Weilan 1

This post will try to clarify my previous post where i had mixed criticizing the game and offering what i thought was obviously radical/exaggerated suggestions to address what i critiqued... This also addresses this yt vid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0eeAL9UkPc&feature=youtu.be that was posted on this subreddit as well and mentioned my post :D , but i feel it misjudged my intentions and actual expectations. My expectations are pretty low tbh , in that Redduck will only do tweaks to the game and imo small tweaks.



Anyway, here we go with what i consider gameplay limitations and issues, obviously , opinionated : Core gameplay : (Not in a particular order, no suggestions provided so as not to be mixed in and confuse readers)



1.Rounds are not interconnected in anyway.
The only element into it is changing sides after 6 rounds ... Other than that any round might as well have been the first. It's very opinionated , but personally i feel there is 0 progression over the rounds other than the score counter.



2. Loadout is very rigid.
You have 1/2 slots per game per class and only 1 armor loadout and grenade loadout. a : Addressing guns first: On match scale, the effect is rather minimal : after a few rounds enemy team knows almost everyone's loadout obviously , 50% is the minimum if every every member got a kill with it. Shotguns are only once a big surprise in a game. Once you get bitten you are more cautious.. Considering proper teams have a rather rigid class selection and tactics/positions it lowers tactical surprises based on weapon selection. On whole game scale though , the effect is huge : Having a rigid loadout will limit the number of actually used guns per class to 1-2 ... I personally don't find it inspiring to see mp7/desmodus , kraken/ak12 , m40a5/FrF2 almost every game .

b: Armor : There is only one option : Use the best armor . On match level , 0 tactical element . On whole game scale , it just drives your euro meter down, making it simply a grinding mechanic and a frustrating at that.

c: Grenades : It's very rigid , in the past at least , you could have 1 dmg nade , 1 flash nade , 1smoke (2 for pointman class) . Per game tactical selection is non existent and even large scale , you only really had to select whether you wanted m67 dmg nade or mk3a2 . Smokes didn't have selection either , you just wanted the red smoke typically .



3. Gun Balance :
a. Pay2win created huge discrepancy in the past and by the late year of UAVA what really happened is just buff euro and paid guns to hell and just make everything overpowered and in a sense , create balance, since most guns would get a kill on you in less than .4 seconds with an accurate burst. It's not a fun way to create balance , but hey, if the give everyone an instagib then it's balanced.

b. Huge strength discrepancy. For huge periods of time and effectively at all times there existed guns that shadowed everything else. aksu74 Desmodus , Para SA58, XCR kraken , AK 12 , dsr 1. Well , effectively this only created limited to no choice for gun selection. They weren't broken for just a month or two , they were broken for years.

c. Pistols , well, what to say about pistols . you can have 1 per class the whole game. They're of secondary importance except perhaps for F3 class... I haven't put much thought in to this.

d. Armor : There only existed choice for armor with s16 Large Caliber armor and what that created was a mess precisely because you can't change loadout ingame. You want to challenge mid cannon against opponent sniper ? You better have chosen Large Caliber armor for Arms(Joints) and that sticks with you the whole game. Chest s16 Large Caliber armor was absolutely useless , it only tanked 65 Armor piercing snipers while the overwhelming majority of snipers had 68-70 armor piercing.



4. Miscellaneous ingame issues :
a. You can see the enemy teams classes : That gives away very important tactical information. Want to play 2 sniper team ? You won't surprise the eneny, You want to rush 5 man B , you won't surprise them the same way and on and on.

b. Binoculars pin point enemy positions in 3D . That doesn't make sense and almost negates the usability of smokes.

c. Crosshair changes color and shows enemy player names affecting the usability of smokes.

d. Smokes and flashes have already been adjusted so idk how useful they are right now.



5. Lobby and UI :
This has changed so i can't really judge it , but the biggest issues with the old UI was that the game modes and servers and such were very fragmented in different pages . This was especially frustrating in the latest UAVA years when in off peak times you just couldn't find rooms and games and you had to search around in a very slow manner .



6. Netcode :
This has already changed but i hope they limit the lag compensation to sane values. It is problematic because every single player on a game , has a different view of the game and team and enemy player positions by a time duration equal to each enemy player's ping to their own... That can be very significant and just CANNOT be evaded , it's how things are. What can be changed is how lenient it is to laggers and how far in the past it accepts their actions.

A player with 100ping and another with 200 ping can have errors in their view of the game worth of 300ping + 1/server tickrate.

Anyway, what the server sees is a history of every player actions/positions/velocities. It then matches each players history to each other by an offset equal to their ping . This way it effectively judges the actions at around similar real world time +- 1/tickrate.

What this example implementation ignores is that a player might have gone into cover and another out of cover such that in real world they wouldn't see each other , but the 2nd player sees and shoots and hits the first. Now what's the solution? One of the players IS going to be treated unfairly either way, either the guy that that went into cover and died into cover or the player that hits the enemy and his hits don't register. Well , the fairer of the too undeniably is the lower pinger . Did you guess who it is? It could be either one , although , typically dying into cover is remembered by every one .

I have no expert knowledge on the matter so i can't suggest how Redduck should alleviate this issue. They should certainly limit lag compensations so as to not degrade a low pinger's experience by the ridiculous amounts it has been in the past.



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SUGGESTIONS :
First some thoughts about gun balance .

Maybe all guns should be the same or almost the same . that would be extremely fair but ultimately absolutely uninteresting.

Or maybe there should be 10-15 unique guns in the whole game that are painstakingly balanced but never truly balanced. Some guns will have an edge and be preferred and will eventually take up the 1/2 slots of each class most of the time in every single game every single round. It sounds well, but balance will be as i repeat , painstakingly difficult , so the end result will be as it has always been... 1/2 guns being the ultimately preferred choice for each class 90% of the time .

That's why i suggest ingame currency because currency can artificially limit the use of stronger guns . The stronger guns don't need to be super balanced on a fine grained level when there is a single knob (currency cost ) that can limit it's use ingame . Anyway, people don't want this option, because they like AVA for what it is and has been .



Ingame currency or not , ingame variety and unpredictability has to be brought to a new level. It's stale for now.

How should that be achieved? For one , a player should have more slots for guns ingame , ideally , the full owned inventory should be available but in a way limited so that you can't just pick whatever you want any time you want .. That's way too much. So i suggest this middle ground .



1 . There should be a pre-game : where each player chooses the loadout without limit from his inventory for the game and sticks to it. This way, a team is better prepared for their opponents rather than blindly picking a loadout . Obviously , if there is only 1 viable loadout and gun then this isn't gonna create more variety in the games but that's another point.



2. Give 3 slots per class .



3. Have 2 tiers of guns , basic guns are useful enough , accomodate the 1st slot and are not limited in their use in any way. Any of the 3 slots can be filled with the base tier of guns . The stronger tier of guns can only fill the 2nd/3rd slot and it's use ingame is artificially limited either by a raw number of uses for a player or even the whole team or for example a currency or some other mechanic i haven't thought of.



4. have 4 slots for throwables and a resource pool of 4 tokens,for example, or space in the backpack tokens or whatever. Damage grenades cost 2 tokens each flash and smokes cost 1 token. You can have 4 smokes, 2smokes and 2 flashes, 2 dmg nades, 1flash 1smoke 1dmg . The choice is up to the player or the team tactics.



5. There should be more types of armor , with different advantages each . Light weight armor that allows you to run , aim down sights and switch faster but you die more easily . Or balanced armor that can take a beating but you are slower to run , quickswitch and aim, but you have slightly lower recoil and better moveshot. Or 3 armor types that can each give different and distinct perks. 3 should be the absolute maximum number of different armor types. Maybe the armor loadout should be sort of a like a perk itself. Maybe the heavy armor for sniper has a helmet but has the aforementioned disadvantages. GIVE US SOME VARIETY AND CHOICE REDDUCK , PLEEEAAASSEE!



6. Give us Demo Recording and playback like csgo has.

7. Update spectator mode and give tools for casters to showcase the game in the best and more exciting ways .



8. Well , i really got tired of writing this post , i had to put my brain into thinking mode and that wastes brain juice and i can only spend so much juice this time. :D ...

Obviously this is not exhaustive list of suggestions neither is it non negotiable .. It's up for discussion and rebutal obviously... Some of the suggestions can be standalone and some only work in groups -all or nothing - . I only hope that counter arguments are actually arguments based on reasoning and not just generic refusals like "Those suck ", "Those will break the game" etc. TELL ME EXACTLY HOW you think it will break the game... Thank you ...



Have a good day...

Obviously i want AVA to succeed . These suggestions i believe would have made AVA a much richer gameplay experience and more interesting and more enjoyable to play as well as watch.