The Re-Volt Hideout

Hey!

Recently there has been some discussion regarding pickups. Really the only problem Some other problems have been pointed out, but that's outside the scope of this thread One of the problems I have with pickups is that in my opinion the Electro Pulse lasts too long. (Note that I am talking about the duration of the effect on the user, not the one getting zapped.) Currently the duration is 10 seconds.

Within this 10 second timeframe you'll usually be able to zap your target(s), after which you'll drive around for a while zapping random people that were ahead of you but are going slower/crashed. It can also happen that you zap someone and later crash; once the zapped person regains control and drives past you, they can get zapped again! This means that respectively the user of the zap can be rewarded for something out of their control and the zapped person can be punished for the mistakes of the zapper.
You can even try to zap someone, miss, catch up to them and zap them anyway. For such a strong effect (3 seconds without accelerating), that's very forgiving.
It seems to me the goal of the Electro Pulse is to punish others from racing past you in narrow corridors. This is backed up by the fact that people in first place get the pickup more often then others, especially those that are last. (see this image for proof). The fact that it can also be used offensively if you are going faster then you're opponent is an unintended side-effect, but not that big of a deal. In either scenario, a few seconds should be enough to achieve your goal. If you did not zap anyone in this timeframe, you used the pickup incorrectly. This should be punished by having the pickup go to waste, instead of being ignored by giving you a second chance to zap your opponent, as well as other random cars.

So, for these reasons I would like to see the duration of the Electro Pulse cut. If I would have to give a new duration right now, I would say 3 seconds: this gives you enough time to zap your targets, but is not overly long and thus removes the problems I discussed. This would require playtesting though, so I can't say for sure.

Thanks for reading my wall of text! I'd like to hear if anyone shares/opposes my views

to me, zap is like a "passive" pickup that cuts down other's engine when they're near. you can activate it and wait/reach for others to get zapped. by reducing the zap duration, it becomes an "active" type pickup, which means you enable it when you're near someone to offset its short duration. if you enable it too soon, the zap activity might cease before you're able to reach and zap people.
my point is, i would like the zap to stay as a passive pickup.

zap also works as a counter tho. if you're in first place with zap, enabled or not, there is a very high chance that you get to keep your first place. if you crash and slow down, the zap will hit the second place, cuts their engine and allow you to regain the first place.
my point is, zap also works as "pass prevention" pickup, preventing people behind you to pass you if you have zap on.

that is my views, at least.

shara-- wrote: ↑Sat Feb 24, 2018 1:38 pmto me, zap is like a "passive" pickup that cuts down other's engine when they're near. you can activate it and wait/reach for others to get zapped. by reducing the zap duration, it becomes an "active" type pickup, which means you enable it when you're near someone to offset its short duration. if you enable it too soon, the zap activity might cease before you're able to reach and zap people.
my point is, i would like the zap to stay as a passive pickup.

My suggestion would indeed require people to be more active with their use of zap. To me this is not really a problem though. Not being able to pass someone for 10 seconds on tracks like Toy World 2 where you can cover the entire racing line is quite strong and not very fun for the other players. It requires minimal effort from the person that used zap while being very punishing for the rest.

shara-- wrote: ↑Sat Feb 24, 2018 1:38 pmzap also works as a counter tho. if you're in first place with zap, enabled or not, there is a very high chance that you get to keep your first place. if you crash and slow down, the zap will hit the second place, cuts their engine and allow you to regain the first place.
my point is, zap also works as "pass prevention" pickup, preventing people behind you to pass you if you have zap on.

Even with the zap duration cut down, you will still be able to zap someone driving past you after you've crashed. 3 seconds is still enough to easily time it. It does however prevent people that were further behind (who were not your target) getting zapped, which is one of the things I hope to achieve.

shara-- wrote: ↑Sat Feb 24, 2018 1:38 pm to me, zap is like a "passive" pickup that cuts down other's engine when they're near. you can activate it and wait/reach for others to get zapped. by reducing the zap duration, it becomes an "active" type pickup, which means you enable it when you're near someone to offset its short duration. if you enable it too soon, the zap activity might cease before you're able to reach and zap people.
my point is, i would like the zap to stay as a passive pickup.

Then I think you aren't being tactical with your zaps. If you're playing on Toytanic and are just waiting for a battery, fine, but otherwise, why waste your zap by using it when no other cars are near? I try to wait with using zap before I'm close to a target, except on Museum 1, there I'll use it at the incoming traffic section (providing there's no etiquette).

With regard to the suggestion:
I am against making big changes to the gameplay of Re-Volt, fundamentally. This does sound like a very good improvement, though... so I'm not as sure now.
I wonder what some of the other more conservative people think of this suggestion.

Today we also realised again that there are many people outside of this community playing Re-Volt. That's another reason to not change things like this...

Do not touch the pickups.

Vogelrok wrote: ↑Sat Feb 24, 2018 4:16 pm Do not touch the pickups.

Then you won't be able to get any weapons. ;P

I see the point (together with pickup weights), that would most likely balance the game better, but as long as certain gameplay mechanics are still mostly hardcoded (not user defined), I can't agree on anything that changes the gameplay in the whole game and there's no way to set how it was originally intended. Single Player campaign would play out noticeably different due to these changes as well.
Unless, as I've mentioned, defines could be changed manually by an user in some sort of advanced settings file, then I see no problem at all. (The most recent and similar example of this is properties.txt implementation for custom tracks)

While I can see how this would balance the gameplay (along with the other discussion on pick-ups), the change would likely garner plenty of opposition, particularly from players who prefer the game to stay truer to its origins. Personally, I definitely would not be against implementing it, but only if it is done as an optional feature.

Using the I/O races as an example, I believe that following a new system with these latest suggestions on pick-ups would result in less enragement, and it might make 16-player races a lot less chaotic, which could considered a positive thing by some players. In contrast, though, it could also result in a loss of participants, including the players discontent with these changes.

That aside, the current system still makes the game very much a fun experience to me, and I believe that these changes (if it is decided to implement them) should be considered low priority until more important matters are handled first. There are plenty of these left.

URV wrote: ↑Sun Feb 25, 2018 3:49 pm ..."I definitely would not be against implementing it, but only if it is done as an optional feature."...

+1 on this, if it got implemented by a launch parameter or a in-game cheat would be awesome.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I agree that the best way to implement this (if it would ever happen) would be through a launch command. That way people that oppose the nerf/changes in general can just ignore it and people that are not aware that there were balance changes won't be surprised/confused by unexpected behavior.

URV wrote: ↑Sun Feb 25, 2018 3:49 pm ... I believe that these changes (if it is decided to implement them) should be considered low priority until more important matters are handled first ...

Yep, definitely

Implementing modifier for a single pickup as a command line switch sounds not very efficient. Especially if there's a possibility to softcode other modifiers, like pickup weights, battery duration, default multi weapon quantity (which is locked to 3 for rockets and waterballoons), firework strength, oil puddle size/duration and so on. With this people (offline players and hosts) could create their own custom rulesets for varied, different gameplay experience with more choices, if wanted. With custom defined pickup weights, for example, LMS (Last Man Standing) mode could be improved and make more sense. So killing two birds with one stone.
And all that would be done and read from an external configuration file (or data received from host, if multiplayer). Sounds like a better approach IMO.

From my side there is not much more to say, I like Vaids idea most - my vote for this approach.

VaidX47 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 27, 2018 9:55 am Implementing modifier for a single pickup as a command line switch sounds not very efficient. Especially if there's a possibility to softcode other modifiers, like pickup weights, battery duration, default multi weapon quantity (which is locked to 3 for rockets and waterballoons), firework strength, oil puddle size/duration and so on. With this people (offline players and hosts) could create their own custom rulesets for varied, different gameplay experience with more choices, if wanted. With custom defined pickup weights, for example, LMS (Last Man Standing) mode could be improved and make more sense. So killing two birds with one stone.
And all that would be done and read from an external configuration file (or data received from host, if multiplayer). Sounds like a better approach IMO.

That would be amazing. I don't think we'd get something like that any time soon, but waiting for it seems better than changing just the duration of the zap weapon, to another fixed amount, through a launch parameter.

at this point, we can have a pickup parameter modifier for every pickup and change them the way whatever we wish. this would be very controversial though.