Knife balance discussion

[bobbobagan]

You should have a cvar that allows us to change back, I think it is unfair that you are having control over the way we run our servers.

[Sly]

You should have a cvar that allows us to change back, I think it is unfair that you are having control over the way we run our servers.

Sounds very reasonable to me.

[phoenixf129]

The answer is simple: don't update.

[Bad King Urgrain]

Don't be absurd. I don't have control over the way anyone runs their server. I only control the game itself. I fix bugs, I add stuff, and I tune balance. If you don't want those things under my control, you can either run an old version or run a different gamemode. Perhaps make one yourself, so you can control 100% of what happens to it.

I'm not going to add cvars that revert fundamental balance changes, any more than I'm going to add cvars that disable new weapons, or cvars that re-enable exploits I've fixed.

[Rectal Exambot]

Worst part of this is 2 of my local servers reverteed the changes.. Now knives insta kill and don't leave DNA after 90 seconds

[phoenixf129]

I don't see the point if reverting updates just because people playing on the server moan. Take my server for instance, it's no vanilla, but it's always on the latest revision (version from svn), unchanged.

I prefer the knife as it is now, the new c4 is sweet, but seems too easy to defuse, 4/5 attempts at random wire snipping worked, the 5th assploded me.
Possibly add a new option on which wire you can choose the wire to be the disarmer, if none chosen, randomise? And possibly decrease the range of explosion when snipped wrong, so people can't abuse this by having a c4 as inno and planting it and snipping - exploding yourself and anyone in immediate vicinity, basically jihad. Maybe reduce to say... The silenced pistol sound range? I can't think of anything relative to gmod ranges.

[Bad King Urgrain]

Perhaps servers will no longer revert after future updates, now that players are getting used to it on other servers, or due to the imbalance it causes.

C4 is relatively easy to defuse if it's set to 45 sec, as shown on the arming interface, because then just one wire is dangerous instead of more. I might make it ramp up to 2/3 boom-wires quicker.

Letting players choose a wire complicates the interface and is going to make it more predictable, not less. Traitors will tend to (subconsciously) pick certain wires etc. Right now the position of bad wires is 100% unpredictable, so every wire is equivalent. Of course it doesn't feel that way when disarming (fun with the human brain), but it's important that it's random in order to keep the balance constant even if you have dumb traitors who would always pick the green wire.

If you plant and snip the C4 as innocent you're a teamkiller, and the karma/points will treat it as such. If you're innocent and someone else snips your C4, well, why did you plant it in the first place if not to teamkill? I have considered reducing the explosion range when wrongly disarmed, but then disarming might end up a win-win. On the other hand, people probably won't like killing themselves like that. Still thinking about that.

[Rectal Exambot]

Once someone put down a C4 while detective, I then guessed wrong codes til everyone died and he got karma banned.....

I lol'd

[Braegh]

If you plant and snip the C4 as innocent you're a teamkiller, and the karma/points will treat it as such. If you're innocent and someone else snips your C4, well, why did you plant it in the first place if not to teamkill? I have considered reducing the explosion range when wrongly disarmed, but then disarming might end up a win-win. On the other hand, people probably won't like killing themselves like that. Still thinking about that.

Once someone put down a C4 while detective, I then guessed wrong codes til everyone died and he got karma banned.....

I lol'd

When someone cuts the wrong wire, causing the C4 to explode, the disarmer could be mentioned in the post-round log. (<disarmer> failed to disarm <planter>'s C4) This will help catch people cutting random wires in an attempt to cause untraceable deaths. (Crediting a failed defuser with all the kills would, IMO, be unreasonable and discourage last-second defuse attempts.)

Having a 5/6 chance of defusing a 45-second C4 (if I understand this post correctly) is quite high and will most likely make the defuser a rarely-bought item again, as well as cause several C4-defusal related deaths. Encouraging longer C4 timers is a good thing, but with the very high defusal rate, you are practically forcing traitors to use longer delays on their C4.

I just thought of a different setup for the C4, not sure if it's viable though:

- C4 with initial timers shorter than say, 60 seconds have 2 defusing wires. Any other C4 has only one.
- Depending on the initial timer settings, C4 can have up to 4 'trapped' wires. These wires cause an instant explosion.
- The remaining wire(s) reduce the timer by a significant amount of time, depending on the initial setting, making a late defusal riskier than an early one.
- Killing the planter will reveal a defusing wire, as it's all you need.

Just as an example (don't take these numbers for granted, obviously), a 45-second C4 might have the 2 defusing wires and 4 time-reducing ones (7 seconds each), where a 90 second one might have the single defusing wire, 1 trapped wire, and 4 time-reducers at 15 seconds each. The 45 second one can be 100% defused if found within 15 seconds of being armed, the 90 second C4 can't be reliably disarmed due to the trapped wire.

[Bad King Urgrain]

Showing failed disarms in the log is indeed on my list.

I know the wire setup currently very strongly encourages longer timers. That is, to a degree, intended. The C4 as a mainstay quickie explosion is something it's turned into, not something it was intended as being. However, I agree that it's too harsh right now, and it will be adjusted so the number of explode-wires will increase more sharply. In exchange I will reduce the explosion range on a failed defuse.

One of the advantages of the binary result (meaning explode or disarm) of wire cutting is that it can never leak information about the traitor-ness of the defusing player. I don't want to re-introduce time loss etc into this.

[bobbobagan]

Don't be absurd. I don't have control over the way anyone runs their server. I only control the game itself. I fix bugs, I add stuff, and I tune balance. If you don't want those things under my control, you can either run an old version or run a different gamemode. Perhaps make one yourself, so you can control 100% of what happens to it.

I'm not going to add cvars that revert fundamental balance changes, any more than I'm going to add cvars that disable new weapons, or cvars that re-enable exploits I've fixed.

I did not mean for you to take offense. This is a discussion on the matter, and I am expressing my opinion & feelings on the matter. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE TTT it just seems a bit strange that you change something semi-major that has been in all previous releases and then not give us the option (via cvar) to change it back.

Somebody suggested I should just not update, well... that is a bit late now.

Do you have archives of previous releases? Or the particular files related to the knife so I can change it back?

[Braegh]

Showing failed disarms in the log is indeed on my list.

I know the wire setup currently very strongly encourages longer timers. That is, to a degree, intended. The C4 as a mainstay quickie explosion is something it's turned into, not something it was intended as being. However, I agree that it's too harsh right now, and it will be adjusted so the number of explode-wires will increase more sharply. In exchange I will reduce the explosion range on a failed defuse.

One of the advantages of the binary result (meaning explode or disarm) of wire cutting is that it can never leak information about the traitor-ness of the defusing player. I don't want to re-introduce time loss etc into this.

There are some maps on which a 'quickie explosion' is a great asset to the traitors, most notably those with traitor checkers. In those situations, C4 is mainly used as area control - put C4 near the natural gathering point and people won't be going there for a while. With the incredibly good chance of defusing a C4, there is little to no reason to leave the area anymore; instead, just look for the C4 and defuse it.

Having the amount of unsafe wires increase sharply will likely result in a small set of 'optimal times', a set of times just past each threshold for the next unsafe wire to be added.

As for the information leak, I had never realized that was a possibility, and I understand that needs to be removed.

What about having 1-2 unsafe wires, and having to cut 2-4 different safe ones depending on the initial timer to successfully defuse? I'm not yet certain how the probabilities would line up, but even in the easiest scenario with 1 unsafe wire and 2 required cuts, there's a respectable 1/3 chance of failure - that's double the current failure rate. Traitors would be able to cut any wire safely, including the otherwise rigged one(s); the note on a corpse could show rigged wires.

It may also be important to note that C4 with timers longer than 5 minutes or so aren't even guaranteed to reach that point. With a 1-minute bomb, you can be fairly sure it will either get disarmed or explode. Anything really long and you can only be certain of that in case you're the only (remaining) traitor, considering your teammates might all go on a killing spree, ending the round before your C4 explodes.

[Bad King Urgrain]

I'm not arguing quick explosions are now disallowed, and I've already stated there should be more risk in defusing short-timer C4s. Not sure what point you're making on that.

Adding more wires is only useful if more fine-grained control over the probabilities is needed. Some degree of stepping would remain, after all there are many more seconds than there are wires to cut. I'm not convinced the stepping, resulting in the existence of optimal times as you call them, is a problem. Perhaps 2 minutes will have the same number of wires as 2.5 minutes. Does that have an actual impact? Is there a downside to traitors using 2 minutes rather than 1:59, for example? Besides, other factors influenced by the timer, such as beep loudness and frequency, are adjusted in a more continuous fashion, so 1:59 is not identical to 1:00.

Considering that the old C4's optimal time is 45 seconds, used by every traitor ever, whatever happens will at least be more interesting than that.

It should be noted that between this version and, say, a few months ago, the C4 has been powered up immensely. The reason is that a few months ago, the C4 had a fairly long-standing bug (then unknown to me) where submitting a wrong disarm code never reduced the timer by more than a second. This meant any C4 was trivial to disarm. Perhaps surprisingly, this didn't completely unbalance the game or prevent all C4 usage (or I'd have noticed the bug sooner).

Making C4 too risky to disarm in all cases just results in innocents always clearing out as soon as they hear one, which is not a desirable outcome from a gameplay perspective. If you set your C4 to 45 sec, you are taking a risk of a disarm if it's found, and you carry some responsibility to keep that C4 hidden or at least untouched. In exchange, it is perhaps at its most effective because it is very easy to guarantee innocents are nearby when it blows up. Tactical tradeoff. Times like 2 and 3 minutes need to be more viable for this to work out, faster unsafe wire increases will help with that.

[Manmax75]

How about, for the knife. Instead of just wounding them if there on 100 hp. How bout we make it one hit kill, HOWEVER. The victim's screen goes red and the sway a little and mabey even some ambient hearbeat noise. They stay like this for 3 seconds before dying. This then allows for the same sort of balancing while the victim won't complain because he might actually get the chance to tell who the traitor was. This concept also adds a bit more realism and also, if the player is like badly wounder, then of course they will die instantly.

[Killroy]

Wow, now we get to remove all form of stealth from the stealthiest kill of them all?

It'd be like pushing someone off a building - they have all the time in the world to say precisely who did it.

[Manmax75]

Well then 2 seconds.

[Rectal Exambot]

Wow, now we get to remove all form of stealth from the stealthiest kill of them all?

It'd be like pushing someone off a building - they have all the time in the world to say precisely who did it.

Its more fun to go AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[Bad King Urgrain]

I should make it automatically go "AAAAAAAARGH" as your last words if you fall to your death while you're not typing anything.

[Killroy]

YES.

[Rectal Exambot]

Perhaps on the first swing the player is silenced for 4 seconds, giving them a chance to fight back, and for the traitor to kill silently