Design Goals

WoD6.08

As all WoD players know, WoD6.08 is a lot of fun to play. There are many toys to play with including novel weapons, multiple grenade types, a jetpack to fly around with, and much more. There are extremely powerful weapons you can use to wipe out entire rooms full of people at at time. And of course you can set your opponents on fire!

Unfortunately not all WoD weapons appeal to everyone. Cataclysm grenades, for instance, are hilarious the first time you use them, funny the second time, and amusing the third time, but after a while it dawns on you that you are using a weapon that takes no skill to use. Also, some of the weapons have enduring appeal but tend to lag the server. The rocket machinegun, for instance, can be used with great skill but rendering all those rockets and all those explosions can cause serious lag problems.

WoD6.08 has two ways of dealing with this: weapon bans and frag bans. With weapon bans you can't use the weapon at all while with frag bans you can use it but don't get credit for the frag. This flexibility combined with the natural tendency of different server operators to appreciate different features has resulted in a proliferation of server setups. Clans using these different rules have a hard time agreeing on a common set of rules which has the effect of inhibiting clan warfare.

"Competition WoD" offers a partial answer to this problem. A standard set of weapon and frag bans is defined so that clans have a common set of rules to play by. Unfortunately not all clans can live with the choices that were made. This is more a problem with the design of WoD6.08 than the definition of Competion WoD. If all the low skill and high lag weapons were taken out the mod would be kind of tame but whatever you put in will be found unacceptable by some. Hence there is no "right answer".

WoD2000

Thus the first design objective of WoD2000 is to make a set of features which should be acceptable to a wide range of server operators. Specifically:

Clearly, server side flexibility is NOT a design objective of WoD2000. Since we are focusing on clan warfare the last thing we want is 500 different versions in use. It is also not a design objective to make wild, over-the-top weapons which are good for a quick laugh. Players who are looking for this can continue to play WoD6.08, LOX, or various other mods.

Client side flexibility is another matter. Many players like to have a wide range of options available and there is no reason not to accommodate them. Also, since WoD6.08 was released there have been significant developments in first person shooters, notably Quake 3 Arena and Unreal Tournament. Armed with these new ideas improvements should be made in user interfaces and other gameplay features.

Along these lines:

The downside of tinkering with user interface is that it cannot be made completely downward compatible with WoD6.08. This means clients will have some work to do to make new config files.

In a category by itself:

Single player operation is also NOT a design objective of WoD2000. You should be able to play single player if you have the server pack installed. The weapons at your disposal will be too powerful to give the monsters much of a chance, but single player may be a reasonable way to try out the new weapons or test your config.

Summary

WoD2000 should offer a large, balanced array of powerful weapons. They should require skill to use and not cause excessive server lag. General gameplay and user interface ideas should be adopted as appropriate. The hook should work by taking the player in a straight line but not so quickly that it overshadows the weapons as a factor in gameplay.