General feedback for 1.10 Exodus
New map: Citadel
Overall, good. Very little to complain about, besides the scale of it for Skirmish. Nice combination of CQC, flanks and open ground with sparse cover.
New mode: Survival
- A total meme. Cross between arcade shootemup and completely non-tactical survival game.
- Nowhere near enough consistency in spawn delays and spawn rationale.
- My team were constantly killing an enemy then watching a new enemy spawn directly in front of our eyes (ie. obvious lag before a spawn location was disabled after player enters the trigger area).
- Enemies also waiting patiently outside the point while you capture it, to then spawnkill the whole team with a rocket or LMG is awkward and frustrating.
- Easily fixed by giving them the same falling back logic as in Checkpoint, while making them more aggressive defenders, sticking to the point a little more when it's under threat.
- I found I could sprint cover to cover and make it to most objectives without having to take more than 2 fights to clear a route, while my team spun around on the spot killing the enemies as they respawned behind us.
- There also seems to be very little motivation for the AI to even move, as they can almost constantly see a player, and will hold an angle for a long time, causing tentative players to stagnate and be overwhelmed by respawning enemies.
New weapons: MR 73 Revolver, Desert Eagle
Recoil, sound and looks: solid as ever. Animations nice and smooth, very fun to use.
Found myself using the deagle over the revolver, as the overall cost of a viable loadout was less for my playstyle (plus more ammo in a mag).
Weapon balance
- Adding the .357 magnum and .50 Action Express calibers to the game: fantastic.
- Keeping the .45 cal handguns so underpowered: confusing.
- They were already short on ammo and weak at range.
- The new high calibers make them obsolete.
- If you're pulling out a .45 against more than 2 enemies, you're desperate.
- It shouldn't cost 2 just to get 2 or 3 kills from a magazine (and it definitely shouldn't cost 3 to get 3 or 4 kills with an extended magazine).
- Potential solution, that a lot of people would hate: swap the cost of the 9mm and .45 cal handguns.
- Insurgents would swap M1911 and Browning HP costs, and M9 could cost 3 to align with Glock cost (unless 30 round mag is discriminator there).
- Deagle costing 5 is okay, only because it doesn't have many overly expensive attachments.
- Security would make M45 1 cost and Tariq 0 cost (why does this cost 1 in the first place?!).
Secondary optics:
- Why does a red/green dot sight cost the same as the median handgun?
- Make them 1 cost for all handguns and the CT scope for the MR 73 cost 2.
- You normally weight suppressors as 2 cost for handguns, and other handgun barrel modifiers as 1 cost.
- Sniper barrel gives a trade-off that no other handgun barrel has, converting the handgun to manual firing.
- This should be 0 cost, balancing the cost increase to the CT scope above (especially as you can't have one without the other).
- Suppressed sniper barrel therefore costing the same as the standard suppressor (2), and meaning the budget suppressor actually has a place in the economy, still costing 1.
General feature requests
- Smoke that animates the same for everyone
- Make the texture face whatever direction the texture should face for the person throwing it, for everyone, and sync the beginning of that animation with the server, so you don't appear to be shot through full smoke when the enemy sees you directly through it as it billows away.
- Remove Random as a map vote option
- People click on random because they don't care what map they play. Random should be used by the game when there is a tied vote, to pick the winner, not overriding the 9 votes for a map, because 10 people don't care.
- This also would allow you to see which maps people actually like playing, rather than having Random skew the results of total playtime (ie. what maps do you need to fix things in so we enjoy them more?).
- If people really don't care what map they play, there could be an option to abstain from the vote, speeding up the voting process and letting those that do care, have more voting power.
- Add a brief tutorial for each class, and how to use them (optional at the end of the tutorial, or completely separate).
- This would help teach people that demolitions is for destroying technicals, helicopters, and clearing narrow chokepoints.
- This would help teach people that gunner is for area denial and suppression.
- This would help teach people that breacher is for clearing rooms at close quarters.
- This would help teach people that observers are supposed to sniff the commander's butt when he asks for them.
- etc.