Beta 2 feedback topic

[sheaf]

I enjoy the laser/rocket interaction, to be honest. It allows for nice plays, and is a pleasant difference from the usual rail vs rockets gameplay.

As for progressive jumps, I think it's a good addition but there should be a minimum jump height — it is silly to jump 1mm to be able to sprint. For a more natural gameplay, either you should be able to sprint without jumping, or have to jump a significant amount... having to "fake" a 1mm jump to be able to sprint feels wrong.

The best thing about this update is all the new blocks. I haven't come across that many maps taking advantage of them, but the ones that did had some really great gameplay going for them. I think this is really where Shootmania can shine, with many different blocks to give various options for the mapper. I think level design is often overlooked in traditional FPS games, here we really have the opportunity to explore and try out new things, and we're already seeing some really neat gameplay coming out! Great work.

[Gugli]

A small update has been release, mostly including crashfixes. (http://forum.maniaplanet.com/viewtopic. ... 20#p133826)

[Zell]

After some testing, I want to yell about "laser vs rockets" option. I said it before, now I repeat myself. This simply ruins the balance we had in Elite before.

Then, after some time, we will look at the balance and work on it if required. Balance is important, but it depends on many things, like the time players use it and experience it before doing it.

So, let's take some time for testing it, balancing it at the best we can, and then see if we have a better game after than before on this. I think that it adds diversity, capacities to see great stuff happens.

My feeling playing this beta 2 is this: Shootmania is now a much more challenging game. I could never return to the old elite without walljump/new physics/shooting rockets. It would be too boring.
That said, I'm seeing the difference in skill levels of players much clearer now. It's like watching the difference between drivers on Rally in seconds, as opposed to Canyon which is in the milliseconds.

However, I also wonder if the balance is ok with shooting rockets. It could be balanced (I still need to get used to it all), but if people still think its not, I had an idea:

What about giving players a bonus for shooting a set amount of rockets down in a row without missing.. Say, 5 rockets shot down without missing makes the rail shot 15% thicker, meaning those 5cm I would usually miss by, I would actually hit the defender now.

[bosnak]

Posted in suggestions, saw this:


1) Charge rockets need to be modified, in a way that it is less than 6s or as following:

-Stand still charges, ex.1) you stand still for 2s, it is 1 charge rocket that you can choose to shoot by switching your rocket slot by keyboard number 1 or 2. You stand still to gather charges, and release them when you choose.

-Make charges an option on the keyboard by weapon slot 1 or 2. You can either shoot bounce rockets with 2, or regular by 1 - this would remove standing still completely.

2) Defensive movement right now is still limited after 10s of the round start. Offense can wall jump all round, defense can only do it at the beginning to secure positions. What I propose is a defense dash.

-Any button the keyboard, W A S D, when double tapped, will do a width of the body or hitbox dash to the selected direction. This gives defense a better change of dodging, and incorporating a usable movement system for rocket players.

[roppa]

Some feedback:
Beta2 feels really great. Playing feels responsive and faster, thats very good.
New blocks are great, I really like those new space looking stuffs, wish more of that looking blocks in future. That hook thing might take some time to get used to, I havent yet figured out how to get it flowing, but havent played with it that much.

Some mentioned no calculated shadows appearing ingame. I saw in one of my maps too and shadows are calculated in previous version. Some black square patterns and random patterns on couple of castle block.

Suggestions:
In battlewaves, there are those 'capture' 'defense' icons locating where are poles. When enemy would capture pole, the 'defense' icon would turn color or blink to know which one of poles to go defense.

Walking on platform feels good, but grass feels quite slow still. You have to jump walk+stamina quite much in grass parts. It could be lilbit faster.

[ylem]

Hylis wrote: "On the walljump, some says that it should be only one time. "

Don't you ever change the walljump; it's perfect as it is right NOW

Regarding rox vs rail, i just think that hitting a rocket should happen less often, meaning that the rocket's hitbox has to be smaller, making everything a bit more balanced.

Everything else ( ALL THE NEW STUFF that was added) is just awesome!!!

[Talespin]

** This is coming from a competitive players perspective **

#1) Variable jumping has to go or at least removed until it isn't completely terrible. Not only is it awkward and nearly impossible to control at lower heights, even normal jumps feel sluggish as if I am playing with 200+ ping all the time. It also removes the risk of starting a sprint by jumping and removes some of the skill from finding creative ways to start sprints quickly by rocket bouncing or taking advantage of different terrain heights.

#2) Rails vs Rockets is a huge boost to defenders survivability and most of the time is completely luck based, I'm not sure if this is what Nadeo intended but the game is already stacked for defense and having attackers get robbed of kills because of an attacker shooting a rocket (that most likely wouldn't have come close to him anyway) sounds like a pretty bad idea to me.

#3) The new movement/jumping sound volumes make it nearly impossible to determine where a player is without having vision. While I understand this may be a change to force players to adapt to a different play style, behind voice comms, weapon sounds, and your own movement sounds you currently can't even hear if an enemy player is running around the corner right next to you. If anything, the short-distance volume of footsteps and jumps needs to be increased, even if players remain silent at mid-to-long range distances.

#4) Charged rockets currently behave awkwardly since most of the terrain isn't very flat and the bounces go off in different directions plus the charge up time is too long to make it very useful.

Bottom line is the addition of walljumping (which I like) isn't enough to make this patch worth playing, the game is worse than before. If you added walljumps to Elite Exp and removed Rockets vs Rails then the game would be MUCH better. Every competitive player that I know worth mentioning has two major gripes: progressive jumping and rockets vs rails. They need to be removed before the already small player pool this game has gets smaller.

By the way, why aren't most of these things server flags already? Why are we being forced to play with settings after nearly everyone I know explained to Nadeo that they were terrible ideas during the testing period? And before you say that not enough people played Elite Exp before to give you sufficient testing data, the reason people didn't play Elite Exp is because it was terrible.

[pksens]

Hylis- regarding the balance:

Problems:
a) An attacker who successfully shoots at a target, who's spamming rockets with little hope of hitting you can get away with ridiculous amounts of +0's, the attacker is robbed from his kill. Sometimes he might even hit multiple times yet be rewarded with nothing, a bad position, more defenders in his face, etc.

b) Attackers also robbed from long distance shots on a player who is doing spam. Small player hitbox vs large rocket hitbox = never hit player. Ridiculous shots should always be possible! There should be a risk to spamming and standing in the open, even pre patch it was still probably too hard to hit the shots (considering the requirements).

C) The sound levels for a player jumping & landing are so quiet now that a play that is ordinarily doing a stupid move is now rewarded with stealth without any skill on his part. Bunny hopping, a term for noob play in other games, is going to make a return. Jumping around non stop instead of good sprint use.. just imagine on fortress, you will have very little clue knowing what jump an attacker is attempting, what angle hes looking for, where he might be headed, etc. Sound is skill.

D) Given rockets are faster to shoot, faster in air travel, that a defender has a +0 shield larger than life, has less sound produced results in more people using aggressive rush tactics (like you typically see in any public server from a player without any patience or sometimes skill).. this style will be far more rewarding. Rushes should be technically precise executions with good teamplay instincts and comms.

I voted initially to remove the feature entirely but I would test if it is good enough if you:

1) Make rocket hitboxes a LOT smaller, like the size of a rocket should be. It'll take a lot of damn precision to hit one, but that is a skill. If it's really hard, make shooting the rocket sound no different than normal so it rewards a player who can pull it off risking his reload time?

2) Allow the rocket to not be hittable in the first 20mS in firing, a point blank fight should result in a simple +1 trade for both players not a +0 +0 +0 random festival.

3) Bring back higher sound from jumping & landing so you actually have a clue what the player is doing, not hiding & praying, or over peaking & guessing.

Cheers ! Loving the movement, wall jumping, rocket buff otherwise.

Talespin, I too play competitively for infused, I like the small incremental jump you can do. Your main explaination for why it's bad is that it's awkward. Well, fix your ping then and maybe have a bit more time to get used to it. Maybe we'll master it and it'll be perfect. The other argument that it removes the risk to activate sprint, come on. That part of the game was pretty obnoxious - having to jump 5 feet in the air to activate sprint is just a bad game feature. Sure you can get around it with smart play, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing.

Infused // Sens

[Talespin]

Talespin, I too play competitively for infused, I like the small incremental jump you can do. Your main explaination for why it's bad is that it's awkward. Well, fix your ping then and maybe have a bit more time to get used to it.

My ping is fine, I said it feels like 200+ ping not that I have that high of ping. Fix your eyes.

The other argument that it removes the risk to activate sprint, come on. That part of the game was pretty obnoxious - having to jump 5 feet in the air to activate sprint is just a bad game feature.

That's part of the game, you get a big reward for a big risk.

Sure you can get around it with smart play, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing.

Actually, that's exactly what that means. It's players like you who don't know what they're talking about that mislead developers into making bad decisions.

[cl0ck]

Please note that those are Talespins thoughts, Team SK Gaming thinks beta 2 is great, more or less.

1) Variable jumping. I find that it is quite nice to be able to control different levels of jump based on your situation. For example it is much easier to use stamina without risking an easy shot on your model due to a jump. This also helps eliminates a lot of the 'accidental' jumps that have been occurring, which is GREAT. Variable jumping is also great because now a player can get the perfect amount of height over different level walls in order to tag people, rather than exposing their entire body risking an easy shot just to get a tag.

2) Rails vs Rockets. Being that the attacker has a weapon that is one-shot-kill, and is equally as effective up close or 70 meters away, defenders using rockets to their advantage via "rock blocking" as it's now being called, is pretty great. It adds a new element to the game. One thing to keep in mind are all the new angles that a skilled attacker is going to be able to hit shots from. With the current movement system I would agree that "rock blocking" may be a little over powered", but being an attacker can quickly double jump off a wall soaring over a defenders head, "rock blocks" are going to be a lot less common than people think in a lot of situations. I'm not saying a defender won't be able to just fire a rocket whenever he peaks to tag, sure, but that's one or two less rockets he is going to have if the attacker decides to rush him. Also, an attacker can easily just hold the fire button down for a half second long to create an instant reload-double shot eliminating a rock block. Try it.

3) Sounds are quieter, but it adds a new element to the game. They aren't disabled, they're there. You just need to listen. I wouldnt be opposed to increasing the sounds, but if you do that I suggest an entire sound engine overhaul is in order because the sounds have been god-awful since the game came out. Certain sound cards, specific sound settings give you a SIGNIFICANT advantage over other players, which is terrible. If you're going to mess with the sound, fix it all together.

4) Charged rockets. The only thing I'll partially agree with is the charged rockets. It is basically impossible to stand still for 6 seconds the way the game is now. And if you manage to do so, by the time your rockets are "charged" the attacker will be in a new position that you can not hit from your current one regardless of how many times my rocket ping pongs around the map. I like the idea with "charging" a rocket after 2 seconds or 2.5 seconds, fully charging them all after 4.5 or something like that. If a change with this feature isn't made I dont see the charged rockets ever being used.

As for Talepsin's comments about "every competitive player he knows" having an issue with something in this new patch. Well I have two responses. The first is that this has only been release for about 24 hours and it is absolutely impossible for the competitive community to have come to such a quick consensus, especially the euro's who have barely had a day to try the new changes. The second is I think the game is actually quite better than before. Elements are added to finally attract players from the Quake genres, which quite frankly has been a continental-sized pool of players and support that Shootmania has yet to have (see http://www.esreality.com, search anything related to shootmania) outside of a small group of top competitive players who I can count on two hands.

So while we gingerly toss around our personal tailor-made wishlists, here are the things that I wou... Erm, I mean every competitive player that I know, would like added or changed.

VIDEO SETTINGS

- BRIGHTNESS AND GAMMA

A lot of people are just adjusting these things on their monitor itself to play, and then of course reverting back to whatever it is they are used to working on/browsing the internet on, etc. I think that there should be a way to scale these options a little bit, they are basic video settings that every game I've played has.

- PICMIP

I understand that games these days are all about spectator value, and wanting to display nice graphics, however allowing users to modify picmip would have no effect on the big-screen, large tv monitors and streams that matches are displayed on.

GAMEPLAY

- CROSSHAIRS

More of them out of the box, with options to scale them to the size you'd like. there are hundreds of custom crosshairs that people have made, out of those there are about 10-20 that almost every competitive player has saved in his crosshair folder. it wouldn't be hard to pick the top 10-20 custom crosshairs and allow those to be packaged within the game.

- MOVEMENT

Adding a crouch or duck feature.

- ROCKETS

Once the attacker is hit with a rocket it should AUTO-TAG him.

Shooting at the ground near players feet should have slightly more knockback then there currently is.

- LASER RELOAD

Adding a feature that adds 50% to your rail reload once you get hit with a rocket as an attacker. Ex. You shoot a laser and get hit with a rocket immediately, your reload jumps to 50% of its current value immediately.

Reduce the speed of the rail reload on rail pads. I believe its currently at 30% faster, this should be reduced/removed; OR keep the 30% faster reload and have the defenders rockets start to reload from 0 after they get off rail every time.

-POLE CAPTURE

When an attacker is capturing the pole the percentage captured should be visible on his Heads up Display (HUD). Ex. If an attacker steps on it for half a second, the HUD should have counted up to 33%.

- ZOOM

A zoom feature that eats up your stamina while you are zoomed. I've thought about this a lot and I think it would be a great way to implement a zoom feature. the zoom doesn't have to be drastic, perhaps less of a zoom as one gets standing on the laser pads, and while you are zoomed/while you are pressing the zoom button your stamina decreases and when your stamina is at 0 you either autmatically un-zoom, or you're allowed to continue zooming just without stamina. I think this would be a great option.

- VOICE COMMUNICATION

I shouldn't have to download a third-party program like teamspeak or mumble to communicate with my teammates via microphone ingame. There needs to be out of the box voice communication built in to the game.

SPECTATING

- I should be able to see who is in my server, both players and spectators by simply pressing tab. It would also be nice to see who the spectators were spectating.

REPLAYS/DEMO RECORDING

- Probably the first thing that needs to be fixed/changed is this. Replays and demos are keys to competitive play. It is vital to be able to watch your games and figure out your mistakes in order to get better both individually and as a team. I should be able to record a match-long replay that encompasses every players point of view, I should then be able to toggle between anyone at any given time and also watch an overhead/third person view with the press of a button I should be able to pause, rewind and fast-forward the replays. Right now the replay editor is incredibly complicated to use and you only have the option of saving individual rounds, which still is sometimes spotty/does not work. This MUST be fixed.

I suggested this list of changed pre-beta2, so if anything above was implemented (I think only the crosshair sizing?) please disregard.
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