Future FPS Mechanic Development

[Kerrec]

Originally Posted by Mietz

Well it IS random, and hence uncontrollable.
This isn't about burst, you can burst compensate with horizontal recoil as well.

Its about how COF is a random "cone" its not the recoil that makes your gun shake and point your ADS off target, its a calculated random cone where the bullets will go.

Originally Posted by Mietz

You correct for an imaginary statistic. I am the soldier. Else you are making an RPG and should give my soldier a mechanic to level up his accuracy and reduce the COF for this weapon. You actively remove control from me, the person who is supposed to actually target and shoot, in a shooting game.
Or, if you want to go this route, then also add recoil to the "soldier" statistic, after all, why keep them separate?

Especially with shot re-centering the suggestion of controlling burst is pointless.

Out of curiosity, did you ever play games that have this? (Red Orchestra 1/2, ARMA, etc.)

I own and have played ARMA. So what's your point?

If you want to think of this in terms of RPG, then what you are asking for is to have a big 2 handed sword that hits for big damage, be able to swing as fast as a dagger that does piddly damage. In effect, you're saying, "hey I can mash this key 2 times a second, so I should be able to swing my 2h sword 2 times a second." So let me ask you, what is the point of having a dagger then?

For that matter, RPG games have TONS of randomness in them. You can swing your sword and MISS simply because you didn't roll high enough to beat his armor class. Not because you didn't have the skill to line up your swing...

Red Orchestra... Haven't played them. Only read about them. Let me ask you a question: Assuming Red Orchestra has "THE" best FPS game mechanics, how well is it doing in the FPS multiplayer scene?

[Mietz]

Originally Posted by Kerrec

I own and have played ARMA. So what's your point?

If you want to think of this in terms of RPG, then what you are asking for is to have a big 2 handed sword that hits for big damage, be able to swing as fast as a dagger that does piddly damage. In effect, you're saying, "hey I can mash this key 2 times a second, so I should be able to swing my 2h sword 2 times a second." So let me ask you, what is the point of having a dagger then?

For that matter, RPG games have TONS of randomness in them. You can swing your sword and MISS simply because you didn't roll high enough to beat his armor class. Not because you didn't have the skill to line up your swing...

Red Orchestra... Haven't played them. Only read about them. Let me ask you a question: Assuming Red Orchestra has "THE" best FPS game mechanics, how well is it doing in the FPS multiplayer scene?

I don't even know what you are talking about anymore.
What have swords to do with daggers and PS2?

What does that have do with realistic recoil mechanics instead of COF?

[Kerrec]

Originally Posted by Mietz

Are we talking past each other?
Because I understand perfectly well how the weapons work in PS2.

I'm not interested in controlling the COF bloom.

That sounds like a player problem and not a game mechanic problem. Let me flip the coin:

I'm not interested in playing a game where everyone uses the same class with the same gun and it's a frigg'n laser beam to boot.

[Kerrec]

Originally Posted by Mietz

I don't even know what you are talking about anymore.
What have swords to do with daggers and PS2?

What does that have do with realistic recoil mechanics instead of COF?

Swords and daggers have absolutely nothing to do with PS2. You keep bringing up RPG as a validation for your arguments, so I gave an example of what you are asking for, in RPG terms, hoping you'd understand what it is you're really asking for.

Edit: AHH, you want realistic recoil mechanics. Recoil is predictable and generally easily compensated for by manual input as you fire. You can find plenty of YouTube videos of people demonstrating it.

You can also find plenty of YouTube videos of mouse/keyboard/software macros that do it automatically, which is lame and undetectable. And that's why you have to introduce elements of randomness.

There's nothing skillful in a macro that does:

Loop
Mouse button one
Down X pixels
Right X pixels
End loop

[Mietz]

Originally Posted by Kerrec

Swords and daggers have absolutely nothing to do with PS2. You keep bringing up RPG as a validation for your arguments, so I gave an example of what you are asking for, in RPG terms, hoping you'd understand what it is you're really asking for.

No, you made up a strawman of my argument.

Try again.

[Kerrec]

Originally Posted by Mietz

No, you made up a strawman of my argument.

Try again.

Not going to try again... I'm just going to copy and paste what I've already written in this thread, that you chose to ignore:

COPY/PASTE:

Cone of Fire also creates distinction between different weapons, as far as how their effectiveness at range is concerned. A weapon that has a large COF (either base, or how fast it grows) will not be good at long ranges, and barely adequate at medium ranges. Weapons that have small COF (base AND how fast it grows) WILL be good at long ranges. This creates a distinction between weapons, making sure they don't all seem the same (or making sure that ONE weapon doesn't make all others irrelevant). What the game designers do is pair COF with Rate of Fire, to keep small cone of fire weapons from dominating everywhere. So close range weapons with large COF will have high rates of fire, and small COF weapons will have low rates of fire. It is THESE variables that give weapons their distinctiveness.

Remove COF so that bullets go where the crosshair is pointed, and you have lasers. Weapons will no longer have any distinction other than the one that shoots the most bullets downrange. Even things like bullet drop are not valid balancing variables, because they are constant. So one class will have THE best weapon, and each classes will have their own BEST weapon. All the other weapons will be irrelevant and some classes who are weapon "accuracy" dependant, like the infiltrator, will become obsolete.

[Palerion]

Okay guys, this went downhill pretty quick. All I was pointing out was that the Cone of Fire, combined with high recoil and high time to kill, makes kills very hard to acquire, even on an unaware medium-range target. The problem is, the recoil can knock your shot to one side of the enemy, and while your sight may still be on target, it isn't on the center of the target. This is where cone of fire causes problems. If the bullets went right where your reticule is, they would all at least nick the enemy, as your weapon is on target, but the cone of fire makes a good deal of them miss. This is where the high time to kill comes in. When you're talking 8 bullets minimum to kill, likely more than that, and so many of your shots are already missing, the time to kill has just escalated even more so.

I think simply lowering one of these factors (recoil, cone of fire, time to kill) could help a lot. Lowering recoil and thus making it easier to stay centered on your target is one way. Lowering cone of fire would allow more forgiveness for not staying directly on the center of your target. Lowering time to kil, or in this case bullets to kill,l would make the recoil and cone of fire in general matter a bit less. It's simply a matter of their being too many detrimental factors to shooting in this game, making kills far too hard to attain.

[Kerrec]

Palerion,

I laughed when I read your post. Not because what you said was dumb, wrong or anything like that. I simply laughed because there's another thread going on where people want to INCREASE time to kill purposely to make it harder to get kills. To them, that would increase their enjoyment.

Edit: The other thread:

http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...ad.php?t=52077

[Palerion]

I've read it. I don't mean we should increase time to kill, I mean one of the three things I mentioned would make shooting a bit more forgiving. Honestly I'm fine with 8 to 15 bullets depending on range for a kill, as long as I can consistently get those bullets on target. At the same time it does depend on which faction you play, as the VS weapons are lasers, and are laser accurate with low recoil. All I'm saying is reducing COF or Recoil (preferably COF) would make the game much more enjoyable.

I know about that thread and that's why I said I would be fine if TTK were increased, but at the same time, weapons would have to be easier to use.

[Mietz]

Originally Posted by Kerrec

Not going to try again... I'm just going to copy and paste what I've already written in this thread, that you chose to ignore:

COPY/PASTE:

Cone of Fire also creates distinction between different weapons, as far as how their effectiveness at range is concerned. A weapon that has a large COF (either base, or how fast it grows) will not be good at long ranges, and barely adequate at medium ranges. Weapons that have small COF (base AND how fast it grows) WILL be good at long ranges. This creates a distinction between weapons, making sure they don't all seem the same (or making sure that ONE weapon doesn't make all others irrelevant). What the game designers do is pair COF with Rate of Fire, to keep small cone of fire weapons from dominating everywhere. So close range weapons with large COF will have high rates of fire, and small COF weapons will have low rates of fire. It is THESE variables that give weapons their distinctiveness.

Remove COF so that bullets go where the crosshair is pointed, and you have lasers. Weapons will no longer have any distinction other than the one that shoots the most bullets downrange. Even things like bullet drop are not valid balancing variables, because they are constant. So one class will have THE best weapon, and each classes will have their own BEST weapon. All the other weapons will be irrelevant and some classes who are weapon "accuracy" dependant, like the infiltrator, will become obsolete.

Then you have not understood my argument nor do you get what I said and are not actually interested in knowing, just repeating yourself and declaring victory.

Welcome to my ignore list.

[Mietz]

Originally Posted by Palerion

This is where cone of fire causes problems. If the bullets went right where your reticule is, they would all at least nick the enemy, as your weapon is on target, but the cone of fire makes a good deal of them miss.

This.

[Palerion]

Honestly one of the greater problems with current FPS mechanics to me is that SOE is trying too hard to make a Sci-Fi FPS realistic. Instead of making low (or no) magnification sights kind of static on the screen, they make your sight sway as you turn it, jiggle around from explosions or damage, and fly around randomly if you jump or fly while aiming down sights. It seems like a detrimental mechanic to me.

[ShadetheDruid]

Originally Posted by Palerion

..and fly around randomly if you jump or fly while aiming down sights

That's actually a good thing, it limits the amount of annoying bunnyhopping.

[Palerion]

Trust me, I hate bunny hopping. But we already have high bullet deviation to prevent bunny hopping. Still, aside from that, the spaztic sights after an explosion and the swaying of low magnification sights doesn't seem right.

[ShadetheDruid]

Some of the stuff does need a bit of tuning, yeah. The shake from explosions has been mentioned once or twice on FNO as something that's a bit ridiculous (if my memory serves me), so the devs will probably tune that at some point at least.