Monday, May 3, 2010

The first news on 2.7

Haven't seen many players lately. Any particular reason you know of? Then again, I've been playing AvP 3 a LOT for the last few days. Like...a LOT.

Anyway, Mik57 is moving, and Damage has finals, so this week will be rather quiet in the mapping department. But I don't exactly have a time table, so I'll be willing to wait on them. At any rate, expect some more detailing work, and if there are gameplay changes you wish made to the maps, throw in your two cents in the comments, the threads, or on IRC, where it can be discussed live.

In the mean time, I've been cracking down on bugs, many of which have been reported by Avernus in the IRC channel THAT I DON'T SEE TOO MANY PEOPLE IN :'(

In case you didn't know about it, there is a ZDoom Wars IRC Channel on irc.skulltag.com, #ZDoomWars.

Anyway, fixes include something that should solve the problem with monsters attacking the ground, and a couple projectiles rendered invisible by mistakes made during the minor wad clean up in 2.6. There are a couple other minor things to be fixed in a couple maps, and then one vexing bug:


If you retrofit a Weredragon, and then use Ghost Wave on it... it doesn't work. At all. And I cannot for the life of me find out why. So if someone wants to poke around in the code and try and figure it out, please do!

As far as current balance changes, expect some improvements to Strife's Spectres and Menelkir, as well as the Inquisitor's attacks being sped up.

As far as balance, the Strife Heroes remain my primary focus, at least for the current versions. Any other outstanding balance issues you've encountered? As is, I think it's getting pretty close to balanced, but I want to make sure that people are actually using the Faction's special abilities. I know Ghost Wave gets used, but try out Enchant. Rough estimates say that it makes Ettins 50% more effective in melee, and the radius blast serpents can wreak total havoc.

Anyway, to recap my questions:
-Any map bugs you've encountered?
-Any map gameplay problems you've seen?
-Any general bugs you've seen?
-Can you figure out the Weredragon issue in Bold up above?
-Are there any balance issues you've noticed in 2.6?
-Are people really using the Special Abilities?

6 comments:

  1. I used to play the game A LOT, but it seems with 2.6 that Corvus and ghost units themselves are waaaaaaaaaay overpowered if you want an opinion on balance. Example: Just about every single game with a Corvus player in it now either wins with absolute domination by means of spamming lets say Clinks and Weredragons hit with ghost wave or makes it to the final two no problem. I say this because on several occasions now I've had an entire balanced army with just about every single class that's not Corvus completely wiped out by a not as diverse squadron of Corvus troops in a matter of moments. It's utterly ridiculous.

    My other beef is with Daedalon. Don't get me wrong, the high cost of mana justifies the strength of the troops, but it seems that 9/10 Hexen players who use the class unlock the Centaur side first, spam Traductus or Zedek along with Centaurs until Heresiarch/Korax is unlocked then save up while making more Centaurs, place one of the heroes down then lather, rinse, repeat. Granted, it is very counterable, but in terms of balance the diversity of Hexen's class isn't really appreciated just because it
    seems that those choice units can get away with controlling and dominating a playing field against most players with ease. It also leads to most Hexen players hiding somewhere, unlocking each unit, hoarding mana and individually engaging with each player using the strategies listed above basically ruling the strategical portion of the game null and void. Yeah, I know that it IS technically a strategy, but it gets absolutely tiresome to see just about every 'top' Hexen player out there to follow this formula. I also say this as a person who has basically played everybody who is a regular to ZDoomWars.

    I dunno, this little writeup might come off as a bunch of whiny complaints, but I was shootin' more for observations in terms of balance and why I've kinda started to lose interest in playing. I can't speak for everyone, but I've talked to a few good folks who are in agreement with that as well.

    Other than that, people are using the special abilities a lot and aside from the bugs listed and known about, no real issues come to mind.

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  2. That sounds like Thetis...

    I think Corvus' faction is balanced well enough. Just about all factions got lots of melee units and ghost hitters, so I don't get what the problem is.

    Actually I've observed that a strife with reaver spam can counter clinkz/Weredragon spam. They just chew clinkz like nothing and finish dragons by number advantage.

    As for centaurs, I guess it's about dominating early points as fast as you can and centaur build allows you to do that very fast. I don't think you could do things that fast with Ettin/Serpent side because it consumes too much hero mana. The key is to be the dominant factor in an area, and centaurs provide that just fine.

    The left branch of hexen IMO focuses more on ranged assaults, more like "late game" units where you need support from anything there is, including the wyvern which gives you lots of it.

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  3. If you ghost wave a regular weredragon and then retrofit it, it will work. (you probably already said that in all that text up there.)

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  4. Avernus said :D

    No I haven't but good assumption. At the moment that's what I do and I find it a bit of a disadvantage in Heretic. Even though it kind of increases your reflexes to a degree, I find it useless. I mean, what about my other dragons that were upgraded before I had ghost wave? Easy prey...

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  5. Haha, Thetis? I'm not him.

    It's not so much that they're not balanced themselves, it's every single class around it cannot doing anything because the units that would counter it cost too much mana to seriously counter. The low cost spammibility coupled with the ghost's strengths is what makes Corvus unbalanced now in my opinion. Last night I played a game with a friend who was CQ, I was Strife and some random guy was Corvus. We quite literally struggled the entire 45 minute game to stay alive and even worked together at points to no avail. Strife is my strongest class and I used to counter Corvus pretty well in the past and my buddys no slouch at Chex either so it's not like we aren't capible of fending off a class especially when teamed up. It had to be seen to be believed.

    I've used a pack of Reavers against you of all people when you were Corvus about 6 times in one game and each time you liquidated them with the abundance of Clinks and eventually dominated the entire map easily outclassing the Chex and Virus that were also in the game. The problem with Strife countering that is Reavers cost way too much hero mana to truly be spammed and that's a good thing.

    Eh, my only problem is people only seem to use Centaurs and Zedek/Traductus instead of using the rest of the class now a days. I just think there has got to be a way to make the rest of the class more used either by nerfing a few units or altering them in some way. It's silly to think most of the class is not utilized to it's full potential by most players because that stratedgy completely dominates just about any playing field.

    This is just my opinion based off a few games, but I feel that every class BUT Hexen and Herectic are balanced pretty dead evenly. There have been games I've played recently where the four players were Virus, Doom, Strife and Chex respectively and each round was dead even with close calls to the very end with a different class winning each time. After a while, the Doom player left and was replaced by a Hexen player and they absolutely dominated each game. That is the only reason I even made any complaints about the balance because that's utterly ridiculous and sorta made everyone quit after a few rounds.

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  6. In case you really want something changed, come to the IRC channel... then we can talk.

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Please remain civil, and do keep things constructive. That's all I ask, really. Discussions in comment threads are encouraged, but don't get out of hand. Also, remember to include a name, if you want to.