Patch 180 Difficulty give your opinion

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KNC
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Re: Patch 180 Difficulty give your opinion

Post by KNC » Sat May 24, 2014 4:53 pm

After playing on the 180 server a little I must say that rather calling the difficulty too high or too low I'd call it unbalanced and weird.

On the one side I guess if you'd start with level 10, not 100, you couldn't even kill 1 damn monster.
On the other side with level 100, a wand, a little bit of luck and a strategy you can already get past wave 20 and finish the game. Alone that is. It just doesn't scale.

Speaking about luck, or rather it's opposite, having a blue deemer Luci spawn behind you, giving you an insta-kill with absolutely full protection is neither fun, nor challenging, nor fair, it's just stupid. Really. It happened to me twice in 8 games or something. Having a challenge and not winning always is totally cool, but then let it be the difficulty itself, not something that feels like the enemies are cheating. This should be about playing, not praying.

And then there's this new, absolutely HORRIBLE idea of having kills instead of EXP to level up. I probably can't even sum up all the bad things it brings with it, but it does not bring anything good with it.
Using kills instead of EXP to level up...
...promotes abusing your teammates to weaken enemies and just to deliver the finishing blow yourself, whereas the EXP motivates you to help your teammates as you will always get exactly the share you deserved
...will let new players find it really hard to level up when there are high level players ravaging the enemies
...makes how fast you get to a new level dependant more on luck than with EXP
...just feels wrong, plain wrong. The levels and the EXP felt just about fine in 179

This new level system makes me want to go back to 179, INV-RPG just isn't meant for this stuff, please simply go back to the EXP system we had in 179 or bring in some good ideas, not horrible ones.
That's just work invested into making the game feel unnatural and frustrating, it's a FAIL-FAIL.

Now that the negative critique is out of the way, there are many good points of course, and 180 could become pretty awesome.

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Re: Patch 180 Difficulty give your opinion

Post by bananaface » Sun May 25, 2014 11:59 am

KNC wrote:After playing on the 180 server a little I must say that rather calling the difficulty too high or too low I'd call it unbalanced and weird.

On the one side I guess if you'd start with level 10, not 100, you couldn't even kill 1 damn monster.
On the other side with level 100, a wand, a little bit of luck and a strategy you can already get past wave 20 and finish the game. Alone that is. It just doesn't scale.

Speaking about luck, or rather it's opposite, having a blue deemer Luci spawn behind you, giving you an insta-kill with absolutely full protection is neither fun, nor challenging, nor fair, it's just stupid. Really. It happened to me twice in 8 games or something. Having a challenge and not winning always is totally cool, but then let it be the difficulty itself, not something that feels like the enemies are cheating. This should be about playing, not praying.

And then there's this new, absolutely HORRIBLE idea of having kills instead of EXP to level up. I probably can't even sum up all the bad things it brings with it, but it does not bring anything good with it.
Using kills instead of EXP to level up...
...promotes abusing your teammates to weaken enemies and just to deliver the finishing blow yourself, whereas the EXP motivates you to help your teammates as you will always get exactly the share you deserved
...will let new players find it really hard to level up when there are high level players ravaging the enemies
...makes how fast you get to a new level dependant more on luck than with EXP
...just feels wrong, plain wrong. The levels and the EXP felt just about fine in 179

This new level system makes me want to go back to 179, INV-RPG just isn't meant for this stuff, please simply go back to the EXP system we had in 179 or bring in some good ideas, not horrible ones.
That's just work invested into making the game feel unnatural and frustrating, it's a FAIL-FAIL.

Now that the negative critique is out of the way, there are many good points of course, and 180 could become pretty awesome.

Difficulty is still being adjusted and not final.
Our intention is to make things challenging but not impossible at any level.
Difficulty of new/low level players is something we're definitly concerned about and they will get some love.
You're not meant to always win but it is very much possible as of right now to complete all 20 waves on your own with regular weapons with any playstyle.

Deemer shield is gonna be fixed so it works against blue deemer luci's deemer so that it will still do significant damage while you're shielded but no longer instagibs.
As of right now the shield isn't working properly, only works against the initial impact damage but not against the ticks from the explosion.

Most monsters don't have enormous healthpools and (when we're done tweaking) no longer have rediculous scaling as on 179 so they get killed a lot faster and that works just fine with the new xp system.
Kill stealing won't be easy if the monsters die fast and you will most of the time be busy trying to survive rather then hoarding kills.
Luck will always be a factor just as it is on 179, you have to be lucky you get the PU's and weapons you'd like and have luck with the monsters spawning that you find easiest to deal with.
Xp on 179 promotes being a glasscannon for fast leveling while the intention is to survive as long as possible to bring down the average monster level to make it easier for all players.
Xp is still something we're gonna look at if it needs tweaking or not, as of right now we're mainly testing and adjusting difficulty and monsterscaling.

Keep in mind, adjusting 1 factor can have an impact on 10 others and many things are still being adjusted.
Also, certain things are temporarely disabled/adjusted for testing purposes or aren't working properly.
Nothing is final so if something doesn't work it's gonna be changed/removed most likely.
Aka Nanners.

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Re: Patch 180 Difficulty give your opinion

Post by KNC » Sun May 25, 2014 3:04 pm

bananaface wrote:Deemer shield is gonna be fixed so it works against blue deemer luci's deemer so that it will still do significant damage while you're shielded but no longer instagibs.
As of right now the shield isn't working properly, only works against the initial impact damage but not against the ticks from the explosion.
Ok that explains a lot. If that will be fixed things will be a lot better. I totally agree on luck or misfortune as you mentioned it, only the blue lucis and general uncounterable insta-gib enemies spwawning behind your back were my problem.

As for the "glasscannons", I do get your point. I always played for survival though and while the glasscanon players around me died I typically got the XP they missed out on so I didn't think of it this way. But then I'd really like somewhat easier to kill monsters as you stated, and maybe somewhat weaker as well, but instead a huge load of them, and maybe even one or two more waves, something to even out the spikes.
Oh and as for luck, the game is now just simply spamming Razor Blade/Blast Cannon/Flare Launcher and stuff like that. I typically have 5 of each in wave 10 and they are being dropped so often I'd never bother to ask another player for them anymore.

To me, your reply totally points in the right direction.
(And by the way, I love how the rock and wand shields now don't offer total protection anymore, didn't like the everything or nothing approach from before.)

Oh and there are still a dozen damn old bugs around that I've known since years. Isn't it time to fix those as well? Is there a thread for known bugs somewhere I missed so I can check if all of the ones I experienced are reported?

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Re: Patch 180 Difficulty give your opinion

Post by bananaface » Sun May 25, 2014 6:48 pm

KNC wrote:
bananaface wrote:Deemer shield is gonna be fixed so it works against blue deemer luci's deemer so that it will still do significant damage while you're shielded but no longer instagibs.
As of right now the shield isn't working properly, only works against the initial impact damage but not against the ticks from the explosion.
Ok that explains a lot. If that will be fixed things will be a lot better. I totally agree on luck or misfortune as you mentioned it, only the blue lucis and general uncounterable insta-gib enemies spwawning behind your back were my problem.

As for the "glasscannons", I do get your point. I always played for survival though and while the glasscanon players around me died I typically got the XP they missed out on so I didn't think of it this way. But then I'd really like somewhat easier to kill monsters as you stated, and maybe somewhat weaker as well, but instead a huge load of them, and maybe even one or two more waves, something to even out the spikes.
Oh and as for luck, the game is now just simply spamming Razor Blade/Blast Cannon/Flare Launcher and stuff like that. I typically have 5 of each in wave 10 and they are being dropped so often I'd never bother to ask another player for them anymore.

To me, your reply totally points in the right direction.
(And by the way, I love how the rock and wand shields now don't offer total protection anymore, didn't like the everything or nothing approach from before.)

Oh and there are still a dozen damn old bugs around that I've known since years. Isn't it time to fix those as well? Is there a thread for known bugs somewhere I missed so I can check if all of the ones I experienced are reported?

The only monsters that are intended to be able to instagib you are melee only monsters (vader and sawyer).

Currently not planning to make the monsters weaker, like how they hurt a lot don't have much health.
Total time spend in a single map is around the same as on 179 so I think we're good in that regard.
Spikes are fine because with it not every wave feels the same.

PU drop rate is still being tweaked, weapon balance is something that is gonna happen in another patch to increase the viability of weapons like bio SR and link.

Bugs are still being worked on same with errors, plan is to fix most of them but some we have no clue about what is causing them.
As far as I know there is no thread about it but feel free to make one or just post it here.
Known bugs:
- wave overlap (still determining wich monster causes it).
- wave hangup (still determining wich monster causes it).
- various sound bugs
- 1 skaarj projectile
- turretlauncher error
- russian/german soldiers holding their weapons wrong/having their helmets wrong
- other monsters holding weapons weird
- commander bugs
- xm8 bug
- vehicles doubling weapon speed
- stegosaurus projectile
- dragons stop attacking when they're hit
- certain pu's retaining their effect on other weapons (speed5, shield regen, health regen etc).
- heal pu not working with certain weapons
- certain pu's of weapons don't destroy nukes while they should
- purpling a lucky weapon creates crazy amounts of pickups
- revive in last wave makes you lose all your weapons
- ghost turns non magical weapons into magical weapons
- ghosting while crouching makes you near invinsible
- bunker size scale
- blue wrench doesn't work after you use medic weapon maker
- run away loop error (still no clue how to fix it)

I think that covers it, might have missed some.
Aka Nanners.

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Re: Patch 180 Difficulty give your opinion

Post by Amy Infless » Mon May 26, 2014 9:57 am

bananaface wrote:
KNC wrote:... having a blue deemer Luci spawn behind you, giving you an insta-kill with absolutely full protection is neither fun, nor challenging, nor fair, it's just stupid. Really. It happened to me twice in 8 games or something. Having a challenge and not winning always is totally cool, but then let it be the difficulty itself, not something that feels like the enemies are cheating. This should be about playing, not praying..

...Our intention is to make things challenging but not impossible at any level.
...
Deemer shield is gonna be fixed so it works against blue deemer luci's deemer so that it will still do significant damage while you're shielded but no longer instagibs.....
thats exactly why we stopped to invite a loser friend to our lan-parties. have you ever seen a 40 year old man crying because of loosing a game? we had enough from him! "stop killing me from behind!" "again you killed me from up top!" and so on...

it doesnt matter if its INV or any other gamestyle, there will be allways monsters, bots or players who cowardly kill you "from behind". what comes next, "please program invsion monsters so they only can kill me when i see them!" ????

i dont see no reason why only the endboss should be a pain in the butt. i see the next posts:

"vader spawned behind me and killed me" ... ok... vader will be deleted... like the wand in wave 9.
"the sawyer spawned behind me and killed me"... ok... sawyer will be deleted, 2.
"the minelayermonster in wave 9 spawned behind me and killed me!" ... ok... these were disabeld, 3.
"the endboss luzi spawned behind me and toasted me!" ... ...will be instantly removed, 4.
"a titan spawned on my head and crushed me" ...ok we have phantom pu now but it rarely spawns in the future.
good, delete both, phantom pu and all titans.

whats left? a right. patch 179...
hmmm.. or not. even there the most fearable monsters were deleted, still dont know why. guess some run and
gun-score-w###s whined to much about they cant get 20k scores anymore because of "them"...
(the only transable elite/super-(wand-)soldiers...)

open the doors for run and gunners again.

so pity noone remembers good old times 7 years ago. one player screamed "WAND", and 15 other players
run away in any direction anywere trying to hide, just to be NOT INSTAKILLED, there existed no wandshields that time.
EVERYONE feared at least ONE monster. and im sure it often happend that it spawned "BEHIND" someone and killed
someone, and noone cryed in forum about its beeing unfair, not challenging, or stupid.
they just took it as part of the game. you played now a handfull maps and all you do is crying, instead of trying.
so, remove it and like there will be noone screaming full of fear "wand" anymore, noone will scream
"BLUE DEEMER LUZI"...



i lost my interest to play the different 180 patches/versions before, and now exactly because of they started to whine
about "its to hard" etc. made my interest come back and i tried it. not for a handfull maps. not for hours.
i played it for days now. and i really like it. "I" know that blue deemerluzi appears randomly every now and then,
but if you "listen" you will hear it comming. believe me it did not kill only you "from behind". find out new strategies
instead of run and gun without beeing hurt.
also if you know blue deemerluzi appears more often from wave 15 on and finally regular in wave 19/20, should make
you play more carefull.

this is not a cakewalk, its "war".

ats

ps.: a compromise maybe would be if its possible to create a "incantation time" for these kinds of monsters, like you
hear 5-10 seconds some special sound or music before "IT" spawns.
but i guess that dont work too since 179 is so easy to play and many players prefer to listen to AC/DC while plaiyng
instead of listening to the boring gamesounds...
Do not try kill THIS bug !!! ->Image Your monitor may not like it...

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Re: Patch 180 Difficulty give your opinion

Post by KNC » Mon May 26, 2014 11:39 am

Sorry if it sounded like whining, I can tell you it isn't. I love a true uphill struggle in my games and the things that frustrate me most are if things are too easy and boring or if I constantly die because I just have misfortune. If a game is really hard I love it as long as luck doesn't become more important than skill and intelligence. And it's just that currently luck is much more important for survival and that bothers me, not the difficulty. Actually it still needs to be more difficult I think.

The incantation time with some sound you could hear would be a great idea. Maybe even better instead of them spawning directly, there could be a light/graphic/whatever that would indicate their appearance a short time before they are actually there and start shooting. Oh and 5-10 seconds is already too much I think, make it 3-5 seconds or something but not more, it should only level out the luck/misfortune factor after all. That way it is at least my stupidity for not paying attention to my surroundings or the result of an actual fight when I still die.

Oh and when I mentioned evening the spikes I just meant to kill off these cases of extreme misfortune. No other kinds of spikes, I know and agree these spikes in game events are necessary and important for the fun.

Oh and as for the bugs:
- certain pu's retaining their effect on other weapons (speed5, shield regen, health regen [the regens do not work on different weapons for me anymore, only the speed PUs] etc)
- the effect of the health/shield regen PUs vanishes sometimes, rendering these PUs useless once that happens, and I have no clue why and when this happens
- when I dropped a chain gun turret once it unloaded the 2 PUs I put into my weapon previously, weird. The PUs were Super Lucky and Summon if that may matter
- some weapons which should be able to be dropped are still "glued" to you (the sam cannon for example if I remember right)

I surely missed some more bugs, I might make a thread later like you suggested or something.

Edit: The Super Soldiers which could only be transkilled are gone? Damn I liked their weirdness somehow, I wouldn't mind them put back into the game.

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Re: Patch 180 Difficulty give your opinion

Post by bananaface » Mon May 26, 2014 1:20 pm

KNC wrote:The incantation time with some sound you could hear would be a great idea. Maybe even better instead of them spawning directly, there could be a light/graphic/whatever that would indicate their appearance a short time before they are actually there and start shooting. Oh and 5-10 seconds is already too much I think, make it 3-5 seconds or something but not more, it should only level out the luck/misfortune factor after all. That way it is at least my stupidity for not paying attention to my surroundings or the result of an actual fight when I still die.
How fast you react to monsters spawning on your ass is part of skill, giving an early warning sound would only cater towards less skill.
- certain pu's retaining their effect on other weapons (speed5, shield regen, health regen [the regens do not work on different weapons for me anymore, only the speed PUs] etc)
Regens retain their effect if you crouch while switching weapons.
- the effect of the health/shield regen PUs vanishes sometimes, rendering these PUs useless once that happens, and I have no clue why and when this happens
Haven't seen this happen but I'll test it.
Edit: The Super Soldiers which could only be transkilled are gone? Damn I liked their weirdness somehow, I wouldn't mind them put back into the game.
They might be put back in, can't promise anything.
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Re: Patch 180 Difficulty give your opinion

Post by Amy Infless » Mon May 26, 2014 6:54 pm

bananaface wrote: How fast you react to monsters spawning on your ass is part of skill, giving an early warning sound would only cater towards less skill.
problem is in that case not how fast you can react or how good your skills are, problem is you are instantly dead when it
spawns. in that case i have to agree with knc. anyways it doesnt matter if it spawns in front of you, only difference is you might have the panic shooting reaction kill luck or a lucky vorpal kill before it fires the first deemer, while you cant do that when you are dead.

i guess a penalty time, like it can only shoot deemers or be killed when its appearing music ended, isnt something that anyone want.. at least you have time to run away....
bananaface wrote:
KNC wrote: - certain pu's retaining their effect on other weapons (speed5, shield regen, health regen [the regens do not work on different weapons for me anymore, only the speed PUs] etc)
Regens retain their effect if you crouch while switching weapons.
i thought that is still part of the "cheating" bug from 179 and not be fixed yet.
so why the change now to let it stay that way??
as far i know it wasnt supposed to work that way, too, plan was to make it "only work on the weapon you hold"!

KNC wrote: the effect of the health/shield regen PUs vanishes sometimes, rendering these PUs useless once that happens, and I have no clue why and when this happens
you sure you started to crouch to make it work? if its on other wops it doesnt work unless you crouch and switch weapons, anyways like i said before, it shouldnt work that way....
bananaface wrote: They might be put back in, can't promise anything.
dont promise... joey did that twice and they still didnt return... :(
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Re: Patch 180 Difficulty give your opinion

Post by ZombieSlayer » Tue May 27, 2014 1:17 am

- vehicles doubling weapon speed is caused by the reloading of the rpg stats when exiting a vehicle, since the speed stat is built off of the native code. Joey might remember us talking about this many years ago :D

About the "certain pu's retaining their effect on other weapons (speed5, shield regen, health regen etc)." I think Vaptor hit on the idea that the way it ties into the native code for those stats and the only way to "fix" it is to buy rights to the native code so it could be edited. If that were done almost every bug listed could be fixed by integrating the code without having to build upon classes. So the bugs centered around the way they are tied into the native code might never be "fixable."

blue wrench doesn't work after you use medic weapon maker... not sure if I'm remembering this right or not, but we (Joey, Kyle, myself) attributed it to the way the mwm pu is based on the magic weapons code from rpg.

I haven't looked at UT code in ... well many years so I may be misremembering a couple of things. I no longer have my notes or transcripts of a couple of our chats (that pc is long gone).
If you lost your cd and have the old drive and have not reinstalled UT2004 or reformatted the drive, you can find your old cd key in the registry here ...

My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Unreal Technologies\Installed Apps\UT2004

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Re: Patch 180 Difficulty give your opinion

Post by Gothicize » Tue May 27, 2014 1:35 am

ZombieSlayer wrote:-I haven't looked at UT code in ... well many years so I may be misremembering a couple of things. I no longer have my notes or transcripts of a couple of our chats (that pc is long gone).
Dear god that was awhile ago. I believe the Blue kit was just missing something in the code but like you said that was many years ago. O hey Zombie tell your dad I said Hi.

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