competitve side of the game


(fragon89) #1

First of all this isnt another “this game sux” thread.
I mainy want to hear DEVs opinion and game main direction especaily in comp aspect.

Some weeks ago one of the DEVs said the game isnt in stage of competitive tests, it will come later
so right now the “main game feeling” need to be focus. From what i see right now these two most go
Together or atleast not being thrown away for too long. In the end it will be harder to tweak stuff to make the game comp. I’ll try to point out some points that not mentioned in 100 other threads.

  • Im writing it on base of 4 months of game, many drafts, mix teams, some cup games, pcw with my clan.

Skill Gap
In one of the threads some dev said that gamer searches for “mastering” in game.if i dont have something to reach in my gameplay i wont have motivation. So right now the game has nothing to master! it may sound too dramatic but everthing in game is too simple, the movement, the maps, the gunplay, skills, mouse1 mercs etc…most of the successful game are easy to learn hard to master, this game is easy to learn easy(nothing) to master. and from this the gap between top players and lower skilled players is very small. I talked about it with rex and aperntelly not only i think about it, my clan played only 1 week in the game with 3 guys who play first time a class-based game and we beat alot of clans and gave nice fight to spank and pducks,guys who play from qw and atleast half year in this game. And not we’re not super aimers or something. The game is simply what you see that what you get.

Another point for the “mastering” thing. At this moment in my point of view not only the maps are linear but the skills also. All the skill simple to click and use with small amout “balanced” damage/effect on the game. What about some hard to use skill but if you use it good in perfect timing the can win games. some merc with very strong weapon but hard to use. The closest thing in this game is airstrike. Its strong and have long cooldown BUT it has twice bigger cooldown than any other skill in the game with small effect compared to the cooldown. The other side (far far away) “anty skill” merc fragger has 2 nades wich got renewed by it self with small cooldown, and the nades are stronger than “NADERs” nades and this suposed to be his special weapon, soldier replaces many mercs not only nader but for example stoker wich is one of main used merc! as fragger i can throw nades and block the are of effect like stoker, with bigger aoe and sometimes longer time and i can use it twice! Or even 4 times by the stokers cooldown falla off.

In the maps even in the new one there is almost zero “spots” some places that people wont think of in the first games and need to “discover it” ,all pretty predictable. Again what you see that what you get.

In game gun fights
Imagine next picture, soldier vs 1/2 player and a medic bind them. Very common now days. Soldier kills the 1/2 players (easly) and the medic at the back has no options! I had this alot of times and why no options? If i go for the heal, either i die before the heal or ill die with person ive just revived if i try to shoot him down he will out gun me or he will gib the other before ill kill him. Pointless to say there is not way to run. I wont tell “so obvious add the spawnshield on revive” but this kind of things thst need to be pointed out in feedbacks because no “ECHO” will show you this.
Im not fully vs the moba style of merc (carry, support etc…) but as it right now its not working well, because first of all this is fps game. Secondly mercs that carry for obvious like fragger right now will kill public games.as a medic or a engineenir if i cant out gun the fragger atleast give players alternative way to kill him. Maybe something hard to use but when used well can help ( like nades, something that just came to my mind) so if soldier will kill me ill say “damn if i just was better with X i could take him out” in order " ye nice mouse1 merc…noob…"

mercs with speed benefits
atm from seeing in 5-5 merc with “less hp, more speed” have no speed benefit, he just lacks of hp. Some examples,
soldier and medic go together and obviously medic need to go behind the soldier so most of the time medic waits for a soldier and go behind him and just follows the soldier. Second example proxy is faster than medic by far, so he needs to wait for a medic and he cant use his speed benefit.
I dont know how it works in public to be honest but on 5-5 game where more team play comes in speed benefit has no effect

I know its might be too late and there is no motivated player in the game to make maps but it can be nice to offer people to make their own maps and in like 3 months make open vote for all beta players and peak 1 map that can be added in the beta stage. The idea came from 1000 threads of “bad maps”.

I know you want to “bite all the cakes on the table” wity iron sights and no movement and everything easy to learn but to sum this thread the game is too easy ,what you see that what you get.

It can be nice if some of the devs give me his opinion and the direction.tnx

*sorry for bad english


(spookify) #2

Great post. Same stuff we have been saying all along. Hope they listen to us.

Buff Soldiers for all care but give me a Nade, reduced Spread and medic packs that work and I will crush low skilled soldiers… I would take their 3 hs over my 6 or 7 hs low spread any day…

Wish they would stop going all COD on this game and bring back a little ET (Just a little). Its what the people are asking for…


(Rex) #3

[QUOTE=fragon89;488027]First of all this isnt another “this game sux” thread.
I mainy want to hear DEVs opinion and game main direction especaily in comp aspect.[/QUOTE]

Right, but it’s also not really new either. I wonder what exactly you want to hear from SD regarding comp?


Allow me to sum up your post in a few points:

- Skill gap is too low

That’s something which still the case up to today. But the low skill gap between players results from the known and existing main issues.
So why is the skill gap so low in Xt? Why would there be no difference between med and high teams?

[ul]
[li]
[/li][li]movement requires no skill
[/li][li]aim skill from “topfraggers” (players with extraordinary aim) gets limited by things like spread etc.
[/li][li]tactically very limited due to the lack of important elements such as capturable and selectable spawnpoints, …
[/li][li]maps don’t offer “smart play” = special positions, being experienced on maps doesn’t bring you any advantage
[/li][/ul]

- Soldier is imba

Quite obvious and I wondered why this hasn’t been addressed with the latest patch. It’s something which is indeed really annyoing but balance changes shouldn’t be the problem.

- Diversity of mercs in comp

It has always been and so it will also be in Xt that not everything is considered as useful in comp. I think it’s almost impossible or very hard to make everything appealing to use.

Comp play is mostly always range focused. So the main reason why Proxy (your example) doesn’t get used that much is because she’s limited to close range fights due to her shotgun.
But you’re also absolutely right with her speed and low health. On attack her speed doesn’t bring any advantage because she has to wait for her team anyway. If she goes alone her lower health will get her killed within no time. Though she is not entirely useless, she just needs to play are more camping based position with backup from her mines.

Overall I agree, yes the game is still too easy. I would give new teams 3 weeks to catch up to the existing and longer playing teams.


(Humate) #4

+rep

Attack / Defence Formation:
The maps and the combat system still reward zerging and defensive clumping over split push and split defending.Even though in reality the skill differential or skill gap may be huge b/w teams in a match, its not rewarded to the degree it needs to be.

The last objective of Sewer is a good example, if Strogg enter that room before GDF, all they need to do is spam the entry points with hyper/rocket/nades as one group. Obviously thats an extreme example, but you see its difficult for skill differential to come into play with these scenarios. XT has a lot of these scenarios, where team-shooting compensates for direct combat skill.

Low Skill Floor vs Reward:
Rex mentions the Soldier. I’ll leave it at that.

Movement:
Check out the movement thread.

Tactics:
In XT, I dont feel this aspect of the game has taken shape yet.
Especially compared with the depth that exists in etqw. Ofcourse I’m sure that will change with time.


(fragon89) #5

[QUOTE=Rex;488044]Right, but it’s also not really new either. I wonder what exactly you want to hear from SD regarding comp?


Allow me to sum up your post in a few points:

- Skill gap is too low

That’s something which still the case up to today. But the low skill gap between players results from the known and existing main issues.
So why is the skill gap so low in Xt? Why would there be no difference between med and high teams?

[ul]
[li]movement requires no skill[/li][li]aim skill from “topfraggers” (players with extraordinary aim) gets limited by things like spread etc.[/li][li]tactically very limited due to the lack of important elements such as capturable and selectable spawnpoints, …[/li][li]maps don’t offer “smart play” = special positions, being experienced on maps doesn’t bring you any advantage[/li][/ul]

- Soldier is imba

Quite obvious and I wondered why this hasn’t been addressed with the latest patch. It’s something which is indeed really annyoing but balance changes shouldn’t be the problem.

- Diversity of mercs in comp

It has always been and so it will also be in Xt that not everything is considered as useful in comp. I think it’s almost impossible or very hard to make everything appealing to use.

Comp play is mostly always range focused. So the main reason why Proxy (your example) doesn’t get used that much is because she’s limited to close range fights due to her shotgun.
But you’re also absolutely right with her speed and low health. On attack her speed doesn’t bring any advantage because she has to wait for her team anyway. If she goes alone her lower health will get her killed within no time. Though she is not entirely useless, she just needs to play are more camping based position with backup from her mines.

Overall I agree, yes the game is still too easy. I would give new teams 3 weeks to catch up to the existing and longer playing teams.[/QUOTE]

the engineer’s and soldier’s speed is just an example for the speed benefit being useless


(Rex) #6

(Topic can be moved to the comp section)

[QUOTE=Humate;488048]
Attack / Defence Formation:
The maps and the combat system still reward zerging and defensive clumping over split push and split defending.[/QUOTE]

That’s what differs Xt from past games. In past games as defending team it was always about holding certain ways and positions of importance. You needed to spread your players, because you didn’t want to lose important key positions (like high grounds, capturable spawnpoints, ways near to the spawn to do spawn rape etc.). But it worked because a player with good aim could hold off 2-3 defenders on his own and protect the way.
This doesn’t work in Xt and isn’t also necessary, so the best thing to do in most of the cases is just to camp directly at the objective (best example therefore: Waterloo hacking objective).