PB2.5: Custom Weapon Discussion / Poll

[Venemous]

So i've been dealing with a bunch of RL crap recently, which is why I've been mostly absent from the mapmaking community and the PB2 community in general in the previous month or so. I don't really have the motivation to continue Tournament: Vice right now -- i've been nonstop working to fix latency issues on my real game -- but I still want to make my way back into the community somehow, so I've decided to start a discussion.

From Eric's twitter PB2.5 progress posts, there's recently been a lot of jazz about the Skin Editor -- a secondary opinion a few members here and there have been talking about is a custom weapon editor to go along with it; With a few more stat editors for the guns, a gun appearance editor, and a few more meta variables we could essentially create our own weapons, which would add a lot of variety.

Eric has not shown any indication that he's going to add a custom weapon editor and personally I don't think he's going to, but he's clearly heard members talking about it so i'm going to write this assuming that he has considered adding it in. Besides the obvious problems of innapropriate gun skins I want to address an issue with competitive play concerning this.

For a long time PB2's metagame has consisted of observation -- you fight, plan and strategise based on both you and your enemies' situations, predicaments and, most importantly, equipment. Fact is, no matter your playstyle, you probably don't approach a sniper and someone using a ray rifle the same way. Custom weapons could change this metagame profusely due to the fact that custom weapons made by the community will probably not show up in more than one map it's specifically designed for, so that means that across multiple maps and competitive matches you'll be playing with equipment you're completely unfamiliar with and as with all community-based creation systems, more will keep coming, making it very difficult to completely familiarize yourself with anything and develop a playstyle for specific maps.

I'm not sure whether a change like this would happen at all, whether it'd be positive or negative, what will happen if it's only partially implemented etc, so I've put up a poll. Discuss.

[darkstar 1]

More weapon variety would be usefull, but would be confusing too.
(Ex: Someone makes a yellow shotgun, and some players think its an alien rifle because of the color)

So, maybe adding the gun editor and an apart server for maps with custom guns. Then people can rate the guns, and if a gun have ... votes, it can be used in other servers?

[shadowstorm122]

about inaprop gun models why not have a pending system so you can have a moderator allowing the gun models and disallowing the inaprop guns
And only have custom weaponry on single player maps or non ranked maps so the player would not loose their ranking because of weapon confusion.


I did mention custom vehicles to Eric too but I doubt he will add them To pb2.5...

[assasinguy]

Well, if all we're talking about is a gun skin editor then gameplay wouldn't be affected at all, we'd just have to moderate and watch out for inappropriate skins as you guys have already pointed out.

If we're talking about actual gun customisations and attachments, that's something entirely different, I would hope that these customisations would be given to the mapmaker to decide, so the mapmaker can spawn a rifle in his map and determine whether or not it has a grenade launcher, scope, etc. If players were able to attach customisations to their weapons and then play MP with them, of course it would create an unfair atmosphere, but if this option is only given to mapmakers, then (as with any other weapons), it's up to them to make sure their map is fair.

[shadowstorm122]

Well, if all we're talking about is a gun skin editor then gameplay wouldn't be affected at all, we'd just have to moderate and watch out for inappropriate skins as you guys have already pointed out.

If we're talking about actual gun customisations and attachments, that's something entirely different, I would hope that these customisations would be given to the mapmaker to decide, so the mapmaker can spawn a rifle in his map and determine whether or not it has a grenade launcher, scope, etc. If players were able to attach customisations to their weapons and then play MP with them, of course it would create an unfair atmosphere, but if this option is only given to mapmakers, then (as with any other weapons), it's up to them to make sure their map is fair.

Attachments.. that would actually be a good idea maybe selective fire(can change assault rifles to burst,semi auto,full auto) and extended barrels so you can convert the marines assault rifle into a DMR or battle rifle(for example) someone go tell Eric...

[tehswordninja]

If Eric was to add in a gun customizer of some sort I'm pretty sure it would be using current weapons and you would be able to mix and match weapon parts.