If dual enforcers are strong then two players together with enforces are strong, except it takes two players coordinating and playing together rather than just dropping the weapon*
Hijacking this thread because relevant.
Throw weapon should be disabled in TDM. Quite often cited as a way to “improve teamwork” I will argue it manages to achieve the inverse – less teamwork or team centric thinking is required. throwweapon gives players a team oriented ability, this in an of itself does not increase teamwork.
Consider the following:
With throwing enabled
1) Pickup a weapon
2) Optional : Communicate you have a weapon available
3) Dropping weapon when a weaponless teammate is nearby
With throwing disabled
1) See weapon available – decide you do not want it
2) Relay this information to the team
3) Guard/wait for team mate, ensure enemy players do not ninja it.
4) Optional : Take weapon even if not required because of enemy pressure / other items spawning needing your attention (can’t leave a weapon lying around)
5) Team mate arrives, takes weapon. yay
2 could be considered optional the same way communicating you have a weapon available for dropping in the first scenario. However this does not make a great deal of sense as the player at the weapon could be waiting a completely unknown duration.
This scenario plays out when a player already has a specific weapon and does not need more ammo. This means it would rarely occur and when it does it is not overly important.
Even at this cursory glance level there is more communication and “teamwork” involved when throwweapon is disabled.
Removing throwweapon also involves deeper thought/planning on a per weapon pickup basis. Do I really want to take that weapon? What do my team mates have? Could someone else utilise it better than me? Where are my team mates (will waiting for another player take us out of the game too long?) These decisions need to be made when the weapon is still on its spawn plate or from when an enemy/teamate is killed and drops a gun. Some of these decisions are the same when the player has the weapon with weapondrop on, however they are made when the player carrying the weapon sees other players – and by and large occur organically rather than the forced model of no weapondrop.
Removing throwweapon also allows weaker teams to punish teams with individually stronger players via more efficient denial. If an enemy player is a beast with weaponX in order to deny with traditional throwweapon on the weapon must be denied every single pickup otherwise the opposing team can simply give it to the better player. With throwweapon disabled players only need to deny to the specific player that wants it.
On the flip side the team with the beasty weaponX player can make it a priority for the team to make aggressive moves onto the weapon so the weaponX player can take it.
This becomes more interesting at a lower level with uneven teams where it may be a case of one player being significantly better than his three team mates. With throwweapon enabled this player can simply be fed weapons by his team mates. With it disabled they have to go around taking weapons together.
Of course the obvious work around is killing ones self to drop the weapon, however this is a “cost” and would not always be a good solution unless the player is naked with that weapon alone.
And because thinking about this would not be worth all that much without an existing example we can look at Quakeworld. The original TDM game that works with 1-2 “strong” ut4 weapons per map on longer than UT spawns. And it works perfectly without drop weapon. Of course there are differences faster quad/armor, backpacks and much slower team weapon stacking come to mind – but it still plays perfectly fine.
*Coming full circle. If two enforcers are considered strong then two fresh spawns playing together will be strong. In a team game this makes sense for players to play together. There is much more teamplay involved in playing together in this way than the weaker aimer dropping their spawn weapon for the stronger aimer.
Unreal GladiatorBy guarding a weapon you are likely hurting your team by not getting frags thus allowing the other team to get ahead, you are also abandoning your team to fight a man short, and you make yourself an easier target potentially feeding the other team and signaling to them that a weapon is available near your. If they frag you they then get 2 guns rather than one.[/QUOTE]
Time is currency in duel and to a lesser extent TDM. In duel your stack and level of control should be dictated by how much free time you have available to pressure the out of control player… which is not relevant right now. This is not really how ut4 duel currently works.
In TDM with no drop weapon you would be trading your time (and possible kills) for the present (you weapon – team mate no weapon) while guarding a weapon for the potential of increased kills in the future (you weapon – team mate weapon). Working out if you need to stay, team mates communicating when they need guns, communicating that there is a weapon available, team mate responding and so on are all important aspects here. All of these leverage aspects of team play more than the simple act of giving the other player a gun^.
More decisions and trade offs are good.
With current dynamics the team may be “down” a man but the game overall would play differently and this as a result what you say would probably not be the case.
Your downsides are aspects players need to deal with in order to get team mates weapons. They don’t sound insurmountable, or even unusual. Don’t die, don’t make a sitting duck of yourself. Situational awareness and common sense that players should apply most times during play.
dropweapon/nodropweapon isn’t better or worse, simply different. dropweapon has always been pushed as a feature that improves teamwork, but in reality I don’t feel it promotes playing as a team all that much. It does promote giving things to your team mates, but as for playing together it does nothing. My initial post exists because I doubt there will be a thread about dropweapon + TDM at any point and this looked like a good candidate for slotting it in.
^To take this point a little further. Irregardless of drop weapon or not, if two players meet and then play together team play is occurring. It does not matter if a player drops a weapon or not as you are still playing together assisting each other. This idea and decisions surrounding it is what teamplay is at its core. The simple act of dropping a gun? Not teamplay. The dropping of medpacks in other games? Not team play. The player with the enforcer should probably play near the other team mate anyway, regardless of what is dropped for them.
*this makes TDM sound very +forward and cessy as it implies that players must always be pressuring the opposing team. I don’t think that is a completely accurate representation of how any iteration of ut has played.
Of course you have this option. Two players can play together with enforcers. Double firepower? Check. Teammate interaction? Check, to a much higher degree than simply dropping it for someone else 🙂
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