PR Versus Server observations/suggestions

Ok, Ladies and gentlemen,

I have been playing PR VS for quite a while, I have leveled mostly up (except the past 3 days when i plummeted downwards worse than the American stock market a few years ago) but anyways...it's all fun and games (mostly games) to one point.

What i actually wanted to say is that after playing PR for so long i do have some comments on a few things you guys have implemented. Don't get me wrong, it is challenging to play the PR, but there are a few things that i have noticed and wanted to discuss..

So bare with me for a few more text lines

BOTS

They seem to be a little unbalanced. While the SI ones tend to do a pretty good job at pummeling survivors (on a few occasions i did get in-capped by them), the ones that are on the Survivor teams seem to be, how to put it lightly and without offending the coders...they seem to be idiots. A few reasons would be

1. SURVIVOR BOTS
   

• Rushers - How many times did players spawn at the beginning of the round just to find themselves covered in spit/vomit and infected. I know you guys are working on a solution for that and I honestly appreciate it.
• No Melee weapon - As in the example above, it's difficult to go through a horde when all you have are 2 pistols. As a suggestion here i am asking if it's possible to make the dual handguns a bit more powerful or give them better melee/shoving characteristics?
• Self preservation - You know it, you love it as a SI and hate it as a Survivor. Talking about the elevator parts of No Mercy,Hard Rain, Dead Center and Sacrifice, where is enough for one/two spitters to cover the area in spit and there you have it. A whole team can be destroyed there because the bots will quietly stay out of the spit and most of the times they cannot be left behind(especially main one), hence the event/elevator cannot be started.

2. SI BOTS

• On this ones I will be short, they actually do a pretty good job. The only thing I can think of would be some lvl increase/skill/upgrades increase, make them stronger. Walking through the spit of a spitter bot is like a walk through the park. I know some of you will say "why make it stronger?" I get it..it's easier to fight a basic spitter than one that has lvl 5 goo-iness and stronger/more damage spit.

SPECIAL INFECTED

• HUNTER DAMAGE - Apparently the survivor takes no damage from pouncing. "xxx has pounced yyy for 0.0 damage over....". Also, it takes forever for a hunter to kill the survivor compared to the smoker. As a matter of fact, i was playing today as a SI and pounced a guy and started tearing at him. Not far from me another one, same level as the guy i was shredding was smoked by maxed out smoker. Guess what, the smoker in-capped and killed his prey a lot faster. By the time i was done killing the Surv, the smoker was almost done with his second kill. Question is: can the hunter damage be increased?
• SPITTER RECHARGE TIME - i do not know what the problem is and where it comes from, but 25% times, the second spit takes a loot of time to recharge. You spit and then your SI acts like he's not upgraded at all...The second (and if you are lucky enough to do a third one) spit takes forever to recharge.
• CHARGER RELEASE - It would be nice if chargers could act like the smokers and hunters and release the victim. Charging someone out from a crowd of Survivors means suicide. You get him, smack him a few times around and then..you're dead cause you can't release and his buddies are hacking/slashing at you. That is really annoying when the strategy is to in-cap your target rather than killing it (like dead center finale, or No mercy elevator, or Parrish-second map) and your only viable option as a SI is a charger.

SI RESPAWN TIME

1. PROS

• As far as I have seen it, the SI strategy is somewhat like this: The ppl that have maxed out their SI go boomers/spitters/chargers. For boomers and chargers, this is pretty much suicide and the 25-30 seconds re-spawn limit is to much on small maps. Take for example 2 boomers and 2 chargers. They die the first 10 seconds and then you have 10 surv vs 6 or less infected for half a minute

1. CONS

• The survivor might have to put a little more effort into making it to the safe room alive

TANK

• This is a sensitive issue. Tanks are few and precious so they should be treated with grace....lool. Back to the subject anyway, all SI are happy when a tank appears. The joy sometimes turns to anger/disappointment when they see the tank being given to the lowest lvl player on that team. Face it, an non-upgraded tank has no chance against Adrenaline rushed players, even an upgraded one has trouble against good players. Solution? i won't say don't give the tank to a low lvl player...i will say don't give it 3 times in a round. Last night there was a lvl 30 kid on USA PR VS that had the tank 3 times and failed. I suggest that players that have the paranoia buff have an increased chance of tank appropriation. Since i've equipped the buff, i was tank 7 times and got paranoid once...and i was playing most of yesterday and the day before

TEAM SCRAMBLE

• Now that is a disaster, no offense to the coders. What i can say is team stacking at it's highest. Just a few minutes ago, i was playing on USA PR VS and the 7 of the 10 of the Survivors were over lvl 80 and except me, the highest on SI team was 65. Guess what. Teams are alright!!!

KNIFE

• My only objection to that is maybe the knife should be assigned a different key. Sometimes, trying to shove an SI of your back, while equipped with a main weapon can result in using a knife( cases of having a jokey on your head or a smoker's tongue..it happened to me before)

That is it for now....i'll think of something more later

 

Bot programming is bot programming, and it's Valve's fault if it's bad. We're running quite a unique plugin, and the bot programming that we're working with is designed for the normal gametype. I honestly don't know what can be done with this. However, I do think that there's a way to make bots pick up and use melee weapons, which has been incorporated in the coop servers.

Concerning Hunter Damage: I think it's glitched, and should be fixed at some point. If not, i'm not sure what's going on. Concerning Spitter Recharge: I haven't had problems with my spitter charge time. The only time i've had slow recharge times are when the control panel hasn't loaded, or if i've been shoved by a survivor. Concerning Charger Release: I agree. If the hunter and the smoker are both able to release their victim, I think having a Charger release would be nice.

Everyone keeps telling me that their respawn times go up to 30 seconds, yet i've never seen mine go above 20, odd... I think, though, if they actually do go up to 25-30 seconds, the respawn times should actually be capped at 20.

I'm not sure how easily the tank appropriation can be messed with. At the moment, i think it's purely random, and tbh, I think it should probably stay that way.

We're working on it.

I agree. I think the "use" key would be a better appropriation if possible.

PS: I was really tired when writing these responses :| I'll go over them in the morning and fix anything that doesn't make sense...

 

Yes.... I've died and had to wait like 4-5 seconds just for the counter to start and have seen 29 seconds... so easily a 30s timer....

 

TBH, then, I think that the cap should be 20 seconds.

 

One more for your list

PARANOIA BUFF

Chances for your tank to go paranoid if you have the buff equipped should be increased. Today for example, in 3 hours of game-play I was tank about 10 times and no paranoia, although i have quipped the buff as soon as I bought it. Tank assigning is random and cannot be modified, but the chances should increase like 25%-35% at least. what point is to have that buff if your chances to go paranoid are really small. I would say, one out every 4 tanks you get on a single continuous game-play should be paranoid

 

we will look into it