modified gadgets...

[Westfall]

You do realize that most of the maps will have to be different to avoid the whole copyright nonsense. We shouldn't be thinking about the maps we play now, but different maps. Maybe the gadgets should be thought of more when some maps are created.

[InvisibleMan999]

I don't really like the idea of camgrenades. That'd be a bit too powerful IMO. In fact, a lot of maps you could probably completely lock down with that to the point where you always know which direction the spies are taking. For instance, on hospital you'd just toss a cam grenade outside and see if they head up the ladder. If they don't you know they've taken the sewers and there's like only two spots they can come out there. You can easily just have a merc waiting for them.

Possibly if they were just like a mine that you could place somewhere, it might work.

Still it'd be pretty dangerous, especially if you can place more than one. In such a case, I might recommend applying some kind of blur effect to the camera view and taking away its ability to MT and EMF vision. That way at the very least you can count on camo to beat camnet.

[goodkebab]

people will always be afraid of change, and doubtless they were afraid of changes from Pt to Ct and the countless threads of complaints.

We cannot use anything that looks like UBI maps, period.   We can legally get away with similarities,  but it has to be our own.


And I have judged the value of camnet, not by which map it is used on.....but by how often it is used. 

[Spekkio]

That's a fallacy if I ever saw one. If you want to judge camnet by how often it's used, you would think it's absolutely useless. 95% of the time I see people taking double backpack. But trust me when I say that when the competition was better around this time last year and the tourney was wrapping up, all the teams that went late in the tourney used camnet. Snakebit and Solidus were the biggest camnet whoring team I ever saw, even using it on Orphanage.

Hell, if you want to judge things by common frequency these days, you'd be making PS into a deathmatch game. That's right -- most players online in CT these days play DM.

[frvge]

Maybe when you are on. I see more story than DM servers usually.

[InvisibleMan999]

Camnet is really useful on a variety of maps.

Especially on polar base, deftech and river mall, it's a near infallible spy detector. It's also very good on factory as well.

Most people don't use it because it's sort of an expert skill gadget to use to full effectiveness. Even on river mall after I've pointed out the hologram room to people, they still for whatever reason don't take it... I have no clue why... 

But in the case of camnet, frequency of use isn't equivalent to overall strategic value.

[Spekkio]

But in the case of camnet everything, frequency of use isn't equivalent to overall strategic value.

FYP

Also, of the teams that are top-notch and don't use camnet, I can't think of one who doesn't have a guy with exceptionally good EAX/hearing to make up for it (basically seefoo/vantage (seefoo) and kronf/lediniz (led)).

Camnet seriously is an ownage gadget.

Aqua: you immediately know where the spies are going; there is a camera in every room
Factory: same, plus standing in front of the spawn vent lets you know if the spies are going digger
Club: you know which entrance the spies are taking, spies can't go into garden without you seeing them
Orphanage: you know which entrance the spies are taking, but overall not very useful on this map
Missile: not very useful
Station: you limit the spies to using the one coop for tech room. Plus, IF they get by that you always know where they are in sector 1.
Museum: One guy checking camnet with the other EMF ghosting the ceiling can lock down the map nicely
Deftech: Overlooks main courtyard, gives a better view than you'd get just by standing on the box by C. Also has a cam in every downstairs building so you can check where the spies shoot out a security failure.
Warehouse: not very useful
Mall: Hologram, cam in lobby overlooks the entire room
Bank: you know exactly which entrance the spies are taking, from there it's a matter of just shooting fish in a barrel so long as you put proxies under all the entrances.

On top of that, it can be used infinitely and cannot be actively disabled by the spies. I also disagree about multiple cams making the gadget "clumsy;" simple teamwork will cut down the amount of cameras you have to check because your teammate is covering the other area. The only reason not to take it is to either try and give yourself a little more challenge in finding spies, or if you don't have a mic and are too lazy to type the room the spies are in.

[B1nArY_001]

When will you people stop making the comparison to how useful it is in CT? Read a few threads back - The maps will not be the same. This little fact invalidates all your opinions on how useful or un-useful it is. We are talking about completely different maps.

There is a lot that can be done when creating the map to control what the cameras can see.

If we are going to use a placeable camera then it will be balance tested as to how many placeable cameras are allowed by one Merc at a time and how vulnerable/visible they are.

Don't over-think it before it has been tested, seen in action and tweaked.

[Vega]

True but we aren't we aiming for a clone of CT, regardless if we can't copy their maps?  We want maps that are at least going to be similar, or play similarly to CT, so it seems natural to compare camnet to CT maps.

[Spekkio]

When will you people stop making the comparison to how useful it is in CT? Read a few threads back - The maps will not be the same. This little fact invalidates all your opinions on how useful or un-useful it is. We are talking about completely different maps.

There is a lot that can be done when creating the map to control what the cameras can see.

If we are going to use a placeable camera then it will be balance tested as to how many placeable cameras are allowed by one Merc at a time and how vulnerable/visible they are.

Don't over-think it before it has been tested, seen in action and tweaked.

Because Kebab is suggesting changing camnet so that the cameras can be placed anywhere by the merc and still cannot be disabled by the spies. Unless you feel like making the most convoluded rooms known to man, this is going to make an already over-powered gadget worse.

Also, Vega has a good point: even if you aren't going to copy CT maps, you still want to get the same SvM feel that we have in PT/CT. That means that map design is going to have to employ many similar concepts. Let's look at OilRig for an example: it plays and feels like a CT map, and camnet is uber in that map, too.

My point is that I believe the game would be better in general without camnet. You wouldn't even have to worry about this placement; instead, you could just focus on having the right amount of passive defenses and getting the overall map design correct. Otherwise you have to tow the line between camnet being too useful/not useful enough, along with whether or not there is enough or too much passive security with/without camnet. Oh, wait, I forgot the third scenario: there already is sufficient security, but with camnet it just becomes impossible to sneak anywhere.

The most probable result of the above, with camnet in the game, is one of two things: you either make camnet useless through lack of viewing angles and already sufficient passive security, or you make camnet a necessity due to too powerful viewing angles paired with a lack of sufficient security to compensate. CT has the latter, and the work that goes into balancing that all out is probably not worth keeping camnet over. Hell, Ubi, a professional gaming company, couldn't get the gadget right on 8/11 maps (10/13 if you want to throw Squat and Polar Base in there). Wtf makes you think that a bunch of amateur mappers who can't even turn out a halfway decent map are going to get it right, particularly if you give the mercs the ability to place the cams anywhere they want?

Regardless of how you make the maps, a gadget that has infinite use and has no way of being actively disabled short of one or both spies running around like madmen to keep the mercs moving is not a balanced gadget at all. It certainly doesn't need to be buffed by giving the mercs the flexibility to place it anywhere they want on the map.

[Westfall]

True but we aren't we aiming for a clone of CT, regardless if we can't copy their maps?  We want maps that are at least going to be similar, or play similarly to CT, so it seems natural to compare camnet to CT maps.

No sir. We are not looking for a clone of CT. We are focused on the same game-play style, but can't make a clone of CT as to stray from the copyright BS. All the maps will have to be different unless they were maps created by users (Maybe UMP maps). Maybe there could be a UMP team for Project Stealth, but there has to be 8-10 maps that are brand new at the release that come with the game of course.

P.S. Spekkio is right. I feel Camnet needs to be hella watered down or just completely cut. Its a pretty significant advantage

[InvisibleMan999]

I've always felt camo should be the counter to camnet whores.

Basically it's pretty easy.
-Take away camnet visions + laser/flashlight.
-Take away camnet zoom
-make camnet a low resolution view, so that camo is almost impossible to detect.

That's all you really need to do.

[Spekkio]

I mostly agree there (except the flashlight and low-res part), but Kebab wants to keep all that and give the mercs an ability to place them anywhere. The problem with making camo a hard counter to camnet is that neither side knows what gadgets they're taking beforehand. What if you don't ordinarilly use camo, but take it in anticipation that most mercs use camnet? Then what if he doesn't actually have camnet? Gadgets shouldn't be picked based upon whether or not they're going to be a hard-counter for the other team's equipment; they should be chosen based upon your play style and how you tend to approach the game.

Either that, or you get into the "must have" situation that we have with CT when it comes to the gasmask. See, you can choose not to take the gasmask, which is a hard counter to both cams and smoke. However, if you don't take mask you put yourself at risk for easy KOs, plus you slow down to a crawl in the smoke grenade cloud. The risk of not taking mask is not worth the reward of having another gadget. If camnet becomes or remains uber in PS, you create a situation where everyone practically must take camo to get around it.

I still don't think camnet is overall a good gadget for the game. Someone on the ubi.com boards made a post about how it'd be cool to look through the cameras on the map in PT and Ubi created camnet for CT. Some ideas are just better left on the drawing board. Personally, I like the feel of actually going out to hunt and finding spies rather than just using a camera network to know exactly where they're coming from. But, if you're gonna play to win, camnet's your 'man', so to speak.

[Overstatement]

I think the original balancing factor to camnet is to have the merc extremely exposed while using it. So we could probably make a delay between camnet and gas mask for easy camming or knock out the merc with a punch while in camnet from any direction.

[Spekkio]

And I'm sure every mapper is going to be so diligient as to make sure there are absolutely no "safety spots" for the merc where he can flip on camnet.