Why not? At least custom maps. Even TF2 allows that. Not everyobdy will start making exploitable maps just to rank up fast. Some will, but most won’t. I don’t see where the problem is.
On the other hand, not allowing custom content on ranked server, you’ll just end up with the same situation quake wars was in, very few people were playing custom content and therefore the very few that were able to make custom content gave up.
Why not? At least custom maps. Even TF2 allows that. Not everyobdy will start making exploitable maps just to rank up fast. Some will, but most won’t. I don’t see where the problem is.
On the other hand, not allowing custom content on ranked server, you’ll just end up with the same situation quake wars was in, very few people were playing custom content and therefore the very few that were able to make custom content gave up.
Doubledigit speaks the truth, this is a big concern please don’t make the same mistake as QW. ET had a massive mod community and is still doing fine even though it is 6years old! People want stats and custom content in the same place not seperated or don’t have stats at all and allow custom content like ET.
Track stats on all servers but only allow unchanged servers to call themselves ‘pure’ and show up in the default list. Custom content is important but what’s even more important is to safeguard the official game and make sure that people will always be able to play what they’ve bought.
This is exactly what is killing etqw, people think custom stuff is shit and think that they have to dl 100mb of viruses & stuff so they just don’t and let the game die because of seemingly no new content. The line between custom and pure must be blurred so people understand custom=good.
No, the bar to get custom content working in ETQW is too high + not getting your precious achievements on those servers is what makes people feel like their games ‘don’t count’.
And no, custom content is not inherently good and rarely approaches the standard of official content. People should be able to play a normal game without having to plough through an endless list of moddified content.
Don’t get me wrong, custom content is a valuable addition to any game and I’m already having ideas for an own mod brewing. But the line between those two should be exact and easy to toggle.
I think if the game is fun enough you don’t need stats. ET’s core game play was awsome and very fun. I played it for over 3 and a half years and the reason i got fed up was because of cheaters not because the game wasn’t fun anymore.
An FPS shouldn’t have to rely on achievements or unlocks to make people play then it just becomes a grind like an MMO. I want to play Brink because i think it will be a fun game. I don’t want it to die because custom content was to hard to make/maintain.
The fact is that Splash damage can’t maintain the game for ever, Modders have to take over at some point to extend the games life if they can’t or there is no point the game will die off.
focus on making the game fun and making it easy to mod. Then a stats system.
I just wish they can just eliminate the whole XP and Rank system and give us a fun multiplayer where the host decided what guns and maps and features to run on their server. But we all know that is not going to happen. Rank server is another way to charge for DLC which I’m sure they will find a way to have PC user start paying for DLC. It all about the money now. I totally agree that gaming industry should be paid for their work but they are getting really greedy now. Alot of games are coming out incomplete and a week later they offer DLC for an additional fee.
That’s a bit negative, there are few shooters that charge for DLC.
Statistics are fun by themselves, it’s nice to see how you’re doing compared to the rest. The QW achievements however were very senseless.
IMO custom maps should be viewable and downloadable in game. Wth perhaps a tiny flag to indicate official from custom maps. Stats should be recorded as normal including maps from which they were gained (can maps have hash verification?)
Mods I think should fall into their own stat categories, that way you can keep the stats but not skew the data.
Well we’re not only talking about maps here. You can enter allot of tiny additions which might be refreshing but become tedious after a while.
Who said there were ranked servers ? Afaik, all we’ve heard is dedicated servers will be available for PC.
[QUOTE=tokamak;201355]That’s a bit negative, there are few shooters that charge for DLC.
Statistics are fun by themselves, it’s nice to see how you’re doing compared to the rest. The QW achievements however were very senseless.[/QUOTE]
True, I do sound pessimistic but so many games has come and gone with only disappointment. Today games don’t consist of the same fun like it once us to, especially in the early 2000’s. IMO, developers are trying to incorporate too many things which is prone to consist of many problems. Plus it is now quantity over quality.
There’s several ways to do stats without ranked servers like ET:QW has, most of them better than QW stats site
Yup, and I’m all ears for suggestions. In fact, this topic is also being talked about here: http://community.enemyterritory.com/forums/showthread.php?t=34988
Not sure if it’s possible but a way of analysing a server and producing a hash to separate it from others would be great. Then you just record stats under each unique hash.
It would also allow you flag server configs you like or filter out those you don’t without going to a server filter level.
I guess the immediate concern that comes to mind is what to do when an update is released for the game or mod. How do you preserve the hash or prevent having to review everything over again.
I am ok with ranks and stats as long as they don’t change anything in the gameplay. I hate games that require you to play like a monkey to unlock this and that. For me, the ETQW style of unlocks is the best. Everytime you play you have something to improve and reach for. Today I want to get to level 4 medic, maybe tomorrow I’ll be an engineer and want them self arming mines, but I don’t want persistent unlockables. Way too cheap.
As far as stats go, I never understood ranks. I wasn’t in the military and have no idea what they mean and don’t care. Stick a number next to them and I might have an idea.
As far as sorting players, I still think the default sorting option should be xp/hour. Give those consistently good players the credit, not to the ones that play 8 hours per day. Some of us have to work actually.
I would like to see graphs on the stats server, tracking since when I created the character to see where I have improved, got bad or whatever.
Going back to the original question, how come stopwatch mode was not ranked?
Rhado, I don’t know if this is of any interest, probably not, but here’s a stats site I put together for our “clan”:
What it offers over the QW stats site is that the leaderboard can be filtered by the last X hours of play, so you can see how you are performing now compared to others, rather than an average of your enitre time playing the game (which would include your learning curve). It achieves this by keeping a continuous history of stats.
Recent promotions + personal bests are shown like a news feed. I also introduced a concept of ‘medals’ based on your personal bests, just an extra thing to gloat about to your mates.
My thoughts on the ranked server issue are, why not include stats from custom content, but with the option to filter by ‘official content only’. Alternatively, allow the community to moderate which custom content should be “accepted” extra content, thus avoiding the problem of exploits etc.
The only thing I dislike about custom content in ET is that there are no categories. Either you allow downloads or you don’t. This ends in a horrible combination of conflicting menu and loading screen skins for your game which just make you go ARRRGHH whenever you start it.
I’m pretty sure there is at least one game that allowed advanced settings like enable download of skins / soundpacks / maps separately.
Problem comes when you have more than just one type of modification in one pk4, a mapper may include themed skins for his map inside his pk4 or include different limbo theme or something like that along with the map and it becomes hard to know what exactly is going on inside it, ideally no mapper would do this and release them separately but you do get some idiots out there as seen with ET like you point out.