Ideas to revie SF-- BRAINSTORM YOU ARE NEEDED HERE
 

What ideas?
What niche/advantage does playing SF have over other games?

fort building is the obvious answer, but is that all?

Why do u play sf?

What can sf do to be more popular?

How to make it popular again? I think you restart completely with a new engine, bill the thing as a new hit indie shooter-builder-rts-zombie game, post a million blog posts about its development, make people pay for pre-orders. Then when that is done get some E-famous person to play it and make a video.

Or just like release the new version when its playable.

Why I played SF was..
It was cool to watch how people who played sourceforts developed new ways and tricks for building contraptions.
The gameplay itself was fun.
I liked the freedom the game offered.
I was excited for new content.

My idea? People think of sourceforts as an old, dead game. People don't go on because they know other people don't go on. I know it's easier said than done, but start seriously constructing a team of developers. Update the game enough to call it 2.0. Get some legitimate spoilers/trailers going, release a steady flow of concept art. Get people hyped. Release it on a very specific date and time, so people will KNOW other people are going to get on. You now have all the oldies that never got on because no one else ever did , but also new players that want to get in on it.

EDIT: Also.. have some dedicated sf oldies to play everyday at a certain time of day. Maybe it could generate some players if they see that other people are playing.
And I would be sad if the building mechanics were changed too much. I always thought part of the fun was figuring out not only what to build, but how to build it. If it were really easy and convenient to place a block anywhere you wanted, it wouldn't be as fun. imo.

a time machine

we've been trying to get a prototype to send to Valve, see if we can get an indie license of some sort. But with Zoc being busing with his Thesis we aren't going anywhere with the mod.

You talk about a new engine, I guess you mean UDK or Crytek3. The problem with those is that no one has ever made a working gravity gun. another thing to know is that they don't release any source code, it's all scripting (Source offers more liberty since you get a big part of the engine' source code).

I would love to get an indie license and sell it on Steam. But the huge thing that happened to PH since it started is that most of the devs get lazy/busy, disapear etc...
so to be able to sell (or get anything decent done) we would need a dedicated dev team that can work at least 12 hours each week. if we can make that happen I'm sure we could have a good prototype if not beta in 4 months.


^ THIS.

#1

*When the number of blocks was high, everybody wanted to build contraptions, giant ramps, or personal bunkers. This by itself wasn't a problem (and it's fun the first few times) but when the flag was captured it sounded like failure. Noobs would rage quit after spending 10 minutes building a sniper tower only to have the flag capped in the first 60 seconds.

*When the number of blocks was normal there are optimal solutions to each map.
A) It is (was) possible to build a perfect base and therefore pub games with two good teams ended in stalemates. On the flip side a single misplaced block would result in a steamroll for the entire team.

B) Lower block counts required bases be build closer to perfection. This drew a gap between people who knew the plan and people who didn't. Usually this meant one person tore down everything else and build the entire base solo. This often resulted in rage, tears, and griefing from a new player who's nade cannon just got destroyed.

Solution: make sf more fluid during combat. Flags should be on the field more often and capping should be a regular event.

#2

There was also a huge divide between the skill level of players on pub servers and the pug groups. Other games have this too (CS/CS:S) but SF was never large enough to compensate. The best players could always win for their team in a pub server, but if you cap the flag in the first 60 seconds the server clears out. With nowhere else to go, the whole game would die for a while.

Solution: Balancing so that pro players don't have as much of an advantage. I know this is a volatile subject (at least it was) but trick jumping was the real problem here. Think how tf2 requires no 'inside knowledge' or special tricks to be good. (I know they exist but it's not as common as in other games)

Disagree.


Yeah, some of this is true (i.e. wanting to build random stuff that wasn't helpful), but it's more of just the whole losing thing in general. The fact that there were 300 blocks and someone built a 200 piece sniper tower (unrealistic, but that aside) and they got capped on in less than a minute, is irrelevant. People will quit when they lose in any game, the amount of blocks doesn't matter.


Perfect bases in pubs never happened. The 35 block prebuilds aren't perfect. I've never seen a "perfect base" in a pub. A perfect base would have virtually no method of getting the flag and no weakness to even attempt to exploit (for example, one area being single thick compared to triple on another area). This never happened in any pub that I was ever a part of (maybe one). Misplacing a single block can obviously be hazardous but that's possible in more than just pubs (see bE vs Suverin cerca early .2, 2007/F41L's slam climbable flagd), at least before prebuilds obviously.



Hardly. Most people who would "know the plan" would never ever ever build. It doesn't happen in pugs, and "top pubbers" that never played in any pugs don't know the "perfect base". I wouldn't say it 'often' resulted in rage either. Maybe occasionally. A lot of the time in the post 1.9.2 era, certainly, there was a lot of "this is quite useless, do you mind if we put it on the wall?" Obviously there wasn't a lot of this, given uberforting and such, so this is a rare occurence one way or the other.

This is always a possibility. I always felt like 1.9.2 style - with 6000 blockhealth and more stalemates and what not - was better for the game than the rocketspam/dominated game that .3-.4 turned into. Seriously, think about it.

1.9.2 had closer games and was more open for either team to win (which is the important thing IMO), as talented cappers on both sides always made for amazing moments. In 1.9.4, capping skill is more or less irrelevant. Pugs turned into who can frag the most, as who can frag the most would get the wall down sooner due to more time in mid, thus have the flag open sooner and so on. As I said, in 1.9.2, it never felt so dominated as it did in 1.9.4


You are right here. TF2 is the same way. The key thing is having enough players to compensate for having largely varying skill levels. I still disagree with the "cap the flag in the first 60 seconds the server clears out". Perhaps this was the case with uberforting - I tried to avoid 120+ block servers as much as possible when I played - but there was always a good portion at the very least that would stay despite giving up a cap.

You're right, to an extent here. Pro players will have an advantage in every game and will be much more polished in everything "trick" related. There needs to be something to distinguish between good and bad, otherwise you have a really horrible game. The trick is implementing something that takes skill, but requires a lot of skill to be *great* at, not just *servicable for a pub level*

any suggestions on how to fix all those "facts"?

I'll just leave this here.

I made it over a year ago. In an hour.

I remember this. Really and awesome and really impressive :]

Edit: also, you don't get any of the engine code with the source sdk, the UDK and source sdk basically give you the same amount of openness.