Patch: Jan 15th, skins, new maps, balance, ball improvements, bug fixes

[r87]

Originally Posted by gemigemi

Today I spent a lot of time on a couple of different servers with {arr}D4rt getting a feeling to the new game mechanics. Half of the day we spent on 10vs10 servers. The experience was absolutely horrible. The huge influx of bombers makes playing an absolutely chaotic mess with no tactics or progression at all. It's horrible. And everyone is saying the same in chat.

I was also just playing on the arr server. That, combined with playing on the unofficial 7v7 server led me to believe that you are correct. 10v10 is a mess, but the new update does favor 7v7 (maybe 8v8) quite nicely.

[Kuja900]

I can no longer detonate rockets immediately at planes in my face, is this intended? Their is a slight delay in launching and ability to detonate.

[CCN]

Maybe the person who runs the ball servers should move them from 10v10 to 7v7 or 8v8?

[r87]

Originally Posted by CCN

Maybe the person who runs the ball servers should move them from 10v10 to 7v7 or 8v8?

Would probably need to add one or two servers to make up for the lost spaces as well.

Adding an official hard wall server would be neat too.

(this is coming from a person who loves 10 v 10, btw)

[Jayfourke]

The unlockable skins are too expensive for anyone who doesn't facebook and stuff like that. I also have no desire to linkspam my online friends and contacts, yet I still want the shark-eye decals. Meh.

[lamster]

Originally Posted by Kuja900

I can no longer detonate rockets immediately at planes in my face, is this intended? Their is a slight delay in launching and ability to detonate.

The rocket timing change was accidental (related to a bug fix on remote mine). It should be fixed in a follow-up patch.

To address one issue that's come up a lot: the planes have always been balanced around 8vs8 dogfighting, as were the latest ball adjustments. As many of you have discovered, the smaller ball games often provide more interesting dynamics than 10v10. We've added more 8v8 and 7v7 servers to reflect this, however it may take some time for the community to transition. We will, of course, continue to support 10v10 servers for those who prefer the mayhem and added chaos there, but those servers will probably never see a lot of diversity in plane choices (e.g. previously these servers were usually 70%+ DF Loopies) because dogfighting capabilities were balanced around smaller games.

[AtomikPi]

Originally Posted by Tank

ok... this update is just going to take some getting used to i guess. i dont like the increased cooldown time for remote mines. It just makes mine hopping almost impossible, and makes no difference in battle, because energy consumption makes you wait awhile before releasing another mine anyway.

ORLY?

I'm pretty sure it makes a major difference because remote went from being great at attacking things in its rear to pretty awful.

[Flyngbanana]

Originally Posted by AtomikPi

ORLY?

I'm pretty sure it makes a major difference because remote went from being great at attacking things in its rear to completely ineffective.

srslywtfisthis10charshiz?

[nesnl]

After playing remote mine I think that maybe all 4 changes at once might have been too much. I think that important change is that people can no longer mine jump. Mine jumping broke the game fairly badly, so it is important that no matter what change is made that mine jumping is prevented.

I think from reading the posts thus far that a lot of people are complaining that a plane can tailgate them and effectively dodge the mines because they can't be detonated fast enough. Maybe the first change that was made, where mines won't detonate on contact, should be changed back so that they will detonate on contact. This way if a plane is tailgating it will detonate as soon as the mine hits it, but if a plane isn't there there is still that safe guard against mine jumping and the rapid fire spam from mines.

[Varonth]

Originally Posted by lamster

The rocket timing change was accidental (related to a bug fix on remote mine). It should be fixed in a follow-up patch.

To address one issue that's come up a lot: the planes have always been balanced around 8vs8 dogfighting, as were the latest ball adjustments. As many of you have discovered, the smaller ball games often provide more interesting dynamics than 10v10. We've added more 8v8 and 7v7 servers to reflect this, however it may take some time for the community to transition. We will, of course, continue to support 10v10 servers for those who prefer the mayhem and added chaos there, but those servers will probably never see a lot of diversity in plane choices (e.g. previously these servers were usually 70%+ DF Loopies) because dogfighting capabilities were balanced around smaller games.

If the game is balanced around dogfighting, why did you take away the abillity of dogfighting for a miranda?
Without repair + altfire a miranda can't really fight in melee range.
We dont have the HP for flexi wings.
We cant use repairdrones.

So we are another plane forced to use heavy armor?

Really, the miranda is the only plane which got a disadvantage on repairdrones when using afterburner AND altfire.

[Annihil8r]

Hey lamster, I got 120 community points from getting the Facebook app. (100 for installing the app, 20 from people clicking it.) So I bought a zebra skin with it. It showed I bought it, but wouldn't let me use it when I customized my perks. So I tried clicking it again, and it didn't work. After restarting Altitude, it gave me the skin but left me with -80 community points . Is there any way you could fix that for me?

[matattack]

Originally Posted by nesnl

After playing remote mine I think that maybe all 4 changes at once might have been too much. I think that important change is that people can no longer mine jump. Mine jumping broke the game fairly badly, so it is important that no matter what change is made that mine jumping is prevented.

I think from reading the posts thus far that a lot of people are complaining that a plane can tailgate them and effectively dodge the mines because they can't be detonated fast enough. Maybe the first change that was made, where mines won't detonate on contact, should be changed back so that they will detonate on contact. This way if a plane is tailgating it will detonate as soon as the mine hits it, but if a plane isn't there there is still that safe guard against mine jumping and the rapid fire spam from mines.

thats what i said!!!! yay +1

[poofighter24]

After playing numerous hours post-patch, I've come to a conclusion that helped me form a pretty great (imo) analogy for the ball game mode:

Ball is now the Oakland Raiders.

Why, do you ask?

Well, it's because the game is now as dysfunctional and chaotic as the current NFL franchise is in real life. I'll explain the role and real-life corollary of each plane below.

Whale - Jamarcus Russell
Basically immobile when not carrying the ball, can take lots of hits without getting "injured", can launch the ball like a cannon

Loopy - Darrius Heyward-Bey
Basically runs around very quickly and in random directions in hopes that a ball will end up somewhere near him

Biplane - Nnamdi Asomugha
Doesn't have the speed factor of the other planes, but can swat down any ball-carrying plane with ease, especially if that plane is Darrius Heyward-Bey

Bomber (with flexy wings) - Darren McFadden
Suddenly the best ball-carrying plane in the game, has the power (grenades) to blow through anyone in their way and the speed to rival anyone on the team while carrying the ball (still slightly slower than Darrius Heyward-Bey)

Miranda - Kwame Brown
Because Kwame's suck transcends all sports

Now, I'm not asking for the Indianapolis Colts here, but could we at least get the Houston Texans?

Please?

[gemigemi]

Originally Posted by CCN

Maybe the person who runs the ball servers should move them from 10v10 to 7v7 or 8v8?

Who's in charge of them?

Originally Posted by r87

Would probably need to add one or two servers to make up for the lost spaces as well.

Feel free to use the {arr} server. I'll also get around to adding one or two more asap (tonight or tomorrow) to allow more players to use them. These are good for European players due to a good location and connection, but the US players will probably like US located servers for lower ping.

Originally Posted by r87

Adding an official hard wall server would be neat too.

Tbh hard walls don't seem to suit ball very well. I've been testing this a bit and I didn't like the results of ball + hw, which is a bit surprising how much better hw is in other game modes. There's another topic about this though, so lets not start that conversation here. If a lot of players want to, I can add one hw {arr} server too.

[nesnl]

poofighter24,

I realize you are not happy with the current patch as you have posted many times, but I am just curious, what would you change about it to make it better? I have a full grasp of the fact that you don't like it, but you don't really offer anything that you think would make it better. Just looking for some constructive suggestions.

-Maimer

[adjahe]

Originally Posted by Varonth

Really, the miranda is the only plane which got a disadvantage on repairdrones when using afterburner AND altfire.

A fair point, imo. The miranda already sacrifices a fair amount in not having a secondary weapon (or at least not one that doesn't require the randa's paper armor to fly through an opponent). If repair was disabled for whales dropping mines or bombers using flak there would be some significant protestation. Also, the repeat hit on bounces being eliminated was unwarranted, I think. It didn't happen all that often, and that was one of the quirks that made miranda unique. Also there are a few players that make that shot intentionally with a lot of success, which was great for the high power but low defense miranda. I really like the laser changes, much needed.

Overall, I like the update. I'm gonna go ahead and agree with Obeighs on his assessment of the whale nerfs. The whole point of remote is being able to detonate whenever you want. The drop to det time leaves whales pretty vulnerable. Also, I forgot who said it, but mine hopping did play and important function for fat whales that were stalled. Afterburn doesn't do as much for them. If you increased the afterburn ability of whale, perhaps stronger acceleration but faster use, then the mine hopping might not be an issue.

Ball changes seem good, my only qualm is that the .7 sec lim on randas afterburn may effect players trying to ditch the ball and simply survive. Perhaps a .7 sec limit on catching the ball after being thrown? Or maybe a bit more even. The decreased drag/increased launch speed in combination with a catch timer would make it difficult to keep up with a thrown ball long enough to catch it again yourself, and would give other players an opportunity for a steal if it was attempted.

Thoughtfully offered for your consideration,
buffalosoldier

[r87]

Originally Posted by gemigemi

Tbh hard walls don't seem to suit ball very well. I've been testing this a bit and I didn't like the results of ball + hw, which is a bit surprising how much better hw is in other game modes. There's another topic about this though, so lets not start that conversation here. If a lot of players want to, I can add one hw {arr} server too.

I agree that HW are not ideal for ball, but they make for a nice change of pace if you want to work on your flying.

[poofighter24]

Originally Posted by nesnl

poofighter24,

I realize you are not happy with the current patch as you have posted many times, but I am just curious, what would you change about it to make it better? I have a full grasp of the fact that you don't like it, but you don't really offer anything that you think would make it better. Just looking for some constructive suggestions.

-Maimer

There have been numerous suggestions in this thread already, it's just that none of them have been addressed.

- Undo the time anchor and repair drone ubernerfs, it's too much. I don't give a rat's ass about game modes other than ball, so even if it's just for ball I'd be satisfied.
- Make the ball maps bigger. With the ridiculous ball speeds, goals are way too easy.

In addition, undo the stupid communist "all planes fly the same speed with the ball" crap. You and Sarah Palin are offering two arguments that are completely contradicting each other. Palin is saying that planes now have more clearly defined roles, while you are saying that they eliminate the ball-carrier role entirely, since planes now supposedly are all exactly evenly good at carrying the ball. That's false btw, whales and bombers are far and away the best ball carriers now. Anyone else see something wrong with that?

In reality, it does neither of those things. It's just a mess. You are never going to figure out a perfect formula that caters to all game modes of all game sizes, and this patch completely kills the fun of ball in favor of supposedly balancing out TBD. It feels like I'm playing soccer in North Korea.

[Herodadotus]

Originally Posted by poofighter24

After playing numerous hours post-patch, I've come to a conclusion that helped me form a pretty great (imo) analogy for the ball game mode:

Ball is now the Oakland Raiders.

Why, do you ask?

Well, it's because the game is now as dysfunctional and chaotic as the current NFL franchise is in real life. I'll explain the role and real-life corollary of each plane below.

Whale - Jamarcus Russell
Basically immobile when not carrying the ball, can take lots of hits without getting "injured", can launch the ball like a cannon

Loopy - Darrius Heyward-Bey
Basically runs around very quickly and in random directions in hopes that a ball will end up somewhere near him

Biplane - Nnamdi Asomugha
Doesn't have the speed factor of the other planes, but can swat down any ball-carrying plane with ease, especially if that plane is Darrius Heyward-Bey

Bomber (with flexy wings) - Darren McFadden
Suddenly the best ball-carrying plane in the game, has the power (grenades) to blow through anyone in their way and the speed to rival anyone on the team while carrying the ball (still slightly slower than Darrius Heyward-Bey)

Miranda - Kwame Brown
Because Kwame's suck transcends all sports

Now, I'm not asking for the Indianapolis Colts here, but could we at least get the Houston Texans?

Please?

You were annoying me, but this post made me lol. I've already stated that I don't approve of the miranda time anchor/repair update, if anything but for the fact that Mikesol's bomb running should be an inspiration to bomb runners everywhere, not just cannon fodder for other clans to nerf.

[nesnl]

Originally Posted by poofighter24

There have been numerous suggestions in this thread already, it's just that none of them have been addressed.

- Undo the time anchor and repair drone ubernerfs, it's too much. I don't give a rat's ass about game modes other than ball, so even if it's just for ball I'd be satisfied.
- Make the ball maps bigger. With the ridiculous ball speeds, goals are way too easy.

In addition, undo the stupid communist "all planes fly the same speed with the ball" crap. You and Sarah Palin are offering two arguments that are completely contradicting each other. Palin is saying that planes now have more clearly defined roles, while you are saying that they eliminate the ball-carrier role entirely, since planes now supposedly are all exactly evenly good at carrying the ball. That's false btw, whales and bombers are far and away the best ball carriers now. Anyone else see something wrong with that?

In reality, it does neither of those things. It's just a mess. You are never going to figure out a perfect formula that caters to all game modes of all game sizes, and this patch completely kills the fun of ball in favor of supposedly balancing out TBD. It feels like I'm playing soccer in North Korea.

I think that map size is hard for a game like ball. This is because there are many different sizes of games. So a map for a 5v5 ball game would be much different than a 10v10 ball game. I honestly am not a fan of many of the ball maps out there right now anyway. I am working on a new one and I am also working with another community members on adapting his map into a ball map. it's not just as simple as "make bigger maps" because first you need people who make maps.

As for balancing towards TBD, I don't think that this was the case for this patch. A lot of what was done was either done with ball in mind or the whole game in mind. I think that the confusion comes from planes being affected more in larger games, such as 10v10, than in smaller games. The miranda nerfs bring them on a more equal playing field in a smaller game while I can see how it hurts it more in a larger game.

I think that Palin and I are on the same page actually. I think you are making an assumption that their should be a "ball carrier" role. I disagree with that idea entirely. I think the game should be about passing and you have stronger passers and stronger receivers. I see the faster planes being better receivers and therefore better goal scorers. The reverse is true for the slower planes. I have played only a few dozen games so far and I have already seen some ridiculous passes made by explodets and bombers to open loopys at the goal. It's passes like that that make me really like the changes that were made. If you still think that there should be some role where one or two planes carry the ball for extended periods of time then I think you and I will never agree.

Personally, I would like to see it go even further. Back over a year ago (when it was just TBD and FFA) you couldn't even afterburn if you were carrying the bomb. I think it created a higher skilled game because you needed a team to make it across the map as you couldn't just hold the Up arrow and hope to make it to the other side. I would like to see that change in ball so that no plane can afterburn while carrying the ball. That kind of change would truely force a passing game.

[poofighter24]

Originally Posted by nesnl

I think that map size is hard for a game like ball. This is because there are many different sizes of games. So a map for a 5v5 ball game would be much different than a 10v10 ball game. I honestly am not a fan of many of the ball maps out there right now anyway. I am working on a new one and I am also working with another community members on adapting his map into a ball map. it's not just as simple as "make bigger maps" because first you need people who make maps.

As for balancing towards TBD, I don't think that this was the case for this patch. A lot of what was done was either done with ball in mind or the whole game in mind. I think that the confusion comes from planes being affected more in larger games, such as 10v10, than in smaller games. The miranda nerfs bring them on a more equal playing field in a smaller game while I can see how it hurts it more in a larger game.

I think that Palin and I are on the same page actually. I think you are making an assumption that their should be a "ball carrier" role. I disagree with that idea entirely. I think the game should be about passing and you have stronger passers and stronger receivers. I see the faster planes being better receivers and therefore better goal scorers. The reverse is true for the slower planes. I have played only a few dozen games so far and I have already seen some ridiculous passes made by explodets and bombers to open loopys at the goal. It's passes like that that make me really like the changes that were made. If you still think that there should be some role where one or two planes carry the ball for extended periods of time then I think you and I will never agree.

Personally, I would like to see it go even further. Back over a year ago (when it was just TBD and FFA) you couldn't even afterburn if you were carrying the bomb. I think it created a higher skilled game because you needed a team to make it across the map as you couldn't just hold the Up arrow and hope to make it to the other side. I would like to see that change in ball so that no plane can afterburn while carrying the ball. That kind of change would truely force a passing game.

I have seen those long "passes" too. The majority of the time, they are launched from near mid-field and still manage to go into the hoop because of the ridiculous shot speed. I am talking about smaller games. The smaller the game, the easier it is to make long and ridiculous shots, and the larger the map needs to be.

The "pass a lot, nobody needs to hold onto the ball" theory might sound good on paper, but the fact is that it will only be successful in small games with extremely skilled players. I am not talking about relatively good players like me, I am talking about players that are currently as good as mikesol or GGQ. The ridiculous shot speeds make it impossible to connect the dots from one end of the map to another, and long passes are literally impossible in 10v10.

The fact is, in every single game ever created that involves putting a ball into a goal, there is a "ball carrier" role. In basketball, exceptional ball handlers are scarce and can get to the hoop with ease. In soccer hockey, great passers are useful, but the main way to get from goal A to goal B has always been "carrying" the ball. It's a working formula, and to make ball carriers so useless is going against a strong history of successful sports.

[GGQ]

Personally, I would like to see it go even further. Back over a year ago (when it was just TBD and FFA) you couldn't even afterburn if you were carrying the bomb. I think it created a higher skilled game because you needed a team to make it across the map as you couldn't just hold the Up arrow and hope to make it to the other side. I would like to see that change in ball so that no plane can afterburn while carrying the ball. That kind of change would truely force a passing game.

I would approve of this in Ball, but not in TBD .

[Sarah Palin]

As someone who has spent a lot of time practicing the old plane ball, and help put together a clan that was pretty good at it, I'm fairly annoyed now that we're all starting over learning the new plane ball which really doesn't translate well.

No offense, but the old plane ball sucked. It really did. There were threads in the forum every week about "how to improve plane ball" "how to make ball actually have skill" etc. It also led to a MAJOR split in the community between pre-Dec-5 TBDers and post-Dec-5 "bouncy ball heroes" who thought that was the way Altitude was supposed to be played.

The major problems, pointed out again and again by many different players, were:

1. Large gamesize
2. Loopy dominates
3. Passing less important than breakout running
4. Very low skill ceiling

The old plane ball was just 20 loopies afterburning after the ball while pew-pewing into the melee, because the best way to score was to breakout with a loopy running the ball or a miranda warppassing it. The ball moved so slowly across the map (combination of passing and running) that there was never any reason NOT to afterburn to the Ball Melee Zone (except if you were playing goalie I guess).

The new patch fixes most of these problems. It balances toward a smaller gamesize, it balances away from Loopy towards a diversity of planes (planebalance was basically even last time I played), it balanced towards a passing game and it increased the skill ceiling.

Now the best way to score is to have a distributed defense and offense across the map with good passing skills. This is exactly what people wanted from ball.

Various comments about how slow loopy is now

Also guys please stop talking about how much slower Loopy is. Its carrying speed went from 8.9 to 8.4. That's not exactly a gigantic nerf.

I understand Loopy "feels" slow now. What happened is that THE BALL GOT FASTER. This completely obviates Loopy's role as a ball RUNNER as you can pass the ball about twice as fast as a Loopy or any other plane can run it.

It in no way obviates Loopy's role as a ball RECEIVER as he can get downfield faster than any other plane.

The close range maneuvering around the goal has been partially lost due to the combination of speed decreases to the most maneuverable planes and shot power increases for everyone.

Ball will require large, open maps and I'm sure people are designing them right now.

The conclusion for us was that ball is now unplayable in larger games, but 5vs5 to 7vs7 works well.

GOOD.

Hopefully this means the death of the 10v10 bouncy ball servers and people will start playing ball in 6v6 and 7v7 hardwall servers where it works just fine, and where real teamwork and cooperation are involved.

I don't give a rat's ass about game modes other than ball,

I know this sounds elitist or sectarian or whatever, but there are way too many players like this ^.

There are also a surprising # of TBD players who don't want to at least give the new ball a try. My advice is try all the game modes (and don't ragequit after 10 minutes because your skillset from the other mode doesn't translate. Learn to play the new mode!).

[poofighter24]

Originally Posted by Sarah Palin

I know this sounds elitist or sectarian or whatever, but there are way too many players like this ^.

There are also a surprising # of TBD players who don't want to at least give the new ball a try. My advice is try all the game modes (and don't ragequit after 10 minutes because your skillset from the other mode doesn't translate. Learn to play the new mode!).

You're right, it absolutely does. It doesn't matter though, I love you anyways.

I am tired of people telling me to try new gamemodes like I am an infant. I tried the other game modes, every single one of them. Well, except Free For All, but that's because I automatically assumed it would be terrible.

I played a couple hours of TBD, absolutely hated it. It was sort of like ball, but without passing. The object of the game was seemingly to blow up as many opposing planes and turrets as possible then either lob a bomb at or crash directly into the base. There are probably deeper intricacies to the game, but to me it was too slow and it wasn't worth the hours and hours of tedious boredom it would take for me to get good at the game.

I sucked absolute crap when I first started to play ball, but at the very least I was still having fun. With TBD, I've never had a minute of "action" during which I actually enjoyed playing the game. I was just going through the motions.

With the "new" ball, I'm having pretty much the same amount of fun I have while playing TBD. It's no longer about passing or weaving through traffic, it's blowing up as many planes as possible so I can launch a half-court shot.

As an example, today I was a flexy bomber in a game with some random {ball} dude (dragracer, I think) that grabbed the ball with the miranda in an attempt to score. As a joke at the fact that mirandas are absolutely terrible now, I said "dragracer god damnit, you're a miranda. you're not supposed to pick up the ball"

e-drama obviously ensued (lolvotekicking) but a couple minutes later the other team scored a goal and we respawned. He immediately started to type the sentence "goddamnit you're not supposed to pick up the ball, you're a bomber" but before he could hit enter, I had already grabbed the ball and launched a half-court shot on ball_snow that went straight into the goal. Now, he's not a phenomenally great typist, but that is just pretty ridiculous. That same shot pre-patch wouldn't even have gone past the first snow mound.

[NastyManatee]

Just a note to everyone who is becoming so hostile (looking at poofighter): There has never been a major game patch that didn't have a subsequent follow-up patch.

Fact: The devs have no way of knowing how things will turn out in practice, and have to jump into most situations and see how they play. Things are often wrong or over-buffed/over-nerfed, and these issues are addressed in the long run.

Fact: It's better to overmodify than undermodify, because it's easier to change things back than patch minor changes 4 times to get things where you wanted them. Live with the fact that for a few days or a week, you might not like how your favorite plane functions, because rarely are truly unbalanced changes left in the game. Worst case scenario, you'll forget all about your imbalanced past planes and move on to current scenarios. Take it from someone who has played the game for awhile, eventually you get right over it and it's like the planes were never different.

New and veteran members have all voiced their opinions, and the devs are evaluating this input and deciding how to design the follow-up patch to best solve everyone's' problems.

Take heart, disheartened, the problems will be addressed, so it's in everyone's best interest to be constructive instead of destructive with their criticism so that devs seriously consider your suggestions. Being polite and thoughtful goes a long way when you want to see the game changed.

[ryebone]

Originally Posted by poofighter24

The fact is, in every single game ever created that involves putting a ball into a goal, there is a "ball carrier" role. In basketball, exceptional ball handlers are scarce and can get to the hoop with ease. In soccer hockey, great passers are useful, but the main way to get from goal A to goal B has always been "carrying" the ball. It's a working formula, and to make ball carriers so useless is going against a strong history of successful sports.

Your analogy to sports is flawed. I'm no soccer buff, but I do know there are specific positions that play certain roles. Defenders defend, midfielders are multipurpose, maintain possession of the ball while feeding the strikers, and strikers score the goals. You will NEVER see a single player dribble the ball for an extended period of time- it's always being passed around, even it's not moving forward. Ball mode should be less like football, where one guy carries the ball and everyone else plows the road, and more like ultimate frisbee, where handlers and cutters play their respective roles to move the ball quickly and effectively.

[poofighter24]

Originally Posted by NastyManatee

Just a note to everyone who is becoming so hostile (looking at poofighter)

wat

The message you have entered is too short. Please lengthen your message to at least 10 characters.

[r87]

"Ball will require large, open maps and I'm sure people are designing them right now."

Seriously? Why? Half the fun of ball is trying to maneuver through all those tight spaces on maze, darkwar, and the like. Wide open spaces (football) are hated by most of the best ball players.

[r87]

I seriously believe the ball carry reduction needs to be negated or severely reduced when climbing uphill.

It just took me about 8 seconds to climb up to the top of mayhem from our own goal area. This completely kills any momentum of a counter-attack.

[ryebone]

Originally Posted by r87

"Ball will require large, open maps and I'm sure people are designing them right now."

Seriously? Why? Half the fun of ball is trying to maneuver through all those tight spaces on maze, darkwar, and the like. Wide open spaces (football) are hated by most of the best ball players.

Under the old conditions, yes. Like Palin mentioned,

The old plane ball was just 20 loopies afterburning after the ball while pew-pewing into the melee, because the best way to score was to breakout with a loopy running the ball or a miranda warppassing it. The ball moved so slowly across the map (combination of passing and running) that there was never any reason NOT to afterburn to the Ball Melee Zone (except if you were playing goalie I guess).

It was much more efficient to race through tight spaces to get away from the loopy pewpew. However, those same obstacles which blocked enemy fire are also now blocking potential passing lanes. With the patch focusing on passing the ball, it would be good to have maps that are conducive to it.

[r87]

There is a reason the GOOD ball players hate football. It's large and wide open. And it sucks.

It seems to me that all these people who I have never seen play a game of ball are really interested in making ball into what they want it to be.

Forgive me for sounding irritated, but you are seriously advocating a move away from maps with a high level of piloting skill just so people can pass more? Good ball players pass a lot as it is. Passing more for the sake of passing more is stupid.

Though Labyrinth is one of my favorite maps.

Larger maps have potential, but "wide open spaces" needs to be qualified a little bit.

Wide open spaces like in ball_woods and ball_lost city are stupid and annoying. Wide open spaces in Labyrinth and snow are fun and challenging.

So now if that is what you mean, I agree with you 100%.

Also, bounce shots are now amazing.

This is one thing I honestly love about the update.

P.S. please don't assume I am annoyed at the devs or anything. This is what I do. I play an update, and spew out all of my opinions as they come along. They will change over time.

[nesnl]

Well outside of the whole "there should be a ball carrier role" argument, which I don't know how you can argue that because in any game with competent players when someone has the ball for more than a few secodns the chat is spammed with "PASS PASS." I think the problem might lie in the new ball physics. I think going forward, instead of arguing for changes to how you carry the ball in a specific plane, maybe we need to talk about the way the ball travels/bounces? You have to remember that they severely reduced the drag on the ball when it is traveling. Maybe if they increased the drag then you wouldn't see such long range shots, but still well placed passes. On that same note, they made the ball bounce with much more elasticity off objects and my impression of this is that the bounce is too much. So maybe after more testing the conclusion will be to add more drag to the ball and cause it to bounce less off objects.

[Duck Duck Pwn]

Originally Posted by poofighter24

Miranda - Kwame Brown
Because Kwame's suck transcends all sports

As an avid Lakers fan reading this made me laugh my ass off. Kwame was soooo bad hahaha.

Anyway, I guess I'll just try to adjust to the new remo explo and I'll post something once I figure out how it plays. I like the new changes to ball for the most part; i do agree that the maps we have now don't truly accommodate the new style of ball yet, but I'm almost certain that will be solved over time. Overall, I'm looking forward to really playing with this update and seeing how it turns out.

[Sarah Palin]

Seriously? Why? Half the fun of ball is trying to maneuver through all those tight spaces on maze, darkwar, and the like. Wide open spaces (football) are hated by most of the best ball players.

It's pointless to argue about what kind of map is best for old ball, there is no more old ball.

On the new ball, the maps that were repurposed from TBD are clearly too small as shown by "the best ball players" (lol) complaining about sinking shots from half court.

a move away from maps with a high level of piloting skill

Meaning maps where loopies dominated because loopies flew the fastest and ran the ball the fastest. A team that understands that pass-receiver offense is where it's at is going to crush a team that's stuck in the old running offense paradigm.


The ball arguments are just going round and round at this point, I am more interested to hear what people who mainline mirandas and explos are thinking about the changes to their planes.

[r87]

Originally Posted by nesnl

On that same note, they made the ball bounce with much more elasticity off objects and my impression of this is that the bounce is too much. So maybe after more testing the conclusion will be to add more drag to the ball and cause it to bounce less off objects.

I actually disagree...I really like that you can make some very cool shots around defenders if you bounce it properly now.

[gemigemi]

Originally Posted by poofighter24

- Make the ball maps bigger. With the ridiculous ball speeds, goals are way too easy.

Originally Posted by Sarah Palin

Ball will require large, open maps and I'm sure people are designing them right now.

The problem isn't the size, the maps are quite good in that manner. The problem is that many of the maps have a long clear path from the middle of the map directly to the goal, leaving the opportunity to shoot goals from that distance. It's not difficult to create a map layout that doesn't have this problem (and such maps exist in the official maps already), so if you want to make long shots impossible then small tweaking to old maps should do the trick.

But hey, this just makes defense necessary, and isn't that also something that people wanted, defense+offense both a necessary part of the game?

Originally Posted by Sarah Palin

Hopefully this means the death of the 10v10 bouncy ball servers and people will start playing ball in 6v6 and 7v7 hardwall servers where it works just fine, and where real teamwork and cooperation are involved.

Yeah, I really hope that 6vs6 - 8vs8 servers will be the ones used later on. I'll be putting up two more {arr} servers tomorrow. One 7vs7 bouncy, one 7vs7 hw. This should allow for more than enough players enjoy the joys of ball without having to use the chaotic 10vs10 servers.

[ryebone]

Originally Posted by r87

Forgive me for sounding irritated, but you are seriously advocating a move away from maps with a high level of piloting skill just so people can pass more? Good ball players pass a lot as it is. Passing more for the sake of passing more is stupid.

On the contrary, I would also consider pilot skill to be moving into position to catch long passes, as well as making the pass accurately.

Larger maps have potential, but "wide open spaces" needs to be qualified a little bit.

Agreed. I didn't necessarily mean I want completely wide open maps like football. Rather, my contention was that some maps had so many obstacles that finding good passing lanes was extremely difficult, further promoting a "I'll just take the ball in myself" mentality. My preference for ball maps would be fairly wide open spaces, with a few well placed obstacles to be used strategically. Darkwar is probably the best ball map right now, because it provides plenty of walls to weave in and out of, while still providing adequate open spaces for making passes (unlike the narrow passageways of mayhem). I actually think lostcity isn't a bad map for ball, besides the always-hated choke in the middle. Even so, the now-increased passing speed makes them less of a problem, since the ball can be passed from one choke point to another relatively quickly.

[SuperDad]

FINALLY, FIXED WARP PASSING. Thank god.

[Harmonica]

Originally Posted by gemigemi

The problem isn't the size, the maps are quite good in that manner. The problem is that many of the maps have a long clear path from the middle of the map directly to the goal, leaving the opportunity to shoot goals from that distance. It's not difficult to create a map layout that doesn't have this problem (and such maps exist in the official maps already), so if you want to make long shots impossible then small tweaking to old maps should do the trick.

I agree with Gemi: the key factor in Ball maps is not size, but layout and pathways. While those pathways were often used for maneuvering previously, their primary role has always been passing opportunities.

To be honest, I don't think this update has altered either good ball strategy or the quality of [most of] the good ball maps; it's primarily affected the poor strategies that had infected public servers, and the maps which were already widely-derided as being inappropriate for Ball -- namely, the existing wide-open ones.

[TRUEPAiN]

The major problems, pointed out again and again by many different players, were:

1. Large gamesize
2. Loopy dominates
3. Passing less important than breakout running
4. Very low skill ceiling

This all could have been resolved without messing with the ball physics. Why, why, why would you mess with the ball physics.

You want to encourage people to pass? Make them explode if they hold on to the ball too long! That's how you encourage passing. (game type idea!) or just make a tutorial video on how to pass, and what the objective of ball is that you have to watch before entering a ball server or something.

Not that passing wasn't going on prior to all this.

In public servers, the ball isn't passed mainly because you're dealing with either a newbie, a jerk who loves to irritate people, or a drunk.

a. newbie
b. jerk
c. under the influence

I'm just upset, I suppose. This patch is pretty much telling us how to play, but in reality, it's just simplifying everything for us, making it easier. Which is kinda of a turn off, because balling was much more competitive prior to this I think.. It was probably more team oriented prior to this as well.

Ball just feels silly and ridiculous now, I mean, I'm not even going to explain -I know you all feel it!

and we're all adjusting...

It's these other kids who don't know how to play, why do we have to suffer! (It's not too bad, again.. super strength is kinda fun now)

Making goals was once an art but now it's a joke! (unless half way across a map or ricochet.)

But now you make missiles faster, and planes slower! You want us to die? Nope, you want us to pass, which was something we were all already doing

+1 beta testing

please don't bite my head off

<3 T-PaiiiiiN