Is prefiring bad

[mikethescribe]

Please watch this vid. https://youtu.be/cD8dsQqHoC4 Do you think this type of prefiring tactic is bad.

[Mordelicius]

It depends on the weapons and situations.

The problem with weapon imbalances is that they test guns on stationary NPC.
Why do I say that?

NC has guns that have slightly more damage + Low ROF + misses a lot.
VS has guns that have slightly less damage + Normal/High ROF + hits a lot.

That can only be balanced if the target is stationary. When the target is moving, the ability to hit is much more important than the extra damage. Hence, Orion is superior as hell because it can ADAD while still hitting targets.

It's harder to 'prefire' when the gun blooms like crazy and have to be burst-fired.

The stationary AI Engineer Turret is good to max out at 10s heat buffer because of the unlimited ammo. That's ok to 'prefire' as long as you know you won't be sniped. Often times you will be so, just hide next to it and press E only when you are ready to shoot.

Lastly, the best way to handle infiltrators is the Dark Flashlight attachment. It will illuminate even the stalkers, so there's little need to prefire since you always have the jump and higher dps so long as you search slowly.

[Rivenshield]

"One empire in Planetside 2 wastes 90% of the ammunition." -- Matt Higby

This is and always has been the preferred tactic of every loyal Terran. It's not 'suppressive fire' so much as it is 'hose ammo around and put the crosshairs on any targets that pop up.' But not everybody remembers why.....

/leans on his cane, waxes nostalgic

It's hard to remember, but the mass-console FP2 market simply didn't exist in 2003. Nobody, NOBODY knew what we were doing -- we were just cheerfully zerging around smashing things up without rhyme or reason. And then occasionally, in the midst of the pixelated carnage, you'd see these small determined organized knots of people healing, fixing, fighting... and winning. And we clustered around them, and they led us, and they taught us by example.

You see, the only people who knew what this first-person slaughterfest thing was all about were these very serious geeks who played QUAKE and DOOM and games like that, and who wired their college dorms together so they could have tournaments. They played in small 4v4 and 8v8 environments over copper phone lines, and when you are in a battlefield that small and that laggy you observe two fundamental rules:

1) Shoot everywhere. Shoot up the windows, shoot up the doorway, splatter bullets all over the corner and the empty space beyond. Because thanks to the network lag over a 16K modem, by the time you *see* the enemy, he will have already killed you a frustratingly high percentage of the time. The only time you hold your fire is when you're trying to sneak up on somebody.

2) Stick close to your comrades and take super good care of them. Heal them. Fix them. Throw down ammo for them; share finds with them. Move forward in a self-healing, self-maintaining, self-organizing swarm that is constantly spitting lead at any cover or opening that might produce an enemy (see above).

And at least on Markov (the old West Coast server), the vast majority of serious-minded techno-geeks, then as now, joined the Terran Republic. Despite the fact that we're the heavies, we are also an organized military. If you enjoy feeling part of something ordered and organized, you wear the red and black. That's the personality type that the TR attract (just as the pro-social anarchists become part of the cheerful, hopelessly-disorganized-yet-deadly NC, and the smartass kids who used to play pranks on each other in high school science lab go for the VS. Our enemies have their own corporate cultures and real-world traditions as well).

We saw them clearing rooms and stopping long enough to type in 'Clear' in squad chat, so we did the same. We saw them running through gunfire to heal complete strangers, so we did the same. We saw them hosing down empty doorways -- and killing the hell out of the enemies that popped up -- so we did the same. They were the founding fathers of the Republic, and they founded a real-world fighting tradition older than some of the kids now playing the game.

And because there's that critical mass of people who learnt from them who straddle two generations in a gaming franchise, and because the TR still attract the team-oriented kinda-sorta serious people, and because all of this is facilitated by having the weapons with the highest rates of fire and the largest magazines, we still fight the same way. We huddle together dutifully with our glue guns behind tanks and turrets under fire, and we die without moving. We run into the open to revive complete strangers, and we get mown down alongside them. We expend vast quantities of ammunition shooting up walls and windows and empty air, and die while we're reloading.

But.... we also save that tank, and we keep that turret up, and we mow down that secessionist that tried to zerg through the doorway, and we rez that stranger, and we get a cheery 'Way to be, soldier!' in return. We have more esprit and better team play than any organization in the online gaming world. We heal more wounds and rez more bodies and fix more equipment and yes, waste more ammo than both of the other empires put together, and we're proud of it.

And that's where 'prefiring' originated as a viable tactic, if you go back far enough. It's how you beat the lag on a 16K modem.

Carry on.

/sets back in his rocking chair, grins

[Ghoest9]

There are still many people on (copper) DSL connection who deal with serious latency issues.

But pre-firings success is largely determined by the game code. Whether or not bullets are considered with respect o the game world or if they are considered with repect to targets. And where targets are considered to actually be.


If you have latency its far more important to keep moving through cover and structures than it is to pre-fire.

[mikethescribe]

I did not think of the latency problem. Some who has a bad latency problem I suppose would have major problems since it is client side hit detection. Thanks for your comment.

[Mordelicius]

Prefiring matter very little when the VS has stacked features like low bloom, low recoil, no drop, 0.75x movement speed and now that crazy infinite ammo on the Betelgeuse.

Again, they have to test these weapons on moving NPCs, not stationary ones.

[Isokon]

Originally Posted by Mordelicius

Prefiring matter very little when the VS has stacked features like low bloom, low recoil, no drop, 0.75x movement speed and now that crazy infinite ammo on the Betelgeuse.

Again, they have to test these weapons on moving NPCs, not stationary ones.

Can you point to where Uncle Vanu touched you?

[Mordelicius]

Originally Posted by Isokon

Can you point to where Uncle Vanu touched you?

Vanu does not understand the concept of faction balance.