Upcoming Release Balance Discussion (SVN)

[makkE]

Since the old thread is falling apart, here's a new one.

SVN sources are up-to-date now, so you can compile your own if you like. Bins have been provided, sorry no mac bins though. I hope they work properly. I will now list the main diffrences from the current 1.1.0.4 version once again:

SMG: Damage is now 15.5. Handling is inbetween 1.0.4 and 1.1

AR: Damage is now 22. Handling is inbetween 1.0.4 and 1.1

Pistol: 10 bullets, slightly faster, a tad more recoil.

Sniper: 83 damage. Happy medium between 1.0.4 and 1.1
Sniper+pistol combo is possible, until you pick up a helmet. Pretty much behaves like 1.0.4 really. (just less coarse).

Shotgun: Complete overhaul. Less maximum damage, better distribution of damage over range. Less random. Aim well and you will get some guaranteed damage. Extra damage when really close.
No more missing by a meter while still getting huge damage in. A bit harder to handle.

Armour has not been changed since 1.1.0.4.

Please test it out and let us know what you think! Some stuff might be buggy. Main focus is the balance at this very moment.

[V-Man]

* V-Man calls a vote: Make Ronald_Reagan compile a bin for Macs

[Panda]

This sounds good as a few things have already been considered and I will test it again for sure :)

[Ronald_Reagan]

* Ronald_Reagan calls a vote, make RR spend more time figuring out why he suddenly has 12 warnings and 1 error while building.

Edit: Vote Passed

[RPG]

I tried to play with the new version of the shotgun.
The most important thing - it is impossible to kill from a distance of 2 meters. Well. But the damage of 99% from a shotgun at point blank range is very strange.
My feelings are:
- sucks, even at medium distances
- shot at point blank range does not warrant the death (damage 98-99)
- Effective only face to face, to kill a fleeing player does not work

[makkE]

And you made this out from how many minutes of playing? 10 ? Did you aim properly?

In fact, the maximum damage of the shotgun is now 84 - with the exeption of point blank range, wich is at the moment defined as 4 cubes. If you are as close as those 4 cubes, you will get the old maximum - 105 = instant kill (most of the time).

Maybe the point blank range needs to be 6 or 8 cubes. But to say it was useless in all other ranges is a bit weird. The way it acts now, you will get guaranteed damage even across a large map of ca. 15-20 ( even at ca. 40 metres or so)- as long as you aim properly.

At mid ranges, you are in the 40-60 damage range easily. THe one thing that has changed is, you will only get this damage if you aim properly. Once you miss a bit, you will not be able to get the full damage (something that was still possible with the old shotgun code). In 1.1.0.4 , you can miss by 2 metres on close distance and still get a splat - that's simply impossible now.

[eftertanke]

* eftertanke claims admin status
* eftertanke calls a vote: Make Ronald_Reagan compile a bin for Macs
Vote passed.

DOIT! Jk. I'm checking out now. Interested in the new pistol and shotgun changes.

[RPG]

Servers are empty, so I played with bots. Of course, for a better test is better to play with people, but there were no people.

If you play with me then you know that I aim well)

Another advantage was a shotgun - to shoot into the crowd. I understand now it is useless. Or shoot in nearly a dead player, running away with the flag without aiming.

[V-Man]

...Wahnfred? :D

[flowtron]

FYI: the bots are currently seriously broken - they don't shoot and the engine might even crash on you. I was working on this till late Monday-Night .. I've found the problem, but am still looking for cause/solution; the bots just keep forgetting the weapon-instance they're currently holding. They know which one it should be, but the actual instance of the weapon-class keeps "suddenly" reverting to NULL. (for you coders: weaponsel==NULL, gunselect is fine, weaponsel is OK after spawn, but gets lost somewhere along the way, so checks in clientgame.cpp et al. lead to SEGFAULT .. go figure)

[Roflcopter]

The sniper is massively over powered. It's actually received rather a lot of improvements:

* Now does 84 damage instead of 80
* Now has 47 spread down from 60 (I mean the sniper isn't supposed to be accurate unscoped but it's almost as accurate as the SMG with 45 spread)
* The scoped FOV can now be set to a max of 60 (instead of 50 in 1.1.0.4)
* Pistols now have a clip size of 10

And in comparison all the stats for SMG appear to have decreased except damage (ie: more recoil and spread). AR is largely unchanged with just a slight increase in starting recoil. So, according to my attempt to understand server.h: sniper is far better and AR and SMG are worse.

And in an hour or so of playing it feels that way too. Sniper is so overpowered that even with 100 health and shield two shots kill.

Worse still, if you have no shield and are hit by a sniper, you need 3 medkits to survive a single second shot. WTF? Basically, a sniper shot has turned into a death sentence.

Consider a sniper defending base who pushes out to around halfway in the map. Any decent sniper can almost guarantee a sniper shot in any encounter. So a player that attempts to push past the defending sniper stands no real chance. Even if he kills the sniper he cannot get 3 medkits in time to push into base so the sniper will kill him on the next encouter before he can get to the flag.

That coupled with AR needing 6 bullets to kill a player with 100 health and 25 shield (as opposed to 5 bullets in 1.1.0.4) makes this game decided sniper biased.

[castiel]

Played a few matches, used the shotgun a bit, and the SMG/AR.

- Shotgun is still to weak in my opinion, even in small/tight spaces, both auto weapons seem to come out on top, maybe increase max damage a tad?

- AR seems good to me.

- The thing that seems to make the SMG weak is spread, even at medium-close range the spread can make plenty of your shots miss, this makes killing your opponent partially needing luck as well as aim, the AR on the other hand, if you have your crosshair over and opponent when you shoot, you will hit at a decent range.

I'm yet to play with a proper sniper, so will report back after testing that.

[#M|A#Wolf]

Roflcopter, read the first post.

- How did you even measure spread?
- In 1.1.0.4 you can set the FOV to max of 60, it's just that the description of the command was wrong.
- Sniper damage is 83, not 84.
- In a normal world, no one will plan to hit you two times with a sniper bullet. Google "sniper-pistol combo". With 1 helmet, you need 2 pistol shots.
- 6 shots with the AR isn't much. In fact, it's actually pretty fast.

[Roflcopter]

Roflcopter, read the first post.

- How did you even measure spread?

I read the source code; I didn't "measure" anything. I am talking about SVN revision 6022 which I believe to be the latest.

- In 1.1.0.4 you can set the FOV to max of 60, it's just that the description of the command was wrong.

I stand corrected. :)

- Sniper damage is 83, not 84.

Yes, I see this now. But my point remains since you'd still only have 83 health after being shot and taking two medkits... So you still need 3 medkits after a single hit.

- In a normal world, no one will plan to hit you two times with a sniper bullet. Google "sniper-pistol combo". With 1 helmet, you need 2 pistol shots.

I think you misunderstand. The situation is that a player A with sniper plays a player B without sniper. B pushes to A's flag but must attack A to do so. A inflicts one sniper shot on B before dieing. On reaching A's base, B will not be able to sustain a second sniper shot from A (who has now respawned) since he will not have found 3 medkits.

Basically, the main thing good teams notice in this game is that you need to kill a player twice to take that player's flag. The cases where this is not true, that team is likely defending poorly.

- 6 shots with the AR isn't much. In fact, it's actually pretty fast.

The best players in the game approach 50% accuracy. In practise when engaging a sniper they are at range and so spread causes bullets to go wide.

In general, weapons should have less spread as it adds a luck factor which is unacceptable at a high level of play. The exception being a sniper which should be weak close range (hence the high unscoped spread).

[V-Man]

a sniper shot has turned into a death sentence.

That's the idea! :D

[jAcKRoCk*]

* DES|V-Man calls a vote: Make Ronald_Reagan compile a bin for Macs

+1 i can't wait to get my hands on this sniper

* jAcKRoCk* needs to cry a little of joy

[eftertanke]

The best players in the game approach 50% accuracy. In practise when engaging a sniper they are at range and so spread causes bullets to go wide.

And now you've lost me :/

[Lumpaz]

Worse still, if you have no shield and are hit by a sniper, you need 3 medkits to survive a single second shot. WTF? Basically, a sniper shot has turned into a death sentence.

Agree.

That coupled with AR needing 6 bullets to kill a player with 100 health and 25 shield (as opposed to 5 bullets in 1.1.0.4) makes this game decided sniper biased.

Agree.

[MykeGregory]

Thank you thank you thank you thank you!!! f1 f1 f1 f1

bout time the shotty was nerfed. and sniper upgrades. waht more could i ask for?

[makkE]

First we get complaints that we nerfed the sniper, now it's "overpowered."
The reduced unscoped spread is supposed to compensate the smaller head hitboxes..
The only thing that is changed by the damage is that 1 shot+1 bullet is possible against an unarmoured opponent. Just like in 1.0.4....
We're trying to get a good mix between the 1.04 and 1.1 balance going here - that's the plan.

[MykeGregory]

i think you have done well getting the mix between the two. From what i have heard.

[Darkbee]

I think you misunderstand...

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't AC assumed to be mostly a multiplayer, team game? I'm sure we can always find a 1 on 1 argument to match our claim. I'm also sure we can find a team argument as a counter claim. My response to your scenario would be to better coordinate with your team. If a team of players can't take out a sniper then something is horribly wrong.

Let's assume that we replace the sniper rifle with a toilet tube and some gun powder. Player A is now dead... always. In other words, how weak do you want the sniper rifle to be? To the point of utterly useless? Why have it in the game then? There aren't that many maps (any?) where a player with a sniper rifle can defend a base up to 5000 meters away (mild exagerration for effect). The sniper rifle is a one shot deal, they either kill or they're as good as dead. I don't feel the need to stack the odds heavily in favor of "as good as dead" personally.

I used to play the sniper rifle a lot but I stopped in 1.1.04 because I found I was out-gunned a large percentage of the time, even if I got the first shot in. It just wasn't fun to play.

Just my two cents worth.

[Blue_Pr!nt]

keep the improvements up.
i will give you a more detailed account of weapons at a later stage

[titiPT]

Will there be any changes to the grenades?

[FleshyPod]

I've got a suggestion for all testing builds-make the weapon stats load from config file, so players can fine-tune weapons for themselves and share these configs with you devs. Let the servers change values on the fly?

[tempest]

First we get complaints that we nerfed the sniper, now it's "overpowered."

Surprise, surprise. There will always be someone to complain.

[cOGhost]

ITS GOOD!!!!

[MykeGregory]

flamers will be flamers. trolls will be trolls. noobs will hold shotguns.

* MykeGregory facepalms.

[Darkbee]

If the shotgun is the noobtoob then why not just remove it from the game altogether. Balance problem solved! Huzzah!

[Roflcopter]

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't AC assumed to be mostly a multiplayer, team game?

Yes, and I gave you a very common example of two teams playing well.

I'm sure we can always find a 1 on 1 argument to match our claim. I'm also sure we can find a team argument as a counter claim. My response to your scenario would be to better coordinate with your team. If a team of players can't take out a sniper then something is horribly wrong.

A team of players to take a single player? You do realize that most of the time in clan matches other players will be preoccupied?

Let's assume that we replace the sniper rifle with a toilet tube and some gun powder. Player A is now dead... always. In other words, how weak do you want the sniper rifle to be? To the point of utterly useless? Why have it in the game then? There aren't that many maps (any?) where a player with a sniper rifle can defend a base up to 5000 meters away (mild exagerration for effect). The sniper rifle is a one shot deal, they either kill or they're as good as dead. I don't feel the need to stack the odds heavily in favor of "as good as dead" personally.

Keep sniper as before -- it was fine. Make improvements to the pistol to help snipers instead. depot is an example of a map where "main" is biased to snipers. I've seen good snipers (especially in RVSF) camp main with great success already. Now it will be almost impossible to push main with an AR.

Thing is though, 1.1.0.4 was very well balanced. If you want snipers increased then drop the damage to 82 (which would only require 2 medkits to recover) but would give sniper players their pistol combo.

On top of that, drop the spread from the AR (very slightly) and SMG (a fair bit) and you will have good balance again. SMG has virtually no range right now due to its spread.

[quote='Panda']
Don't increase the AR spread. It's "bad" enough already. Why do you want to have more random chance and less skill in AC?