Here's an idea how to improve the Loadout mode, keep the dual wielding fair and balanced and do something about the LG and flamethrower in case RS decides to spit on people's suggestions who have suffered enough from the awful spiked electric dildo of doom that posesses the divine power to dominate gravity

This is not meant to be a serious post, so if I'm writing silly things please don't get angry. I'm not sure if my proposition is good enough, maybe it's just stupid space filler, but I'd like to share it with you...

1. WEAPON SLOTS

[melee weapon slot]
[sidearm slot]
[grenades/special item/2nd sidearm slot]
[primary weapon slot]
[secondary weapon slot]
[tertiary weapon slot]

Yes, I suggest adding another main weapon slot. Two just don't seem fun enough and four is something that just doesn't sound right, while three sounds like... three

2. DUAL SIDEARM WIELDING

If you decide to pick a second sidearm, you have to stick it into the grenade/special item slot. Dual sidearm wielding should be balanced somehow because two pistols... well, two pistols aren't just one pistol I've noticed that many people don't use grenades and mines just because they don't fit their playing style. So they get a chance to get an extra sidearm instead. And vice versa, if you don't want to run around with two pistols, you can pick grenades insted. Grenades are just as great as an extra sidearm. A pain to some, a pleasure to others. But if you don't like them, you are free to pick an extra sidearm instead.

So the second sidearm is balanced: it comes instead of grenades, so you are deprived of an equally effective weapon. You say, it sucks not to be able to have both dual sidearms and grenades? Remember that balance comes first and cool features only after. Also, having grenades/mines as a separate slot means that those who don't use them at all get a disadvantage versus those who are skilled at grenade throwing, since everybody has grenades/mines and there's no opportunity to get something other instead. Offering a second sidearm instead of the grenades makes up for that.

3. DUAL MAIN WEAPON WIELDING

All the SMGs and machine pistols go into the main weapon section. They're too powerful to be sidearms, especially when dually wielded. But still they can be dually wielded.

The idea is simple: if you want to take a second XRS or Fifty-9 for dual wielding, that will occupy another weapon slot. I think it's quite logical: one Fifty-9 occupies one weapon slot and two Fifty-9's occupy two weapon slots. Double firepower for twice as many slots.

BTW, moving all the SMGs and machine pistols to the main weapon section allows you BOTH to dual-wield a couple of pistols and a couple of SMGs without upsetting balance Also this allows to dual-wield an SMG and still keep the grenades, unlike dual pistols.

4. HEAVY WEAPON BALANCE

Any weapons which are considered 'uber', 'heavy' or 'tools of ownage', namely LG & Flamethrower, but not limited to these two, require two main weapon slots. So naturally your overall ammo capacity is reduced, also by picking a heavy weapon you lose the chance to get TWO more tactically flexible guns instead, which is a fair trade.

I'm not sure what exact guns should go into the heavy section, but I could guess that the lesser machineguns and the sniper rifle could still be 'light' weapons since nobody complained about their uberness.

And since you have three main weapon slots instead of two, you can still carry one light weapon along with the heavy one. And don't forget about the sidearms. But hey, since a heavy weapon takes two main weapon slots, you can't carry dual SMG's along, only dual pistols. Though it's quite justified by balance reasons.

I hope that's all. Please don't take that serious

lol...

The only thing you have said here will make any changes.

The extra weapon slot and the Heavy Weapons taking 2 slots.

You can configure the rest in the Loadout Options!

I actually like this idea.

Although it's not terribly different than my current loadout:

Melee: [Grenades/Melee]
Sidearms: [Handguns/SMGs]
Grenades: [Grenades/Explosives/Handguns/Melee]
Primary: [Everything]
Secondary: [Everything]

Obviuosly the primary and secondary slots could be altered to fit your tastes, but it's not too far from your idea.

I like the idea of your additional slot and the proposal to make some guns take 2 slots. I think how you can determine which take up 2 slots would be best determined with another 'slot' labelled super weapons and just choose which guns as normal, but the super weapon 'slot' isn't one of the slots to select from, it just categorizes some weapons.

In all seriousness, I'd quite like to see an RPG type loadout, where different weapons take up different amounts of space. So you have a certain number of slots and heavy weapons take up say, 4, main weapons 3, most other weapons 2 and grenades and ammo 1.You could have perhaps 12 to 20 slots.

Anyway, sorry for ruining your post with a serious suggestion

Well what's the rest? My post is all about the two things that will make some changes that you've noted. The rest is just some framework to make the idea look whole.

BTW, I'd like to see the weapons separated into sidearms and main weapons obligatory, placing an SMG into the sidearm class is sure to ruin the balance.

The idea about heavy weapons taking two slots is the only remedy I was able to make up to put an end to complaints about LG and Flamethrower as far as Loadout is concerned, but I'd rather have those rebalanced instead


No sooner than RS make a shop with an elf trader who sells the guns in the middle of a fierce deathmatch. Oh yes, there's no use making an RPG-styled inventory until we get a full-blown character leveling system and some perks to choose from. Of course, hunger, sleep and fatigue should be in.

P.S. I wasn't able to figure how to add a third main weapon slot in the options. So it must be a 'new' idea too. Which is probably two years old and has been suggested many times.

I kinda like the idea of the Killing Floor weapon selection system, where each weapon has a specified weight. You can hold only X lbs of weaponry, so you choose your loadout by selecting a guns, where the total weight must be less than X.

The menu could work in such a way that you choose your first weapon, your total weight is updated, then you choose a second weapon, etc. As your weight gets high, the heavier guns that are too heavy too add to your inventory grey out and cannot be selected. This would allow a person to carry a half dozen pistols, or just a lightning gun and a pistol, for example.

This would also help encourage people to use smaller weapons more and not just spam flame or the infamous, but awsome, lightining gun. After all, inductors are not light. A single inductor capable of producing even just a centi-Farad is quite heavy (Don't drop it on your toes). Also, carrying a 10-gallon propane tank on your back would probably weigh down any soldier so much that a sidearm might not even be available to accompany a flamer.

While wer're on this line of thought, why not add a seperate mutator aside from loadout where you spawn with 2 or 3 weapons and they are handled Halo style. You can hold only 2 or 3 weapons, and need to swap a weapon with ones you find on the ground.

Looks like time for thread necromancy.

A big bump to this, since this wasn't much discussed and even less criticized.

In a nutshell: one slot for melee, one slot for sidearms, one slot for grenades, three slots for bigger guns; all the guns are split into classes: pistols, SMGs, shotguns, rifles, energy rifles, heavy weapons; you can't have more than one of each class simultaneously, with SMGs and pistols being the only exception to the rule; the classes are fully configurable though; if you want to balance the superweapons in loadout, you can assign LG or something of the kind to take two slots; you can choose a second sidearm instead of the grenades/explosives, this is meant as a kind of compensation for those who don't use grenades, or as a kind of penalty to those who excel at dual-wielding of pistols, or as a sort of limitation for those who are way too skilled with grenades - no other way to choose a second pistol; however this is not the rule for the SMGs, which are bigger guns by default, so you can pick two of the same kind in two different slots for bigger guns (see above).

The best three features of this are: 1. possibility to make a gun occupy two slots for balance reasons 2. possibility to pick a second sidearm for dual-wielding without a need to replace a bigger gun, but rather as an alternative to the grenades, which is better in terms of balance 3. an extra weapon slot much asked for before.

So a part of what your asking is just to have it so that in loadout to have an option (it must be an option) to not be able pick up dropped weapons? Or is it that a picked up weapon will kick out a current weapon so that your only able to hold so many weapons namely 5?

And because it says so in the title...

*Ugly Pants thwacks Baklajan... really hard *

Well, I didn't directly ask for that, but I guess there could be such an option. What I'm asking for primarily concerns the initial stuff you get on every spawn. What guns you collect after - that solely depends on your skill and luck. However, this idea of yours sounds good. Sometimes it would be fun to play with such a limit.

Two-slot items and a second sidearm replacing the grenades are just a means to balance the initial loadout, however it could work with a strictly limited inventory as well.

Indeed it would be fun.

But why such a fuss over what you start off with?

Well, I guess people should begin the game with equal opportunities.

True enough, but I'm very very sure you can setup Loadout so thats its equal for all, all by yourself.

I don't quite get your point. If I'm playing on a server and pick just a couple of SMGs and my opponents spawns with a LG and a G5, I'll have poor chances against him in areas with few obstacles and hiding places. That is less likely to happen if he's limited to only one heavy weapon. Just as well, on certain maps a player with a lot of light weaponry (say a Fifty-9, an XRS-10 and a shotgun) will easily defeat his heavily armed adversaries (G5 and flamethrower suck on outdoor maps with a lot of obstacles).

So if everybody is forced by the circumstances to pick only heavy guns or only shotguns or only SMGs, the game gets dull. Also I don't like the idea of picking LG every time just because the rest of the players run with it, and without it I'll be in a disadvantageous position.

If the weapons are split into classes and you can't have more than one type of each weapon, the above mentioned chances are balanced. Well, you are still free not to have any heavy weapons at all (if you're a light weapons expert), but at least your loadout is bound to be functionally diverse. That should help to establish balance on maps where weapons of a certain type of functionality dominate the rest of the arsenal.

Generally speaking, a guy which spawns with a LG and a shotgun all the time won't be much trouble to a guy who spawns with an assault rifle, a skrith rifle and an SMG. If you still don't get the idea, please skim through the initial post once again.

Well thats the whole reason Loadout is Loadout. If you really try to make it balanced, well the only way of doing that is when its for teams so that Team A and B have the loadout's weapons chosen before the game (in the config menu for loadout not the ingame one) then having said chosen weapons being more or less very limited and such, like xk2 and that XRS machine pistol for something and maybe the pistol (orginal) and XRS Pistol and that would be for all like the categories.


Or you just have Advanced loadout (couldn't think of a better name) that would either me an extension of Loadout as in another Mut (which would be kinda pointless) or just an option that adds more detailed configurations to loadout (that'd be better). In this Advanced Loadout, you'd have (reminds me of my old idea for ladout) either those categories but expanded, like Rifles, Shotguns, (i don't know if there should be a energy slot since we have very little energy weapons) MachineGuns, Heavy Weapons (like G5 flamethrower, i'm not too sure how this one would work), Submachine guns, SuperWeapons (maybe) ,Pistols, Meele and grenades and explosoves slot. And say your allowed to have ingame a total of 5 slots ((category= slots) or maybe the devs can make it choosable between 1 and maybe 7).
You could say swap said slots for other slots, say you want to just have 2 rifle slots (rifles are like assault rifles and the like), a grenade slot and a super weapon slot. Or say you only just want 2 rifles and a MachineGun slot, then it do that. You choose that out of game in the Advanced Loadout menu (i think separating Loadout and Advanced Loadout might be a good idea) and everyone has to choose those certain weapons in those slots.
And you WOULDN'T be able to put a assault rifle into the MG category.

Though in these slots you CAN (like loadout does now) select which weapons to have in it, say in the MachineGun slot you only want that 50 cal MG, well just de-select the other MG and blamo, there you have it.

Option to not be able to pick up dropped weapons.
Options to have currently held weapons kicked out when you pick up another weapon of its same type so that your always holding 5 or however many slots there were.

Their should possibly be a team option, which namely doubles what you already have (mentioned above which is sorta like loadout weapon menu layout), so you have Red Team and Blue Team (maybe 4 for Gold and green team?), and then you could just choose weapons for each side that balance out with minimal select-ability

Their should be an option to allow changing weapons in slots to others (like if you don't consider the minigun a Superweapon and consider it a machine gun) (again not to sure on this one).

Namely all this does is that it makes sure that everyone has the same type of weapons in each of their selection in that ingame menu. and just makes it (in my opinion) much easier for any one to make a loadout selection without having to switch things over and around (like currently) and in that system, you could bloody have a Flamethower in the meele slot!

I think you're just making things too complex, basically you're saying what I want to say, but in other words.


Didn't I say that naturally all the rifles belong to the rifle class, heavy weapons to the heavy class, etc.? Well, you could stick the minigun into the melee class, but that's just not supposed to happen. Any server admin, provided he's not insane, will keep the rifles in the rifle class, etc.

I don't see much reason for having two rifle slots or two shotgun slots. Picking a number of slots out of a range of different types can end up in everybody running around with LGs and miniguns again. I think everything could be made much simpler - 3 slots for melee, sidearm and explosives + 3 slots for bigger guns. As long as you can only pick one gun of each class (classes being more numerous than actual slots, like what you suggest), your arsenal is balanced. Yes, you can sort of get a disadvantage by not picking a heavy weapon, but with some players this will be an advantage. Still you can't pick up three SMGs or rifles, so tactical flexibility of every player is roughly balanced.

You'll have to choose out of Rifles (let's say the Skrith one belongs here as well), Shotguns, SMGs and Heavy Weapons. Out of these four, you can pick only three, one of each type. If you pick a Heavy Weapon which is considered 'super', its backpack takes an additional slot, so you're limited to only 1 extra weapon. Machineguns aren't a separate class, but they're smaller so they only take one slot, allowing for 2 extra weapons.

As for the lesser equipment, that's an independent, self-balanced system. One melee weapon. One sidearm. One extra item like explosives, grenades or second sidearm. No matter what you take for the 'bigger' slots, this part will stay balanced.

I still like my system.

I like one of the above ideas of using what Killing Floor did and did well.

---

My own idea is this:

7 Slots

1. Melee ONLY
2. Sidearm Pistol
3. Grenade
4. Primary Weapon
5. Secondary Weapon
6. Heavy Weapon
7. Extra Grenade

Of course though, I still like the idea of using what KF did.

I think there should be two changes to loadout and thatis it.

1) Configurable number of slots

2) Configure how many slots a particular weapon takes.

All that other baloney is just unneeded words.

Sidearms can already be slapped in with grenades, giving you an option to dual wield. Super weapons can be omitted and from what I read in a different thread, spawned at regular super weapon bases, or alternatively take up an extra slot or two.

The rest is just a matter of selecting what's available for each slot.

And reading what you said earlier:
"...sort of limitation for those who are way too skilled with grenades"
Whats that crap?

You want to penalize somebody for being good through practice and skill?

It also appears that you think some weapons and/or combos are inherently better than others. This too seems like a big steaming pile of crap. You say a person spawned with an AR and SMG or so could easily take out someone with a LG and shotgun?

You seem to be playing a different game than me. Any of these weapons, with enough skill and specialization with their favourite weapon, can take out any one else without much problem. All I use is melee, shotguns and grenades. Period.

I can take out skilled human players without much problem most any time, regardless of what they are equipped with, be it sniper rifles, lightning guns, or G5s.

Let's say so, on certain maps a person packed with heavy weaponry will have an advantage fighting a light-armed opponent, and more rarely - vice versa. I don't believe your words about killing everybody with a shotgun and a bunch of grenades. I've heard lots of such stuff from you, which rather gives me the idea that you don't undertand the difference of tactical value of, say, a shotgun and a flamethrower. Please don't tell me things like 'all of them are balanced in skilled hands'. I'm also inclined to regard this sort of ideas as a kind of steaming crap. Be you Santa Claus or be you God Almighty himself, flamethrower will prevail on 80% of maps. You're just creating myths.


Oh, that's easy. A person who's not good with grenades and doesn't use them is likely to replace them with a second sidearm. But a person who's skilled with grenades chooses them instead of a second sidearm. The rule is simple - either a single sidearm and grenades or dual sidearms and no grenades. That's just a number-of-slots limitation which has nothing to do with skill and practice. In other words, if you suck at tossing grenades, you can replace them with a second sidearm not to waste a whole slot.

I can use shotguns with great proficiency. Flamers on the other hand, I don't use so well. But I do rack up the kills with the M763 regardless of what my opponent is using.

And when I use grenades, you better damn well make sure I don't know where you are (Thats not always going to guarantee safety though). I am skilled with grenades.

I do know the tactical values of weapons. Its just that my tactics involve reckless charging and brutal close range attacks. Those tactics serve me well. I am not lying or exaggerating about this either. And I'm not just talking about killing bots.

And don't you tell me that you can't get kills with any weapon with enough skill and practice. You can do it. It may take varying degrees of practice, but you can do it. This isn't something with balance either. In any game you'll probably find someone using with great efficiency one of the weakest weapons in a game.

My only wish right now is to have the internet connectivity available to actually prove what I say, as I'm sure they probably do sound like exaggerations.



Ah, ok, that makes sense.

Anyways, sorry about sounding like a jerk, my job I got for the summer is rather stressful, my mom kicks me off the internet when I just get on, its all just rather frustrating and I was wrong to take it out by insulting you and your opinions.

So, in other news, lets get back to the topic at hand.
I for one love your idea, at least with more slots, and the option to make some guns take up two slots. The rest I don't know about, need to read over it again some time.

I'd like a Loadout system based on Deus Ex's inventory system. Basically, it's a grid of squares, with each item taking up a certain number of squares. Bigger weapons take up more space, etc.

EDIT: Also, the ability to save loadouts would be nice.

Deus Ex inventory system sounds cool.

But for saving loadouts, you mean the different combinations you use? That could be pretty nice, but in my opinion almost trivial, since it's only 5 different slots and a limited amount of choices to choose from for each slot.

It'd be nice, but kinda trivial.

But what would make it quite a bit more useful is if you can set the state the weapons start in, like the 10mm starting with burst fire and silencer on. Now that would be nice.

No dude, with the Deus Ex inventory system, there won't be any slots at all. It would be a grid of squares, say 4 x 8, with each weapon taking up a certain number of squares. An M50 would require more space than a pistol, while the Minigun with ammo would take up nearly all the space. Just drag and drop items to your grid. Your only limitation would be space and your imagination. You could forgo grenades in favor of more ammo for your guns, or go without a secondary weapon to carry more grenades.

Oh, yeah, gotcha. Didn't think about the possibility that you'd have the combo saving for that system. Silly me.

As for Baklajan's idea, I kinda like that. I can imagine that if there is a way to abuse a weapon, there will be people abusing it in online matches. Something like this could be pretty effective.

Ok, so a Loadout with a configurable number of slots, a weapon dropping option and the possiblity of having a weapon take up multiple slots...
The rest of the 'changes' you listed are already features in BW.

Sounds interesting though.

Sounds like the mutator that we want to take over from loadout in the future.

We have a 'space' (several slots together) and different weapons takeup diffrent amounts of space. The admin can set how much space is available.
The admin can also say which weapons are available and how much space each weapon takes up.
Throw in a droped weapon option.

I also noticed you made a post with 1 line! Good job Baklajan, you're on your way!

Also, in future super weapon will be limited by the skill requirements to get them and/or cost.

Anything else?

Awesome, now thats a loadout i like the sound of




He did. Wow, amazing. Good work B.

different skill requirements for different guns; an option to introduce super weapons as artifacts to add some extra fun and competitiveness, see my previous message

a full-blown inventory system with weapon buying would be so great

P.S. I'm a concept writer, so it's just an unhealthy habit of mine to make loooong posts.

P.P.S. Even if different weapons will have different skill/cost requirements, please nerf AM67 a bit. More recoil to it, it ain't no SMG after all.

Remember the AM67 conspiracy.

... More like the Flaming Flamewar of the century...

God, that was so redundant... >__<