Muddeh, in your reply to me, you stated that your argument is that Twisted Metal will lose an element of depth (which you earlier described as "critical") if future installments abandon the ramming system of TMX. It's fascinating to me that, while your initial statements align with this view, they do nothing to support it, let alone, clearly state it so we can understand and respond to your position. The bulk of your replies afterward have caused much confusion.
You've spent countless words apparently trying to convince everyone that using TMB's ramming system for TMX wouldn't balance TMX. I don't think anyone disagrees with you though, which is probably why those ramblings left everyone confused. If you can find a quote from someone who actually said, "Swapping TMX's ramming system with TMB's would balance TMX," all of those replies will start to make sense to me.
On the other hand, the argument was clearly stated by your opposition that the very nature of ramming is that it is unbounded, which sets it apart from all of the other weapons that have clear bounded regeneration rates. If you give big cars devastating ramming abilities, it essentially gives them an unlimited special weapon, which can be used perfectly concurrently with other weapons. If you give them a powerful special weapon on top of this, it necessarily leads to balance issues. Many of us would rather have big cars with powerful special weapons than big cars unbounded high damage rams.
On a side note, it could be fun to sometime start a thread to discuss unexplored avenues of game balance strategies that might work. I did a thread on old TMA years ago about that. For example, you could take away the car's shield and cloak abilities, impose inventory limits, and there are all kinds of creative handling quirks that could be imposed, or something else. Sounds like TMX experimented with smaller turbo tanks, but only mapped it onto smaller cars. I actually suggested that in that thread long ago. Haha Balancing these things would be rough though and could probably only be done by gathering complex live server statistical data.
Muddeh, as for your alleged refutation of the unbounded ramming/balance fears, you've provided quite a tangled web of statements that often appear to contradict each other. For example, you keep insisting that turbo is a scarce resource, which effectively bounds ramming potential. However, now you're saying that experts have turbo greater than 95% of the time. This doesn't sound "scarce" at all and feels to me like it brings us back to square one, which is pondering how many times (excluding turbo dash for now) can one car ram another car before running out of turbo? The answer to this is indefinite (unbounded). Furthermore, how does the mechanic of their [concurrent heavy ramming weapon] + [special weapons] architecture interact with the [special weapons only] mechanic of other vehicles?
Another example of apparent contradiction is when you stated that our perception of ram impact on game outcomes was based on observations made during the infancy of the server, and ranted about how clueless noobs get pwnd by rams. This
seems to imply that ramming really isn't something that happens a lot on the matured server with seasoned players. You even directly say that rams on small cars are rare. You were rather flabbergasted though when all of this was taken as saying "rams are rare" in general, and you insisted that rams are "frequent." Whatever you're trying to say is very confusing, and to understand why we are confused, you have to frame these statements in light of our concern about "frequent" unbounded concurrent rams occurring AS WELL AS devastating special weapons for big cars.
These two apparent contradictions combined make things even more confusing. You say rams are so bounded by turbo, but then describe them as a "frequent" occurrence, and say experts almost always have turbo. To make matters worse, on TMX's wiki, am I reading it right when it says big cars have anywhere from one and a half to two and a half minutes of turbo to burn on a single tank?
Also, you have not answered Malefactor's point about ramming without turbo. Is it the case that, in TMX, only turbo rams do damage? If not, why is it that you believe turboless rams for big cars is not a skill worthy of development?
Finally, you've insisted a few times now that we shouldn't care about this issue because "
ramming isn't what's throwing off the balance
." Whether you're referring to TMX's balance or Twisted Metal in general, this statement demonstrates a very primitive view of the balancing landscape. I could unpack this, but should I? Or would it be better to just leave it highlighted in red ink?
Especially after you've already stated that rams are frequent and the larger vehicles are mysteriously residing in the upper tier? Would they have less damage potential if their ramming ability was capped at 10 points? The strictest logical wording of your statement may be true, but I see it as bizarre as making a statement like, "
Cancer isn't what's killing us
."
On a side note, your "misunderstood genius" routine as well as your "all of you have reading comprehension problems" routine are both best abandoned at this point. People genuinely can't make sense of the things you're saying. Show some accountability.