the iron...sigh(t)

(kilL_888) #1

well folks.

few days ago i read a pretty long interview with richard ham. its posted here. a lot of things were discussed. one of the things which was repeatedly mentioned was the ironsight in brink. should there be an ironsight or not.

i think there shouldnt be an ironsight and i tell you why.

back in the days when first person shooters evolved, like doom, quake and so forth, we didnt have that silly ironsigt thing. we had our gun and a crosshair and we were happy. we played quake and quake2 with obsession. we shot with our left mousebutton and (i personally) jumped with the right mouse button. we bunnyhopped our asses off.

and then there was the first game i remember which introduces alternative fire modes. half-life. jesus. now i had to use a third mousebutton. no big deal at the time. mousewheels were pretty rare yet and it was fun hitting my middlemouse button to shoot a grenade out of my machinegun.

soon later quake3 was released and everything was back to oldschool. fire+jump, two of the most important functions of a first person shooter. left mouse+right mouse. bunnyhopping till madness. let me correct this. its not bunnyhopping, its strafejumping. lots of fun. one of the elementary things about quake3 which we all loved and still love.

but then, oh lord, was it medal of honor or call of duty first? one of these games introduced one thing called ironsight. what was that? this was a stupid function that had me change my button layout. i had to use my beloved right mouse button to ironsight my damn gun. no freakin strafejumping, hell, no jumping at all. why would you jump in a ww2 shooter anyways? see the point?

few years later we see first person shooters with and without ironsights. wolf:et no ironsight (yet ww2 but more action, faster, strafejumps, yay), doom3/quake4 no ironsight, cod series ironsights. not only was it a gimmick, no it was important to use it, it still is, since mw2 is still there.

but well, lets get back to what i wanted to tell you. this ironsight thingy became very popular and also important. what it does to me personally, it made me change my key layout i was used to for many many years. actually it didnt help me shoot more accurate. actually the opposite is true. it blocked a lot of my screen and blocked my view to see other players. it also changed my movement. no more running, hiding, jumping. just sitting and aiming. that was boring… it still is.

so, i try to summarize: for a realistic first person shooter the ironsight is a good thing. it adds to realism. im no fan of realism in computer games. i want to play an action game. best example is quake3. i want to run, strafejump, do tricks (in brink) and stuff like that we all loved for decades since quake1. and what does SD do with our future favorite shooter brink? it adds that silly ironsight and kills the fastpaced shooting we loved about the recent SD games.

why? oh lord, why? i dont know actually but the console factor might be one thing. you will never ever be able to play as fast on a gamepad than on keyboard and mouse. thats it. and heres a funny question for you: ever tried strafejumping with a controller? freakin impossible imo :slight_smile:

so, think about the ironsight thingy dear SD. if you manage to use it just like in quakewars where it was possible to use it with some weapons but still wasnt necessary than im fine with it. but dont make another boring war simulation like the modern warfare (mw2, bc2…) games nowadays.

think about your roots and think about why we are here.

(-SSF-Sage) #2

This topic has been talked earlier. I think it was stated several times that there’s no big difference if you use it or not. You can rock and roll with or without it. Just don’t use it if you don’t want to no big deal. It might be useful in a bit longer distance shooting, where you would normally be crouching and moving only little to keep your spread down anyway. That should be the whole idea of it anyway.

If you need to use it to hit a barn from 3 meters away, something has gone totally wrong imho, and at that point ironsight would ruin a game for a lot of us. Many people does not realise it tho that it does not initially do anything bad, it only does if you have to use it all the time to be successful. Which is not the case in Brink according to SD.

(BeyondSpectrality) #3

MW2 has gotten alot better about the non- Iron Sight aiming, but still fails to understand that you shouldn’t always have to use iron sights. Battlefield Bad Company 2 seems to realize this a bit more, but I hope Brink seals the deal.

I personally love Iron Sights, but if I’m running along and all of a sudden there’s a guy in front of me and my entire clip misses from two feet away because I wasn’t Iron sighting then it’s gone too far…

So I believe they should be there, just not as a necessity.

(Apoc) #4

Ironsights should only be used at med-long range, hate games like cod where your 2m away from someone and you have to scope at them…
ETQW was perfect. I realise im starting to sound a bit fanboyish, but etqw was a fantastic game, its only flaws were its marketing and not being noob friendly (which i see as a good thing, but doesnt help get the masses involved), the scoping system on there was just right.

(.Chris.) #5

ET:QW had good iron sight usage but this isn’t ET:QW it’s Brink so I’m not allowed to make reference to that game or any other games SD have developed despite them all seemingly following a similar premise of objective team play so instead I’ll suggest we have aiming like Super Mario Bros when Mario has that flower upgrade that makes him shoot fire balls. (I assume we are allowed to draw comparisons to games SD haven’t made and nothing to do with the style of game Brink is)

Anyway rant over, back ontopic:

I don’t mind ironsights that much just aslong as you can turn off the sight model or the sight model doesn’t take up 3/4 of your screen in the first place, ET:QW Pro had nice feature where you could have the from hips weapon model on view (so you knew what weapon you had) but have the ironsights model not shown when in use without the need for troublesome drawgun binds.

(Apoc) #6

yea to be honest i play with show gun model off, so it only makes a differance to me movement wise

(Apples) #7

To me, no ironsight = no spread, and as I kinda like a bit of spread nowadays, I think ironsight can be a good choice, but as apoc pointed out, only mid/long range. Having to zoom in at 1 foot really doesnt make any sense IMO.

peace

(tokamak) #8

Ironsights add way more to an FPS than just realism. It’s rewarding the players who make the right decisions in complex situations instead of telling all players that there’s only one best way to approach a fight, which without ironsights is run’ngun. Boring.

COD was ridiculous as the ironsight was rewarding players add a too short range so you had to repeatedly flick that thing to be playing well.

What we need is a perfect balance so that a player constantly needs to evaluate which stance (crouch, stand, move, IS or a combination) to use dependent on the situation.

Got to agree with Chris dat ETQW handled it excellent and indeed Brink plays on a different scale so naturally the same parameters don’t apply here.

(Qhullu) #9

for me ironsight would ideally just be a fov switch not affecting movement or accuracy, just used to better see targets that are very small otherwise, for example i’d probably use a fov/sensitivity switch to shoot at people camping the east radar on mp_radar in et when attacking from side if the server i play at allowed it.

but here as long as it’s instant and only really necessary at long range when shooting at someone camping behind something so that only a few pixels of their head are visible, and you can set drawgun 0, i’m happy. otherwise, i’ll see what i think when i get to play with it.

(Szakalot) #10

I believe RTCW/W:ET got it quite right when you had to crouch at long distance to be effective at all. No ironsights needed when the choice is between crouching = slower movement, and running = bigger spread.

(Brandmon) #11

I agree with tokamak. Ironsights add but doesn’t make worse. The only thing to worry about is if hip firing is not useful anymore because of the ironsight option. As Chris and Apoc said too, ET:QW is a good example of how ironsights could work out, having a good enough balance of both so that that both could be useful in practice. (of course one having advantages over the other in some situations) In ET:QW you didn’t have any extremes. You didn’t have players HAVING to use ironsights to get atleast one kill. But still didn’t have spread too easily controlled that it would be brutal for any beginner to get into.

And above all, one fact should be remembered: Brink is Brink. It will, hopefully, have its own way of play and I’m glad SD are actually making a new game. Anyone expecting the next W:ET would most probably be disappointed. Otherwise, prepare to accept new methods of play.

(H0RSE) #12

I agree with tokamak. Ironsights add but doesn’t make worse.
but it does make it worse…it decreases your FOV, your movement and mobility. The thing is, even if you don’t ‘have’ to use, just having the button there is going to make people want to push it. I’m hoping fully mappable buttons make it to console (my PC is crap right now and I’m broke) so I can just leave that action unbound…hoping that it truly isn’t needed. If they have to have some sort of ‘fine tuning’ aiming, why don’t they just link it to movement…

sprinting = decreased accuracy
walking = increased accuracy
crouching = increased accuracy
jumping = decreased accuracy

something like that would work just as well, while still maintaining some movement and no FOV compromise. I am not a fan of ironsights at all, and it was one of my biggest gripes in QW.

(Asasello) #13

I think that Ironsight make a lot of sense in game with parkour elements, like Brink. On Brink Gameplay ironsight was looking good and i think that its the best resolution. I know my must is illogical, but i don’t speak english well, and i just can’t explain my thoughts.

(shirosae) #14

lol

Apparently I need to give karma to someone else a few times before I give you any more.

I tend to find ironsights slightly annoying, in that they’re basically the same thing as crouch-to-aim except slightly clunkier because they typically involve an annoying animation with associated delay time and/or huge-ass view obscuring graphic.

That said, ETQWpro with etaimstyle was pretty sweet for ironsights - you didn’t need to walk around at a snail’s pace with them out all the time, but they were a distinct bonus when you put yourself into a position with a slight time advantage at range by being aware of where the enemy would be approaching from. In short, they gave you options, instead of taking them away.

(kamikazee) #15

[QUOTE=H0RSE;218478]but it does make it worse…it decreases your FOV, your movement and mobility. The thing is, even if you don’t ‘have’ to use, just having the button there is going to make people want to push it. I’m hoping fully mappable buttons make it to console (my PC is crap right now and I’m broke) so I can just leave that action unbound…hoping that it truly isn’t needed. If they have to have some sort of ‘fine tuning’ aiming, why don’t they just link it to movement…[/QUOTE]I think this saying is appropriate here:

“Doctor, doctor, it hurts when I do this!”
“Then don’t do that”
Nobody forces you to use it if it was properly designed, i.e. when it just gives one player an edge over another instead of “true aim” vs naught.

However, this feature is just one of many game tricks a player can master to gain an advantage. While I can hope you can do mostly without for close-combat, it probably will be a valuable asset. Just make sure you get the hang of it before the other team does.

(H0RSE) #16

the point is, there shouldn’t be an ‘edge,’ no matter how slight. If there is an edge, players are going to be inclined to use it. I would prefer to just cut out the sights, and have it 100% even 100% of the time. If anything, I would say a big reason they even have ironsights to begin with, is for the players that are used to playing games with ironsights, not because it adds anything to the game…Brink would lose nothing, gameplay-wise, if they removed ironsights.

(zXSwordXz) #17

I agree with the OP. It is a video game, just give me a gun with a cross hair and lets your skill stay in the player movement.

(Lequis) #18

Personally I hope they make it so the iron sight has two options. First being increased bullet accuracy with slowed movement and the second being reduced turn sensitivity (still just as inaccurate), without slowing down movement. I hope this is an option for the console version because I can’t stand having low sensitivity but I freak out if it’s high long range.

edit: btw, I’m pretty sure it’s too late to change SD’s opinions on IS, but it definitely isn’t too late to change IS options and statistics. Personally I hope the IS stats aren’t over-the-top good though, because it would promote camping behind cover.

(crazyfoolish) #19

i personally think that iron sights are great,
However, i think that there should be a balance and that i (as an iron sights user) should not have an unfair advantage over a non iron sights user.

Realistically in a real war soldiers will aim down the sights of their gun. Unlike in cod though i hope that in brink i will not have to aim at an opponent i am practically touching.

(Sssaap) #20

[QUOTE=crazyfoolish;218563]i personally think that iron sights are great,
However, i think that there should be a balance and that i (as an iron sights user) should not have an unfair advantage over a non iron sights user.

Realistically in a real war soldiers will aim down the sights of their gun. Unlike in cod though i hope that in brink i will not have to aim at an opponent i am practically touching.[/QUOTE]

You won’t have to. It was said, that even on moderate distance you will be able to somewhat hit without aiming down the sight.