MaceMadunusus's Roadmap to the Future

MaceMadunusus

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MaceMadunusus's Roadmap to the Future​


In 2024 I took a leave of absence from the team. In doing so I promised to create a personal roadmap of things that I would have liked to see implemented into Movie Battles II. I also said that I would likely reveal it to the community, as I have always believed being transparent, open, and honest is better than being secretive or hiding things away. The only reason I haven't revealed some of this earlier is that I wanted there to be some surprises. A lot of these ideas are also things I have discussed on various other occasions. As I have mostly completed the document with most of the things I think people would be interested in seeing, it is now time to release it. While I haven't written down everything to a level I am fully happy with, and there are probably things I am still forgetting from my time on the team, there are more than enough ideas here to be useful while I work on anything else.

So without further adieu,
Feel free to discuss anything in this thread, on discord, or ask questions. I fully recognize that certain things in this may not be things others would come up with or enjoy, but a large part of my goal with open mode changes and ability additions was to shake up everything quite a bit. I hope you all enjoy this look into what MB2 could become and I wish the current team the best of luck into the future. They may use any of these ideas, and I personally hope they stick with a lot of them.

I may still finish some of my unfinished map projects as I do enjoy making maps, but I don't see myself returning as a major member of the development team any time in the near future. I appreciate all of those who have been supportive of my efforts, and all those who have enjoyed or appreciated my contributions to the game. Thank you.
 
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I'm the last brazilian who plays on a gringo server, couldn't I create my own server and do good things for the game? i really want to change, and i'm willing to go far for this game, because in bad times in my life mb2 has embraced me, i mean the gameplay, always fun and cool, i would really like some position, or at least a server.
 

Fang

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So as I finished reading it, I didn't really think cool, great etc. I thought. So never then right? Personally I think it's really pointless to make a roadmap of this size and then say 'I wont be a major player in the dev cycle'. Why bother then?

Seems too ambitious for small team which internally isn't particularly well known for time-frames and deliveries...

whilst it sounds nice it's that one saying like
talk the talks but doesnt walk the walk

EDIT:
Also i seem to recall NPC's vision and your vision here. So its not shared? Was this discussed between because I'm seeing two visions and we're going back to the old ways where everyone's not on the same pages
 
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MaceMadunusus

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So as I finished reading it, I didn't really think cool, great etc. I thought. So never then right? Personally I think it's really pointless to make a roadmap of this size and then say 'I wont be a major player in the dev cycle'. Why bother then?

Seems too ambitious for small team which internally isn't particularly well known for time-frames and deliveries...

whilst it sounds nice it's that one saying like
talk the talks but doesnt walk the walk

You're not wrong. Many of these things were in the pipeline for large periods of time, but things like Custom point builds for legends gets added last minute to the R20 release taking away coding time for those things. Most of this could have easily been done by now, Astromech has been sitting idle mostly finished code wise (mostly just need visual cosmetic polish stuff) waiting on a little bit more coder time. Same with a lot of these other items. Many of them are sitting at the 75%-90% finished stage and need final pushing (Conquest, Payload, Astromech, SBD Revamp, Riot Shields, etc.)

I wanted to keep going, but I gave the team a more or less two year warning that I would be leaving the team if we could not focus on getting certain features done. It is incredibly hard to keep working when you see so many projects you were involved in just sitting around unfinished and you don't have the ability to finish them all on your own. The team is currently bringing on a lot of new talent, and maybe they listen to the old ideas maybe they don't. But hopefully a new group of passionate individuals keeps things moving forward in a better way than the previous.
 

MaceMadunusus

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EDIT:
Also i seem to recall NPC's vision and your vision here. So its not shared? Was this discussed between because I'm seeing two visions and we're going back to the old ways where everyone's not on the same pages

NPC is a new person running the show. Whether he takes the ideas and uses them or starts his own thing is up to him and the current team.
 
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the stasis ability for jedi would be cool as fuck
orders from heroes are also kind of interesting
A couple of cents from me:
Orders would require an additional mechanic that would punish players for disobeying orders, like military tribunal with executions or something with lots of moral and ethical implications
For example, if an order given by team A was unethical from the perspective of team B, but team A wins, team A would not get punished for war crimes as victors
If team B wins team A will have to be held accountable for following criminal orders
Would a 'hero' from team A remain a 'hero' then?
 
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so, guys, here I am, I'm not here to expose my craziness or schizophrenia, I just want to put an end to it, I apologize to everyone here in this game for the atrocities I said, I believe that we can all be friends, I'm young and I've always liked mb2 since I was 6 years old, but currently I feel antagonized by the trolls because of my jokes, so I decided to stop it, basically I was throwing things from real life into the game, like daily stress, problems, but I swear, I will seek help anyway, I hope everyone is blessed, live life, and don't give up
 
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so, guys, here I am, I'm not here to expose my craziness or schizophrenia, I just want to put an end to it, I apologize to everyone here in this game for the atrocities I said, I believe that we can all be friends, I'm young and I've always liked mb2 since I was 6 years old, but currently I feel antagonized by the trolls because of my jokes, so I decided to stop it, basically I was throwing things from real life into the game, like daily stress, problems, but I swear, I will seek help anyway, I hope everyone is blessed, live life, and don't give up
What are you going through man?
 
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thanks for the transparency and putting this out for the community to use. a lot of it could potentially make its way as legends content inspired by what you've got written out. if the game were far more modular in what you could create, there'd be so much avenues for unique content. but still as is, this is a pretty good resource for inspiration. so thank you again for posting it.
 
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2cwldys

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Having read the part on your roadmap about external third party scripting, we will be releasing the backbone to our python systems soon in the future, rcon hookup with modular plugin support on python 3.11+

So far, ACHUTA has been able to completely rework RTV on it from scratch, and everything people will add will be done in the plugins/ folder made in a separate fork and enabled through a CFG. The goal is to give server owners the tools to expand beyond the default RTV hookup, and make their own plugins. This should achieve things like vote kicking, vote muting, or vote tempbanning should people wish to create it theirselves with this barebones systems, as well as smod smsay (admin only) command support.

We believed this would be a good gesture on our part towards the community, with a level of transparency such as open sourcing the scripts system we use under MIT available to all in the MBII community. So people may improve their own creative works and dedicated servers.
 
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Having read the part on your roadmap about external third party scripting, we will be releasing the backbone to our python systems soon in the future, rcon hookup with modular plugin support on python 3.11+

So far, ACHUTA has been able to completely rework RTV on it from scratch, and everything people will add will be done in the plugins/ folder made in a separate fork and enabled through a CFG. The goal is to give server owners the tools to expand beyond the default RTV hookup, and make their own plugins. This should achieve things like vote kicking, vote muting, or vote tempbanning should people wish to create it theirselves with this barebones systems, as well as smod smsay (admin only) command support.

We believed this would be a good gesture on our part towards the community, with a level of transparency such as open sourcing the scripts system we use under MIT available to all in the MBII community. So people may improve their own creative works and dedicated servers.
you love to see it
 

TeKilla

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I would like to share some specific thoughts on the changes to the Mandalorian class. I found that the change to the "feeling" of the EE3 had a significant impact, but unfortunately not in a positive way for everyone. Perhaps adding a new weapon that restores the classic way the EE3 behaved could appeal to those who preferred the previous style.

Another issue that bothers me is related to the rockets and the interruptions the class suffers whenever it is hit by the enemy. Why doesn’t the ARC class face the same disadvantage?

In any case, I appreciate the excellent work and the opportunity to share suggestions.
 

MaceMadunusus

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I would like to share some specific thoughts on the changes to the Mandalorian class. I found that the change to the "feeling" of the EE3 had a significant impact, but unfortunately not in a positive way for everyone. Perhaps adding a new weapon that restores the classic way the EE3 behaved could appeal to those who preferred the previous style.

EE3 was a complicated problem and decision to make. In ye olden days, Mandalorian used to have the projectile rifle. Having that sniper, a jetpack, and more basic level design that combination proved to be pretty powerful in the right hands. Because it was so strong, and having it on a jetpack class it was eventually removed. In the end we were left with a lesser sniper mode on the EE-3, but it was still very powerful. There has been a little back and forth depending on members of the community over the years who have thought EE-3 sniper was a little too strong, or sometimes unfun to play against in very skilled hands, and the bloom mechanic a little too annoying and that it could have been made/done better. While another segment who played it loved the weapon, got were really familiar with its capabilities and knew how to use it to great effect. As a dev you do have to try and see all sides and try and see the reasoning behind that feedback. Did people like it because they were dominating, did people dislike it because they were getting shit on? Did people like it because of the mechanics themselves, or did people dislike it because they were good players who genuinely felt it was too strong?

Now fast forward to more recent days, where we need to start adding new features into MB2. One set of them was Mandalorian abilities based on the recent show and one old ability that we didn't end up getting to work quite right. One of those was Amban, which brought back a dedicated sniper to the mandalorian class, but designed to be nerfed slightly to help prevent the oppressive nature of the original projectile rifle, and also to create a slightly unique weapon that matched the show and sat between proj and disruptor. Which with the return on a highly mobile class, having two sniper modes is kinda a bad idea. Then you have Beskar, which makes Mandalorian harder to kill. So a mobile, flying machine, with higher tankiness, that can reach areas other classes can't, with two high damage sniper options? A third is the addition of Whistling bird. Whistling bird + wrist laser + EE3 burst combos were SUPER strong when testing in beta especially against saberists that were caught off guard that we had to add a few minor delays to reduce its effectiveness. I shudder to think what that wombo combo would be like with old EE-3s sniper mode. So right there is three negative points towards maintaining old EE-3 on Mandalorian. The dedicated sniper addition returning, increased tank, and absurd combo damage potential. Beta testers did not want the comboing potential nerfed as they found it fun, so we largely kept it.

The next goes towards how past balancing was handled in MB2. In MB2 there has been a lot of game breaking problems that have plagued it for decades, and people in past dev teams and even the current dev team, have been doing what I and others call "Circular Balancing" where you are never going to end up at an ideal balance state, because the problems with MB2s meta/state of balance cannot be solved with the existing set of weapons, abilities, and classes. New things needed to be added, and radical changes needed to be done beyond just simple number tweaks. Those number tweaks just ended up going back and forth all these years. Two big examples are the fairly consistent buffing and nerfing of weapons like p3 and proj. This document contains many examples of completely radical changes that I believe were needed in order for MB2 to even have a chance at being balanced in the future. Things like a riot shield that is deployable for clone, giving another class other than jedi the ability to block a lot of damage coming from the front allowing rebels to push. Or astromech having a fire extinguisher to be used against fire grenades, or the magnet mine thing that gives another class outside jedi an option to redirect grenades. Mandalorian and EE-3 were treated no differently. Radical changes were needed in my mind. Those kind of radical changes will always have people who like it and dislike it, people who can change an adapt, and those resistant to that change. Regardless, throwing cogs in the wheel are what needed to happen. My only issue is the subsequent changes in my doc above have been too slow to happen, it all needed to be done much faster.

Another final consideration, and this is more me as a person than a lot of the team including the beta team, is that I firmly believe that if we are to ground ourselves in the Star Wars universe, and specifically call ourselves "Movie Battles" that canon and its design are important. To me it constrains designs a bit, and shifts what balance options are available. Otherwise we are not a Star Wars mod called Movie Battles and we should rebrand and retheme if we want complete creative freedom.

In the end, given all the variables from design additions, radical game design changes, mixed community feedback (so overall a wash), and core design constraints that I believe are important in mb2, I believe there was no choice but the complete removal of the old EE-3 from Mandalorian and its a decision I stand by. What the new team does it up to them, but I hope they at least honor or take into account the reasons for the decision. I fully expected that not everyone was going to agree, and that there is a lot of things even in the document I posted above, that were going to ruffle feathers. But to me that was the point, ruffling some feathers and bringing new life into something that has remained mostly stagnant for 13 years or more.

This is all I will say on the matter.

Another issue that bothers me is related to the rockets and the interruptions the class suffers whenever it is hit by the enemy. Why doesn’t the ARC class face the same disadvantage?

This was one of the rush decisions, brought on by the latest scrimmer grievances spamming the beta channels and developers giving in. This was not a decision I had any say in, and hated the idea because it felt forced, rushed, and just done to placate a few people. Its the kind of crap I had a big problem with while on the team.
 

TeKilla

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Thanks for the detailed explanation about the EE-3 changes. I understand the reasons behind the decisions, even if I don’t fully agree with some of them. Drastic changes can be tough for players like me who don’t have as much time to adapt, unlike younger players with more time to play.

Still, I really appreciate the clarification. It helps even those who don’t fully agree to understand the bigger picture.
 

MaceMadunusus

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Drastic changes can be tough for players like me who don’t have as much time to adapt, unlike younger players with more time to play.
Yeah that is definitely one thing that sucks about getting older. I enjoy battle royale games like Apex, or MOBAs like DOTA but they're near impossible to play now because things shift so much in just a couple months. You run out of energy and time to keep up.

It suck a bit that we couldn't get these changes done more gradually over time. New classes and stuff should have come ages ago. So many have been sitting partially finished for far too long.
 
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