Rationale Behind Gameplay Decisions?

[Jimmy]

Red Eclipse is a bit different than other FPSs I've played, and I'm curious why some of the things are the way they are (by default).

1) Why is the health system the way it is? Most FPSs I've played do not have health regeneration, and have health and other buffing pick ups.

2) Why is the weapon item system the way it is? Why have a limited loadout? Why do you have to press a button to pick things up (I guess it makes sense if you have a limited loadout)? Why have unlimited ammo instead of ammo pick ups?

In most FPSs I've played, pick ups add a kind of "map control" dimension to deathmatch gameplay, which I enjoy. This is mostly missing in Red Eclipse from what I can tell so far (just started playing it).

It'd also be nice if the rationale behind the gameplay decisions were in the wiki. Maybe with suggested strategies and tactics too? Perhaps a tutorial?

[qreeves]

It mostly comes down to this: after 10 years of playing Quake-like deathmatch games, I wanted to play something entirely different (yet somehow the same). Too many FPS games go with the old tried and true ways of doing things, and I was soooooooooooooo fucking bored of it. So to answer the specific questions, I guess..

1) Mostly due to the origins of Red Eclipse, the co-author on the previous project had some very Halo inspired ideas. It was different to Quake-likes so I rather enjoyed it. Health regeneration hasn't changed a single bit since I first implemented it (unless you count buffing when defending your flags). It changes the gameplay in this respect: you know that all you have to do is hit someone once to delay their regeneration, so it's a fight for survival ("can he get away and regenerate before the attacker depletes the entire lot?").

2) Prior to v1.4, what is now known as "classic" used to be default. Over the years I have watched and played many games of Red Eclipse and felt items throughout the level both cluttered and complicated the gameplay. Most people don't like starting off with nothing but a pistol (no matter how deadly it is in the right hands). Like "team", "arena" and "instagib" were the most popular mutators, so over time I tend to adjust things and invert certain concepts to make what we want the most default and the rest optional.

3) Map control is more focused on movement and the dominating the grenades/mines/rocket, rather than controlling a bunch of items in a map. This allows you to focus on what matters (killing people) rather than micromanaging a bunch of things. Yes, I do know what you mean though, it was practically a prerequisite to have mastered this stuff back in the Quakeworld days (and I daresay it probably still is now in the Quake-likes). I hated all the cluttery items in maps too, Red Eclipse tries to simplify while also expanding (paradoxical infinite loop logic, lol).

But yeah, mostly it just comes down to: "what could we do differently? how could we change that to make things more fun? what ideas really aren't working and need to be reviewed?". The best part of making a new type of game is the experimentation along the way, I find many people who agree that something different was needed in the area of arena shooters. And in the end, we just say, "Well, we are not game X, we do not want to be like game X, we like who we are and we're proud to tell the world that."

[TheLastProject]

Please note that I am not a gameplay designer or whatever, and this is just bits and pieces I picked up from what people told me:

Mostly, the rationale behind this is that Red Eclipse, unlike many other FPS, is designed for the more casual crowd. The ones that just want to play and be able to have a nice match without spending countless hours learning the exact positions of the pickups of each maps to be most effective in it. According to the wiki, the health situation has the following reason:

Unlimited ammunition and regenerative health
Eliminating these as factors in success allows for more equal combat situations

The rationale behind the limited amount of weapons seems to be (note: this is pure speculation) because people generally only use a limited amount of weapons, new players are easily confused by having too much possibilities in a situation and to prevent people from hoarding all weapons in the map when the "classic" mutator is activated (which activates weapon pickups, which was the default situation in 1.3.1).

Pretty much the main reason behind it all is the underlying mentality that Red Eclipse has no reason to be like any other FPS. The developers follow their own decisions, without necessarily doing what is normal to be done for this kind of game, often tending toward the more casual side, but that surely doesn't make the game unplayable for the more hardcore amongst us!

EDIT: Darn, Quin ninja'd me. I'm losing my touch.

[qreeves]

EDIT: Darn, Quin ninja'd me. I'm losing my touch.

Don't feel bad, I had to approve the topic as this is his first post.