06 Sep 14, 04:50AM
i posted this in another thread Kappa
(ATTENTION: IF YOU HATE READING MY SATIRICAL WALLS OF TEXT THEN FUCK YOU, IM BEING SERIOUS THIS TIME)
sticky nades are ambiguous as a concept as well. i will discuss two options; nades that stick to players and nades that stick to surfaces. if you want a nade that sticks to both then feel free to combine my argument yourself, as the ideas should be coherent with each other
STICKY NADES THAT STICK TO YOU
with regards to nades that stick to players, it increases the damage taken as soon as you get hit by one. its essentially a bullet that will eventually hit you, even though you can see it floating and barely moving. it may seem like an interesting concept to add to assaultcube, but it removes an important facet of gameplay: kill securing (provided you hit a player). this removed many of the fun moments one can have when they escape the enemy base because they got hit by a sticky, and then they die away from the enemy. this also gives an advantage to defenders, as you can now use the time you would have chasing an enemy elsewhere, for example killing the second attacker
with normal grenades, there is a skill ceiling introduced with the mechanic of "cooking". By being able to hold the primed grenade, you are more able to control the nade's detonation to further increase your damage output. this takes time and practice to improve on and master, as you must be able to predict the enemy's movement, hit them with the nade, and make sure the nade explodes upon/near impact for maximum damage. with nades that stick to players, you only need to predict enemy movement. for balance reasons, the sticky nade would probably need to do constant damage regardless of how close the enemy is to the center of the blast, and the constant damage would have to be low. so by trading difficulty for lower damage, you are left with a very noob friendly weapon. which is not bad by any means. but if left with similar physics and behaviours as a normal grenade, there is no reason to use sticky nades instead of normal ones. if you gain the skill to use normal grenades to their damage potential (100 - 200 damage), then there is no reason to use a sticky nade. as ac weapons are (conceptually) sidegrades of each other, there is no need to introduce a downgrade of a perfectly fine weapon
STICKIES THAT STICK TO SURFACES
the most familiar i am with a grenade in video games that sticks to surfaces is the sticky from TF2. i will use this idea as the basis of my argument. there are two sub-options for sticky nades in this case: ones that have manual detonation, or ones that are timed.
you may ask, why wouldn't they explode if walked over? well, in a game as fast as AC, that would be really shitty. Area denial in any game slows down the pace. AC is an inherently quick game (not as fast as quake, but faster than many shooters out there). by adding stickies that can cling to cubes, you add the fear of people not being able to go that route. AC, while having very flexible paths to the flag, still does not have enough to keep the pace. when you see a carpet of stickies, you have to decide; can i walk over them or is the player listening attentively (i say listening because there are not many good angles to watch over good "spots" to place stickies, so like AC, you would need to hear). the problem is, most likely people will be able to bypass the carpet. in a standard 3v3, you usually do not have the time or advantage to allocate a person to watch over the carpet. so nades that require manual detonation will not be a big deterrent as one would hope they would be, and may altogether be useless for defensive purposes.
i say defensive because a mechanic from tf2 may very likely carry over into this concept: air detonation. with manual detonation, you can detonate sticky nades as they are in the air. this provides much more freedom in area denial as you can now use this aggressively. it is hard to fight someone as they blast bombs in your face. like timed detonation, this mechanic would lead to many a strategy of nadespam. explosive spam is often quite annoying, and is an argument many have against the addition of a rocket launcher. of course you could limit the amount of nades to normal levels, but that also makes these nades useless as you need a lot of them to properly use them for area denial.
there is also the concept of shooting them off with bullets; this works in TF2 as the majority of the guns are semi-automatic, so it requires ample time removing a carpet instead of spraying it down
however i am not sure my argument will hold true; they work (and are very powerful) in TF2 because the guns are semi-automatic, so bullet damage comes slower (albeit harder as they usually are shotgun based). a competent AR player could probably mow down a sticky spammer before they even detonate a sticky, making the nades useless for aggression and defense.
HOPE FOR STICKIES
i am sure in any case that the devs and HOPEFULLY TESTERS would properly adapt such explosives to the game in a way they are balanced, useful and not detrimental to the current playstyle of AC. i also know many alternative uses for these could be found and implemented (sticky jumping anyone?)
![[+]](/images/collapse_collapsed.png "[+]")
Spoiler(ATTENTION: IF YOU HATE READING MY SATIRICAL WALLS OF TEXT THEN FUCK YOU, IM BEING SERIOUS THIS TIME)
sticky nades are ambiguous as a concept as well. i will discuss two options; nades that stick to players and nades that stick to surfaces. if you want a nade that sticks to both then feel free to combine my argument yourself, as the ideas should be coherent with each other
STICKY NADES THAT STICK TO YOU
with regards to nades that stick to players, it increases the damage taken as soon as you get hit by one. its essentially a bullet that will eventually hit you, even though you can see it floating and barely moving. it may seem like an interesting concept to add to assaultcube, but it removes an important facet of gameplay: kill securing (provided you hit a player). this removed many of the fun moments one can have when they escape the enemy base because they got hit by a sticky, and then they die away from the enemy. this also gives an advantage to defenders, as you can now use the time you would have chasing an enemy elsewhere, for example killing the second attacker
with normal grenades, there is a skill ceiling introduced with the mechanic of "cooking". By being able to hold the primed grenade, you are more able to control the nade's detonation to further increase your damage output. this takes time and practice to improve on and master, as you must be able to predict the enemy's movement, hit them with the nade, and make sure the nade explodes upon/near impact for maximum damage. with nades that stick to players, you only need to predict enemy movement. for balance reasons, the sticky nade would probably need to do constant damage regardless of how close the enemy is to the center of the blast, and the constant damage would have to be low. so by trading difficulty for lower damage, you are left with a very noob friendly weapon. which is not bad by any means. but if left with similar physics and behaviours as a normal grenade, there is no reason to use sticky nades instead of normal ones. if you gain the skill to use normal grenades to their damage potential (100 - 200 damage), then there is no reason to use a sticky nade. as ac weapons are (conceptually) sidegrades of each other, there is no need to introduce a downgrade of a perfectly fine weapon
STICKIES THAT STICK TO SURFACES
the most familiar i am with a grenade in video games that sticks to surfaces is the sticky from TF2. i will use this idea as the basis of my argument. there are two sub-options for sticky nades in this case: ones that have manual detonation, or ones that are timed.
you may ask, why wouldn't they explode if walked over? well, in a game as fast as AC, that would be really shitty. Area denial in any game slows down the pace. AC is an inherently quick game (not as fast as quake, but faster than many shooters out there). by adding stickies that can cling to cubes, you add the fear of people not being able to go that route. AC, while having very flexible paths to the flag, still does not have enough to keep the pace. when you see a carpet of stickies, you have to decide; can i walk over them or is the player listening attentively (i say listening because there are not many good angles to watch over good "spots" to place stickies, so like AC, you would need to hear). the problem is, most likely people will be able to bypass the carpet. in a standard 3v3, you usually do not have the time or advantage to allocate a person to watch over the carpet. so nades that require manual detonation will not be a big deterrent as one would hope they would be, and may altogether be useless for defensive purposes.
i say defensive because a mechanic from tf2 may very likely carry over into this concept: air detonation. with manual detonation, you can detonate sticky nades as they are in the air. this provides much more freedom in area denial as you can now use this aggressively. it is hard to fight someone as they blast bombs in your face. like timed detonation, this mechanic would lead to many a strategy of nadespam. explosive spam is often quite annoying, and is an argument many have against the addition of a rocket launcher. of course you could limit the amount of nades to normal levels, but that also makes these nades useless as you need a lot of them to properly use them for area denial.
there is also the concept of shooting them off with bullets; this works in TF2 as the majority of the guns are semi-automatic, so it requires ample time removing a carpet instead of spraying it down
however i am not sure my argument will hold true; they work (and are very powerful) in TF2 because the guns are semi-automatic, so bullet damage comes slower (albeit harder as they usually are shotgun based). a competent AR player could probably mow down a sticky spammer before they even detonate a sticky, making the nades useless for aggression and defense.
HOPE FOR STICKIES
i am sure in any case that the devs and HOPEFULLY TESTERS would properly adapt such explosives to the game in a way they are balanced, useful and not detrimental to the current playstyle of AC. i also know many alternative uses for these could be found and implemented (sticky jumping anyone?)