Dev. Journal: squeek. (2011-11-30)

[FF_Team]

I thought I'd try something out. I'm going to talk about an idea that we tried for a while in the beta but ultimately scrapped, why we ending up removing it, and what we replaced it with.

One thing that we try to do is look at every mechanic in the game and form some sort of consensus on it with regards to the following questions: Is it good for the game? Does it need to be replaced or removed? If so, what is worth keeping about it? And other questions along those lines.

In this process, some mechanics stand out in terms of needing replacement. One such mechanic was the soldier's nail grenade, which stood out because, essentially, the correct use of it was spam. There was no depth, no interactivity, and no skill involved both in its use and its avoidance. This is a huge problem, because it means that it's not fun to play against, kills that were netted from it didn't feel earned, and therefore it would primarily cause frustration. This is a post from a thread on the beta forums about it:

Originally Posted by squeek.

1. The nail pattern isn't interactive. To avoid damage you just can't go near it.
2. The explosion at the end is only effective against people that accidentally run into it. Running through a nailgren is a gamble; sometimes it explodes, sometimes it doesn't, and it's not dependent on anything the soldier is/was doing (when he threw it he never could have predicted [even with wallhacks] that you'd go there at that specific time, he was just guessing).

So, we went about thinking of replacements. There are a few criteria for class-specific grenades: that it conforms with or strengthens the role of the class and/or that it creates a deep moment-to-moment choice about which type of grenade to prime (the Medic choosing between frags and concs is a good example of this type of depth).

Our first idea was called the vert grenade. It converted horizontal momentum into vertical momentum; in other words, it slowed people down and popped them up in the air. This works quite well with the soldier because it creates an opportunity for a rocket airshot, buys time for reloading, creates an easy rocket shot when they land, or creates an easy opportunity for getting a few shotgun blasts in.

the vert grenade in all its glory

This was all well and good. It was interactive, it created some amount of depth in grenade choice, and it conformed with the role of the soldier. But, it was not as thrilling in practice. The huge, glaring problem was that it was really, really difficult to use because of the 4 second grenade timer. Elmo summed it up well in a post on the dev forums:

Originally Posted by Elmo

[If you think,] "Someone should be coming around the corner soon, it's been a while. I'll prime a vert gren"

With the vert grenade, the effect is so quick that the chance of getting someone with it in this way is very low. (it's wasted)

[If you think,] "Aha a victim, I'll prime a vert gren *primed*"

The chances are that they will avoid you (wasted) or frequently the fight is over in under 4 seconds (wasted).

So to make this grenade work (as it is now) you either have to....

• increase the duration of the effect in the hope it will get someone (likely that you didn't intend to hit)
• OR
• Reduce the timer so that you can hit the intended person before the fight is over.

Neither are good solutions...

Say you primed it AND you actually hit them - woo about fucking time....

Most maps have a low-ish roof, especially in CTF around choke points that a soldier would be defending. I DO NOT believe maps should be made FOR vert grens, we need to make a gren that can be used in multiple spaces and surroundings.

With low approval by beta members and playtests with the vert grenade not feeling quite right, we decided to try something else. That something else ended up being the laser grenade.

an early/alternate version of the laser grenade with nails for arms

The original idea, suggested by caesium, was for a grenade similar to the original nail grenade but with defined arms. After some discussion, we settled on an idea that we could work with and got to coding it. Both nails and lasers were tried, but we ended up going with lasers because the nail version was simply too expensive. Lasers had the added bonus of being really simple to team-color, among other small benefits.

Luckily, the laser grenade worked as well in practice as we thought it would in theory. It solved all of the problems with the nail grenade while retaining the nail grenade's area denial ability. Removing the explosion at the end solves the nail grenade's need-for-spam/luck. Making the arms of the laser grenade dodgable creates a level of interactivity that the nail grenade could never have dreamed of attaining. It conforms with the soldiers role and was fun to use and play against. It ticked all the boxes and after extensive testing we decided it was worthy of inclusion in patch 2.42.

Finally, to sum up:

Originally Posted by squeek.

The laser grenade is similar to the nail grenade, but also entirely different. It does damage in an area, making people want to avoid it. But, the damage is dodgable if you behave in a certain manner. This creates an interesting dynamic, because if there is no one around, you can dodge the damage fairly easily (meaning spamming is less effective, and damage from it always feels deserved [you failed to dodge it well]); but, if there is someone around (say the soldier that threw the grenade), your movement as you dodge the damage becomes MUCH more predictable, making it easier for the soldier to hit you. Once you get into that loop, there is a lot of depth and interactivity (avoiding damage makes me easier to hit with rockets, should I take some damage from the laser grenade? should I hang back and wait? etc...) All are viable and potentially logical choices, dependent on both the situation and the actions of each player. That is what we are looking for.

Anything can be made effective. We want to try to make our mechanics effective, interactive, deep, and fun wherever possible (and jump roping laser grenades is rather fun ).

And so that's that. Let me know on the forums if you'd like to see more of this type of dev journal.

P.S. Be on the look out for a hefty laser grenade damage increase in patch 2.44 (coming soon!).

[Agent Buckshot Moose]

Originally Posted by FF_Team

P.S. Be on the look out for a hefty laser grenade damage increase in patch 2.44 (coming soon!).

Assuming there are servers that have the grenade enabled. Heeeeyoooo!

[NeonLight]

Yes yes moar squirk this was great. I tweeted about it so hopefully we'll get some more views. Should probably post about it on the official twitter account.

[FDA_Approved]

Really enjoyed the insight. Seems like a very logical improvement. Maybe more servers would have it enabled if they took a second to think anout the points you've listed here.

[Gwarsbane]

I was talking with the OT people about this last night, and we all agree that we are more then willing to give it a try.

Only reasons why they reverted back to the nail grenade was because it was far more useful and did more damage.

As a spy/demo/pyro/heavy, the nail grenade made me think, it made me want to get out of the area (large area). It made me not want to attempt jumping past it because I have no idea when its going to go off. The laser grenade however, just made me laugh as a spy/demo/pyro/heavy. The lasers didn't go out very far. I hardly took any damage from them, and as long as I jumped over the lasers I didn't have to worry about any explosion taking me out.

If you really believe all it was used for was spam, then thats sad. It was a good area denial feature.

Changes I think that would make players happy would be...

Make the lasers do more damage (you've already said you're doing that, so thats good)

Make the grenade float up and down a little (maybe 3 or 4 in game feet) This would make it harder to jump past it or over it.

Extend the lasers out further (2 or 3 times their current length) This would help making it an area denial device again.

Have it do something at the end, explode or maybe cause a mini emp effect. (1/10 the damage of the engi emp for the whole radius of the lasers reach (over top and below the grenade too)) Lasers get sucked in, then half a second later boom.

And remember these suggestions are coming from someone who hardly ever plays soldier, I'm always going up against the laser/nail grenade.

It just does not make me want to avoid the area as it is right now. Maybe with the damage increase it might, I will give it a chance and so will the OT people.

[squeek.]

Originally Posted by Gwarsbane

If you really believe all it was used for was spam, then thats sad. It was a good area denial feature.

I think this just comes down to the definition of spam.

Originally Posted by AfterShock

any time you place/prime/throw/fire any weapon without knowledge of where your enemy is, hoping to do damage by pure luck, that's spam.

There was no other way to use the nail grenade. The way it got kills was with the explosion at the end. There was no possible way you could throw it to intentionally kill someone with the explosion. It's simply not possible to see that far into the future. You would throw the grenade and just hope someone is unlucky enough to run into it as it explodes. Almost no one that I've ever seen even primed the nail grenade at all, they would just toss them into high traffic places and (more often than not) run away from them, just hoping they'd be useful.

Now, by this definition, the laser grenade could also be considered somewhat spammy. But, the difference is, laser grenades do not become more useful when spammed, they become a lot less useful. Throwing a laser grenade or two in a high traffic area and moving away from them makes it very easy for enemies to dodge that damage. Laser grenades are most useful when you are nearby to take advantage of the predictable movement of someone dodging the laser grenade damage, forcing them to take the damage in favor of unpredictable movement, or influencing their decisions in a myriad of other ways.