New Plugin Public Test

[JackieChan]

Just a little update on the Class mod:

 

-Medics now have a First Aid Kit cooldown. They will receive a new med kit in 120 seconds (default) after they heal someone or themselves. A big decision has to be made whenever a heal goes down. "Do I heal myself, or someone else?"

-Snipers can now "track" targets. If a sniper damages a special infected (Tank included), they're "tracked" for 2 seconds. Tracking means they have a white glow that can be seen by everyone. I was going to make it so if a Sniper just sees a Special Infected, they'll be tracked, but I was having problems with ray tracing and whatnot.

-A help menu (!classhelp) has been added to briefly describe what each class is about

-Added a convar controlling if a player can select their own class, or have the plugin pick one for them when they type "!class". Class limits still apply.

-If "l4d2_class_selection_type" is set to 1 (which is random selection type), a player can "roll" for a class up to 3 times to prevent them from continuously spamming the command to get what class they want.

[JackieChan]

Also, I'm trying to figure out how I want bots to be handled if they're the Support class. Bots can drop ammo if requested to by a player by typing "!reqammo" in chat, but I'm trying to figure out how to make it so that command cannot be spammed and when the bot will think it's a good time for them to drop ammo for the team since bots aren't absolved from Ammo Pile limits.

 

With that said, the plugin is nearing completion. There are some things I need to think of to fix potential bugs, but it should be safe for the stress test 10v10 night. Anyway, keep on coming and volunteer if you haven't already. I'm going to let whoever is in the server know when it's going to happen and I hope that when I do, they will ask other people who might be interested to join in as well.

[Biggs]

Possible solution: Make it so bots are never support?

[JackieChan]

Pfft...if you want the easy way out.

[MasterTalpa]

Biggs doesn't know what he's talking about. Also I would like to test this out, if I'm able to.

[TheChief]

I will volunteer my body

[JackieChan]

-Added a "!defib" command to queue a defib instead of a med kit for when it's time to receive another healing item.

[JackieChan]

I'm aiming for maybe a....Saturday/Sunday night thing this coming weekend? like maybe 9 or 10 PM CST.

[mavC]

I'm available those days.

[Lookback]

Dang, I am gone for rthe weekend.

[MasterTalpa]

Would it be possible for the medics to start with pills and have them regenerate every 2 mins?

[JackieChan]

Thanks for all those who came out to test tonight. Really appreciate it. Tweaking will be done as well as some minor additions.

[Biggs]

Maybe you should remove all guns from the levels as well, and just let players choose their preferred gun. It feels weird having guns lying around that no one can pick up.

 

Why does the medic get to use the assault gun? Shouldn't that be assault only?

[Masgnoh]

The game has really turned into a war of attrition, the survivors slowly keep getting worn down until they snuff it. like there's absolutely no coming back. things don't even ever get any better, 1 medic for 10 ppl is pretty nasty.

 

I think 1 minute is just too long, 30 seconds, or maybe make the cooldown a linear function where cooldown is inversely proportional to total survivor hp. like if the collective survivor's hp is 1000 (10 ppl at 100 hp each), cool down of 1 minute. if all survivors are at 50 hp, then cooldown is 30 seconds. Just a constant 1 minute cooldown is... there were points when you just knew the game was over since there's no coming back. shorter medic cooldowns would allow for a come back.

 

how about giving medic a pill cooldown as well? temporary fixes for when you can't heal everybody at once.

 

infected were over powered. one team was superior to the other team, yet both sides never made it (save 1 time, but that was essentially rushing). how about nurfing the infected? such as either not allowing infected to change their class. or let infected choose their class before the spawn cooldown ticks in, but once they get that class, they have to stay with that class. infected are really adaptable to any situation because they can pick infected at any given moment, but if they have to stay with a class then more teamwork is encouraged plus they might have chosen an infected for a certain situation but the situation changes and that infected class is no longer viable.

 

civs are really useless. they're fodder. even if you're holding a pipe/bile, it's very hard to judge a situation so that survivors don't get overwhelmed by commons vs. wasting the throwable. plus, there's 5 civs. and there's like 10 throwables a level, some undiscovered. there's not really much to throw. how about a cooldown for pipe bombs? or start with pipe bombs?

 

i didn't really get to experience the other classes as i didn't become them, but boomers are essentially overpowered. when a survivor gets boomed, he gets overwhelmed by commons, other survivors have a hard time shooting the commons off him, and the boomed survivor himself can't shoot randomly because ff is on. When whole teams get boomed, they can't really shoot because of ff. getting boomed as a sniper sucked =( my pea shooter vs. 20 commons.

 

I know the game encourages teamplay, but it also encourages leaving ppl behind, if a survivor gets incapped in a bad spot, everyone else can potentially get incapped. with so limited healing options, it's just more advantageous to leave the survivor behind especially if he's a civ.

[JackieChan]

I do plan on having 2 medics instead of 1 to try and compensate for the cooldown.

[hoojee15]

First of all, thank Jackie very much for making this second server and its plugins. Below are my impressions and suggestions after my try out tonight:

 

1. Surivor Class choice: The idea of survivor class is interesting. But I think current class design and allocation is problematic.

 

a. Civilian: This class is so weak compared to other classes. Their only class skill, which is using grenades, is unreliable due to the fact that whether or not and where you can find throwables are random. Yet this class, with a skill that depends on nature, and only equipped with submarine guns, are for now the most common class in terms of number. And I have to say that it is very boring and frustrating to be banned from using tier 2 weapons. My suggestion is that either remove this class completely (which I think is best) or add more powerful class abilities to it.

 

b. Medic: I believe that medic is the most important class in this system. It is good to limit the recovering resources of survivors but I think current rules are too strict on survivors. They simply do not have enough resource to sustain the team unless the infected side are completely clueless. I think the 1 min CD on med kit is fine but it may be better to increase the number of medic to 2 per team. And, a M16 is too strong a weapon for a healing class. I think medic should be restricted to submarine guns only like the civilian class.

 

c. Sniper: the current sniper skill is not so practical: if you spot and hit an infected normally it will die very fast so the glowing is useless; on the other hand if you do not kill it instantly the duration of glowing is too short. Maybe the skill can be changed to this: as long as you aim to a special infected, the infected will glow, instead of hitting it with bullets. Or, let the sniper be the only class to be able to use laser sight, or make this class be able to spawn laser sights for the team.

 

d. Support and assault: no comment since I did not get the chance to play them but I think they are fine.

 

Overall team composition: I believe that for a 10 player game, there should be 2 medics, 1 sniper, 1 support, and rest assault. Assault should start with T1 weapons and upgrade them to T2 en-route of the map.

 

And if a important class dies, like medic, support or sniper, the rest of players should be able to pick up the dead survivor's role

 

There should be a ranking system like the one running in ordinary server. And at the start of the round, high ranked survivors have the priority to choose desired class first.

 

2. I have to point out that this gameplay system might encourage some 'irregular' tactics. For example, since the med kit now has a 1 min cool down, a survivor team with many injured players may would like to find a good place to hold and defend themselves against infected relatively comfortably (there are a few such places in every map) while waiting for cool down of their med kit and defib, fully healed, then start again. The counter measure is simple: put a limit on maximum ammo piles and med kits that a team can spawn in a single mission so the survivor cannot hold in one place infinitely.

 

Also, I believe with current game play system, rushing and intentionally leaving hard to save teammates behind is a far more better strategy than ordinary grinding for survivors in the sense of getting high score (we did not test rushing tonight so I cannot confirm this). So it is quite possible that the game becomes a need for speed contest with both side rushing as survivors. Admins need to come up with something to deal with it if that does happens.

 

3. I think current game play is too hard for survivors even if they are all seasoned and skilled players. And we have to keep in mind that a lot of people who plays in ordinary server do not have such good skills. So what will happen if they play as survivor and are completely owned by infected? I guess most of them will rage quit. Or, if a good player play with a team with key roles assumed by new players, he will much more likely to rage quit than he will do in ordinary server. So I think this server is only fun if both sides are very good players and the difference of the teams are little. This confines the popularity of the new server.

 

4. It will be better if like the ordinary server, there is more information provided to both sides. Like, as infected I want to see how much damage I caused to my target; as survivors I want to see how many infected I have killed and how many survivors are left, which survivor has been defibbed and who has respawned, etc.

 

5. There might be a reward and ranking system. You get points while you play, and earn your rank based on your accumulated points. High ranked players choose class first at the beginning of the round.

 

6. It seems that there is no human controlled tank spawn event in this system. It will be more interesting if there is one.

Edited October 8, 2012 by hoojee15

[JackieChan]

c. Sniper: the current sniper skill is not so practical: if you spot and hit an infected normally it will die very fast so the glowing is useless; on the other hand if you do not kill it instantly the duration of glowing is too short. Maybe the skill can be changed to this: as long as you aim to a special infected, the infected will glow, instead of hitting it with bullets. Or, let the sniper be the only class to be able to use laser sight, or make this class be able to spawn laser sights for the team.

I was going to make it so if a Sniper just sees a Special Infected, they'll be tracked, but I was having problems with ray tracing and whatnot.

 

Hopefully I can find a middle ground with a lot of issues I noticed during the 10v10 play-test.

[crasx]

one of the things that got me was the infected's ability to choose their class. This plugin has always allowed the infected to hit the survivors hard, and the best way to even that out was to allow survivors to get better guns and buy heals.

[mavC]

Well, there's so many issues.

 

Like everyone is saying, the new guys who doesn't know how this works or doesn't have such a skill, they will be left behind, and the rushing will take an usual place on games.

 

Now about the classes.

 

How about this? the medic have more HP than the others. I mean the 2 medics.

 

About the civilians I wasn't one of them on the test, but if this is a very weak class, then it have to be less civilians in the game. It would be great if Jackie could make the civilians always "mains" and just 4 civilians per game, so that will be like the others are an squad team trying to take the civilians to safe.

 

1 Sniper it is ok, just one of them.

 

3 Assaults, and they are the ones who can drop ammo.

 

2 Medics.

 

Ehrr, the support class, i don't see nothing special on them, just that they can drop ammo. But the assault guys can make it too.

[JackieChan]

My big question (which I should have asked last night) to the people who were in the 10v10 test last night, given tweaks, balancing and all that fun stuff takes place, would this plugin work at all?

[TheChief]

I think it could work if it were balanced and a huge plugin like this needs time to be tested just like a real game.

 

My opinions on ways to keep it balanced (includes some ideas from other's previous posts)

• 2 Medics each with a 60 second Medkit cooldown. However, the heal time is cut in half
  
• If the Civilian class stays, there should only be 4 and they should be the mains. But personally I think if the civilian class stays they should get throwables that have a 3-4 minute cooldown.
  
• Support class seems kinda silly and Assault should be renamed "Soldier" and they can use Assault rifles and auto-shotties but each of them can only drop 1 ammo pile. Also a few more assault would help.
  
• Snipers should be able to drop laser sights if they achieve a certain number of headshots.
  
• Infected don't get to choose which one they want to be.
  
• Since they can't choose the class they want the infected should be able to mark 1 person on the Surviors. This way they can try to take down the medic, assualt, etc. more easily
  

Also, thank you Jackie for doing all this and volunteering your time to create a new plugin for all of us to enjoy,

 

P.S. Gnome Hat

[JackieChan]

The more I think about it, I'm thinking about maybe merging Civilian into Assault. The whole class system wasn't inspired by TF2 which is what everyone compares it to, it was more based on Battlefield 3.

 

Here are my projected changes:

-2 Medics with 60 second kit cooldown.

-If Civilian class gets removed, Tier 1 weapons will be available to all classes, however all tier 2 and 3 weapons are restricted to the appropriate classes.

-Snipers may be able to drop laser sights for their team, but only if a requirement is met.

-There might be more than 1 support, but the amount of ammo piles for support would be reduced to 1.

-Medics might be able to generate pills/adren like they can with med kits.

-A !chat command to bring up a panel to see who is what.

[Biggs]

Maybe the tier weapon everyone receives could be based on the campaign level you're playing. Ex: on Dead Center map 1, no one gets tier 2 or 3.. etc, you get the idea I think.

 

Also, I don't like randomly assigned classes... I think everyone should have at least some control over the class they play.

[Lookback]

I liked the civillian thing,

[MattKemp]

I think if you change one civilian to medic, and make it a lot easier for new people to understand whats going on, it should be fine.

 

PS I kinda sorta overreacted when my team didnt make it that far into the map when I joined. I had no idea how hard it is on the survivors