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[SUGGESTION] More noob-friendly Xonotic: improvements that don't sacrifice gameplay

#1
Rainbow 
The goal of this proposal is to remove as much newbie frustrations as we can without making any changes to the gameplay, even if these frustrations can be relieved by turning on or off a simple checkbox.

Sensible default settings

Default weapon key binds are useless. This is the biggest problem, as it's impossible to fight against good players who rapidly switch to weapon that is easiest to aim in any current situation when important weapons are out of finger reach. I know that people may disagree which particular layout is the best, but I everyone will agree that putting the most used weapons Nex and Rocket Launcher on keys 7 and 9 where they can't be reached without letting go of control keys makes these weapons nearly useless in combat. I believe the biggest reason why is Overkill more popular than standard mod is that it only has 4 weapons and the keys 1-4 are easily reachable.

The default field of view is too low. How many of good players play with field of view more than 90? If the answer is "most", then we should increase it. I think that 110 is a good value, Red Eclipse uses it by default.

Shouldn't switch weapons on pick-up. It's absolutely useless (since with right binds you can quickly switch weapons with keyboard anyway) and can get you killed: you aim eg. nex, step on a rocket launcher someone dropped and fire a rocket instead, and the opponent gets time to damage you. We shouldn't teach noobs to rely on this. Could impede discovery of new weapons by new players.

Default mouse speed could be too high or too low. It should be automatically set to a sensible value on first start (or when mouse model is changed, but mouse speed was never manually adjusted) based on OS mouse speed, acceleration and mouse DPI.

Note that we shouldn't disable blood, explosions, force a model, or make things solid-color by default.
(01-23-2013, 12:13 PM)edh Wrote: The point of a game shouldn't be for everyone to have the optimal ability to shoot everyone else, this spoils the fun too much and everyone then starts arguing about balancing.
However, if when noobs start to really feel that the above-mentioned settings cap their in-game performance and change them, they have to re-learn after they have changed them.
Simplifying graphics, etc. just removes the nuisance, you don't have to re-learn anything significant.

Improve maps and map guidelines

Add more distinguishing features to map locations. That'll make it easier to learn the maps.

Maps shouldn't lie to players. Example offenders are drain (teleport entrance and exit look absolutely the same, so you can mistake the entrance for another teleport), glowplant (no way to know if fan is broken until you actually step on it).

Teleports are confusing if there are too many of them. Darkzone :O!!!

Tutorial

Obviously. This has already been talked to death.
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#2
Quote: Default weapon key binds are useless. This is the biggest problem, as it's impossible to fight against good players who rapidly switch to weapon that is easiest to aim in any current situation when important weapons are out of finger reach.
This is a real problem IMO, perhaps it could be adressed by placing different weapons of the same ammo type on the same key: 1 for laser and shotty, 2 for LG and crylink, 3 for nex and electro, and 4 for rl and mortar, placing the non-core weapons on less acessable keys.

Quote:The default field of view is too low. How many of good players play with field of view more than 90? If the answer is "most", then we should increase it. I think that 110 is a good value, Red Eclipse uses it by default.
I agree with this, but I think 100 is a less alienating default

Quote:Shouldn't switch weapons on pick-up. It's absolutely useless

Default mouse speed could be too high or too low. It should be automatically set to a sensible value on first start

I disagree with this, autoswitch is necessary for discovery of new weapons for new players, adaptive mouse speed would be inconsistant and silly.
Quote:Add more distinguishing features to map locations. That'll make it easier to learn the maps.

Maps shouldn't lie to players. Example offenders are drain (teleport entrance and exit look absolutely the same, so you can mistake the entrance for another teleport), glowplant (no way to know if fan is broken until you actually step on it).
I agree with this as well, maps aren't as well-designed as they could be for learnability.
Quote:Teleports are confusing if there are too many of them. Darkzone :O!!!
LEAVE DARZONE ALONE!!!! ;_;
it's not inteded for the new players, it's for nostagiagasms for oldschool quake 1 players. If cortez breaks it more than the extra health pickups already have I am going to metaphorically kill him.
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#3
(01-27-2013, 07:36 PM)lamefun Wrote: Default weapon key binds are useless.

The default field of view is too low.

Shouldn't switch weapons on pick-up.

However, if when noobs start to really feel that the above-mentioned settings cap their in-game performance and change them, they have to re-learn after they have changed them.
Simplifying graphics, etc. just removes the nuisance, you don't have to re-learn anything significant.

While it may seem well meaning and I totally understand why some people want these changes they're not something I would like to see. If Xonotic went down this road then I would not feel inclined to follow. If that is what the community wants then I wish you all well in that but it is regretably not a direction I would want to go in.

I'm simply not interested in playing a game where everyone is playing with r_make_everything_look_like_it_was_drawn_in_paint 1, a FOV that allows them to see out the back of their head and moaning that they can't get 6000fps without switching everything off. While some people might already be playing with such things and crazy picmip values that might be considered cheating by some, I just don't consider it in the spirit of a game for everything to be like that.

I play the game for the fun of it and because I like the graphics. I'm also too old to go and relearn where keys are on the keyboard. Numbers for weapons have worked just fine for 20 years. I wish everyone well if they want to make it into something else.
I'm at least a reasonably tolerable person to be around - Narcopic
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#4
Quote: .... glowplant (no way to know if fan is broken until you actually step on it)....
You step on it. You know.

Also, more important than all of this is jQuery support.
"Yes, there was a spambot some time ago on these forums." - aa
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#5
(01-28-2013, 05:53 AM)edh Wrote: I'm simply not interested in playing a game where everyone is playing with r_make_everything_look_like_it_was_drawn_in_paint 1, a FOV that allows them to see out the back of their head and moaning that they can't get 6000fps without switching everything off. While some people might already be playing with such things and crazy picmip values that might be considered cheating by some, I just don't consider it in the spirit of a game for everything to be like that.

If you don't consider nuisance removing options to be in spirit of the game, don't use them yourself, no one makes you to. They only give small advantages to players who use them, not game-breaking ones.

If you don't want OTHER players to use it, you should find the world of Steam VAC and proprietary software and DRM and "Trusted" Computing most welcoming, where people willingly install spyware to enjoy a warranted fair game.

But Xonotic is Free Software --- anyone can do whatever they want with their copies, including replacing content, without fear of being automatically banned or whatever.

It doesn't mean that aimbots and wallhacks should be allowed --- server admins can still detect them easily, since the advantage they give to their users is immediately visible: inhuman aim, always knowing where other players are going to come from, etc.

However, merely removing the nuisance (like shiny effects, bloom, etc.) is virtually undetectable: it improves player's in-game performance a little, but doesn't make it possible for a player to perform feats that are impossible with standard settings. Without being a spyware-packed proprietary game, we have no means of seeing what's really going on in the client.

But removing nuisance is still, however small, an unfair advantage. The best thing we can do is to give everyone an option to enable this advantage and not to think of it as of cheat.

And I certainly don't recommend to enable them by default --- bad graphics by default is going to ALIENATE new players instead of attracting them.

(01-28-2013, 05:53 AM)edh Wrote: (1) I play the game for the fun of it and because I like the graphics. (2) I'm also too old to go and relearn where keys are on the keyboard. Numbers for weapons have worked just fine for 20 years. I wish everyone well if they want to make it into something else.

1. Just don't disable the effects. Smile The fact that some other players do it doesn't mean you should do it too. Simplified graphics just removes some nuisance, but doesn't magically transform noobs to inhumanly high-skilled pros (although it DOES help people to perform a little better).
2. You won't be affected by new defaults, only new players who have downloaded Xonotic for the first time will.

(01-28-2013, 12:37 AM)s1lence Wrote: LEAVE DARZONE ALONE!!!! ;_;
it's not inteded for the new players, it's for nostagiagasms for oldschool quake 1 players. If cortez breaks it more than the extra health pickups already have I am going to metaphorically kill him.

Ok, ok, but please don't make more of such maps.

(01-28-2013, 12:37 AM)s1lence Wrote: I disagree with this, autoswitch is necessary for discovery of new weapons for new players


It's may be necessary until we implement a tutorial. All weapons and their binds should be covered in the tutorial.

(01-28-2013, 12:37 AM)s1lence Wrote: adaptive mouse speed would be inconsistant and silly.

No it wouldn't. It would just give all new players a sensible mouse speed by default. The goal of my proposal is to remove as much frustrations as we can without any changes into gameplay, even if these frustrations can be relieved by a simple checkbox. Not being able to follow other player with crosshair because the mouse is too slow is certainly a frustration.
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#6
(01-28-2013, 05:41 PM)lamefun Wrote: If you don't consider nuisance removing options to be in spirit of the game, don't use them yourself, no one makes you to.

If you make it more and more centred on removing 'nuisance' options and more and more specialised into making it easier for people to get frags then I feel it will become a worse game in general. Consider sports where they change the rules to make it harder, hence more competitive and fun. What you're talking about is automatically setting it up into an easier, more manufactured, less skilled form. That will be worse in the long run for players in general, not just those players using those settings. We already have far too many threads on balance and if you make it into this elitist form it will just continue to get worse too.

What any settings do to me personally when I play the game isn't the point. What it does for the potential community by turning into some crazy elitist game by default is my problem. I simply wouldn't want to play in such a community.

(01-28-2013, 05:41 PM)lamefun Wrote: anyone can do whatever they want with their copies, including replacing content, without fear of being automatically banned or whatever.

No they can't. That is regarded as cheating. Let's say you make everything fullbrights in your modded Xonotic, that gives you an unfair advantage and you should expect to be banned in the same way if you 'modified' Xonotic so that you had an Aimbot. People should expect to be banned for doing such and they deserve it.

(01-28-2013, 05:41 PM)lamefun Wrote: However, merely removing the nuisance (like shiny effects, bloom, etc.) is virtually undetectable: it improves player's in-game performance a little, but doesn't make it possible for a player to perform feats that are impossible with standard settings.

Yeah, why not just make everything fullbrights by default?!? Then it would be much easier to get frags! Or just turn all of the weapon damages up by 100x. I'm not being serious with these points by the way. I would really rather it wasn't set up for everyone to be a human aimbot. Maybe there would be more frags but does that make more fun?

(01-28-2013, 05:41 PM)lamefun Wrote: Without being a spyware-packed proprietary game, we have no means of seeing what's really going on in the client.
Yes there is. Trusting people not to be idiots has worked very well in the past. Cheating on multiplayer computer games should make people feel dirty inside and if they don't then they're not a person who is going to be any real success in real life anyway and I feel smug enough about that. If however you don't trust people and instead make the game into a more elitist, twitchy form then you will move things to the point where some people will be attracted to break the rules as more advantage will be had from it.

(01-28-2013, 05:41 PM)lamefun Wrote: But removing nuisance is still, however small, an unfair advantage. The best thing we can do is to give everyone an option to enable this advantage and not to think of it as of cheat.

No because within 5 minutes everyone will have them all on anyway so you're back to the same point except the game looks worse and weapon accuracies will be improving to an unfun level which will kick off ridiculous numbers of balance threads for everyones pet theory based on anecdotal evidence and coincidental EOL data that one weapon or other needs to be killed off.

(01-28-2013, 05:41 PM)lamefun Wrote: And I certainly don't recommend to enable them by default --- bad graphics by default is going to ALIENATE new players instead of attracting them.

Then you certainly can't go with high FOV by default. It gives unrealistic parallaxing like wearing someone elses glasses. Virtually all games with FOV of 90 (UT has been 80) for good graphical and gameplay reasons. If it genuinely was good for a games balance to have high FOV then you would find some commerical games actually doing so by default.

(01-28-2013, 05:41 PM)lamefun Wrote: 1. Just don't disable the effects. Smile The fact that some other players do it doesn't mean you should do it too. Simplified graphics just removes some nuisance, but doesn't magically transform noobs to inhumanly high-skilled pros (although it DOES help people to perform a little better).
2. You won't be affected by new defaults, only new players who have downloaded Xonotic for the first time will.

You're missing the point. It's not about me, it's about what I fear for the game in general by unbalancing it. If everyone else was playing on settings like that then it would not be a game I would want to play. It simply isn't within the spirit of a well balanced game. I would especially think of this for things like key binds. I don't want to play a game where people are actively thinking about saving 1ms for a weapon change by moving their keys into some more rheumotologically challenging configuration.

(01-28-2013, 12:37 AM)s1lence Wrote: No it wouldn't. It would just give all new players a sensible mouse speed by default.

You're missing the point on this. Some people have it how they like due to their personal preferences. Some people want to be able to spin round on only 2mm of movement, others don't mind pushing their mouse half way across the room. What you're suggesting is still going to be considered wrong by most people. Regardless of what any other individual might think of the optimal speed it's their preference and no ones preference is wrong.

Please just accept its a game played for the fun of it, no one in real life really cares who gets most frags or not so just play the game for fun.
I'm at least a reasonably tolerable person to be around - Narcopic
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#7
(01-28-2013, 06:52 PM)edh Wrote: If you make it more and more centred on removing 'nuisance' options and more and more specialised into making it easier for people to get frags then I feel it will become a worse game in general. Consider sports where they change the rules to make it harder, hence more competitive and fun. What you're talking about is automatically setting it up into an easier, more manufactured, less skilled form.

Xonotic rules are already very hard, but I'm not proposing to make the RULES easier. You're missing the point. Let me make an analogy with football. What you think I propose: make the gates wider (change game rules to make the game easier). What I really propose: give new players spiked shoes (good mouse sensitivity, good weapon switching binds and good field of view) from the start instead of making them figure out what exactly gives the players that have spiked shoes (good mouse sensitivity, good weapon switching binds and good field of view) the advantage over them entirely by themselves.

Except if you want to declare that changing controls is cheating... Well, good luck detecting that without "Trusted" Computing, spyware and DRM (same for nuisance removing options).

(01-28-2013, 06:52 PM)edh Wrote:
(01-28-2013, 05:41 PM)lamefun Wrote: anyone can do whatever they want with their copies, including replacing content, without fear of being automatically banned or whatever.
No they can't. That is regarded as cheating. Let's say you make everything fullbrights in your modded Xonotic, that gives you an unfair advantage and you should expect to be banned in the same way if you 'modified' Xonotic so that you had an Aimbot. People should expect to be banned for doing such and they deserve it.

(01-28-2013, 05:41 PM)lamefun Wrote: However, merely removing the nuisance (like shiny effects, bloom, etc.) is virtually undetectable: it improves player's in-game performance a little, but doesn't make it possible for a player to perform feats that are impossible with standard settings.
Yeah, why not just make everything fullbrights by default?!? Then it would be much easier to get frags! Or just turn all of the weapon damages up by 100x. I'm not being serious with these points by the way. I would really rather it wasn't set up for everyone to be a human aimbot. Maybe there would be more frags but does that make more fun?

Except that without spyware and DRM the admins CAN'T know for sure if you have everything fullbright or you're just more skilled at differentiating colors than other people or you have high monitor brightness and contrast. If this was a stealth game where you could hide in the dark or etc., yes, fullbright would be cheating, since it would break the game, but it would be easily detectable: if someone consistently finds players that they shouldn't have seen, it's obvious that they are cheating. However, this game is DESIGNED to have high visibility even with default settings: maps don't have areas that are too dark, player armor has glowing areas, so fullbright doesn't allow you to perform feats that would be impossible without it, it just makes the game slightly easier. If you can't fight it, embrace it. Smile

(01-28-2013, 06:52 PM)edh Wrote: Trusting people not to be idiots has worked very well in the past.

No it hasn't. Why does this forum have moderators then? Why do you keep a lock on the door of your house?

(01-28-2013, 06:52 PM)edh Wrote: within 5 minutes everyone will have them all (nuisance-removing options) on anyway so you're back to the same point except the game looks worse

And if we remove them, withing 5 minutes someone will make a mod that adds them back and people will be going to use it instead of the official release.

(01-28-2013, 06:52 PM)edh Wrote: weapon accuracies will be improving to an unfun level

No they won't. This game is DESIGNED to have good visibility by default, simplified graphics is not much of advantage.

(01-28-2013, 06:52 PM)edh Wrote: which will kick off ridiculous numbers of balance threads for everyones pet theory based on anecdotal evidence and coincidental EOL data that one weapon or other needs to be killed off

In Red Eclipse there isn't a fullbright setting or FOV setting or solid color texture setting, but people still argue a lot about balance.

(01-28-2013, 06:52 PM)edh Wrote: Then you certainly can't go with high FOV by default. It gives unrealistic parallaxing like wearing someone elses glasses. Virtually all games with FOV of 90 (UT has been 80) for good graphical and gameplay reasons. If it genuinely was good for a games balance to have high FOV then you would find some commerical games actually doing so by default.

Maybe, but this isn't a "some commercial game". Is there even a commercial multiplayer shooter that is as insanely fast as Xonotic?

(01-28-2013, 06:52 PM)edh Wrote: I don't want to play a game where people are actively thinking about saving 1ms for a weapon change by moving their keys into some more rheumotologically challenging configuration.

Except it's rather like saving a second instead of 1ms and it allows you to keep moving instead of turning into a sitting duck while you're switching weapons. As fast weapon combos are really important in this game (nex -> rocket -> moratar is MUCH faster than eg. nex -> nex -> nex), keys 0-9 put newbies in considerable disadvantage.

(01-28-2013, 06:52 PM)edh Wrote: You're missing the point on this. Some people have it how they like due to their personal preferences. Some people want to be able to spin round on only 2mm of movement, others don't mind pushing their mouse half way across the room. What you're suggesting is still going to be considered wrong by most people, regardless of what any other individual might think of the optimal speed, it's their preference and no ones preference is wrong.

Then we should ask many people, really many people, how they use their mice, what is their field of view, see what most people use and make it default. By autodetecting mouse sensitivity I mean "set the default mouse mouse sensitivity so moving mouse X cm will make the view rotate Y degrees". People who don't like the default setting will be able to tweak it as they want, no change here. It will only help people who are new to the FPS genre and are unfortunate enough to have OS mouse setting and/or mouse model to make their default mouse sensitivity too slow or too fast to be playable.
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#8
You aren't understanding me here. I am not missing the point, I see your point exactly and it is not where I want the game to be heading.
I'm at least a reasonably tolerable person to be around - Narcopic
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#9
Please just... stop... I am mostly looking at you edh. Seriously, you know as well as I do that none of this will make it into the game.

The only thing that stands a chance is the javascript support, if only we had some more devs to implement it.

To be honest, with one ludicrous thread after another I can not really blame the devs anymore for completely ignoring the forums. "How to make the game more newbie friendly by making advanced settings default"... shees...
"Yes, there was a spambot some time ago on these forums." - aa
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#10
(01-29-2013, 04:57 AM)edh Wrote: You aren't understanding me here. I am not missing the point, I see your point exactly and it is not where I want the game to be heading.
(01-29-2013, 09:00 AM)PinkRobot Wrote: "How to make the game more newbie friendly by making advanced settings default"... shees...

What direction do YOU want the game to take? Don't relax the current very difficult rules, while providing newbies with default controls and settings that are completely inadequate for the rules? At least good keyboard controls are essential on non-beginner servers. No wonder it has so few players... If you're starting playing a new game, you'll have to learn, and we're better off providing adequate defaults for newbies from the start, since if we don't, newbies will later realize they're inadequate and will have to re-learn, which is a yet another reason for them to quit the game.
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#11
Something to consider about this keymap idea is that not everyone has an american qwerty keyboard. But the numerical keys are shared in many international keyboards.
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#12
(01-29-2013, 06:55 PM)Mr. Bougo Wrote: Something to consider about this keymap idea is that not everyone has an american qwerty keyboard. But the numerical keys are shared in many international keyboards.

This should be ideally automatically detected, like mouse DPI.
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#13
Except that inputs outside of the Latin1 character range are not supported. http://dev.xonotic.org/issues/1248

Yes, I know, that bug should be fixed. Same for all the other bugs. Anyone want to do it?
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#14
Stop shouting. JUST stop shouting.
[Image: 0_e8735_c58a251e_orig]
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#15
(01-28-2013, 05:41 PM)lamefun Wrote:
(01-28-2013, 12:37 AM)s1lence Wrote: LEAVE DARZONE ALONE!!!! ;_;
it's not inteded for the new players, it's for nostagiagasms for oldschool quake 1 players. If cortez breaks it more than the extra health pickups already have I am going to metaphorically kill him.

Ok, ok, but please don't make more of such maps.


@s1lence: too bad that the itemlayout of darkzone already been discussed to death. I would be a pleasure to start this discussion again.

@lamefun: now i feel very bad. How could i make a map which doesnt fulfill your wishes?
<Samual> I am the most unprofessional developer ever
<bluez> halogene, you make awesome music, but you have no clue about ctf.
<Halogene> I didn't know mappers include some mysterious waypoints so members of the BOT clan can navigate a map?
<divVerent> if you don't pay for a premium account, your movement speed is limited to 100qu/s
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#16
(02-03-2013, 03:55 PM)Cortez666 Wrote: @lamefun: now i feel very bad. How could i make a map which doesnt fulfill your wishes?

Isn't Xonotic darkzone a remake of a preexisting map? You actually made it better by adding easily recognizable details at different places of the map.

My only real map complains so far are:

aggressorx: everything looks the same, no easily recognizable details that can help to learn the map
drain: teleport entrance and exit look 100% the same
darkzone: confusing teleports - you enter a teleport, exit another teleport and if you try to go back, you end up somewhere else...
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#17
(02-04-2013, 02:43 AM)lamefun Wrote: darkzone: confusing teleports - you enter a teleport, exit another teleport and if you try to go back, you end up somewhere else...

Yes, like the original. Big Grin Have you ever actually played Quake?
I'm at least a reasonably tolerable person to be around - Narcopic
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#18
(02-04-2013, 06:38 AM)edh Wrote:
(02-04-2013, 02:43 AM)lamefun Wrote: darkzone: confusing teleports - you enter a teleport, exit another teleport and if you try to go back, you end up somewhere else...

Yes, like the original. Big Grin Have you ever actually played Quake?

No, never. I actually think that it's good to have some quirky maps, it's fun!
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#19
(02-04-2013, 09:22 AM)lamefun Wrote: No, never.

May I suggest you get yourself a copy of Quake? If you don't want to pay for the full game then download the Shareware version. I know you have plenty ideas of why everything should be changed but I suggest you play Quake and get some ideas of why things are how they are. Xonotic is derived from Quake and owes a lot to it and over time this link is being stretched as some people here may not even have been born when Quake was released.

I would be happy to advise you further on setting up Quake on a modern system.
I'm at least a reasonably tolerable person to be around - Narcopic
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#20
Yeah, definitely play Quake - it's the best game ever :-). It's really easy to setup with Darkplaces so it looks quite good.
My contributions to Xonotic: talking in the forum, talking some more, talking a bit in the irc, talking in the forum again, XSkie
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#21
Brick 
(02-04-2013, 01:23 PM)edh Wrote:
(02-04-2013, 09:22 AM)lamefun Wrote: No, never.

May I suggest you get yourself a copy of Quake? If you don't want to pay for the full game then download the Shareware version. I know you have plenty ideas of why everything should be changed but I suggest you play Quake and get some ideas of why things are how they are. Xonotic is derived from Quake and owes a lot to it and over time this link is being stretched as some people here may not even have been born when Quake was released.

I would be happy to advise you further on setting up Quake on a modern system.

Useless default weapon keys, narrow default field of view should be kept because they were like that in Quake?
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#22
(08-13-2013, 02:51 PM)lamefun Wrote: Useless default weapon keys
That's your opinion. Doesn't mean it is universally felt. Please start learning to separate your view from the world view.

The numbers are entirely logical, they run in a line on the keyboard and unless you're innumerate are also of great significance to most of the people of the planet (yes I know Arabic and some other number systems do exist). It's an obvious choice and has been ever since 1992 when Wolfenstein 3D introduced them as a default for FPS games. As has also been pointed out, your suggestions do not work well on keyboards that have different layouts whereas the numbers are reliably in the same place for everyone. OK, AZERTY layouts will mean WASD is different but that is a small percentage, unlike the differences you're proposing.

(08-13-2013, 02:51 PM)lamefun Wrote: narrow default field of view
Do you sit 5mm from your monitor? The chances are that you are actually sitting at a distance greater than half the horizontal of the monitor, hence even 90 degrees would be too wide if you want to keep perspective correct.

What you need to accept is that the default settings should NOT be those that you personally think would make everyone else a better player. They need to be ones that are easy for people to learn - if they have previous experience with a layout this is good so obscure egotistical layouts are bad if you want people to jump in easily from other games.

(08-13-2013, 02:51 PM)lamefun Wrote: should be kept because they were like that in Quake?
So did you play Quake then? Or any other FPS games pre Half-life? If you had you would have noticed that Quake does not use the WASD layout anyway. It uses numbers for weapons but movement is by the cursor keys in general but one of the shareware versions I still have (0.92 IIRC) had something a bit different. The final Quake layout was basically the same as Duke3D, Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. WASD only came later with Half-life. Why did they stick with keyboard cursor keys before that? Truth is not everyone had a mouse and mice didn't work so well for aiming (Quake by default has sv_aim 0.92) so they were intended for keyboard play in general. Nowadays we can accept everyone with a GUI will also have a mouse so we can give them mouse support and go for something that is a lowest common denominator and people will be used to - like WASD and numbers for weapons.

Field of view is also another thing that is set to a default that will look good in the eyes of a layman on purpose. It's not important that a caffiene pill fuelled pro-gamer thinks that it doesn't allow them to see through the back of their head enough - they'll change the FOV anyway. What is important is that new users don't look at the game with FOV 1 billion and think 'the perspective looks all wrong - the developers of this game can't even make the walls straight!'.

So, default settings are NOT there to serve the aims of a few, but a far broader majority. If you want your own settings, that's fine, change them as you obviously know how to. For a new user to take your 14 fingered layout and turn it into something that they could even remotely remember would be much harder. The lowest common denominator always wins.
I'm at least a reasonably tolerable person to be around - Narcopic
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#23
Just stumbled upon this thread, and honestly it would be nicer if someone would implement a benchmark on first run. Maybe play a demo with a lot of action at once, afterwards load up a config that runs at a min of 60fps on the computer if possible, I've seen some new games have something like that, and low fps is what drives many new players away... I may try to get this working myself, but I don't have any qc experience so I don't guarantee something actually being done

I think, however, that mouse accel should be off by default, or set to something more sensible such as 0.2-0.5 since it doesn't really help aim, unless you are the type of player that likes it, but considering the majority of players don't use it, and default settings are meant to be used by new players (since players from other fps games already have their own config, keybinds).

Besides that, I don't think adding specific weapon binds, changing maps, or anything along those lines will help new players much... besides, compared to gamemodes like cpma, osp, etc.. Xonotic is a rather easy game compared to some other arena shooters, so players can learn without too much trouble.

Now talking about ideas (not really necessary): would be a matchmaking system similar to the one on ql, but not based on "tiers" or skill levels/rating, but instead simply warning players about joining servers running duel/tdm that those are more difficult gamemodes and trying to redirect them more towards ctf/dm servers which seem to be a bit easier on players that are just starting out.
[Image: 12766.png]
Sucks at weapons
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#24
With screens getting larger, keeping Quake's 90 fov doesn't make much sense. We want to bump that five to ten units up
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#25
Perhaps the starting FOV would be figured dynamically, maybe something like multiplying the ratio of width to height to 90 degrees, so that a square screen would be 90, and as screens widen, the starting fov would as well (obviously just as an initial setup thing, not for preexisting installations)
This seems doable, though I'd guess that it would get hairy at some point
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