thereby indirectly avoiding studying for my exam

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/featur...y_.php?print=1

^^This link is integral to understanding anything I'm talking about, so read it if you have any intention of understanding me.

I posted some shit in the dev forums about it, but I wanted to see what you all thought about it. primarily the parts about:

1. Tutorials integrated into combat.

2. Bring players down to bring them back up.

3. close combat.

4. protected turrets (which in SF means everything, since players can turn just about any weapon into a "turret".

This section seems to be a bit dead, so i figured I'd liven them up a bit by giving some people something to talk about. As I said, we've got a few ideas of our own that i may share later with you all, but I'd like some community input as to how we should approach these issues with 2.0.

Not a bad idea. I like how there's a random tip when loading a server in TF2, for example.
Fairly sure it was brought up before that it would be too hard to code in a tip designated for how you died.

I actually think this is in place to a certain extent in 1.9.#. Obviously it can't be the same considering the article is talking about a console game where there is a definite storyline, though.
Could be fixed in 1.9.# by further shortening the nade timer.

Don't really like the idea if any weapon could work. Sounds like it would give defense an obvious advantage.

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Before you ask why he's banned. Simply, he requested to be. He personally found that he visited this site too much, for no reason. Lack of self control I guess, but there you go. Ask him if you want on his Steam. -Black™

It would be a lot easier to speculate and discuss good ideas on SF2 if we, the general community, had a better idea of how SF2 actually works.

How can I say what, in my opinion would, work for a game I know nothing about. How can I suggest anything for any class based on nothing. It would be like me trying to cure AIDS with no knowledge whatsoever of how the virus operates within the human body.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to read the original design document we released, then just think of a game were combat and building are fairly equal and both are required to achieve the goal of winning.

Then you can wait patiently for Oddjob to finish of collating everything nicely into a new design document.

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God.

The over-protected turret (as the article states) is a negative element, but it's one that SF in its current design has an abundance of. With current forts, you can make a fully protected "turret" with anything, and according to this article (and imo), it isn't good for the game.

And ferrari, you know how it works. Each map has 5 points, and on each side, there is a flag. Capturing the flag earns your team points, and that task becomes easier as you capture CP's. Building is done during combat, and is focused around the same general concepts we've got in 19x: things like walls, bunkers, ramps, etc.

The classes are different, some building mechanics are different, but most all of that is still being worked on, and is therefore no more concrete to us than it is to you.

Ah, then that makes sense. Is the question about proper balancing? If so, then everyone's going to have a hard time providing constructive support given that the majority know nothing about it.

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Before you ask why he's banned. Simply, he requested to be. He personally found that he visited this site too much, for no reason. Lack of self control I guess, but there you go. Ask him if you want on his Steam. -Black™

Here's part of what I posted in the dev forums:
"

1: Tutorial

We should try to integrate the tutorial into the gameplay as much as possible. I honestly think that, assuming our building system is intuitive enough, we could pull off a l4d style training system that only tells players how to do things, rather than a traditional "tutorial." They will likely be turned off by a mandatory tutorial, some might even skip it, so if we can intercept their questions about the game with suggestions a la l4d, it might work out.

2: Weapon design

"When players are protected and not getting harmed, utilizing these weapons led to low engagement levels. When players were consistently damaged, unprotected, or challenged by equally powerful enemies, the payoff was huge: engagement rose often to off-the-charts levels."

On defenses:
"The failure lies in how protected the players are. In Resistance, one of the players' experiences with turrets in the first 90 minutes is from within a huge tank. In Halo 2, players utilize small, unprotected turrets that nearly ensure that they will be harmed, if not killed, if they remain on the turret for long."

Given that we're allowing players to build their own fortifications, we're going to need a way to make sure that players are still vulnerable behind their walls.

As such, I propose a few things:

the assault rifle (soldier weapon, i guess) be able to shoot through walls, though at the cost of a significant amount of damage. This is not enough to do any major damage, but enough that the players behind know they're still somewhat vulnerable.

Make block destruction damaging; when an enemy destroys one of your blocks, it should hurt the blocks around it, as well as allied players around it (no indirect friendly fire. allied players cannot attack blocks, only rip them, so as to prevent friendly fire griefing.) This should moderately damage, but never kill, a player (even if the damage would cause more damage than he would take to die)


3: sniping
" The difference between engaging sniping and disengaging sniping also lies in the threats posed to the shooter."

Given that players can build their own defenses, it would be unwise to implement a full sniper class."

That's not all of it, but everything that's there is based entirely on info you all have.

First and foremost, I WANT A GODDAMNED MELEE CLASS. THERE ARE NOW FACTS TO PROVE HOW AWESOME A MELEE CLASS WOULD BE.

1) Anyway, I like what the dev team tried to do/started with tutorials in 19x. The popup things are unobtrusive and let you try things out for yourself without holding your hand and forcing you to build a perfectly vertical wall ten times.

2) The best way to get this done in a multiplayer game is to have biggish maps. In Dystopia, (and some of the bigger sf maps like that crystal one, sf_crevice, & sf_fronts) the maps put you on edge because there's a period where you've just spawned and most likely won't see enemies (but it's possible) then there's a period where you run around and have a few mid-range 1 on 1 fights, and finally you get to where the action is and have an in-your-face orgy of combat.

In sourceforts, assaulting the enemy fort should be interesting, but the climax should be when a teammate is blasting back to cap the flag.

3) GIMME A FUCKING MELEE CLASS. From what I've seen of 2.haven maps, it looks like you're going for a big long stretch of map. To help close combat, you should break maps down into seperate rooms or add a lot of corners (so the map looks more zig-zag than a line).

4) I like the idea of having a weapon shoot through blocks, but I think the assault class's main weapon either shouldn't do that or do ridiculously low amounts of damage just to annoy people who are sitting in a bunker. I think there should be some specialized weapon that goes through blocks and does regular damage instead.

5) I think sniping would be ok if it did less damage, left a big tracer, and were hitscan. That way at least snipers couldn't just camp the same spot for an hour.

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if you guys do impliment a text based help like currently make sure you are able to disable it as it gets annoying after a while.

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11:29 p.m. - ☢ AZgAg: did the fgd was moved?

The system is good if we could implement it like Left 4 Dead, where you're prompted until you start doing it yourself. However SF isn't a linear game like L4D, especially so with SF2 where there is no specific build round. You can't drop in hints like "press mouse 2 to push the boomer away before shooting", because there are no hard and fast rules for gameplay, it varies too much based on your opponent and your own skills.

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God.