I recently posted this in the Volition Red Faction forums, in response to a thread about the multiplayer. I'll put it here - maybe I'm not completely out of my mind, right?
"You know when multiplayer has issues? When its more fun to play the MP by yourself, with no one else there.
Unfortunately, thats the case for Red Faction. Both the community and Violtion's asinine settings make trying to do anything where you don't have complete control or decent settings a chore, and not fun at all.
Obviously, Violition can't be held responsible for the community - however, they an be held responsible for failing to provide a few stopping measures to mitigate the pain.
- Those training videoes? Should've been mandatory to watch before you can play. Not knowing is not an excuse.
- Party Filters. Seriously, how in the hell is it possible that the only company on the planet that gets this is Bungie?! PARTYIES VS. NON-PARTIES IS NOT FAIR. EVER. EVER. PARTIES SHOULD ONLY EVER PLAY OTHER PARTIES. PERIOD. Individual players should not be punished for playing by themselves.
-Anti-idiot fallbacks - For example, if the demoman doesn't do X damage per Y time, give it to some else - in all likelyhood, they're not trying anyways.
But what really gets me is Violition's game settings. Jetpacks and Rockets? Shotguns and Fleetfoots? Recontructors + Reconstructors? Yes Violition, I saw your response in that other thread - unfortunately what you think is "intense" and "fun" is irrelevant.
Ranked Matches, or matches where stats are tracked and count towards something need to be about fairness, balance, level fighting ground, consistency, skill and playing style. Not Rockets and Jetpacks. Lets take a look and see what other games that are immensely popular and don't let yo choose your spawn weapon tend to have in common. (This excludes Battefield, COD, Farcry, etc.)
Your starting weapons are generic, some-what effective, skill-relaxed weapons decent at everything but excellent at nothing. Examples include: Halo 3's Assault Rifle, GOW's Lancer and Shotgun, Shadowrun's Pistol. These weapons allow you defend yourself, but aren't good enough on their own, forcing you seek out better weapons and play more to a style, rather then giving everyone power weapons, some of which require a great deal of skill or talent to use right, which therefore alienates those not good with those weapons.
Well then, what would fit the bill such as described for RF? Such weapons would be the Assault Rifle, Peacekeeper Shotgun and Pistol. All of these are easy to learn, effective, and limted weapons which will force people to search out other weapons to suit their playing style. A combination of one or two of these should be the starting weapons in ALL Ranked Playlists.
Further, your spawn weapons should supplimented by a gametype -specific helper - IE The Reconstructor or Remote Charges. While CTF and Siege should not have either of these in the basic load-out, Damage Control and Demolitions would be good choices for these.
In addition, for Ranked games, there should never be any backpack starts of any sort. Not only do they destroy a lot of tactics that could be employed (particularly in the case of the Jetpack), but they cater so heavily to certain styles of gameplay that anyone not good at those styles is just going to take it up the butt fr the whole match.
Thee are several other issues, such as spawning (WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU EVER SPAWN SOMEONE IN THE ENEMY BASE DURING CTF?!), however, the above are the most annoying and pressing. Going into a Ranked Match expecting to find competition and fair play to find Rockets and Jetpacks is certainly dissappointing, to say the least.
Of course, I know Violition would like to hold to their "precious" "fun" gametypes - so do what every other dev does - stick them, Unranked, in their own playlist, away from the Ranked Lists, so that people who just want to have fun can go there, but those who want have some competition with their fun won't have to deal with Rockets+Jetpacks on Rift ever again."
"You know when multiplayer has issues? When its more fun to play the MP by yourself, with no one else there.
Unfortunately, thats the case for Red Faction. Both the community and Violtion's asinine settings make trying to do anything where you don't have complete control or decent settings a chore, and not fun at all.
Obviously, Violition can't be held responsible for the community - however, they an be held responsible for failing to provide a few stopping measures to mitigate the pain.
- Those training videoes? Should've been mandatory to watch before you can play. Not knowing is not an excuse.
- Party Filters. Seriously, how in the hell is it possible that the only company on the planet that gets this is Bungie?! PARTYIES VS. NON-PARTIES IS NOT FAIR. EVER. EVER. PARTIES SHOULD ONLY EVER PLAY OTHER PARTIES. PERIOD. Individual players should not be punished for playing by themselves.
-Anti-idiot fallbacks - For example, if the demoman doesn't do X damage per Y time, give it to some else - in all likelyhood, they're not trying anyways.
But what really gets me is Violition's game settings. Jetpacks and Rockets? Shotguns and Fleetfoots? Recontructors + Reconstructors? Yes Violition, I saw your response in that other thread - unfortunately what you think is "intense" and "fun" is irrelevant.
Ranked Matches, or matches where stats are tracked and count towards something need to be about fairness, balance, level fighting ground, consistency, skill and playing style. Not Rockets and Jetpacks. Lets take a look and see what other games that are immensely popular and don't let yo choose your spawn weapon tend to have in common. (This excludes Battefield, COD, Farcry, etc.)
Your starting weapons are generic, some-what effective, skill-relaxed weapons decent at everything but excellent at nothing. Examples include: Halo 3's Assault Rifle, GOW's Lancer and Shotgun, Shadowrun's Pistol. These weapons allow you defend yourself, but aren't good enough on their own, forcing you seek out better weapons and play more to a style, rather then giving everyone power weapons, some of which require a great deal of skill or talent to use right, which therefore alienates those not good with those weapons.
Well then, what would fit the bill such as described for RF? Such weapons would be the Assault Rifle, Peacekeeper Shotgun and Pistol. All of these are easy to learn, effective, and limted weapons which will force people to search out other weapons to suit their playing style. A combination of one or two of these should be the starting weapons in ALL Ranked Playlists.
Further, your spawn weapons should supplimented by a gametype -specific helper - IE The Reconstructor or Remote Charges. While CTF and Siege should not have either of these in the basic load-out, Damage Control and Demolitions would be good choices for these.
In addition, for Ranked games, there should never be any backpack starts of any sort. Not only do they destroy a lot of tactics that could be employed (particularly in the case of the Jetpack), but they cater so heavily to certain styles of gameplay that anyone not good at those styles is just going to take it up the butt fr the whole match.
Thee are several other issues, such as spawning (WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU EVER SPAWN SOMEONE IN THE ENEMY BASE DURING CTF?!), however, the above are the most annoying and pressing. Going into a Ranked Match expecting to find competition and fair play to find Rockets and Jetpacks is certainly dissappointing, to say the least.
Of course, I know Violition would like to hold to their "precious" "fun" gametypes - so do what every other dev does - stick them, Unranked, in their own playlist, away from the Ranked Lists, so that people who just want to have fun can go there, but those who want have some competition with their fun won't have to deal with Rockets+Jetpacks on Rift ever again."
