Tighten spread, reduce damage

(its al bout security) #301

[QUOTE=shirosae;347418]The problem isn’t that people don’t understand his argument. It’s that his argument is based on something that isn’t true.

This player is a good shot:

This player is not so good a shot:

Who wins? The person with better aim.

Now let’s try the same thing again with massive spread:

This player is a good shot:

This player is not so good a shot:

Who wins? Whoever the diceroll favours.

The idea that you turn the focus from lottery-spread into control of (vertical) recoil, and have ironsights enhance recoil control is genius. I much preferred this recoil in the early DoD betas to CS’s odd pseudo-recoil thing. As a way of distinguishing weapon classes without turning everything into a lottery, I’d love to see how it plays in an ET gametype.
[/QUOTE]

sorry but the guy with the good aim and the awful spread still has a much higher chance due to geometric probability

i get what you are saying though :smiley:

how much damage we would have to cut though?? 66% sounds about right yes?

(Kendle) #302

Not true, the DOD scene had this discussion, at enormous length, when Valve introduced “even spread”.

Because more of a circle’s surface area is towards the outside rather than the centre the guy with the bad aim would probably hit more than the guy with the good aim because more of the opponents head is in the outer part of the circle.

Even spread not only does not reward good aim, it actually punishes good aim because it’s not just a case of bullets not going where you aim, it’s worse than that, it’s a case of most bullets going somewhere other than where you aim.

When DOD went down this route some very clever people actually produced formulas proving it, and eventually Valve re-introduced centre-weighted spread.

(Shinigami) #303

this poll is too biased. why does it have to be: reduce spread, less damage or higher spread, higher damage.

why didnt you include an option like lower spread, equal damage. or even lower spread higher damage?

(its al bout security) #304

[QUOTE=Kendle;347645]Not true, the DOD scene had this discussion, at enormous length, when Valve introduced “even spread”.

Because more of a circle’s surface area is towards the outside rather than the centre the guy with the bad aim would probably hit more than the guy with the good aim because more of the opponents head is in the outer part of the circle.

Even spread not only does not reward good aim, it actually punishes good aim because it’s not just a case of bullets not going where you aim, it’s worse than that, it’s a case of most bullets going somewhere other than where you aim.

When DOD went down this route some very clever people actually produced formulas proving it, and eventually Valve re-introduced centre-weighted spread.[/QUOTE]

if the spread is even, and only even then geometric probability ( a mathmatic principle) dictates that it MUST, sorry nut most of the bullets would be totally missing in the last pic there and hitting the shoulders but the head is only a small encompassed area, thus geometric probability shows that it is likely to hit the head. regardless you dont have to worry about spread with a gerund on burst fire.

(shirosae) #305

If you took both spread regions as static areas, and fired an infinite number of bullets, then the relative probabilities would build up as determined by the centre weighting (which they changed last patch it seems).

You don’t do that, though. It takes a finite number of bullets to kill, so you’re dealing with quantised events, not a fluid probability distribution.

If you were to average all firefights at identical range in the game, it’s possible that what you predict would happen. On the scale of individual fights where a few headshots win, randomness prevails.

You could have gunfights determined by a coin toss. On average each player will win 50/50 - that doesn’t mean each individual fight will be satisfying.

I think that if the only solution to the SMG being bad is ‘use another gun’, then SMG are broken and need to be fixed. Having damage falloff at distance preserve the skill of the weapon, without making SMG dominate at all ranges. Choose whatever range you want SMG to be effective up to, and have damage falloff after that.

(MoonOnAStick) #306

This is total nonsense. Geometric probability is simply an area of mathematics. It is not a mathematical theory and it says nothing about this spread business. Looking at the wikipedia entry, I’m not even sure if the problem posed by shirosae’s diagrams even comes under this area of endeavour (EDIT: In fairness, it sounds like it might do.)

Back to those spiffy diagrams:

The assumption being made here (please correct me if I’m wrong) is that the weapon spread is such that, shooting from a given distance at the centre of the circle, the rounds are equally likely to strike the 2D plane of the circle at any point; that is, a random distribution.

I don’t know if this is an accurate assumption or not but, if this is true then, since all 4 circles contain the entire head, a headshot is equally likely for each of those players.

(Rahabib) #307

[QUOTE=Kendle;347645]Not true, the DOD scene had this discussion, at enormous length, when Valve introduced “even spread”.

Because more of a circle’s surface area is towards the outside rather than the centre the guy with the bad aim would probably hit more than the guy with the good aim because more of the opponents head is in the outer part of the circle.

Even spread not only does not reward good aim, it actually punishes good aim because it’s not just a case of bullets not going where you aim, it’s worse than that, it’s a case of most bullets going somewhere other than where you aim.

When DOD went down this route some very clever people actually produced formulas proving it, and eventually Valve re-introduced centre-weighted spread.[/QUOTE]

as a fellow former DOD player, I remember those forum discussions. The problem was a bit worse in DODS with the assaults as there wasnt much of a degredation (or too fast), so people just held down mouse 1 and ran around (sounds familiar).

Now I want to keep it weighted toward the center, but the problem still lies in the fact that there is a “chance” it will fire outside the predicted area of fire - so why not just make the cones smaller? This way you know the shot will fire in this area when firing so there are fewer, WTF shots happening when you fire a short burst and 2 of the 3 shots may have randomly been chosen to be a bit further from the center.

tighter cones, more recoil (DOD players should be on board for this!), less damage, and for SMGs use the DMG falloff properly. I understand the need for some cone of fire (although I do think too many devs fall back on it because they are lazy in implementing proper recoil), but especially in ADS, where I aim is what I should hit.

(shirosae) #308

[QUOTE=MoonOnAStick;347679]The assumption being made here (please correct me if I’m wrong) is that the weapon spread is such that, shooting from a given distance at the centre of the circle, the rounds are equally likely to strike the 2D plane of the circle at any point; that is, a random distribution.

I don’t know if this is an accurate assumption or not but, if this is true then, since all 4 circles contain the entire head, a headshot is equally likely for each of those players.[/QUOTE]

The stuff Smooth said in the other thread suggests that it isn’t a completely flat distribution. The post before suggests that the distribution for the Carb has been made more flat in the recent patch.

So how well those diagrams apply specifically to Brink depends on how flat that distribution curve is.

By painting the circles solid colours, I didn’t mean to imply that Brink has no centre weighting; it was purely an attempt to aid the tight/loose spread stuff that’s been going about in various threads.

I did consider drawing distribution curves above each circle, but decided it’d just complicate things.

(INF3RN0) #309

What makes Brink even worse, is that at least in other games where you got a large AoE spread, it could be countered by burst/tap firing. There is no reward for accuracy in Brink though, as even when you tap fire it still sends the bullets out at random, but at a slower rate. This was proven through debug testing if anyone thinks their tap-fire method does anything.

(Oschino1907) #310

Hip fire or ADS?

(INF3RN0) #311

[QUOTE=its al bout security;347572]sorry but the guy with the good aim and the awful spread still has a much higher chance due to geometric probability

i get what you are saying though :smiley:

how much damage we would have to cut though?? 66% sounds about right yes?[/QUOTE]

Your totally wrong. If you have the reduced spread, more bullets will hit the target in a shorter amount of time. Your saying that if you had a spread that shot more precisely at the center of the circle, as opposed to one that sprayed in a much larger radius, the larger radius was going to hit the center more often??? That makes no sense. If anything, the bad aim with a larger spread is going to beat the bad aim with a lower spread, as well as making them more competent against a good aim with less spread. The good aim with less spread is going to win every time though, as bad aim is NOT rewarded in any scenario with low spread. This should be very clear to you now I hope…

(INF3RN0) #312

I believe it is both if I remember correctly; try doing a thread search on here if you want to check it out. The illusion that tap firing is doing something is generated by the artificial bob of the gun model, but the only way to counter the increase in cone spread is to wait for a 3-4 second interval between consecutive bursts I think and even then only the first 3 bullets go kinda straight.

(TONSCHUH) #313

… that’s right, because I recon that would be another option beside changing the weapons at all … if the balance of the AI would be a little bit different, I would be still happy with the weapons how they are at the moment, because then it would be not such important how a weapon reacts … if on one hand the enemy bots would be less accurate and the team bots a little bit smarter, then we would still survive longer in a match and it would be not such important how fast we could kill our enemies … if we have humans vs humans only, the weapons are only secondary, because then only the skills are involved … if we could spawn closer to the next objective if we captured a command post who is closer then the basic one, we would have a chance to reach the area before all the enemy bots are back and overcrowd the area … I’m not so sure if changing the weapons will make the game better / easier for new and / or average players … maybe it would make the gap even wider … so maybe we have the opinion to change the wrong thing to improve the game play …

:stroggtapir:

(its al bout security) #314

im saying in the last two diagrams that if you circle is more over the head and sholder area than partially over the head and shoulders that geometric probability dictates that–

there is a higher chance of hitting the head and shoulders than totally missing.

in a family of math teachers, im pretty sure i know :slight_smile:

but the problem here is that the spreade normally leans to the centre reather than to the outside.

(Szakalot) #315

this has been addressed in the fact that we do not know what the curve of that probability (what Shirosae referred to as center-weight) is of whatever shape you seem to think it is.

(Apoc) #316

[quote=Shinigami;347652]this poll is too biased. why does it have to be: reduce spread, less damage or higher spread, higher damage.

why didnt you include an option like lower spread, equal damage. or even lower spread higher damage?[/quote]

Because the speed to kill people in brink is at a nice speed. Any faster and it would be COD like, any longer and it would be more like Halo.

Lower spread, equal damage, would mean much faster killing. Lower spread higher damage would be COD.

The reduced damage is to counteract the added accuracy to make killing speed the same.

Also polls shouldnt have many options or they lose their effectiveness, especially on a reasonably small audience

(GreasedScotsman) #317

The bulk of players here are referring to fully multiplayer freeplay matches where no bots exist. Human vs human. Modifying AI has little bearing on the bulk of this discussion.

Please stay focused on the weapon-related aspects in further replies, but do feel free to start another topic to discuss the AI and forward spawn changes you suggest. I personally really miss the dynamic of forward spawns and wouldn’t mind discussing their potential in Brink elsewhere.

(its al bout security) #318

i was assuming it was the circle of the reticule we are given, though i know there is alot of center wait given, but they fixed it to be a pretty nice 0

(its al bout security) #319

[QUOTE=MoonOnAStick;347679]This is total nonsense. Geometric probability
The assumption being made here (please correct me if I’m wrong) is that the weapon spread is such that, shooting from a given distance at the centre of the circle, the rounds are equally likely to strike the 2D plane of the circle at any point; that is, a random distribution.

I don’t know if this is an accurate assumption or not but, if this is true then, since all 4 circles contain the entire head, a headshot is equally likely for each of those players.[/QUOTE]

you misinterpreted how to do the problem, you do the probability on the circle not the head, half the shots will be going way from the body rather than the head meaning the chances are FAR from the same, it doesnt mean you have to get the large circle directly on the head but it will generally hit more if the circle directly encompasses the head and the body.

(INF3RN0) #320

[QUOTE=its al bout security;347756]im saying in the last two diagrams that if you circle is more over the head and sholder area than partially over the head and shoulders that geometric probability dictates that–

there is a higher chance of hitting the head and shoulders than totally missing.

in a family of math teachers, im pretty sure i know :slight_smile:

but the problem here is that the spreade normally leans to the centre reather than to the outside.[/QUOTE]

The overall point, is that the percentage in difference is MUCH more substantial when the spread is lower. The bigger the spread, the easier it is to completely aim off target and be rewarded. The best probability to get the majority of your bullets to hit a target is to aim at the upper chest and hope that the random spray will land more shots on the head, but aiming directly at the head vs spraying at the body/head/etc is not going to give consistent results. There is no point to hit boxes if the player has to rely on probabilities of a large random spread. Aim should be defined as “hit or miss”, not “there’s a good chance anything can happen”. Brink weapon design is an incredibly low form of aim and the fact that you can’t do anything to control the spread as well (ie tap fire), completely cripples this part of the game. Hurr durr lame sauce.