Name: Die no Death
Location: Everywhere
Posts: 1264
(Updated on a sporadic basis):
What are your views?
Quite concerning all of the changes that have been happening to FFA, with the QL readiness for steam. With so many threads around these days I wanted to try to get input from FFA Lovers, and hope to get good input / ideas for the balance. Which as a mode of Quake, has been seen to be a great starting point to move into other elements of quake.
FFA is not Duel, it is not TDM, it is not CTF, however great players, come from an initial FFA background, and some do very well coming from the other way round. However, I personally think there is something fundamentally wrong with the way it is being designed at the moment. Included or partial disabled Loadout's, they change everything and the problem starts. (loadouts / map design / map size / spawn positions / focus points / timers / ammo boxes / powerup ratio / armor protection / spawn health etc etc etc.
I have played quite a number of FFA's, CTF TDM and other game modes over the years. I am sure well in excess of 200,000+ over all Q game titles and around 50,000+ in FFA alone, and have won and lost. It is, and it has been one of my favourite pastimes. I have good days, and bad like most, and better at some Titles than others. FFA, to me also stands for Fun For All, but recently this has changed. There are many players who are very good at this mode, and only want to do this mode, as it fits in well with real life. Some do not want the stress of a Duel / TDM / environment, nor can commit the exact time of these games, and want the fun / competitive combat mode back, to just jump straight into.
I was really trying to find out what others thought & what suggested improvements might be better, as currently with the QL version update Sept 11 2014 is by far perfect. It has some improvements, but still I feel something is so wrong.
I have pasted in some of my thoughts, and I will update as I go along, but was interested in hearing what other players thought was wrong or right with it?
Personally the whole thing about FFA in the past has been loads of players on the server, so you can jump onto a populated server, not like one with 4 players on it, then having fights in different areas, with different focal points. At the moment it's far too spammy with the Loadout's, on these congested maps.
8 players means small maps with Loadout's, less population of servers. (I get why they are trying to do this, so the players can vote a different game mode which is good in 4v4 or 5v5 situations)
Still quite good fun with fewer players on a smaller basis, and quite duel like. However, imo it's too duel like designed for some reason, and not the FFA theme which is about combat and the rest, if you want to dominate. It's like someone from a Duel background, who has no idea about FFA, tried to design the FFA mode. I think it has the right intentions to make duel more popular, but many players who play FFA want more than a 1v1 situation solely. With many more players to communicate with, and have a good old thrashing with. But at the end of the day it isn't duel or TDM or CTF, or Race. It is FFA, pure, multiple combat and the rest.
Still the larger player capacity on servers are the best imo, for getting more players to join servers, as you already see 12 players on there already. Also larger maps are better, so that you get different action / focal points, that aren't over dominated by 5 new spawners in a congested map of "grenade surfing" spam. etc. I think with the Loadout's as it stands the balance needs new maps and some of the above.