The fix list

[Spekkio]

Seriously, I'd love to see you try to sneak past me with a disk on warehouse without being noticed. I don't think it can be done. Hell, that'd be tough even against a total newbie.

So you mean sneaking TO the objective, having my partner pull you out of position, grabbing the disk and bolting to spawn before you can catch me is aggro huh? Interesting...

[goodkebab]

hell....someone never played extraction on PT.  It was bloody hard to stop spies in the first sector of wherehouse.  It takes all of 15-30 seconds to return the green jar of goo.

[Overstatement]

As with all of the Unreal Tournament's, they are designed primarily as online multiplayer games so the netcode has always been pretty solid for each release in my experience.
As I understand it, When a developer licences the Unreal engine the netcode is either a seperate fee, or it is not included at all. Requiring the developer to write thier own as it seemed Ubisoft did resulted in a sometimes poor online experience with oddities such as warping and poor hit detection.
If Ubisoft had used Epic's official netcode for both SCPT and SCCT, then I believe these problems would have been few and far between.

If UT3's netcode is as stable as its predecessors, then I think PS will be quite free of the annoyances of warping and host advantage related bugs, which is one of the reasons why it is best off as a mod for an existing and well reputed game, than a game built from scratch on an open source engine ;)

The problem is, like any part of performance mined software, there could be many places that are potential bottlenecks. Could be the game sending too much information, inefficient choice of protocol, or bad prediction code. I don't know how it's done but it didn't make sense to break up the engine and sell it seperately. And it sure doesn't make sense to make your own code when you're already buying the Unreal engine.

Open source doesn't automatically mean it's crap. There is no bug killer stronger, in the programming world, than peer-review (pending Frvge finishing his formal verification classes). To give it a metaphor, which would produce a better game, a bunch of qualified professionals trapped in an office building or this project, filled with (hopefully) equally qualified people (if not, let's say the creators of OGRE and Irrlicht are experinced programmers) constantly listening to the community?

[frvge]

I did some Program Verification and I had to write down 0.5 pages to prove 2 iterations of a simple while... I'd be completely messed up if you'd have to do that for more advanced stuff. There are automatic checkers tho. I'd say Peer Review is a more feasible solution in this case :(. Refactoring and XP. yay.

[Overstatement]

slightly widen flashlight radius

Huh?

[InvisibleMan999]

Seriously, I'd love to see you try to sneak past me with a disk on warehouse without being noticed. I don't think it can be done. Hell, that'd be tough even against a total newbie.

So you mean sneaking TO the objective, having my partner pull you out of position, grabbing the disk and bolting to spawn before you can catch me is aggro huh? Interesting...

Well yeah, most of the time getting the disk is the easy part. And yeah you could stealth that. But once you've got the disk, returning it is most often the tough part.

And returning a disk tends to be all about run and gun or simply run. There's very little stealth to getting out with a disk. It's not much different from running back to your base in any capture the flag style FPS game. When you've got a disk, not getting noticed is impossible. Hell, the merc has you on radar whenever you move. Your best bet is just bolting full speed, and yes, that is aggro.

Aggro isn't just about attacking the merc. It's anytime you make no effort to conceal your presence.

Now, it's pretty damn unavoidable with a disk, but that's one of the reasons I hate extraction in general. It's just an aggro game. There's no stealth mind-games or misdirections, you just grab the disk and run like hell, because it's the only option you've got.

[Valserp]

Your best bet is just bolting full speed, and yes, that is aggro.

Aggro isn't just about attacking the merc. It's anytime you make no effort to conceal your presence.

Well if aggro isn't about attacking a merc and stealth isn't about attacking a merc, then what's what?
Don't tell me that a stealthy spy is the one who always creeps slowly and stays in the dark, doesn't go for necks etc etc. That's not a stealthy spy, that's a losing spy.
If it were possible to BORE the mercs to death then this tactic would be a fave.

[goodkebab]

Honestly Invisible,  this is getting pointless.  DA is an example of the developers trying to force the players into a specific gamestyle,  which is why it failed.

Your classifications and the unspoken suggestions of how the game SHOULD be played are what turn people off in the first place because they may simply not want to play the game the way you enjoy it.  And to be honest, if we wanted to sell out and appeal to the masses, we would have to make the game a simple aggro fest.  So we have to go half way,  and make the game exciting enough with confrontations,  but with the depth of stealth.

Stealth is rewarding because it is so hard to do against human opponents.  The way project stealth is going to encourage this is by the quality of the map design.  But you realize of course that if we make an open map that favors stealth, it will not stop aggressive game play and nor do we want to do so.

[Daybreak]

"If it were possible to BORE the mercs to death then this tactic would be a fave."

I do that to Spekkio all the time. Man it's funny. I don't always do it on purpose, however, it's hilarious when I do. Mercs that are bored do weird things to entertain themselves. Look at walls, play with sniper modes. Spin.
Some stop moving at all. And that's scary cause you think they are away and tehn boom they come to life.

[InvisibleMan999]

DA is an example of the developers trying to force the players into a specific gamestyle,  which is why it failed.

Which is exactly why I hate maps like warehouse and don't believe they should exist at all. They force people to play an aggro style.

If your goal is to let people play their game, then you can't have maps that totally nullify stealth.

[InvisibleMan999]

Well if aggro isn't about attacking a merc and stealth isn't about attacking a merc, then what's what?
Don't tell me that a stealthy spy is the one who always creeps slowly and stays in the dark, doesn't go for necks etc etc. That's not a stealthy spy, that's a losing spy.

Aggro is letting the merc know where you are.

Stealth is quite simply, not letting the merc know where you are.

Now what you do when you're stealthy or aggro is up to you. You can have an aggro killer or a stealth killer. You can have someone who takes objectives via aggro or those who take objectives via stealth. It's not about what you do, so much as the method you do it.

Is there any surprise or misdirection involved? Or are you simply running around trying to beat the merc with FPS skills?

That's what aggro versus stealth is all about, and it's why I say extraction is an aggro objective style, at least how it's done in CT. In DA, it allows for both styles. CT/PT style extraction simply forces you to run. You might as well be playing Unreal CTF at that point because it's just about dodging bullets and frags, not about sneaking past your opponent.

Even bombing objectives have far more stealth involved. At least in most bombing objectives, there are multiple bombable spots and you can set up a stealth ambush or misidrect the merc as to where the bomb might be. Granted aggro probably does the job best, but at least you have a few stealth options.

Extraction you pretty much can't do anything. That stupid radar thing basically negates any chance you have of being stealthy at all.

[Valserp]

Well if aggro isn't about attacking a merc and stealth isn't about attacking a merc, then what's what?
Don't tell me that a stealthy spy is the one who always creeps slowly and stays in the dark, doesn't go for necks etc etc. That's not a stealthy spy, that's a losing spy.

Aggro is letting the merc know where you are.

Stealth is quite simply, not letting the merc know where you are.

Now what you do when you're stealthy or aggro is up to you. You can have an aggro killer or a stealth killer. You can have someone who takes objectives via aggro or those who take objectives via stealth. It's not about what you do, so much as the method you do it.

Is there any surprise or misdirection involved?

Well if I let myself be seen and bait the merc to my position and away from my teammate, am I applying a stealth tactic via misdirection?
If so, did I just aggro because I let the merc see me intentionally?

As far as extraction being more agroo, I agree to a certain degree. But I always prefer to get myself slowly in a good position before I try to make a run for the drop-off. So it's a mixture.

[goodkebab]

being on radar can be a misdirection as well....

I have yet to do this successfuly, but a spy on spy trap and another spy with disk  ...and the mercs will think the spy trapped will be the one with the disk.

[InvisibleMan999]

Well if I let myself be seen and bait the merc to my position and away from my teammate, am I applying a stealth tactic via misdirection?
If so, did I just aggro because I let the merc see me intentionally?

Well it depends. If your idea was to inhibit the merc with smoke grenades and shock while your partner ran by, then it was an aggro tactic. If you deliberately revealed yourself so that your partner could sneak past undetected while you got the merc chasing you, then I'd call it cooperative stealth. 

As far as extraction being more agroo, I agree to a certain degree. But I always prefer to get myself slowly in a good position before I try to make a run for the drop-off. So it's a mixture.

Well, the problem is that with the radar, you really can't afford to slowly creep anywhere, because your chances of getting seen are far too great. I'd personally like to see the disks changed so that you only show up on radar when you do a full run. It'd make extraction a lot easier, but I figure maybe we could make it so actually placing the disk in its case takes a certain amount of time or something.

[Valserp]

Well, the problem is that with the radar, you really can't afford to slowly creep anywhere, because your chances of getting seen are far too great.

You creep to the edge of the merc's patrol route then you bolt to the extraction. The point is to get to a spot where they wouldn't expect you to come out from.
If the mercs are covering a wider area, sure they can spot you creeping about. However, this will give you to chance to just shock them and run right past. They'd never get you since they wandered far from the briefcases. If they allow you this oppurtunity, what's wrong with taking it?