Gaming – Words

May 28, 2014

Why we should steer clear of fps map remakes

@43109673 raxxy writes…
[“Yes, but they don’t hurt for a test of various things, everything will ultimately be remade properly.”] here

I dunno. ut has never been great with acceptance of third part maps in non-custom game modes. This was surely in part because ut99 was so well done that it kind of played ok in everything, so they were not really needed. Even on custom levels the mappers at the time wanted to stick to the formula laid down by epic.

I don’t know if things will get remade “properly”. Do we even want them remade? Deck is a terrible map. Liandri is a terrible map. Rankin it pretty bad.. and so on.

We played an awful version of dm6 (campgrounds) in 2003. It was really simple, unpolished pos. The mapper had probably not played the original quake version enough to understand how/why it plays the way it does. Anyway.. I think overall mapper have no idea and churned it out to get one of their maps played. This also highlights how terrible 2k3 dm maps out of the box as we were happy to play this.. but thats another story.

Here is an example that is currently relevant. quakelive re-released dm6 for quakecon this year (next month?). dm6 is not really considered a good, or balanced map, but it is old and ingrained and.. whatever. Intel are sponsoring the competition and wanted a map redone like a processor box or something. It is quite a good idea imo.. but..

There are a few architecture changes, texture changes, item changes. The biggest thing is a new armor. It was a three item map (mega/ra/ya) and always considered quite difficult to play out of control. For a long time players have discussed adding an extra green or yellow and adding some additional architecture to tone down lg usage a bit.

So they added a new armor. Sweet. Except it is right next to the mega where the in control player can pressure it without repercussions. This is pretty obvious, maybe they wanted it this way, maybe the guy who did the revamp was not aware how the map actually played? Its 25armor and questionable if you should bother pushing out for it.

Great.

So one other change is an additional health bubble at bridge. This may not seem like a lot, but it gives the in control player (with RA) an even tighter grip as this is a common route to rocket jump after ra pickup to go high-mid rl. This player can refresh their health.

Of course there was a chance it was added so the out of control player has extra health when harassing from bridge – quite common. The argument here is that if you take damage while out of control on this map attacking here you are, simply, doing it wrong. To get a stack worth using on the original map would take 60-90 seconds under good circumstances. As the out of control player you only get a few chances to break control on dm6. Taking heavy damage (needing two health bubbles) while harassing RA from above (a very safe option) is almost as bad as dying since the restack will take a large chunk of the 10 minute time limit..

So two of the item changes actually skew the balance in favor of the in control player, which.. is the problem the map had anyway. What.

Aerowalk is another example. qw vs q3/ql. I don’t think the mappers that redid aero originally understood how it plays because the q3/ql version plays completely differently. Maps are good because of how they play, not just because they have a particular layout. What is the point of doing a remake if the remake plays completely differently?!

And then you could say that remakes can fix problems – but quite often mappers do not have the understanding (or play time/skill) required to even identify the problems.

Remakes are horrible

November 25, 2013July 14, 2015

UT99 for duel.. go esr

ut99..

There are good memories but if you stop and look at the 1) items and 2) maps, you have to see how horrible it was. Either that or you never really played it enough to appreciate this.

Or perhaps you played with US rules which was even worse!

It had potential (eg 2 jackets + belt or 2 jackets + keg) but the epic mappers* insisted on forcing 1jacket + 1belt + 1pads on every single map. Sometimes no jacket (so out of control played with the equivalent of a green armor that did not stack vs mega+100armor) Also every weapon and full ammo at most weapon spawns.

*and the community 1v1 maps too, yay. Not that q3 was any better in this regard, there were better duel maps floating around for a long time, yet only ztn was commonly used in earlier years.

The jacket/belt spawn time overlap was retarded. The maps we dueled on were laughable. Tempest, seriously? Probably better than playing morpheus or fetid, but really?

Good things.. combat wise you could play any way you wanted, aim, no aim, whatever, and still do well. This, imo, was ut99s strongest attribute. Even more than quakelive you could play without aim. However the bizarre mapping decisions held it back. I know, I know, most people on esr will point to the lack of movement as the biggest thing holding it back, but honestly if you think a game is going to play well by giving one player more than twice the health via pickup than the other player and then allowing them to freely pressure the weaker play on the next spawn then.. you have no hope. Movement or no the item system was broken.

Have to thank epic for turning 2k3/4 into an lg/shock primary hitscan-fest and not fixing the stupid armor spawns. Also adding quad to duel, woo! Will duel in ut4 fix any of these possible problems? Doubtful, epic are set in their ways.

October 22, 2013November 19, 2013

BF4 has dumbed down FPS even more!

@40655475 astro_ant writes…
[“Dumbed down and added crutches like lock on weapons and suppression to lower the skill cap. But still more entertaining than Call of Duty.”]

The problem is this (dumbing down) has been occurring since day 1 in FPS. From a team perspective TDM in quakeworld has amazing depth, both from an individual skill point of view as well as teamwork required. Also the 3-4 popular maps lend to very different play styles – almost to the point of infantry maps / full vehicle maps as a BF3 example.

This depth has been watered down in the decade+ since, especially from a team stand point, to where we are today.

One BF title to another or BF vs COD is hardly the issue. The games are hardly the issue either, well they are but they are the problem because of the playerbase. They simply don’t want that game anymore.

And the saddest thing is that, while the huge skill cap in quake could possibly have been argued as a.. bad thing, in 2000 with small player base, now it would not be such a bad thing. Larger player pools, possibility of matchmaking make these “problems” less glaring.

This is coming from someone that never played TDM in quakeworld and until recently had not even watched it. When it comes down to it the amount of communication and working together is huge compared to BF or COD. And then you add on individual skill caps? We have an awesome game.

Looking for sexy competition? Try Thatsnaughty sex toy competitions!

October 14, 2013

Fraze attends dreamhack and cries about map changes!

Nice. Did not understand 4 slow + 1 fast to begin with. Glad additional maps were not added as a 7 map pool typically start with drop/drop, which of course, while not required (could be ppddddp) would more than likely happen. Going to seven would probably re-add another fast map.

Ignore fraze, the only reason he is bitching is because his fav map is tox. The majority of his recent games have been on cure and sinister, and it appears, specifically not tox.

His reasoning for being cut over ZTN was due to not practicing it to this point, yet they are not practicing tox?

Of course he might be playing some sort of offline ql, or on aliases*, but why would you change up your practice regime^ on another account or playing offline? In au/nz we don’t really play cure or sinister very much so getting as much time on those while not getting rusty on older maps seems prudent. Which appears to be what he is doing!

*Which fraze has specifically (and for some reason proudly) said he never ever does in at least one interview 🙂 Also offline ql? Naughty naughty.

^Lets hide the fact I practice tox but not the other maps, teehee. So clever, noone will think I play it!

In fact given the apparent lack of tox play it is fairly obvious that fraze was decently confident on it, and has not bothered playing it recently. Judging by maps he has picked in previous tournaments, his “dueling while talking” series, his reaction to this new map pool*.. he liked tox and felt confident it being there.

*New map pool being one change. If one single map is such a problem the problem is that one map, not the rest of the pool 🙂

This post could get longer with more pointing out similar things, like there are seven weeks till the event, the map pool was announced 15 days ago, a large majority of people on esr* wanted it changed, etc.

*I know that this is not really a good gauge, after all lots of people liked britney at one point right? However a lot of these are backed up with examples of recent tournaments where the decider map has been tox and has been.. bad. As a spectator I don’t really enjoy it.

My one piece of input for the dreamhack guys would be add something along the lines of “This is the current prelim map list and will be finalised or changed by XYZ date” in future. A week or two (more like 2-3 hours) is enough to gauge the reaction. While I don’t doubt players that want to bitch about changes would find a way it would at least shut down this current argument of “blah blah blah blah they shouldn’t have changed it”.

——
http://www.4seasonsgaming.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5213

I have to question why a donation drive was run on 4sg to send fraze when he says this:

Since there are a few international Quake Live events now, what made you decide to attend Dreamhack Winter?

Fraze: I would be in Europe at the time anyway and its about time I played at an international LAN!

Really. Were people donating paying for a holiday in eu? Maybe they were donating so you could attend from another part of europe. Thats fair enough I guess.

Until you stop and think that since you had the cash to travel to europe already why would you not make dh the destination rather than begging from the community.

Lets not mention that the map list had little to do with fraze attending, he seemed keen to go before the list was even announced.
——

I was excited to watch a tournament without fast map, with a 5 map pool with new maps.

However since I wrote the above dreamhack have reneged on the changed maplist – updating it again and adding tox and aero to the list. Disappointing to say the least and we will be lucky to see anything except bo5/7 being played on new maps.

oh well

April 30, 2013

Company of Heroes 2 tips from COH1 – Available June 26th! Beta until then

Keep in mind I have not played COH2, but played a lot of COH1. Notes below relate to COH1 but from what I have seen on youtube COH2 plays fairly similarly. Some Company of Heros 2 tips!

Use retreat liberally. Saving units and ceding ground is generally better than losing units. Reinforcements are cheap compared to buying a whole unit. For instance, if your units are all in one area and you hear mortar fire it might be better to simply select them and retreat. In COH retreating units took less damage, moved faster, etc.

When a group of units was selected in Company of Heroes you coold “tab” between all selected units using the tab key. This was very useful for issuing different orders quickly. tab, move, tab, attack, tab more, tab more, tab move. Saves you having to select individual units with the mouse.

Also in COH1 you could “jump” to the most recent.. action using spacebar. There was also a feed on the left hand side of the screen. When the announcer says under attack/whatever press space. Your POV should jump to the current engagement. This is probably not the ideal way of playing, but I am not a hardcore RTS guy and it was suitable way to quickly cycle through stuff.

Since you were having problems with mortars specifically the following might be useful. Range and line of sight heavily changed how accurate/effective artillery was in COH. This means a mortar at long range shooting into the fog of war was unlikely to hit what it aimed at. A mortar at long range with units spotting for it was somewhat accurate (however due to the travel time of the shells you could move your dudes before they landed). A mortar in close with spotting + support was quite dangerous due to accuracy + fast shells.

If you cannot see any other troops it is possible the other guy is spotting with a sniper on hold fire. This could end up being a popular tactic in Company of Heros 2, especially if the mortar has been buffed compared to COH1.

Which brings us to snipers. Ideally you should put them on hold fire+cloaked, especially when you first deploy them. This stops them randomly attacking. Keep them close to your front line guys and be ready – if you drop an enemy squad to low member numbers use the sniper(s) to try to take out the remaining dudes and eliminate the unit completely. This can be a large setback if it happens early enough in the game as you will be one unit up (provided you haven’t lost any to that point).

After that first engagement you can be a little more brazen. It is probably good to be aggressive for the first few minutes after initial uncloaking. This way you can get some quick kills in before the enemy gets out a counter (sniper/decloaking unit). It is even possible to play uncloaked, giving faster movement, just keep the sniper behind your other squads. After this first few minutes of this, if you feel that the opponent is going to try to counter you should cloak up and move between each shot. The common counter is another sniper on hold fire who uncloaks + kills your sniper when he shoots. Moving between shots, or even waiting a long time will prevent your guy being taken out.

While the learning curve is steeper I would heavily suggest playing 1v1 over the team game types. It is a lot more controlled and makes analysing your game much easier. Are you losing because of cut offs? Because of infantry out of cover? Because of rushing into MG?

Company of Heros 2 looks to be the goods.

January 28, 2013

Map size in battlefield 3 is too small for 64 players, hell even 32players.

The more I play squad rush the more I think that each mcom area is acceptable for 4v4 in BF3. This means that each mcom/flag accommodates around 4 players attacking and 4 defending, maybe 5-6 max per team before it an area becomes over crowded. The team interplay of defending or attacking an mcom is awesome – and this is because there are only just enough people to cover each approach, or possibly not enough so responding to threats is important. If the enemy tries to push hard on one approach this must be communicated in order for the rest of the team to assist.

If you can cover all entrances with players then the “teamwork” aspect becomes less important. This is seen in the popular infantry heavy BF3 maps. Metro 64 in particular highlights this. When there is a stalemate at lockers/frontstairs/backstairs progressing becomes very difficult because there are so few ways to attack and all the avenues for pushing are covered. The same can be seen in Seine crossing, grand bazaar, the close quarters maps as well as the new Aftermath maps. There is no teamwork required when all approaches are heavily covered.

Too many players on a map lead to the death of teamplay and Battlefield 3, or any game, it becomes a zerg without structure. This is problematic but quite often cited as “good teamplay”, if only because everyone runs around together / gets stuck at the same point. Once again playing near each other is not playing together nor does it necessarily mean that good teamplay will be seen in action. **Read below for clarification.

Lets back up a bit and look at what I consider to be teamplay. Other people might consider it dropping ammo or health or reviving but I think teamplay is making plays/decisions with your teammates actions in mind.

A basic example : two members on your team as RU are covering lockers on metro. They spot several enemies at the US end of lockers but cannot kill them – they revive or hang back and heal. Pushing lockers is probably not a great call so they hang back. If you were hanging around the stairs a really excellent bit of teamplay would be pushing up past the gardenbeds/backstairs and shooting the players at US lockers in the face. You could delay entering until you see your teammates engage (using mini map/audio) the pair at US lockers, then engage.

This is teamplay at its core. Just because a player is in a jet does not mean this sort of thing is not happening. In fact with a scoreline of 60-2 I think it would be hard that these sort of player ARE happening regularly, even if he is not deliberately doing it. He would be assisting players on the ground that need assistance and he would be locking out the enemy air assets.

At the same time wide open maps just fail for dynamic team play that is good. The problem is not as obvious but the amount of communication due to the more open nature of the map will work the same way. Maps need definition, pathways, walls, chokepoints and flaking routes. Having none of these is the same as not giving enough options. An example of this would be Antenna on Caspian. Generally you can cover everything easily. I think older BF players would point out that you could flank a really really long way around and come from behind. To be fair this is probably possible but I would say it is a bad choice and you are letting your team down if you opt for this. Your team would be playing down 1/2/3/flanking players.

Good teamplay at its core is the interaction between players. It is not dropping health or ammo.

I put it to you – Battlefield maps are the wrong shape. All the maps start narrow, go to one point then maybe out to 2-4. This is wrong, especially for pub gaming because it funnels the team that plays offensively onto one point, then the base. The BF3 maps are also setup so once you have pushed a team back to its base there is very little chance to push out due to narrow approaches out of the base. In my opinion, instead of funneling all resources out through a narrow passage the map designers at DICE should give bases many, many more escape routes to easily attack more than the first flag. This allows more teamplay because of the above mentioned “too many player” syndrome. Designing a map this way also allows comebacks.

I think DICE have partially learnt this lesson, Talah Market has many approaches for the attackers in conquest assault

January 22, 2013

Battlefield 3 Mouse Sensitivity – Best Mice, mousepads, high or low sens?

Ah mouse sensitivity, the bane of almost every gamer out there who is trying to improve.

Mice and pads are also chopped and changed with such regularity that it is hard to imagine the users even get used to them. Is this needed or is this almost compulsive changing a products of the mouse/pad industry.

What is the best sensitivity for bf3?

If you look on the web for Battlefield 3 or any other game you will find two sides to this argument. One side knows what they are talking about and the other side does not. Unsurprisingly the side that does not know what they are doing like new mice and tend to spout the rubbish mice manufactures say.

Selecting a reliable mouse is a large part of mouse sensitivity. Without a reliable sensor you cannot perform.

Lack of unremoveable negative or positive acceleration
Malfunction speed (important for low sensitivity)
Lift off Distance (Distance at which the mouse stops tracking when picked up)
Prediction or angel snapping (smooths out bumps)

Picking the best mice is for another time, however the most important thing is a reliable sensor so you can run a lowish sensitivity. Correct, low sens is the best for almost everyone. This applies to most FPS. Sensitivity numbers and DPI are not needed here. Basically use anything over 400DPI – Not sure you can buy a mouse with lower sensitivity than that anymore. Any gaming mouse will do it. Next up you want to set sens low enough, set it somewhere above 30cm.

Some mice with good sensors: Razer Deathadder, Zowie AM, Microsoft Wheelmouse optical/explorer V3/intellimouse, Razer Abyssus (tape the sensor to fix the lift off distance issue), Logitech 518. This is not the be all end all list but it is something to start on.

Why low mouse sensitivity for Battlefield 3 / FPS?

Gaming is about being consistent. Sure some players perform well with high sens but generally you should use medium, or even better, low. Low sensitivity provides more consistent performance and aim. Your reaction time and close in aim can suffer, but if your objective is to improve your game, reaction is not a huge issue. You should be situationally aware at all times and not reacting to split second changes too often.

Low sensitivity also smooths out problems such as nerves and cold hands. Having low sens is a benefit if you are planning to start playing competitively and suffer from jitters.

I started writing this about three weeks ago and after reading to here can’t remember where I was planning to go with it. At any rate, if you are not awesome (and even if you are), lowering your sensitivity is probably a good idea. After that stop screwing with it and build the muscle memory for good snapping.

On top of this you should pick a scope type and stick to it. The red dots and holo sights have different sensitivity multipliers (yeah you are retarded DICE) so using one and sticking with it would be best. It would be nice to try something along the lines of changing DPI to get a real zoom fov sensitivity multiplier but really at this point in the game with my interest waning I CBF.

Low sensitivity needs a low sensitivity mouse mat

Get something big. I like the Razer Goliathus Extended because it is gigantic. The Extended costs a little more than the other Razer mats but you get two for the price of one. Simply cut it in half when you receive it, twice as long until you need to replace it! Speed has more friction and control has less, go figure. Chopping one of these in half gives you a wide and slightly narrow mat compared to the largest Razer pads. This is a good budget solution.

Before buying or ordering a mousemat I strongly suggest googling for your mouse + mat. Some mice have issues tracking on specific pads.

December 18, 2012December 18, 2012

How to fix Mouse Lag in Black Ops 2 :COD BO2

Like most games Black Ops 2 can suffer from mouse lag*. Like most FPS it is easily fixable with a few tweaks via the menu. In addition to the “normal” problems like vsync and raw mouse input, BO2 can suffer from frame rate degradation when aiming down sights.

*My guess is the majority of players run with some sort of acceleration. Between bad mice, bad graphics settings and mouse mats, the large majority of gamers would have input lag of some sort but not even realise or notice. This paints a picture of just how bad and out of touch the average player is. On top of this, mouse lag is

The usual mouse lag fixes apply to COD: Black Ops 2

Firstly wireless mice always have some sort of latency – if you are using a wireless mouse this is the first aspect to fix. The one exception is the Razer Mamba, I know a few guys who are picky but think it is acceptable. I would not use it but they seem to think it is decent. Google “mice with flawless sensors” to find a list of good mice. Deathadder, MS 3.0/wheelmouse, some new zowie to name a few.

Disable pointer precision in control panels and turn off acceleration if availabe in game. Also turn off any acceleration your mouse drivers are adding.

Next up you will want to disable vsync – in BO2 this is listed in the video settings menu listed as “Sync every frame”. Why the COD devs needed to rename this option I have no idea but there it is. The basic problem here is that vsync is generally not implemented correctly and causes 1-2 frames of latency. This value varies based on your monitor refresh rate as well, on a 60hz LCD the effects will be more noticable, on a 120hz less due to each frame being half the duration as the 60hz. This is an important point to note, many players may be getting 120hz LCDs and liking them more because of this.

There are better ways to limit frame rate, but since Carmack does not work on these titles we will never have tools like com_maxfps. If your video drivers externally let you limit FPS you may wish to try this for frame capping. You could also do vsync via your drivers to see if it behaves better than the in game implementation.

The next fix would be to update your video drives. Both nvidia and ATI have pushed newer drivers since Blackops2 release. Both card manufacturers address FPS issues providing smoother gameplay as well better performance.

Input latency for BO2 should be easy to fix

Finally tweak your video settings for better performance. The usual suspects are prime targets here. Texture quality, screen resolution, model detail, etc. Turn this down to get stable FPS, frame spikes can feel like mouse lag at times and they detract from gaming.

To recap

Make sure your mouse is wired and decent
Disable any external acceleration in windows or your mouse drivers
Disable vsync
Update your display drivers
Tweak for performance

November 20, 2012

Teamplay in Medieval Warfare: Chivaly

If you are an archer and get rushed by enemy players when you have melee team mates nearby, please refrain from being a retard and trying to engage. Please just get the hell out of the way and let the guys in plate kill them 😀

November 19, 2012

So how should scavenger work in BF3?

So how should scavenger work in aftermath?

I think ideally it would be good if there were weapon tiers. This is easy, esp when you consider that you can skew weapons better with attachments.
T1 – A pump shotgun with frag rounds, G18 and a .44
T2 – One of the “best” assault rifles plus its optimal items. SKS or M417.

Utility weapons – RPG, M320 LVG.

Actually there are many options available. Ideally we want good weapons to be something a team works for, so having lots of them on a map detracts from the game overall. It would be easy to make a prefered set of weapons vs underdog weapons.

Things that need to be added or changed.

Health needs to be broken out of the medpack and turned into a periodically spawning item. On this note I would also say that health being boosted about 20% would be beneficial. Having played on servers like this I can honestly say it creates better firefights. The alternative is to have no attachments which also causes longer engagements due to slower TTK. 20% equates to around one more bullet in a fight.

Armour needs to be added. This is the largest problem since there is no mechanic currently. Armour would require extensive testing. Using quake numbers a full stack should add around 2-300% durability to a player. Different armour types would be fine here. A yellow and a red type that offer varying degrees of protection. The beauty of TDM is how levels can be setup to play very differently based on the load outs. Looking at popular TDM maps from quakeworld we see things like. DM2(2 red, 2yellow) DM3 (1 red 1 yellow) E1M2 (1 yellow 1 green). Wildy different setups there. In comparison to UT99 which is basically belt + jacket on every single map. Some variation would have made UT99 a lot more interested. Two jackets + belt? Three jackets? and so on. A robust armour system would give mappers much more variety.

An important thing to note is that simply giving more health is not the answer. Armour and health are very different because armour does not absorb all damage. Because of this grabing a red armour with 15 health does not offer you a great deal. You will still need to heal yourself somewhat before being more aggressive. Thus using health is not the answer.

Powerups – quad damage, invulnerability, etc. The class items could be used here. Defib is very powerful but I am not sure how game changing it would be as a short duration powerup. Quad damage could be fun, but at the same time would not be the same as in quakes. Maybe a powerup that doubled fire rate but halved recoil would be fun. This way if you miss you are not instagibbing the other player with one stray bullet. It would also make ammo a heavy consideration.

Another option would be a powerful weapon. Perhaps the M320 with a decent stack of ammo.

Ammo – Limit this to 3-4 ammo types – less if needed.

Scavenger TDM Maps

We want this to be 4v4. Maps need to be small enough to not have long travel distances between items, weapons and other key areas, decent interconnectivity without turning the level into swiss cheese is important. In addition being compact is good because we want spawners to be able to link up with team mates without a massive hike.

Ziba tower is the smallest close quarters map, however it is too large for the purposes of 4v4 TDM. Levels and atrium style maps are sorely missing in modern FPS and while they would not get past DICE QA in the older quake style, they could be created easily enough. A shopping center with ruined sections to add ramps.. Lifts, catwalks and so on. As already mentioned connectivity is important, ideally choke points should be negateable and locking down one area/item does not guarantee winning.

Spawn weapons

In the first post spawn weapons were discussed. As mentioned the spawn weapons consist of an empty pistol, a knife and a grenade. This leaves a player completely useless off spawn from a combat standpoint. In older FPS it may seem that spawn weapons are useless, but flooding enemies when they are weak should be a somewhat valid tactic. This allows taking down of weapons and camp zones even without weapons. This does not mean that spawning -> attacking should always be a valid tactic. A game that plays like this is quake 3 and its implementation of TDM, and while not bad it removes a lot of strategy and importance of items. Quake2 gave players a very weak starting weapon that did not allow much offensive action, or even defensive for that matter.

Players should spawn with something – but probably not a pistol as they are generally too powerful. A pump action shotgun with frag rounds, using the automatic shotgun damage, would do well here. They hit softly, shoot slowly but with 2-3 guys would be ok. Remove the suppression and we would be set!

A few more things..

Random weapon spawning has been mentioned on whirlpool as well as some other BF3 community sites. If this is entirely random it will completely detract from the gameplay. If all the weapons randomly spawn there is no rhyme or reason to how teams will play. The game will play worse than FFA. There will be no objectives, there will be no strategy.

By the same token players need to randomly spawn. If the current squad spawning system is allowed it compeltely detracts from the skill of surviving as a spawner and regrouping. This is an important aspect of TDM and while it may seem like it detracts from teamplay it in fact improves it due to increased difficulty of meeting up and playing together.

Plus spawn killing is similar to objectives and area control, if you control more of the map you have more “safe” area for your team to spawn in.

important – random spawning and lack of randomitem spawning.