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Out of a point blank scout 4 shotting a solly or 2 shotting a solly, one of them is closer to balance.

Why should randomness decide which situation occurs, and therefore randomness decide whether the game was balanced at that point? Just because a shot is probably balanced doesnt mean that all shots are probably balanced. It should be 2 shots, 3 shots, 4 shots or more, but not a chance of any of them, because it can encompass the most correct answer at some opportunities.

Ahhhhhh, people actually think I am for random damage… i don’t like it as much as the next guy. The problem is, with random damage comes balance. Valve probably implemented random damage in the first place to allow classes to be balanced. That is one of the only advantages of using random damage is that any class can kill any class based on a luck factor.

The question is how do you alter the random damage values into static damage values while maintaining a balanced game? However you do it, one class is going to favour over another. And since we don’t know which classes should be stronger than the rest (because there is no way of getting them perfectly balanced), I can’t see a realistic way around it.

I could write a HUGE paper explaining everything that would need to be taken into account. Here are just a few.

Let’s say a rocket does ~20-50 damage at long range. What value should stand? Which value occurs most often? How much of an effect would this have on a player (if he was hit by 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7 rockets? How many long distance rockets should it take to kill a player? How many DOES it take on average to kill a long distance scout/soldier/demo etc… if it took 4 rockets to kill a scout, and 4 rockets to kill a medic, what damage value would mean the medic took 5 rockets while the scout stayed at 4… would this be a big change or maintain balance? would a soldier be more powerful? less powerful? Would this effect his close range rockets? How much damage would they do? would he kill players in less or more rockets than the average amount needed in current TF2? would this make him overpowered or underpowered? Would……. it can go on and on.

I’m all for losing random damage, I just don’t want the game to be changed (current balance) from the game i’ve been playing for a long time over something i value as quite insignificant, because of it.

AcidReniX:
You just won my vote for player of the season.

(Even thou i think this game cannot be balanced without random damage. Hope this wasn’t too ranty.)

I give Arx’s essay a C (3rd class). I am penalising you for going over the set word limit of 10,000.

The damage ranges and changes in class balance should at least be listed and known before we consider implementing TFTrue.

The damage each weapon does with tftrue is currently unknown. Also the way valve calculates damage is not known so we don’t know if the damage ranges that are taken out of the file are correct. The base damages valve lists in some other file are also different from the in-game situation so we don’t know if the damage ranges are correct. Some testing will solves this quite easily though.

The other problem is the class balance that will be affected by implementing static damage. The easiest example would be with the sniper rifle.

When fully charged the sniper rifle has a 50% chance of body-shotting a full hp medic. In TFtrue that chance will (probably) be 100%.

Now, this might be an acceptable change, however its kinda weird people want to implement TFtrue without even knowing how classes are going to be affected.

I’m not saying that I am against the removal of random damage(ranges of 99-200 -> wtf). I’m just saying we need to be carefull since it also affects class balance.

Acid if i recall correctly the only thing i was trying to say is that 1shotting a full health scout is just bullshit, i agree that some values could be tweaked but they shouldn’t differ much than the average of the maximum and minumum ranges.

Because you stated in one of your first posts that luck eventually evens out, well so do the damage ranges even out. only problem is now the damage is random and there is now way to tell when you will get high damage shots. You might just have wasted them rocket-jumping for all i know.

on top of that the higher end is too high anyway. for any class bringing it down by removing random damage is another plus to tftrue. (that includes the scout 2shotting a demo btw)

I suggest to anyone to not use 2.2 at all, some people also reported random crashes with it (also related to the soldier self damage).

You can still use 2.1 which is stable, no crash reported, and there shouldn’t be any.

We’ll still try to fix the soldier self damage for 2.3.

I’d like to see a coach function in the game, as it was present in various q3 mods. or at least a way to lock the team from spectators/invite spectators.
a coach function would really improve the game on a competitive level and help work that skill gap, as teams, who lack players to call certain situations in the game rightly, are likely to perform better with proper guidance.
on the plus side this could be implemented serverside only, right?