Mon Feb 04, 2013 2:00 pm
Balance Changes
I believe it is in bitFighter's best interests to approach a better game balance. As it stands, the game is a bit unbalanced in many ways, but it's far better than Zap ever was, so developers, you have my support and my gratitude. I think far too often we forget what the developers have gone through for our little community. Sure, it's a hobby and a passion that they have, so it is a labor of love, but it is labor nonetheless and we should make our appreciation more known.
I will tell you that Zap was being developed by GarageGames. Being a small company they knew that they couldn't charge people $10 just to get in the door, so Guests could get into the game free of charge and have pretty much 90% of the game at their disposal. They did, however, charge $10 for a real account with full access. This persisted even after they stopped developing the game and lost interest. Eventually they shut the master server down.
bitFighter was made from the open TNL/source of Zap (which is entirely legal) by watusimoto, and as we all know he has attracted other developers, including raptor, kaen, and sam686. They work entirely free for their pleasure and for this tiny community we have, and that's honestly a dream come true for players like us. How many other games get that good of a deal? Few and far between.
Now that we have had our history lesson, let's look to the present, and next the future. I have mentioned that at our present time we have better game balance than Zap ever did. There have been some balance changes that have taken place, slowly, cautiously, over the years. These changes include tightening Triple Fire's spread, making enemy Mines a large bit less noticeable, making Mines take ~1/2 energy rather than 2/3, making Enhanced Sensor worthwhile, adding Spybugs and Seekers, quick energy regeneration while standing still, spawning protected with less than full energy, various Engineer changes, adding Armor, and finally, adding double-tap to Boost.
All of these changes, in my eyes, are very positive. It has taken a long time, because such changes are very controversial, but overall they have worked well. In the case of Spybugs, they were revised about 200 times or so, but the developers (and members) have finally settled upon a good implementation. Mines are common now, whereas before they were generally thought of as … situational, to say the least. Enhanced Sensor is now comprised of various utilities, making it very handy indeed for a defender. (Personally, it has been my favorite of the balance changes)
Anyway, the point is that a lot of good changes have been made. But now we should look to our future. I believe it is in the best interest of our community to strive more towards game balance and less toward new features. Change for the sake of change is meaningless in the grand scheme of things. When the game is already slightly unbalanced, adding more weapons/modules/general features is *not* going to make the game more balanced, it can only be (nearly) meaningless, or else make things more unbalanced.
So I have made this thread for folks to put forward their ideas on how to go about balancing the game better. I do NOT want people posting "let's add this or that," because that is clearly not what this thread is about. This is a thread about proposing changes to already existing modules/weapons/whatever else. I believe if we are straightforward about what we are trying to accomplish here, we can sooner and more directly tackle the issues instead of going off on other topics.
I will tell you that Zap was being developed by GarageGames. Being a small company they knew that they couldn't charge people $10 just to get in the door, so Guests could get into the game free of charge and have pretty much 90% of the game at their disposal. They did, however, charge $10 for a real account with full access. This persisted even after they stopped developing the game and lost interest. Eventually they shut the master server down.
bitFighter was made from the open TNL/source of Zap (which is entirely legal) by watusimoto, and as we all know he has attracted other developers, including raptor, kaen, and sam686. They work entirely free for their pleasure and for this tiny community we have, and that's honestly a dream come true for players like us. How many other games get that good of a deal? Few and far between.
Now that we have had our history lesson, let's look to the present, and next the future. I have mentioned that at our present time we have better game balance than Zap ever did. There have been some balance changes that have taken place, slowly, cautiously, over the years. These changes include tightening Triple Fire's spread, making enemy Mines a large bit less noticeable, making Mines take ~1/2 energy rather than 2/3, making Enhanced Sensor worthwhile, adding Spybugs and Seekers, quick energy regeneration while standing still, spawning protected with less than full energy, various Engineer changes, adding Armor, and finally, adding double-tap to Boost.
All of these changes, in my eyes, are very positive. It has taken a long time, because such changes are very controversial, but overall they have worked well. In the case of Spybugs, they were revised about 200 times or so, but the developers (and members) have finally settled upon a good implementation. Mines are common now, whereas before they were generally thought of as … situational, to say the least. Enhanced Sensor is now comprised of various utilities, making it very handy indeed for a defender. (Personally, it has been my favorite of the balance changes)
Anyway, the point is that a lot of good changes have been made. But now we should look to our future. I believe it is in the best interest of our community to strive more towards game balance and less toward new features. Change for the sake of change is meaningless in the grand scheme of things. When the game is already slightly unbalanced, adding more weapons/modules/general features is *not* going to make the game more balanced, it can only be (nearly) meaningless, or else make things more unbalanced.
So I have made this thread for folks to put forward their ideas on how to go about balancing the game better. I do NOT want people posting "let's add this or that," because that is clearly not what this thread is about. This is a thread about proposing changes to already existing modules/weapons/whatever else. I believe if we are straightforward about what we are trying to accomplish here, we can sooner and more directly tackle the issues instead of going off on other topics.
† Exploits of Quartz and bobdaduck - Pleiades Maps †
† 19-year-old Quartz mad about lawn removal †
† 19-year-old Quartz mad about lawn removal †
raptor wrote:sometimes I think getting Quartz to use plugins is like getting my mom to use a computer
