Brizz started a new Unreal Tournament reddit sub because the mods on r/unrealtournament are generally douche canoes.
What would your ideal weapon set be for your ideal Unreal Tournament game?
Shock
One of rocket or flak
One of mini or pulse
Sniper/rail style weapon
This gives us : 1* Projectile aim (with low rof, high damage, splash), 1* tracking aim (high rof, low damage), 1* flick aim (low rof high damage)
+ shock because.. ut.
If mini was picked then the weapon set would be lacking a high rof low damge projectile weapon (pulse primary). If rl was picked then you lack a shotgun style weapon.
The ripper could replace the rocket/flak weapon with a beefed up explosive disc. It was useless in ut99. However the other two unreal tournament weapons are more “iconic” so.. yeah.
Balancing rl seems a pain in the ass. I like single fire.. and would be fine with just that, but the majority seem very attached to loading. The flak alt fire could become a non-arc shot and the rl dropped, solving the need to address loading at all.
Sniper seems to either get love or hate, personally it feels very flat compared to ql rail, which is balanced nicely with the reload to punish close shots.
Starting weapon – something shotgun style to limit effective range. Dispersion pistol comes up as this often but.. slow moving projectiles that feel like marshmallows are not appealing. A shotgun could even be quite “strong” at close range* as the trade off is having to get in close with your opponents.
Four weapons? Anything beyond that is doubling up with the usual ut firemodes. Unless you wanted to aim for a tiered weapon setup which is not a bad thing, but could relegate crowd favourites to the trash tier. After these four the next “obvious” candidate is a grenade launcher style weapon which ut has never really had in a meaningful way (outside of maybe the current thing) – but that is not really on par with the other weapons and fills a utility role. Perhaps flak could be modified for the alt fire to shoot a non-impact style fused grenade + the regular primary (unique to the other four weapons already).
I’d prefer to see more utility from the weapons and heavily different usage. Rather than shock/sniper being almost interchangeable remove most of the damage from the shock primary (for example) and change it to knockback instead, putting more difference between the shock and sniper. It becomes a combo machine + knockback.
*imo this is a big failing of the ut4 project. Epic never laid out “ranges” and what they expected weapons to be useful for. Thus they were inundated with feedback that X was not useful at Y range when it may have been their intention. This causes discussion around the weapons to get stuck here rather than a more interesting discussion around what range the weapon should be useful at.
> primary, secondary, and tertiary firing
I’d be more keen to see more unique weapons rather than trying to cram more use into the existing ones. Weapons should each fill a unique niche and this has never been the case in ut really.
KmKz; Map feedback for DM-Echo! [url]https://youtu.be/l_JYtgeMoKM[/url]
The point on the 50a = dangerous area seems good since the smaller armors should be for the out of control player so you don’t want it to be too challenging for them. However the danger also applies to the in control player as well wanting to deny it. If the in control player decides they don’t want to risk belt or 100stack for the 50a denial then that seems like a choice they can make – if the area is as dangerous as you say then it should be taken into account rather than blindly jumping in. If the 50a is left up the out of control player you can time your pickup when your opponent is on the other side of the ut4 map getting belt or 100a. If the in control player decides they can take the 50a they are putting themself in the same risky secnario the out of control player would be putting themselves in and leaving themself open to heavy destacking.
Could it be said that leaving it dangerous leads to less denial, or more time spend leading up to denial by the in control player (checking corners and the general area instead of just going in) which in turn frees up the out of control players time? The alternative to not checking in this manner is taking unnecessary damage and losing control. Having to weigh things up before committing is not a bad thing.. if anything it is a great thing.
Sidenote : The fortnite double pump shotgun trick is fun.
Why move the shock? That area is quite strong for ooc – quick shock + 50a (albeit dangerous), chokey fast approach from mid/belt (narrow door above lift). Defensible spot high near the health pack. On top of this because shock is quite stonk and out of the way of belt/100a/other weapons the player in control will need more time spend in order to travel to obtain it (once), to deny (more than once) or for fast ammo (more than once). By putting it in the box in the middle of the map you take away a deal of strength from what out of control can exert in what is essentially “their” part of the map – in fact it denudes that whole side of the map of strong weapons – rock, flak, shock, sniper are in a line down the center/other side of the map.
Your primary argument against the current shock location seems to be that the shock can be picked up and then used on the player going for 50a – this seems like a very small “problem” that is solved by picking it up prior to heading to 50a. None of the reasons given for the shock being in a “bad” location were overly compelling.
It makes sense to try to get players through that middle room more because you correctly point out that it is a dead zone, while also pulling the in control player away from the top pipes, which do indeed seem over the top for visuals/access. Moving the vials does not solve this top pipe strength problem as players can take them before belt so they are gone when leaving the area, or simply not take them at all and give no audio queue. Rather than moving shock how about putting double shock ammo (if there are two packs elsewhere on the map) in the center – and possibly pulling the nearby exterior health pack(s) inside as well. This way the in control player wants to travel through there to get ammo or wants to get health – quite strong need for this with 50% absorption.
I agree with changing acid -> water, simply because the player who falls down ends up in a rather bad position. However if you remove the damage you open up a few unsavory gameplay options that are probably best left alone, at least imo. The player that falls down can hug the wall and make the “inside” player come to them. They can simply stay in the water, hidden down the drop and make the inside player chase them. Obv they are in a bad location but they don’t need to get out straight away – they don’t have to take the ramp or the bounce pad as both are more dangerous than just sitting. They can whittle down time in what would be a boring cat and mouse scenario. Secondly this can be extrapolated out to a player wanting to waste time towards the end of a game and run down the clock – making the hunting player “check” all the way around the edge for a player hiding is bland and uninteresting. You could stay down near the 50a, hidden while waiting for it to spawn.
I am all for making players spend time doing things (previously mentioned checking before taking 50a) but in a reasonable way, not by putting a hidey spot like the water would create. The damage stops this occurring.
If it was my map I would add the railings you guys requested, add some more pipes/stuff to block players and then make the acid gib players that fall outside.
Gnalvl; Take CPMA in the Quake community for example… When Quake 3 hit, many diehards felt that it’d been too casualized and that too many key aspects of QW and Q2 had been discarded, so a group of them developed a consensus on how to improve Q3 and executed those changes as a mod.
Granted, CPMA did start out as a small subsection of the larger Q3 community, but at least it was there for the people who wanted those changes,
OSP borrowed CPMA’s ruleset wholesale and popularized a ton of its changes. UTComp’s key ideas like brightskins and hitsounds came straight from CPMA.
If OSP borrowed anything it was interface/quality of life changes from CPMA. None of the movement, armor or weapon changes were adopted by base OSP. None of the actual features you would consider the “game” of CPMA was taken for OSP – or if movement/weapon/armor/etc changes were taken as a voteable option in OSP, they took a back seat to brightskins, improved HUD options, stats, voting, ready up, minor visual/clutter options, spawn algo(?), netcode(?), etc for duel or tdm – these were the real reasons people used OSP in vq3. If the game changes were included in OSP it could almost be said that this was an attempt to expose CPMA movement/weapons/etc on a wider player base via integration of the base CPMA game in OSP. Which was clever as OSP had a much larger uptake. So players+severs that had OSP also had the core CPMA gameplay but no additional content – maps primarily?
The casualised q3 aspect was primarily related to speed and perhaps some of the movement options in q2. Not brightskins, ability to vote or the options that OSP was used for in vq3 for duel or TDM.
OSP was used up to ESWC 2004 and CPMA was used in at ESWC in 2005, however it was not for CPMA gameplay, rather the aforementioned “extras” that improved the game while not really changing the game overly much from the “casualised” perspective. Why was it used here? Was OSP ever updated at this point while CPMA had people working on it still? Was it purely lack of support from the OSP camp or ease of use that finally got CPMA onto servers for vq3? By the time CPMA was replacing OSP (even as just a competitive mod) it was too late, the game was essentially dead. It could be said that similar things happened in ut99 with newnet and faster weapon switch.
The bold options were available in the two older quake titles, either via competitive mods or some recolouring skins that were not cheat protected at the time. The only thing off the cuff I can think of that these mods bought that had not been done previously was hitsounds. Saying that these are features of CPMA is ignoring 3+ years of competitive/server control mods that came before it in the older quake games.
If CPMA created a divide it was not a minor one, as some of the better later day q3 duelers were original CPMA players. Daler and Fox come to mind. Did people play CPMA? Sure, some. A small community. I bet more than ut4.
[QUOTE=’Gnalvl;n391398′] which is more than we can say for a lot of the requested changes in the UT community which either never got implemented at all or if they did, never made it on any servers.[/QUOTE]
I agree with your general sentiment about ut players and not accepting anything non-epic. The base ut99 maps had problems but could have been “fixed”, more easily than the q3 maps as we could edit them. They were never addressed. For example curse had issues in duel because belt vs pads yet it was never addressed and while it was somewhat popular early on one of the reasons it lost popularity was surely because of the perceived “imbalance” between control/out of control. Map authors were even aware of this as the 1on1 maps were much better setup in this regard, they were received by the community as better and a big part of that was the item balance. Yet they were still not played.
You are being disingenuous pitching CPMA as the savior and an example of mass uptake – when its use was not due to the gameplay changes in CPMA but its ability to be a competitive mod for quake 3. This would be akin to utcomp implementing large movement changes alongside its base options, then saying that uptake on the movement changes was good because utcomp uptake was good – while ignoring the fact that noone really used the movement changes and just used it for voting/brightskins/hitsounds/etc.
-AEnubis- Maybe he’d like to chime in on this hijack, or reference another thread already on the subject.
There are two aspects to armor. Well more than two, but two I find interesting about. The first is the resource dynamic between in/out of control and how it plays out, I covered this heavily in that “post” about quake/ut. It is semi related to the second point.
The other aspect, which I am more interested after coming back from overwatch is how armor drives players to fight in duel – this is even more lacking in ut compare to quake. This is a mixture of stack self vs deny opponent and relative item sizes determining if pickups are worth contesting.
The current system “caps out” players needing to interact very quickly (yet not quickly enough), leading to situations where one player has 1xx/100a and the other has 1xx/150a. If scores are close the question I ask at that point is 1) does the out of control player need the extra 50 from the belt, enough to contest and potentially “waste” the time they spent building to 100a, 2) If the in control player is ahead do they need to pressure the out of control player knowing they have 1xx/100a? The stack difference is close, they have little to gain if they are already ahead, would they not be better off biding their time and resources and not wasting them?
To illustrate this the fight right here did not need to occur – Fjaru obv made a mistake and did not realise his opponent had not taken the 100a already, however his opponent already had 100a (capped out) meaning he had no benefit to taking the armor and does not need to be there at all. He has not damage fjaru since he took the belt. In this situation the next big ticket item that is coming up is the belt, denial for fjaru and stacking for his opponent (provided no damage is take in the interim). This is the only large item both players can stack on.
This secnario occurred in the old system as well – if the out of control player obtained the 100a the requirement to fight for it was gone until either player took damage. The in control player could swap attention to the 50a as this is the only source of stacking for the previously out of control player. This may sound nit picky, but the armor that drives players to fight stops making players fight very quickly in ut. You can still try to kill your opponent “for fun”, but the resource requirement is no longer there. Players are not going to fight for the small spattering of vials around the map, nor will they be predictable enough to setup for fights on these vials. This is where the single, large, pickup that is the mega comes in. The belt is attempting to replace it by being the only armor “overheal” available but by itself it is too small and not significant enough to risk stack for.
Sidenote : The fortnite double pump macro is fun.
The current system is an improvement from the perspective of “lets play some ut for fun” or for out the out of control player. Players can stack more and players can contest more. At a lower level it is fine, but when you need to toss up the consequence of committing to a fight (ignoring the current abomination that is in fight movement), weapon damage and stack difference being ~50 it really begs the question of why you should commit. This leads to more defensive play in an attempt to conserve resources that have taken time to accumulate.
To be honest it has been interesting to test but needs to be put to bed. Armorware is not the solution either, but it might be an improvement over the current epic setup.
At this point you might be thinking “well ut has seemingly worked well in the past” to which I would straight up say it has not worked from this perspective of players needing to fight. Watching competitive games players contest the 100a at :30, die, then go on to contest the belt at :00 without stacking at all – this is just poor play and giving away points. This was very common – yet players could trade off the belt for the 100a and be on a more even footing. HOWEVER the next point of conflict is still the next belt spawn. 30-60 seconds away. I believe part of the problem is the small community ithat continues to push memes like “must always contest belt” and similar things. Must always run belt+100a ad infinium regadless of if I or my opponent need it, potentially taking damage for no reason. If UT were large this would fall to the way side and the problems with the armor would become more readily apparent. edit: After posting realised that the older titles with belt+100a dynamic and control is why this did not occur as much in the past.
I use quake as a comparison only because it is convenient. This could be reworded as “ut does not foster an environment that causes players to fight”. Or something. I don’t want ut to become quake and I don’t think transplanting ql armor into ut has worked.
This forum and the ut community in general seems obsessed with tweaking a few values (usually in terms of limiting in control players stack while also keeping them buff enough to warrant getting items ), thinking it will “fix” armor. Ut armor is flawed from the perspective of out of control play as well why players fight. The fix is actually reasonably simple – maps need more resources players care about. In the old system the 50a was not super important to deny because alone it could never amount to more than +50.
The important variables – the spawn times, the number of items and the number of resources that cause fights (armor in ut vs armor/mega in quake) are what need to be tweaked. This does not specifically mean a mega needs to be added.
One final aspect that needs to be put to bed is armor decay. This does not drive conflict – the in control player in quake will cap out their armor at 200 and need +25 every 25 seconds in order to keep this high. Armor decay is more time limiting to the out of control player stacking on a single 50a. In this scenario they can stack to 150a in three spawns with no penalty, however if they want to go to 200 they need to spend the next two spawns 150-25, 125+50, 175+50 to obtain it.
The flip side is that decay for mega makes a degree of sense. It is a single item on a longer spawn.
Gnalvl Yeah a lot of Quake maps have 2 YA because during their initial design in Q3 there was no GA, and then when GA was eventually added in CPMA and QL, no one bothered to change the maps. It’s sorta lazy but in worked out for the better in many cases.
Overall newer, quake 3/live duel maps have more resources available than older q3 maps. If you compare t4 (2*YA, 2min mega, a few +5 bubbles, long spawn rail), t2 (2*YA.. no mega. I believe the only ql duel map missing it), dm6 (1*RA 1*YA 35s mega, +25 shards).
Of course there were older, more heavily stacked maps (dm13, ztn, even areo in the closing years of q3) but recognising this simply lends weight to the case that the earlier, lighter loaded maps were not that great. Both were played, tested and one fell away.
The popularity of dm6 took much longer to wane and there were many discussions on esr about how to “fix” the map. iD revamped it in 2013 with an intel branded sponsor version for qcon – which essentially ignored most of the feedback beyond “add another armor”. A green was added to the main atrium, not really aiding the ooc player in a meaningful way because it was in a “dangerous” location.
Sinister, cure, toxicity, aero, battleforged, hektik all sport significantly much more resources than the old maps. They also have a varying array of pickups – different numbers of YA/GA/shards/+5hp. At most the difference between ut maps is omitting a pickup but until the 20s weapon respawn you could not even leave out a weapon because maps needed seven pickups otherwise full scale denial became too easy.
So.. how would I fix ut duel?
1. Roll back to the “old” setup with slotted items, no self stacking. Pads, vest, belt. Maybe helmet.
Changing both items to 75a means the in control player needs to run all three pickups for full denial. It also means they need to be aware of their opponents stack and specifically which items they have taken in order to know what has been denied. It gives more options to out of control play, it ties up much more time for the in control player and buffs a single pickup (75a vs 50a), making things potentially slightly easier for them.
This is a unique aspect of ut armor, the least talked about aspect, and probably the most interesting from the perspective of ut dna in the game. It should be looked at and used to create something interesting.
The short version :
In reality this rarely, if ever occurred because the in control player just continued playing like an automaton, picking up belt+100a even after the 100a has been taken (and no damage dealt) by the out of control player.
For me this is the starting place to build something. Perhaps a mega could be added. Perhaps +50 mega, meaning two pickups are required. Perhaps something is done with ammo.
One thing is for sure, the current setup is lacking for duel.
PayBack; Some people are just born with faster reflexes, better eye sight or a higher drive to improve or excel.
These are factors but the fact you think major differences come down to reflexes or eye sight show how little you actually understand improving at gaming.
Straight up you should not be involved in developing the game if your base assumptions for majority of players being better/worse is “reflexes and eyesight”. This is completely wrong. For the sake of simplicity lets roll “aiming ability” into reflexes and assume that it is a natural “skill” that some players have and others do not have. Makes sense right?
This is completely wrong and there are many ways to improve, even if you never work on you aim. In fact the breadth of options for improving in arena fps games is one of their major appeals to myself personally. Many of the changes in ut over the years push more and more requirements on to aiming, which is sad because it makes for a flatter experience.
In Paybacks defence if he has not been involved in any other gaming communities for the past decade+ he is unlikely to have seen any “good” content relating to this. UT ideas seem to have stagnated in 2002.
So if your entire background is unreal tournament and you have never consumed “how to improve” media from other franchises…. well then this is sort of understandable. ut seems to be a microcosm stuck in 2002, permeated by the same ideas as 15 years ago. If you compare the progression in counterstrike or even quake content it is easy to see how stagnant ut is. Look at zaccs tutorials and then compare this to what is available for cs, quake, overwatch. The difference is huge. ut tutorials are literally “click and weapon does THIS”.
You can improve but you first need to break away from the concept of “my aim is my aim and I will never improve it”. This goes doubly for ut4 duel.
Why does this game keep getting horribly worse with every update?
Because ut until now (this version/this versions development) has been an arena fps and Epic are now creating an “arena fps inspired shooter”, which sounds something blizzard would have said about overwatch. Epic are no longer making Unreal Tournament because they are no longer making an arena fps.
Our goal is for Blitz to become the primary 5v5 game mode for Unreal Tournament. We want to retain some of the core ideas of what make Arena Shooters fun, while at the same time modernizing aspects of the game that may be stuck in “legacy land” for no particularly strong reason. Source
So it has come to the point where they are no longer making ut. They are making a game that is potentially inspired by ut but is not an arena fps. Sounds a bit like this. If Epic had stated that they want to retain the arena fps core and modernise other aspects that would have been fine, however they want to keep some core ideas that make arena shooters fun. An example from overwatch. Widowmaker has a grapple, which is obviously inspired by quake 2 CTF and kept the core “idea” of the grapple. The grapple in q2 is fun and it is retained in a manner that makes it fun still, while essentially making it nothing like grapple in q2 at all. Given the hardon epic have for ow this is a direction that is reasonable to expect. The new LG is (or was) an almost direct rip of the ana gun – which is sad because it is such a garbage and uninspired weapon.
Unreal Tournament is an arena shooter, if these aspects are removed it is no longer unreal tournament. Things that make a game an arena shooter in my mind are – weapons, movement, lack of classes, fast respawns and pickups. These do not always apply, as CA/TAM have rounds and no pickups yet would not make a game not-arena fps. Weapons is a fairly broad concept but if you compare ut/quake to cs/cod one gets the point fairly quickly.
Maybe Epic are confused as to what constitutes an arenafps – perhaps Sid purely thinks of arenafps = gametype. You know.. there is an arena, there are pickups, etc. Deathmatch. If that is the case.. fine, but at the same time it is difficult to imagine Epic making that particular “mistake”.
The truth is they are making changes to core arenafps principals in order to make flagrun “better”. By the time they are finished the only thing ut about the new ut will be the name. It is not overly surprising that epic have gone the overwatch way. Their history is riddled with changes and copying other franchises without understanding – and luck. The Unreal franchise started as a magic carpet clone which then went on to become an FPS, probably due to iDs success with doom. From here there are amazing choices like shipping ut99 on “hardcore” instead of “normal” – basically a % modifier to many aspects of the game. It is hard to imagine that the game was designed with this in mind – create base game, apply across the board %s to make things faster and you are done? Is that next level design or straight up butchery. Likewise fast switch in 2k3, obviously taken from q3 with no understanding turned the game into shock primary -> lg -> shock primary -> lg, simply because the weapon switch negated the reload. This was addressed in 2k4, however why it was implemented in the first place boggles the mind – Epic don’t understand and given the complete lack of direction in the ut4 project this is unlikely to have changed.
Look at history.
Unreal – trash multiplayer, abysmal map list.
UT99 – decent multiplayer which is essentially a “fixed” version of Unreal with new gametypes
2k3 – trash multiplayer, abysmal map list.
2k4 – decent, the issues from 2k3 are addressed and the game is better. This is also because of more maps.
UT3 – trash multiplayer
UT3 never had a followup title. Epic iterated on their first two “titles” by releasing, polishing and re-releasing. This is not to say
Work on a game that is called Unreal Tournament started that day. Epic have announced that it is no longer an arena fps so it is no longer ut.
ProfessorGanymede: Did you notice how much damage I took while I was wallriding?
It is a good example of where to wallride – that tall, narrow corridor thing with access from up the wall puts you above players line of sight from the get go and obscures you once you are there. You have another example on nepal and while you did not take damage (or took minimal) in that video either you were “open” to people shooting you from anywhere inside the main room. You were basically exposed to everyone entering the room.
Around 1 minute you are above the point on the Nepal video. You say you don’t shoot because you don’t want to draw attention (in more words) but if players really looked you would die.
Now, currently it might be legit to play in this manner as players across the board seem to not notice lucios behavior. This would either be because few players wall ride well or because the players heavy, obvious, wallriding works against are straight up unobservant. Personally I think that the playerbase has not matured to the point where they are comfortable with more vertical play and more specifically they are not used to a character like lucio being up on the wall. Players coming from modern fps can aim but do not cope with this sort of thing. A good parallel here is Pharah. Even at low-mid 60s I often had mccrees that did not shoot the enemy pharah. This does not make pharah a good pick (end of season 1 meta), it simply means players who should shoot you might not.
This smacks of gambling. The fortnite double pump shotgun is awesome.
I play with some older arena fps players and they do not struggle with lucio wall riding. “Lucio wall riding” *lucio proceeds to die*. You would have been dead in that nepal video very quickly unless the flags hide you in some way.
Compared wall riding to Lucio trying to dodge. Lucio with passive speed + adad spam is very hard to hit. His hitbox is small. His animations are pretty crazy. Making him straight up hard to track. Wall riding is almost identical to running in a straight line*, just not on the ground, which is why it is currently decent. Players can easily track an enemy running straight – thus players can track a lucio wall riding. They just don’t do it. This is similar to terrible target selection most players exhibit.
Now the question that really should be asked is “Am I harder to hit when I wall ride compared to when I adad spam with passive speed” and the answer should be obvious. The latter makes you harder to hit in most situations where as the former makes you inconspicuous to some players but much easier to shoot for ones that do see you. Going back to the gambling this is the point where you have to make your own call as to which to use. As the game matures I think we will see blatant out in the open wall riding reduce as lucio will just die when he does it.
If you can LOS most of the enemy by using wall ride, then excellent. This video is a great example of this behavior. The Nepal video in my mind is not
*If not worse because at least with running in a straight line you can drop straight into evasive action instantly rather than needing to drop (also easy to track) until you hit the floor.
And if you are on the ground strafing, good players WILL be able to hit you. ESPECIALLY hit scan characters like Mcree, Widow, and Tracer.
Moving in a predictable, straight line on a wall. Or even worse, stopping the wallride to bounce up the wall. Or dropping off the wall and falling a significant distance.
vs
Moving back and forth rapidly perpendicular to your opponents aim with passive speed.
The only way the latter does not work against those characters for the smaller hitbox characters is if the netcode is wildly broken. They will still hit you, however they will hit you at a significantly reduced % compared to walking in a straight line across a wall.
the enemy team did have a Tracer that was wrecking my team.
This is in hind sight after your positioning was pointed out. This sort of thing should be in the video. “I am here because the tracer can’t get me”.
There is no tracer in the video I linked.
But there are plenty of situations where it is more useful than strafing on the ground, making yourself easy pickings for hitscan characters.
When you are wall riding you are slower, more predictable and easier to shoot compared to when you strafe spam with passive speed. If you can position youself using wall ride to LOS these characters then that is superior to fast adad.. otherwise no.
I even agree that with the current player base wallriding like 1:00 in your nepal video is probably fine and you won’t get picked off. However flat out stating that wall riding makes you harder to hit is bollocks. It makes you easier to hit unless you can LOS your opponents using it. It doesn’t matter that you are up on the wall unless the wall you are on heavily effects your opponents LOS to you. Perhaps a series showing parts of maps like the kings row stairs would be useful to support this piece.
This is similar to players jumping when in fights to try to throw off their opponents aim. Does it? Yes. Does it as much as adad with passive speed? No. Because there are times when you are moving in a much more predictable manner.
Here is a relevant anecdote from another game I play(ed). During UT4 development Epic added a “sprint” feature. This is a passive that kicks in after a player runs forward for.. 3 seconds. The player speeds up until they stop running or jump or turn too sharply. In UT land players have the ability to dodge by double tapping their strafe keys, resulting in a quick movement left/right/forward/back. This is typically chained together for faster forward movement and has been a staple of the series since unreal1. Even though sprint is faster than chained dodges noone has ever specifically used sprint to move faster because the player is too predictable/easily tracked. The edge cases, where sprint is useful is not because it is faster but because it is quieter than dodging. Once again we see that running in a straight, predictable line is a bad idea.
Like wise when players are trying to dodge in quakelive they generally stay grounded so they can adad – jumping, even on the flat, increases your predictability.
I don’t know what your gaming background is but if it is modern fps like cs, cod and bf I fully understand why you would be skeptical of this idea of grounded strafing and unless someone comes forward with a rebuttal or a reason why (outside of “this is not the case”) then it will stand.
The one thing that could change this is the netcode.
I don’t even feel you can’t even really comment on how effective this is because.. you do not do it.
NATO_chrisjm: The community is enormously fractured, and while things like visibility are universal the views on possible solutions are wide. It doesn’t help when the devs make a firm statement such as ‘we don’t want brightskins’ a chunk of the community yell at them that it’s going to be a failure if it’s not included. Feels like there’s a lot of distrust coming from the community right now, which doesn’t encourage the devs to open up.
Overall a well thought out and put together post.
Player visibility is one of the key points epic could have handled better during Unreal Tournament 4 development. There was a lot of noise about difficult to see players and Epic repeatedly stated that they did not want to go the neon bright bright skins route and would solve the “problem” using other methods. This seemed acceptable for many players and the ones it was not fine for was more from a “we don’t trust you or your track record*” rather than “that is impossible” point of view. Of course there was a minority (often vocal) that refused to accept that there was any other way to do it, but lets ignore them. Player vis was an aspect where epic could have easily won points from the community by actually implementing something, even to the point of pushing it a little far (to win supporters) and dialing it back at a later date. They did open up about this point.
However nothing was done. Then some community members created threads comparing methods of player highlighting – followed by bright skin mutators (not a problem) and then Epic finally pushed something useful in the last few builds. This is not to say that the community brightskins spurred Epic to put their own solution in place. Are the new Epic skins perfect? No. Is it good enough for shells? Probably, they are a huge improvement on shells on a map like chill. Are they good enough for meshed maps? Probably not. But it is better than one of the previous Epic visibility changes that was along the lines of “slightly changed XYZ by 1.27% to improve player visibility”. When they make changes to something that is essentially zero change it is hard to think they will implement anything… or approach it at such a slow, teeth pulling rate.
But they have only implemented changes recently. They should have done it months ago.
This is different to weapons being considered OP by large swathes of the community – you could create a game with a weapon that is ridiculous and if that is epics vision then, whatever. You could also create a game where all the players are black. But to straight up state that they want to address a problem in a specific way then do nothing? Or the equivalent of nothing (slightly changed XYZ in a single build). It is understood they are a small team but it was/is a fairly large point that they specifically commented on – and their track record has been poor on this aspect of the game from 2k3 onwards. So if they were planning something it would be important to show us rather than just say “Yeah we don’t like bright skins but you will have to deal with it until we get around to doing something”.
Maybe points from the community don’t matter, or whatever, but this is not an aspect like crap mouse input that is difficult to track down, diagnose and fix, if that is even possible as it may be the underlying engine that they lack control over.
*This was reasonable and further highlights why this would have been a good place for epic to start winning the support of the community. If the current red/blue visibility was in game.. 12 months? 6 months? ago when this was a hot topic it would potentially have gotten more people on side.
So for new comers, players that never paid attention to this or just curious bystanders some explanation may be in order. It was easy to see players in ut99. It was very difficult to see players in the base game of 2k3, so epic implemented shoulder mounted lights – horrible sprites that sort of solved the problem. utcomp came along and added glowstick style bright skins as well as force model which was accepted by the competitive community. 2k4 came around and epic put their own version of bright skins in, which was probably acceptable, but once again no force model (from memory).
The whole visibility saga was replayed in ut3 in a similar manner.
Not sure this is 100% how it played out but it is roughly there. Not learning from past experience is most certainly one of Epics more annoying traits.
- Keep ammo more in flow than out of it. Unlike weapons where you’d choose to go to a particular area of the map you’re unlikely to do so for ammo alone; thus pickup up ammo should only require small diversions and be low risk.
- Spread it evenly across the map, and in theory useful to particular weapon routes.
- Keep ammo numbers equal to avoid biasing one weapon.
Some counter points. I understand this is primarly coming from designing dm maps (and I disagree in part there, ammo can be used differently) but needs additional thought for showdown.
1) Alternatively you can force a player to spend more time obtaining ammo at the expense of not being able to do something else. Get armor, pressure enemy team, cover team mates, get other weapons etc.
Goes without saying this is during the early pickup phase of showdown. Scavenging ammo later is different and not what we are aiming for here – and not what is achieved with spread out ammo in “the flow”.
Looking for Fortnite Double Pump help?
Players must gamble on leaving ammo up and pushing for other weapons/pickups at the expense of another player potentially picking the ammo up. If ammo is always in the flow players will simply pick everything up they can as they travel from A to B. This is not to say ammo should be wildly out of the way but rather (for example) the ammo cache near the pad side mini lift on ASDF. It is out of the flow.
Given how the gametype works I disagree that players are “unlikely” to make diversions for ammo. Single pickups may not draw players the way larger pickups do early game but should not be given away for free* by placing them directly in player movement paths. Two ammo packs can make a larger contribution mid-late game compared to the very limited amp pickup early game. Maybe even one ammo pack.
* The currency is time and this is severely limited in showdown to player opening moves.
2) Grouping up ammo buffs the importance of 1), to the point of it possibly adding another weapon/powerup “importance” point that is neither a weapon or a powerup. If a player knows their opponent has shock they can potentially deny their ammo, or the majority of their additional ammo.
In the picture below when there are two single packs A there is only one route to take – if the “something important” was a jacket, belt, amp, boots this would be the next pickup after the first ammo pack “in” the flow. The alternative is dropping out the center top then going up the stairs for the weapon. Both provide the same pickups in different order. When the ammo is a double stack at B there are more choices and possible repercussions for the spawning player. There are three possibilities with enough travel time to make each different.
In this way weapons could be organised near, but not next to, their ammo and players then have a number of choices after obtaining a weapon –
a) Take their own ammo. Add to team resources.
b) Take their opposing nearby spawn ammo. Deny enemy resources.
c) Ignore ammo and go for the closer pickup (armor, amp, belt, etc) and risk losing the ammo.
Outside of weapons and pickups this is not a large consideration for showdown currently and adding an additional layer of “objectives” could only be considered a good thing for showdown since they are rather quickly exhausted with higher player counts in the current game. Extending the opening moves further is a benefit.
Further to this, if there is ammo somewhere else on the map a player or team may not opt to risk themselves for a single pack but two? Maybe more chance for this to happen.
On the flip side it could be interesting if ammo is not near weapons and players need to share weapons based on what ammo they have picked up. For example if player A spawns and receives two rocket packs but player B has the rocket launcher, they need to meet up and rocket player needs to drop weapon before using the last rocket in order to eek as much potential from the teams resources. For a “teamplay” based team this could be a huge boost to potential damage output.
If the flow is player movement between point A and point B players would leave if there was a reason to, a single ammo pack is not a reason but two may be. Finding the trigger to get players to change their ingrained behavior is interesting.
Ammo is slightly different in showdown due to the no-respawn aspect and showdown needs more player interaction drivers. It also come relatively freely in players minds compared to slapping down multiple belts, amps or additional weapons. Its only ammo right?
Both these points together also mean that if ammo is “in the flow” it must be near the weapon otherwise it will just be picked up.
This
Weapons
Power ups
Dual ammo caches
Single ammo
25 health
Vials?
3) There is something wrong with biasing one weapon? A map and areas on a map will favor one more than another. ut, especially dm maps feel very… samey. By and large most (except smaller “arena” style maps) have one of each weapon spawn. In general all very homogeneous.
Having pickups that are more desirable drives better player interaction. 1-2 weapons having more ammo makes these weapons more important without adding additional
This is not to say your points are not good, but the inverse also applies and can potentially make for interesting times as well!
Finally there have been posts about maps like asdf not being suitable for 4v4. Why not? There are sufficient weapons and pickups. If you screw up and get nothing.. that ss player fault. You now need to play accordingly with your enforcer and play near your team mates more than you might otherwise have to. This makes a weapon drop important and perhaps your team mates will oblige killing someone for you. 4v4 tdm on ASDF would be horrible, but I am not convinced showdown would not work.
MoxNix: two would be overkill even on a really large map meant for 10+ players.
Ignoring two kegs next to each other for a minute. Two being overkill for 10+ players seems to be stretching the friendship somewhat.
There have been quite a few comments both here and on irc relating to health > armor and how the keg is “not used” because of this. Until now this has not seen this expanded upon.
A keg offers the same amount of stack as a jacket – but a jacket spawns three times as often. With this in mind surely the jacket is relatively overpowered compared to the keg when used in duel, a gametype with 2 players? Even if only half the armor of the jacket is used each spawn (unlikely) this would give players three times the total of a keg?
Can you outline (or link to, or someone else chime in) why keg is not used beyond the usual “it was never on a ut99 duel map”. It behaves in a similar manner to belt, except it is less (100vs150), on a longer spawn time (90vs60) and if you pickup while damaged – the often repeated (downside) last second steal at low health with the belt – you can only ever benefit from damaged base+100. For example when picked up at 20 health a player has 120h and cannot heal additionally. By comparison the belt can go from 20h/150a to 100h/150a.
Maybe it is how it interacts with other ut4 armor pickups? Jacket + keg is too much? But belt + 5 vials (ASDF) is almost this amount of stack. So perhaps the aversion exists solely because of belt+keg. A match up that would happen a maximum of six times in a ten minute duel, likely less.
There are upsides/downsides to both health and armor, belt included. Straight up stack the keg is roughly equal to a jacket but it has less impact over the course of a game because of its long spawn time.