Warning, very unpopular opinion! Why kill-cam desperately needs to return

[Rolfski]

Originally Posted by Ertwin

A kill cam would also reduce the effectiveness of a small squad against a zerg. A couple of months back my squad leader was able to get a beacon on a really tall rock outcropping. Once we dropped in on it as engineers and heavies, we were able to stop a TR tank zerg without getting spotted for a good 5 minutes. The zerg had no idea where we were shooting from, but a couple of people were paying attention, and we got hit by light assaults.

That wasn't a loctation where we could "just relocate" A kill cam would have prevented that from working near instantly.

Shooting down from a top of a cliff on a zerg is a typical situation were newer players (often part of a zerg) can quickly learn from a kill-cam how important checking all your angles in this game is. Nothin wrong with that imo. Sure they know now where they get shot from (that's the point of kill-cam) but you still control the high ground in a relatively safe position and you're still stopping that zerg.

Originally Posted by Taramafor

Once you add in a pure game mechanic that offers no realism whatsoever that someone has to waste certs or money on, the game WILL die.

Believe me, this game will die faster at the rate the skill ceiling is making the game increasingly more frustrating for new players. And don't give me the realism argument because nothing is realistic in this game and if anything, analyzing where you get shot from is a way more realistic military technique than camping over and over from the same spot.

Under NO circumstances must you pay to REMOVE something that you don't want. That IS shoving it down our throats.

Non-argument. I don't want bullet damage either, they're shoving it down my throat. Guess what, I can cert into nano weave armor to take some of that away.

Now if you can get a kill cam implemented that doesn't have a negative effect on the enemy, by all means, make it yourself and let people test run it.

Well, that's the real problem here. Too many of the veteran hardcore players are just never not prepared to give up anything of their insanely OP position if that helps the game for all players. You saw that with the reverse thruster discussion, it's not different with the kill-cam discussion. And it's exactly this hopelessly short-sighted vision that will die out the game.

This (farming, R.) has not been my experience.

Why do you think they put walls around the bases on Esamir? What is the idea you think behind dome shields they want to implement? Why did the Fury, Marauder and every splash damage dealing weapon got severely nerfed since launch? Why did they change the XP kill reward system for newly spawned players? Why did they overhaul the spawn room designs? Farming has been one of the biggest issues of this game since launch that is still not solved.

This alters the motivations of your entire argument for why kill cam should be implemented. It's the difference between saying kill camera's help players who don't play FPS's learn the game mechanics and saying kill camera's help players who don't play FPS's compete against people who spent hours and hours playing at it.

No it doesn't alter the motivation at all actually.
Experienced FPS player or not, this game should be easy to learn but hard to master for everybody. Going from zero to mediocre skill plateau where 80% of the players sit, should be a smooth ride. Going from mediocre to elite skill, however, should be an insanely long and steep traject (high skill ceiling) that will make you in the end only 20% stronger vs mediocre players, not 200% as is now the case. Kill-cam will help new players getting to the 80% plateau, after that it won't help them getting to the elite level. It will help somewhat however, in toning down the elite player skill vs reward output from 200% to an acceptable 20% level.

No this is just you wanting to remove certain strategies/tactics/combat elements from the game because you don't like them.

Farming should not be promoted in this game. That's not just because I don't like it. As I told you above, there's a reason why they put these walls on Esamir. If you still want to farm, then giving up a perk slot is a very reasonable price to pay imo. In the end, you still have a choice.

No that's called metagame for kill cam.

It's called counter play in this video actually and demonstrates that counter strategies for mechanics like kill-cam or spotting can make a game a lot more interesting for everybody than just sniping or farming the heck out of people and making only one side happy:

Originally Posted by Baneblade

You do know that kill cam only makes it easier for vets, right?

No, it doesn't and I already explained why that is.

Originally Posted by Sunrock

Do you really think that newbs are that retarded Rolfski and that they will stay that noobish for more then a few hours?

By far the most difficult thing to learn in this game is positioning/situational awareness. You will never learn that in hours, not even in months. There's just way too much map content, angles of attack, chaotic battle flow and weapon types in this game for any but the most hardcore dedicated players to overcome that and it's getting worse by the month. That's exactly why we need playfield leveling tools for this like kill-cam.

Originally Posted by Wahooo

TLDR
1. Not wanting Kill Cam has nothing to do with COD rage.

I was referring to the alpha/ tech-test discussion were kill-cam got rejected. There was a lot of COD rage in that discussion.

2. Your reasoning seems thinly veiled on helping new players, where it is actually just more personal.

I'm not aware of any secret agenda on my side but feel free to disbelieve me. I just want this game to be a good experience for everybody: whether you're new, casual, veteran or hardcore. Right now this game is only getting better for hardcorce veterans, who have a loud enough voice in forums like this to block any direction in this game they don't like. This worries me a lot. Newer, casual gamers don't come to this forum and discuss 8 pages over features that might help them. They just get frustrated, quit and never come back.

3. Vets and those who are more aware will benefit much more than new players, and probably to the new players demise. How does Killcam help new players break into the ESF game?

I already explained on the first one. And kill-cam will not help much in the ESF game but it will help leveling the playing field on the ground. The current ESF game shows us what will happen if the strong get stronger to a level that there's no room anymore for the weaker to enter. You don't want this to happen to your ground game as well or this game WILL die.

4. It really does nothing to stop farming where the REAL farms happen.

It might not stop farming (not sure what will ever stop farming in this game) but it should have a general discouraging effect.

Originally Posted by scufmark

In regards to revenge, let it go. Because seriously, how many times have you tried hunting down that sniper, who is often behind their friendly lines, and you get mowed down?

I agree. Kill-cam is a horrible revenge tool, especially in a game like this, if that is what you use it only for. If you use it however, to learn from your death and make sure you don't do it again, then it is a very helpful tool imo.

[Baneblade]

Originally Posted by Rolfski

No, it doesn't and I already explained why that is.

If you call that an explanation, I was giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming you hit your head with a trebuchet counter weight.

[Wahooo]

Originally Posted by Baneblade

If you call that an explanation, I was giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming you hit your head with a trebuchet counter weight.

Common thing through this whole thread really.

'it works in COD but this is not COD, it is a totally different game' He's fine with that as an argument against having K/D but for some reason can't see why it would apply here.
In COD there are random spawns, the guy you just killed may spawn right behind you, though the pro-campers in a lot of instanced shooters know where the spawn locations are and set up so than can take people down there. You have a few chaotic moments to learn the map, discover where stuff is, and try and figure out how to get to weird vantage points. All within the game when you are trying to kill more than be killed.
In Planetside? The map is always there, you can choose a time when no one is around that area and explore it. You dismissed this as not a typical MMO because there was nothing to explore. You are flat out wrong there is a lot to explore. That is how people found the BFR garage, not a place you run into by fighting. And able to get ESFs inside biodomes, you don't learn that during a fight, and all of the different places sunderers have been parked that the devs have needed to come back and add bollards and lower roofs and stuff. These are all things that you cannot do in an instanced shooter and why a kill cam helps. I've spent so much time trying to figure out how to get certain places in this game and the number of deaths from suicide on a flash or falling off cliffs it is silly.

'Kill cam would give X information to experienced players' 'No... you already have radar, or experience or tracers or awareness...' ???? WTF you just countered the argument against kill cam by saying there are better ways of finding out the same info? But yet it is still needed????

Then telling everyone how to play sniper when he's basically never done that.
Then talking about how kill cam would prevent people farming with prowlers and harassers. Really the tank with lockdown is supposed to be mobile? And kill cam does what exactly to counter a harasser? If anything it leads to more confusion to a new player because the harasser is never stationary... like ever.


Long and the short of it is Rolf I re-read everything you've written in this thread, and other than the sentiment that new players need a bit better experience, I disagree with everything you've said... EVERYTHING. There have been well reasoned arguments, you've dismissed them or simply don't understand the true impact.

The biggie for me right now in this, is that you are not understanding how this helps experienced FPS players with good awareness who may or may not be vets of this game more than the new player. I don't care about the new player learning my 'secrets' my worry as a sniper has nothing to do with that, it is the good player I fear, the one YOU say is going to ignore the kill cam. We've proposed several different scenarios where the kill cam provides crucial info to aware or experienced players and you counter it with ~'no there is already THIS in game that tells you everything.' ???
Basically telling us that all of the mechanics that are in game already are superior for gaining tactical knowledge... yet a kill cam is needed for new players to gain tactical knowledge... and that it benefits new players more than vets because there is already better ways of gaining info in the game
Information is power, and someone with more information is going to utilize that power better, the kill cam for what little good it might do to new players is power that experienced players will use better. This widens the gap between new and experienced more than closes it.

[Ertwin]

Originally Posted by Rolfski

Shooting down from a top of a cliff on a zerg is a typical situation were newer players (often part of a zerg) can quickly learn from a kill-cam how important checking all your angles in this game is. Nothin wrong with that imo. Sure they know now where they get shot from (that's the point of kill-cam) but you still control the high ground in a relatively safe position and you're still stopping that zerg.

It was only a relatively safe position because nobody knew we were there, once we were discovered, we were quickly flushed out. A kill cam would have immediately rendered that position useless.

You're saying that people can already guess what's inside a dug in position without kill cam, so kill cam is useless for information, but there is a huge world of difference between guesswork and knowing for sure.

You say that if you want to stay hidden with a kill cam, just focus on staying hidden, and move when you shoot. However you're forgetting that you can be revealed by someone else's kill cam. Kill cams show way too much, and as much as it helps the newbies, it helps the vets a lot more.

Furthermore, the majority of the camping/farming is around the spawn room. How is a kill cam going to help newbs there?

[Badjuju]

Originally Posted by Wahooo

Common thing through this whole thread really.

'it works in COD but this is not COD, it is a totally different game' He's fine with that as an argument against having K/D but for some reason can't see why it would apply here.
In COD there are random spawns, the guy you just killed may spawn right behind you, though the pro-campers in a lot of instanced shooters know where the spawn locations are and set up so than can take people down there. You have a few chaotic moments to learn the map, discover where stuff is, and try and figure out how to get to weird vantage points. All within the game when you are trying to kill more than be killed.
In Planetside? The map is always there, you can choose a time when no one is around that area and explore it. You dismissed this as not a typical MMO because there was nothing to explore. You are flat out wrong there is a lot to explore. That is how people found the BFR garage, not a place you run into by fighting. And able to get ESFs inside biodomes, you don't learn that during a fight, and all of the different places sunderers have been parked that the devs have needed to come back and add bollards and lower roofs and stuff. These are all things that you cannot do in an instanced shooter and why a kill cam helps. I've spent so much time trying to figure out how to get certain places in this game and the number of deaths from suicide on a flash or falling off cliffs it is silly.

'Kill cam would give X information to experienced players' 'No... you already have radar, or experience or tracers or awareness...' ???? WTF you just countered the argument against kill cam by saying there are better ways of finding out the same info? But yet it is still needed????

Then telling everyone how to play sniper when he's basically never done that.
Then talking about how kill cam would prevent people farming with prowlers and harassers. Really the tank with lockdown is supposed to be mobile? And kill cam does what exactly to counter a harasser? If anything it leads to more confusion to a new player because the harasser is never stationary... like ever.


Long and the short of it is Rolf I re-read everything you've written in this thread, and other than the sentiment that new players need a bit better experience, I disagree with everything you've said... EVERYTHING. There have been well reasoned arguments, you've dismissed them or simply don't understand the true impact.

The biggie for me right now in this, is that you are not understanding how this helps experienced FPS players with good awareness who may or may not be vets of this game more than the new player. I don't care about the new player learning my 'secrets' my worry as a sniper has nothing to do with that, it is the good player I fear, the one YOU say is going to ignore the kill cam. We've proposed several different scenarios where the kill cam provides crucial info to aware or experienced players and you counter it with ~'no there is already THIS in game that tells you everything.' ???
Basically telling us that all of the mechanics that are in game already are superior for gaining tactical knowledge... yet a kill cam is needed for new players to gain tactical knowledge... and that it benefits new players more than vets because there is already better ways of gaining info in the game
Information is power, and someone with more information is going to utilize that power better, the kill cam for what little good it might do to new players is power that experienced players will use better. This widens the gap between new and experienced more than closes it.

I'm with you 100%. There perceived benefit that a kill cam may have for new players is very small and not comparable to all the negatives that come with it. There are also far better ways for new players to gain knowledge if they are looking for it. Streams and YouTube guides for example provide way more help than a kill cam ever will and are very popular these days. I know the counter argument is not everyone chooses to use resources like that, but those people are probably not going to spend time evaluating what took place in the kill cam either.


Kill cams are not some god send for new players, sorry Rolf. Case and point COD. The kill cam has been in the game for how many generations and the situational awareness of the general player base is terrible. Situational awareness is something comes with practice and experience. It will be strengthened much more by actively watching better players, or simply making the effort to pay attention to what you are doing and then asking yourself what you did wrong when you died. You don't need a kill cam 99% of the time to do that. There is no need to give out real time information which reveals all kinds of information.

[Wahooo]

Originally Posted by Badjuju

I'm with you 100%. There perceived benefit that a kill cam may have for new players is very small and not comparable to all the negatives that come with it. There are also far better ways for new players to gain knowledge if they are looking for it. Streams and YouTube guides for example provide way more help than a kill cam ever will and are very popular these days. I know the counter argument is not everyone chooses to use resources like that, but those people are probably not going to spend time evaluating what took place in the kill cam either.

OH my yes... I had totally meant to say just this.

Those players who don't want to use resources to learn are going to quit anyway. They are not going to be retained and come and go and are always fodder.
The ones who may get frustrated and leave BEFORE they get a chance to learn? Yes I agree they need something. Tutoring outfits, tutorial videos.

The complaint that the skill gap between high and low is too great is hard to deal with. yes it is large but a lot of vets know this. That is why there are so many instructional youtube videos. Instanced shooters? most videos are either hackers or just high twitch playser waving epeen. The example about ESF pilots not wanting a change to their flight mechanics? well there are several videos from some of the best pilots in the game trying to TEACH how to fly like them. You don't see this in instanced shooters. You do see it in Planetside.

[Ruffdog]

Just wondering: are you guessing, or have you got first hand accounts of such lamenting of said frustrations? Quitting because of rubbish frame rate or cheating scumbags I can buy. People ive recommended to have 100percent quit because of the frames. Not one has got moody because they got got from a bad angle or a high br may have dominated them.
I cannot buy what you're saying.

[Timithos]

Originally Posted by ketarakh

Though I find killcams a little bit too much for this game, I think than newbies must have some sort of info on how and from where they were shot. For example when you die and while you are falling on the ground your camera turns for 2-3 seconds in the direction where the guy that killed you was standing. Some sort of advanced "hit direction detector" UI thingy.

I kind of like this where instead of the camera panning upwards over your corpse, it pans in the direction of the damage. You still get a dim screen and a kill screen overlay that doubly obscures the enemy you're trying to look at. Snipers are still pretty darn safe, and splash damage is going to give you all kinds of false camera directions. Plus the enemy player that does the majority of damage will at times be masked by the enemy that gets the kill shot.

[Rolfski]

Originally Posted by Baneblade

If you call that an explanation, I was giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming you hit your head with a trebuchet counter weight.

Maybe your enlightened being then can explain me why newer players would rather get exploited from a kill cam system than learn from it because I have a hard time seeing that.

If BR 100's get killed, they just know 90% of the time what killed them and from what angle. They just hit enter and skip the kill-cam footage most of the time. For them, kill-cam is occasionally useful to sharpen the extra 1% on their skills. Newer players however, should relatively learn a lot more from it.

Originally Posted by Wahooo

In COD there are random spawns, the guy you just killed may spawn right behind you, though the pro-campers in a lot of instanced shooters know where the spawn locations are and set up so than can take people down there. You have a few chaotic moments to learn the map, discover where stuff is, and try and figure out how to get to weird vantage points. All within the game when you are trying to kill more than be killed.
In Planetside? The map is always there, you can choose a time when no one is around that area and explore it.

This is an illusion, seriously. In COD and BF3, there are plenty of ways to learn the map without getting in the thick of a fight. These maps are relatively small, designed for a specific battle flow and are reasonably predictable. It can be learned reasonably easy and if anything, you don't really need kill-cam in these games. Still, kill-cam is widely accepted in these games. Not sure if you have seen the latest Gamescom BF4 MP footage but the kill-cam in that upcoming title is very obvious (at 7:35 for instance):


In PS2 however, learning this is almost impossible to do. You can fly around and explore MMO style forever (seriously, who does that in a shooter?), but getting a hang of all angles and camping spots is just impossible to learn for anyone, not willing to spend at least 20 full days into this game. How realistic is that for an average player? This game is just way too big, way too chaotic and way too unpredictable.
Even kill-cam won't fix this 100%, but at least it helps you as a newer player to become more aware of your surroundings. As BR 100 you already knew this. You won't get any uber power out of a kill-cam that lower skilled players won't get. This whole "vets get more advantage of it" is just a false argument from players being afraid to loose their edge.

Originally Posted by Ertwin

It was only a relatively safe position because nobody knew we were there, once we were discovered, we were quickly flushed out. A kill cam would have immediately rendered that position useless.

I disagree. A good set-up launcher position on a high cliff takes a dedicated, organized team effort to take out. Sure, you must have heard these stories of squads on a cliff destroying everything coming out of the SE Indar warpgate, taking forever for an entire faction to properly respond to it.

Furthermore, the majority of the camping/farming is around the spawn room. How is a kill cam going to help newbs there?

Newbie error no 1 is thinking you are safe in front of an enemy spawn room, so kill-cam will for sure teach this instantly. The real value of kill-cam when it comes to farming is in the other farming situations, which are numerous: Getting shot by tanks when in a tower, getting libbed/lol podded, get farmed by harasser, get sniped by AV turrets from impossible distances, etc. etc.

Originally Posted by Badjuju

There are also far better ways for new players to gain knowledge if they are looking for it. Streams and YouTube guides for example provide way more help than a kill cam ever will and are very popular these days. I know the counter argument is not everyone chooses to use resources like that, but those people are probably not going to spend time evaluating what took place in the kill cam either.

Well, here is exactly your problem. Any threshold you raise for people to learn the game intuitively and "in your face" is not going to work for 80% of the target group this game is after to maintain a healthy player base.
Kill-cam is by no means ideal but direct feedback about your death is for sure a better feedback tool for casual players than forcing them into watching youtubes.

And there's always the "make dying fun" factor, which is imo very important for any casual or beginning player. And kill-cam is for sure a better way to make dying fun in this game than the horrible depressing death screen we have right now.
Btw, this is also the reason why I strongly oppose the useless KDR stat, as it makes dying even more depressing for most players, but this is a whole different discussion.

Kill cams are not some god send for new players, sorry Rolf. Case and point COD. The kill cam has been in the game for how many generations and the situational awareness of the general player base is terrible.

Exactly my point. Kill-cam is the very least they should do to improve overall situational awareness, because right now it is downright atrocious and one of the Achilles heels of this game. Kill-cam may not be the god send but it belongs to the very hygienics they should fix to give average players at least some notion about what the heck is going on.

This game NEEDS to attract some of the "casual" COD/BF3 player base in order to survive, like it or not. Relying on them to learn from YouTube or at least investing 200+ hours into this game, in order to get something of a grasp of it, is nowhere going to cut it.

Originally Posted by Ruffdog

Just wondering: are you guessing, or have you got first hand accounts of such lamenting of said frustrations?

As I told in the opening post, being kinda admin of the Dutch PS2 community, I get a lot of feedback from frustrated people (pm or in forum). It's not the biggest registered issue because frankly, you typically won't see casual players on forums, but it's for sure a frequent complaint.

Edit: I edited some text to make it more clear because people took it out of context for trolling reasons

[Sledgecrushr]

IF a killcam would help to retain players then Im all for it.

[Taramafor]

Originally Posted by Rolfski

Believe me, this game will die faster at the rate the skill ceiling is making the game increasingly more frustrating for new players. And don't give me the realism argument because nothing is realistic in this game and if anything, analyzing where you get shot from is a way more realistic military technique than camping over and over from the same spot.

Originally Posted by Rolfski

Non-argument. I don't want bullet damage either, they're shoving it down my throat. Guess what, I can cert into nano weave armor to take some of that away.

Seriously? That's your argument? Bullet's ARE realistic. They WILL kill you. In or out of games. Just as much as someone standing in a corner when you blindly charge into a room. A killcam might help show people in corners in this game but when they play others they'll be so used to it that they'll neglect to check those corners. Who's fault is that? By your logic it's the person being smart enough to camp a corner who could easily be blown up by a grenade (or flashed then mowed down). What you're talking about is adding a purely visual game mechanic and forcing people to cert into REMOVING it. Nanoweave is an ADDITION (also this game wouldn't EXIST without bullets). So don't give me that "none realistic" bull. Even spawning has some degree of realism in this game since there's the lore about it (could as easily be another soldier instead of the same one regardless) Plus it's a tried and true game mechanic that doesn't have any negative impact whatsoever (not including spawn room camping and such which can be fixed with some sort of spread out/switch of locations).

Also, what's your proof that people are rage quitting because they don't have the intelligence to learn simple rules of engagement? The game's not that difficult. You do the tutorial. You drop pod. You have a gun. And if you get killed in a room and didn't see anyone, well I tell myself to check the corners. My own dumb fault for rushing in like an idiot.

The only "learning curve" is all the stuff that gets certed into. But there's clear explanations of what weapons are good at. HE is for infantry. AP is for armor. Etc. That and repairing/reviving and hacking. A killcam does not show people how to do any of that (training/VR really needs to get people to use those). I put that as a higher priority frankly.

I haven't seen an under populated map in... Well... Ever. Seems to me people get by just fine with the tools they have.

I give up. Trying to talk sense into you is like trying to explain to a 1 year old advanced math.

[Baneblade]

Originally Posted by Rolfski

If BR 100's get killed, they just know 90% of the time what killed them and from what angle. They just hit enter and skip the kill-cam footage most of the time. For them, kill-cam is occasionally useful to sharpen the extra 1% on their skills. Newer players however, should relatively learn a lot more from it.

If I had access to a kill cam, I'd be studying the shit out of it every time and using that information to send more newbies footage of myself cutting through them like a hot knife through butter. Just because you imagine yourself some champion of newbiedom, doesn't make you any less wrong about how established players will use kill cam.

Even PS1's death cam was far too useful to a vet.

We are better off without both. Develop situational awareness or don't, but don't think for a minute that a kill cam will help a newbie more than a vet.

[Sledgecrushr]

If a kill cam would make a newb feel more comfortable and increase player retention then this would be a good thing. So far for what we have it looks like keeping new players has been an issue.

[Wahooo]

Originally Posted by Rolfski

This is an illusion, seriously. In COD and BF3, there are plenty of ways to learn the map without getting in the thick of a fight. These maps are relatively small, designed for a specific battle flow and are reasonably predictable. It can be learned reasonably easy and if anything, you don't really need kill-cam in these games.

In PS2 however, learning this is almost impossible to do. You can fly around and explore MMO style forever (seriously, who does that in a shooter?), but getting a hang of all angles and camping spots is just impossible to learn for anyone, not willing to spend at least 20 full days into this game. How realistic is that for an average player? This game is just way too big, way too chaotic and way too unpredictable.
Even kill-cam won't fix this,

[Taramafor]

Thank you! Finally, proof that he's full of it and has no idea what he's talking about.