Community Question: Shooting While Sprinting

[shirosae]

Most of the sound is relevant before the combat starts.

Sound is relevant any time an enemy is close enough to make short-term changes in your strategy important.

Usually this means between bursts of AR fire, since the Lac is a bit easier to hear past and the other weapons don’t tend to be such continual sound outputs. This is actually kinda handy in some ways if you use the AR noise to cover the footsteps of teammates flanking.

And sounds become only more useful under a dynamic spread system exactly because you get to prepare.

This is what you don’t understand: You don’t ‘prepare’ with these senses, you adapt continually as you pew pew during the fight. The preparation is during the fight, continually, alongside the fighting. Other people are capable of doing the strategy and pew pew at the same time.

Oh and I loved the sound drop-offs. Being able to disorientate your opponent is a great tactical asset.

(1) Sounds are important before combat starts.
(2) Making an opponent deaf during a fight disorientates them.

Are you trolling me?

[Humate]

The more you post shirosae, the more I agree with you… particular this part:

You don’t ‘prepare’ with these senses, you adapt continually as you pew pew during the fight. The preparation is during the fight, continually, alongside the fighting. Other people are capable of doing the strategy and pew pew at the same time.

[Kendle]

You can express the combat potency in the average time it will take before you eliminate the target With so many odds taken in such a short amount of time you’ll find that there’s very little variation in between these different lengths of time. And this is provided all other factors are eliminated, the external factors will have a far bigger impact on lowering the predictability of your elimination time than the spread itself has.

You use words like “you’ll find” and “will have” like I haven’t played online shooters for 10 years and don’t KNOW that spread adds luck and unpredictability to the outcome of a firefight.

I’m not debating with you whether it does or it doesn’t, I know the answer to that question for a fact, I’m only debating with you the degree to which it does and contend that it’s an unacceptable degree. The fact that Brink has significant spread (or had) and that so many people stopped playing it because of that (just read the threads about it, especially in the clan section where players are generally good enough that it really matters) if my 10 years experience with hit scan shooters isn’t enough for you.

[Apples]

If you are able to recreate a statistical law, in 3 dimension (cone of fire), and calculate the odds and the mod of the 3 dimensional density of probability, and add some other dimensions as you also move yourself, while you are shooting at someone, all of that by head, yeah randomness isnt random then :rolleyes:

Indeed spread is probabilities and it isnt randomly generated but follow a statistical distribution law, but this law just add “luck” into aiming because you arent capable of controling it consistently, thats why with a flat spread you can rely only on your ability to track the opponent as you dont add any variance / noise into the equation, it’s not that super hard to understand and your capacity to deny that impresses me toka

Peace

[tokamak]

You are capable of controlling it consistently. Don’t move, ironsight and you can get incredibly clean shots off. It’s just that’s not always the best way to approach things.

With a flat spread moving around around as much as possible is a no-brainer. No-brainers are what makes a game boring because everyone is doing the same thing.

This is what you don’t understand: You don’t ‘prepare’ with these senses, you adapt continually as you pew pew during the fight. The preparation is during the fight, continually, alongside the fighting. Other people are capable of doing the strategy and pew pew at the same time.

MOST people are capable of doing that and shooting at the same time. ESPECIALLY if you simplify things so far there’s very little worth thinking about, then it’s indeed that little headshot game that’s left.

You present it as if the fight is constant. This is far from true. Encounters happen in varied places at varied times. People who are able to anticipate the opponent’s next move should be rewarded for that.

You use words like “you’ll find” and “will have” like I haven’t played online shooters for 10 years and don’t KNOW that spread adds luck and unpredictability to the outcome of a firefight.

Which would be a valid point if players weren’t able to accurately determine the spread they’d wish to have in the moment.

[Apples]

Which would be a valid point if players weren’t able to accurately determine the spread they’d wish to have in the moment.

You are playing with words here, determining the spread is far from determining exactly where your bullet will hit, and this you cant predict unless you can solve randomness algorithm by heads while playing as I said earlier even if the cone of fire is tight, the randomness inside the cone is there and add some layer of randomness into the firefight, having a flat spread will still reward people with good positionning and tactics and approach of the fight, it’ll even reward them more than with a random spread effect, as someone who is just caught off guard, flick turn and shot in the general direction of the ennemy can hit the head with spread (by luck) while he wont be able to hit even the torso if he has to aim perfectly to land his shot.

Exagerating stuffs, if you have a 3 meters round spread around your caracter, you can headshot kill someone you dont even see in your screen by pure luck when you are caught of guard and just shoot by reflex, thus, this system can reward a bad positionning + bad aim + bad awareness because it’s compensated by the random effect. On the opposite you took the time to position yourself well and to reduce your spread to say, 1 meters around your crosshair, there is still a chance that your perfect headshot will miss and that you’ll be killed because the other one shoot you without even seeing you.

Yeah it’s exagerated and it’s on purpose because we are discussing theory here, there is no way a random effect can add anything into a game, unless some stuff about “realism”, because a good player might loose to a bad player because of this random effect, and the more spreads deviate from flat, the more you increase the odds of this situation to happens. While with a flat spread, good positionning and awareness + tracking will be allways rewarded with the upper hand.

Randomness is just random throwed into the equation making it impossible to predict the outcome without uncertainty, that’s all.

Peace

[tokamak]

You are playing with words here, determining the spread is far from determining exactly where your bullet will hit

Sure, glad we’re on the same page there. I already said that even if you were able to determine where your next bullet was going to hit, then it would be useless information as you wouldn’t be able to adjust in time.

I’m saying that being able to determine the spread, and thus the probability of hitting your target and (jeez do I need to go through all this again?) thus your combat potency defined in estimated time it will take you to kill him is enough.

Yeah it’s exagerated and it’s on purpose because we are discussing theory here, there is no way a random effect can add anything into a game, unless some stuff about “realism”,

Trust me, this isn’t for the sake of realism. Random stuff is bad if you’re not able to control it or work with it, but dynamic spread is anything but that. It’s a highly controllable factor and it allows for far more profound mind games than if it was left out.

I’m not even sure why I’m arguing for this. To me all of this seems incredibly obvious, to all tactical shooter developers, and I’m sure it’s just painfuly obvious to everyone here as well. I don’t think anyone here is going to say that ETQW is tarnished by it’s dynamic spread.

[Runeforce]

…zzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz…

[Kendle]

So is something simply being lost in translation here?

You agree you can’t predict the direction each bullet will take, only that it will land within what we’ve been referring to as the “spread” of the weapon? If so great, we’re on the same page with that one and you’re not the imbecile I was beginning to think you were.

You maintain you can predict the spread, i.e. know in advance, or at some point, that there’s going to be spread and you really ought to do something (whatever is within your control) to deal with that. Fine, no-one’s ever argued otherwise as far as I can see. I and others are only talking about the distribution of individual bullets with the “cone of fire” of the weapon. In other words no-one’s arguing that we can’t predict there’s going to be spread, we just can’t predict what the effect of that spread wil be.

It still remains that spread = luck, because the individual trajectory of any given bullet is not within your control, they will each land where a software algorithm puts them, not where you want them. As such some bullets, thru no fault of yours, will miss the target. Some of your opponents bullets will of course miss you, but the number of your bullets that hit your opponent, and the number of his that hit you, may not be the same, and is not within your control, or your opponents, therefore the outcome of the encounter is determined by luck, to an extent.

The “extent” may be small, you may know (predict) there’s going to be a “margin of error” as to precisely where your bullets land, however there’s still a margin of error (imposed on you by the game), something you can’t do anything about (even tho you predicted it would happen) and something that can and does determine the outcome of firefights.

Replace “spread” with “recoil” and you still have a balancing mechanism, something that punishes you for moving contrary to the default movement speed (if it’s agreed that such punishment is justified, and I’m not arguing that it isn’t), however spread is random and un-controllable, recoil is not random (assuming it’s the simple lift your barrel up as you fire sort of recoil) and therefore is controllable.

Assuming we do now agree that spread (as in the existence of it) is predictable, whereas spread (as in the effect of it) isn’t, can we please put this particular debate to bed?

[tokamak]

You agree you can’t predict the direction each bullet will take, only that it will land within what we’ve been referring to as the “spread” of the weapon? If so great, we’re on the same page with that one and you’re not the imbecile I was beginning to think you were.

It just seems like such a moot point to me. Imagine the game indicating precisely where the next bullets will land through the means of tiny dots in your crosshair. Then what? There’s no way you get to adjust your aim to that without slowing down your firing.

So seriously, why are we still talking about this bit? The fact alone that this keeps being brought up as if it’s some kind of argument either way just suggests that people here don’t have a tight grip on the subject.

You maintain you can predict the spread, i.e. know in advance, or at some point, that there’s going to be spread and you really ought to do something (whatever is within your control) to deal with that. Fine, no-one’s ever argued otherwise as far as I can see. I and others are only talking about the distribution of individual bullets with the “cone of fire” of the weapon. In other words no-one’s arguing that we can’t predict there’s going to be spread, we just can’t predict what the effect of that spread wil be.

It still remains that spread = luck, because the individual trajectory of any given bullet is not within your control, they will each land where a software algorithm puts them, not where you want them. As such some bullets, thru no fault of yours, will miss the target. Some of your opponents bullets will of course miss you, but the number of your bullets that hit your opponent, and the number of his that hit you, may not be the same, and is not within your control, or your opponents, therefore the outcome of the encounter is determined by luck, to an extent.

And you determine that extend. The whole point of dynamic spread is that it creates a margin of error you’re solely responsible for. You’re able to reduce your spread to near zero, you’re able to reduce it so far that you’re still able to hit from incredible ranges. Requiring near-zero spread is usually only required for long range warfare. For anything below that people will usually gladly take some spread in favour of having some extra mobility. Whatever they consider worth more.

[Kendle]

[QUOTE=tokamak;386826]It just seems like such a moot point to me. Imagine the game indicating precisely where the next bullets will land through the means of tiny dots in your crosshair. Then what? There’s no way you get to adjust your aim to that without slowing down your firing.

So seriously, why are we still talking about this bit? The fact alone that this keeps being brought up as if it’s some kind of argument either way just suggests that people here don’t have a tight grip on the subject.[/QUOTE]

It suggests we’re talking at odds, with you talking about predicting something’s going to happen, and the rest of us (which knew that anyway) talking about the effect of that something. No-one’s ever suggested distribution within the cone should be a known factor that you can predict or adjust to on the fly. I’m suggesting there should be no cone to begin with, so that even attempting to adjust to it (seeing as we both agree that would be impossible) is simply not part of the game.

And you determine that extend.

No you don’t (currently), the game does.

[QUOTE=tokamak;386826]The whole point of dynamic spread is that it creates a margin of error you’re solely responsible for. You’re able to reduce your spread to near zero, you’re able to reduce it so far that you’re still able to hit from incredible ranges. Requiring near-zero spread is usually only required for long range warfare …

… people will usually gladly take some spread in favour of having some extra mobility. Whatever they consider worth more.[/QUOTE]

OK I’m getting your point now. Thru mechanics within your control, movement, stance, etc. you control the amount of spread, so you choose between moving fast with high spread or moving slow with low spread. Fine, that bit was getting lost in all the other gumpf.

Personally however I’d rather have dynamic recoil than dynamic spread. Spread is still luck, after all these pages and all these words that’s what it boils down to. Adding “dynamic” luck doesn’t change the fact it’s luck.

[tokamak]

Yeah, I’m not saying that a high minimum amount of spread is a good thing. I think Brink punishes people that do their best to keep their spread low way too much by letting the spread escalate very fast. When a player goes for the low spread stance in the game, then he should be able to make his aiming skills count.

In regards to luck, you can say poker involves luck, but professional players are still able to consistently
alleviate the amateurs from millions of dollars each day simply by knowing the statistics of of these odds.

Like those Sting lyrics

He deals the cards to find the answer
The sacred geometry of chance
The hidden law of probable outcome
The numbers lead a dance

You can see spread as poker within the shooter genre. Play too bold and you end up losing a lot, play too safe and you won’t kill anything at all. But know when to turn the odds in your favour and you’ll heap in reward after reward.

[Bullveyr]

[QUOTE=Kendle;386828]
Personally however I’d rather have dynamic recoil than dynamic spread. Spread is still luck, after all these pages and all these words that’s what it boils down to. Adding “dynamic” luck doesn’t change the fact it’s luck.[/QUOTE]
For me it’s the other way around simply because I prefer my screen not shaking and/or my gun moving on the screen.

I guess you mean 100% predictable recoil, so not like it’s done in CoD for example?

[Kendle]

I guess you mean 100% predictable recoil, so not like it’s done in CoD for example?

Of course, it has to be predictable so it can be countered, otherwise it’d be no better than spread.

[Bullveyr]

Of course, it has to be predictable so it can be countered, otherwise it’d be no better than spread.

Unlike spread you can see unpredictable recoil and compensate it.

[Kendle]

That’s why I like recoil, you can see it, you can take positive action to counter it, and you get immediate visual feedback as to whether your actions are countering it successfully, and you get all that whilst moving and changing stance as well, even if the degree of recoil changes with movement.

[tokamak]

What recoil does is punishing the second shot while keeping the first shot accurate. This means that players always get an accurate shot in short intervals regardless of how they’re running.

The degree of recoil is also unpredictable because it can’t be visualised to the extend that spread can. Spread is way more workable because you can instinctively see how much of the target covers your spread circle. That’s precisely the chance each bullet will hit.

[Kendle]

… players always get an accurate shot in short intervals regardless of how they’re running.

Which is a good thing, burst firing is a skill, and should be rewarded. Accuracy is the opposite of luck and we should always strive to achieve it.

The degree of recoil is also unpredictable because it can’t be visualised to the extend that spread can. Spread is way more workable because you can instinctively see how much of the target covers your spread circle.

Recoil is immediately visualised by the rising gun barrel, and control of it is immediately fed back by the lowering of the gun barrel as you move the mouse down.

Spread being visible (via a circle around your crosshair) is meaningless unless you have the means to affect it.

[tokamak]

You won’t be able to accurately compensate with dynamic recoil. With spread however, you have every means to affect it AND observe how much it’s impacted. Any action you take shows directly the impact on your spread without firing your gun.

[Kendle]

You won’t be able to accurately compensate with dynamic recoil.

Who said anything about dynamic recoil?

With spread however, you have every means to affect it AND observe how much it’s impacted. Any action you take shows directly the impact on your spread without firing your gun.

I assume you mean your vision of dynamic spread, because at the moment we have ironsighted spread and fire from the hip spread, and you can’t change either.

So you’re comparing spread we don’t have with a type of recoil no-one has mentioned ??