Improve on Situation Awareness

wildcat140679 · 2011-04-19, 04:42 PM

Indoor battles, towers and base battles counts many friendly fire incidents and many of them are due to lack of situational awareness of your allies and what they are doing out side your field of view.

Corridors, doorways and other cramped spaces are ideal for friendly fire incidents.

Being shot in the back, by friendly fire, is more often than you know it, due to your own cause.

While you try to dodge enemy bullets, you side step in to the line of fire of your own team mates.

For those who know the game Left 4 Dead, it has many similar cramped situations where your risk shooting your team mates when they try to dodge or get out of harms way.

The game also had a weapon upgrade, a laser sight. It improved accuracy on all weapons, but the most important for me and my friends was the red beam, that was drawn and extended several feet out from the gun. When looking forwards, those red laser beams could be noticed and where great tell signs of letting you know, if you had an ally aiming past you on your left or right side. Would trouble find you, knew what side you should not dodge to, when trying to evade stuff. It wasn't perfect and we still had friendly fire incidents, only a whole lot less than with out those laser sights added to the gun.

I was hoping PS:N could have something similar, but not a red laser beam for everyone to see, but something only friendly units could see.
A beam that extents out a good distance, drawn along the bullet path, that's only visible to those in close proximity of an other friendly unit.

Lonehunter · 2011-04-19, 06:47 PM

I didn't play L4D much but the laser sight sounds like an awesome addition to it. In Planetside though we're looking at a much larger scale, even indoors. The lack of situational awareness is on the shooter's part in my opinion. You really shouldn't be shooting right by friendlies in front of you. People do anyway, because they want that kill, we all do. While the laser sight could work in PS:N, with the larger scale meaning many many more laserz, I'm worried about the net issues. Do I really wanna see 10+ lasers going by me? Are they really going to be accurate to the inch? I can't help but feel doubt, and why the hell is my Enter button disabled while posting here now? Have my paragraph making privileges been revoked?

Senyu · 2011-04-19, 09:59 PM

Friendly fire I think would mainly be solved from having a better engine for the game. It was clunky,slow, and large projectiles. With a new engine and faster speed, I imagine friendly fire would be easier to avoid simply from a better working engine able to respond to your reflexes much better

DviddLeff · 2011-04-20, 03:30 AM

I do want laser sights (improve hip fire accuracy yet give away your position), and as a by product they would make friendly fire as you said easier to avoid.

Diddy Mao · 2011-04-20, 08:29 AM

It's a good theory, but in a cramped space in the heat of a battle there will be friendly fire regardless of the situation. As sad it is to say nothings gonna be able to fix kill whores (who honestly aren't gonna stop shooting because a friend wants to be a bullet sponge) / Zerg mentality (dozens of people rushing in to a base) or people with just bad accuracy. Sounds like I'm being totally negative but I'm not i'd like to see if they could try and have it be effect. But when rushing down into a base leading the charge you know you're guys are behind you with Yellow/Purple/Red bullets it comes with the territory.

Canaris · 2011-04-20, 11:23 AM

I know blue on blue can be a pain when storming down corridors or stairwells in bases and towers but TBH I think it should remain a factor of the game.
I prefer the more realistic FF over not having FF.

Not knowing what's around the next corner is a buzz and if you happen to turn a mate into swiss cheese with the MCG because you got a fright, that's life

Logit · 2011-04-20, 12:56 PM

FF will always be a problem.

I can't count how many times Fairy's were standing outside because they were afraid to die. So when I finally rush in I get spammed to death mostly by my own team.

You could say that was my fault, but in reality if everyone would just go inside and stop being scared of the re-spawn tubes, I wouldn't get friendly fired upon.

I think due to the mass amounts of people, your always going to deal with friendly fire, just the nature of the business.

But I would never move to have it taken out of the game, because that would be lame.

Furret · 2011-04-20, 10:57 PM

Friendly fire is going to happen in a game like PlanetSide. Steps should obviously be taken to reduce friendly fire to a minimum, but these steps have to accommodate the fact that FF is going to happen. I liked the grief system, but I never saw the full extent of the punishments for exceeding certain grief thresholds.

I'd like to see a system that took a percentage of the damage you deal to friendlies and take it away from the damage you do to enemies (say 5%).

If you OS 40 teammates, you lose 5 health from each friendly killed, totaling -200 damage. Pretty much everything you shoot after that is going to do 0 damage, so OSing your teammates is not a good plan. This damage reduction factor would decrease as time goes on, by say 1 damage per minute. After three and a third hours (200 minutes), your damage would return to normal.

In a more realistic situation: You jackhammer your buddy in the back as he walks past. If you do 40 damage to him, your bullets are reduced by 2. Now you do 38 damage, no big deal.

If you jackhammer him twice, then a few more friendlies, you're still doing mid 20's to 30's, which is playable, but you might want to stop spamming your shotgun down the hallway so much.

Also, the time it takes for your damage to return to normal could be scaled. If you hit five targets, it takes a minute per damage. If you hit 20 targets, it takes two minutes per damage. If you hit 40 targets, it takes 10 minutes per damage. Some sort of exponential function that penalizes players very heavily for doing a lot of friendly fire in a short period of time.

Senyu · 2011-04-20, 11:13 PM

The reducing damage is an interesting idea I have to say. Seems fair.

Mightymouser · 2011-04-21, 05:40 PM

While I'd be interested in hearing ideas for adding situational awareness; I think PlanetSide has one of the best ways of dealing with friendly fire I've seen in a FPS; especially in a game of this scale... The grief system punishes intentional griefers while still accommodating the minor mishaps that are always going to occur, and make it difficult for someone to reverse grief you..

I don't know about laser sights; I could see them being rather distracting when moving in groups (to say nothing of the FPS hit). Also the laser sights on the TR DC MAX have always looked rediculiously foolish to me; especially since a red laser which is visible in mid air is more or less impractical to the point of impossible...

Baneblade · 2011-04-21, 09:05 PM

85% of my FF is legit greenie control.

CutterJohn · 2011-04-27, 03:17 AM

The game can have fights of 5, or of 300. No base design is going to work for all amounts of populations. A base that can fit 2 poplocks slamming into each other will fail miserably when its 20v20.

The bases should have multiple zones and paths that open depending on the local population. 20v20? Some sections get closed off. 200v200? They open up. Not sure how you'd control it, but someone can figure it out, I'm sure.

Furret · 2011-04-27, 06:14 PM

i see where you're going cutter, but it would be extremely stupid unless there was a good reason for parts of the base randomly shutting down.

I think the best way to implement the idea, would be to give a very obvious tactical advantage if you fight in the areas designed for the certain numbers of players in combat.

For example, create an area that can easily shut down 20 people but would be hard to defend if there were 200 people swarming the doorway.

On the other side of the spectrum, a cramped hallway that can only accomadate two players side by side.

Basically terrain advantages that would sway players to using different routs to the CC that don't put their playercount at a huge disadvantage

Senyu · 2011-04-27, 07:26 PM

I still think a better performing engine with good reaction speed will negate much friendly fire simply if your carefull

Logit · 2011-04-27, 10:33 PM

Originally Posted by Senyu

I still think a better performing engine with good reaction speed will negate much friendly fire simply if your carefull

This

Unless your AWFUL, as long as you show some restraint and don't spam, you shouldn't have too much to worry about.

It takes a good amount of grief to get locked, and if you spam constantly and get to that point. Well it's really your own fault.