Poll: Is the lightning gun evil and unfair?

[Baker]

Is the lightning gun evil and unfair weapon?

I like the lightning gun, I like to use it and I personally don't think there is anything more fun to do than play airshot on ENDIF and try to shaft someone and keep them up in the air (something some, like Mindzfield, can do almost 100% of the time ... but not me).

But the lightning gun is the most sensitive weapon in Quake. You need ...

1. High FPS (Frames per second). Absolutely critical.
2. Ping
3. A very well adjusted SENSITIVITY and maybe FOV and other things.
4. The LG possibly discriminates against OpenGL, in the sense that the software renderer clients (WinQuake-like) do it better because WinQuake is smoother.

Why the lightning gun isn't "fair":

1. Use of the weapon depends on things other than skill. In particular, shafting well depends on your config, settings and hardware more than it does anything else.

2. Knowledge to use the weapon effectively is somewhat "secret" and not common knowledge in general. Consider that vsync can't be unlocked in ProQuake to get more than 60-72 FPS without going to the control panel and it is much easier to shaft well with 200 FPS than 60.

3. The main difference between an average player and a great player is mostly how well they use the lightning gun. (Somewhat of an oversimplication).

[Canadian*Sniper]

These facts could be stated for any instant hitting weapon (shotguns). If the ping difference is lower than 50, I wouldn't call it unfair. But if we're talking about a 30 pinger vs a 200 pinger, RAPE.

[Mindf!3ldzX]

LG is fine.I cant stand WinQuake lol

[Phenom]

C*S tell that to everyone who whines "All ping" when I shaft the hell out of them then on my bad days they yell "Worst 20 pinger ever!" and the funny thing is, they ping around 40-60



I think the lightning gun is a pleasant weapon which is very useful if in the right hands, even a HPB can do A LOT of damage ( -150 ping )

[Stung]

HPB shaft eats the ass of a dead chicken in CAx for some reason; as hpb on crmod servers it was decent. It is innately skewed to favor lower pingers and individuals with high frames per second, I agree Baker. I would expand the argument though, in rebuttal:

Since the rl does 4x damage, and has an incredible splash radius, and grenades deter unabated charges around corners and such, the broad spectrum of weapon balance stays preserved in my opinion.

Also, evidence would indicate that Winquake may be smoother, but the higher framerate realized in GLquake contradicts and thus neutralizes winquake's advantage. And FOV/sensitivity is subjective to every individual: not an issue of fairness per se.

So yes, shaft v shaft fights between me in 2001 (900Mhz, winquake, 90 ping) and me now (Dual Proc Athlon 64 4200+, glquake, 50 ping at rage, ~24 at crmod) would likely favor me now, but overall weapon balance related to the gl/rl/lgun is preserved. My opinion.

Sidenote: strangely enough, when I ping 100, which I have for a while on Rage at times, I seemingly do better than with half that ping (not when I spike to 400, obv). I use the lgun in a more selective manner, and operate more evasively due to this; I also use the RL more (which was the primary weapon everyone who started quake-ing in the 90s used). So yeah, the difference of the lgun influences the value of the player, but perhaps that is indeed an oversimplification as you point out. Reasonable selection of what to do and when is probably of equal importance.

[Canadian*Sniper]

RocketGuy voted "unfair" because of the nightmares I gave him in the euro servers ;o

[RocketGuy]

RocketGuy voted "unfair" because of the nightmares I gave him in the euro servers ;o

True, I couldn't sleep for days after I saw those gibs coming out of the water.

Also shaft sucks

[Polarite]

I don't think i shaft any better on my P4 3500mhz then on my PII 450mhz.

Framerate is locked here on 72 or 77 depends on server.(just like qw)
With unlocked framrate i can get 1000fps but that doesnt help my shaft aiming.

PS: My shaft aiming was best in 1997 !

[Stung]

Shaft definitively helps recognize nuances of your opponents movement quicker if you have a higher framerate. Framerate is unlockable with pq_maxfps:: I use pq_maxfps 218 and the difference is very noticeable. It also correlates to lowering your ping (e.g. Spoon used maxfps 72 and Vsync and pinged 40 on chi; turned it off and went to max_fps 500, and pinged 0-10.) So no, framerate is not locked.

[Baker]

Shaft definitively helps recognize nuances of your opponents movement quicker if you have a higher framerate. Framerate is unlockable with pq_maxfps:: I use pq_maxfps 218 and the difference is very noticeable. It also correlates to lowering your ping (e.g. Spoon used maxfps 72 and Vsync and pinged 40 on chi; turned it off and went to max_fps 500, and pinged 0-10.) So no, framerate is not locked.

Setting pq_maxfps to a number higher than your monitor's refresh rate (typically 60 Hz for a flat screen or 72 Hz for a CRT monitor) doesn't do anything unless you go Start -> Control -> Display, clicking settings tab and then click Advanced and go into your video cards settings and set vsync to "Always off".

Mine is set to "always off" and I have pq_maxfps set to 250.

But if you don't go into the control panel on a given machine and set the video card settings for vsync to "Always off", your FPS in ProQuake will be limited to your monitor refresh rate no matter what you do inside ProQuake.

Newer engines than ProQuake -- Qrack, JoeQuake 0.15 and DarkPlaces -- have no need for messing around in the Windows control panel to break the 60 Hz/72 Hz limit because you can disable vsync from the console by typing something in.

Yes you are right in that the framerate isn't locked, but an average player would not know to do this.

Here is a thread where Monster -- not exactly a Quake newbie -- can't get ProQuake to get more than 60 FPS (thread). Well connected players that are in a clan, talk on IRC or know a friend or 2 don't have trouble unlocking the frame rate in ProQuake.

This kind of thing is something I think is annoying because some players play more poorly simply due to not knowing these things. A great game is one where secret and/or undocumented (or not well known) configuration information is not required to do well.

[Stung]

I meant vsync off, forgot the word off.

[Lardarse]

Is the lightning gun evil and unfair weapon?

Yes, but for none of the reasons that you specified.

Assume for a moment that we are playing in a LAN setting, where everyone has a strong enough computer to handle the graphical issues, and a fully tweaked config that lets them use it at its fullest potential. The LG is unfair because you only have to touch your opponent and he's dead. It does 30 damage per hit, and fires 10 times a second, which is 300 damage per second, and puts any opponent very quickly within killing range...

The biggest balancing factor was meant to be that you got very little ammo for it. Unfortunately, this is false in both SP and DM.

In single player, the first level of every episode where it appears has enforcers, and lots of them. Each one gives you 5 cells when it dies. Even if you don't get every single pack that they drop, it's still very easy to have well over 50 cells by the time you get to the lightning gun. I can begin to understand why Matthias Worch made them only drop 2 cells each in Beyond Belief...

And in multiplayer, it's even worse, because the ammo tends to accumulate until people use it. But the ultimate wrongness is CA, where you don't even need to run around and find the ammo for it. This then removes the last downside, and creates a beast of an unfair weapon....

So yes, it's an unfair weapon. And it's only even more unfair in the more typical setting of playing online, where not everyone has a brilliant computer, 10 years of experience, or a house in the same street as the server. And it can't ever be fair while it has issues in a perfect world...

[LordHavoc]

I contend that it is unfair for yet another skill-related reason that has gone unmentioned - it only fires 10 times per second, this means that there is a big difference between 'perfect timing' and 'almost perfect timing' (hit and miss), it's not so much a matter of keeping it on your opponent as it is a matter of having it on your opponent when it does damage, this is not readily obvious when using it as it is a lingering beam, not a 'pulse' that you observe.

In my mods I prefer to make it fire at the server ticrate (typically 50ms), using part of a cell with each 'shot', this means that it sweeps more smoothly and anyone who can keep it on their opponent 'most of the time' will do well, which requires less practice.

Plus it looks nicer with better sweeping

I think there are two separate points to be made, one is that it does too much damage for the best players, the other is that it does too little damage for the average player, so it should be made both easier to use and do less damage to make it fair. I seem to recall in Quake3 that the LG does less damage but is easier to use?

[Phenom]

I agree once again,

the LG would do fine I think if the damage was reduced and its usefulness factor was added to!

Its an instant hit weapon and the good players can kill you in 1 second most of the time.

[Lardarse]

I think there are two separate points to be made, one is that it does too much damage for the best players, the other is that it does too little damage for the average player, so it should be made both easier to use and do less damage to make it fair. I seem to recall in Quake3 that the LG does less damage but is easier to use?

In Quake 3 it does 8 damage every 50ms, so 160 damage a second. But that game has its own issues with the weapon. cg_TrueLightning makes it far too easy to aim it exactly where you're pointing...