The backwards strafe key holding is exactly what makes this a glitch that needs to be fixed. Seems pretty cut and dry to me, and it's easy to see the motivations of the people who want it to remain.
If the strafe direction were like normal, then it would probably just need to be nerfed because it's overpowered. In any case I think the bhop system is fine without any perks for special jerky mouse movements.
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I haven't had access to NS2 since before b250 was released, so I don't have any experience with the new skulk movement at all. I'm not taking any stance on whether butthopping is or isn't cool as I just don't have experience.
However, the way to perform this butthopping by strafing into the wall, then flicking away from it as you jump sounds intuitive to me. Like a hit the wall, power your way off the wall kind of thing.
Like I said, I've not been able to try these techniques yet, but the way it's described it sounds like it makes some sense to me.
the technique isn't even challenging. Once you get the hang of it, it's very easy.
I've said it before, but it bears repeating: without focusing on the combat itself as the skill-based mechanism for the skulk, there will forever be design and balance problems that arise fundamentally.
I really can't understand why people want this removed. It's fun, it gives you the amount of speed that skulks should have, it's NOT unintuitive (jumping off the wall with your back feet makes a hell of a lot more sense than jumping off of it with either the right or left side of your body) and you don't even have to flick your mouse... it's about the strafe into the wall and the angle of the jump. You can jump into the wall already looking away from it without having to flick and accomplish the same thing.
This technique has finally made skulking fun for me since the first time since build 239. Sewlek wanted to put in a movement system that allowed people to learn its intricacies and get faster than normal speeds... and that's what we have. But people want it removed? It's not imbalanced, it doesn't help in combat, it's not hard to learn, it's not being kept a secret. Bitey made a fucking tutorial that's going in the state of the game vid. It's being communicated.
I've only even seen like 5 people say they want it removed... and most (not all) of them just sounded like they were whining that people were enjoying something that they don't.
The arguments about intuitiveness can be ignored unless those same people advocate for the removal of the intended skulk movement features as well, since they aren't in any way more intuitive than this mechanic.
The execution of buttjumping also isn't as easy as people make it seem to be; if you listened to people here you would assume that practising this movement for half an hour means that you now constantly move at speed 12 without any faltering whatsoever. The reality is that a single failed jump or badly faced staircase or slope can and will reduce your speed back to the base 7. Especially staircases are difficult to maneuver. The more you use this mechanic in real maps, the more you will start recognising good spots to get speed from and develop better maneuvering through tricky terrain. For example, I've spent a ton of time on a private server to overcome the small staircase when moving from Sub Access to Ventilation on Summit without losing any speed. Now I've got the hang of it and can engage marines in the shooting gallery that is Ventilation much more efficiently. I also constantly break my record in Tour de Summit, because I'm getting better and better in utilising buttjumping. Isn't this learning and developing skills? But oh wait, buttjumping is just a glitch that you master the moment someone tells you how to do it and as such doesn't add anything to the game.
I will freely admit that I only use this technique because it provides a speed benefit that I would not normally have. But isn't this what its meant to be? A player that understands all the 'physics' of a game will ofcourse know how to get the maximum from the game. Game knowledge is a skill, being able to pull this off consecutively (not just 1-2 jumps) but like 10+ in a row is where the skill lies. See Therius post above..
It's disappointing that we have walljump with such a low speed cap, then people are now discovering how to get around it and people are crying for its removal.
This is why I don't post movement video's anymore, fun shit gets removed. If you remove all the intracies of the game, there will be nothing left to learn.
Your not going to be able to fix the backwards strafing requirement for this movement, as its that along with the mouse movement which allows you to do the jump. While this jumping technique does provide some extra to the skulk and its speed potential, the problem with it currently is that it effectively has no speed cap - performed correctly you can gain +1 speed every single jump. To fix the movement so there is some form of a speed cap (even if it was 20) will break the very bug which allows the movement to even be performed. While I agree that 10.5 base skulk speed is too low, I think there are better ways to fix that problem.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
If fun for you is using a technique you find challenging and having depth, to accomplish greater speeds, and is communicated. (Because lets be honest, if it were truly intuitive the percentage of the playerbase that actually legitimately discovered this technique would be far greater)
Then ok. That makes sense.
If fun for you is using something the large majority of the playerbase don't have knowledge of, and will not figure it out on their own, in order to gain a 30% increase in speed..
Well, that doesn't make sense to me and seems pretty shallow, tbh.
Wanting to keep such information withheld so that you can have the "secret edge" doesn't sound skillful to me.
Just sounds like you want a rigged game.
The arguments about intuitiveness can be ignored unless those same people advocate for the removal of the intended skulk movement features as well, since they aren't in any way more intuitive than this mechanic.
This is just so full of stupid it's giving me cancer. This and all the other posts defending this bug as intuitive.
Intended skulk movement is jump queuing, walljumping, and strafe accel. All of which are intuitive. A jump makes you jump, a walljump gives you a speed boost, and a strafe gives you accel in that direction.
It is unintuitive to press the opposite strafe button to not only the direction you want to go, but the direction you flick your mouse. Why is this repeatedly so hard for you intellectually challenged to understand? Backwards strafe walljump inputs together suggest that you are actually trying to counter your walljump force with strafe force for an overall weaker walljump. The result instead happens to be an overall stronger walljump.
A player that understands all the 'physics' of a game will ofcourse know how to get the maximum from the game. Game knowledge is a skill, being able to pull this off consecutively (not just 1-2 jumps) but like 10+ in a row is where the skill lies. See Therius post above..
There is nothing about this mechanic that ties itself to the fundamental 'physics' of skulk movement. What a joke. Can you explain how and why this speed boost occurs from pressing opposite strafe and mouse flicking only past a certain static angle? Bhop can be explained via fundamental physics theorycrafting, 'butt jumping' most certainly cannot.
Also, I'm honestly surprised that you of all people would find this hard to chain and defend it from this angle. It's easy as fuck to pull off, smooth air control curving for truly skillfull chaining is not a big determinant because you're just crashing into walls instead of trying to glance them, and you can get to 14 in like 2 jumps or 1-2 seconds (which is still ridiculous).
Wanting to keep such information withheld so that you can have the "secret edge" doesn't sound skillful to me.
Just sounds like you want a rigged game.
I would freely share this knowledge if I knew it wasn't going to get removed.... Also 99% of random pubbers don't even walljump anyway, so not sure what the difference is.
There is nothing about this mechanic that ties itself to the fundamental 'physics' of skulk movement. What a joke. Can you explain how and why this speed boost occurs from pressing opposite strafe and mouse flicking only past a certain static angle? Bhop can be explained via fundamental physics theorycrafting, 'butt jumping' most certainly cannot.
Also, I'm honestly surprised that you of all people would find this hard to chain and defend it from this angle. It's easy as fuck to pull off, smooth air control curving for truly skillfull chaining is not a big determinant because you're just crashing into walls instead of trying to glance them, and you can get to 14 in like 2 jumps or 1-2 seconds (which is still ridiculous).
I don't find it difficult at all? Not sure where I said that.... For the average player to consecutively chain walljumps I do believe it is quite difficult.
If they up the base speed cap of normal walljump then I frankly do not care if they remove butt jumping. It's purely the ability to go faster that makes me want this left in. The current speed cap is far to low
As Elodea said, if anyone thinks the base skulk speed caps are too slow, you should post about that in the Beta Test thread to see what possible solutions can be done. This bug is not the right answer..
I'll take a shot at the real reason why people like myself enjoy movement. Like I said before it's not the speed, The Edge, or any kind of gimmicky reasoning that I prefer this movement over the others. I've been trying to hypothesize the reasons why players like myself enjoy a movement like this and after asking a few of my longer term friends from multiple games I've come to a similar conclusion. Due to the intensive effort, audio cues, and frankly 'new' movement of inverse-circle walljumps it creates a movement that opens a door of Freash™ air. I've played in alot of different games, and by far the newer skulk movement is something that I've not encountered before therefore it's something that's exciting to utilize and master.
Ontop of that bland movement in general is something that can be boring for some. Getting from point A(Spawn) to point B(Combat) can have alot of open space in between which also means time spent simply moving. A good movement mechanic can be something that fills the 'void' of the traveling dulldrums, as you're brain will basically be processing information about the paths it needs to create through a given map. Think of it like staying busy when you're bored, for a player like myself I simply find enjoyment in these kinds of things. Probably the best part about this discovered movement is how you can once again just sit on a server and progressively refine this mechanic and sail about.
I honestly wonder if anyone else feels that same way about movement mechanics ^_^
Honestly, I've yet to see any form of 'exploitative' advanced movement in any game has been intuitive from the start. You can't call any form of strafe(Air, Wigglewalking, Circle jump, or otherwise) based acceleration movement intuitive as no matter how you word it. You simply just have to show and explain to a person how to perform the action through guidance, patience, and perseverance. This movement is no better or worse then any other that's been apart of ns2, or even comparatively to Source based movements. It's simply more enjoyable once you accomplish it then the skulks current 'approved' movement.
Also, please don't say people are "intellectually challenged" for enjoying Buttjumping >:(
I'll take a shot at the real reason why people like myself enjoy movement. Like I said before it's not the speed, The Edge, or any kind of gimmicky reasoning that I prefer this movement over the others. I've been trying to hypothesize the reasons why players like myself enjoy a movement like this and after asking a few of my longer term friends from multiple games I've come to a similar conclusion. Due to the intensive effort, audio cues, and frankly 'new' movement of inverse-circle walljumps it creates a movement that opens a door of Freash™ air. I've played in alot of different games, and by far the newer skulk movement is something that I've not encountered before therefore it's something that's exciting to utilize and master.
Ontop of that bland movement in general is something that can be boring for some. Getting from point A(Spawn) to point B(Combat) can have alot of open space in between which also means time spent simply moving. A good movement mechanic can be something that fills the 'void' of the traveling dulldrums, as you're brain will basically be processing information about the paths it needs to create through a given map. Think of it like staying busy when you're bored, for a player like myself I simply find enjoyment in these kinds of things. Probably the best part about this discovered movement is how you can once again just sit on a server and progressively refine this mechanic and sail about.
I honestly wonder if anyone else feels that same way about movement mechanics ^_^
Honestly, I've yet to see any form of 'exploitative' advanced movement in any game has been intuitive from the start. You can't call any form of strafe(Air, Wigglewalking, Circle jump, or otherwise) based acceleration movement intuitive as no matter how you word it. You simply just have to show and explain to a person how to perform the action through guidance, patience, and perseverance. This movement is no better or worse then any other that's been apart of ns2, or even comparatively to Source based movements. It's simply more enjoyable once you accomplish it then the skulks current 'approved' movement.
Also, please don't say people are "intellectually challenged" for enjoying Buttjumping >:(
any and all games. if I can get somewhere faster than I should, im all for it. q3 and strafe jump, and rj. enemy territory and sprint jump. there's something to be said for going fast.
Honestly, I've yet to see any form of 'exploitative' advanced movement in any game has been intuitive from the start. You can't call any form of strafe(Air, Wigglewalking, Circle jump, or otherwise) based acceleration movement intuitive as no matter how you word it. You simply just have to show and explain to a person how to perform the action through guidance, patience, and perseverance. This movement is no better or worse then any other that's been apart of ns2, or even comparatively to Source based movements. It's simply more enjoyable once you accomplish it then the skulks current 'approved' movement.
No.
All of the above that you have mentioned are based on controls that do exactly the same function as their base. For example, wiggle walking does not involve pressing right to go left, or pressing left to go right. Circle jumping does not involve pressing right strafe to circle jump left. Jumping does not involve looking down at the ground and pressing w. Furthermore, all of the above mechanics you mentioned have a smooth scaling of effectiveness. There is no "you must press strafe for greater than x seconds in order for the effects to magically kick in", which is exactly like how the mouse flick angle behaves in buttjumping.
Strafe based acceleration movement is intuitive by nature. The only unintuitiveness was having to let go of w, and that is not a consideration anymore. It is organic use of fundamental movement physics, unlike backward strafe walljumps.
Also, please don't say people are "intellectually challenged" for enjoying Buttjumping >:(
I too enjoy buttjumping. If anyone doesn't, i would actually think something is wrong with them. However, it has obvious flaws from the holistic design pov that must see this technique removed.
If you would actually read again closely, the people i was specifically calling intellectually challenged were those defending that it is intuitive, or that intuitiveness is not even a consideration... with some frankly stupid arguements. Their attitude reeked of arrogant elitism, 'UWE taking away my toys' crap, and either an inability or lack of desire to see the obvious.
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I don't find it difficult at all? Not sure where I said that.... For the average player to consecutively chain walljumps I do believe it is quite difficult.
If they up the base speed cap of normal walljump then I frankly do not care if they remove butt jumping. It's purely the ability to go faster that makes me want this left in. The current speed cap is far to low
Game knowledge is a skill, being able to pull this off consecutively (not just 1-2 jumps) but like 10+ in a row is where the skill lies.
It is not difficult to chain at all, unlike glancing walljumps. Like i said, you can just crash into walls and opposite strafe out, so there is no need for finetuned air curving or routes. Stairs and ramp routing is a feature irrelevant of buttjumping, walljumping, or whatever movement mechanic gets designed in. You don't really need to chain it much either. 2.. maybe 3 will get you sufficiently fast enough for whatever you want to do.
The thing is, any movement skill that pushes us this fast should be difficult to master even for great walljumpers like yourself.
As for why backward strafe walljumping is difficult for average players. They don't understand why they are doing this set of actions. They don't understand where the acceleration is coming from intuitively (pressing left will make me go faster to my right? but only if i time it by flicking my mouse far enough?), and thus they don't understand how to properly perform the actions.
And yes, i too agree with you that current non cele speed cap is probably too low. It was a bit faster in bt at one point to about 12ish and i kinda liked that, although many pubbers were complaining of 'too fast skulk'.
*cough* It might actually be possible to do butt jumping with the strafe away from the wall key, too *cough*
At least that's what a teammate said he was doing in a practice last night, and he was going just as fast as me (2nd skulk sound, no celerity).
I will check tonight
I must admit, I actually quite like this movement mechanic, now. It does give an advantage over those who don't use it, though - that I would like to see negated through communication (maybe add it as a loading tip, ingame video, front page highlight in game or something?). It fulfils many of the ideals of a skill-based movement system: it's reasonably deep, it's quite fun to do (gives a nice feeling to get 2nd skulk sound after chaining together 2 perfect jumps). I think it's a better solution than bunny-hop, personally. There are sections of map that are really tricky to traverse perfectly, especially when in a game keeping a look out for enemies. With that comes a level of predictability: skulks are more likely to be taking the perfect fast-speed path, or at least they will be in 3 months when more people are doing this
I advocate leaving it in, but making it absolutely crystal clear to players that this exists, that it's quite easy, and that it does give you a speed boost. That removes any 'omg hacker' sentiments, and puts everyone on a fair playing field, which is very important.
TL;DR
Direction of strafe key might not actually matter for butt-jumping. Testing tonight.
Leave it in, but explain it clearly and widely.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
edited July 2013
@bitey I totally get that and I actually wouldn't mind keeping the technique, i have zero issue with the technique itself.
If the speed were to be kept though, access to learning it would need changing.
If it's more similar to wall hopping mechanics then it'd be discovered more frequently and thus no need for communicating it.
But if the speed was lowered none of that would be needed Imo.
Thanks for the well constructed argument /explanation. ;-)
on an administrative note : fatalities and pat, take it up in PMs, I'll just be continuing to delete your comments if they persist like that
Hi, I'm new to this forum but have been playing NS2 a good amount of time (and have gotten many people to buy it) and have been playing games with movement mechanics (goldsrc/source movement, quake 3 movement, etc) for many years and I'd like to thank Unknown for keeping up the tradition of fast-paced skill-based movement in an FP world filled with generic walk/sprint mil shooters, but I think the skulk wall-jumping mechanic is a bit less interesting than it could be.
Right now the skulk wall-jumping is primarily used (and correct me if I'm wrong) to get from point A to point B, and has a limited combat use of barreling into marines that are not paying attention, reloading, or not skilled enough to shoot you or wall-jumping in a circle and touching a wall mid-combat, and sometimes escape. I feel that this is due to the commonly low angles used in regular wall-jumping, and even butt jumping doesn't have that large of an angle. I feel that if wall-jumping weren't just a way to gain speed by hopping off of a wall and was instead a mechanic that propelled you at a more interesting, non-parallel angle, then you'd see both more difficult and interesting runs from point A to point B, and you would also see more creative, skill based, and fun rabid dog antics in and out of actual combat.
Just some thoughts, at the end of the day I do like this movement more than if you were to have nothing, I just think it could be more interesting. Props again to unknown for keeping old school FPS movement in their game.
Right now the skulk wall-jumping is primarily used (and correct me if I'm wrong) to get from point A to point B, and has a limited combat use of barreling into marines that are not paying attention, reloading, or not skilled enough to shoot you or wall-jumping in a circle and touching a wall mid-combat, and sometimes escape. I feel that this is due to the commonly low angles used in regular wall-jumping, and even butt jumping doesn't have that large of an angle. I feel that if wall-jumping weren't just a way to gain speed by hopping off of a wall and was instead a mechanic that propelled you at a more interesting, non-parallel angle, then you'd see both more difficult and interesting runs from point A to point B, and you would also see more creative, skill based, and fun rabid dog antics in and out of actual combat.
It used to be a bit more like what you're suggesting, but it was deemed OP and the skulk then recieved nerf after nerf, until we were left with the 249 brick skulk. The movement code was then re-done to what we have now, it's the best position it's been in imo. But you're right, it's mostly for getting from A to B. You can still use it in combat in the right kind of situation though, if you're not making sharp turns in the air which kill speed.
I think if you propelled off walls at sort of 45 degree angles or so but had less air control it might balance fairly well because you would be moving in more straight lines in between bounces which would give opportunities for you to get shot by a good marine, especially if air braking were removed (being able to press S to lose all your momentum and just drop to the floor), so that skulks would have to deal with the consequences that came with whatever jump they made instead of being able to curve about and go pretty much anywhere. AC tends to be pretty controversial in these games, though. I think it's fun to have AC personally, but I agree that having lots of AC and being able to do crazy bounces would lead to being very OP. Obviously I'm relatively new to this game, having played only a couple months in alpha and a fair amount recently (missing the bouncy skulk era apparently), so I could easily be dead wrong.
The arguments about intuitiveness can be ignored unless those same people advocate for the removal of the intended skulk movement features as well, since they aren't in any way more intuitive than this mechanic.
This is just so full of stupid it's giving me cancer. This and all the other posts defending this bug as intuitive.
If you very carefully read those two posts, you can see that I, in no way, said that buttjumping is intuitive. As I have stated multiple times in my posts, I fully understand that buttjumping is not intuitive. What I'm saying is that since the intended features of skulk movement are also NOT intuitive, it's silly to argue that this feature should be removed just because it's not intuitive without saying a single word about the intended features. What I'm saying is that you're practising double standards.
If you gave the skulk into the hands of an entirely new player who had never played NS2 or any goldsrc game, he would never figure out that jumping along walls builds your speed, and that you need to move in a wave-like figure strafing with A and D to effectively retain that speed. Well, walljumping, perhaps, when he accidentally hit a wall and happened to press jump and saw that he went faster. But strafing? Never.
Intended skulk movement is jump queuing, walljumping, and strafe accel. All of which are intuitive. A jump makes you jump, a walljump gives you a speed boost, and a strafe gives you accel in that direction.
The only thing intuitive in your list is "a jump makes you jump". You're mistaking intuitiveness with being familiar with the mechanic. To new players there will be no difference.
With that out of the way, if your only problem with buttjumping is that you press the opposite strafing key of where you're going (which, in my opinion, is quite an absurd reason to be advocating the removal of the entire mechanic, it's like removing mouse aiming from the game in the case of inverted mouse being enforced), then are you saying that if those keys were reversed to make it more intuitive, you wouldn't have any problems with it? Because to me it doesn't change anything about the movement and I would be perfectly okay with it.
Also, calling people 'intellectually challenged' when you can't even read their posts properly is breath-takingly, mind-numbingly pathetic.
@IronHorse
By all means, communicate it. I don't think there's anyone here who doesn't want people to know about this, the only reason some of them want to keep it a secret is because things like this get removed if public knowledge (and, honestly, I can understand them). Stop making communication a problem when all it takes is to include this in the tutorials, just like every other movement mechanic.
Wow... the solution to this entire debate was given pages ago. Put a hard cap on the speed. Raise it if the alien has celerity. Then people like Bitey can keep doing the new wall jump and the rest of the games population can keep doing the normal skulk jump.
What would the hard-cap be though? There's no point in using this technique if it isn't giving you any extra speed over the standard walljump.. I'd be fine with a hard cap around 15 or so, I don't think there's much reason for skulks to be going faster than that. But the speeds you can get with the standard walljump technique just feel so slow.
Wow... the solution to this entire debate was given pages ago. Put a hard cap on the speed. Raise it if the alien has celerity. Then people like Bitey can keep doing the new wall jump and the rest of the games population can keep doing the normal skulk jump.
EVERYONE IS HAPPY.
But then what would we argue about in the pages to come?
Anyone remember, I think it was in TFC, where you would bunnyhop and keep gaining speed until you hit a speed cap and it would knock you back to to default speed? The best players learned to stay right under the speed cap consistently.
Wow... the solution to this entire debate was given pages ago. Put a hard cap on the speed. Raise it if the alien has celerity. Then people like Bitey can keep doing the new wall jump and the rest of the games population can keep doing the normal skulk jump.
EVERYONE IS HAPPY.
But then what would we argue about in the pages to come?
As long as there are humans, there is something to argue about. Fret not, it is in our nature to find something, somewhere at any given place and or time to argue about. Us humans are annoying resourceful like that :P
This is just so full of stupid it's giving me cancer. This and all the other posts defending this bug as intuitive.
Intended skulk movement is jump queuing, walljumping, and strafe accel. All of which are intuitive. A jump makes you jump, a walljump gives you a speed boost, and a strafe gives you accel in that direction.
It is unintuitive to press the opposite strafe button to not only the direction you want to go, but the direction you flick your mouse. Why is this repeatedly so hard for you intellectually challenged to understand? Backwards strafe walljump inputs together suggest that you are actually trying to counter your walljump force with strafe force for an overall weaker walljump. The result instead happens to be an overall stronger walljump.
There is nothing about this mechanic that ties itself to the fundamental 'physics' of skulk movement. What a joke. Can you explain how and why this speed boost occurs from pressing opposite strafe and mouse flicking only past a certain static angle? Bhop can be explained via fundamental physics theorycrafting, 'butt jumping' most certainly cannot.
You kind of make it sound harder than it really is. You get speed by jumping off the wall with your back legs(by aiming the camera away from the wall) as you are strafing to the direction you are going. There is no need to flick your mouse or anything else.
If you want to argue about it being unintuitive, I can tell you that it is. But so is bunnyhopping, wallhopping and pretty much all the things in this game: you go faster by jumping continuously than just running, strafing to retain momentum on fades and skulks(even if you are going straight), skulks run faster on walls and ceilings than on floor, marines gain momentum by jumping downhill, welding structures to gain armor.............
Bunnyhopping or wallhopping might be intuitive for you if you have played NS1 or Quake or something else, but those things are just as unintuivive for newer players as "buttjumping". How many skulks have you seen on the servers that just run straight at you without bunnyhopping or wallhopping? Do you think that all of those just bought the game 5 minutes ago and are playing the first round of NS2 in their life? I bet 90% of the players have watched a tutorial or heard about wallhopping and bunnyhopping from somebody else instead of just intuitively trying to spam jump key and hold down a strafe key to retain the momentum. Just because some older games have used some of those mechanics don't make them instantly intuivive.
I think it's very good thing for a game like this to have 'deeper' mechanics that you only figure out after playing the game for a while, since it's hardly game breaking mechanic anyway(there could be a cap for the speed tho). Also it makes alien gameplay more challenging and rewarding, since at the moment it is generally much easier to play as aliens than marines. Newer players could start with the standard walljumping and then move on to the advanced buttjumping once they have figured out the beginner stuff.
It's just up to the devs and UWE to make the tutorials to be more available for newer players. I don't think you can really make alien gameplay 'intuitive' anyway, so tutorials are in the key position in a game like this. Nobody should go and play a game like this game for the first time without knowing anything about it, he/she is not going to enjoy the first play experience if he doesn't know anything what is happening. There is a reason why there are really good beginner tutorials in other successful but 'hard to get into' game types like DotA and LoL and Starcraft. If the new players had to choose between 'watch a 20 minute video about this game' and 'Play now', most of them will pick the 'Play now' instead. However they probably aren't going to play again after the first day experience since getting raped by stealthy skulks, unkillable onoses and impossible to shoot fades isn't fun.
UWE: Make the tutorials better, more available and more appealing! There shouldn't be a "Play now" option available or visible for a player who just bought the game.
Comments
If the strafe direction were like normal, then it would probably just need to be nerfed because it's overpowered. In any case I think the bhop system is fine without any perks for special jerky mouse movements.
However, the way to perform this butthopping by strafing into the wall, then flicking away from it as you jump sounds intuitive to me. Like a hit the wall, power your way off the wall kind of thing.
Like I said, I've not been able to try these techniques yet, but the way it's described it sounds like it makes some sense to me.
I've said it before, but it bears repeating: without focusing on the combat itself as the skill-based mechanism for the skulk, there will forever be design and balance problems that arise fundamentally.
This technique has finally made skulking fun for me since the first time since build 239. Sewlek wanted to put in a movement system that allowed people to learn its intricacies and get faster than normal speeds... and that's what we have. But people want it removed? It's not imbalanced, it doesn't help in combat, it's not hard to learn, it's not being kept a secret. Bitey made a fucking tutorial that's going in the state of the game vid. It's being communicated.
I've only even seen like 5 people say they want it removed... and most (not all) of them just sounded like they were whining that people were enjoying something that they don't.
The execution of buttjumping also isn't as easy as people make it seem to be; if you listened to people here you would assume that practising this movement for half an hour means that you now constantly move at speed 12 without any faltering whatsoever. The reality is that a single failed jump or badly faced staircase or slope can and will reduce your speed back to the base 7. Especially staircases are difficult to maneuver. The more you use this mechanic in real maps, the more you will start recognising good spots to get speed from and develop better maneuvering through tricky terrain. For example, I've spent a ton of time on a private server to overcome the small staircase when moving from Sub Access to Ventilation on Summit without losing any speed. Now I've got the hang of it and can engage marines in the shooting gallery that is Ventilation much more efficiently. I also constantly break my record in Tour de Summit, because I'm getting better and better in utilising buttjumping. Isn't this learning and developing skills? But oh wait, buttjumping is just a glitch that you master the moment someone tells you how to do it and as such doesn't add anything to the game.
It's disappointing that we have walljump with such a low speed cap, then people are now discovering how to get around it and people are crying for its removal.
This is why I don't post movement video's anymore, fun shit gets removed. If you remove all the intracies of the game, there will be nothing left to learn.
Then ok. That makes sense.
If fun for you is using something the large majority of the playerbase don't have knowledge of, and will not figure it out on their own, in order to gain a 30% increase in speed..
Well, that doesn't make sense to me and seems pretty shallow, tbh.
Wanting to keep such information withheld so that you can have the "secret edge" doesn't sound skillful to me.
Just sounds like you want a rigged game.
Intended skulk movement is jump queuing, walljumping, and strafe accel. All of which are intuitive. A jump makes you jump, a walljump gives you a speed boost, and a strafe gives you accel in that direction.
It is unintuitive to press the opposite strafe button to not only the direction you want to go, but the direction you flick your mouse. Why is this repeatedly so hard for you intellectually challenged to understand? Backwards strafe walljump inputs together suggest that you are actually trying to counter your walljump force with strafe force for an overall weaker walljump. The result instead happens to be an overall stronger walljump.
There is nothing about this mechanic that ties itself to the fundamental 'physics' of skulk movement. What a joke. Can you explain how and why this speed boost occurs from pressing opposite strafe and mouse flicking only past a certain static angle? Bhop can be explained via fundamental physics theorycrafting, 'butt jumping' most certainly cannot.
Also, I'm honestly surprised that you of all people would find this hard to chain and defend it from this angle. It's easy as fuck to pull off, smooth air control curving for truly skillfull chaining is not a big determinant because you're just crashing into walls instead of trying to glance them, and you can get to 14 in like 2 jumps or 1-2 seconds (which is still ridiculous).
I would freely share this knowledge if I knew it wasn't going to get removed.... Also 99% of random pubbers don't even walljump anyway, so not sure what the difference is.
I don't find it difficult at all? Not sure where I said that.... For the average player to consecutively chain walljumps I do believe it is quite difficult.
If they up the base speed cap of normal walljump then I frankly do not care if they remove butt jumping. It's purely the ability to go faster that makes me want this left in. The current speed cap is far to low
Is exactly what I am going to do...
I'll take a shot at the real reason why people like myself enjoy movement. Like I said before it's not the speed, The Edge, or any kind of gimmicky reasoning that I prefer this movement over the others. I've been trying to hypothesize the reasons why players like myself enjoy a movement like this and after asking a few of my longer term friends from multiple games I've come to a similar conclusion. Due to the intensive effort, audio cues, and frankly 'new' movement of inverse-circle walljumps it creates a movement that opens a door of Freash™ air. I've played in alot of different games, and by far the newer skulk movement is something that I've not encountered before therefore it's something that's exciting to utilize and master.
Ontop of that bland movement in general is something that can be boring for some. Getting from point A(Spawn) to point B(Combat) can have alot of open space in between which also means time spent simply moving. A good movement mechanic can be something that fills the 'void' of the traveling dulldrums, as you're brain will basically be processing information about the paths it needs to create through a given map. Think of it like staying busy when you're bored, for a player like myself I simply find enjoyment in these kinds of things. Probably the best part about this discovered movement is how you can once again just sit on a server and progressively refine this mechanic and sail about.
I honestly wonder if anyone else feels that same way about movement mechanics ^_^
@elodea
Honestly, I've yet to see any form of 'exploitative' advanced movement in any game has been intuitive from the start. You can't call any form of strafe(Air, Wigglewalking, Circle jump, or otherwise) based acceleration movement intuitive as no matter how you word it. You simply just have to show and explain to a person how to perform the action through guidance, patience, and perseverance. This movement is no better or worse then any other that's been apart of ns2, or even comparatively to Source based movements. It's simply more enjoyable once you accomplish it then the skulks current 'approved' movement.
Also, please don't say people are "intellectually challenged" for enjoying Buttjumping >:(
any and all games. if I can get somewhere faster than I should, im all for it. q3 and strafe jump, and rj. enemy territory and sprint jump. there's something to be said for going fast.
All of the above that you have mentioned are based on controls that do exactly the same function as their base. For example, wiggle walking does not involve pressing right to go left, or pressing left to go right. Circle jumping does not involve pressing right strafe to circle jump left. Jumping does not involve looking down at the ground and pressing w. Furthermore, all of the above mechanics you mentioned have a smooth scaling of effectiveness. There is no "you must press strafe for greater than x seconds in order for the effects to magically kick in", which is exactly like how the mouse flick angle behaves in buttjumping.
Strafe based acceleration movement is intuitive by nature. The only unintuitiveness was having to let go of w, and that is not a consideration anymore. It is organic use of fundamental movement physics, unlike backward strafe walljumps.
I too enjoy buttjumping. If anyone doesn't, i would actually think something is wrong with them. However, it has obvious flaws from the holistic design pov that must see this technique removed.
If you would actually read again closely, the people i was specifically calling intellectually challenged were those defending that it is intuitive, or that intuitiveness is not even a consideration... with some frankly stupid arguements. Their attitude reeked of arrogant elitism, 'UWE taking away my toys' crap, and either an inability or lack of desire to see the obvious.
*edit*--- It is not difficult to chain at all, unlike glancing walljumps. Like i said, you can just crash into walls and opposite strafe out, so there is no need for finetuned air curving or routes. Stairs and ramp routing is a feature irrelevant of buttjumping, walljumping, or whatever movement mechanic gets designed in. You don't really need to chain it much either. 2.. maybe 3 will get you sufficiently fast enough for whatever you want to do.
The thing is, any movement skill that pushes us this fast should be difficult to master even for great walljumpers like yourself.
As for why backward strafe walljumping is difficult for average players. They don't understand why they are doing this set of actions. They don't understand where the acceleration is coming from intuitively (pressing left will make me go faster to my right? but only if i time it by flicking my mouse far enough?), and thus they don't understand how to properly perform the actions.
And yes, i too agree with you that current non cele speed cap is probably too low. It was a bit faster in bt at one point to about 12ish and i kinda liked that, although many pubbers were complaining of 'too fast skulk'.
At least that's what a teammate said he was doing in a practice last night, and he was going just as fast as me (2nd skulk sound, no celerity).
I will check tonight
I must admit, I actually quite like this movement mechanic, now. It does give an advantage over those who don't use it, though - that I would like to see negated through communication (maybe add it as a loading tip, ingame video, front page highlight in game or something?). It fulfils many of the ideals of a skill-based movement system: it's reasonably deep, it's quite fun to do (gives a nice feeling to get 2nd skulk sound after chaining together 2 perfect jumps). I think it's a better solution than bunny-hop, personally. There are sections of map that are really tricky to traverse perfectly, especially when in a game keeping a look out for enemies. With that comes a level of predictability: skulks are more likely to be taking the perfect fast-speed path, or at least they will be in 3 months when more people are doing this
I advocate leaving it in, but making it absolutely crystal clear to players that this exists, that it's quite easy, and that it does give you a speed boost. That removes any 'omg hacker' sentiments, and puts everyone on a fair playing field, which is very important.
TL;DR
Direction of strafe key might not actually matter for butt-jumping. Testing tonight.
Leave it in, but explain it clearly and widely.
Do you normally lie straight out? You didn't even understand the movement when I saw you in 250 release
If the speed were to be kept though, access to learning it would need changing.
If it's more similar to wall hopping mechanics then it'd be discovered more frequently and thus no need for communicating it.
But if the speed was lowered none of that would be needed Imo.
Thanks for the well constructed argument /explanation. ;-)
on an administrative note : fatalities and pat, take it up in PMs, I'll just be continuing to delete your comments if they persist like that
Right now the skulk wall-jumping is primarily used (and correct me if I'm wrong) to get from point A to point B, and has a limited combat use of barreling into marines that are not paying attention, reloading, or not skilled enough to shoot you or wall-jumping in a circle and touching a wall mid-combat, and sometimes escape. I feel that this is due to the commonly low angles used in regular wall-jumping, and even butt jumping doesn't have that large of an angle. I feel that if wall-jumping weren't just a way to gain speed by hopping off of a wall and was instead a mechanic that propelled you at a more interesting, non-parallel angle, then you'd see both more difficult and interesting runs from point A to point B, and you would also see more creative, skill based, and fun rabid dog antics in and out of actual combat.
Just some thoughts, at the end of the day I do like this movement more than if you were to have nothing, I just think it could be more interesting. Props again to unknown for keeping old school FPS movement in their game.
It used to be a bit more like what you're suggesting, but it was deemed OP and the skulk then recieved nerf after nerf, until we were left with the 249 brick skulk. The movement code was then re-done to what we have now, it's the best position it's been in imo. But you're right, it's mostly for getting from A to B. You can still use it in combat in the right kind of situation though, if you're not making sharp turns in the air which kill speed.
The amount of words you put in other people's mouths is getting out of hand.
If you very carefully read those two posts, you can see that I, in no way, said that buttjumping is intuitive. As I have stated multiple times in my posts, I fully understand that buttjumping is not intuitive. What I'm saying is that since the intended features of skulk movement are also NOT intuitive, it's silly to argue that this feature should be removed just because it's not intuitive without saying a single word about the intended features. What I'm saying is that you're practising double standards.
If you gave the skulk into the hands of an entirely new player who had never played NS2 or any goldsrc game, he would never figure out that jumping along walls builds your speed, and that you need to move in a wave-like figure strafing with A and D to effectively retain that speed. Well, walljumping, perhaps, when he accidentally hit a wall and happened to press jump and saw that he went faster. But strafing? Never.
The only thing intuitive in your list is "a jump makes you jump". You're mistaking intuitiveness with being familiar with the mechanic. To new players there will be no difference.
With that out of the way, if your only problem with buttjumping is that you press the opposite strafing key of where you're going (which, in my opinion, is quite an absurd reason to be advocating the removal of the entire mechanic, it's like removing mouse aiming from the game in the case of inverted mouse being enforced), then are you saying that if those keys were reversed to make it more intuitive, you wouldn't have any problems with it? Because to me it doesn't change anything about the movement and I would be perfectly okay with it.
Also, calling people 'intellectually challenged' when you can't even read their posts properly is breath-takingly, mind-numbingly pathetic.
@IronHorse
By all means, communicate it. I don't think there's anyone here who doesn't want people to know about this, the only reason some of them want to keep it a secret is because things like this get removed if public knowledge (and, honestly, I can understand them). Stop making communication a problem when all it takes is to include this in the tutorials, just like every other movement mechanic.
EVERYONE IS HAPPY.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Pk6AobT_SDo
But then what would we argue about in the pages to come?
Anyone remember, I think it was in TFC, where you would bunnyhop and keep gaining speed until you hit a speed cap and it would knock you back to to default speed? The best players learned to stay right under the speed cap consistently.
As long as there are humans, there is something to argue about. Fret not, it is in our nature to find something, somewhere at any given place and or time to argue about. Us humans are annoying resourceful like that :P
You kind of make it sound harder than it really is. You get speed by jumping off the wall with your back legs(by aiming the camera away from the wall) as you are strafing to the direction you are going. There is no need to flick your mouse or anything else.
If you want to argue about it being unintuitive, I can tell you that it is. But so is bunnyhopping, wallhopping and pretty much all the things in this game: you go faster by jumping continuously than just running, strafing to retain momentum on fades and skulks(even if you are going straight), skulks run faster on walls and ceilings than on floor, marines gain momentum by jumping downhill, welding structures to gain armor.............
Bunnyhopping or wallhopping might be intuitive for you if you have played NS1 or Quake or something else, but those things are just as unintuivive for newer players as "buttjumping". How many skulks have you seen on the servers that just run straight at you without bunnyhopping or wallhopping? Do you think that all of those just bought the game 5 minutes ago and are playing the first round of NS2 in their life? I bet 90% of the players have watched a tutorial or heard about wallhopping and bunnyhopping from somebody else instead of just intuitively trying to spam jump key and hold down a strafe key to retain the momentum. Just because some older games have used some of those mechanics don't make them instantly intuivive.
I think it's very good thing for a game like this to have 'deeper' mechanics that you only figure out after playing the game for a while, since it's hardly game breaking mechanic anyway(there could be a cap for the speed tho). Also it makes alien gameplay more challenging and rewarding, since at the moment it is generally much easier to play as aliens than marines. Newer players could start with the standard walljumping and then move on to the advanced buttjumping once they have figured out the beginner stuff.
It's just up to the devs and UWE to make the tutorials to be more available for newer players. I don't think you can really make alien gameplay 'intuitive' anyway, so tutorials are in the key position in a game like this. Nobody should go and play a game like this game for the first time without knowing anything about it, he/she is not going to enjoy the first play experience if he doesn't know anything what is happening. There is a reason why there are really good beginner tutorials in other successful but 'hard to get into' game types like DotA and LoL and Starcraft. If the new players had to choose between 'watch a 20 minute video about this game' and 'Play now', most of them will pick the 'Play now' instead. However they probably aren't going to play again after the first day experience since getting raped by stealthy skulks, unkillable onoses and impossible to shoot fades isn't fun.
UWE: Make the tutorials better, more available and more appealing! There shouldn't be a "Play now" option available or visible for a player who just bought the game.