did we really need all of these base combat mechanic changes?

Black Mesa Archive The Cafeteria
#1

you know what i’ve been waiting for the mod for a while like everyone else and was happy to get my hands on it. although i was a bit dissapointed with how many alterations they did, i was hoping it would get the same treatment as halo combat evolved and after all if i wanted a whole new black mesa oriented game i would be following the operation lambda mod. but in the end its not so bad(although the ammount of load screens are, and thats an engine issue) the one thing that’s killing me about this remake is the combat mechanics.

if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, so why the hell did they make so many changes to the base combat mechanics? the originals were fine and a lot of stuff is just so screwed up right now. and its not that i didnt want change, believe me i wanted change and love all of the additions to gameplay like ADS, actual 02 counter, sprint, crowbar hitting head crabs in the air. but its the base combat mechanic changes that i just cant stand.

crowbar- well its now almost completely useless minus headcrabs. sucks against zombies with how they fight, barnacles your better off shooting if you get caught in one and even the houndeye cant be fought with it. houndeye especially is bugging me since it was never meant to be a hard enemy, just a low level one and as the game progresses you work your way up to harder ones.

pistol- would have prefered HD texture pack style but ah well. also heavily nerfed, you need a lot more bullets now to kill most enemies severely weakening it, and using it would just waste ammo(i’ll explain latter)

revolver- one of the few weapons i’m happy with, still extremely powerful and the ADS is great for it, not a lot of changes to its mechanics.

m4- cant really tell that much power difference but it was nerfed to hell with ammo. now only supports 150 bullets which makes sharing ammo with the pistol a complete pain, wouldn’t be so bad if you didn’t have to use the pistol for all the enemies the crowbar would normally handle. the actual magazine size has also been reduced to a mere 30 bullets which is useless for storming a bunch of enemies at once, kill one marine, head back reload, kill another wash rinse and repeat. its so annoying and breaks combat, its just not fun at all

shotgun- so far i cant tell that much difference with it, still deadly at close range so that’s a plus.

none of the base mechanic changes were needed and most of them suck, some people will probably think its fine for now but i wonder how much they will think that once death match comes out especially with the m16 changes. now onto the actual enemy changes

zombies- harder to kill, and will more often than not hit you if you try and melee them.

headcrabs- about the same

houndeye- way more powerful than it should be and its even worse since it now shakes up player vision.

barnacles- harder to kill with pistol and crowbar

vortigaunts- much shorter charge time and its annoying as hell since it also obstructs your vission. and on a side note who thought it was a good idea to give them a crotch piece?

the tentacle mouthed thing- i absolutely hate this enemy now, its not that its hard to kill its the way it does the damage, instead of the normal spit thing it now lobes acid in your direction which is extremely annoying and has far to much of a range.

i just have to wonder who the hell thought it was a good idea to change the base mechanics, nothing needed tweaking and everything was fine as far as balance goes except maybe the laser gun in death match and i havn’t gotten to see that yet. but seriously there are so many changes this is half way to being a differnt franchise entirely in terms of gameplay, it dosent resemble the first half-lifes gameplay OR the second. so what was the point? all they did was screw up balance and once deathmatch comes out i have a feeling so many people will hate the changes to all of the weapons, m16 and pistol especially.

#2

You say none of these changes were needed, but you give no reasons WHY they are not needed. All you list is how they’re different, and not how any of it is bad at all. You expect us to think like you in that different = bad and for that to be reason enough to complain. Personally I thought every change was for the better. Crowbar is still great against Zombies, you just have to pace back and forth. Pistol feels just as good as it used to, killing in a similar amount of hits. The reason the MP5 is bad now is that you have to actually manage ammo now? Apparently making two of the most useless enemies from the game into actual threats is bad game design. Ok.

#3

Pretty much agree with your points. If there was a tweak to fix/change these I would eat it up.

#4

It’s not an M16, it’s an MP5, and it has always shared its ammo with the pistol.

#5

Hey man, if you don’t like change then you can take your dollar bills somewhere else . . . A little money joke for fun eh?

#6

The fundamental problem with the current balance of BMS is that it makes the Aliens far too easy and the Humans far too hard. The original HL (bosses aside) has an overall balance where the Aliens are individually less dangerous but much more numerous and wear you down over time, while the Humans are more dangerous individually but less numerous overall.

In BMS the balance is off such that you massacre the Aliens without breaking a sweat and get torn apart whenever the soldiers are around, plus the cuts to certain parts result in a greater bias towards Marines fights than the original.

On the bright side, outside of certain level design issues the vast majority of these issues should be fixable with some skill.cfg editing (and I plan to go in and see what I can do sometime soon), and the rest with some small bits of modding. I disagree about the Bull-squid though; that’s one enemy where I thought the changes were perfect (I’m considering experimenting with giving them slightly more health though, as they seem to go down to the shotgun much easier than they did in the original). I also disagree about the Crowbar; if anything it needs to be slightly weaker against Zombies and Headcrabs.

#7

just checked the original and you are right. modified the OP

if you think this is because i didnt want any change than you clearly didnt read fully into the OP.

and that joke was terrible

#8

The crowbar is actually the fastest way to kill zombies. Their attacks are about 200% easier to dodge than in HL1, since there zombies had a fuckton of melee range. Bullsquid spit spread can be annoying, but you get used to it pretty quick, houndeyes as well. I also found vortigaunts pretty easy compared to HL1, since their damage is lower. The only not-so-balanced thing is MP5 against HECU, everything else is not difficult at all.

#9

Basically you are saying each npc is harder.

#10

You asshats do realize everything the OP bitched about is changeable in the skill.cfg right?

#11

ssh, let the OP bitch some more

#12

Is it?

#13

for me the zombies in the original were far easier with how they attacked. bullsquid while you can get used to it is still annoying and shouldn’t have been added. houndeyes i still say should be a crowbar killable enemy, it was in the original so why change it. and the vortigaunts damage isnt the hard part its how fast they attack and the distortion.

all in all we wouldnt even have these balance issues if we stuck to the original gameplay

#14

The Houndeyes in the original HL were so goddamn easy to kill. They were honestly less of a threat than Headcrabs, no joke. I’m glad they made them more deadly. Also, the Bullsquid changed for the better as well. His acid spit is actually a challenge to avoid now that it has a wider spread.

You’re basically saying that enemies are more of a challenge now, and that it’s a problem. That’s kind of a dumb thing to complain about.

The only thing I kind of found annoying was there weren’t any one hit crowbar kills for barnacles anymore.

What difficulty are you playing on?

#15

A i cant code

B modifying a mod probobly isnt the best idea and could cause instability

C any changes i make to have it more like the original wont get carried over to deathmatch

#16

95% of the stuff mentioned in this thread has been mentioned already in existing threads.

Houndeyes sucked so bad in HL1 they might as well have been taken out. Now they have a purpose as a very quick attacker that keeps you on your toes.

Barnacles were pathetic in HL1 because I never got caught in 1. If they caught you in BM, then someone did their job right because if I never had to worry about an enemy, then I would be bored honestly. They are in spots that make your fights with other enemies more complicated and they can snag you. One-hit killing them with a crowbar seems like such a small thing because I just feed them fuel drums or junk to bypass them and conserve ammo.

Zombies are fun for me because they made me have to change up my tactics. Instead of trying to crowbar them, I simply popped them with a shell from my shotgun. In the beginning, I found them harder to predict but after some trial and error I found it pretty simple.

Crowbar = Headcrab killer in my opinion because I never would charge another enemy with it unless I was trying to show off or be a hardass. I admit that people do run out of ammo at times and it is necessary, but typically I conserve ammo well. I never ever killed houndeyes with the crowbar in the original because I found shooting them simpler and I never really ran too low on ammo in the parts where I found them.

“vortigaunts- much shorter charge time and its annoying as hell since it also obstructs your vission. and on a side note who thought it was a good idea to give them a crotch piece?”

The crotch piece was in HL2 so maybe they felt it added to the visuals of their enslavement.

As for the HECU, I had some trial and error with them but I learned to simply pop them in the head with the revolver, shotgun, or crossbow and it made short work of them. Sure I lost like 5-10 hp here and there because they would hit me first but the plentiful locations of charger and health made it a small price to pay. Hell, even the mp5 worked on them. I found that I did really bad when I panicked and tried spraying at them. Wasted ammo and they really used that to their advantage.

#17

playing on hard obv.
crowbar- zombies get slaughtered with it easily. Hound eyes, maybe you’re right.

pistol- idk, i used pistol for like 2 levels, then got shotgun and revolver so…, besides it did add a little pleasant tension to the early levels where you didn’t have all that many alternatives.

revolver- n/c

m4- I almost didn’t use this gun at all, until I started running out of revolver ammo. I thought it would be weak and have terrible spread. To my surprise it was an excellent weapon, delivering quite a bit of dmg if you weren’t being a dumbass and just run and gunning, instead using cover.

shotgun- n/c

zombies- bullshit sir, nothing hard here.

headcrabs- n/c

houndeye- please try to experience a >= 165db sound without twisting your head or flinching. Oh and making them actually noticeable enemies, the team improved on the game formula I think.
barnacles- 1 revolver shot; dont want to? don’t and move on.

vortigaunts- some of the funnest enemies. You think you know how to kill them without suffering dmg, but then they move somewhere and you still get hit at least once.

#18

I agree about some complaints for the Bullsquids:
-too easy to kill, please give them more health points
-they attack MOSTLY with the acid, used to melee more in HL1, make them a danger at both close-long range please.

#19

The vortigaunt’s crotch piece was Valve’s idea. BMS is just using the model.
As for the other monsters, I consider them improvements. The squid’s acid attack is a real step up from its gravity-defying slow traveling spitballs, the houndeyes are actually a threat now instead of just target practice, and the crowbar is still good for taking on headcrabs and zombies, it’s just that the timing for when to strike is different.

I do have to agree with you on the SMG though, I almost never use it on the HECU because it doesn’t do jack against them. Hell, the pistol fares better on them because it has better range.

#20

You don’t need coding, and there is no danger of instability.

There is a file called skill.cfg (in a folder called “configs”)which can be opened with an ordinary text editor like notepad or wordpad and it has a list of all the the enemies, how much health they have, and all the weapons, how much damage they do and how much ammo capacity they have.

So if you don’t like the MP5 submachine gun having a 30 round magazine and an ammo capacity of 150, you can easily change it to 50 round magazine with a 250 ammo capacity just like good old Half-Life 1. This won’t cause instability or crash the game, it’s just changing a number from 150 to 250. (Personally I like the limited ammo as it encourages you to switch weapons alot, while in Half-Life you could just use MP5 and shotgun for the whole game. I was astonished when I ran out of pistol/MP5 ammo in Blast Pit and for five minutes was forced to use the shotgun and magnum. But if you don’t like the limited ammo, you can easily fix it.)

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.