A big point of discussion for all Cube2: sauerbraten folk, old and new, is the community. Where is it headed? The ditch? Maybe it’ll just stay the same? Or will it rise into the magnificent popularity that our counterpart, quake live, has? We all want the game to be more popular and more fun, so how do we go about achieving this? And this is exactly what the question in todays’ Q&A hopes to achieve:
You are now the leader of sauerbraten, tasked with improving the game and the community. What would you do?
<Skillz> I have a couple thoughts. First and foremost: Different maps, encourage editors to make more playable maps and are not only playable but FUN to play. We can’t count the number of players who have left because they do the same shit over and over again. Forge, reissen, dust2, forgotten, redemption, authentic, turbine, ot, complex… Sure you get some damnation thrown in there and some mercury if you play with WiDeN (maybe some kffa with frosty) but I mean changing modes doesn’t make it any less of a repeat than what we’ve done before. They’re great maps but we need more diversity. One problem that is our community’s fault though is we shoot ourselves in the foot, we say we’re sick of playing the same stuff but we choose it anyways, or we have a very closed mind to even trying things like ctf, or hold, or protect or collect. I think I’ve played a total of 5 collect games since the mode came out. Maps/modes aside, another problem we face is competition. In swat’s little article about mixes, I wouldn’t say they’re KILLING the game, but I mean mixes in general are just about getting a game going and having fun. Which is good BUT it’s not a battle to protect your honour or your clan’s honour. Sure we have SSL once a month but that’s it. Once a month. There needs to be a constant competition between clans and inside the clans too. I would suggest an ongoing 1v1 ladder and potentially some 2v2 and 3v3 ladders even. This gives something to strive for. To be named “the best” is quite compelling in ANYTHING one does. From old players to new, it’s safe to say we aren’t very welcoming in general. The “while 1” stuff, while fun (I do it too :s), makes a person think “wow, these people are just assholes” and NOBODY wants to play games with assholes. They’re born and we throw them into an ocean and say “swim to shore”. Obviously sauer isn’t an extremely complicated game but some people DO need direction.
<Zoocata> If I were the head developer of Sauerbraten I would make sure that community and team interaction is a must. I’d incorporate gamemodes that require a team to work together to complete instead of just mindless fragging around the map (king of the hill?), or maybe give servers functions to properly advertise their own forum, other servers, etc. If I could get these into the game, things would be so much easier. I’d also update the wiki to actually include the things you need to know about the game.
<Neon> To improve the community and to maybe attract new players to the game, there could be hosted things like tournament with cash prizes for example. also some kind of global scoreboard or a good working global chat for everyone (just as an example, I know those things may not even be possible to create). a new version of Sauer could may help this too, but I would only add maps and maybe a new mode/player model. At the gameplay itself, I wouldn’t change anything, I’ve heard from people they may want to have the footsteps making noises now as well, that’s a pretty dumb idea in my opinion, it could destroy some gameplay parts. the graphics should become a bit fancier as well, but still should offer a good amount of fps, for people in the community which have quite an old pc.
<Frosty> If I were to describe sauer development in one picture I would use that ugly grey/metal bullet ridden background, its just old and ugly and has been there for so long, development is going nowhere. So if I had to improve the game I would definitely take some nerdy classes, then I would know what I’m doing, then I’d make sauer feel like it was made in 2015 and I’d probably modify a few parts of the gameplay: mechanics, (I think it’s stupid that commiting suicide is the tactical thing to do in ectf) and maybe reduce the amount of content such as maps like the killer k’s (ksauer, konkuri-to, kmap5, killfactory and katrez_d) and reduce the filesize and have more simplicity that way. The Sacha Baron Cohen in me wants to oppress everyone and change a whole ton of german words into aladeen, but in all seriousness I’m fine with the community as a whole, if you are always complaining about how the community sucks, you are probably the problem and not everyone else, it reminds me of those loud-mouthed hoes in high school who complained about drama always following them and they had no idea why… However I would like to see less aladeen energy (negative energy) overall and see less bitch fights and have everybody be more friendly… thanks for reading!
So, what would YOU do? Do you think these guys have some great ideas? Maybe you have some great ideas of your own! Let us know and post your brilliant thoughts in the comments.
+ fix weapon balance:
cg: reduce spread + clip size, increase hitpush
pistol: reduce spread
rockets: drastically reduce splash radius
grenades: make them explode faster instead of waiting around for 9 years
+ add some kind of matchmaking system/UI to find mixed games quickly
+ have someone in charge of permanently banning cheaters from the game
sauer would be a wonderful game then, i’m serious.
/$0.02, inb4 hate
I would absolutely change the main point of this game – open source. I would improve the engine by doing a bit better graphics and more flexible game by itself. I’d also include some very good ‘working’ anti-cheat and close the source. Right after I’d do everything to make sauerbraten more popular, first of all I’d put it to the steam. I’d follow the community and I would host my own tournaments because I believe that ‘Official Sauerbraten Tournament’ would be very popular. I’d also make more playermodels and maps made for a teamplay.
close the source? why?
To make sauerbraten more popular.
well, i dont think that that would make sauer more popular, i even think that it would make sauer less popular.
where are you man? can’t find you in game? anything where I can contact you?
I would create some form of editing tutorial, absolute newbie (first time opening game), and within 10 minutes they will already know basic keybinds, basic editing (cubes, curves, lights, ents), mainly just how to spawn them, how to modify them, and show what they do.
Then an intermediate tutorial which heads into map creation. An easily understandable guide (with pictures), examples of trick jumps to add, basic layout, texturing, mapmodels, and generally just get the player started with their first map. Most newbies these days… *sel whole map, /lava*, or spam mass cubes.
Finally an expert tutorial, which covers: how to make atmosphere fit, proper texturing for atmosphere, advanced lighting commands for light improvements, bug fixes, cfg, proper ent placement, advanced ents (spotlight, example), and other end-map commands to prepare the map for submission to quad or sauerworld.
Perhaps a custom content tutorial as well, to insure editors are familiar with licenses if they are using content that isn’t theirs.
TL;DR
Tutorial = new players are introduced to concept of editing in sauerbraten, and within a week are already working on a somewhat reasonable map.
I would suggest when you click ‘multiplayer’ in main gui, you are prompted to login with Sauerworld account.
And you cannot access multiplayer without logging in.
Cheater problem = solved, just ban their account. Perhaps some sort of IP matching to insure cheaters don’t make new accounts.
Option 2: ban multiplayer access if client is sourcecode modded in any way. Regular mods, like huds, hudguns, playermodels, are acceptable.
Option 2.1 : coop edit is accessable with modded client, but upon gamemode change if client is modded, instant dc from server.
TL;DR
User accounts, the end
Side note, forgot to include in previous post: Sauer seems the same year after year, some maps, some new commands, some this and that.
It needs something big, a massive overhaul really.
A community wide vote, lists all the maps, users vote which maps they want to go POOF, gone from sauer.
Another community vote, vote for which gamemodes stay, which ones go.
And for the modes that stay, votes for how to improve the game mode.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it feels that 3 people run sauer development, Eihrul, Nieb, and some guy that give eihrul large donation for a position.
Development needs more than 3 people’s influence to really get anywhere, in sauerbraten’s case at least.
I’d never want Sauer to become more popular because the small community where you know everybody is the reason i was able to find a connection to it for such a long time. I agree with skillz’ part with variating game modes combined with zoocata’s part with modes who need teamwork to be won or enjoyable so bascially making people learn the rules of e/i/collect would be pretty fun because i used to suggest it a few times and people just restarted ectf without taking it seriously after some minutes.. At other times we managed to finish some collect games and i pretty much know the rules and some basic strategies now (i especially remember an rC intern which was really fun :P)
Vanquish, making the damage drop off to 0 does make it a lot like Quakes rockets.
Everyone asked summed up my thoughts pretty well. The only thing is – will we actually ACT on ANY of this? Or will it just be another discussion with just sitting and talking like Parliament and doing absolutely nothing but fuming at those who don’t agree with us?
Forgot to add this in the other post…
Skillz was talking about how we’re unfriendly to noobs.
I get my ass absolutely raped in Reflex every single day I play. I don’t get called a shithead, noob, or called a fuckwit for being bad by ANY of them. I never have in Reflex. I see people do lesser versions of this in sauer (i.e., noob get out) and extreme versions in Quake (die fucking retard noob swatllama die).
The people in Reflex aren’t just not mean to me. A lot of them go over the game with me and help me out after they finish raping me – sometimes, they even interrupt the duel and show me stuff too. That’s how we have to act to keep noobs into our community, to assimilate them, to denoobify them.
I like this. And I’m proud to say that I’ve been doing this to as many players as possible. Being kind and showing newcomers how to play is ESSENTIAL to keeping new players from entering the game permanently. I’ve seen this first hand with many players that I used to duel quite often (I’ll keep their names untold just in case :p).
The other great thing about this is that everyone can start doing it TODAY. It’s the one difference that everyone can make! You don’t need special programming classes, 100 hours of your time, sleepless nights developing servers and advertising websites and moderating forums. None of that. It starts with just being kind and helping other players improve. 99% of people you meet will want to get better at the game and will want to aspire for higher. Help show them the way :)
I never meant that there should be no splash at all, just that atm you can literally hit the floor, wall, door or w/e and still get 30 dmg and a good bounce even if it’s nowhere near the player at all. I feel like sauer should reward people for having skill with rockets and punish those who only spam them – and I say that as someone who’s never been particularly good with the rocket launcher myself.
User Accounts as was mentioned to be able to play multiplayer and even connect to server.
Global Statistics, Rank system
Anticheat included into client
Global ban which could work as was destribed earlier by someone. Account bans.
Global forum with tips, skins, advices, solving problems (nothing like sauercom, which is becoming blog of sauer players)
And yea, we need what sauerbraten has lost. Clanwars. Instead of that we have here very unfair, very disrespectull binds (:D ;) etc) I am up for mixes also, but fucking shit, why are you in the clan if you dont want to play clanwars? :D
Want to be pro? Make it pro.
Less hate
And 2 more things.
Global clantag protection (oo closed source server mod ?)
Global chat, clan chat in whole game. Doesnt matter where you are, you still can contact ur mate via CT.
Ik that oo game client had some kind of feature like this.