Been playing casually for a long time now, and although I was excited when I heard ET would be getting a sequel, it wasn’t long before I started to worry that the transition between RTCW and Quake intellectual properties might not change the game for the better. Listed here are some of the concerns I have, and some possible solutions. its just constructive criticism. No one wants this game to kick ass more than me.
Concern 0: Give me rocket-grenades or give me death!
Just thought I’d get this little one out of the way. If this game doesn’t have a rocket grenade weapon extremely similar in use and balancing to the K43 and Garand FOR BOTH TEAMS, I’ll be too pissed to buy it. In my opinion, the only thing that beats the death from above aspect of the K43’s rifle grenade is missing with the 'nade and then pumping them full of holes. =) 
Quick Solution:
Rifle Grenades.
Concern 1: Changes to general weapon balancing and its effects on gameplay
Quake and Wolfenstein have completely different gameplay types. Quake is a quick run and gun multiplayer game where 2 seconds of firefight with the wrong weapon can mean the difference between being at megahealth to being a rapidly-expanding cloud of meaty gibs. The WWII era weapons and slower-overall character movement speeds of ET make for longer, more interesting, and ultimately more tactically significant battles. Sure you can still instagib a couple of enemies if you really have a need, but in ET it will cost you your limited ammo and powerbar resources (i.e. Panzerfaust and Rifle-grenades.) :drink: Here’s to hoping that ET won’t devolve into a 1-rocket-per-second, trick-jumping gib-fest. That’s for Quake proper. This is ET.
Quick Solution:
Keep the spirit of RTCW:ET’s weapon balancing. And rifle-grenades.
Concern 2: Team Assymetry and possible unbalancing effects
My immediate reaction to learning that the GDF and Strogg forces would have differing class was to think that it was totally freaking sweet. Then I thought to myself, “Uh oh, this could seriously unbalance the game.” An off-hand example is the Strogg ability to have a rolling spawn-point – as is my understanding, this is essentially the Strogg medic’s ability to spawn his teammates directly into the body of a fallen enemy. Anyone who has played ET knows that this would be an indispensible ability. Have your medic spawn another medic. Have those medics fight and spawn additional medics from the dead soldiers. You’d basically have a rolling health/rez factory. Or maybe have a team of medics storm a base and then spawn a team of engineers right next to a destructible objective. This is the totally freaking sweet part. Medics that are actually dangerous.
But on the other hand, so far there has been no mention of a corresponding GDF ability. There has to be something they haven’t announced yet; maybe a quick class-swap feature between GDF teammates. But if it turns out there isn’t, then you can see how the GDF could be overmatched. If I could spawn whenever my Strogg teammate ganks somebody, I can’t see how I would want to be one of the human classes that had to wait for the spawn timer to tick down.
That’s just an example given with what little information we actually have about the class abilities right now. Basically the concern is that if we have wildly varying special abilities and weapons between teams, we’ll either end up with an unbalanced massacre or on the otherhand a game like Starcraft where the balancing is such that you are basically running with Rock-Paper-Scissors.
Quick Solution:
Um, pay the game designers more?
Concern 3: Weapons across teams
Like concern 2. If each team doesn’t have the opportunity to use the exact same weapons, like in RTCW:ET, they should be extremely similar. (Heh, especially if you are spawning into other people’s bodies.)
Quick Solution:
Weapons that fire essentially the same way accross teams but have differing cosmetics, ammo and powerbar requirements. And Rifle Grenades.
Concern 4: Unholy Air Supremacy
I HATE AIR UNITS. If you’ve played Battlefield, Unreal Tournament, or even Halo 2, you know that if you see something big in the air you run the @#$% away. Hopefully it will be better in ET since its not a race to X kills, but still, these things should be limited be fuel, maneuverability (i.e. inability to hover), or some other damn thing. An even better solution would be an AVRIL type weapon or an anti-air grenade that will take these buttwipes out. :bash:
Quick Solution: Simple, common, effective anti-air tactics, like a homing anti-air grenade. Make Anti-air rifle grenades an Engineer specialty maybe. =)
Concern 5: Too Big Maps
If it shouldn’t take any longer than 30 seconds to get from a spawnpoint to the action. Otherwise there’ll be teamkilling to get into the vehicles and I’ll be one of the TKers. I read an interview once with the developers of Halo 2 who said that that game’s gigantic increase in map size over its predecessor wouldnt be a problem because now there were more vehicles. What a bunch of crap. On certain maps in that game you have to pretend you’re playing a car-battling game just to have fun. Either that or snipe, which brings me to my next concern.
Quick Solution:
More, better, closer spawnpoints
Also, rifle-grenades.
Concern 6: Snipers
Yes, yes I know. Its a perfectly valid play style. Unfortunately it has got to be the most frustrating and least-fun way to die. I’ve had more fun being killed to death jumping over barbed wire. Balancing the sniper weapons somehow with a counter doesn’t entirely fix the problem. Its still maddening to watch your life tick away with no means to fight back, or repeatedly walking out of spawn and getting head-shotted. Hopefully the first part can be fixed by the railgun’s signature trail, but if there are other sniper weapons as is likely, then I envision hairpulling in my near future. As for instant-kill headshots, cripes, if the GDF hasn’t invented some kind of force-field shielding device to prevent these, then they all deserve to be Stroggified.
Quick Solution:
Headshots knock you prone in addition to normal damage.
Radar? Maybe?
Use rifle grenades to take out dem pesky snipers.
Concern 7: Won’t be newbie friendly
Our college has a GameDev Club, and every quarter we hold a LAN event. ET is always the main attraction for club members, as we can sit down and play as a team. However, it is really difficult to get non-members interested in the game. Apparently people would rather dwell in their Counterstrike-centered universes and not learn a new game because it is just too hard. The game needs to be easy to learn, difficult to master. Recent announcements show that we’re going in the right direction, with proper mission briefings at the start of each mission. We can do one better though. My suggestion is a beginner HUD that shows up when the player has low XP. This HUD would be non-invasive, but still provide helpful hints such as important key-bindings and maybe explicit heads-up directions so they dont get hopelessly lost on the map. Objectives could be labeled ala Halo 2 multiplayer.
Quick Solutions:
Beginner HUD
On-screen labelled objectives
Radar
Individually assigned newbie missions (Already announced)
Rifle Grenades are easy to learn, tough to master. :beatdeadhorse:
Heh. Ok that seems to be all for now. I’d love some responses to these as well as thoughts on what other people want the developers to try and avoid.
