Tribes indoor vs. Quake, what's different?

Pages : [1] 2

Special
04-03-2003, 21:10
Reading the HoF/turtling thread sparked a question in my head. First off, I was just imagining how cool it would be to have Quake-like indoor play meshed with Tribes' outdoor aspect. So in that case, some people would look forward to actually attacking/defending generators and ending turtle situations.

This raises an interesting question which I don't really know what the answer is: What makes Quake's indoor play so much more fun than Tribes'? Here are a few guesses on my part (keep in mind I will be only referring to T1) on why indoor Tribes doesn't work:

1) Weapons. What are the feasible weapons you can use indoors? Discs, grenade launcher, mortar, plasma. Secondary to those choices are chaingun, blaster, ELF. Let's inspect the primary weapons. Discs are very powerful but end up doing too much damage to yourself to be used in close quarters. Their rate of fire is something to be left outdoors. The grenade launcher is all about spam, although it is a cool weapon to use around corners. Mortars are the same as grenade launchers, and we all know how annoying it is when you're spammed with these. Last but not least is the plasma gun, which is the only promising indoor weapon out of the primary choices. Its rate of fire is ideal, but, it is too weak. Against another shielded light you'd have lots of trouble. Against a shielded heavy you'd die trying.

2) Maps. The basic design behind Tribes' indoor maps lend to hallways that are too small, entrances that are too small, rooms that are too small, and passages that are too complex. Mix this with inappropriate weapons and all of a sudden you have a giant spamfest with no finesse in the gameplay. The larger indoor maps in T2 tried to change this, but it didn't work. They still sucked.

3) Shield pack. This is the pack that throws all indoor play off balance. Suddenly you have a second bar of life that is always constantly regenerating. To a skilled player this is almost like invulnerability. Imagine playing a game of Quake where all players could snag an invulnerability powerup at the same time. It wouldn't be fun. Add in to the mix the dynamic fact that heavies using shield pack have much more shield than a light, making it futile to assault a base as a light.

4) Foot speed. In Tribes the strongest move the slowest, the weakest move the fastest. In Quake there is no such distinction. Indoor fighting using a heavy is basically sit and shoot and hope to maim. A light is marginally better but it is still difficult to dodge shots. Quake has lots more finesse, and I attribute it to foot speed. You're able to dodge shots quickly while jumping and shooting all the way through. It's a much more exciting game that way.

What it comes down to is this: The fundamental aspect behind Tribes (teamplay and its balancing issues) does not lend to fun indoor gameplay. This is evident in mods such as D&D and Siege. Quake is much more fun indoors because of one fact: All players are created equal.

What I am saying (to the developers aka THRAX) is, I think you guys should really investigate why Quake is so successful even though most of its gameplay is indoors. If you take what is successful in that arena and combine it with what you already know with Tribes' outdoor aspect, you will have quite a gem on your hands.

Sir Lucius
04-03-2003, 22:07
I kind of thought up a solution for point 4.


It sounds dumb tho, and I don't want you to take it seriously, but it is a solution. Variable walking speeds? Indoors it's easier to move than it is outdoors.


Another dumb ide Since out doors you main method of transportation is the jet pack, why not have that some how translate to an indoor enviorment? All I can really think of is jet doding, where your force is applied to which direction your're running rather than on a z axis.

addps4cat
04-04-2003, 01:25
Some maps work very well for the kind of indoor fighting you are talking about. Maps like harvester and katabatic have medium sized indoor bases that have lots of heavy fighting in them.

You talk about heavies and lights a lot, but in my mind the most Quake-like indoor battles happen in mediums w/ shield pack. The plasma is a lot more useful indoors than you think, and is very useful even against shields because of its high rate of fire.

What keeps the different classes equal is their footspeed vs the amount of health they can carry. Obviously it would be a rare battle in which a light w/ shield pack kills a heavy, but a medium in shield pack can take on almost anything. Lights can move very fast indoors, while a heavy is barely moving in order to conserve shields, which makes him an easier target.

The weapon thing is a little more difficult to balance because so much of tribes takes place in huge outdoor environments in which you need weapons that have large splash damage. Weapons like the grenage launcher have like 15m splash damage radius which makes them somewhat unbalanced indoors because you can spam them out. Imagine a mortar-weapon being common in quake, it would just be a frag-fest.

Personally I am not a fan at all of large sprawling bases. Recalesence comes to mind as a map that I would get lost in because it was so large. I like maps that have just a hut with inventory stations like Surreal or Feign.

R@ND0M
04-04-2003, 02:15
Perfect outdoor gameplay combined with perfect indoor gameplay would be a 99% perfect game.

Tribes (both) indoor movement was far too slow, which forced alot of original Quake players to go back to their original games.
Not to say I like or dislike quakers, but you could have hooked them with fast indoor movement like they were used to.

I think Alex should write up a Questionnare with maybe 20 questions to fill out about your favorite game, and give it to gamers of all types.
I interviewed quite alot of people/friends on this subject last year around the time of that Tribes Council, and alot of interesting points came up.

Nearly all of people answered "Speed" for their primary desire.
I can post these if required, but I'm sure Marweas can do a better job on marketing research than a 19 year old (soon 20 :/) from New Zealand can :P



Summary of what I said before I went off-topic: Make it fast, only require large amounts of skill to gain this indoor speed (timing down to the milliseconds)

edit: After reading some of Erics post it reminded me that you should stay away from hit-scan instant-kill weapons.
Dodging rockets/grenades was a really fun part of the Quake series.
Maybe a longer live-time could be placed for grenades, or perhaps make it so they require more than 2 bounces to explode. Which would probably solve indoor grenade spam issues. In my opinion also, ammo you spawn with should be lowered.
The reason for this, is it enforces that people make their shots wisely (conserve ammo), along with having to scavenge players dead bodies, adding more depth to ammo conservation & pickup.

Many of us will argue this, playing the game with 15 discs, 10 grenades and 100 chaingun bullets will cause us to not think outside the box.
But if we didn't spawn as much ammo (maybe 8 discs, 5 grenades, and 50 chaingun bullets, the blaster needs MAJOR tweaking to become a decent spawn weapon again), then I think it could add a new twist to the gameplay in Tribes.

I just got off the phone and forgot what I was going to say, so I'll leave it at that :P

Wulfen
04-04-2003, 03:22
Don't have an indoors. :o

I live for the sprawling hills and wide-open maps.

NoGodForMe
04-04-2003, 09:17
Quake and UT type games have powerups and weapons on the ground, whereas T2 has inv stations. When you go for an inv station and the enemy is in the base, you die. Whereas in the Quake games, you keep moving getting the goodies. Some maps have health powerups on the ground (dust to dust), but not many.

Da_Timsta
04-04-2003, 09:54
as NoGodForME said, powerups are a huge aspect of Quake and UT type shooters. Quake is fun because you need to have both aim and control to win a map.

Is'nt one of the points in tribes to give players different roles? Of course other games has this as well, but not at all in the same degree because the players are created equal.

I'm all for making the indoor part of Tribes fun, but not at the cost of the outdoor play.

Ceiling_Fan
04-04-2003, 10:03
Don't have an indoors. :o

I live for the sprawling hills and wide-open maps.

Ambush_Bug[DTM]
04-04-2003, 11:07
Special: On your weapons point, you should realize that against heavies, plasma is only good for one thing--ridding them of their shields. Plasma shots eat through shields like mad, but compared to the other weapons, it doesn't do jack against heavies. Lights, it shreds, but heavies will just laugh it off. Once you drop their shields, then you switch to something else, like the blaster for its rate of fire and damage bonus against heavies or if you're in an open room, the GL, and just blow the living **** out of the heavies.

I say this as a guy who primarily does HD, HALO drops from a Havoc, and infiltration HO. The indoor combat is fine, but you really, really, really have to tweak your loadouts for it. And specifically, you have to use your hand-grenades very tactically--toss a single whiteout and fake a direction change just before it goes off, or strip a baddie of his stuff with a concussion grenade, or just do a grenade sandwich with a regular grenade and your GL.

I'll agree with you on the spam--it gets pretty bad at times, but that's what a shield pack, a medium with lance, and good shield management-skills are for. Mostly, it's a base design issue, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread.

One of the things I've personally noticed during my time indoors is that players who are used to being outside and running free keep forgetting about the ceiling. They'll stay away from the walls, yes, because they're aware of that, but commonly I see outdoor-type people jetting up to the ceiling and making perfect targets of themselves. The players I have the most trouble defending against (or getting past, if I'm HALO-dropping) are those lights and mediums that know exactly how far away to stay from the walls and ceiling to avoid all splash damage, while still maneuvering around like crazy. It's hard, and it requires intricate knowledge of the base layout, and it is oh-so-effective.

Solutions? Well, I do agree on base design. I think they should be, overall, smoother on the inside, with not quite to many projections in hallways and doorways and stuff. I also think they should be a hair less complex--Recalesence is a favorite of mine, yes, but that's because I like using the base layout to my advantage and hunting people like the Predator. ;) Something like the bases in IceBound(Siege) are about as complex as they really need to be, and that particular base could use a little less pillars, if you ask me.

Weapons? Yeah, the blaster should be tweaked. I hate the bounce--I want the old T1 1.0 blaster back, you know, the carbine. I don't think it should go through shields, but rather retain its damage bonus against shields, like it does in T1. (Blaster in T1 was about the only weapon heavies didn't get a defense bonus against) I think plasma shots should be faster-moving as well--the current speed makes them fairly difficult to use in stripping the shields from mediums and lights. T1 plasma was a beutiful weapon in its uses.

Spam? Base design issue, really. If the designers would stop putting valuable objectives right next to the main entrance or right at the top of a long shaft, they'd last longer. Sure, once a heavy gets into the base, all bets are off... but that's a job for the D, eh?

Additional thought: I'd like to see a 'disorientation grenade'. Saw it a mod a while back--you get hit and your display goes woozy for a few seconds and I think your left-right controls got reversed for a that period of time, too. It had its risks, but it sure was fun as hell to watch baddies going around in circles after you beaned them with one.

Clamsoda
04-04-2003, 12:52
there ARE some fun T1 indoor maps.. I remember playing a map where there was an outside but you went into these tubes below the ground, and the indoor area was HUGE and had a giant column and walkways going radially from it.

we played it on the TPL composite ladder.

NEwayz.. the point is there ARE good indoor maps that suit T1's weapons, speed, physics, et cetera..

Flatscan
04-04-2003, 13:09
I think it would be a mistake for Tribes to try to "out-Quake" Quake. What makes Tribes unique is the jetpack and skiing. T3 should focus on exploring the full potential that those differentiators offer.

Re: your specific points

Believe it or not, T2 indoor fighting seemed better than T1 indoor fighting. I think this is directly related to the viability of using a medium for **** operations given its increased speed. Check out Nolman's old T2 base demos - he shows how to fight well indoors in T2. His style was imitated by many.

xpdnc
04-04-2003, 16:42
there ARE some fun T1 indoor maps.. I remember playing a map where there was an outside but you went into these tubes below the ground, and the indoor area was HUGE and had a giant column and walkways going radially from it.

we played it on the TPL composite ladder.

NEwayz.. the point is there ARE good indoor maps that suit T1's weapons, speed, physics, et cetera..


Anthill...i'll dcc it to you later if you really want it :P

as for t1 indoor maps, i'm slowly worldcrafting Minotaur to t1...it's culled down a bit because too many things inside would kill the t1 engine, but it's the same base....we'll see how it plays in t1

i may make a mod that restricts the use of shields for that map, we'll see

R@ND0M
04-04-2003, 23:24
I think it would be a mistake for Tribes to try to "out-Quake" Quake. What makes Tribes unique is the jetpack and skiing. T3 should focus on exploring the full potential that those differentiators offer.

Re: your specific points

Believe it or not, T2 indoor fighting seemed better than T1 indoor fighting. I think this is directly related to the viability of using a medium for **** operations given its increased speed. Check out Nolman's old T2 base demos - he shows how to fight well indoors in T2. His style was imitated by many.

Catering for only the current Tribesplayers isn't going to cut it though.
In order to achieve the sales this next sequel has promised, Thrax is going to have to cater for a huge audience, and he'll do whatever he can, to make a great game to do this.
Tribes 1 indoors was "fun", but it could've been much more fun with some form of speed jumping, a grapple or faster running movement.

Take the blissful outdoor feeling of Tribes, combine it with the mind-blowing indoor movement of QuakeWorld, with the Strategic aspects of C&C/War3, coupled with the vast freedom of movement in vehicles from Microsoft Flight-Sim/Freelancer, and the team-sizes of Counterstrike.
Finally add the System Requirements of Duke Nukem 3D, and you have yourselves the most near-perfect game on the planet.

I've undoubtably left out some aspects (the sentence was far too long already), But this is what must be achieved, to have a "Best-selling game to end all games" on your hands.

snow
04-04-2003, 23:48
you can fight indoors and outdoors in both tribes games, but you have to pick weapons accordingly, indoors a blaster is quite usefull, but outside ill take a cg anytime. same with plasma when inside its a very effective weapon, but outside its to slow for most things. so even if you create a game that has good indoor and outdoor fighting environments, you will still have to pick weapons for either indoor or outdoor fighting.

PyroTeknik
04-04-2003, 23:56
3) Shield pack. This is the pack that throws all indoor play off balance. Suddenly you have a second bar of life that is always constantly regenerating. To a skilled player this is almost like invulnerability. Imagine playing a game of Quake where all players could snag an invulnerability powerup at the same time. It wouldn't be fun. Add in to the mix the dynamic fact that heavies using shield pack have much more shield than a light, making it futile to assault a base as a light.

This is one thing I totally disagree with.
It seems like you're implying that a light should be a match for a heavy. The way I see it, heavies should be the lords of indoor fighting, whereas a light will most likely own a heavy outdoors (common sense :o). Assaulting as a light is definitely not futile. Simply put, an assaulting light should not be looking for a fight. Look at D&D; a light (or even a medium in T2) with a shield pack who knows what he's doing - and where he's going :p - can dish out a whole lot of damage (base raaaaaape. Sure, you can't hold the base, but it'll sure make the heavies' task a whole lot easier), heavies or not. It takes a good HD to stop a light with shields that knows what he's doing; because even indoors, lights still have the advantage of speed - and this even though the indoor environments are very confined.

However I do believe there is an issue with the weapons as you said. They just don't seem suited to indoors combat, and it all quickly turns into a cluster**** (hell, indoor combat in t1 was "see enemy, MD/MP enemy" or simply grenade mortar spam, and same for T2 except the MD/MP part was replaced by "conc spam/whiteout spam").

BlueCream
04-05-2003, 00:01
Solution: Dont have indoor maps.

Why dont I like indoor?
a) No skiing (or free skiing)
b) More basic fps style gameplay
c) Slow
d) No sniping

and I can name more

Wulfen
04-05-2003, 00:45
Catering for only the current Tribesplayers isn't going to cut it though.
In order to achieve the sales this next sequel has promised, Thrax is going to have to cater for a huge audience, and he'll do whatever he can, to make a great game to do this.
Tribes 1 indoors was "fun", but it could've been much more fun with some form of speed jumping, a grapple or faster running movement.

Take the blissful outdoor feeling of Tribes, combine it with the mind-blowing indoor movement of QuakeWorld, with the Strategic aspects of C&C/War3, coupled with the vast freedom of movement in vehicles from Microsoft Flight-Sim/Freelancer, and the team-sizes of Counterstrike.
Finally add the System Requirements of Duke Nukem 3D, and you have yourselves the most near-perfect game on the planet.

I've undoubtably left out some aspects (the sentence was far too long already), But this is what must be achieved, to have a "Best-selling game to end all games" on your hands.

I can name several games that tried that and failed miserably. How about we try to get them to innovate instead of being 'marketing' and using what everyone else has?

Jack-of-all-trade games don't work. Play to the game's strengths, and be innovative with game design. Don't use ol' tried-and-true, because that just stagnates the gaming industry. Look at 80-90% of the games released nowadays for proof of that. : \

R@ND0M
04-05-2003, 01:07
What I'm saying is, let's take a look at what went wrong in Tribes 1. And what could have been improved upon.

You mustn't have played maps like Broadside or Scarabrae early in the game, if you think there is nothing wrong with the indoor physics in T1.

They definately need something done to them, this thread is for debating what we think should be done to them.

I don't really care if the game isn't as strategical as War3, or doesn't have vehicles which emulate Microsoft Flight-Sim.
Because I'm paying for Tribes, not this other crap.
Why not take ideas that have worked in the past though?
By your method of thinking, "Weapons" are past their use-by date.

Take the absolute best thing from every game you've ever played, and try to combine them.

Wulfen
04-05-2003, 16:15
What I'm saying is, let's take a look at what went wrong in Tribes 1. And what could have been improved upon.

You mustn't have played maps like Broadside or Scarabrae early in the game, if you think there is nothing wrong with the indoor physics in T1.

They definately need something done to them, this thread is for debating what we think should be done to them.

I don't really care if the game isn't as strategical as War3, or doesn't have vehicles which emulate Microsoft Flight-Sim.
Because I'm paying for Tribes, not this other crap.
Why not take ideas that have worked in the past though?
By your method of thinking, "Weapons" are past their use-by date.

Take the absolute best thing from every game you've ever played, and try to combine them.

Well, I played Scar, and both B'sides quite a bit in my time playing T1. And whatever fun might have been had indoors, was quadrupled when I was fighting outdoors.

I should probably say that I think bases are necessary. But they don't need to be extravagant, or deep, or large. Only the basics, large enough to hold invs, stations, turrets, etc. I don't see a need for those Scarabrae-type bases, or the worse ones in T2, that players could actually get lost in.

PyroTeknik
04-05-2003, 19:16
Well, if you look at it, I think it's the jetpacks that turn indoor fighting into such a cluster****.
Indoor fights quickly turn into pinballs, with people bouncing off walls, weapons with blast radiuses too large for these confined areas being fired all over. Indoor fighting is pretty much shooting the walls around a person and not the person themselves - while this kind of fighting seems good for outdoors (leading and all), it simply doesn't work indoors. Not to mention that people getting hit start bouncing all over.

What we need, I think, is to tweak weapons (or make new ones) to have an alternate firing mode for indoors that takes care of this splash damage problem by reducing it (maybe even does increased damage to encourage its use).

I see way too many people killing themselves indoors, and when a heavy gets inside a base, most of the time all you see are naked lights flying around, bouncing off the ceiling like flies, shooting in the enemy's general direction.