Messages posted by: TheDruidXpawX

Completed. New and better security than ever.

Flak Monkey wrote:

I don't know if this violates any rules of our forum or not. If so, I apologize and by all means, let me know and remove it.

For something like this, we approve.

> She started a Twitter page

Good call. I'd also have her set up a free wordpress account and blog about her experiences with this and healthcare in general. With the current health care debate, it's likely to draw a lot of eyes, and I'd blog knowing that information. Every time she does a blog post, she should tweet it out. She should also have donation links on the wordpress blog and you or her should get google analytics going and pay a lot of attention to what people are visiting the blog and why.

For SEO purposes, make sure and name the blog something that people would probably search for.. something like healthcareforme. I'd probably shy away from her name for the blog name.

Once her blog gets going, She should go to similar blogs, and post comments with links back to her blog articles. Other bloggers will do the same with comments on her blog. It helps build reputation and also improves your search rankings.

Anyway, I hope these quick tips help,

Dru

Jefe wrote:

An option to change and/or vote for multiple options would be good now that the options have changed several times.

Yeah I agree, except that in this case, they're just some suggestions on what we should do.

DrNathan wrote:

I think that if you take away the medics ability to fight then they will only hide out of the way and because they weren't in the fight at all then they will be the only ones left on a wave and will also die from the lack of means to defend themselves.

I really am not intending to take away their ability to fight, but the infinite weapons have to go.

Thè-Hättêr wrote:

so i was wondering if you could tell us the names of those guys

Sure, me.

I'll go into the RPG file an engineer that's level 70ish I'll buy only the skills to amp up the link gun and pump all the base attributes. I'll buy ghost and a couple other goodies, but for the most part I'll skip the engineering skills.

I'm fairly out of practice and I'll bet I can earn at least as well as my AM character, with a vorpal, that's twice this level.

Ok, there's two primary issues.

1) The infinite link gun berzerked is too much. It's too much for the server, it does too much damage, it's too much in every way. Infinite RL is also a problem. This is unrelated to any one class.

2) Medics and Engineers were never supposed to be played through their weapons the way they are presently being played by some. <tongue in cheek>We may as well make a new class that comes with an infinite rl and link gun and skip the other skills.</tongue in cheek>

The issues may be slightly different for the medic and the engineer, but on the surface they are the same problem.

The issues for the link/rl may appear slightly differently but on the surface they are the same problem when you spawn with one or can create one almost any-time. For the other classes this is still a problem but to a lesser degree as they probably wont always get one.

RoadKill v3.4 wrote:

I have gotten over 4000 xp with my WM on a single map given the right circumstances and contributed little to none to the team

Anyone can pull it off given the right circumstances. I'm more concerned with how once you know the system, as an engineer or a medic, you can do this pretty much every game even at lower levels.

RoadKill v3.4 wrote:

A huge amount of xp generated with medics can be from monsters and from well placed sentinels for engis

True that, and that's how I'd expect to see the xp gained, however when I look at how people scored that are gaining huge amounts of XP, it's from an infinite link or an infinite RL.

RoadKill v3.4 wrote:

spam heavy on server

I know no one wants to talk about this, but this problem is bigger than you think.

RoadKill v3.4 wrote:

Link gun would seem to be the major contributor, which is why I'm asking for medics to be separated from Engis here

Inf RL is also a problem, just not to the same degree.

RoadKill v3.4 wrote:

are we looking too closely at certain individuals; of superior skills/very high level and not observing players of lower/mid level, and average skills

You may be looking at them, however, I've seen people of high personal skill but low level able to duplicate this same thing.

Wail wrote:

I think this actually highlights an interesting thing, which is that experience from team-supportive abilities is hard to pin down since it does not have the inherent risk/challenge vs. reward setup that fighting monsters does.

Yes, but when someone runs this, it's not a zero sum game, they gain XP, also everyone else gains XP. I actually care a great deal less about this.

If you can kill more monsters, you earn more XP, everyone else earns less.

But we're wandering far afield here. The issue is really about infinite weapons with berzerk. The problems are primary with the link gun, but they do spill over onto other weapons.

I know we've got a few very vocal people saying nothing should be done. Trust that on the other side I've heard from a number of very vocal people saying this is entirely broken.

The server is going to be rebooted tonight at 5 to apply some security fixes. The outage should be as short as 15 minutes.

It's uptime this go around is 288 days.

In closing on this topic for the evening, I have to say that I've heard some really great ideas about how to handle this problem in this thread, and I'd like to hear more.

I've got no concerns using another mod. You'll still have to download the original mod from the server and the appropriate team will still get the credit. People do this to Druids RPG all the time.

I wouldn't spend a lot of time trying to "make weapons". There's plenty of them in these two base sets.

The problem (at least with ChaosUT) is that they want different PlayerPawns, and the RPG effects cant be applied to their weapons.

This is where my experience in trying to code it up ends.

Elite wrote:

when I first began to play here I already had a few years of practice and I am not sure but I believe the link turret and goliath were nurfed due to observations on me . Yes I was still a low level, but not many knew how experienced I was yet.

I don't want this thread to go too far off course, but I want the link turret back. If anyone can figure out a sane way to do this. I'm all ears. I freaking love the thing.

Elite, I know you may think this sounds like this is about a small group of individuals that are highly skilled (yourself included), but it's really not.

I hadn't a clue how wicked awesome an infinite link gun was until I watched you and hobo go nuts with them. I hadn't a clue that I could with my adren master run berzerk and a trip damage, or a bolt, or with invuln pretty much the entire game by using an infinite link gun.

I think I'd actually earn less exp with a vorpal link gun because it would pop the monsters for 1 xp and then run out of ammo.

I now know I can, and I've no doubt that I'd be trying to spawn this more common weapon constantly vs trying to spawn a vorpal. Now multiply that by 15 players and there's not enough room in the maximum packet size for unreal to broadcast all the traffic.

I've got no doubt in my mind that an infinite link is far and away superior to any vorpal weapon you can spawn. I as an AM can do crazy more with this weapon than I suspect an engineer or a medic can and I'm sure the weapons master is in the same boat.

MrAndrew wrote:

Instead, you could make it self-resupplying (a bit, about 1-3 ammo in a sec), so player could have something to shoot. And when player uses his weapon for right purposes(healing, shielding, repairing) the ammo won't consume or will resupply a lot

This idea has lots of potential. Vote item added for this.

Well, here's the issues, plain and simple.

Issue 1. The infinite link gun is way too good. This is the heart of the problem.: Regardless of class, the link gun does the most damage per second. If you can get an infinite model in any way, it dramatically affects your ability to score positively, and it dramatically affects everyone else's ability to earn exp.

I don't really care if it's an engineer, a weapons master, or someone that hasn't even picked a class.

You pile an additional weapon speed of 50 on top of that and then run berzerk and it's just flat out unhinged.

Also, every single fire of that weapon has to be transmitted to every player on the server. We dropped weapon speed down from 80 to 50 many years ago for this very reason.

I'm not horribly concerned about these weapons overly much at the 50 weapon speed, but if you can berzerk them, the results are dramatic.

The simple fact of the matter is that the infinity portion of the link gun has got to go. The class is irrelevant to this issue.
Issue 2: The engineer's most powerful weapon should not be their link gun.: The engineer was supposed to build a base with some sort of turret or vehicle that they could sit in and plug the baddies. Mobility was never the goal. The Link gun was never supposed to be the best weapon in their arsenal. The fact that there is tremendous argument on this point indicates that the point of playing this class is a failure. Apparently we need to come up with new motivations to be an engineer.
Issue 3: The medic's most powerful ability should not be their infinite weapon.: The Monster Master was not even going to be a medic. The addition was to keep your all-to-weak pets alive. I was flat stunned when people wanted to play this class as a support class for everyone else and did not care about having monsters. We added the EXP element to the healing weapons to bolster this team spirit.

The class was never intended to be used as a full out attacking role, but it was also not intended to be in a full support role. Again, the fact that there is tremendous argument on this point indicates that the point of playing this class is a failure. We need new reasons to be a medic and monster master.
Issue 4: These classes are fun to play as they are: Now that doesn't indicate that either of these classes aren't fun to play. In fact they may be a better fit in their current role under the Subclasses that Szlat wants to introduce. I'd say that some hybrid between the weapons master and each of these classes is what most people want to play. You wont feel nerfed if we do it this way, however you will have a reduced engineer or reduced monster master/medic role in exchange for your weapon abilities.
Issue 5: The sky is falling. The world is ending.: If anyone regardless of skill can regularly obtain a third of a 10k level during a single 16 wave game, we will be changing it. It's not cheating on your part, but it is unbalanced, and it is unfair to the other players for me to leave it in this state.

edman007 wrote:

TheDruidXpawX wrote:

I wouldn't dream of taking away the ability to heal yourself. It may just look a bit different.
Well it sounds like you are doing that, <snip>

We are not. The medic requires the ability to self heal.