Can grenades be 'cooked'?

[Phisionary]

Originally Posted by sumo

rediculous. you try throwing .5-1 kg 50 meters and tell me how you do
in the danish army the distance to throw is 25 meters with a standard sized danish handgrenade (and we have the biggest and most powerful handgrenades in europe).

fair enough.

I found a rock that weighed 1.87 lbs (~3/4 kg) and tossed it over my house. I was able to easily clear the AC on the roof, and paced out the distance from the where I stood to the dent in the lawn at first impact, at exactly 45 paces. so, maybe 40m. As reference, I have a hollowed out surplus pineapple nade that weighs 1.41 lbs.

So, 50m seems fair estimate. I'm convinced I could manage it (@ 1kg) if I really put my weight behind a throw.

[Fanglord]

Originally Posted by Otleaz

Cooked grenades make sense, but it is bad game design. It really rears its head with objective based games like PS2 will be.

If you know where your enemy will be, a cooked grenade is a guaranteed instantaneous kill. Response and counter gameplay is healthy gameplay. Being killed without a chance to fight back should be rare.

I kinda disagree, I know its a simple mechanic but there's a certain knack to getting people with cooked grenades. Takes a bit of skill to know how long to hold and to predict where a moving person will be in relation to the fuse. Watching people use grenades in moderny type shooters its surprising how many people just pull the pin and throw.

[rodohk]

People are saying in real life not all timers are exactly the same. Yes this is true so why not include this have the grenades be a random time within a set range and allow cooking. IMO not being able to cook a nade is lame and annoying, but so is insta death from one. So semi random timer plus being able to cook it that adds some risk to cooking but keeps the strategy of cooking.

[Phisionary]

Originally Posted by Otleaz

Cooked grenades make sense, but it is bad game design. It really rears its head with objective based games like PS2 will be.

If you know where your enemy will be, a cooked grenade is a guaranteed instantaneous kill. Response and counter gameplay is healthy gameplay. Being killed without a chance to fight back should be rare.

That's ridiculous. It might be bad level design. It might be bad tactics (...so don't stand in such a grenadeable position). But it's not bad game design. It's realistic, it's authentic, and it makes sense. I don't know what non-'objective based' games I must be playing, but when I capture the objective in them, it's usually assisted by good use of grenades. It's a game skill like any other, from mastering gun response and recoil to estimating bullet drop on cannon rounds. Likewise, the decision to put away ones primary weapon (in many games at least) and stand there like a wanker with a grenade in hand, waiting for the timer to be Juuuuust right. Oops, the guy is already around the corner and he shot me. Oops, I didn't run fast enough and the timer is out. Oops, it turns out no-one was there and I just wasted my grenade. These are tactical decisions, and important to gameplay. None is a guaranteed kill. Not even in blacklight retribution, with a sanctioned wallhack game mechanic, is cooking your nade a guaranteed kill. MAYBE that's why that game has the nerfiness I described (earlier in the thread), I don't know. And, if grenades take resources, players wont want to waste them. If they manage to predict you so well that they can guarantee kill you, you are too predictable.

On another topic, I think the player should be allowed to pick up thrown grenades. I got used to this in DOD:S, and now every time I see a nade in-game, I want to grab it. It allows some defense against grenades, it allows positively epic return throws in battle , it rewards players for learning the cooking mechanism, and even if you pick up a thrown nade in the middle of a pack of teammates, it can be good. If there is some damage reduction benefit from being team-held (real-world analog: a guy throws himself onto a soon-to-explode grenade, right?), then it provides a concrete benefit. alternatively, you are denying the enemy a mass of grenade kills. I remember once getting automatically insta-kicked because I picked up a thrown grenade in the middle of 4 teammates with FF on. It was sort of hilarious, but I was generally glad the other teams' guy didn't get the credit on a quintuple-kill.

Finally, any developer of weapons, modern or future, who allows more than 1/10 second variation in short-duration explosive timers, should be shot. Random timer variation is not acceptable.

[ThermalReaper]

Just put them in a boiling pot of water.

[Sifer2]

At E3 the grenades looked like quick nades similar to Halo/CoD where you hit the button and the guy just throws it immediately. So no cooking plus being able to spam them instantly. Hopefully i'm wrong though an you have to switch to it then pull the pin an throw. I prefer that so you have to make a decision of when to throw a grenade as it leaves you vulnerable for a bit. Cooking also leaves you vulnerable for longer so I think its a fair trade off for having a better chance of blowing up the target before they can react.

[Otleaz]

Originally Posted by Phisionary

Likewise, the decision to put away ones primary weapon (in many games at least) and stand there like a wanker with a grenade in hand, waiting for the timer to be Juuuuust right. Oops, the guy is already around the corner and he shot me. Oops, I didn't run fast enough and the timer is out. Oops, it turns out no-one was there and I just wasted my grenade. These are tactical decisions, and important to gameplay. None is a guaranteed kill.

I'm not convinced. What you describe are blunders an inexperienced player would run into by not reading the situation properly, and would not common for someone who has a feel for the pace of the game.

[Liwen Diamond]

Considering grenades cost ressources, any solider at a given time as a very limited supply of them ready and are very limited in range compared to rocket launchers, tank shells, air to ground missiles and all the other explosive weapons we have available that explode instantly on contact, I'm thinking the argument that they should not be cookable for fear of making them overpowered is a bit nonsensical...

This is a endless war with thousands of people simultenously out there to kill you in the process of gaining territory by capturing clearly identified objectives. You are going to have loads and loads of unavoidable grim deaths defending and assaulting said objectives, and I for one believe that grenades should get the love they deserve. Make them cookable, allow us to throw them via a dedicated button that doesn't involve having to holster my gun for several seconds, unless I'm cooking them and please give us as much customization on them as we get on other weapons. I want to be able to increase throw distance at the cost of damage or explosion radius. I want to increase damage and explosion radius at the cost of range or the ability to carry as many as I normally would. I want some that do EMPs. I want flash nades. I want flying homing ones that can be attached on aircrafts if not shoot out of the sky or outrun. Go wild with them :P. They are as many possible types and applications to grenades as they are for guns, vehicules and utility belt items.

I've always been impressed by myself and other people getting skillful awesome kills out of their grenades. I would never want to be anywhere close of one in real life, even with the pin still in it, but in videos games I like the added element of variety and tension of having to deal with them and having them as a tool in my asernal.

[SztEltviz]

Originally Posted by rodohk

People are saying in real life not all timers are exactly the same. Yes this is true so why not include this have the grenades be a random time within a set range and allow cooking. IMO not being able to cook a nade is lame and annoying, but so is insta death from one. So semi random timer plus being able to cook it that adds some risk to cooking but keeps the strategy of cooking.

This.

After a suicide with a few teamkill, because a short fuse, they will learn not to cook

[Kipper]

Hmm, death by random number generator doesn't sound like a good gameplay mechanic to me.

The argument against cooking grenades should be that they have to be selected, and held, at the expense of holding a gun, rather than insta-thrown. Thus you take a risk in doing it because you're defenceless.

Even if you argue that you could still hold a gun while doing that, you could restrict people to hip-fire or otherwise reduce their accuracy so that personal defence is still compromised.

...and of course, Grenades will cost resources and hopefully take some time to resupply, so they will not be spammable.

[Carnage]

I would suspect as with most of the PS2 Equipment, you will be able to up/down/side-grade your nades to whatever configuration you choose... I can see most of the basic styles making it into the game, Sticky, Proximity, Contact and Timed... who knows what else there will be... I heard there will be a 'vampire-like' nade that will suck HP from close enemy before detonating with a force equivalent to a ratio of that HP...

I see no issue with cooked nades, I find them quite useful, with some skill you can master the 'explodes next to enemy face in mid air tactic' with great results.

and of cause if your holding down a key waiting for the timer for a few seconds, you cannot shoot with a weapon.

[Salad Snake]

Originally Posted by Phisionary

That's ridiculous. It might be bad level design. It might be bad tactics (...so don't stand in such a grenadeable position). But it's not bad game design. It's realistic, it's authentic, and it makes sense.

Not to say that I don't often enjoy those elements, but games are not just about realism and authenticness. To talk about game design one must realize what any sort of game really is; a physical or (in the case of video games) mental exercise that produces entertainment by offering reward and punishment for certain behaviors, typically ones that are difficult to replicate on demand but can be improved upon (like shooting a basketball more effectively or aiming more accurately with a rifle) that are called skills.

Cooked grenades can be poor game design for the same reason a 1-shot bodyshot kill can be poor game design; because it offers an overly frustrating experience to the victim due to receiving a nigh-instantaneous death seemingly at random that can happen quite often without warning because it's easier to pick up than, say, a bolt-action headshot. There is no initial negative feedback, like you would have if you had simply been gunned down. There's no retaliation, no real engagement with the victim. One moment you're fine and the next you're dead. So looking at the mechanic's potential to entertain the player and weighing it out with how much potential it has to frustrate him/her instead, I would say that allowing grenades to be cooked ultimately weighs in heavier on the later side of the scale.



That said, due to the fact that most of the combat in this game won't be intensely CQC and mainly happens with combined foot and vehicle components I don't really care whether they're cookable or not. I'm just posting to say that cooked grenades CAN be bad game design, especially if your game does happen to have a lot of CQC (such as a more deathmatch-y game), and explaining why that is so.