cRPG

cRPG => Suggestions Corner => Topic started by: Joker86 on December 18, 2011, 01:19:40 am

Title: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Joker86 on December 18, 2011, 01:19:40 am: Hi there!

Some days ago I observed a special situation while being in spectator mode.

One team was losing, and had only three men left: two archers on a rooftop and a single cavalryman. The other team had like 10 heavy infantry left, and two cavalrymen.

The rooftop where the archers (and of course no ladder) were was about in the middle of the (desert) map, while the cavalryman was riding around in a corner, chased by both enemy cavalrymen. The infantry was gathering around the house with both archers on it, trying to find some cover or dodge the projectiles while waiting for them to come down. As there was still a cavalryman left, the admin couldn't order them to get down, and so they were able to shoot two more infantrymen before the cavalryman went down, and even then the admin had to use his red text to order them down, and they followed... after shooting another time...

To me this seems absolutely retarded, so that I present you...

My Idea:

As soon as the population of a team goes down to a certain percentage, I would suggest something between 10 and 20%, something like a servermessage on the screen pops up, saying something like

The battle is appraoching its end!

All fighters engage in a last charge, and all archers abandon their safe positions.

As soon as this message pops up (or has popped up, respectively, in case the ladder gets destroyed afterwards), all archers know that they have to jump off unaccessable roofs. The enemy gets a message in the chat like "The enemy force is close to being routed", so they know the enemy archers have to come down. I think it is important that it is a message on the screen for the concerned team (unlike the enemy team, where a chat message is perfectly enough), as most archers will have tunnel vision and would simply overlook a chat message. Just something similar to the "Your team has won the round!" message.

With this feature you wouldn't have such RETARDED situations any more like the one I described above, where players exceed the phrasing of a certain rule to its maximum. I think both kills for those archers were completely undeserved, as I see no reason why they should have been "immortal" to the infantry until the cavalryman at the other end of the map went down.

And finally I don't think such a feature would be difficult to implement for the dev team.
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Fluffy_Muffin on December 18, 2011, 01:52:46 am: I dont see how this would change anything, they would just ignore the message and remain on the roofs
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Joker86 on December 18, 2011, 02:01:01 am: Ignore = kick.

The point in this suggestion is to give a clearly recognizable point when an archer has to come down. Common sense would say they have to get down when there are no reasonable targets around for enemy melee fighters (a horse archer for example is no reasonable target for an infantryman), but when do you have such a situation and when don't you have? To decide this is always difficult, and if the admins would decide by their personal judgment we would have a lot more "admin abooze"-topics around here.

The idea is to allow archers to be targeted by infantrymen a bit BEFORE there is no other way to finish the round.
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: ArchonAlarion on December 18, 2011, 02:11:59 am: Officially looking text is enough to deter many people, and those who aren't deterred wouldn't have an excuse. It's something to at least try, I think.
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: B3RS3RK on December 18, 2011, 02:21:17 am: Yes.Totally.

Do it or you are gay, Devs!
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Duke on December 18, 2011, 04:01:09 am: I don't think the message would help much, I'd rather 'Master of the field' began sooner.
That already has a message and more importantly gives an objective for the infantry to win.
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Zerran on December 18, 2011, 04:46:08 am: Not sure exactly how you could get this to be an automated message. In a case of a couple archers left vs. a large number of infantry it would be easy. But take the other side of the coin, a large number of archers on a roof vs. only a few infantry. I love the idea of a message popping up in the middle of the screen, but I think it would be necessary to make it something that an admin has to activate.
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Joker86 on December 18, 2011, 02:04:08 pm: But that's exactly where the problem is, which I try to eliminate: WHEN would an admin have to activate this message? How does he decide this?

I want to give a fixed, undisputable point when the roofcamping has to come to an end, so that chances for survival are about equal for all classes, and not having the archers decide 80% of the ending rounds.

In that situation I described above I asked the admin "Why don't you tell them to come down?" and he answered "I can't, rule says they are allowed to roofcamp as long as teammates have their feet on the ground.", and with my suggestion we wouldn't even have this perverted situation.

It's just a supporting "tool" to help the admins administrating the servers. Instead of the current undisputable moment for archers to come down (everyone else on the ground being dead) we have a new moment, when the battle is coming to an end and only 20% of the team are still alive. As this is determined by the game itself and not by a human admin, noone could complain about any bias or other unfair behaviour. It's just the moment when your "immune against melee"-armour loses its magical abilities...
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Joker86 on December 19, 2011, 01:30:03 pm: A little *bump*
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Grumpy_Nic on December 19, 2011, 01:45:20 pm: I usually dont mind roofcamping as long as its not half of the team. Infantry that cannot reach roofcampers and dont have any other targets should have the patience to simply wait for the flag (I know thats hard....). But I think it would work in the long term, its also boring for an archer not to see any enemies for a minute.
Maybe we need to be able to tear down houses with mauls and axes... would be fun to see roofcampers buried in a crashed house. Or set fire to houses with torches... Burning house makes 30 fire damage per second vs players... :D Archer BBQ

Patience is probably the best thing and you dont need to add anything in the game.
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Joker86 on December 19, 2011, 02:05:57 pm: Quote from: Grumpy_Nic on December 19, 2011, 01:45:20 pm
I usually dont mind roofcamping as long as its not half of the team. Infantry that cannot reach roofcampers and dont have any other targets should have the patience to simply wait for the flag (I know thats hard....). But I think it would work in the long term, its also boring for an archer not to see any enemies for a minute.

I would love to see more patience in the game, especially as appearently 90% of all cRPG players are literally unable to release the [W]-key, but it has simply the disadvantage of all players in specator mode having even less time to play. The infantry hiding somewhere doesn't really play either, and only the archers, who in most cases find some targets anyway, are allowed to shoot people and thus having fun by actually fighting, and even better, they are completely immune to all melee attacks while doing so! To me this sounds like a severe imbalance of "fun" in the game. And I don't see any reason for this.
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Grumpy_Nic on December 19, 2011, 02:20:32 pm: The waiting for respawn is not so bad most of the times, I can go get something to eat/drink or take a piss, when I die at the very beginning I can even take a sh*t. I can clean the kitchen, cut my fingernails and do lots of other stuff.
Sometimes its boring yes, but in general the respawn time is ok, you just have to use it wisely instead of raging in front of the screen. Maybe the game should spawn ladders in the middle of the map after 80% of the players died? :wink:
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Joker86 on December 19, 2011, 02:21:47 pm: That would be another suggestion I could live with :mrgreen:
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Grumpy_Nic on December 19, 2011, 03:04:21 pm: Add a vote option for Spectators: "Submit a poll - Teleport to ground - Choose player" with a minimum of 70% (?) yes votes
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Tomas on December 19, 2011, 03:16:08 pm: How about...

Once 1 team is down to 5 players or 20% of their team (whichever is higher), all ranged weapons are disabled.

So if its 50 vs 50 then ranged weapons will be disabled for both teams as soon as 1 team hits 10 players.

This means there is no point camping a roof after that point, you won't be able to do anything and if you all camp a roof playing for a draw then you are scum and deserved a ban.
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Grumpy_Nic on December 19, 2011, 03:18:43 pm: No.
You cannot remove a players primary weapon. This would mean that dedicated Archers/Xbowers would have no chance to win a game if they survive until the end.

Edit: Add a 0 slot rope ladder :) on the other hand this gives every archer the possibility to climb everything...
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: bredeus on December 19, 2011, 03:31:09 pm: Nice idea. I would like to see some more radical methods (like old firebom effect in the last minute on combt on every roof) but this one sounds nice too.
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Gisbert_of_Thuringia on December 19, 2011, 06:26:47 pm: Bad idea, wouldn't change anything.

Better would be what has been suggested again and again and again and again (and again for 100times), EITHER that ladders can't be destroyed on battleservers OR that a "short" fix on every map places a fixed ladder to every rooftop (or only a couple of rooftops) OR remove ladders from battle completely :/
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Joker86 on December 19, 2011, 06:36:02 pm: Quote from: Gisbert_of_Thuringia on December 19, 2011, 06:26:47 pm
Bad idea, wouldn't change anything.

I think it would change a lot, because currently most archers are coming down when they are the last survivors or the admin tells them. So I suppose most archers would also come down as soon as only 20% of the team are left and the message appears, especially as they know the admins will kick them immediately. And in those rare occasions where no admin is on I would even trust the community to have enough combined hatred against roofcampers that kickvotes would be successfull.

At least it can only improve things, there is no way it can make them worse. And many people seem to agree on that.
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Taser on December 19, 2011, 06:45:51 pm: Quote from: Tomas on December 19, 2011, 03:16:08 pm
How about...

Once 1 team is down to 5 players or 20% of their team (whichever is higher), all ranged weapons are disabled.

So if its 50 vs 50 then ranged weapons will be disabled for both teams as soon as 1 team hits 10 players.

This means there is no point camping a roof after that point, you won't be able to do anything and if you all camp a roof playing for a draw then you are scum and deserved a ban.

Horrible idea. For the same reason Nic said, you cannot remove someone's primary weapon. And it shows obvious bias towards melee weapons. I understand where you're coming from here though as roofcamping is annoying sometimes.

Quote from: Gisbert_of_Thuringia on December 19, 2011, 06:26:47 pm
Bad idea, wouldn't change anything.

Better would be what has been suggested again and again and again and again (and again for 100times), EITHER that ladders can't be destroyed on battleservers OR that a "short" fix on every map places a fixed ladder to every rooftop (or only a couple of rooftops) OR remove ladders from battle completely :/

This is a better idea than what was suggested. It allows roofcamping but doesn't make them unreachable in the case of making ladders for every roof anyway. It would be better to just remove ladders from battle completely. As an archer I would miss the ability to be safe from cav and flanking infantry on certain maps but I can live without it.
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Joker86 on December 19, 2011, 07:00:51 pm: As far as I have understood the rumors around here, chadz explicitly insists on keeping ladders as they are. I don't know if he would agree to make them undestructible for the own team or something like that, but I do know...

... ladders never will be removed from battle

and

... for sure the developers won't change every map with a roof on it to have fixed ladders or something even more complicated like spawning or moving/"growing" ladders.
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Zerran on December 19, 2011, 07:41:34 pm: I would at least like to see custom maps required to make roofcamping impossible. This can be done very easily by either putting a ladder to the roof already, or by using invisible walls on the roof to stop anyone from being able to get up to them. (Though I think there has been some work towards this already)

I've played around with map editing a bit, and honestly it's really easy to do this. If even just 1 or 2 mapmakers could be convinced to run through the maps and update them all with this, it could solve the problem without any direct dev intervention.
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Joker86 on December 20, 2011, 05:11:35 pm: I think the only way to achieve this would be that someone who knows how this works volunteers, changes all maps, and then contacts the developers. There is no other way, as they surely won't change their to-do-list for this suggestion... or any input from the community at all...
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Lichen on December 20, 2011, 06:34:33 pm: I don't think a server message is going to do much. Try going after archer roof camps at the beginning of the round instead of waiting till the end after they have wounded and killed many of your teamates.
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Zisa on December 20, 2011, 07:44:26 pm: I hope and pray for the removal of ladders.

Also there are far too many village in a bowl maps where archers can perch, which of course is the smart thing to do as infantry crawl up to your position.

Inacessible positions (breaking a ladder to seal off any pursuit) means you are avoiding any danger to self, and should go play single player. chicken.
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Gisbert_of_Thuringia on December 20, 2011, 08:48:58 pm: Quote from: Zerran on December 19, 2011, 07:41:34 pm

I've played around with map editing a bit, and honestly it's really easy to do this. If even just 1 or 2 mapmakers could be convinced to run through the maps and update them all with this, it could solve the problem without any direct dev intervention.

Go send a message to devs and offer that you will put some fixed ladders to the roofs on all the maps, so it will be useless to bring siegeladders to reach them and roofcamping would stop :)
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Vexus on December 20, 2011, 08:49:33 pm: If chadz doesn't want to remove ladders why not just make the flags (Forgot actual name) appear when 2 min - 1 min 30 seconds are left so roof campers are forced to go down if they want to win the round?
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Zerran on December 21, 2011, 10:22:57 pm: Quote from: Gisbert_of_Thuringia on December 20, 2011, 08:48:58 pm
Go send a message to devs and offer that you will put some fixed ladders to the roofs on all the maps, so it will be useless to bring siegeladders to reach them and roofcamping would stop :)

See, I would do this... but I'm lazy. >_>
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: AreTreble on December 21, 2011, 10:41:57 pm: Why not just bring your own ladder to get up to the roofs? If your ladder is long enough you can usually be at the top of the ladder before anyone has a chance to attack it, as long as you start walking up it as it is deploying.

It would be cool if there was a new item like reinforced metal ladders implemented that can only be destroyed from the ground. I imagine you could just reskin the ladder and make it only destructible at the bottom.

Another, idea more consistent with history and immersion is having stand-alone ladders (german origins, I think) that dont have to be propped on the side of buildings.
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If properly placed, archers won't be able to destroy these as they would be out of reach.
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Rumblood on December 21, 2011, 10:56:19 pm: Remove ladders.
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Ujin on December 21, 2011, 11:30:32 pm: Quote from: Rumblood on December 21, 2011, 10:56:19 pm
Remove ladders.
Really. Stop inventing the bicycle, just remove the goddamn ladders.
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Zlisch_The_Butcher on December 22, 2011, 03:04:37 am: Remove ladders.
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Joker86 on December 22, 2011, 03:32:53 am: Again. This won't happen. chadz doesn't want it. Come up with anything else, but forget the removal of ladders.
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Vibe on December 22, 2011, 09:47:00 am: Wow talk about overcomplicating. Perhaps we could just remove ladders eh.

PS: we don't care what chadz wants :3
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Grumpy_Nic on December 22, 2011, 12:47:45 pm: Random Plains only, remove buildings
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Christo on December 22, 2011, 01:50:45 pm: Quote from: Ujin on December 21, 2011, 11:30:32 pm
Really. Stop inventing the bicycle, just remove the goddamn ladders.

This made my day.
:mrgreen:
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: AreTreble on December 22, 2011, 08:25:31 pm: Quote from: AreTreble on December 21, 2011, 10:41:57 pm
Why not just bring your own ladder to get up to the roofs? If your ladder is long enough you can usually be at the top of the ladder before anyone has a chance to attack it, as long as you start walking up it as it is deploying.

It would be cool if there was a new item like reinforced metal ladders implemented that can only be destroyed from the ground. I imagine you could just reskin the ladder and make it only destructible at the bottom.

Another, idea more consistent with history and immersion is having stand-alone ladders (german origins, I think) that dont have to be propped on the side of buildings.
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If properly placed, archers won't be able to destroy these as they would be out of reach.

All you have to do to implement this is make the ladders automatically stop at a predetermined height. And a reskin. Constructive criticism welcome.
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Joker86 on December 24, 2011, 12:47:38 am: Wouldn't this lead to the kind of "sniper tower" constructions like in older versions of cRPG?

Just place two ladders next to each others, not totally perfect on a line but looking a bit towards each other, so that they will connect somewhere in the air. As soon as they do they will stop and you can climb up. Especially handy on plain maps, protecting you from cavalry for a long time, and also from enemy fire while being allowed to shoot from an elevated position yourself.

Thank god this is not possible any more.
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: Adalwulf on December 24, 2011, 04:42:57 am: Quote from: Joker86 on December 19, 2011, 07:00:51 pm
As far as I have understood the rumors around here, chadz explicitly insists on keeping ladders as they are. I don't know if he would agree to make them undestructible for the own team or something like that, but I do know...

... ladders never will be removed from battle

and

... for sure the developers won't change every map with a roof on it to have fixed ladders or something even more complicated like spawning or moving/"growing" ladders.

can't be done. Cuz then people can aldder block iwth indestructable ladders of bundle of sticksry.
Title: Re: Idea to lower the problems of roofcamping
Post by: obitus on December 24, 2011, 05:54:12 am: spawn a ladder on the ground at both team's spawns at like 5 minutes in for someone to be able to pick up if needed