Ragdoll - Why it's more important than you think...

[VaderShake]

I was looking over the roadmap this morning and I did not see ragdoll physics listed there. I think there is one major reason implementing ragdoll physics is more important than people realize.

Really ragdoll you say? Ragdoll is not as important and (insert your preference here), why should they bump it up priority wise?

Seeing bodies fly over buildings, ejected from exploding vehicles, flopping down the side of a cliff, or cartwheeling through the air would significantly raise the emotional experience of playing Planetside 2. Right now the emotional experience ebbs between intense focus, anger, satisfaction, frustration, and some laughter, all of these drive those of us who love PS2 to play harder and achieve victory, but for some not having enough OMG HAHAHA moments is alienating especially in an endless battle.

Adding ragdoll physics and to see bodies tumbling off the top of the Tech Plant after a Liberator bombards the gun platform and land on the windshield of your Sunderer would give all those who witnessed in a great emotional high of laughter and having ragdoll would also a bevy of exciting hilarious Youtube videos to promote this franchise on a daily basis and overall raise the level and range of emotions playing this massive warfare game..

[MrMak]

See there are 2 problems with ragdoll phisics.

1. Increases stress on the system And no you cant switch them off becouse of promblem number 2.

2. It makes a Medic's job much harder when bodies fly all over the place, ptentialy getting stuck or glitched somewhere. Again you cant switch ragdolls off becouse for reviving purpouses the dead guys have to be in the same place for evryone. So either everyoen has them or nobody does.

[Roderick]

While I see you point of the extra fun factor being added to the game with ragdoll physics, I just do not see it as priority over other things that need to be worked on in the game. Hopefully we will get to see it added. I just do not see them doing it anytime soon.

The players in the meantime can make their own OMG HAHAHA moments in others ways. I think I was breaking teammates ears in TeamSpeak last night just laughing at how I and others were ESFing.

[Shogun]

totally not needed.

when the game is able to render every enemy in your view at every range, you can bring it up again.

but until then, purely cosmetic things like ragdolls, that would stress our clients even more, are a nogo.

not to mention that corpses have to be tracked and would also stress the netcode more, which also still has major issues.

don´t put additional stress on systems that are already overloaded and not working like they should.

[wasdie]

Adding ragdoll physics = more load for the server and the clients combined. In a game that is badly CPU bound as it is, we don't need anything more taxing the CPU.

[RSphil]

have to agree that it is not needed.
makes medics jobs impossible and will also cause extra problems in game tech wise.

keep it how it is.

[Lonehunter]

I'm pretty sure anyone who has seen rag-doll physics before, and played in a Lib or tank in PS2, has thought about and knows how awesome it's implications would be. It is in no way a rare thought.

But it's always a lot harder to implement then people think as people here all ready stated.

I never even thought about the Medic point of view

[Galron]

Would love it but we need optimizations to improve CPU effectiveness first to give us some room for ragdoll.

[Shogun]

in an fps the most important things are smooth movement, having the enemies onscreen and having the hits register right.

we don´t have any of these right, so we don´t need ragdoll.

but i am curious how the performance will change, when ps2 finally uses 64 bit and my 7 additional cpu cores. if the performance goes up enough to render all enemies at every distance, we can start a new discussion on how to implement ragdoll physics without hurting medics.

[Dragonskin]

I disagree with the medic arguments. It could potentially make medic job harder, but you have a revive gun that has decent range so that you don't have to be directly on the target to revive them. Battlefield 3 uses ragdoll physics and has medics that can revive people. If they can pull it off then SOE technically could.


I do agree with the net code/client/server arguments though. It would probably be a nightmare to pull off without severely impacting game performance. This game can have way more players in 1 area than Battlefield 3 or any other FPS game can pull off. The problem would be all those players being tracked and displayed to everyone else as they fly across your screen in real time. The game already has issues with server lag during alerts. This would probably make the game completely unplayable.

[maradine]

Ragdoll physics are a stealth buff to Revive Grenades. NERF THE MEDIC.

Sorry, don't know what came over me.

[VaderShake]

Well perhaps when the open up they other cores....I still see it as more important than most might think, especially to make PS2 a more relevant FPS moving forward.

[SturmovikDrakon]

I actually consider ragdolls a vital part of gunplay feedback. Watching players fall back as a result of your shots just adds to that great feeling, as opposed to the stiff pre-set animations they way they do now.

Maybe with the better multi-core support, as you said

[Shogun]

vehicle enter/exit animations would be far more important. and they wouldn´t add as much stress to the system.
ragdolls is the same league, but as long as the game doesn´t work properly, all of this aesthetic stuff is unimportant.

also the aesthetics of the game are already broken beyond repair due to the pay for clownsuit thing.

[Rolfski]

They will be added few years from now.