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(09-27-2017, 08:28 AM)Halogene Wrote: Could I remind everyone ....
Sorry about that, maybe we should detach this discussion to another thread? OTOH, I am happy to inform you that I've seen a lot of people using handicap on public servers so I guess this thread fulfilled its purpose
Antares, yes, it's a viable tactic, but only to a certain extent (you likely won't end up last but definitely not first). More importantly it dumbs the game down. There's no point in using skillful movement to survive if you're content with just a couple frags. Or when you get hurt and are low on health it's often easier to just die and start with 100h again. Maybe it's what people want, I noticed small maps are popular on WTWRP deathmatch even with a lot of people. I am probably the minority but DM gets boring really fast, compared to CTF it's like half the things i like about xon (outmaneuvering the enemy using the resources at hand) are missing. DM doesn't provide much room for improvement except learn to find the weak and pick on them till you hit 30 kills.
Antibody, it's the most common mode in campaign (a valid excuse would be that CTF with bots is excruciatingly dull), it's at the top of mode selection in Create dialog and the gametype cvar is set to dm so when you start a server you get DM by default. At least having the mode voting screen enabled by default would be nice so you can start with a few people with DM and switch to TDM or even CTF when you get a decent number of players on the server.
I was told on IRC that TDM is even more unforgiving to newbies then DM but i don't remember the exact reasons (except dying gives enemy a point), so maybe they weren't too convincing
<packer> when i see martin-t's name my blood pressure increases
< [BOT]Hоtdоg> anyone here lives near martin?
< [BOT]Hоtdоg> will pay monies for shooting him
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(09-27-2017, 09:40 AM)martin-t Wrote: I was told on IRC that TDM is even more unforgiving to newbies then DM but i don't remember the exact reasons (except dying gives enemy a point), so maybe they weren't too convincing There's the exact same kind of dynamic for games like DOTA, where dying makes your enemies stronger (gives gold and experience points). Which is probably more brutal to underdogs / new players, but at the time it doesn't affect the game's popularity (this is before being picked up by a big name like Valve and having random loot boxes, etc). It might not matter too much ultimately as long as some players get some wins in.
(09-27-2017, 07:53 AM)Antibody Wrote: I'm a bit unclear as to what DM being the "default" actually means. Are we talking about what UI items are actually highlighted when someone goes to the "create" tab, the order of the items in the gametype voting screens, or something else entirely? If we can be more specific about what we think needs changing I'd be happy to create an issue on Gitlab for it or put it to a team vote.
I put default in quotes, loosely I meant it being THE mode. I might be more minded toward server.cfg, where there are a lot of basic Xonotic servers with no special configuration e.g default hostname Xonotic 0.8.2 Server or <name> Xonotic 0.8.2 Server that only have DM and standard maps. A lot of new players who want the base playing experience or don't understand the categories or brief description of features in the hostname tend to pick those servers. However currently the trend seems to be Create Menu / LAN games hence the number of players technically higher than before
190 players and 376 games (160 ctf; 104 dm; 57 duel; 26 cts; 19 tdm; 10 other) in the past 24 hours.
24 Jul 2016 06:29:33 UTC
https://archive.fo/qzlgX
233 players and 412 games (146 dm; 136 ctf; 100 duel; 17 cts; 10 tdm; 3 other) in the past 24 hours.
10 Oct 2016 10:12:11 UTC
https://archive.fo/p7T3G
322 players and 405 games (201 dm; 152 ctf; 15 cts; 13 tdm; 13 duel; 11 other) in the past 24 hours.
30 Jun 2017 08:11:45 UTC
https://archive.fo/RbnTO
340 players and 552 games (321 dm; 123 ctf; 27 duel; 27 tdm; 23 ft; 31 other) in the past 24 hours.
27 Sep 2017 11:43:56 UTC
https://archive.fo/6sh4y
despite everyone being uppity about new players / player population lately.
I am not sure how to make this post relevant to voluntary handicapping. But I'll stop here.
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(09-27-2017, 05:29 PM)Antares* Wrote: I am not sure how to make this post relevant to voluntary handicapping. But I'll stop here.
Since this thread appears to be exclusively about handicap etiquette, requesting a thread title that isn't vanilla player bait.
For those looking to improve over time, there isn't really a time that self-handicapping won't untrain some of the feel and habits that you develop when playing a game with consistent mechanics. Of course, active training is most useful but many of us rarely or never do this. The best method of making any mode more enjoyable is to bring more players of similar skill together to play matches.
There seemed to be a lot of excitement for a newbie night taking place on a /v/ east coast server but the admin had bandwidth issues. The /v/ pacific server has had some success with this but a lot of the players who come in are European or east coast ping whiners. If any east coast or European server admins can find gaming or FOSS forums that don't mind event advertisement, this could be a good way to bring in new players. In my relatively limited experience with Xonotic, I've seen active approaches like this, tournament hosting, and ladders work much better than fire-and-forget server hosting.
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(09-04-2017, 03:15 AM)For everyone that didn\t know, you can set your handicap (it's a client side setting) by issuing Wrote: in console, whereas the <value> defines the factor by which damage you receive gets multiplied and damage you deal gets reduced. I use values between 1.3 and 2. As it is a client side setting, you'll need to report it to the server after setting it by doing
Code: sendcvar cl_handicap <value>
OFC i didn't know, and how should if i don't know where to find it (or care to look for).
I would gladly use handicap if it was a slider in the options menu instead of typing a command.
Quake 3 has a handicap option in the menu and i used it when i played my inferior colleagues back in the day.
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(11-17-2017, 02:10 PM)Pendulla Wrote: OFC i didn't know, and how should if i don't know where to find it (or care to look for).
I would gladly use handicap if it was a slider in the options menu instead of typing a command.
Quake 3 has a handicap option in the menu and i used it when i played my inferior colleagues back in the day.
I definitely like the idea of putting the handicap in the menus somewhere as a slider.
Might also be worth putting it on the F5 join popup screen (or an option to put it there, off by default), so you can tweak it from whatever value it's set to for this game.
That way, if you find you're overpowered/underpowered, you can adjust it as you join the game, rather than going back into the game menus each time.
Quote:“To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.” - Douglas Adams
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(11-18-2017, 11:24 PM)thimo Wrote: i wanna spawn with 200hp
You are so OP that i would set the server force command to spawn you with 1hp.
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(11-18-2017, 11:24 PM)thimo Wrote: i wanna spawn with 200hp Check out competitive servers. They feature a warmup before the actual match, where you spawn with 100h and 100a.
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Setting handicap is disgraceful, disrespective and insultive. I'm glad that not too many good players do it.
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12-13-2017, 05:29 PM
(This post was last modified: 12-13-2017, 05:29 PM by Smilecythe.)
That's because there are more entertaining ways to be disrespective and insultive.
Such as using blaster only, or better yet: not using any weapons and winning 0 to -1.
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(12-13-2017, 05:29 PM)Smilecythe Wrote: That's because there are more entertaining ways to be disrespective and insultive.
Such as using blaster only, or better yet: not using any weapons and winning 0 to -1.
Those are less insultive than handicap IMO.
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12-14-2017, 11:37 AM
(This post was last modified: 12-14-2017, 11:37 AM by Smilecythe.)
(09-25-2017, 04:17 PM)martin-t Wrote: There's no point in fighting strong players, you're just wasting time when you can be spawnkilling slow noobs.
Of course there is. Your chances of winning are bigger if you take out the biggest threat first. If you focus on those slow noobs then that gives the strong player opportunity to gnaw you away from your stacks. When unarmed and unstacked, the strong players pose significantly less threat and are as valid for quick points as the newbies are. And if you prefer to think of DM as "racing to kill noobs the fastest" then think of hunting a strong player as "sabotaging your rival".
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(12-13-2017, 04:05 PM)morosophos Wrote: Setting handicap is disgraceful, disrespective and insultive. I'm glad that not too many good players do it.
Could you elaborate how it is disgraceful, disrespective and insultive? We're talking about FFA DM here. How would I offend anyone if I set a handicap to myself so that I end up in the middle of the scoring board at the end of the game?
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(12-14-2017, 03:39 PM)Halogene Wrote: (12-13-2017, 04:05 PM)morosophos Wrote: Setting handicap is disgraceful, disrespective and insultive. I'm glad that not too many good players do it.
Could you elaborate how it is disgraceful, disrespective and insultive? We're talking about FFA DM here. How would I offend anyone if I set a handicap to myself so that I end up in the middle of the scoring board at the end of the game?
Cause it's like publicly tell "You're all rickety noobs and it's not fun to play with you full strength". I don't want to argue about that really, just wanted to mention how it looks from my noobish side.
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(12-14-2017, 04:22 PM)morosophos Wrote: (12-14-2017, 03:39 PM)Halogene Wrote: (12-13-2017, 04:05 PM)morosophos Wrote: Setting handicap is disgraceful, disrespective and insultive. I'm glad that not too many good players do it.
Could you elaborate how it is disgraceful, disrespective and insultive? We're talking about FFA DM here. How would I offend anyone if I set a handicap to myself so that I end up in the middle of the scoring board at the end of the game?
Cause it's like publicly tell "You're all rickety noobs and it's not fun to play with you full strength". I don't want to argue about that really, just wanted to mention how it looks from my noobish side.
I've seen that sentiment seconded on my server before. I don't know about the European crowd.
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(12-14-2017, 11:37 AM)Smilecythe Wrote: (09-25-2017, 04:17 PM)martin-t Wrote: There's no point in fighting strong players, you're just wasting time when you can be spawnkilling slow noobs.
Of course there is. Your chances of winning are bigger if you take out the biggest threat first. If you focus on those slow noobs then that gives the strong player opportunity to gnaw you away from your stacks. When unarmed and unstacked, the strong players pose significantly less threat and are as valid for quick points as the newbies are. And if you prefer to think of DM as "racing to kill noobs the fastest" then think of hunting a strong player as "sabotaging your rival".
I m not sure it makes a noticeable difference. On public servers, there is usually me, one or two other competent players and like 5 newbies who always run towards the enemy with shotgun. If i kill one of the competent players, it'll barely slow him down because there are so many easy targets that he doesn't even need strong weapons or a good stack to keep getting kills fast.
It's similar with DM in campaign. The bots may not be good but winning DM with many of them is hard because they just get lots of kills from each other despite dying A LOT too. I think in DM you should lose 1 / (number_of_players - 1) points for each death. E.g. with 3 players it's -0.5 points per death - assuming you get killed by each of them roughly equally you give each of them your_number_of_deaths / 2 points which means statistically you're 0.5 points farther from winning with each death. The game would still end with 30 kills but the score would indicate who played DM well and who was just a frag farm.
Of course it doesn't solve the case where 10 players vote for a tiny map but then with more and more players the game is more and more about randomness anyway.
Similarly in 2 team TDM you should lose 1 point for each death - you just gave a point to the enemy team so you're hurting your team and it should be reflected in your personal score and by extension Elo. Note i am not saying your team should lose a point. Team score = number of kills of all its players. Personal score = kills - deaths.
<packer> when i see martin-t's name my blood pressure increases
< [BOT]Hоtdоg> anyone here lives near martin?
< [BOT]Hоtdоg> will pay monies for shooting him
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About handicap - it's better than nothing (nothing == clearing the server) but it feels really arbitrary - like "hmm, without handicap i win 30:5, with 1.5 i end up in the middle, let's see if i can still win with 1.2". What's even the point of playing if you can just decide whether you win or not? Dynamic handicap (with reasonable settings) that shows up in the scoreboard might be a bit better but i still think it's a crude temporary solution until we actually figure out a good public/casual balance.
<packer> when i see martin-t's name my blood pressure increases
< [BOT]Hоtdоg> anyone here lives near martin?
< [BOT]Hоtdоg> will pay monies for shooting him
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What I don't like about these so called newbie balances is that they're generally not inline with what newbies want and instead are presumptive of it. Of the proposals I've seen they seem generally intended to lower the difference between two differently skilled players, which doesn't really help. For example, there are newbies that want to learn how to play the game, but the casual-focused (i,e newbies are not necessarily casual gamers) addition of adding uncertainty / randomness throws a wrench into the process. Fundamentally, it adds more inconsistent rules that overall complicate the game.
For example, when I try coaching someone sometimes the interaction I get is explaining the different rules across balance settings because somethings aren't occuring when they normally would be.
"why can't I pick up this item" (XPM)
"why am I moving slower" (XDF w/o strafing)
Before I get handwaved as a non-newbie, a year of playing experience isn't going to change my perspective regarding RNG in PvP games. This is a fundamental concept I've had a concept of before playing Xonotic.
Overall I think it's a completely misunderstanding that fiddling with numbers on the balance cvar is going to help the situation. Especially when "newb mode" is going to add another balance set to the 2-3 existent ones.
You guys can at least start with loading screen tips that every game does nowadays. Or something that CSGO does which while loading it shows the layout of the map and a brief description of rules that may vary. That way it at least seems as if there was an in-game attempt at conveying useful information.
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(12-15-2017, 01:01 PM)martin-t Wrote: If i kill one of the competent players, it'll barely slow him down because there are so many easy targets that he doesn't even need strong weapons or a good stack to keep getting kills fast.
From personal experience (86% winrate) every tight DM game that I've had were the ones where I died a lot, these are also typically the games that takes the longest to finish. While in the other hand, games where I die less end faster. That is simply because you can kill faster with stronger weapons and a good resource management allows you to maintain that throughout the game.
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Maybe this is a weird idea, but i think the vanila version is actually good. There are two groups and none is happy. This can only mean its right in the middle.
From my perspectiv the movement goood as you get easily into it and achieve something quickly, but on the otherhandside there is still stuff to learn.
(12-17-2017, 09:09 AM)Smilecythe Wrote: From personal experience (86% winrate) every tight DM game that I've had were the ones where I died a lot, these are also typically the games that takes the longest to finish. While in the other hand, games where I die less end faster. That is simply because you can kill faster with stronger weapons and a good resource management allows you to maintain that throughout the game. You know that you are a bad example and that this is a bad example. You always need to add the amount of players on the map into the equation.
If there are many players on a big map, you can do easily a lot of damage, but its hard to get stacked up (you die more). If there many players on a small map, its just pure randomness. You can have luck and spawn near a weapon, but its more likely you will end up with just a shotgun. Gearing up can take time and there is a high chance you are not even able to gear up. This is of course the scenario where you die the most.
<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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12-18-2017, 07:36 PM
(This post was last modified: 12-18-2017, 07:37 PM by Smilecythe.)
Quote:You know that you are a bad example and that this is a bad example.
Am I a bad example because I'm a strong player? The claim is that you should not hunt the "strong players" because it's a waste of time, so my perspective should be sufficient. I know from my experience that letting me off the hook like that just works in my benefit. If killing me feels like a waste of time, then it's because I get my stack back too easily without a contest. In which case it's not a waste of time, but bad read on a situation.
I also know that if I simply went shotgun only without paying attention to stronger weapons/armors, I might be getting frags at a more consistent rate but I'd also be dying more frequently. That's why I invest on weapons/armors, because they allow me to get many frags at once and FASTER while messing the flow of other players.
Quote:You always need to add the amount of players on the map into the equation.
The size of the map, the amount of players or the lack of resources doesn't change the fact that the less you die, the more time you get to spend on fragging people.
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12-19-2017, 10:15 AM
(This post was last modified: 12-19-2017, 10:16 AM by kojn^.)
The truth is the balance like most aFPS these days, is based around the hardcore players.
Casual players just do not have the ability to hit multiple nex shots in a row or combo with several weapon with the high accuracy so many of you can, it's no surprise Xonotic (which isn't alone in this either) struggles to keep players.
Just look at the weapon damage and see how hard it is for someone to frag another player, from a beginners perspective.
I mean you would expect a direct hit rocket to frag someone off the spawn, but it doesn't, crylink which should be like a close-up shotgun / flak cannon and rip through people in a similar way - doesn't, it's the same with most of the weapons.
Is it any reason that aFPS games only sustain a dwindling player base these days? If you look at all of the popular modes in Xonotic that have come and gone on public servers (Overkill for example), they were easily accessible, fun to play and weapons were particularly juicy to use. None of this applies anymore in the modern aFPS world. Reflex, QC, UT4 - all built around the 'competitive' players requirements.
Which is basically uber balanced weapons and little fun anymore for the casual gamer, there's nothing wild or exciting about them in terms of weapons. Just take a look at the original UT's sniper compared to the one in UT4. One you could even as a casual gamer get a double-kill / multi-kill maybe with a bit of luck and some aim, same with flak-cannon, shock rifle. You only need to watch footage of UT4 to see none of that exists for a casual gamer.
The same applies for practically all of the new aFPS games, they've mostly lost there sense of enjoyment and cater to the hardcore crowd / competitive players. Each one trying to create a 'competitive game', when you were a noobie you played for fun because the game was fun, all of the original FPS games from the past spawned a competitive scene - they weren't made as competitive games!!
The Xonotic vanilla mode or balance just isn't fun for majority of casual gamers. I'm sure most will disagree with me but just look at the trend with most of the new aFPS games. QL was the nearest thing to being enjoyable for a casual but even that was a watered down version of Quake 3.
#deathmatchers @ irc.quakenet.org
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@smilecythe Ok, after a recent game, I have to admit dying did slow me down quite a bit. OTOH, there were at least 2 players who attempted to time items so i didn't get H/A nearly as easily as normal (and had to time myself which i find incredibly annoying when playing to relax).
@Cortez666, @kojn^ I don't think the balance is good: http://xonotic.org/posts/2017/2016-by-the-numbers/. Mortar, vortex and RL are clearly the primary weapons and the others are underused and usually underpowered (except their niches which tend to be small rooms for crylink, hagar and electro and MG is a bad substitute for nex if you don't have nex and the enemy is far).
I also hate how the weapons are all made for close range so on any at least slightly open maps and especially in CTF, vortex it THE main weapon and if you don't have it, you have to go grab it NOW or there's no point for you going after the flag or FC.
@Smile i like your idea of 100% self damage, i think it would nicely reduce the usefulness of blaster is casual/public games. When i showed xon to friends, most had a negative reaction to blaster movement tricks.
I'd say these are the main things xon needs to fix to be accessible: - Default weapon binds that make weapon combos possible with WASD so players can do enough damage fast enough (currently that means mortar,vortex,RL on Q,E,C or similar and a SANE wheel switching order because it's easy to learn even though not optimal)
- Movement tutorial (EACFreddy started work on it in the maps repo so to everyone who can stand radiant for more than 5 minutes: *don't* start yet another unfinished one, help him instead)
- Item jitter for megas (when i see a player timing, i do it too and i know how hard it's for me to kill them let alone a newbie) - i think 10 s would be enough for avg. 5 s waiting time. You can still time and get a benefit but it's not such a massive advantage.
- Health/armor caps (probably 150/150). There are 25h everywhere and I often get up to 200 with them, it's just too much. This also needs a HUD indicator to make it clear what's happening and that it's possible to go above with the right items. The health bar in general needs to show the outline so players don't think 100 is the max, the part above the limit could be slightly greyed out or something.
@Antares* after playing vanilla a bit more i see why you think randomness is a bad idea but i really insist we should try item jitter in casual balance. The h/a difference between strong and weak players is just too much and they can't get a kill without random luck.
<packer> when i see martin-t's name my blood pressure increases
< [BOT]Hоtdоg> anyone here lives near martin?
< [BOT]Hоtdоg> will pay monies for shooting him
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Quote:I also hate how the weapons are all made for close range so on any at least slightly open maps and especially in CTF, vortex it THE main weapon and if you don't have it, you have to go grab it NOW or there's no point for you going after the flag or FC.
You are not going to change the situation with Vortex and "close range" projectiles based weapons on wide open maps by fiddling with balance cvars. It is basically a challenge to deal with the travel time on those maps, and there are less walls and constrained spaces to splash on. Meanwhile less or no interrupted lines of sight and not having to deal with a traveling projectile makes Vortex a logical choice over much others.
The game simply needs more CTF maps that have a balance between corridors (or general areas where projectiles are viable) and strong lines of sight for hitscan weaponry. A lot of the CTF maps are currently strongly biased for the latter.
Quote:@Antares* after playing vanilla a bit more i see why you think randomness is a bad idea but i really insist we should try item jitter in casual balance. The h/a difference between strong and weak players is just too much and they can't get a kill without random luck.
I think both are bad ideas despite your good intentions. You are simply adding uncertainty to the game that didn't exist before in both cases.
Ultimately adding different rulesets is adding to the learning curve in its own way.
That I think you should stop conflating new players with casuals.
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(12-21-2017, 06:00 AM)Antares* Wrote: Quote:I also hate how the weapons are all made for close range so on any at least slightly open maps and especially in CTF, vortex it THE main weapon and if you don't have it, you have to go grab it NOW or there's no point for you going after the flag or FC.
You are not going to change the situation with Vortex and "close range" projectiles based weapons on wide open maps by fiddling with balance cvars. It is basically a challenge to deal with the travel time on those maps, and there are less walls and constrained spaces to splash on. Meanwhile less or no interrupted lines of sight and not having to deal with a traveling projectile makes Vortex a logical choice over much others.
The game simply needs more CTF maps that have a balance between corridors (or general areas where projectiles are viable) and strong lines of sight for hitscan weaponry. A lot of the CTF maps are currently strongly biased for the latter.
Not with the current cvars but we could implement additional behaviors for certain weapons: - Hagar nad RL rockets could accelerate so they're about the same at close range but reach farther places faster than now. (There might already be code for this now)
- Hagar rockets could gently steer towards enemies. This could work against (vortex) campers too since you could be partially/completely hidden while shooting at them.
- Electro primary could start discharging bolts of lightning after certain distance.
- Arc (if/when it replaces MG) could fire a bolt into the wall/enemy and then arc between the gun and the bolt.
- There was also a suggestion vortex shots could pass though enemies at close range but stay inside them at longer ranges, then explode. Then vortex could be nerfed at close range while staying the same at long so it's not such a superweapon as now.
(12-21-2017, 06:00 AM)Antares* Wrote: Quote:@Antares* after playing vanilla a bit more i see why you think randomness is a bad idea but i really insist we should try item jitter in casual balance. The h/a difference between strong and weak players is just too much and they can't get a kill without random luck.
I think both are bad ideas despite your good intentions. You are simply adding uncertainty to the game that didn't exist before in both cases.
Ultimately adding different rulesets is adding to the learning curve in its own way.
That I think you should stop conflating new players with casuals.
Fair point but as Lyberta said, most players now are newbie casuals and they have the most trouble getting used to AFPSes from other games (which imho usually are TFPSes). Casuals (new or experienced) would forever stay in vanilla casual. Getting pros coming from other games interested in xon is then only a matter of clearly advertising there is a pro balance (XPM) and it's differences. Having different limits in casual and XPM would not be an issue since it would be visually shown in the HUD. Jitter in casual shouldn't annoy pros because they should be playing XPM and it shouldn't confuse casuals since they never play XPM and probably don't care about items that much either.
In general is am in favor of few clearly defined differeces between XPM and casual rather than minor tweaks to many cvars but casual should not be defined by the whims of duel players.
<packer> when i see martin-t's name my blood pressure increases
< [BOT]Hоtdоg> anyone here lives near martin?
< [BOT]Hоtdоg> will pay monies for shooting him
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