For the sake of attempting the orthodox road, I'll post this somewhat structured text going over my personal citicisms of modern day CvR.
The first point I'll bring out is the recent dev philosophy changing torwards a protectionism of the "new player experience."
The idea behind this being that UNION/RF should be stronger than the average unit, because a new player needs to be given the a good first impression of the server, so he decides to stay instead of quitting because he got jumped on by stonger classes.
From my perspective there are several issues with this line of thinking. For one, it solves a short-term issue while creating a long-term issue, like with any progression based game its to be expected that your new player experience will be difficult, but that you have the opportunity to achieve better stats, gear or gameplay mechanics by investing time in that game, which in CvR is not a grindy process, as RFs / UNIONs pretty much get insta promoted for just attending a DB and killing 1 dude on the field, and from there they have a plethora of divisions they can join by answering half a couple easy questions. The "new player experience" SHOULD and HAS been "You are currently weak, but you can become strong". By allowing people to have the strongest stats right off the bat, they have no reason to dedicate themselves to the game, they are already sent straight to the end-game experience without having to give an ounce of effort. Additionally, this causes an even bigger issue that is a disrespect with OG people who prior to the recent changes had dedicated weeks if not months finding their ideal space of gameplay, only to be curb stomped by PVT shitnutz9000 and his top tier Assault Rifle, job-included armor bonus and super short respawn timer.
The effect of this affects gameplay in a negative way, as you are forced to face an endless horde of cracked up infantrymen, who spawn out of FOBs like they're Tyranids from Warhammer, making it impossible to take areas where they've swarmed. Just to be absolutely clear, if their strength was numbers alone, that'd be fine, but its numbers packed with stats that are above the average combat class by a significant amount. (I will not be mentioning any actual stats, as we've been prohibited of using them for criticism).
Not satisfied with buffing the starter class for all the reasons mentioned above, they also crippled or otherwise levelled the stats of all other classes to be on par with the starting class, without any of the addes bonuses, less carry weight, below average weapons and utility. Yeah, on paper classes have been given up to 100 extra HP, but since every class got that bonus (+ the recent decrease in TTK) has the practical effect of essentially nerfing every class, using the UNION/RF stats as a parameter.
This issue only becomes worse when you realise that not all classes got the same treatment, some were more or less penalized based on "how powerful they are", except the data used to determine what classes were strong or weak are solely based on Discord Chat messages, which are passive to bias (which is usually the case). And that brings me to my next point of criticism.
CvR as a community has been slowly recovering from bring fractured, ever since the original discussion of "each faction should have a different way to approach things due to lore reasons", which in turn caused the server to polarize between the combines and the rebels, as each side drew very different people based on their mentality. This caused various dramas and schisms which have not fully healed, and these unsolved issues in turn become an opening for people to use others as scapegoat, let me elabroate.
If you are playing a competitive gamemode (competitive in the sense that there are 2 teams competing for an ojective), and a friend of yours kills you on the other team, you'll see it in a different light that you would if that person was someone you disliked. To give a hipothetical scenario, if your friend kills you 6 times, but the person you don't like kills you 3 times, you'll subconsciously focus on those 3 deaths much more than the other 6, giving you the illusion that the person you don't like killed you more than your friend did, and that becomes even more the case when you're talking about a gamemode where the average K/D is 100+/100+, and your focus is divided between a bunch of people who you either like or don't care about, and a specific group you dislike.
Tying this to what I said earlier, you can't make balance changes based on views under the influence of such bias. Technical solutions to a community problem will only create a new issue, without solving the original one.
Additionally, I have to mention how staff/server deals with the in-satisfaction they cause, prohibiting people from complaining in OOC, going as far as to remove OOC entirely, which happened in the past. You can remove one's ability to speak their mind, but that won't stop them from thinking the things they wanna say. In the long term, this causes accumulated frustration that will eventually sour relations between individuals, sub-communities or the entire community, not to mention it passes a negative image of staff, who are often ironically compared to 1984.
My recent "interview" with the Big Brother himself was no different. A premise was put forward and either I agreed with it, or I was accused of "not understanding it". On other matters the premise was structured in such a way, that disagreeing with it made me look like an inconsiderate asshole. What rhetoric nerds would call a "loaded statement", its disingenuous and forces us to agree to policies we don't actually agree with.
Also, getting pinged literally every single day to "hop on" gets old really fast. People are unsatisfied and don't wanna play, the solution to that should be to solve the current issues rather than force people under personal commitment to play the server, rather they're gonna have a good time or not.
I dont agree, I think its actually the opposite, I think RF PVT and UNION is strong because they have ZERO utility, And every class's utility is over valued causing there stats to be absolutely terrible,
IE scav, sword, eow, ect, They all have bad stats because of the "utility" they have, yet its really not as strong as people say it is, so when we balance classes we lower there base stats causing a bad class.
Before saying what I want to say, I will clarify: I don't want RF/UNION to be absolutely frustrating to play. I agree with Solomons in the argument that it should be a stepping stone for getting stronger, RPG esque (level up - specialize - build your spells/perks), which is, on the long run, more gratifying than what we have now, which is a basically perfect class compared to everything else.
RF/UNION dominate everything- even long-range engagements against snipers, and they also dominate close-range against shotgunners, they already have a perfect class. Why would they ever want to specialize when their class does everything well, or even better than the supposed specialized classes?
I remember my first day of CVR. I was getting killed left and right, I distinctly remember barely getting a kill, but it motivated me to join a different division in the next few days. I joined LVET Shotgunner. The difference was night and day, I felt way more powerful, shredding people close range, I felt like I was getting better, obviously it was because of the kit and a little more experience, but I felt like specializing was worth it. I was making progress.
Don't want to linger in the past- thing is, this isn't the case anymore. Specializations aren't really that good at their niche anymore. Shotgunners aren't that good at CQC anymore as they get melted in an instant, Snipers can just get sniped by an auto at long range (though it is in a MUCH better spot than shotguns).
Specialized classes don't really seem to matter anymore when I can get on RF and kill a Sword in CQC, sure, it can happen, but I should be having a harder time than just digging 4 bullets into their forehead before they can get even a shot off.
My point is, leveling up and progressing through the ranks, levels and classes isn't as thoughtful anymore.
As a last thing, I am NOT saying that old cvr was better, I had and still have no idea of the state of the community and the server as a whole back then because I just didn't have enough experience or people to talk to. I am specifying because a lot of arguments about/mentioning "old cvr" seemingly get thrown out of the window. I am merely giving a tiny bit of input regarding the state of the server nowadays.
I was a bit confused as to what was meant at first, but Persistence has definitely cleared up a bit what's going on.
Shotguns across the board probably will need another damage bump.
As for snipers, I think the snipers themselves are fine, it's the automatics that are a bit too oppressive at range. I'll see what adjustments I can make to automatics in general without compromising their general viability.
I could comment on some of the other things you've said Solomons, but there's not much of substance I could say, it'd mostly consist of "Nuh uh".
I will say that it's important to make a distinction between being better than something, and being bad.
Arson calling scav an objectively bad class is completely wack. Is it overshadowed by other classes in areas where it should reign supreme? Quite likely, yeah. Not tryna be the grammar police, but phrasing genuinely matters in deciding if something should be buffed or nerfed.
(28 Nov 24 at 10:05pm)[DEFN] Sentinel Wrote: I was a bit confused as to what was meant at first, but Persistence has definitely cleared up a bit what's going on.
Shotguns across the board probably will need another damage bump.
As for snipers, I think the snipers themselves are fine, it's the automatics that are a bit too oppressive at range. I'll see what adjustments I can make to automatics in general without compromising their general viability.
I could comment on some of the other things you've said Solomons, but there's not much of substance I could say, it'd mostly consist of "Nuh uh".
I will say that it's important to make a distinction between being better than something, and being bad.
Arson calling scav an objectively bad class is completely wack. Is it overshadowed by other classes in areas where it should reign supreme? Quite likely, yeah. Not tryna be the grammar police, but phrasing genuinely matters in deciding if something should be buffed or nerfed.
Tinkered a bit on SU with the combine shotguns while writing this up, correct me on anything I get wrong, since spread mechanics are weird.
There's a bit of divisional bias coming from this, because of my issues with the JAK-12 recently, and you're still more qualified to talk about the balancing of the shotguns than me, but have you considered toying with the spread gain debuff you get while moving / firing directly after sprinting?
You sprint into a vast majority of engagements you get into, and also tend to whilst repositioning, chasing an enemy, etc. Since shotguns rely so heavily on that first and second shot in order to be effective, its quite the kick in the nuts that your first shot gets so much spread slapped onto it because you fired coming out of a sprint, and usually causes quite a few (when your shotgun is built around spread - god forbid you fire coming out of a sprint on a stock m860) pellets to miss entirely.
If this was changed, the offensive nature of SWORD/RIOT (again, cannot say for rebel shotguns, don't have the characters) would be a lot more bearable when rushing down points in a CQC setting, because it wouldn't feel like you're firing nerf darts because of missed pellets. I'm not saying the damage buffs are entirely unnecessary or that they shouldn't be considered, but as you've said, not a lot of stuff is as fixed as easily as 'increase the damage on x' or 'decrease the range on y'.
Edit: Made it more bearable to read.
Edit 2: And to add onto it, there seems to also be a spread penalty when moving in general? Can't be entirely sure if I'm just seeing differently because I'm moving, but it definitely feels like my spread is tighter when I'm standing still - which... is a death sentence in the current state of CVR, having to strafe a bit is usually necessary in a bit of encounters.
if i just may add myself a little piece of mind, but as far as I can see, there is less and less effort to do well and just "enough". How much is "enough"? I don't know myself at this point because i am getting ck'd for being toxic.. AKA saying that the team were idiots because we lost from a big lead as soon as more rebels joined, i don't understand how you fumble the bag so badly with a really big lead?
also i don't understand the reason for making the class enlisted, NCO and CO have the same hp, cw and speed, people say for "standardization & balance" but now there is almost 0 incentive to actually progress through the ranks to an average player, and the stats are not some hush hush number, they are legit public information within the field manual.
this server can be compared a lot to a job where you can have a employee #1 who is slacking and does the bare minimum, and gets rewarded for it, while employee #2 is doing not only their work but other's as well and naturally, the employee #2 would complain, and be told to calm down and not be rude
I have been following my KD ratio every time i play, and its always above 1, there had been only once in the past few months it has been below 1. While numbers don't say a lot, i have been trying to move around, flank, take out enemy FOB's and play around my team, and not just pile (i would only do it whenever its a win or lose situation, like 5 on 5 reserves)
Now don't get me wrong that i don't enjoy this game, i can still from time to time do enjoy the game, except i enjoy the game in a more "kill = fun" since i have lost all other sense of fun in my life (tho that is more of a me problem that i will try to fix, but until i move out of my parent's house, i would relatively stay the same)
Overall, I'm just getting tired of games trying to give people the short term enjoyment for the sake of them spending more time playing the game, and its slowly happening to CvR, the only good Gmod server left in this goddamn game
If it wasn't for CvR, I would not be playing Gmod whatsoever. That is how much this server means to me.
That is all from me, hate me all you want I simply would not care as I'm no position to care for the others
(28 Nov 24 at 10:05pm)[DEFN] Sentinel Wrote: I was a bit confused as to what was meant at first, but Persistence has definitely cleared up a bit what's going on.
Shotguns across the board probably will need another damage bump.
As for snipers, I think the snipers themselves are fine, it's the automatics that are a bit too oppressive at range. I'll see what adjustments I can make to automatics in general without compromising their general viability.
I could comment on some of the other things you've said Solomons, but there's not much of substance I could say, it'd mostly consist of "Nuh uh".
I will say that it's important to make a distinction between being better than something, and being bad.
Arson calling scav an objectively bad class is completely wack. Is it overshadowed by other classes in areas where it should reign supreme? Quite likely, yeah. Not tryna be the grammar police, but phrasing genuinely matters in deciding if something should be buffed or nerfed.
I've phrased everything specifically how I meant, and it concerns me when you can't or isn't willing to elaborate on where you disagree with my criticism, resorting to simply denying them with a "nuh uh". To me that shows inflexibility if not a disregard to negative feedback. I don't think I'm being unreasonable with the things I've criticized, and while I understand you're much too busy with a LOT of dev changes and plans (which is understandable), I would still expect you be able to at least say where and how you disagree with the things I've stated.
The first point I'll bring out is the recent dev philosophy changing torwards a protectionism of the "new player experience."
The idea behind this being that UNION/RF should be stronger than the average unit, because a new player needs to be given the a good first impression of the server, so he decides to stay instead of quitting because he got jumped on by stonger classes.
From my perspective there are several issues with this line of thinking. For one, it solves a short-term issue while creating a long-term issue, like with any progression based game its to be expected that your new player experience will be difficult, but that you have the opportunity to achieve better stats, gear or gameplay mechanics by investing time in that game, which in CvR is not a grindy process, as RFs / UNIONs pretty much get insta promoted for just attending a DB and killing 1 dude on the field, and from there they have a plethora of divisions they can join by answering half a couple easy questions. The "new player experience" SHOULD and HAS been "You are currently weak, but you can become strong". By allowing people to have the strongest stats right off the bat, they have no reason to dedicate themselves to the game, they are already sent straight to the end-game experience without having to give an ounce of effort. Additionally, this causes an even bigger issue that is a disrespect with OG people who prior to the recent changes had dedicated weeks if not months finding their ideal space of gameplay, only to be curb stomped by PVT shitnutz9000 and his top tier Assault Rifle, job-included armor bonus and super short respawn timer.
The effect of this affects gameplay in a negative way, as you are forced to face an endless horde of cracked up infantrymen, who spawn out of FOBs like they're Tyranids from Warhammer, making it impossible to take areas where they've swarmed. Just to be absolutely clear, if their strength was numbers alone, that'd be fine, but its numbers packed with stats that are above the average combat class by a significant amount. (I will not be mentioning any actual stats, as we've been prohibited of using them for criticism).
Not satisfied with buffing the starter class for all the reasons mentioned above, they also crippled or otherwise levelled the stats of all other classes to be on par with the starting class, without any of the addes bonuses, less carry weight, below average weapons and utility. Yeah, on paper classes have been given up to 100 extra HP, but since every class got that bonus (+ the recent decrease in TTK) has the practical effect of essentially nerfing every class, using the UNION/RF stats as a parameter.
This issue only becomes worse when you realise that not all classes got the same treatment, some were more or less penalized based on "how powerful they are", except the data used to determine what classes were strong or weak are solely based on Discord Chat messages, which are passive to bias (which is usually the case). And that brings me to my next point of criticism.
CvR as a community has been slowly recovering from bring fractured, ever since the original discussion of "each faction should have a different way to approach things due to lore reasons", which in turn caused the server to polarize between the combines and the rebels, as each side drew very different people based on their mentality. This caused various dramas and schisms which have not fully healed, and these unsolved issues in turn become an opening for people to use others as scapegoat, let me elabroate.
If you are playing a competitive gamemode (competitive in the sense that there are 2 teams competing for an ojective), and a friend of yours kills you on the other team, you'll see it in a different light that you would if that person was someone you disliked. To give a hipothetical scenario, if your friend kills you 6 times, but the person you don't like kills you 3 times, you'll subconsciously focus on those 3 deaths much more than the other 6, giving you the illusion that the person you don't like killed you more than your friend did, and that becomes even more the case when you're talking about a gamemode where the average K/D is 100+/100+, and your focus is divided between a bunch of people who you either like or don't care about, and a specific group you dislike.
Tying this to what I said earlier, you can't make balance changes based on views under the influence of such bias. Technical solutions to a community problem will only create a new issue, without solving the original one.
Additionally, I have to mention how staff/server deals with the in-satisfaction they cause, prohibiting people from complaining in OOC, going as far as to remove OOC entirely, which happened in the past. You can remove one's ability to speak their mind, but that won't stop them from thinking the things they wanna say. In the long term, this causes accumulated frustration that will eventually sour relations between individuals, sub-communities or the entire community, not to mention it passes a negative image of staff, who are often ironically compared to 1984.
My recent "interview" with the Big Brother himself was no different. A premise was put forward and either I agreed with it, or I was accused of "not understanding it". On other matters the premise was structured in such a way, that disagreeing with it made me look like an inconsiderate asshole. What rhetoric nerds would call a "loaded statement", its disingenuous and forces us to agree to policies we don't actually agree with.
Also, getting pinged literally every single day to "hop on" gets old really fast. People are unsatisfied and don't wanna play, the solution to that should be to solve the current issues rather than force people under personal commitment to play the server, rather they're gonna have a good time or not.
IE scav, sword, eow, ect, They all have bad stats because of the "utility" they have, yet its really not as strong as people say it is, so when we balance classes we lower there base stats causing a bad class.
RF/UNION dominate everything- even long-range engagements against snipers, and they also dominate close-range against shotgunners, they already have a perfect class. Why would they ever want to specialize when their class does everything well, or even better than the supposed specialized classes?
I remember my first day of CVR. I was getting killed left and right, I distinctly remember barely getting a kill, but it motivated me to join a different division in the next few days. I joined LVET Shotgunner. The difference was night and day, I felt way more powerful, shredding people close range, I felt like I was getting better, obviously it was because of the kit and a little more experience, but I felt like specializing was worth it. I was making progress.
Don't want to linger in the past- thing is, this isn't the case anymore. Specializations aren't really that good at their niche anymore. Shotgunners aren't that good at CQC anymore as they get melted in an instant, Snipers can just get sniped by an auto at long range (though it is in a MUCH better spot than shotguns).
Specialized classes don't really seem to matter anymore when I can get on RF and kill a Sword in CQC, sure, it can happen, but I should be having a harder time than just digging 4 bullets into their forehead before they can get even a shot off.
My point is, leveling up and progressing through the ranks, levels and classes isn't as thoughtful anymore.
As a last thing, I am NOT saying that old cvr was better, I had and still have no idea of the state of the community and the server as a whole back then because I just didn't have enough experience or people to talk to. I am specifying because a lot of arguments about/mentioning "old cvr" seemingly get thrown out of the window. I am merely giving a tiny bit of input regarding the state of the server nowadays.
Shotguns across the board probably will need another damage bump.
As for snipers, I think the snipers themselves are fine, it's the automatics that are a bit too oppressive at range. I'll see what adjustments I can make to automatics in general without compromising their general viability.
I could comment on some of the other things you've said Solomons, but there's not much of substance I could say, it'd mostly consist of "Nuh uh".
I will say that it's important to make a distinction between being better than something, and being bad.
Arson calling scav an objectively bad class is completely wack. Is it overshadowed by other classes in areas where it should reign supreme? Quite likely, yeah. Not tryna be the grammar police, but phrasing genuinely matters in deciding if something should be buffed or nerfed.
Tinkered a bit on SU with the combine shotguns while writing this up, correct me on anything I get wrong, since spread mechanics are weird.
There's a bit of divisional bias coming from this, because of my issues with the JAK-12 recently, and you're still more qualified to talk about the balancing of the shotguns than me, but have you considered toying with the spread gain debuff you get while moving / firing directly after sprinting?
You sprint into a vast majority of engagements you get into, and also tend to whilst repositioning, chasing an enemy, etc. Since shotguns rely so heavily on that first and second shot in order to be effective, its quite the kick in the nuts that your first shot gets so much spread slapped onto it because you fired coming out of a sprint, and usually causes quite a few (when your shotgun is built around spread - god forbid you fire coming out of a sprint on a stock m860) pellets to miss entirely.
If this was changed, the offensive nature of SWORD/RIOT (again, cannot say for rebel shotguns, don't have the characters) would be a lot more bearable when rushing down points in a CQC setting, because it wouldn't feel like you're firing nerf darts because of missed pellets. I'm not saying the damage buffs are entirely unnecessary or that they shouldn't be considered, but as you've said, not a lot of stuff is as fixed as easily as 'increase the damage on x' or 'decrease the range on y'.
Edit: Made it more bearable to read.
Edit 2: And to add onto it, there seems to also be a spread penalty when moving in general? Can't be entirely sure if I'm just seeing differently because I'm moving, but it definitely feels like my spread is tighter when I'm standing still - which... is a death sentence in the current state of CVR, having to strafe a bit is usually necessary in a bit of encounters.
also i don't understand the reason for making the class enlisted, NCO and CO have the same hp, cw and speed, people say for "standardization & balance" but now there is almost 0 incentive to actually progress through the ranks to an average player, and the stats are not some hush hush number, they are legit public information within the field manual.
this server can be compared a lot to a job where you can have a employee #1 who is slacking and does the bare minimum, and gets rewarded for it, while employee #2 is doing not only their work but other's as well and naturally, the employee #2 would complain, and be told to calm down and not be rude
I have been following my KD ratio every time i play, and its always above 1, there had been only once in the past few months it has been below 1. While numbers don't say a lot, i have been trying to move around, flank, take out enemy FOB's and play around my team, and not just pile (i would only do it whenever its a win or lose situation, like 5 on 5 reserves)
Now don't get me wrong that i don't enjoy this game, i can still from time to time do enjoy the game, except i enjoy the game in a more "kill = fun" since i have lost all other sense of fun in my life (tho that is more of a me problem that i will try to fix, but until i move out of my parent's house, i would relatively stay the same)
Overall, I'm just getting tired of games trying to give people the short term enjoyment for the sake of them spending more time playing the game, and its slowly happening to CvR, the only good Gmod server left in this goddamn game
If it wasn't for CvR, I would not be playing Gmod whatsoever. That is how much this server means to me.
That is all from me, hate me all you want I simply would not care as I'm no position to care for the others
I've phrased everything specifically how I meant, and it concerns me when you can't or isn't willing to elaborate on where you disagree with my criticism, resorting to simply denying them with a "nuh uh". To me that shows inflexibility if not a disregard to negative feedback. I don't think I'm being unreasonable with the things I've criticized, and while I understand you're much too busy with a LOT of dev changes and plans (which is understandable), I would still expect you be able to at least say where and how you disagree with the things I've stated.