Weapon Design Rant

(Raviolay) #41

OK call me crazy, but what if there was a slightly delayed depiction of your exact spread drawn near your crosshair in dot’s in another colour sightly opaque. The weapons are more visual in how they are pointing when holding down the trigger, along with the screen shake. Would that not allay some of the spread issues also, or would that just make the game too easy?

(INF3RN0) #42

That would basically draw the spread patterns, which would make it more predictable- but not necessarily easier. I still think the better solution would be to have significant progressive recoil rather than progressive spread. In this case aiming would be more difficult, but spread would be maintained. I prefer progressive difficulty rather than progressive inability.

(prophett) #43

Truthfully, barring a few tweaks, I am fine the way it is…

(Glottis-3D) #44

[QUOTE=krokodealer;485265]My suggestion is: projectile weapons.
-like plazmagun, or (more likely) some kind of an automatic/semiautomatic crossbow // darts minigun
-more exotic - chainhook, like the one that scorpion used in Mortal combat.
these weapons were used in different quake mods, like painkiller(for quakeworld) and they were both fun and hard to master.[/QUOTE]
any chance for a primary projectile weapon?
may there be some difficulties (judjing by strange nade bouncing) in engine?

(Ashog) #45

tbh I still think that the “skillfullness” of some pilots was basically a consequence of them finding the right controls layout and balanced flyer mouse sensitivities/speeds for both yaw and pitch. Those who managed to find them kept them secret, hence such a difference in flyer “skills”. I personally never bothered to search for perfect settings, because I was never interested much in flyers, however I did this for vehicles (hog, dillo, etc).

(Mustang) #46

Lol, perfect settings, advanced mode = on, job done.

Sensitivity is a personal preference, it wasn’t as underground as you try to make out. :tongue:

(Ashog) #47

sense not, but m_helicopterpitch and yaw as well as vehicleSteerKeyscale was. Changed the behaviours totally.

(Mustang) #48

They’re all just sensitivity multipliers, nothing different than changing mouse DPI.

(Ashog) #49

yet they had to be balanced for every flyer and to sensitivity as such, which took time.

(INF3RN0) #50

Ashog just mad aboot life

(Ashog) #51

more smartassing pls

(PixelTwitch) #52

[QUOTE=rookie1;485275]ETQW :piloting air vehicules asked for skill …not all ppl could do it
Ren : I know a guy in c&c Ren that mastering the gunner ( kind of rpg) hes almost a legend :wink:
the point is to support INF3RNO post :Some weapon could be mastering in good hands ;)[/QUOTE]

What you have to remember is that them games had a very tiny (all be it active) community. I also have issues with the weapons in XT however I do not think your suggestions are the best way to go about it. We are currently seeing constant 30 kills to 1 - 2 deaths by the decent players. That is showing some form of skill gap/base.

Really I do not think it comes down to skill…
Its more down to complexity…

Beating people that do not yet understand a game and all its nuances does not make you more “skilled” just more “experienced”.

Again, I really like some of what you said but just not keen on your solutions :slight_smile:

(modded) #53

I’m going to make a quick quip about shotguns. I love shotguns in general in video games. However, for optimal use they require strong positioning skills, not as much strong aim (unless the RoF is low enough). This doesn’t mean that shotguns offer little room for improvement, it’s just that’s it’s a different area than what is needed for other weapons. One of the reasons I love shotguns is that I consider myself to be a strong flanker, hence it suits me.

(tokamak) #54

Can I just give a counter-voice to this whole attitude that we need more weapons that are harder to control with greater trade-offs?

I don’t believe in this skill/reward thing at all. At least, not in the way INFERNO is describing ‘skill’

this should be reflective in player performance; be it tracking, recoil, reflex, hit scan, etc.

This is a very narrow description of player performance. And yet at the same time, the criticism that guns right now are ‘situational’ is what I consider the most meaningful way a player can handle weapons. The moment a weapon is situational it requires an enormous amount of insight about the current combat situation, your position, your team’s position, the odds of succeeding, the time you have left, the abilities that are in place etc etc.

Situational weapons are good. ‘Performance’ based weapons based on trivial hurdles are bad.

We already have Fragger and Red Eye. Especially Red Eye’s weapon is not easy to use consistently. I don’t mind seeing a whole host of variations on their weapons. But making a weapon more powerful by compensating with obscure ways of using that require vigorous training, that’s just breaking with the tactical niches the current ‘situational’ weapons.

I guess a good example of what would fit this ‘high performance’ description is the quickscope /quick reload sniper glitch in ETQW. To me it appears that’s the sentiment behind this plan. It’s an exploit that requires an enormous amount of skill, dedication and practice. But once you mastered it you’re enjoying an advantage that has nothing to do with your tactical awareness.

So there’s my two cents. Should better aimers be rewarded? Yes, that’s already happening right now. Spookify’s performance in this game is a testament to that. That dude is scary online. But simply making a weapon more difficult to give players that mastered it a complete advantage is a perverse way of designing weapons.

(Ashog) #55

Skill? lol, everyone knows people used mouse macros for that. Even if they wouldn’t admit that. Such macro is made in 5 minutes, cmon.

(tokamak) #56

I had no idea. That’s extremely lame.

However, for the sake of my point, suppose they did. Suppose they worked months at perfecting the art of quickscoping. I don’t think that’s a honed skill that should be rewarded at all. It’s something that’s isolated and has very little meaning within the game itself. There’s tons of cheap flash games that train your mouse dexterity. I’d like to see a shooter be more than just that.

(INF3RN0) #57

[QUOTE=tokamak;495961]I had no idea. That’s extremely lame.

However, for the sake of my point, suppose they did. Suppose they worked months at perfecting the art of quickscoping. I don’t think that’s a honed skill that should be rewarded at all. It’s something that’s isolated and has very little meaning within the game itself. There’s tons of cheap flash games that train your mouse dexterity. I’d like to see a shooter be more than just that.[/QUOTE]

As far as I know it was mostly EU that scripted, but a lot of people did it manually. It wasn’t that hard though, just bind to mouse button 4. FYI though, the exploit was the weapon swap bug, not the quickscope. Anyone could use that bug to get a faster RoF, but because all a “quickscope” is… is hitting zoom and shoot really fast, you had to have aim to hit anything.

(Bangtastic) #58

I kinda miss when you stop shooting, the crosshair goes back in the initial position. would make burst fire and gunplay much smoother at least for my taste xD

(modded) #59

That’s called recoil reset. I don’t like it, so if it’s put in it needs to be an option (like it is in Blacklight: Retribution).

(Bangtastic) #60

ok to be fair recoil reset in blr seems to be instantaneous, there I dont even like it either. In BF or Counterstrike its quite nice. I imagine it gives the guns a more rounded feel, as the new weapon animations worked wonders :smiley: