[T:V] Ball!!

:lol: i am amused that you felt the need to write a novel since i didn't reply (while i slept).

I know, I crave disscussion :(



Anyway.. i am in a hurry so i will make this short. If you can only knock down the guy with the ball.. you will have no way to stop his teammates going downfield to catch a pass. Yes, you can intercept it, but doing so is 100x more difficult in tribes than being a CB in football because of 1> speed is based off skiing 2> positional awareness in a video game is rather limited compared to real life. Further, what is the point of your teammates? If the team with the ball can't kill defenders, or keep them from getting to your ball carrier, there is 0 reason for them to be on the field. If you can't kill a defender (team w/o the ball), then the only way to successfully move the ball is for the ball carrier to ski past the defender, or pass the ball. In other words, there is no way to clear the road for the ball carrier, making the game very 1 sided.

A valid concen. Going back to football it's like having blockers.

The way I envisioned it was that you'd have to catch the ball on the run to avoid being hit by weapons. I think there's a balance in how much damage you can do to someone before they would be knocked down from fire or drop the ball. That was the whole idea of fumble.

I can't actually say how hard it would be to intercept in T:V b/c I havn't played the game. But from what we've seen it looks like it's a lot easier to get inital acceleration. If interceptions were an actual valid threat, I think I would prefer them over mowing everyone on the other team down.

A valid concen. Going back to football it's like having blockers.

The way I envisioned it was that you'd have to catch the ball on the run to avoid being hit by weapons. I think there's a balance in how much damage you can do to someone before they would be knocked down from fire or drop the ball. That was the whole idea of fumble.

I can't actually say how hard it would be to intercept in T:V b/c I havn't played the game. But from what we've seen it looks like it's a lot easier to get inital acceleration. If interceptions were an actual valid threat, I think I would prefer them over mowing everyone on the other team down.


umm.. how is it like having blockers? you said it is .. then talk about catching on the run and the carrier fumbling.

you are basically restricting the game to those who can catch and pass, and removing the small nitch where people who were good at killing had. In reality, a bigger nitch needs to be created than TR2 had. Some other aspect to pull in people who are better at killing than at flag handling.

Interesting that you got that out of the post, Sambuca. ;) What we were talking about is that KP said you could, literally at the same time, have a CTF game and a ball game going on. He only said it to exemplify how there is no longer such a thing as a "CTF map." It may be a map geared towards CTF, but it could be used for Ball, Arena, or whatever on the fly. It all depends on what objects are loaded; and if you are the masochistic type, you could merge the two together since it is possible. I doubt it would make for a good game though.

I think what I said still rings true. What KP was saying is T:V Ball uses all the same physics/properties as ctf (and other gametypes). Where as in T2 you could not do this. The two games were too different.
I don't think he was saying you would want to do this, just that you CAN do this now.

It was devasting to the TR2 community because people simply could not adjust to both gametypes. A lot of people said they wouldn't play TR2 because it was too different.

Now KP is saying that everything is the same, you could litterally play T:V Ball on the same map where people are playing ctf.

Do you get it now?

umm.. how is it like having blockers? you said it is .. then talk about catching on the run and the carrier fumbling.

you are basically restricting the game to those who can catch and pass, and removing the small nitch where people who were good at killing had. In reality, a bigger nitch needs to be created than TR2 had. Some other aspect to pull in people who are better at killing than at flag handling.
I agree. Sorry, Lucius. I think there'd be very interesting positions with normal kill styles.

Let's say 8v8 -- (I'm thinking 14v14 or 16v16 is too many people for this game, but maybe not)

Offense - If your team has the ball, 1 carrier (has the ball), 1 assist (helps the carrier), 2 distractors (kills/distracts the goalies). Or maybe 2 assists and 1 distractor.
If you don't have the ball, 4 chasers.
Defense - 2 goalies, 2 light defense (wherever they're needed).

Football was a fun mod, and I don't have enough experience with TR to make comparisons, but I think it would be better if this is your regular kill type game. As locke said, Football and TR2 were too niche. Not enough people understood the concept. I think people would rather quickly realize the benefits to goalies, general D, chasers, assists, and carriers within a game or two. And everybody knows where to try to get the ball if you have it. ;)

What'd be sweet as hell (and I hope this works) is being able to MA the ball so it gets intercepted, or just makes the throw miss. :)

umm.. how is it like having blockers? you said it is .. then talk about catching on the run and the carrier fumbling.

you are basically restricting the game to those who can catch and pass, and removing the small nitch where people who were good at killing had. In reality, a bigger nitch needs to be created than TR2 had. Some other aspect to pull in people who are better at killing than at flag handling.


I made a new paragraph to seperate the ideas.

In football, the only guys who make a pre-emptive hit are the ones who are blocking. This most closely relates having your team mates cover you by killing the enemy.


As for nitches, keep in mind I originally did not use tr2 to base these Ball ideas off of. In that, I'm not thinking, "What's the next fix for tr2." The idea I'm going with is simply, how do you get the ball in the goal.

I'll run that down on a thought process level.

There's a ball and a goal. How do I get this ball in that goal? I go over and throw it in.

Now there is a defender. In a tribes enviorment, what's the easiest way to get past him? The easiest way is to run by him rather than killing him (that's really my opinion, but if you're going fast enough, I don't think you're going to stop and duel just to get by the defender. It's like capping the flag).

It's at this point I'm saying to myself that the defense has a huge disadvantage. There needs to be a way to make up for the advantage the ball carrier has. My fumble suggestion was that the defender only needs to do a small ammount of damage to knock the ball lose, thus ending the run. Say a disc hit. Of course that has tons of problems on it's own. Already you'll have 5496343 chain whores from that system. So no, it's not perfect.

But at this point in my thought train it's already too late and the fumble system is in (along this thought process). Let's say I have to get by 4 defenders. Well, that's just not possible with the little ammount of damage it take for me to drop the ball. So my 3 team mates are going to spread out so they can get open for a pass.


In this system there isn't really an escort needed as no one is ever making a break normally.



But in the end I've made the focus the ball. You seem to want to integrate duel in with the ball. I'm not saying it wouldn't work, not at all. But I do think passing and catching should be the primary focus of the game.


Argh, I tend to say a lot more then I need to say sometimes, I just want you to see how I'm thinking this through.

I agree. Sorry, Lucius. I think there'd be very interesting positions with normal kill styles.

Let's say 8v8 -- (I'm thinking 14v14 or 16v16 is too many people for this game, but maybe not)

Offense - If your team has the ball, 1 carrier (has the ball), 1 assist (helps the carrier), 2 distractors (kills/distracts the goalies). Or maybe 2 assists and 1 distractor.
If you don't have the ball, 4 chasers.
Defense - 2 goalies, 2 light defense (wherever they're needed).

Football was a fun mod, and I don't have enough experience with TR to make comparisons, but I think it would be better if this is your regular kill type game. As locke said, Football and TR2 were too niche. Not enough people understood the concept. I think people would rather quickly realize the benefits to goalies, general D, chasers, assists, and carriers within a game or two. And everybody knows where to try to get the ball if you have it. ;)

Oh, I'm not presenting suggestions really, so I don't take any offense to shooting anything down. I'm just stating how I think the gameplay MIGHT work. I'm pretty confident they already have the entire rule system and gameplay planned out. I was just taking this as a thought and theory thread.

and with that post.. we go round and round in the circle of death. my reply will be the same as post 42. You are catering to a small audience.

i spelled niche wrong.. you spelled it wrong.. Ixiterra spelled it correctly. He gets the prize for the day.

I was just copying how you spelled it.


But can I say this: duel caters to a niche crowd as well.
I will try to think of a way that player to player combat can be implemented and not abused in a game of Ball.

since i was addicted to tr2 when it came out:

TR2 was a great gametype. However, the one continuing problem throughout the games was the skill gap and teamwork. In pubs, the games would usually end up revolving around the 2 best players on a team spawn passing it to each other and ignoring everyone else.

Not only that, there was a problem with a reliance on your team in pub play. In CTF pubs, you could still have fun without winning. In TR2, you needed to be in control and in the heat of the game to have fun. I'm sure that stuff is what turned off a ton of players from tr2.

I was just copying how you spelled it.


But can I say this: duel caters to a niche crowd as well.
I will try to think of a way that player to player combat can be implemented and not abused in a game of Ball.

protecting the carrier is not dueling. you are moving, and have an objective. It is not a 1 on 1 ... paced bout. Play a zone defense, and you are doing the exact same thing you do in CTF when you are defending the flag.

Ball will be fun.

Thing is, with knockdowns for everyone, in extremis it becomes dueling, with a bit of passing. With knockdowns for the flag carrier, a grounded flag/ball is almost impossible to get back into play in a coherent manner it goes from ground to ground via slaps until someone gets lucky.

The thing is, the rules for football or baseball or what have you didn't just get written down and people said "yeah lets go with that." The rules have evolved based on what happened in the game. Remember the forward pass in football? The only reason it is in the game now is because there wasn't a specific rule against it and people thought it helped the game. TR2 has had a little bit of that evolution. The basic rules didn't take into account the "rapid fire passing" and other things that happened that didn't add to the game. Then the new version(s) of TR came out with hard coded "rules" against most of the lame stuff.

I think that's how something like "T:V Ball" will have to go. Does the opportunity to knock down opposing players add to the experience or take away from it? That kind of question can only be answered by a lot of play, and even then people will have differing opinions on it.

About the melee weapons, maybe the game could include extra skins etc. for more variety in server-side mods since MODs seem to be a large part of the game. I'm not saying the 'BASE' gameplay should include them but if there was lets say free space etc. why not include a few extras to make the game funner for the players. Sort of like how T1 has a few mappings objects that are not used in the game.

Maybe the ball should float indefinitely. When dropped only fall to a certain height above the ground. That might aleviate being grounded and being hit by like wulfen stated, a symphony of nade launchers or what have you. *shrugs*

Melee weapons of some kind could be cool :) Like on roadrash, the motorcycle game on genesis of old you had chain maces you could knock the other guy around or off his bike, in ball you could knock off opponents.

Body checks seem to me the most logical, with the press of a key it could cause a short burst in a direction you're facing (Taking energy of course: penalty) giving a shoulder check to knock someone off from intercepting causing you to intercept in his place.

I mean I see two possibilities here. One which involves guns/death/and respawning or something totally passive with body checks (Complete with animation) and either some form of melee weapon or hell a nerf gun that shoots a fucking nerf ball that has some profound effect on you or a concusion gun of some kind giving an small concusive blast (More in the t1 concusive effect.) All with penalties of course for balance and anti abuse.

Being the game was passive with no one dying means you wouldn't die or have to respawn keeping you in the game indefinitely playing the ball but some way to temporarily disable players, taking them out of the game for a moment.

I dunno, these are just ideas I think might be fun :)