Eitani's Top 5 Personal Complaints of JA

[eiTani]

Perfecting it to the level that which you are explaining to me takes too much time and work that I feel is not truely necessary in these times. Rocket jumping/Strafing does not effect the speed of killing a player as it is an entirely different factor. I'm all for JA being challenging and taking skill to master, but there could be a better method than poking.

 

 

You're being a little unfair here.  First you say x feature sucks, game should change, then you say mods suck.  Okay well if mods suck then why do you want to change the game?  If you think modding is okay though then we don't have a problem, in fact most of your complaints find closure in various mods.  For example poking doesn't really exist in JKG's saber system and the combat is completely different.  Regardless, you're not going to have a massive resurgence of player numbers unless we get a new game.  Getting a new game means getting a licence from EA/Disney and working under their supervision and approval.  They've got another 2 years of milking Battlefront before they try something else.  You're asking for the impossible, sorry to break it to you.

 

*No where in my complaints did I say mods suck. I meant certain mods that aren't used by most people in a MP setting (A.K.A. a useless mod)

 

*JKG <--- Example 1 of mods people don't play

 

*EA/Disney doesn't care about games maintained by 3rd parties (look up SWGEmu and SWGReborn)

[Ping]

Perfecting it to the level that which you are explaining to me takes too much time and work that I feel is not truely necessary in these times.

Not entirely sure, given how popular games with extremely high skill ceilings are nowadays: e.g. Starcraft 2, Dota 2, CS:GO and the rest. Is it necessary to master the mechanics in those games to be able to enjoy playing them? Absolutely not, but the same goes even more so for JKA. You can be playing JKA on an extremely low level and still have a great time (cf. "social" clans), but there are a lot of opportunities for those kinds of people that strive to be the best and that is because of the high skill ceiling. If we agree that poke increases the skill ceiling, then poke is good for competitive play.

Rocket jumping/Strafing does not effect the speed of killing a player as it is an entirely different factor.

The point of bringing up strafe jumping was an argument from analogy. In Quake3 (DM), strafe jumping significantly contributes to your effectiveness as a player because over there, map control is extremely important for winning a match (even if it doesn't win the match on its own) and strafe jumping is extremely important for map control. But strafe jumping is an exploit, yet the community embraced it as part of the game mechanics. Similarly, poking significantly contributes to your effectiveness as a player in JKA because making the best out of your swings, i.e. using swings as efficiently as possible (not just in terms of damage but also in terms of timing, swing choice, combos etc) is extremely important for winning a match (even if the efficiency of your swings doesn't win you the match on its own - you still have to hit people with them!) and poking is important for making your swings efficient (amongst other factors like timing; similarly, strafing is not the only thing there is to map control in q3). Both mechanics are exploits, but just like with strafe, poking has been embraced by the competitive community and removing it from the game now is unimaginable.

 

 

I'm all for JA being challenging and taking skill to master, but there could be a better method than poking.

I agree completely, but since (as I said in my previous post) we cannot all agree on what this better method should be, we should make the best of what we have. And what we have is a game where poking is viable and widespread.

[Futuza]

*No where in my complaints did I say mods suck. I meant certain mods that aren't used by most people in a MP setting (A.K.A. a useless mod)

 

*JKG <--- Example 1 of mods people don't play

 

*EA/Disney doesn't care about games maintained by 3rd parties (look up SWGEmu and SWGReborn)

You said they're useless if they aren't well distributed, which means 99% of all mods are useless.  Excepting server side based mods.  Even MB2 the most popular doesn't have more than 100 people playing it on any given day. So what's your point in all of this?  You aren't going to be able to get modders interested in modding a 10+ year old engine when they could use Unreal4 instead.  The lack of new popular game overhaul mods after the release of the JKA source code should have proven that.  JKA is not going to suddenly burst into popularity, it's a dying game, that's just how it is.  That's why I asked you what you expect us to do about it.   

[Smoo]

Such a tight knit community is sometimes a selling point for people. Some people would prefer playing in smaller groups than with large hordes of players. That's part of the reason why players have decided to stick with 1.00 instead of 1.01.

 

[red]Moderator note: some posts have been hidden as they do not contribute to the conversation[/red]

Well usually we just love the map glitches haha

[Warlock]

I found the old cvar I'd forgotten about that pretty much fixes all the wiggle and poke exploiting, it's called g_saberdmgdelay_idle   I set it to 400 and it seems that if the idle damage is delayed 400ms it reduces almost all the silliness of the exploitation of multiple hits with a single swing. Just saying...it's quite easy to fix and has been known about since at least 2004 but no one uses it anymore because they like exploiting the broken game.

[Ping]

You have no idea how many "easy fix" claims I have heard over the decade, none of which fixed a thing. I therefore highly doubt your solution. Our best options are mods, but even they come with a lot of problems (see previous post). Also, there is a contradiction between claiming that nobody uses the magical easy fix because they like exploiting the game and claiming that you found the old fix that "you had forgotten". At the very least people could have "forgotten" about it just like you did, but you prefer to think everyone loves "exploiting the broken game" too much to use it, which is maximally uncharitable towards them and only makes you sound bitter.

[Warlock]

Well, it's a fact that prior to the existence of ESL there was a large amount of the JK community that saw these "skills" as exploitation of flaws in the game's weak hit detection system and strange errors produced by the physics. Basically everyone that came to JA from JK2 felt these moves were silly and broke the mood they wanted. The g_saberdmgdelay_idle cvar I assure you does "fix" the brokenness of the extra hits. If you want better collision that will require a mod, because there is a missing hit zone on the lightsaber in the base MP game that will always result in being able to fast-spin through it and do a hit somewhere else that should have been stopped by the saber. So you are quite correct about the best option for good gameplay being mods. I'm simply stating that this cvar in conjunction with mods (the most popular still being JA+ 2.4 with MP damage settings which is what I tested) resolves the wiggle hits pretty effectively, and this is something we knew back in 2004 as it was used by virtually every JA+ community from that time period.

 

I can also give you a vivid explanation as to why it works if you'd like. I think it's pretty self-explanatory though. It's a value in ms that the system delays before registering a hit from the idle portion of a swing. At the default value of 0, idle hits are calculated every time they hit, so a single swing can hit any number of times. With the delay of say 350ms (a value many were using in 2004) it only calculates damage on idle hits every 350ms meaning at most you will get 2-3 hits from a single swing relegating the ramping of damage from poke or wiggle to mostly burn damage. I chose to up the value to 400 because we were still getting some idle hits at 350 that I didn't like with the improved collision we were using. However, I assure you this cvar mitigates the DAMAGE exploitation of wiggle and poke to a large degree (again I can't speak for the collision exploitation because that requires modding and/or a lot of complicated cvar play to remedy, so I never claimed this to be some "magic" cvar that fixes the entire game).

 

So I stand by what I said. This cvar has been around forever, I'm fairly sure it's a standard Q3 cvar used to mitigate issues with OP splash damage and the like (and to facilitate a way to tweak the creation of things like flamethrowers and swords and such on their engine without breaking everything) and it does what I say it does (did extensive testing with many people using those moves and they don't do any real noticeable extra damage). So to say it's an "easy fix" to one of the biggest problems (at least I think it's a problem as does the OP) in the game is a sound conclusion to draw imo considering we were using this cvar in the {O} clan back in 2004 because it stopped the whirlybird fighters from scoring cheap wins on people who had been training how to fight in JK since DF2. When we took away this "skill" it turned out they couldn't even aim and would usually die relatively fast to a simple 3-hit red combo. Surprise.  *eyeroll*

[afi]

The ESL section existed since the release of this game and Dureal invented the poke already in 2004 or even 2003 when trying to find a way on how to beat staffers who were topping the ladders back then. There was a big disussion whether the ESL should ban poke or not and they decided to do not. You're still not getting the point though. You can obviously prevent people from using poke/wiggle but 1) it breaks the original game mechanics, 2) it lowers the skill ceiling and 3) most people actually like to use the poke (as history shows). You're free to use this command on your server though, no one prevents you from doing so.

[Ping]

When we took away this "skill" it turned out they couldn't even aim and would usually die relatively fast to a simple 3-hit red combo. Surprise.  *eyeroll*

Ah yes, the standard derogatory assumption that everyone who pokes doesn't know how to play the game properly and if you take away their poking they lose badly to even the worst of JA+ players. It discredits your conclusion.

 

Again, I have not tried out the cvar so I will reserve judgement, but I am extremely sceptical given my experience with magical fix claims in general and also your claims in particular. You draw your conclusion that the cvar fixes poke based on "extensive testing" done in the context of your JA+ clan from 2004, which (probably) involved your own clanmates and also the "whirlybird fighters" that poked but you claim were terrible players (see above). If the testing was done with players that poked but were otherwise terrible, it makes me sceptical whether they even knew how to properly execute a poke given that they were otherwise terrible players. If the testing was done with JA+ clanners that abhorred poke, it is even less likely that they knew how to properly execute a poke (and even more likely that they were terrible players as well). In both cases I have reason to question your conclusion.

 

EDIT: Tried the cvar on my own server. The setting was on 350 by default. Was getting easily one-shot by a friend of mine on both 100/25 and 100/100. Tried setting it to 500, 700, 1000 - made absolutely zero difference. Am I missing something? Does it only work on JA+ (which would make the entire discussion moot)?

 

EDIT2: Moving on, @ makes the as of yet unmentioned but excellent point that poke is necessary for balance given the way staff works. So changing the way poke works would also have to change the way staff works, which means we'd be talking about a different game by that point - and this in turn runs against the problem with mods that I mentioned before.

[Omicron]

So it takes a lot of skill because one guy managed to get over 300? 100-130 should be enough and requires very little skill.

Consistency of damage dealt, doing it while hitting moving players (with good movement), that's where it gets hard. You could use this exact logic in most fps games: Headshots are easy, it gets hard and requires skill when you take into account player movement, tactics, their experience, etc. You're no longer the only person with this 'ability' to deal high amounts of damage, so other factors are put on the table. The headshots is just the final execution.

 

If I can do it, then everyone can do it.

No. As someone who has played on and off for a few years now, I can 'poke' but when I'm up against better players it becomes far more difficult for me to execute it well. See above point & analogy to get what I mean here (as an example).

 

Perfecting it to the level that which you are explaining to me takes too much time and work that I feel is not truely necessary in these times.

"These times". So you think getting good (and implying to reach the top level?) shouldn't require a lot of time and work? I'm sorry but that's just stupid. 

[Circa]

Any game is going to take time to get good at. That's why so many people try a game and never touch it again, because they don't want to take the time to get good.

 

That's life, really. Not just video games. Sports, jobs, life skills. You get out of it what you put in.

 

This game is over a decade old, and most of the player base now is full of people that have been playing it since it launched, or not too long after. So yeah, they're going to be pretty good. Especially compared to someone that just bought it on a Steam sale.

 

I understand the frustration though. I've been playing JKA SP since 2005 but only started playing MP a few year ago, so I'm nowhere near as good as I could have been if I started in 2005. And I just don't have the time and desire to spend endless hours playing and learning.

 

If you think about it, the learning curve of this game is why it's such a great Star Wars game in general. It involves learning saber techniques just like Jedi and Sith. It's why clans are so popular, they have classes and teach the game, similar to a Jedi or Sith Academy. And is why RP is so involved in that as well.

[eezstreet]

There is no such thing as an "easy fix" when it comes to poke/wiggle, at least in the base system. You'd have to redesign the entire saber system to where it's either impossible to do, or make it so that the strategy is relatively useless (like it is in MB2 or JKG).

[Ping]

If you think about it, the learning curve of this game is why it's such a great Star Wars game in general. It involves learning saber techniques just like Jedi and Sith. It's why clans are so popular, they have classes and teach the game, similar to a Jedi or Sith Academy. And is why RP is so involved in that as well.

And that is fair enough, but there seems to be a tension between the roleplaying aspects of the game, i.e. the master-padawan relationships in the context of teaching someone how to play, and the actual player improvement aspects, i.e. becoming a good player. I will make and defend the bold claim that nobody who has ever been trained or taught by anyone has become a good player solely by virtue of his training with that person or school. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that being taught is detrimental to your development as a player. The only benefit it can possibly have is indirect, i.e. through social support.

 

So although the dynamic combat mechanics, the SW theme and the open-ended FFA gametype allow for schools and teaching to flourish, neither contribute directly to the development of the player and are therefore just make-believe. In short: Schools don't teach you how to play, they just involve you in unintended or intended roleplaying. But I agree that this vast array of roleplaying opportunities makes JKA a really good SW game, especially so because it's reasonable to think that attending ingame classes will make you a better player, where in reality ingame classes are just illusory make-believe like any other form of roleplaying.

[Warlock]

Some good points made by P!ng and aFinity here.

 

For clarity I was mistaken and yes the default value is 350. I'm not sure if raising it to 400 or 500 does a lot, it's probably a combination of that and other things we're doing. No the claim wasn't based simply on our 2004 server, but on the one I'm testing now, and with people who know how to poke/wiggle (I had Earth on the server earlier, and granted he ain't the best of the best, he knows what he's doing) and yes his wiggles and pokes were getting through some of the collision but there was never extra damage aside from some burn it seemed. I assumed it was the idle delay cvar, maybe it's a combination of factors, maybe I'm just delusional. Who knows.

 

Also I was never claiming that people who poke/wiggle can't play the game. Obviously that isn't the case then nor now. But it is the case that when new players who barely understand game mechanics see someone doing crazy poke and wiggle, they try to mimic them and look like fools and don't learn how to aim and end up weaker in the process, and then get frustrated and quit because they get sick of being one-hit since no one explains stuff to them. I poke and I wiggle and always have to some degree, because my style is technical so of course I'm going to twist and turn my model around people's shots and poke back in for mine and such. That isn't the exploitation. The exploitation is generally created by the missing saber hitbox that can make it easy to avoid saber collision entirely by using velocity to spin the saber through that box. Most of that is fixed in JA+ MP anyway, but people goof up other stuff with their configs and it gets equally silly.

 

It is ultimately a preference like is said, and I'm not here to fight against the world. I was simply trying to tell the OP that there are ways to configure a server to mitigate a large amount of the exploitation of game flaws and perhaps some of my examples were a bit inaccurate I'm finding as I do further testing, but the fact remains there are ways to configure things that make people happy that there isn't goofy stuff going on. Maybe that lowers the skill ceiling as you said, personally I think it just changes the skill set a little on how you get the job done. I do understand the points about staff and such, that is a huge issue with base if there were no poke and wiggle to break their rush.

[Ping]

I agree with you that for a new player poke is a shortcut to increase the efficiency of one's swings and that it can easily lead to neglecting other important skills, which in turn can lead to stagnation later on. This is what I meant before by saying that poke on its own doesn't win games - and focusing too much on it, as you rightly claim, can be bad for you as a player. I think this is pretty clear.

[Circa]

And that is fair enough, but there seems to be a tension between the roleplaying aspects of the game, i.e. the master-padawan relationships in the context of teaching someone how to play, and the actual player improvement aspects, i.e. becoming a good player. I will make and defend the bold claim that nobody who has ever been trained or taught by anyone has become a good player solely by virtue of his training with that person or school. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that being taught is detrimental to your development as a player. The only benefit it can possibly have is indirect, i.e. through social support.

 

So although the dynamic combat mechanics, the SW theme and the open-ended FFA gametype allow for schools and teaching to flourish, neither contribute directly to the development of the player and are therefore just make-believe. In short: Schools don't teach you how to play, they just involve you in unintended or intended roleplaying. But I agree that this vast array of roleplaying opportunities makes JKA a really good SW game, especially so because it's reasonable to think that attending ingame classes will make you a better player, where in reality ingame classes are just illusory make-believe like any other form of roleplaying.

Right, but they still learn the basics of the game. Most of it afterwards is practice. If a player that learned the game through a "master-padawan" relationship or training school, they'd only get so far, and some are content with staying at that skill level. Like me. The only way to get better is to practice and learn from those that are better. And those people would mostly be the various TFFA pros and/or ex-ESL players that are still around. 

[eiTani]

"These times". So you think getting good (and implying to reach the top level?) shouldn't require a lot of time and work? I'm sorry but that's just stupid. 

 

You misinterpret my words. 

 

I'm implying that unless you're really competitive, you will not need that much time or work in order to get better. Especially, since the population has dwindled and the use recycled tactics is more obvious.

 

Once you learn basics, the game is rather straight forward and you will learn as you fight. 

[Ping]

I don't understand. Are you trying to say that the overall skill level is much lower now and that even below mediocre players can be successful and so therefore it is not necessary to work hard in order to be a successful saberist? How do you conclude from that that poke is awful?

[eiTani]

I don't understand. Are you trying to say that the overall skill level is much lower now and that even below mediocre players can be successful and so therefore it is not necessary to work hard in order to be a successful saberist? 

 

That's exactly what I'm saying.

 

As for poke, I'm not exactly sure what else you want me to say. I've already spoken my mind

[Ping]

I was asking how the fact that below mediocre players can be successful with little work is something that makes you conclude that poke is bad. Since you refuse to continue, I will do it for you: I take it that since poke enables bad players to be successful with little work, and being successful with little work is bad, so therefore poke is bad.

 

The first premise assumes what I wrote in my previous post, namely that the overall skill level is so low now that even bad players can be successful. "Being successful" cannot mean being able to win against random bad players because then the fact that the overall skill level is low now would be irrelevant to questions of success. It also cannot mean being able to compete at a high level because no bad player can do that, regardless of whether he uses poke or not. So I guess by "successful" we mean being able to defeat the average player.

 

But this makes the argument fail in multiple ways: First, the average player uses poke, so it doesn't follow that a bad player can win against an average player solely by virtue of the bad player using poke, because the success-making feature of poke should work for the average player as well, so the argument fails to get off the ground. Secondly, even if the average player were not to use poke, which is false, the bad player would still not win against an average player because (as it has been mentioned before many times) poke doesn't win games on its own. Third, even if it were true that a bad player could beat an average player solely by virtue of the bad player using poke, this would be completely justified. If a game is "easy" and you can be above average with a cheap trick because everyone sucks so much, that's the average player's fault and I don't see how being successful in that sense is a bad thing, so the second premise needs further arguments.

 

Finally, even if we grant both premises, the conclusion that poke is bad doesn't follow because the argument is invalid. A valid argument would be: Bad players use poke to be successful with little work, being successful with little work is bad, so bad players using poke is bad. I agree that bad players should not use poke, but that doesn't make poke bad, it makes it a bad thing for bad players to use. So the argument fails in every conceivable way.

[Omicron]

You misinterpret my words. 

 

I'm implying that unless you're really competitive, you will not need that much time or work in order to get better. Especially, since the population has dwindled and the use recycled tactics is more obvious.

 

Once you learn basics, the game is rather straight forward and you will learn as you fight. 

I see your point here. I agree with you in the first/last sentence, however that doesn't mean it doesn't take a lot of work to become as good as the top players (also doesn't make a it a bad thing either imo). "Use of recycled tactics", eh. I guess so, but it's all about perfecting said tactics and being better than your opponents, which takes time and becomes harder the further up the ladder you go.

[eiTani]

I was asking how the fact that below mediocre players can be successful with little work is something that makes you conclude that poke is bad. Since you refuse to continue, I will do it for you: I take it that since poke enables bad players to be successful with little work, and being successful with little work is bad, so therefore poke is bad.

 

The first premise assumes what I wrote in my previous post, namely that the overall skill level is so low now that even bad players can be successful. "Being successful" cannot mean being able to win against random bad players because then the fact that the overall skill level is low now would be irrelevant to questions of success. It also cannot mean being able to compete at a high level because no bad player can do that, regardless of whether he uses poke or not. So I guess by "successful" we mean being able to defeat the average player.

 

But this makes the argument fail in multiple ways: First, the average player uses poke, so it doesn't follow that a bad player can win against an average player solely by virtue of the bad player using poke, because the success-making feature of poke should work for the average player as well, so the argument fails to get off the ground. Secondly, even if the average player were not to use poke, which is false, the bad player would still not win against an average player because (as it has been mentioned before many times) poke doesn't win games on its own. Third, even if it were true that a bad player could beat an average player solely by virtue of the bad player using poke, this would be completely justified. If a game is "easy" and you can be above average with a cheap trick because everyone sucks so much, that's the average player's fault and I don't see how being successful in that sense is a bad thing, so the second premise needs further arguments.

 

Finally, even if we grant both premises, the conclusion that poke is bad doesn't follow because the argument is invalid. A valid argument would be: Bad players use poke to be successful with little work, being successful with little work is bad, so bad players using poke is bad. I agree that bad players should not use poke, but that doesn't make poke bad, it makes it a bad thing for bad players to use. So the argument fails in every conceivable way.

You overestimate the skill of the average player & my opinion still stands. 

 

People accept it because they were forced to deal with it, regardless if it made sense (and it doesn't). MB2 does not have poke and the skill level is somewhat unaffected. While it does require a different set of skills, it has the potential to be as challenging as the base game. I guess having bugs around for so long, I can see why people would try and defend it as part of the game. It's just like one of those "intelligent design" arguments

[Ping]

You overestimate the skill of the average player

I already addressed this possibility in my previous post. It is clear that you have not read it.

 

I guess having bugs around for so long, I can see why people would try and defend it as part of the game. It's just like one of those "intelligent design" arguments

Nobody has claimed that poke was intended by the devs. From this it is clear to me that you have no idea what you are talking about.

[eiTani]

I already addressed this possibility in my previous post. It is clear that you have not read it.

 

Nobody has claimed that poke was intended by the devs. From this it is clear to me that you have no idea what you are talking about.

Re-read it, my mistake.

 

Everything you said was correct, but what about the older, more experienced (above average) players? I'm sure they worked as hard as everyone else to get their skills, but being able to do extremely high amounts of damage on a consistent basis would still be unfair to a fresh player. It's already unclear as to how they are supposed to go about learning the game, poking just adds another layer of frustration. Since a fresh player would not have the proper aiming skills, wouldn't they have a terrible time without using poke anyway? The game doesn't go in depth enough about it's own skills. That's why I believe the game caters more to the older players. If we must have these techniques without gimping both sides then there needs to be more schools or guides that explain the combat better.

 

To your last sentence, you can't make a statement like that. Maybe not on this thread, but arguments like those have happened before.

[Futuza]

Re-read it, my mistake.

 

Everything you said was correct, but what about the older, more experienced (above average) players? I'm sure they worked as hard as everyone else to get their skills, but being able to do extremely high amounts of damage on a consistent basis would still be unfair to a fresh player. It's already unclear as to how they are supposed to go about learning the game, poking just adds another layer of frustration. Since a fresh player would not have the proper aiming skills, wouldn't they have a terrible time without using poke anyway? The game doesn't go in depth enough about it's own skills. That's why I believe the game caters more to the older players. If we must have these techniques without gimping both sides then there needs to be more schools or guides that explain the combat better.

 

To your last sentence, you can't make a statement like that. Maybe not on this thread, but arguments like those have happened before.

The solution to this is an elo ranking based system, but the devs are gone and we're not going to get a matchmaker.  So...instead take the simpler solution: if you're a nub, don't play against pros.  This is not an issue of poke, it's an issue of bad matchmaking.