Major, Xeno, SephirothKen and I played it together today for 4 games and had quite a bit of fun, here are some of our thoughts:
- Already saw you comment on the kill score or whatever, I think what you're currently planning (winning team gets to see their stats) seems good. What I do think is a necessity though is to have a Counterstrike style "who killed who" whenever someone dies, this way you know which person you killed because a lot of times you are fighting and if you kill them you don't even know who you killed (unless for some reason during the battle you were able to hover your mouse over them and read their name) - With regard to the last point, it would be a really cool touch to add those quake style "FIRST BLOOD" "TRIPLE KILL" etc etc although I'm not sure if you would want to do that - We played a 2v2, two 3v3s and a 4v4. The 4v4 seemed the most fun because flags were actually being captured quite frequently, whereas the 2v2 and 3v3 seemed much more difficult to secure flags. Then again those were our first games so I'm not sure how it'd play out with more experience. - Units should be hotkeyable so when you double tap 1 (your control group) it will recenter on your marine, it's a very small detail but was a little bit annoying to a few of us
The rest are kinda just ideas I wanna throw out there, although I know you said you wanted to keep the game as simple as possible with as minimal UI distractions and stuff Maybe have multiple types of maps in the future? Smaller maps for 2v2s or 3v3 or something? Higher walls around the flags so that nades can't be spammed so easily in there? Just very slightly longer respawn times so that defenders don't respawn so quickly and closely in order to defend, making surviving more important
Would love to see your thoughts on some of these, cheers for the awesome game we had quite a bit of fun and will look forward to playing it again in the future
I have been drowning in requests for kill feeds and scoreboards and I will go into my thinking on why I don't have them, but before I do I will say that I am constantly considering them because of the sheer number of requests I get to add them. I got into a long debate with ChanmanV about scoreboards tonight and he had me just about convinced to add one.
Why I haven't added a scoreboard -
I have not added a scoreboard for a few reasons. The main reason being that in any objective based game I have ever played that had a scoreboard, there were always a lot of players that focused on just getting kills instead of the objective and I felt like my game experience as someone who cared about the objective was ruined by these people on my team who never helped.
The second reason is because a scoreboard would not accurately reflect a player's contribution to the game and I think it is unfair to show some kind of rating for a player when it is impossible to rate them. In Pure CTF I genuinely believe you can be the MVP of a game without ever killing an enemy or touching a flag. I think the most important thing in the game is to waste your opponents time. By occupying your opponents time you create opportunities for your allies. I will often engage a couple of enemies at my own flag without trying to kill either of them for a long period of time because I know if I do they will respawn at their base and defend against my teammate who is attempting to collect their flag. My goal is essentially just to waste their time. Of course this is only valuable if you are outnumbered, otherwise you and your opponent just cancel each other out. But if you can survive solo against 2 or 3 enemies for even 20-30 seconds you are creating huge opportunities for your team. But how do I track that? How do I track someone wasting his opponents time?
The third reason is because I feel like you have little opportunity to kill your opponent. The game is really about forcing mistakes or outlasting your opponent more than killing them. It is sort of 'who screws up first'. You aren't really aiming your rocket at them so much as trying to create a bullet hell situation for them that they eventually cannot cope with and make a mistake and die. Whether my rocket kills my opponent, my teammates rocket or he is killed by his own team, it was the situation that really killed him and forced his mistake more than any individual player. There is an exception to this when players do the 'close blink' style play and gib an opponent by blinking right on top of them and firing before they can react.
Why I haven't added a kill feed -
Actually I did add a kill feed the other day, but I immediately disabled it again after noticing a terrible trend. In two out of the first three games I played after implementing the kill feed at least on person devolved into doing nothing but killing his teammates out of anger that someone had team killed him once or twice. Besides the general negative feeling everyone in the game will have when two people are being so genuinely hostile towards each other, it is also a horribly misguided view because you have plenty of opportunities to get out of the way of friendly fire. If I get killed by friendly fire I almost always feel like it was my mistake and not that of my teammate. But not everyone shares that view, and I don't really want to stoke those flames.
That said I could perhaps implement a kill feed that only shows who you have killed and not who killed you.
Camera centering -
You should already be able to center your camera on your marine by pressing spacebar. I hope that helps. I am not sure how to implement normal control groups without causing other problems (like making it possible to accidentally select an enemy unit which really sucks).
Different maps -
I am considering a system that uses the same map but rearranges the obstacles from game to game.
Respawn times -
I may bump them up a bit, I agree there should be more opportunity to make something happen after you kill a couple of enemies. I would prefer to find a way to do that though while keeping the feeling of constantly being in the game.
Information about the next patch -
In the next patch I am adding a laser ability. I tried implementing it on my test map tonight and I found some problems so I need to go back and work on it some more, but it will basically look like this:
It will take awhile to fire and it gives a little bit of a warning targeter thing but it will pretty much instantly traverse the map killing everything in its path including rockets when it finally does. You do have to sit still to fire it. Another interesting thing about it though is that it will be able to pass through force fields. It is designed to punish players who sit really far away and spam rockets. But I think the ability to fire it through the force field may give it a little more utility than just that. Still, it will be difficult to use the laser to hit anyone who is paying attention to their own marine. Though it may pose some threat to the slower moving flag carriers.
Besides the laser my next patch will also include a system that detects when a player has left the game or gone AFK and then attempts to balance the teams, and I have enlarged the marines by about 30% so they are easier to see. I am debating a system that assigns specific shapes to players to put on the ground underneath them so you can at least tell your teammates and opponents apart at a glance. I still don't want to do names overhead though.
Idea : post-game awards, totally unrelated to the outcome but simply for the fun factor. Some examples : - longest total flag possession time - most kills - most team kills - most spells used - most bullets fired - longest distance walked
Implement a way to quickly identify allied/opposing players without having to hover the mouse over them, especially when playing with friends. A hovering name tag might be intrusive though, so other alternatives could be to give each player a different cosmetic model.
Change the space bar key to lock/unlock the player's camera to the marine (e.g. you could scroll across the map to snipe and then lock the camera to to dodge shots effectively).
The spawn locations could have more protection as it's possible to rain bullets along the map edge and take out players as they appear.
I have added the new laser weapon to the live version of Pure CTF. Please try it out and let me know what you think.
The laser is designed to help punish players who just stand there firing rockets from really far away. You can also fire it through force fields because I thought it needed a little more utility.
I've probably played 30+ games of this already, it's really fun. These are my thoughts on what could be changed:
- Possibly the need to reload every once in a while. The game is completely fine without it, it would just prevent mindless spam from being the best option in a lot of scenarios. - Something to keep people playing. I know you don't want a scoreboard of kills/deaths but wins/losses would be nice or even an xp system like halo had where you gain xp after each game. xp rewards could be just cosmetic changes like a different marine skin or a different shape under your marine. This would give people like me a feeling of progression too instead of just the fun aspect keeping us playing. - Laser should have a relatively long cooldown and be slightly wider in my opinion. Right now it doesn't feel useful or fun, you can spam it all game but you won't hit anyone who's half decent. Making it wider would allow it to have a higher chance of hitting but the long cooldown would prevent it from being spammed, so you would have to put some thought into when you are using it.
Those are just my suggestions, but overall it's a really enjoyable game.
I would like to add it would be nice if the flags broke forcefields. I have seen too many stalemates were every player just forcefields on the flags so no one can get them and locks up the game.
On February 19 2014 06:26 hobbidude wrote: I would like to add it would be nice if the flags broke forcefields. I have seen too many stalemates were every player just forcefields on the flags so no one can get them and locks up the game.
I disagree. Setting a FF on top of the flag is great as a flag runner if you find yourself outnumbered without support. Drop the flag, FF it, and try to get the kills. Without being able to FF the flag, returning the flag would be far too unforgiving because as soon as you drop it to defend yourself, someone would blink on top of it.
This is a great game, I'm looking forward to seeing it get even better (with new modular arenas!) and having a constant source of fun on arcade, not a "solve it and move on" type game.
I have not added a scoreboard for a few reasons. The main reason being that in any objective based game I have ever played that had a scoreboard, there were always a lot of players that focused on just getting kills instead of the objective and I felt like my game experience as someone who cared about the objective was ruined by these people on my team who never helped.
The second reason is because a scoreboard would not accurately reflect a player's contribution to the game and I think it is unfair to show some kind of rating for a player when it is impossible to rate them. In Pure CTF I genuinely believe you can be the MVP of a game without ever killing an enemy or touching a flag. I think the most important thing in the game is to waste your opponents time. By occupying your opponents time you create opportunities for your allies. I will often engage a couple of enemies at my own flag without trying to kill either of them for a long period of time because I know if I do they will respawn at their base and defend against my teammate who is attempting to collect their flag. My goal is essentially just to waste their time. Of course this is only valuable if you are outnumbered, otherwise you and your opponent just cancel each other out. But if you can survive solo against 2 or 3 enemies for even 20-30 seconds you are creating huge opportunities for your team. But how do I track that? How do I track someone wasting his opponents time?
The third reason is because I feel like you have little opportunity to kill your opponent. The game is really about forcing mistakes or outlasting your opponent more than killing them. It is sort of 'who screws up first'. You aren't really aiming your rocket at them so much as trying to create a bullet hell situation for them that they eventually cannot cope with and make a mistake and die. Whether my rocket kills my opponent, my teammates rocket or he is killed by his own team, it was the situation that really killed him and forced his mistake more than any individual player. There is an exception to this when players do the 'close blink' style play and gib an opponent by blinking right on top of them and firing before they can react.
Been playing this a lot with the zone control community lately, been having a ton of fun with it, but we're experiencing a game breaking bug where the flag is no longer pick-up-able. Is there anyway it could either be fixed or I could get a copy to hopefully fix it?
EPT
