new anti aggro move for mercs

[Gawain]

maybe a llonger delay is needed (*1.5) for pulling out the SS, because for most people it's kinda hard to quickly aim at mines (bad mouse implementation) atm, and it could affect gameplay favoring aggro.

i'm ok with 5 gadget slots if there are some limitations (slot system), for example camnet+spytraps+usual stuff or triple nades+recon tool seems overpowered/hard to balance to me.

[Spekkio]

Harder to balance, harder for noobs. Too many options = harder to know what the oppenents are carrying.

This isn't a good counter argument

@Kronf: PT allowed you to take 4/6 gadgets. CT expanded the gadgets, but kept the same amount of slots. Granted 4/6 =/= 5/8, but it also =/= 4/8.

Something else I've been thinking about is expanding the spy gadgets to 5 while the mercs still have 4 as a possible way to balance the sides more.

[goodkebab]

If this is an anti-aggro move, wouldn't that make the merc uncharacteristically suicidal?

Exactly what I was going to say.  This just seems silly because if you drop a mine at your feet when you see two spies running around you, it would seem very easy for them to detonate it right there and then while your walking around it.

and how is this  risk any different then placing a proxy on the wall when 2 spies are coming?

imagination guys!

I remember all the complaints of  HBS and Camo ....and the usage of those gadgets proved contradictory to the arguments.

[a3c0i3d]

Now that you mention the HBS, (btw this is totaly offtopic) what annoyed me very much in scct
was that when you had the hbs out, and you had termal vision on, the red dot indicating mercs on the radar (top left), would get lost in the red blur of the spies head. Could you pls fix that  :)

[neth]

Harder to balance, harder for noobs. Too many options = harder to know what the oppenents are carrying.

This isn't a good counter argument

@Kronf: PT allowed you to take 4/6 gadgets. CT expanded the gadgets, but kept the same amount of slots. Granted 4/6 =/= 5/8, but it also =/= 4/8.

Something else I've been thinking about is expanding the spy gadgets to 5 while the mercs still have 4 as a possible way to balance the sides more.

I have no idea why ure insisting on this. This is not a stupid fps where youve got 15 weapons and switch between them in any moment. Its about tactics. You choose only important things so you need to stay focused and adjust your tactics to eq. 4 is absolutely the best you can imagine.

[B1nArY_001]

I still say try the new mine placement and go from there. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out.

I understand everyone is used to a certain game developer leaving things off balance but don't forget - we are not that developer and if something turns out to be a balance issue or just simply to much, it will be removed. It's as simple as that.

[Spekkio]

If this is an anti-aggro move, wouldn't that make the merc uncharacteristically suicidal?

Exactly what I was going to say.  This just seems silly because if you drop a mine at your feet when you see two spies running around you, it would seem very easy for them to detonate it right there and then while your walking around it.

and how is this  risk any different then placing a proxy on the wall when 2 spies are coming?

imagination guys!

It's different because you are proposing an animation that is much quicker than placing a proxy on the wall. I say again: it would look and play incredibly stupid to have a merc fart out proxies when 2 spies start to attack him. Placing a proxy on the floor, which I am all for, ought to involve crouching, facing the floor, and then placing a mine like you would on the wall.

I have no idea why ure insisting on this. This is not a stupid fps where youve got 15 weapons and switch between them in any moment. Its about tactics. You choose only important things so you need to stay focused and adjust your tactics to eq. 4 is absolutely the best you can imagine.

Adding a gadget slot would INCREASE the amount of tactics one could use because you have more combinations of equipment available to you. In Pandora, you could take 2/3 of the available gadgets. In CT this is reduced to 1/2. 5/8 is still less than 2/3. Quite frankly, I don't know why the gadget slots weren't expanded with CT to begin with; judging by the incomplete nature of CT, I can only guess that it wasn't on their priority list of things they were going to haphazardly slap together before shipping the game. With 5 slots, you would see a lot more usage of spy traps and tazer on the merc side, along with more usage of snares and camo on the spy side. I fail to see how that would change the gameplay into omg run around fps.

Why bother? Well, we all know each other at this point, but if PS actually becomes more popular than 20 players, you won't be able to predict your opponent's play style. Therefore, picking the tazer vs. spy traps (and rifle vs. uzi) would become a crapshoot. You get an aggro team, the spy traps aren't going to do much. You get a stealth team, the tazer is a waste. So then you resort to the BP as a 'safety' gadget. If you want the game to be more accepted by avid gamers, you need to take out luck factors such as these. If you had 5/8, you could take both traps and tazer and cover your bases with the rifle. Or you could take the uzi and not take tazer at all.

But it would also enhance the game experience for the casual gamer, too. Let's imagine that camo was fixed, and I wanted to take a snare-camo combination -- something that would be pretty useful for a tricky/stealthy playstyle. I now have two slots left to choose between an evasion gadget (flash/smoke), a trap-disabling gadget (chaff), a KO gadget (cams) or a recon gadget (HBS/Bullets). That is way too much to give up for this combination. Now, you could make up the recon by having a partner w/ a mic who takes HBS, but not everyone has that (and if you did, you could use the other 3 slots for something like flash/chaff/cam, which retains the advantage of having communication). This means that you will hardly ever see such a combination, especially among casual gamers. By having the 5th slot, you could take the snare-camo combination and still have room for 3 gadgets of different functions. Again, this INCREASES possible tactics while making the game MORE newbie-friendly.

It's really a win/win situation. The only reason you guys have for saying no is "well, it's at 4/8 now and I like it that way."

I still say try the new mine placement and go from there. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out.

I understand everyone is used to a certain game developer leaving things off balance but don't forget - we are not that developer and if something turns out to be a balance issue or just simply to much, it will be removed. It's as simple as that.

Sometimes ideas are just bad. Quick throwing proxies is not a good idea. How about you give spies rocket launchers and then remove it later when you find out what we already know?

[frvge]

My stupid own argument: 5 slots suck, because I use F1-F4 for gadgets. The F5 button is not close enough to the rest :P XD

[Spekkio]

lol omg grow longer fingers  ;D

[frvge]

I'll use my 11th finger =/

[kronf]

Harder to balance, harder for noobs. Too many options = harder to know what the oppenents are carrying.

This isn't a good counter argument

@Kronf: PT allowed you to take 4/6 gadgets. CT expanded the gadgets, but kept the same amount of slots. Granted 4/6 =/= 5/8, but it also =/= 4/8.

Something else I've been thinking about is expanding the spy gadgets to 5 while the mercs still have 4 as a possible way to balance the sides more.

Don't understand why you still keep referring to pt. There is too much of a difference in gameplay between ct and pt and I thought we're basing this mod on ct. Ct gadgets were 4/8 which was absolutely fine. Only reason to expand them as if number of gadgets available increases.

[neth]

Spekkio why dont we let ppl take all the gadgets..wow they will be able to do so many tactics.

[Spekkio]

Harder to balance, harder for noobs. Too many options = harder to know what the oppenents are carrying.

This isn't a good counter argument

@Kronf: PT allowed you to take 4/6 gadgets. CT expanded the gadgets, but kept the same amount of slots. Granted 4/6 =/= 5/8, but it also =/= 4/8.

Something else I've been thinking about is expanding the spy gadgets to 5 while the mercs still have 4 as a possible way to balance the sides more.

Don't understand why you still keep referring to pt. There is too much of a difference in gameplay between ct and pt and I thought we're basing this mod on ct. Ct gadgets were 4/8 which was absolutely fine. Only reason to expand them as if number of gadgets available increases.

I keep referring to PT because PS is based on SvM which originated with PT. While it was far from perfect, PT did a lot of things better than CT. Conversely, CT does a lot of things better than PT. If I had more experience with DA, I would be pushing for the good stuff from that game to be incorporated as well.

I don't think 4/8 gadgets is fine. The vast majority of people take extremely similar loadouts, especially as merc, which makes gameplay become stale. 3/4 of your gadgets are dictated before the game even starts. Mercs: mines, frags, mask. Spy: recon (hb or bullet), cams, evasion (smoke or flash). The thing with spy's equipment is that the gadgets work more synergistically than merc equipment (ie HB + cam, snare + camo, chaff + flash, etc), and there is more overlap in function. You could take something else than the above 3 staple items, but only if you want the challenge of playing with a shitty loadout. That means you have 1 slot left to choose from among 5 different pieces of equipment. I merely ask for 2.

Spekkio why dont we let ppl take all the gadgets..wow they will be able to do so many tactics.

Now you're just being an idiot. Having 5/8 gadgets still presents the player with a choice of prioritizing and thinking about his equipment. If we use the same snare/camo combination from above, I still only have 3 slots to fill among 6 different gadgets. I could take smoke/chaff/flash to give myself adaptability in switching between aggro/stealth roles. I can take chaff/cam/hb sensor to play a more full-stealth style, and anything inbetween. 5/8 will not make organizing your equipment a no brainer at all.

Again, I have provided multiple reasons why this change could be good. And hell, the only reason I brought it up is so that the mercs had more room to fit the tazer in their loadout, thus negating the need to fart proxies all over when you get attacked. You guys have not provided any reasons why it wouldn't except for "but it's 4/8 now." Isn't B1nary the one always saying "well, if you want to play the same game go play ct?"

[kronf]

Expanding it to 5/8 eliminates that little sacrifice thing we had in ct. Let's take for example flash, smoke, cams, hbs. On some maps you would like to have chaff to quickly bypass security (orphanage, hospital). To do that you would have to sacrifice one gadget for it or suffer trying to shock them out with shocker. Want to have triple nade and cams? Then sacrifice recon gadget. Now with 5 gadget system you can forget about it and have everything equipped. All that will be gone with extra slot.

[Spekkio]

Expanding it to 5/8 eliminates that little sacrifice thing we had in ct. Let's take for example flash, smoke, cams, hbs. On some maps you would like to have chaff to quickly bypass security (orphanage, hospital). To do that you would have to sacrifice one gadget for it or suffer trying to shock them out with shocker. Want to have triple nade and cams? Then sacrifice recon gadget. Now with 5 gadget system you can forget about it and have everything equipped. All that will be gone with extra slot.

I see your argument, but you're ignoring snares and camo completely. That's ok, because you're not alone in doing this. When you take triple nades/cams, you're not just sacrificing recon. You're sacrificing cloaking and sound coverage as well -- believe it or not, snares actually work pretty well with aggro. Furthermore, I don't necessarily believe it's a good thing that the spies have to commit themselves to a particular style of play before the game starts. Unpredictable stuff happens, and the 4/8 system doesn't give a lot of breathing room for adaptability.

The thing is, spy equipment tends to overlap a little more than merc equipment. Flash/smoke and HB/bullets serve relatively the same function, while only spy traps/camnet overlap as merc gadgets. I have to admit that when I thought of the equipment grouping, I had spy equipment in mind.

Now, would triple nade/cams/snares be too strong? I don't know, but it would be countered by the fact that the mercs have frags/mines/tazer/gasmask/spy traps. That's something that you would have to test to find out.