I just talked with Charlie the other day and we were talking about skilled movement systems.
So yeah, what kind movement systems would you like NS2 to have which would be more intuitive. It could be bunnyhop, but then you would have to suggest ways to make it more easier to learn. Puzl suggested removing the forward key prohibition, which I agree on. Queued jumping (no need for exact timing) could make it also easier to learn. Perfect system would be easy to learn but hard to master. Scripts or binding to wheel should not be necessary.
I would like to hear comments from players who have played other games (preferably on competitive level) to hear about their implementations of similar skill systems.
This discussion in not just for the fun of it, if you present a good idea there's a decent chance it could go through.
- Allow a queued bhop but also add exponentially smaller speed increases for increasingly accurate timing.
- Take teleport out and bring blink back in. Most of the complaints I hear from people who hate fading is that they just get caught every 5 seconds on some part of the map. Someone was telling me recently that as a skulk you don't get caught on anything at all now in NS2 after they added some feature in. I think if you coupled whatever feature that is with the sort of semi permeable TF2 models, you could at least merit trying out proper blink again in the beta.
That's certainly the way you make it easy to learn and hard to master, but how the fuck do you time a queued hop?
Maybe make it so that whichever way you are looking, the jump boosts you in that direction, just like when you're attached to a wall in NS1 and you can jump off of it.
The speedboost you get from each jump would be some function of your current speed and the angle at which you are aiming, compared to the direction you were previously moving.
The peak boost could be at something like 20 degrees to the direction of your previous movement, with the magnitude of the boost dropping off to a minimum at 0 and 90 degrees.
If you want it easy to learn, hard to master and you decide to implement this, you need to introduce a tutorial. I expect you'll also want some bullshit storyline/scientific justification of why this works.
Basically I've proposed the NS1 system with queued jumping.
I'm suggesting that a queued bhop should offer a baseline speed increase over walking in a straight line, but that the more accurate your bhop (the closer you click jump to when you actually hit the ground), the larger that speed increase would become. And that the accuracy/speed increase ratio should offer diminishing returns in order to minimise the chances of kuitmo breaking able or whatever.
warsow a like jump would be awesome actually, that would make wallhoping a lot easier not to mention that bhop(if its ns1 bhop) will be easy for everyone who plays the game for the 1st time, wallhoping could also release a really high potential of some skill based movements for competitive players etc ; )
also ns1 blink being used in ns2 would also add another movement based skills and making fading exciting ; )
it should be exactly the bhop system in NS right now but without the need for a script that spams jumps
ideally they would embrace it in such a way that a bhopping lifeform is animated properly and looks badass in the process. bhop should look like it belongs in the game instead of looking like poop that the devs feel they have to apologize for because of the 90% of the playerbase they want to cater to sucks at video games
i'm not very optimistic, so just tell him to put air control in and i'll cross my fingers until 2015 when ns2 comes out
I like the current movement system, but it's way too hard to learn. I teached it several people (ABLE newbs)..or at least tried to.
People don't understand
1) why the forward key is forbidden to use - not intuitive
2) where to look when hitting the ground (the basic left/right angle switches) - not intuitive, most people start bhopping backwards :D
But jump timing is something everyone understands. But you shouldn't need a script for first success.
So I'd try this:
1) Just use one key to hold down permanently (forward key as convenience)
2) Make strafing adjustable by mouse moving (currently you just change your view by moving the mouse). I'd try to make air movement that you change air direction as you "look". I guess everyone should be able to pick that up fast
1+2) is the easy to learn part. Now we need the difficult to master part. Just using the first 2 steps could lead in a faster way than just walking on the ground. You can increase speed slightly by hitting the jump key when reaching the ground. The better you time, the more you increase speed. A good tolerance value (+/-) is key. So you can maximize the effect by practising the timing (and map knowledge, considering where you hit grounds).
To PREVENT jump key spammage I'd slow the movement down when you hit jump in the air or out of tolerance range of ground contact or hit the key more than once a given time.
If you want to use bunny hopping there should be two ways of doing it: Easy and hard. eg. you just simply keep +jump pressed and press forward and you get some more speed OR you keep +jump pressed and do some certain NS bhop like movement and gain more speed than just going for easy way.
One should also notice that nowadays bhopping is more used for faster movement rather than in actual combat.
Leap has some promise for skill based movement. It should be more than just easy way to jump to marine's face. eg. it could be made easier to do triple leap like wall->roof->marine. Also player should have more control of strafe movement during leap and maybe even be able to second leap while in air. (like in NS1)
I highly doubt they would add "complex" mouse style ways to gain speed although they maybe better. Something like multiple simple timed jumps and higher / lower elevation speeding with minimal loss of speed from jumping into -> from walls and continuation from leap would be a good start.
Without accerelation and randomness you cant really call it "skill-based".
I'd like to see it possible to have more control over the distance and height of each jump.
Say, you hold down jump before jumping, whilst holding it down it increases a 'jump strength' meter.
So holding down jump for longer would have a slightly longer and higher jump.
Also, skill elements could be introduced by using the idea of timing each jump by when you release the jump button. You get more of the 'jump accel' by releasing the jump button closer to the ground.
This would be possible to tie in the strafing movement as well as push forward movement both for gaining speed for dodging and introduce new elements to dodging as a life-form.
E.g. you could do lots of smaller jumps that are really well timed for fast acceleration or longer higher jumps at certain times during a bhop.
To make it still easy to learn, you could still gain acceleration from repeated jumps and mouse movement without having to time your jumps well, just increase the accel for better timing.
I'd say make it like a mix-up between Q3 and NS1. That would work really well.
Strafe keys shouldn't be necessary for gaining momentum, but be useable for a little air control.
Queued jumping(like Quake3) is a good idea to make it alot easier to learn for new players.
Also, unlike NS1, you should not lose your momentum by bunnyjumping on/off a wall. That decreases marines advantage when they got the higher ground.