Community Question: Damage Model

(Humate) #1

I know badman usually starts these threads, but I’m curious as to what people here prefer when it comes to combat. My understanding is, that twitch based or aim based shooters do not play very well on console. With the emergence of multi-platform titles, competitive shooters get thrown by the wayside for more “monopoly” style of games.

What do I mean by that? In cover shooters, the area which you stand on, the range of your weapon and the direction you are facing determines your “real estate”. If someone opts to roll the dice and lands on your property so to speak - the typical damage model in these games, ensures that player loses the fight.

In ET or ETQW if someone lands on your “real estate” theres a duel. It plays out a bit like rally in tennis or table tennis. You can get aced with a triple headshot. It might be a drawn out rally which attracts the attention of other players or everything in between. You can still use cover, if you prefer to play that way. You can still flank your opponent and attack unsuspecting players from behind. That style of gameplay is still available to you, but you arent guaranteed the kill because of the damage model.

In Brink you fall asleep.

So my biased poll is as follows:

  1. Monopoly - BF3, COD
  2. Tennis - ET
  3. zZzZ- Brink
  4. Other: Please reconsider and choose Tennis
(BrinkTourist) #2

I always enjoy a good nap…

(tokamak) #3

ETQW is in between tennis and monopoly, I personally lean a tiny bit towards the monopoly side of things (so a bit more damage would be great) but ETQW is fun nonetheless.

(light_sh4v0r) #4

Everyone likes a good fight where:

  1. you still have a chance if someone jumps on your back
  2. the winner of the fight is the winner because he was better at aiming and dodging simultaneously.
(ArchdemonXIII) #5

I chose other because they’re all valid depending on the game.

To me the most important thing is headshots. I don’t care how lethal bodyshots are, but if i flank someone and blast them in the face with a shotgun and it’s not a kill, that game is likely getting uninstalled.(I’m biased; I like CQB. Long range/sniping bores the hell out of me)

The other thing is reloads. if it’s an arena shooter where you have just a pool of ammo (UT, Quake) I don’t mind the more arcade-y style of damage. But if I have to reload, a clip should be capable of at least 2-3 kills.

yet another factor would be projectile speed/trajectory. if you have relatively slow moving, dodge-able projectiles, the lethality should be high. Hitscan weapons less so. Realistic bullet physics (bullet drop off, damage drop off over range, the need to lead your targets) should be pretty lethal.

Short version: depends what else the game is trying to do.

(tokamak) #6

[QUOTE=light_sh4v0r;384578]Everyone likes a good fight where:

  1. you still have a chance if someone jumps on your back
  2. the winner of the fight is the winner because he was better at aiming and dodging simultaneously.[/QUOTE]

Completely disagree. If the winner of the fight is always the guy better at aiming and dodging then all other stuff like scouting, positioning and strategies like laying ambushes or flanking no longer have any value.

Players should have a chance when being jumped on, but it should only be a really small chance. This can be reached by giving stationary players a sufficient accuracy and let the accuracy recovery (from running to halting) be slow.

Camping in deatmatches is lame because it slows down the game and the only benefit to the player is higher K/D ration. In objective driven games however, “camping” has the purpose of taking and holding vitally important positions. This is what makes shooters like these so interesting. It’s dishonest to misconstrue the act of defending a position that BOTH parties place value on as camping.

Because being tied to a position is already a disadvantage next to being able to move and aproach a position from different sides along with your team-mates, a player that holds a position NEEDS to be compensated with a considerable accuracy advantage. Not in the way of sudden kills like COD, but precisely like ETQW where you’re able to claim positions and hold them against multiple enemies in a firefight that can last a couple of seconds.

Brink did it the other way around, the weapons had a fast recovery overall but a low accuracy while stationary which is exactly what made the gunplay so boring.

(light_sh4v0r) #7

I completely agree Tokamak, maybe I didn’t put it down right. Of course the player who can get behind his enemy should have an advantage, but not so bad that his opponent is dead before he can react.

(BioSnark) #8

I disagree. A player who is flanking his opponent already has a huge advantage in reaction time. If there are spread changes based on player movement and stance, they should be minor and occur nearly instantly. My character’s heart rate or breathing should not be a factor because that differentiates me from my character. A player using a good position should benefit from controlling when and from where they engage their opponent and how much of their hitbox is vulnerable, not from an additional damage bonus via reduced spread.

Also, I didn’t experience fast spread recovery in Brink weapons. If I had, I would have understood some people’s insistence that burst fire was the secret correct way to play the game.

(tokamak) #9

The point is that you can negate a lot of tactical advantages your opponent may have by simply moving around a lot. That’s what the increased stationary accuracy needs to compensate.

You may not have noticed it because the minimum spread is so incredibly high.

(Humate) #10

Good to see this semi-serious thread turned into some good discussion.
BTW badman I hope you dont mind! :slight_smile:

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(Apples) #11

I dont know if you ever played xtreme damage mod on sof2 (one bullet one kill), but even with this mod I often ended up with the highest frag on CTF without camping a tad, and the players known to be “campers” usually were powned, maybe the maps layout? maybe the general speed of the game? well, I should reinstall it one day to have some fun, but the game is mostly dead, maybe not on gold version…

Peace

(tokamak) #12

Raven Shield does in some sense also really reward pro-active players. My point is that with more fragile players, the locations start to matter, there’s less room for mistakes.

(Humate) #13

[QUOTE=Apples;385264]I dont know if you ever played xtreme damage mod on sof2 (one bullet one kill), but even with this mod I often ended up with the highest frag on CTF without camping a tad, and the players known to be “campers” usually were powned, maybe the maps layout? maybe the general speed of the game? well, I should reinstall it one day to have some fun, but the game is mostly dead, maybe not on gold version…

Peace[/QUOTE]

Movement speed plays a big part. although I cant really comment on sof2 specifically.
In instagib arena games, if a player camps they are normally screwed. There are exceptions ofcourse - where they have full view of all the “random” spawn areas.

(INF3RN0) #14

@Toka

I think any person would agree that tactical decisions should give you the upper hand, but then of course it still comes down to aim in the end. If your flanking, your giving yourself the element of surprise against a player who perhaps gets 1-2 bullets in before you do in a frontal encounter, or maybe your aim is good enough that a flank simply preserves your hp. Crossfires are the most common strategy at maximizing team efficiency when the aim skill is equal or lacking. I’ve been flanked and put against crossfires many times that I could still survive, but that was only a reflection of the other players lack of aim ability. You may not be able to consistently overcome aim with tactics, but it definitely increases the odds in a manner that does not overshadow aim. That was where Brink horribly failed as an FPS. Having importance of aim also prevents camping from being a viable tactic. Camping is really not a very viable choice with ET style weapon mechanics, instead you are more inclined to cover a large “zone” while being in a constant state of motion. Bottle necking, like in a door/hallway, is a good tactic to maximize damage on enemies while limiting their range of movement. The definition of “camping” in an ET game is a bit hilarious when you compare it to “camping” in CoD haha.

(tokamak) #15

When the goal is bodycount then sure, camping isn’t preferable as it stagnates the game simply because there’s already nothing to prompt players to go out and control the map. However, I don’t see what’s so wrong about camping if the objective is implicitly about controlling areas. The only concern here is that the damage model shouldn’t favour camping in so far that it favours the defenders too much.

(INF3RN0) #16

Camping to get kills isn’t the same method as in CoD, is what I was saying, since the weapons in CoD are much easier to use and kill quickly no matter where you aim. In ET your better off being in a constant state of movement. Camping in ET would be like setting up crossfires in strategical areas that maximize your cover/movement and minimize the enemies; and even then people aren’t sitting still or hiding around a corner. Prone was a little more “camper style”, but you were more vulnerable to grenades and it wasn’t necessarily that advantageous (maybe just for gpmg/hyper types). You basically want to avoid standing still in ET because strafing in a firefight increases your chances of survival ten-fold. The mode is obviously not TDM, so yea dying doesn’t matter as much and discourages camping, but overall it’s just a poor tactic to use in ET considering the weapon mechanics.

(tokamak) #17

Right but that doesn’t touch on the point I’m making.

(Humate) #18

I think inferno didnt like your “fragile” comment.
Fair to say, you were making comparisons with Brink.

(INF3RN0) #19

[QUOTE=Humate;385958]I think inferno didnt like your “fragile” comment.
Fair to say, you were making comparisons with Brink.[/QUOTE]

I was only responding originally because I found Toka’s post very true, but slightly misleading/or made me wonder if I was reading his words correctly; probably because I am hesitant when he talks about tactics vs aim. I think my response pretty much speaks for itself, just wanted to clarify that in many cases superior aim/movement can overshadow tactical play, but tactics still retain value regardless of the outcome. ET is more aim/movement as a means of killing, and tactics as a means of closing the gap between aim/movement deficiency or a means of increasing ones chances of success o a level playing field. A high level team can just focus on kills, and easily destroy a low level team who simply fail when it comes to mastering the basic weapon mechanics and movement system. Many tend to mistakenly find this proof as a balance flaw between aim/intelligence, but when two teams of equal or close skill in the basic game mechanics collide, tactics suddenly determine the outcome of a game. Here’s a quick and poorly constructed analogy: If two bikers were going to race to a finish line, the “tactical” one would start at the top of a hill as it would be an obvious means of gaining an advantage. The more “mechanical” one would just pedal as hard as they could. It would seem ridiculous if the tactics lost to the mechanics, but would it be too much to ask the tactical biker to just learn to pedal harder instead of demanding the bike to be easier to use? It’s an awful analogy, but it get’s the point across I think. Something to consider overall is how loyal we want our FPS games to be to their genre First Person Shooter; me being a fan of pure aim/low damage and tactics that compliment the system instead of giving loop holes.

Brink is more pre-set tactics as a means of killing by requiring buffs and cross-spraying in order to increase the chances of randomness in your favor. The reason behind that design being that the killing mechanic (aim/movement) was dwarfed so that the truly simplistic and silly “tactical” stuff could feel more weighted. By tactics in Brink I am referring to things that are non-aim related, as in ornate plans that involve out-smarting aim or giving straight up mathematical advantage (as in buffs). But I digress…

The other part was just pointing out that the actual weapon mechanics in ET are more discouraging of traditional camping methods, rather than the game mode itself.

(Kendle) #20

Not sure which to vote for, I think the poll is biased and the description offered in the opening post is not particularly accurate.

Despite RTCW being my first game, and having played all the variants since, ET, ET:QW, Wolfenstein 2009, Brink, I’ve actually spent 6 of the last 10 years of my gaming life playing DOD:S, which uses a high damage model (way higher than BF3 or COD), but it doesn’t fit your “monopoly” description, not even slightly, in fact good aim, and in particular fast aim, is most definately rewarded.

I think the myth that high damage games are campy is just that, myth, usually perpetrated by people who don’t play those sort of games.

Personally I feel if the game uses really accurate weapons the skilled player will beat the un-skilled player (both in terms of aim and positioning) pretty much every time, the damage they do is very much a secondary concern.