Deathmatch and weapon balance

Black Mesa Archive The Cafeteria
#1

I’d like to discuss half life deathmatch and weapon balance, and how it applies to black mesa deathmatch :retard:

In half life deathmatch, some weapons are undeniably better than others. Since players are so quick, weapons based on precision (magnum, glock, shotgun) are less effective. Since weapons were designed for single player, many things that worked great on HECUs don’t work so well in death match.

Here is my quick, unprofessional analysis of each one:

Crowbar: Ok if you’re stuck with someone in a small area. Otherwise not so good.

Glock: Terrible. The only reason I would use one is if I had nothing else. It just doesn’t kill fast enough, even if you get a hit off every time.

Magnum: Not bad for sniping players at range who aren’t moving too much.

MP5: Powerful and easy to use grenades. Primary fire takes too long to kill though. Probably one of the easiest weapons to get a kill with.

Shotgun: Difficult to use due to fast moving players, but I’ve seen skilled players do okay with these.

Crossbow: A bit difficult to use, but exploding arrows helped.

RPG: Pretty well balanced, in my opinion. Powerful, but easy to kill yourself with at close range. Also long reload time.

Tau: I liked the tau. Powerful charge attack, more rapid fire primary, and jumping, yet didn’t feel overpowered.

Gluon: Lagged horribly. Maybe this was an intentional feature because it was overpowered, I don’t know. Tau was a better use of ammo, in my opinion.

Hivehand: Haven’t seen a lot of these in deathmatch. Seems okay at distance, where explosive weapons are more difficult to use.

Grenade: Not particularly good. Players too fast for them to be very effective. Might get a kill if tossed all over the place in a room with fighting.

Satchel: Good for camping. Toss em somewhere, wait till someone mistakes them for a pickup, then go boom. Problem I had with these is that they lagged a bit to deploy and explode, and since the game is so fast paced, those seconds can cost you.

Tripmine: No reason not to with these. Just plonk them somewhere and hope some idiot comes blundering into them.

Snarks: A joke. Easy to kill, easy to run away from, takes a few seconds of holding down mouse to deploy. They even attack their owner. Not to mention they don’t last forever like tripmines, they explode after a while of being out.

Now the questions are, is this imbalance good? It is a gameplay element, after all, that the better weapons are in harder to reach locations. Personally, I think there should be a little imbalance. Makes it more interesting and hectic. Yet, some things like grenades or pistols just sit in my arsenal and are never used. It shouldn’t be completely balanced, but I should at least be able to get a kill with every weapon. A little too unbalanced for my tastes. A thing to keep in mind is that deathmatch is very fast paced, and the weapons should be built for that. Now, I wonder how this will apply to black mesa deathmatch. How will the weapons be rebalanced to better fit a multiplayer deathmatch? Will they keep, more or less, the original half life deathmatch setup, with useless snarks and things.

Let me know what you think of my analysis of deathmatch, disagree with my statements, and share where you think deathmatch should be in terms of weapon balance. Oh, and say your favorite weapon. Mine is tau. :retard:

#2

These are my suggestions for weapon balance in the single player campaign to round out yours for multiplayer. Some of them overlap.

Balance

  1. Crowbar–Should kill a barnacle on hard mode in no more than 2 hits. This is the traditional barnacle killing weapon in all half life games so players should not have to take damage while using it.

  2. MP5-Needs a slight damage boost as it is not particularly effective for engaging the tougher enemies in game (e.g. HECU). This would help decrease reliance on the magnum, adjust for the decreased clip size (30 bullets instead of 50) and increase gameplay options.

  3. Crossbow-Inferior weapon in BMS compared to the magnum because of accuracy issues and collision model problems…the bolts often get stuck on walls or props when you are trying to snipe and this should really be fixed. Also, the crossbow cursor is buggy and will occasionally disappear after quicksaves.

  4. RPG-Needs a damage boost versus vehicles (especially versus Apache) as it is an inferior option to a charged tau shot. Why use this weapon and take more damage from the enemy than necessary when you can kill it with just a couple of tau shots?

  5. Tau cannon-Consider a diminishing returns model for secondary fire damage (charged shots) to balance it against the RPG.

Gluon gun-As with the original HL, this weapon is essentially useless compared to the Tau cannon because it depletes uranium too rapidly. Consider decreasing rate of ammo depletion by ~25% to make it a more viable option.

#3

By reading your opinion about “precision based weapons” I can tell that you have pretty bad aim or bad mouse/settings, probably mouse acceleration on or something.
Shotgun beign precision weapon? That`s just lol.

#4

By precision I mean that you actually have to aim with it. I trust you have played deathmatch? Most of the weapons are either rapid fire or explosive. With shotgun, you have to be facing your target at the precise (thus, precision) moment you shoot, rather than holding down the key or just shooting near your target. I do admit I’m not the best at deathmatch though, not used to the super fast players. :fffuuu:

Anyways, be more polite, will ya?

#5

Sorry sir, I`m not that good at english to be able to keep track on my flow of politeness. x)

What I mean is that its not that hard to be precise and to have good aim. I dont know what stops you from attaining decent level of aim, but if it is about precision then with good mouse and with mouse acceleration turned off anyone can reach decent level of aim, as long as they practice enough.

Or maybe its because you have very low mouse sensivity which makes it hard to follow fast moving targets. Then my advice is just to increase mouse sensivity. Because low mouse sensivity isnt suited for games with fast player movement.

edit:
Crowbar: it isn`t supposed to be used for combat, its more useful for breaking crates without wasting ammo and fighting xen creatures (not as effective in BM although).

Glock: as beign one of starting weapons, it is supposed to be this weak. Should only be used as last resort when there are no other weapons around.

Magnum: its hard to use, but its weapon suited to players with great aim, not for players whose don`t have decent level of aim. Usefulness is dependant on situation.

MP5: Glock on steroids. Low damage, but fast fire rate, no issues with it.

Shotgun: Close combat weapon, used to take out opponents when getting in close range fights.

Crossbow: slow arrow velocity, which makes it very skill based weapon, because it takes to predict timing to shoot arrow ahead of opponent.

RPG: easy to use, lethal, but slow and useless/suicidal at close range.

Tau: Skill based weapon, because it have capability to do various tricks, for its charged attack timing is precision is vital, for normal shots precision is required as well.

Gluon: The strongest weapon in game, easy to kill anything, from any range and situation. Unbalanced, but with reason, because it is supposed to be the strongest.

Hivehand: This should have lower damage for deathmach. As we know, original HL hivehand was comparable with glock at its damage, but was very useful due to its ability to shoot targets when they can`t see you and hit back. However BM hivehand is stronger and therefore probably needs damage lowered for deathmach balance.

Grenade: Granade is just an granade. Can be used to blow out campers from theyr hiding, but not that useful for dynamical fast combat situations.

Satchel: Requires you to drop your gun and wait behind corner with no gun in your hands. Not guaranteed for opponent to run it over, there is certain level of risk when using it.

Tripmine: it takes some kind of plot to figure out how to lure opponent in them, like planting them near spawnpoints or behind corner when beign chased.

Snarks: idk how strong they are in BM, but in HL they did some damage when used according to situation.

#6

ah, sorry if I mistook your post for being rude, easy to do that on the internet :retard:

but, anyways, I see our miscommunication here. When I say precision, I am not talking about having good aim. What I essentially mean by precision is…well, firing bullets. Since so many of half life/black mesa’s weapons are explosive or strange (like hivehand), aiming them is much different.

Thanks for analysis of weapons, good to see other people’s opinions

#7

I think they should put the m4 in for deathmatch too… Just saying

#8

I hldm the most experinced players just stick with the Gauss, and just use the other weapons when they deplete the tau ammo. Just the Tau and SMG are a must due to they versatility.

in BMDM all weapons must be more balanced.

#9

uh don’t think they should be balanced just the heavy hitters should be rare (one on map limited to one spawned at a time)

#10

not really, in the original maps they were scarce maybe 1 or 2 spawn points, for the heavy weapons, what is necesary is make the weaker weapons stronger for a more satisfying gameplay.

#11

its not possible, as long as there are stronger weapons players will forget the weaker ones unless they are forced to use them. only way to balance is to nerf the strong ones like hell, but that’s a bad idea as it makes them useless. you can’t really balance a single player games load out for multi player

#12

Make stronger weapons harder to access on map or place them where it takes risk to pick them. For example, place gluon gun in middle of lava, which requires accurate bunnyhopping skills or something to reach it. Or place it on middle of map, where opponents can pop out from any direction and shoot at you.
That way picking up strong gun would require some skill and would require to feel flow of game to find appropiate timing to pick one up.
I think.

#13

but then you would be limiting the weapon only to the highly skilled that would kill the game if they had it.

#14

It`s just an example to explain concept. Sorry for not beign clear. I mean to make stronger guns to have proportionally higher risk and difficulty of picking up from theyr spawnpoints. Meanwhile weaker guns would have proportionally more and easier to reach spawnpoints.

For example, gluon gun is so OP that it just don`t make sense to leave it easy for anyone to pick it up, as it makes it just into contest of randomness, depending on who spawns closer to it to pick it up first.

Anyway after killing one who wields powerful gun, it can be picked up, but even so it also involves risk, because its harder to drop one who have this stronger gun. Except its stolen by third party or frag thief.

Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.