Mysterial
2) This is the only gametype that is flat out unplayable with too many players. You put 16 people in a small CTF map and it becomes a brainless spamfest, but you still get to jump around and blow people up with a variety of weapons. The good players still somehow manage to win most of the time. And there have been enough full 32 player servers over the years to know there’s a segment of the population that actually prefers it that way. But you put even 8 players in Showdown on most maps and the game is broken; half the players get to play with the Enforcer while everybody else has weapon(s). It’s not even close to fun. I think it’s good that 3v3 is the optimal player count, but it needs to at least be functional with more. If everybody just gets the closest weapon, then at least they’ve all got something to work with.
It’s infinitely more playable than 5v5 tdm unless teams are very balanced and players play “properly”(or more than 5. or even 4v4 on smaller maps with less than a full weapon load out) with weaponstay off. At the very least in TSD most players will get weapons every round and one team will never get locked out heavily. You are also exaggerating “half the players” as even on small maps with one spawn of each gun there are 7 weapons. This is not to say seven players will get all weapons right off the bat, but four players getting all seems a bit of a stretch – and even if two players on each team get all the guns there are enough with dropweapon for everyone barring one player to have something. The belt/jacket/amp should be regarded in a similar way to a “weapon” and when these are added in there are 9-10 “items” to go for – more if one counts boots.
Dropping weapons and playing together in this way is something that should evolve – just because players are not doing it does not mean the gametype is broken. Perhaps from a purely pub standpoint I agree with your statement – cramped spammy messy 16player ctf has more appeal to the general populace than showdown. But having 7 weapons does not necessarily break TSD at a more competitive level. I know quake gets little love around here but quakeworld TDM maps are very weapon light, to the point one map has a single weapon (rocket launcher) and in general players use their spawn shotguns. It takes ~2 minutes for a team to obtain four rocket launchers.
Maybe the enforcer player could be considered the games equivalent of a hard carry without the eventual payoffs. Or an eco round.
One concession that needs to be made is that the enforcer does not have enough ammo to roll with the bigger guns. To alleviate this perhaps players without gun pickups could be bumped to 100ammo (or something) when there are no longer weapons on the map. Or the inverse, everyone starts with more enforcer ammo which is dropped to 20 when they pickup a weapon. OR players pinyata enforcer ammo on death. However even in 4v4 with only seven spawns it could be said that good teamwork overcomes the ammo problem – the enforcer player uses their ammo, communicates with their team mate who drops a weapon and uses their enforcer. Rinse and repeat for 120 bullets.
On top of this the gametype has not had time to mature – one obvious direction is sharing weapons based on ammo pickups. In this way a player can pickup the rocket launcher and one ammo pack, and a team mate can pickup another two ammo packs elsewhere. The first player can use the weapon down to one rocket then pass it off to their team mate who has ammo. This extends firepower significantly. As rawlph highlights voice for teams is really needed for this level of coordination.
It could almost be said that at one end of the spectrum we have 16 player small ctf, that works on pub but will never work competitively and at the other 4v4 TSD on ASDF sized maps – which would generally be unenjoyable for pub players but would “work” with organised teams.
Mirrored ut weapon spawns are not entirely bad. Some examples.
Tuba shock spawns – Previously there were two spawns, one on each side of the shock tower (no longer exists). This could allow one player to take boots and one to take shock. The player taking boots has 2x health packs to use vs the player who gets the shock. The problem here is potentially ammo for the enforcer player if they want to engage, however with boots they can opt to go to the tower for rifle/amp straight away. In 2v2 this trades some of the boots spawn health (assuming the shock player hits them) for positional advantage (boots) they can potentially use to get the sniper and amp.
Having said that the other mirrored spawns on tuba (bio and pulse specifically) are horribly bad for two teams to spawn at.
ASDF rocket spawns – Enemy picks rocket spawn farther from lift. Teammate picks pulse. Enemy team has the mini/belt spawn, your team has a player at bio for jacket. You pick the other rocket spawn closer to the lift. By moving straight onto the lift you can control where the rocket player is likely to go, deny shock via lift as well as bring two players (yourself with enforcer + team mate with link) to bear on the rocket player in short order. The rocket player has few options, none of which give quick access to any important pickups. The bio player can push onto the shock quickly.
Obviously there are ways around this, hammering straight to shock is the obvious example but this slows down the rocket player unless they specifically decided to do it off spawn.
Another point for the mirrored spawns – they allow closer grouping of team spawns. This way two players could spawn in close proximity and then play aggressively together quickly, even though one only has an enforcer. This would be later a later stage spawn picking type thing, if an enemy player is obviously somewhat cut off from the rest of their team stacking your last player near them to assist quickly killing them might be beneficial.
Lag spawn in – Rather than starting the game instantly how about putting players on their spots for the count downs? Might not help.
I’d also agree whole heatedly about impact/rocket jumps. If anything these are even more important early round if one wants to secure early resources. With 200 starting health they are much less risky as you never put yourself near death with piston and early round when you are pushing. One example I would pick is ASDF rocket spawn – hammering to shock (provided the other player did not pick the shock spawn) is faster than taking the traditional lift jump.
FPS