If.... what do you think?

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Before I go too deep down the rabbit hole with this, I wanted to collect a few opinions. I'm possibly working on something for UT4. It might be my take on EO. I could be tentatively calling it 'Surge.' It would be more toned down than EO has been, but still a big boost to how UT4 weapons feel, don't get me wrong. Think the level of my take on ADR, reduced maybe a little more. And I'm thinking of leaving the health at 100, simply for comparability with other stuff - I always felt it a shame that EO couldn't just click with other mods and mutators because the damage would be too weak. Basically, I'd be trying to get that EO feel out of a 100 health pool, reducing fall damage to compensate and that kind of thing. But the name, the reduced overkill and the 100 health pool has me concerned. Would EO players take this well? Could this fly? Or would it fail. Feedback please!

I'm also interested in what your feelings would be on changes to UT4 movement for the faster pace, and maybe some ideas. Anything else? You tell me, please!

 

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Before I go too deep down the rabbit hole with this, I wanted to collect a few opinions. I'm possibly working on something for UT4. It might be my take on EO. I could be tentatively calling it 'Surge.' It would be more toned down than EO has been, but still a big boost to how UT4 weapons feel, don't get me wrong. Think the level of my take on ADR, reduced maybe a little more. And I'm thinking of leaving the health at 100, simply for comparability with other stuff - I always felt it a shame that EO couldn't just click with other mods and mutators because the damage would be too weak. Basically, I'd be trying to get that EO feel out of a 100 health pool, reducing fall damage to compensate and that kind of thing. But the name, the reduced overkill and the 100 health pool has me concerned. Would EO players take this well? Could this fly? Or would it fail. Feedback please!

I'm also interested in what your feelings would be on changes to UT4 movement for the faster pace, and maybe some ideas. Anything else? You tell me, please!

I'm in favor of keeping 100 health as the baseline with regen. I'm sure the 300 EO health felt like another iteration of the nonsensical US Customary system to the Euros ... maybe that's why it was never very popular across the ocean. It just would require, as you mentioned, reducing fall damage and with an increased weapon ROF, reduced damage per projectile. It certainly could work, and in my book would still be Excessive Overkill. I think the environmental damage is baked into the maps so lava and acid will be a little more deadly but that is a minor effect.

 

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I'm in favor of keeping 100 health as the baseline with regen. I'm sure the 300 EO health felt like another iteration of the nonsensical US Customary system to the Euros ... maybe that's why it was never very popular across the ocean. It just would require, as you mentioned, reducing fall damage and with an increased weapon ROF, reduced damage per projectile. It certainly could work, and in my book would still be Excessive Overkill. I think the environmental damage is baked into the maps so lava and acid will be a little more deadly but that is a minor effect.

Thanks for the feedback! I figured you'd be cool with that. You didn't mention it being less overkill, though - besides the health I'm mostly worried that even if I 2 or 2.5x the RoF that EO players might find it too weak.... I haven't done any testing yet but that was kind of the range I was thinking of. Obv some more or less than others.

 

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I don't know what the exact RoF increase was between UT99 vanilla and EO. I always assumed it was around 3x since you had 3x health and 3 plasma balls instead of 1. The 100 health is really just a scale. The actual number doesn't matter much. Just the ratio of RoF / DPM / DPP etc to your health.

http://mistrealm.com/ADR/Comparison.html

This info could put put into a spreadsheet to give some starting values to try and keep the EO/vanilla balance for a 100 based health system.

 

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Going to post my thoughts/plans here for them to get some air. In my take on EO I want to have as many valid levels to gameplay as I can make. I don't want anything already in UT to be made useless without a replacement. I like to air my thoughts but I also thought it would be good if anyone following development knew what to expect so it would be less jarring. Which for EO players it will be - 100 health, etc. So, here's my current layout - And I'd like for you (Maest/Osk) to be thinking about how this would fit in as you play UT4!

Health: 100
Health Max: 199
Health Kit: Restore 10 (instead of 25)
Health Vial: +5
Max Armor: 200 (instead of 150) - Shield stacks separately from regular armor under this total
Helmet: I am going to do something else with this..... ideas? Maybe offensive....
Thigh Pads: 25 (instead of 50)
Chest Armor: 75 (instead of 100)
Shield Belt: 100, Regens (instead of 150)

For weapon modification, I am thinking something like 1.5x current firing speeds. Half again as fast. Damage I was thinking I'd leave the same.... for the time being. Trying this with the regen and fast movement of EO makes the weapons pretty weak surprisingly so the 1.5x firespeed should go nicely. It certainly won't be perfect. But I may not be able to modify the weapons much at this time in development. So that would come later. At this stage of UT4 I can get everything surrounding the weapons right and then improve on the weapons as UT4 progresses. I hope players find that acceptable....

Finally, I've been wanting to create my own kind of pickup to replace the weapon locations for a long time. I have it in mind for it to be an item that stacks up to 5, and slightly increases the rate of fire, ammo regen, and health regen. It would need a visual representation on the character and in the player's UI, so I would do this last. Current values are planned at +3% RoF and Ammo Regen Rate, +4% Health Regen Rate for each stacking up to 15% and 20% respectively. That would put Health Regen at 3 every 2 seconds instead of every 2.5, and RoF will only feel slightly increased if you focus on it at full stack. So, it's not something that you're going to go out of your way to get. It, the health kits, they should not disrupt the fast pace that is EO. The armor values translate exactly to my ADR version by the way. I am keeping my vision with this new pickup very small. I don't want players taking time out of their assault run to go out of their way for these or for those chasing a flag carrier to worry about picking them up at all. I want it to be something defenders and flag carriers can go around picking up those in close proximity but not going out of their way. In UT weapon locations are a huge part of map flow. In this, my version, I would like them to play a very small role, but a role nonetheless.

This all goes back to me wanting to create as many levels to the gameplay as I can. But I am committed to the fast pace, recklessness and lightness of death that is EO. Everything else is subject to change, except that. I'm committed to my vision but at the same time very open to feedback, would also love to hear any suggestions, so if you have any please do share! Talking with Maest the other night made me realize that I had to lower the values on all this other stuff significantly, and these are my numbers after mulling that over.

 

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Typing this on a phone so sorry in advance if it is unclear. I'll be restating much of what I said via IM.

Re: health packs

I understand the desire to repurpose or reuse all of the UT assets including health packs and vials. In my opinion the EO game type at its core has 3 characteristics that replaces the which 1) weapons are collected (they aren't save super weapons) 2) ammo is supplied (fully loaded and then regenerated) and 3) health is restored (regenerated). The lack of the requirement to spend time running around collecting weapons, ammo, and health before attacking the flag or engaging in a firefight is a major plus to the game type. It is what makes it relentless and fun. I don't think health packs are needed. Keg yes, vials I could go either way, but packs no. Especially at the amount of health you are taking about, with health regen, all packs really amount to is a way to spend a little time going out of your way to save a little time on regen. I'd prefer to minimize pickups to major game changers so that people spend less time on the ground and more time in the air. Less time farming and more time fighting.

 

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,Re: armor

I'd like to see increased importance on armor as you've been experimenting with.
The game within a game armor,shield and power up control will be natural for competitive UT players. I like the sttacking idea and the shield regen. Right now Ut4 kills the telefragger if the target has a shield belt. Might want to change that our maybe kill both. I'd keep helmet as armor plus headshot shield. Maybe 25+25+50+100 with up to 100 regenerated with belt.

 

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Re: weapon replacement idea

Not opposed to trying it. But I'd put it as a low priority.I do think it'd be a better replacement mechanic for the health packs as well. (faster health regen)
But again, I think mechanics that reduce time fighting generally is a negative. However, if you make the effect small enough that most people won't spend much time going after them, then the only guy that will is the flag carrier if his flag is out and maybe a defender. But if you get a very good flag carrier or defender, I could see him being just to hard to kill if they get shield, and max out health regen rate.
Just worried it might not play well though I'm certainly up for trying it. You will remember that previous versions of UT tried similar mechanics with adrenaline. It was that ask that popular and is not in UT4.

 

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Thank you for commenting Maest! :-D

Typing this on a phone so sorry in advance if it is unclear. I'll be restating much of what I said via IM.

Re: health packs

I understand the desire to repurpose or reuse all of the UT assets including health packs and vials. In my opinion the EO game type at its core has 3 characteristics that replaces the which 1) weapons are collected (they aren't save super weapons) 2) ammo is supplied (fully loaded and then regenerated) and 3) health is restored (regenerated). The lack of the requirement to spend time running around collecting weapons, ammo, and health before attacking the flag or engaging in a firefight is a major plus to the game type. It is what makes it relentless and fun. I don't think health packs are needed. Keg yes, vials I could go either way, but packs no. Especially at the amount of health you are taking about, with health regen, all packs really amount to is a way to spend a little time going out of your way to save a little time on regen. I'd prefer to minimize pickups to major game changers so that people spend less time on the ground and more time in the air. Less time farming and more time fighting.

Understood. And agreed, perhaps to a lesser extent though. I have no intention to make something like U4E where the ground is overpopulated with items. I'm not trying to create something that makes you want to "collect them all!" like Pokemon. I think that with the values I've outlined once players get used to them they won't be going out of their way for them. If they are once they get past the oooh shiny! stage, then I will have to reevaluate. I simply cannot imagine any player worth their salt taking one step out of their way to pick up 10 health or 3/4% increase on a flag chase, or retreating for 10/20 health back when their health is regenerating anyway. For a frame of reference, in my ADR I increased the sniper RoF by 10% when zoomed and no one could tell except me even when I pointed it out. Then why put them in? Well, why not? It doesn't clutter the map. UT maps have weapons on the nodes of the new pickup plus ammo beside it, this would just replace the weapon nodes and you could only gather up to 5. I don't have any intention of adding anything else to clutter the maps. While skilled players would not go out of their way for them new players and bots would, and perhaps it would help them a little, and I understand that perhaps no one cares one whit about that except me, but it something you should care about for its success/growth/future. Again by not going out of their way I don't mean not caring about it at all, I mean not making detours.

,Re: armor

I'd like to see increased importance on armor as you've been experimenting with.
The game within a game armor,shield and power up control will be natural for competitive UT players. I like the sttacking idea and the shield regen. Right now Ut4 kills the telefragger if the target has a shield belt. Might want to change that our maybe kill both. I'd keep helmet as armor plus headshot shield. Maybe 25+25+50+100 with up to 100 regenerated with belt.

lol, Epic's anti-translocator shit is really annoying. I will definitely be fixing that. Maybe, I could do the armor values like that. I'm just not fond of the whole headshot protection idea. It messes with balance. I would rather headshots not be balanced around whether someone has a helmet or not (and they prolly don't). I like for things to make sense very much, but in my view for balance if someone has any armor or extra health that should put them exactly over the threshold for a headshot instant kill. If they just have a little health or armor well breathe on them and they're out. And there's no mechanic that simply fucks headshots. Making headshots always worth going for, and at the same time not overpowered. That's my view anyway.

I very much appreciate your feedback and it does matter to me even when I stick by my design decisions. After talking with you my philosophy has changed from wanting items to have a significant impact to wanting them to have a small impact and definitely not a big one. The bottom line is if you and Osk are ultimately unhappy with what I create as a whole because of something then I will have to go back to the drawing board. There seems to be no one except us few that cares anything about this, so we should all be able to be happy with it. I am trying to create something we can all enjoy and appreciate even when I am putting in some small things that no one wants except me right now.

 

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Re: weapon replacement idea

Not opposed to trying it. But I'd put it as a low priority.I do think it'd be a better replacement mechanic for the health packs as well. (faster health regen)
But again, I think mechanics that reduce time fighting generally is a negative. However, if you make the effect small enough that most people won't spend much time going after them, then the only guy that will is the flag carrier if his flag is out and maybe a defender. But if you get a very good flag carrier or defender, I could see him being just to hard to kill if they get shield, and max out health regen rate.
Just worried it might not play well though I'm certainly up for trying it. You will remember that previous versions of UT tried similar mechanics with adrenaline. It was that ask that popular and is not in UT4.

Oh aye I hated adrenaline. I think this will work because of its placement, the type of effect it has and hopefully ultimately its representation, but only time will tell. Yeah, I considered that idea with the health kits last night after talking with you. But I felt in the end that just as you worry, it would place too much importance on the health kits, and that just letting them restore 10 health each would give them a much lesser impact on the game than any amount of extra regen for any duration. I am still toying with the idea of them increasing regen noticably for a very short span but, I worry even that would make them attractive in too many scenarios other than when you're low and need just a little boost. Indeed, someone becoming too strong is something to worry about. That's why I'm reducing the armor values from reg UT - when a shield belt only gives 100 armor, even with regen it will more than break in one shock combo, etc. The regen on the shieldbelt will only be good if you just get scraped, and I felt it was too much to add it to the other armor.

 

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I just decided, as a big middle finger to Epic's Translocator hate I will give the Shieldbelt to anyone who telefrags someone with it.

 

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I just decided, as a big middle finger to Epic's Translocator hate I will give the Shieldbelt to anyone who telefrags someone with it.

Now to make Tele fragging easier... Osk was teasing me when I was trying to Tele frag him. Basically if you run away from the guy trying to frag you he can't. Pretty pitiful.

 

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Well folks.... I mean Maest. He's the only one reading this, right? This is going to turn out a little different than I expected. Here's the thing. With my abilities right now and the game's stage of development there are some things I can't do. With creating my own weapons I am currently at an impasse. So I've been planning mostly blanketed changes and some targeted ones as allowed. After trying a 1.5x blanket fire rate buff I can say that UT4's balance is.... odd. Heh. Well, I can probably balance it better, but the rate of fire, for me, right now, would need to be a blanket effect. There are some other reasons I wanted it to be a blanket effect as well. Done that way it will affect other mods. Totally balanced and playable with other mods balanced around UT. At least that's the theory and what the testing I can do now concludes, but I suppose some mods may be made in a way that eludes this. It'd also feel a lot more like reg, for the reg UT4 players.

The cons however are.... no shock combos right on top of you or with multiple balls. No rocket spam. Well, the more I think of it the more I wonder if those are really cons? Maybe it is just my wording heh. Basically the weapon balance would feel nothing like EO but more like a beefed up reg. At 1.5x rocket jumping feels almost as fast as EO though, and you've got all the other traditional mechanics obviously.

The reason I am saying 1.5x is because anything at/past 1.65x done across the board really throws things out of whack, and I have to leave that 15% margin. Plus, speeding up the weapons faster than that if I were to keep the 100 health I would have to significantly reduce the damage received by the player, just for more spam, that doesn't seem right to me. >_< Thoughts???

 

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Comments are naturally rather limited of we are talking in theory. I will say the vanilla UT4 time to combo is slow for my taste. Even if 1.5x doesn't quite allow a combo on top of yourself like EO I think it'd be an improvement over vanilla for many people.

at this stage in the game, I think trying to do to much might be counter productive. There's still weapon balancing being done in vanilla. I don't even think they had new FX yet.

What do you think about 6 vs 3 rockets?

 

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Oh lord of UT4.... forgive a man his doubts. This. Plays. Great! After a game with bots my heart is still pounding. Mind you, that's with bots, and balance that seems good with them may not be good with players but.... it seems to have come out pretty well. The shock combos honestly feel perfect to me. It's like everything in UT4 was made to be scaled to this degree. It just works. Of course this is without anything extra added to the weapons like AoE for the sniper, etc...... Anyway. Actually, I wasn't testing with the reg UT weapons, but with Wail's remake of them.

Maest, when you get a chance download all his weapons here: https://ut.rushbase.net/wail
Just the .pak files and put them in: C:\Program Files\Epic Games\UnrealTournamentDev\UnrealTournament\Content\Paks
You use them with the official Weapon Replacement mutator. I'm not sure if I will use all his weapons yet but maybe. By use I mean on the server or something dunno. They're not necessary right now but I like them better and they're what I'm testing. I test the same way anyone else would so I could give what I have to anyone else anytime. I'd rather take it a bit further first but yeah. And Maest, thanks, you've encouraged me. Ah, for the rockets, Wail's RL lets you load up 5 and works just like reg UT. His Trident I mean. It actually may have too much momentum lol. I still haven't tried all his weapons and their versions. I'm thinking I won't touch air control either. It would be okay with a little more but I think it's justtt flexible enough as is. Other opinions definitely welcome.

 

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Progressing well.... switched from a gamemode to a mutator for improved compatibility, simplicity, consolidation, etc. and had to figure out how to call everything I needed from the mutator class, turns out it's a lot more complicated but once I figure something out it works better. So far:

Survivability was too low at 100 health after bumping firing rates 1.5x, so I've increased max health to 110. I was backing off too much so I increased regen from 3 health to 5 every 2-3 seconds, going to figure out exactly where in that range I want the base timer to be. I'll increase the health more if I have to but I am hoping that will be enough - I don't want the health to be much higher than regular, didn't want it any higher but what can you do - and I do want the damage to be very high, die quick and get back in the fight quick.

So.... have firerates bumped, health bumped, health regen and ammo regen in and finally (so far as I can test offline) working 100% right.

Still a lot remains (like PROPER no self damage - Epic has made this really hard - shields still take damage and no falling damage to health) and then, online testing which may break everything lol. It's a long list but I feel like I'm close - I'm picking up the moves with Blueprints.

..... I'll just gloat again that I really like how this plays. It's not spammy while still being highly damaging and the combat having a solid feel to it. It's amazing what just a little firerate bump can do, or not really when you think about it. Faster translocating, closer shock combos, harder to avoid pulse, taking off heads left and right, etc. The weapons won't be modeled after EO/ADR, it wouldn't be right if it was even if I could, this will be its own thing.

 

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All right, if anybody wants to have any input in this, like the weapon balancing, now's the time. I have it to the point where everything is 'ready' (not everything I want is in or right, but good enough for release) except for weapon balancing. Even up to the UDamage event and msgs. I don't plan to spend much time on weapon balancing. I'm going to make some slight tweaks here and there and it'll be ready, that'll be it for a while. So right now rate of fire is increased by 1.47x globally. The idea is that It will scale up to 1.69x eventually with maxed pickups that replace berserk.

A few notes. The ONLY weapon currently tweaked is the Translocator. The RL will have to see some redesigning to make it like the old or just use someone else's that is already made like that (Wail's). The RL is the only weapon that will get that kind of work or replacement right now. I didn't fix the telefragging block that Epic has implemented, but the changes I made to it inadvertently DO make telefragging significantly easier.... once you get the trick down. You have to right-click right before it would impact the target to prevent it bouncing off. It's actually growing on me now that my tweaks have made it more reliable.

So. Please let me know if you want a version for your own private testing. Again this is the time for feedback. It's going up on a hub after this and that'll be that unless there are issues to fix that are revealed online. All I ask is that when you offer suggestions on weapon balance you balance each weapon against the others and not just how strong it seems by itself.

 

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Can you post it?

 

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Can you post it?

No, not yet. Anyway, you're the only person interested. I'll mail it to your GMail account in a few minutes after I finalize a few things for a new build.

 

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Maest, after considering your feedback I'm going to rebalance the weapons around a lower base firerate increase. Thinking 1.25x instead of 1.47x. Will go from there. As firerate increases rapid fire weapons get exponentially more powerful and take less skill to use compared to the other types, and I guess the only way to address it properly is to roll it back some. Also, I noticed that in the version I gave you the extra regen in Berserker range wasn't working after things got going, bah.