This might read a lot like a rant, because it is. It also might seem long and drawn out and convoluted, but it's the only way I'll be able to get my thoughts about this out there. I've played hours and hours of CC in my time, and I've likely spent an equal number or more on DRLFF. I don't want to see this game end up as an unfinished ♥♥♥♥ after ten long years of development.

I'd love it if the other ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ (esp. the olderfags than me; I'm only 3 years ) would have a sit down and a think about what I think and tell me their thoughts. Paul for his sharp observations, Zalo for his tinkering brain and, tucker because I liked hearing your thoughts about the philosophy of CC that time. If any of you have time to read through and post your responses as you go, that'd be sweet.

So there's a new build and I sat down for a few hours and tried everything out and wrote down a lot of my thoughts. I had a rant to MLC and Lizard about it en route to here. Either way, first time I've played CC for any length of time in months, honestly.

Seems like quite a bit's changed here and there. Quite a lot hasn't though.
Truth be told, it's uh... still pretty much how CC has been for almost all of the modern builds.

First thing I noticed is there's more bot-spam and even less actor permanence than before.

The metagame feels good, the stuff about turn progression has already been addressed so whatever, keen to see how it goes. It's a metagame for a game that isn't a game yet though.

Content rant time:
It seems to me like like guns are oddly balanced.
Take the coa sniper rifle: behaves like an accurate pistol. The flamer? Still just gibs people (no fire? ._.). The revolver cannon... is crazy inconsistent especially vs rockets, though I like that it's gone back to just being a slug. Ronin weapons in general seem to be either peashooters or cut me to bits.

It seems like there should be 1hk weapons (heavy sniper, flak, uber cannon, revolver cannon), and 2hk weapons (light sniper), multi-hit kill weapons (pewpew rifles, pistols I guess), and area denial weapons + CQC (flamer, napalm bombs, EMP ♥♥♥♥ whatever). There's some of that going on now, which is good, however currently, the multi hit ones are the most reliable, because you can still just spam them.
No recoil (esp. on ARs) = pewpewpepewpewpepwpdead = bots pwn me when using the same gun, and at the same time there's still AIderp moments where the AI waves the gun around like a madman and ends up shooting fire on their teamies.

A small aside that reflects the parts of CC I remember fondly:

Do you remember testbunker2?
That level kind of embodies happy memories of CC for me. That and prom grounds.
For those who dont: there was a level, ages ago, called testbunker2. It was utter ♥♥♥♥. But, somehow, it was awesome because it was back when CC was a black box to me. ♥♥♥♥ gibbed for some reason every now and again. There was like 4 actors on screen at a time if that + brain if you were in strife.

Everything was put together with such care and diligence that it somehow captured that feeling of right something gets only after it's received a lot of love and far too much playtesting from its creator. The vanilla dropship gibs are testament to how ♥♥♥♥ awesome the detail of CC can be. Like, incredible. There's micro gibs placed correctly. Trail emitters! Jesus christ the robot's heads EXPLODE INTO SOMETHING LIKE 60 PARTS!
there was also that bug where both brains were inside each brain vault, but the red one placed last so you could only see it's health, and your dreadnought would shoot at it if you left it unattended killing your brain in the process, so there was a bit of micro if you wanted to swap to your brain to buy something putting it somewhere it wouldn't shoot you, hahah, but i digress

Anyway, there was the really really decent balance of the original vanilla content before numgun spammed like 30 items or something and just made up random ♥♥♥♥.

I don't hate numgun or even dislike him, but I don't like what he did with CC's content. I understand a lot of the decisions were made under pressure, but given the choice between releasing something completely hacky buggy messy and ugly and not, I'd hide it till later.
Here's issues off the top of my head:

• what the ♥♥♥♥ was the original vanilla molotov?
  what the ♥♥♥♥?
  It just bounced guns around and killed some actors inconsistently but not others but sometimes the others anyway because they were moving fast enough for the really really unsharp particles to pierce dummy plastic. Dummies themselves were some sort of unkillable nightmare that would flip about with no arms and no legs after you shot it with a 60 KILOGRAM SLUG from the revolver cannon trying to body-slam you through the concrete. Sometimes they succeeded ffs.
• All the masses were out.
  Inconsistently out, with each other, within a single .rte.
  Like, arbitrary random numbers that just so happened to work and therefore were released in the public build of a commercial game.
• all the effects were basically ♥♥♥♥
  on all the new content
  bar revolver cannon, rocket launcher, flamer, flak, dummy everything (GRENADE LAUNCHER HOLY ♥♥♥♥), and because those ones were not too spammy and kinda tasteful.
  the napalm flamer made/makes a horrible mess though.
  I swear it should just be a burst flamer. fire shotgun. kapow "OH GOD MY BURNING" with enough air force to knock a ♥♥♥♥♥ over. i digress again

CC doesn't feel like a black box in which amazing things can happen anymore. Sure, it still has a few moments like that.
But: it feels... buggy, and like almost all the content inside it has been jammed up its own anus.

Here's an example where choices have been made that I don't agree with from a gameplay point of view and facetious herping about what the designer must have been thinking.


Honestly.
Content workers:



Q: How hard is it to remake a gun, given the sprite and precoded gibs + offsets?
A: Not hard.
Q: How hard is it to tweak something into an acceptable recovered position when it's so broken it should never have been born or seen by human eyes because its a failed prototype of a gun that fires bullets heavier than your average pistol?
A: Nightmarishly.

Just sit down with, say, coalition.rte. Or dummy.rte. Whatever, one of the main ones, and then:
Delete every .ini in there forever.
Then arrange the folders, sprites and sounds so they make sense.
Then delete the ones that don't make any sense.

Just wipe that ♥♥♥♥ away and make some good guns.
Content that makes sense. Content designed and created by people who were hired because they demonstrated an ability to pay close enough attention to how something works and breaks and responds to harm to mimic Dan and Niklas's perfect vanilla content. Apparently.

Situation: bot w/ heavy sniper on the hill facing you.
What you can do: ♥♥♥♥ all, because:

If you try to attack, either:

• they gib the ♥♥♥♥ out of you while their 40 friends walk over the hill
  
• if they dont their 40 friends do
If you duck for cover, either:

• you get crushed by a drop-crate.
• they gib the ♥♥♥♥ out of you through the terrain while their 40 friends walk over the hill
• if they dont their 40 friends do
If you throw a grenade from cover in a bid for freedom:

• you get crushed by a drop-crate, then
• they gib the ♥♥♥♥ out of your dead body through the terrain while their 40 friends walk over the hill, then
• they pick up the grenade you threw and store it in their inventory WITH NO NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCE TO THEM and keep walking towards your brain

If I've spotted a sniper with my expensive guy with a good loadout but I don't have a bead on his head, it's too late.
No matter what I do. If I shoot him, there's another 3 where he came from.
No matter that my expensive guy is supposed to be a walking tank.
No matter that I'm supposed to be focussing 90% of my brain's thinking energy on this damned actor and the CPU is controlling 50 guys.
No matter what, I'm ♥♥♥♥ within 5 minutes. Jesus.

My thoughts on skirmish (the way I used to play CC always) that may or may not be becoming apparent: at the moment it is unwinnable and unfun.
I know the survival aspect is the point of skirmish, but I spend 5 minutes making a base and 3 minutes dying.
I should be spending 5 minutes making a base and 30 minutes fighting a slowly escalating battle with squads of enemies smarter than potatoes but stupider than soldiers with my uber micro and 3 decked out actors, because that's how skirmish is fun. If I need to buy 50 guys and set them up with guns and plan their positions for this to be fun, then I'm letting the AI do whatever for most of the game anyway and I may as well just set up a double-AI game as a screensaver because obviously I don't need to be involved.

I think CC should be moved from the scale of some huge battle between two juggernaut teams into something more squad based. Something a player can manage. I can manage 3 guys at most in something as hectic as this - it's like playing soldat in three windows as the same time but possible if you stick near your base. I can see base upgrades like deployable mines, turrets etc being fun too, if you're looking for longer games. Extra sub-governor brains would be awesome. They could add to the AI ability of your team. You'd get some sort of base progression for your troubles rather than just slowly getting ground into the ground.
Ideally the enemies should come in squads and give you time to deal with those squads rather than pooling 40 guys around the map who slowly trundle towards your base. You should not be able to just break into a brain vault in a minute with a shotgun! Doors could easily be made multi-layer with attachables or just multiple door actors per door. They should require anti-materiel weapons like heavy sniper rifles or bombs or a pile of grenades. We're not dealing with wood here. Have you seen what guns do to metal plate? Assuming it's being used as and designed to be armour, most ordinary AR bullets won't penetrate it. Shot will be doubly ineffective. Fix yo doors.

MLC's just said that CC's lost some of its whimsy. I certainly think so. Try to capture some of that again. Go play those older builds and see what's going on. It's not the fact that I lose skirmish that pisses me off. It's the fact that I don't have any fun doing so any more.


In summary: Guys, we've had RTE around as a toy for years. Time to make the Cortex Command.

Thank you for reading through, I'm going to bed.

Some untouched rant that I feel needs to be addressed but can't slot in anywhere above:
Actors don't pick up guns on my team any more what up with that?
The terrain feels less permeable and that's excellent. Like, great, good job. Fools can still probably erode it with their feet but we're getting there.
However walking still feels like a marathon of pain and unhappiness so I jet around like I always have.
The doors still place their terrain block when they stop. That sounds kinda harmless but it means that there's no way to pathfind out of your base to the sky -> you have to place empties.

Wow. I can't say I agree with most of it, but at least it was at least a semi-intelligent rant.

*EDIT*

Isn't CC a one man operation? If not just one guy, I doubt it's more than five. Data/others did a damn good job, I think. You go and make a game from scratch, tell us how it goes.

Wow, one of the few people on the forum who you can't actually use that argument with.
He's providing good points backed up by sound game design. How about you try and rebut his points and see how that goes?

My understanding is that content is going to be methodically replaced gradually.

It's actually a 7 man operation.

He has. viewtopic.php?f=82&t=23692

It seems woefully appropriate to respond to such an elegant yet vast post such as yours with a few lines of gibberish run on sentences as I am currently doing, but your post is pretty comprehensive and similar sentiments (in less comprehensive chunks) have been expressed by many ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ over the years.

To repeat what has been said as to express my agreement, CC hasn't really been a game for a long time. It's always been a toy, unstructured, approaching some qualities of a screensaver. I think that fundamentally there aren't any game designers in the dev team. I mean there are people who are game designers, good ones, but no one is acting in that capacity. Data is a programmer, Prom is a universe designer and artist, and the rest are artists/content designers/programmers.

You could use the cliched analogies of a fancy cake where the bread isn't any good or a beautiful car where the engine is broken but the essence is that CC is broked at a fundamental level.

It is chaotic and oversatured with stuff to the point of entropy. Everything is destructed so easily and so chaotically that it's very difficult for gameplay to form amidst the uncontrollable chaos. The lack of order in the game design is reflected in how the game plays out.

And to verify what others have been saying, Geti is a goddamn ♥♥♥♥ amazing game designer, artist, and programmer. To use a terrible bad analogy, he is like a slug with good games instead of slime, his long slimy trail lately leaving the brilliant game King Arthur's Gold, which I like a whole lot better than CC. I intend to play KAG for years, and it's only a couple months into development.

tl;dr: I agree.

The only thing I can disagree with you on is the squad based thing, I enjoy my Juggernaut armies.
Other than that: I say we make this man a content dev!

Now I might not be an ♥♥♥♥♥♥, started playing a bit before the map tomato first came out, and neither have I posted a ton, but I share Geti's opinion on the current state of the game.

To be fair, I've spent tons of time playing and tinkering with this game and feel that I've got my money's worth, but thats because of the ENGINE part and the mods that it has enabled. The GAME part hasn't evolved that much since the earlier builds excluding the campaign.

What I consider the biggest problem with CC is that dying is not fun. One way to make dying fun is to let you easily throw lots of chaff around X-Com, TA, Cannon Fodder style. The lore suggests that actors are disposable, but the gameplay mechanics are tuned to controling as few actors as possible, so using more than 2-3 is a pain. The other way is making sure the game is fair even with rng. Being eaten by a carp is fun if you're in the right mindset, but it quickly becomes horribly annoying when it happens regardless of your actions/inactions. getting crushed by a drop crate might be funny the first time, but will make you rage when you understand, that you can't do anything to avoid it.

Well, i agree with you at some points, disagree with others. Nice read though. I definitely agree that the game has lost a bit of its whimsical charm, but this might be an observation through rose tinted glasses.
Skirmish is infinitely harder now, as the AI is much less ♥♥♥♥ than before. Thing is, i kind of liked the AI being a bit daft. Right now, it'll beat you in a head to head fight with the same equipment more than half the time, because it reacts faster and aims better. Not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, but coupled with the deadlier weapons, higher enemy count and lower mobility (jetpacks are like glorified farts now), you're going to die FAST. I usually don't mind dying, but at this frequency it's just annoying. It's exactly like you said; why bother controlling when the AI does almost everything for you? I don't like relying exclusively on an AI, and i definitely wouldn't feel like *I* won if THEY broke the other brain. The problem isn't that the AI is bad; quite the opposite actually, it's a (potentially) very competent AI. Perhaps a bit too competent.

Before i get too disjointed, i'll just TL;DR and say agreed, mostly.

I agree with a whole lot of this, but with one special exception.

I don't think you should stop with content devs wiping the slate clean.

I really think Data should scrap (at least some of) his underlying engine. There's so many niggling little issues with the engine that have survived years of development that really, really hinder everyone's attempts to do anything with the engine, even first party people. The whole dev philosophy up until the content developers rolled around (that is, I'm Data, so I'm going to add in a new, highly situational variable for one weapon/actor/dropship and then not tell anyone about it [giboffsets, for one quick example. I literally discovered those by accident, months after a build released.]) was broken, and to be honest it hasn't gotten much better. Yes, we get more content, and the vast majority of it has been through a fair bit more love than, say, your average forum mod, which is in large part due to a highly competent cherrypicked team of modders.

But that's sort of the problem. When your game relies on the people who learned how to mod by working through your game engine's leftovers to produce content, you're starting the pyramid the wrong way around. For a game this goddamn modding reliant, it's absurd how little modders actually get to know about or change. Lua was supposed to be the miraculous spackle that fills in all the holes, and it took 19 days shy of three years for us to get modding on attachables, which should be the OBVIOUS first thing to make modifiable with a scripting engine.

I have absolutely no problem with Data or CC; for christ'ssake, I've been on this forum for four and a half YEARS. I just hate how many things have been wrong for so goddamn long, with no fix in sight. But I don't, honestly, know of any solution. I haven't been in anything approaching the same experience, so I'm not going to preach about how you should fix this or fix that, to either Data or the content devs. Just, recognize the things that are wrong, and please try to fix them.

Okay, here's my wall 'o text:

I'll be the first to admit that the original molotov and the current mission activities are my fault. I can't explain the molotov (that was a while ago and I've since fixed it) but I can explain the mission activities. Those activities have been around for a long time (since late 2008, according to the SVN log) and I initially created them when Data mentioned that there would be a new, Lua-scripted skirmish mode. At the time, they were balanced with the other content in the game, and I playtested them a fair amount. However, they didn't actually become useful until B24, which didn't come out for another two years. In fact, the scripted skirmish activities weren't functional until about a week before B24's release, and at the time, I was busy with real life and didn't really get time to update the activities until really late at night over the course of about two days. So, yeah, sorry about that.

As for the content, I think the biggest issue is that there's simply too much of it. A lot of the things in the game were added because they sound like they could be fun to play with, but ultimately, a lot of it is just clutter and/or poorly balanced. We've already started redoing some of the content, and I imagine that once the campaign mode is fully functional, there will be a huge focus on making the content fun and balanced, since we'll also be adding more techs into the mix. Whether that'll mean redoing the content from scratch or not, I don't know, but I can pretty much guarantee that every single item and actor in the game will be looked over and much more carefully balanced than they are at the moment.

All of that said, there's one important thing to keep in mind (and this applies to me, too - I've been playing the game since 2006): the game has changed since we first played it. There was a time when the game was, as you put it, the game was a black box. There was no real point to the game, so we made up our own, and that usually involved flying around the map at insane speeds and crashing indestructible rockets into unsuspecting robots (allied or not). Yes, it was fun. Yes, it made for many fond memories. But, personally, I don't think that's going to make it a complete game in most people's eyes. We can certainly have a gamemode that works like that, but the most important part of the game right now is the one that people are going to play first, and that's the campaign mode. The game is moving toward a more tactical base defense sim than a rambo gun-firing sim. A lot of the issues you mentioned (like being crushed by a drop crate or not having any cover) are at least partially remedied by being inside of a base instead of walking around in an open field. That isn't to say there aren't some balance issues, because there really are too many attackers now that the AI is better, but the fact remains that the game is working differently than it did before, and that's intentional. If we give the content a bit of time to catch up to the new AI and general workings of the game, it may be a better experience.

My solution: Keep it Simple.

One problem that I have is that there is just so much content. In the old days, we had one gun that shot a lot of bullets at once, which we called a shotgun. Another one shot single bullets in a stream, called an SMG. If you couldn't find either of those guns, you used a pistol. Everything had an iconic and obvious role (kinda like the guns in TF2 before all of mannco/acheivement stuff). We just need to resist our initial impulses, and trim the fat. If people want more guns, we have the modding section (Also, if a rocket with 10 kajillion bullet-holes in it is more fun than a rocket that blows up, use the ungibbable rocket instead!) EDIT: Holy Mackerel, TLB agrees with me!

A second problem is the new menu system. Data's new menu framework is fun and all, but he needs to resist his impulses to stretch its capabilities, and design it for the enduser. You used to be able to hit Skirmish from the main menu, choose your map and players, pick how hard you wanted it to be, start the game. It was compact, fast, and efficient. He had a good idea to make level scripts extendable across multiple maps, and it was great until you realized that skirmish is the only game-mode that works well across many maps. Still, we now have this labyrinth of menus adding layers of obscurity and abstraction to the whole gaming process.

Lastly, the game engine itself. The first problem was when Data switched the physics system from B13 to B14. It made good slow-motion impossible without mods, but more than that, it destroyed the fun part about CC. If you compared the amount of fun you had playing around in Build 13 with the amount of fun you had playing around in Build 14, you would see the difference immediately. As for the rest of the problems with the engine, they could be solved tomorrow if Data set up a system where the content developers could work on the engine code as well. Mainly, they could be the ones who would do the tedious bug fixes.

As romantic as this sounds, I feel that CC is straying from the it's "true" path into a world of broken complexity and obscurity.
The best thing it could do would be to expand on its rambo roots and strengths, and trim off the excess features and content.

EDIT: In response to TLB, all I have to say is that we all got addicted to CC when it was a rambo simulator. Everything about how CC's structured encourages chaotic rambo-esque gameplay. Heck, if it were to become tactical, we might just have to throw out the current physics engine in exchange for a tile-based one, where everything is stable and predictable. I don't mean to be harsh, but this whole tactical "strategy" shooter mindset is what got CC into the mess it's currently in. I like the good 'ol romp of chaotic destruction and modding

EDIT: Also, it is much less modder friendly than it was in past builds. This could be solved instantly if we could just get a special restart function that would reload code, lua, and sprites.

Zalo, I get where you're coming from about the tactical gameplay not fitting with the engine. I'm not saying the game is going to be entirely tactical - there's no way that's going to happen, and the physics engine doesn't make any sense for it. What I'm saying is that the game is becoming *more* tactical. Like it or not, the campaign mode is the main game, and it focuses on base building and defense, not flying around the level killing everything. There's certainly a balance somewhere between the two, and we'll be sure to find it, but with brand-new AI and our first look at how the campaign actually works having all appeared in the last month, we simply haven't had any time to rebalance the rest of the content to make it fit.

I'm going to take look at the these "skirmish antics" just for these comments alone. This is the other reason being involved here is so interesting. Besides I'll be able to better understand the sentiments and organize my thoughts better. Personal comment aside, It's weird how we play a spongy game, knowing its faults and hoping for something for miraculous milestones. Funny thing is if CC had the CCfluff page 6 years to now, a lot of this would have been taken care of spades. The page is a spine that would keep all those nifty ideas and keep imagination spurts in line.


For ease, just some points and queries.

- I agree with TLB especially that CC will get better, but we modders need a SDK or something in-between
- And overall I agree with the vibe everyone has. Even if points are picked, nothing is more disheartening than not having fun or putting in an effort for naught.
- Promster may have some insight down the line eventually, his design document is the most critical now that CC is reaching its emergent phase, the implements must be tethered down. And it seems we're repeating the clamor for that concept thread we had so long ago. As a player I'm going to see what can be done
- We really need to put the 'it' in keep it simple - simplicity is a powerful virtue but it is not one size fit all. One major reason: CC heavily supports custom factions and I believe much like we tailor customizable characters in other games, we all need to have our core philosophies and work them in to what the engine [notwithstanding the issue of a deeper access of course]
- Honestly, I'm biting my tongue a bit =-Edit-=
After going over what's what and how I play for little bit:

Surprisingly, the RTE isn't going deep enough in its plug and play function. Things like the dropship's hovering and the classes are too hard-coded. If there were core classes (Actor, Module, and Global) and respective subs (such as Limbs and Motion, Firearms and Cargo, Weather and Terrain) that called to the engine, this would be ideal. I should be able to type such key words and the engine would apply forces and action where necessary of defined by the user. Like Lego, we should be able to connect a suite of parts into a system.

MOID limit - Been lucky enough to not be brutalized by this 'gibbing judge'
All I know is that as bases become more focal in use, this will be a aesthetic and very known thorn in time - even with cleverness

I dare say Lua is a holy grail of sorts. The key is that the user would have to be adept in the language which narrows the modding level, though this point is a subjective one. Plus if your changing simple like colors its moot. However if the Lua is bound to a donkey, we're back to the first edit here.

Aesthetics, the pretty big subject here; the look, feel, act, and flow of the game and the actual 'play' part. On one sector we have the game in development, so time will tell the final coat. Another beholds the yet to be updated palette. No violets, good mutes, strong analogous blends (violet-red, peach, green-blue, indigo) yikes! There is only enough to get by. This is easily handled by the thread so just add the two coins by saying I would have liked more control over what I control: Actors. I need stances, idle states, cqc, verticality and a sub-routine for instinct( still working out the kinks on this one.)
Modders can handle this for now in degrees, though. yet not to full functionality. No playfulness = a cup of rage



Still don't like how crab legs have poor reversing skills, the legs act like they're flicking water. This is probably going a modding wall since the waist won't turn the legs the other way.
~~~

So yeah, hopefully we who have gone that distance can ping off each other like now and hold up well. The rest of the stuff on the plate I'm just gonna mod in and come back with a situation report.

Well Geti that is a rant alright, most of what you wanted to say is that the content needs to be remade, the game hasn't changed enough, the AI is too good now(!) and it's not as stable as the older versions, if there is any other points you didn't make them very clear... Here is my reply:

It's true that essentially there have been no changes to the game for a very long time however I can see the meta-game being very fun and that I think CC is improving a lot more rapidly now and that should be commemorated (though the campaign doesn't seem to be a full blown story arc as I initially thought though I guess there's hope that this will pave the way for that).

I agree that the content needs to be removed and restarted, there's stuff everywhere and it's a mess and Arne's design direction has changed too. I think the most of the problem with the game now is content or more specifically that Arne hasn't done any content for ages, and everybody else's content shouldn't even be in the game because mostly it simply isn't anywhere near as good or well thought out as Arne's stuff. However I do like the browncoats but they are just two actors. I'm sad to see that Arne's new units aren't in: http://androidarts.com/cortexcommand/As ... lineup.png

And here are my thoughts on Cortex Command:

One thing that has always annoyed me is cumulative small damage destroying something big like many bullet shots destroying a door (/tanks/buildings), data needs to stop damage accumulation, it would mean that only small exposed parts can be destroyed with bullet based weaponry, but doors and other things (rockets...) can only be destroyed with explosives or penetrated with higher calibre weaponry. I believe this would also make the game so much more tactical and fun.

Another thing that has always annoyed me is weight induced terrain rape by actors, can't you just turn off terrain damage by actors? (except the terrain frostings and settled material perhaps) Because it's a bit ridiculous. The walking/standing is done in a ridiculous way really with the pushforce stuff (the only reason I can see for it is one legged walking), but I doubt that will ever be changed (something like if footgroup in contact pos+=animation movement distance seems to be much simpler).

And it would probably be better to limit the actor inventory weight with arbitrary limits instead of the current system that allows you to pile on and have unlimited weight in your inventory. Perhaps even limit it to one pistol, up to 5 grenades, a tool and one of the following choices: one heavy weapon/two rifles/one rifle and a shield (would need to add a class variable to the ini files).

There is also the jetpack issue, no idea why it was ever changed from build 23, why was the burst jumping so bad?

People have mentioned squad stuff but really it just doesn't work on a 2d plane unless actors on the same team can see and shoot (and move?) through each other, however that does seem like a logical thing to do.