Sergeant Kelly's Weapon Pack V9

[Azarael]

We do actually have a rule against more than 3 quotes in a post, but given that the discussion is going to have to follow that format I'm going to ignore it for now. I'll try not to use too many quotes in my own posts, as it's hella intimidating for other readers.

I agree that there did not appear to be any group that was interested in balance on your forums, but I did point out that your forum makeup was biased for certain reasons (mostly to do with the balance making BW more singleplayer-oriented). Threads on adding new content to the game have thousands of posts, while the various balance mods have significantly less despite the horrible balance of the game, and that's a clear indication that the makeup of the forum community is biased towards those people who don't care about balance due to playing singleplayer, or due to having a vested interest in abusing it (ABA, specifically with respect to the G5.) Before you state that people naturally become more excited about new content than balance, this isn't true. On forums I frequent, I see more posts on balance than on new content, with dedicated sections of the forums and rules for discussion when talking about balance (see http://forums.relicnews.com for this) and there are a good number of people who tell the developers to stop releasing new content until the existing content has been balanced. I must admit I felt this way at first when I heard the announcement of V25.

It may not be my cross to bear as you say, but it's still frustrating to see the principle unrecognised, especially when the players directly suffer from mistakes that have been made in the form of reduced interest and playercounts. I could not force our players to post on a foreign board, as many of them are rather quiet when it comes to forums I'm afraid. It tends to be that way among the online players - they get their interaction and discussion while they're in the game, so they're not that interested in boards. We're actually ranked #5 Unreal Tournament 2004 server in the world at the moment according to GameTracker, but our forums as you have noticed are even less active than yours are.

I understand that part of your goal is to further your skills and to give people something they'll enjoy while you're at it - and nothing I wanted you to do would have involved any major work on your part, which is why I asked. While things cannot be perfectly balanced, with the default balance of V9 it feels as though there wasn't really any attempt made.

I'm well aware that the community reported my posts - Kelly told me this a while ago. However, a moderator isn't an extension of the community, it is an entity who is supposed to think for himself. If moderators are there simply to act as an avatar of the community's wishes, then why not make everyone a moderator? To be honest, there was no way I was going to win there - having seen my attempts at discussion fail due to lack of rules to promote discussion, I assumed this was the kind of board where anything goes and so I brought out the attacks, which I still feel were grounded in truth. Had I realised that the forum was based on placating the existing community at all costs, I would not have bothered posting at all in the first place and we'd have all saved ourselves a lot of time and effort.

Regarding opinions: It is impossible to prove an opinion, and as you say, it is about convincing people. However, the primary influence in this should be logic and argument - not the number of people posting to agree with an opinion. There's a reason we (and major forums) have a rule against posting contentless posts such as "I agree" or "X is fine" - because the number of people who support a given position is not indicative of the veracity of that position. Example - a forum on UFOs. If I were to sign up to a forum on UFOs and post a supported opinion on why UFOs are not of alien origin etc, another member of that forum posts a supported opinion on why UFOs ARE of alien origin, and seven people from that board post vague messages of support for the opinion of the UFO supporter, should the opinion of the UFO supporter be held in greater esteem than it would be otherwise because indigenous members of that board have posted in support?

Regarding time and patience to support an opinion: It takes me a few minutes to write out a post with a supported opinion - the time factor is not particularly relevant. As far as patience goes... those without patience have no real place on a discussion forum. If one doesn't have the patience for a full discussion, one should leave oneself as a spectator and allow those who do to discuss. Such is what is happening on this board at the moment.

Regarding the hypothetical of RuneStorm balancing V25: I concede that from RuneStorm's perspective, performing in-house balance would have been a significant problem for an old project. This is more a hypothetical "what-if" scenario, and the real point is that those who casually play the game tend to be satisfied with anything in the end, especially if, once they're played it, they can appeciate that it is actually better than it was before. I never expected RS to perform a full rebalancing of the mod - UT2004 is now nearly 11 years old - however, I would have appreciated a clear admission from the community that the mod is unbalanced.

Regarding "complaint and complaint and complaint about balance": You've misunderstood me. I refer to the apparent objection by the community to efforts to balance the mod. I do not refer to complaints that the mod isn't balanced, which as you have rightly pointed out rarely exist on BWC.

Regarding your own personal opinion on balancing the weapons: I agree that not being able to benefit from your work is a strong demotivator, especially when you are working for free. It's a difficult position for you - had balance happened earlier, the reward for you would have been increased notoriety within the community - praise is always good, and I assure you that if BW and your pack together had come out balanced I would have nothing but the most lavish praise for both. Regarding consistency in the mod, your hands are sadly tied here. This is mostly RuneStorm's fault.

EDIT: I must add here that most of your weapons actually outpower RuneStorm's. I forgot to mention this the first time around. The CYLO MK1 primary fire is a good example, as is the M30.

The main reason I'm bringing this up is because one of the posts in the thread about making an unofficial patch stated that if the patch included any balance changes, it would be vetoed because you (plural) didn't feel like balancing your weapons. And regarding offline play... in this case, the game is Unreal Tournament 2004. The core game was designed for the online community - excessively so, as this game has a high skill cap and can be extremely frustrating in competitive play. If players desired a progression of weapons for themselves, it would have been easier to balance for the online players and thus spread the mod more by catering to the taste of the admittedly picky online bastards in comparison to the offline players, and allow the offline players who have found the mod, who generally have more patience and are more knowledgeable when it comes to modding the game than the average online player, to create their own mods and spread them if necessary. Offline players tend not to be demotivated as badly by, or even notice, poor balance, because they have the ability to change the difficulty level of the enemies they face to compensate for it if necessary, or they can be the only ones able to use the weapons.

I don't find it accurate to state that I have no respect for offline players. If someone tells me they play games offline, there could be a multitude of valid reasons. Lack of internet, lack of interest in competition or fear of rebuttal for lack of skill by other players (the latter for me has been a problem in many RTS matchmaking systems). However, when balance is discussed in a gaming context, it refers almost universally to the problems caused by imbalance online. Offline, bots do not understand balance and will not prefer one weapon over the other or abuse a broken tactic unless specifically coded to do so - UT2004 bots exhibit a weapon slot preference depending on what was set in the .upl. Online, players are very happy to do so - ABA have built a server based on G5 abuse - and this can cause a real destruction of enjoyment for players who simply want to use the weapons they like without worrying that they are underpowered or overpowered. An underpowered weapon may as well not exist, and is wasted time by the developer. And an overpowered weapon will be seen in every match, consistently, over and over until it's completely lost its cool factor, everyone hates it and will continue to hate it should it become balanced in line with the other weapons simply because of the memory of what it once was. This is why balance is God in successful online games.

I do acknowledge the existence of PMs asking about how to balance your weapons previously, and in light of those, my opinion of you at the time was of a reasonable person who was interested in the gameplay and balance of the weapons, but either not present enough to enforce this or being overruled by a superior. It was nice to be asked.

Regarding my comment about the server being dependent upon your pack: You got me, I strawmanned. The server doesn't require the existence of your weapons per se in order to continue to exist, but if the other servers are running the weapons which do work and add something to the game and we aren't, we will lose traffic for this reason. Given that traffic isn't great for a mod in 2011 at the best of times, it's something I will personally try to avoid unless given no other recourse. I am quite surprised that this course of action was chosen, as my server is yet another showcase for your weapons, and we state the truth when asked of their origin.

Regarding obscuring of existing weapons: I don't understand why you would go ahead and make something without considering the impact of it on the game. Sure, making stuff is fun, but it's all the more better if you just put a little bit of thought into how what you're making completes the game, and then you're not forced to make it more powerful than it needs to be, and to push another weapon (or in the case of the AH-104, an entire class of weapons) out of the game in order to showcase it. Things like the CYLO, Bulldog (offline functionality), LS-14, SKAS-12, G28 etc contribute to the game in a significant fashion, and it would have been far better if all of your weapons had been designed in that way. There's a guy on Epic Games Forums called UT2004Addict who is pretty much the inverse, in that he cannot model or texture but the vehicles he codes have incredibly different and complex functionality which adds to the game immensely. Unfortunately, since he cannot model or texture, the majority of people are not interested in the great ideas he brings to life, and like you, he does it in the name of fun.

Regarding permissions to use weapons: I will not, and will never in the future, apologise or feel any guilt whatsoever for how I have behaved towards any of the named parties. Had the composition of the forum been less slanted towards a certain viewpoint due to the current composition of the Ballistic Weapons mod as favouring offline players, or had the moderation on the forum been unbiased and conducive of discussion rather than voting, I would not have had to resort to insults or similar. I held my patience for a long time as Kelly moderated me for things that others had done, or for "backseat moderating" when he had failed to address an issue, such as happened in the beta forums. I don't feel apologetic in the slightest and I never will, and since this whole grievance has stemmed from improper moderation of the RuneStorm forums I do not hold myself to blame at all.

Sorry, but that is just how it is for me. I've been at the limit of my patience so many times, both on MSN, in game and on the BWC forums. I held it until the breaking point. I can't feel any regret whatsoever.

Regarding elitism and game companies: You are not professional gaming companies. Thus, as aforesaid, I made no requests of you which were unreasonable. I consider unreasonable requests to have been completely modifying the functionality of a weapon to something totally different, significantly modifying models or significantly modifying texture assets. I asked for the following:

- Balance
- Aimed fire animations
- Better ironsights
- Fixes to online functionality

Of those, I hoped you would feel obliged to implement the last one, I strongly pushed for the first, and the second and third were optional, since I can do those myself and they would only be relevant to my pack and not yours, although I did get irritated at being told the M50 had usable ironsights. I don't feel I made excessive requests, and this is coming from someone who rebalanced the entire mod and added various other features onto it. I was, in fact, willing to balance it for you had you been willing to accept this as standardised balance, but then we go back to the consistency with RuneStorm's weapons and it turns out that it ultimately goes all the way back to RuneStorm failing to balance their weapons when they had the chance.

Of reasons for not balancing: You don't have to give any reasons whatsoever. Similarly, I do not have to respond to any of your posts past this point. However, I will continue to, because otherwise I would look like an absolute bloody fool. I agree with failing to give reasons where the privacy or health of a party is in jeopardy as a result of this (it's how governments work) but when reasons can be given and are not because a party doesn't want to admit the true motivation behind something and prove the opponent correct, I can't respect that. It happened multiple times and there is nothing, I repeat, nothing that I find more annoying than a party completely dismissing a discussion with one or two lines. The most recent incident was the camouflage discussion - the immediate response was "We've had a discussion and we're keeping it in". That kind of conduct is completely opaque and very annoying. You've since done the above, and thus I am satisfied - your statement that you did not wish to balance the mod because RuneStorm failed to balance their weapons is valid, but as previously stated, your weapons for the most part dramatically outpower RuneStorm's, with a significant number of them falling into the superweapon class or being superpowered versions of standard weapons with minor tweaks or additional firemodes. The camo system further accentuates this by giving a random chance of an even MORE powerful weapon.

Regarding the lack of balance in UT2004 mods: You may have misunderstood me. CarBall is balanced and skill-oriented with a high skillcap. It is the only example of a UT2004 mod which is so in its default incarnation. And once again, this argument is somewhat dated. I first encountered this mod in its 1.7 edition, and I posted along with Kaboodles on the BWCommunity boards to convince them to balance the mod. As far as I'm concerned, this discussion dates all the way back to that. Had the mod been balanced, it could have been like Team ArenaMaster became - TDM and DM were dropped in favour of it. There was a point where no populated BW servers existed at all back in 2009 - this was the original reason I created my own, which my friends at the time wouldn't play because of, you guessed it, gameplay and balance issues. When I ran V21, some of the people who are quite happily playing the mod in BallisticPro V55 outright refused to play V21 default, and I hold that as evidence that the path I chose was right and that this mod could have done far better than it did.

Of rebalancing maps: Almost all of the maps in question were created by people who no longer play the game, and the nature of the improvements was such that I, and the other mappers, put significantly more work into the maps than it took to create them. As far as we're concerned, we inherit that major stake by virtue of a) the mapper's absence and b) the dramatic amount of work we put in in comparison to the original mapper - some of these maps are complete remakes of maps which originally were UT99 standard into a state that is acceptable for UT2004, in terms of both gameplay and graphics.

On content crediting: If you're happy with it that way, then so be it. Please bear in mind that I offered to help in various cases, even if it was minor things such as bug testing, correcting death messages, information on how to fix bugs, general Q/A and advice and in the end I was willing to start modelling for you until it was made clear that this wasn't appreciated to the degree in which proper moderation of the boards would start. Quite sad, as I was quite enjoying that.

Regarding distribution of coding time: This doesn't actually address my point. While it may be true that he was waiting for your models, as well I knew because he'd told me many a time and I was watching for your login on RuneStorm's boards in anticipation of a release, the fact of the matter is at that time there was coding work to be done, specifically fixing the online functionality. Online compatibility, regardless of whether the creator plays online or not, is expected. When coding the functionality for some of my vehicles (personal use and occasionally used by LDG admins on the server) I made sure to test them on a local dedicated server and code them with online in mind, like many other coders before me have done. It's simply what is done, I don't really understand how to put it any other way.

Regarding my statement about default BW being unplayable: It certainly was unplayable in V21 unless you set the accuracy scale down, because of 0.8 second ironsights on every weapon, let alone the other gameplay and balance issues. Originally, BallisticPro existed only to introduce sane ironsighting speeds to every weapon, but it became apparent that even with the ironsights decreasing the power of hipfire weapons such as the G5, HvC Lightning Gun and flamethrower, there were still balance issues, and many of them existed between weapons which were previously not viable in any way because of the ironsight issue. The match we played a while ago against ABA in which their members used almost exclusively G5, with one member having 88% of his kills with this one weapon while being incapable of making kills with others is all the proof I need to back up my statements. It's not playable online without major frustration in its default form. Offline, maybe so, as you can face monsters or opponents set below your skill level, which is why offline play doesn't interest balancers.

Sorry, I was under the impression you were better than me. I don't know how I could have ever came to that conclusion.

Come on. If you want to keep it as civil as possible I'm all for it, but unless I explicitly said that, that's just a complete assumption. I do not know enough about you to make any form of judgement as encompassing as that. I'd rather be having this discussion with you than with any of the other moderators of BWC.

Regarding trolling: I believed in good faith my statements were true, otherwise I would not have made them. I do not troll - everything I state is to accomplish an intended goal, and if other people wish to jump on the tone of a particular statement then that is their prerogative.

Regarding the post in which I imitate Sarge (the user): This was in response to a discussion with Kelly on MSN, in which Kelly said that Sarge's post at the end of the ABA thread was not spam. He said that "he expressed appreciation that the thread was over, and thanks to the moderator for ending it." I'm sorry, but on any reasonably moderated forum this would be called spam, and it might even be another warning for kissing up to moderators. The thread was done with when Kelly made his own post, and "so its all sorted now? good job kelly " added absolutely jack all to the thread. I'm extremely annoyed at that example of how your guys are incapable of proper moderation, and as such any insinuations that I conducted myself improperly at any point are meaningless given that the standards of moderation on your forum are terrible.

Bear in mind that I was moderated for telling Blade Sword in beta discussions that "I wish you'd post in the correct thread" because he'd posted a statement on balance in the wrong thread in order to protect himself against me posting again as I'd already been moderated (selectively) for posting a balance comment in the bug reports thread in response to him previously and suddenly it seems quite a lot more justified. I have admin powers on this server, and last we checked, we're the 5th most populated server in the world. I know what should be banned for and what shouldn't be and it's why I'm still in the post and why our server still has people who play on it. Corruption will either kill a population or reduce it to sycophants - and the latter is what happened at BWC.

So in short, I was told that Sarge's conduct was reasonable and thus I sought to imitate it completely. I was hoping you'd take action so I could then point out the hypocrisy in a way which would have been difficult for even your moderators to contravene. Unfortunately, they didn't take the overt bait but I see they still screen captured it for use later, when it would not provide such a difficult conundrum to wiggle out of.

Regarding our forum members: As aforesaid, this board isn't like BWC - it is not composed of people who are devoted to me, you, anything I represent (BallisticPro) or anything you represent (RuneStorm, Ballistic and BWBP9), unlike BW which is based around RuneStorm and the current balance / state of BW, and in turn they are granted no special dispensation from moderators where others would be moderated. I would clearly like to note the lack of people chiming in to make nasty comments about you, such as "BURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRN!" and implications that I posted on ModDB because Kelly had "porked my sister." Indeed, WebAdmin reveals that people are quite impressed with you - let's just say that I do not encounter many intelligent opponents, and most people will retreat at the first wall of text. There are some real black spots on this forum, but when things become serious our moderation becomes serious, and that's the difference between how we work and how BWC works. Anyone who posts here will either not get involved with our discussion directly while posting their opinion on some of the issues we've touched upon, as Jate has, or will make an unbiased comment. I only post if there's something to gain, and in this case the discussion is ongoing not because we're trying to convince each other, but because there are people here who are publicly watching, and they're the people we wish to influence.

Again, anyone who wishes to post, and can bear reading these walls of text, feel free, whichever side you support. As aforesaid, if three players of the BW server post recommending that the weapons be removed, this will happen.

[CaptainXavious]

Sorry for not responding sooner, had a busy weekend replacing a ball joint on the van, damn thing was riveted on...

And I understand your three quote limit, normally I would be in full compliance to that and the rest of your rules, but I have a hard time reading and writing a lengthy post of this caliber without something to remind me what the topic at hand was. I will try to keep my posts coherent without excessive quotes, but please bear with me, it may get confusing.

I understand most online players tend to not be interested in forums, but my point still stands that a silent voice does not carry far. I know some (maybe you too, can't remember) will paraphrase or quote what others have said on their servers, and that helps, but it still doesn't represent much of a group.

And I really honestly wasn't going to suggest people naturally get more excited over content than balance, though you have to admit to the uninformed, screenshots generally are pretty eye catching. But your counter point to the point you thought I might bring up as a counterpoint to your previous point seems to suggest that there can be a vocal audience who does say something about balance. And I am sure Relic takes note of what the public suggests, perhaps weighing more the supported opinions over the "Me too's", but I would argue that general consensus still means something to them, regardless if the consensus is for balance or remaining (un)balanced.

I would still argue your request for balance on our part is major work. We would need at least 4 people (I think that's a realistic number) to be playing very often and giving us detailed reports on what needs balance and how that would be achieved. I don't know if you noticed, but actual beta testers that truly understand and perform what is expected of a beta tester is really hard to come by. The best we can hope for is reports on crashes and noticed bugs. I don't know how you expect us to accomplish this without dedicated testers.

And for the record, we designed a lot of our weapons to either be super weapons, or somewhere in between (anti-vehicle ONS type weapons), such as the BFG, the HVC Plasma Cannon, the HMC Photon Cannon, the SKAS Shotgun, the Golden guns, and the SMAT, to name a few.

Moderators in RS are not there to promote "proper" discussion, as it rarely is needed in everyday banter. What we do is make sure the community is happy. We stop inflammatory posts and trolling. We do not baby sit discussions to make sure people discuss properly. The human element of the moderator takes effect when determining what is personal attacks, what is utter spam, what is worth a warning, what warrants a ban.

I don't see how making attacks was a good idea in any event. Have you actually seen precedence for attacks having any effect on either our forum or any other forum? Besides, you had a problem with a specific moderator, and instead of discussing it with a higher-up or at least another moderator, you brought it public, where adverse reactions to generally liked moderators would logically cause you to be villianized.

As for the democracy thing, you misunderstand me. I am not stating that votes on one side or another discusses anything. But once the opinions have been supported and discussed at great length, what more is there to do but pick an opinion you agree with? A vote of popular opinion is essentially the end result of any discussion, regardless of how much actual discussion has been made.

And to your example, I would find it very unusual that the indigenous members wouldn't hold the UFO supporter in greater esteem than the opponent to the idea. Why would they be part of this rather specific topic of a forum if they didn't share a similar opinion of the matter? I don't think posting on a forum specifically to disagree with the general consensus would yield any other result, the odd man out will not hold any credibility to those that disagree with him, and since he is the minority, he has no one to support his credibility.

I don't think you get the time and patience thing. As you may well know, people often are intimidated by post like this. Why is this if not for either the lack of time to read it or the patience to do so? If people are intimidated by a wall of text, they are probably unlikely to post one themselves. Your supported opinions seemed to consist of large walls of text (for the most part) and people were not inclined to reply in turn. I am one of the few that tends to. I still don't really like to though. I guess I'm not really sure what kind of supported opinions you expect if not a rather lengthy one.

I never argued your point that casual players would still enjoy a balanced BW, but how is a bunch of votes in your favor really going to change anything..? It seems to go back to your above point.

Ok, so I misunderstood your complaints. Give me examples still. I see plenty of posts in support of your balance pack, and plenty stating disappointment in our discontinued cooperation.

More Unbalanced stuff: See comment above about super weapons. Though I don't see how CYLO is clearly overpowered over stock. No other weapons have to worry about the horrendous reliability of the CYLO, jamming and erratic fire rate should be a factor in balance that I feel you are not weighing enough, but I still feel balance is more of an opinion than anything else since I've witnessed several balance focused players disagree in certain areas, so I will not argue the validity of your opinion any further.

You may not find my statement accurate, but I seen plenty of personal and community-aimed attacks that seemed to suggest otherwise. But I don't really find your your argument valid. Why would someone concerned with winning like a weapon if they knew it was underpowered unless they liked it because it made kills more challenging or some other reason regarding its underpowered qualities? And for Overpowered weapons... well, if they hate it so much, how can your claim that ABA built a server based on the G5 abuse have any credibility?

And what do you mean I wasn't present enough to enforce balance? I wanted to see my weapons balanced in your pack, not Sgt. Kelly's. I had no intent to force him to do something neither of us wanted for our own pack. I wanted to see your view on my own weapons, while still having my vision of them intact.

For the record, I really would like to see some sort of compromise made to end this disagreement and see my prior wishes fulfilled, but I don't have the power to make this happen.

But I can hardly see why you'd be surprised that insulting the lead designer of the weapon pack would no longer seek cooperation for you, particularly when nothing new actually occurred to spark this attack seemingly out of the blue.

In regards to obscured weapons, I don't see why you would have to use the ones that make other weapons completely redundant. Considering we have a total somewhere around 80 weapons, I'd say we did a damn fine job limiting the inevitable overlap of weapons. And you keep bringing up the AH-104, and while it has no new content save for a really nice texture, you seem really intent on using it in your server or something. I'm not sure. You keep bringing it up, but that is the one weapon out of 33 that you sufficiently support your opinion of it being unbalanced. I find no reason to argue that claim, its your opinion, you have a right to it, but really... if it is that bad, why even argue about it? Just don't use it, you claim it adds nothing to the game, and it adds relatively little to the content pool, what reason do you have to use it? Plenty of people seem to like it and we have no reason that we can agree with to take it out.

By the way, at the time of this writing, it is very late and I am very tired. Please understand this if anything less than civil should be said by me.

Again, I wish we could settle this dispute quickly, fairly, and calmly, but I don't see that happening. But your disputes with a particular moderator should not have been dealt with on the public forums. We have a Private Message system and our emails are in full view. It was something to have been discussed privately, at least initially.

And I still say your requests were largely unreasonable. We don't have extensive experience with online coding, and I hardly think you would have appreciated the Camouflage system being functional in an online setting.

As for your requests, we were all for balance, in your own pack. We were in full support of this. Aimed fire in animations is still planned for v10 as far as I know. Better ironsights? No idea. I think we are largely planning on keeping them consistent with BW. But I don't know. Online functionality is still an area we are trying to learn in.

Next paragraph... We want the camo system in as a way to get more weapons into the game with minor changes here or there without flooding the weapon lists with plenty of overlapping weapons. I am pretty sure this was stated as the purpose behind the camouflage system. But when a developer says something is in, its in. Game developers don't always give their reasons for doing something, most people don't really look much further into it. Hell, any body providing services or goods to the public makes many decisions without giving reasons, but failure to give the reasons extends beyond privacy or proving the opponent correct. I don't even see where that fits in here. And again, many of our weapons were intended to be super weapons.

Meh, dated argument... Getting tired... Back in v21, the RuneStorm guys were living with really sucky unreliable dialup. And we lacked the online player base to perform thorough balance testing. All coming back to online players not speaking up, so naturally they aren't heard.

I'm sorry, but I have to sleep now, I need to wake up in a few hours for work. I will try to pick up on this tomorrow.

[Azarael]

Coming back to this now. It seems I'm going to have to quote more than three times, but I didn't really envision this kind of thread when the rules were written.

A group doesn't need to be represented for a proposition to be discussed fairly without resorting to numbers supporting or opposing.

There could have been a group posting for balance... but there wasn't for one main reason: BW (and its offshoots) aren't a commercial game, so online players don't have that motivation to recoup their losses when they discover that a game they paid for has balance issues - they simply dismiss the mod and don't come back. That, in addition to a poor reception from RS in response to balance requests back in the day, is the reason BWC is composed exclusively of people with a majorly positive opinion about the game. A common whine on commercial game forums is of customers' rights and expectations given that they've paid for a game, and that tends to be what motivates people who wouldn't otherwise bother posting to post.

I can't really speak for Relic's internal affairs too much. All I know is that "me too" posts on Relic are deleted and the poster suspended or banned if it's done too much. Consensus is reached through extensive debate, and those who once supported a particular side of the argument can be convinced otherwise. This is never so if "me too" posts are allowed - the thread just gets bogged down, decent posters get pissed off about being ignored in subsequent posts because there's no rule indicating that posters MUST address previous points as there is in RN, and in the end all that's left is a vote which could be accomplished without forum software. RN pay far more attention to their own balance team in any case, who are all high level players and some of whom were recruited from the community. I've yet to see a middle or low skilled player recruited. RS should still take note of how Relic conduct their forums, because if they expect to be able to have critics moderated until they just give up and maintain a good reputation for more than two minutes they will have another thing coming. They'd better get used to it sooner rather than later.

Regarding it being a major work to balance the game: BWPro is a one-man project tested on a public BW server, and while I'm sure it's not perfectly balanced, it's a hell of a lot more playable online than V25 is. There have been no players whoring a single weapon since V53 came out, which is a good sign, and there are more guns in BW than in V9 as well.

Regarding super weapons: That's tragic, really. XWeapons.MutNoSuperWeapon is a very popular mutator and for good reason.

Moderators in RS are not there to promote "proper" discussion, as it rarely is needed in everyday banter. What we do is make sure the community is happy. We stop inflammatory posts and trolling. We do not baby sit discussions to make sure people discuss properly. The human element of the moderator takes effect when determining what is personal attacks, what is utter spam, what is worth a warning, what warrants a ban.

I don't see how making attacks was a good idea in any event. Have you actually seen precedence for attacks having any effect on either our forum or any other forum? Besides, you had a problem with a specific moderator, and instead of discussing it with a higher-up or at least another moderator, you brought it public, where adverse reactions to generally liked moderators would logically cause you to be villianized.

This speaks for itself. Poor moderating and a terrible lack of understanding of the purpose of a discussion forum. The "human element" of moderating should be absolutely minimal - on your forum moderators don't actually consult with a single set of rules and apply them evenly, they pick and choose who they will be applied to. The moderation style differs dramatically between moderators, and it's pretty much indefensible - pure laziness given the moderator/user ratio of your forum compared to Relic's.

I brought my dispute public because I perceived there to be a clique mentality within the moderation which would result in a private dismissal of any concerns. I never bother doing anything sensitive behind closed doors, I can't stand that kind of crap. Unfortunately, I made a mistake; it turned out that the clique was forum-wide and not just in the moderation. Again, had I known that I was not entering a neutral discussion forum, rather a circle-jerk of RS fanatics, I would not have made a single post in the first place.

Regarding "democracy": Two sides continue attacking until:

a) one side has been refuted
b) everything has been discussed

in a) if one side refutes the points of another side, and the other side cannot attack the refutation, the first side has won. This is why discussion has to be enforced - a common counter to being completely destroyed is to say something utterly irrelevant or repeat an earlier statement which was refuted in order to derail the discussion or irritate the opponent.

in b) the discussion ends without the need for any voting and the developers make up their own minds without being swayed by vote posts. What people individually want means absolutely nothing unless you can be sure that the reasons they want it are relevant and worthy. To do anything else means that you're a slave to a) the money (if commercial) or b) the praise of the many.

And to your example, I would find it very unusual that the indigenous members wouldn't hold the UFO supporter in greater esteem than the opponent to the idea. Why would they be part of this rather specific topic of a forum if they didn't share a similar opinion of the matter? I don't think posting on a forum specifically to disagree with the general consensus would yield any other result, the odd man out will not hold any credibility to those that disagree with him, and since he is the minority, he has no one to support his credibility.

And indeed, this is what would happen. My point was that it is not correct for this to happen - it's population bias and voting again. If a board does not consider the effects of its own makeup on discussions, and allows me-too posts, then that board is inherently biased towards whatever conclusions the majority of the board members support, and as such is intellectually bankrupt.

Regarding the length of posts: A post on a single subject need not be longer than one or two paragraphs. The only reason many of my posts were walls of text is because of the sheer number of things that are broken and needed to be addressed, and to cover all possible bases (a futile effort given that I inevitably had to repeat myself due to me-too dismissal syndrome.) I don't particularly enjoy dealing with posts of this size (2-3 screens) but a couple of paragraphs is expected for a forum. IRC and instant messenger programs are that way for idle chat.

Some people supported my efforts at balance, about three of them. Compared to the number of people active on that forum and posting elsewhere, both Kaboodles and I have very few posts in our threads. Opposition to balance should be clear from the veto in the unofficial patch discussion thread and the lack of people interested enough in balance to actually comment upon it. I seem to remember, in the thread in which Scorpion_SK or someone makes a mod to buff the mines even more by removing the ability to trigger on the person who placed the mine, I stated that the M46 mine was balanced and didn't need buffing because of the sound it makes and the time delay. The magnificent response to this was, and I quote: "So?"

Additionally, when posting in the beta forums, I made a list of things which were bugged, broken or imbalanced and I was told to "stop being obssesive"[sic]. People aren't interested.

Regarding the CYLO: Variable fire rate and jamming do not work online, which results in the CYLO primary dealing outrageous amounts of damage - it actually outdamages the MK2 in the standard build I last used. I had to nerf it significantly. Jamming should not exist in any weapon to begin with - it is inherent randomness, which is always avoided in any form of skilled online play. Nothing is more annoying than losing to something that wasn't your fault, and jamming is an excellent example of this. Realism overruling gameplay again.

You may not find my statement accurate, but I seen plenty of personal and community-aimed attacks that seemed to suggest otherwise. But I don't really find your your argument valid. Why would someone concerned with winning like a weapon if they knew it was underpowered unless they liked it because it made kills more challenging or some other reason regarding its underpowered qualities? And for Overpowered weapons... well, if they hate it so much, how can your claim that ABA built a server based on the G5 abuse have any credibility?

To the first point (underpowered weapons): Most people who use underpowered weapons have a strong attachment to some aspect of it, most likely from the real world (see: M14 in CoD4). The prevalence of the M14 is extremely low otherwise. Most people do not play online games to get some form of challenge, and using an underpowered weapon to dominate is a slight upon the skills of your opponents. Using an underpowered weapon and failing to dominate simply induces a sense of injustice at playing better than an opponent but still losing because of the imbalance. People will play with whatever gives them the best chance of looking good, and that's why eight times out of ten the kill icon on CoD4 death message tickers is for the AK-47, which has a slight edge over all other weapons.

To the second point (overpowered weapons): Those who would actually like to use weapons which are balanced, but are no longer viable once a player pulls out an overpowered weapon, resent the presence of overpowered weapons. See the grenade launcher and martyrdom in CoD4, which are outright banned on many servers and were removed in Promod. Unfortunately there will always be a certain type of player who sucks hard, but still wants to look good - and then you see players who will use nothing but completely broken weapons, accusing anyone who complains of being resentful because they themselves are an inferior player. ABA are an excellent example of this kind of player - in the clan match the entire clan were using G5s or M99s to compensate for a complete lack of aim and movement. They are more than happy to base their entire server around the G5 because that way they don't have to get good, and that's exactly what the kind of player I'll refer to as the lazy noob likes - a weapon which is extremely powerful with a low skill cap.

For the record, I really would like to see some sort of compromise made to end this disagreement and see my prior wishes fulfilled, but I don't have the power to make this happen.

But I can hardly see why you'd be surprised that insulting the lead designer of the weapon pack would no longer seek cooperation for you, particularly when nothing new actually occurred to spark this attack seemingly out of the blue.

Simply stating an opinion which I hadn't had the chance to get out there otherwise. It does make me retch, I must admit, when I see people sucking up so much despite the obvious problems. I don't mind seeing praise for what is done well - I've given it myself in cases - but I do not like people stating things to be awesome and perfect when they're not. These kinds of people overly inflate egos and make it all the more difficult to get valid criticism through.

At that point I wasn't interested in any sort of consequences of my actions, to be fair. I consider an unbalanced release a defective product, and the response a spiteful attack. I gain no profit from your work, nor do I remove any potential profit for you. The only motivation for trying to block my attempts to balance your pack is out of some kind of tit-for-tat exchange, and it sadly fits in keeping with the nature of BWC I've witnessed so far. :/

On obscured weapons: This paragraph is kind of misdirected, because I've already stated that I don't use the obscuring weapons for obvious reasons. I don't expect anything to be done about it - who cares, in the end? I'm simply pointing out that it's not a great strategy from a design perspective to create a more powerful version of an existing weapon unless you intend to replace the original weapon entirely. The AH-104 is the main example I use because it was the one many people noticed, as it's broken - we have a mutator on the server which displays the amount of damage done by a player in addition to pitched hitsounds which also help, and when 95s were popping up from a sidearm accompanied by a very low pitched sound for the shooter, indicating hitting like a truck, the clients raged hard.

On camouflage and online coding: Half-right. The SRS-M2 would have been interesting, but the 600 pretty much supersedes that as a weapon now. As for online coding, I hate to repeat myself but it's expected. Both Epic's source and RuneStorm's source, and most of the tutorials, are written around the client-server model of coding and variable/function replication. It's a multiplayer game, it's expected. Client-server coding constitutes the majority of coding skill in UT2004, as it's possible to make anything work quite easily online without much understanding of the engine, because all variables, functions and classes are accessible on the host machine, hence why the Bulldog, CYLO and A49 don't work online. Some classes don't even exist on the client or the server at runtime and variables have to be passed manually. That's why I can't be impressed much with coding written for singleplayer. If you're going to learn how to code online, fair enough, but you'd have saved yourselves potential rewrites by doing it properly in the first place, so it's wasted effort for you guys.

I would argue, regarding the camo system, of necessity - is it really worth having multiple variants of the same weapon with different functionality? For me, I would have said it was unnecessary and confusing for players to have to remember what particular bonus they're going to get out of a particular weapon, and the random distribution isn't great either. Camo in CoD4 was a nice thing to work for - a reward for headshots etc - and that's its role for me. I understand, however, that implementing camo in this role would be quite a lot of work.

You're not the only one tiring of walls of text, don't worry about that.

[CaptainXavious]

I'm sorry, but I lack the will to continue this debate. My father was just rushed to the hospital in an ambulance Friday in critical condition and I can not continue writing with much concentration on the subject.

I think we both came to the conclusion that we are getting no where and I'll have to leave it at that for now.

[Azarael]

I understand completely. Best of luck to you and your father.

[corinne h]

I don't have any particular horse in this race so to speak but I hope your dad's OK xavious.

[CaptainXavious]

Its much appreciated, guys. He just got out today! But yeah, I still want to depart from this discussion.

[Azarael]

Sure thing.

If anyone should ever happen to want this reopening PM me.