Future of Fortress

Big Blue Box · Post by **Big Blue Box** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 10:14 pm

Fortress' future has been looked at alot around http://playfortress.wordpress.com/ lately.

One of the more talked about things was how to make the grind less needed and not as much of a main part of fortress.

I have a suggestion that would most likely need to be coded in somewhere and might require someone clever with coding.

My suggestion is to make it so after a certain amount of time of grinding on a wall your acceleration turns into a negative amount. Obviously people will find ways around it by degrinding then going back to grinding. Maybe if it was made that it shares the same dimishing returns and your acceleration wont immedietly go back to normal but instead need time to 'cool off.' (these settings would be changed with the console like any other setting if you are confused.)

If someone wants to attempt this i'd really appreciate it. Obviously i'm not requesting anything only putting the idea out there if anyone is interested.

Concord · Post by **Concord** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 11:34 pm

gee
I don't know about this
I think it would effect way more than just grinding
am I wrong?
is that something we want?

Big Blue Box · Post by **Big Blue Box** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 12:28 am

It would be cool to test though, maybe just have it affect cycle_accel_team. I dont know but its just a idea to test out and see if it works well and adds more dynamic to fortress

Post by **Lucifer** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 4:20 am

YOu're trying to treat the symptoms without addressing the cause.

The reason the grind is needed is because the game can only start people in the wingman configuration in a team game. Once we eliminate that (which we can't in 0.2.

, then we can talk solutions.

Website · Post by **Z-Man** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 10:26 am

What Lucifer said. Plus, what's broken about the importance of the grind? And what would be wrong about just setting acceleration by teammates to zero?

Then there's the problem that we can't quickly test this; it requires clientside modifications, or there will be ugly mispredictions.

Taken on its own, the suggestion has some merits. It would also prevent speed hogging and could make regular last man standing servers encourage direct dogfights more. How about letting wall acceleration deplete the brake meter, too, and have it stop working on empty brake meter? That turns the brake meter into a general speed change budget.

Oh yeah. One more thing. Not in 0.2.8. Feature freeze. Seriously.

1200 · Post by **1200** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 6:25 pm

Speed-phobia for weaks!

Concord · Post by **Concord** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 10:46 pm

Z-Man wrote: Plus, what's broken about the importance of the grind?

Z-Man, the general thought behind "the grind being broken" is that it makes fortress much harder for a first timer. And then they're kicked, etc.

Post by **Lucifer** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 10:49 pm

Concord wrote:
Z-Man wrote: Plus, what's broken about the importance of the grind?
Z-Man, the general thought behind "the grind being broken" is that it makes fortress much harder for a first timer. And then they're kicked, etc.

I would suggest that the reason it's harder for a first timer is because of the old-timer's attitudes. Otherwise, newbies being kicked wouldn't be a symptom of the problem.

Joe · Post by **Joe** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 11:14 pm

why not try making the zones bigger, or making the zones closer together, or making the whole arena smaller so everyone is in closer quarters.

Website · Post by **Z-Man** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 11:17 pm

Yeah, and then the suggested change doesn't fix the problem that if someone doesn't grind at all or badly, there's a hole left to be exploited by the other team, so the poor newbie still gets kicked.

There already exists the possibility to widen the start formation so a full team is spread across the whole grid width. It was tested in one of my evil experiments and generally not liked, though. Or, in the other extreme, you could set up the formation to be grinding already, but that makes things confusing like hell.

Post by **Lucifer** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 11:19 pm

We also tried moving the spawn point out of the fortress, which also made the non-grinding hole non-exploitable, but that wasn't liked either.

Hmmm, what else have we tried?

Concord · Post by **Concord** » Fri Dec 19, 2008 1:54 am

Lol!
in Fortress Test server right now,
the spawn is outside the zone and SPAWN_WINGMEN_BACK 8 SPAWN_WINGMEN_SIDE 25.

hoop · Post by **hoop** » Fri Dec 19, 2008 10:08 am

a possible solution?

ps. find the tkernoobsnongrinders

1200 · Post by **1200** » Fri Dec 19, 2008 12:26 pm

Double grinding is one of the most fun part of the game.
I'd wish every player could start like that at the start of the round.

hoop · Post by **hoop** » Fri Dec 19, 2008 2:44 pm

1200 wrote:Double grinding is one of the most fun part of the game.

/me agrees 10000%