Hey there's some actual good ideas.
Firstly let me say this to all the people posting on this thread. Where in the name of HELL do you think the importance of timing for the general player base of this game was mostly realized.....
Since I can feel how hard your brains are struggling let me educate.
1 v 1 ONLINE PLAY if you don't have a deep understanding of this "game type" then you really don't understand how DM works and is supposed to be played.
offfline play? who cares' why are you going to make something easier or more offline friendly when the whole reason the game was made in the first place was for competitive online play, the single player game however good it may be was jsut an after thought.
playing on a lan or on your own....you can do what ever the F^%# u feel like with the settings on the server its not like unreal engine 2.0 limits you in any real way for this just learn how to use a server.ini and you're good to go. The only place balance is judged by epic as well, is in online combat, the best way to do it (a way any nub MMOer would reconize) is by balancing the DoT of each weapon, based on its effective range. Anyway don't take that to seriously cause I've only spoken breifly with an epic rep about how they "generaly" design and test weapons.
Fuzzle makes the accurate observation that DM revolves around the 100a. In truth DM revoles around not only the 100a but AMP as well, making 2 objectives on the map. Just like CTF, ONS, ASSAULT, DOM, and nearly every game type in unreal there are 2 objectives on each map. In 1v1 only the 100a is used b/c there should only be a single objective when 1v1ing.
The real issue here is that people need to reconize that Epic and the majority of the player base of unreal is interested in competitve online play, this is were epics consumer base and faithful customers are, and they will cater to them over all others.
The LG was an atempt to reduce the overall DoT of the sniper weapon in unreal in that context it was scessful. However when you exaime the basic proerties of the LG you find that in order to keep up in DoT with the other weapons every shot would have to be a headshot...to compensate epic added in some groovy effects to the LG, splash damage, ignoring partial vehicular armor etc....so the thing essentialy with the way 2004.07 are/is being designed with alot of vehicles and armor etc the LG becomes an overpowered weapon, which is why they are reworking it.....
I think a real key to weapon balance is in the ammo, picture how precious every LG shot would be if you only got 4-5 shots with it and 3 shots in each ammo pack. I don't know why there seem to almost always be ammo pickups near a weapon spawn since when playing with weapons stay off (the generaly accepted competitive setting) you get ammo from the main weapon everytime u pick it up.
I think jafo makes an excellent point about how easy it is to acumulate ammo and stacks in unreal 04'.
Reducing the available ammo on the maps and not providing every weapon spawn with 1 or 2 ammo packs would not only encourge players to make every shot count, but it would do wonders for map control.
Think about it, if you left everything as it was now, timing, weapons, power up values, etc the same and removed all the weapon spawn ammo packs on the map, you would then have 2 effective ways to control the map, by reducing the ammount of ammo and gun carries and spreading out the ammo pickups, you make regualr worthless ammo pick ups vital for really doing some damage. So if one team is spending all thier energy controling the AMP/100a the other team can suck up all the ammo on the map and render the other guys pretty inefficient no matter how stacked they are b/c they have no ammo. Obviously there are some fine details to work out but that seems like a step in the right direction.
If anyone would like to run some tests or help with setting up and testing out a limited ammo weapons stay off server xfire me: vind21
. Everytime powerup would spawn, it would be an insane battle where you would have to be skilled at :
