Grenade Options

[The_Silver]

Oh yeah I remember why I turned it down. Because I planned to eventually make grenades a separate category of thing ("accessory" or something) that you buy separately from the weapons and you can only have one of.

Instead of that, as a stopgap I'm going to scale down the radius and damage of grenades when there are more than 8 people on the server. That should cut down on the spam a good bit I imagine.

I don't see how it could reduce the grenade spam unless there's a dynamic big text saying like "Grenades just became useless on this server because the 8th player joined!", I still think that the inventory weight increase is the simplest and most effective solution untill other "accessories" will be implemented, if this will ever be done... Surely dinamically reducing the the effectiveness of a weapon depending on the player's amount will only annoy players, they would have to change habit in mid game because their weapon just became ineffective with no reason, I'd rant for sure if this happens to me, inconsistent weapon behaviour is just nonsense IMHO.

Anyway I've written these things from my player's perspective since I'm totally ignorant about developing games, so I could have posted a bunch of bullshit, in case feel free to ignore me.

[Penguininnabox]

Obviously cant speak perfectly cause i haven't played with the new nerf yet, but more recently the problem with the nades isn't the damage, but rather the sheer volume of nades that can be thrown at once. 1 nade was fine as they were, just dive away from it, and the damage will knock your armor off at most. The problem arises when 6 of the damn things are thrown all around a major fight area, like the lower down roof on rooftops. No matter what you do, one of those nades is gonna hit for full damage, and the reduced dmg from the others will probably make it a kill. If grenades were less available, less would be thrown, and the amount of times 6 at once would happened would be greatly reduced. And as Silver said, is there any indicator that the dmg is reduced now that a 8th guy joined? Cause once this update gets buried under others, most will likely not know about the reduction. Or we get a stigma against servers with more that 8 players possibly. If you like to use grenades, why would you stick around in a game that has them nerfed? Of even worse, why not just kick some people until your nades are back to normal? Grenades don't need a damage nerf, they need a "practicality" nerf. Don't allow players to shoot their gun while they throw. Limit nades to just nitro players. These are just ideas, they could be the wrong ideas, but as of now, I have way more faith in these ideas than the ones you implemented. Looking forward to the new version to see if I'm entirely wrong about this!

[Black_Stormy]

Instead of that, as a stopgap I'm going to scale down the radius and damage of grenades when there are more than 8 people on the server. That should cut down on the spam a good bit I imagine.

This doesn't strike me as a good idea. Changing the damage effect of a weapon mid game without telling the players about it. You're changing the game dynamic and giving the players no feedback. Isn't that a game design no no? It won't effect peoples decision to throw grenades at all because they won't see they have any reason to stop. I can't see this solving the problem we're discussing. Increasing the weight directly will solve the problem, and is easy to change back when the accessories system comes in.

Actually this doesn't seem like something you would do at all Vino. Unless, as usual, you have a really well thought out reason that you're about to elucidate?

[Vino]

Maybe I'm just not firing on all cylinders right now. Here's my logic in full and you guys can tell me if I'm off track.

The goal is to cut down on spam.

The usability solution is a tricky one to implement because you're betting on whether the player will take your different feedback and incorporate it into a new playing style. In other words you're assuming that taking longer to throw the grenade or increasing the weight or sticking a fork in their eye when they throw a grenade will cause the player to throw fewer grenades. In the long term if we have enough playtesting time we can discover a relationship between those factors and grenade throwing, but we don't have that time, we all want a Steam release fast and we all want this issue at least mitigated in the Steam release.

So instead I opt for a mathematical (but temporary) solution where I can calculate damage done to players, reduce it by some factor that I want, and be done with it. Damage by eight players is about right, so what I want is that when double the grenades are thrown, half the damage is done. The way explosions work in HL is that the damage is a function of the radius, (ie smaller radius => less damage) so we're looking at about an inverse cube function (damage ~= radius, area = .5 pi r^2, so damage ~= .5 pi r^3) so reducing damage by about 20% per grenade should get a 1/2 overall reduction in grenade damage. Sorry to drop all this math on you guys, I know most people don't care to see the math, but I did want to elucidate that on a full server I'm only dropping full grenade damage by 20%. (Incidentally I'm glad you guys forced me to do this math because my initial guess was way too high.)

I'm not worried too much about feedback because the difference in damage is so low. It's a detail and in my experience trying to relate details like that to users is pointless. What matters is the visual effect (unchanged) and the style meter feedback, which will still play most of the time. Even if it doesn't affect people's decision to throw grenades, which it's not designed to do, the system will still work to reduce total damage. When I'm done with the Steam release we can worry about getting the mechanically-based solution in place and then we can remove this hack.

[Penguininnabox]

So instead I opt for a mathematical (but temporary) solution

Thats all you needed to say to have me on board with this.

Also, thanks for the math drop, the nerf sounds MUCH better than what it was initally. Also if this is just temp, then disregard the worries about the need for a notice when dmg gets reduced, by the time it would be neccary, the function would hopefully be removed or revamped.

Speaking of the style meter, cant remember the details, but i sweat i saw someone throw like 6 nades in a row from that stack of containers on streets. Do grenades really give that many style points that they can be chained together like that?

P.S. If this doesnt go over well i am so for sticking a fork in someones eye whenever they throw a nade.

[Black_Stormy]

I still don't see this resolving the problem, but playtesting can prove that wrong. You've already coded it in so let's see how it goes.

[Vino]

Style for grenades should probably be reduced as well.

[Penguininnabox]

Ive been trying to think of ways to incentivise using grenades in "cool" ways, rather than punish players for just using grenades at all, and I came to realize, why don't grenades give a bonus for getting double, triple and quad kills? Its stylish as fuck, and would be a great way to encourage players to save their grenades for REALLY epic moments, rather than just use them on the first person they see.

And BTW, is that damage nerf implemented for the Steam release? The more I think about it, the more faith I have in its helpfulness.

[Vino]

That is quite a good idea, and yes.

[Trop]

Could a few server variables be added for grenade radius and damage? This would allow server owners to tweak to their content until a final solution is found.

Style for grenades should probably be reduced as well.

Yes. I saw someone on a server earlier with near 4000 style who for the entire match just suicided with grenades in groups of people and never used a gun.