Pro/GatherMod Ideas
Skie
Skulk Progenitor Join Date: 2003-10-18 Member: 21766Members, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Shadow
Skulk Progenitor Join Date: 2003-10-18 Member: 21766Members, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Shadow
<div class="IPBDescription">Balance fixes for competitive play</div>It's unlikely that the ruleset that competitive players will like will be that of default NS2. Maybe we should list things that would be the best for 'fair' competitive play and make a mod for it.
<u>What we have:</u>
- Yuuki's fademod
I would like to suggest some changes.
<u>Specifics:</u>
- Faster weapon switching for marines
- Slightly slower blink spam time for fades in the fademod (from 0.05 to 0.10) OR higher activation cost
- Slower spawn time for marines
- Slightly faster egg spawn time for aliens
- Gorge heal to bypass armor on marines, but do somewhat less damage (because it makes sense)
<u>Not specifics, but ideas:</u>
Pistol secondary fire needs to be made useful somehow.
Gorge bilebomb needs some nerfs.
Disabled shadows/bloom by default.
Smaller/disabled 1st person weapon models.
Comments?
<u>What we have:</u>
- Yuuki's fademod
I would like to suggest some changes.
<u>Specifics:</u>
- Faster weapon switching for marines
- Slightly slower blink spam time for fades in the fademod (from 0.05 to 0.10) OR higher activation cost
- Slower spawn time for marines
- Slightly faster egg spawn time for aliens
- Gorge heal to bypass armor on marines, but do somewhat less damage (because it makes sense)
<u>Not specifics, but ideas:</u>
Pistol secondary fire needs to be made useful somehow.
Gorge bilebomb needs some nerfs.
Disabled shadows/bloom by default.
Smaller/disabled 1st person weapon models.
Comments?
Comments
I mean, the ENSL gather uses mods on NS2 like Fade mode, you might as well just keep adding to it to make a proper 'Pro' mod.
Having said that, a few things I would put on that list (just off the top of my head):
* Remove sprint
* Increase marine base-speed to compensate for the removal of sprint
* Remove seizure-inducing red-flashes when on low health
* Remove the fuzzying of sounds when on low health
* Set a very high ceiling for FoV (presuming UWE will put in a slider)
* Increase jump-height
* Introduce duck-jump
* A movement-mechanic of some kind, preferably quake-style bunnyhopping.
Hear me out.
It's not anything new, it's been done to death for so many years, half the gaming community know how to do it already.
How about introducing a new skill based movement, that no one yet knows how to use, and thus current experience is important rather than experience learned in 1999.
Any suggestions for this new skill-based movement? We know UWE is doing something involving wall-hopping, but that doesn't seem to pan out very well up to this point.
I am sure Yuuki and Harimau could work some maths on the code, add some 'realistic' forces and make it more interesting :)
The wall hopping is a good idea in principle, and on the few areas of the few maps you are able to take advantage of it, it works well, but it doesn't seem to be consistent at the moment, maybe that's just my lack of skill :P
Err Skie?
Pistol secondary fire is useful.
Alt fire turns the damage from 15 to 40. That's a lot of useful to me :)
We already have 3 different ns2 vanilla versions, ensl servers, hbz servers.
So if we play a pcw against duplex we can play with the ensl settings we are used to, but against clans that dont play ensl we have to play vanilla... which is very different to what we used to play. (fade changes, no random spawn on some maps, health changes on structures, hivecost...)
Either UWE will start to make a ns2 version the competitive scene will be happy with, or we got serious problems.
(currently they are not delivering => ppl are unhappy and so ppl make own balance versions)
Why are there no pro mods for other competitive games, even tho you could make a mod?
The ns2 community will not be that big to begin with, with pro mods and sub competitive communitys around different balance versions everything will be crap.
The ns2 community will not be that big already, with pro mods and sub competitive communitys everything will be crap.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I do agree with you, although there was Challenge Pro Mode for Quake III Arena.
Alt fire turns the damage from 15 to 40. That's a lot of useful to me :)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
But switching to pistol and changing fire mode takes about 3-4 seconds. That's something you can't do in the heat of a battle, where you can barely change to the pistol. It's bad that the pistol doesn't remember the firing mode over deaths, and changing weapons takes a bit too long. It also gives away your position which is silly.
Q3 has CPMA and CoD4 has a Promod. So does CoD2.
Newer games don't have ones because they don't <b>allow</b> modding. So every game that actually can be considered to be played on a high skill level have some sort of pro mods.
I think fast weapon switch is pretty much a must and it would be pretty bad if it wasnt put into vanilla imo. Also, I would have thought they'd fix the jump mechanics and bring back duck jump into vanillla right? :X
Agree with the rest of your changes Skie (besides the gorge one, which im not sure about), even though i'm not familiar with the specifics of yuuki's mod.
Would also like to suggest
-no lockouts to actions from animations. E.g. no parasite delay to bite, no pistol fire stuttering while jumping etc.
-No starting IP, or atleast 10 less res for marines.
-Much higher cap on pistol rof.
- Walking doesnt have any depth or skill ceiling - we should make it so that ppl have to control each foot.
- We need flashbangs and smoke nades because the game is not really tactical in combat...
- Also dont forget scopes, because a game is only pro if i can make a 360 quick or no scope...
- Bunnyhop, duckjump, rocketjumps, strafejumps and double jumps cant miss - you cant call a game pro without that.
- Also i dont see any aircontrol - we definitely need a lot more of that.
- I want to be able to tweak my config, if im not able to make it look like quake with glowing enemy models and a fov of 180° it cant be good.
- Oh damn, i nearly forgot scripts, we need that and ofc no attackspeedlimit on weapons like the pistol... (but no scripts is fine too, there are enough programms for the most important exploits)
Ill call it the_real_promod and make another thread, or maybe i will put my effort in getting the change that i think would be good for the competitive scene into vanilla ns2... since the game is still under development, not feature complete, not really balanced, and not optimized well enough still.
- Walking doesnt have any depth or skill ceiling - we should make it so that ppl have to control each foot.
- We need flashbangs and smoke nades because the game is not really tactical in combat...
- Also dont forget scopes, because a game is only pro if i can make a 360 quick or no scope...
- Bunnyhop, duckjump, rocketjumps, strafejumps and double jumps cant miss - you cant call a game pro without that.
- Also i dont see any aircontrol - we definitely need a lot more of that.
- I want to be able to tweak my config, if im not able to make it look like quake with glowing enemy models and a fov of 180° it cant be good.
- Oh damn, i nearly forgot scripts, we need that and ofc no attackspeedlimit on weapons like the pistol...
Teh ultimate competitive gamemod in tha house!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Just go away.
There are competitive games that allow modding but dont have promods, also newer ones... - And the way you worded it ppl could interpret it wrong and read that you are saying "all new games" dont support modding which is false too.
Dghelneshi already said there are promods(so dont see the point of your reply), it was a simple wording mistake on my side - i didnt want to say there are no promods, i wanted to say not all games have promods that support modding.
Then you ignored the main points i wanted to make, possible fragmentation, and that ns2 is still under development - so why not try getting what we want from them first - before planning a promod. (why did i say anything about promods in other games? i wanted to point out that not all competitive games need promods even if they can be modded, and ns2 maybe wont need a promod if we put our effort in telling the devs what we want, and dont judge their work as if its set in stone already)
Ofc you are free to not answer/reply/care about my posts, but you did and i felt a bit trolled after you ignored the main message, and pointed at something that was already said - so i made a troll reply. Sorry that you didnt find it funny(i know, it was childish :/)
I just posted right after waking up and replied to the only thing that had a question mark after it on your post, Koruyo.
About the fragmentation, it's going to fragment anyways. I think it would be wise to try and push out one single mod for competetive/ensl play exactly for that reason, and base it on rules that <b>most</b> agree on. Such as, Yuuki's fade mod.
But since the devs do listen to some players, we should definitely try to push the wanted changes to them as well. We should just agree on them first. It was nice to see them react to the ~75 minutes of rambling about powernodes that masterp recorded some days ago, although the conclusion they came to maybe wasn't such a good one, ultimately. Not because of their bad judgement, but our bad theorising, perhaps.
So I agree with Koruyo and you should really wait until the game is nearly feature closed before trying to change half of the game to make it more like ancient games... :P
I never understood why people want to change a new game into something old, which makes the new game equals to the old. Instead why you dont play the old game if you really liked it that much :S ? That's something I really can't understand. Ofc there may be some changes or balancing issues required right now, but I suggest everyone of you to be a bit more patient and see what further builds will offer you.
Hope it's clear enough what I'm trying to explain.
On a side note, I seriously dislike (the use) of FadeMod. Not because there is anything wrong with the implementation (it works well and does what it aims to do). I just do not believe there is a need to change the way fades work. They are already incredibly easy to kill against a team of marines with good reflexes and aim, which will only become more apparent as hitreg/choke issues are resolved. I think that fades being invisible (sort of) while traveling adds a lot of stress/confusion to fighting fades, which is an enjoyable aspect of the game for me. You have to begin predicting their actions by how you know they play, not simply watching for them.
If something is old does that invalid its usage in new games? Nobody is asking for a duplicate of NS1, it wasn't perfect and NS2 needs to improve upon it, but that doesn't mean you're not allowed to re-use aspects of the old NS. Change for the sake of change even it means removing a working mechanic, is just rediculous.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Ofc there may be some changes or balancing issues required right now, but I suggest everyone of you to be a bit more patient and see what further builds will offer you.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Or rather fundamental issues with many units in the game, and the lack of trust that UWE will sort it out proper.
Nobody likes to split the community, but if the game remains as it is now, it'll force the hand of the competitive-community.
Edit: That said I like the gorge and fade balance tweaks that Skie mentioned, but I think they'll be patched into the core game before release as those are basic balance concerns. I'm more against the kinds of changes that remove aspects of the game entirely, and I really hate super high FOV settings. Seeing more of everything without having to look around doesn't make you more skilled and forces everyone else to use the settings to remain competitive so it then negates any advantage players were seeking from it in the first place.
Promod was very necessary in CoD4 if there was any clan matches to be had, because otherwise people would always get machineguns and just kill everyone by randomly shooting 200 bullets through the walls. Real show of skill, yeah. Also of course you remove silly stuff like airstrikes.
The scale of tweaks I was considering are all in the range of my first post, though. Nothing too major, although the fademod is quite a big change. Probably the biggest that there would be.
But seems like this isn't forming into any kind of fruition. I guess we should just wait.
It doesn't have to be different gameplay, could be minor game rule changes, or changes to rules on spectator vision etc.
My idea of a pro-mod is one that re-balances the game more specifically for organised play that is all. That is why I sugggested maybe making changes to the final implementation of wall-hopping if needed, rather than implementing bunnyhopping.
My idea of a pro mod is definitely more a consistent set of rules for gathers and comp play. With things like the fade mode if it doesn't get added by the devs anyway :)
I'm with you here, NS2 is still a beta, and everything is subject to change.
We should try to reach the devs, I know they have already stated that they are looking at the fade mod, which will benefit the fades balance in terms of invulnerablity.
However Skie, I agree that the cooldown on the blink needs a change. And your suggestion will work wonders I think.
Also, if UWE implements it, they have to make sure the fades are fully visible as soon as they exit blink, as I'm not sure that's something Yuuki was able to adress.
I don't like the idea of super high FoVs. However a scaling option for the viewmodels would be appreciated, I don't care if I can see through my onos. All the viewmodels looks zoomed to me now after the latest changes of FoV. I have a 4:3 CRT monitor.
The scale of tweaks I was considering are all in the range of my first post, though. Nothing too major, although the fademod is quite a big change. Probably the biggest that there would be.
But seems like this isn't forming into any kind of fruition. I guess we should just wait.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It went further than that, changing the way you and your weapons moved entirely, it was like playing a different game... which was not why I decided to go into playing into COD4.
Disabled shadows(which I will continue to defend as a MECHANIC of the game, one that I enjoy), fast weapon switching, bringing back old giant marine jumping, taking away disadvantages from being low on health, making you always be moving around super quickly instead of sprinting- these are the kind of things I have problems with.
Neither of the Starcraft games have pro mods and still maintain wild popularity throughout all levels of play.
Disabled shadows(which I will continue to defend as a MECHANIC of the game, one that I enjoy), fast weapon switching, bringing back old giant marine jumping, taking away disadvantages from being low on health, making you always be moving around super quickly instead of sprinting- these are the kind of things I have problems with.
Neither of the Starcraft games have pro mods and still maintain wild popularity throughout all levels of play.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Both Starcraft games were tailored explicitly for competitive play.
Instead it should be called "awesome mod", "community mod" or "improved ns2 mod".
Also about the fragmentation, first who have the power in the community ? I would say mainly the admin of popular servers. So the main objective would be to make them agree to run a specific mod and to have some rules about what get included into the mod (majority vote probably). Basically you need some kind of legitimate political organization, with some standard procedure to add modifications.
Really? I tried to play starcraft 3 times, not a prayer, tried starcraft 2 a couple of times, forget it. There is no such thing as a low-level starcraft game
At least i would if i could.
At least i would if i could.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
HAHAHA, so with NS2 designed to be one of the most modded games ever, as soon as a mod comes out for it you don't like, you are going to quit NS2, even though you don't need to play the mod?
That is moronic.