On Wednesday we had another heated discussion on the topic of Bunnyhopping on the PlanetFortress Forums. In that discussion PainKilleR-[CE] made an excellent post presenting a very elaborate and detailed standpoint towards the topic. With his permission I repost it here, not only for all those who have missed the discussion in the first place, but also to be able to add it to our archives for later reference 
. Thanks a lot, PK.
BTW, this was posted as a reply to another post, hence the quote in the beginning from a post to which PainKilleR was responding.
"Also, I’m puzzled over why you keep bringing up how this "wasn’t intended by Valve" thing. Were flying scouts and meds INTENDED to fly across the sky over long distances in TF?! Were Soldiers INTENDED to leap out of the elevator in 2fort?! I don’t speak for everyone, but in my opinion, conc jumping is MUCH more useful then bhopping."
You want to talk about TF, then we’ll talk about TF. It’s quite true that concjumping was not originally intended in TF. It’s also true that they (TFS, now part of Valve software) changed a number of things numerous times in TF’s time under their control. They modified conc effects several times, modified the effects of gas grenades, added classes, added (and removed) abilities, grounded (and later ungrounded) HWGuys, and so on.
Eventually they turned the code over to another group, which released one or two patches and then gave up on the TF community, the reasons for which should be obvious (see the last month of posts...).
Now, we come to TFC: conc jumps are a well known phenomenon in TF, and Valve chooses to leave them in TFC. However, they screw up some code bits, and we end up with handheld conc jumps that throw you further than any conc in TF could (actually, the maps in TFC are just
preportionally smaller than their TF counterparts, but the HH concs probably still could throw you further back in 1016 than any conc in TF). Valve actually *DID* remove the HH concs completely during beta testing, and then decided to put them back, though limited. You want to discuss intent, talk about something other than the current state of concs in TFC. You want to talk about TF, talk about TF. Cannonhopping isn’t a problem in TF because HWGuys can’t jump and fire the AC at the same time. Bunnyhopping is an issue there, but the TF code is dead and the idea of modifying the QuakeWorld code’s physics to get TF working better probably only appeals to a certain group of people.
TFC’s balance has shifted quite a bit from it’s early days. Most of this was a result of the 1.5 release, which altered the properties of conc grenades (weakening medics and scouts), reduced the running speed of scouts (weakening scouts again), decoupled hitscan weapons from the players’ pings (shifting weapon balance on scouts and medics from nailguns to shotguns, making snipers more accurate, giving soldiers a better chance at long range fighting, etc), and decoupling the rate of fire for any hitscan weapon from the ping of the player firing (increasing effectiveness of the HW’s asscan and the sniper’s autorifle, the only hitscan weapons in the game that have a high enough firing rate to be effected by normal pings). In fact, it seems that the HWGuy’s firing rate was so high that you couldn’t even achieve it with the previous netcode, even on a LAN. GG Valve, squashed that bug, here come the asscans.
Towards the last days of 1016 (despite a recent resurgance of players looking to play clan matches on 1016 I’ll still refer to the last few days before 1.5 as the last days of 1016), a certain script, known as the demoscript, or quickdet script, became VERY widely used in clans. All of a sudden clans that never used a demoman before had multiple demomen in each match, detting pipes dead-on target, doing the pipe-rocket-jump (the entire jump could be scripted), and just in general proving that a simple exploitation of a bug could have a massive effect on the game balance.
Bunnyhopping in itself is an effect of Valve using the Quake, Quake2, and QuakeWorld code to build their engine. If they *had* intended the HWGuy to be as fast as other classes and to be on offense, then wth does the manual read like this: ’ Heavy Weapons Guy - A walking tank.
The name says it all. A slow moving, heavily armored beast toting an enormous assault cannon, the HW Guy can mow down any enemy in seconds. Not a lot of finesse in this one, since the cannon spits out so much fire you barely need to aim it. If you like picking a defensive position in a map and saying "No-one, and I mean no-one, is getting past here", then the HW Guy’s the class you want. ’
Hmm... not only does it emphasize slow-moving, but also says defensive position. hmm... of course it goes on to say ’Defend Don’t go on offense with this class until you’re fairly experienced. Soldiers and snipers will pick you off in an instant because of your slow speed’
Yeah, just too bad the HW isn’t slow if he’s bunnyhopping, and it takes a sniper a fully-charged head shot or quite a few normal shots to take you down, and takes a soldier 3-5 rockets.
Again to relate to TF, an HWGuy, bunnyhopping or not, couldn’t show his fat face to the enemy snipers without gibbing, bunnyhopping or not. In TFC, just gliding I can do fairly well putting a big open hole in the enemy defense as an HWGuy, even with 2 or 3 enemy snipers playing their version of the game.
If you are interested in the complete discussion, it was started on March 20th with the post "sick of bunnyhopping?" by Mud. By the time I’m posting this it’s located on page 5 of the TF Classic forum.
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