Tighten spread, reduce damage

[INF3RN0]

[QUOTE=noupperlobeman;346274]I just don’t understand all this “raising the skill ceiling” talk.

Let me get this straight. You want to make shooting more accurate, but that act itself raises the skill required to be successful?

Can’t you already aim for the head? Are you saying your skill ceiling isn’t high enough to aim for the head as it is? If the current system is easier and you are better than the rest, why does it need changing? Why don’t you just go ahead and aim for the head if you are good enough, and leave system the way it is?

I’m not being facetious, I’m actually trying to understand this argument.[/QUOTE]

Um what??? If you re-read your post it makes little sense. Aim for the head when the spread of weapons is a wide cone, meaning to be the most effective you don’t want to aim directly at the head… The point is that if you reduce the spread, the importance of aiming skill doubles as your bullets go exactly where you are aiming, as opposed to the current “general region” you are aiming. If you think that it is more skillful to aim at a big blob, as opposed to a small head for the most successful output, then please clarify. This makes perfect sense, and it is proven in SD other games… so nothing to argue here. What doesn’t make sense is having hit boxes and random spray.

[noupperlobeman]

Um what??? If you re-read your post it makes little sense. Aim for the head when the spread of weapons is a wide cone, meaning to be the most effective you don’t want to aim directly at the head… The point is that if you reduce the spread, the importance of aiming skill doubles as your bullets go exactly where you are aiming, as opposed to the current “general region” you are aiming. If you think that it is more skillful to aim at a big blob, as opposed to a small head for the most successful output, then please clarify. This makes perfect sense, and it is proven in SD other games… so nothing to argue here. What doesn’t make sense is having hit boxes and random spray.

I wasn’t arguing anything. I was asking someone to clarify. This seems to be a common theme for you, assuming that everyone wants to argue when they post.

Thanks to everyone else, though. I understand where you are coming from. I still don’t wish anything to be changed, but what you are saying makes sense to me.

[Humate]

[QUOTE=noupperlobeman;346274]I just don’t understand all this “raising the skill ceiling” talk.

Let me get this straight. You want to make shooting more accurate, but that act itself raises the skill required to be successful?

Can’t you already aim for the head? Are you saying your skill ceiling isn’t high enough to aim for the head as it is? If the current system is easier and you are better than the rest, why does it need changing? Why don’t you just go ahead and aim for the head if you are good enough, and leave system the way it is?

I’m not being facetious, I’m actually trying to understand this argument.[/QUOTE]

Theres accuracy of the weapon, and then theres accuracy of the player.
The weapons are designed so they do not hit exactly where the reticle is.A player who has great aim, cannot consistently hit the head of another player to earn the reward of the headshot damage multiplier. Its pot luck.

With tight spread the guns hit where they are supposed to… and its the player’s accuracy that determines the winner of the duel. ie skill differential b/w the two players

The reason the guns are the way they are:
The higher the skill ceiling, the less influence social class actions have.
With super accurate weapons, skilled players can shoot themselves out of situations, as opposed to relying on team-mates for assistance. If I can out gun you, I dont need my buddy to hand me a health buff while I’m on 3 HP. I’d win the fight before you could even blink. Conversely, players who cannot outgun anyone usually stick next to their buddies, and try to beat players that way.
Brink forces the latter regardless of the skillset.

[tangoliber]

I wouldn’t mind the starting accuracy being better…but I would like for the spread to expand more under sustained fire. The reason that spraying is effective for the SMGs now is because the spread is too small, not because it is too big. If it was bigger, like the assault rifles, it would be too ineffective to shoot full auto.

Maybe design the SMGs for 1 second bursts (since you don’t really burst fire SMGs)… starting at pinpoint accuracy, and expanding to their current max spread. After that, they keep expanding, surpassing the current max, forcing the player to pause.
At the same time, let the spread retract quickly enough at the start that you can tap-fire and retain your pinpoint accuracy that way.

As for the ARs…the starting accuracy can be higher, but the expanding spread is perfect at the moment…designed for 3-4 bullet bursts.

This way, accuracy and burst rhythm are both important.

[INF3RN0]

[QUOTE=noupperlobeman;346299]I wasn’t arguing anything. I was asking someone to clarify. This seems to be a common theme for you, assuming that everyone wants to argue when they post.

Thanks to everyone else, though. I understand where you are coming from. I still don’t wish anything to be changed, but what you are saying makes sense to me.[/QUOTE]

Yes your comprehension of the “argument at hand” was off. Then there’s the explanation, where in the end there is no argument against this. So now you explain your reasoning as to why you don’t want it to be changed yes? In all fairness, the only sensible reason not to change this is if people don’t want aim to have any meaning in Brink. And before anyone says “team game”, let me refresh the fact that previous SD games had both and were pretty dam amazing.

[V1cK_dB]

Yes your comprehension of the “argument at hand” was off. Then there’s the explanation, where in the end there is no argument against this. So now you explain your reasoning as to why you don’t want it to be changed yes? In all fairness, the only sensible reason not to change this is if people don’t want aim to have any meaning in Brink. And before anyone says “team game”, let me refresh the fact that previous SD games had both and were pretty dam amazing.

Lol exactly. W:ET had both team based gameplay and tight spreads with less damage. THE GAME WAS AMAZING! So amazing it’s still played to this day right SD? So amazing over 1 billion matches have been played on it right SD? How is Brink working out? End of debate.

[Qbix]

Interesting suggestions here.

What should be obvious is that ARs are still inferior to SMGs and that this can’t be solved by increasing spread for SMGs. The suggestion including reduced spread and damage sounds quite reasonable. In addition to this, AR’s should deal more damage and while having their spread not reduced, probably that would be balanced.

Everything I know is, that I normally play light + CARB and if I join a server as medium and try to use an AR (Euston works best for me so far) I tend to lose many encounters with lights carrying CARBs. Simply because you can totally forget hip shooting and spraying with the Euston compared to the CARB, although the Euston should deal more damage. You simply can’t hipfire AND defeat someone with a CARB. And if you aim via the iron sights, you are an even easier target.

[Spendlove]

PC player here. Keep it as it is.

I like the new patch. It works for me.

Use your iron sights, thats what they are there for.

SMGs are not accurate… rifles and assualt rifles are… use those instead. Its no point crying that Splash took your noob tube smg Carb 9 away. You should have learned to use a variety of weapons until you found the one that suited your character best.

Simply repeating the new complainers buzzword “lottery” shows a sheep mentality. Lotteries sometimes drop you big prizes. Remember that.

I didn’t want to be a L2P troll poster but I am afraid in this poll it is entirely accurate.

Actually, some of you posting here don’t even own the game or have not even played this patch on the PC! How can you possibly complain about something you utterly know nothing about?

L2P (that means you have to buy the game first and THEN learn to play it).

[Qbix]

[QUOTE=Spendlove;346411]PC player here. Keep it as it is.

I like the new patch. It works for me.

Use your iron sights, thats what they are there for.

SMGs are not accurate… rifles and assualt rifles are… use those instead. Its no point crying that Splash took your noob tube smg Carb 9 away. You should have learned to use a variety of weapons until you found the one that suited your character best.

Simply repeating the new complainers buzzword “lottery” shows a sheep mentality. Lotteries sometimes drop you big prizes. Remember that.

I didn’t want to be a L2P troll poster but I am afraid in this poll it is entirely accurate.

Actually, some of you posting here don’t even own the game or have not even played this patch on the PC! How can you possibly complain about something you utterly know nothing about?

L2P (that means you have to buy the game first and THEN learn to play it).[/QUOTE]

Seems like someone is immune to logic infections. :rolleyes:

You probably didn’t read my post, but I will repeat the key messages for you. They changed the CARB to be less accurate and to deal a veeeeeeeery little less damage now. What did it change for us? CARB is still better for spraying than every AR and most likely every other SMG. Noone here is crying because they took the noobtube away, we are just stating that nothing changed about the differences betweens SMGs and ARs and that increasing the spread can’t be the answer.

(fyi, the one and only simple step to remove at least 50% of the CARB usage on servers would be to take away the drum magazine, just sayin’)

When playing light + CARB I easily outplay every medium character. They may have more HP but hit ***** when I am strafing faster then they can aim while having 60 CARB bullets hitting from time to time. Solution to this can’t be that you nerf the CARB until you can’t hit anything more than 5 pixels away without dice luck. That goes for everything. If weapons feel imbalanced, do not nerf the better ones, buff the worse. Otherwise 1 or 2 patches ahead you won’t be able to do anything else than melee attacks to defeat ppl in a decent amount if time.

EDIT: Just to clarify this, I don’t want Counter Strike weapon behaviour in any way. Sometimes I have the feeling that people asking for more skill rewarding weapons go a little bit too far.

[jazevec]

Maybe they want weapon spread to be poor ? Maybe they want to, in fact, cap skill ? A game for the whole family. Where the only advantage of a MG nest is infinite ammo, damage dealt is low, health is high, movement is slow, turrets are anemic, explosives rarely kill. Tactics are interchangeable, because players shouldn’t be punished for picking the /wrong/ tactic. Everything is nice and forgiving.

[OnceWasGreat]

Very much want the importance of precise aim tracking back, but just an FYI though you might miss out on the votes of the thousands who uninstalled Brink and no longer visit the forums in the past months. The sheer amount of leavers really ought to be a clear enough statement on this subject though…

This.

I think the choices made until now took us to this point -> empty servers. I still hope the game takes some fix.

[jazevec]

Good point by INF3RNO. It’s called “survivor bias”. You may run a poll and get some results, but only from people who still play the game. The majority of people who bought Brink no longer play it. Changing the game so it suits them better would revitalize the community the best. Unfortunately, people who stopped playing Brink don’t care about this forum.

In WW2, the British tried to learn what’s the best way to protect their bombers from enemy fire. They calculated statistics to see where the most bullets hit. They examined returning aircraft for holes. The result is they added extra plating covering wings and gunner’s position. There was no holes around pilot’s position and the fuel tank.

[Kalbuth]

[QUOTE=noupperlobeman;346299]
Thanks to everyone else, though. I understand where you are coming from. I still don’t wish anything to be changed, but what you are saying makes sense to me.[/QUOTE]

I was a bit like you years ago coming from OFP to ET:QW and reading these comments.
Today I totally agree with them (and mind you, my main game is still OFP / ArmA serie, which is the total opposite of ET / Brink )

There are 2 possible things SD want to achieve with SMG, and more generaly with all weapons, the way they work currently :

1. They want SMG short range only because they are primary weapons of light body types, who are fighting through movement, so they are supposed to be better at positionning (and going close up)
2. They want SMG to spray because a moving character isn’t supposed to be precise in their eye, it’s a “run&gun rusher” who has no “right” to be precise, being precise requires being static

In case 1), they can easily make everyone happy by working with damage falloff instead of spread to determine a weapon range, or a mix of both making SMG spread not as bad as currently. And work on making all weapons more precise, tweaking damage to keep TTK the same. This bring back movements into the game, and emphasize aiming

In case 2), they are simply alienating a big portion of their player base, the ones they relied upon when touting their work with W:ET & QW, because they are transforming the ET serie from one of the last FPS where aim AND movement was important, into a more generic ADS shooting static FPS. And many of SD followers are of the former kind

Looking at Apoc’s post, some past SD followers still have hope SD is aiming for 1).
From the numbers of players last night, I’m afraid most now suppose that SD is seeking for 2), so that they, the former SD lovers who like aim & move, are not welcome anymore in Brink, thus they left the game

[BioSnark]

I’d love to see spread down with damage or RoF down across the board on PC. It’s clear from the past discussions on this, as well as the PC thrust in the platform wars (m+kb), that this is a PC specific issue.

What should be obvious is that ARs are still inferior to SMGs and that this can’t be solved by increasing spread for SMGs.

How about by decreasing AR movement, automatic fire and non-scope spread? Higher smg damage dropoff at range?

[INF3RN0]

Maybe they want weapon spread to be poor ? Maybe they want to, in fact, cap skill ? A game for the whole family. Where the only advantage of a MG nest is infinite ammo, damage dealt is low, health is high, movement is slow, turrets are anemic, explosives rarely kill. Tactics are interchangeable, because players shouldn’t be punished for picking the /wrong/ tactic. Everything is nice and forgiving.

Jazevec, you basically nailed their intent on the head btw and I have brought this up before too. They listened to all the forum crying from their past games about rambo PRO players who’s gun skill made the teamwork feel worthless, and actually interpreted this as a major problem. I think that to be perfectly honest about the entire development of Brink, SD was listening to the wrong crowd of people and now they are paying for it. The fact that ET games bring a much higher skill cap to the table in terms of aim in FPS gaming can really separate the contributions of players in the game, along with all the other complexities of their past games. They wanted to make the less able feel more competent (ie the stuff all the past fan “haters” want changed), but they overlooked the part where the best games (and I don’t mean the most popular) are the hardest. I am sure this was also due in part to appealing to the mainstream console market, but there really is no pleasing those already hooked to CoD; though I feel the original ET model would have done MUCH better than user friendly Brink. Some things should be learned from Brink though. A steep aim skill curve is NEVER a problem, but in fact brings a huge motive for players to continue playing a game in the hope of improvement. Better players will always make things feel less fun for some, but that definitely does not mean it is a flaw in the game mechanics. You can’t force teamwork no matter how hard you try (nerfing gungame, adding buffs, giving XP, etc). It is a requirement to play the game and people will learn on their own if they want to win games. There is a massive amount of enjoyment when you attempt to coordinate with your team (VOIP???) even in a pub, and players don’t hesitate to change classes, as well as having the ability to do it with ease (Brink=BUT I CANT CHANGE DIS IS MY HEAVY OPERATIVE CHAR). Since the times of great game titles, developers have either taken the CoD easy money route or attempted to add new ideas to their original games. We all encourage further development of the originals, but so far these attempts have been resulting in the end of game titles and styles. The reason for this is because with all the “new” the roots of the “old” are forgotten. Take the aspects that made the original games great, and build on top of it. There is a reason why Brink feels like 2 steps back in the wrong direction. If people liked what you made originally there is no reason why it shouldn’t continue forward instead of trying to build it again from the bottom up. Brink ‘looked’ like the type of game we all wanted, but it played like less than the standard SD had already set with their other games and it was missing tons of things that made us love playing their games. Tons of people pre-ordered the game because of the “it can only get better” hype, and with the game in its current state it should be very clear that an important lesson is to be learned. I don’t want Brink to be the end of ET games, but I don’t want it to be the new standard either.

[V1cK_dB]

[QUOTE=Kalbuth;346433]I was a bit like you years ago coming from OFP to ET:QW and reading these comments.
Today I totally agree with them (and mind you, my main game is still OFP / ArmA serie, which is the total opposite of ET / Brink )

There are 2 possible things SD want to achieve with SMG, and more generaly with all weapons, the way they work currently :

1. They want SMG short range only because they are primary weapons of light body types, who are fighting through movement, so they are supposed to be better at positionning (and going close up)
2. They want SMG to spray because a moving character isn’t supposed to be precise in their eye, it’s a “run&gun rusher” who has no “right” to be precise, being precise requires being static

In case 1), they can easily make everyone happy by working with damage falloff instead of spread to determine a weapon range, or a mix of both making SMG spread not as bad as currently. And work on making all weapons more precise, tweaking damage to keep TTK the same. This bring back movements into the game, and emphasize aiming

In case 2), they are simply alienating a big portion of their player base, the ones they relied upon when touting their work with W:ET & QW, because they are transforming the ET serie from one of the last FPS where aim AND movement was important, into a more generic ADS shooting static FPS. And many of SD followers are of the former kind

Looking at Apoc’s post, some past SD followers still have hope SD is aiming for 1).
From the numbers of players last night, I’m afraid most now suppose that SD is seeking for 2), so that they, the former SD lovers who like aim & move, are not welcome anymore in Brink, thus they left the game[/QUOTE]

To me it seems like case 2 is what SD decided to go with. Which goes completely against what made their games popular to begin with which is what drives me crazy. How do you have a perfect formula that works and decide to screw it up? Why? Because W:ET is an older game? I don’t even think it’s that. I think SD really doesn’t know what made their previous games great and the way they designed the shooting AND continue to make it WORSE in new patches by making spread worse proves it.

It’s infuriating because they actually DID talk about kills taking skill and moving while shooting being important and being able to fight back, headshots being important blah blah blah. Who can blame me/us for therefore expecting something similar to THEIR previous games…that THEY themselves talked about while hyping Brink?

If case 2 is what they went with then I wish SD would just come out and say it so I can stop wasting my time hoping that they fix this game and leave it to the people who are happy with it and eventually playing against bots because nobody plays this crap. Just let us know SD. Confirm that you have no clue what actually made your games fun so we can move on. Do you even have any people who PLAYED W:ET or helped develop it. And I’m not talking about the damn objectives/class system…I’m talking about the SHOOTING!!!

[morguen87]

I haven’t played the with the patch yet, so take this with a grain of salt:

Instead of smg accuracy being nerfed I would have preferred ARs getting an accuracy buff.

I would rather have AR’s become the all-around gun I think they should be, the swiss army knife if you will, and increased AR accuracy (especially while ads) and a slight increase in stability would have really helped.

Instead of nerfing the smg’s stats, I would have rather had them make it so drum magazines cannot be equipped on smgs. That alone would help with balance and the smg stats wouldn’t even have to be touched.

BUT
like I said, this is all theoretical. I haven’t had a chance to try the patch yet, I’m looking forward to it though.
I can’t vote yet til I try it.

[V1cK_dB]

Jazevec, you basically nailed their intent on the head btw and I have brought this up before too. They listened to all the forum crying from their past games about rambo PRO players who’s gun skill made the teamwork feel worthless, and actually interpreted this as a major problem. I think that to be perfectly honest about the entire development of Brink, SD was listening to the wrong crowd of people and now they are paying for it. The fact that ET games bring a much higher skill cap to the table in terms of aim in FPS gaming can really separate the contributions of players in the game, along with all the other complexities of their past games. They wanted to make the less able feel more competent (ie the stuff all the past fan “haters” want changed), but they overlooked the part where the best games (and I don’t mean the most popular) are the hardest. I am sure this was also due in part to appealing to the mainstream console market, but there really is no pleasing those already hooked to CoD; though I feel the original ET model would have done MUCH better than user friendly Brink. Some things should be learned from Brink though. A steep aim skill curve is NEVER a problem, but in fact brings a huge motive for players to continue playing a game in the hope of improvement. Better players will always make things feel less fun for some, but that definitely does not mean it is a flaw in the game mechanics. You can’t force teamwork no matter how hard you try (nerfing gungame, adding buffs, giving XP, etc). It is a requirement to play the game and people will learn on their own if they want to win games. There is a massive amount of enjoyment when you attempt to coordinate with your team (VOIP???) even in a pub, and players don’t hesitate to change classes, as well as having the ability to do it with ease (Brink=BUT I CANT CHANGE DIS IS MY HEAVY OPERATIVE CHAR). Since the times of great game titles, developers have either taken the CoD easy money route or attempted to add new ideas to their original games. We all encourage further development of the originals, but so far these attempts have been resulting in the end of game titles and styles. The reason for this is because with all the “new” the roots of the “old” are forgotten. Take the aspects that made the original games great, and build on top of it. There is a reason why Brink feels like 2 steps back in the wrong direction. If people liked what you made originally there is no reason why it shouldn’t continue forward instead of trying to build it again from the bottom up. Brink ‘looked’ like the type of game we all wanted, but it played like less than the standard SD had already set with their other games and it was missing tons of things that made us love playing their games. Tons of people pre-ordered the game because of the “it can only get better” hype, and with the game in its current state it should be very clear that an important lesson is to be learned. I don’t want Brink to be the end of ET games, but I don’t want it to be the new standard either.

Man at first I wasn’t going to read your wall of text but I’m glad I did. I suggest putting some paragraphs in there…I know it’s late. I 100% agree with everything you said. Gamestyles are being lost due to devs going away from their roots and everything is beginning to play the same. Look at the dude about 3 or 5 posts above talk about “use your ADS”…I bet he has NO CLUE what an SD game is. What made SD games great. In fact…he is reading this now trying to figure it out lmao before he types up his response.

Which brings me to Valve. Look at their success. Why? Because they stay true to their roots regardless of what the popular game is at the moment. They BELIEVE in their gameplay style. That’s why TF2 plays like the original Team Fortress!! They even have some of the same MAPS!!! Amazing huh? They released an updated Counterstrike that played very similarly just had updated graphics/physics. I think their games are pretty popular to this day no? SD could be the same but they decided to listen to the wrong crowd. I know someone on this thread will probably quote that statement and say this game is good or whatever so I’ll just respond now by saying you and a couple of hundred people a day think so. In 3 months have fun playing with a handful of people against bots because most people don’t agree with you.

The fanbase for previous ET games IS huge. The opportunity to expose more people to that type of gameplay was great and they had a chance to change the direction of FPS games for the better. SD failed. They failed because they didn’t have enough faith in their own style. They deserve this. They potentially can save a little face by fixing the spread issue. But they won’t. Because they don’t even think of it as a problem. And that’s the scariest part of it all…we might never play amazing games like W:ET again…because the creators themselves don’t even know what made the game great.

My last hope is id. Even they are losing it a little though. Have you seen the RAGE vids? The gameplay moves and looks very similar to RTCW!!! They were the original creators of that shooting mechanic. Not SD. You can tell by looking at RAGE. But alas they decided NOT to make a multiplayer FPS mode…they are making a car game for MP…AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHHH!!!

[Qbix]

They released an updated Counterstrike that played very similarly just had updated graphics/physics.

I thank you for the effort you put into your post, but I stopped reading after that. Biggest trash you could possibly make up about CS and CS:S.

[V1cK_dB]

I thank you for the effort you put into your post, but I stopped reading after that. Biggest trash you could possibly make up about CS and CS:S.

Yeah yeah dude I get it. The way I look at it is if SD released Brink to play ANYTHING close to RTCW I would have dealt with it. I understand the original CS players and how they feel about source. Believe me I get it. I played both but at this point I will take a “source” version of RTCW. All day long. Feel me?