An odd idea I thought of today...

[WolfWings]

This is a non-abusable version of Friendly Fire, to make it worthless to fire any of the super-large-blast attacks (like Kame) into a furball of players for easy frags.

Instead of killing everyone, this would make the attack itself worthless BECAUSE it could have killed everyone.

Basically, on detonation, if friendly fire is off (meaning your team-mates can't be hurt by you) then take the damage that would be done to all the 'immune' targets (which does NOT count self-damage) and total it up, call it FriendlyDamage. This is using the 'uncapped' damage, so if it would do 700 damage, it's 700 damage added to that variable.

Now, total up the actual 'real' damage, call it EnemyDamage. Note this does include self-damage. Note that this is limited by the enemy health, it's not the 'uncapped' damage. So if it's 700 damage to a guy with 10hp, it's only 10 damage added to that variable.

Now, the damage is changed as follows:
(IndividualDamage * EnemyDamage) / (EnemyDamage + FriendlyDamage)

Yes, this means being the guy that shoots a Kame into a group of three of your friends fighting one enemy isn't going to do much. But, in a one-on-one, beams are still fine, and on team servers they're still great as well, just they make the 'long-range guy sniping with large-blast attacks' an ignorable player, instead of someone that pisses off an entire server because they want to actually fight and swoop, and mid-way through their fights... ZOOMP... no more fight, their entire team vanishes in a kame blast.

Also, before you go asking why not find servers with friendly fire on... that's easy. It's too abusable, friendly fire on just means EVERYONE dies, and the problem still occurs of a high-adrenaline, fast-action furball of action being ended prematurely by the decision of one outside player.

And I'm not calling the tactic of playing a sniper cheap, or asking that Kame's be toned down, just asking that the 'tactic' of watching for a fight, then just launching the largest-explosion weapon you have in the general direction and detonating it, be toned down on team servers when friendly-fire is off, as right now it's not so much an overly powerful as overly annoying tactic to be enjoying a fight only to have the fight end with often no warning at all.

This just makes launching large-blast attacks into your friendly always have a downside, instead of either being lethal or being abusable, which is too striking a change to balance across effectively.

 

[WolfWings]

...was my idea just so well-worded that nobody can think of any criticism (constructive or otherwise) about it, or is it an idea that's been re-hashed before but never quite finished or implemented yet?

Just curious, as I know I don't post much, but I try to only post when I have something meaningful to add, and this seemed meaningful enough from the few answers to the poll I got, so... any thoughts anyone?

 

[Cheeto101]

I personally dont find beam snipers any less or more annoying then melee whores. Theyre both a pain in the ass and both easy to deal with. Melee whores just bust out the zazoken and generic beam then or eyelaster them to death, beam snipers, well just teleport to them and beat the hell out of them(or my personal fave, charge up a beam of your own, hold it at full charge till the sniper fires again and ps with him and watch him (or yourself) go boom, at least that way he has to work for his kills. I just think that maybe friendly fire should only get like 50 % of the damage that is incurred normally.

 

[Mystic Snidely]

I like the idea. But it would only apply to the explosion, right? I think if you hit the guy smack on, you deserve credit. I don't remember anyone being killed in the series by a detonation of an attack - it was only when it actually hit them.

-----

Vegita: Wow, Freiza just knocked my gallit gun (or whatever it was) away with one kick. I'll get him this time, though...

Freiza: Oh, here we go again. Bring it on.

Vegita: Ha! I will press alternate fire and detonate the beam right in your girly face, so you can't block it! Die, dip****!
*Freiza, Piccolo, Krillin, Gohan and half of Namek goes up in smoke*

 

[WolfWings]

Yes, this idea was specifically for the 'blast' past of a beam. If you're lucky enough to truly 'snipe' them with the beam, full damage on that impacted person.

And the problem with 'dealing' with a beam sniper, is that if someone gets to a certain power level, which is pretty easy on a fraglimit 100 server, they can just start launching kame into the central spawn area over and over again. Over half the time, you won't even have a chance to locate them before the kame impacts, and you're dead again.

The other half of the time, you're fighting in a furball of two or three on a side. Note that this formula would NOT prevent someone from 'saving' a friend that was being ganged up on, only crippling the blast if they try to launch it into a 3-on-3 or 4-on-4 or so group to wipe out half of them for free kills.

Don't start in on 'but it's a valid tactic' either, anyone. This is meant as questioning the validity of that tactic, and if such a tactic should have safeguards in place to limit it's effectiveness, since if friendly fire is on the tactic is invalidated. Though, with the blast-radius, damage, and other caps in 1.1, this problem may go away for the most part.

But, the simple fact is that even Cheeto101 indicate that beam-snipers are a problem. Melee 'snipers' still have to get close to you, so you're BOUND to see them, and know where they're coming from, and it's very hard to get a one-hit kill.

Many beam snipers, since that first hit kills everyone, and then they drop to the ground before respawning, on some maps like Kame's Lookout, or City, it's physically impossible to track where the attack came from. Or on the same maps, they can stay out of view, and loop their beam up over an edge before detonating it, so it's even more useless to try to 'track them down' then, so an entire team gets to play 'needle in a haystack' while trying to continue fighting with the rest of the enemy team.

 

[Cheeto101]

ehh true, i dont necessarily like playing with them, i prefer playin with people who do an even mix of both, but they dont really bother me, with the proper use of zazoken you can escape any beam attack or melee attack. And if you have a game with more then 6 people anyways, of course theres gonna be beams flyin everywhere. I think might as well leave it as is. But i do see your point, i just dont really think the team needs to spend extra time coding in a new damage system. Id rather see new moves, chars, transformations and advanced melee. Just my opinion though.

edit: and if a sniper can stay hidden around a building and keep looping his beams around or he keeps moving, i say hes good enough that he deserves all the kills

 

[WolfWings]

Again, in a 'competition' where friendly fire would be on, such a tactic is quite feasable as the player would assumably warn all his team-mates to teleport away before firing...

If he didn't however, such a tactic would become damaging to the 'snipers' own team. This tactic of dodging and blasting randomly into the central areas, often blindly, is only valid on Free-For-All Servers, and on Team Deathmatch servers with friendly fire OFF.

The former is understandable. Kill em' all and get the points for it. It's a very valid tactic if you can pull it off, as the ENTIRE server can hunt you down at their leisure if you do it too often.

On team deathmatch servers though... the tactic is only valid if friendly fire is off, meaning you can't harm your team-mates. In any 'serious' competition, friendly fire would presumably be on, meaning that if you tried this tactic, you'd gain far, far less, if not lose points, because you'd harm and kill your team-mates along with your enemies.

That dicotomy of what's valid between friendly fire on and off servers... competition and pubs if you will... is damagingly striking.

It's not something I expect fixed in 1.1, as I know it would be a minor bit of coding with negligible effect on performance if any at all, essentially making each 'radius' blast calculate damage twice, once to tally up the damage, and a second time using that tally to actually inflict it.

But it is a problem I see that can limit the usefulness of public servers for practicing on, or for general enjoyment because it breaks an otherwise-uniform feeling of Team Deathmatch servers of working together and no one person being able to rule the server. Yes, a team can rule the server, but except for these blind-sniping attacks, one person can't 'take over' a server and toy with everyone.