Vehicle armor should ricochet bullets and...

[Xyx]

Gameplay arguments for a different damage model:

• Shock is good at short range, shock is great at long range, shock is great against vehicles. A vehicle damage model would allow for a rebalancing of weapons and more variety in gameplay. Instead of doing everything with shock, you need to actually use different weapons for different tasks.
• Several other shooter games use a vehicle damage model with great success. These games are popular for a reason. The game industry is a popularity contest.

Fixing vehicles with link gun and building nodes with it? Silly...

Nanobots, memory metal, matter created from energy... whatever. Sufficiently advanced technology becomes indistinguishable from magic. That's scify, that's unreal. I can go with that and accept it as reality. Jumping off thin air has no basis in technology. That's silly. That I cannot accept as reality.

[Phopojijo]

...

• Several other shooter games use a vehicle damage model with great success. These games are popular for a reason. The game industry is a popularity contest.

And such this (out of context, admittedly) quote encompasses my entire beef with the entire thread.

100 games can follow the same mechanic and be successful. You still can deviate, even 100%, from that model and be successful and even more successful than the former game.

We had at one point a bunch of arcade games like Asteroids, Tempest, and Pong. Miyamoto came along and deviated from that, created Mario (Yes, after Donkey Kong) and created a huge craze of sidescrollers... he then almost immediately after created Zelda and made the wave of non-linear puzzle/action games.

Many arcade machines before hand were amazingly successful (albeit not at Nintendo's launch... that was the arcade flop generation.) and yet someone deviated, and became more successful. Later on came the iD/Raven games which ushered in the FPS category and online multiplayer. Wing Commander ushered in space-combat along with X-Wing and Tie-Fighter. Sierra and LucasArts ushered in the adventure genre.

Halo, Halo popularized (albeit not created... that was done some time earlier) the vehicle element to FirstPersonShooters.

For the love of *God* don't say that people should just conform... variety is *good*. Not everyone needs to have a conquest mode with damage vehicles which have damage models and unique weapons per role. There'd be no point for 1000 different games if they all are the same game with slightly different color schemes and polygon layouts.

Suggest ideas, sure -- but don't automatically think that one scheme fits all.

[MonsOlympus]

Unfortunately thats the way the game industry is going and I dont like it one bit, really the issue isnt pop gaming culture or weather the said feature is realistic and will turn UT in CST.

Lets take an example, someone spawns with an enforcer in warfare. Will they A) run for the nearest weapon locker risking death and totally ignoring near by enemy vehicles B) try to take on the enemy vehicle with a weapon that is pretty much assured to be hopeless against vehicles.

This IMO would greaten the team work aspect of warfare, now yes ONS does a good job with spider mines and manned turrets. The thing I find is there is usually too much happening on the battle field for turrets to be manned properly, with vehicles like the tank and bender taking up 5 people when fully loaded then you got say 2manta's and 1 raptor thats 8. So the remaining would have to be on defense in turrets just to fill them to capacity.

Now if players could setup defensive turrets and mines around bases and nodes then 1 infantry could baby sit the node or base and be very effective at defense. Where as now in ONS it takes atleast 2 people to defend a base and 1 to defend a node depending on how many spider mines they have for backup. No doubt vehicles have been streamlined somewhat in warfare because I always felt there was a few to many and now with the hover boards people dont have to solely rely on vehicles to navigate the map quicker.

Back to the point, now johnny spawns at node B and if there is no defenses and a tank right on top of him, he's pretty much guaranteed death. Obviously thats poor communication on part of the team, should he be rewarded by being able to take down a tank with the spawn weapon or should he just accept his fate and di, then just respawning at a more defended node. Take the opposite into account where there is someone defending a node, someone can spawn there happily have time to get a weapon and start attacking the tank with a weapon thats more appropriate for taking down a vehicle.

See if the lesser weapons damage vehicles less or just damage the amour before actually taking the health of the vehicle then better anti vehicle weapons could take more health. Like say the link or rocket launcher, flak primary.

Im a huge fan of locational damage but people will go on to say oh no thats too real. See the equal and opposite points are brought up as both pro's and con's. Theres obvious differences to what people want to see the next UT2k7 game being. For me I want a faced paced in your face FPS but ontop of that I would like to see the most skillful, team based and indepth FPS on the market. That wont exactly make it realistic as I said the formula of realism tends to work as a whole concept and the concepts alone from what we have seen are very very scifi. On top of that scifi does usually have some bases in reality or it does tend to lend itself to fantasy or mythology (such as dragons) now this is not saying those concepts wont fit.

What I do think is people take gameplay the totally wrong way and dont see it as a way for things to play out instead it seems people take it as the major deciding factor in realism. More gameplay = more realistic is a totally wrong assumption. Gameplay and gameflow are closely related and one area where the UT series has always performed flawlessly is in gameflow, gameplay on the other hand there has been some dodgy idea's that wernt widely accepted. So the goal is to keep the flow of the game good while adding skill and depth but not at the cost of bad gameplay.

[Carinae]

Comedy Gold

[Xyx]

100 games can follow the same mechanic and be successful. You still can deviate, even 100%, from that model and be successful and even more successful than the former game.

No, really.

• You're barking up the wrong tree here. I'm a modder and I make it a point not to copy an existing concept.
• Your quasi-philosophical game design rants are beside the point (not to mention patronizing - tell me something I don't know). Novelty has nothing to do with including a vehicle damage model. Not including a vehicle damage model isn't any more novel than including one.
• The absence of a vehicle damage model deprives the game of ways to distinguish itself. I am not suggesting a Battlefield copy. It would be great if, for example, covering the road with biosludge would damage the treads and wheels of passing vehicles.
• UT2004 already has a vehicle damage model. It just hasn't been implemented anywhere near its potential.

[Phopojijo]

No, really.

• You're barking up the wrong tree here. I'm a modder and I make it a point not to copy an existing concept.
• Your quasi-philosophical game design rants are beside the point (not to mention patronizing - tell me something I don't know). Novelty has nothing to do with including a vehicle damage model. Not including a vehicle damage model isn't any more novel than including one.
• The absence of a vehicle damage model deprives the game of ways to distinguish itself. I am not suggesting a Battlefield copy. It would be great if, for example, covering the road with biosludge would damage the treads and wheels of passing vehicles.
• UT2004 already has a vehicle damage model. It just hasn't been implemented anywhere near its potential.

Actually my entire point was that 1) Copying an existing concept is okay, breaking from an existing concept is also okay... 5000 cars can each have a radio, 5000 cars can be a Honda Civic (actually try 1000+x that in Canada alone ), 3000 cars can be pink, 2000 black, 1000 orange -- some can have miniature spoilers, some vanity rims. Its the combination which defines the car.

Making it a point to not copy is pointless, its fine either way (and yes I know you probably know that). Some people prefer their coffee black, some double double.

2) "It just hasn't been implemented anywhere near its potential" -- in your opinion. Fundamentally there's nearly limitless potential... it all goes back to design choices.

Someone at Epic/Digital Extremes decided it would be fun to have the damage model illustrated -- either that or they implemented it in the way due to time constraints. Either way it defined UT2004.

Was it good? Was it bad? That's a matter of opinion.

[Xyx]

Generic philosophy is very nice and all, but in the end we still need a game that is opined "good" more than "bad". It is not all good.

[_Lynx]

This IMO would greaten the team work aspect of warfare, now yes ONS does a good job with spider mines and manned turrets. The thing I find is there is usually too much happening on the battle field for turrets to be manned properly, with vehicles like the tank and bender taking up 5 people when fully loaded then you got say 2manta's and 1 raptor thats 8. So the remaining would have to be on defense in turrets just to fill them to capacity.

Now if players could setup defensive turrets and mines around bases and nodes then 1 infantry could baby sit the node or base and be very effective at defense. Where as now in ONS it takes atleast 2 people to defend a base and 1 to defend a node depending on how many spider mines they have for backup. No doubt vehicles have been streamlined somewhat in warfare because I always felt there was a few to many and now with the hover boards people dont have to solely rely on vehicles to navigate the map quicker.

Back to the point, now johnny spawns at node B and if there is no defenses and a tank right on top of him, he's pretty much guaranteed death. Obviously thats poor communication on part of the team, should he be rewarded by being able to take down a tank with the spawn weapon or should he just accept his fate and di, then just respawning at a more defended node. Take the opposite into account where there is someone defending a node, someone can spawn there happily have time to get a weapon and start attacking the tank with a weapon thats more appropriate for taking down a vehicle.

That's good for average-and-above level teams. And on pubs there's little to no teamwork. No one wants to build or guard that note, they want action, they want frags. Those common guys won't stand a chance against same level guy, who was "smart" enough to take the tank and hammer the people spawning there. And what if one of the teams is being pinned down to the core? Vehicles are doing spawnkilling while others bring down the core. With suggested changes letting a vehicle in you base when you've got no nodes is equal to losing the game. So, it's a bad idea.

[MonsOlympus]

That's good for average-and-above level teams. And on pubs there's little to no teamwork. No one wants to build or guard that note, they want action, they want frags. Those common guys won't stand a chance against same level guy, who was "smart" enough to take the tank and hammer the people spawning there. And what if one of the teams is being pinned down to the core? Vehicles are doing spawnkilling while others bring down the core. With suggested changes letting a vehicle in you base when you've got no nodes is equal to losing the game. So, it's a bad idea.

Thats why I have also suggested making it harder to get into a base with things like big doors or gates you would commonly see on military bases anyways. As it is in ONS your best opportunity to take your own base back is to actually spawn outside the base and work your way behind the enemy's advancing front. I can understand where you are coming from though, spawning with some kind of anti-vehicle weapon would ofcoarse level it some but in other ways unbalance it.

Its good you brought it up actually because this is exactly what I was talking about with a problem with gameflow. See you want people to be able to make a comeback from being down to the core on the flipside you also have to make vehicles like tanks and levithans the ungodly power vehicles they are, its not just the infantry vs vehicles which should be unrealistically balanced for good gameflow. If you look at something like warhammer 40k its a prime example of how things like this should play out. Heavy bolters and rocket launchers can be extremely effective against enemy tanks or armoured vehicles but when sending in infantry you must expect some amount of casualties. Now this is where RTS and FPS differ majorly because of spawning and the lack of resource management.

Now in ONS the grenade launcher on the assault rifle is way better for attempting to take down a tank then the bullets so I would expect the enforcer even in dual mode to be pretty usless. Its like being able to take out a tank with the equivalent to an smg or pistol, to me thats bad gameflow even if it can help make the game to play out more fair in some respects. My alternative would be to give people something more effective vs vehicles when they spawn without making it unbalanced. Something like grenades, EMP or explosive charges which have limited ammo but can allow a quicker infantry player to get in there and deal some damage to a vehicle whilst waiting on some backup. EMP could even allow a player to take down vehicle shields and deal damage with those lesser weapons at the same time incapacitating the vehicle for a duration.

I think the defensive aspect of ONS though compared to the defensive nature of UT2k4's other gametypes hasnt been explored enough. ONS plays very well but for me it should be about one big assault attempt then maybe being pushed back then a rush for nodes. More like how dawn of war plays out, it can go back and forwards but there is alot more strategizing before making a move on enemy positions because of more defensive alternatives. Of coarse a good defensive will always require some offense I find in ONS you can actually win matchs often without any defensive tactics at all and pure offense, this is alot like the tank rush scenario in RTS games.

Either way I think infantry weapons vs vehicles is something which epic will be looking hard at no doubt. ONS played pretty well for its first outting so Id expect things to get better, Im all for anything which can add depth but I'll also be the first to admit these concepts have to be tried and tested before being shrugged off. On top of that though is the fact that if they are tested and they dont work I would also be the first to say get rid of said idea or perhaps rework it into something that flows and plays better. Depth, skill and strategy should be explored then weighed against flow and play, the main concept of an action scifi FPS should be core.

[Flaksmack22]

Well the game was built on balance so that new people wouldnt be totally overwhelmed by a tank if they didnt know where the avril is but honestly if u can get pwned by a noob with an assault rife in a while your in a tank thats just plain pathetic

[Sb27441]

Who claimed UT was darker than UT2k4? The character models and levels are lit far worse in UT2k4 than UT, which features bright colors in much greater abundance.

[Xyx]

the game was built on balance so that new people wouldnt be totally overwhelmed by a tank if they didnt know where the avril is

The AVRiL doesn't have to be the only weapon capable of damaging heavily armored vehicles. Link and rockets also seem like fine anti-vehicle tools.

[Pendrokar]

Who claimed UT was darker than UT2k4? The character models and levels are lit far worse in UT2k4 than UT, which features bright colors in much greater abundance.

Emm wrong thread!

[Hedge-o-Matic]

I agree with Olympus Mons on this, more or less.

I seem to be in the minority, though, in that I actually like struggling back to parity from an inferior position. So, for example, I like the fact that in Torlan the Avril is in very few places in the base, and you have to run over to it while the tank advances on your base. How cool is that? Scrambling for the right weapon is half the fun! Too many maps (especially community maps), have Avrils, shock, and link guns at absolutely every locker. And people wonder about the power of the vehicles? Stop wondering!

It's tough, though, to balance defense with offense. You don't want it to feel too much like Assault, with the players running to killing-field chokepoints over and over. So I understand why bases and such seem to be areas, rather than defensive structures. But this approach makes using the defensive equipment (mines, grenades, and turrets) a lot less effective. Mines have strange limitations, and explode when crossing anything over an inch tall or angles more than twenty degrees, grenades bounce around too far to place with accuracy, and turrets have a strange mix of traits that make people want to avoid getting into them.

I just think that Epic should strip out this stuff, and begin from first principles. But this always leads to deployables, in my mind. And I'm not sure Epic wants to go the route XMP did.

[Wolfgang]

I've noticed how a lot of people say, "This game is called Unreal for a reason," which I totally agree with, yet I do see a sense of realism they've tried to add to the game... Like running for your needed weapon while a tank approaches, rather than having it every other place you turn on the map. I'd like to see a more modern-wartime feel added in with the futuristic style [for example, people not flipping and flying all over the freakin' place during the fight- hopping is one thing, but back flips off walls when you're a freakin' Juggernaut is pushing it].