are you still playing FF?

[Born_In_Xixax]

Originally Posted by Crazycarl

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.

If you evade or finesse a sentry, good...probably one of the most fun things in the game. But if slip up and that senty *catches you* in its sights, it should be game over much more quickly, IMHO. With the current SG, you can waltz around unimpeded while it plinks away at you for a good long time.

This is where the different requirements for CTF and AvD come into play. In classic TFC-like AvD play with a strong SG, you struggle (sometimes for a good long while) to break a fixed defensive position by first breaking the SG...then you usually have a chance to cap/advance while the defense is significantly weaker. With a weak SG that does nothing to stop enemy movement, the offense much more easily just rolls along.

However, consider a strong TFC-like SG in CTF: The flag is always in the same place, in the bowels of the base. The SG is always on the flag. With snipers, and defensive respawns so close in many maps, heavy offense capable of killing the SG making it to the flag room is rare, and concers are usually weak from facing front line D. This makes the flag room a constantly deadly place for the entire match.

With a weak SG, concing classes (especially scouts) can almost pretend the SG is not even there. It's easy to 'burn' the SG, and even if your burn-fu is weak, the SG is very forgiving and will have a hard time killing you, much less stopping you with the flag.

The main problem with weak vs. strong SGs (and most other aspects of game balance involving nerf vs. buff discussions) is not that any of the above scenarios are necessarily _bad_ - they are all interesting/fun variations on TF game play - but that there is a huge legacy inventory of maps, and some of these variations work for some maps, and not for others.

For example, you could leave the SG relatively weak and revamp the AvD maps to give defense a better chance of holding points (closer spawns, more bags, better protected SG spots.) Alternatively you could buff the SG way up, and modify CTF maps so that it's much easier for heavy offense classes to mix in and take them down, or harder for the defense to get a SG up (farther spawns, fewer bags, closer bases.)

The current set of parameters is favorable to allowing concing flag touches on the old standby CTF maps, but pretty miserable for setting up 'epic' AvD last-stage stands. Unfortunately it's several orders of magnitude harder to revamp all CTF or all AvD maps than it is to tweak some SG values.

I tend to agree that the SG is a bit weak, but unfortunately if it was significantly stronger I think it would make CTF quite a bit more difficult (cue the tears of the pickup crowd) without other changes and map restructuring.

One final thought: dedicated gamers play to beat other players, not the game AI. They will feel frustrated/bored/offended if they mostly die to a mindless machine. You can buff the SG to make offensive success more dependent on taking it down, but you must also ensure that this is still very possible.