Thrax speaks in VUGames T:V forum

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The light will be very lightly armored. If one disc doesn't kill you, then you'll escape with a hair of health. This will make disc-jumping very costly for the light. If you limit the light to only 2 weapons, you'll alienate them, and they will become the new t1/t2 medium.

You missed Zooloo's point. He's not talking about specific positions. If you're in light(or any other cla.ss for that matter), you need weapons that allow you to fight close, medium-range, and long-range combat; taking into consideration ground-to-air, ground-to-ground, and air-to-air attacks. A two weapon limitation doesn't cut it. The only use a light would be ideal for is a sniper.

edit// replying to slayer... just read zooloo's.
 
Exactly pyro. Now, for anyone opening up page five, click the little 4 on the bottom and read that huge post I just made. :]
 
Mmm. I dunno...raping a base with nothing but mortar/disc launcher/burninator seems a little sticky to me.

That flamer had better be something special at burning up generators.

I also agree with DwarfVader, in that I'd hate to be caught on HD/HoF without either (a) a chaingun and its anti-air rapid-fire ability or (b) the grenade launcher and its good ratio of firepower to rate of fire, and the only weapon in Tribes I've ever been good with.

HO with 3 weapons, yeah, you're not missing much, but on HD/HoF with 3 weapons, where you can't move around a lot, I don't think you're gonna get off so easy.
 
It wont matter cuz noone will die because the Repair pack repairs you like healing potions in Diablo... aka we will all be 12345678 whores pressing quick belt keys like crazy.
 
Wulfen said:
Holy crap, nice and in-depth. I do like the sounds of 3-4-4.
Click to expand...

I do in-depth all the friggin' time in my posts for T:V ideas, and all people do is laugh. :(

Laugh all you want, little worms...when the T:V beta begins, the Disciples of Ben will come to call, and you'll need tweezers to clean up the aftermath. Bank on it!
 
I don't need a swollen head. Yeah, I just set aside 50 minutes of my day to consider the math behind weapons combinations in T:V.

I was satisfied by the results. The math confirmed my intuition. Two optional weapon slots produces the best variety. The actual number of weapon slots is immaterial, and should in my opinion be determined by adding like this...

# of required weapons + 2 = # of armor weapon slots

The disc launcher and the mortar are currently the only required weapons. Nobody ventures forth without these weapons. But if the medium-only weapon is a required weapon also, then the medium should go up to 4 slots.

I'm done repeating myself again and again in this thread. Now I'm just going to quote myself if I feel I have to reply again. :p
 
3-4-4 and 3-4-5 are pretty much the same. Extra weapons and the ability to carry said weapons hasn't proven the pivotal and defining characteristic that seperates Light form Medium from Heavy. If there is a balance problem between the armours, it will not be because the Heavy carries a few more loadout options. If Zooloo's math is correct then the other numbers actually hurt the design more then help it. Which kind of makes me wonder why is it worth messing around with at all?

Notes:
  • Almost any "rig" or Loadout will require a Disker. No other weapon can allow the player to compete as effectively as the Disker will. If other weapons, or newer weapons change this dymanic then our loadout combinations can use fewer slots. Its a day worth remembering when I can go into the field and feel confident without a disker in my loadout.
  • Heavies must carry the Mortar, it is their signature Weapon. A Heavy is a Mortar Platform, if you altered the dynamics of the Armours so Heavies were not dependant on being a Mortar Platform, things would be different. If you're not carrying a Mortar you're using the wrong Armour.
  • If Medium Armour is ineffective, and Light Armour is over-effective, it is not because of the number of weapons they carry. So altering the inventory slots isn't going to fix the problem.
  • If Medium Armour is the new spawn armour and we've targeted buffing up the clbutt to the point where it becomes the "norm" at the expense of Light Armour... have we really solved the old problem? Or have we simply swapped the name of the problem from Medium to Light? Gutting the Light Armour is not a productive course. I don't think Vengeance is following this course fortunately.
 
I agree they are nearly the same.

3 - 3 - 4 is superior in my mind. But I mention 3 - 4 - 4 only because the medium-only weapon might be so good that it becomes signature, as the mortar is to the heavy.
 
Yeah. fudge that poop. Vawlk's right! I rescind all my careful analysis. There is no reason to improve anything.
 
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Zoolooman, your post has lots of assumptions. The goal of course is for all weapons to be viable options. Yeah, the 3 armor-specific weapons are considered special, but it shouldn't be assumed that everyone will always want to take their armor-specific weapon. If that were the case we'd build them into the armors (an option which we've considered, btw). Same with the spinfusor.

We started and have stuck with our own assumption, namely that we can balance the weapons such that they're all viable options. If this proves impossible we can revisit our decisions.

You also seem to assume that more combinations are better.

A subtlety that isn't clear from the maths, and which I tried to explain in the other thread, is that the smaller the combination size, the more unique your equipment choice will be. If each person could only carry 1 weapon, for example, then everyone suddenly becomes extremely unique on the field. You'd have your mortar guy, your chaingun guy, your disc guy, etc. There'd be a standalone role for each weapon. At the opposite extreme, if each person could carry all weapons, then uniqueness would be eliminated because everybody's weapon choice becomes exactly the same. In other words, with each combination choice that you add, the roles on the field increasingly overlap, thus making each person less unique.

Extreme class-based uniqueness is not what Tribes is about...I agree completely. But there's still something attractive about uniqueness. You can imagine how a certain amount of uniqueness breeds teamplay. Uniqueness encourages inter-role dependencies (an example of inter-role dependencies is the clearer/capper/escorter relationship). You work with other people in order to maximize your team's effectiveness. In sports there is a lot of uniqueness due to individual skill, intelligence and each player's raw physical body. In online games we lack a raw physical body so it's nice to inject a bit more uniquess in other ways.

So while Tribes is and always will be about choosing your role and choosing your equipment, the goal is to make that choice meaningful from a teamplay perspective. And let's face it, at least 56 possible weapon combinations (which is what you get with a 3-3-3 system assuming 8 weapons, which also might not be a valid assumption) is still a lot of choice.

We'll see how it goes, right? I think some of you are a bit too fatalistic about something that is relatively easy to change in the event of extremely negative feedback,
KP

P.S. Please fix the a.s.s filter.
 
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