Aimpunch, did I miss something?

[azz_abdr]

I didn’t play much since hunter update, I see some posts about aimpunch, what happen to it?

[Begin2018]

There is nothing really new, but most gamers dislike the way it’s implemented in DB (random bullets dispersion) since it was added to the game.

Recently, after 2 years, they finally fixed a bug where aim-punch stacked in some cases, especially with hochfir against low life mercs. But in practice, nothing really changed, it’s still totally random…

An old video about the “issue”:

[azz_abdr]

So it was just an old topic that rising up again lately? Nothing changed again or not going worse?

I thought aimpunch was a “good mechanic” on this kind of shooter game with character that have different health but most weapon have similar dps, without it it would be “whoever shoot first win” or “whoever have more health win”,
…
but it seems it’s not going well with high rpm guns, is it?

[Begin2018]

Yes, I think it’s mostly an old topic, except some people recently reported it’s even worse since the latest “bug fix”. Maybe someone else will give you more precision than me about this.

[K1X455]

SD will make a paradigm shift in the implementation of the game if they altered aimpunch.

Because at the pace at which the game is played, aimpunch is a deciding factor in gunplay. At it’s current state (as it was back in 2015), laying down the crossfire is essential team play that seasoned and veteran players do in a defence to prevent enemy advancement (or their ticket to play TDM). If aimpunch gets even lowered to a point where crossfire is no longer an effective strategy, DPS will take over and only a few mercs can dominate, leading to a lot of broken and undiversified game plays. At the moment, because of aimpunch, all mercs have more or less the same DPS. If you notice the weak fire power of Empire-9, you should notice that players who use it get compensation by applying aimpunch in higher frequency (Same with Hochfir, but in relation to Blishlok, the current implementation of aimpunch disadvantages a Blish plahyer). Without aimpunch, mercs using weapons with high-RoF will be disadvantaged.

I won’t advocate for aimpunch (because I’ve been preaching the same video from Pansy since it got implemented), but rather, I would advocate for a change in the DPS model of the game to “balance” things out. The consequence is that yes, sniper rifles will become OP and their cyclic rate will dominate. But then again, so will shotguns. In both situations, there is a distinct difference (effective range to state the obvious, implementing damage falloff from distance). What lies in between range difference are burst rifles, semi-auto rifles, ARs and SMGs.

[Szakalot]

meh, they could just go the W:ET way of aimpunch only messing with your vision, NOT crosshair placement.

Gunplay is very similar to W:ET, with a bit shorter ttk and less revive trains. Crossfires were king then, and they are king now

[bgyoshi]

@Szakalot said:
meh, they could just go the W:ET way of aimpunch only messing with your vision, NOT crosshair placement.

Gunplay is very similar to W:ET, with a bit shorter ttk and less revive trains. Crossfires were king then, and they are king now

If it doesn’t alter your crosshair then it doesn’t alter your aim and thus has no real effect. Tracking is based on the movement of your crosshair and less so on the movement of your vision. All it would do is train players to not move their mouse while being shot.

! It also creates the issue of moving the crosshair with the screen motion, but keeping the location of firing the same (meaning the place the bullets go and where the crosshair is pointing is out of sync) or locking the crosshair to where it’s firing on screen (meaning what you see and what you shoot are out of sync). In the former, you lose the intuitive motion of tracking players with your crosshair, which will more than likely just frustrate more players than aimpunch currently does. In the latter, you lose the benefit of shooting first. Unless the screen is violently shaking on earthquake proportions (think 100-500x more shaking than there is currently) then tracking players will be trivial, and aimpunch as a mechanic would be pointless.

Pros complain about aimpunch the most because they don’t like strategic play. Pros feel that FPS/skill based games should be 90% skill and 10% strategy. They care less about team composition, team size, or gun balance. All they want is the players with the highest headshot % should be the winners. They want aimpunch to be predictable, avoidable, and inconsequential. That way, tracking through aimpunch (for example, by shaking the screen without affecting the actual crosshair shoot location) becomes a skill.

Just look at the popular pro FPS games right now, like CS:GO, Overwatch, Quake… all of these games have an element of strategy to them, but especially with games that seem to have a lot of strategy like Overwatch, you notice that team compositions and strategy don’t change. There’s one single best team composition and one single best strategy. Everyone does it because it’s the best, and the rest of it comes down to aim. Whoever has the best aim, wins the game.

True aimpunch removes a layer a skill and replaces it with a layer of strategy. Suddenly positioning and suppressing fire become relevant. Shooting first and pairing up becomes stronger than outaiming your opponent. Being ganked means you have to retreat and take cover, instead of being able to 180 and headshot-skill your opponent to death.

! In more relevant cases, explosives gain an inherent advantage over guns since they create aimpunch with a lesser requirement on skill. And when explosives are stronger and easier to rely on than guns, that just further exacerbates the issue. So it’s understandable that all the pros got saltier and saltier as more explosive mercs were released and aimpunch remained as punishing as it is. Even with the hypothetical merc limits being enabled, there’s explosives in all classes except medic at this point. Being able to stack explosive classes ((Aura/Sawbonez)/Fragger/Nader/Fletcher/Javelin) just makes the game less about gunplay and more about using explosives to kill or aimpunch your opponents.

One of the main things I like about DB is the aimpunch. One of the main things I hate is how much it makes you rely on team play. Team play is great, but it leads to the current issue in casual and casual ranked (random players queuing and being matched together) play, where games can get wildly imbalanced because one team is accidentally more cohesive than another, or one team composition is accidentally more functional than another. I say accidentally because it seems rare in casual DB that players actually look at what mercs their team is playing, and then change to a merc that is missing. So it just so happens that two players want to be medic, three players want to be assault or support, and two players want to be engineer. By accident, the team comp is strong. It seems rare that players play for the objective, or take a backseat role to provide ammo for their team instead of themselves, so when players are doing that, they’re accidentally more cohesive than the other team.

That being said, I prefer a game where team play is more important than personal aim. I’d much prefer to be happy with my performance and disappointed in my team, than to be happy that my performance was all the team needed to win.

And in DB, a cohesive and well composed and moderately skilled team will dominate a non-cohesive, poorly composed skilled team. All because aimpunch screws up where your bullets go. It forces you to aim well AND play smart.

TL;DR If aimpunch didn’t screw up bullet placement, the team with the best aim will win the game. Always

[Ptiloui]

@bgyoshi said:

@Szakalot said:
meh, they could just go the W:ET way of aimpunch only messing with your vision, NOT crosshair placement.

Gunplay is very similar to W:ET, with a bit shorter ttk and less revive trains. Crossfires were king then, and they are king now

…

I was against aimpunch but with this really nice and deep explanation, i’m starting to change my mind about that.

[Begin2018]

I’m not sure, because if everybody in the party have aiming skill, then it’s still the team-play and strategy who do the difference. I don’t feel the game is better since they added it.

[bgyoshi]

@Begin2018 said:
I’m not sure, because if everybody in the party have aiming skill, then it’s still the team-play and strategy who do the difference. I don’t feel the game is better since they added it.

Yes, and the team play will be boiled down to the single best team composition (it already is tbh) and who has the best aim. You don’t need engineers and support if you can just kill your opponent first and revive whoever died. You can ammo up while the other team is respawning. One of the main reasons why Thunder is super banned in any kind of organized play is because the only strategy in 5v5 is to death ball. You stay in a group of 5 and move in together. So naturally, an ability than can blind an entire team at once, at a level where the opposing team is more than skilled enough to kill the blind team before they can move, is too good.

One reason why I push 6v6 over 5v5 is because that one extra player per team allows for far more strategic play, allows teams to split up and flank in pairs, or create distractions, and so on. But 5v5 is just one team composition, and one strategy. Nothing else.

Aimpunch has always been in the game. It was never “added”. That video you posted is ancient news, and a lot of that random bullet spreading has been toned way down or removed.

[Begin2018]

Yes, I think she did the video just after this change: “Adjusted view kick so the kick speed also scales up with the amount of incoming damage received”.

[bgyoshi]

@Begin2018 said:
Yes, I think she did the video just after this change: “Adjusted view kick so the kick speed also scales up with the amount of incoming damage received”.

Yeah, in 2015, 2 months after the beta release. It was also adjusted, not added, meaning it already existed.

It has since been changed again, and again, and aimpunch isn’t even close to what it was when that video was made.

[Szakalot]

@bgyoshi said: snip

I appreciate this argument and the well thought out analysis. Coming from W:ET, if ANY aimpunch is needed, I would go for some visual effect.

I still think its utterly unnecessary. If aimpunch is the only crutch to keep sophisticated strategy in the game, its a problem of the game, not details of gun mechanics.

Some things that could easily add more depth to the game:

• nerf healing: currently within a few seconds of a finished firefights all of the winning combatants are at top health
• nerf jumping spread even further (lower mobility)
• slow down reloading (most weapons reload crazy fast, and reload cancel is a thing); again slow down mobility and create more firefights of attrition
• asymmetrical spawn timers (e.g. 20vs30sec)
• out of sync spawn timers

Keep nerfing comp ‘must pick mercs’

Problem is, the devs don’t want a comp mod, with different balancing than the pubs. This was a problem since even before W:ET. Having to adjust to both, **drastically **different groups, forces this common ground messiness, where a merc like Fragger or Aura have been receiving consecutive nerfs for 3 years now, and a meme merc like Phantom or Proxy have always sucked in comp.

Its like they want the game to be as close to W:ET as possible, without promoting /kill tactics.

[bgyoshi]

@Szakalot said:
I still think its utterly unnecessary. If aimpunch is the only crutch to keep sophisticated strategy in the game, its a problem of the game, not details of gun mechanics.

I disagree to a degree. I wouldn’t say it’s the only crutch, I’d say it’s the necessary base that should help evolve the gun play beyond simply “aim gud”, for example

Some things that could easily add more depth to the game:

• nerf healing: currently within a few seconds of a finished firefights all of the winning combatants are at top health

Definitely

• nerf jumping spread even further (lower mobility)

I don’t see why bunny hopping is seen as a problem. If you can’t shoot someone that’s bouncing around, but they can shoot you while bouncing around, sounds like you just need to improve.

• slow down reloading (most weapons reload crazy fast, and reload cancel is a thing); again slow down mobility and create more firefights of attrition

Definitely

• asymmetrical spawn timers (e.g. 20vs30sec)

Definitely

• out of sync spawn timers

Definitely, though this may make it harder for teams to coordinate. In 5v5, you can’t afford to be one man down when you run in. This would be interesting in a 6v6 game though.

Keep nerfing comp ‘must pick mercs’

Definitely

And might I just add:

• Reduce the availability of explosives
• Lengthen the cooldown on Arty airstrikes and Kira’s laser