An Anti Mirv Thread

[puppychow]

bacon.

[Green Mushy]

This thread is infuriating me. It is this simple. Mirvs are a source of lag and frustration in the game. Change them so they arent laggy, and cause less frustration. While ur at it, make it something that is more fun. "Whoa crazy ideas here mush, ur going to fast for my little brain." "OH NO MY COMFORT ZONE, CHANGE IS SCARY!" "Omg dont change mirvs i like them". "Spam is hilarious and it helps the game" Are you kidding me?!

For those who are stupid, Im not saying nerf demoman. Give him an equal nade, perhaps even a better nade! Who cares, come up with something new! The game is in the hands of the players for god's sake. There is the power to rid the community of half-assed and frustrating ideas. You dont have to settle with ideas that are only alive because of nostalgia.

If you think dying by 9fps spam is fun, you have a screw loose. If you think this game is fine how it is right now, you have a screw loose. If you haven't seen mirvs abused by anybody for that matter, you dont have a valid opinion. Truth is, if you have played against gator or vile, you would have seen how unfun the game becomes with mirvs. If you have childlike fears of change and leaving your narrow minded comfort zone, you have a screw loose.

This may come as a shock, but new ideas are a good thing. You come up with an idea, and try it out. If it doesnt work, guess what? YOU CAN BRING BACK THE OLD MIRV! Simply dismissing this subject as a matter of "Dont fix whats not broken" is completely wrong. This game is dead or dying, it cant be hurt any more, there are few players to lose. New ideas and fun things can only be a source of life for this game. The attitude should be "Fix what could be better". Simply settling on traditional ideas is what is going to perpetually keep the game undesirable.

Yes, i agree the mapping dimension of spam determines how mirvs will be used. I will look into that in my future map making.

"Mirvs are being used strategically, and we shouldnt take out a depth oriented mechanic in the game" Are you kidding me? Even if they are being used strategically 25% of the time, its not worth keeping it in because of that 75% of misuse.

"Noobs need a way to kill people." You should NOT be awarded for being bad. You should be enticed by the idea of becoming familiar with mechanics of a game, and mastering them. Not using a laggy/skilless nades to help new players kill things. This point is just asinine.

"I want defense to be nerfed and offense to always have a capfest." You are completely retarded if you get this vibe from me. Read other posts i have made, they have always been a subject balancing the game to give offense and defense fun equally.

"Spam and tactical spam should not be removed from the game" Fine, lets find a compromise between 9 fps and 100fps. Demoman should be a master of controlling explosions and guarding flags. Lets keep him this way with the new nade. Whats the bid deal? Same goes for killing sgs. The new nade will have the same strength at killing sgs and people alike.

BALANCE BALANCE BALANCE, reduce frustrations and lag oriented elements of the game. Make the game more fun. These are the objectives, not stick to old ideas were weak then and weak now. I have so much hope for this game, and im going to stick with it for a long time to come. I want complete balance, depth, and speed. I dont like how people have knee jerk reactions to new ideas, and say "Dont fix whats not broken" The game IS broken and CAN be fixed. Go.

[Firefox11]

I think the MIRVs are good for the Demo, I've experienced major spam in TFC (which, remember, was worse due to Nuke-area grenades) and I'm not stupid. So here.

Demolitions Man. Means he demolishes things, and to demolish things you need explosives. In fact, I'm surprised he doesn't have that Super Shotgun that shoots explosive bullets and a bomb attached to the Crowbar. If you want less spam, cut the max MIRVs the Demo can hold to one, or make it drop less MIRVlets (4 now? Its the sweet spot, if you ask me). Also, is the signature of the Demoman, besides the Detpack.

Now, the Grav grenade should be given to the HW so he can catch those 1,000mph Offense players and give them death, and suits him (he's fat, I bet he even has a Grav. field of his own around. Hell, give him the ability to pull dropped Ammo bags to refill the AC!). This or the flak grenade, and we will have almost all classes with signature 2ndaries.

[GeoKill----->]

Well the way I see it for the Demo, he blows up pipe trap while killing a scout, trows another one at the flag while he sets ups for the 2nd scout. As for the heavy... ya he needs a new nade

[BinaryLife]

Originally Posted by GeoKill----->

Well the way I see it for the Demo, he blows up pipe trap while killing a scout, trows another one at the flag while he sets ups for the 2nd scout. As for the heavy... ya he needs a new nade

"Don't look directly into the trap!"
"I looked at the trap, Ray!"

[puppychow]

Originally Posted by Green Mushy

words

I'll try to be a bit more constructive, only fair from the time you put into your OP:

1) I've never seen lag from mirvs, either in tfc or FF. Not saying it doesn't exsist, but I never drop below 30fps no matter the action, and I only have a midrange system. When are the occurrences when this happens? And if it only happens to folks with lower end systems, is that merit for change? If it's due simply from poorly behaving players, is that merit for change?

2) Your talk about, either explicitly or imply, that death by spam is a bad thing and ruins the game somehow, especially for higher end folks - is this what you believe, and if so, can you please go into more detail? IMO, we have to be careful labeling all spam bad spam - it's true that some players abuse them, however what may sometimes appear as abuse can also be intelligent gren2 play - i may not know exactly where that sg is in that corner, but i know its there, and make a blind throw based on inference - is that still spam?

3) Your comments regarding general frustration of mirvs..through the years we've all heard countless cries for changes to the HW guy, the sniper, and the pyro - to be honest the mirv issue is new to me. Is there truly general frustration out there? Is there a real need for tweaking. I ask this not out of a fear of change but rather from feeling mirvs are an essential weapon of the hw/demo that actually has a lot of depth to its use - but more importantly, they are FUN to use.

4) Lag issue aside, there is more spam from regular grenades than mirvs - don't those fall into the same category of general frustration? If you take out mirvs whats the arguement for nades? You could argue they have a smaller spread and smaller payload but there are many more of them being thrown around. at the heart of the arguement i see no difference between the two.

5) The mirv is crucial for clearing out areas where the d stacks - if there was a replacement gren2 it would have to have some sort of larger footprint of destruction anyhow, being potentially spammy. It's a necessary deterrent to overstacking and keeps proper spacing in tact.

[Dr.Satan]

^ truths

[Ihmhi]

On the lag issue from a tester's perspective: we tested all of the grenades with showbudget and reported what areas were being overloaded.

You think the MIRVs are bad? In the beta, a full on match had a chance of crashing due to spam. It was worked to the point where we needed 6-8 dedicated guys with impulse 101 bound to a key tossing MIRVs or nailgrens to get the server to overload and crash.

Bring up showbudget, toss a MIRV, and see what areas you spike in. If you're really having a lag problem, I'd like to know what it is so we can figure out what the Hell is going on. FFS I'm running a gig of RAM and a RADEON 9250 and I don't get lag from MIRVs (or nailgrens).

[FooL]

i think the nades that come off from the mirv should all blow at the same time rather than a constant area of explosion for like 2 seconds i think that would balance it fine but its not a big deal to me keeping it the same would be fine too

[KubeDawg]

Proximity nade?

[mixer]

Originally Posted by FooL

i think the nades that come off from the mirv should all blow at the same time rather than a constant area of explosion for like 2 seconds i think that would balance it fine but its not a big deal to me keeping it the same would be fine too

2 seconds??? its a few tenth of a second ...

[mervaka]

Originally Posted by Green Mushy

If you think dying by 9fps spam is fun, you have a screw loose.

"Spam and tactical spam should not be removed from the game" Fine, lets find a compromise between 9 fps and 100fps.

what are your pc specs? my pc copes fine in most situations

[Elmo]

havent been arsed to read the whole thread.. theres some lengthy posts that my mind just isnt in any state to absorb

I have no problems with mirvs as they are and no problems with changing them.. so I've basically got no comment on this thread really.

But if it helps heres the spec of my old PC and some screens following.

I was spamming mouse2 bound to "impulse 101;+gren2;-gren2". hosted on my LOCAL server - hosting my own server also takes a fair few FPS from me. Also showing how bad the PC is.. showbudget takes 30 fps from me alone!

XP3200 @ 2.4Ghz
AGP GeForce 6800 XT OC'd
1GB 3200 DDR (400MHz) RAM

+showbudget & Spam
+showbudget & No Spam
-showbudget & Spam
-showbudget & No Spam

[chilledsanity]

Green Mushy: Sorry to hear it's so frustrating for you. While I don't like demomen flying in to drop mirvs, die, repeat in under 10 seconds either, ultimately I still like Mirvs. I don't suffer any noticeable slowdown from them, so I can't comment there. I'm sorry you don't agree, but I think all the spam and the ragdolls are hilarious, it's one of the main reasons I play. Nowhere else have I seen the bodies fly through the air like in TFC and in FF it's even better. I like the distinctiveness of the grenades. If you wanted to reduce spam, honestly I could see regular grenades going away before you got rid of the specialty ones.

[dys]

Well said puppychow. Chalk one up for the loose screws.

[Green Mushy]

I suppose i did make this thread with some assumptions. I guess i have to look more into them. When i made the first post, i was under the impression that a majority of people are frustrated and say things like "lag" "spam" or "im getting bad fps" when they feel they are dealing with those things. It just so happens that mirvs happen to be being thrown when that is happening. I dont know if im making a wild connection here, but that is my observation.

Another thing is that PC's are different. I obviously dont assume that everybody's pc is the same, and some people experience no lag at all no matter what the spam, and ive been assuming that most everybody had felt some sort of lag. I do know for a fact that a lot of people dont have new pcs, and they will feel the hurt of 9fps. So, if lag from severe spam or any types of explosions doesnt effect you, you need to look at dying from spam or mirvs as the subject, not the lag.

Also, do you think people should be forced to go out and spend hundreds of dollars so they can healthily load spammy mirvs? Are they seriously hundreds of dollars worth to keep in the game? Remember, im not asking to nerf demoman. Im just asking for a less PC eating grenade. I figured that at the same time, the grenade itself could be looked at because people are just running around and 1shotting people in pickup games over and over with mirvs. They spam them on flags, die, and return to where they were. They know the O is coming in a few seconds and throw down mirvs. They throw them at teammates. They throw them everywhere. Mirvs become more of a reliable strategy to killing people then using the blue pipe launcher and i think that is what is fucked up.

When i think of spam, and bad fps, i imagine a 4v4 ctf map, or a big pub. Openfire comes to mind, where the demoman is piping the flag, and chucking mirvs everywhere. My fps will start to hurt, and many others do too. And while running to their base 50 times or so, you will die by thoughtless mirv throwing many of those times, especially more to a better demoman. Now, in a pickup situation, a place where the depth of the game becomes more mastered and understood, dying by things that are basically luck is greatly unappreciated. Frustrating to say the least. Thats just the pickup scene, and i know pubs more important.

In pubs, which are prone to being laggier to start, anything that pushes the fps downward should be greatly unappreciated to any gamer.(i know, related to pc). Do you want to lose new pub players with ok pcs to laggy gameplay? No. You want people to experience a demoman and see explosions everywhere and destruction. Fine, keep that in, just make it not hurt pcs. I hardly think there isnt a new idea that would be just as good as a mirv and less laggy. There are an infinite number of ideas. Take a page from TF2's book. Why do you think they removed nades? They said to reduce spam and help new players. It just so happens that new players dont know whats going on, and many times die to spam, not knowing how they died. This makes them frustrated and quit. Now, i love grenades, and am not proposing to remove them. Just look at a successful video game. Look at how they approached the subject. Try to be more like them, but keep the real Fortress feel alive. No sense in being stubborn about this nostalgic grenade that could be hurting the game. There may be many things that are nostalgic about FF that could be some of the reason that its not desirable to new players.

On the subject of spam in pubs to begin with, well you will always see it at the starting gates on AvD maps. And you will see spam thrown in front of spawn doors. This is fun and intended? This is how u want nades used? This will always merit a response from the person who was spammed at the gate or door, and make reference to fps or spam. If it doesnt effect you, GJ, but you should care how other people are experiencing the game. Especially pubs, good fps and NON-Annoyances are a must.

Getting 1 shot in general is usually an annoying mechanic to a video game. So many people complain about the AWP in cs, and crits in TF2. A 1shotting mirv, that is thoughtlessly thrown, does not deserve to lag the minority of pc owners, cause frustration, be relied on for killing more then a primary weapon, and kill the more skillful. (I am exagerating that 1 mirv lags me. You would need a full game and multiple mirvs.)

[KubeDawg]

So, why not just fix the mirv, instead of getting rid of it?

[chilledsanity]

Green Mushy: What are your PC Specs? Processor type (not just Ghz rating), amount of RAM, and videocard. Also, what's the best looking game that you can run smoothly on your system? I'm not downplaying your concerns over performance, I'm just curious what your weak spot might be with it. If I had to guess, I'd say it's your CPU that might not handle the spam well since I know a good chunk of it is physics based. Also, have you tried turning off ragdolls?

Just look at a successful video game. Look at how they approached the subject.

I don't think you're going to win any sentiment with that statement. Many players here feel TF2 is a dumbed down version of TF that's been mutated to the point where the feel is completely different and less desireable to people who enjoyed previous TF games. Also Valve has an enormous marketing force behind it AND it was bundled with 2 games many people wanted to play, a franchise sequel and an original puzzle shooter. TF2 would have had to have been absolute shit for hundreds of thousands of people not to be playing it.

On the subject of spam in pubs to begin with, well you will always see it at the starting gates on AvD maps. And you will see spam thrown in front of spawn doors. This is fun and intended?

Yes, it is actually. This goes back to TFC at least. This is one of the biggest things that appealed to me about the game. There was so much action and explosions and bodies flying everywhere on AVD that even on my 56k at the time it was a blast to play just because it was so exciting. Also there's no respawn wait so you could try again and again to push through and wear the defense down. It's not like this on all maps, but what you're describing is intentional.

[puppychow]

Originally Posted by Green Mushy

Also, do you think people should be forced to go out and spend hundreds of dollars so they can healthily load spammy mirvs? Are they seriously hundreds of dollars worth to keep in the game?

that's a bit of a wild overstatement don't you think?

Originally Posted by Green Mushy

When i think of spam, and bad fps, i imagine a 4v4 ctf map, or a big pub. Openfire comes to mind, where the demoman is piping the flag, and chucking mirvs everywhere. My fps will start to hurt, and many others do too. And while running to their base 50 times or so, you will die by thoughtless mirv throwing many of those times, especially more to a better demoman. Now, in a pickup situation, a place where the depth of the game becomes more mastered and understood, dying by things that are basically luck is greatly unappreciated. Frustrating to say the least. Thats just the pickup scene, and i know pubs more important.

i get what you are trying to say here, but it comes off as elitist, which i do not mind, but if the goal of FF is to make it so the experience is so refined, so technical, and so hard for new people, it will become more of a niche game than it already is and completely die. when i kill someone by accident, or at least when i didn't think i was going to, it gives me those internal "oh shit" moments where i chuckle and lol inside. it's that feeling that kept me coming back to TFC and is part of the whole enjoyable experience of FF. i'm not grilling you at all, we can agree to disagree on spams place in the world; i just think your perspective of wanting FF to become this world where only the l33t can thrive is misguided. Error and guesswork make the game richer, not dumbed down. It feels like you just take it oh so seriously and I have this vision of you cursing at the screen and calling someone a n00b when they drop a nade upon death and it takes you out. It's ok man!

Originally Posted by Green Mushy

On the subject of spam in pubs to begin with, well you will always see it at the starting gates on AvD maps. And you will see spam thrown in front of spawn doors. This is fun and intended? This is how u want nades used? This will always merit a response from the person who was spammed at the gate or door, and make reference to fps or spam. If it doesnt effect you, GJ, but you should care how other people are experiencing the game. Especially pubs, good fps and NON-Annoyances are a must.

This is what made dustbowl fun. Being able to break through the spammy D gave a sense of accomplishment.

Originally Posted by Green Mushy

Getting 1 shot in general is usually an annoying mechanic to a video game. So many people complain about the AWP in cs, and crits in TF2. A 1shotting mirv, that is thoughtlessly thrown, does not deserve to lag the minority of pc owners, cause frustration, be relied on for killing more then a primary weapon, and kill the more skillful.

again, "the more skillfull" - just sounds bad. it's like you want anything taken out that gets in the way of your "skillfull" play. I also take to task your assertion that mirvs kill more than pipes for an average demo. look, asshats will always be out there - can't you just change tactics if you are so frustrated? your comments make me want to go mirv crazy and make "more skilled" players cry.

I think some of your posts have some degree of merit, but on a whole the positives of mirvs outweigh the negatives. Most importantly as stated before, there needs to remain some sort of mass removal weapon in the game - a mirv substitute would most likely still have the same spam potential - its very nature is a necessity.

I have read many of your thoughtful posts before and your ideas often are insightful and frankly needed and i enjoy reading them. But you can't bat 1000%, and I think you are misguided on this particular topic.

[squeek.]

Originally Posted by puppychow

It feels like you just take it oh so seriously and I have this vision of you cursing at the screen and calling someone a n00b when they drop a nade upon death and it takes you out. It's ok man!

This made me chuckle. Mushy is very calm basically all the time.

Just wanted to say I also get the 10 fps whenever Gator-style spam starts.

(By the way, I'm still not at home)