Next Movement Test Patch

(tokamak) #161

Exactly, dodging would imply that you know what you were avoiding. You’re not dodging, you’re dancing. You’re giving yourself an arbitrary movement pattern to make yourself a more difficult target.

[QUOTE=Bananas;416452]Out of curiosity, I would love to hear exactly how you think firefights should play out.

I see that “jittery dancing” as what adds skill to firefights. The game would be utterly boring and borderline a completely different game if people just hid behind boxes peaking at each other.

So please, explain how you think firefights should work in this objective based game. Also enlighten me as to how dancing works against gun diversity.[/QUOTE]

If you believe that the firefight starts at the moment the players start shooting then yes, it does add more skill because otherwise the whole outcome would be more fixed.

However, skill is also something that is also relevant before the the firefights happen. The conditions in which the firefights start and are resolved are also down to skill. A player that knows the map and anticipated the enemy and through that managed to get the drop on that guy should enjoy a considerable advantage.

Dancing and the prevalence of hipfire both decrease this advantage. It may still be there but it becomes less important because players either get a way out through the dancing or the attacker has less means to heighten his advantage due to ironsights being less useful.

In turn this makes the geometry of the maps less important. It makes more sense to just keep rushing into each other and frantically bounce around because that gives you more chance of survival than to carefully secure locations and back each other up.

If you start punishing people more for being careless you’re automatically rewarding the players who think things through which adds a lot more depth than what’s currently going on.

(shirosae) #162

Nope; people good at aiming tend to use strafing as well as mouse movement to aim. As such, when you’re dodging you tend to mix both aiming and evasion in to your movement. By looking at your opponents movement, you time your movement to frustrate his aiming.

(tokamak) #163

Sure but none of that takes away from what I said, you’re not dodging in the way you’re dodging a grenade. You’re just give yourself a random pattern to make yourself more unpredictable. Dodging is a bad word, dancing covers it exactly. Don’t mince words in order to make it seem more impressive than it really is.

(DarkangelUK) #164

Sorry but that’s nonsense, I use the bullet tracers from the enemy gun to see where he’s shooting, if the tracers start crossing over to match my movement I then ‘dodge’ the line of fire and move the other way, and I tried to continually dodge the bullet line… it’s just more difficult to do at the moment due to reduced strafe speed and high rof. Are you going to tell us now that you’re much more of an authority on aiming and movement than anyone else here just like you are for f2p titles?

(Senethro) #165

No idea what point you’re trying to prove here, but like most tangents about terminology its extremely tiresome.

(tokamak) #166

@DA Right, and I use Bayesian extrapolation to predict where the entire opponent team will be, what classes they are and how much ammo they have left at any point in time.

I’m responding to someone who wanted everyone here to start calling it dodging rather than dancing. As someone else pointed out, this is a meaningful difference in the way it’s being framed. Other than that it’s indeed not the most useful thing to discuss so I’m just going to keep calling it dancing. If people feel they’re actually dodging things then they can call it that. I don’t mind.

(warbie) #167

I’ve no problem with calling it dancing, have been for years. Duelling works too if people want something that sounds a bit more macho :slight_smile:

For what’s worth, I see with what you’re saying, tokamak, and agree that high movement speeds and accurate hip firing take away from positional advantage. Where we probably disagree is that I think this is a good thing, and that the importance of positional advantage in nearly all current shooters is far too high, rewarding luck and randomness as much as clever play. I disagree that it makes geometry of the maps less important, though, as any advantage is key in combat. This is especially true in a game like ET, where tactics and team play become the battles of attrition that they should be, rather than lottery draw we often see in slower games.

(tokamak) #168

Okay if people like to call it duelling and feel it’s less derogative then that also works for me and it kind of hits on the subjective nature of this issue.

I feel duelling is still an artefact from the arena shooters. And I love arena shooters but this gameplay mechanic encroaches on the depth that could be reached by tactical shooters. I like games where I can’t duel myself a way out of bad situations. I like games where I can set an ambush, perhaps even put down an entire group of players simply because I outwitted them. I feel that having been outsmarted needs to be punished as that makes the game more rewarding.

Duelling reduces this penalty, duelling gives you a way out regardless of how clever the situation could have been.

And I don’t want a second Raven Shield. Well I do but it doesn’t fit the ET structure, RS also has objectives but they usually revolved around simply killing the other team rather than doing the actual objective.

I want the game to be about the objectives and duelling takes away from that. The other direction, like you stated, is also bad. Getting the drop should determine the absolute outcome. There needs to be some leeway but I rather see this come in the form of a lower fire rate than in the form of even more movement, which is already ridiculously high in this game.

(warbie) #169

I don’t get that jump - how longer lasting fights take away from objective play. Nor that more tactical shooters have any more depth. Infarct, how are they more tactical - you’re doing the same things, just much slower :wink:

(tokamak) #170

The longer a fight lasts the less control you can have over an area by having the best position.

I want this:

To be a relevant tactic again. ETQW was fast but it also give you the ability to lock down paths if you really committed to it.

And speaking of which, where the hell is lean? I really value being able to lean and I use it in all the games where I can. I sorely miss it in DB.

(DarkangelUK) #171

We know, you’ve said all that before.

(adhesive) #172

he is further proving how clueless he is about how actually tactical shooters work.
i also would like to add this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactic

(warbie) #173

ET had that too - and was faster and more dancey that DB. Watch any decent match and teams are closing down areas.

(tokamak) #174

I prefer ETQW over WET in that regard. QW wasn’t nearly as dancey and it meant more area control in the end.

[QUOTE=adhesive;416611]he is further proving how clueless he is about how actually tactical shooters work.
i also would like to add this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactic[/QUOTE]

Yeah now imagine you need to have an arm-wrestling match before any chess-move becomes valid.

(H0RSE) #175

[QUOTE=tokamak;416607]
And speaking of which, where the hell is lean? I really value being able to lean and I use it in all the games where I can. I sorely miss it in DB.[/QUOTE]
If they add lean, I hope they do it how it was in RTCW, where you can hold down the action key and press left or right.

(shirosae) #176

The situation is like this: I’m patrolling an area (or encounter someone who is as I push forward) and I come face to face with another player. Neither of us were camping, and we both notice each other at the same time.

We both start strafing, and lining up for headshots.

If we are both strafing in the same direction, we’re essentially static relative to each other, and aiming for a headshot is easy. If we’re travelling in different directions, or at different speeds, or one of us crouches, we are no longer static, so aiming becomes more difficult.

If I want to hit her, I can intentionally match her movement.
If I want to evade, I can intentionally not match her movement.

I can watch the other player’s fire. Is she unloading the full magazine? Can I evade until she’s low on ammo, and then counter? Is she bursting? Can I dodge during the burst, then match her movement between bursts to fire myself? Maybe they’re bursting because they’re low on ammo? Is she jiggling towards cover? Is she low on health already? Can I risk taking a few bullets and use my extra HP to bulldozer her? I hear some gunfire too my right, off screen. Is that an ally, or a foe? Can I tell which by looking at her reaction to it? Can I work that risk management into my movement without giving up so much that I lose this fight?

Even this description really doesn’t do the process justice, because it happens at a speed too quick to actually phrase those questions in your head; it happens at some freaky interface between reaction and battle awareness. That’s why people want it so badly. You don’t get games which operate at that kind of speed almost anywhere else.

This conversation has been like listening to someone asserting that boxers are randomly flailing their arms about without strategy or thought or relation to their opponent. Deny all you like, call it whatever name you like, pretend it’s irrelevant all you like. It’s important, and it’s brilliant.

(tokamak) #177

Most of that can be brought up with less lethality and there are different routes to achieve that. Dancing is one of them but it’s also the one that ruins the advantage in situations where you don’t bump into each other.

(shirosae) #178

Nope, because the advantage gives you a free shot without return fire. If three headshots kill, and you get a free headshot (at least, depending on fire rates and reaction time), that’s a considerable advantage. It’s just no longer an insta-win.

(Humate) #179

And you can always bring a knife to a gun fight.

(tangoliber) #180

And many of us don’t. We simply like different things, and no amount of analysis can reconcile that fact. I like the element of positioning, but I don’t want it to be as important as you want it to be.

American Football reference: For the defender, being in the right position and taking the right angle, gives him a big advantage in trying to tackle the running back. Just that advantage makes it important enough. But a great running back still has a chance to get out of it by juking, stiff arming, breaking the tackle, hurdling, whatever… It wouldn’t be as fun if great players couldn’t make plays.

If there is any benefit to positioning in an FPS, then a team with better tactics will have a longterm advantage. Even if they get beat in one instance, the consistent 30% advantage or whatever due to better positioning/tactics will mean a lot over the course of a match.