[T:V] A Concern Regarding Skill

Recant much?

there's a difference between "being effective" and "using"

maybe i'm being imprecise. by "being effective", i mean "being good." to me the two are synonymous, but maybe other people don't see it the same way. either that or you're grossly overestimating how easy it will be or how skilled you and the people you play with are.

So, you're concerned about removing items that may be unbalanced but that offer a hefty "skill advantage"? I see NO "dumbing down" the game by removing the repair kit. I see no "dumbing down" the game by removing the minedisc. I see no "dumbing down" the game by changing how the shield pack works.

All I see is a Tribes game that's different and doesn't have exactly the same elements as the first two. "Skill" may mean something slightly different in T:V, but I doubt that anyone serious about making a "Tribes" game could remove enough skill from the game to make it deserve the label "dumb". (heaven knows it's been tried... Homing Missile Launcher... yeeeesh.)
i'm trying to figure out if you're actually reading my posts or not.

i think you're just trying to argue, and doing a poor job of it.

to repeat:
as i said in my initial post, the exclusion of these 3 features appears to me to be a trend of "dumbing down" the game that i'm concerned about.
see the bold print?

again here:
like i said, we'll see what it's like when the game comes out. not having repkits won't make the game suck. eliminating a lot of small skills will, which is why the exclusion of these three particular features is drawing my concern.

i'm not going to bother responding if you're not going to read my posts in the first place.

effectively
In an effective way

decently
Moderate, but competent; sufficient; hence, respectable; fairly good;

There's a major semantical difference here?

Anyone who can hit an occasional MA can be said to use the DL both decently and effectively. Someone who hits EVERY MA or nearly every MA can be said to use the DL perfectly or consummately.

If you made a mistake in your word choice I apologise.

So, you're concerned about removing items that may be unbalanced but that offer a hefty "skill advantage"?
sorry, i needed to do some more careful reading to see how stupid this statement is.

read what i said in my first post again:
in the end, the only reasons i can see to remove the features i've discussed are for balance reasons or that they're not intuitive. balance issues are entirely at the discretion of the dev team and i can't speak to those issues without playing the game. as far as intuitive goes, i wouldn't say that any of them are weird or don't make sense.
paraphrase:

I'm concerned about the removal of features that add skill to the game (note: NOT a "hefty skill advantage").

also:

i'm not concerned at their removal if they're for balance reasons

NOT:
So, you're concerned about removing items that may be unbalanced but that offer a hefty "skill advantage"?


seriously.. READ MY POSTS BEFORE RESPONDING

Read them I do...

I reiterate, I do not see this trend of "dumbing down" the game that you see. The examples you cite are features that I either did not like in the first place, and see no problem with thier removal or that I see examples of replacements that both take the function of, and the "skillful usage of" the removed item, and therefore have no problem with thier removal.

In either case the trend you speak of does not exist for me, and I'm arguing that it does not exist in fact, and is merely your opinion. But until the beta comes out, neither of us can be "right", and the best either of us can do is to trust the Devs to do thier best at providing a fun, "skillful", and engrossing game.

i don't read posts

there's a difference between "being effective" and "using"

maybe i'm being imprecise. by "being effective", i mean "being good." to me the two are synonymous, but maybe other people don't see it the same way. either that or you're grossly overestimating how easy it will be or how skilled you and the people you play with are.
if i define a term, that's what it means. you don't need to check the dictionary and look it up if i've already defined it.

I'm concerned about the removal of features that add skill to the game (note: NOT a "hefty skill advantage").
What point is there of doing something "skillfully" if it cannot provide an advantage over doing it any other way? Every specific instance you've given for "dumbing the game down" I have tried to meet with a reply that either gives a balance reason, or points out that "skilled" alternatives already exist ingame, as far as can be inferred from discussion.

This discussion centers the "trend" of the game being "dumbed down". You have yet to cite convincing evidence to prove your point to me.

Read them I don't...

I reiterate, [VaporTrail's personal preferences from limited competitive experience]

In either case the trend you speak of does not exist for me, and I'm arguing that it does not exist in fact, and is merely your opinion.
from the first paragraph in the first post:
let me preface this by saying i'm keeping an open mind until the beta comes out. i'm not going to argue that the dev team doesn't know what they're doing; i'm just going to point out a few things i think are important.
you're the reading comprehension master.

ok children, play nice now

This discussion centers the "trend" of the game being "dumbed down". You have yet to cite convincing evidence to prove your point to me.
i need to start quoting myself and replying to myself.

anyway. re-read all my posts.

i would say 3 instances indicates a trend, but what do i know? i'm tired of explaining things to you.

next.

[VaporTrail's personal preferences from limited competitive experience]

You cite instances of small things being removed or changed. You back up these with personal opinions drawn from your experiences and discussions on this forum. You then effectively state that my opinions mean less than yours because I didn't play competitively for as long or place as high on a ladder as you did.

And I state:

You have not proven to me that these instances constitute, in fact, a measurable decrease in the skill level required to be an exceptional player. All you have proven is that T:V will be different.

Vive la difference!

In the end, the only reasons i can see to remove the features i've discussed are for balance reasons or that they're not intuitive.You left out the most important reason of all. We're not remaking the same old game. I've said all along that the only things that were sacred were the jetpack, skiing, and the disk launcher. That's what I told the dev team at the start of the project, and so that's where the game started from. We don't have to justify removing anything from the game, because these three things were the only things in the game from the start. Everything else has had to go thru a justification for being included.

If people want T1 or T2, they should go play them. We have never had any intention of remaking either game. T:V is T:V and I'm tired of playing the "but my favorite feature was removed" game. To everybody who says that, I now reply, "Screw your favorite feature and the knobby old horse it rode in on." :p

You left out the most important reason of all. We're not remaking the same old game. I've said all along that the only things that were sacred were the jetpack, skiing, and the disk launcher. That's what I told the dev team at the start of the project, and so that's where the game started from. We don't have to justify removing anything from the game, because these three things were the only things in the game from the start. Everything else has had to go thru a justification for being included.

If people want T1 or T2, they should go play them. We have never had any intention of remaking either game. T:V is T:V and I'm tired of playing the "but my favorite feature was removed" game. To everybody who says that, I now reply, "Screw your favorite feature and the knobby old horse it rode in on." :p
thx for the response thrax.

was that the reasoning for not including those features then? --> it was in previous tribes games and inclusion would be too much like the old ones and that there was no justification for them?

i can appreciate where you're coming from and i think that the dev team has come up with a lot of interesting new features (grapple, passive pack effects, etc).

however, with the removal of the features i mentioned, it seems like the dev team is dropping some of the "smaller skills" that add variety and depth to the game just for the sake of making a "different game". i'm absolutely reserving judgment until the beta comes out, but i'd be cautious about trying to re-invent the wheel too much (dave g's T2 Base comes to mind).

I want toggleability, but they need to change the shield pack and that speed pack somehow, because they'd just be sooo goddamned powerful.

Lemme think on this...

Toggleable Speed Pack - I don't see any way to balance it without either nerfing it or making it overpowered. I say keep this one un-toggleable.

Toggleable Shield Pack - This one's real near and dear to my heart, so I'm gonna try my damnedest to think of how one would make it work. I also miss the old nigh-invincibility of the old shield pack, God knows how many times it saved my ass in those rare Renegades HoF opportunities when I got to suit up.

My initial thought is to make it drain pack energy faster and recharge slower, so that you don't have too much leeway to fly around while practically invulnerable. If you turn it on and let it run, it lasts for maybe 3 seconds total, and when the bar depletes, it takes maybe 10-11 seconds to refill to full capacity. This allows skilled players to time activation to block specific shots while still allowing newbies a little leeway to use it continuously for protection.

The above is admittedly shaky, so I just thought of another, if goofy, idea to make the shield pack work for blocking specific shots -- a fighting-game-style instant-block move which requires specific timing, but if mastered yields better results than simply turning on the shield pack and waiting for a shot to hit. Say somebody tosses a disc at you, and you hit the activation button just an instant before the disc actually collides with your body -- instead of the normal 3/4 damage reduction and non-stop pack energy depletion, you get a fully invincible shot-block and only about half your pack energy drained.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

I know, I know, it's a real friggin' stretch, but dammit, I miss the old shield pack, because I never gave it nearly enough love and now it's a whole different beast. If it were me in the dev team's chair, I would bend over backwards to make it work, if for no other reason than to show off in duels.

Tribes isn't just a game about being BETTER than the other guy. It's also a game about being better than the other guy AND knowing how to flaunt it whenever possible. Being an old school shield-pack god on duel servers is part of that mystique.

Hm... /me burns pages 2 and 3 in thier entirety and lets the flames trickle up a little on page 1, and starts fresh...

I still don't see where you're coming from Vermouth (if you don't have me on ignore...) but why do those three items crystallize in your mind as removal of variety? If anything, the items added to T:V over T1/2 far outweigh any loss of variety from those three items.

Another question, why do you not feel the loss of variety from the Det pack, the Shocklance, the ELF gun, or the non-mention (to my knowledge at least,) of Solar Panels and forcefields? Those last two I could honestly have missed info regarding thier inclusion, but I'm pretty sure the others will not be making an appearance in T:V.

The above is admittedly shaky, so I just thought of another, if goofy, idea to make the shield pack work for blocking specific shots -- a fighting-game-style instant-block move which requires specific timing, but if mastered yields better results than simply turning on the shield pack and waiting for a shot to hit. Say somebody tosses a disc at you, and you hit the activation button just an instant before the disc actually collides with your body -- instead of the normal 3/4 damage reduction and non-stop pack energy depletion, you get a fully invincible shot-block and only about half your pack energy drained.

Sounds like this infringes too much on the Buckler's territory to me. Since the Buckler is the Med specific weapon, I'm not too sure that the above is viable.

with the removal of the features i mentionedThey weren't removed. They were never part of the game. Mine disking is not in the new Leasure Suit Larry game either, but you wouldn't say it was "removed". It's a new game. new. The only features we took from T1 and T2 were skiing, the jetpack, and the disk. Everything else was added. We never sat around and said, what should we remove from tribes. Get over the "it was in T1 so it should be in T:V" mentality, becuase I'm not even going to go there any more. If it's in T:V it's in. If it's not, then you'll all get over it. Life goes on.

They were removed from the Tribes series.
:p

But they were never in Base T2, so I guess you could make the argument they were never in Tribes 2 either. Though any further comparisons to Tribes 2 would probably send Thrax into a bloodthirsty rage.

actually because the timeline.... everything "Removed" just wasnt invented yet. Toggle packs may be future tech? :P

then why call it tribes?

Seriously, now...You keeping tring to engrain in people's minds that it isn't the same as Tribes 1 or Tribes 2; why continue the franchise name, then? It seems to me that a lot of the confusion IS stemming from this: people see Tribes in the name and think of what that means to them, and when those things arent included in the game bearing the Tribes moniker it appears it's being removed from the series.

I also know that if you made a game with jetpacks, skiing, and disk launchers that wasn't called Tribes: Something, people would be equally incensed, but I also know that people would get over a name much quicker than trying to accept the things they loved about tribes are not being included in the next installment of the franchise.

I'm sure you'll respond with some incredibly witty and unnecessarily sarcastic response to this, Thrax, but whatever.