My little write up. Was gonna ask one of the TWI guys if they wanted it emailed ( I can still email it, it should keep formatting then ) but decided to post it here, so people can read it over and give their responces.
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Intro:
The thread was originally created for the purpose of discussing quantities of grenades given to each player, posting a picture of some seven men from Stalingrad, amongst them 23 grenades. From there the thread spins off into a discussion about grenade spam and many peoples ideas on a fix to that problem. This document sums up the suggested fixes in an easy to access document for later use in BETA Ballance tests.
It's a common denominator amongst most commentators that grenades just aren't right in ROOST. Most of this opinion is very likely tainted due to the currently available maps on ROOST ( Cough danzig ) and the design of these maps being made for 32 players instead of 64. Before proceeding further we will now differentiate between two types of undesirable grenade usage. The first is using a grenade as a primary weapon; them priming and cooking and air bursting over your target while trying to avoid their fire. The second is the act of grenade spam, or blindly throwing grenades into an area where you suspect there to be enemies.
Using Grenades as a primary weapon:
- Move away from precise fuse timers to something a bit more unpredictable. Timer length being predicted by something like a normal curve, with time in seconds on the X plane, the majority of grenades fall into time +/- .5 of a second. ( Perhaps even including duds )
- Reduce players ability to throw grenades while moving. Lemon suggested moving to the ARMA style solution of not being able to move while throwing grenades. This is something that can be tested, but is very likely to be annoying to players ( It's also not very realistic to lock someone in place while they throw a grenade ). The more a person moves, the harder it is to throw something exactly where you want it, and the game should reflect this. It should also reflect that when you are running or jogging it is much harder to make a good swing and throw something as far as you can when standing still. To this effect players should still be able to move while throwing grenades, but should get less range and accuracy at a jog compared to standing, and again at a run compared to a jog. This would enable a player to run across a street and pitch a grenade into a first floor window, but not all the way down the street.
- Sticky Grenades: This particular issue is most like deprecated with the new engine. Grenades in ROOST tend to stick to the floor that they landed on, instead of rolling. This made long range grenading of a particular area much easier, as there was no compensation needed for the grenades movement after landing.
- Increased Kill Range: It has been pointed out by a few people ( including myself ) that satchel charges were never really used like grenades as in spam weapons. The main differences between these two explosive weapons are:
- Thrown Range
- Kill radius
There is no difference in issued quantity of the weapons, NONE. If grenade spam was caused by quantities of explosive weapons satchel charges would fall victim to the same excessive usage. But for a period of time there the WERE used exactly as grenades, Shambeh Bambeh being the exact term. Players would lay down on top of a BA 64 ( Clown Car ) and drive by a tank satcheling it and continuing to drive on to safety from the explosive. What is this replicating? Satchels with a greater throw distance, one where the users are not afraid of harming themselves. The only other case of satchels being used in any regularity in a 'spam'ish situation is in CQB when they can be thrown around a corner and not harm the user due to the walls blocking the blast. Again the weapon is being used in 'unrealistic' situations when the player feels they can get away with it without harming themselves. Observing other games where grenades are many times less powerful it can be seen that players often throw them carelessly and without thought or concern, so it would seem that the illusion of grenades being a throw and forget weapon that cannot harm you is partial cause for spam.
It would be very interesting to see Beta test results with grenades set to have a realistic kill blast radius to see what effect this would have on their usage. Note that if this made players a bit more hesitant to use them in unrealistic situations then players could be given more grenades. ( As is actually realistic ).
- Aside note: This issue may be less of an issue in ROHOS due to the player model scaling over distance, it will now be roughly two times easier for the grenade as first weapon player to be hit. Also camping positions like a hallway with a grenade to kill the first few enemies, the grenade camper will no longer be safe from enemy fire standing mostly behind a door sill as that concealment can be penetrated.
Grenade Spam:
This is a tricky issue because as many people have pointed out, grenades were used en masse in Stalingrad. I personally think that 95% of what players call grenade spam in ROOST was either due to map constraints, or players using grenades as a first weapon. Grenades as a first weapon was a tactic I first started to use shortly after the games release, and it almost guaranteed you two very easy kills. That being said, when that problem is solved that actual issue of grenade spam will probably go with it, in the end some people dislike being killed by grenades, and all that is required of the map maker is to make a map large enough and with enough options so as to not force players to be killed by grenades constantly. RO is a thinking mans game, a grenade should be a tool that is used to harm those who are not thinking, not the favorite tool of those who don't think.
- Map Pre-knowledge: I'm sure that the tactics of the second world war would have changed were ever battle fought on an identical map and the soldiers respawned. The base problem of this one valid case of nade spam is that players learn the map and then know exactly where people will be at certain times. In the worst case scenario this means someone learning exactly how to fire a grenade launched grenade from spawn A to spawn B. In most cases this means advancing players who have not yet met with enemy contacts start throwing grenades where they know the enemies are due to previous experience. This is ( atleast in my opinion ) one of the only true forms of grenade spam. The fix for this though is probably a map randomizer, or just a map generator.
Conclusion:
The idea is not to fix 'grenade spam', as players are thinking beings who adapt to the reality you have presented them. Don't apply a band aid on top of that, but realize that the way this reality is constructed evokes a response from the players, if you wish to change that response, change the base mechanics, limiting the grenades might limit grenade spam, but it does not FIX the problem underneath, it is a band aid fix. The suggestions in part one would help to encourage a player to stop to make grenade throws where possible, something that abides by reality, but yet does not force the players into the will of the game designers ( which is always a bad move ). It gives the players choice for how they will use their grenades, but simultaneously removes the previous capability to move at great speed and throw grenades long distances accurately.
