2.42 First Impressions

[Elmo]

could consider it a grace time for friendlies to realise a scout has built a jump pad and that it needs defending - 5 seconds even might do. If you don't have the backup of your team the its evidently in the wrong place. And if defence gains back ground it can still be destoryed again.

I can tell you this idea wouldn't reach 2.43 if accepted though. We're on RCs now and just wanna fix the major game problems we have. There's nothing actually broken with the JP for now at least.

[Raynian]

We don't need to be able to place the JP in front of the enemies' eyes. Making it crowbar-destructable only is silly. Increasing the health is silly. JPs screw up gameplay enough as is when they can just be placed on battlements, making them destroyable was one of the best things FF could have done (short of removing them).

[Iggy]

Originally Posted by The Obtuse Rubber Goose

Laser grenades, like nail grenades, should explode.

How about if it "popped", did no damage, but effectively works as a minor conc nade. Say, like 1/4 the range and "concussion" factor.

[eomoyaff]

Originally Posted by squeek.

Starting and max slowfields are going to be decreased in 2.43 (to 1 and 2 respectively), and they are going to be toned down in other respects as well.

I don't see the distinction you're trying to make between the overpressure and a pipe trap. How are they different? The most perfect conc, just like when dealing with a pipe trap, is either so fast they don't have time to react or is planned so that you make them waste the det/overpressure and you escape afterwards. Except, with the overpressure, if you juke it, you know for certain he can't use it again until the cooldown is up (with pipes, he could get another pipe on the flag before you get to picking it up). But, overpressure cooldown is being increased in 2.43 as well.

But even the perfect conc doesn't work in closed - in choke point's, via monkey's T, lower, Openfire's Hallway, 2fort's spiral, flagroom halls, elevator, etc etc etc. Conc Over, perhaps? Nope, because the Hw can actually hit the pressure while in air as well.

Originally Posted by chilledsanity.

You know I have to say this feels like a total reversal to what I've been seeing the past couple years, so I'll throw back something I was told all the time with me: What is your TEAM doing to help you? Maybe I'm misreading what you're saying, but it sounds like you're complaining that offense is no longer a one-man operation. Is anyone on the team using non-light classes to break more things up? Soldiers, pyros, and demomen can create a lot of chaos to break D. My team had no problem capping on O when I was using heavier classes to focus on D, it's just not as fast as 2.4 levels.

It was never suppose to be a one-man operation. But sometimes that's just what it is.. I'm not exactly sure if you understand, but if you played offense like I did, and had a few snipers for teammates, and the opposing team turtles the whole map, why in the hell would I NOT be complaining? The offense was nerfed, and the Defense got a golden ticket to willy wonka's. That's just the big picture.

Pickup games are now lower capping away from its' standard since the release of the game, and servers without class limits just take wide ass advantages over the defense (more so then what they did prior because of the changes.) Can you imagine 2 fatties blocking a flag constantly with slow fields and pressure, and the only thing you got effective enough, is a nail gun that you have to reload, and perhaps a single grenade? And lets top if off it a demo a soldier perhaps, and an sg, just all hovering around that. I mean I do enjoy a challenge and teamwork, but god damn... Dev's completely demeaned the word balance in this one..

[chilledsanity]

Originally Posted by eomoyaff

It was never suppose to be a one-man operation. But sometimes that's just what it is.. I'm not exactly sure if you understand, but if you played offense like I did, and had a few snipers for teammates, and the opposing team turtles the whole map, why in the hell would I NOT be complaining?

Well I can understand where it's not fun, but that's an unfortunate reality of the game, or it was for TFC. One person trying to take on an entire team of people playing defensively doesn't really work. You need at least one person breaking D up or running a diversion and at least one person going for the flag. If you think one person on O should be able to get through an entire D team that's turtling, unless that person is doing something very clever or lucky, then that doesn't exactly sound balanced, even if that is a problem if the rest of your team is just dicking around. It works both ways, if I was playing D and NO ONE was helping to guard the flag, I wouldn't expect to be able to stop multiple attackers by myself.

Originally Posted by eomoyaff

The offense was nerfed, and the Defense got a golden ticket to willy wonka's. That's just the big picture.

The offense being nerfed I'm in agreement with you on, that doesn't seem necessary (except for destroyable jump pads, that's made a big difference in some maps). As for defense getting the golden ticket, in terms of the BIG picture I'd disagree. They've certainly received a boost compared to any other 2.x patch, but it feels more like defense has CAUGHT UP to all the abilities offense received back in 2.0, which have needed some sort of counter for a long, long time. While some things may be a tad overboard, this is far closer to FF 1.x or TFC defense than anything else since.

Originally Posted by eomoyaff

Pickup games are now lower capping away from its' standard since the release of the game, and servers without class limits just take wide ass advantages over the defense (more so then what they did prior because of the changes.)

I haven't heard any statistics on that actually. You said since the release of the game, how does the pickup game capping rate compare to FF 1.0? In the pub I/D and CTF games I played, it felt much more like FF 1.0 or TFC to me. I know a lot of people were satisfied with the 1.11 patch, it would be interesting to see how it compares to that.

Originally Posted by eomoyaff

Can you imagine 2 fatties blocking a flag constantly with slow fields and pressure, and the only thing you got effective enough, is a nail gun that you have to reload, and perhaps a single grenade? And lets top if off it a demo a soldier perhaps, and an sg, just all hovering around that.

I don't have to imagine, I saw similar situations in ksour and it led to a pretty good game. However that sounds EXACTLY like the sort of situation where I would not play scout or medic and would try and find out the easiest places to break up the defense on. It also sounds like the sort of situation I would need teammates to help with. While I don't expect much from general pub players, there's usually at least SOMEONE else trying to accomplish the objective that can either focus on breaking up D or go for the flag.

Originally Posted by eomoyaff

Dev's completely demeaned the word balance in this one..

Welcome to my world in I/D and AvD for the past 3 years.

[Elmo]

well as you know there wasn't particularly much testing the slowfiled as it is in 2.42. I can personally accept much of the responsibility for that as I changed the mechanic of it in the last week before release. But I feared that had the old slowfield gone in with the older mechanic then I don't feel it'd have been effective enough at all or rather effective in the right way (with it now being based on player speed) and therefore not deemed a worthy replacement for the mirv. Something I really didn't want to happen. Had that happened I could have seen people then hating the slowfield no matter what we did in the future, now that people have seen the potential of the slowfield they're more likely to accept it as worthy. Just a case of now finding the right values and tweaking it.

Hope you can see my point there.

But many of the other things were in the beta for a long time - such as the medic clip and the soldier grenade. Betas had the chance to speak up so don't say the devs demeaned the word balance - the betas are responsible too y'know (including yourself) but does anyone speak up much in that regard? Not especially.

Not just personal to you. I'm getting annoyed seeing beta testers posting as if they had no clue what was going in the patch - that wasn't entirely our fault. The details of changes was up for some time. If betas didn't see it as a big problem during testing immediately before release then why should us devs have any special ability to tell? Balancing is a group effort.

I understand we rushed a few last minute changes to try n pack more in and the majority of problems with the patch was due to this. I know it wasn't perfect on our part - but we're fixing that now. So what more can you ask of us?

Sorry for the rant. It's been building.

Originally Posted by chilledsanity

Welcome to my world in I/D and AvD for the past 3 years.

You I can't deny... I'm glad this patch has made some difference to your gametype. I hope 2.43 continues to be as effective with the slowfield nerf.

[Raynian]

Scout: Nice tweak, jump pad needed a nerf, but the infinite duration at least helps a bit for doing stupid stuff like triple jump pad into concslide into cap point on ff_ksour_classic. Changing the way concs affect enemies kinda hurts him, but it removes a really irritating frustration from D. Nice.

Sniper: Why wasn't he nerfed?

Soldier: Slight nerf to rockets, and the laser gren...I like it on O a lot more than on D, actually, it can be very useful to force defenders out of their positions. Can cause a lot of havoc and really distract the defenders. Overall nice.

Demoman: Pretty big nerf to blue pipes. Was it needed? Maybe...we'll see.

Medic: Already planned to be fixed with the clip. To be honest, nobody even likes the clip system - one of the greatest things about the SNG before was that you could just spray and pray while focusing on other things and maybe do some significant damage. Now, you run out so fast and the reload time just sucks ASS. If the devs plan to keep infections/SNGs weak, maybe increase the healing on medpacks to 20.

Heavy: Huge buffs, but he needed them. The right fixes are already on the way, so I feel there's been enough said here.

Pyro: Glad he wasn't changed much. He causes plenty of whining, but all together I feel he's in a decent place. If he needs anything, MAYBE 10 less speed or a litttle less burst damage on the IC.

Spy: No changes, not really noticing much of a playstyle difference with him. So, nothing to say.

Engineer: I like the SG buff, but like I said before - if it was going to get a buff, make the time it takes to get it online longer. I can understand some frustrations with the offensive taking it down, then it being up their very next run. Maybe .5s-1s longer build time and give it 5% more health. Also, the railgun bug is really offsetting.

Overall thoughts for the patch - B+. Fixed a lot of balance issues, and the new heavy features are very fun to play with. Having to actually work for a cap makes it feel that much more rewarding. Obviously we need 2.43 to fix the constant crashes and FPS issues when servers fill up and you have 20 people running around the map.

[Dexter]

yay a report card

[Dexter]

ALSO, all things considered, people seem upset defenders have a feasible goal of actually defending a flag now. uhh sorry I guess?! (dont look at me I dont touch this balance shit)

[Elmo]

Originally Posted by Dexter

ALSO, all things considered, people seem upset defenders have a feasible goal of actually defending a flag now. uhh sorry I guess?! (dont look at me I dont touch this balance shit)

Hey that's usually my excuse.. but i can't say that anymore...

[chilledsanity]

Originally Posted by Raynian

Engineer: I like the SG buff, but like I said before - if it was going to get a buff, make the time it takes to get it online longer.

I agree, I've never been a fan of the disposable nature of the sg's now. If it takes longer to build, it's more of a boost for O when it goes down and feels more like an investment for D.

Originally Posted by Elmo

You I can't deny... I'm glad this patch has made some difference to your gametype. I hope 2.43 continues to be as effective with the slowfield nerf.

Well I am kind of pissed about the 2 minute cap limit for I/D, but CrazyCarl says that will be modified, so we'll see. Everything else I think it will be fine, every change I've heard for 2.43 sounds like it won't disrupt things too much for balance. In my opinion the biggest things that helped restore balance to D in this patch were overpressure (a longer recharge time should still be okay), increased sg push, and making jump pads destroyable. Everything else feels like icing on the cake and changes to it I don't think will disrupt core balance too much.

[Elmo]

Originally Posted by chilledsanity

Well I am kind of pissed about the 2 minute cap limit for I/D, but CrazyCarl says that will be modified, so we'll see. Everything else I think it will be fine, every change I've heard for 2.43 sounds like it won't disrupt things too much for balance. In my opinion the biggest things that helped restore balance to D in this patch were overpressure (a longer recharge time should still be okay), increased sg push, and making jump pads destroyable. Everything else feels like icing on the cake and changes to it I don't think will disrupt core balance too much.

Cool. Yeah, it didn't really get enough testing previously. The one particular time we played it and it ended really fast I should've said something to carl but didn't.

He put it to 4 minutes for 2.43 and our game seemed to last forever in the test the other day. We'll have another test on it tonight I hope (I won't be there though ). I need to mention to carl that perhaps 3-3.5 might be better.

[chilledsanity]

Well it's the point CrazyCarl was bringing up before, it depends on the map. 4 minutes is an eternity for cornfield, but not necessarily for some caps of palermo. I really hate the system of arbitrarily ending matches / rounds simply because a certain length of time has passed for one lone cap, it's like the game is being redesigned to get I/D rounds over with in a hurry. I've provided several scoring suggestions in this thread that would solve this problem without having to end rounds early.

Afterall, who are these changes being targeted for? Have there really been waves of complaints about how I/D scoring isn't always a perfectly balanced situation? Or that I/D is fun, but it just moves too slowly compared to CTF? I always thought the pace of I/D is much faster compared to CTF because there's much less of a wait before you get to fighting. So why speed things up even MORE?

I stand by what I said before in that it feels like it's being changed to favor score tidiness over fun. It is FUN playing something like ksour for 20 minutes regardless of how many caps there are. The action in it is fantastic as are most I/D maps. I like close games where there's fighting all the way and it feels like O or D has really earned their victory. While I/D obviously moves faster than AvD, the idea of the length of time for any cap determining the outcome and length of the whole game feels just like a bad idea and not as fun.

[FreaK367]

I was wondering if there was a way to increase the capacity at different parts of maps (not sure how it works, I'll explain). I was on Destroy and Blacknight was on our roof causing havoc so I conced up there to deal with him as I was a scout at the time. He had all of his yellow pipes on the roof at the time, he was jumping around shooting blue pipes, I was jumping around and using my crowbar, then after a while he blew up his yellow pipes, and we both simultaneously crashed... with the "pure virtual function call" error.

I know that error is getting fixed in 2.43 but Black said we managed to overload the capacity of the Roof of Destroy, something about it only being able to handle so much, and everything me and Black were doing all added up and the pipes going off was too much, so we both crashed.

Can anyone expand on what he is talking about, and is it possible to increase the limits?, I hope he isn't talking crap.

[Crazycarl]

Well, it's based on my experiences of defensive shutouts, and how boring they tend to be. Other than that, it was not my goal to change the pacing. Many of our balance changes are not made in direct response to player input, because we make our own observations and don't get any feedback about it. One might say that a lack of input means that people are content, but OTOH, we are always finding stuff that's bad or broken, and I think people are simply used to it. Often you have to break the things people are used to before you can make something better. I rely on your feedback to know if I'm doing the right thing.

One of our goals is to give more feedback on the whole about who won and who lost. Currently the map just ends, and there's no payoff if you've won. To that end for I/D I need fair and decisive scoring. Unfortunately "fun" is a subjective term and not measurable. I certainly want as much fun as possible in the game, though.

I think now, with four minutes per cap, timing out will be fairly rare on any map if the teams are balanced. The ideal would be for the round to end just about the time the offense feels like giving up. So let me ask you: how long is too long for a round to go on without any caps? 10 minutes? 20?

I've fixed the issue with maps ending way too soon (basically I forgot that 20 minutes is the default time limit; I always have it set much higher for testing purposes). Now, maps may end only a couple of minutes before the server's time limit, or they may go a round or two past that.

[Crazycarl]

Originally Posted by FreaK367

Can anyone expand on what he is talking about, and is it possible to increase the limits?, I hope he isn't talking crap.

He's talking crap.

[FreaK367]

Originally Posted by Crazycarl

He's talking crap.

Thought he could be, he does that a lot, it seemed a feasible excuse to why we both crashed at the same time so I believed him.

[Elmo]

Originally Posted by Crazycarl

He's talking crap.

lol. Yeah theres no such thing as what he's on about.

[eomoyaff]

I still have to disagree with the balance.

Considering my application for the beta was up for, idk, 2 years, and never looked at until the end of that beta (and accepted, finally,) I never had the chance to place in an opinion, or a suggestion, nadda. But in the future, I'm sure you'll see more of that.

I am a more offensive-proned player. You will see me running offense 80% of the time. Defense is too boring, and doesn't hold a challenge like running offense does. I suppose it's just that I'm mad that my inability to do half the things I use to do with a medic, is almost not possible anymore.. The Medic is the Middle Child. He seperates the offense and the defense. He's the only class who can keep up with the scout, and could still put out JUST enough damage (use to) to allow the scout to do what he needs to do. The better skills you had with the medic, the easier it was to penetrate the defense. It showed off the skill of the player more then the skills of the class. And I think thats the way it should be seen if you work that hard to get that far with a class. With that said, I think the boost kind of destroyed that for some of us. It's almost beyond bitter to play the medic class now because of how much the boosted defense has degraded that.

[episkopos]

I agree with moya. Either buff Medic or nerf D. I'll certainly be attending future tests, and voicing my opinion on the beta forums.