NcSource talk:Gameplay

Discussion rules

Here discussion on the gameplay ideas, please before editing, discuss your ideas on here, and sign your entries with the wiki syntax "--~~~~" --Biglines 21:10, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

What are our goals?

By Rambus: I don't think we have discussed at all what our goals are, having read through those stated I have a few comments on how we should progress. I feel like the end goal is completely unreasonable. Mods with professional staff don't get that far, and we really don't have a plan to get there. I say we keep our dreams small and concentrate on quality, if the opportunity arises later we can grab it- but this way in the mean time we will be producing something of value and not just waiting for a milestone that will never arrive to release. Lets set a goal we can reach, and reach with a level of quality people will want to experience.

I propose our 'roadmap' / 'goals' be changed to something similar to the following:

1. Deathmatch map pack for Hl2 (Released with source code for maps to allow porting to other mods).
2. Deathmatch mod (With our custom weaponry/models).
3. Teamplay mod - even if it's 'team' death match.
4. Teamplay mod enhanced (whether that be capture points, or what ever other game play mechanic you had in mind).

--Rambus 19:12, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Tbh, it all depends on the quality of the programmers. All of the things proposed have been done in non-commercial mods. But I don't think it's bad to dream big, but I don't mind to add/change the goals to coincide with your ideas. -Biglines 19:28, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

I think we should move the Story section to ncSource:Story --Biglines 14:52, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Moving the story to it's own page is fine. I also agree with Rambus' roadmap mainly because it isn't that dissimilar to my own. I agree that quality should be our highest priority at this point, seeing as how we don't have much in the way of programmers atm. So, focusing on releasing an NC:Mod that is just HL2:DM + some custom NC maps should be our first move. However, I'm with Biglines, everything proposed thus far exists in third party mods at the moment. We should dream big and make a plan to get there... just don't expect to be there next week. If we drop the ball on the mod, we have laid the ground work for others to be able to pick it up and run with it. --Whitestuff 17:32, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I propose adding one between weapons and control point maps, which is team based maps and gameplay --Biglines 15:48, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Recasting/overcasting buffs, shields and heals

Since i am currently working on implementing the PSI management stuff i would like to throw a question into the room. How should we handle re-/overcasting (not sure how to correctly translate it) of shields, heals and buffs. We could for example handle it the NC1/early 2 way: nothing can be re-/overcasted. So shitbuffing is possible and probably one way to gain advantage over the enemy team. We could also handle it the NC2.2 way: shields take damage and get weaker, after a certain amount of damage the shields may be recast on the poor person under attack. Also if someone casts better shields on a runner, the runner will recieve the better shields, so shitbuffing is partially ruled out. Heals and buffs still can't be recasted.

Which way do you prefer? Or do you prefer a completely different approach? --R2d22k 13:11, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

I think the old way is more fun, allows ppu's to actually be killed --Biglines 13:14, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Another possibility which came to my mind is that we could also stick to the old way but with three shields. Personally i would also prefer the old way. With two shields. --R2d22k 13:22, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

forgot about the 2-3 shields thingy, what I like about the 3 shield types is that they make more sense this way, the damage types for each shield make sense, also making antibuffing more interesting with the different damage types. I'd prefer 3 shields, and the old recasting policy ;) --Biglines 14:17, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Here is an idea that I have had for a while when considering the gameplay: I like the 3 shield system, with each shield absorbing 2 types of damage (which is something we need to consider on the weapon types). But, considering the fast paced nature of true first-person shooter combat, I don't think the shields should function exactly as they do in NC.

Look at World of Warcraft and Power Word: Shield. The shield is cast by a Priest onto another player and it absorbs X amount of damage before fading. It cannot be re-cast on that target for 15 seconds and lasts 30 seconds if it isn't killed. If all of the damage isn't absorbed before the 15 second debuff has expired, then it can be recast on that target and the target will effectively not take ANY damage as long as the shield holds.

What I take away from this is that, we should allow buffs to be recast after a certain point BUT with several differences. First, shields should mitigate damage, rather than absorb it, meaning that they reduce the damage taken from a given damage type and not prevent it totally. Second, there should be a "life-line" associated with each shield. The default should be a time span that the shield would last, without mitigating any damage. If it mitigates damage, then it's effectiveness should fade to a predetermined point and once it mitigates a certain amount of damage, the shield should "die" before it's time span is up. This would require a PPU to be dedicated to watching his team-mate's buffing timers. As for shit-buffing: I never liked this tactic. It seems to much like an exploit to me, and I would prefer something more like a debuffing system, such as APU's had, so that a PPU and their team mates aren't rendered completely defenseless for a long amount of time. With the faster pace of combat, once you factor in the recast time on the shield, plus the cast time on the heal... the PPU or his target could very well be dead, and I feel that healing shouldn't be as powerful as it is NC. Not true FPS that I know of has a healing class that can outheal the incoming damage from other players. In TF2 it takes 3 medics to produce that effect on a heavy, and then you are just gimping your team by tying up those player spots with healers. All of my rambling aside, the most important thing we can do is decide on a system and then CHANGE IT if it doesn't mesh out well while testing. We should put as many ideas out there as we can right now, so we can have other systems to fall back on later, if what we pick now doesn't work well for the game. --Whitestuff 19:21, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I have never had a heal that outheals the damage done in a proper fight, unless someone misses a huge amount, a heal just helps in between fights, not in the middle of a fight.

I like the idea of making the time of a shield depend on the amount of damage it has absorbed though, would make the ppu role much more important, this is something that could work very well in this mod.

As for shitbuffing, it only works on ppu's, in order to kill them when they are all that's left, and there is a way to counter it, namely just antiblue on themselves and recasting, which in opfights atm is pretty much standard anyway, but if we have the shields suffer from sustained damage, this shouldn't be much of a problem

So I agree with: time of buff being based on damage taken, with a maximum time limit, and being able to antibuff (you know that antibuff is still in the game right? a full anti buff which depletes psi pool, and damage type antibuffs which cost less psi). I don't agree with lowering the heal much more than the effect it has in nc atm, depending on how it plays in our game. And we should have some way like shitbuffing to inconvinience ppu's, as making debuffing easy would have ppu's killed way too soon.

I would say a ppu needs to be the hardest to kill, because it adds so much to the team play if the dynamics aren't focussed on just killing but actual teamplay and tactics. --Biglines 20:22, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

My uncapped PPU with an uncapped Holy Heal and 2 shields (never got around to building the third since 2.1) can outheal all WoC weapons on himself and outheal PvP damage at OP's on other characters against rares. That's 1 on 1 though, obviously focus fire from multiple enemies can't be outhealed. --Whitestuff 01:18, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Ah thought you meant foreign heals (a fighter gets easily outdamaged). I think it depends, if we have no or few respawns, the ppu needs to be very very hard to kill, if we have other respawn timers I guess it could be less --Biglines 09:39, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Weapons

I've been thinking about the weapons, how they relate to eachother etc. Because I don't think it's very smart to get all the weapons ingame, I think we might be able to just get a limited set of weapons which behave differently.

• Laser (dissy model, healing light beam), first shot must be on target to do damage
• Plasma (plasma cannon/rifle/pistol), each bullet does damage, but accuracy isn't great
• Sniper (silent hunter model), normal bullets, lots of damage, long reload time, only fire in scoped
• Ionic shotgun (cannon, pistol or rifle), high amount of damage, very low rate of fire
• Grenade launcher, small aoe range, but pretty low dmg
• Melee (claw, baseball bat, katana), high dmg hard to hit

this is just a first list, might be a good idea to make a few classes first and assign guns for each class --Biglines 13:48, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

My thoughts on weapons: First, eliminate burst fire. It was said that this was put into NC because the server couldn't keep up with the rate of fire of the weapons. This is a non issue since these servers can be hosted locally by the players. Full-auto rifles and lasers that continue to fire until you let go of the mouse button... That's the way to go. Eventually, we need to incorporate all of the weapons we can. Fusion weapons and rayguns are missing from the list above, as are easier weapons to implement such as the Libby, Pain Easer, and regular shotguns. We should start with a small list, but don't eliminate the possibility to add more later.

As far as how the system itself works, I would propose a hybrid of TF2 and CS: S. You pick a class and each class has the ability to load out on certain weapons. When you die or enter "buy zone" you can load out with other weapons. I'd say something like you can do a main weapon and a sidearm and everyone gets the equivalent of a stun stick. Melee characters could have a big damage melee, a pistol equivalent, and the stun stick equivalent (brass knuckles or something). This is really just a shotgun blast of ideas, but we have to start somewhere I suppose. --Whitestuff 19:21, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

hehe, you do realize that adding the dissy only as a model has so far cost me over 4 fulltime days to model/animate? and I even had all the dimension cuz I had already done it in solidworks.

as for the non-issue because server can be hosted locally, this is actually not entirely true, because local hosted servers would actually have more trouble keeping track of gunfire due to connection limits (yes, running a server is not viable on a home connection). The actual reason for using the burst, is that it allows the aiming mechanism to focus on staying on target, and only having to report a hit just once, meaning less bandwidth, but also resulting in the one thing that makes combat in nc enjoyable, which is actual aiming skill instead of spray n pray. Even though the system of neocron was caused by the server structure, it is one of the most important aspects, and would set our mod apart from 90% of all the other games, that use the burst mechanism

the point of burst weapons is that they work, look at the AK in game, every bullet hits for itself, meaning people just spray and pray. If you eliminate all burst weapons, there is no reason to choose a certain weapon over the other. just having burst weapons would negate any need for different weapons, and mean there only need to be 3 weapons or so, as all the rest will be exactly the same. I'm talking about actually achieving our mod. I will tell you now that we will certainly not get all the weapons in game, especially if they're all the same (which they would be if you remove the different neocron effect such as long bursts, beams that lock on, etc.).

To summarize: burst weapons are an important aspect of neocron, I vote very very strongly to keep them in unless we just wanna make yet another source mod that has as its only selling point that it resembles neocron a bit.

as for the buy zone, if players can just respawn immediately, what would be the point of having a ppu? I'd propose a system where the game is played in rounds, like in cs:s, where each team starts off with a bunch of people, with ppu's being able to heal, cast shields and resurrect killed players, which means there is going to have to be teamwork in order to protect your team's ppu, take out the other team's ppu. As for loading up a character with different guns, I don't really like that, as it would imply that every class is able to do a whole range of things. I will set up a total idea which I've been working on over the past few weeks while modeling the dissy and talking to r2d2 --Biglines 20:12, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. We really need to focus on getting some things in and then toy with them. I understand you worked hard on the Dissy and hopefully we can get some help on that front. --Whitestuff 01:14, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

My Huge Ass Gameplay Idea

General gameplay:

People can choose between all four classes, a spy that can either be sniper or rifler (with stealth), a pe that can either be pistols or heavy (with short stealth), a tank that can either be heavy or melee, and a monk that can either be ppu or hybrid (no apu's in order to increase likelyhood of someone on a public server going for partial support role).

Spies and monks can hack.

The ppu and hybrid can both rezz, cast shields, antibuff and heal (Maybe some other things like damage boost in order to get them up front), the hybrid of course takes longer to cast rezz and has weaker shields/heal.

Gameplay modes:

op_map:

One team is defending an op, with a related safezone for that team (the underground), but they have around 1/4th less people.

the two teams spawn in different places, the defenders in the ug, the attackers outside, but they have the advantage of being able to set up before the defenders can even leave the ug.

When the attackers hack the first layer, the defenders can come outside, and fight. For the attackers, there are no respawns unless a monk rezzes, or when another layer is hacked. When a layer is hacked, all the attackers are respawned outside the op (maybe with a timer), and the defenders that are dead are also respawned in the ug. The defenders respawn on a very slow timer (at least 3 times as long as a rez). The defenders can hack the layers back, which allows them to respawn in the ug. The defenders win when all the attackers are dead. The attackers win when 3 layers are hacked.

team_dm_map:

Both teams just fight eachother to the death, rezzes only by ppu, until a team is all dead.

--Biglines 22:11, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Rounds like CS:S would be cool, but I would say to have something more along the lines of TF2, where respawns are on a timer and both teams respawn at the same time. That way, you can focus gameplay towards completing the objective of the OP fight (defend the OP for X amount of time, or capture the OP). In team deathmatch, it may be better to have CS:S round rules, since there aren't objectives, per say. The only thing about CS:S round rules that isn't attractive is that with the ability to heal, the rounds could last a lot longer than a CS:S round. CS:S players can't heal or replenish armor, and each fight takes them down a notch in health, giving the dead players a shorter wait time to play again. But, with the ability to rezz, this might lessen that burden? Unless you are the player died where it's hard for them to get a rezz. I wouldn't want to have to sit there for 25 minutes while my kick ass PPU and the rest of the team plays. --Whitestuff 01:14, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I think if rounds were like tf2, and the attackers re-spawned no matter what, the defenders would never win, but I guess we can see about re-spawning when we're play testing. NikooO_o will be working on some op-props, and I'm looking at making a map in sketchup (yes, it's possible to map in sketchup, and über easy with "Match Photo" as it will just allow me to draw over the image in 3d, and have all the dimension right), seeing as I want some time off this modelling (I enjoy modelling a lot, but animating the same thing for days gets boring ;)). --Biglines 09:37, 10 March 2010 (UTC)