by Mutsu » 27 Mar 2011, 18:46
First off, lest this seem like a bitch-fest, let me say that as a long-time UT fan, I'm liking this game a lot. It's fast-paced, blessedly unashamed to be a classic arena shooter, and full of solid basic arena-shooter concepts. The audio/visual presentation is not and isn't supposed to be anything to write home about, but the graphics are very functional, and the hitboxes and surfaces feel "right" most of the time -- I've only hit a few disturbing invisible walls (Forge has been a bit annoying in that regard), and the flow reflects a real old-school feel. Two thumbs up, guys.
On to the suggestions. I'm perfectly happy with "it's been done, here's the setting" or "thought about it, will not happen because..." responses -- these are just my comments on the game as I've played it.
[Graphics/Sound]
1. Let me emphatically second what windstrider said: more crosshairs and team-specific ctf/bombing-ball announcements, along with a volume slider for the announcer.
2. On that note, I'd also like movement, respawn, and jump sounds, even if they're all relatively quiet -- I want to use my ears to find people and predict threats.
3. Implement team-colored instagib beams. It would be nice to be able to distinguish friendly fire more quickly.
4. Give players SOME way of personalizing their avatars. I don't care if it's as simple as varicolored boots and pauldrons; shooting at identical clones is a bit frustrating, especially when you're really hunting "that one guy" in a mid-size map.
[Interface/Meta]
1. Please eliminate (or offer a very good explanation for) the respawn queue. Failing that, fix the bug that lets one team die off entirely and be stuck in the queue. If you're wanting to make death "count" for something, just increase the default respawn time, or maybe tie it to game performance. In the latter case, keep in mind the potential for unstable equilibrium, and don't overdo it; while I PREFER winner-takes-all, power-protect mechanisms, they can go too far. Everyone wants to play, that's why they're in the game.
2. Maybe bring up the Arena weapon-select immediately on death in an Arena match. It's easy, in the heat of battle, to forget it's there. This might be an optional setting.
3. More forceful notification of a mid-game vote in progress. Maybe even a quick screen-takeover once 1/3 of the players have submitted a vote. It's almost impossible right now to escape an I-B-J-O-WTF-S-BBQ match -- too many people just won't hit F3, even as they cry and moan about how lousy the match is.
4. More explicit/deterministic weapon-swapping, somehow. I often don't know what I'm going to get when I mash "2." I have to think about what order I picked up my guns, what I was carrying, whether I have grenades/rockets -- it makes good weapon-handling harder than it ought to be. Scroll-wheel is a similar crapshoot. It's possible that I need to mess around with the hotkeys more.
[Gameplay]
1. Rifle. It's been said, but it's a bit wimpy. It shouldn't be insta-gib; if I were to throw out a number, it would be 45 -- 2 shots, almost dead, finish em with something spammy. Or, a flat 50 -- 2 quick shots, dead, but if they regen at all, it'll take 3 shots. I'm withholding judgment on shotgun, flamer, and plasma -- they're quirky, but they may just be effective enough as-is. I'd say that pistol, sword, smg, grenades, and rockets are the closest to where they ought to be for now.
2. Possibly put wall-jumping and wall-running parkour on different keys, then allow wall-jumps without pointing cross-hairs at the wall. Maybe even attach wall jumps to "jump" or "dodge/slide." Right now, wall-jumping in a fight is asking for swift death, because you have to stop shooting, stop aiming, lose sight of your target, face the wall, bounce, then reacquire aim. I'm 100% capable of running/moving backwards; I shouldn't have to sacrifice that to have full mobility.
3. Tie-breaking in team game modes. If the teams' scores are equal, let the clock run. Endless matches are usually the fault of the map designers, not the players.
4. In service to my [Maps] suggestion, for team games, add a fast halftime period where teams swap bases. Lots of ctf games do this, and for good reason: it does a lot to cover for non-symmetrical maps. Even if Red starts off with the peachy hilltop bunker, they lose it halfway through, and Blue gets a chance to come back.
5. Eliminate instagib dual-deaths. Determine a winner, please. If that means adding a random check for shots too close to tell (say, <50ms), so be it. Both players dying from simultaneous rails sucks.
6. Check hit detection through walls and ESPECIALLY through ceilings/floors. Lots of effects (explosions, flame, even shotgun shells) reach right through thin floors to do damage. It'll never be perfect, but grenades thrown inside a building shouldn't be Super Effective against people on the roof.
[Maps] -- Yes, this is partly/significantly community action.
1. More varied maps. While non-symmetrical maps are hard (not impossible) to use for ctf, they're wonderful for dm, tdm, area defense, and other game modes where a team's fortunes aren't tied to how one area of the map is laid out. The majority of my experience is from UT2k3/2k4 (although I did play UT99 when it was new), and I'm thinking about maps like DM-Deck16, DM-Curse, DM-Antalus, DM-Asbestos, DM-Compressed, DM-Rankin DM-Stalwart, and the like. Also, even in symmetrical maps, more could be done to shake things up; horseshoe-style maps, primarily vertical maps, teleporter maps...Obviously, this one falls significantly on the community and on what maps get popularized, but pushing a few more options out with the default release would be nifty.
You can still load the earliest of Sauerbraten maps, you can still load any Blood Frontier map (change .bgz to .mpz), so you can definitely load any Red Eclipse map there ever was.
