Dev. Journal: squeek. (2011-11-30)

[FF_Team]

I thought I'd try something out. I'm going to talk about an idea that we tried for a while in the beta but ultimately scrapped, why we ending up removing it, and what we replaced it with.

One thing that we try to do is look at every mechanic in the game and form some sort of consensus on it with regards to the following questions: Is it good for the game? Does it need to be replaced or removed? If so, what is worth keeping about it? And other questions along those lines.

In this process, some mechanics stand out in terms of needing replacement. One such mechanic was the soldier's nail grenade, which stood out because, essentially, the correct use of it was spam. There was no depth, no interactivity, and no skill involved both in its use and its avoidance. This is a huge problem, because it means that it's not fun to play against, kills that were netted from it didn't feel earned, and therefore it would primarily cause frustration. This is a post from a thread on the beta forums about it:

Originally Posted by squeek.

1. The nail pattern isn't interactive. To avoid damage you just can't go near it.
2. The explosion at the end is only effective against people that accidentally run into it. Running through a nailgren is a gamble; sometimes it explodes, sometimes it doesn't, and it's not dependent on anything the soldier is/was doing (when he threw it he never could have predicted [even with wallhacks] that you'd go there at that specific time, he was just guessing).

So, we went about thinking of replacements. There are a few criteria for class-specific grenades: that it conforms with or strengthens the role of the class and/or that it creates a deep moment-to-moment choice about which type of grenade to prime (the Medic choosing between frags and concs is a good example of this type of depth).

Our first idea was called the vert grenade. It converted horizontal momentum into vertical momentum; in other words, it slowed people down and popped them up in the air. This works quite well with the soldier because it creates an opportunity for a rocket airshot, buys time for reloading, creates an easy rocket shot when they land, or creates an easy opportunity for getting a few shotgun blasts in.

the vert grenade in all its glory

This was all well and good. It was interactive, it created some amount of depth in grenade choice, and it conformed with the role of the soldier. But, it was not as thrilling in practice. The huge, glaring problem was that it was really, really difficult to use because of the 4 second grenade timer. Elmo summed it up well in a post on the dev forums:

Originally Posted by Elmo

[If you think,] "Someone should be coming around the corner soon, it's been a while. I'll prime a vert gren"

With the vert grenade, the effect is so quick that the chance of getting someone with it in this way is very low. (it's wasted)

[If you think,] "Aha a victim, I'll prime a vert gren *primed*"

The chances are that they will avoid you (wasted) or frequently the fight is over in under 4 seconds (wasted).

So to make this grenade work (as it is now) you either have to....

• increase the duration of the effect in the hope it will get someone (likely that you didn't intend to hit)
• OR
• Reduce the timer so that you can hit the intended person before the fight is over.

Neither are good solutions...

Say you primed it AND you actually hit them - woo about fucking time....

Most maps have a low-ish roof, especially in CTF around choke points that a soldier would be defending. I DO NOT believe maps should be made FOR vert grens, we need to make a gren that can be used in multiple spaces and surroundings.

With low approval by beta members and playtests with the vert grenade not feeling quite right, we decided to try something else. That something else ended up being the laser grenade.

an early/alternate version of the laser grenade with nails for arms

The original idea, suggested by caesium, was for a grenade similar to the original nail grenade but with defined arms. After some discussion, we settled on an idea that we could work with and got to coding it. Both nails and lasers were tried, but we ended up going with lasers because the nail version was simply too expensive. Lasers had the added bonus of being really simple to team-color, among other small benefits.

Luckily, the laser grenade worked as well in practice as we thought it would in theory. It solved all of the problems with the nail grenade while retaining the nail grenade's area denial ability. Removing the explosion at the end solves the nail grenade's need-for-spam/luck. Making the arms of the laser grenade dodgable creates a level of interactivity that the nail grenade could never have dreamed of attaining. It conforms with the soldiers role and was fun to use and play against. It ticked all the boxes and after extensive testing we decided it was worthy of inclusion in patch 2.42.

Finally, to sum up:

Originally Posted by squeek.

The laser grenade is similar to the nail grenade, but also entirely different. It does damage in an area, making people want to avoid it. But, the damage is dodgable if you behave in a certain manner. This creates an interesting dynamic, because if there is no one around, you can dodge the damage fairly easily (meaning spamming is less effective, and damage from it always feels deserved [you failed to dodge it well]); but, if there is someone around (say the soldier that threw the grenade), your movement as you dodge the damage becomes MUCH more predictable, making it easier for the soldier to hit you. Once you get into that loop, there is a lot of depth and interactivity (avoiding damage makes me easier to hit with rockets, should I take some damage from the laser grenade? should I hang back and wait? etc...) All are viable and potentially logical choices, dependent on both the situation and the actions of each player. That is what we are looking for.

Anything can be made effective. We want to try to make our mechanics effective, interactive, deep, and fun wherever possible (and jump roping laser grenades is rather fun ).

And so that's that. Let me know on the forums if you'd like to see more of this type of dev journal.

P.S. Be on the look out for a hefty laser grenade damage increase in patch 2.44 (coming soon!).