Ideas Revisited

[HaTe]

About a year ago now I had posted a topic that represented some of my ideas for the game. They were received well and had little to no negativity towards them. I had to stop playing the game since then due to getting real busy with school and work, but I was wondering if any of these ideas have been implemented in someway or altered from their original way. Basically, at the time of me posting these ideas, there were more important issues that had to be fixed (crashing) before any real gameplay change was going to take place. So I'm revisiting the ideas now. Here is them copy pasted from the original post almost a year ago:

1. Vehicle limit algorithm. Such that the default vlimit setup would be a minimum of 7 vehicles per team. The algorithm will take 60% of the current highest player count team (so if nod has more players in-game, each team's vlimit is based off of their players, and the same if GDI has more players), and turn that number into the vlimit. These numbers would get rounded up at every point they are not a whole number (ex: 5 stays at 5, but 5.1 goes up to 6). Meaning that: if the highest player count team in game has 1-11 players, the vlimit will be 7 (this is the minimum amount). If they have 15, it will be 9. If they have 25, it will be 15. And so on and so forth. This is to avoid any vehicle limit being set in stone, and so it avoids having it way too high or way too low based on the current in-game player count. It should be dependent on how many players are in-game, and this is the best way to do it.

2. Airstrikes done differently. Airstrikes should not be used an offensive weapon. It's not fair to a team to have an airstrike called on them while trying to disarm a nuke/ion. Airstrikes should be used as a weapon to help break a seige. So: first off, there should be an airstrike cool down time. A player can only call in an airstrike once for every 5 minutes. Secondly, an airstrike can only be used in his team's half of the field closest to his base (and including his base). Thirdly, airstrikes should do damage proportional to where they call the airstrike in. So, it should do max damage (say 400) on the direct spot the airstrike was called in. The other planes that drop the explosives next to that spot should have a bit wider of an impact than the middle one, but do significantly less damage (200-250).

3. Self-disarming proximity mines. Often times, a building will die that has proximity mines still inside it. This screws up the whole mine limit, and you are forced to go replant up to 35(+) mines just to get rid of those now useless mines. So, it should be that: targeting your own proximity mine within its detonation range and pressing "E" will disarm that mine. This can only be done by the player who laid the mine. If you target someone else's mine on your team and press "E" it will send you a PM notifying you who placed the mine (so you can tell that person to come disarm them if need be).

4. Capturable tech buildings. I don't like the idea that these are in the field. They give the team that should already be having the advantage on points and credits, more credits. I think these should be redesigned and implemented into the tunnels in a different way. That way, it makes infantry units in the tunnel have an actual use rather than kill whoring. They can now attack, rush, or defend their team's "Tech MCTs". I also think that they should work as regular mct's - none of that neutral MCT crap. Instead, have 2 MCT's (either side by side or right across each other), and have them default at 0 HP. Once they reach 75%+ (or green health), have them give that team the bonus of the tech building. Have them take normal damage of an MCT as well, but double the overall health (so that it takes more time to repair, as well as having it have to take more damage to get below 75%). Once it gets to 0%, it can still be repaired by its respective team though. Makes infantry in tunnels worth a small something, and can give the team with less points/credits a higher possibility of retaking the tech building, as well as giving the potential for both teams to simultaneously have access to the silo's improvements.

5. Remote C4 limit per player. 5 remote C4 limit per player, rather than a strict remote C4 limit per team. Having a team limit on a C4 that is only detonated per 1 individual causes the potential for one player to use up all of the limit. That's fine and all for proximity mines (see suggestion #3) - but for Remote C4's there should be a limit per player, since they are only able to be detonated by each individual. There could also be a maximum put in place if needed, but the per individual limit is what is important here.

6. (Originally suggested by Goztow and Stealtheye - edited a bit for my preference). Team sorting algorithm. This may be quite complicated for some people to understand, but it is both possible and effective. The algorithm is for when a map ends and the next one begins (sorting teams). When the map ends, the server looks at 2 qualifications specifically: 1. The clan tag of the player; and 2. The place (rank) the player ended up based on his score at the end of the last match. Such that: Players with the same clan tag (using (), [], {}) will get put on the same team, so long as the number of these players does not exceed 20% of the overall players in-game. If the number of players in one specific clan in-game does exceed 20% of the overall players in-game, the members of that clan will be distributed evenly into the 2 teams using the algorithm for qualification #2. That algorithm would be: (*changes when clan members are present so long as they are under 20% of overall players) Players 1,4,6,8,10,12,14,16, etc. go to team #1. Players 2,3,5,7,9,11,13,15, etc. go to team #2. If one or more clans are present in-game and are under 20% of the overall players, they are put onto the same team. This is used to try and put friends together, whilst keeping a decent balance between the 2 teams.

7. (*Originally suggested by Kil). Nukes/Ions done differently. Such that the normal time is counted down, and it works similar to Renegade in that 5 seconds before the ion/nuke is about to detonate, the ion animation plays and the nuclear strike begins to fall from the sky. The difference being that if the beacon is disarmed in those 5 seconds, an animation to "get rid" of the beacon takes place. For nukes, the missile explodes mid-air with a small explosion. For ions, the ion animation is "sucked" back into the center of the ion with a new sound played. This way there is no 5 second "no repair time" and the random disappearing animation from Renegade is also fixed.

[Handepsilon]

Number 3 is done, with alt fire button (or was it the fire button?) instead

[HaTe]

That's good. That was one of the ideas that I really thought had no reason to be opposed. Any of the others done in anyway or done differently than they were originally? I'm getting back into playing again in a couple weeks here after I finish building my computer, so just curious.

[SFJake]

1- There is a mutator now to set a vehicle and mine limit per map. This is not at all like what you proposed but its worth noting.

2- An airstrike team cooldown (I believe of 30 seconds) is being added to Beta 4 and it will no longer work over beacons as well (confirmed by RypeL).

3- Since when can we disarm our mines? I didn't even know.

4- Old maps were not changed on that aspect. I don't expect this will ever happen, but maybe the new maps make better use of tech buildings. Actually, I believe one of them has a tunnel tech building but I'm not sure.

5- From the changelog of Beta 4: Remote C4 does not influence the teams minelimit anymore. Instead there is a special remote c4 limit of 4 per person

6- Nothing to sort players in any way was done, so far.

7- I'm STILL hoping we get an update to disarm beacons up to the last milliseconds, even if they don't do the whole graphical effect for it. I think they said they wanted to do it a long while ago, but its not there yet.

That is what I know. They have been pretty busy and the beta 4 is looking like its progressed a lot.

[HaTe]

1- At least a per map one is better than a set-in-stone vlimit per server or throughout the entire game. That's positive news, though I still believe the idea that I proposed is more...ideal.

2- That's good. I believe they were nerfed as well since the original release, so I'm glad to hear that. More good news there.

3- If it's indeed a feature, it's a solid one. Should be advertised more clearly so that people are aware.

4- Honestly, this was the one suggestion that I'd amend now anyway. The tech building in the field isn't necessarily bad, it just doesn't promote the type of gameplay that I enjoy the most or feel like is the best overall. That's just an opinion though, and I haven't seen many people complain about it. So I'm not at all willing to continue supporting this idea that would change too much at this point anyway. Though new maps with this implemented would be a nice change of pace and encouraging for people who like that sort of gameplay, so that is positive too.

5- Almost perfect. I believe 5 is more ideal so that GDI can at least protect their heavy armored vehicles from SBH's fully and still be able to use at least 1. Other than that, I'm completely satisfied that they decided to go this route.

6- Hopefully this will be added, but it's not something that is completely needed or necessary. It would just be nice. Random sorting or however it is sorted now is not problematic, just not ideal.

7- Considering that it was originally one of the Dev's idea (kil), I really had hoped this would've been changed. Really the first negative result I've seen that it hasn't been done yet. Perhaps it is just in the schedule and not yet a priority. I hope that the way it is now is not the final result, though. I'm not the only one that vocally dislikes the way that this is done. I believe that this suggestion is a perfect way to do it and would please everyone (though it would take extra animations and more work, so i can also see the unattraction from that aspect).

[RypeL]

3. It's in B4

7. In B4 there is a counter on the beacons targeting box reaching zero when the beacon can't be disarmed anymore.

[HaTe]

I suppose that solution for #7 is "good enough." Better than nothing, so thank you.

[SFJake]

Its not really a solution to #7, it makes it more obvious yes, but the original concept was that the way beacons are now kill the intensity of beacons. Instead of having a chance up to the last second and everyone potentially dying at the blast, everyone just disperse and give up before the blast happens.

[HaTe]

Hopefully the counter will prove to be a solution that somewhat matches the intensity for players that the explosion did in the original game.