Tribes:Ascend Forums

FAQ • Login • Register

Loadouts 2.0: Customization for the masses, CASH for Hi-Rez
Author	Message
GoFFe Joined: Fri Dec 16, 2011 7:37 pm Posts: 215	Re: Loadouts 2.0: Customization for the masses, CASH for Hi-Rez etb513 wrote: +1 Genius post as usual by SmoothP. This sort of setup is what this game desperately needs and tons of people have been arguing towards for months. Just a couple points: Why so many repair gun sizes? Add in the targeting laser! So that you can choose to have a really fast repair gun if you feel ur position is inside the base helping the generator at the cost of having a less powerful gun and vice versa.
Sat Jan 14, 2012 1:12 am

Armydons Joined: Sat Feb 07, 2009 4:15 pm Posts: 268	Re: Loadouts 2.0: Customization for the masses, CASH for Hi-Rez I'm honestly not really sure why this idea, or something similar to it, hasn't already been slapped on top of the existing class system at the very least. Allow people to buy blanks they can customize that, once customized, are locked in with the items chosen. Whenever you want to customize a new loadout you have to buy another blank. Wouldn't that make them MORE money than they're currently making? As far as I can tell that doesn't interfere with the current system at all, would generate them more sales, AND people would get the customization they want in addition to the existing system.
Sat Jan 14, 2012 1:21 am

Elysiume Joined: Fri Dec 02, 2011 4:33 pm Posts: 1058	Re: Loadouts 2.0: Customization for the masses, CASH for Hi-Rez Armydons wrote: I'm honestly not really sure why this idea, or something similar to it, hasn't already been slapped on top of the existing class system at the very least. Allow people to buy blanks they can customize that, once customized, are locked in with the items chosen. Whenever you want to customize a new loadout you have to buy another blank. Wouldn't that make them MORE money than they're currently making? As far as I can tell that doesn't interfere with the current system at all, would generate them more sales, AND people would get the customization they want in addition to the existing system. I'll be entirely honest and say I hate your idea. Getting locked into a single loadout until I can pay for a new one? Ugh, no. At least with the current classes they are (in theory, if not in actuality) balanced and useful. _________________ 100% inheritance is something the game needs. Jetpacks need to behave more like jetpacks, at all speeds.
Sat Jan 14, 2012 1:25 am

etb513 Joined: Mon Nov 09, 2009 3:26 pm Posts: 877	Re: Loadouts 2.0: Customization for the masses, CASH for Hi-Rez GoFFe wrote: etb513 wrote: +1 Genius post as usual by SmoothP. This sort of setup is what this game desperately needs and tons of people have been arguing towards for months. Just a couple points: Why so many repair gun sizes? Add in the targeting laser! So that you can choose to have a really fast repair gun if you feel ur position is inside the base helping the generator at the cost of having a less powerful gun and vice versa. I understand having multiple sizes. I'm just of the opinion that five is excessive. _________________ Tribes name: Fenr1r
Sat Jan 14, 2012 2:08 am

P4PPY Beta Tester Joined: Sat Dec 19, 2009 12:50 am Posts: 819 Steam Gamer Name: P4PPY	Re: Loadouts 2.0: Customization for the masses, CASH for Hi-Rez First, I love that you've spent so much time. It truly shows me how much you love this franchise. Second, You need to go into detail more with things like specific damage, specific energy costs and the like. You've done a lot of work here, but it's still only half the battle. Keep in mind that what ever you do, someone will dislike it. You know this... yer smert. On to the specifics: "How to make T:A as fun and long lived as possible: •Highlight the features of Tribes that make it unique and engaging, i.e. skiing, jetting, and prediction based weapons." While I agree that this is the core of the game, it's not what a lot of people really care about most. You may have just skipped the "versitility" or "creativity" parts, so I wanted to make sure they were mentioned. In T1 Shifter, (I know... I know...) rarely did you see two identical strategies in a match. It wasn't as simple as one team deciding to play a heavily offensive tactic vs another team going for heavily defensive to counter it. It was the classes that brought specific weaknesses and strengths to the match. For example, you didn't just see a single type of armor always capping because it was, "the best". There were variations of classes that could cap and each one had a weakness and a strong point. Looking at your mock-up without specifics does nothing for me... I can't see the versitility anywhere in there except for packs, hp's, weapons and weight. All of which are already in T:A. Renegades broke to mold on the Light, Medium, Heavy labels by saying, "Yeah... you can BE a heavy, but if you choose THIS heavy, you can use THESE weapons." "•Have a wide selection of fun and useful items, but avoid IMBA items or mechanics that are frustrating to play against." Items, abilities and techniques that are frustrating to play against are part of what made Tribes, Tribes. Think about the first few times you logged into T1 base and saw a disk launcher coming at you. It was a wierd mechanic... You adapted to it, and now you can't live without it. I'll admit, some mechanics and items should be left off the table, but you really can't dismiss them just because they are frustrating to play against. If there is a counter to it, it's OK in my book. This is happening to me because of the machines guns at the moment. If I had a "counter" to them, I wouldn't care... but I can't find one, which is what is making me frustrated with the game overall. "How to foster a strong competitive community: •Maximize interesting game play elements at the competitive level, e.g. minimize bullet spray, one shotting, and RPS mechanics." fuc-king nailed it! "•Do not pigeonhole players into specific roles, encourage emergent strategies and tactics." fu-cking nailed it again! "•Treat TRIBES as a sport, not just another shooter!" fu-cking na*.... wait a minute. I don't agree with this. It's been proven that, if left up to the players of any sport, the game will live on forever. If left to the demise of the people making money off of it, it fails miserably. Look at soccer in foreign countries, some of these kids act like they were born with a soccer ball. They live it, breath it and strive to be the best at it all the way up until they realize they'll never be pros. Now look at soccer in the U.S. Not so glamorous is it? It's because no one can make money off of it here. If the "sport" aspect of this game is left up to Hi-Rez, it will fail without question. You know this as well as I do. It's why we all feel so deeply about out opinions in these forums. None of us want to see T:A fail. We all want to play it as much as possible and continue to become better than the other person. It's competition... and without at least taking into consideration the players input for competition, everyone will be mediocre at best. insert special olympics joke here* "Only a few specific items like the Fusion Mortar and Shocklance would be able to one-shot people." You've contradicted yourself here, but I understand what you're saying. Weapon suggestions: I like what you've done here... but you've only done the easy part. You've gone through a lot of effort, but barely scratched the surface. You can't expect a small studio to completely revamp their system AND do the number crunching. I understand that you have a model, a weighted system and checks/balances, but those are common sense to gamers. Skill caps are what truly define the weapons balance and enjoyability. What I'm looking for here as a game designer is raw numbers. This weapon does this much damage, it's balanced against specific armors, countered by certain tactics and requires a certain level of skill to use effectively. I ask you to read a thread: viewtopic.php?f=313&t=54189 This person thought that the class, weapons and armor were basically crap. His assumptions were based on his own skill level. He obviously hadn't taken the time to observe someone playing a Raider to it's pull potential and/or never had the opportunity to go up against one that was better than him. He's obviously been enlightened and now see's the potential in the class. This will make him work harder at it and eventually, he'll be one of the best Raiders on the servers. OK... that last bit might not be true, but the point I'm trying to make is that so many different variables define a single aspect of a weapon, pack, nade and armor that it's near impossible to balance until you can actually see someone use it to it's full potential. Only then can you make it balanced. You can't just call it something, weight it and give it limiting properties and say it's a better system than what's in place now. * I can't believe Hitscan made it out of Alpha! * "---------- D e p l o y a b l e s ----------" I love the list of deployables, but it's very limited. 8 different items, 4 of which are just different variations of the same thing. Unique none-the-less, but no where near what I want to see. My beef with this is that one turret will be better than the others. Sure, it might vary from map to map... but that's about it. Because we have to balance for competition, we have to placate the pub players. Previous Tribes gams have done this by throwing as many deployables at them as possible. Whether they're any good or not doesn't really come into consideration because the game is ever evolving. For instance, a "Shotgun Turret" would be worthless anywhere by near a flag or a door (inside). I can think of one map that it might come in handy on and that's Bella Omega. Let's take this turret and break it down. Obviously it has to do more damage than any of the other turrets (for argument sake), yet it still can't "one shot" any armors (per your rules). This means that it can't do more than 999 dmg. You've now limited all of your other turrets to that cap damage. I'm assuming that the ION turret has a longer range, therefor does less damage than the shotgun turret, so let's make it do 800 dmg. When do you start to say, "Wait... this turret shoots twice as far and only does 199 dmg less." This defeats the purpose of the shotgun turret. This is completely made up of course, I threw the numbers in there to show you my understanding of balance. You can't just balance items based on raw data. There's placements, individual skill, teamwork and a plethora of other factors to be considered. Deployables should sprout creativity, versitility and of overwhelming sense of worth to the players using them. I'm honestly not trying to knock you here Smooth. I think you've spent night after night dreaming of ways to make this game better for all of us, and I appriciate it a lot more than this post shows. I just think that throwing ideas out there like this should come in small bursts, not full on alterations to the entire game ( I know, exagerated here ). My idea of a small burst would be to pick a specific thing you want changes about this game. Prove to Hi-Rez that a change is needed. Back it up with videos, and focus on it until it's either changed or something else more important to you comes along. _________________ Kills mean everything in Public play Kills mean nothing in Competition play Never judge a class by its kill count.
Sat Jan 14, 2012 2:19 am

Armydons Joined: Sat Feb 07, 2009 4:15 pm Posts: 268	Re: Loadouts 2.0: Customization for the masses, CASH for Hi-Rez Elysiume wrote: Armydons wrote: I'm honestly not really sure why this idea, or something similar to it, hasn't already been slapped on top of the existing class system at the very least. Allow people to buy blanks they can customize that, once customized, are locked in with the items chosen. Whenever you want to customize a new loadout you have to buy another blank. Wouldn't that make them MORE money than they're currently making? As far as I can tell that doesn't interfere with the current system at all, would generate them more sales, AND people would get the customization they want in addition to the existing system. I'll be entirely honest and say I hate your idea. Getting locked into a single loadout until I can pay for a new one? Ugh, no. At least with the current classes they are (in theory, if not in actuality) balanced and useful. I don't mean being locked into a single loadout at all. I mean the ability to purchase blank slates slapped on top of the existing system. Ideally, a system like SmoothP proposed just layered on top of what is already in place.
Sat Jan 14, 2012 2:28 am

Cyanidearm Joined: Sun Feb 14, 2010 11:08 am Posts: 5	Re: Loadouts 2.0: Customization for the masses, CASH for Hi-Rez As much as I want to jump on this idea and say "Yes. Yes, this exactly." There's a nagging part of me that can't get over how people want to revert back to what they've had with older games in the franchise. This is a "new" game, with a new model. It's not Tribes 3. The idea of developer produced loadouts gives the chance for things to be balanced. Else everyone would run around with the pre-patch thumper, cloak pack, and shocklance; or some other combination of weapons that makes someone that isn't paying just roll their face into their keyboard. Honestly if you're trying to pad Hi-Rez's wallet, suggest they either reduce the effectiveness or duration of the boosts they have in place (preferably effectiveness) as that would diminish token gains and encourage people to buy gold instead. tl;dr: Balance will help this game more than adapting it to TF2/old Tribes standards.
Sat Jan 14, 2012 3:37 am

VoltCruelerz Joined: Sun Aug 07, 2011 8:50 pm Posts: 721	Re: Loadouts 2.0: Customization for the masses, CASH for Hi-Rez I really don't see why they couldn't just do this on top of what they already have... At any rate, this is pretty nice once again. Also, you didn't touch on it, but you said that you said that you could "buy x loadout for a limited time." You never explained (that I saw) why not just buy the components instead. I was thinking though that you'd have a series of classes that'd be standard (like those we already have). Then, there'd be a list of purchasable classes (I know you can already buy the current ones; I'm thinking of reducing their cost to about 7,000 tokens so that the new ones cost, say 18,000 tokens or equivalent gold). These would be select player-designed ones (as you seemed to suggest). Then, at perhaps 25,000 tokens (or equivalent gold of course), you can buy a blank loadout. Weapons'd be, say 5k; packs would be 7k; off-hands would be 3-4k. Perks would still be extremely expensive. So in list form (I don't claim to know the conversion of tokens to gold, so once again numbers are in tokens)... Standard Loadouts: 7,000 Select Player Loadouts: 18,000 Blank Loadout: 25,000 Weapons: 5,000 Packs: 7,000 Off-Hands: 3,500 Now, as a F2P person who'd like to buy gold for the game but can't (paypal doesn't like my bank and don't have a credit car), I assure you that even playing as a college guy with way to much free time, unlocking things like that will still take a very long time. I've been playing for quite a while and I've still got five loadouts to unlock. And those were just the standard ones, let alone custom ones or select ones. I'm assuming this is more or less what you had in mind.. Just trying to clarify and add some numbers to some concepts.. In other news... Mach Light Armor Spinfusor (M) SMG (S) Energy Pack (M) Concussive Grenades (S) Duties Capping E-grabbing Guardian Medium Armor Spinfusor (L) SMG (S) Energy Pack (L) Frag Grenades (S) Duties General support Base protection Chasing if the need arises Escorting cappers Gatekeeper Heavy Armor Spinfusor (L) Chaingun (XL) Ammo Pack (M) Frag Grenades (S) Duties HoF'ing, using the chaingun Protecting the entrances to the base Retaking the base from enemies _________________
Sat Jan 14, 2012 3:50 am

Schottingham Joined: Wed Sep 14, 2011 4:07 pm Posts: 644	Re: Loadouts 2.0: Customization for the masses, CASH for Hi-Rez DarkWeeble wrote: SmoothP is my hero. Let me know when you get your own game going and I'll be first in line to help with anything you need. This. For real. Some minor things: - I like the idea of an optional manually-timed air blast for the thumper. Would the reload be delayed as long as you're holding the trigger (as a cost for using the feature)? - In the interest of using existing art resources, are you thinking that the shot-blaster should use one of the shotgun models, and the blaster the nova colt model? I did really like how they preserved the look of the T2 blaster for the nova colt. - Why limit the AR to three-round burst? I think this would be a HUGE hindrance to anti-air duty. I find it very hard to correct my lead without that continous chain of tracers. - I love the idea of having both projectile-based and laser-based sniper rifles, but a question about your Gauss rifle description: Would it drain the player's energy immediately on firing, or consume energy slowly (similar to a pack)? You could justify an immediate energy drain the same way you would for a laser; it's just a huge burst of energy to accelerate a projectile magnetically. I really hope Hi-Rez considers some of your great ideas :/ _________________ - Fix Jetpack Physics (video) (video) - Remove regen, bring back health kits - Buff explosive jumping - 100% inheritance for "bullet" weapons (nova blaster included)
Sat Jan 14, 2012 4:44 am

SmoothP Joined: Fri Jul 29, 2011 3:28 am Posts: 1584	Re: Loadouts 2.0: Customization for the masses, CASH for Hi-Rez Elysiume wrote: I'll be entirely honest and say I hate your idea. Getting locked into a single loadout until I can pay for a new one? Ugh, no. At least with the current classes they are (in theory, if not in actuality) balanced and useful. This would be on top of the current system. So you'd still have free loadouts (which I personally think should have a capper/chaser, a farmer, and a heavy mortar guy), and you'd still be able to unlock standard loadouts exactly like you do now. It only adds the ability to create your own loadouts combining the stuff you've unlocked. Schottingham wrote: - I like the idea of an optional manually-timed air blast for the thumper. Would the reload be delayed as long as you're holding the trigger (as a cost for using the feature)? Yep, exactly. I see it as "holding a button on the back of the gun" instead of reloading it. It's a powerful feature, but costs you potential DPS. I also see it as NOT exploding on contact if you use "active detonation", which is interesting for various reasons, the most obvious of which is setting traps for people to run over. Which you can also do with the arx buster and sticky grenades in L2.0, but those currently have a timer as well. Quote: - In the interest of using existing art resources, are you thinking that the shot-blaster should use one of the shotgun models, and the blaster the nova colt model? I did really like how they preserved the look of the T2 blaster for the nova colt. Sounds good. The Nova Colt would be perfect for the blaster. And I think the blaster / shotblaster would be really interesting indoor weapons with the ricochet. I can see people becoming known for their "blaster monkey" skills just like we have well known shrike pilots and snipers now. Quote: - Why limit the AR to three-round burst? I think this would be a HUGE hindrance to anti-air duty. I find it very hard to correct my lead without that continous chain of tracers. Hmm, something I missed when I rewrote this was the tenet of "less frequent, more important" shots. Which I think is extremely important and creates a more engaging gameplay vibe. But on the AR, I see it as having a short reload, along the lines of ~0.4 seconds, so you'd still be able to use tracers to correct aim. Of course specifics like this are fine tuning issues that would require balance testing, and while I do have baseline numbers in my head, I'm hesitant to mention them unless asked or else people would jump all over the numbers and ignore the fundamental system. Such is the internets. Quote: - I love the idea of having both projectile-based and laser-based sniper rifles, but a question about your Gauss rifle description: Would it drain the player's energy immediately on firing, or consume energy slowly (similar to a pack)? You could justify an immediate energy drain the same way you would for a laser; it's just a huge burst of energy to accelerate a projectile magnetically. It would have a drain over time that starts immediatley AFTER firing. I wanted to create a projectile rifle with different mechanics than the laser, so it's sort of a reverse of the old school rifle. The amount and duration of the drain would obviously need much tuning. Quote: I really hope Hi-Rez considers some of your great ideas :/ Thanks, man. I've put in a lot of thinking on this, and think it would make for really awesome gameplay and a really fun meta game. I can see myself lying awake at night debating whether to go with a M thumper and a S assault rifle or a S thumper and M assault rifle, thinking about which one would be slightly better in various situations... and then finally just deciding to unlock another custom slot and have both! And that's something both players and Hi-Rez can smile about, amirite. _________________ Give a man a pistol, and he'll play for a day... Teach a man to disc, and he'll stay devoted forever. Loadouts 2.0 - Directional Jets - True Inheritance - Cosine Splash - Active Regen - Abolish Credits Last edited by SmoothP on Sat Jan 14, 2012 11:23 am, edited 2 times in total.
Sat Jan 14, 2012 11:03 am

Display posts from previous: Sort by

Loadouts 2.0: Customization for the masses, CASH for Hi-Rez

Author

Message

GoFFe

Joined: Fri Dec 16, 2011 7:37 pm
Posts: 215

Re: Loadouts 2.0: Customization for the masses, CASH for Hi-Rez

etb513 wrote:

+1

Genius post as usual by SmoothP. This sort of setup is what this game desperately needs and tons of people have been arguing towards for months. Just a couple points:

Why so many repair gun sizes?
Add in the targeting laser!

So that you can choose to have a really fast repair gun if you feel ur position is inside the base helping the generator at the cost of having a less powerful gun and vice versa.

Sat Jan 14, 2012 1:12 am

Armydons

Joined: Sat Feb 07, 2009 4:15 pm
Posts: 268

Re: Loadouts 2.0: Customization for the masses, CASH for Hi-Rez

I'm honestly not really sure why this idea, or something similar to it, hasn't already been slapped on top of the existing class system at the very least.

Allow people to buy blanks they can customize that, once customized, are locked in with the items chosen. Whenever you want to customize a new loadout you have to buy another blank.

Wouldn't that make them MORE money than they're currently making? As far as I can tell that doesn't interfere with the current system at all, would generate them more sales, AND people would get the customization they want in addition to the existing system.

Sat Jan 14, 2012 1:21 am

Elysiume

Joined: Fri Dec 02, 2011 4:33 pm
Posts: 1058

Re: Loadouts 2.0: Customization for the masses, CASH for Hi-Rez

Armydons wrote:

I'll be entirely honest and say I hate your idea. Getting locked into a single loadout until I can pay for a new one? Ugh, no. At least with the current classes they are (in theory, if not in actuality) balanced and useful.

_________________
100% inheritance is something the game needs.
Jetpacks need to behave more like jetpacks, at all speeds.

Sat Jan 14, 2012 1:25 am

etb513

Joined: Mon Nov 09, 2009 3:26 pm
Posts: 877

Re: Loadouts 2.0: Customization for the masses, CASH for Hi-Rez

GoFFe wrote:

etb513 wrote:

So that you can choose to have a really fast repair gun if you feel ur position is inside the base helping the generator at the cost of having a less powerful gun and vice versa.

I understand having multiple sizes. I'm just of the opinion that five is excessive.

_________________
Tribes name: Fenr1r

Sat Jan 14, 2012 2:08 am

P4PPY

Beta Tester

Joined: Sat Dec 19, 2009 12:50 am
Posts: 819
Steam Gamer Name: P4PPY

Re: Loadouts 2.0: Customization for the masses, CASH for Hi-Rez

First, I love that you've spent so much time. It truly shows me how much you love this franchise.
Second, You need to go into detail more with things like specific damage, specific energy costs and the like.

You've done a lot of work here, but it's still only half the battle. Keep in mind that what ever you do, someone will dislike it. You know this... yer smert.

On to the specifics:

"How to make T:A as fun and long lived as possible:
•Highlight the features of Tribes that make it unique and engaging, i.e. skiing, jetting, and prediction based weapons."

While I agree that this is the core of the game, it's not what a lot of people really care about most. You may have just skipped the "versitility" or "creativity" parts, so I wanted to make sure they were mentioned.

In T1 Shifter, (I know... I know...) rarely did you see two identical strategies in a match. It wasn't as simple as one team deciding to play a heavily offensive tactic vs another team going for heavily defensive to counter it. It was the classes that brought specific weaknesses and strengths to the match. For example, you didn't just see a single type of armor always capping because it was, "the best". There were variations of classes that could cap and each one had a weakness and a strong point. Looking at your mock-up without specifics does nothing for me... I can't see the versitility anywhere in there except for packs, hp's, weapons and weight. All of which are already in T:A.

Renegades broke to mold on the Light, Medium, Heavy labels by saying, "Yeah... you can BE a heavy, but if you choose THIS heavy, you can use THESE weapons."

"•Have a wide selection of fun and useful items, but avoid IMBA items or mechanics that are frustrating to play against."

Items, abilities and techniques that are frustrating to play against are part of what made Tribes, Tribes. Think about the first few times you logged into T1 base and saw a disk launcher coming at you. It was a wierd mechanic... You adapted to it, and now you can't live without it. I'll admit, some mechanics and items should be left off the table, but you really can't dismiss them just because they are frustrating to play against. If there is a counter to it, it's OK in my book. This is happening to me because of the machines guns at the moment. If I had a "counter" to them, I wouldn't care... but I can't find one, which is what is making me frustrated with the game overall.

"How to foster a strong competitive community:
•Maximize interesting game play elements at the competitive level, e.g. minimize bullet spray, one shotting, and RPS mechanics."

fuc-king nailed it!

"•Do not pigeonhole players into specific roles, encourage emergent strategies and tactics."

fu-cking nailed it again!

"•Treat TRIBES as a sport, not just another shooter!"

fu-cking na**.... wait a minute. I don't agree with this. It's been proven that, if left up to the players of any sport, the game will live on forever. If left to the demise of the people making money off of it, it fails miserably. Look at soccer in foreign countries, some of these kids act like they were born with a soccer ball. They live it, breath it and strive to be the best at it all the way up until they realize they'll never be pros. Now look at soccer in the U.S. Not so glamorous is it? It's because no one can make money off of it here. If the "sport" aspect of this game is left up to Hi-Rez, it will fail without question. You know this as well as I do. It's why we all feel so deeply about out opinions in these forums. None of us want to see T:A fail. We all want to play it as much as possible and continue to become better than the other person. It's competition... and without at least taking into consideration the players input for competition, everyone will be mediocre at best. *insert special olympics joke here*

"Only a few specific items like the Fusion Mortar and Shocklance would be able to one-shot people."

You've contradicted yourself here, but I understand what you're saying.

Weapon suggestions:
I like what you've done here... but you've only done the easy part. You've gone through a lot of effort, but barely scratched the surface. You can't expect a small studio to completely revamp their system AND do the number crunching. I understand that you have a model, a weighted system and checks/balances, but those are common sense to gamers. Skill caps are what truly define the weapons balance and enjoyability. What I'm looking for here as a game designer is raw numbers. This weapon does this much damage, it's balanced against specific armors, countered by certain tactics and requires a certain level of skill to use effectively. I ask you to read a thread: viewtopic.php?f=313&t=54189
This person thought that the class, weapons and armor were basically crap. His assumptions were based on his own skill level. He obviously hadn't taken the time to observe someone playing a Raider to it's pull potential and/or never had the opportunity to go up against one that was better than him. He's obviously been enlightened and now see's the potential in the class. This will make him work harder at it and eventually, he'll be one of the best Raiders on the servers. OK... that last bit might not be true, but the point I'm trying to make is that so many different variables define a single aspect of a weapon, pack, nade and armor that it's near impossible to balance until you can actually see someone use it to it's full potential. Only then can you make it balanced. You can't just call it something, weight it and give it limiting properties and say it's a better system than what's in place now. * I can't believe Hitscan made it out of Alpha! *

"---------- D e p l o y a b l e s ----------"

I love the list of deployables, but it's very limited. 8 different items, 4 of which are just different variations of the same thing. Unique none-the-less, but no where near what I want to see.
My beef with this is that one turret will be better than the others. Sure, it might vary from map to map... but that's about it. Because we have to balance for competition, we have to placate the pub players. Previous Tribes gams have done this by throwing as many deployables at them as possible. Whether they're any good or not doesn't really come into consideration because the game is ever evolving. For instance, a "Shotgun Turret" would be worthless anywhere by near a flag or a door (inside). I can think of one map that it might come in handy on and that's Bella Omega. Let's take this turret and break it down.
Obviously it has to do more damage than any of the other turrets (for argument sake), yet it still can't "one shot" any armors (per your rules). This means that it can't do more than 999 dmg. You've now limited all of your other turrets to that cap damage. I'm assuming that the ION turret has a longer range, therefor does less damage than the shotgun turret, so let's make it do 800 dmg. When do you start to say, "Wait... this turret shoots twice as far and only does 199 dmg less." This defeats the purpose of the shotgun turret. This is completely made up of course, I threw the numbers in there to show you my understanding of balance. You can't just balance items based on raw data. There's placements, individual skill, teamwork and a plethora of other factors to be considered.

Deployables should sprout creativity, versitility and of overwhelming sense of worth to the players using them.

I'm honestly not trying to knock you here Smooth. I think you've spent night after night dreaming of ways to make this game better for all of us, and I appriciate it a lot more than this post shows. I just think that throwing ideas out there like this should come in small bursts, not full on alterations to the entire game ( I know, exagerated here ).

My idea of a small burst would be to pick a specific thing you want changes about this game. Prove to Hi-Rez that a change is needed. Back it up with videos, and focus on it until it's either changed or something else more important to you comes along.

_________________
Kills mean everything in Public play
Kills mean nothing in Competition play
Never judge a class by its kill count.

Sat Jan 14, 2012 2:19 am

Armydons

Joined: Sat Feb 07, 2009 4:15 pm
Posts: 268

Re: Loadouts 2.0: Customization for the masses, CASH for Hi-Rez

Elysiume wrote:

Armydons wrote:

I don't mean being locked into a single loadout at all. I mean the ability to purchase blank slates slapped on top of the existing system. Ideally, a system like SmoothP proposed just layered on top of what is already in place.

Sat Jan 14, 2012 2:28 am

Cyanidearm

Joined: Sun Feb 14, 2010 11:08 am
Posts: 5

Re: Loadouts 2.0: Customization for the masses, CASH for Hi-Rez

As much as I want to jump on this idea and say "Yes. Yes, this exactly." There's a nagging part of me that can't get over how people want to revert back to what they've had with older games in the franchise. This is a "new" game, with a new model. It's not Tribes 3. The idea of developer produced loadouts gives the chance for things to be balanced. Else everyone would run around with the pre-patch thumper, cloak pack, and shocklance; or some other combination of weapons that makes someone that isn't paying just roll their face into their keyboard.

Honestly if you're trying to pad Hi-Rez's wallet, suggest they either reduce the effectiveness or duration of the boosts they have in place (preferably effectiveness) as that would diminish token gains and encourage people to buy gold instead.

tl;dr: Balance will help this game more than adapting it to TF2/old Tribes standards.

Sat Jan 14, 2012 3:37 am

VoltCruelerz

Joined: Sun Aug 07, 2011 8:50 pm
Posts: 721

Re: Loadouts 2.0: Customization for the masses, CASH for Hi-Rez

I really don't see why they couldn't just do this on top of what they already have...

At any rate, this is pretty nice once again.

Also, you didn't touch on it, but you said that you said that you could "buy x loadout for a limited time." You never explained (that I saw) why not just buy the components instead. I was thinking though that you'd have a series of classes that'd be standard (like those we already have). Then, there'd be a list of purchasable classes (I know you can already buy the current ones; I'm thinking of reducing their cost to about 7,000 tokens so that the new ones cost, say 18,000 tokens or equivalent gold). These would be select player-designed ones (as you seemed to suggest). Then, at perhaps 25,000 tokens (or equivalent gold of course), you can buy a blank loadout. Weapons'd be, say 5k; packs would be 7k; off-hands would be 3-4k. Perks would still be extremely expensive.

So in list form (I don't claim to know the conversion of tokens to gold, so once again numbers are in tokens)...

Standard Loadouts: 7,000
Select Player Loadouts: 18,000
Blank Loadout: 25,000
Weapons: 5,000
Packs: 7,000
Off-Hands: 3,500

Now, as a F2P person who'd like to buy gold for the game but can't (paypal doesn't like my bank and don't have a credit car), I assure you that even playing as a college guy with way to much free time, unlocking things like that will still take a very long time. I've been playing for quite a while and I've still got five loadouts to unlock. And those were just the standard ones, let alone custom ones or select ones.

I'm assuming this is more or less what you had in mind.. Just trying to clarify and add some numbers to some concepts.. In other news...

Mach

Light Armor
Spinfusor (M)
SMG (S)
Energy Pack (M)
Concussive Grenades (S)

Duties

Capping
E-grabbing

Guardian

Medium Armor
Spinfusor (L)
SMG (S)
Energy Pack (L)
Frag Grenades (S)

Duties

General support
Base protection
Chasing if the need arises
Escorting cappers

Gatekeeper

Heavy Armor
Spinfusor (L)
Chaingun (XL)
Ammo Pack (M)
Frag Grenades (S)

Duties

HoF'ing, using the chaingun
Protecting the entrances to the base
Retaking the base from enemies

_________________

Sat Jan 14, 2012 3:50 am

Schottingham

Joined: Wed Sep 14, 2011 4:07 pm
Posts: 644

Re: Loadouts 2.0: Customization for the masses, CASH for Hi-Rez

DarkWeeble wrote:

SmoothP is my hero. Let me know when you get your own game going and I'll be first in line to help with anything you need.

This. For real.

Some minor things:

- I like the idea of an optional manually-timed air blast for the thumper. Would the reload be delayed as long as you're holding the trigger (as a cost for using the feature)?

- In the interest of using existing art resources, are you thinking that the shot-blaster should use one of the shotgun models, and the blaster the nova colt model? I did really like how they preserved the look of the T2 blaster for the nova colt.

- Why limit the AR to three-round burst? I think this would be a HUGE hindrance to anti-air duty. I find it very hard to correct my lead without that continous chain of tracers.

- I love the idea of having both projectile-based and laser-based sniper rifles, but a question about your Gauss rifle description: Would it drain the player's energy immediately on firing, or consume energy slowly (similar to a pack)? You could justify an immediate energy drain the same way you would for a laser; it's just a huge burst of energy to accelerate a projectile magnetically.

I really hope Hi-Rez considers some of your great ideas :/

_________________
- Fix Jetpack Physics (video) (video)
- Remove regen, bring back health kits
- Buff explosive jumping
- 100% inheritance for "bullet" weapons (nova blaster included)

Sat Jan 14, 2012 4:44 am

SmoothP

Joined: Fri Jul 29, 2011 3:28 am
Posts: 1584

Re: Loadouts 2.0: Customization for the masses, CASH for Hi-Rez

Elysiume wrote:

This would be on top of the current system. So you'd still have free loadouts (which I personally think should have a capper/chaser, a farmer, and a heavy mortar guy), and you'd still be able to unlock standard loadouts exactly like you do now. It only adds the ability to create your own loadouts combining the stuff you've unlocked.

Schottingham wrote:

- I like the idea of an optional manually-timed air blast for the thumper. Would the reload be delayed as long as you're holding the trigger (as a cost for using the feature)?

Yep, exactly. I see it as "holding a button on the back of the gun" instead of reloading it. It's a powerful feature, but costs you potential DPS. I also see it as NOT exploding on contact if you use "active detonation", which is interesting for various reasons, the most obvious of which is setting traps for people to run over. Which you can also do with the arx buster and sticky grenades in L2.0, but those currently have a timer as well.

Quote:

- In the interest of using existing art resources, are you thinking that the shot-blaster should use one of the shotgun models, and the blaster the nova colt model? I did really like how they preserved the look of the T2 blaster for the nova colt.

Sounds good. The Nova Colt would be perfect for the blaster. And I think the blaster / shotblaster would be really interesting indoor weapons with the ricochet. I can see people becoming known for their "blaster monkey" skills just like we have well known shrike pilots and snipers now.

Quote:

- Why limit the AR to three-round burst? I think this would be a HUGE hindrance to anti-air duty. I find it very hard to correct my lead without that continous chain of tracers.

Hmm, something I missed when I rewrote this was the tenet of "less frequent, more important" shots. Which I think is extremely important and creates a more engaging gameplay vibe. But on the AR, I see it as having a short reload, along the lines of ~0.4 seconds, so you'd still be able to use tracers to correct aim.

Of course specifics like this are fine tuning issues that would require balance testing, and while I do have baseline numbers in my head, I'm hesitant to mention them unless asked or else people would jump all over the numbers and ignore the fundamental system. Such is the internets.

Quote:

- I love the idea of having both projectile-based and laser-based sniper rifles, but a question about your Gauss rifle description: Would it drain the player's energy immediately on firing, or consume energy slowly (similar to a pack)? You could justify an immediate energy drain the same way you would for a laser; it's just a huge burst of energy to accelerate a projectile magnetically.

It would have a drain over time that starts immediatley AFTER firing. I wanted to create a projectile rifle with different mechanics than the laser, so it's sort of a reverse of the old school rifle. The amount and duration of the drain would obviously need much tuning.

Quote:

I really hope Hi-Rez considers some of your great ideas :/

Thanks, man. I've put in a lot of thinking on this, and think it would make for really awesome gameplay and a really fun meta game. I can see myself lying awake at night debating whether to go with a M thumper and a S assault rifle or a S thumper and M assault rifle, thinking about which one would be slightly better in various situations... and then finally just deciding to unlock another custom slot and have both!

And that's something both players and Hi-Rez can smile about, amirite. 8-)

_________________
Give a man a pistol, and he'll play for a day... Teach a man to disc, and he'll stay devoted forever.
Loadouts 2.0 - Directional Jets - True Inheritance - Cosine Splash - Active Regen - Abolish Credits

Last edited by SmoothP on Sat Jan 14, 2012 11:23 am, edited 2 times in total.

Sat Jan 14, 2012 11:03 am

Forum rules

Loadouts 2.0: Customization for the masses, CASH for Hi-Rez