Page 4 of 5

Re: Ansion

Posted: Thu Mar 28, 2019 3:53 pm
by Black
I am pretty sure that the alt route from d spawn to the blast door area doesn't have a soundset or doesn't play a sound anyway. There may be more that I can't recall. As for the missing textures this is just strange. I should have those idk what's going on.

Re: Ansion

Posted: Tue May 14, 2019 6:46 am
by Duo
Patch notes for the new update?

Re: Ansion

Posted: Tue May 14, 2019 10:29 am
by hannah
Ansion beta 12 is finally up on server! I figured this time instead of just posting the changelog, I would make a more detailed post about where I think ansion is right now, where I think it should be going, how I think certain objectives play, or should play out, and so on. (But there will be a full changelog at the end for those who don't want to read a wall of text.)

First objective:
I think this obj is pretty well made, probably the most well functioning obj the map currently has. Which kinda makes sense, as whenever I made changes to the map this was the first thing I touched, but I digress. I intend this objective to play out as a pretty straightforward objective, where defence has plenty of options to position themselves, and overall the fight between O and D should slightly favour D.

The alternate hack should be a lot harder to defend, and a hack O should always try going for. It should open up a really valuable alternate route, which bypasses the big chokepoint of the objective. I want O to think of the newly opened routes as worthwile of taking, and the changes done to this objective should reflect that intention.

Changes:
  • Added a launch pad near the right side O spawns.
  • Moved alt route door further away from choke point.

The launchpad should hopefully mean that the far right side route will become an option (it is currently never used). And the other change is self explanatory.

Second objective:
(Just for clarification, by second objective I mean both red and blue stations in the second area.)
Yellow hack is making its return in this version. Before removing it I had concerns about just how well D can defend so many things at once: yellow hack, green hack, and the dish, so I wanted to experiment how it plays out when they only have to split their attention between 2 objectives. To me it felt that a crucial part of the gameplay was now missing, and overall the objectives became less fun.

However, yellow hack has undergone some serious rework:

Image

There are 7 switches, activating one switch will also activate all adjacent switches. The goal is to obviously have all of them activated, that will complete yellow hack. The usetime for each switch is 1s, and the minimum amount of required hack is always 4, never more to complete the hack. It is randomised at every map restart, so the order can not be just memorised and executed.

Defence can also activate the switches, but it takes 5.5 seconds for them to do so.

Concerns: it might seem that pulling this hack off during a live game could be problematic, and just too difficult to solve. However, during my tests I have found that I could always solve it within 10 seconds of trying, and more often than not, the solution is just really simple. I am also aware that D being able to hack it could complicate things, if it turns out to be bad, this will be the first thing to go. (Also D can totally open yellow hack so careful with what you are doing...)

Overall I intend this area to play out somewhat similar to cargo stations: station 1 is easy to start damaging, station 2 is hard to breach. I think currently it more or less plays out like that, although there is probably room for improvement.

Changes:
  • Yellow hack is now back. (the optimal hack time for yellow hack is ALWAYS 4 SECONDS)
  • Slightly altered the layout.
  • Reworked the hitbox of the dish.

I felt the dish had a bit clunky hitbox: it was fine to damage it by gunners but jedi had an awkward time. Hopefully this should be fixed.

Third objective:
I think this is the objective most people had issues with, barring last obj that has been reworked anyways. I think, however, that most of the issues stem from sticking to using 1 or 2 routes, and ignoring the rest of them. Just a reminder, gunners can also get to the other side by going up to the turret room, and rolling down onto the ship, thus ignoring the bridge.

Also, there is an armour generator at the bottom area, so when D just camps the high ground, O can fully shield up. Don't get me wrong, I'll absolutely make changes to this if it indeed ends up needing some, or there is a general consensus about it, but for now, I have decided to mostly just leave it as is. I did, however, buff the health of both NPCs, especially Alpha's, because I felt he was way too easy to kill.

Changes:
  • Transferred 1 hp from Alpha to Onasi to better reflect reality.
  • Both NPCs got their health buffed.
  • Increased the width of the separating wall between bottom and upper areas.
  • The turret room has been enlargened.
  • The hack to turn on refueling procedures have been decreased to 1s (down from 2s).

The change done to turret room intends to make it more convenient to use it as a means to get to the other side as well. And the hacktime decrease is a QoL change for defence: oftentimes it already took long enough to just walk to the hack panels, the 2s hacktime was a bit unnecessary.

Fourth objective:
I think this objective had one too many mini objective to complete, and that is precisely the only change I did to this. Overall I would like this objective to have 2 different parts: one should be opening the blast door, and the other one should be about getting to the Reencoder Droid. I'd also want these 2 parts to have more or less the same difficulty, which did not appear to be the case before.

Changes:
  • Removed the secondary hack/destructible, and the forcefield is now lowered by default.

Hopefully, with this change the objective will be more in line with what I envisioned, and just getting to the codes won't be that difficult.

Fifth objective:
Since this objective has been reworked, I'll post the changes first:
  • Reworked the area.
  • There are now 4 reencoder droids around the area: the first one is activated by default.
  • The rest of the recall droids need to be hacked to be activated, and have activision times as well.
  • The goal is still to reach the ship with the datapad.

I would like this objective to require quite a lot of teamwork, which should be the determining factor at just how quickly it is beaten by the attackers. Defence has great positioning with their spawn room I feel, so O will have to play together to outplay them. And of course, I also want this objective to be finally something fun! I think there has never been an objective like this in siege, so I'm really curious as to how it will play out.

  Reveal hidden contents
Changelog:
  • general: added locations.
  • added missing messages.
  • added missing icons.
  • 1st area: ending lockdown procedures now activates a launch pad near right side spawn.
  • 1st area: moved alt route door further away from choke point.
  • 2nd area: yellow hack is now back.
  • 2nd area: the optimal hack time for yellow hack is ALWAYS 4 SECONDS.
  • 2nd area: slightly altered the layout.
  • 2nd area: reworked the hitbox of the dish.
  • 3rd area: transferred 1 hp from Alpha to Onasi to better reflect reality.
  • 3rd area: both NPCs got their health buffed.
  • 3rd area: increased the width of the separating wall between bottom and upper areas.
  • 3rd area: the turret room has been enlargened.
  • 3rd area: the hack to turn on refueling procedures have been decreased to 1s (down from 2s).
  • 4th area: removed the secondary hack/destructible, and the forcefield is now lowered by default.
  • 5th area: reworked the area.
  • 5th area: there are now 4 reencoder droids around the area: the first one is activated by default.
  • 5th area: the rest of the recall droids need to be hacked to be activated, and have activision times as well.
  • 5th area: the goal is still to reach the ship with the datapad.

Re: Ansion

Posted: Tue May 14, 2019 11:04 am
by ghoul
/vote a

Re: Ansion

Posted: Wed May 15, 2019 3:51 am
by Duo
Dank developer update

Re: Ansion

Posted: Fri May 17, 2019 10:56 am
by hannah
Made some adjustments for beta12:
  • 2nd area: yellow hacktime reduced to 0.5s (down from 1s)
  • 2nd area: fixed a ladder.

My first impression of yellow hack was that people generally feel a bit scared to touch it, in case they end up making it worse, so I'm hoping shorter hack time will make people feel a bit more confident. This change may get reverted in the future.

Re: Ansion

Posted: Fri May 17, 2019 11:47 am
by hannah
I have also decided to make a more detailed post about yellow hack, because in my opinion, it just seems scarier than it really is.

So to start this off, this is how the hack works: upon map load all switches are in ON state: (1 1 1 1 1 1 1). Then 4 numbers get randomised, that cannot equal to one another. Based on these numbers, certain switches end up getting activated. But as you can see, unless D tempers with it, or O screws something up, you are guaranteed to be able to solve this hack just by 4 hacks.

Now, probably the most important thing to keep in mind, based on my observations during the games we played yesterday: you need to have at least 2 or 3 switches in OFF state, if you want to solve the hack. Because activating 1 switch will also activate all adjacent ones. So you can turn off 2 if it's at an edge, or 3 if it's in the middle. You can never turn off just 1.

Now with that out of the way, let's get to actually solving the hack. There are "easier" and more difficult combinations as of right now, simply because some tend to be more straightforward, than the others. At first I was somewhat concerned about this, but then I figured that this difficulty gap is pretty insignificant anyways. Anyhow, I could make adjustments to even the combinations up, although I hope I won't have to get there.

It is also important to keep in mind, that the order in which the switches are activated is irrelevant.

The easiest combinations to solve involve only 1 edge in OFF state, and the other edge in ON state. For example: (0 1 1 0 1 0 1). Now, how did we get here? From 1 1 1 1 1 1 1, we used the 5th, then the 1st, then the 3rd, and then the 4th switch.

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 -5th-> 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 -1st-> 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 -3rd-> 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 -4th-> 0 1 1 0 1 0 1
OR
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 -4th-> 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 -1st-> 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 -5th-> 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 -3rd-> 0 1 1 0 1 0 1

I hope that will be sufficient proof that the order does not matter, I could have done any combination, and the result would have still been the same.

Now, why do I say these are the easiest to solve? Because you can pretty much start at the edge (the OFF state one), and go through without any thought. Because you want to have everything on ON, so it is only logical to start at an edge right? So you activate the 1st switch:
0 1 1 0 1 0 1 -> 1 0 1 0 1 0 1
Now you once again, want to turn ON the furthest switch, so you use the 3rd switch:
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 -> 1 1 0 1 1 0 1
You've got the first 2 switches in ON state, that's good. Now you move on to the next switch, which should be the 4th:
1 1 0 1 1 0 1 -> 1 1 1 0 0 0 1
And now, it should be pretty obvious, that you only need to use the 5th switch. Once again, the order clearly does not matter, so instead of having to figure out which switch was used first after the randomisation, you can just go from left to right, and focus on turning the switches on one by one.

The more difficult combination are the ones where you can not just pick a side and go from left to right, or right to left. For example: 0 0 0 0 1 1 1. Using the first method, you would first activate the 2nd switch: 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 -> 1 1 1 0 1 1 1. Except now you have ended up with only 1 switch in OFF state. This can not be solved. Remember, you need to have at least 2 switches in OFF state to be able to flip them.

So instead of starting from an edge, you want to start from the middle, bringing back enough OFF states, that you will be able to flip them.
Let's use for example, the 4th switch: 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 -> 0 0 1 1 0 1 1. Now, this may still not look very promising, but we have to go on. Let's use the 6th switch now: 0 0 1 1 1 0 0. And from here I think it is pretty obvious that all you need to use now are the edges, so 1st and 7th switch. As I said, I am not controverting these kind of combinations are harder than what I had in the first example. You have to take a leap of faith so to say, because it is not obvious at first sight what needs to be done.

Also, I suppose you could say that, of course I could solve this combination first try: there is no pug going on, and so I had time to do the math. Well, here is what would happen if you guessed a different switch, and not 4 or 6.
0 0 0 0 1 1 1 -5th-> 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 -3rd-> 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 -1st-> 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 -3rd-> 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 -4th-> 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 -5th-> 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 -6th-> 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 -7th-> 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

I just randomly picked 2 numbers there, that I used. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but it was really obvious where to go from after the first initial missteps. And as you can see, I ended up undoing using the 3rd and the 5th switches later on. Because at that point, I was once again going from left to right. You just need to start doing it, and it will become really obvious how to solve it, even if you hack the wrong switch by accident.

And, if you are uneasy about starting from the middle, you could also start from the 2 edges. Looking at this very same example:
0 0 0 0 1 1 1 -1st-> 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 -7th-> 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 -4th-> 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 -6th-> 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

I understand that this kind of thing is a totally new approach in siege, but I hope people will be willing to give it a chance, because it really just looks more difficult than it is. As for me, having played ansion b12 twice yesterday, I feel I am far more concerned about how easy it might be to defend yellow hack, than actually how hard it is to "crack the code".

Re: Ansion

Posted: Fri May 17, 2019 12:22 pm
by ghoul

Re: Ansion

Posted: Fri May 17, 2019 1:21 pm
by hannah
ghoul wrote: Fri May 17, 2019 12:22 pm Yellow hack tutorial https://youtu.be/5ZePnCvVjGs?t=46
That's actually pretty accurate:D

Re: Ansion

Posted: Mon May 20, 2019 3:53 am
by Duo
I'm still not really a fan of having puzzle elements in a multiplayer fps tbh...would rather just have a code input or something, like JK2 SP Kejim level, but even that is pushing it imo tbh.

It's not a question of difficulty, it's just that it takes away from the combat/strategy focus of the game and is just like a little unrelated minigame. It would be like having a little chess board simulation where you have to hack the correct piece that needs to be moved in order to achieve a checkmate in one turn. I just don't really like doing an unrelated minigame/puzzle in a shooter game (same reason that I always hate lockpicking/hacking minigames in singleplayer FPS games like Fallout...I usually get mods to disable all of that if possible). I just don't really enjoy that and would rather just have straight up on/off hacks so the focus can remain on combat/movement/strategy, as it always should be in a multiplayer arena FPS.

I think if you made the area more inherently interesting (currently it's just a small room with a single pillar in the middle), you could make the hacking aspect of the objective more interesting just by making the gameplay around it more diverse rather than using the puzzle gimmick.