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Old 10-10-2009, 05:48 AM   #1
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Some critique

I've been playing FF since 2.0 came out, on and off, and I've always noticed the very small playerbase as being odd; I mean, FF is a great game, why aren't people playing it?

Well, I noticed that whenever I have a bad match, it usually causes me to think momentarily, "this game sucks" or "I hate this". It's just a knee-jerk reaction. However, I don't really find myself thinking that altogether too much when I play most other games and I have a bad match.

I did a thought experiment, and tried to figure out why exactly this was, and I narrowed it down to this: annoyances. There's some things about FF that are flat out annoying, and when you combine them with a bad match, it gets very irritating.

Here's a few examples of things I'm talking about:

-Pyros being able to own you without you standing much of a chance, if they're good (even if you kill them, the level 2 or 3 burn will annihilate you; and level 1 burn is bad enough for a light class)

-Good soldiers can annihilate just about anybody, no matter which class, toss you around like a ragdoll with rockets before you can even aim or fight back. It's irritating because you just can't seem to beat them, and if you go solly to try to counter them, they'll beat you then, too (because they're more skilled!) It's discouraging.

-Snipers. Yeah, I enjoy sniping--when I'm on the right side of the gun. Being sniped is ANNOYING. It's just irritating for the other person. From far away, you really do not stand much of a chance against a sniper, unless you're another sniper.

-Flame grenades. These little guys aren't neat and orderly like a soldier's nailgrenades, these guys just go everywhere, and there's not much you can do if someone nades the outside of a spawn. Being on fire is just annoying because, unless there's a medic around who cares enough, or water deep enough, you're going to be on fire for a little while. It's not like you being on fire actually benefits the pyro; the pyro gets no points when you die unless the pyro is the one who kills you.

-EMP grenades that go through walls. Physically, this makes sense. An EMP blast WILL go through most surfaces. However, there's nothing more annoying than being killed through the floor by an EMP grenade on the level below tossed at the ceiling. Or a similar situation, someone kills you through a wall. Kill you in one hit, and you don't stand a chance against it. You might say, "discard your ammo!", but this is annoying too!

-Why should you have to discard your ammo in order to not get annihilated by an engineer? It's not intuitive. A newbie won't be thinking "oh, I can discard my ammo to save my ass, and I should get into the habit of doing this after I respawn". Discarding is good for helping engineers on your team, and this is a good function of it. But, it's just annoying to have to discard whenever you respawn.

-Concs moving your screen everywhere. This is another annoying thing; there's nothing you can do about it. Concs go through walls, too. Once you get conced, you're just sitting there, still able to aim if you do it properly, but it just makes it THAT much more annoying to do so. It's also very unintuitive for newbies; they won't know that you can still aim, despite your screen moving everywhere. The effect lasts for way too long too; it's mainly an annoyance.

That's about all I can think of for now. Don't get me wrong, guys, I love FF. I've been playing for a long time, on and off. It's just I find that the biggest, major turn off of this game, is the annoyance factor of some elements of the gameplay. It turns a bad match into something very irritating, that would cause an inexperienced person to ragequit; hell, I've even nearly ragequit a few times because of this stuff, and I came from the land of TFC. Granted, TFC had way more annoyances than FF (sheesh, don't even get me started!)
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Old 10-10-2009, 06:16 AM   #2
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I completely agree there are to many annoyances in this game. I also agree with each item on your list being annoying, although some of these can't really be changed unless we completely change the game (such as the sniper).

Here are a few annoyances that I want to add to your list:

- Teammates push damage affecting you. I don't think when a teammate shoots you with a rocket/pipe/conc/etc it should push you around. At the very least I think the push should be toned down dramatically.

- Teammates / Team buildables colliding with you. I think you should be able to walk through teammates and team buildables (sg, dispenser). Although I'm pretty sure once we get on OB engine we are going to do this.

- To many grenades. I think there are to many grenades flying around in pub play and it gets hard to even move around sometimes due to the amount of grenades.
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Old 10-10-2009, 07:41 AM   #3
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Good list Junkhead. We definitely plan to address those problems in some way or another.
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Old 10-10-2009, 08:14 AM   #4
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So in a nut shell, you don't like loosing ?
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Old 10-10-2009, 08:26 AM   #5
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Junkhead-
I agree with some of the stuff on the list.

Hlstriker-
I think changing or removing the sniper won't affect the game play even a little bit, if at all. I've never heard anyone say " WE ARE GETTING STOMPED ON D SOMEONE GO SNIPER." if you have seen it, post screen shots. LOL

But I agree the SG should be non-colliding, but i want to use the dispenser, not walk through it.
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Old 10-10-2009, 09:49 AM   #6
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I agree with many (almost all) of the points and they're something I think most of (almost all) the devs will agree with too.

thanks for taking the time to write that up and believe me you didn't come across badly, I respect you for it
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Old 10-10-2009, 10:25 AM   #7
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Annoying when learning but importantly makes you want to get better to defeat the annoying person. People quit any game server when someone opposing is just too good sometimes.. However the thing about FF is that you don't have to be good to be effective, numbers = effectiveness.

I do agree that they all can be annoying at the start but they are part of the game and I think to take them away would make the game have less depth for someone wanting to try all the classes.

A good soldier will get owned by an average sniper,
a good sniper will get owned by an average medic who has the sense to not go midmap...

it's a balanced game imo, always a counter... but yes fire is annoying, the pyro is not used in clanstyle gaming because it is actually the least effective class and very much just a fun class to play for noobs.


I think anymore changes could prove to be very damaging for the FF community, the past 2weeks have been dreadful for activity and the last thing you want to do is drive away the current players who play it competitively because without them you have no servers, no new players able to join pickups and less people like zE and even myself spending time on servers teaching people how to trimp or bhop.

Anyway the success of the game is entirely down to marketing so hopefully it shall be on the orange box soon.
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Old 10-10-2009, 01:20 PM   #8
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Initially I have to agree with wakka on this one, i can remember when i first started playing TFC , die, respawn, die, respawn, until i got better at it. Personally I believe that peoples expectation's of games in general today are that they can pwn everyone within' the first 10 mins of playing and thats why we get dm midmapping in pubs. Most big games are designed and cater for the console kids and have little or no depth. Not in the way sense of developing any level of skill like you can in FF.

Why is it that i don't find these "annoyances" annoying ? Gren spam ... I love it

On the other hand if it's a question on survival then ... but it maybe at the cost of loosing hardcore fans.
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Old 10-10-2009, 04:11 PM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Junkhead View Post
-Pyros being able to own you without you standing much of a chance, if they're good (even if you kill them, the level 2 or 3 burn will annihilate you; and level 1 burn is bad enough for a light class)
pyros need a tweak still anyway - I agree that faster classes should have a way of losing the the flames (eg concing)
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-Good soldiers can annihilate just about anybody
thats just a skill gap I don't see that changing much
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-Snipers.
need a revamp
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-Flame grenades

It's not like you being on fire actually benefits the pyro; the pyro gets no points when you die unless the pyro is the one who kills you.
I agree the point that the pyro rarely gets the kill is a problem (why I think we need kill assists)
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-EMP grenades that go through walls.
meh, don't emps in RL go through walls?
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-Why should you have to discard your ammo
I agree there's little depth to this and its just an advantage to the people who do know.
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-Concs moving your screen everywhere.
just something to get used to imo
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Old 10-10-2009, 04:30 PM   #10
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...so you're not happy if you're getting hit or killed.

Weapons are just plain annoying. I mean seriously..damn!
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Old 10-10-2009, 04:54 PM   #11
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...so you're not happy if you're getting hit or killed.

Weapons are just plain annoying. I mean seriously..damn!
That's what I got out of most of these points. The only ones I really agree with are pyros needing kill assists from napalm grenades (or just fire in general), and the stuff about discarding not being intuitive. Also perhaps the conc effect lasting too long. It feels too long for the speed the game moves at.

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Old 10-10-2009, 06:46 PM   #12
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I understand that this might come across as myself simply saying, "I don't like getting killed!", but really guys, it's not me getting killed that I find annoying. I don't mind getting killed in a fair fight.

The fact is that it's just discouraging to keep getting killed, without any chance of survival against a 1337 pro... unless you also just happen to be a pro. I understand that it's not fair to the pros (who have invested significant time in this game) to be able to be killed by newbies all the time (ala TF2), but also, it's very, very discouraging for a newcomer to play the game if they keep get owned every time they leave their respawn. It's not going to make the newbie think "I have to get better at this", usually, in the same way that telling someone they're an idiot isn't going to make them suddenly try to be smarter. It's going to make them toss their hands into the air and play another game, because at the end of the day, most people just want to play a game to have fun. They don't see a game as a hobby, something that needs to be worked at.

I love this game. I've been playing for a very long time. I'm not a newbie. I'm also not a pro. I also don't have any intentions in being a pro, because I play this game only for fun. If I want to work at something, I'll work on a program of mine, or practise some guitar. All I'm saying, is that the driving force behind people leaving this game are the aspects seem just plain unfair and/or annoying.

That being said, the 2.4 update has helped out a lot, in my opinon. The new gametypes are fun, and I consistently find myself having a MUCH better time on the new non-CTF maps than the older CTF ones. The devs are definitely moving in the right direction.
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Old 10-10-2009, 06:49 PM   #13
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I understand that this might come across as myself simply saying, "I don't like getting killed!", but really guys, it's not me getting killed that I find annoying. I don't mind getting killed in a fair fight.
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The fact is that it's just discouraging to keep getting killed, without any chance of survival against a 1337 pro... unless you also just happen to be a pro.
You seem to have a contradiction on your hands.
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Old 10-10-2009, 07:03 PM   #14
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He means, in some situations, the mechanics determine the fairness, not the skill level.

Being 1-shotted by an EMP doesn't give you any feedback on what you did wrong. What you did wrong was getting hit by the EMP, but how do you dodge it next time if you never even saw it this time (let's say it was behind a wall). Plus, there's no way of knowing that what you might have done wrong is not having discarded your ammo. That's not good, and it's annoying to be killed that way.

It's a legitimate list, and it's something we have been talking about behind the scenes for a little while.
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Old 10-10-2009, 07:10 PM   #15
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For some of the points maybe. Most of them are just "I'm getting killed by people really good at the game."
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Old 10-10-2009, 07:26 PM   #16
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For some of the points maybe. Most of them are just "I'm getting killed by people really good at the game."
Only the soldier one in my opinion.
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Old 10-10-2009, 10:03 PM   #17
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Only the soldier one in my opinion.
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Old 10-10-2009, 10:10 PM   #18
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Quote:
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You seem to have a contradiction on your hands.
At first glance it does appear to be a contradiction, however, it's really not. In a fight between a newbie and a pro, the pro is going to win. What I'm arguing, is that you have to let the newbie win sometimes. I'm not saying introduce crits like TF2 or something ridiculous, I'm just saying in order to keep the morale high, sometimes the lesser player needs to get a small victory. It's not a fair fight between a pro and a newbie, because the pro has many advantages that the newbie does not, namely, knowledge. I'm definitely NOT saying "dumb this game down for the newbies", since FF is awesome the way it is.

Thank you FF staff and everyone, though, for reading my thoughts and opinions on the game, I'm glad you guys decided to listen to what I've had to say. Keep up the great work!
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Old 10-10-2009, 10:57 PM   #19
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Something needs to change with pyros.... I absolutely love it and I do really well at the class infact better than most I see in a pub. Then i get called out for being a noob..

fix it so when you do awesome ppl go hey nice job not "FAGGOT NEWBY"
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Old 10-10-2009, 11:13 PM   #20
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...I'm just saying in order to keep the morale high, sometimes the lesser player needs to get a small victory...
Maybe this is where achievements should come in
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