Team weapons ala Fusion?

[bakkufu]

I was thinking of possible special weapons that the various teams could use in future leagues, and having though of some really great ones ( I'll tell you all in a mo ) I was wondering what you guys thought of the special weapons feature, and whether it could be something that could be included in the future.

A couple of examples of new weapons:

Icarus could employ the aptly named "Archangel" where a series of rockets are launched ( in quite an impressive angel wing pattern ) backwards, before flying forward at an area of the track in front of the craft - not super accurate, but heavy damage and splash damage.

AG 5Y5's new toy could be the "Samurai" where an onboard high precision mobile laser, at almost point blank range cuts across all nearby craft causing extreme damage to all nearby ships.

Piranha's "Feeding time" locks on and fires a missile at the selected target, if it hits it causes damage over time and loss of control while the Piranha Nanites in the missile break up the targets armor and disrupts electrical flow.

[Seek100]

If someone asked me what I thought of team weapons in Fusion I'd have to resort to profanity to aptly express my opinion of them, in short wipEout pure is STILL too biased towards weapons usage, Fusion was an absolute joke, team specific weapons are unbalanced and usually so bloody annoying I want to throttle a developer for thinking them up.

Course that's just MO.

[infoxicated]

That just adds 8 or more extra weapons into a game already far too littered with weapon fire.

I wasn't a fan of the team specific weapons in Fusion, mainly because some of them were too powerful and some of them were useless.

When Wipeout is selling itself on the number of weapons in the game it'll be a sad day indeed, as it'll mean the designers have completely run empty on ideas for the brilliant racetracks that have always been the hallmark of a good Wipeout title.

[Drakkenmensch]

Agreed. Besides, every time you add another weapon, it lowers the odds that you'll get the one you need when you run over a weapon pad. I'd be more in favor of tweaking existing weapons (like the not very useful disruptor bolt) rather than just throw in more.

[element42]

when you say 'tweaking' the disruptor bolt, do you mean by that: throwing it in a pit, filling pit in with concrete, then dancing naked on top? :twisted:

turning through a corner, get hit, turn other way, arrgghhhh!
along a wall-less section, get hit, random movements push me off three times, arrgghh!
racing, get hit, screen zooms back and forth, throw up on psp, argghh! :wink:

One further point I'd like to make about the too-heavy weapons in Pure is that it's exceedingly frustrating to have all of your speed taken away and be left to bounce around for 3 seconds after a hit. No, we do not need more powerful and more weapons. As Drak says, some tweaking is what's needed. IMHO *coff*

[bakkufu]

just throwing the idea around though, despite the weapons being quite inventive in fusion, they didn't seem very in keeping with the team themes.

It does make sense that each team has something different weapon wise, but I really do understand where you guys are coming from balance wise.

[Zero [RG] [HG]]

Feeding Time should be melee range.

[Seek100]

@ element42 - you know the disruptor bolt has been around since the original wipEout in 1995, except then it only made your steering go a little wobbly, and all the tracks were walled in making it impossible for the disruptor to take you off the track. Featured in 2097 aswell, same function - wobbly steering. If it was reduced to that effect alone, and only lasted say 3 to 5 seconds, then I could live with it, but as it is I'm in complete agreement about the infernal hell to which the pure era disruptor bolt should be sent.

Back to team weapons, aside from balance issues and the fact that there's already too many weapons in the game, there is the 'feel' of the game to consider, this is supposed to be a proffesional racing league, the future equivalent of the WRC, the Touring Car Championships, or the *shudders* Formula 1, it just doesn't seem sensible to me to let 8 or more different teams come up with nasty high powered super-weapons, only they have access to.

It's the wipEout equivalent of if the FIA (F1 governing body) had let that *shudders* Formula 1 team get away with the ground-effect car they designed back in the 80s, they won every race that season cause no one else knew what they'd done to the car, FIA banned the ground-effect stuff for *shudders* Formula 1 cars for the next season. Think it was Jaguar, not sure though.

Right now after saying the name of that particular single-seater racing championship so many times I'm off to recreate the bit in Ace Ventura right after he screams 'Einhorn is a man!'.

[Zero [RG] [HG]]

IT WAS IN 2097?!

[element42]

yes, the disruptor bolt was in 2097, but it had little discernable effect on your craft - it had some nice sparks come off it, and you slowed down a little bit, and control went a little bit 'fuzzy', but it was quite laughable as a 'weapon'. I can't remember it in the original although that is the iteration i've played least.
Seek, even if the old tracks weren't walled in, you'd have to be pretty pants to get knocked off by the disruptor, as it never actually seemed to move you; the Pure disruptor flings you around like you've been possessed :x

[eLhabib]

plus, it was called 'electrobolt' in 2097.

I know there's a lot of ranting going on about the purE disruptor bolt, but i don't see it that way. Seeing as only 1 effect of its 10 is really hazardous (the reverse-o-matic), I tend to throw it away most of the time, because the chances that it will actually do something are low, and I can use some extra shield for barrelrolling anyway. Also I don't think I have been hit by one of those dreaded reverse bolts more than 3 times up until now, and i really do play A LOT. So it's really not that bad.

I agree that you could tone down the reverse effect a little, making it last for a shorter time, and indicating clearly when exactly it is over.
However, the disruptor should NOT be taken out of the game completely, because that would only mean that the pickup ratio for all the other, more devastating weapons, becomes much higher (seeing as the diruptor IS rather frequent), making the game even more of a warzone than it already is.

Btw, the weapon balance is JUST FINE in multiplayer, I can really count the races I have lost to weapons on one hand. The only weapon that CAN seem a little overpowered sometimes is the bomb, but you could easily iron that out by making it also hazardous for the one who dropped it. And it's definitely the second most satisfying weapon for multiplayer. (first would be plasma bolt :D )

[element42]

...I don't think I have been hit by one of those dreaded reverse bolts more than 3 times up until now, and i really do play A LOT.... 8O I must really get in the way of them then... Or perhaps my PSP just hates me.

[Drakkenmensch]

I agree with eLhabib here - the best way to improve the balance of the bomb in the game would be to let it explode when ANYBODY touches it, including whoever set it there in the first place. I remember a race on Mandrashee that I won because everybody just kept slowing down to avoid a bomb I placed in a tricky right turn, and nobody detonated it. For a whole three laps, I could blast through that curve at top speed while everybody else slowed down not to take the damage.

[Rapier Racer]

If the bomb were like that then I would have ran over at least 7 of my own bombs by now, for me it's not the disruption bolt that’s the most annoying weapon, its ironically my favourite the bomb! When a disruption bolt hits you, you know there a chance it might not have an adverse effect but when you hit a bomb, your screwed plain and simple. Team specific weapons, hmm maybe if each team had a weapon of similar power and there were no other weapons in the game, but I like things the way they are now.

[SMThomas]

How about: -

For Tigron, Dash Strike where the craft can use it to boost out with great speed and can ram into other crafts so with great mass, knocks them flying and receive crictial damage, it's not a lock on weapon.

For egr tech (if apporite to theme), Thunder is a lock-on weapon that when it shoots a bolt to the sky, it fires a deadly lighting from the sky to the target, causing immobility and huge damage to the craft and that would be seriously powerful!

[eLhabib]

for balancing reasons, powerful weapons should ALWAYS be hard to aim, like the mighty plasma bolt. having an overly powerful weapon that is easy to target would be ridiculous, even more so if it was team-specific!

[Sausehuhn]

yeah, eLhabib, just two words:

nitro rocket

[SMThomas]

do you mean 'Nuke Missile' held by Tigron?

[zargz]

Team weapons? ... ... ... NO Thanks! :mr-t

[Drakkenmensch]

Mister T is right! We pity the foo' who wants overpowered team weapons!

[lunar]

Hey Zargz! 8) A rare sighting of you these days..... :D

btw I agree with you - team specific weapons fall into the "might seem like a good idea at the time but it`ll never work in practice and will destroy the game balance" category of game ideas.

[Distrupto]

It would be better if team weapons WERE available, but had to be unlocked by completing certain conditions using a certain team in order to get the weapon for THAT particular team.
:wink: And instead of going over a weapons pad for it and getting it randomly, it should be like a Team-Support that u can only use once in a race and have all the time before u use it. It should be non-absorbable and cannot be regenerated during the race after it has been used. 8) :wink: Here r some ideas:

FEISAR Shortcross: This creates a shortcut bridge from the section of the track the craft is on to another random point on the track where the shortcut rejoins.

Triakis Magnavacuum: This can be shot at a single wall or ship. If it hits a wall, that wall sucks every ship passing it at any distance towards it and bangs it three times, inflicting heavy damage with each hit, and then letting it go. If it hits a ship, that ship will be magnatized similarly. This does not affect the Triakis ship.

Harimau Teleport Swap: This teleports the Harimau ship and switches its position with the nearest ship ahead of it. Best if ur closest opponent is too far ahead to catch up to, battle and overtake within the laps left.

Piranha Energy Feed: This is shot forward directly. If it hits a target, the Piranha gets a boost worth the speed of the target craft and gets its shields charged to full while the target is stopped to a standstill and looses however much shield of its is needed to recharge the Piranha's shield to full. Devastating, but is hard to aim and is very short ranged. Its range is about half the start/finish straight at Sinucit.

Assegai Ultimate Shield: This shield reflects any weapons that hit it back to the ship which fired it with double power and disrupts the firer in the process.

Auricom Laser Drone: This releases a drone that goes along the track shooting all the other teams with a superpowerful laser that can only be defended from by dodging. If a target dodges, the drone keeps chasing it till it hits the target and then goes after the next target till it eventually hits the leader.

Qirex Time Bomb: This isnt really a bomb. When it is used, every ship on the track(except Qirex) gets slowed down to superslow speed and get any random disruption.

AG-Sys StrikeDrone System: This unleahes 5 dornes which fly near, around, ahead of or behind the AG-Sys ship, attacking any ship closing in on it or trying to overtake it, blocking any attacking ships' weapons, destroying bombs and mines and attacking ships that r ahead of the AG-Sys ships. They r destroyed only wen they take so much weapon fire that they blow up.

Icaras Vacuum Net: This, wen used, creates a hanging, magnetic net some distance above the track. Any ship wich passes directly under it is sucked up and caught for 5 seconds. Then they r let go of by the net throwing them in any dirction, crashing them into walls, throwing them off track or just allowing them to fall back on track. It can only be destroyed if a ship being held by it drops a bomb or mines. They get sucked up too and upon hiiting the net, destroy it.

Goteki Bombarder: Wen activated, mines of low power(one 8th of normal mines) start to rain all over the track and keep raining for 5 seconds. The G-45 ship is not affected by these mines.

Van-Uber Frenzy: Wen activated, everyones performance stats r changed randomly(better or worse) and all the ships change color, size and everyones weapons get mixed up. Even weapons, drones and team weapons activated at the time change size and colour. Effect lasts for five seconds. For example, a bomb laying on the track at the time may become tiny and wen detonated, have the effect of a disruption bolt!

Tigron Quake Aftershock: Wen activated, Tigron launches several quakes forward and backward, the first most powerful(but only 1 4th damage of normal quake) and the rest 4 with decreasing power.

:lol:

Edit 1: Assegai, Auricom added.

Edit 2: Qirex, AGs added.

Edit 3: Bolded names.

Edit 4: Icaras, G45, Vanunber and Tigron added

Edit 5: How to destroy Icaras' Vacuum Net. 8)

[bakkufu]

I've always been one for keeping super weapons in the "theme" of each team so from a personal perspective I reckon Feisar, "being fair" as they put it in thier Pure slogan, could have some kind of EMP detonation where all teams in the blast radius lose the ability to fire or absorb weapons until the effect wears off.

The super weapons did have a set of conditions to meet before you could get in in Fusion, and I like the idea of it being a support weapon that can only be used once. Maybe have it as a tournament one shot weapon, I.E if you fire it in race 3 of 12 thats it, you can't fire it again in that tournament.

[Daylight]

*pictures an icaras speeding away from said auricom drone until it runs out of fuel and crashes harmlessly on the track*

[Distrupto]

Imagine wat would happen if u were a Piranha and used the Energy Feed wen ur shield is on the red! The poor target is a gonner and u get a mega-boost with ur shieklds topped up too! And if the Energy Feed shot looks like a piranha with big shark-teeeth!
Auricom Laser Drone NEVER runs out of fuel!! Do any of the ships run out of fuel midgame? :?

[Daylight]

No, they don't. Thank god too, having to worry about shields AND fuel would be too much for my fragile nerves

[Task]

I'm not so sure about the specific team weapons you've mentioned, but the base concept of "a special team weapon that can only be used once a race and you always have until you use it" is quite interesting! I'd say there's definitely a good idea there.

Hmm, as to the mechanics of it...

What if for race records there was a grid of times instead of a top 3? Like this:



<track> Vector Venom Rapier Phantom
FEISAR <time> <time> <time> <time>
AG-Sys <time> <time> <time> <time>
Auricom <time> <time> <time> <time>
Qirex <time> <time> <time> <time>


And these are your own personal records, so if you haven't flown that craft on that track at that speed, there's no data.
There would be a similar table kept for each of the AI opponents.
So when you choose to race on Haledonian Heights at Venom, you and your opponents are placed onto the grid via who's got the best time on that course. You probably won't come in 1st place after one race (because the opponents would really know how to fly) but you'd beat at least half the pack. So when you replay the race, you start midway through the pack. After a couple races, you win gold and any races you make on that track later you start at the head of the pack. Importantly, coming in 1st isn't enough to "get the gold", you have to come in 1st _and_ beat the best time all your opponents have managed on that track. Which, if you're coming in 1st, you should be doing, but it prevents a "victory through annihilation" and gives a definite hard requirement for gold.
Anyway, once you've got, like, more than 20 golds for any specific ship, that unlocks the team weapon. Which has a button all its own on the controller (meaning this would be a PS3 game, not enough buttons on the PSP). So the normal opponents would likely never unlock their own team weapons. It's either that or have them start out with access to their own team weapon. Not sure I like either choice.

Anyway, on to the special team weapons themselves. They shouldn't be overpowered, they shouldn't kill the game balance, they should mostly be "cool". I like the Auricom Laser Drones, but they shouldn't do very much damage. The overall effect should be that everyone takes a little bit of damage. Perhaps people near the Auricom take more and people far away take less. The Pirhana Energy Feed is awesome, but too powerful. How about: All craft nearby (withing feeding distance) start to lose shield power and the Pirhana starts gaining shield power at a rate of 3:2. So it's useless if nobody is nearby, but very effective when you're in the middle of a pack of opponents. Sliding scale of usefulness is fairly balanced, I would imagine.
I don't like the "shortcut power", how about this instead:
FEISAR Afterburner: For about 5 seconds (I figure all team weapons should last the same amount of time and have some sort of global effect so that the whole world knows you've fired your one and only team weapon) an announcer says "Feeiii....saaar!" and during this time the FEISAR has speed 4. Or maybe even 5! Normally a "speed 1" craft, this team weapon fills in The FEISAR Weakness for a very short period of time.

All team weapons should either take care of the biggest problem in the craft (like the Assegai Shield) or enhance the "purpose" of the craft. Like this:

Goteki Power: For 5 seconds there's a little musical piece that plays where someone is saying really fast "GOteki, GOteki, GOtecki" (like a cheer, right?) and during this time all weapons fired by the Goteki do extra damage. Maybe even double, but that might be too much.

So I definitely like the idea, and there's my .02 for adding & expanding the original concept. 8 )

[Daylight]

oooooooh i love the idea of the crowd and the announcer saying the team names :D

[bakkufu]

Billboards could go crazy when you fire these off too :D

[Daylight]

Might as well have an organ playing like in basketball games :wink:

[bakkufu]

lol just thought it might have that "banzai" appeal

[Daylight]

hey, don't get me wrong, i like the idea! :D but it reminded me of baseball games :wink:

[Lance]

.
Distrupto, those are some very imaginative weapons. i like 'em!
i also like the idea that they should be one-time-only. part of my reason for this is that it would be very difficult to balance the total effect of a superweapon for all teams, and that would result in very long testing times during development and thereby very expensive games [IMO]. but the idea is just too cool to ignore, even though i tend to be a basic get-in-there-and-race guy. the one-time use would obviate the difficulty and make the superweapons practical and fun. the fun and excitement would be added to by Jay's/Task's idea of some sort of global warning or announcement that a superweapon has been fired. preferably a loud announcement. but one whose volume could be controlled by each player.
.

[lunar]

Well, for me there`s a dangerous amount of support for super-weapons going on here, and I remain unconvinced. So I`m going to argue against these weapons, while not denying that the suggestions we`ve just had are quite imaginative. :)

Given free-use, a set of weapons more powerful than the ones we already have would destroy the gameplay balance. Inevitably, one team`s weapon would be preferable to another`s, and if the ships were as balanced as they are in Pure it would give that ship an advantage as a result. We don`t want to see people picking a ship just because it has a weapon that tips the balance in its own favour. Wipeout is a racing game with weapons, not a combat game in rocket ships. You`ll look at these superweapons once and say "ooh that was cool," then after a few times everyone will get bored of them and realise they`ve murdered the gameplay for a quick thrill.

So, does the "one use only" idea get us round this issue? I don`t believe it does. The one-use-weapon could be used in the deciding race of a tournament which went down to the wire - I don`t want that. I want the last race to be a test of who can keep their skills together under the pressure of the situation, not a matter of who happened to save their super-weapon for the last race. With four people in a four race tour, each race could be decided by the use of one of these mega-weapons. I don`t want tournaments to come down to deciding when to "play your ace", when it should be decided by who shows the best overall performance as a pilot over the whole series. It`s about you, your opponents, the track and a limited stock of weapons which you can use to turn a situation to your advantage if you are good enough, but which won`t win you a race by themselves. I wouldn`t want to win or lose any race because of some over-powerful weapon. Even if it was just one race in a tour, why would you want to spoil a great race with some weapon that requires limited skill and which the other guy can`t have? Every team with its own unique weapon capable of producing the same race-killing rage and unfair incapacity as the reverse-disruptor: No thanks!

The only way to make super-weapons acceptable, imo, is to make them just cool and not particularly effective; in which case why bother with having them simply as an unnecesary distraction from the gameplay? I can`t imagine any way that these weapons could actually improve the game.

I think we`ve seen from the response on the forums to the reverse disruptor and the effect of weapons blowing you backwards that what really annoys a lot of players is when the weapon effects take precedence over the flying or driving, and stop you doing either for too long. This response is what you get when you put something into the game which seems cool, but isn`t really thought through.

To be amazing, all PS3 wipeout has to do is take the best elements of wipeout from the past, and use next-gen hardware to finally give us the perfect game, which for various reasons we`ve never had. Pure isn`t that game, simply because it`s on a handheld and a machine with limited power. But it`s damn nearly there and one more push, working on the ship handling and AI, is all that`s required. There`s no need to add loads of extra features and cool sounding stuff like superweapons, otherwise SL will run the risk of "doing a Fusion" all over again.

:)

[Drakkenmensch]

To be amazing, all PS3 wipeout has to do is take the best elements of wipeout from the past, and use next-gen hardware to finally give us the perfect game
Think about it for a second - your missile shooting from the front of your ship with each frame carefully animated, a thin layer of smoke left in the wake of the soaring cylinder of death, its exhaust treated as an independant source of light by the graphics processor, the impact giving a shining burst of dramatic light and the explosion leaving scorchmarks on the hull where it hit the target.

It'd be still the same weapon as before, but would have us all go "WHOA, that was COOL!", just like our first glimpse of the bomb explosion in Pure :D

[Lance]

.
Lunar, i understand your objections and say that there should be a separate superweapons mode. the superweapons would be available only in that mode and not in the 'standard' racing formats. especially never in tournaments
.

[Sausehuhn]

lunar, I agree with you nearly 100% (ok, I really don't think Pure has the right handling, it's not bad, but really not as good as the ones in the older WipEouts).
I'm also not for superweapons, they destroy the game.
Also when a superweapon won't change the game that much (and that is something unrealistic, too) it can be a real nightmare when two superweapons come together like a nitro rocket combined with a powerswarm.
And the right superweapon in the hands of the right pilot can be a combination that is really unfair to other pilots - and also unfair to the AI.
In Fusion superweapons made the easy AI anymore easier so the whole competition was lost...

[bakkufu]

I know it sounds dumb but you could have the superweapons availiable in tournament mode after completing certain challenges, and so it doesn't become an "ace card" kind of thing, your teams superweapon only activates if you are a certain amount of points behind in the tournament.

Kind of like a helping hand to keep things interesting.

[G0rT]

I see what your saying, kind of like a handicap. It would definately make things more interesting so that rather than have you and the same computer player always getting the top two positions, you would be able to be neck and neck with all different teams for all different positions.

[bakkufu]

Exactly, and imagine the fun in multiplayer tournaments where someone who's a fair way down in the stakes can use their team weapon to even things up a little for themselves.

[Distrupto]

But team weapons r not THAT powerful that they can get someone way back in a tournament back into the battle. How will an extreme miisile, a powerful reflect shield, a magnetic wall or a hanging net bring someone with 2 points wen the leader has 17 back into the battle with only 2 races left?

But there would be too much chaos on the track if an Auricom Laser Drone goes after AG-Sys, who activates SDS and sends 5 small drones to attack the laserdrone, wen they all get caught in a big magnetic net, only to have a hailstorm of mines afterwards and then find everybody has got a rainbow liverly and a building sized bomb is blocking the track. :lol:

Its funny, but there is no AG racing in that. Instead, its woever survives is the only one left..

[Daylight]

"...and then find everybody has got a rainbow liverly and a building sized bomb is blocking the track."

*falls over laughing, hitting the floor over and over again with her fists*

[kaiotheforsaken]

while i agree that superweapons tend to hinder the game as a whole, the fact that wipeout has a super weapon already seems to have been overlooked (granted i only read pg 2 of the thread). while the plasma was toned down slightly in pure it still is enough to seriously mess you up and without a quick recovery will lead to your demise. so why not take the plasma away and have the one use team specific weapon? it seems to me like it would balance out in the end, the main reason i say this is before i logged on this evening i was playing XL and got 6 freaking plasmas in one race effectively ridding myself of six other racers. now as rare as that is, a one use type situation would help solve that issue. so i think its a trade off, the team weapons solve some problems and wouldn't solve others, and of course most of us love the good ol plasma and wouldn't want it to go the way of the dodo. but then again since for everytime you get 6 in a race you get liek 10 races with no plasma, its an even trade off by itself. but despite the fact i sorta argued with myself a bit in this post lol, i guess i say lets just keep the formula pretty much the same.

[bakkufu]

well the idea of a team superweapon is just that, its a superweapon that, once you slip say 8 points behind, gives you, from the beginning of the next race the chance to even things up a little, it would depend on the pilot being skillful enough to make USE of that weapon effectively to do so.

A reflector shield for example, might not look like it could turn a tournament around, but if an AG5Y5 or Icarus fired off a quake and recieved double damage, it could effectively hinder their progress for that race, giving the person behind the shield a chance to get points ahead of others and bring themselves back up in the league a bit.

The plasma in 2097 / XL was instant death, and while on Pure its not, its still very effective, if a little hard to aim sometimes.

[Distrupto]

Pure's Plasma Bolt is not an instant death at all. Its harder to aim(i think) and if ur above Flash class, wen an enemy gets hit, they quickly recharge their shields in the verry short time between getting hit and exploding, and survive. Medevil is an ace at this trick, since it gets the most practice. :twisted: A better way is to use a Quake and Bomb duo.