Uh, Flayra?
Kitsune
Join Date: 2002-11-09 Member: 7843Members
Join Date: 2002-11-09 Member: 7843Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Regarding the fresh 1.04...</div> Just a couple things I'd like to point out to make certain that they've come to your attention:
- Half resources back from an exiting Kharaa still leaves the door open for that exploit. I was on an alien team where one idiot was using that exploit; my resources shot up to 100 immediately after I turned Gorge, and stayed there for three quarters of the game. And it only took him about a minute of constant exit/enters to accomplish that. It doesn't matter if the gain from the exploit is slowed, all the aliens need for a guaranteed win is enough to buy the second hive immediately. Anything beyond that is icing. I know you don't mean that to be a permanent fix or anything, but I'd personally prefer a temporary fix that doesn't let an exploiter ruin a game.
- Grenades and Bile Bombs are only doing half damage on a direct hit: 90 and 40, respectively. Admittedly, I haven't double-checked that on a 1.04 server yet, but it's true as of 1.03 and I didn't see any mention of that in the patch list. So rather than boosting grenades to 200, which I imagine is probably being halved to 100, making them do the damage they're supposed to be doing alone would be a very good benefit for them.
- Level 3 weapon upgrades are fubared for the pistol, LMG, turret, and maybe the shotgun, as they're doing 25, 12, 30, and 200 damage rather than 26, 13, 35 and 208. If the shotguns are (pellet damage rounded down)x10, that's correct shotgun damage, but if it's (pellet damage x 10) rounded down, that's off. That's also on 1.03, haven't gotten a 1.04 server to myself to do any controlled tests yet. Thanks to Comprox for helping me double-check all those numbers. By shooting me. A lot.
I know you've got your hands full with 1.04 and 1.1, so please don't take the above as criticism or anything. Just think it would be a shame to see you spend time balancing weapon damage and stuff when their current damage is flawed, making you do it all over again when those bugs come to light.
- Half resources back from an exiting Kharaa still leaves the door open for that exploit. I was on an alien team where one idiot was using that exploit; my resources shot up to 100 immediately after I turned Gorge, and stayed there for three quarters of the game. And it only took him about a minute of constant exit/enters to accomplish that. It doesn't matter if the gain from the exploit is slowed, all the aliens need for a guaranteed win is enough to buy the second hive immediately. Anything beyond that is icing. I know you don't mean that to be a permanent fix or anything, but I'd personally prefer a temporary fix that doesn't let an exploiter ruin a game.
- Grenades and Bile Bombs are only doing half damage on a direct hit: 90 and 40, respectively. Admittedly, I haven't double-checked that on a 1.04 server yet, but it's true as of 1.03 and I didn't see any mention of that in the patch list. So rather than boosting grenades to 200, which I imagine is probably being halved to 100, making them do the damage they're supposed to be doing alone would be a very good benefit for them.
- Level 3 weapon upgrades are fubared for the pistol, LMG, turret, and maybe the shotgun, as they're doing 25, 12, 30, and 200 damage rather than 26, 13, 35 and 208. If the shotguns are (pellet damage rounded down)x10, that's correct shotgun damage, but if it's (pellet damage x 10) rounded down, that's off. That's also on 1.03, haven't gotten a 1.04 server to myself to do any controlled tests yet. Thanks to Comprox for helping me double-check all those numbers. By shooting me. A lot.
I know you've got your hands full with 1.04 and 1.1, so please don't take the above as criticism or anything. Just think it would be a shame to see you spend time balancing weapon damage and stuff when their current damage is flawed, making you do it all over again when those bugs come to light.
Comments
Looks like we're probably going to have to throw away all alien resources when somebody leaves until that exploit is fixxed.
According to patch notes this "will be revisited later".
edit. My mistake, apparently is updated while i was watching movies with my friends, sorry. Yah , i see how its still a problem, but theyll fix it in 1.1
I mean...since the game just started a minute or two ago, you're really not out much of anything if you get "dinged" during that time for ten whole res...and if the player leaves and rejoins the team they get their ten back. Not much they could do with ten anyway.
Grenades are useless for everything except attacking through Umbra and laying down a covering screen.
I hate the idea of alien resources just being 'destroyed' for no reason... causes annoying balance issues or exploitation (balance - aliens lose res for nothing... || exploitation - marines joining aliens and quitting to destroy res / with 1/2 res loss, still able to give some res to gorges.
-edit
as to grenades... they seem to be ok at destroying stuff when I use them... hardly useless.
I'll take that virtual resource idea and counter it with this idea: Route points left over from someone leaving into a new player pool. People joining will get up to ten points from the new player pool, assuming the points are there for them to take. That way people who join later in the game might be able to get a better start than beginning at 0, but it won't do a thing to benefit players who are remaining in the game, i.e. Gorges. That's the most exploit-free way I can think of to deal with that without just destroying leftover points. It's still exploitable, someone could do the quit/join loop to fill up that new player pool and insure that people joining will come in with ten points, but that's not exactly a big impact on things.
And grenades wouldn't be useless in the least if they were actually doing their full 180 damage. Even with just 90 they do a very good job of flushing aliens out of an umbra, reaching into vents, and generally blocking off a hallway.
-Joe
What I think would work well would be to create a 'virtual resource node' that would be used to handle alien resources from departing players.
So let's say that 2 players with 33 res leave the game. The 'virtual node' now has 66 res and it gives those res back to the team like a regular alien resource node does. When it is empty, it no longer gives resources to the team.
This way the aliens don't lose resources from departing players, but using the F4 exploit would be pointless since no matter HOW many aliens use it, the extra resources only come back at the rate of a single resource node.
Sound fair?
Regards,
Savant
So after this, aliens get a steady income of resources, even if they have no nodes, and the marines cant do anything about it.
The virtual node is not invincible since it is not really a node. You can't kill it since the res points have already been EARNED. Thats what this is about. If you allowed the node to be killed then you still have the aliens lose EARNED res points.
The idea is that the EARNED res points will be allowed to be funneled back into the team so they don't get screwed over. At the same time the res won't allow an unfair advantage since the flow of one node is not of consequence compared to the exploit as it stands now.
Regards,
Savant
so you believe that the entire alien team should suffer because someone has to leave? how fair is that?
The exploit is a glitch due to the initial 10 resources given to the Aliens side every time they join Aliens for the first X seconds of a round.
The 'fix' for this is far less complex than they've been targetting right now, in my opinion. Make the Hive have an initial resource pool of 100, same as Marines, and spread THAT out like everyone had just gotten a resource tick.
Boom, someone leaves, those res go back in the hive to be given to everyone else instead, but if they come back, boom, they get some back too. But it cuts off the loophole that grants near-infinite resources at the start of a round.
Again, the 'exploit' Flayra is trying to patch is <b>not</b> a skulk with maxed resources leaving and coming back once when the Gorge needs a boost. It's an exploit like the 'gun-toting alien' exploit or the carapace+regeneration+redemption exploit, using a sequence of commands on the console in rapid-fire to overload or circumvent the game somehow.
my idea (i didnt realy read every post) is:
you enter, you have 10 res. Now when you leafe in readyroom the reources go to the aliens. When you come back, its stocked somewhere that you already were in the alien team (and it is already stocked because sometimes i cannot join marines because i was already alien), you DONT have 10 res. Now of course its always possible to push a gorge, but thats a normal strategie, and it isnt always good... i mean, its cool to have a second Hive... but without res to go lerk or fade its not very funny.. you see, everything has his Pro and Contra
PS: the thing with only giving back the ressources when you leave the server would also work
if someone readyrooms they take their resource with them.. Its not like they can go to marines right? If they disconnect from server then all their resource goes to the alien team.. So the only way to exploit this is to constantly reconnect to a server... That would take a long time and i dont think many of the exploiters out there have the patience to do that...
Anyone see flaws in this? To me, this seems like the perfect solution and i thought of it all by myself <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo--> mommy would be proud
*binds key to 'retry*
*switches watch to stopwatch mode*
*presses key and button on watch at same time*
*waits and presses it again*
*realizes it took longer to type this out than for his machine to finish*
In fact... it took 2.173 seconds to do it, according to the watch. So figure about 2 seconds, give or take.
Yes, I've owned a computer that took almost 30 seconds to load a HL map, my current one has enough RAM to store the entire HL *AND* NS folders in memory though, and dual CPU's to burn through other processing while it loads and processes. No offense, but 2 seconds isn't gonna slow down an exploiter. :-)
And as to the 'stick with 10 res' idea, it's good on paper, but again, why hard-code how much money specific players get? Marines don't get that, on a 30-player server Marines get less overall to start with but faster resources from then on. Aliens get more to start with but less from then on. At least level out the starting amount neatly so that part's level footing, since it's a simple bit of math to do so, and should stop most all problems.
Except for obliterating skulks, clearing buildings, scaring fades, killing fades, destroying hives.. etc. etc.
How about, when some alien leave the game, their resources goes to a virtual pool which stores the resources, but doesn't give to the existing team members?
Then when someone joins, the virtual resources goes to the joiner(s)...
sounds fair?
though i Don't know if this can be done... I'm really a nub in programming.
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Very simple solution to that - play on a server that doesn't have a bunch of exploiting retards on it or one that has admins around to ban such players.
No need to hurt the Kharaa by removing resources when players legitimately leave the game just because of a few retards.
<b>Not to mention by removing the resources you open up an exploit - someone who favors Marines could join Kharaa instead and be a gorge and suck up resources and then when he leaves all the resources (3 per tick) he took are all lost.</b>
So no, it's better the way it is now in 1.03 than to remove the resources when a player leaves.
What I think would work well would be to create a 'virtual resource node' that would be used to handle alien resources from departing players.
So let's say that 2 players with 33 res leave the game. The 'virtual node' now has 66 res and it gives those res back to the team like a regular alien resource node does. When it is empty, it no longer gives resources to the team.
This way the aliens don't lose resources from departing players, but using the F4 exploit would be pointless since no matter HOW many aliens use it, the extra resources only come back at the rate of a single resource node.
Sound fair?
Regards,
Savant<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes, that works and is the most fair thing to do. At the best, the aliens have the equivalent of one more resource node, at the worst, a Marine can suck away resources as a gorge and quit and slow the retrieval of those resources.
Fair enough and it doesn't screw over either team the way the current exploit and solution do.
Unless it can be fixed.. and I mean really fixed.. it shouldn't be an option at all. Far too easy to pop in and out of an alien game and the ready room, scoring up quick points in under 30 seconds. I watched a guy do it, and he flat-out denied it.. man, I wish I recorded a demo.