The general opinion concerning aggro vs. stealth

[InvisibleMan999]

What that means is that keys on the PC do not have to have double-functions (although sadly too many do in SvM because ubi is lazy...such as use/melee/grab/elbow/heal being piled onto one button. A separate control scheme for spy and merc would be great but oh well). Try to triple nade on xbox with the same speed as the PC player, or do a silent dive, or simultaneously dive/switch vision/throw a grenade. They can't be done on the Xbox, but they can on the PC. Not to mention aiming is much, much better on both sides, although the spies get the short end of the stick because of shitty XBox code making its way in (nothing that can't be fixed by altering your sensitivity, though).

Well honestly, no. It's not really an equal proportion set-up. While it seems like ti might be, remember that the merc has the better FPS style weaponry, and this means the merc makes out much better. You just can't get 1 second snipes on xbox like you do on PC. It's not that xbox players are worse, it's just that the control setup doesn't allow it. Obviously it's much easier to fend off aggro on PC, due to the increased turning speed.

Pretty much all the changes favor the merc heavily.

Also, have you even played it on xbox, or are you just imagining what it's like?

2. Being that you play Xbox, I'd be willing to bet a large sum of money you're nowhere as good as many of the PC players still playing the game and many who have since quit.

Well, I play on xbox now, I used to play on PC and I was pretty good back in the day. I'm rusty now (at PC anyway), but I still know the basic concepts of the game. I used to play a lot on PC back in the day.

As such, you really shouldn't be speaking on the balance of the game as if you are the end-all authority.

If you want to see someone claiming to be an end-all authorities, you probably want to look in the mirror. I'm not the one pointing my finger and saying, "You guys know next to nothing about the game and are total newbs, listen to me cause I'm way better than you'll ever be."

2a. If you can't get by 640x480 blurry ass MT on a merc sniping with a joystick, you just suck and need to learn to play better. There's nothing else to it.

Well first, I can sneak by MT on xbox, I'm just saying it's still rather difficult sometimes. On PC, the situation is far worse. Basically MT is powerful as hell on xbox, and on PC it's godly.

2b. Yes, I can play without MT. I can probably play without any single equipment, vision, or gadget piece. So what? Does the fact that I can win without taking camnet mean that we should remove it out of the game? Of course not.

Note that nowhere did I say I wanted to remove MT from the final game completely. If you're going to be insulting and elitist, I advise you actually *read* the posts you're responding to first, otherwise you just come off as a misinformed ass. The point of having a no-MT build isn't so we can ditch it from the game entirely, it's so we can get a better perspective on its role in the game. Again, it's an experiment.

But you know, apparently running an experiment to try to learn something makes me a know-it-all. Yeah, I'm the one with the illogical asinine arguments?

Just because you don't like it and can't figure out a way to get past it doesn't mean we need to remove it from the game, or go through hours upon hours of playtesting to satisfy something that we already know: MT doesn't need the drastic changes you are calling for.

Who is we? Lots of people in the MT thread have suggested some nerfs to MT of various kinds. This includes you.

Lets do a quick run through the of MT thread and list some nerf ideas that others have suggested (not counting my own).

-PT style static sound while MT is on (you, seconded by fvrge)
-Merc loses sound detector device (scope2005, seconded by Thy-Tormentor)
-More blurry shading (overstatement)
-Loss of all HUD functions (fvrge)
-Visual indicator that spy is in MT (fvrge)
-Detect random motion (scurrying rats, moving windows, etc) (Gawain)
-fix shadow inversion (Gawain)
-Allow spies at long range to crouch move at normal speed (Gawain)
-"Slight nerf to encourage stealth" (Valserp)
-Mercs should not be able to detect crouched running spies BEHIND them AT ANY DISTANCE (scope2005)
-180 degree MT might make it into one of the versions (goodkebab)

These are people's opinions on MT, almost everyone is proposing some kind of nerf. We can't really agree on what the best nerf might be, but lots of people are calling for some nerfs.

But apparently according to you, nerfing MT is my one-man crusade and wanting to run an experiment with MT to gain more insight is my way of telling you all that I know it all and have the perfect solution to everything. 

::Rolls eyes::

Yeah, your ideas for the game may disagree with mine, but stop pretending like you speak for the entire community.

You don't.

[Succubus Dryad Of The Undying Comet]

Well... I say we leave MT where it is, the CT maps have lots of cover on them, and spies got to live with it.
A merc can't see you on MT when ur behind cover, anyways, so just leave it alone...
And YES, the shadow inversion is quite annoying, but just take camo and you're home :D

[Spekkio]

honestly, mt whores dont bother me anymore....mostly because I have come to accept that crouching is far more useful then how i played a year ago. 

camo is very good against it as well....

This is something that is echoed by most of the vets in the community. I know this because I play with them on a semi-daily basis and have talked to them about it. You also might want to take kebab off your list of wanting to nerf mt because you conveniently ignored his statement here. I'm pretty sure he threw the 180 degree thing out because of all the noise you've been making about the matter.

[Gawain]

invisible, i'd bet a large sum of money that spekkio is indeed much better than you and (especially in stealth) one of the best players, but never mind.

you come way too fast to conclusions, this is a discussion in which everyone gives some ideas to be discussed, and nothing more. If you want to know my current view on the fixes mt needs:
- fix the shadow inversion the way zed did on the ump maps
- make it more blurry / force normal post render (spies not in motion and in large distance should be invisible, just like spies with activated camo in closer distance)
- add static noise
- instant reaction to any movement faster than slow crouch (or slow climb, check out spekkio's fix list; some stuff they changed was better in pandora)

in conclusion: i like mt to be used more the way it was designed for: to detect movement. i have to stress that this is my personal current view, and it can change.

edit: i'd love to hear your thoughts about my opinion, but plz discuss some more important and creative points and stop whining.

[goodkebab]

i am not accountable for anything i say

:D

[Gawain]

 :D

[Spekkio]

I personally suggested some nerfs because while the pros left in the community don't really care about MT, I know that noobs/intermediate players have a big problem with it. What I put into my list was what I felt a happy medium between doing nothing at all to MT, and nerfing it way too much.

As far as I'm concerned, don't make maps with a retarded large open area and two mercs forced into the same room having a superior sniping position, and there won't be a problem.

- fix the shadow inversion the way zed did on the ump maps
- make it more blurry / force normal post render (spies not in motion and in large distance should be invisible, just like spies with activated camo in closer distance)

If you use these two in conjunction, MT becomes unusable because it's impossible to navigate the map. I know this because for a while I was playing on normal post-render just to see what the difference was, and the maps with the MT fix all but disabled MT vision entirely. Made for good fun trying to defend against the typical rush upper lobby in Cinema.

[Succubus Dryad Of The Undying Comet]

Yeah, on normal postrender in MT, my FPS got to about 250
and in high, they fell till 130... technolgy...

[Gawain]

- fix the shadow inversion the way zed did on the ump maps
- make it more blurry / force normal post render (spies not in motion and in large distance should be invisible, just like spies with activated camo in closer distance)

If you use these two in conjunction, MT becomes unusable because it's impossible to navigate the map. I know this because for a while I was playing on normal post-render just to see what the difference was, and the maps with the MT fix all but disabled MT vision entirely. Made for good fun trying to defend against the typical rush upper lobby in Cinema.

so we have to find the right balance between blurriness and zed's no shadow inversion, so that it's still possible to navigate through the map (which is crucial against aggro). for compensation, i really want pandora-like instant detection of movement, which makes it a much more viable vision if one is prepared for an attack.
anyway, the main problem the pros have with mt is that there is no slow-climb and the slope bug, which both are on the fix list...

[Succubus Dryad Of The Undying Comet]

slope bug

What slope bug ???   never heard of it

[Gawain]

this is on the current fix list:
-MT
  -Force normal post-render
  -Timer for detection needs to be more sensitive in mercs LOS like it was in PT, and possibly a little less
    sensitive than it is now from behind.
    behind him.
  -Re-add the static noise that existed in PT
  -Tweak the sensitivity so spies crouch-moving slowly on a slant don't get detected on a gray box.

1. how can i try normal post-render?
2. the timer should be more sensitive in every direction, as mt is the vision you use whenever you fear being attacked, and the 360 detection is one unique feature
3. this is the wrong thread to discuss mt ffs

[B1nArY_001]

Spekkio - Long time man. I agree though, crouching is a much safer way to play as a spy and MT though annoying at times wasn't really that bad to play against. It just forced you to adopt new tactics which any good player will do.

[Spekkio]

Gawain,

1. You can try normal post-render by going into options ---> video and setting "post-render quality" to normal instead of high. It makes a huge difference, but it's not going to make you invisible from the merc at medium range. A safe bet is that if the merc is close enough to see your emf ghost, he's close enough to make out your blurry sillhouette in MT. Something it does do is expand the shadows you see in MT, which gives you a broader range of places to take cover and not move.

2. The addition of a 1 second delay from PT to CT made sense in the context of stealth. Nothing was more annoying than finding a nice hiding spot and getting a jump on a merc, but the split second you popped out from your spot the merc had a buzz telling him you were behind him. MT actually reacted faster than the sound reticle. Since you rarely are able to grab a merc instantly, it resulted in jump ---> turn --> tazer ---> dead. The reason I proposed the LOS difference is because there are times where I'll be shooting at a spy in MT while he's diving away and no box will come up for some reason, or it won't come up until he's already reached cover. That's retarded. I also said POSSIBLY less sensitive when behind him. A good argument could be made that it's fine as-is.

3. You are right, but see my rant above about invisible turning every thread into a whine about motion tracking.

4. I know people have thrown out the idea of 180 degree detection, and this is why it's bad: throw snare ---> no reason to crouch, ever. Yes, the merc will be looking around, but it's more advantageous for me to get to point B more quickly so that if he does turn around and see me, I will be at cover or close enough to survive. If I'm crouching, he'll see me in the open and then I have a higher chance of dying.

[Spekkio]

slope bug

What slope bug ???   never heard of it

The fact that movement in CT is additive via the pythagorean theorem. If upward movement is 1, and lateral movement is 1, then the diagonal movement is 1*sqrt(2) via 45/45/90 right triangle. So you move slightly faster on a slant. This was useful in games like Goldeneye when you were trying to get cheats -- strafe and run at the same time to shave off a few seconds. Almost all games by the inception of PT had fixed this, but there's ubi laziness for you. Since the threshold for MT detection is somewhere between one-dimensional and two-dimensional movement, moving on a slant at slow-crouch sets off the grey box. Same goes for slow-crouch movement on non-horizontal surfaces like stairs. Highly annoying.

NOTE: There is a max speed the characters can run, however, so strafe-running as merc or going full speed as spy does not increase movement speed.

[InvisibleMan999]

you come way too fast to conclusions, this is a discussion in which everyone gives some ideas to be discussed, and nothing more.

I'm not the one coming to conclusions. I'm just suggesting ideas and asking that some of them be tried. Because this is a mod, I'm leaning heavy preference to the ideas that are easiest to implement.

Now, obviously my personal goal for MT is to make it more of an anti-aggro vision as opposed to anti-stealth. Right now, I feel like MT is both anti-aggro and anti-stealth which makes it too good. I also feel as if there is very little reason to ever turn on normal vision, and thus when I play, I use a combo of MT and EMF, heavily favoring MT.

Seriously, I'm not sure what's going to fix MT. I think MT is too powerful as it is now, but as far as what solution will work best, I'm not sure.

My personal favorite solution idea is degrading detection. Which basically means that a combination of range and merc facing determines how sensitive MT is. Basically this would keep the basic anti-aggro function, since running spies would always set off MT, and yet still allow you to sneak around, since you could for instance, fast crouch away from a merc if his back was turned to you or if he was far away. I don't believe that this is going to hurt anti-aggro much, as that almost always involves running at the merc, but I could be wrong.

Also, is post render even going to be present in this mod? MT is going to look entirely different graphically in PS, so the whole graphics process of CT isn't' even going to exist in the mod, at least, I wouldn't think it would anyway. I think the programmers can make MT as blurry or clear as they want. Of course, I have no idea how blurring algorithms work and how difficult they are to program, so playing with the blurriness may or may not be an option.