Please Please Please!!

#1 ? go drive around the levels and see where the powerups spawn and there won't be an advantage over you. Play a few games and take in what you see, people that have played longer will have a better understanding of how to exploit the terrain/obstructions/powerup positions.
Same with any game.

#2 Richard is right Jeff. It does not take long to learn where they spawn. Plus it is nice to have them in constant spawn locations.. that darned heal is hard enough to find as it is.

"Oh no! Hum [bot] has the area effect!"
Tank Dork

#3 Half the time I don't even know where I am on a map and I play relatively frequently. I do not play everyday and I think that newer people really have the deck stacked against them. Learning to use the terrain is one thing but I've seen scores in battle mode of 35 to 2. That person isn't 15x better than everyone else (probably only 5-10x :*) . I am sure that the people who have all the levels memorized will not want random powerups because it takes away much of their learned advantage. Why not have the powerups marked on the radar?

#4 If a person gets a 35 to 2 score consistently, then I would say that person is 15 times better than the other person. Experience is a very important factor when 'calculating' skill. Newer people have the deck stacked against them in any game because experience is one thing you can't start out with.

#5 Yes experience obviously counts. I'm not saying lets make it so a beginner can win. I'm not saying someone who wipes the floor with everyone else isn't better. Twice as good a driver, 4x times as good a driver, six times? Ok. 15X better? Do you know what that means? I don't see that score consistently but I have seen it. Does anyone have fun in a match like that? Anyone?
I really wanted to make an appeal to the designers but my viewpoint seems to be a minority of one.
It is nice to have things to learn in a game which keeps players coming back for more. I can see that. Tell me this: Is the health power up completly random within the spawn locations or is it more likely in certain spawn areas? I'm not looking to learn secrets I just want to know the likelyhood of it.

#6 Jeff - the powerups are spread pretty liberally and randomly around the missions. I don't think anyone has much of an advantage just because they know the exact location the powerups appear. The type of powerup that occurs at any given time is completely random (health powerups occur about 20% of the time, I think). Nobody has an advantage here.

In terms of adding powerups to the radar, this is a suggestion that others have made also. It is under consideration. Just be aware that not everything that seems like a good idea really is. Often playtesting will show that a little tweak that someone thought would be good actually has a negative impact. We need to evaluate potential changes and make them carefully.

In terms of whether someone with a score 15x as high as yours is 15x as good as you or only 2x is a little too abstract a question for me. But I will say that the difference in skill has little to do with knowledge of the mission and much to do with practice driving and shooting, as it should be.

Now does anyone have a good time when the score is 30 to 2 or whatever? Maybe, maybe not. But generally people who score that well look for other top players to play against, so I don't see this as a huge problem (i.e., that may happen from time to time, but it doesn't dominate the games and it's simply a fact of life that some people are going to be much better). Personally, I've had a great time watching the community players get better and better. I started out as one of the better players because I'm one of the developers, but it didn't take long before other people had played more than me and were routinely handing me my brain-jar on a platter. Is it still fun for me? Heck, yeah. So I do think people can have fun even when they aren't winning...

Anyway, yes, we are considering tweaks like adding powerups to the radar, but no promises. In terms of placement and randomness of powerups, that will likely stay as it is now.

#7 Thanks for clarifying the power up situation. I would guess that the stratosphere scoring players deserve their score. What about just adding the health powerup to the radar? Then it might create a race while not getting the radar too crowded. Thanks for answering.

#8 Yes, adding the health powerup is the solution we are considering most seriously. We do want to test first, though. E.g., it gets rid of those neat situations where you are fighting someone with their back to a health powerup. You know something they don't, and you fight them accordingly. Or perhaps you are involved in a heavy fight, a health powerup blinks on somewhere and everyone races to the powerup. Did that make the game better? Maybe, maybe not. But as I said, it's under consideration.

Cheers.

#9 Personally, I know quite a lot of the locations of powerups on certain maps, however, I dont tend to bother with them (except for health) and except for the occasional time I need a different powerup. The power ups can be more of a hinderance sometimes as you dont have the same rate of fire or accuracy. The 'area effect' powerup can be useful if you are at a distance / sniping, but it is useless in close quarters combat as it has a very slow rate of fire and you can damage yourself with it. The 'bounce back' again 'can be' useful, but half the time, I find it more of a hinderance as I cant use it cleanly without the possibility of shooting players on my own team by accident as the shots bounce around the map. 'Rapid fire' is the only one I actually like getting, however I'm not able to distinguish which powerup each one is - other than health. (bounce back/area effect/rapid fire)

So, just because I know where they are doesnt mean I'll be going for them, and I've noticed that a lot of the top players will also tend to not bother them and will even drive around them so as not to pick them up (with the exception of health).

I have also found that the healths are very hard to come across - even if you know where all the powerups are. It may well (as has just been stated) only have a 20% chance of turning up, but if all the other powerups are being ignored and not picked up, then the chance of a new one appearing drops to 0% as there will eventually be no spawn spots for it to appear in. (or do they change periodically? if so I've not noticed that.)

I have also noticed that most players (myself included) will go kamikaze into others or cliff dive when too badly damaged (in scrum games) because trying to find one of those overly elusive healths is just far too time consuming.

As for their locations, I think it's probably better that they are always at pre-designed spawn spots, it allows them to be placed deliberately in certain locations which can be tricky to get to. Random placings would mean that they would start appearing off the edges of the maps (like the scrum itself does) or in amongst clumps of rocks where players wouldnt be able to get to it. It's fairly easy to learn where they appear from the terrain, and actually having them always in a particular spot helps with general orientation as they almost act as landmarks.

In response to the sometimes excessive gaps in scores, don't forget that Demo players get their scores reset once their demo time runs out and they come back into the game, so they will be very unlikely to have scored more than a few points at the end of a game.

-Z-

#10 -BUMP-