State of Play: Modes, Movement, Mercs, & More

(chenapan) #101

Anti i think you focus too much on the strafe side. and lose the big picture doing so.
Nobody is “just” strafing, we are strafing AND tracking AND shooting at the same time, and this is the Combination of it wich is skillfull…

skill = being able to compensate your own movement to have a steady crosshair plus tracking the opponent

this video is not about fighting but just show clearly what i mean by aiming as a combination of movement and mouse
[video=youtube_share;0agxm3My93E]http://youtu.be/0agxm3My93E[/video]

we cant do that if we dont have fast movement, with very low acceleration and low spread impact from the movement
it is the exact opposite of CS where aiming is mouse skill only
and just very different of tribes ( wich i also played) where the skill is in the prediction of the other player movement indeed and the dodge is really a dodge
it is nice but more slow paced.

(chenapan) #102

My gut feeling is that it’d actually feel better if the speed was high but the acceleration was lower. This would make rlrlrlrl stuff less effective but would make full left or right strafes with the occasional break, what I see as more skilled strafing, actually more effective.

and this is the opposite of what we need in order to feel what i try to explain :s

we need very low to no acceleration… a almost instant change in speed direction so we can compensate it with the mouse . .again you miss teh fact that nobody is just dodging ( probably because of your tribes past where as teh projectile are slow and the rof very slow, dodging is totally different)

i think you should think about the lrlrlr stuff more as a dance than a dodge and again always think about the all process of fighting

to sum it up the winner of a fight is not the one who is better at spamming lrlrlrlr ( everybody knows how to do it or can learn in 10seconds)
but the one who is better at compensate his own movement and at tracking the other guy = skill

(chenapan) #103

My gut feeling is that it’d actually feel better if the speed was high but the acceleration was lower. This would make rlrlrlrl stuff less effective but would make full left or right strafes with the occasional break, what I see as more skilled strafing, actually more effective.

… and this is the exact opposite of what we need to feel what i try to explain :s

what we need is actually very low to no acceleration at all. A quick and predictable change of direction and speed in order to compensate it with the mouse

i think you should think about the lrlrlr stuff more as a dance than a dodge and again always think about the all process of fighting

(stealth6) #104

Bring back staminabar & enable sprint in all the situations people want. BF has unlimited sprint because the maps are huge… I don’t feel it’s needed in XT and would improve the experience if it was removed. Might solve the spread issue too since people will be moving slowly more frequently which helps according to Anti. You could even tie in walljumps so 3 jumps depletes your stamina bar, allowing you to chain jumps at a cost. So many possibilities…

Or don’t, XT isn’t a bad game I just don’t think it appeals to SD’s old fans in it’s current form.

(Anti) #105

A little, but it was mostly the growth rate. We don’t want guns to reward holding down fire for 10-15 seconds, you need to exercise some control of the weapon beyond pure tracking, even if it is minimal burst fire or recoil compensation.

(Anti) #106

[QUOTE=Mustang;496862]Eww…

I don’t know at what point you would call it spam, but I’d rather we just penalised the spammers (e.g. with increased spread whilst spamming) rather than penalise everyone.[/QUOTE]

Not a bad idea, although we’d have to communicate it clearly, which could be hard as it’s quite an abstract concept compared to many.

(Anti) #107

[QUOTE=chenapan;496870]and this is the opposite of what we need in order to feel what i try to explain :s

we need very low to no acceleration… a almost instant change in speed direction so we can compensate it with the mouse . .again you miss teh fact that nobody is just dodging ( probably because of your tribes past where as teh projectile are slow and the rof very slow, dodging is totally different)

i think you should think about the lrlrlr stuff more as a dance than a dodge and again always think about the all process of fighting

to sum it up the winner of a fight is not the one who is better at spamming lrlrlrlr ( everybody knows how to do it or can learn in 10seconds)
but the one who is better at compensate his own movement and at tracking the other guy = skill[/QUOTE]

I know what you mean and I understand what you want, you want to be able to dodge. You also want to be able to hit people. Easy dodging is the main nemesis of accuracy from all the tests we’ve performed, that’s all I’m pointing out :slight_smile:

(chenapan) #108

I know what you mean and I understand what you want, you want to be able to dodge. You also want to be able to hit people. Easy dodging is the main nemesis of accuracy from all the tests we’ve performed, that’s all I’m pointing out

hum no , i probably was not clear… ( i am french and my english is probably too poor :confused: )
I dont really care about being able to dodge i want strafe fast and feel the “dance”

it is obvious that the learning curve is very hard and that accuracy is impacted by fast movement… but the reward is greater and the feeling is better
this first diffulty let us to have a lot of room to improve our tracking skill

in fact the strafing should not be a way to dodge , but just a way to force the opponent to track.
it should just be the base of any fight or “duel” as a lot of tester call it

the winner is the one who track and compensate his own movement better, not the one who “dodge better”

(Bangtastic) #109

hmm what you describe is true in 1v1 situations, but its more common 2v2, 3v4 or 4v4. There you got a lot more layers of combat and factors which determine who is going to win the gun fight, this has also to do with map awareness positioning and not only who is the “xT dancing star”. It is reasonable to balance this one aspect, one layer of the movement. you can also wall jump here to evade bullets, you couldnt do that in ET and I think its better than only pressing rlrlrlrl in ecstacy.

BTW video you posted, its the same in cs how you approach corners.

(spookify) #110

This! So much this. I think this with the longer range shots not really being to effective (OR not knowing how to burst it) piss me off the most in game.

Something is super wrong with very close range strafe shots. Im talking the I should be able to pop out (Strafe POP out) and dink you and that hardly happens even though I am right on the head. Gun gets all freaked out or something.

(Anti) #111

As always if you folks have video clips showing moments when it feels bad then please upload them as unlisted and send us a link, it helps us track down issues and fix them (or figure out if it’s feedback/balance issues rather than tech issues), especially when we don’t see the same issues ourselves.

(spookify) #112

Slighty reduced strafe speed I am sure will help but that doesnt fix the problem of running forward at someone who is standing still and hardly getting a blep hit! Something is broke there! If I backrage two people I should be able to run at them and down them both.

Heck to be honest I have no idea how to handle that situation in this game… Do I STOP crouch and then tap shoot? Running at them and shooting doesnt seem to down them very fast!

Are the head shot hit boxes smaller from the back because they sure feel like it!!! Visually they are a lot different from the back!

WHAT IF you make upper torso Back shots worth a little more or something. Something feels very off.

(spookify) #113

[QUOTE=Anti;496858]I understand that, it’s similar in other slower games where you’ll strafe one way but break the strafe occasionally. My point is more that erratic rlrlllrlrlrlr type motions, spammed randomly, are just as effective as more consciously made dodge moves. Not only that but there is no real ‘tell’ about where the opponent is aiming, so it’s not like you’re seeing their play and reacting to it, it’s not the same skill as dodging slow moving projectiles like grenades or rockets in Q3, UT or Tribes.

The reason I struggle to see the skill in this is that there is no real curve, there are just states, not dodging, dodging. The most basic dodging (rlrlrl spam) is normally as effective as any other.[/QUOTE]

Left and Right Dodge actually is a skill and actually does take muscle memory to pull off. BUT! That’s just the beginning! Dodging left and right is the horizontal tracking your enemy will need to pull off. ET you actually needed to Track left and right sort of because of the large hit-boxes… You can add a Vertical aim movement that EURO hate such as crouch into the strafe pattern! Not only are you moving your hit-boxes left and right now you are slightly bringing them down. If you add Prone you are taking away from the people that have m_pitch 0 like all of your beloved euro ET players. Why not add a bunny hop to raise the hit boxes either at close range or far away trying to get away from an enemy around a corner or something.

Conclusion: I am getting very mixed feeling from SD on how this game should actually shoot and play! (Correct me if im worng here:
From what is sounds like is that SD wants a fast pace shooter but wants the players to be still when they are shooting like BF. Sounds like they are trying to get away from the ET of run and gun and also dont want people to move haha.

Funny Conclusion is that all people should be stationary in spawn and use their imagination to play!

(Phandy) #114

This is the way I think about things. You don’t want to do anything to actually impede or stop players having good freedom of movement/speed, but you make them think more about when they shoot. By increasing spread/or/recoil when they jump or strafe quickly ie. It’s harder to do both, you can’t strafe/jump spam to dodge and still be able to shoot at top accuracy, but timing them well will retain the best accuracy. Strafing(change) and Jumping would have an additive effect on spread I guess, and if you don’t let it settle between strafes/jumps them then it increases.

But overall you don’t try to stop people’s movements, just limit what they can do during it.

Like in Counter Strike, strafing increases your spread, but when you strafe back the other direction, there’s a crossover point where the spread comes back to down to zero before going back up. Its a small technique to learn that’s interesting.

I assume you would use cross hairs as the main indicator of spread, thats the only way we ever communicate it anyway.

(spookify) #115

[QUOTE=chenapan;496869]Anti i think you focus too much on the strafe side. and lose the big picture doing so.
Nobody is “just” strafing, we are strafing AND tracking AND shooting at the same time, and this is the Combination of it wich is skillfull…

skill = being able to compensate your own movement to have a steady crosshair plus tracking the opponent

this video is not about fighting but just show clearly what i mean by aiming as a combination of movement and mouse
[video=youtube_share;0agxm3My93E]http://youtu.be/0agxm3My93E[/video]

we cant do that if we dont have fast movement, with very low acceleration and low spread impact from the movement
it is the exact opposite of CS where aiming is mouse skill only
and just very different of tribes ( wich i also played) where the skill is in the prediction of the other player movement indeed and the dodge is really a dodge
it is nice but more slow paced.[/QUOTE]

Miss that feel!

(Anti) #116

[QUOTE=spookify;496888]Slighty reduced strafe speed I am sure will help but that doesnt fix the problem of running forward at someone who is standing still and hardly getting a blep hit! Something is broke there! If I backrage two people I should be able to run at them and down them both.

Heck to be honest I have no idea how to handle that situation in this game… Do I STOP crouch and then tap shoot? Running at them and shooting doesnt seem to down them very fast!

Are the head shot hit boxes smaller from the back because they sure feel like it!!! Visually they are a lot different from the back!

WHAT IF you make upper torso Back shots worth a little more or something. Something feels very off.[/QUOTE]

We don’t see this in any of our tests, if you can give me a video example of it in action it will really help us to reproduce it and solve the issue

(Anti) #117

It’s pretty simple:

[ul]
[li]We want players to be shooting on the move[/li][li]We want the game to feel responsive[/li][li]We want cover to exist (talking line of sight blockers here, not crouching behind crates in corners)[/li][li]We don’t want erratic movement to make the game the reserve of 40%+ accuracy players only[/li][li]We want ‘good’ movement to be down to skill, not spam[/li][/ul]

It’s about making a game that is good for competition and good for casual play, because without the latter the former can’t exist with any real strength or longevity.

The feedback we get from you folk is generally:

[ul]
[li]I want to move faster and accelerate more quickly[/li][li]I can’t hit things often enough[/li][/ul]

My belief is the second of those points is down to either the movement or balance, not bugs, because we’re not finding any bugs in this area right now. Our tests show that changing movement has the biggest impact on the accuracy of things, so in an ideal world that is how we’d make significant changes here, but you folk don’t want that, so we aren’t.

As a result we have to keep testing smaller things, iterating on the balance and try to get to that right feeling another way. Or you can provide videos of ‘moving hit box’ bugs to help us find and fix them :slight_smile:

(Erkin31) #118

We don’t want erratic movement to make the game the reserve of 40%+ accuracy players only

You find that is the case for ET/ETQW ?
I think that more the movements are importants, less the precision is important.

My precision is not very good. In a game like Day of defeat, i’m bad. You are slow, and you need to hit the first. Here, the precision is really important.
On ET, if i miss the first shot, I can track my target and dodge its attacks.

(Erkin31) #119

[QUOTE=Phandy;496892]
I assume you would use cross hairs as the main indicator of spread, thats the only way we ever communicate it anyway.[/QUOTE]

I hate this. Weapons are limited by the spread and movements are limited because they increase the spread. What I like is a precise weapons while I jump, crouch, straf. No restrictions, to be able to move how I want, without superficial limits.

Even in realistics games, I dislike the concept of spread represented by the crosshair.
Give a look at the management of weapons in red orchestra in comparison to games like R6, Swat 4 or Ghost recon.

RO has no spread but weapons have recoil and you need to manage the recoil.

but you make them think more about when they shoot.

Think when you shoot yes, but this shouldn’t decrease your movements or accuracy. Think when you shoot by anticipating the movements of my adversary, this is what I like in an arcade fast fps.

My belief is the second of those points is down to either the movement or balance, not bugs, because we’re not finding any bugs in this area right now.

I don’t understand. There are no problems on FPS like ET/ETQW/Tribes/UT/etc. And they aren’t slow.
The problem is real on Xt ? Have you compared the stats of accuracy with others fps?

(Ashog) #120

[QUOTE=Anti;496847]Of all the tests we’ve done in alpha/closed beta, and there are a few…
…the biggest increase we’ve ever seen in player accuracy, from a single tweak, was when we reduced strafe speed. It’s had the most impact of anything we’ve done. We even tried smaller spread at one point and yet accuracy didn’t increase with that change for the majority of players.

I think we’d still like to try reducing strafe speed slightly but in this case we’ve listened to you folk, who say it’s something you really want.[/QUOTE]

I don’t see what the problem here is? That is supposed to be that way. Counter-claim:
Anti in 2017, writing memoirs:
“…The biggest change in accuracy we have seen in our previous game Xt was … when people new to the game mastered this game’s movement and tracking after some time (half a year after release or so) without us changing anything”.
:slight_smile: Give it some time. Remember the learning curve and not too lo skill ceiling. :wink:

I have to say I find it a little odd that spamming left and right keys to ‘dodge’ is considered a skill, as I’ve never seen it executed in a way that I could call more skillful than how the average button masher would use it, it’s simply about being as erratic as possible.

I have played Quake-based games most of my gaming way and I have to say that moving and dodging is a large chunk of the skill in such games, perhaps on par with aim/track skill. Perhaps you have tried too many CoD/BF-like games which promote shooting while standing because of the insanely ridiculous weapon damage and cellar-low TTK. I have to totally disagree with the above statement, I actually find it a bit offending too. And as kroko said, adad isn’t the only way it goes, there’s always abacab :wink:

On another note, the day when the strafe speed is nerfed again will be one of the most sad days in the so far short story of this game. I’d hate it tbh, even more so due to the amount of moaning, convincing, argumenting and persuading that has been practiced by most people here in favor of freeing the movement and improving dodgeability by increasing strafe speed and buffing strafe accelleration speed (which never happened afaik).