Previous ut4 belt post. More fun from the thread that keeps on giving. Is the shieldbelt OP? These guys are cool but there is some serious cognitive dissonance going on in both these posts when considering the rest of the ut franchise.
nuxx: That isn’t the argument, the argument is the chance of winning a fight by rushing with one of the weapons from a bad position and no armor is big. Of course it should be possible but it happens so frequently some players are beginning to abuse it.
Why is the chance big. The player in question has bad position (assuming heavy +forward), is outstacked and is playing against a player in a potentially defensive location. Why is this player winning consistently if the skill gap (aim/movement specifically) is close. It is not because of the weapons or movement – bother players have access to similar pickups. In the secnario I am describing the stacked, better positioned player should win. Will they take damage? Sure, but they shouldn’t die unless they completely fail in execution.
Why is this occurring? I could take some guesses but they would be overly verbose and wordy and in the end come down to two things. 1) A +forward aim heavy play style is easy. Any player with aim from any arena fps could play this way. The alternative is more nuanced, takes longer to develop and is crippled by 2) its alpha. The alternative play style benefits from things like a good audio system, learning maps heavily (compared to +forward). Yes weapon balance does play a part here but even with a modest stack advantage and firing second the player with belt should kill their opponent if they are truly in a “bad position”.
Are the movement and weapons iffy? Sure. However they are not overbalanced to the point where good positioning, stack and player awareness are completely negated by +forward rockets. If they were threads about max stack being too much (when it was only 50 more than current) and belt being OP would not exist because players would get weapon -> kill opponent regardless of everything.
Flikswich: You should be able to kill someone with more armour by out-skilling/out-positioning them. But right now it’s far too easy :/ You can still have that kind of dynamic, where a player with better aim, skill and positioning can beat a fully stacked player, but it should be a risk to take those fights, not a standard tactic.
Duel in ut is built around naked* vs stacked fights. Perhaps there are times, especially early in a map, where jacket plays off against belt but in general there is no middle ground because the control game is essentially two items – belt and jacket. This is further masked by the delayed/staggered spawn system that is currently in use. With both items ut respawn times it is far too easy to control two pickups but this has always been the case. This is why max stack has been so heavily scrutinized on this forum, even if posters do not realise why they do it. Its shallow. High damage weapons are the only reason ut duel has ever worked.
By virtue of the armor/health system ut duel has always had “that kind of dynamic” and it is essentially the staple for out of control play for the past 15 years.
Look, ut duelers attribute much skill/difficulty to controlling the belt and jacket. In reality this is a simple task, similar to having red+mega^ which is not super challenging. Perhaps the ut duel player pool is so shallow that this is a difficult task. I don’t know. ut has never had meaningful out of control stacking. It has never had a reliable way for the out of control player to lower stack differential outside of damage. What you are describing is the status quo. I know you are fond of 2k4 weapon mechanics but the same two item scenario exists for duel there as well.
I don’t think the belt is OP in any way. It might also sound like I am disagreeing with either of you <3. Not really at all 🙂 The game needs more depth but it also needs to change the armor/health system from the archaic mess they are now. * Single pad pickup is so weak it is hardly worth mentioning for the out of control player. ^ Not exactly due to damage output and whatnot, but the two items in ql are "harder" to control due to 25/35. [wp_ad_camp_1]
FPS