Priorities

[bokko]

So let's face it, Team Fortress 2 is effectively winning the Fortress community over (Seemingly even the FF devs). Instead of trying to beat TF2 at its own game would it not be better to prioritise what is unique for FF?

Can skip this:

I'm talking about the areas in which TF2 are lacking, namely:
Grenades
Movement
Variation

TF2 is simply speaking a refined Attack vs Defence game, and a damn good one at that. It is also perhaps the most newbie friendly Multiplayer game to this date. The game will attract new players and keep them hooked because of the sheer fun factor.

FF is a more traditional Fortress game, and the learning curve is steep.
It takes patience to fully get into the game, and practise to master.
On the other hand it has enormous depth and variation that will keep players coming back to improve and experience new playing styles.

So what about priorities?

Less focus on Attack vs Defend gameplay that TF2 does a lot better, less focus on making this game appeal to the average gamer, I think we should all agree this is a niche game.

More focus on capture the flag which indeed exists in TF2, but it will never be as dynamic without concs and similar moves.

More focus on skill maps - this game needs an official conc map!

And more power to the community that will keep this game alive, more resources such as how to use LUA in ff.

Sorry if I come off as arrogant, I have never worked on a mod so this is mostly speculation. And I don't think my suggestions would magically bring FF a solid playerbase.

[greenday5494]

you hit the nail on the head, but i dont think they should abadon D and A, i love those maps, in TF2 and FF, its nice to see a deviation once in a while, and be prepared to be flamed

[Johnny Mullet]

I played many Fortress games and Fortress Forever is newbie friendly. TF2 is for kids.

[Major Lee High]

I would not focus on more CTF maps. Well, 2fort etc will always end up dominating the server lists. 10 ctf maps, all the same goal with a little bit different layouts, people will start wanting well and 2fort where they already know where to go and have their strats figured out.

A/D might not draw in lots of new players but they have a better chance for new maps to be played than CTF imo. With assault the map is the gametype, unless the mappers are making maps the same they will be alot more different than ctf maps end up.

[SoBe Green]

Actually I think more focus on the AvD department is needed. If TF2 was purely CTF less people would play it. CTF is a tired idea. Even in TF2 people complain when 2fort gets loaded. There will always be people out there that want their 2fort or well. But the fact of the matter is AvD FORCES a team to work together and each team can see their progress as the game keeps going.

I'm part of a CS community and every now and then we'll organize a night of TFC. Do you know what these CS players want to play when they play a TF game? avanti or dustbowl (occasional warpath) Not to mention most times I play FF with a new player or even older players they all talk nonstop about avanti. Get in a server and start talking about avanti. Everyone wants it.

AvD has more mass appeal. Its more fun to defend or try to capture an "area" than it is to run a flag back and forth for 30+ minutes. CTF might work great in matches but its a tired out idea for pubs.

TFC didn't just die out due to lack of support from Valve it was the dominant CTF game type. Valve no longer supports CS 1.6 and haven't for two years now and it is still above all other Valve products in stats. Imagine if TF2 were nothing but CTF maps. Imagine if all maps were near recreations of their originals shutdown, well, 2fort Can't say I'd want to play TF2 like that. Can you?


Quick summary: Show players what they like in TF2 only in FF and how much fun it can be.

[Dr.Uudge]

i think FF can benefit from "true balance" as opposed to "appear balance."

By "appear balance" what i mean is that the impression of gameplay balance is there because theoretically this should balance that. But in reality, which is actual gameplay, there are significant hinderances that disallow the theoretical balance.

TF2 example: people have suggested that tf2 classes work like rock-paper-scissors game - such as scout>soldier in open space, but soldier>scout in CQC. Or pyro>all classes in CQC but all classes>pyro. The problem is, in actual gamplay, this game of RPS is bogus because there are some dominant factors that tend to nutralize any sort of theoretical balance that was concocted; an example being sg squatters or a combo of sg squatters and medic-hw defending the sgs. Although uber looks good on paper for offense, the fact that the defense can use them too, but w/ sgs as their backup and sandwiched engies babysitting w/ dispensors kind of makes it impractical in many situations; it "should work" but in reality, it's dependent on factors outside of the player's control(aka teamwork, environment, crits, etc)

"true balance" is taking actual gameplay into consideration and rather than using statistics to determine if xyz will work in a situation, to make it work 100% but only in the case that the player develops the skills to use the game mechanics; someone on the tf2 forums mentioned skill multipliers:

example: there's theoretical skill 1, 2, and 3 -
1. concing
2. aim/shooting
3. predicting opponents movements/strategy

all three are skill dependent; more experience/practice = improvement

while someone might be good at 1, they might suck at 2 or 3. his opponent might be good at 2, but suck at 1 or 3. both have similar advantages in this case because the concer can escape while the shooter tries to frag the guy; if someone is good at 3 and 1, and average 2, but his opponent is good at 2, but averate 1 and 3, there should be a greater advantage for the first guy because he's good at 2 of the multipliers while the other guy is only good at 1

the above is only an example

i think if a list were made that clearly favored skills and improvable by practice, and the classes designs were based around that, it would help buff the gameplay; for instance, an hwguy cannot conc and therefore the player only has to be good in 2 skills( according to the above example) to excell; to compensate for the lack of concing, the hwguy now has a timer on his AC that requires similar skills to the concer, in terms of timing(the heatup); if these kinds of balances focused around the list of improvable-by-practise-skills, and the curve was easy to learn, then it makes sense why medic infection would be nerfed; this would tend toward a "true balance" as opposed to "appear balance"

In terms of roles, i think tf2 hit a sweet spot by laying out specific roles of each class. However, I dont' think it should be 3 separate roles. Rather, it should be like a cold-hot scale, where far left would be offense(flag runner) and far right would be defense(flag guard). If the classes' mobility/weapons/tools were based on this scale, i think it would help distinguish each class for a specific O or D role, instead of the "i'm not sure" such as pyro, spy or scout;

all offense class could have some sort of conc-like ability, with a trade off in one form or another, because this would promote active flag capping; for the scout/medic, they already have conc-effect; but this could be reversed in terms of duration because scout is weaker than a medic and needs to recover more rapidly to be effective; medics already have brute force arsenal at their disposal; as for pyro/spy, the trade of for some kind of conc-like thing could be dmg to h/a; as slower classes than scout or medic, they're more prone to engagement; the spy can avoid it for some time, but when the spy has the flag, he's a turtle on sand - no mobility at all; pyro's mobility is also limited and in terms of gtfo; at least the demo has a mirv, a fairly good room clearing tool; the D could have tools like the scouts caltrop or something that blurs(like the super conc effect) to hinder flag grabbers

perhaps if there was a more methodical/systematic way of differentiating O vs D it would help. Certainly the skill multiplier is a good thing to consider. After all, it doesn't seem equal, when a sniper can 1shot kill a full health medic/pyro/spy even though only 1 aspect(the aim/shoot) needs to be good whereas the offense needs 3 or 4 skills in order to get past the whole D team to get the flag. And the clear role with tools that clearly favor those roles certainly would help. At least then, future gamers can look back on FF and use its "true balance" design as a guide of sorts

[SoBe Green]

You type way too much. :/

[Johnny Mullet]

LOL!

[KubeDawg]

IMO, they shouldn't just focus all their or even most of their time on one specific thing. I think the key to TFC's success was the variety of maps, because although there were tons of 2fort servers, you had maps like Avanti, Rock2 and Warpath kickin ass because they're something different, not to mention all the skill type maps.

Another thing we need to work on is animations as well as models. I know it probably took a while to model each character, but I enjoyed havin the gangsta engineer outfit and the golden spanner while playing:



or the quake RPG launcher:


Once the game starts having more variety in it, I think more people will pick it up.

[Norris]

welcome to ugly TFC?

Johnny Mullet: wwwrong. it is maybe newbie friendly IF you actually have expierence in the TF gameplay. new players usually doesn't know about bhop, concjumps, grenades etc. it's like when we started back in the day. you have to perfect lots of stuff at the same time. maybe you argue that it isn't needed to play the mod but in the end it is because you usually face someone who already does it which gives him an advantage over you. FACT.

tf2 is hardly for kids. or does teamplay only belong to kids?

topic: I wouldn't drop the AD aspect of the game. this will end up with more players changing over to TF2. AD (HI dustbowl) was probably the gamemode which attracted the most players before they tried clanbased CTF in TFC.

[qui]

Originally Posted by Johnny Mullet

I played many Fortress games and Fortress Forever is newbie friendly. TF2 is for kids.

Yeah.... be more of a snob.

[Circuitous]

Originally Posted by KubeDawg

Another thing we need to work on is animations as well as models. I know it probably took a while to model each character...

Another thing we need to work on is getting a modeller on the team who won't run off.

[KubeDawg]

Originally Posted by Norris

welcome to ugly TFC?

Johnny Mullet: wwwrong. it is maybe newbie friendly IF you actually have expierence in the TF gameplay. new players usually doesn't know about bhop, concjumps, grenades etc. it's like when we started back in the day. you have to perfect lots of stuff at the same time. maybe you argue that it isn't needed to play the mod but in the end it is because you usually face someone who already does it which gives him an advantage over you. FACT.

tf2 is hardly for kids. or does teamplay only belong to kids?

topic: I wouldn't drop the AD aspect of the game. this will end up with more players changing over to TF2. AD (HI dustbowl) was probably the gamemode which attracted the most players before they tried clanbased CTF in TFC.

haha, I hardly see how you'd clasify that as ugly, especially compared to the current models...

[SoBe Green]

TFC is beautiful compared to FF when it comes to player models. You can't tell one player model from the next at long range. TFC is far from ugly.

[greenday5494]

yea, speccially the New Models, the textures are actually pretty crispy and high detail, the Old Models are more blurry, and dont really stand out well, but you can tell what class people are. in FF, they player models blend in too much, and its hard to see what class it is from a distance, TF2 and TFC got this down, now we need an animator and a modeler. is modelling hard, and is animating hard?

[Norris]

I really should have quoted the pictures....

[Dr.Uudge]

my bad the post was long; here is the condensed summary:

1. there could be a list of "skill multipliers" such as concing, aim/shoot, opponent movement prediction, rocket jumping, knowing the map, etc, a general list of things that people normally improve with experience and practices; the class balances can be tweaked so that one class should not be able to dominate an entire map by being good a 1 skill multiplier, but have added skills as compensation
-example, concers need timing skills, but hwguy doesn't; to compensate, hwguy has a timing thing for his AC; now the skill multiplier requirements(timing) are needed for both classes

2. a scale: far left is offensive, far right is defensive and the classes, instead of being strictly O or strictly D, the classes can be on the scale in their relative roles; all class can be used for both O or D, but their weapons, movements/mobility, function should tend to favor their abilities depending on where they are on the O/D scale
-example, spy or pyros usually are involved in active flag running also, but do not have as much mobility as medic or scout; therefore both pyro and spy needs some mobility function; the spy has cloak to be sure, but once the spy is carrying the flag, he's lame duck on land; defense like demos/hwguys could have a function/tool that could perhaps blur(like superconc) O flag runners for ~1 sec or less that helps them to defend, but which can also be used somewhat effectively if they decided to go O; the blur thing is only an example and i do not personally advocate it - i was just using it as an example

3. emphasize the skill multipliers, but allow the learning curve to be easy, such as the conc_course; there could also be an official rocket_course or pipe_course or IC_course with things such as "use only 1 conc for this jump" or "use only 1 grenade and 1 rocket for this jump"; the skill multipliers will allow for better balance, since it doesn't seem fair for a player to dominate a map just because the class they play is designed to dominate certain environments, especially when the player only needs to be good at aim/shooting or concing/rocket jumping(1 or 2 skills), when there are other skills that can be implimented and honed(such as 3 or 4 others that they do not need because of class design such as knowing possible gren-jump locations, knowing where/how to throw flags into accessible areas, timing prime/throw gren for sgs, etc)
-example, a pyro must be better than the soldier at predicting movements and rockets to go 1v1 because the soldier is better/higher lvl armored, has more dmg and has better arsenal of weapons compared to the pyro; but as for skill multipliers, if the pyro player is better at mobility skills, some kind of function could allow the pyro to escape dm matches against soldiers so that 1v1 confrontations can be avoided if the pyro's dm skills are not better than the soldier player

[Skanky Butterpuss]

thats not very condensed...

[[AE] 82694]

Hey Skanky tell all these guys that our #1 priority is PUSSY. Patch and everything else is second.

[Skanky Butterpuss]

that one goes without saying