Community Question: Powering Class Abilities

(.Chris.) #21

That’s quite a nice idea actually. Combined with less deploy spots to begin with I could see that working well. However it only helps with the engineer’s deployables, still potential for the defense to spawn back and place some fire support deployables and spam the crap out of the attack, you could perhaps only allow them on the active stage of the map but that can do harm in that the defense wouldn’t be able to lay down their defense if they decide to fall back during the previous stage before it was completed.

Wonder if they should make next question about deployables, not strictly on topic here.

(tokamak) #22

I found the turret combinations and artillery batteries combined with interceptors pretty interesting in ETQW. They were sometimes incredibly strong but they always had an Achilles heel and once you crashed down on that weak spot it was like a dam burst.

And that’s 12v12 of course. Though I don’t really see how ‘dispersing’ the turrets by limiting the proximity to each other in smaller games helps. In smaller games the turrets are already more powerful when spread.

(.Chris.) #23

How many times could you actually coordinate this on a public server though? Once a defense has a good set of deployables in place and a few good engineers repairing and redeploying them it becomes a real huge effort to take them all down long enough to achieve the objective, it could be done if players played as a team more and as you said it does feel like a great achievement when done but the times it has worked out that way for me personally are very few and far between, typically it descends into a game of lemmings.

The MCP end goal on Valley was a pain in the arse to clear when there were multiple deployables of all types for example.

Idealy you would having something along the lines of getting a covops to emp the anti-arty deplyables, whilst another does the same with their artillery around the back, time this with a hammer launch taking out their AVTs and APTs then repair the MCP and have your vehicle players keep their heavy vehicles busy during all of this. Obviously that’s just a simplification of what is needed and there are other ways but trying achieve anything like this on a public server is pretty difficult. I like the idea of deployables but they were too much of an nuisance for me personally to deal with, I’d probably enjoyed public servers more if they were handled differently.

Think he meant for all games. It’s quite easy for a small group of players who come across a single deployable on a side route to deal with it, couple of nades and its disabled, move on, but when you approach an area with a few of them they start becoming a major pain in the arse, especially if its an APT next to an AVT. I’d rather be spending my time fighting against other players not dicking around with deployables for majority of the time. Dispersing them through proximity would help somewhat I reckon though not a final solution, it may even ‘force’ players on both sides to explore the maps more whilst they look for another area they can deploy in, such as the oasis area on Slipgate that no one ever thinks to use and such.

May have to look at the deploy masks for some of the maps and see what potential side effects would be of reducing them and/or dispersing them. I’m still leaning more towards the pooled energy resource idea that can be altered through command posts and the like.

(tokamak) #24

Well I think this is purely a matter of taste now. I loved the Valley part after the tunnel as the attacker. Maybe it’s stopwatch players who hate it because such stages causes a really large deviation between both completion times?

(Humate) #25

The MCP end goal on Valley was a pain in the arse to clear when there were multiple deployables of all types for example.

Even in promod, with deployable limits that section of Valley can be a bit annoying.
Have been part of matches where the attacking team had the MCP disabled 1cm away from completion, and because of how close the spawns are they couldnt get a repair no matter what they tried -lemming, airstrikes, sniper, split attacks, grouped attacks, rambo, decoys etc

Idealy you would having something along the lines of getting a covops to emp the anti-arty deplyables, whilst another does the same with their artillery around the back, time this with a hammer launch taking out their AVTs and APTs then repair the MCP and have your vehicle players keep their heavy vehicles busy during all of this.

I guess they expected the platypus route would be used a fair bit, but yeh not the most exciting map to attack on.

(.Chris.) #26

Erm kind of, for me it breaks the flow of the map, obviously any stage of a map can grind to a halt but generally these escort ones break down more often than not and almost always towards the end of the escort if they do, Valley, Canyon, Outskirts, Refinery and Slipgate all suffer the same problem and I think it’s mainly down to deployables and the proximity of the defense’s spawn.

However other objectives also suffer thanks to deployables, Ark for example on the first stage, if the attack don’t get a plant on quickly you’re in for a bad time, once the defense has a good foothold in that area you have a mountain to climb in order to just achieve the first objective, doesn’t leave long for the rest of the map.

Yeah, the map layout leaves a lot to be desired in that area, far too defensively biased in terms of cover and such as well as the spawn location, the Strogg spawn should have been pushed back once the MCP left the tunnel, might be too far away as it stands but that base spawn where tormentor spawns would have been ideal if brought bit closer in towards the lake.

(tokamak) #27

Ah I see. Yes that’s just what I really really like. I like it when maps get stuck or progress even reverted. Those scenarios are the most compelling to play in. Just breaking your head over it and trying to find that weak spot (or sucking the momentum from the attackers) I see that it would be terrible for stopwatch mode because that would make the game very erratic down to chance. But for ordinary games I just hate it when the game is trying to force a certain outcome for the sake of making things run smoothly (especially WoW is guilty of this).

I don’t mind the subtle stuff. ETQW has dynamic spawn-timers depending on the team’s performance and that’s all great if handled elegantly.

(Ashog) #28

Don’t think artillery in spawns a bad idea tbh. Else they get destroyed before you get a chance to use them due to cooldown. There simply should be a better cooldown balance, that’s all.

As another note, there probably need to be a certain deployable cell mask, that not only regulates where stuff can be deployed, but also what type. That would decrease the chance of multiple AVT’s gathered around MCP route, but rather reserve place for smth else, e.g. APT, radar, artillery…
Typical example mentioned above - Ark. On 1st stage it would allow then only 1 AVT to be deployed on the first stage area at all. At the same time AIT cell could be reserved somewhere not so hidden behind the house so that Strogg can actually succeed in damaging it.

(tokamak) #29

That sounds awfully restrictive. There’s no way you can sell to a player that there are already too many AVT’s standing in between the MCP and the objectives when he wants to add his.

(.Chris.) #30

I could argue the same for making things not run smoothly, if a team has come up with a strategy to hold the attacking side and even pushed them back then yeah, great. However if things hit a stalemate because that section of the map heavily favors the defense and they have deployed as many turrets as humanly possible then things become rather dull. I think if handled well, limited team resources could result in players having a more considerate approach to the placement of deployables and defensive tactics in general on public matches, making a successful hold seem more ‘real’. For attackers it would mean if they do find themselves stuck they know it’s because the opposite side are playing better not because the game and map heavily favors that opposite side.

They wouldn’t but least now they could be destroyed bit more easily without someone hogging a flier and hovering above the the other side’s spawn all map.

Nah, just a total limit would suffice I reckon, if a team places few AVTs and hit their limit then you’ve just left the whole area wide open to infantry and vice versa, just need to reduce the sheer number of deployables that are available, it was possible to have both turret types covering all major routes which felt bit cheap when you add in the fact you still have guns and vehicles to use in your defense.

(tokamak) #31

That’s another thing. In TF2 the sentry is extremely powerful but the engineer himself isn’t. So engineers are still not overly played because the static superiority doesn’t easily outweigh the mobile superiority that comes with other classes.

That’s the best way to balance deployables. The classes that put them down really need to lack in other departments. A team that has lots of turrets should be comprised of lots of weak engineers that have trouble holding their own in a 1 on 1 fight.

(.Chris.) #32

Erm, not sure having not played TF2 beyond two rounds. It could work I guess but then you are relying even more on the other members of the team to protect engineers in other situations which sounds good on paper but as soon as you bring that into a regular public server it could break down quite easily, it’s hard enough trying to get cover as things stand.

(tokamak) #33

A way around that and making classes easier to balance in general is to tie their class abilities to their loadout.

Similar to Brink but in a broader sense and changeable during the match. Each class can have up to three class packages. A preset for a Covert ops would be ‘Sabotage’ ‘Sniper’ and ‘Recognition’ for example. A player can then load out the packages as they wish (or adapt the presets) and chose to include a turret in one of them (but forego other perks).

The in-game result of this is that engineers are only thoroughly weakened if they’re carrying a turret package around. This makes it more necessary for them to be on deployable maintenance duty rather than throwing a turret somewhere ad hoc to nail a few bonus kills while he does his own thing in the mean time.

(Humate) #34

Not needed imo. Mass deployable spam isnt powerful, its only annoying.

(Beermachine) #35

Shared.

While balance is harder to maintain with a shared pool the added flexibility leads to more tactics that can be employed, so is much more beneficial in the long run to the development of strategies.

Edited - In retrospect, hybrid would probably be better, as it’s dependent on the class / ability effect / balance considerations where in some cases shared might not be ideal.

(Dthy) #36

Voted for shared, like it is in QW.

(Patriotqube) #37

shared like W:ET :slight_smile:

(Dragonji) #38

Shared of course (Enemy Territory FTW).

(rorgoroth) #39

W:ET Shared. As less special-spam as possible :stuck_out_tongue:

(tokamak) #40

I don’t see why you would limit yourself to either one of them. A resource-cost, cool down, team-wide limit, diminishing returns etc they’re all very important measures required to balance the game. These limits are what allows a developer to do more extreme and crazy things after all.

What I would like to see more of however, is ways to replenish your resources. This only heightens the skill ceiling and the potential strength of a player. There can be all kinds of interesting ways to generate energy, it should be easy and it shouldn’t be common, but if it’s at least possible then players can start ramping up their power and become true monsters in the field.

I’m thinking of replenishing energy through scoring killstreaks, through leeching it off corpses, leeching it off incapicated players, through supplies, through player auras, from vehicles etc.

You can include numerous ways of replenishing energy if you make upgrades a prerequisite for them. That way you get some players using kill-streaks as a resource gathering while others garner it through corpses, depending on the way they decked out their player characters.

It gives a lot of variation in specialisation as well. Some players may chose to start with a large maximum capacity of energy, some may chose a fast passive generation and some may search it in active generation while there may be others who go for a very energy-economic build and put their strength in other things like raw combat power, or stamina.

If you allow for more ways to generate a whole new level of depth opens up.

Plus there’s just nothing more satisfying than ascending ordinary combat potency through stacking up your cards in your favour through clever play. All in all it’s hugely rewarding the cerebral playstyle without impeding on more basic approaches.