colin
January 13th, 2005, 11:52 AM
THIS IS A LONG READ. I didn't proofread it at all, so please forgive minor spelling/grammar mistakes.
This topic is intended to primarily highlight exisiting problems in TFC that need fixing rather than introducing entirely new ideas. I'll kick it off with general points.
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Major:
Grenades - This has already been brought up and addressed a hundred times.
Teleporters - I believe the majority of players preferred the times when there were no teleporters. Typically they turn a defensive oriented map into an offensive nightmare (for example, 2fort was somewhat playable 9v9 before teleporters forced it to be 8v8). Whether this is the result of teleporters not being a good idea for TFC in general or that they're just not suited for maps that are commonly found in leagues is another argument. My suggestion - remove them altogether.
Conc Effect - I myself don't consider this a major problem, but I placed it here due to the amount of attention it receives. By far the biggest (and imo only) problem with the current conc effect is that an HW can still see where he is aiming. Granted this problem is exemplified by tracer customization, but it's hardly more difficult with defaults. My suggestion - leave the fundamentals of the conc effect exactly as they are and to remove the "real" AC tracer.
Single Shotty - Totally worthless weapon. The only reason it sees any use is that the Pyro and Demoman have no better long range source of damage or short range instant source of damage. With the changes the pyro should be getting, it becomes even more worthless. My suggestion - replace the single shotgun with a pistol or pistol like weapon. Preferably a fast firing, low (but consistent at all ranges) damage, very little to no knockback weapon. The only existing downside I see to this is that it forces certain classes to keep a type of ammo that they would have otherwise automatically discarded. I'm sure a workaround for this would be possible.
Spread weapon damage - Shotty and AC damage at long range is too high. This leads to effective yard defense, which in turn greatly nullifies O classes that can't conc. Only very few maps offer viable alternative entrances for said classes. Aside from that, snipers are so rarely seen or used because an HW guy in the yard typically does over time at least - if not more - damage than a sniper. Snipers are supposed to be the most effective class at moderate to extreme ranges, yet are often outclassed by a class utilizing two spread weapons. My suggestion - much greater damage penalties for shotguns (if single remains, if not just the super shotty) and AC at long ranges.
Minor:
Melee weapons - Too little damage. Almost never a viable option, even in very close quarters combat. My suggestion - boost all (crowbar, knife, spanner) damage by ~50%, give or take.
Weapon knockback - This is probably more opinion based than the rest, but I believe that shotguns, the sniper rifle, and the AR are all given too much knockback. My suggestion - toning down the knockback on the sniper rifle would be dangerous to the livelihood (sp?) of the class, but at the least bump down knockback on the super shotty and greatly reduce it on the AR.
Fall damage - Why does it exist? At best it causes unnessecary constraints on map design. I've never seen fall damage being incorporated into any team's or player's strategy. I would post a logical counter-argument to the removal of fall damage if I could come up with one. I expect the best I will see is FPS purists wanting it because it's been a staple in the genre for years, which is hardly a reason in my opinion. The removal of fall damage would give map designers much more freedom, which will be especially important with Sources support of larger (and taller) maps. My suggestion - remove fall damage in its entirety.
Selective Ammo discarding - This wouldn't be too much of a problem if bags that gave you absolute max of every type of ammo weren't so common these days. Walking into the enemy base with 200 cells, 50 rockets, and 200 shells as a pyro is practically helping the enemy engineer get his gun up. This is less of a problem with other classes but still an issue. More about this in the Engy class section. My suggestion (MS) - console command that lets you discard whatever you want.
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Classes (in no particular order):
HW - Given the removal of his tracer and the nerf of long range AC damage, I think the HW is perfect as is. He may prove to do slightly too much damage as of yet, but we'd have to wait and see. MS - remove tracer and nerf long range ac damage
Engy - It's obvious that the engineer could use a useful replacement to his railgun. What that replacement would be is subject to a lot of debate. I suspect that the FF team already has something in mind. Otherwise, if classes are given the ability to discard whatever ammo they want AND are stripped of telelporters, they'll probably need some sort of boost aside from the rail gun change. MS - To be honest, I haven't given the engineer a lot of consideration as of yet. The thought occured to me to make an EMP destroy all of the chambered ammo in the targets' weapons (in addition to regular damage) forcing them to reload, but what do you do for the AC/IC/etc? Moving on...
Medic - The class that defines the game. From an objective standpoint, medics are probably slightly too strong. They have extremely versatile weaponry, good speed, good h/a, the best set of primary/secondary nades, the ability to fully heal a teamates health with one boop, as well as the ability to almost ensure a defender's death with the same boop. The medpack seems unreliable at times. Both players will hear the sound effect but nothing will happen, etc. MS - Nothing, ASSUMING that other classes are properly corrected to be made as viable. The medic's great versatility is the standard to measure other classes by, not a flaw. It's this versatility that allows for such a great variety in play style, and as such for greatness in players and specialization in classes.
Soldier - Like the medic is to O, the soldier is to D. If medics aren't the staple class of TFC the soldiers are. Soldiers, also like medics, are very versatile. There's really nothing more to say. MS - nail grenades could stand to do more even/reliable damage. There are, of course, a number of bugs related to them, but pointing out bugs is hardly worth the time when it's understood that they'll be fixed. Otherwise, soldiers are perfect as is.
Sniper - Everyone knows how rare snipers are in matches, and everyone knows why. If map design opens up in Source, I think these guys will be much more commonly utilized. This is apparent in some of the more open maps of the ADL, where at least one sniper is a staple on several of the maps. Granted this is a result of several factors, but it proves that snipers can be useful when it comes to match time. MS - as far as gameplay changes go, snipers could benefit more from being a consistent source of damage more than they can from the current "one shot, one kill, be back in 5 seconds". This could be done in many ways. If it were up to me I'd incorporate a modified one of the CS style guns (bullpup/sig) into the class. Tweak damage a bit and make sure you penalize players that try to pull off a zoom + AR style of play with actual clips that require reloading. Snipers could use a second type of grenade as well, but I haven't been able to come up with something that would both make sense as well as be effective/useful in a match setting.
Scout - Scouts are most commonly seen on maps where engineers are less dominant and I believe this will hold true more than ever if they are given flashbangs. Am I suggesting that this is a problem? No, in fact I like the idea as it creates more map based strategy. Otherwise, there's really not much to say about this class. MS - I do believe that a limited flag radar (say 20-30 yard radius) has a lot of merit. Dissenters claim that it lowers the amount of teamwork required, but I'd argue that giving a precise flag location over voice is a waste of time and frustrating. Regardless, replacing trops with anything is a good deal.
Pyro - The scourge of TF. To be frank, I'm shocked that developers have yet to give up on this guy. His problems in TFC are plenty. For starters his flamethrower is incredibly unreliable. His IC has a ridiculously slow fire rate, has almost no push whatsoever - which kills his movement potential as well as his dm power -, AND does very little damage. Furthermore, a smart pyro will spend his time on the way to the enemy base emptying as much ammo as possible so he doesn't get KO'ed by one EMP, which still happens regularly. Enemy offense isn't exactly please to be running by a Pyro shooting his flamethrower and IC's everywhere, either. All in all, this class is a mess. MS - for starters, turn his flamethrower from a small projectile oriented weapon into a cloud that will glance off walls and ceilings, etc. Give his IC a faster rate of fire and more push. Keep after the fact burn damage, but remove the blinding effect (as far as i know people don't use combat armor that catches on fire....particularly your face. how that works is beyond me). Make the pyro himself vulnerable to fire - possibly at a reduced rate - but totally invulnerable to catching on fire. Selective ammo discarding will mostly fix his vulnerability to EMP's. Add a decent initial explosion push - but not necessarily damage - to Napalm grenades that the pyro can use to jump with, but remove the terribly annoying push that the burning napalm has.
Demoman - A very situational class. Demomen are great for defending things, but poor at defending themselves at the same time. At the same time they carry a lot of firepower on O, but lack the speed or mobility to use it effectively on most maps. Blue's are one of, if not the hardest weapon to use in the game. Pipe detonation, unfortunately, is largely based on ping. MS - Add ~10 armor. Combine the pipe/gl launcher into one weapon selection. Reg fire shoots a pipe, alternate fire shoots. With pipes, make it so if you HOLD your det key, it will det the pipes as soon as possible. This is a much better alternative to trying to perfectly time your det under the influence of lag or just wailing on the key rapidly. Give blue's a more predictable path, if possible. Right now you have to aim on all 3 axis...es(sp?), which is the suck.
Spy - Spies have greatly fallen out of favor it seems. Considered to be one of the hardest classes to play "correctly" - demo being the other -, the spy's worst enemy is the other team being organized. The tranq is a great tool, but like blue's, is extremely difficult to reliably connect with. The knife, likewise, is very ping/connection based, and has the rather famous problem of point blank back stabbings not killing. Aside from deductive reasoning, spies are identified in one of three ways - speed, weapon holding/firing, voice icon - and two of these the spy cannot do anything about. Feigning is another problem altogether, but there was some talk about removing it since it would be difficult to do on Source, so I won't bother to talk about its problems. MS - Fix stabbing. Base the weapon the spy appears to be holding off of the weapon he is. Either remove the voice icon altogether or give the spy a command that he can bind and press while disguised that will display a voice icon above his head to the other team. Slightly lower he time it takes to disguise. Potentially give the spy the super nailgun in place of the regular. Spies are supposed to be SG killers, yet they're given the bootleg version of the weapon practically created to take them down? Make gas grenades not stack with each other (ex: 2 or 3 gas grenades in the same spot as one another will only do the damage that 1 would do). Improve hallucinogenic affects. Fake death messages, no death messages, fake sounds, slurred hearing, skewed vision, inability to walk straight, etc are all feasible possibilites.
-----
I'll update this if anything else comes to mind. If anyone else can think of more existing problems - rather than totally new things they'd like to see added - and/or fixes to problems then I encourage you to post them.
This topic is intended to primarily highlight exisiting problems in TFC that need fixing rather than introducing entirely new ideas. I'll kick it off with general points.
-----
Major:
Grenades - This has already been brought up and addressed a hundred times.
Teleporters - I believe the majority of players preferred the times when there were no teleporters. Typically they turn a defensive oriented map into an offensive nightmare (for example, 2fort was somewhat playable 9v9 before teleporters forced it to be 8v8). Whether this is the result of teleporters not being a good idea for TFC in general or that they're just not suited for maps that are commonly found in leagues is another argument. My suggestion - remove them altogether.
Conc Effect - I myself don't consider this a major problem, but I placed it here due to the amount of attention it receives. By far the biggest (and imo only) problem with the current conc effect is that an HW can still see where he is aiming. Granted this problem is exemplified by tracer customization, but it's hardly more difficult with defaults. My suggestion - leave the fundamentals of the conc effect exactly as they are and to remove the "real" AC tracer.
Single Shotty - Totally worthless weapon. The only reason it sees any use is that the Pyro and Demoman have no better long range source of damage or short range instant source of damage. With the changes the pyro should be getting, it becomes even more worthless. My suggestion - replace the single shotgun with a pistol or pistol like weapon. Preferably a fast firing, low (but consistent at all ranges) damage, very little to no knockback weapon. The only existing downside I see to this is that it forces certain classes to keep a type of ammo that they would have otherwise automatically discarded. I'm sure a workaround for this would be possible.
Spread weapon damage - Shotty and AC damage at long range is too high. This leads to effective yard defense, which in turn greatly nullifies O classes that can't conc. Only very few maps offer viable alternative entrances for said classes. Aside from that, snipers are so rarely seen or used because an HW guy in the yard typically does over time at least - if not more - damage than a sniper. Snipers are supposed to be the most effective class at moderate to extreme ranges, yet are often outclassed by a class utilizing two spread weapons. My suggestion - much greater damage penalties for shotguns (if single remains, if not just the super shotty) and AC at long ranges.
Minor:
Melee weapons - Too little damage. Almost never a viable option, even in very close quarters combat. My suggestion - boost all (crowbar, knife, spanner) damage by ~50%, give or take.
Weapon knockback - This is probably more opinion based than the rest, but I believe that shotguns, the sniper rifle, and the AR are all given too much knockback. My suggestion - toning down the knockback on the sniper rifle would be dangerous to the livelihood (sp?) of the class, but at the least bump down knockback on the super shotty and greatly reduce it on the AR.
Fall damage - Why does it exist? At best it causes unnessecary constraints on map design. I've never seen fall damage being incorporated into any team's or player's strategy. I would post a logical counter-argument to the removal of fall damage if I could come up with one. I expect the best I will see is FPS purists wanting it because it's been a staple in the genre for years, which is hardly a reason in my opinion. The removal of fall damage would give map designers much more freedom, which will be especially important with Sources support of larger (and taller) maps. My suggestion - remove fall damage in its entirety.
Selective Ammo discarding - This wouldn't be too much of a problem if bags that gave you absolute max of every type of ammo weren't so common these days. Walking into the enemy base with 200 cells, 50 rockets, and 200 shells as a pyro is practically helping the enemy engineer get his gun up. This is less of a problem with other classes but still an issue. More about this in the Engy class section. My suggestion (MS) - console command that lets you discard whatever you want.
-----
Classes (in no particular order):
HW - Given the removal of his tracer and the nerf of long range AC damage, I think the HW is perfect as is. He may prove to do slightly too much damage as of yet, but we'd have to wait and see. MS - remove tracer and nerf long range ac damage
Engy - It's obvious that the engineer could use a useful replacement to his railgun. What that replacement would be is subject to a lot of debate. I suspect that the FF team already has something in mind. Otherwise, if classes are given the ability to discard whatever ammo they want AND are stripped of telelporters, they'll probably need some sort of boost aside from the rail gun change. MS - To be honest, I haven't given the engineer a lot of consideration as of yet. The thought occured to me to make an EMP destroy all of the chambered ammo in the targets' weapons (in addition to regular damage) forcing them to reload, but what do you do for the AC/IC/etc? Moving on...
Medic - The class that defines the game. From an objective standpoint, medics are probably slightly too strong. They have extremely versatile weaponry, good speed, good h/a, the best set of primary/secondary nades, the ability to fully heal a teamates health with one boop, as well as the ability to almost ensure a defender's death with the same boop. The medpack seems unreliable at times. Both players will hear the sound effect but nothing will happen, etc. MS - Nothing, ASSUMING that other classes are properly corrected to be made as viable. The medic's great versatility is the standard to measure other classes by, not a flaw. It's this versatility that allows for such a great variety in play style, and as such for greatness in players and specialization in classes.
Soldier - Like the medic is to O, the soldier is to D. If medics aren't the staple class of TFC the soldiers are. Soldiers, also like medics, are very versatile. There's really nothing more to say. MS - nail grenades could stand to do more even/reliable damage. There are, of course, a number of bugs related to them, but pointing out bugs is hardly worth the time when it's understood that they'll be fixed. Otherwise, soldiers are perfect as is.
Sniper - Everyone knows how rare snipers are in matches, and everyone knows why. If map design opens up in Source, I think these guys will be much more commonly utilized. This is apparent in some of the more open maps of the ADL, where at least one sniper is a staple on several of the maps. Granted this is a result of several factors, but it proves that snipers can be useful when it comes to match time. MS - as far as gameplay changes go, snipers could benefit more from being a consistent source of damage more than they can from the current "one shot, one kill, be back in 5 seconds". This could be done in many ways. If it were up to me I'd incorporate a modified one of the CS style guns (bullpup/sig) into the class. Tweak damage a bit and make sure you penalize players that try to pull off a zoom + AR style of play with actual clips that require reloading. Snipers could use a second type of grenade as well, but I haven't been able to come up with something that would both make sense as well as be effective/useful in a match setting.
Scout - Scouts are most commonly seen on maps where engineers are less dominant and I believe this will hold true more than ever if they are given flashbangs. Am I suggesting that this is a problem? No, in fact I like the idea as it creates more map based strategy. Otherwise, there's really not much to say about this class. MS - I do believe that a limited flag radar (say 20-30 yard radius) has a lot of merit. Dissenters claim that it lowers the amount of teamwork required, but I'd argue that giving a precise flag location over voice is a waste of time and frustrating. Regardless, replacing trops with anything is a good deal.
Pyro - The scourge of TF. To be frank, I'm shocked that developers have yet to give up on this guy. His problems in TFC are plenty. For starters his flamethrower is incredibly unreliable. His IC has a ridiculously slow fire rate, has almost no push whatsoever - which kills his movement potential as well as his dm power -, AND does very little damage. Furthermore, a smart pyro will spend his time on the way to the enemy base emptying as much ammo as possible so he doesn't get KO'ed by one EMP, which still happens regularly. Enemy offense isn't exactly please to be running by a Pyro shooting his flamethrower and IC's everywhere, either. All in all, this class is a mess. MS - for starters, turn his flamethrower from a small projectile oriented weapon into a cloud that will glance off walls and ceilings, etc. Give his IC a faster rate of fire and more push. Keep after the fact burn damage, but remove the blinding effect (as far as i know people don't use combat armor that catches on fire....particularly your face. how that works is beyond me). Make the pyro himself vulnerable to fire - possibly at a reduced rate - but totally invulnerable to catching on fire. Selective ammo discarding will mostly fix his vulnerability to EMP's. Add a decent initial explosion push - but not necessarily damage - to Napalm grenades that the pyro can use to jump with, but remove the terribly annoying push that the burning napalm has.
Demoman - A very situational class. Demomen are great for defending things, but poor at defending themselves at the same time. At the same time they carry a lot of firepower on O, but lack the speed or mobility to use it effectively on most maps. Blue's are one of, if not the hardest weapon to use in the game. Pipe detonation, unfortunately, is largely based on ping. MS - Add ~10 armor. Combine the pipe/gl launcher into one weapon selection. Reg fire shoots a pipe, alternate fire shoots. With pipes, make it so if you HOLD your det key, it will det the pipes as soon as possible. This is a much better alternative to trying to perfectly time your det under the influence of lag or just wailing on the key rapidly. Give blue's a more predictable path, if possible. Right now you have to aim on all 3 axis...es(sp?), which is the suck.
Spy - Spies have greatly fallen out of favor it seems. Considered to be one of the hardest classes to play "correctly" - demo being the other -, the spy's worst enemy is the other team being organized. The tranq is a great tool, but like blue's, is extremely difficult to reliably connect with. The knife, likewise, is very ping/connection based, and has the rather famous problem of point blank back stabbings not killing. Aside from deductive reasoning, spies are identified in one of three ways - speed, weapon holding/firing, voice icon - and two of these the spy cannot do anything about. Feigning is another problem altogether, but there was some talk about removing it since it would be difficult to do on Source, so I won't bother to talk about its problems. MS - Fix stabbing. Base the weapon the spy appears to be holding off of the weapon he is. Either remove the voice icon altogether or give the spy a command that he can bind and press while disguised that will display a voice icon above his head to the other team. Slightly lower he time it takes to disguise. Potentially give the spy the super nailgun in place of the regular. Spies are supposed to be SG killers, yet they're given the bootleg version of the weapon practically created to take them down? Make gas grenades not stack with each other (ex: 2 or 3 gas grenades in the same spot as one another will only do the damage that 1 would do). Improve hallucinogenic affects. Fake death messages, no death messages, fake sounds, slurred hearing, skewed vision, inability to walk straight, etc are all feasible possibilites.
-----
I'll update this if anything else comes to mind. If anyone else can think of more existing problems - rather than totally new things they'd like to see added - and/or fixes to problems then I encourage you to post them.