Debriefing > Impressions & Feedback

Arsenal Slappers Ruining the Game

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Whiny Slappers Hater:
This is a great game. It takes me back to the good old original game and adds more fun to it. Great work!

I am not the biggest fan of Arsenal, but I understand why people like it. I wish my friend and I had come to play before Arsenal was invented, because at the times when we want to play, Arsenal often is the only game type available. I hope that other game types will be played more again someday.

I started playing and had much fun. So did my friend. However, one problem became more and more bothersome, and now he has even stopped playing because of it. It bothers me much too, especially now that he no longer plays. I am talking about the Arsenal Slappers. I do not play much, but I am posting this here because many agree, and I think it is a significant problem that needs to be addressed. I have discussed it with others and seen there are many who agree with us, but most of them stay silent or leave. Understandable, considering that when we speak out on the servers, the Slappers lover often either laughs and slaps more, ignores us, bashes us, calls us whiny, or tells us to shut up or leave. How lovely for a community that otherwise is great. I thought feedback and raising concerns politely was a good thing to do.

The problems with Arsenal Slappers:

1. It is too harsh, especially toward new and weaker players. We typically start with a weak weapon, take a long time to reach level two and get another weapon, only to be slapped down a level to the dull, weak weapon again. We should not lose a level just because a highly skilled player comes and uses Slappers on us.

2. Slappers is far too good. It is unrealistic and takes away the fun. Most players come to shoot, not to slap. They do not want to learn how to be superskilled with Slappers. We even get armor from it, making it even harder to kill the players who use Slappers. The players who use Slappers are typically extremely skilled with it and can easily avoid bullets and take out anyone. When we have for example Klobb or DD44 or another weak weapon, and see an armored Slappers player, we know there is a loss of level coming. It often leads us to try to be killed by someone else as soon as possible, or leave the game in rage.

3. Slappers is not as it was in the Nintendo 64 game. It used to be weak and not give us any benefits such as armor or taking others down a level. At the end of Arsenal games, we typically see that the weapon of choice for the top players was Slappers. It is not right.

The solutions:

1. Make us no longer lose a level from Slappers. This is the most important part that can make the game more playable and enjoyable, especially for newcomers and weaker players.

2. Make us no longer be rewarded with armor for lowering other players' level. It is wrong and makes it too hard for weaker players to kill them, especially with weak weapons.

3. Make Slappers weaker. It used to be difficult to inflict much Slappers damage in the original game. I think it used to be at least as weak as the PP7.

My guess is that the developers like Slappers as it is, and that nothing will be done. However, I think it was worth making a thread about this. I think that two important parts of this game must be to make it friendly for newcomers and similar to the original game. Arsenal Slappers is not good for keeping players, and it is not as it was in the original game. The Slappers players often purposely attack weaker players because they know it will work. They are often cold and could not care less about new players losing the few points they have. There is also plenty of cursing at times. Not pleasant, especially for children coming to play, but I assume there is not much to do about this.

I hope my post does not cause negativity. It was intended to prevent it, provide feedback, and make the game more playable and enjoyable for all the players who are bothered by these problems. Most of them never raise their concerns. As I said, I think it is a great game. I hope it will continue to be improved. I hope to return later at some point and see that things have changed to more players on non-Arsenal servers, and hopefully no more Slappers problems. I could then try making my friend play again too. I think we just came at the wrong time.

I wish you good luck with the community and development.

Entropy-Soldier:
Well, the thing to remember is that all the weapons are balanced around deathmatch modes, and in those modes slappers are generally already pretty mediocre.  They actually already do PP7 damage, meaning they're only really useful when you're having trouble hitting close enemies or your only alternative is the mines or Klobb.  Since Arsenal isn't really what the game is built around the slappers themselves are in a pretty good spot already I feel.  That being said they did get some changes in 5.1, so we'll have to see how they hold up.

While that removes solution #3, there does seem to be a general consensus that slappers in Arsenal are a bit too useful at the moment.  The level stealing + armor gain mechanic was more or less a direct port from 4.2 where the slappers were much weaker, but it held up well in the redesigned 5.0 Arsenal during playtesting so we figured it was worth including.  However, our playtesters are good players and we're not heretics so we play with the radar on, making it much harder to surprise someone with slappers.  Playing in 5.0 it seems much easier to get slapper kills on new players, and then use the armor from doing so to focus down better players in an endless cycle.  It's not an unstoppable strategy but it's certainly easier than intended, so for the 5.1 redesign of Arsenal we've changed things up a bit.  It's still important to have a source of armor in Arsenal, but perhaps not a self-sustaining one. 

The level stealing is another mechanic we're looking into.  Right now it's a bit too easy thanks to the current armor mechanics, but in general it's meant to be fairly difficult and costly to get slap kills.  It's meant to help set back potential rivals and give an alternate, more risky strategy to get ahead.  It generally only gives 2 kills, which isn't a whole lot, but can be enough to turn the tables towards the end of the game.  On its own I don't think its a huge problem, but the trolling potential does seem to be there which merits some thought on our end.


In the meantime it seems like there's a few things exacerbating the issue:


Server Configuration:

"We typically start with a weak weapon, take a long time to reach level two and get another weapon, only to be slapped down a level to the dull, weak weapon again."

This sounds like you're not playing on a weaponset designed for Arsenal, but rather some other weaponset.  Arsenal weaponsets are designed so that the strongest weapons come first, and the weaker ones later.  This is meant to let weaker players have a chance to catch up and make slappers much harder to use in the first half of the round.  If the server your playing on is running a weaponset like Remote Mines or Pistols, they might have a configuration issue and it's worth bringing it up with them.  Arsenal weaponsets typically have "List" in the title, with the strongest weapons coming first.


Radar:

Arsenal was intended to be played with the radar on.  This makes it easier to spot slapping players and find people to fight.  If the server doesn't have radar, maybe try seeding one that does.


Strats:

If you see someone coming to slap you, don't give up!  Back up while shooting at them, and once they get close enough just start slapping them back.  Hopefully you'll at least take off their armor and a bit of health initially, and then maybe you'll have the upper hand in the slapper fight instead of them.  Circle them and crouch randomly to be harder for them to hit.


Just Seed Other Gamemodes:

Most of the time if you wait around in a reputable server for 5-10 minutes you'll get more people to join.  Get a group of friends to help you seed and you'll get the server full in just a few rounds.  There are a lot of people like you looking to play other modes but they all look at the server list, see that no-one is playing those modes, and go do something else.  You can be the one to change that!  Entropy-Server, Graslu's Server, Word is Bond, and Best of Bond are just a few of the servers that you could seed.



Thanks for the feedback and I hope this post helps you out!

Troy:
In the old version of Arsenal, we used a single predefined weapon set.  It was set up in a way so you would start out with the strongest weapons and work your way down to the weakest.  As I remember it, I would use slappers to downgrade someone who was getting close to getting the win.  It worked well and it made the rounds last longer.

In the new version, I see that E-S changed it so we're using the weapon sets from the game.  A lot of these non Arsenal sets go from weakest to strongest.  With this kind of set up, I can see how someone would use slappers to gain the upper hand.  It's kinda easy to strafe, gain a speed boost and kill someone who has a klobb or throwing knives.  Then you just keep doing this to keep the player base on the less powerful weapons.  I can see how that would be frustrating if you were new.

Whiny Slappers Hater:
Thank you for your quick, understanding, constructive replies. I now have a better understanding of why these problems exist.

I agree that a solution can be to join non-Arsenal servers with few or no players, and wait for more players. I wish it worked more often and more quickly. I hope that instead of Arsenal servers being constantly filled, it will become more popular with game modes such as Team Deathmatch. I played it some days ago. It was great.

As long as Slappers steals other players' level and provides benefits like armor, there will always be players abusing it to take down weaker players. They often even take us out with Slappers while we have a great weapon such as RCP90. It simply requires too many hits to take them and their armor out, and they know how to kill quickly with a very few slaps. What often makes it even more complicated is the lag, and that it looks as if they slap us from far away.

The Slappers problems would not have caused so much trouble if it was easier to play non-Arsenal game modes.

Graslu:
Troy, by default they're all meant to be Arsenal sets that go from strongest to weakest. Server hosts make their own and don't follow those rules, that's the issue and not the change E-S made to Arsenal for 5.0.

As E-S said, go to other servers. Right now the reason of why it's only Arsenal servers available is because that's the only community left as the others have "nowhere" to play on, but if you join the community Discords and say you're joining X server, normally a few people will follow and have a match going for the whole night.

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