Implemented Adrenaline Options

[JvIasterMind]

I have always felt that adrenaline is way to powerful. Currently, we have adrenaline enabled on our server, since there are a few members/regulars that really enjoy it. However, we also get a lot of complaints with many people suggesting that we disable it. Most of our players feel the same way I do about it and just refuse to use it. Anyways, we have attempted to make it much harder to get it so that it isn't as much of a problem. Our "solution" was to increase the amount of xp needed for level 4 medic to 700. This isn't working very well, as the people who want it tend to connect often enough so that they can use it every time they play (xp save resets after 60h).

 

I am proposing some options to allow server admins to make adrenaline less powerful. Here are a couple possible solutions that I think would work fairly well...

• First, add an option (likely to g_medics cvar) to make adrenaline use 50% of your charge bar instead of the full 100%
  
• Then, add one of the following options...
  
  1. An option (g_medics) to disable the damage reduction that adrenaline gives (so adrenaline only gives the unlimited stamina benefit)
     
     • This combined with the reduction of charge bar usage would still keep adrenaline useful for running with an objective or running on the battlefield to revive a teammate, but makes it less powerful for rambo medics using it in battle.
       

  [*]A cvar to adjust the damage reduction value for adrenaline (as a percentage).

  • This way, server admins could just reduce the damage reduction to a value that they feel is more balanced.
    
  • You could also accomplish the same thing as the first option and set the damage reduction to 0 (which I think would combine good with the 50% charge bar usage)
    

Using the first option and adding just the two bitmask values to g_medics seems like it would be the more intuitive method as server admins would not need to worry about a new cvar. The second option would be a lot more flexible because you could keep adrenaline using 100% of the charge bar and just tweak the damage reduction down a little bit to help balance it without changing the feel of how adrenaline works currently.

 

What do you guys think?

Edited November 4, 2011 by JvIasterMind

[gaoesa]

This is a good proposition. I understand what you say. Sadly the persistent XP save has changed the use of the adrenaline from being a bonus for good medics in the campaign, to an additional leverage against other players in gun fights. Which is deserved within so long period of time that it is not necessarily deserved at all. Or the player can forget about his classwork after he hasgained it. The same problem applies to many other upgrades also but self adrenaline is one of the most notable ones.

 

One more possibility to make the adrenaline deserved would be an option to allow it after certain certain amount of medic work has been done within the map. Not necessarily a good idea, just occurred when reading this. Everyone who has opinions about this, or other upgrades that are not well deserved with XP save, please post them into this thread. Maybe we can find even more possible solutions for the problem in the silEnT mod.

 

EDIT:

I personally think changing the rewards to a shorter span could perhaps create more effort into achieving them. Sometimes it feels like all the gameplay is around aiming. And I suspect it is partly because other gameplay options (committing to the objective) does not offer as much rewarding feeling. Except for those who have already played the game few years ago.

[hellreturn]

On my server what I did to battle this adren was.. medics can give adren to others to help the team but they can't boost their health at all with it. Medics can heal themselves and their health keeps on generating (unless used cvar to stop it)... so why even they need adrenaline?

 

OR What can be done is.. after certain number of revives and giving health packs to other team mates, they get adrenaline for one map but then again what is stopping them to use that adrenaline just for themselves?

 

OR Other give and take relation: Every 3 revives they get one adrenaline syringe.. Need more? help more.

[gaoesa]

OR Other give and take relation: Every 3 revives they get one adrenaline syringe.. Need more? help more.

 

I kind of like this one.

[JvIasterMind]

I kind of like this one.

 

I like that one also!

 

Still, even with that limitation, it would be good to also have options to decrease its effectiveness. We should have all three!

Edited November 4, 2011 by JvIasterMind

[TheSilencerPL]

Another option could be to make them loose adre if they didn't heal for too long time but at the same time they used it too much for themselves. 2 parameters would be taken under consideration:

• time of not helping others (cvar)
  
• number of self uses (cvar)
  

This way admins could leverage the adre usage.

 

Or something like this

[=EMP=Avery13]

I like the third option the best. We use to have it to where you could only give out adren to other players and couldn't use it on yourselves. It helps promote better team work.

 

On a side note dealing with it, is it possible to boost someone even more if they use adren on themselves, and someone else sticks them too... double boost? We thought about that while playing one day cause I stuck myself as someone else came to stick me too and I didn't realize it.

[JvIasterMind]

On a side note dealing with it, is it possible to boost someone even more if they use adren on themselves, and someone else sticks them too... double boost? We thought about that while playing one day cause I stuck myself as someone else came to stick me too and I didn't realize it.

 

The double boost could be the stamina benefit for the first one and the damage reduction for the second one. That way the rambo medics would only get the stamina increase while the players with teamwork can get the full benefit.

[=EMP=Avery13]

I think that would work. Just gotta have them figure out how to make that happen now

[gaoesa]

This is pretty much an idea thread. Please keep them coming and the discussion too and do not settle with anything.

[JvIasterMind]

Another idea could be to remove the damage reduction if the player using it fires their weapon (like how g_spawnInvulFair works). This would allow players to still use it for running the objective or to make a critical revive in the battlefield, but would still discourage players from using it for battle. Edited November 5, 2011 by JvIasterMind

[gaoesa]

I would try to avoid complex functionalitites to the players. The reason is that they are hard to learn, would be used by only few players making them look weird. And they don't offer the sensation of achieving something. I would hope to get the rewards back to teamwork and not only nerfing adrenaline. And all the other undeserved upgrades like flackjacket and enemy recognition. Also, I do think the upgrades should be concerning the players who deserve them and not something they have to use on others. Please let us know, if you get or have any (even wild) ideas.

[phantasm]

How about every time you revive someone you get to use adrenaline once? That's pretty simple and intuitive.

[JvIasterMind]

I would hope to get the rewards back to teamwork and not only nerfing adrenaline.

 

Still, I hope you do consider putting in options that can nerf adrenaline. Our server generally has a lot of players that come from etpro. Quite often, when they see people using adren, they complain or leave the server. I think if we could limit its effectiveness, they wouldn't have as much of a problem with it. So far, I haven't heard these players complain much about the other class upgrades such as the flak jacket. Adrenaline just seems much more overpowered compared to the other rewards.

 

We thought about disabling adren on our server, but there were a few players that were completely against the idea. However, they were fine with the xp requirement increase and I'm sure would be open to settings similar to what I originally proposed (so we can change the xp requirement back to normal).

 

I do think it would be fun to have some settings that encourage teamwork, but even a team player that earned it is still overpowered when using it. It might work fine on "fun" servers, but it's far too much of an advantage on a really competitive server. Because adren is probably the most controversial setting in ET, I would love to see settings for both encouraging teamwork and for limiting adren effectiveness so server admins can mix and match the settings to best suit the server.

[gaoesa]

There was no shooting down ideas yet Just collecting every idea there is to get and hopefully simple and intuitive functionalities for the players. I do think the adrenaline might be too strong even when earned.

 

But you are right. I hijacked your feature proposition thread.

[JvIasterMind]

There was no shooting down ideas yet Just collecting every idea there is to get and hopefully simple and intuitive functionalities for the players. I do think the adrenaline might be too strong even when earned.

Glad to hear this!

 

 

 

But you are right. I hijacked your feature proposition thread.

It's cool! I am really enjoying this discussion!

[gaoesa]

In the next version added

 

g_medics flag 512, adrenaline only benefits the sprinting and no damage reduction

g_adrenDmgReduction , the percentage of damage reduction, default 50

[JvIasterMind]

Thank you so much gaoesa!!!

 

Does the flag 512 decrease the charge bar requirement by any chance?

[gaoesa]

Unfortunately not. I thought since it is only to reduce the effect of the adrenaline it is ok if it is not allowed more often. Also, since the charge bar effect must be handled in the client side prediction code I didn't want to make the changes lightly. Though I must admit that the flag 512 and the g_adrenDmgReduction are overlapping as it is. Maybe removing the flag is in order.

[gaoesa]

Ok. I took another look and now with the g_medics flag 512 only half of medics chargebar is used. Players cannot inject again until the old adrenaline is consumed.

 

The g_adrenDmgReduction is now inddependent percentage of the caused damage that is inficted when the adrenaline is on. 0 means no damage and 100 means full damage from the weapon. Default value is 50 which is the original. Over hundred values are truncated to full reduction.

[JvIasterMind]

Awesome... love the options!!!

[gaoesa]

The g_adrenDmgReduction is now inddependent percentage of the caused damage that is inficted when the adrenaline is on. 0 means no damage and 100 means full damage from the weapon. Default value is 50 which is the original. Over hundred values are truncated to full reduction.

 

I was pretty tired at that point. This is how it is:

The g_adrenDmgReduction is a percentage of the damage from the weapon that is reduced when the player is in adrenaline. 0 means no reduction and 100 means full reduction from the weapon damage. Default value is 50 which is the original. Over hundred values are truncated to full reduction.

 

One thing that I noticed was that the class abilities stack the reduction. Resulting for example a situation when a player can survive from direct hit from for example panzer or artillery. By default, both of these weapons give 400 damage from direct hit. First with adrenaline, the damage is reduced to 200. After that, if having flak jacket, the damage is reduced to 100. This is already less then the full health. Being a little bit away from the hit point, the damage is decreased even further. I'm wondering if the reductions should be mutually exclusive? For a disguised covert op, the direct panzer hit damage can go as low as 50 hp if the g_coverts flag 8 is set. This requires that the class skills expand over all classes though.

[gaoesa]

One more thing to notice is that adrenaline has no effect on headshots if the g_dmgHeadShotMin is set on the server and the reduced damage go below this value. Another question would be should this be taken into account before the damage reduction?

[JvIasterMind]

I would have guessed that g_dmgHeadShotMin would have been calculated before the damage reduction. I never noticed that headshots did their normal damage when shooting someone using adren. Very interesting that it's not set up this way.

 

That seems like a tough question because it could make sense either way depending on how you interpret the cvar. I guess I would lean towards adren reducing the headshot damage along with the other damage.

[BECK]

Not to dig up an old topic - but these settings are not properly documented in the latest server.html file. I can see them in the 0.5.1 changelog section, but in the 0.5.2 download that I have, I cannot find them documented anywhere (the 512 flag and the entire g_adrendmgreduction setting).

 

Thanks.