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[PR-COOP] Improvements?

Discussion in 'Server Questions / Issues' started by Fated 0ne, Nov 15, 2016.

  1. Fated 0ne

    Fated 0ne Junior Member

    Hello reader :W,

    A bit of a long read and I'm not sure where to start exactly so I'll go with the first thing on my mind, bear with me.

    The Dead Centre Finale: I was wondering if more improvements could be made to balance it (I understand Mute has made some changes already). I think I can speak on behalf of most people when I say that this is the finale which is most likely to be repeated from an an exploding Jimmy Gibbs Jr. car. There are a few points that I'd like to bring up about this. Firstly, there is an auto-difficulty manager based on the amount of players or total level (I'm not sure exactly). Let's say that the current difficulty is on Advanced and the required gascans amounts to 45. After 5-10 minutes, players have survived a few tanks, perhaps custom tanks, and only need so little more gascans to finish the campaign with a few thousand hp left on the car. Next moment, a player joins. The difficulty shoots up to Expert and so does the amount of gascans; occasionally a tank may spawn at this point too. Sometimes, on Expert, half the car health has gone already after fighting the initial tank spawns once players have left the elevator.

    In the past, when a player joined, they could not play until they were "rescued". In the case of this finale, the difficulty still increased when some threshold is reached while said player has to wait until the next campaign (hopefully) in order to play. This isn't the case anymore presently, but I find that it is still difficult to complete. I guess you could call it whinging but I'm just sharing an inquiry and wondering about other's opinions on how balanced this is. There's no number to quantify the percentage of losses, but I'm sure it is low and the frequency of losing the round & auto-reducing difficulty is higher than I'd hope it to be. Maybe it's just me but it feels a bit demoralizing to keep restarting this finale, like only a full server with high-level players are required. Teamwork is hard to come by when there are situations such as a low level player (or more) is being pinned on the other side of the map, while higher-level players more capable of handling themselves amongst infected go to fetch gascans distanced away from the pouring location.

    My suggestions for improving this include perhaps a timer-based finale, having an interval where new sets of gascans are spawned on the map instead of when all of them are poured into the car, and a further increase in car health. These could be applied to the Port finale too, but there's no car hp to consider too so it is not as much of a priority in this case.

    Clan Benefits: Not sure if it has been pointed out already, so apologies if it has, but there are empty text boxes when you try to view more information on some of them.

    !players command: I would like to suggest adding this command to the !cp menu as an additional selection. No real reason behind this, just thought it could be something like the !upgrades command. For example, you can see your reputation from the !cp command without having to use !rep, since the control panel is a "universal menu" of sorts. I'm not trying to be lazy (yes I know I could bind it but it's not something crucial for in the midst of game-play) so please don't bash me, it's an idea related to convenience and I'm not seriously pushing for it. A !buffs command would also be useful to have.

    Common Infected: It seems that when a tank appears, common infected tend to spawn very close to you. To elaborate, a mini-horde can appear right behind you when you are being chased by a tank even if you've checked behind yourself for obstacles a second earlier (the tank is not biled btw). I've noticed this while having third-person mode enabled, they spawn right in front of you sometimes as well. When you're dealing with a mob which is surrounding you, a new "batch" appears behind them , it is hard to see because of the mob in front of you, but it certainly happens, and I'd like to know why? :?

    Easy/Normal difficulty tanks: A topic related to server balance, there are some custom tanks on these difficulties that make it difficult for new players to deal with. An example would be the Speedy Tank. I was playing on the Dead Air finale with 3 other players not so long ago, 2 of which were relatively low-leveled. Notorious for trapping players in corners, the speedy tank dealt with the low-leveled players swiftly and began focusing on the high-leveled players. Although the situation is not frequent and this tank doesn't spam abilities like the Void Tank, which spams its stun and blind abilities, the Speedy Tank's nature can leave you watching your incapacitated team mates die while you're bouncing in the corner from the tank's throws. Usually, the server has enough sufficiently high-leveled players to deal with this. But the case I'm bringing up is that when there aren't many players, such as in the situation I experienced ,or when the server is mostly full of low leveled players, these types of tanks can be overwhelming to deal with. I believe imo that restricting some of the custom tank types in these difficulties or moderating their hp would make the game-play more appropriate to the generally new players. As the more experienced player, you would like them to become more involved in the action and have fun. But there are limitations when you need to deal with protecting/reviving them from CI & SI, and a tank with certain abilities at the same time. Don't want them to think the server is being unreasonable when a tank gives them no opportunity to get up and reload or heal. Just my 2 cents.


    http://images.akamai.steamuserconte...253/3F93E228FF61253EFBB74B37154F891A32E236E0/
    We were lucky it wasn't anything more than a pestilent

    http://images.akamai.steamuserconte...578/AFEBB82194379C821956EBDE9C425E8F29B307E5/
    Congo newbie

    http://images.akamai.steamuserconte...476/D097AB037D8980C9877E8CA3D63DA349550AD57B/
    I call him: Sanic


    Feedback? Thoughts? Opinions?
    :smiley-signs127:
     
  2. Mute

    Mute Head Administrator Staff Member

    May as well drop my views on this:

    Dead Center: As you mentioned, I've made a few small tweaks behind it, but it still is probably the one finale with the biggest failure ratio when compared with the others, and to be honest, one side of me is fine with that, but the other feels it's an unfair loss, as you're pretty much screwed if you get two Tier 2+ tanks.

    I'm gonna go off a tangent here, but one thing I've come to notice, is that Expert, doesn't really feel like Expert any more, at least with a higher number of people. Whenever there's 8 - 10 people or so, Expert is hectic just due to the vast numbers of SI/CI, and it's challenging and fun, but with more people to deal with it, it isn't nearly as hard, and people will rarely ever die. We also can't keep ramping up the number of SI/CI, as I found out, it causes pretty bad ping for just about everyone on the server. Tenacity as well has completely disrupted balancing, as I don't want to add percentage based damage to everything just to make it hard, as it defeats the point of Tenacity, and I don't want a high base damage as it'll cause those without Tenacity to get ripped to shreds in seconds.

    Tangent aside, what I might do to attempt to balance Dead Center, firstly, increase the car health (probably double it or so), and instead of having 2 tanks spawn at the start and another midway, is to have a tank spawn every time all the gas cans are poured, with the cans respawning when the tank is killed, though this itself presents a few issues. On one hand, it creates a slower, less hectic and more controlled finale, on the other, if a Tier 3 spawns, it'll take a while before more cans will show up, which could just end up being another failure from the car taking too much damage, and the survivors unable to progress due to the lack of gas cans. I'll have to think about it for a bit.

    Clan Benefits: This is due to some older clan benefits being removed from code (they do nothing), but not from the database, I'll fix this shortly.

    !players command: It's a simple enough request, along with the !buffs command, I'll see if I can find the time to put them in.

    Common Infected: Honestly, I've no idea what causes this. I'll try to take a look into how the horde spawns, but I doubt I'll be able to find anything.

    Easy/Normal difficulty tanks: I remember discussing this with you in game a bit ago, even though the chances of them spawning are fairly low, I agree some tier 1 tanks shouldn't spawn on lower difficulties due to them being stronger than the average tier 1. I've decided that the following won't spawn on Easy or Normal difficulty:
    • Ghost
    • Guardian
    • Warrior
    • Assassin
    • Speedy
    • Poison
    • Void
    That limits about half of the tier 1 tanks, but given how its only on the lower difficulties, I think it'll be fine.
     
  3. Fated 0ne

    Fated 0ne Junior Member

    Thanks for the input, Mute :)

    Was worried I'd sound a bit silly hehe..
    I hope it's not possible for two tier-3 tanks to spawn during the finale (forget about gascans or the car, focus on surviving!)
     
  4. You know. I would like to add my fair share of points on this too + others of my own. Mainly the dead center finale is what im most concerned about... so here goes.

    Dead Center Finale: When you have Expert Difficulty that involves a chance of tier 2 or tier 3 tanks. it is almost guaranteed 9/10 chance that there is a guaranteed wipe on that difficulty alone in the finale, that's what i've noticed in this past year or so while playing it myself. For tier 3 tanks that spawn, if anything other than a supreme shaman spawns the chances of every survivor wiping in the finale is higher than normal (probably 100% too) (there is no way you can defeat an fighter/infernal/executioner tank before the car blows up).

    - My advice is that you should disable tier 3's spawning in the Dead Center Finale only if thats possible. It would eliminate the most problematic thing that has the least likely chance of happening. Sure its funny to have tier 3's spawning in the Dead Center Finale, but it is not funny to be tired of wiping to these tier 3 tanks each and every fight that happens.


    The Tier 2 tanks are not that difficult and sure enough on expert, some tanks can give us a wipe if we don't come prepared properly. 7/10 of the time we fight tier 2 tanks on the expert finale, we can defeat most of them before the car explodes or before we wipe to them. Freezing tank, Corrosive Tank are those tanks that can cause huge problems for the finale if you dont strategically control them with proper tanking, it can result in many deaths in under a few minutes and gascans dealing huge amounts of damage to the car as well as increasing the chances of the car exploding.

    - Another suggestion I would agree on with you is to increase the car integrity of the car on expert from 12000 -> 20000, on advanced from 15000 -> 24000 and on normal and easy from 20000 to -> 28000 It makes it less likely to wipe on the finales and gives survivors more time to fill up the cans into the car itself.

    OR

    - Decrease the damage of the following to car integrity
    - Tanks from 100 to 50 per second
    - Fire damage decreased by 75% overall from car explosion sources only. and a 25% fire damage decrease to all other sources.
    or
    - make the car require 3x the damage in order for it to be exploded on expert, and 2x on advanced.

    - Decrease the frequency at which tanks spawn (for expert, have only 1 tank spawn at the start, than at every 20 cans that are filled into the car) / reduce the chances of tier 2's spawning in this finale by a low percentage for the expert difficulty. This reduces the chance of us wiping in the finale itself.

    The Fences: Not all areas that could be exploitable have fences around them. so i'll list a few areas that deserve to have fencing around them

    - The Sacrifice, The Barge Chapter

    - There needs to be a fence where survivors cannot jump up to the boat and hang there until someone revives them. We don't need people to shortcut their way around the hills and avoiding that bridge thingy that connects the top of the hill to the boat exterior.

    Swamp Fever Finale: The finale itself does not contain a finale escape timer, at the very least it deserves one to be in line with all the other campaigns, make it 2:00 as well.

    The Crash Course Finale: Would it be possible if for advanced/expert difficulty for the timer to be set to 5:00 and then on easy/normal difficulty for the timer to be set to 2:00? on easy and normal difficulties with low number of players, your reducing the frequency of tanks that appear by 1 which can make it easier for struggling teams who cannot handle a large number of tanks. just an idea to make mgftw easier for that side.

    The !players command: next to the player names, would there be an option to add how much bounty that player has at the time you viewed the command !players? Could be quite helpful for healing/defibbing or other bounty purposes as required by other players.

    if i have anything that comes to mind for after the next time i'm playing COOP, i'll list them here. thats all for now.
     
  5. Mute

    Mute Head Administrator Staff Member

    Just to elaborate on a few of the newer points made:

    Fences: I knew about this spot, I had something in place, but then I realised that it also blocks infected spawns so they just sit there, and don't even attempt to climb onto the ship. I hadn't really thought of some form of alternative yet, but I will soon.

    Swamp Fever Escape: I just fixed this fairly recently, along with some other maps.

    Crash Course Finale: Well, what can I say, the timer is set to 5:00, but something, and I've spent days looking for it, is changing it to 2:00. It happens on COOP and VS, but not on the Test server, which is what I can't figure out. I'll have to give this a more thorough look later.

    Bounty: Again, a simple thing, I'll see if I can find time to add it.
     
  6. fnord

    fnord Game Server Moderator Staff Member

    What about adding more gas cans on the finale for a better survival rate?
     
  7. SanAtlas

    SanAtlas Game Server Moderator Staff Member

    i don't know what mute think about it, but i guess the 13 gas cans is quitly enough for now, unless if good players are in dead center finale to survive on expert.

    One more thing about the passing finale, me and other players was dead and the passing has been changed automatically to the first map, what if the players didn't want to do the campaign second time?, we all didn't want to do this again and we all wanted to change campaign but we couldn't example i couldn't change maps because i'm not a donor or admin.

    Man, i wish i can change maps on regular coop too, and that the paysafecard is supported for the mg store.
     
  8. SanAtlas

    SanAtlas Game Server Moderator Staff Member

    now the same thing happend on dark carnival finale too, what is going on?
     
  9. Mute

    Mute Head Administrator Staff Member

    Basically, any time 0 survivors make it out when the timer ends, it will, for some reason, restart the campaign instead of the map.

    Dark Carnival finale is a rough one due to the fact that there are two possible exit points (left side/right side). As which side its on isn't determined on map load it doesn't know which trigger to use, so it doesn't use the right one, causing it to act as if no one had made it out. I just fixed this so it should now correctly hook up the right trigger.

    I also added a different way to lose the round, so hopefully it should now correctly restart the round instead of the campaign.