Here are two tweaks that I think would improve this grand old game. Both are controversial. Discussion and more ideas are welcome!
.

Decrease LG damage/sec from 300 to, say, 270. Increase starting LG cells from 15 to 18. Increase LG ammo boxes from 6/12 to 7/14.

Yes, this one has been discussed to death, and is highly controversial. I have stronger LG aim than RL aim, so this change would hurt me as a player. Nevertheless, it is clear that modern computers, with their 1000+ FPS QW clients, anti-lag netcode, and flawless optical mice, have made hitscan weapons more powerful than they were ever intended to be. Lowering LG dmg/sec would certainly make DM6, which has been ruined by increased LG accuracy, more playable. It could plausibly have a positive effect on Aero, ZTNDM3, and DM4. The LG is certainly *fun* to use though, and with lower dmg/sec it would make sense to allow a commensurate increase in available LG ammo. So if you enjoy using the LG, keep in mind that this solution would actually *increase* its use in game, despite lowering the dmg/sec.
.

Add a small amount of transient telefrag protection in 4v4 games.

I propose that in 4v4's a 0.1 second "grace period" be given to players transiting through a spawn point. During this grace period the player could not be telefragged, and the player who would have done the telefragging would spawn at a different spawn point instead. A player could only be "saved" from a telefrag once per game, after which the grace period would no longer apply for that player.

Yes. there is some amount of skill in avoiding spawn points, but we all know that some telefrags are pretty bullshitty. I'd like to tone the luck down a bit, and the above proposal seems to be a good way to do so without dumbing down the game. Players who are "asking for it" (frequently walking through spawn points, camping on spawn points, killing an enemy while on a spawn point) would still get telefragged. But players who meticulously avoid spawn points until they, say, randomly get knocked into one by a stray grenade at just the wrong time would get a one-time-only reprieve.


I will be posting more ideas soon.

Throwing another one into the mix:

Raise the default pitchup limit to match the pitchdown limit. The pitchup limit should be 90 degrees (not 70 or whatever it is now).

Just about every time I play a set of duels, I have 2 or 3 situations where I lose fights because someone can aim at me (they're above me), but I can't aim at them (I'm backed up against a wall and can't look up far enough). A good example is fights in the middle of ztndm3 where one player drops on the other (and the dropping player can be at a big advantage because of the pitchup limit). Another example is when someone shoots straight down from the SNG spawn on aerowalk, and you need to put yourself in bad positions in order to deal damage back (since you can't shoot 'straight up' at them while they shoot straight down at the ramp/rocket ammo).

It seems really dumb for it to be this way, since it introduces asymmetry that's really hard to justify. Both players can have great aim and lots of health, but one of them just can't deal damage for part of the fight....and it's not the guy dropping?

I looked into this once (ages ago), and I think there's already a setting for it in all the server software being used. We would just need to roll out a 'new default' to as many servers as we can (through ktx, mvdsv or whatever decides it).

Fresh maps would make for a more engaging experience for new players. Something like a one map tourney with the new map released a week earlier.

Like maybe solarium, drako's duel map that hardly anyone has seen? :^]

I basically just want yawn mode with air steps enabled by default, with a few additional changes.

-RL/GL splash reduced to 120 units.
-RL/GL damage dropped to 100
-LG dropped to around 25 dmg per cell, possibly lower
-yawn mode cell capacity upped to 50 from 25


yawn mode ruleset: http://www.quakeworld.nu/forum/topic/2657/quick-little-poll-please-all-player#34595

airstep: http://wiki.quakeworld.nu/Airstep

1) QW is perfect the way it is.
2) SNED!!! WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN MAN?

Increase or decrease lg dmg wont change anything on dm6, this map is quite broken. Its just really too one-sided.
That can be a problem on others maps but most of time because of spawn congifuration at beginning. In my opinion, its the only one problem in QW (in duel), you always can control the luck, but not at start :p. A better configuration for this would be great to render nice maps like dm4, even ztn more competitives.

DEV I NEED BREAKS ONCE IN A WHILE. And I think I'm going to spam "QW is perfect the way it is (c) -Dev" whenever you get telefragged from now on.

A lot of interesting ideas in this thread.

On Yawnmode...

A lot of the tweaks it makes seem very reasonable (though some, like keeping speed through teleports, are more radical than i would support).

It looks like it raises axe damage to 50, which I was going to suggest as well. It takes some darn skill to make an axe kill, and that should be better rewarded. More axe kills = funner games.

On removing the pitchup limit...

That limit does seem pointless. Playing devil's advocate, one possible reason to keep it would be to give a small advantage to "higher ground" positions. Honestly, I'm not sure that justifies the limit, and I can't think of any other arguments to keep it.

On using new maps...

So easy to wish for, so difficult to make happen. I'd love to see a custom map duel tourney or ladder, and I might attempt to make it happen one of these days. Forget newly-released maps; there are loads of forgotten custom maps that have never been played at a high level. Off the top of my head: Solarium, Spitfire, RF2, Utressor, Strogg Duel, Bravadob2, and Subterfuge.

On whether lowering LG dmg/sec would help DM6...

The classic "DM6 is shit" scenario happens when one player is out of control and the other player is camping, fully stacked, at the GL. If this player is in the lead he has no reason to ever move from this position. This was hard enough to deal with 15 years ago, when Lakerman used this strategy against Kane at TGI. But LG aim has gotten so much better since then that this position is comically advantageous. If the player in control has mega as well, the other player's best option is to camp in the mega room for two minutes until the next mega comes. Not exactly edge-of-the-seat pacing.

Now imagine, as a thought experiment, that there is no LG on DM6. Camping at the GL, while still advantageous, would be more difficult. A GA100/200H player could attack from the top, not fearing the LG, and hold a reasonable chance of winning the fight. It would simply be harder to maintain map lockdown.

I wouldn't actually want to remove the LG completely from DM6 because that would make the map too simple. That is why I think weakening the LG would improve gameplay on DM6 (but not fix it completely by any means).

(Edited 2015-09-30, 14:47)

And now for another idea.

Imagine that servers supported an item editor that could create/move/modify items on any map. Imagine all the modifications possible. Variations would be endless. Here are some.

DM6
v.1: Replace GA with YA.
v.2: Replace RA with YA.
v.3: Change RA respawn time to 40 secs.
v.4: Remove top LG cells.

DM4
v.1: Mega room rocket pack changed from big to small.
v.2: Grenade launcher removed from map.

DM2 (duel)
v.1: remove MH from RA/MH (and perhaps change secret RA to YA)
v.2: replace GL with LG (with no cells on map)

DM2 (teamplay)
v.1: replace NG with SNG
v.2: add 2nd SSG near YA tele.
v.3: add PENT in center of big room (spawn time 5 or 10 minutes).

Aerowalk
v.1: switch YA and RA
v.2: move spawn point at RA to slightly *above* the RA, so that a good player can shoot the spawner before they drop down on RA.
v.3: switch GL and YA.

ZTNDM3
v.1: replace GA with YA (a la Q3ZTNDM3)
v.2: switch SSG and GL

DM3
v.1: create new spawn point in water tunnel.
v.2: move pent to water below rl.
v.3: modify ring respawn time to 4 minutes (so it is harder to keep track of, and attacks are less expected).

E1M2
v.1: add pent to center of MH room (respawn at 5 or 10 mins).
v.2: add ring to center of MH room (or possibly end door)
v.3: add LG to start with long respawn (5 mins?)

--

So that is just a small list of possibilities. It's very hard to get people to play customs (especially for team games) because it is such a big time commitment to learn new maps. I believe most people would be much more open to playing the "classic" maps with minor variations like this. It would be a way to (1) correct some problematic imbalances on certain maps (ie DM6), and (2) encourage variety in a game where variety is sorely lacking.

Most of these are already possible with .ent files. The changes are pretty static since once the .ent is on the server items are changed until the .ent is removed. A /command togglable .ent would be better.

I really think dm6 is beyond help. You need to be careful about creating a 'rob Peter to pay Paul' situation too (lowering LG damage in quake to alter how one map plays? obviously the others will change a lot too..)

There are a lot of really cool custom maps that are almost completely unexplored for duel (like lacrima and hate). Why not just play those any time your finger hovers over the dm6 button? :^]

Be aware that if you remove the 70 or 80 degree limit (I forgot exactly how much) then bouncing a grenade straight up for a gren jump or to pop it on the edge of a ledge will be a lot more difficult (unless you can somehow toggle the limit on the fly)

I wouldn't bother about it

One thing too about teles keeping speeds - This was a very experimental thing that didn't last long in the original JawnMode because we felt that teles SHOULD be both an escape mechanism AND a bottleneck where you know exactly what speed the tele spits you out with. There's more to it but I have lost all the notes and IRC logs with everyone's arguments. I did however experiment with increases to the speed teles spit you out at

I've actually in the last year or so been experimenting with a new version of JawnMode. It's kinda grinded to a halt since I've been working (and riding BMX) again but seeing that people still like to talk about this kinda stuff I might give yas a peekaboo in the next couple days

(Edited 2015-09-27, 02:57)

i like this.

Not sure I follow..you want the limit to be there so you don't have to learn how to aim at a certain angle and set up grenades for jumps?
The uhh, point, of what I'm saying is that you can't shoot anything 'straight up' but you can shoot straight down.

Yeah that's exactly what I said. Totes

Wow, while I love you Sned, most of those changes wouldn't really work. Kenya tournaments on a specific map is a great thing, though

Okay because it seems like a really strange reason to not improve this.
Anyway if anyone wants to try this on a server:
sv_maxpitch 90
sv_minpitch -90

This has always bugged me. It doesn't surprise me one bit that an easy fix was implemented but no one adopted it. It also allows you to rocket jump higher which makes playing ported q3 maps a lot easier (q3dm6qw for example, CA match being played on it as I type).

Nothin' like RJing straight to high mega, ey?

Yes, we can pit maps together during signups, and pick the favorite maps to play first. Shit maps could have a sort of loser's playoff event.

I've played Solarium, but haven't played qwride, qwpit, subterfuge, and so on. Might as well play them at least once

After a few months of these newmap tourneys, hopefully we will have new newmaps to play ^^ I am learning the editor.

I would also be interested in some sort of flash mapping tournament. This would be sorta involved I think though.

edit

Well, wouldn't our stylish and spastic flick strafe RJ techniques be obsoleted by this change?

Maybe qwdm6 should be revised. It's a port from a different game and I think maps should suit qw and not the other way around. It's 2015 and q3 is in the rearview in my opinion.

There's a lot of discussion and wishes in this thread. Nothing's gonna happen, though. That's the way it has always been when it comes to changing the game's fundamentals.

My bad, the ability to rocket jump higher with sv_minpitch -90 was greatly exaggerated. It's only a few feet and it doesn't let you jump straight to high mega on dm2 if that is what you were referring to.

Yeah, I'm not really interested in adding 2% to rocketjumps. When you have to make up a story about jumping to high mega and it isn't even possible, it's time to take a break from agenda-posting on the qwnu forums, I think..

The main reason to fix pitchup/pitchdown is so they no longer make fights advantageous toward people dropping off ledges. It's silly that the player going all-in gets an advantage because of this, even when both players have aimbots and 100 cells.



It doesn't feel right to call it "changing the game's fundamentals" when there are already svars for this. The problem is just that the default values for those svars are stupid!

Anyone who has a server should really try setting these to -90, +90 and see if anyone except vb- is upset by the change (or if anyone even notices)

I had NFI if you could RJ to high DM2 mega with 90 downpitch before I made that post. My point was that breaking QW maps to accommodate ported maps is a bit silly.

Dropping off a ledge isn't as advantageous in a fight as you might realise. Did you consider how easy it is to rock or shaft a falling player?

Also, lol @ upset. I've been taking it easy on you (despite the idiocy like strawmanning me), don't start on me cunt

The whole point is that the pitchup limit prevents you shooting at the falling player while they deal damage and maybe win the fight. Like, for part of the fight the person not dropping cannot deal damage. Have you not ever seen this in game? (Do you play qw?)



Anyway thanks for getting mad. Where's the strawman, though? Is it the dm2 thing or the 'grenades straight up' thing? Because like, I think you'll find those are both (fallacious) strawman arguments. *pushes glasses up nose, closes wikipedia tab*

Please assist me in figuring this out.

Thanks!!!

While I myself have only ever encountered problems with the pitchup limits maybe once a duel in DM4 games (when fighting from the lower lava platform), I don't see how changing it would cause that much of a problem and I would fully support doing so.

I myself am someone who strives to use grenades as much as I do rockets, and yet I'm unsure of what vb-'s argument over the negative impact it would have on grenades means precisely. If you could explain it more clearly with an example or demonstration it would provide me some much needed clarity.

Also, sedicious was simply voicing support for the idea and detailing one of its small benefits for ported maps so I fail to see how that opens up your criticism of BREADLORD420 looking to "break[ing] QW maps to accommodate ported maps". I'm unsure of exactly how much extra height you can gain off of the added 10 degrees, but I think that should be tested before claiming that it will simply break all QW maps.

I can't say I agree with sned's LG balance or map balance changes (especially not removal of GL on DM4, shame on you!) but having this discussion is healthy and although other continents may not adopt any of the changes present here, we'll definitely be trying out pitchup changes on North American servers.

This is correct.

Everyone just forget I said anything about ported maps, I tried some other straight ports (q1q3hektik) and many rocket jumps are still impossible so the pitch limitations have nothing to do with the inconsistency in rocket jump height between games.

I fully support the pitch changes. It does give a slight amount of added rocket jump height so that is something to consider. I tested a few jumps and there are some new possibilities though nothing game breaking.

-DM6 main room rocket jumps to high platform can be done off the first step or the tele platform. They still cannot be done from ground level.


It seems mostly North Americans want change because our scene is dead and we need to attract new players.

I realise that dipshit. In case it isn't obvious, I tinkered with this many years ago. This is why I'm playing devil's advocate. Do whatever the fuck you want, but realise there are more conesquences than you at first might be aware of, and that it's not simply a black and white case of 'omg falling player is breaking the game!'



The strawman was "you want the limit to be there so you don't have to learn how to aim at a certain angle and set up grenades for jumps?". That's not at all what I said. The DM2 thing was a lousy example of map-breaking that higher RJ's cause, true, but my point about easy grenade jumps/sly popping of grens onto a ledge is spot on.

What amazes me is that I just wanted to make you aware of some consequences, and you've become hilariously defensive and snide. You presumed I wanted to shut you down as opposed to share my experience

I dunno if it's a continent-specific thing, but getting more NA players would be great.
I would be interested to see what someone like Locktar thinks about the pitchup/down idea.





So what did you mean then? I don't get it, and I'm not trying to play dumb..

A thing that you can do will be a lot more difficult? Do you have a demo or youtube clip or anything to show me what you mean?
It seems like...and I could be out of line here...if you can aim up 90 degrees, you can still aim up 70 degrees for these grenade shots. That's why I'm confused.



Dude Just Chill Let's Talk It Out

Instead of thought experiments, go and try it