Some criticisms of Dirty Bomb's gun fight mechanics, and some ideas to improve it

(watsyurdeal) #1
  1. The M4 is currently the only fully automatic weapon with a predictable recoil pattern

If you watch the video you’ll notice that the M4 goes in a / pattern. The bullets going out at certain angles is spread, and that’s not what I mean, I simply mean the direction in which the recoil pulls you is always in a / direction.

Now compare that to other weapons like the Crotzni and SMG 9, it’s entirely random. And I don’t believe if the game wants to be competitive, that it should stay this way. Part of good game design is no random changes, the player should be able to reasonably asses patterns or repetition so they can build habits around them. For example, the Airstrike marker always goes in a horizontal direction when it lands, the knife always gibs downed enemies in a single hit, and various other things that are consistent and always work in the same manner. This allows for good gameplay, and I believe this change to recoil will do the same.

2. Range, does it actually tell you anything useful? Such as damage falloff, damage rampup? Why does it not instead, tell you the distance you’re guaranteed an accurate headshot from hipfire?

This is something else Counter Stike does, Range basically tells you the distance at which you are guaranteed to hit a 20 cm plate, in other words, guaranteed to hit someone in the head, assuming your aim is true.

I believe Dirty Bomb would benefit from this as well, as it’d make certain guns more distinct in their role and how they should be used. Something like the KEK for example may not have as great of range as the SMG 9, so even though it’s good up close, the SMG 9 beats it at a distance.

It could also be used to tell the player when the gun will start to lose it’s damage, so say the SMG 9 has a range of 30 units, after those 30 units, the gun’s 12 damage begins to decrease, all the way down to 50% (6 damage).

3. Hit indicators could do more, they tell when you are dealing damage, but I think it could go further

So if you’ve played Battlefield 4, one of the neat things they’ve added is different color indicators for dealing damage, and for when you kill someone.

I think Dirty Bomb could do something similar

Red - Damging an enemy
Blue - Damaging a friendly
Green - Enemy downed
Yellow - Enemy gibbed

This is a subtle thing but I think it’d really help people to know immediately that they’ve killed an enemy aside from the kill confirmation you get “killed BatFan”.

4. Aimpunch, should be entirely visual, and not affect spread

Pansy said it better than I ever could

(Someordinaryguy) #2

More things could be implemented from BF4 apart from the hit indicator colord (customization would be cool too), for example:

1)Visual recoil
Make it like in BF4 where the dot on RDS (for Blishlok for example [and more guns in the future I hope]) doesn’t move but the sight does. This will make “staying on target” easier, especially with aimpunch.

2)CustomizationI don’t want crazy level of customization like BF4 but a few sights to pick and for example silencer/other accesories would be nice (each should have pros and cons though)

3)Punishing for bunnyhopping/kangaroo jumping
It’s annoying to fight against shotgun classes as squisher mercs who constantly jump around with little to no penalty for doing this, while other weapons get somewhat affected. I get that shotguns should be good in CQB but atm they’re way too good.

4)Introduce muzzle velocity
Right now all weapons are hitscan, introducing muzzle velocity system would spice things up. For example Blishlok would have faster travelling and more damaging bullets than other SMG’s to compensate for it’s slow ROF.
The list would be: Bolt Snipers->Semi-snipers/REVIVR->LMG’s/semi rifles->Burst rifles->Assault Rifles->SMG’s->Revolvers&DEagle->Machine Pistols->Pistols->Shotguns

Add limited charges to defibs&triage system
In BF4 you can’t do medic train as easily as in the previous titles. You have a limited number of charges, that regenerate over time. But you also get a indicator above dead teammates, showing how much time left you have to revive them (slowly decaying circle).
It’s annoying to run to a teammate with 100% charged defibs and he taps out and respawns. The way I see it would be having a 2-3s “hold K to tap out” instead of just clicking the button and an indicator showing how much time teammate has left before he respawns. Limited charges would promote smart reviving instead of rushing and reviving with small amount of HP.

To make both Defibs and Revivr more distinct Defibs would have a slower charge but revive up to 100% and “regenerate” charges at medium speed . Revivr would be able to revive to max 60% HP, charge slightly faster and have the current “recharge” speed.

5)More diverse perks&loadouts
Some perks are just useless on some classes (like Cool on Sparks), some are just plain bad (Flying Pig)and some could be “added” to some mercs (f.ex. Quick Charge for other medics). Some new augments would be cool too (my personal favourite would be a cooldown reducing perk for Fragger)

Offtopic

1)The way they handled healing items
For those who haven’t played BF4 there are 2 types of healing items to pick: Medpack and Medbag.

The first one is a throwable pouch that can be picked by anyone (or “sticks” to teammates when it lands near them) and heals 10hp/s back to 100hp unless you take damage (even 1 dmg will stop healing).

Medbag on the other hand is AOE, meaning you can heal multiple people, much like Aura’s Health Station/Phoenix Pulse. Like the Station it stays in place and heals you after you take damage too.

You may be thinking Medbag is superior but in reality it isn’t. First of all you need to sit near it to heal you- and with medpack you just pick it and it heals you as you move. Secondly there’s a suppression system in BF4- as long as you take damage/bullets are flying near you the medbag WON’T heal (plus a few seconds of “cooldown”), while the medpack will keep healing if bullets are flying by (but if you get shot, it stops healing).

This (with small tweaks) could be implemented into DB to make Medics more diverse. The way I see it is:

AURA:
As long as you get shot/health station is shot it won’t heal but if you/it isn’t damaged for 1-2 s it will slowly start healing (50% heal rate at start, slowly building up to “normal rate”) This would promote accuracy and make people inside HS area less tanky.

Sawbonez
Should stay as it is

Sparks
Her medpacks are small and often teammates will “dodge” them plus compared to other heal abilities medpacks are weak. I’d love to see their hitboxes made “bigger” and give more HP (40HP normally and more with potent packs)As a trade-off only 2 could be placed at the same time (to avoid spam)

Phoenix
Too high-risk, not enough “reward” Buff to cooldown and fixing some augments (cough Potent Packs cough Extra Supplies) would be nice. Maybe even introduce Quick Charge augment (the one that Sparks has)

(Samniss_Arandeen) #3

I’m thinking Aura’s healing station should heal at a slower rate as more players enter its area, reducing the effectiveness of congregating around it. Then again, I like the idea of removing hitscan, making people have to lead their targets and account for drop.

Aimpunch! Aimpunch should only take effect if you have your crosshairs on a target other than the one that aimpunched you. It’ll do its job of distracting enemies (snipers especially) and making two-on-one engagements even more deadly for the lone guy, but won’t give flanking and surprise attacks even bigger advantage than they already did before aimpunch.

Phoenix’s healing pulse. Show me an icon over the Phoenix’s head when he’s charging it up so I know to stay near him. Also, if he fires off a pulse, he should be able to charge up and fire another, kinda like how Redeye can reactivate his IR Goggles even when they haven’t fully cooled down yet. As he currently stands, Phoenix has massive periods where he isn’t healing his team.

(CCP115) #4

[quote=“Samniss_Arandeen;80879”]I’m thinking Aura’s healing station should heal at a slower rate as more players enter its area, reducing the effectiveness of congregating around it. Then again, I like the idea of removing hitscan, making people have to lead their targets and account for drop.

Aimpunch! Aimpunch should only take effect if you have your crosshairs on a target other than the one that aimpunched you. It’ll do its job of distracting enemies (snipers especially) and making two-on-one engagements even more deadly for the lone guy, but won’t give flanking and surprise attacks even bigger advantage than they already did before aimpunch.

Phoenix’s healing pulse. Show me an icon over the Phoenix’s head when he’s charging it up so I know to stay near him. Also, if he fires off a pulse, he should be able to charge up and fire another, kinda like how Redeye can reactivate his IR Goggles even when they haven’t fully cooled down yet. As he currently stands, Phoenix has massive periods where he isn’t healing his team.[/quote]

That Aura change literally destroys her whole purpose. Explosives are her counter, any airstrike or Fragger nade will scatter them all.

Aimpunch is a tricky thing. A lot of people want it straight gone, others want it kept visually, and then you have my stance, which is just keep a little bit of aimpunch that scales with weapon damage. Your suggestion is really complex and odd, and just weird.

Phoenix has an odd role that isn’t strictly defined. He’s a lot more offensive than all the other medics, so that seems to be where he sits.
Also doesn’t he have this massive circle or something around him when he charges? I haven’t seen many Phoenixes, so I can’t say.