Since I couldn't find a thread dedicated for ideas and suggestions for VSH servers, I decided to make a thread where people could post their ideas and thoughts about VSH servers. And now here it is! Post your ideas and thoughts about what should be changed/added (such as mods, maps and so on) or defend something you think is already good! Ideas: Soldier Battalion's Backup Since Hale can one-hit-kill the Soldier and it's not too often that the Soldier gets help from the Medic, I suggest giving Soldier damage resistance against Hale, let's say 30-50%(based on the fact that as far as I know, Hale deals about 200-250 dmg), but without changing the amount of damage he receives from rocketjumping, falling from too high and so on. Additionally, if the amount of damage required to fully charge the buff is still default (300 dmg taken), then I would also recommend lowering it to 150, so the Soldier won't have to find medcits of Medics to help him to get the buff fully charged, but at the same time, be carefull with Hale if Soldier is going alone. Heavy Buffalo Steak Sandvich Modifying the Steak so that when eaten by Heavy, he receives damage boost and damage resistance, as in deals more damage and takes less damage from Hale. The amount of damage resistance could be at 80-90%, since he can't use guns if he eats the Steak, so that keeps him from becoming OP with it. Also, the damage boost he would get could be around 2x. Please keep in mind that the minicrit-effect still applies, meaning that Heavy will still take damage even with the boosted damage resistance, and he can' deal thousands and thousands of damage with his fists alone. And for example, if Hale deals 200 dmg, then Heavy would take 40 dmg (with 80%)/20 dmg (with 90%) + minicrit, so even with this kind of a buff, he's not invincible. Goomba Stomp + shotgun Speaking of being invincible (or almost), everyone knows how the Heavy can get health by stomping Hale with his shotgun equipped. This is a fair method, but the fact that the Heavy can get thousands and thousands of health by doing multiple Stomps in a row is just ridicilous. It ruins the game for Hale and takes the fun from other players. Therefore I suggest adding a maximum limit for health gained this way. Heavy would be fine with the limit of 1,000 - 1,500 HP. With this limit, Heavy can get still Stomp Hale and get health with it, but it would keep his health in reasonable numbers, even if Heavy would take a punch or two after one stomp. Engineer Short Circuit Those who use the Short Circuit know it's a life-saver in a tight spot. And those who use it, have died against the "stun-but-no-stun"-bug. I'm talking about when the Engineer stuns Hale, but Hale still punches him to death and THEN he raises his hands to show that he's stunned. So far i've hear two explanations for this: 1) TF2 logic; a started attack will finish no matter what, as in if Hale starts the punch even 0.01 seconds before the Engineer uses the SC to stun him, the punch will finish, no matter if it will hit anything or miss everything (similiar to one of the very first bugs of TF2 where you could cancel your melee attack by changing to another weapon and the next time you take out your melee wep, THEN the melee attack will finish. Started attack will ALWAYS finish). 2) Lags. If this is the real reason, then there's really nothing to do about it. But as I'm hoping that explanation 1 is the correct answer, I suggest atleast trying to add a damage multiplier of zero for Hale when he gets stunned. This could bypass the glitch by simply still allowing the hit to finish, but the hit wouldn't deal any damage! I really wish that this would be atleast tested some day. Metal from dealing damage All Engineers know that Sentry + shotgun = huge load of metal (and fast if the Sentry is lvl.2 or 3). Despite this being fun and very usefull for the Engineers, I still believe the amount of metal they can get is simply too much. I suggest either limiting the max amount of metal to 1000 or reduce the amount of metal the Engineer gets from 50% of damage dealt to 25%, as in if Engineer now deals 100 dmg, he gets 50 metal, but by reducing the amount of metal gained to 25%, he would get only 25 metal, keeping it more reasonable. Either modification woud possibly encourage the Engineers to build Dispensers, instead of being so much dependant on their Sentries and leaving their teammates to yell for Medic or cry for ammo. Sniper Huntsman taunt We all know how Sniper can trap Hale with his Hunstman-taunt, and most of the time, it's game over for Hale at that point. To keep it more fair, I suggest disabling taunts (not including the action items like High-Five-taunt) when Sniper gets stunned/spooked from rage. This would allow Hale to escape the trap and keep it fair for him. However, keep in mind that the Sniper would still be allowed to keep Hale in trap if he gets help from a Medic who keeps übering the Sniper and thus keep him taunting. But even if this happens, it's more than likely that Hale can just wait untill the uber runs out and THEN use rage to get Sniper and the Medic, again making it possible for Hale to escape (without being pushed away from Sniper by crokcets and so on OR without !rocketme, which doesn't always save Hale anyway). Amount of rage reduced from Hale with Jarate The idea that the Jarate decreases Hales "rage-charge" is good, but I think it should be more than 4%, especially when we remember that one compression blast from Pyro will add 4% of rage for Hale. I suggest increasing the amount of rage reduced from 4% to 10%, 15% at max. However, in case that Sydney Sleeper decreases the amount of rage too, it would be very bad for Hale, especially in wide open maps like Warehouse or Crevice. Therefore, if it would be possible, the amount of rage Jarate reduces would be increased, but at the same time, Sydney Sleeper would only take the original 4%, in case that Sydney Sleeper reduces rage in the first place. There, those were some of my ideas. Please keep in mind that I'm not saying that these ideas should be put to use right here and right now, but to give you something to think about as a way to improve the VSH servers. Now I want to know what you think, please express your thoughts about them, wether you think they're great and should be applied to VSH servers or burned in fire and then dumped the remains to a ditch and leave it there to rot and be eaten by rats. I'm hoping to see a real brainstorm here! Thank you for your time.
i'm really excited about these new idea's! but there is one thing buggering me. if you think about 6 heavies with the steaks and they use it wouldn't that be a bit op? 6 almost indestrucible heavies pounding heavy down with extra damage. for the rest good idea's mate
I understand your concern, but if that would ever happen, Hale can just either jump away or use rage to either get away or try killing the Heavies. Also please keep in mind that even if there would be 6 Heavies with the Steak buffs punching Hales guts out and Hale can't jump away or put rage to good use, the buff only lasts for 15 seconds, after that, they're just regular Heavies. And they can't "spam" the effect, since it takes takes 25 seconds for the Steak to "reload" + about 4 seconds to eat it again.
How can you charge the back-up when you get one-hit-killed? I think this will be pretty OP, if you know that crits have knock-back so the hale won't get in range of the heavy too quick. So the heavy can do a massive amount of damage before hale reaches him. +1 This can use a limit indeed. This is indeed a problem, but the real problem is that the HHHJr can't get stunned AT ALL. It just ignores him. +1 Lowering this should be a great solution. This + short circuit is pretty OP. I won't touch this. It's pretty easy to avoid being taunted. +1 for increasing the jarate rage reduction. Sydney sleeper doesn't take rage.
That's something I have been wondering for a long time. If I remember right, if a Soldier would manage to fill the charge and use it, it would reduce the amount of dmg Hale deals, but getting it is almost impossible at the moment. And to actually answer that question more directly: like I said, if Soldier has the BB equipped, giving him damage resistance + lowering the amount of damage received to charge the buff would make it more practical. But how can the Heavy deal damage without getting to Hale first after eating the Steak? Or are the Heavies allowed to use guns after eating the Steak? And if Hale would be pushed back by Heavys punches, wouldn't that lower the amount of total damage Heavy manages to do? On a sidenote, here's some math: A heavy with this buff and normal Fists (or any other melee weapon with the base damage of 65), the Heavy can deal (65 * 2) * 1,35 = 175,5 dmg/punch. And with the TimeFireDelay (AKA how long the Heavy is forced to wait untill he can punch again) of 0.8, the Heavy has enough time to make 18 punches during the 15 seconds with buff after eating the Steak and thus, deal about 3290 dmg. This may seems quite alot, but when we remember that getting a hit with every punch isn't likely to happen, + when we remeber the knockback you mentioned Darkness, then that lower Heavys chances even more to give Hale the beating of his life. And even in the worstcase scenario, with multiple Heavies blocking Hale in a tiny hut (or anything similiar) with the buff and Hale just can't get out, he can use rage, scare the Heavies and waste several precious seconds of their buff. And if Hale STILL can't get away (if the Heavies take turns on who does the beating, then don't forget that the Heavies still aren't immortal. The equation for counting the peak damage the Heavy can do is: ((X * 2) * 1,35) * (15 / Y) X = Base damage, Y = Attack rate But please remeber that if you use this equation, the total damage is not quaranteed, since the amount of damage various on each punch.
Do you get charge from falldamage and rocketjump damage? Because if you can get charge that way, this should work. But we should not forget that it will buff everyone near that soldier, making them reduce hale's attack on them aswell. Oh wait, you can only use melee with that steak buff, I forgot about that.
No, you can only charge the buff by taking damage from a hostile source, in this case, Hale. Damage from rocketjumping, falling from a great height and so on do not charge the buff. Therefore, Soldier HAS to get his ass to Hale and take a beating, and it's not even guaranteed that he can espace. That's exactly why the Back-up would be a great tactical equipment: with the BB buff, Soldier can help the team by buying more time for Medics and Dispensers to heal teammates, and it would be a great assault buff too. Either way, similiar to Buff Banner, if Hale can see that the enemies have a buff and he know what it means, he stays away untill the buff ends, again resulting that the Soldier can give a few precious second to breath more easily.
Agreed with most of Darkness's responses. Just to keep the heavy's with buffalo's and shotguns at balance I suggest class limit to 3-4? Seems optimal since we do limit most classes that tend to be OP. Stress testing would be required on anything anyway.
Although i appreciate the effort of these modifications, you do have to know that i am not the author of the plugin, even though i do get a lot of stuff "working" or introduced, most is build from stuff from alliedmodders.net, you can however post your idea's on the alliedmodders link though. Perhaps i can do it for you as a veteran over there
quick reply: Soldier: remove buff on last 2 players, or they keep jumping away get health, never die (Since they have crits) Heavy: Steak, imagine 4/5 heavy's surround the engy/medic. Hale cant hit him, they just block constantly. People do team up.. there not stupid. The goomba is overpowered, but if known nobody's lets a heavy jump on his head. The short circuit is a lag issue, called lag compensation. The game is not made for a player to walk as fast as hale does, it is not used to compensate those speeds. Thats also the reason why you still die when rocket jumping away. Also the same reason why you should never run in a straight line from hale (because he will hit you with 10 meter distance) always zig zag so the compensation is less. Engy should get less metal indeed, no clue how to do that though. We would keep the sniper taunt, its a really hard "tactic" to do, just like the teleporter trap of a engy. (even more fun if a heavy with his shotung out takes the teleport) Jarate should indeed be more, but again, no clue how.
If you would do that, it would be awesome! This made me wonder, are all the modified items "built-in" on VSH-mod itself or are they all (or just some of them) individual plugins? A list of all plugins would be very much appreciated too (if it's not too much to ask).
I know at first I said on the server that I can agree with all of the ideas, I realized that I disagree with two of them. The heavy shotgun overheal is hard to manage and if Hale lets a heavy goomba him constantly, that's Hale's fault, that should remain untouched. The huntsman taunt is also a hard to do trick specially with all the useless scouts, soldiers, demos, pyros and the rest of the ignorant team pushing him out of it. That and Hale can use rocketme to escape, unless it's in a tight spot with nowhere to fly up to. I always keep check if my rocketme works in case by any unnatural way I'd be caught in this taunt. Battalion's: adds +10 health and upon using all team members in it's effect take less damage from Hale. Hale deals 174-220 damage, so there is a slight chance the soldier survives 1 hit, but heck he'll never get away alive cause rocket jumping kills him, equalizer wont get him far either, only option is medic healing him which is hardly likely unless they agree to use this strategy, though keep in mind the medic is still in danger. The soldiers NEEDS a damage resistance against Hale when using the BB. Buffalo Steak: lasts 15 seconds, gives a speed boost but you also deal/receive mini crits. Note that the heavy will have 100% crits due to the mod giving crits to melee weapons, exception for the spy knife and the heavy's Holiday Punch which has minicrits. It also has a cool down after it's effects are off. The heavy class limit (cause there is one) is 4 on the VSH servers, and it's hardly likely that you get a team of heavies using it in a properly organized assault/defense. SC: As much as we want to believe, it is not lag compensation that causes you to die upon stunning a player in TF2. I'm not sure if it works but take the soldier with the Cowmangler 5000 for example... if he initiates a charged shot and gets stunned, that shot will fire anyway eventhough he's stunned. Another closer example is (which often happens to me) when the CBS charges a shot with the Huntsman and I stun him with the SC face to face... guess what, he fires the arrow AFTER being stunned cause the stun cancels out his charge. A last interesting fact is that if you initiate a melee hit and then immediately taunt, the hit will not be cancelled and in fact lands eventhough you're already taunting, I use this little trick/bug/glitch/exploit as an engineer with the eureka effect when I'm down to my last metal and upgrading buildings (last hit and I initiate the teleport taunt in the process, this way saving an extra second by upgrading AND teleporting at the same time). My suggestion is while Hale's under the effect of the stun, he should do damage multiplied by zero to compensate in case he does land a punch. Metal from damage: Yes, it can get overpowered. I'd go with the limit of 1000 metal, specially cause slightly after 1000 it resets to 0 and you need to least get it up to 100 to build a dispenser if you cant waste metal into upgrading and rolling it back down to 1000. Jarate: at the moment it reduces rage by 8%. I often saw it save lives cause just as Hale was hit by the jar, he taunted but it failed cause his rage went down. That 8% doesnt help too often though and makes most snipers prefer to use the SMG to dish out rapid damage and slight push back. I would say it should reduce the rage meter by 25% cause that would actually make snipers want to be more team players and use it, cause that's a more significant amount. Additionally I would add a similar suggestion to the Fan-o-War for the scout which reduces rage by 5% on hit. This small amout is not worth it to risk my life doing slight 5 points of damage and remove 5% of rage. The sandman helps far more. Now if the Fan would reduce rage by say 20% on hit, that would make it worth using. This is my opinion on this and I think it is possible to modify weapon stats inside the game mod files... somehow... problem is I've never seen what a mod file looks like but cant be anything worse than a game's code file containing stats you can modify to your liking. For example the STALKER game series stat files are easy to open in text manager and modify armor and weapon and other stuff. tl;dr: WALL OF TEXT
Completely agree. -Jokes, I agree with everything. But the metal doesn't seem to reset, after some tf2 update it doesn't reset it just keeps going, witnessed an engi building 4 sentry's and upgrading them to lvl 3 once, once one is build fully he would blow it up and make another. No fetching metal or anything.. that's my prof. So if it would be capped at 1.5k I'd agree, maybe it would confuse some engis seeing lower numbers on metal, maybe not but still.
Nice work Echo, and thanks for reminding about some rather important stuffs, like melee = 24/7 crit, I had completely forgotten about it! Guess you don't think about when you get used to it... Also, leaving the Huntsman alone would be fine by me, I was thinking about keeping it fair for Hale in case there's a newcomer playing as him who doesn't know what weapons can do in VSH or don't know about all the tricks (as not-likely-scenario as it may sound) like !rocketme. But when it comes to Shotgun + Goomba, something needs to be done with it. Sure, in most maps Heavies can't use it too well if at all, but then there are some maps that almost yell to Heavies: "Shotgun + Stomp are here, here and here!" The limit for health wouldn't be too visible in most of the maps since it's not very likely for one Heavy to get several Stomps, but in some maps where it's ridicilously easy, like Pool Day, THAT'S where the health needs a limit. Or if altering the mod would be far too great task, then would it be imposiible to think about an alternative plugin, such as instead of getting health from dealing damage, what if the Heavy would gain ammo? But still keeping the default ammo limits, so that a Heavy can't have 5000 ammo in his minigun. As for the rest of the subjects, I agree with everything else except with the FaN suggestion. With rage reduction of 20%, the FaN would have far too great impact on the rage, especially if the player using it knows what he/she is doing. Good Scouts can easily get multiple hits on Hale if Hale isn't going specificly after them, thus practically disabling the rage. When we compare it to Jarate and its 25% reduction as you suggested, it would only make sense that the Jarate would reduce more due to the time it needs to recharge. As for FaN, the Scout can (with some skill + luck) keep hitting Hale several times, and with 20% reduction/1 hit, a good Scout could make it so that Hale wouldn't be able to use a single rage during a round. Therefore I would say 10% reduction would be the max amount of reduction if you ask me. Unless the rate of fire for FaN would be drastically lowered, THEN it should be allowed to take away more rage, but I don't think that would be "inviting" for the Scouts anymore. And about modding the stats and attributes, I don't think it's too difficult, but as for me, I don't have the files of the plugins, therefore I can't tamper with them. But I'm still hoping that Snelvuur will have mercy on me and point the way to them... "Yet another wall of text! Let's build a castle out of these already!"
Maybe I did go a bit far with the 20% with the Fan-o-War, 10% would be fine, not like we'd have alot of hit and run scouts who'd use it well. Heavy gaining ammo via damage sounds like an excelent compensation for not being able to drastically overheal. It would definately make a heavy's job easier that he doesnt have to leave his safe spot to get more ammo if he just has to dish out damage. But of course he only gains ammo if he uses the shotgun and the damage is equal to the ammo amount he gains for the minigun. Funny thing though. On maps where you know heavies will use this strategy to goomba Hale, they're so damn vulnerable. They concentrate on that only spot where they expect Hale to come from and they get ambushed from behind. Crevice for example, I'm Hale and Snob said to me to come at him cause he has a trap ready for me... I entered the back cave from the open side and not the launch platform side cause obviously that's where he expected me. I find 2 heavies just looking down the platform waiting and I go there and be like "Hey, what are we looking at?" and you can imagine the rest.
Btw, the engy's metal on hit, the heavy getting health with the shotgun, the pyro shooting and setting hale on fire (yes nobody knows i assume) only happens on xx damage. And the homing missiles and the goomba that only works for players are all plugins. Also the rocketme is a plugin. So only leaves the BB, the steak and the jarate left from the original post, if i want to place some ideas to the author it would need to be correct. Also from what i have read is that the sniper will get some climbing abilitys (dont ask me what/how though)
interesting. also i would really like to see the steak on the server, and the soldier with his bb would be quite handy to maybe have enough health to take 1 hit and rocketjump+land 1 time. then he can protect his team and get away when hale targets him.
More like pain in the ass in just about EVERY map. If Sniper could climb as up on everything, for example in Crevice, imagine Snipers camping on to of trees, or in the spot on the edge at the opposite side of the map from the bridge. I think giving Sniper a climbing ability would make his job too easy in certain maps, so I'm not supporting it. Unless there's some kind of a "Climb-meter" which limits the amount of how long/far the Sniper can climb, then it would be balanced and could be considered as good addition for VSH.
I support all you suggestion except the huntsman taunt. As snel said it it's very hard to pull that out so we can keep that. Also skilled players can easily get out with rocketme. About the engineer gettin load of metal. he gets half the amount of the damage he makes. So maybe modify the plugin so the engineer only gets 1/4?