Womannpower - Give me your opinions on the power-ups!

[Deleted member 33500]

Hello all!

As any of you may have seen, I was working on a Mannpower knock-off that tries to fix up the mode a bit!
The goal is to be at least somewhat fun while maintaining balance.

So, with the 72hr jam coming around, I will be trying to revive this idea with a map in just 72 hours!

So before that starts, here are my plans:

• Either CTF or Invade-style Player Destruction
• Grapples
  
• Custom-made power-ups

I think the grapples and mode selection is self-explanatory enough, however, concerning the custom power-ups...

Here are some existing power-ups that I am currently considering putting in:

Stealth
Gain invisibility
Lasts 15 seconds

Spoiler: Precise Description

Conditions: 66 (Fading invis)

Swiftness
Movement and weapon speed boost
Lasts 50 seconds

Spoiler: Precise Description

Conditions: 113 (Slight weapon speed increase), 32 (Speed boost)
25% faster taunting speed
50% faster decloak rate
150% faster cloak rate
90% lower weapon switch time
125% faster sentry build speed
200% faster dispenser and teleporter build speed
50% increased jump height
50% faster non-melee firing speed
75% faster reload speed
100% faster Ubercharge gain

Vigour
+35 max health, +10 health regeneration
Lasts 40 seconds


Impenetrable
Increased damage and knock-back resistance
Lasts 35 seconds

Spoiler: Precise Description

20% damage resistance
75% knockback resistance
50% airblast resistance

​

Handy notes:

• You cannot pick-up a power-up if another one is active.
• Power-ups have a fancy UI meter out of three vertical lines that disappear, indicating how much time is left on the power-up. (Which is also forcing me to keep the effects text to minimum, since only 5 game_text entities can have their text displayed at once)
• Power-ups get removed upon death, class change, and time-out.

That is all. Thank you for your time!

 

[Fluury]

Consider putting in the custom Grapple that doesn't feel terrible while you are at it trying to improve the gamemode.

Though I don't know why you decided to make them timed. That makes it feel less like Mannpower and more like a Halloween Spell. A lot of identity of Mannpower comes from the perma-upgrades so stuff like "15s of invisibility" or "+35 HP for 40s" feels kinda boring I guess.

 

[Deleted member 33500]

Consider putting in the custom Grapple that doesn't feel terrible while you are at it trying to improve the gamemode.

Though I don't know why you decided to make them timed. That makes it feel less like Mannpower and more like a Halloween Spell. A lot of identity of Mannpower comes from the perma-upgrades so stuff like "15s of invisibility" or "+35 HP for 40s" feels kinda boring I guess.

I may use Sarexicus's improved grappling hooks for the grapples.

As for the timed power-ups: The main reason for that is that I would have an extremely difficult time trying to remove the timed attributes, conditions and game_text stuff from players whenever they want.
Which is why I really wish for an entity that would be like an item_teamflag but for applying attributes.

Might try to figure out something before the jam starts, but more likely, I will have to sort out for the timed power-ups for the jam map.

 

[Fluury]

I may use Sarexicus's improved grappling hooks for the grapples.

As for the timed power-ups: The main reason for that is that I would have an extremely difficult time trying to remove the timed attributes, conditions and game_text stuff from players whenever they want.
Which is why I really wish for an entity that would be like an item_teamflag but for applying attributes.

Might try to figure out something before the jam starts, but more likely, I will have to sort out for the timed power-ups for the jam map.

Understandable, though if that's the case I feel like you shouldn't be scared of making them really powerful, almost mannpower-level.

Invisibility is fine for that. Impenetrable also feels powerful enough for a timed effect.

Swiftness kinda feels like a nothingburger if you aren't engie/pyro/spy. Maybe throw higher fire rate/reload on that?

Healing and Vitality feel like they should be one upgrade. Either alone don't feel very impactful.

 

[Deleted member 33500]

Understandable, though if that's the case I feel like you shouldn't be scared of making them really powerful, almost mannpower-level.

Invisibility is fine for that. Impenetrable also feels powerful enough for a timed effect.

Swiftness kinda feels like a nothingburger if you aren't engie/pyro/spy. Maybe throw higher fire rate/reload on that?

Healing and Vitality feel like they should be one upgrade. Either alone don't feel very impactful.

Hmm, maybe if that is the case, then could I mix healing and vitality into a singular power-up to make a powerful enough one?

And yeah I could make Swiftness have a greater reload speed and fire rate. Cond 113 would have already done the job but looking at it now the attributes I need for the wep. fire rate and reload time expire properly.

 

[Tiftid]

when asked to give my opinion on something I cannot respond with anything other than an essay so here you go

I feel like keeping the gamemode entirely flag-based would be a bad idea. Mannpower already suffers from the 'CTF dilemma' where if engis don't keep their sentries in the intel room for 4 hours, a scout just speedruns captures over and over again and eventually wins without anyone on the enemy team really being involved.
So I'm much more in support of the PD idea.

But it's Invade PD. If I understand this right, this means that you can only deposit points at the enemy base, and they can only deposit points at your base. So if the enemy team is losing, they can do scummy strats like stay in spawn and/or hard camp their deposit zone with no intention of leaving.

However, I think you could add a round timer and make the losing team lose when it's over, thanks to the OnRedScoreChanged and OnBlueScoreChanged outputs.
That'd make it so the losing team wants to leave spawn. But they'd probably still camp their deposit zone. This would be problematic if the deposit zone was so easy to hold that nobody ever captured.

That's where the powerups come in.
If the powerups are all at mid, and they're great at busting defensive holds, the team who owns mid has a greater likelihood of busting the enemy team's hold and depositing their points. The team who got capped on then gets to respawn, clear out the attacking team, go to mid with grapple-powers, gain control of their powerups and ultimately meet them in their own base. Thus promoting a natural back-and-forth.

So basically I just spent all this time setting up for what I really wanna talk about, which is the design of the powerups.
Like I just said:
I think the powerups should be less deathmatch-focused and more focused on busting last-ditch final control-point holds.

Stealth: Already great at doing this. Lets the attackers dance around the defending team's setup, unless all the attacker entrances happen to be tiny chokes. The time is just about perfect considering you won't have to fight anyone after grabbing this until it wears off inside the enemy base.
The problem is that it might let you get to the enemy base too easily. Ideally, we want the team who won the midfight to only try to go for the enemy spawn after the midfight's actually finished. But this lets you go and start spawncamping without needing to finish (or even win!) the midfight.

Healing: Pretty good. Lets you sustain an attack from any position without needing to rely on health packs or medics. Not the best at dealing with sentries, but not bad either.

Swiftness: Probably too deathmatchy. You kill people faster, which can be good for guaranteeing picks on defenders, but that probably won't offset the strength of their defensive positions (e.g high ground, corners, spawn doors). Pretty amazing for attacking engineers, but I don't think a powerup should be specifically useful on one class.

Vitality: Pretty useful for dealing with sentries since it lets you live longer under direct sentry fire than you otherwise would have. Also pretty good at letting you survive sniper bullets and generally making you tankier to survive enemy spam. I think it's just on the lower floor of usefulness on its own, so I recommend combining it with Healing for the best of both worlds. Maybe with 5 HPS instead of 10, though.

Impenetrable: Similar to Vitality. Very similar, actually, since both increase the power of health packs (Vitality makes them restore more health whereas Impenetrable makes each point of health more important). In that sense Impenetrable is kind of just superior since you also get knockback resistance. I recommend removing one of the two (and combining the other with Healing.) The knockback resistance of Impenetrable is great for dealing with sentries and explosive spam (although I don't think I like the full airblast immunity), so I feel like it should probably be the one that stays.

As for duration, well, it really depends on how long fights last. Most powerups are probably gonna be picked up during the downtime where there isn't a fight happening at mid, so they need to last long enough to go through the entire fight at the enemy base (Except for Stealth). So I'd say about 75 seconds for everything except Stealth would be a good duration.


I also want to offer my own original powerup ideas but I actually haven't thought of any yet so watch this space.

 

[Deleted member 33500]

when asked to give my opinion on something I cannot respond with anything other than an essay so here you go

I feel like keeping the gamemode entirely flag-based would be a bad idea. Mannpower already suffers from the 'CTF dilemma' where if engis don't keep their sentries in the intel room for 4 hours, a scout just speedruns captures over and over again and eventually wins without anyone on the enemy team really being involved.
So I'm much more in support of the PD idea.

But it's Invade PD. If I understand this right, this means that you can only deposit points at the enemy base, and they can only deposit points at your base. So if the enemy team is losing, they can do scummy strats like stay in spawn and/or hard camp their deposit zone with no intention of leaving.

However, I think you could add a round timer and make the losing team lose when it's over, thanks to the OnRedScoreChanged and OnBlueScoreChanged outputs.
That'd make it so the losing team wants to leave spawn. But they'd probably still camp their deposit zone. This would be problematic if the deposit zone was so easy to hold that nobody ever captured.

That's where the powerups come in.
If the powerups are all at mid, and they're great at busting defensive holds, the team who owns mid has a greater likelihood of busting the enemy team's hold and depositing their points. The team who got capped on then gets to respawn, clear out the attacking team, go to mid with grapple-powers, gain control of their powerups and ultimately meet them in their own base. Thus promoting a natural back-and-forth.

So basically I just spent all this time setting up for what I really wanna talk about, which is the design of the powerups.
Like I just said:
I think the powerups should be less deathmatch-focused and more focused on busting last-ditch final control-point holds.

Stealth: Already great at doing this. Lets the attackers dance around the defending team's setup, unless all the attacker entrances happen to be tiny chokes. The time is just about perfect considering you won't have to fight anyone after grabbing this until it wears off inside the enemy base.
The problem is that it might let you get to the enemy base too easily. Ideally, we want the team who won the midfight to only try to go for the enemy spawn after the midfight's actually finished. But this lets you go and start spawncamping without needing to finish (or even win!) the midfight.

Healing: Pretty good. Lets you sustain an attack from any position without needing to rely on health packs or medics. Not the best at dealing with sentries, but not bad either.

Swiftness: Probably too deathmatchy. You kill people faster, which can be good for guaranteeing picks on defenders, but that probably won't offset the strength of their defensive positions (e.g high ground, corners, spawn doors). Pretty amazing for attacking engineers, but I don't think a powerup should be specifically useful on one class.

Vitality: Pretty useful for dealing with sentries since it lets you live longer under direct sentry fire than you otherwise would have. Also pretty good at letting you survive sniper bullets and generally making you tankier to survive enemy spam. I think it's just on the lower floor of usefulness on its own, so I recommend combining it with Healing for the best of both worlds. Maybe with 5 HPS instead of 10, though.

Impenetrable: Similar to Vitality. Very similar, actually, since both increase the power of health packs (Vitality makes them restore more health whereas Impenetrable makes each point of health more important). In that sense Impenetrable is kind of just superior since you also get knockback resistance. I recommend removing one of the two (and combining the other with Healing.) The knockback resistance of Impenetrable is great for dealing with sentries and explosive spam (although I don't think I like the full airblast immunity), so I feel like it should probably be the one that stays.

As for duration, well, it really depends on how long fights last. Most powerups are probably gonna be picked up during the downtime where there isn't a fight happening at mid, so they need to last long enough to go through the entire fight at the enemy base (Except for Stealth). So I'd say about 75 seconds for everything except Stealth would be a good duration.


I also want to offer my own original powerup ideas but I actually haven't thought of any yet so watch this space.

First of all, thanks for the FB!

Second of all, based on that, would doing these things be an improvement?

• Make Impenetrable have something like a 50% airblast resistance instead of complete immunity, and also delete Healing & Vitality
• Increase the duration on all power-ups minus Stealth

I thought of increasing the speed of as much of things as possible with Swiftness (e.g. Ubercharge build rate), maybe also giving you Cond 32 and a jump boost.

I also don't know how much power-ups I should be including. Not sure if 3 are enough, nor if I want to completely remove these 2 power-ups.

And I am open for ideas! Keep it reasonable though, so keep it to conditions + working attributes.