Improvement: Happy Medium - quick-knife, assassinations and knives... - Page 3

Ratstomper · 2012-06-19, 12:39 PM

Originally Posted by Jinxsey

Infiltrators have silenced weapons, knives remain in but they are not one shots. It's just not appropriate to have insta-kill knive mechanics because there are very many ways to get to point blank range and plenty of devices (Jet pack, cloak) that vasty improve movement ability.

Knives niche, is that if you're out of amunition, you can draw your knife to kill someone at point blank range. It does more damage that "quick rifle butt" but at the end of the day, knives are more survival tools than weapons.

A beyonet would make more sense in PS2 than a knive.

That thread zerker linked is for bayonets. I'd be fine with them if someone wanted to use it instead of a rifle butt attack. It's a pretty good idea, actually.

Movement ability won't do much for backstab kills (again, I want to make clear I'm only advocating 1-hit kills for attacks made from a small area behind targets with secondary knife mode on). This game is going to be fast enough that you won't be able to pop down by someone as a LA and successfully assassinate them. It would have to be exclusively for killing targets who aren't in the thick of a fight, because walking into a firefight with a knife would be ineffective.

My issue is that knives have been used historically for combat purposes, not just as a tool. British commandos trained and used knives in this very fashion.

I'm seeing that most people don't want the mechanic because it may be abused and used in situations where it wasn't intended. This can be worked around. We wouldn't need fancy animations or anything, just a small enough target area where you cant just run around backstabbing people.

Jinxsey · 2012-06-19, 02:56 PM

The spear I hear used to be quite popular too, but it's somewhat outmoded by the invention of black power. commando's primary weapon's incidentaly are sub-machine guns, rifles and light support weapons. Training with combat knives (commando daggers) was for last ditch, or preparatory work against sentries, but soldiers were (and are) encouraged to used suppressed weapons first.*

*24904011

Any mechanic that relies upon "mastery" for ballance, will be broken.

You can't leave a "small target area" as a ballance constraint. Infiltrators have plenty of other ways to kill people and knives are used primarily in other games as ways to reset encounters. These kind of one on one dueling mechanics are intended for games where combat is small scale, personal and high intensity, encounters that go on "too long" or get into ranges where glameplay suffers, require a 'reset' thus the "quick knife". In the case of planetside 2, where your position on the battlefield, relative to the objective, matters much more, and clutch survival with the last mag in your sidearm could still matter, these knife mechanics are innapropriate.

There may well be some way to make melee viable, but animation locking one-shots are not it.

These mechanics are not appropriate in a game where point blank range and power armour are implimented. If your knife mechanic is so neiche that it can't be used against MAX units, people not facing you, people moving etc then it becomes redundant anyway. If it can be used against MAX units, against moving people, and people facing you, it's only a matter of time before galaxy dropped infiltrators become the new black.

This idea would work, but not in a game with so many different movement and teamwork factors. Our "knife" is the MAX unit with flamethrowers.

Ratstomper · 2012-06-20, 01:49 AM

Originally Posted by Jinxsey

The spear I hear used to be quite popular too, but it's somewhat outmoded by the invention of black power. commando's primary weapon's incidentaly are sub-machine guns, rifles and light support weapons. Training with combat knives (commando daggers) was for last ditch, or preparatory work against sentries, but soldiers were (and are) encouraged to used suppressed weapons first.*

*24904011

Any mechanic that relies upon "mastery" for ballance, will be broken.

You can't leave a "small target area" as a ballance constraint. Infiltrators have plenty of other ways to kill people and knives are used primarily in other games as ways to reset encounters. These kind of one on one dueling mechanics are intended for games where combat is small scale, personal and high intensity, encounters that go on "too long" or get into ranges where glameplay suffers, require a 'reset' thus the "quick knife". In the case of planetside 2, where your position on the battlefield, relative to the objective, matters much more, and clutch survival with the last mag in your sidearm could still matter, these knife mechanics are innapropriate.

There may well be some way to make melee viable, but animation locking one-shots are not it.

These mechanics are not appropriate in a game where point blank range and power armour are implimented. If your knife mechanic is so neiche that it can't be used against MAX units, people not facing you, people moving etc then it becomes redundant anyway. If it can be used against MAX units, against moving people, and people facing you, it's only a matter of time before galaxy dropped infiltrators become the new black.

This idea would work, but not in a game with so many different movement and teamwork factors. Our "knife" is the MAX unit with flamethrowers.

I wrote like 4 paragraphs in response to this, but it was all so jumbled that it didn't make much sense. Most of this is because I don't understand what you mean by some of the jargon you're using and I fail to see how the rest is relevant.

You've said equippable knives have a place in the game, as well as other melee attacks, but you've failed to give any reason why they should be there at all (under your reasoning). Furthermore, I understand the whole reseting-counters theorycrafting, but NOONE is talking about "dueling" in this thread at this point and noone is talking about a 1-hit kill facestab. I'm not sure how a mechanic that can be useful to players is inappropriate, assuming it follows proper risk/reward criteria. You may say "A 1-hit kill backstab doesn't follow risk/reward criteria." I would say you're wrong. The teamplay and movement of the game will easily balance out a backstab mechanic and reward someone who is willing to risk it with a quick kill and not having to waste some ammo (which we all know is somewhat scarce).

Under your logic, if something cannot be used against all enemies, it serves no purpose, but if it CAN, then it's overpowered? You're saying the task melee combat would normally fill is relegated to MAX units with flamethrowers. What about other ways of doing things? Why have HA's carry Anti-vehicle weapons if we have a MAX for that?

The point of the melee system I proposed isn't to have some kind of knife-fighting mechanic, it couldn't work that way. It's to actually give the knife a use BEYOND a knife-fighting mechanic; something that is a much more practical and useful option.

Toppopia · 2012-06-20, 06:08 AM

Its odd how people are so against knives... how are we supposed to silently kill people that we sneak up on? I love the moments in BF3 where i come across a group of people and manage to knife 1-2 of them and quickly hide or shoot the rest, its a nice risk reward scenario that rewards skilled/stealthy players. I would probably only want to see knives implemented as a kill animation from behind, because anything would be odd or overpowered.

If we sneak behind someone while there are 20 people around, we should be rewarded for that, in the form of an instant assassination that maybe gives us a dog tag or something. Actually, me and my friends had a mini game in BF3 where if we were on opposite teams, we would almost go out of the way to steal each others dog tags, its fun looking back through the list and saying. "Hey, (insert name), do you remember when i knifed you by sneaking past 10 people?"

Ratstomper · 2012-06-20, 03:42 PM

Originally Posted by Toppopia

Its odd how people are so against knives... how are we supposed to silently kill people that we sneak up on? I love the moments in BF3 where i come across a group of people and manage to knife 1-2 of them and quickly hide or shoot the rest, its a nice risk reward scenario that rewards skilled/stealthy players. I would probably only want to see knives implemented as a kill animation from behind, because anything would be odd or overpowered.

If we sneak behind someone while there are 20 people around, we should be rewarded for that, in the form of an instant assassination that maybe gives us a dog tag or something. Actually, me and my friends had a mini game in BF3 where if we were on opposite teams, we would almost go out of the way to steal each others dog tags, its fun looking back through the list and saying. "Hey, (insert name), do you remember when i knifed you by sneaking past 10 people?"

I've never played BF3, but anyone who played PS1 knows that there are times when you find yourself in a scenario where you've snuck up on someone and they have no clue you're there (the E3 videos seem to replicate PS1 in this regard). In PS1, the knives aren't that great, so usually soldiers have to sneak up on the enemy and, with all the subtlety of smacking someone in the face with a thawed mackerel, just whip out their gun and shoot them in the back and hope they don't turn around and fire back. I've snuck up on people like this and I've had people sneak up on me. Anytime I've snuck up on someone, it's because I wasn't paying enough attention to my surroundings like I should have been.

I want a system that lets you handle the situation logically; the enemy doesn't know you're there and isn't paying attention, you COULD waste ammo on killing them, but you've got a knife that would work just fine. Only makes sense to let people do assassinations to not waste the ammo and not let everyone within 50 yards of you know where you are. I wouldn't even mind seeing a PS1 style merit for it: Commando bronze/silver/gold merit, kill X number of enemies from behind with you're empire's knife.

inspades · 2012-06-21, 07:30 PM

I think that some ideas can be gained from the TF2 spy's knife. The mechanics behind it have been virtually unchanged since TF2's release in 2007, and so far the TF2 community is more-or-less happy with it.

The quickknife
To make a "quick weapon switch" button will likely result in what happened in tf2, people will make scripts and bind it to a button to achieve the same effect. Can't be helped unless the devs really clamp down on scripts

Assasinations
Simple. One swing a second, and if i'm knifing you from anywhere 180* behind you, you're dead. Sounds OP eh? Well, the way it was balanced out is that if youre killed like this, you let out a very loud and discernible death scream and death animation. Many TF2 players considered it a spy alarm, and unless you beat feet fast, you were gonna get slapped by the rest of your victim's team. That's not the worst of it either. You blew your cover, and half of your effectiveness as a spy evaporates as soon as they enemy knows there is a spy around. It's something to be done with care

Ratstomper · 2012-06-21, 07:57 PM

Originally Posted by inspades

I think that some ideas can be gained from the TF2 spy's knife. The mechanics behind it have been virtually unchanged since TF2's release in 2007, and so far the TF2 community is more-or-less happy with it.

The quickknife
To make a "quick weapon switch" button will likely result in what happened in tf2, people will make scripts and bind it to a button to achieve the same effect. Can't be helped unless the devs really clamp down on scripts

Assasinations
Simple. One swing a second, and if i'm knifing you from anywhere 180* behind you, you're dead. Sounds OP eh? Well, the way it was balanced out is that if youre killed like this, you let out a very loud and discernible death scream and death animation. Many TF2 players considered it a spy alarm, and unless you beat feet fast, you were gonna get slapped by the rest of your victim's team. That's not the worst of it either. You blew your cover, and half of your effectiveness as a spy evaporates as soon as they enemy knows there is a spy around. It's something to be done with care

I drew SOME inspiration form the TF2 spy. The issue I see most people having with 1-hit kill backstabs is that it doesn't give the attacked any chance of getting out of it, even if his entire team wasted the attacker. That's why I think a 90* angle behind the attacked would be a bit better and the knife sound in a small radius around the attacker would give a little indication that something is up. Part of the issue with spies in TF2 is they can still backstab you from the side, which is BS, but isn't a HUGE issue in TF2 because the maps are relatively small and it's easy to move back to where you need to be. Regardless, I don't think backstabs should be nearly as prevalent in PS2 as in TF2, just because the game is based around team play and making tactical decisions, not just killing enemies. However, I think there does need to be a tool to fill this niche, and knives seem to be the most sensible option.

inspades · 2012-06-21, 08:36 PM

I drew SOME inspiration form the TF2 spy. The issue I see most people having with 1-hit kill backstabs is that it doesn't give the attacked any chance of getting out of it, even if his entire team wasted the attacker.

Yeah, backstabs can be annoying. I just happens though, and it happens in many forms. It could be a sniper's headshot, catching a tank shell with your teeth, ambushed by a reaver, etc. Getting stabbed will be another nusiance to add to the list.

That's why I think a 90* angle behind the attacked would be a bit better and the knife sound in a small radius around the attacker would give a little indication that something is up. Part of the issue with spies in TF2 is they can still backstab you from the side, which is BS, but isn't a HUGE issue in TF2 because the maps are relatively small and it's easy to move back to where you need to be.

Interesting that you mentioned this (warning: spy bias incoming) because the TF2 devs actually tried downing the backstab range from 180 to 160. The backstab became surprisingly useless, and it was changed back within a week. I believe it may have been due to complications coming from lag compensation, resulting in a lot of "failstabs", stabs that should have hit, but diddn't. Very annoying, since it usually results in your death after alerting the guy you just tried to stab. It will all come down to playtesting I guess.

Regardless, I don't think backstabs should be nearly as prevalent in PS2 as in TF2, just because the game is based around team play and making tactical decisions, not just killing enemies. However, I think there does need to be a tool to fill this niche, and knives seem to be the most sensible option.

Agreed, assassinations should be reserved for those few keystone players in a group. Personally, im hoping to be able to spot for people, mind-fsck defenders, and cause mischief.

Ratstomper · 2012-06-21, 11:59 PM

Originally Posted by inspades

I drew SOME inspiration form the TF2 spy. The issue I see most people having with 1-hit kill backstabs is that it doesn't give the attacked any chance of getting out of it, even if his entire team wasted the attacker.

Yeah, backstabs can be annoying. I just happens though, and it happens in many forms. It could be a sniper's headshot, catching a tank shell with your teeth, ambushed by a reaver, etc. Getting stabbed will be another nusiance to add to the list.

That's why I think a 90* angle behind the attacked would be a bit better and the knife sound in a small radius around the attacker would give a little indication that something is up. Part of the issue with spies in TF2 is they can still backstab you from the side, which is BS, but isn't a HUGE issue in TF2 because the maps are relatively small and it's easy to move back to where you need to be.

Interesting that you mentioned this (warning: spy bias incoming) because the TF2 devs actually tried downing the backstab range from 180 to 160. The backstab became surprisingly useless, and it was changed back within a week. I believe it may have been due to complications coming from lag compensation, resulting in a lot of "failstabs", stabs that should have hit, but diddn't. Very annoying, since it usually results in your death after alerting the guy you just tried to stab. It will all come down to playtesting I guess.

Regardless, I don't think backstabs should be nearly as prevalent in PS2 as in TF2, just because the game is based around team play and making tactical decisions, not just killing enemies. However, I think there does need to be a tool to fill this niche, and knives seem to be the most sensible option.

Agreed, assassinations should be reserved for those few keystone players in a group. Personally, im hoping to be able to spot for people, mind-fsck defenders, and cause mischief.

I agree. It will need to be tested and tweaked so it's effective in appropriate situations, but not allowing backstabbing infiltrators to become rampant.

I'm hoping better netcode will help solve some of the lag issues TF2 had. Not to mention I think movement will be a bit less twitchy than in TF2, where players can fling themselves across a map by firing a rocket at their feet. lol

inspades · 2012-06-23, 09:01 AM

...or some of the things in this vid

I wanted to share a realization related to the third point in my last post. The loud unique death scream and animation also seems to be a good means of balancing "knife-monkey" like behavior.

If the Infiltrator tries to go for a "chain-stab" and see how much he can get away with in spite of all the commotion he has made, he will quickly find his would-be prey turning around to face him. It instantly robs him of his instant-kill ability, and renders him the focus of a lead bukkake

EDIT: ...unless they dont have ears, like the victims in the vid.

Ratstomper · 2012-06-24, 12:35 AM

Originally Posted by inspades

EDIT: ...unless they dont have ears, like the victims in the vid.

I don't know how I feel about a death sound. I can;t tell if it would be giving too much away or not. On the one hand, if someone has gone to the lengths to make the silent kill, a death scream might be a little too obvious. Remember, infiltrators have other duties besides killing people. a knife kill would probably be a means to an end, not an end in itself.

I DO know the backstab in TF2 has WAY too much range and the gameplay in that video shows exactly what most people wouldn't want, and I tend to agree with them. I understand the point of the video, but I don't think the knife should be nearly as viable a weapon in PS2 as it is in TF2. Just Saying.