11-20-2010, 05:44 AM | #101 | |
Join Date: Nov 2009
Gametype: Capture the Flag Posts Rated Helpful 1 Times
|
Quote:
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. |
|
|
11-20-2010, 04:00 PM | #102 | |||
D&A Member
Join Date: Oct 2007
Gametype: AvD, I/D, waterpolo, hunted Posts Rated Helpful 6 Times
|
Quote:
A sentry is meant to be the last line of defense for situations like that. In TFC, unless you had amazing movement skills, you couldn't expect to run into a full team defending and expect to cap the way you can now. It used to be when I played on O, I would focus on clearing a path for the flagrunners (using teamwork in other words). I would try to take out sentries from afar or move in closer as a spy to tackle them. Just running at them unassisted as ANY class with no sort of plan was suicide (as it should be). This involved a real strategic element which I think is gone from FF. I don't have to snipe a sentry anymore, the flag carrier can just run in. Inversely, I also think it's a mistake to lower the build time the way FF has. This reenforces the "disposable" nature of sentries now. If somebody takes out your sentry, big deal, a good engineer can have another lvl 3 one up by the time the flag carrier gets there. I've always seen the sg as more of an investment. When it goes down, O should be rewarded for that and that should create a window of opportunity for them that should last longer. So as for pinning people to walls, to me the answer is of course. Should the hwguy be able to shred people quickly? Should a scout be able to zip along? By taking that away, it erodes the function of the class. It's not that I'm against O players, but I feel like ignoring defense should be punished, not rewarded. If you have a stupid plan of attack, you should die, not cap the flag and end the game faster. Quote:
Quote:
|
|||
|
11-21-2010, 12:17 AM | #103 | |
D&A Member
Wiki Team Fortress Forever Staff Join Date: Apr 2007
Posts Rated Helpful 31 Times
|
Quote:
I think our goal should be to make the engy and his sentry as powerful and reliable as any other D player. It shouldn't be the linchpin of any defense. |
|
|
11-21-2010, 01:12 AM | #104 | ||
D&A Member
Join Date: Oct 2007
Gametype: AvD, I/D, waterpolo, hunted Posts Rated Helpful 6 Times
|
Quote:
Newbie player: Runs straight at a sentry and dies Skilled player: conc jumps in at an angle and bunnyhops without missing a beat like some sort of speed demon I think it's a mistake to try and appeal to simply "run in and not worry about defense" because it takes depth and balance out of the game. When I was learning how to play TFC, I learned quickly that strolling into the cap where the enemy defense was meant death. So what did I do? Did I spend months and months perfecting conc jumps and bunnyhopping obsessively until I had a better chance of evading the sentry? Fuck no. I TRIED OTHER TACTICS. Sentry gun mowing things down? Let's try and fire rockets or snipe it from a distance. Demoman piping everything? Snipe his ass. Sentry concealed too much to attack it from afar? Sneak in as a spy and destroy it. Or slip around the corner, release a mirv, then run away. My point here is it's not just experts v. newbies. Just someone who's died 2-3 times using the exact same tactic can try something different that might work without having to be an expert by any means. That's how things worked for me in TFC. Things like conc jumping were irrelevant in most AvD maps anyway. I may get flamed for this, but in my opinion, players SHOULD get punished for running towards the sentry gun with no plan whatsoever. While of course we want new players, FF is still a niche genre, there is some learning curve to it. It doesn't mean you have to be an expert, it means that you should have to think about how you play. A good defense should be outmaneuvered, outwitted, or overpowered in order to get past them, it should be able to be simply ignored or run past by a single above-average player. You do have a valid point however. I'm sure many players will die 2-3 times and simply QUIT instead of trying something different. If that's the audience FF is really trying to woo in, I'm not sure what to suggest. It works both ways though. Those same players may try to defend their sg over and over and quit as a result, saying it's impossible to keep up. I think I've already seen one or two posts like that already before in the forums. Quote:
I'm not saying you personally, but decisions like that are what made me question the competency of the FF devs in the first place, since this was such a common-sense issue in my eyes. When a game was close to being balanced, like 1.11 was, taking away abililties from one side, then adding new ones to another is the exact opposite of balancing things. It's taken a very long time for the FF dev team (as a whole) to understand this. |
||
|
11-21-2010, 01:51 AM | #105 |
D&A Member
Wiki Team Fortress Forever Staff Join Date: Apr 2007
Posts Rated Helpful 31 Times
|
You're exaggerating now. Nobody is succeeding by blindly running in and ignoring defense. Nobody is proposing that. If you can do that, maybe you've just gotten really good at the game.
I'm not concerned about the extremes in player skill. SKilled players are going to mop up. Newbies are going to get owned. but for the players in between, there should be various levels of success. Yeah, I agree that there should be multiple ways to deal with a sentry. However, in competitive CTF, you don't field heavy classes on offense. So they don't have many options. This may or may not be the best thing for the game. It depends on who you talk to. |
|
11-21-2010, 02:42 AM | #106 |
Join Date: Nov 2009
Gametype: Capture the Flag Posts Rated Helpful 1 Times
|
This is a key point, true. I do kind of like the 'linchpin' role for engineer, especially in AvD, but you don't want to have a newly powerful SG and teams with 3 or 4 or more engineers making bases utterly impenetrable. That was a badness that tended to happen in TFC pretty often, thinking back.
|
|
11-21-2010, 02:43 AM | #107 | ||
D&A Member
Join Date: Oct 2007
Gametype: AvD, I/D, waterpolo, hunted Posts Rated Helpful 6 Times
|
Quote:
Quote:
|
||
|
11-21-2010, 02:47 AM | #108 |
Join Date: Nov 2009
Gametype: Capture the Flag Posts Rated Helpful 1 Times
|
I've always thought TFC was a bit broken because it devolved to only medics (and occasionally a scout) on offense. IMHO if the game was really well balanced, any class could be useful on offense or defense, just about equally. Wouldn't that open up so many more options? Wouldn't it be more fun?
|
|
11-21-2010, 02:50 AM | #109 | |
D&A Member
Join Date: Oct 2007
Gametype: AvD, I/D, waterpolo, hunted Posts Rated Helpful 6 Times
|
Quote:
I mean say you had a 6v6 CTF game with 4 engineers on defense. If all you're using is medics and scouts, then yes, it's a meat grinder, and thus poor tactics. Now imagine if 4 people on O (or hell, the whole team) all went spy, looking like an engineer. Sure there would be spychecks, but that would be a fucking nightmare for D, especially if they just were there to take out the sg's (and didn't pause to sabotage) while somebody else went for the flag! Last edited by chilledsanity; 11-21-2010 at 02:52 AM. |
|
|
11-21-2010, 03:43 AM | #110 |
D&A Member
Wiki Team Fortress Forever Staff Join Date: Apr 2007
Posts Rated Helpful 31 Times
|
I don't really remember well as it's been years since I played TFC. They probably just restricted engineers. Turtling was a big problem as well. If you went all defense there was little the enemy team could do to cap against you.
But many people figured out that they could conc and evade sentries as scout and medic. Since those classes allow for more runs per match, they became the only choice for O. By the time you truck a soldier over to the other base to blow up the sentry, a good scout could have made a run at the flag three times. So this situation got institutionalized and we have "offense only" and "defense only" classes. In this idealized type of match, the only classes who ever come up against a sentry are the light classes (obviously this is not the case in AvD or in a pub). I believe the sentry was balanced with that in mind. |
|
11-21-2010, 05:23 AM | #111 | |
D&A Member
Join Date: Oct 2007
Gametype: AvD, I/D, waterpolo, hunted Posts Rated Helpful 6 Times
|
Quote:
1. Devs balanced sentries for the two lightest classes in the game and are weakened enough to ensure some caps get through. 2. Sentries are a mainstay of AvD defense, where they constantly face soldiers, demomen, spies, and even hwguys, where one cap can mean the end of the game. 3. AvD balance topples, and since it's not a priority for the dev team, it stays that way, though none of this is admitted. In many cases they may not even be aware of the problem due to lack of extended playtesting / interest for the mode. If other devs had been more forthcoming about this from the get-go instead of pretending to be seriously factoring AvD into this decision, it would have saved countless posts from me because I wouldn't have been under the misconception about where the decision-making portion of the dev team stood. I personally think some of the devs should be ashamed of themselves for not being more honest about their intentions with this decision and instead engaging in a campaign of denying the problem existed for as long as they did. |
|
|
11-21-2010, 05:34 AM | #112 |
Stuff Do-er
Lua Team
Wiki Team Fortress Forever Staff |
Chilled, we didn't say that because it isn't true. Yes, we had that in mind when balancing the SG in 2.1, but we didn't ignore everything else. We tested and tweaked the push values on monkey, waterpolo, palermo, and played with it on every non-CTF map we have (as has been stated, we play non-CTF way more than CTF in the beta playtests).
But, due to the changes in the past few patches that make evading SGs more nuanced for lighter classes, I think it's more than safe to raise the push and maybe the damage of the SG, which will be happening in 2.42 (and probably should have happened in 2.41).
__________________
#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 Last edited by squeek.; 11-21-2010 at 05:36 AM. |
|
11-21-2010, 06:18 AM | #113 |
D&A Member
Join Date: Oct 2007
Gametype: AvD, I/D, waterpolo, hunted Posts Rated Helpful 6 Times
|
I think what it comes down to is that I care about AvD way more than anyone else on the modern dev team. I mean you say you tested it in beta and it got through somehow, fine. I don't understand how that could have come out balanced, but I do understand you have limited resources for testing.
But how many pub AvD games did you test after it was released? Did you have ANYONE keeping tabs on this? I just checked on my hard drive, I record almost every game. For 2.1 - 2.41 I have 878 demo files recorded and the majority of those were from AvD games. The story I found was VERY clear starting in 2.0 and a landslide in 2.1, you've seen it from me in the forums a million times. I mean you say "safe to raise the push" when it's been reduced over 80% already. I think my views on FF and TFC are just too different from yours to be happy with the direction it's been taken, and possibly where it's going. I was playing dustbowl, warpath, and avanti 95% of the time in TFC, you guys were mostly playing clan-style CTF, I get that. I realize all the things I liked from TFC won't be preserved with the dev team having a different primary focus, however I don't think you guys met AvD players halfway either. On one hand I am frustrated with how AvD has been kind of destroyed, it drove off friends I had playing the game, and I made every effort I could to try and point out what was happening. Indifference or denial of the problems from some devs hasn't helped. On the other hand, the signal to noise ratio here is awful and I think you guys probably didn't realize the impact of what you were doing. It works both ways, some changes mean a huge amount to CTF, but really don't affect AvD all that much. Snipers in general, skim caps, shot slowing, pyro burn damage, etc. all fall into that category to me. They don't make a big difference in AvD one way or the other. I think you thought what you were doing with O boosts and weakening ng/hwguy was a similar thing from your perspective and I was just overreacting. And I WOULD have be overreacting if I didn't have game after game where I saw the same thing occurring. From your perspective, the game was still staying afloat, but had plenty of tweaks to be done and there were always people complaining about one thing for another. I'm just another psycho on the forums. From my perspective, the game had been devastated and I couldn't understand what the hell you guys had been thinking. I think more transparency as to WHY decisions were made after the fact would have been helpful here. You wouldn't have had to reveal what you were doing in beta, but explaining why you did what you did for controversial changes once they got released I think would have helped. I still feel like I'm not communicating with hardcore CTF people a lot of the time, but now I think I have a better perspective as to what's happened on your end. I think overall I've just been more invested energy-wise into all that I liked from TFC and was hoping FF would carry that on. I really don't know if it will, but at least now I understand what's been going on for the past 2 years. Last edited by chilledsanity; 11-21-2010 at 06:30 AM. |
|
11-21-2010, 08:42 AM | #114 |
Stuff Do-er
Lua Team
Wiki Team Fortress Forever Staff |
I don't understand your position. Your views are too different from mine?
Your view is that we need to raise SG push and damage. My view is the same, but I might think it doesn't need to be raised quite as much as you might. That's hardly irreconcilable. I hate all this hyperbole and/or catastrophizing. Maybe you don't think it's hyperbole, but it really seems that way to me. You can claim "AvD has been destroyed, all balance is lost, the dev team is the worst at balancing ever, they don't care about AvD." That's fine. But when your only solid evidence for this is one buildable's values and the HWGuy seeming weak, I can't help but see it as hyperbole. The SG might need its push and damage raised a bit. The HW might benefit from a bulletdamage increase of 1 point or less. Great. Feel free to apply for the beta team and suggest some values (ffdev_ vars might even have gotten into the release build, so you could suggest values without being in the beta!). But I guess you don't think we'd listen because we obviously hate AvD and want you to suffer.
__________________
#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 Last edited by squeek.; 11-21-2010 at 08:43 AM. |
|
11-21-2010, 09:01 AM | #115 |
Stuff Do-er
Lua Team
Wiki Team Fortress Forever Staff |
Oh, and by the way chilled, the push values changed at the same time that the rate of fire changed. The rate of fire is WAY faster now, so the push and bulletdamage would have had to come down to even make it the same as it used to be.
Claiming a 80% drop in push is incorrect. It's more complicated than that. And push and damage got raised in 2.4.
__________________
#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 Last edited by squeek.; 11-21-2010 at 09:08 AM. |
|
11-21-2010, 09:32 AM | #116 | ||
D&A Member
Join Date: Oct 2007
Gametype: AvD, I/D, waterpolo, hunted Posts Rated Helpful 6 Times
|
Quote:
*My apologies for the wall of text, I appreciate your reading through it if you have time. * I'll clarify. It's not ALL sg push, that's just been my conclusion based on the evidence I've collected. By all means, please explain to me what you think has happened after reading this. Like I said before, I've played a ton of AvD games, made demos, and I notice any differences when new patches come out. From 1.0 to 1.1 to 1.11, I didn't notice a whole lot of difference as to how many wins or losses there were. Whatever changes happened weren't substantial enough to upset things. 2.0 I started noticing differences. It became notably more difficult to hold caps and substantially easier to make them. It wasn't impossible, but I'd say there was a 10-25% shift to offense winning more and defense losing. Some I/D maps were shot to shit (cornfield in particular), but others were still pretty manageable. So AvD and I/D wasn't broken, but it was definitely taking on water. So what happened that offense was winning more? A lot of stuff. Jump pads, pyro jumps, weaker sg health, weaker sg push, shitty range for the hwguy, etc. I don't think there was any one cause here, but a culmination of several things. You say I'm attacking you guys about balance, well O received a lot of toys to play with, what did you give D to compensate here? The only thing I can think of is hwguy had the best potential close-up damage of any version, but it was sometimes tricky to pull off and at the expense of more reliable range. 2.1 was like a dam breaking. Suddenly instead of a noticeably shift, it was almost EVERY GAME I played the outcome was a foregone conclusion. Defense on AvD started winning only about 5-10% of the time. I could have rounds of some I/D maps OVER in 2-3 minutes. I was absolutely stunned. So what did I do? I looked at the changelog! Solly had a minor nerf on radius as did demoman, no biggy. Pyro had less napalm, also no biggy. Hwguy damage cut almost in half, that's relatively major, that could be a reason. Spy given total invisibility. That was less major than I thought it would be. While I do think that broke hunted, but was only annoying in AvD. Sg damage reduced a small amount, but firing rate increased. Sg push reduced by 83% compared to 2.0 and 91% compared to 1.11. Holy shit, that's a pretty difference. Nailguns literally had more push than the sg. This is on TOP of the sg health being weaker than 1.0 and not having splash protection like in TFC. It started to make sense once I realized this. Players could literally run up to the sg without dying, and more importantly, run up to the cap and end the round. That would NEVER happen in TFC without taking out the sg or having clever tactics From 2.1 on, I haven't noticed a substantial difference in the ratio. Anticitizen and vertigo can still swing either way. Basicbowl is punitive towards O. Everything else is clearly slanted. And you say you don't like the hyperbole. I do consider this a catastrophe for the mod and part of the playerbase. Of course it's not a REAL catastrophe, like someone dying or a house burning down, but for the game, it basically ELIMINATED close down-to-the-clock AvD games for me was the bread and butter for me from TFC and early FF. Furthermore, all the friends and acquaintances I managed to rope in before then started jumping ship. They complained to me that if they played on defense they would get their asses kicked and it was impossible to keep their sentry up. On O, it wasn't challenging anymore, one complained about how in one game he literally spent more time waiting behind the gate than he did playing because the capping was so fast (granted it wasn't normally THAT fast, but you get the idea). Another joked that he had to leave because of a phone call early on in dustbowl, when he came back his team had already won. It became ridiculous and not fun. Try to look at it from my perspective. I'm assuming you enjoy pickup games? Imagine someone else took over the mod so you weren't in control anymore. Then they made a change that was AWFUL for them, say conc grenades and bunny hopping were removed, or the speed caps by them were reduced by 90%. That would be a pretty shitty change for CTF right? Then they left it that way and didn't alter it and EVERYONE you knew who played pickups with you quit the mod because they didn't like it anymore. What would you call that situation? - - - Anyway, does everything depend on sg push? Of course not. Does it make a huge difference in AvD? The evidence suggests yes. That was the conclusion I drew from what I observed. If you have alternate theories I'm glad to hear them. The only other thing I can think of is that I became a massively better O player and a tragically worse D player between 2.0 and 2.1. I don't see that as very likely. As for the beta, when I was told that hypothetically if I could prove that I could win on offense 90% or more of the time that it was no guarantee anything would be changed balance-wise, that discouraged me a great deal. That's like saying there's no amount of evidence I could present that a problem existed for anything to be done about it. If so, then what's the point of testing? Furthermore a beta test member (not Bridget) told me that he actually submitted values to test out for the sg a long time ago that he spent a long time experimenting with and a dev member flatly refused to do so. Maybe I'm getting a half-truth, I don't know. Basically the message I get from all beta testers I talk to and the devs themselves is that I'm largely helpless as an individual to influence anything, unless it's cosmetic changes. That could be wrong, but I'm sure you know I've to influence AvD balance and that hasn't turned out so hot. Quote:
Anyway, I appreciate your reply and I'm happy to clarify anything I'm saying and listen to any flaws in my reasoning. I think you're doing yourself a service responding to some of this and asking questions, even if you don't agree with all I'm saying. When you remain silent, Bridget starts becoming the loudest voice of what's going on in the dev end, whom I feel may not be the most objective source. Last edited by chilledsanity; 11-21-2010 at 09:35 AM. |
||
|
11-21-2010, 09:38 AM | #117 | |
D&A Member
Join Date: Oct 2007
Gametype: AvD, I/D, waterpolo, hunted Posts Rated Helpful 6 Times
|
Quote:
2.1 = holy shit this is weak; a nailgun LITERALLY has more push than this 2.4 = not AS weak, but still QUITE weak compared to early FF, TFC, or any other Fortress game |
|
|
11-21-2010, 09:41 AM | #118 |
WhenNailGrenWillOut?
Beta Tester
Join Date: May 2009
Gametype: mp_prematch Affiliations: [:)] - Frag Happy, babe| Posts Rated Helpful 29 Times
|
|
|
11-21-2010, 02:09 PM | #119 | |
Heartless Threadkiller
Beta Tester
Forum Moderator Join Date: Apr 2007
Class/Position: D-Solly / O-Medic Gametype: CTF Affiliations: [AE] AssEaters Posts Rated Helpful 42 Times
|
Just a note:
The reason people are willing to read you walls of text, Chilled, is because you don't constantly bash other players, the dev team, testers, server owners, etc... You form coherent arguements, make your point and back it up without stooping to flaming. Someone else around here should take notes.
__________________
Quote:
Friend me on Facebook Follow me on Twitter |
|
|
11-21-2010, 07:29 PM | #120 | |
Banned
Join Date: Sep 2008
Class/Position: Soldier Gametype: AVD Affiliations: TALOS Posts Rated Helpful 5 Times
|
Quote:
|
|
|
Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests) | |
|
|