What do you think of the Sentry Gun?

[chilledsanity]

Originally Posted by Born_In_Xixax

The TFC sentry was less aware - not sure whether it rotated slower (think so) or detected enemies less quickly/accurately - but the FF sentry seems to pick targets and start shooting much more quickly.

This is mostly true, however TFC speeds were also much slower. Now maybe conc'ing in was about the same, but for everyone else, the TFC sg could grab you dead to rights. So yes, FF guns lock on quicker, but everyone is moving quicker as well. I consider this an example of balancing to maintain a similar effect.

Originally Posted by Born_In_Xixax

However, the TFC sentry was much more disruptive. Once it acquired you, you were pushed/pinned/incapacitated/dead in extremely short order. It seems to take longer for even light classes to die from a FF sentry.

This is why the sg feels so weak now. AvD games relied heavily on this to prevent people from capping. In FF you can literally run right up to an sg. You probably won't live, but that's enough time to drop your payload and take it out (or to cap the flag). In TFC you could not walk right up to an active sentry, it was impossible. You had to approach it from an off angle, fly in, be a spy, etc. and had to use some real strategy and/or teamwork to your approach. The whole point of sentries was that it prevented people from just flying in and ending the rounds in a fraction of the time, like offense does now.

Originally Posted by Born_In_Xixax

As far as splash damage, I haven't noticed much difference from TFC - in either FF or TFC if you push right up against the gun you will receive rocket splash, but if you hang back a bit, all splash is blocked.

FF guns provide no splash protection. The only "protection" it provides is that the point of detonation is in front of your gun and doesn't extend past that, even though the damage and knockback does. I remember being able to hug TFC guns a lot of the time and it would block a lot of it. Even if I took damage, I would rarely be shoved back (thus preventing me from repairing my gun). Now I'm not necessarily advocating that an sg should be hugging his gun the whole time, but this is a notable difference between the two games and is a big part of the reason TFC guns stayed up so much longer and is worth considering for balance reasons. If you take this away or it can't be implemented (as is the case), it needs something more to compensate.

Originally Posted by Born_In_Xixax

It might be interesting to see the following metrics documented for TFC, FF 1, 2.1:

I think ground push and air push is essential to be included on that list in terms of comparing what's happened.

Originally Posted by Born_In_Xixax

In general I would like to see the sentry be more effective while up, but more difficult to get up - making success of the enemy team more dependent on getting the gun down and keeping it down. in TFC the HW/engy were the immoveable objects that the offense had to solve in order to succeed. IMHO the sentry is a bit anemic in FF - especially when facing the frenetically increased speed of all the offensive classes. (The HW is very anemic in FF, but that's a different thread...)

Couldn't agree more. I think the sentry should be an investment that can do its job rather than a half assed measure that's simply easier to get up. One idea I've seen proposed that's gotten ignored a few times is to have lock-on time related to where it's aiming. FF has great aiming controls. So if an enemy is running at a corridor that you have your gun TRAINED on, he is dead, end of story. However, if he comes from a side corridor that's 90 degrees off, lower the rotation speed so that the gun will take notably longer to rotate into position and start attacking. This solves multiple problems:

-It would create blind spots so O could still punch through (thus emphasizing their manuevering skill rather than just running in and ignoring it as long as possible)

-It's a way to beef the gun back up without overpowering it in every situation.

-It would add a little more strategy to the class by making risk decisions about the best place to aim your gun.

[squeek.]

There are not enough options in the poll to make the results useful at all. There should be at least 5 options, but 7 would be ideal (overpowered, somewhat overpowered, barely overpowered, balanced, barely underpowered, somewhat underpowered, underpowered). Forcing hardline stances on something so obviously nuanced is ridiculous.

[Bridget]

Originally Posted by squeek.

There are not enough options in the poll to make the results useful at all. There should be at least 5 options, but 7 would be ideal (overpowered, somewhat overpowered, barely overpowered, balanced, barely underpowered, somewhat underpowered, underpowered). Forcing hardline stances on something so obviously nuanced is ridiculous.

The point was to prove that the community can agree on some things. It would have been overcomplicated if there were that many choices. People should be supplementing their vote with an explanation that explains the degree of how badly overpowered or underpowered they see it. Even if I had added those options, you would still be reliant on an explanation of why people choose it, which ultimately reveals that same degree. Lol inference!

[chilledsanity]

Originally Posted by squeek

There are not enough options in the poll to make the results useful at all.

Wrong. If you were to act on the results of this poll (I'm assuming it will have no impact, but just speaking hypothetically), you could assume that you should not weaken the sg any further.

Originally Posted by squeek

here should be at least 5 options, but 7 would be ideal (overpowered, somewhat overpowered, barely overpowered, balanced, barely underpowered, somewhat underpowered, underpowered).

That wouldn't be very useful. If I think it's relatively balanced against scouts and horrible against all other classes, what do I pick? What if all I play is scout? What if I never play scout? The poll wouldn't allow any consideration. You just get a mess of obfuscation on the issue and no agreement would be made.

Originally Posted by squeek

Forcing hardline stances on something so obviously nuanced is ridiculous.

Not when the changes to it have become so blunt, it's no longer something nuanced.

Squeek from posts I've seen you make, you tend to drift to the perfect solution fallacy. By that I mean you see an issue that there's not going to be a full consensus on, so rather than try to ford a solution that will compromise and please the maximum amount of people to some extent, nothing is done instead. It's sort of a variant of the Polish Parliament mentality.

Here's what I would do if I were in your shoes:

Start a thread asking the community what they think the biggest problem areas are of the game. Get as many specifics as possible. Some problems may only apply to people playing O, some may only apply to pickup CTF, some may only apply to AvD, etc. Look for trends to see if there's any overlap. Also look at the quality of the explanation. If somebody just says "x class sucks, we should get rid of it" and nothing else, that should carry almost no weight compared to someone explaining in detail why X problem is a problem, specific situations it occurs in, what can be done to fix it, etc. Once you identify some trends, ask people to propose solutions to the problems that have gotten the most attention. You can take the top solutions and make a poll out of that. For ones without a clear majority, you can either force one solution that makes the most sense or attempt a compromise between two.

Finally, I'd make all of this very public. I'm not saying make the mod completely democratic, but you can use people to determine where the problems lie and what can be changed to stop more from leaving the mod. If someone's proposed change is in a minority and/or is problematic, have a trail of evidence showing it. Don't have total clandestine development of ideas, with people left completely in the dark, thinking they have zero influence. They don't know if devs are ignoring their ideas, are even aware of them, whether their ideas are in the majority. The tracker system supposedly solves the "aware of" problem, but since we never know what happens as a result of that (whether it's ignored, devs don't want to work on it, one guy overrides the idea, etc.), it leaves us just as much in the dark. Whether it is or not, FF certainly LOOKS like a one-way street.

Originally Posted by Bridget

The point was to prove that the community can agree on some things. It would have been overcomplicated if there were that many choices. People should be supplementing their vote with an explanation that explains the degree of how badly overpowered or underpowered they see it. Even if I had added those options, you would still be reliant on an explanation of why people choose it, which ultimately reveals that same degree. Lol inference!

Yeah pretty much. The votes would have been more spread out then, thus re-enforcing the concept that nothing could be agreed on, and fueling the perfect solution fallacy further. I guess I see now why the decision making process takes a long time.

[squeek.]

Perhaps "useful" wasn't the right word (though I still think it may have been). The results don't provide us with any new information. Okay, the community agrees that the SG is underpowered. So, what now? Does that require a drastic overhaul? A few small tweaks? Changes to the SG? Changes to other classes?

I understand that the responses to the thread will provide that information, but then why even include the poll? If you are going to point to the poll to prove any point you may have, it's just not going to help (even if the point is "See, we can agree on something!"; you're not showing that the community is at odds with the dev team). If there were more options, and, say, "Barely underpowered" got a large majority of the votes, then it'd be quite obvious that a small damage increase/push increase might be a decent quick solution. If "Underpowered" won, then it'd be clear that we'd need to look at testing more drastic changes.

[chilledsanity]

Originally Posted by squeek

The results don't provide us with any new information. Okay, the community agrees that the SG is underpowered.

It's "new" enough. At what point was there a recognition of this trend in the community? A month ago? This year? To me, these are the same old arguments ever since it got nerfed heavily 2 years ago. The main difference is now there seem to be less people saying it's fine (if they left FF, the irony on that would be pretty thick). Also I address this question to any dev, not just squeek.

Originally Posted by squeek

] I understand that the responses to the thread will provide that information, but then why even include the poll?

My guess is without the numbers of Bridget's poll to back it up, some devs would still be saying there's no consensus in the community on the issue, thus undermining action and direction on the issue. So this does accomplish something. While it's a small sample (but hey, FF has a small playerbase), 85% is pretty damn high.

Originally Posted by squeek

] If there were more options, and, say, "Barely underpowered" got a large majority of the votes, then it'd be quite obvious that a small damage increase/push increase might be a decent quick solution. If "Underpowered" won, then it'd be clear that we'd need to look at testing more drastic changes.

This won't help for two reasons:

One: say you play primarily as a scout. The sg is ALWAYS going to be overpowered. You play the weakest class in the game, your opinion shouldn't count for much on this issue. Now say you only play pickup CTF as engy where you only have light classes to contend with. You'll probably think the sg is great, since you don't have to deal with heavier classes. This is worth noting for that game mode, but a bad basis to make a whole decision on. Now say you're like me and focus on AvD where you think the sg has become a joke and almost never see the situations where it's actually effective. That's also worth nothing for that gamemode. It's essential to consider the source and the situations where it is or isn't working so you can get the full picture. "Slightly underpowered" just doesn't do that.

Two: Pretend 70% of people put "majorly underpowered." Decisions made primarily off that can be just as bad. Say the pickup scout selects that, because he can never outrun the gun. That suggests that the tracking speed should maybe be lowered. Now say the AvD defense guy selects that because the gun doesn't stop head-on attackers from capping, even though they die. That suggests the gun needs more push. Now say the dev team sees "strongly overpowered" and increases the gun's damage and rotation speed, but leaves push the same. This would indeed make it stronger, but would still not help either party who selected the option. Then you get more people complaining because the problem wasn't solved and the dev team sees this as the FF community not knowing what they want. Hard to imagine, I'm sure.

Originally Posted by squeek

] If "Underpowered" won, then it'd be clear that we'd need to look at testing more drastic changes.

Well since "underpowered" with 3 options won, I think drastic corrections make sense since it was drastic changes that made it underpowered in the first place.

[xks]

Either it needs to have poor damage output/low push and be much harder to kill, or it needs to have good damage output/high push and die as easily as it does right now.

[episkopos]

I accept the sentry gun is severely underpowered, but I don't like it as a weapon. Sentry guns are what turn a TF2 2fort game into a boring stalemate.

[Iggy]

It shouldn't be unkillable. Everyone agrees to that. But it shouldn't be killable by a lone scout out in the open, either(unless he's out of the SG's range).

Like I said.... set it as close to the TFC settings as you can, and tweak it from there.

[KubeDawg]

I'm still waiting on a level 7 SG, damnit.

What if the SG could be upgraded to a 4th level?

[Elmo]

FIRING BABIES!

Puts the class out of action while the throws up covered in baby blood

[moosh]

Originally Posted by KubeDawg

I'm still waiting on a level 7 SG, damnit.

What if the SG could be upgraded to a 4th level?

A level 4 SG would fire level 1 SGs which would fire frag grenades at the enemy at ultra high speeds.

[Elmo]

haha! You think we should stop before we derail his valid question?

Erm, yeah what would you hope to achieve by having another level over tweaking the 3 levels we have?

[Bridget]

If anything, the Sentry Gun should be level-less.

[moosh]

Originally Posted by Bridget

If anything, the Sentry Gun should be level-less.

I'm interested. Please tell us why.

[Bridget]

It reduces confusion. Some beginners presume there's only one level. Others spend a long time leveling their gun up only for it to die in a fraction of their investment time. It also gives the Engineer a chance to drop his gun and go about supporting it instead of having to waste time leveling it up. I know this can be fixed with better explanations, but it just feels redundant: the whole concept of leveling the gun up. I know it's there to put a delay on how fast sentry guns go up and have influence, but I think there are better ways to go about that. It would just feel more intuitive and polished with a single level sentry gun that fares well enough, without sucking and dying near instantly, and without being a total killing machine.

[KubeDawg]

Interesting. So the spanner would only be used to repair armor for humans and cells/health/armor for the SG.

How would you propose that be done? Something where it auto upgrades over time or just a level 3 SG built automatically without having to go through the first 2 levels?

The more I think about it the more I think something like that would drastically change the gameplay. Unless you had an outrageously high build time, which in itself would be a problem I could see people building a SG quickly and it fucking up everything in its path and by the time the next wave of attackers come through assuming the SG had been destroyed, another level 3 in its place? pfft, that's a big issue. You should have to work to get a SG to the level you want it to be at.

How about just 2 levels instead of 1 or 3? Mid level decreased firepower a small bit, then a level 2 SG that takes more cells to build and is more powerful than the current sg?

[Bridget]

The general idea is that you deploy the sentry. It looks like a level-3 sentry. It has the statistics of a level-1 sentry. The longer the gun stays up, the more powerful it gets, eventually becoming as powerful as a level-3. Now, I think this encourages positive feedback. If the offense flows well enough, they can lock down an Engineer with a poor sentry gun. If they slack behind, they end up letting it gain power.

There's always the problem of offensive Engineering coming from a single-level idea. I think something like this would prevent that. If you drop a sentry in front of a spawn, with people constantly coming out of it, it will hardly ever have the time available to build up power. The only problem I see from this is people getting mad their gun isn't an instant killing machine. The pickup community would especially find it frustrating.

You could keep levels with this suggestion, but I think it's redundant still. Plus, Engineers would be confused as to why their guns are magically changing form for seemingly no reason. Plus, you would need animations between level-changes for it to make any sense.

You guys could just add a bar over the SG that slowly filled to show its progress. The idea here is that it's upgrading, but can still fire and protect itself while doing so. It simply automates the hard work.

[Ricey]

Originally Posted by Bridget

The general idea is that you deploy the sentry. It looks like a level-3 sentry. It has the statistics of a level-1 sentry. The longer the gun stays up, the more powerful it gets, eventually becoming as powerful as a level-3. Now, I think this encourages positive feedback. If the offense flows well enough, they can lock down an Engineer with a poor sentry gun. If they slack behind, they end up letting it gain power.

It's two sided. Yes, it will make the engineer less confusing,but at the same time it loses it's depth as a character.

Level 1 Sentry guns take 22 shots to kill a full health solider.
Level 2 Same(I've been tweeking this damage % a bit with Neon we upped it by 1.5 it, seemed to feel more natural for it to do more damage.)
Level 3 If i remember correctly it is 12-14 shots.

Bridget, the beta server is up, I can change any cvar that is not commented out, and if it's something that you can't access, Any of the devs would be happy to open it up. Hop on the server and tell me what settings you want to mess with and i'll do it with you.

[chilledsanity]

Originally Posted by Ricey

It's two sided. Yes, it will make the engineer less confusing,but at the same time it loses it's depth as a character.

I doubt it's that two-sided as far as the devs are concerned. Almost every single idea I've proposed regarding new gameplay ideas (especially ones designed to please both sides) have been shot down on the basis of making the game more complicated, despite having existing mechanics that are already far more complicated. I've argued how several ideas would add more depth many times. Some examples are having a variable timer (or projection speed) for blue pipes, an alternate fire mode for hwguy, different values for league mode, and new engineer buildables.

I can almost guarantee that the dev team is going to lean towards making things simpler, rather than less complicated. I think the basis is that they're worried anything new with a nuance like other TFC mechanics might discourage new players. Bridget's idea may be an exception however, because it would be trying to reverse a long-held mechanic.