Wirehead Studios

I just wanted to thank all those who voted upon this mode (obviously in addition to myself voting on 6 machines ... j/k) because it was an electrifying experience that felt very much like the QW days. Gen reproduced the feeling of killing someone and stealing their pack with 100 rockets and just letting the good times roll. you Doom fanboys may whine that Slipgate is the "one weapon wonder" but it's in my opinion that no id game demonstrates deathmatch and capture the flag better than Quake. Quake is like the heavy metal of the id games in that it's just pure intensity and aggression.

and don't kid yourselves... there were lots of nailgun kills demonstrated by Makou and lots of shaft kills from Tabun ... I even had to show that the super shotgun can in fact kill shit from a distance, even though its spread is patterned after the "net"Quake style opposed to QW's tight-packed spread. spamming grenades has never been more entertaining either.

although Quake 2 is my personal favorite of the Quake series (I racked in almost 4 years of playing RA2 after all), I think it's healthy to dive back to that era of 1996-1998 just to showcase the game that put multiplayer online deathmatch on the map. Doom may have brought multiplayer FPS deathmatch to the fold, but Quake perfected it. call it perfect timing (online gaming, 3D acceleration, standard FPUs!) or call it luck ... but that's how I see it.

I'd rather play DM in the brown world of Quake over Doom any day. at least Slipgate doesn't need to run at 90 mph and have an arsenal of overpowered weapons to survive.

yes, that's my declaration of war. I'll see you Saturday ... using the Doom class.  :thumb:


... depending on if Angst plays. then it'll be Slipgate.  :ownage:

Well, it was tons of fun, like I said in the demo thread (if someone wants demos of the earlier US games, I have those too). It's especially enjoyable because hardly anyone plays with Slippy during normal forum games, and it IS delightful to be able to walk around the place without getting rails in left and right (that does help when one is connecting from a different continent :)).

GGS folks.

BTW, I give you little chance mecha, the Slipgate side in a class based game (because that's where we'll eventually go!) will need all the best players to kick Doom's arse. And the best players are nearly all pro-Doom ;]

yeah, we'll need the best. it's too bad we lost Tek and Omega... more or less... they were both really good with Slipgate. the Doomers are really good, but I find Doom to be a really cheap class, especially considering I played on the release night with Doom and I was slaying people left and right with the saw even. I just think Doom is highly overpowered. seriously, the Doom SSG is what, 300 pts damage? if Doom gets a ridiculously powered SSG, I think in all fairness Slipgate should get the QW style tight-spread SSG. I was talking to Pho about some balancing issues, and I think that with the inclusion of the "old school" mode in 1.0, I think that the normal mode should have more balance to make it fair to play and kick ass with any class. that goes against the original principle of Gen Arena, I understand this, but "old school" mode takes the original Gen vision one step further.

I think if we went that route, old school would have a more lasting effect. Makou, the biggest pessimest on the face of the earth, right away said that old school mode would get old real fast. I think by having an accurate mode and a balanced mode to choose from would add even more possibilities for Gen.

and I'm not talking about the balance for Slipgate's sake. I mean it for Earth and Strogg as well. I just find that Doom is highly overpowered, and you can't really say "well duh! that's because Doom pwnz11!1" because Doom is derived from an entirely different engine that had different needs from the more fine-tuned multiplayer series of Quake. and Wolf didn't even have multiplayer, and was so primitive that I don't even think you could use that as a basis for comparison at this point.

there, that's my 4 cents, since 2 isn't enough to describe it.

 :ownage:

Who would have believed it? I totally agree.

Balance review? Indeed :]

First off, the changes made to the mortar, sniper and railgun work. Nothing is 'nerfed' and playing with the Earth class does not result in cheap mortar and sniper kills any longer. Duels between the Earther and other classes are tense and often long-lasting, which is brilliant.
So far I'm liking the Strogg railgun changes too: it just isn't too lop-sided playing the class now (it was supposed to be a very diverse-strategy class, which works all the better in 99f).
The Slipgate class appeared to be slightly underpowered in previous versions, but since recent additions, I think it balances out near perfectly with both Strogg and Earth. Personally, I don't miss the QW-type shotty spread, During the Slipgate DM night games, it became apparant that nails and pellets were dangerous, and reasonable one-weapon-wonder complaints belong to the past.
Arena, as always, is hard to judge, because the people kicking ass with it usually don't even realise there are any other classes. I still say it holds the middle ground fairly well, and is mainly dangerous due to the powerful melee & spawn gear.

With none of the above mentioned classes I get that annoying feeling that 'again, you get the shitty class' in random class mode, which I think is a very good sign. It tended to creep up when you were in a 'winning' mood, but kept ending up with Slipgate in Q3DM16 (the bouncy map), so to speak.

Sadly, I have to agree with Mecha (and ConfusedUs) on the Doomer. Now, before one goes and states 'just because you have no defense against something doesn't make it overpowered', I can own with it easily too. Racking up kills has always been a bit easy (especially if it's crowded and you're in a spamming mood), but with the balancing of the other classes the effect has worsened noticeably.

The combination of:
- enormous speeds
- super powerful ssg
- super powerful, precise chaingun
- strong, huge and rapid fire rockets
- strong and spamfriendly plasma

more often than not results in a tanked killing machine.

'You can rail him from afar!' was a very nice theory, but doesn't hold in play. Some maps don't have railguns, distances are generally short (especially when the Doomer knows how to get there, he gets there quick) and the chaingun vs railgun duels are a fair fight  to say the least.
Doomers have no difficulty getting around on the map, can jump great distances and are hard to track even with hitscan weapons. A player that knows the item spawns can get out of fights with ease, to heal, tank up and deny that armor to slower classes. When pursueing an injured opponent, he leaves no chance of escape, but escapes easily from the average fight (in a typical map).
Perhaps because of this, perhaps not; the Doomer does not feel like it combines advantage with disadvantage, like the (typical) tradeoff speed-vs-strength that is often seen in other class based mods. Even with his low armor cut rates, he can take quite a beating.

When Doom does get up close, he rips the shit out of anything. Dodging is possible even at point blank because of his speed and missing isn't much of a problem when the next plasma bolt or rocket can be fired even before the opponent gets time to reload.

Again, in theory it sounds like balance should hold, but in practice it does not. This goes for every game I've witnessed on both Euro and Central servers. I fear discussion of this will meet with great resistance, and might not be taken seriously - which would be a shame, since 99f is so much closer to acceptable balance than the mod has ever been.

I've just taken this opportunity to make a balance review of Generations .99f, because it would be unfair to just bitch at Doom and ignore the huge strides of progress we've made.

I have to agree.

generally the faster guy should be weaker, but it's simply not the case with Doom. Doom is both the fastest and has the most powerful arsenal (IMO, though some can argue Strogg may be better) ... it also has the best melee weapon by afar. I'm not talking about castrating Doom, but I think the chaingun should be weakened a bit, after all I didn't think it was THAT powerful in the Doom games anyway, but I don't code the game, Phoenix does, and IMO nobody knows Doom better than him. and well... whatever.

Phoenix and I have had discussions pertaining to Slipgate's botched physics. even his physics are incorrect. bunny-hopping was possible in Q1. as was Q2. it wasn't done away with until Q3 came along and Carmack got rid of it to put a damper on the so-called "cheapasses" that would turbo-run or bunny-hop like crazy. Q3 was the multiplayer-driven game, so this balance was logical. you can bunny-hop with Doom and Strogg, I know this for sure. my playing style in RA2 was based on this turbo-running, and Strogg handles to near-perfection compared to his Q2 counterpart. Slipgate however, slows down when you jump. it has the bunny-hop blocked, just like Arena. although Slipgate is relatively quick, he has shoddy armor and by comparison to Doom or an experienced Strogg player, he's put at yet another disadvantage. and to dispell any mysteries behind the psychotic air-control behavior on jump pads, that's just a bug -- Slipgate wasn't coded that way specifically. this novelty feature reaps strange benefits on the space maps, but alas, the physics are still screwed up.

Makou and I both find the RL feeling a bit nerfed in .99e/.99f  ...  Slipgate used to have footing in .99d, but I can understand the improper splash damage calculation needing to be fixed. any Quake 1 player will probably notice that the RL doesn't seem to behave the same in Gen as it did in Q1. I remember it being an all-conquering gun in Q1 with a ridiculous splash damage ... but perhaps I need to fire up Q1 again.

the shaft behavior seems to be proper. I need to practice with this more though, I suck with the shaft (and always did, so whatever)

thanks for the input Tab. c'mon guys, I know you wanna talk about this too. heh

To add to the comment made on DooM's chaingun, it seems to me to be a bit too accurate. If I'm not mistaken even at fairly close range it would scatter quite wildly. May have to go back and check that out later though. On the issue of them being over powered...ok I would have to agree, but it doesn't help me too much  :)~ . I've noticed DooMers can be cut down pretty quickly. Oh well, thats my opinion at least.

On Slipgate: I think the RL is spot on as it is (that is, to play Generations, not to match QW exactly). It can be dodged, but it's still the fastest explosive projectile of all. I personally don't want it to be an "all-conquering gun" -- that is exactly what I would like us to stray from. In old-school mode it can be undodgeable and insane for all I care ;]

Also, you can bunnyhop with Slippy - it requires some skill though, and I don't regularly see people do it, excepting myself and former Gen-player Tekhead. The trick is to swivel your view left and right while making the 'hop'. This will propel you forward if done right, much like you can accelerate in mid-air by turning. You can actually gather quite a bit of speed that way, providing you don't bump into anything (see my Slippy-night demos to see what I'm talking about).

I can agree with adjusting (or at least cvarring) the 'QW spread' for the shotgun, but aside from that I think effectively using Slipgate just requires that extra bit of skill. In my hands, I don't feel the class is any less dangerous than Earth or Strogg (and I guess most of my victims agree ;))

Tab's said it better than I could.

Doom is extremely powerful, except at long range. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Q3 (and therefore Generations) maps are rather small and tight. Even if there is a large open area, it's but one part of the map, with the rest being fairly tight.

That tightness makes for great duels. There are things to stand on for that elevation advantage, and things to dodge behind. Unfortunately, no class stands on equal ground with Doom when it comes to close-range duels. His speed makes tracking very difficult, and his power makes every single shot, even a near miss, hurt.

The biggest problems I see with the Doom class are:

Hitboxes for his Rockets and Plasma - These extremely deadly rapid-fire weapons are even more dangerous because you can't just sidestep them the way you can other weapons of their type.  Possible Fix: Smaller hitboxes or none at all

The knockback on the plasma rifle - This is almost almost as bad. Getting hit by the spray is disorienting enough already, because the lights blind you. It doesn't help that you're getting knocked all over the place. Possible Fix: Lowered or no knockback

The refire speed on the rocket launcher - You can't dodge the damn thing. The splash radius is large, the damage is high, and the refire is very very fast. If Doom is close to you with more than one rocket and any decent skill, you're gonna be hurting. Their slow speed doesn't matter. Carpet-bombing is highly effective. Possible Fix: Decreased ammo counts, or change Doom's grenade launcher/ammo pickups to another weapon..

The chaingun's damage - Damn near everyone knows about the first-shot accuracy now, and even those that don't are still something to fear. This thing is a beast. It's deadly at mid range and dangerous at long range. It's not as deadly as the gats, but the accuracy makes it easily comparable to a railgun and completely eliminates doom's only weakness; long range. Possible Fix: Lowered Damage. I'd like to see it at 10 or 12 instead of 15

My biggest problems with Doomare that his biggest weakness isn't a weakenss at all and his strengths are immense.

First, let me correct a mistaken assumption.  Doom's Combat Shotgun in Gen does NOT do 300 points of damage.  It does 176 IF every single pellet hits.  In Doom it did a random of 100 to 300 based on 20 pellets, each pellet doing 5, 10, or 15 points of damage randomly.  So close range yes, it clobbers you, but it's not a 300 point deathcannon.

This is where I'm going to act as the avian equivalent of a lineman trying to prevent the quarterback sack.  So far this is what I'm hearing:

Doom's too fast, slow him down.
Doom's shotgun does too much damage, make it weaker.
Doom's chaingun does too much damage, make it weaker.
Doom's rocket launcher fires too fast/does too much damage, take away his ammo.
Doom's plasma is too punishing, strip the knockback.
Doom's plasma and rockets have a hitbox and are hard to dodge, make them dodgeable.
(fortunately no complaints lodged against the BFG)

Also, I'm going to rub some people the wrong way when I say this, but it's an observation I cannot ignore and I'm going to say it regardless of whose feelings might get hurt.  The people who are complaining about Doom being "too strong" are the same people who have always complained.  I am not going to sit here and call said people whiners, that is not my point.  I would like to hear feedback from the community overall as opposed to the same "known" sources.  I realize I'm not going to be able to please everyone on every single issue.  Everyone's opinion of how each class should be balanced is going to be different.  I have to focus on what works best overall for everyone in (most) every situation.  We have, of late, a lot of players who are good players who prefer the Doom class.  I will listen to balance questions, but I will not knee-jerk a balance hack into the code just because someone may be using the class well.  In a small to average-size FFA I've seen good Arena and Strogg players outscore a mob of Doom players, so I'm not easily convinced this is necessarily a class balance issue so much as it is a player issue, especially when I can dominate a map like gen-q2dm7 using strictly Earth and have twice as many frags as anyone else on the map when all of them (except Rob) are Doom.

Most of Doom's weapons are pretty powerful, yes, but we also tend to have a high concentration of players who like the Doom class.  This will tend to lead to more people being killed by Doomers since there's more Doomers on the server.  Recent games I've played tend to consist of 1 Earther (Rob), a few Doomers, and a few random people.  This will lead to the perception that Doom is doing most of the killing.  That's just the law of averages at work.  In regards to the maps being tight and not open, I'm going to pass the buck here since traditionally I've had little involvement in the map selection process and suggest that perhaps we need some more open maps to go along with the smaller, tighter corridor-rich maps we presently have?

Now, in regards to the weapons specifically, and class balance, I'm very loathe to make severe changes to things like ammo types and counts.  Earth and Slipgate both get 5 rockets (or mortar shells) for running over grenade ammo.  Giving Doom 1 is punishing the class for no good reason.  Killing off the hitboxes on the plasma and rockets I do not like either.  The rockets are so freaking huge you can see them coming a mile away.  I can dodge them, Makou and Kajet dodge them all the time, I don't see a problem here.  The plasma depends on the flight radius to a large degree.  The plasma was an absolutely devastating weapon in Doom, much like Slipgate's shaft is in Q1.  Taking away the bounding box (which was not a problem until .99f for some reason) turns it into a projectile that flies slower than Slipgate's nails and is 5x more visible than Arena's plasma.  The plasma is easy to see coming from a distance, and if dynamic lights or someone's choice in plasma color (like white, for instance) is blinding there are cvars to handle that.  The knockback is not so severe that it's unbalancing.  Slipgate's weapons do a lot more knockback.  Those rockets can fling you across the map, the plasma just knocks you around a bit.  The Combat Shotgun (I'm assuming nobody's referring to the 12 gauge specifically) does a boatload of damage, but it's supposed to.  It's not effective past medium-close range, but point-blank you're going to get killed by it.  Arena's and Strogg's shotguns can be just as dangerous.

I do not buy the notion that Slipgate has crap armor.  He is the only class that gets 75 yellow instantly, and his yellow stacks to 150 without rotting.  Strogg's only goes to 100, Doom's green armor is crap.  Slipgate's red armor absorbs almost as much as Strogg's.  Doom's got the weakest armor, and believe me, if there's no blue armor on the map you feel it in a serious way when there's a Slipgater or two running around.

Now I don't want anyone to feel like they're being snubbed here, or that I'm ignoring feedback or criticism.  I tend to defend the status quo as a rule to avoid hasty decision making.  That's my job.  I don't want us to balance Gen's standard play so much that all 5 classes come out like Arena, or we're making a mod for nothing.  We went down that road once before, and the answer was to accentuate - not eliminate - the class differences.  I'm willing to tweak things, but I'm not willing to make balance decisions if the balance complaints are the result of the player population choosing one class more often than another, resulting in average kills by a specific class being higher due strictly to statistical reasons causing a biased perception, or people just plain being rusty and running up against stronger than expected opposition.  I also would prefer better solutions than just "tone down gun x".  Perhaps we've weakened another class, and Doom's strength is more noticed instead of the weakness?  It's harder to notice the absense of something than the presense.  If it's a specific class that Doom is slaughtering on a regular basis (as opposed to a specific player), then I'd like some more detailed information.  Maybe we zigged when we should have zagged at some point.

I'm going to add my own feedback, since I play Gen too, and I use every class as I often play Random anymore.  The balance to me feels very good right now over all.  I'll make specific class comments.

Earth is no longer a 100% indestructible tank all the time, but he can get to that tank state through work.  Mortar is dangerous but not inescapable, dual gats are lethal but not from across the map, rifle is nasty but not a one-shot-kill cannon.  The +5 shard pickup instead of 10 makes them feel like armor shards instead of mini-yellow armor as someone had mentioned before.  Class feels great to me, Rob's just as dangerous with him as ever, and I can get my share of kills in without feeling overwhelmed by any other class.

Doom feels fine to me.  I am a damned good Doom player, so I'll grant that it is hard for me to be completely objective.  However, I am not completely indestructible as Doom either.  I die just like anyone else.  Where I think people may be noticing a change in Doom not dying as easily might have to do with the Strogg railgun and Earth rifle and mortar having their damage toned down slightly.  This means that one-shot-gib-the-Doomer rail isn't going to happen.  If he squeaks through with 5 points you might get a shotgun blast to the face, but that's the same with any class.  That's not a fault necessarily of the Doom class so much as people being accustomed to the overpowered rail weapons and mortar.  The chaingun may be a little strong.  If I were to tone anything down I'd consider that first, however this weapon fills the lightning gun slot for most every other class, and is also Doom's pickup for the railgun.  Those are two very powerful weapons for just about everyone.  I think it's worth cautiously looking into.  I don't feel there's a whole lot else that can be done to the weapons without destroying the class.  We could experiment with the speed a little, but again, I don't want to lose the feel of the class in a balance attempt.

Slipgate's physics do need reworking.  He feels like a slug to me.  I cannot "bunnyhop" at all, no matter how many physics demos I watch or how someone says to do it.  I can circle-jump fine as Strogg, I can't do it as Skippy.  I can air-turn, and do other physics stuff, but I can't get any speed.  This is what's killing Slipgate for me.  The shaft's render behavior needs changing, and will get a make over so the lightning bolts behave visibly more like Q1.  Otherwise, everything is as close to Quake as you can get weapon-wise.  Rockets feel decent, even though I still suck with them and frequently get tossed around by Slipgaters who actually have skill with the class.  I get plenty of shaft kills, and I get my share of nail kills and lead too.  I think if the physics get straightened out Skippy will be fine.

Really not too much to say about Strogg.  I do quite well with the class, I see other players who also do quite well.  DzJepp is a formidable Strogg player, Makou is getting to be pretty decent, I've not seen the "Q2 grunt slaughterfests" that some people out there seem to think are the result from using this class under any circumstances.  I do wonder sometimes if we shouldn't give him back that 125 point rail just to beef up a weapon for him, but then why have that arsenal if you're not going to use it?  That's open for debate if anyone wants to pipe up.  Strogg's not great for big fights, but he's damned good at cleaning them up.  I've got no trouble using the class, and strafe-jumping and general movement physics feel wonderful.

Arena is Arena.  What can be said?  I'm actually getting better with the class.  Arena's advantage is that just about any gun can kill you as easily as any other gun.  A few like the lightning are stronger, but I don't see any specific advantages or disadvantages to the class.  Some Gen regulars who never use Arena tend to die easily as Arena when random, and some Q3-only players tend to make Arena look insanely powerful, but that's just home turf advantage.  I've only heard one or two complaints about nipping the extra 25 health at spawn, but usually it's the die-hard Q3 players who complain about that sort of thing, much like the die-hard Doomers complain about not being able to wall-run and walk on water. ;)

There's another factor that's not even being considered in all of this discussion of weapon balancing, and Doom being strong, etc, and that is weapon switch times.  As any of our beta testers know (or should know, if you've been keeping up with the internal development discussions!) weapons are going to a frames-based system.  This means every class is going to get varying times with which to change guns.  Doom, like everyone else (except Slipgate) right now has Q3's default weapon switch times.  That makes it pretty easy to peg someone with a few rockets, then whip out the chaingun and nip them in the back as they retreat.  The weapon switch times in Doom were much longer, so it's going to be harder to do that once that code is written.  Doom's weapon switch times are going to handicap him a bit, so like Strogg, he's going to have to choose his weapons a bit more cautiously.  Doom's weapons also did not "instant-fire" like they do in Q3.  The rocket launcher took a second to pre-fire, for example, so that's going to make the rocket launcher a tricker weapon once that goes into effect.  All the classes are going to get a shakeup when these timers are completed, so this must be taken into account when considering balance.  If we go tinkering around now with a bunch of things, then throw all this in, we're going to be making extra work.

Just so nobody blows a cork, I'm not completely dismissing the possibility that Doom is overpowered.  He may very well be.  I just don't want to rush to judgement and action until we're 100% sure what should be done, if anything, and I want to rule everything else out first.

This isn't a knee-jerk reaction.

However, as a whole, Doom is still the strongest class. Earth took the cake there for a little while, but Doom's always been up there. His speed plus his damage equals mass death. Most maps simply do not have the range necessary to handicap the doomers.

The plasma knockback isn't the real problem with the weapon. It's the knockback combined with the hitbox plus the speed of the projectile added to the overall spaminess of the weapon. It's just too damn easy to kill with. So are most of Doom's weapons.

Every gun short of the spawn weapons can kill someone in moments. Hell, most of them are OVERKILL, meaning that even a near miss is fatal

THe SSG is a one-hit wonder. The RL can lay waste to entire rooms in seconds, and individuals faster. The plasma is the same in hallways. The chaingun is an EXCELLENT sniping weapon (I'm actually better with it now than the railguns), and the BFG is the best of its class.

However, weapon switch times are going to make a HUGE difference, as will the RL prefire. It'll be a lot harder to just carpet-bomb an area with a pre-fire delay on the rocket launcher.

Currently, no one facet of the class is overpowered, except perhaps the chaingun. It's the sum of ALL of his weapons combined that makes it so, along with his speed, lack of health rot, lack of falling damage, and other such doom-ish trappings. I'm not sugesting removing all of these, or even most of them. I would like to see an honest effort towards balancing out the class a bit, however.

As Tab said earlier, when playing random, I no longer get that 'oh crap not CLASS X again!' feeling. However, I do get 'oh yes! It's doom!' every single time it pops up. No other class is as easy to kill with. No matter the situation, Doom is all but guaranteed to throw a few kills into my total. And I'm not the only one to feel this way.

This has turned into a really good discussion, and I don't really have anything to add, except some whining about Doom's chaingun. :)

Doom is supposed to be the close- to -mid-range guy. His weapons are designed in a way that he really should own it. Okay, that's fine, but the chaingun, as it is, makes him just as effective at long range as Earth, Strogg, and Arena can be. While that may be a "good thing," it's also counter to what we tell everybody the class is capable of doing and not doing. It also effectively leaves Slipgate as the only class without a real "long range touch" weapon. One could argue that the Shaft fits that bill, but it's extremely hard to use in that manner.

That said, I think this is the first weapon that might need some changes, other than the addition of proper weapon switch timing.

Hmm... kind of makes me wonder how those old random damage values might spice things up... add a bit of uncertainty to whether Doom's going to pop you with 1 bullet or 3.  Not talking about 300 point SSG blasts here, I'm still talking "within a balanced damage range", but the problem as Con's stated here is Doom being consistantly powerful across the board.  What if we took some of that consistency out of the equation by shifting toward an aspect that was in the original game?

Overall, I'm not a fan of random damage. I find it more frustrating than fun.

Also, setting random damage would only work if the average damage was lower than the current static values. Otherwise it still comes to the same issue across the board: Too much damage too fast from any weapon. The numbers would balance out in the end, centering towards the average value over time.

I'm going to disagree with Con on this one. That might be a good way to go. The mortar currently has a randomizer on it, if I remember correctly (100 + [Random from 0 to 20]), and I can definitely tell that it's there just in normal play -- and I tend to like it.

The mortar (and the q1 RL) are 100 + 20 random I believe. You're guaranteed at least 100 damage. The rest is gravy.

Doom's weapons were done differently, I think. The SSG, for example, did 100 to 300 damage in increments of five. You couldn't count on the gun killing an armored enemy, even on a direct, solid hit. Nor could you coun't on surviving a direct hit, even if well armored. Being on the bad end of either side is highly annoying to me. I don't mind limited random damage, such as the mortar. I do mind when the range is so great that my direct hit is useless.

I'd honestly like to see what the switch times and fire delays do, before going crazy with the random damage. The RL is my main gripe with the Doom class. Making it that much harder to use might tip the balance.

I forgot about the cool stuff that the new weapon animations bring about. we'll see what the weapon switch/firing delays can offer in the line of balance. I forgot about the RL delay in Doom.

but yeah, we'll worry about balance, if need be, after the weapon animation stuff is finished.

First off, I have no idea how randomized damage would work, but it'd be more newbie-friendly (which, I guess, is good ;)).

Pho: As for my list of reasons why Doom is so strong, you might have misread that for 'this ALL needs to be changed". That's certainly not what I meant; but at least some of it will have to, IMO.  Like I said balancing out the class; fast and 'weak' works. Strong and slow works. Fast, strong and durable is a serious case of ouch.

So far, I think people are grossly underestimating the advantage of being able to outrun players and things. Arena needs a few seconds to get close and place that shotgun shot, Doom can run straight up to the offender and peg him before he gets time to even think ;]
This does not mean I think Doom needs to be slowed down AND have a weaker shotgun, I'm just saying: this is what I see in battle (the last 8 games in a row, at least), and it's not balanced. In the past, you've always proven to have the best ideas for balance yourself, so I don't see any reason to make such suggestions..

Your observation is true, by the way. Usually the same people speak up. In this case however, I have also backed my own assumptions by discussion with other players. Most of them have never been on the boards, or tend to stay away from these threads for unknown reasons. For instance Alucard and several other Euro players agree wholehartedly, but are quite unlikely to speak up. Although I am less familiar with the US crowd, I am certain a lot of players either don't care enough to state their preference or agree, but don't realise they can have a hand in this. Be thankful Tekhead isn't here to make the same points in an arrogant and blunt manner ;]
In any case it would be unfair to assume that everyone that is not posting about these things thinks all is fine and dandy.

Besides, this is indeed not a knee-jerk. I'm a pretty reasonable fellow, a good, competitive player with plenty of comparative explerience. When I (among others) detected Slipgate's overpoweredness and Earth's strength, mostly this met with arguments as I gave before "it's just you.". After changes were made, everyone seems to be quite happy.

I didn't just look at how many times Doom makes a kill on a server, because that would be totally dependant on how many people would be playing the class, ofcourse. I try to see how people (including myself) fare when using it. Aside from the odd game, I've seen players vary from getting 10 frags in 15 minutes playing with Earth or Strogg to around to 30 playing Doom. I myself have played maps in which I  (randomly) played Doom for 4 out of 15 minutes, and made half the frags on the map with that class. And these are consistent observations (that's why I didn't bring it up immediately, I needed to check this in the field).

Obviously you're free to think of my intellect and perceptivity what you like, but I'd like to stress that I'm usually keen about this sort of thing, and I care about getting close to true balance.

I'm sure the frame animation will make a difference, but I fear it won't be enough --  I am very curious about how that'll work out though. Besides, there's a lot fo animating to do, so I won't have time to get sick of or be annoyed by playing Generations in the near future :]
I also hope you'll be able to let go of that personal Doom-bias and take an objective look at this one ;]

Can we have some more open maps?

Finding GOOD, open maps is hard. They're either bland and boring looking because of the lack of architecture, or they're nothing but railfests. I don't particularly enjoy using nothing but the railgun for 15 minutes at a time.

The Edge, q2dm1, is one of our most open maps overall, as is Warehouse, q2dm8. In both cases, Doom can close those gaps in moments unless he's on the far side of said open areas, and then he can just duck out of sight.

I would like to add that doom isn't that strong

true his speed, and sheer rocket spamming ability are his strengths

but he is not the strongest class

too many people ignore earth

personally in order of strongest to weakest i would place them like so

1 Earth
2 Doom
3 Slippy
4 Arena
5 Strogg

this may be a biased opinon, however as i'm no good with earth, and yet still can cream doomers with most of his weapons

slippy could do with extra nails

strogg is a bit slow, he didn't seem that slow in q2 deathmatch or q2 generations

on the whole though if you getting beaten by doom

play as him, learn his weakness, which classes weapons he's most vunerable too

that way online you'll have a much better chance

plus slippies RLauncher is the same speed it's always been.

if you can't win with it, just practice

i find Q3DM19 on Nighmare a good test

but no on the whole i have no problem with doom, as long as you stop him getting armour he's frag bait no matter how fast he can run

oh and Tab and Pho any chance of putting the mission poack weapons in for slippy as i would quite like to have my old lava nailgun back

in fact if you could put back in all the mission pack weapons for all the class that would be cool  :D

so what are the chances?

oh dear , here we go again .
LORDBANE, be prepared to hear a little rant of the wirehead team where they will explain to you why to will not do that .
and they are right about it .

Fair Enough

thought I'd ask though

Tab:  Your last post is providing information I need, and I'm not dismissing people's opinions, but the opinions of those who are not providing feedback don't do me much good if I don't know about them.  I'm not saying either you nor Con are knee-jerking on criticisms, I'm saying I want to avoid a knee-jerk fix that might do more harm than good.  You all know I'm one for balancing, I just don't want to screw anything up in the process, so my harsh stance is not personal, it's a check and balance against hasty decision making.  I'd like to see how weapon switch behavior and correcting the movement physics (in the case of Slipgate) helps.  We might also be running Doom around a hair too fast, like I said, I'm not discounting any of this.  I'm used to dealing with Tekhead's rather pointed and relentless suggestion making and attempts to change Gen into something it should not be, so forgive me if I came off a little strong?  My intent is never to insult anyone's intelligence here.

LordBane:  I've often wondered about the mission pack weapons for a Team Arena mode, but the problem is we probably would not be able to do it for technical reasons in addition to sheer workload.  I've never seen the Quake mission packs myself, only the Q2 mission packs.  We've also run out of available weapon slots.  There's a maximum of 16 available, which is a hard-coded number that cannot be changed.  14 of those are already used by Strogg.  He has 12 weapons (if you include the grappling hook), and 2 weapon numbers are used by the code for enumeration purposes.  I may be able to fudge one of those back, but it will take some investigation.  If not, then at most we'd be able to add 2 new weapons per class, and Team Arena has 3 new weapons.  That would mean one of them would get a "standard issue" replacement.  Arena Gladiators would not be able to use all 3 of their TA weapons, so I tend to be of an "all or nothing" mindset as far as those go.  Right now our intention is to do "standard issue" replacements across the board, such as lightning gun weapons for the TA Chaingun, grenade launchers for the TA prox launcher, and shotguns for the TA nailgun (which was a big nail shotgun anyway).  If we did decide to throw in any interesting new weapons I'd need to run through the Q1 mission packs to see what they did and if they're worthwhile for Gen's gameplay purposes, and then we'd have to figure out how to invent additional weapons for Doom and Earth, and there's the question of workload since that's 12 new weapons, some would need from-scratch models and skins, sounds, and animations.  We're not done with the ones we already have!  In all likeliness we're probably going to just go with standard-issue replacements, but we'll see once we get closer to Team Arena compatibility implementation.  A lot of this is going to depend on how fast we get everything else done, and whether or not we feel the weapon additions are going to be worth the extra effort.

Understood. I tend to take things a bit too personally anyway.

The problem I have with TA stuff and mission pack weapons for any game, is that there's just too many stuff to deal with. Let's just see where we can get using the weapons we've got, and when that finally works smoothly. Even when that's done, I really think I'd like to see some Resurgence stuff prior to mission package ;]

Tonight's game had a lot of Doomers, and I took the win on the following maps with the following classes:

Simply Dead:  Random
H2SO4:  Strogg (No I did not whore the invulnerability)
Trial By Error:  Slipgate (second go-round, first I was goofing off with the gauntlet)
Not quite Earth:  Slipgate

I suck with Slipgate, I missed a LOT of railgun shots as Strogg, and yet I still did well against a boatload of Doomers.  I'm not posting this as bragging rights, but just as additional information for the balance discussion.  I'm having trouble doing the killing with Slipgate more than anything else owing to the movement problems, and I think his rocket splash could do a bit more damage than it's doing right now.  Knockback feels great.  I felt the movement problems most severely on Simply Dead.  It is hard to get on those crates with Slipgate.  You have to circle-jump just perfectly.  Once I got a weapon I did decent, it's getting the weapons I was having the trouble with.

To be fair, I will admit I got a nice BFG9000 run on SD when I spawned as Doom, but only one run with it.  For context, there was another Doomer that used the 9000 as often as he could.  I still do exceedingly well with the Doomer, so I'm not the best metric to use for how well the class does on average.  (I have some thoughts on this I'll post soon as well)

Strogg feels fine to me, even with just a 100 point rail.  I used the rocket launcher, SSG, grenade launcher, and chaingun to good effect.

Earth feels fine.  I really like the class now, I think it feels as close to perfect as we can get.  Rob kills me just as easily with the mortar now as he did before.  I had no trouble using the class, nor did I have trouble dying from it.

In regards to class balance, I'm wondering, what should be our best metric?  So far our playerbase tends to have two distinct groups:  Those who play Gen a lot, and those who are brand new.  Those who play Gen a lot have a specific class they tend to favor, and do well with.  Those who are brand new usually grab a class and try it out.  This lends itself to some interesting scenarios:

1)  People who are long-time players who do extremely well with a particular class tend to make that class look very good.
2)  Skill differences between long-time players can make one class look better than another.
3)  People who are new players may find some classes easier to use than others and make them look good.
4)  People who are new players may find some classes very difficult to use and make them look expecially bad.
5)  Maps can favor one class heavily over another.

For example, say someone is new to Q3, and is new to Gen, and picks the Strogg Troopers.  They get fragged repeatedly.  This makes Strogg look bad.  Take someone who is used to Q3, but not used to Gen.  That person can make the Q3 class look especially good.  Take someone who usually plays Doom, they pick the Q3 class, and the Q3 class looks especially wimpy.  A specific class may be easier for newer players to use.  That's not necessarily a balance factor, but more an "ease of use" question.

Now, take a lot of new players, and say that Doom is the "easier" class for new players to get some frags in.  He runs fast, and can get up close in a hurry and unload some damage.  Then throw in a few high-skill, Gen regulars.  So, if more newer players use Doom, and get some frags, it makes Doom look good, whereas they might make the other new players using other classes look especially bad owing to learning curve for the other classes.  I will grant that Doom tends to be the class that is "most easily used the most recklessly".  There's no doubt in my mind it's easier to be reckless with it, hence the term "rabid Doomer".

Now let's deal with experienced players.  Take someone like Rob.  He plays Earth.  He makes Earth look good, and tends to pound the daylights out of all but a few people on a regular basis.  Tekhead made Slipgate look damned good, and some players like rdw I've seen make Slipgate look almost god-like.  I make Doom look nearly undefeatable.  At the same time, someone like dzJepp can give me a run for the money using Strogg when I'm Doom and make me work for those frags.  I can do pretty good as Strogg, and make a server full of Doomers look like a server full of targets, depending on map of course.  That complicates the equation to a large degree.

Complicte it even further by throwing in certain maps that heavily favor one class or another.

So now we see a severe shift in how the class balance appears, depending on the following criteria:

1)  Number of experienced players
2)  Class choice of experienced players
3)  Number of inexperienced players
4)  Class choice of inexperienced players
5)  Level design and item placement

Also to consider are:

5)  The "Purist" factor
6)  The "Nostalgia" factor

That's a lot to take in, and is giving me a pretty stark picture of just how complex Gen's balancing game really is.  Frankly, I'm amazed we've done as well as we have so far.

it does tend to be that way

i play as slipgate and where as i'll never be as good as tekhead

i do tend to favor it on the whole, due to my experience playing quake world

it's just a case of which class you prefer

oh pho as for the mission pack weapons for the quake 1 series they were

the lava nailgun (basically the same normal nailgun but with lava nails instead of regular nails, they did a ton of damage and made a hissing sound when ever they hit anything)

The Cluster Rocket / Grenade Launcher thing ( would be way to powerful for gen )

a Plasma Gun , Similar to doom only not as fast

and a wickedly powerful proxy launcher (not like the one from Q3TA, which was a bit pants)  :evil:

so you only need 2 weapon slots for quake 1 add ons as the lava nails were an upgrade for the original nailgun

the cluster rockets / grenades were an alternate fire for said weapons

so you would only need models for the plasma gun & Proxy Launcher

I suppose you could do like painkeep with the nailgun in regards to the lava nails

as it would make the original nailgun used more

if you don't decide to add mission pack weapon it's not a great loss as it would seriously unbalance some of the classes

For me, the metric feels a lot less confused.
I do not excel with any one class, because I have no favourite. I rarely, if ever anymore, use a single class in an entire game (excepting [class]-only nights, obviously), and my scores and game results are not dependant of class used (shy from the aforementioned slippy on q3dm16 extreme example). That said, I win quite a few of at least the Euro games by a fair margin, regardless of class.

When comparing a class's toughness, I don't just tick off # kills and say: 'well, he's got # ticks, and he's got # - 1, so the former is too strong'. My approach is based on mental notes made throughout all games I've played and witnessed so far (especially since .99e), on both Euro and US servers. Many dogfights are comparable, and after playing so often and so regularly, it becomes easier to try and make matches: "slipgate at the end of this hallway, earth at the other end, both packing plenty of rockets/m-shells.". Patterns emerge. I usually play with and against players who's styles I've seen evolve.

I'm known (or at least  known to myself) to live a LONG time when I'm not having an off day, and I've just noticed I can live through (clumsy) assaults by Earth, Strogg, Slipgate and Arena players, but very few by Doom. When I play with the class, I often find myself switching to other weapons in the same situations, just to keep it enjoyable. There's only so many times fellow players can appreciate being blown to dust by a clusterbomb of Doom rockets or a single shotgun blast in the face, before both they and I tire of it. This is an effect that I have with no other class, except perhaps sniper & railgun usage on q3dm16 (again that unbalanced map ;)).  And neither am I trying to brag, I'm merely saying that I do not have  specialist skills or a favourite class, but I'm starting to get a least favourite class this way.


The ease-of-use factor does come into play, I do agree. However, I feel Doom is both easy to use, and allows for perfection of usage (using his speed to the fullest, using the chaingun effectively, using rockets to deny opponents an exit to the room while closing in, etc, etc), which results in a class that is powerful, but not all dominating, in the hands of a newbie, and at the same time a class that is all powerful in the hands of a long-time player. Only the top players are known to make use of speeds to get to spawning items quickly, only top players are known to make 'quadruns' effectively and so on. The latter is the bigger problem, obviously. If Doom could only be used by players with a limited level of experience and skill, all would be fine and dandy - that would indeed help the balance the entire game - sounds like it'd be hard to enforce though ;]

Tab, once again, says it better than I could.

Doom is extremely easy to get some frags with. Even as a newbie. With a good player, he's just a can-o-whoop-ass and we've got an electric can opener. If a newbie can spam a lot and get multiple frags, a good player can aim those shots and get many more.

In most situations, there's no defense against the RL. The only defense against the plasmagun is extreme range and open areas. The SSG is the most balanced of his weapons, as all you have to do is dodge effectively. The chaingun is deadly at any range in the hands of an experienced player; newbies are deadly with it at close and medium range.

The mega-spamminess of the Doom guns is the biggest problem. There is no problem just carpeting an area with rockets or plasma, or firing the chaingun at a group of players a bit down the hall. Either way is a sure frag, and probably more.

I would disagree that there's no defense whatsoever against the rocket launcher.  I know several players who manage to dodge them quite often.  I will agree that Doom rockets tend to fly often, and they do tend to blow the crap out of things.  This is partly owing to the fact that he has two weapon pickups and ammo types that provide the rocket launcher and boxes of bombs to go with it, so it's hard to not run across a Doomer toting a rocket launcher and at least 5 bombs.  Earth's mortar takes time to refire, and he's slow, so it's not so much a problem for him now that the weapon has been tweaked to what I would consider a near-perfect state.  Slipgate doesn't get a Rocket Launcher for the Grenade Launcher pickup, so while his ammo might be equally as useful, his weapon spawns are not.  Strogg and Arena have split ammo and aren't relevant.

I think the main problem lies in availability.  I've mentioned on the Beta forum, but I'll also mention here for public discussion, that the original game only gave you 2 rockets at pickup.  We kept it at 5 just to stay consistent with the other classes.  Putting in a "low" ammo count of 1 rocket (Doom's small rocket pickup) for the grenade ammo would seem like too severe change to me, owing to the scarcity of grenade ammo and the fact that Slipgate and Earth both get the same useful quantity for their main projectile weapon, however changing the ammo pickup in the gun itself to 2 for either spawn is something I'm more than willing to test out.  You'd have to place your shots a lot more carefully until you could find some ammo crates or a nice juicy Skippy backpack.  That would hopefully cut back on the frequency of running into a Doomer toting around 5 rockets, unloading all 5 on a freshly spawned player, running over the nearest GL/RL spawn and having another 5 to do the same with.  There's also the direct hit damage to consider.  I know I'm hesitant on changing that, but if it's direct hits as opposed to splash that's doing the most brutal of the killing I could set them to the 100 + random 20 that everyone else is using.  I really don't know how much that would help when Rocket #2 lands on you though...

The other note I made was the chaingun.  We can lower the damage down to 10 from 15 so it's not so punishing a gun, especially since it's also a multiple-spawn weapon, having pickups for both railgun and lightning gun, and that pinpoint accuracy for those who know how to use it.  I really do not want to tinker with the plasma.  It's not a super-common spawn, there's usually only one on a map.  Honestly I see a lot more rocket and chaingun kills than plasma.  Most plasma kills I see are because someone ran headlong into the Doomer after rounding a corner, they got cornered during a firefight, or the Doomer found a crowd and sprayed into a few weak combatants.  Any of those situations would result in dead meat with just about any weapon except the pistol.  You'll never outmatch the plasma rifle on a weapon-for-weapon basis with something like a nailgun or hyperblaster, but against a chaingun or shaft it's got a more even footing.  I think if we tweak back the chaingun a bit, the plasma will fill Doom's version of the Q1 shaft slot, and the chaingun will be his "super-nailgun".  Putting him strong vs weak, and weak vs strong might actually help to balance in its own way instead of just hacking weapon damages, flight radii, etc.  The one area I will not touch is refire rates, for any class that has an old-school weapon to draw from.    That's got much more of a class-feel consideration than damage or projectile bounding box.

I realize Doom's weapons tend to be spammy by nature.  Unfortunately that's part of the class, and difficult to work around without destroying weapon feel and function.  I'd like to give the changes to the rocket and chaingun, along with the frames code switch time changes (once coded) a serious testing out.  If we still have problems with Doom being overly dominant on a regular basis we can always tweak from there.

The proposed changes sound very good to me, especially when keeping the frame-based changes in mind.

In regards to the plasmagun; I think it only kicks the shit out of everything in crowded games. When there's a central area where there's a bunch of players fighting, a simple fire and forget burst usually yields an easy pair of frags, that are harder to come by without such rapid fire projectiles. I can easily live with it, though. I also believe it took quite a while in Doom before you could fire the gun again after a burst, but it's been too long for me to know exactly how long or what effect that would have - if I'm right about that, it would probably help too.
Like you say, with the changes to the chaingun, the plasma deserves to be powerful again.

Here Here

I Agree with Tab and Pho

Although the Chaingun with Doom is Powerful and i have just tested it against a few bots

and it is quite accurate

which if i recall from doom and doom 2, it was nothing like as accurate

you did have to be right on top of somebody to get that sort of hit ratio

maybe the hit boxes are bigger, but as not being much of a coder i wouldn't know

so yeah it should be tweaked, not nerfed

just tweaked

so that the Plasma Rifle will rule again  :thumb:

That sounds good to me pho: 2 rockets per gun pickup.  That'll keep the ammo counts down enough to actually have a chance to dodge them all. Five rockets in 3 seconds in a small area is hard to dodge.

I'd actually wait for the doom frames system before changing the damage for a direct hit. If the rockets are going to be that much harder to use, then it may just do the trick.

is that a mistake I see :p

*Gives games keeper a "humiliation" award.*  :surprise:
Corrected.

first time I read your post to the bottem and I found a mistake :D

See? You should read my posts all the way through more often!