are you still playing FF? - Page 5

Pixel · 11-08-2010, 10:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iggy

The thing no one really ever says about OT, is that if you DO break the rules, but agree to abide by them after having your blunder pointed out, you'll usually get a second chance(except for cheating and outright racism, obviously). From what I've personally experienced on their servers, they seem to be pretty fair.

From my experience they just flat out ignore you.

**Elmo** · 11-08-2010, 11:08 PM

They were good to me the other day.. I went on and swore a few times as I have before now. They're like "ELMO!!" at which point I remember what server I'm on and try my hardest to refrain from my usual potty mouthed self. I never mean to, its a force of habbit hard to get out of!!

moosh · 11-09-2010, 05:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elmo

They were good to me the other day.. I went on and swore a few times as I have before now. They're like "ELMO!!" at which point I remember what server I'm on and try my hardest to refrain from my usual potty mouthed self. I never mean to, its a force of habbit hard to get out of!!

An English man being forced not to swear is like watching censored pornography. It just ain't right.

**Elmo** · 11-09-2010, 10:43 AM

hahaha

Gemini Saga · 11-10-2010, 06:05 PM

1. are you still playing FF?
No

2. if not, why not? busy, no time or just no interest?
No interest. For me FF seems a Half-Life 2 game, it's just too old when compared to today games. TF2 is just better now in my opinion.

3. are you gonna start playing again? giving the game another shot?
I play it rarely because I loved Team Fortress Classic.

JackBauer · 11-19-2010, 03:20 AM

excuse the lack of my knowledge, but does it take a big effort to change a certain class, e.g. make it stronger. what needs to be done?

do you have to change a few parameters? I imagine changing certain variables in different areas affect the overall strength of a class? that ain't a big deal, it's much more difficult finding the right balance among the 9 classes. is that correct?

**squeek.** · 11-19-2010, 05:16 AM

Yeah. It's easy to change values of things in the game (damage, speed, etc), but any changes can have unintended or unforeseen consequences (for example, changing the SG in certain ways might make offensive SGs strong).

**Ricey** · 11-19-2010, 05:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JackBauer

excuse the lack of my knowledge, but does it take a big effort to change a certain class, e.g. make it stronger. what needs to be done?

do you have to change a few parameters? I imagine changing certain variables in different areas affect the overall strength of a class? that ain't a big deal, it's much more difficult finding the right balance among the 9 classes. is that correct?

Few? A Good amount, just alone the SG is controlled by 15 or so? Each level has vars that control it, it takes hours of testing to get it just right.

chilledsanity · 11-19-2010, 05:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ricey

Few? A Good amount, just alone the SG is controlled by 15 or so? Each level has vars that control it, it takes hours of testing to get it just right.

Fuck that, try YEARS of testing for the sg apparently.

JackBauer · 11-19-2010, 02:00 PM

cheers for the info. Finding the right values is the real challenge then.

Bridget · 11-19-2010, 03:13 PM

Offensive Engineers wouldn't be a problem if the devs stopped trying to force certain classes to work only in certain roles. The best way to do things is to just implement classes and let people play the goddamn way they want to. Besides, if most people are playing the classes different than you envisioned, that might be a hint that you need to give up your vision, because it isn't fun at all.

I made a suggestion a while back for a way to prevent blatant o-Engineers. Make Sentry Guns deploy with 10% health and slowly ramp up to 100% and become a better killing machine than it is now. The only way to get the gun up is to have a break in between the offense, and then continuously pushing on offense to keep the gun locked down then becomes an actual strategy. Dropping a gun in someone's face or outside someone's spawn would just get destroyed immediately due to the time required before it could begin firing.

Sentry nests? That's what the Spy should be for. Give him some better anti-SG abilities, but you're going to have to scale them relative to the number of Sentry Guns in the area, because implementing a mechanic used to deal effectively with 3 or 4 sentries is just going to make the class OP as fuck against 1 or 2. Something like the Sapper in TF2, that drains at a rate relevant to the number of friendly Sentries in the area. The base rate should be mild, because getting 1 gun down should be an easy task already.

I'm not convinced that "finding the right values" is difficult. For the 2.42 patch, they suggested they would change the Sentry's push and damage values as a 'tie me over' before 2.5 releases in the next decade. Well, if it was that fucking easy, why didn't they do it before?

Iggy · 11-19-2010, 10:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by squeek.

Yeah. It's easy to change values of things in the game (damage, speed, etc), but any changes can have unintended or unforeseen consequences (for example, changing the SG in certain ways might make offensive SGs strong).

Given the time required to get an SG up to level 3, I don't see this as a problem. Think about it this way; if the Defense gives you time enough to set it up, they have only themselves to blame for it.

toaster^ · 11-20-2010, 12:29 AM

1. No

2. It hurts when I play, don't know why tho.

3. I would try and play again, but the above would prevent me from playing it, i think I need some painkillers or med packs, oh yes

**Crazycarl** · 11-20-2010, 01:12 AM

Finding the right values is tough, and here's why: what plays well in one map or situation can be horrible in another. As an example, let's use sg push. You can come up with a value that keeps demos from mirv-rushing effectively, but then maybe it ruins conc jumpers by landing a single shot. You can counter that by making it track slower, but then it becomes way too easy for scouts to strafe and conc past.

People have different ideas on what better values are. Is it better for sentries to stay up a long time under heavy fire, or should they have a shorter lifespan? The best the betas can do is pick some numbers, play a while, and let the devs know what was fun.

Skillet · 11-20-2010, 02:05 AM

Crazy Carl are you the same crazy carl that use to pay on pub servers like 3 years ago and were pretty new to the game?

**Crazycarl** · 11-20-2010, 02:20 AM

Maybe? Everyone was new to the game three years ago. I was playing TFC long before that, though.

chilledsanity · 11-20-2010, 02:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crazycarl

Finding the right values is tough, and here's why: what plays well in one map or situation can be horrible in another. As an example, let's use sg push. You can come up with a value that keeps demos from mirv-rushing effectively, but then maybe it ruins conc jumpers by landing a single shot. You can counter that by making it track slower, but then it becomes way too easy for scouts to strafe and conc past.

I realize it's not a 1:1 formula, but SPECIFICALLY what is wrong with TFC approximate push values? The answer I generally see to this question is a vague "FF is not TFC" without any other explanation.

You've said before that you personally are not sure why the sg push was nerfed so heavily, fine. Elmo doesn't seem to know this either, and I haven't seen one dev say in no uncertain terms WHY it was nerfed all to hell.

Since this is one of the bigger balance skewing changes in the game where nobody seems to know why it exists in the first place, what's the PROBLEM with upping the push values to TFC levels? What magically stops working in FF that DID work in TFC when that happens?

I don't understand this "let's just keep shooting in the dark and hope it turns out well" approach when:

1. Obviously a lot of players were happy with TFC values and that's such an obvious model to work off of.

2. The push values were broken 2 years ago and over the course of 4 patches since, they've only been changed ONCE to something that's still awful.

I think if you guys were actually serious about testing it, the 2.1 changes never would have happened, and there would have been many revisions since then if they did anyway.

I'm not saying TFC values are perfect and there's no room for improvement. I'm saying that THEY worked fine across all gamemodes in TFC, so if you guys can't decide what values are good for ff AND and have been willing to leave broken ones in place for essentially 2 years, what's the problem with rolling back values that were clearly better? What's stopping you? One person who doesn't regularly defend against soldiers and demoman without team support (i.e. pubs) saying the values are fine, therefore there's no community consensus?

**Crazycarl** · 11-20-2010, 03:47 AM

It's a different engine, with different physics. The sentry is coded completely differently. You can't just plug a number in and say, now it's the same as TFC.

This is from a dev thread I dug up, dated Jan. 2008, four months before I joined:

Quote:

I knew the push was off, but last night I did some pubbing and the push REALLY showed how out of balance it is with damage.

The ratio of push to damage is way off. On Congestus a level 3 sg was below/behind the small ramps, facing the NME base. As medic, I could jump from the flagroom, trimp on a smaller ramp and IF I had enough health, the SG would push me to my own base. My base's ramp was at enough distance that the SG did not pin me to the wall and I could drop down the main ramp. I was still alive and could then cap. There may have been a conc or explosion that added to my speed but I dont' really remember it. I know I was able to use SG push to assist me past the NME ramps several times.

This is just a guestimate, but I'd drop push by about 15-25% and up damage 10-15% or so. If you adjust the damage of the SG shells, does that throw off other weapons? Does the SG share a type of shell with other weapons?

After that, there was a discussion of exactly how to determine a sentry's rate of fire. Apparently, the HL2 bullet code prevented players from being pushed very much while on the ground, so I think they made seperate push variables: one for airborne players, and one for players touching the ground.

Quote:

Its push on the ground is too weak; its push in the air is too strong.

chilledsanity · 11-20-2010, 04:14 AM

Well I'm not sure that's the fairest comparison since I believe the infinite lock-on bug was still present back then, which would have accounted for such a huge boost (the gun would have hit you all the way across the map under the circumstances described). As for air push values v. ground push, I seem to remember those swapping between one of the version, I want to say either 1.0 and 1.1 or else 1.11 and 2.0. I thought those were separate values the whole time. If they are separate however, it seems that would make it EASIER to fix, since you wouldn't need one universal value. Though in all fairness, TFC sg's nailed you to the wall AND shredded you on both ground and air once they got a lock. I understand how it's a different engine, but I would think with separate values like that, you could emulate it with enough tweaking. 1.0 felt similar to TFC, although push may have been SLIGHTLY high, plus the tracking wasn't as good. In 2.0 the push and health was weakened, but the tracking was improved, so it was some give and take. Everything since then has been a total beatdown.

I'm still confused how this thread led to the present values however. That comment was made pre-2.0 and he's suggesting a drop of 15-25%. Between that and 2.1, (according to the changelogs) the actual change was about 92%, not 10-25. That's a big fucking difference. In 2.4 the push was boosted slightly so now the drop is "only" an 83% drop, which is still a big fucking difference.

**Crazycarl** · 11-20-2010, 04:53 AM

Well, that raises the question, do we really want sentries to pin people to walls? I take it you see that as an essential way to keep heavy classes at bay in AvD. For anyone who wants to evade or finesse a sentry, the high push can be really punitive. That makes it a really high risk action, and whether you think that's desireable is a matter of opinion.

Anyway, I don't know whether that thread led to an actual change that got shipped; it was an attempt to find out what the thought process was at that time.

11-08-2010, 11:08 PM	#82
Elmo Gets tickled by FF Fortress Forever Staff Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: UK Class/Position: Med Solly HW Gametype: Any/CTF Posts Rated Helpful 41 Times	They were good to me the other day.. I went on and swore a few times as I have before now. They're like "ELMO!!" at which point I remember what server I'm on and try my hardest to refrain from my usual potty mouthed self. I never mean to, its a force of habbit hard to get out of!! __________________ Support FF: Done: ff_monkey Done: ff_bases Done: ff_warpath Forever Doing: ff_medieval (beta#99999999)

11-09-2010, 10:43 AM	#84
Elmo Gets tickled by FF Fortress Forever Staff Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: UK Class/Position: Med Solly HW Gametype: Any/CTF Posts Rated Helpful 41 Times	hahaha __________________ Support FF: Done: ff_monkey Done: ff_bases Done: ff_warpath Forever Doing: ff_medieval (beta#99999999)

11-19-2010, 03:20 AM	#86
JackBauer Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: Switzerland Posts Rated Helpful 20 Times	excuse the lack of my knowledge, but does it take a big effort to change a certain class, e.g. make it stronger. what needs to be done? do you have to change a few parameters? I imagine changing certain variables in different areas affect the overall strength of a class? that ain't a big deal, it's much more difficult finding the right balance among the 9 classes. is that correct? __________________ Swiss Fortress Community

11-19-2010, 05:16 AM	#87
squeek. Stuff Do-er Lua Team Wiki Team Fortress Forever Staff Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Northern California Class/Position: Rallygun Shooter Gametype: Conc tag (you just wait) Affiliations: Mustache Brigade Posts Rated Helpful 352 Times	Yeah. It's easy to change values of things in the game (damage, speed, etc), but any changes can have unintended or unforeseen consequences (for example, changing the SG in certain ways might make offensive SGs strong). __________________ #FF.Pickup ¤ Fortress-Forever pickups My Non-official Maps Released FF_DM_Squeek - FF_2Mesa3_Classic - FF_Siege_Classic Beta FF_Myth - FF_Redlight_Greenlight Sick of the people on the internet, always moanin'. They just moan. - Karl Pilkington

11-19-2010, 02:00 PM	#90
JackBauer Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: Switzerland Posts Rated Helpful 20 Times	cheers for the info. Finding the right values is the real challenge then. __________________ Swiss Fortress Community

11-10-2010, 06:05 PM	#85
Gemini Saga Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: Rio de Janeiro - Brazil Class/Position: Soldier - D Gametype: Capture the Flag Posts Rated Helpful 1 Times	1. are you still playing FF? No 2. if not, why not? busy, no time or just no interest? No interest. For me FF seems a Half-Life 2 game, it's just too old when compared to today games. TF2 is just better now in my opinion. 3. are you gonna start playing again? giving the game another shot? I play it rarely because I loved Team Fortress Classic.

11-19-2010, 03:13 PM	#91
Bridget Banned Join Date: Sep 2008 Class/Position: Soldier Gametype: AVD Affiliations: TALOS Posts Rated Helpful 5 Times	Offensive Engineers wouldn't be a problem if the devs stopped trying to force certain classes to work only in certain roles. The best way to do things is to just implement classes and let people play the goddamn way they want to. Besides, if most people are playing the classes different than you envisioned, that might be a hint that you need to give up your vision, because it isn't fun at all. I made a suggestion a while back for a way to prevent blatant o-Engineers. Make Sentry Guns deploy with 10% health and slowly ramp up to 100% and become a better killing machine than it is now. The only way to get the gun up is to have a break in between the offense, and then continuously pushing on offense to keep the gun locked down then becomes an actual strategy. Dropping a gun in someone's face or outside someone's spawn would just get destroyed immediately due to the time required before it could begin firing. Sentry nests? That's what the Spy should be for. Give him some better anti-SG abilities, but you're going to have to scale them relative to the number of Sentry Guns in the area, because implementing a mechanic used to deal effectively with 3 or 4 sentries is just going to make the class OP as fuck against 1 or 2. Something like the Sapper in TF2, that drains at a rate relevant to the number of friendly Sentries in the area. The base rate should be mild, because getting 1 gun down should be an easy task already. I'm not convinced that "finding the right values" is difficult. For the 2.42 patch, they suggested they would change the Sentry's push and damage values as a 'tie me over' before 2.5 releases in the next decade. Well, if it was that fucking easy, why didn't they do it before? Last edited by Bridget; 11-19-2010 at 03:15 PM.

11-20-2010, 12:29 AM	#93
toaster^ Join Date: Aug 2009 Gametype: Capture the Flag Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times	1. No 2. It hurts when I play, don't know why tho. 3. I would try and play again, but the above would prevent me from playing it, i think I need some painkillers or med packs, oh yes __________________

11-20-2010, 01:12 AM	#94
Crazycarl D&A Member Wiki Team Fortress Forever Staff Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts Rated Helpful 31 Times	Finding the right values is tough, and here's why: what plays well in one map or situation can be horrible in another. As an example, let's use sg push. You can come up with a value that keeps demos from mirv-rushing effectively, but then maybe it ruins conc jumpers by landing a single shot. You can counter that by making it track slower, but then it becomes way too easy for scouts to strafe and conc past. People have different ideas on what better values are. Is it better for sentries to stay up a long time under heavy fire, or should they have a shorter lifespan? The best the betas can do is pick some numbers, play a while, and let the devs know what was fun.

11-20-2010, 02:05 AM	#95
Skillet Join Date: Oct 2007 Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times	Crazy Carl are you the same crazy carl that use to pay on pub servers like 3 years ago and were pretty new to the game?

11-20-2010, 02:20 AM	#96
Crazycarl D&A Member Wiki Team Fortress Forever Staff Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts Rated Helpful 31 Times	Maybe? Everyone was new to the game three years ago. I was playing TFC long before that, though.

11-20-2010, 04:14 AM	#99
chilledsanity D&A Member Join Date: Oct 2007 Gametype: AvD, I/D, waterpolo, hunted Posts Rated Helpful 6 Times	Well I'm not sure that's the fairest comparison since I believe the infinite lock-on bug was still present back then, which would have accounted for such a huge boost (the gun would have hit you all the way across the map under the circumstances described). As for air push values v. ground push, I seem to remember those swapping between one of the version, I want to say either 1.0 and 1.1 or else 1.11 and 2.0. I thought those were separate values the whole time. If they are separate however, it seems that would make it EASIER to fix, since you wouldn't need one universal value. Though in all fairness, TFC sg's nailed you to the wall AND shredded you on both ground and air once they got a lock. I understand how it's a different engine, but I would think with separate values like that, you could emulate it with enough tweaking. 1.0 felt similar to TFC, although push may have been SLIGHTLY high, plus the tracking wasn't as good. In 2.0 the push and health was weakened, but the tracking was improved, so it was some give and take. Everything since then has been a total beatdown. I'm still confused how this thread led to the present values however. That comment was made pre-2.0 and he's suggesting a drop of 15-25%. Between that and 2.1, (according to the changelogs) the actual change was about 92%, not 10-25. That's a big fucking difference. In 2.4 the push was boosted slightly so now the drop is "only" an 83% drop, which is still a big fucking difference.

11-20-2010, 04:53 AM	#100
Crazycarl D&A Member Wiki Team Fortress Forever Staff Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts Rated Helpful 31 Times	Well, that raises the question, do we really want sentries to pin people to walls? I take it you see that as an essential way to keep heavy classes at bay in AvD. For anyone who wants to evade or finesse a sentry, the high push can be really punitive. That makes it a really high risk action, and whether you think that's desireable is a matter of opinion. Anyway, I don't know whether that thread led to an actual change that got shipped; it was an attempt to find out what the thought process was at that time.

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