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Before you people critisize the topic there is a VERY GOOD explaination behind this thought. I believe this is the sole reason DB has gone downhill and become a slower game on the whole. Please read if your going to comment for i do believe this is why DB isnt as fun to play any more.

1.3b was considered the catalyst patch. When people think of all the fun times they had in DB they were generally in 1.3b. 1.3b had set jumping. Think about it...

Scores were still higher.
Volleying required much more skill than it does now.
It was harder to dribble.
It was harder to hit people mid-boost (and take boosts all together).
It was easier for offensive players to catch downfield jump-passes.
It took more accuracy to set-up wall vollies.

In 1.4 free-jumping was introduced. And it was good. In 1.4b came the VO plague. All the volley whores showed up and said "holy crap, this is mad easy to do now!". I was one of them, and i jumped on the band wagon. I enjoyed 1.4b because DB was still competative, had high scores and volleying was simply used as a team tactic only used when absolutly necessary.

Everyone remembers 13th_Disciple of SoP who has been gone for awhile now. Well he was one of the biggest professors of -not- volleying as a game winning technique. SoP ML (the team he and I were on) went undefeated through the regular season and while other teams were learning to volley, we were scoring and winning.

On the other end of the same stick we didnt have the highest scoring differential but still managed to win our league and the series using little to no volley goals to win games. You also have to remember our 2 forwards were myself and ATB (the original Volley Whore) but we always kept it under wraps and won without the vollies even when free jumping could be used to our disposal to enhance our volley skills further.

Now everyone is a volley whore, no one even tries to keep it hidden anymore. Every offensive player i can think of can do it at least 1/2 as well as I can and I'v been playing forever. Some can even do it better than I. What i, and many others, did lose was shooting. When 1.4b first arrived there was a stir in the SoP camp as the majority of our shooters (me, Sabi, K69, and HooDa) all lost our shot for a little while but quite quickly were back to 75-80% in a very short time. This is when i started volleying and almost never looked back. I knew i could shoot well, but can i volley?

You may be thinking to yourself "how does this all incorporate to free-jump?" and the reason is very simple. Its not as easy to volley anymore and at the same time not as easy to stop them defensively. Free jump was a crutch everyone has used since its been introduced. It made life easier for offenders and defenders alike and this has made Deathball boring. The lack of cognitive thought which i and many other FPS players have a good grasp of usually.

Cognitive thought is basically preception of where things. In deathball its basically how things will end up after you do them. A good example of this is when you throw a ball at a wall which then bounces off another wall if you know where it will land you are using cognitive thought. You are preceiving where it will land by using your knowledge of the walls, the ball power, and other factyors your brain can very rapidly calculate unknowingly. In DB when you shoot the ball theres a gradual decrease in the balls height and you can quickly pick up on it, again cognitive thought. As far as the X and Y axis goes there are little to no problems, but not the Z axis at all which was the defining difference between DB and football.

In deathball we can jump. High. With free-jump any idiot can jump and catch a low floater or intercept a long pass with reletive ease. If your bit low, quickly touch the spacebar again and its caught. If your a bit high just let yourself fall and hit jump (if necessary) to catch the ball easily. This is where cognitive thought is lacking. You need not require a good ammount to play DB to its full potential, thus making it easier to do seemingly complicated moves and variations.

This applies to every aspect of the game. I will make a very complete listing of where cognitive though is used if this topic actually picks up.

Back ontopic i believe re-adding set-jumping into the game will enhance gameplay drastically. Making people actually have to *try* to do more complex manuvers and gaining a form of self-appriciation when completeing them. When i play DB i don't really say "go me" or "damn that was nice" when i pull off vollies or interceptions like i would have in DB in previous versions. The same goes when i see others players do them. They've all been done before and very little is impressivle. I'm not one to flater people with showers of praise (like saying "nice shot") because somewhere deep inside i know 100% that what they did was a very simple task that anyone can pull of.

There are exceptions though. When a keep makes a nice save, when a good shooter scores a bad angle shot, when a defender makes a high areal interception, etc. This is why i loved DB. It took skill to do moves that others could not, its what made people individual players, its what defined the good from the bad, its what once made many of my fellow players seperate from eachother.

This is not how it is anymore. Everyones either a volley whore, a banana whore, a pbox camper, a dodge keeper (not necessaraly a bad thing), or a little bit of everything. This is not how it should be.

I don't like to make references to members of my team but i will because they're the best examples i can think of. Back in the day or main offensive players me, Sabi, ATB, HooDa, and K69 all had or specilties. Sabi was the ace passer and a very accurate shooter, the main play-maker and was involved in most goals. ATB was a good shooter and a good vollier, a very well balanced offensivle player. K69 had the miracle side shot that had about an 85% score rate, probably one of the best shots in all of DB. HooDa was the original volley master doing arial vollies since 1.2 but didnt have the long shot that the others had but made up for it with passes/vollies. I was the close range "put the damn ball in the net" close range accurate shooter but couldnt do very much volley-wise at all, i danced around people instead of taking long shots. We were a very well balanced team and all of our skills would usually complemented another player of the teams with few conflictions.

Now as i staded we've all been forced to volley to win and many of our players have lost their thunder and intrest in playing AFAIK. I hardly play anymore, ATB does occasionally, HooDa only playes league games, K69 has left completely AFAIK and i can't even recall the last time i'v seen Sabi play.

As for defensivly, RIP and Cor, the "Defensive Destroyers" have both quit playing and have completely lost intrest in DB because what fun is it just trying to block vollies all day? Its not. The only people that i havn't seen quit are keepers. 2 of ours are still around, 1 moved to offense (which hes better at) and the other stopped playing consistantly before 1.4b.

I dont think theres much hope left for our players to come back, but for the sake of the community i know we will all get bored playing "death-football" at this rate. Bring back the cognitive thought, make it hard to play. Were not here to accomodate n00bs and i sure as hell won't play with a crutch much longer. One day you have to take off the training wheels and see what happens. In your efforts to make DB more n00b friendly your destroyed it for those of us that have been playing for a long time and you've completely taken the skill factor out of all of DB and made it reliant on simply picking up techniques.

On a related note, this is what's happened to Planetside (the new SOE game, still in Beta stages) and that is that people have burned out on the game because of a stupid cone of fire made to put everyone on an equal playing field. This is what free-jump is doing to DB and it sucks.

Although i like free jumping and it can still make the game fun and good for n00bs.. i agree... it will take more skill and thought with set jumping... and will bring some like back into DB

Surge, you talk too much
I haven't read it, but i voted for No.

Yeah, honestly man.. you need to lay off the keyboard every now and then. A few paragraph post could've summarized that rather easily.

Anyway, as it is with this game, there is such a distinct difference with every option added. Love sprint, hate it. Love volley, hate it. There is very few who are indifferent on every subject and don't care where they play. Adding set jumps as "just another option" is going to split the community even further than it already is, and there's going to be a great lack of "pub" games that everybody can enjoy because they might want sprint or they might not want the set jumps...

The reason why I'd vote yes is rather stupid, really. Say I play a few games of DeathBall over a day or so. When I go and play a CTF or DM game, my mind is still in "free jump" mode, and I have a few problems jumping occasionally.

But, hey, the only thing that could make DeathBall easier to score is LowGrav (which is fun to do on DB-TrainingCourt 1v1 ).

your just making it harder, scaring away new people. jump has always been fine since whenever i got playing, 1.4 or whatever.

I agree with surge what he says about volley whoring, but you can't turn back the clock and expect everything to be fixed. Things arn't as simple as that now.

Anyway, if people don't call you a "volley whore", you get called a "cherry picker". Deathballs decline is down to two things:

a) People taking it too seriously.
b) P/box camping.

DEUS don't p/box camp. It might sting us sometimes, but at least we're still having fun. We don't take the game too seriously. Maybe that's why we're still together, whilst other teams are crumbling? P/box camping is just boring and about as much fun as reconstructing your eye-sockets with a red hot iron.

When we take it down to foundation level, ONE thing will stop Deathballs decline: attitudes. I don't care for the constant bitching that goes on here on the forums, in IRC and on the DBL pages. I really couldn't give a flying fuck about it all. Some of you need to chill out and just play the game for fun. Take a leaf out of the smaller, less successful teams book: play for fun, win, lose or draw.

Way too long to read, i just wont vote.

Cliff notes! :p

both are good for different reasons, but I had less fun with the old multi jump settings, too annoying when you miss the timing for some weird reason, it always felt like it should have been right, but it wasn't
-> no

i like it as it is now, so i vote for no

both are good for different reasons, but I had less fun with the old multi jump settings, too annoying when you miss the timing for some weird reason, it always felt like it should have been right, but it wasn't
-> no

agreed and just add fast paste dribble again and we are happy KTHX

for all of you who came to play after 1.4 you should all be hit with the noob stick. We all learned to play with set jumping, we being the people who have played since the early 1.x versions and some in .9, so why cant you? Its not hard when its what you start with, consider it a challenge.

This game is far too n00b friendly and that is the downfall. People get bored of games that are simply based on a certain variety of moves without much variation. As far as shooting goes its practically useless...

Honestly i feel i should have the right to bitch out any player who hasn't played as long as us, hasnt had to completely re-learn the game 2-3 times, and still comes in here and complains.

Change is nice yes, drastic change is not. Giving us free jump was a drastic change that was not needed and completely changed DB and apparenly not in a good way. Changes like Banana shot nad Sprint can be worked with and enjoyed but free-jump totally altered the mechanics of the game and made it sort of "for dummies" IMO.

and for what its worth to do a 100% quad jump in set-jump just keep tapping the space bar...

a lot of jumps arent used to get higher...but too just stay in the air. Maybe lower it to 2-3 jumps so that it involves timing and not jumping and staying in the air untill ur teammate passes it to ya.

1.4b pwned so just add dribble and what surge said kthx that is all kthx kthx fest KTHX

ffs surge you always seem to be saying "i am the best" and "im old school db player" and you think that it makes you more important, it doesnt, and what you are saying is way off. first you start talking about how the game is too slow and it is ruining the game, then you say volleys are ruining the game. and you say that it is too n00b friendly, yet you flaunt the fact that youve been playing since 0.9 as if it means you are better.

quality, not quantity.

no.

"Some of you need to chill out and just play the game for fun."

Damn Right. Surge, try the above you highhorse-riding, ignoramus, type-too-damn-much, self-centered phuck-stick.