Opinions on Possible Mod Ideas. First idea: Modular (tribes or ET) style loadouts.

[Buster Charlie]

I know a few people I may be able to talk into helping me work on a BF2 mod project. My Ultimate goal is really to build on and improve BF2. I am not looking to create a 'realism' mod because everyone and their mom makes realism Mods.

I also realize that most likely a mod will not be played and will be wasted effort. Because of this I want to gather feedback from the TG community (because I feel on a whole you people are more level headed and focused on fun and teamwork than the gaming community as a whole) and take notes on what people say to devlope a design doc.

I want to see what people would like to see, what they think will work, and why.

If people are responsive I will post more topics for people to debate, maybe someone will see an idea they like and use it in a mod, maybe someone else had the same idea and can do it better.



Anyway onto the first idea.


Would you as a player prefer more options when equiping your player?

For example.

In Enemy Territory each class often had more than one weapon to choose from. BF2 has the 'unlocked' weapons if you have enough rank.

The simplest idea is to have each class have at least one alternate weapon to choose from. In some classes it's easy because the weapons are balanced, in others you'd have to tweak things because one weapon is superior.

For example (American side only, you can figure out the chinese/MEC equivulent)

Assault: M203 or G3, these two both have their tradeoffs so there wouldn't be too much balancing issues,

Engineer: Shotgun or m-4, the shotgun could be tweaked a bit (tighter pattern to represent a more realistic spread as long as it dosn't make them too powerful) and instead of a full fledged M-16 you could give them the m-4 (like the spec ops has, but without the scope) This would IMHO encourage people to play the engineer more.

Medic: M-16 or ? Im not sure. the L85A1 (or whatever its called) is much better than the m16 and being a british rifle seems out of place except with a british team. Maybe beef up the SMG's, it would make sense for the SMG to be deadlier than the m-16 at very close range (more controllable in full auto) in some situations.

Sniper: The current alternate would work with some tweaking. Idealy I think each team should have a Bolt action (super accurate but slow) semi auto marksman rifle (for the US it would be the m-14 based marksman rifle), and a .50 cal /12mm heavy gun.

AT: The current AT unlock is just amazingly badass, I'd like to see the SMG tweaked a bit so its not useless, and a shotgun kept as an alternative I guess. Maybe a scopeless m4 but I think that would make AT too powerful. I'd also like to see the option of equiping anti-air rocket launcher instead of anti tank (not both at the same time) depending on the situation

Support: The current selection (Saw vs LMG) is not bad but needs some tweaking, obviously give the Americans the m60 or other 7.62 Nato LMG instead of the PK.




So the above idea is just a rough concept, but what I'd really like to see, and would be the most flexable is a completly modualr design.

Basicaly a player would be able to choose every aspect of his fighter, and each part would have a tradeoff.

The great thing about BF2 is it has a built in balance issue for the players with heavy armor or weapons; Sprint

By using the BF2 sprint system you can have some pretty good checks and balances.

So at the player screen instead of picking a class, the player would pick everything. Like tribes, he could save his profiles for quick use.

First off a player would decide if he wanted body armor or not. THis may sound like a no brainer but players without body armor would have a large speed advantage. You might also implement a total 'weight' limit too.

Then He'd decide on his main weapon, he could pick any weapon, but the heavier weapons would also reduce your sprint.

Then you pick your secondary kits. Grenade launchers, defib, ammo packs,
Extra ammo for your weapon, grenades, claymores, C4, mines whatever.
You'd need a lot of play testing and balancing to make sure there is not 'ultimate' combos.

Do you guys think it would be worth taking a lookt at? For example you might be able to sacrifice body armor and a real good gun to be able to carry C4, mines, and claymores and be some kind of 'super defender' class where you just booby trap the hell out of your base.



I would really like peoples input on this!

[Buster Charlie]

Would this subject be more apropriate in general discussion or what?

[kornkobcom]

Ithink that while such a mod woudl be interesting, it would probably take a great deal of work to gameplay balance all the various combinations so that there wasn't an 'uber kit' loadout.

[Buster Charlie]

Well At first I think there would be some Uber Kits

All classes have a knife and pistol, we could make the pistol optional (and allow for extra main weapon ammo) But that complicates things more. Weather the pistol has a silencer or not is irrelevent as I belive the silencer reduces damages or could otherwise be balanced.

All classes have a main weapon

For the most part they have two special items except Medic which has the Defib, med pack, and grenades.

You could say the defib/med pack are one special item I guess. But it would be neat to see the option to have both or JUST heal or JUST revive.

The anti tank class has a main weapon (AT rocket) and the SMG as a special. Also its interesting the AT has body armor, a rocket launcher, and a SMG and can sprint faster than support and assault.

Or Maybe the Anti Tank rocket is the special weapon (2 slots?) and the SMG is the main weapon. Maybe the fact that AT runs faster than assault or support is because he has a light main weapon (SMG) rather than a heavy one? (m203 or LMG)

Therefor the system could work that body armor decreases your sprint 1 second, and heavy weapons decrease your sprint 1 second

Im not sure exactly, i'd like peoples feedback if they think this would be a good idea.



Another possibily to aid in balancing the game would simply run a beta server. If you ran a 64 player game with pretty loose standards, and tracked the stats of each player kill, with a hash based on their kit loadout, and their victims kit.

I'm pretty sure you'd see a pattern.

So you could use this to determine which kit combos totaly kicked ass, which ones sucked. Im sure personal skill is an issue to. But ultimately if you could give each player a lot of control over their personal kit, without havig any one class be super powerful, that would be awesome