration of uneducated, exaggerated opinionaters known to man. Basing something out the collective bitch-ass-crying-fucktard-inbred-dysfunctional collective opinion of esr and you end up with a game thats harmonic blend of all the popular games that already copy each other to death. well maybe with a few pr0leet mods that make it impossible to grasp for any newcomer. /flame

You cant really use the same measurements for a game such as this as for a commercial game; the motivation and principle drive behind the two are fundamentally different. 10.000 angry, paying, tards cry "we want pink pogo-stick in crysis". Crysis gets pink pogo-stick. 10.000 angry freeloading tards cry "we want pink pogo-stick in Xonotic", ill say lawl notnx. if you want it; you do it. Personally i dont give a flying fuck if the player-base dosent grow beyond this; its nice if it does of course but its not why i develop for this game. I develop for this game because a) i like game development, and b) i want to shape the game towards something _I_ like. Dont get me wrong here; im not saying i do not listen to ppls ideas and complaints. Im trying to explain what drives me (and i suspect most of the ppl who develop Xonotic) to do what we do. If this game, for example would head in the direction of being a straight quake3/live clone id quit in a heartbeat and never look back. those games just aren't my cupa.

Wrt to competitive community, id have to say that id rater see a competitive community grow from within the player base then trying to "import" one from other games.

Tzork has a point. There are very few arena shooters on the market like xonotic; most are like cod (I know a guy who does not like xonotic because it involves fighting people rather than hiding behind crates)

Tzork has a point. There are very few arena shooters on the market like xonotic; most are like cod (I know a guy who does not like xonotic because it involves fighting people rather than hiding behind crates)

Actually, I think the only other shooters brought up in this thread are "arena" shooters. Call of Duty is on the very opposite extreme of the spectrum.

<-- More Fast/Trick | More Real/Stealth -->

Quake -- Xonotic -- Halo -- Urban Terror -- Call of Duty

I see you point kojn, but i must also say that esr and similar sites tend to hold the largest concentration of uneducated, exaggerated opinionaters known to man. Basing something out the collective bitch-ass-crying-fucktard-inbred-dysfunctional collective opinion of esr and you end up with a game thats harmonic blend of all the popular games that already copy each other to death. well maybe with a few pr0leet mods that make it impossible to grasp for any newcomer. /flame

You cant really use the same measurements for a game such as this as for a commercial game; the motivation and principle drive behind the two are fundamentally different. 10.000 angry, paying, tards cry "we want pink pogo-stick in crysis". Crysis gets pink pogo-stick. 10.000 angry freeloading tards cry "we want pink pogo-stick in Xonotic", ill say lawl notnx. if you want it; you do it. Personally i dont give a flying fuck if the player-base dosent grow beyond this; its nice if it does of course but its not why i develop for this game. I develop for this game because a) i like game development, and b) i want to shape the game towards something _I_ like. Dont get me wrong here; im not saying i do not listen to ppls ideas and complaints. Im trying to explain what drives me (and i suspect most of the ppl who develop Xonotic) to do what we do. If this game, for example would head in the direction of being a straight quake3/live clone id quit in a heartbeat and never look back. those games just aren't my cupa.

Wrt to competitive community, id have to say that id rater see a competitive community grow from within the player base then trying to "import" one from other games.

Nobody has a problem with developers doing stuff for themselves, I did it too and will do again when I have time. I/we am/are only asking to make community decisions on the main part of the game, balance, one person can never get this right alone, it has to be a community decision, a tested and well thought out of one for once. Sure not gaining new players is one thing that doesn't really matter, loosing even more players because of biased default balance decisions is another, even you agreed balance is crap in nexuiz

I would love to see this game flourish, get the attention it deserves but taking everything that a huge part complained about in the last game and dropping it here won't happen. Everybody agrees the balance is probably at it's lowest in 2.5.2. and movement is leaving a lot players sorely disappointed, I mean don't remove laser but offer other options, strafe jumping, dodge, wall dodge, double jump, already in the game a config most of the main devs would agree on just has to be made, I'm not suggesting another warsow, but just because that has dodge is not a reason to refuse to add it here, it can be implemented in more ways or tweaked to our liking not warsow, ut or anything else. I have no personal preference on the physics used, just something that has depth and offers a wide variety of gameplay and movement methods not just laser/bunnyhopping.

It's like 3:15am so i'm going to bed soon and will write a in-depth reply tomorrow.

Some good points, and some quite..not so good one's imo.

This thread should evolve more then juse on the points I made, I also agree with the in CTF/ffa you shouldn't be waiting 15 seconds to get a weapon, and also with team/mirror damage off in CTF..I never even understood why that was on in that game-mode in nexuiz but anyways.

As a quick re-cap:-

@ Roanoake - I meant just a video like Morphed's basically showing a decent/intermediate player playing the game well enough not a omg h4x frag video. Just a video to competently show the different game-mode's, movement, weapons etc etc.

@ killgenerals - you've basically quoted half of my opening post and just said - no change needed on about 3 parts, you can say every critic for 2.4 was it? was answered a guy from nexuiz and yes it was answered, but that's also like closing your eyes and ear's and going 'la la la la la' when someone is trying to explain what/why they disliked the game and not taking there view onboard. Now I know you get frustrated with threads like this about changing stuff, but it's not like I'm asking for something to be randomly changed for the sake of it, I'm trying to explain why.

About server/skill ratings (sorry I am quite tired), that is a very good idea to somehow show what kind of level the player's currently playing are at..just for example novice, intermediate, veteran etc, debugger mentioned it to me on IRC earlier.

@ Rocket-Launcher - I really like the guided rocket's it's one of the best thing's i've seen in a FPS game for ages, and how many other FPS game's similar to 'nexuiz' in term's of gameplay/action speed have it, I can only think of HL, obviously it's down to personal taste also but I quite like the balance for example the RL does, less damge if you explode it yourself rather then firing it and letting it explode.

The problem unknown and thyr4ne are mentioning is when you fire a rocket someone shoots a mortar and the (rather big) blast radius blows up your rocket and does INSANE damage. Not only is it very frustrating, it's also seems pretty random..this is what is annoying them is randomised elements like that, and it really annoys me too.

@ tZork, Like your saying it's full of a lot of idiots and like I said I already know it's got quite a few trolls. I knew someone would bring up the 'Why I develop' line. Yes I see that as a developer that you have to do something that is fun and something that you enjoy/like. Your point about commerical game's and if 10,000 say they want ABC I understand, I didn't think of that perspective. However neither do I want the game to be exactly like a Quake 3/Live Clone, and everyone keeps bringing that up..but my point is that most of the better FPS out there have some kind of the same fundamentals, what's wrong with having strafe movement or dodge, it doesn't mean that Xonotic would be a clone at all just because of this, It can have different weapons and enough other things in it's gameplay to make it different. But why are they complaining about movement being hard to control..not master, but control even the one's who have tried for more then 30 minute's .

@ ALL - After all, why do people play warsow when it has the SAME weapons + physics basically as Q3's CPMA mod, and the same fundamental movement..there must be someone who plays warsow here who can tell me why they play/played it?? There's enough in it to make it different to be played, dash, walljump, Stronger ammo to name a few..It has some similar or same FUNDAMENTALS, but it also has enough to differentiate it's self from other game's, THATS my point, and that's the point i'm trying to make with the ESReality comment's they point to wanting fundamental's in balance and physics.

@ ALL - I already tried to make a different physics set to try to keep the nexuiz bunnyhopping way but whilst intergrating the Quakestyle turning or adding UT-style dodging (notice the word style) and I add my reasons why, but it all seems pointless when it get's shot down with the 'If you want a Q3 clone go play Q3 comments' etc.

Like unknownnf said there's no stopping making the dodging different to UTs just because something has been used before doesn't mean it can't be used, I do understand however that some people dislike it, my point i'm trying to make is please don't say clone of this clone of that, there's lots of games that have very big similarities, but have enough in them to make them completely different at the same time..it doesn't make them clones.

The point of those physics was to be a bit different to the other game's (nexuiz's forward bunny hopping to gain speed) but also try to keep some fundamentals of other game's.

I can't really see any posts on ESReality that say..Why isn't there RL like the Q3 one etc because the nexuiz one IS different, as long as it fundamentally has balance it's great that it's different, same as electro another unique weapon, it's not the weapons that are the problems in general most of the time, it's normally the balance, but some weapons just don't seem to work, like the crylink..always seems to be a problem with that.

=========================================================

Off-Topic a bit now but what I feel like need to be answerr:-

Also I'm trying to explain a few of the current problem's that never seemed to get solved/why is no one taking notice/answering from the Dev team?

That's why I used the ESReality links as my point.

Someone from the Dev team i'm hoping you might be able to tell the community here on these forums/website why there is no info on the following (you know me for too long now to know I am not having a go at you or anything in the following points )

for example:-

1) What is Xonotic's target audience, is there even one? If not why not?

2) Why hasn't the news page been updated on this site for like 2 months..I can honestly say i'm not the only one who wonder's why it feels there is such a big divide between developers and the 'community', I often have to suggest things on IRC via PM or ask questions, then ask on the forum and get a response from a Dev.

3) I know many Dev's get pissed off with using the forum because they feel like they either just get trolled or it's waste of there time, but in that case how do they think the player's of the game feel when there asked to give new idea's only for there to be hardly a sign of a Dev in certain areas..too often it feels like time is spent by other people coming up with idea's and then not much view from a Dev, then out of the blue it'll be rejected, what is the point of us then? I hope you see where i'm coming from.

4) Why does the community not know for sure, if Xonotic is meant to have new game mechanics, physics or weapons or if it's going to be nexuiz with better graphics, asking the community to come up with weapon functions when we don't even know the answer to the first part of this question. Nexuiz 2.6 for example was meant to be getting new weapon balance apparently, did it stop getting worked on or what? who is working on the current xonotic GIT balance etc cause I certainly do not know and I haven't seen anyone else except for you or Dib answer stuff so far when it comes to talking about weapon functions or weapon balancing for xonotic.

For me it feels like the community is asked to give idea's but we don't even know what's planned, like i'm trying to give the new physics idea's and working on some kind of different weapon balance, am I wasting my time with thread's like this because Xonotic will be staying the same as Nexuiz's except with graphical updates..Can we have some kind of clarificaton?

Well i think i sounded off a bit more then i meant to there, sites like esr and their inhabitants tend to bring out the flamethrower in me

I understand your motivation for bringing up those points kojn, and its a good initiative; im not trying to take a piss at you/this. Im just pointing out that the very nature of the game (open & free development) changes so much that its complicated to speak of it in the same way as commercial games. The question of target audience for example is virtually un-answerable, cept for "whoever wants to play/develop it"

2) Why hasn't the news page been updated on this site for like 2 months..I can honestly say i'm not the only one who wonder's why it feels there is such a big divide between developers and the 'community', I often have to suggest things on IRC via PM or ask questions, then ask on the forum and get a response from a Dev.

3) I know many Dev's get pissed off with using the forum because they feel like they either just get trolled or it's waste of there time, but in that case how do they think the player's of the game feel when there asked to give new idea's only for there to be hardly a sign of a Dev in certain areas..too often it feels like time is spent by other people coming up with idea's and then not much view from a Dev, then out of the blue it'll be rejected, what is the point of us then? I hope you see where i'm coming from.

The news page, i have no idea. not my area. The rest is sort of interlinked. I shall try and summarize the main reasons here, note that this is my personal option/perception not some official standpoint. Many devs feel like they are drowning in the flood of opinion on the forums. This is why the current development is more closed in nature. Its not a situation or development im happy with as i believe that there should be no such thing as developers AND players, just community members contributing to and enjoying the game in different ways (in the perfect form) However when the choice is between listening to more or less random conflicting ideas and criticism all day, just saying fuck this shit and give up, or forming a group who deals with deciding and developing somewhat independent; i prefer the latter. Also at the moment the number of ppl who are developing this game is small. really small considering the work that lay ahead. Dokujisan took on the responsibility of "Xonotic community development" has resigned all official involvement in Xonotic development leaving us basically without anyone to handle this part. I would assume much of the lack of communication springs there from. The weapon functions thread was my personal "question", not some official thing. didn't realize it came of as such, ill edit it to make that clear. Much of the reason for "Why does the community not know for sure, if Xonotic is meant to have new game mechanics, physics or weapons or if it's going to be nexuiz with better graphics" would be that noone know that yet the process and discussion is ongoing.

Hmn.. this WOT is getting large.. Lets round if off with this: if you (as in anyone who reads this) dislike the current divide between developers and the rest; step up and offer to help out in any way you can. Everyone can do SOMETHING, its just a question of motivation and resolve. well its 06:52 now, gtg to work after working on a map for Xonotic all night.. hope you get the point

Lets round if off with this: if you (as in anyone who reads this) dislike the current divide between developers and the rest; step up and offer to help out in any way you can. Everyone can do SOMETHING, its just a question of motivation and resolve. well its 06:52 now, gtg to work after working on a map for Xonotic all night.. hope you get the point

The troof. +1

I see one MAJOR flaw on the first post. Your linking to some punk-ass Warsow fanbase that ripped on the game WITHOUT ACTUALLY PLAYING IT. Sure the earlier versions sucked, but most of the suckage disappeared with the release of 2.3.

Wow...what a thread!

All the balancing is right, some main changes are maybe to lower to strength of sg and mg... they are too strong especially for ctf

The balancing is one of the most important things for the next version, with it players come and players will go!

All the balancing is right, some main changes are maybe to lower to strength of sg and mg... they are too strong especially for ctf

sometime ago people complaint that mg and shotgun were to weak, but now they are pretty good weapons for close/ long range combat. Now they are complaining they are too strong.
They are starting (well almost) weapons and the starting weapon are always useless compared to high damage weapons like the rocketlauncher.

I see one MAJOR flaw on the first post. Your linking to some punk-ass Warsow fanbase that ripped on the game WITHOUT ACTUALLY PLAYING IT. Sure the earlier versions sucked, but most of the suckage disappeared with the release of 2.3.

Lee:- Actually there's quite a few on there who did play it like Vedic, I'm not saying that a lot of them didn't, I even said some only played it for 30 minutes in one of my posts and there's definitely a troll or 10 on there who didn't, but obviously there's a lot of them disliking something for them only to play it that long.

Personally I already said to someone on IRC the thread would go this way, I tried to point out the one's who did say something commented on the balance ands movement mainly which contributes to the gameplay, and how we should be taking feedback for the one's who gave feedback, that is not happening still, people are just going to quote more and more not on the subject so I give up.

@tZork thanks for the answer/s that has cleared up everything I wanted to ask.

~KillGenerals

At first, I wasn't going to bother to reply to your post simply because it's too damned long and I wasn't going to spend the time quoting each part of it and pointing out the flaws... but then I realized people might actually read that and take it seriously. I'm still not going to quote each part, but instead I'll summarize what I'm thinking.

1. A vast majority of the people who have been playing Nexuiz for years, YEARS, are screaming for change. You think maybe there's a reason for that? Perhaps these people have enough experience with Nexuiz and it's players that they can close their eyes and point out the flaws in it's gameplay? Do you think that's possible? You said you were only recently enlightened to the fact that new players don't like getting WTFPWNED when they join a server. This is something we've known for a very long time, and simply, the only way we found to counter that was to try and tunnel all of the experienced players into private servers, and invite new people as they progressed through the open servers. Why would we do this? Because the more people a server has, the more people will want to join it rather than some other server. You couldn't put the batcaves on the list, because initially, any newbie who joined would have been ABSOLUTELY slaughtered.

2. Weapon balance... You claim the weapons are balanced? What you've provided looks all well and good on paper, but it runs through the meatgrinder when it comes to actually playing the game. Let's go through them.

Laser: just for moving yourself or pushing off enemys // Also used for laser sniping cross open maps. Spawn, laser snipe. Die. Respawn, laser snipe. Profit.
MG: can be used to slow down the enemy who is running towards you. useless for chasing. // There are a few encounters where the slowing is actually useful, this takes place on launch pads in space maps, and the shotgun can be used for the same purpose, and... the nex pretty much guarantees they will die, and it stops them dead in their tracks. It's not good for chasing? Well, let's think about what weapons ARE good for chasing. Laser... that's out for obvious reasons. Shotgun... pushes them forward. Electro... too slow for the most part. Hagar, impossible to hit with... Crylink. Ahh! The crylink! One of the few weapons that's actually good for chasing. Unfortunately, on any map that doesn't have enough free space, aiming with the crylink is going to be pretty difficult, and probably won't actually slow them down enough to matter. Rockets can be used to counter an enemy initally, but they're too slow afterwards... soo... Oh wait.. The nex is good for that! Nex! I choose you!
RL: Quite powerful weapon. But it has one big weakness: ppl can blow up your rocket and YOU die. useless in close and far combat. it is NOT overpowered! In the esreality thing people complain about the rockets being too weak because everything can blow them up. // I've pointed this out before, and people seem to have forgotten this important point. Countering rockets is far more difficult than hitting someone with them. Now you have curving rockets. Fire upward, curve down, and even to the side while you're doing that, and unless you've got really amazing aim, that rocket is going to nail you in the face. Rockets, with their excessively large blast radius, maneuverability, and ability to detonate at will are, by far, the easiest and most powerful weapon you can find. I'd say the nex was more powerful, but with the nex, you can actually miss, you know... So Nex takes 2nd.
Mortar: used against RLs. good overall balance: fair damage, but quite hard to aim // Maybe before rockets could curve... Mortars were useful against rockets previously because they had to be kept aimed toward the ground to ensure a hit. The mortar, unless you're really good with it, generally needs to be aimed toward the ground for a higher chance of hitting. For this reason people tend to laser upward to get a better aim.
Nex: used to kill fast enemys. Second hardest to aim, needs much ammo, slow refire. // It's not hard to aim with the nex unless you're close quarters, and even then it's not too difficult. It's also not used to kill just "fast enemies", it's used in every situation you could possibly imagine simply because ammo is abundant, the damage is ridiculous, and it's pushback force almost guarantees that anyone you hit will be stopped in their tracks or thrown off the map.
Hagar: used on high distances to spam or on low distances to blow up rockets. // Good luck blowing up rockets that aren't intentionally aimed at the ground. The radius on the hagar is too low to hit them otherwise. You won't see anyone using this unless they have no other weapon because it's far too difficult to aim.
Electro: very tactical weapon, best for defense - usueless in direct combat // It's best for defense if you constantly spam electro balls, which takes a massive amount of ammo, and inhibits your respawning teammates in the process. It's far easier to just crouch in a corner with the nex, or stand on the flag with a rocket launcher, and many people do.
Crylink: shoots around corners! very high damage with direct hit. useless on widerange // It also pulls the enemy toward you. Yes, it may shoot around corners, but how often do you actually hit people like that, unless their brain isn't functioning properly and they stand still. I won't argue with the damage, but which do you think is easier to use, Rocket or Crylink? Rocket of course, and on top of that, it uses less ammo.

Like I said, while your "weapon balance" may look good on paper, the simple fact of the matter is that Nex, Rocket, and Mortar are basically the rock, and all other weapons are scissors. There is no paper in Nexuiz.

You claim that the experienced players don't understand the "game balance"... we do.

By the way, I'd like to point out that you're quick to scream "quake clone", forgetting entirely that Nexuiz and Xonotic use the Quake 1 engine with Darkplaces. On top of that, you're all for cloning Nexuiz. So... Is cloning Quake anathema, while copying Nexuiz completely and simply relabeling it for some ungodly reason alright? Nexuiz still exists. The code is still there. There has been no announcement that development is halting entirely, and the game, while missing a few devs is still around. If you want to play Nexuiz, by all means PLAY NEXUIZ. I see absolutely no point in having two very similar games with a playerbase that can be crammed on the head of a needle.

2. Weapon balance... You claim the weapons are balanced? What you've provided looks all well and good on paper, but it runs through the meatgrinder when it comes to actually playing the game. Let's go through them.

you know that there are people who didnt liked the 2.x setting for the shotgun because it was to weak. now the people are screaming its to strong

2. Weapon balance... You claim the weapons are balanced? What you've provided looks all well and good on paper, but it runs through the meatgrinder when it comes to actually playing the game. Let's go through them.

you know that there are people who didnt liked the 2.x setting for the shotgun because it was to weak. now the people are screaming its to strong

There will always be people like that. The way I see it right now is... Shotgun is a problem because people can still hit you with it from range, and for decent damage aswell. That's a bit ridiculous. However, for close range, the shotgun presents a problem for anyone sitting in the enemy base encountering respawns. While I dislike the respawn flooding that sometimes happens, respawns SHOULD present a danger to anyone sitting in the enemy base. Therefore the damage is fine at close range, but it should not be capable of what it is at long range. A new starting weapon for Xonotic can be balanced accordingly.

Like I said, while your "weapon balance" may look good on paper, the simple fact of the matter is that Nex, Rocket, and Mortar are basically the rock, and all other weapons are scissors. There is no paper in Nexuiz.

You claim that the experienced players don't understand the "game balance"... we do.

By the way, I'd like to point out that you're quick to scream "quake clone", forgetting entirely that Nexuiz and Xonotic use the Quake 1 engine with Darkplaces. On top of that, you're all for cloning Nexuiz. So... Is cloning Quake anathema, while copying Nexuiz completely and simply relabeling it for some ungodly reason alright? Nexuiz still exists. The code is still there. There has been no announcement that development is halting entirely, and the game, while missing a few devs is still around. If you want to play Nexuiz, by all means PLAY NEXUIZ. I see absolutely no point in having two very similar games with a playerbase that can be crammed on the head of a needle.

Exactly, there are 3 weapons in the whole game that can basically obliterate everything else. I for one hold on mainly to mortar and nex however the damage rl gives when it's not blowing in your face and the ease of hit makes it quite attracting on anything that isn't a corridor.

Also as I previously stated I doubt anyone want's to clone anything, at least from the people in this thread, nexuiz is still here, xonotic is a new game albeit a fork but it can have changes people are screaming about. Physics and weapon balance being first on the list of course, if I want quake I can play quake live, same goes for cpma or warsow or ut. I have all those games, something original can be made, but being original does not mean avoiding every proven feature that has been going on in the last 16 years of deathmatch just to be different, that's just some emo tune. Inspiration has always been the key to progress why should it not be here, all the features are here and there are even people that want to help, we just need a direction and scope for these two things, one with the damn depth everyone wants.

I see what you mean here. Removing autoguide should fix this, however, keep the laser guidance mutator.

Also actually removing the detonation and rockets volatility would fix this, I have no problem against a guided rocket, i do have problems when rockets blow out in my face dealing out tons of damage at random intervals or are impossible to dodge.

I do agree here, we MUST remove either. I would suggest removing the remote detonation, and making the rockets travel at exactly 1000 ups.

Not all are spammy. Mortar and nex are not spammy. The nex needs to be a hitscan weapon effective over long distances that deals high damage to actually be used. Now, if your team cannot take out a sniper, then that's the fault of your team, not the game.

Mortar and nex are overpowered, mortar is the weapon for close combat right there with nex, you have mortar and nex and you basically are ready to take out almost anyone. First off mortar is easy to aim once you get the hang of it, good refire, damage, projectile speed and push make it the weapon of choice for close combat, div0's stats proved that, I have no problem with the nex itself it's just hard to balance right with the current health stuff, I've never had problems in taking out snipers then being called a cheater and other nice things, making the weapon not obliterate freshly spawned players while giving fighting chances against stacked guys is impossible, and no reducing damage with range is not an option, limiting stacking abilities would allow a far better balance of all the weapons because there are limits to how strong your opponent is, sure he'll be way more tough than a freshly spawned player, however it's not by a huge margin.

Again, agree with a health/armor limit. Limiting to 200/200, with only shards (5 hp/armor) and powerups (100 hp/armor) being able to be picked up after 100/100.

To be honest in two years of playing Nexuiz I never saw the rock-paper-scissors analogy, some weapons are too overpowered, others too annoying and others just plain spammy. They all have their uses but none feel really good to be honest. Having annoying weapons is bad for any game, they must have a certain feel to them, to sorta seem natural to use(not meaning realistic). Rockets for example are wildly imbalanced, they are both too strong and both too weak at the same time, crylink is just plaing wierd and hard to aim, has insanely fast projectiles, electro is sorta like a mix between a rocket launcher and a grenade launcher, all's well and fine but it has 0 edge damage, mortar will always best it. Also there are too many similar weapons and they are all adjusted to be a sort of mid range guns. Doom II had a wider variety of weapons that feel and act differently from one another, a lot of the weapons in Nexuiz feel like variants of the same weapon and there are like 12 of them(double the number, half the differences from a 1994 game). Some weapons could do some really cool things with some tweaking and testing, a plan and concept ideas just need to be made.

Agree with weapons being way too similar, way more diversity is urgently needed. Each weapon should be unique, which many in the Nexuiz balance weren't
Here would be my suggestions/ideas, please comment:

Laser => tazer, else it's too similar to other projectile weapons. Maybe still allowing _SMALL_ "tazerjumps" . The laser allowed for too easy jumps with almost no cost, which ruins any sense of heights. See a megahealth on a platform 4 floors above? No problem, just laserjump there and snatch it from the player who's just walking towards it normally. >_< Nope, there needs to be a penalty for this, ie. being hurt a bit by a rocket (yeah, you SHOULDN'T even be able to jump like that if you aren't stacked up from before. Anyone heard about strategy?)

Shotgun => Slower refire, more bullets, more spread (gaussian spread now that we can? realism! ) and more damage. It's a shotgun, not a rapid fire semi-automatic rifle with huge spread x)

Uzi => Less force anyone? IIRC that used to be just *slightly* too much.

Mortar => Grenadelauncher? Make it's range MUCH shorter (especially secondary, it should only be useful at spamming close quarters. (heck even that, it never was!) Spam some nades around a corner or so). Maybe in order to decrease similarity to other weapons we could make the primary also fire a grenade, with a different timer?

Electro => ?!?... It's badly flawed at the moment, due to it's similarity to the rocketlauncher. It's pretty much only useful if combined with the secondary, by first shooting a couple of blobs against a target area and then shooting a primary immediately after. What about we make the primary a lightning gun similar to Q3, but maybe with the ability to charge up secondary blobs around the area it hits so they will explode with a bigger radius and more damage?

Crylink => This one's a bit hard... Maybe we could increase both it's pull and it's radius to make it more useful?

Nex => I agree with reducing the damage and force at long distances, but just slightly (1/3x or so? nothing more extreme) It will still remain useful where it's needed, defending your base from immediate attackers. It'll reduce the effect of camping though. Distance needs tweaking.

Hagar => Less spread and more projectile speed should fix it. Not sure about bounce on secondary, it's a bit similar to the crylink now isn't it?

Rocketlauncher => Remove remote detonating as I've stated above, same reason as Unknown said: It's very very hard to dodge a rocket shot by a skilled player (if it misses slightly he just needs to hit secondary). Just to give secondary a use now, maybe it could be the button that starts the guiding of a rocket, so that you can shoot multiple rockets with primary, then guide them all at once by pressing secondary? (another primary after that would cancel guiding for previous rockets) Could get interesting
Also give rockets infinite health to remove the (RANDOM! ANNOYING!) explosion right in front of your own face if someone else fires another projectile at you!

Other weapons => garbage can IMO They can be added later if really needed, now we really need to focus on a GOOD BALANCE for the initial release, as has been stated above in this thread, it will be the first impression that makes this fork a hit or miss. So we should disable them for now and really tweak, tweak and yet more tweak the 9 first weapons.

P.S.2 Faster weapon spawns will also help, in duel, ctf and ffa most of all, these game types are not about controlling weapon spawn points, they should all allow you to easily get a weapon and get into the fight, having to wait 15 seconds for one is just wrong, also adding classic ctf as in NO TEAM DAMAGE or REFLECT DAMAGE would help, nobody seems interested in that, you should be able to help your fc not kill it and die for a random shot.

YES PLEASE.

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By the way, I'd like to point out that you're quick to scream "quake clone", forgetting entirely that Nexuiz and Xonotic use the Quake 1 engine with Darkplaces. On top of that, you're all for cloning Nexuiz. So... Is cloning Quake anathema, while copying Nexuiz completely and simply relabeling it for some ungodly reason alright? Nexuiz still exists. The code is still there. There has been no announcement that development is halting entirely, and the game, while missing a few devs is still around. If you want to play Nexuiz, by all means PLAY NEXUIZ. I see absolutely no point in having two very similar games with a playerbase that can be crammed on the head of a needle.

FULLY agree. This is a chance to improve the game, whoever does not want to take this chance and wants to continue playing Nexuiz, then that option is still there!

Also btw on the news matter, there are problems with the news page that have caused that nobody can write any news! -z- is fixing this at the moment, and we should hopefully be seeing some news articles being written by developers soon! (I sure hope they will do that too, actively to inform everone who doesn't read git log )

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A new starting weapon for Xonotic can be balanced accordingly.

Hmm, MG for starting weapon? Could make it a bit weaker, and then instead make the shotgun a REAL badass shotgun, not some plastic toy-gun

again reducing the nex damage? the nex is already quiet useless and reducing the damage even more. Now you need 2-3 hits to take a flagcarrier down, sometimes even more