PSA: Projectiles and movement

[Scheveningen]

I know I promised my rework PR was supposed to happen awhile ago but I've been SICK for a couple weeks. I'm OK now. Since the past few days I investigated some weird shit regarding combat.

Presently, the current state of the game and how the nuances of gunplay factors into that has gone completely unnoticed even by me for months. Only after doing a bunch of testing today during a couple of ongoing rounds as well as odd experiences from past rounds, have I noticed this.

If you are moving while attempting to input something along the lines of shooting any firearm or energy armament, you will be massively penalized and your projectile will go way off target.

This is normally pretty consistent with other shooter games where strafing/shooting will penalize your overall accuracy by a certain amount. The degree that this game does it, though, it's genuinely unmatched. Let me describe to you the only viable strategy is at the moment for working around this:

1. When preparing a shot, remain motionless.
2. Line up your shot and then fire.
3. Start moving/kiting back again.
4. Repeat, but keep in mind, never shoot while moving.

To some people it seems as though this strategy benefits melee users a lot more than it does to the guy with the gun. This is absolutely untrue. Considering how easy it is to still follow the above formula and punish anyone stupid enough to rush the guy with a gun, nothing in particular has changed, but if you notice you're missing a lot, it's because you're moving way too much and need to sit still. Note that guns are generally bad at chasing people down in general who are already moving. If you don't have a scope on that thing, you shouldn't be trying to land any hits.

What can melee users take away from this? Unfortunately, the advantage is still not really in your favor against a firearm user with the above strategy in mind and with a superior firearm than what weapon you have in your hands. Your strategies are as follows:

1. Flanking, or the usage of (non)human shields.
2. Usage of grenade or disruption tools to disable the use of firearms or the manipulation of said firearms in some way.
3. Rush in and hit someone with force gloves + melee weapon. Objectively inferior to other options because you don't get a guarantee to safety this way.
4. Usage of the object shield in conjunction with a one-handed melee weapon. Preferably something that deflects projectiles. Note you must be facing the punishment to reliably deflect it, and you can be killed by superior angling very easily.

Unfortunately, none of the above really makes melee stand up well unless they start the confrontation having already closed the distance on the firearm user. Assuming equal skill, competency and cognizant of the advantages each side has of the firearm user and of the melee user, the firearm user almost always has the advantage of range, cover, suppression and safety over the advantages of reliable, nearly infinite applications of damage that come at a cost of safety and range and absolutely no relevant tactical environmental factors whatsoever.

If you die to a ninja or someone with force gloves + esword it's because you misplayed from a combat standpoint, sorry, firearms are still better in many regards with how many objectives a firearm can accomplish. I will be removing force gloves pretty soon nonetheless for other reasons; such as how force gloves enable mediocre antag players to gank or otherwise effortlessly win confrontations against notably less robust players, which in turn makes overall gameplay enjoyment incredibly marginal. Because you can't interact with dead people, nor can you interact while dead.

anyway, the tl;dr: Don't move while shooting, you will miss. Stay stationary for a brief second, shoot, and then move, then repeat. Stay robust, my friends.

[LanceTheInvader]

While I agree to some degree. Your logic behind removing the gloves is flawed in my opinion. I get the whole "Makes killing noobs easy" thing but they are still useful against any type of players.

While RP should always be the priority, if you start removing threatening gear from antag. How are they supposed to be threatening in the first place? I personally believe it is better to encourage people to use the gear responsibly than to remove it.

An antag, by design or at the very least in spirit, is in a one vs "all" situation. Or at the very lease they ain't favorised by many factor. (One being they often have to fight both security and the AI trying to slow their progress.)  You cannot expect a guy like that to fight without using every tricks to his disposition. The guy is going to abuse every single advantage he has and the very fact he can is the reason why an antag is threatening to begin with.

You are free to do as you wish. But, to me, removing should always be the absolute last resort in any kind of situation with any given item. And I feel there is better options.

[Scheveningen]

You will never touch someone who knows you have force gloves and a strong melee weapon.

force gloves + any melee weapon isn't close to being "threatening". It's lame min-maxing that makes any individual instantly realize you're the lowest common denominator of an antagonist that isn't worthy of interacting with, not even to shoot.

[LanceTheInvader]

11 hours ago, Scheveningen said:

You will never touch someone who knows you have force gloves and a strong melee weapon.

force gloves + any melee weapon isn't close to being "threatening". It's lame min-maxing that makes any individual instantly realize you're the lowest common denominator of an antagonist that isn't worthy of interacting with, not even to shoot.

Good, then they are going to hate them more. It's actually wonderful. Really I hardly see the issue at all with that. I have no idea why people would go "lowest common denominator"? Because they feel its unfair? Bring our the tears and get the baby food because really it is an RP server and in the grand scheme of things that kind of scummyness is more than common even in real life. A low life criminal will not play fair.

Perhaps it all makes sense to you but I literally cannot comprehend something I never had a problem with. EXCEPT with forcepikes... but those things we're actually broken on a mechanical level so that's another thing.

Feel free to balance your game as you want. But I still feel that logic is greatly flawed.

[Sytic]

Have you tried not being where the projectiles are? Or solid positioning? Ambush strategy? Pincer formation? A melee weapon can do a bunch of these fairly well, and a good melee weapon can do wonders.

Using the "run" feature wisely also allows you to chase people down now, where the new run-while-shooting nerfs will make them unable to hit you nine times out of ten as they book it. Melee has always been viable due to it's feature to get one good hit meaning probable death. Guns have rarely been able to do that. Duck around a corner and you can easily stall someone for a long period of time.

Ranged weapons have always had an advantage if you can perform proper positioning, teamwork, and have a good understanding of how not to overextend, but dismissing someone who uses a melee weapon as "bad and just ganks for kills" or dismissing someone who dies from a melee weapon as "bad at video games" sounds like filthy casual talk to me. 

TL;DR:

Spoiler

https://i.imgur.com/dAZh78g.jpg

 

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

13 hours ago, Scheveningen said:

You will never touch someone who knows you have force gloves and a strong melee weapon.

force gloves + any melee weapon isn't close to being "threatening". It's lame min-maxing that makes any individual instantly realize you're the lowest common denominator of an antagonist that isn't worthy of interacting with, not even to shoot.

I have slain entire rosters of Officers who foolishly follow me into maintenance as I use force gloves and melee weapons against them. It's an important playstyle of unathi.

All tactics are situational. Melee weapons in the right hands are incredibly threatening. A spear and decent armor can wreck someone's day.

Unless you counter it with kiting or whatever.

Shooting while moving is important if you are a tajara because movement is the only method by which to increase your changes of avoiding enemy fire, by not being where the bullets are going to be, or by having the actual player misclick away from you.

[Nantei]

15 hours ago, Scheveningen said:

You will never touch someone who knows you have force gloves and a strong melee weapon.

force gloves + any melee weapon isn't close to being "threatening". It's lame min-maxing that makes any individual instantly realize you're the lowest common denominator of an antagonist that isn't worthy of interacting with, not even to shoot.

A few days ago as Raider I got what was essentially three kills on Security members, and two kills on Cargo Techs, all fully outfitted. I had a gladius, EMP's, a manhack, and a hazard suit. The sword is fairly mediocre stats-wise, but what it did do was cripple legs. I cut off one officers' leg, broke another, taking them both out of the fight. Killed two CT's that tried to fight me, and almost killed a Detective who pushed on me. An EMP, some armor, and a decent melee weapon can take you far.

I also don't agree with removing force gloves, they're fun and let you actually play with the grab system more than you usually could.

The thing to remember is armor is cheap as hell: 4tc, EMP destroys Securities strongest weapons, and melee weapons can easily end someone in a single hit. I have gone on huge murder rampages with nothing but armor, a melee weapon, and an EMP grenade. It really cannot be underestimated. God forbid they follow you somewhere narrow too.

[LanceTheInvader]

6 hours ago, LanceTheInvader said:

Good, then they are going to hate them more. It's actually wonderful. Really I hardly see the issue at all with that. I have no idea why people would go "lowest common denominator"? Because they feel its unfair? Bring our the tears and get the baby food because really it is an RP server and in the grand scheme of things that kind of scummyness is more than common even in real life. A low life criminal will not play fair.

Perhaps it all makes sense to you but I literally cannot comprehend something I never had a problem with. EXCEPT with forcepikes... but those things we're actually broken on a mechanical level so that's another thing.

Feel free to balance your game as you want. But I still feel that logic is greatly flawed.

Quoting myself because I feel I need to clarify something. When I speak of forcepikes, it was a weapon in Jedi Academy ForceMod I had to ban. It was OP not because it was strong but because it was mecanically broken.

Was the weapon used by the Royal Guard class ingame. Problem was unlike lightsaber, physical weapons in JKA caused knockbacks. That alone was not an issue. But, the royal guard combat style ingame was Ataru (AKA Cyan) wich was the cause of all the issues. That stance allowed for continuous left-right short swings. With a lightsaber it worked alright since they had no knockback. But due to the knockback it made players "bounce" on the blade continuously if somebody did that... stacking up hits to a very broken and unrealistic level. In other words, a collision related issue. This is literally the ONLY major gear ban I ever made on JKA and it was due to an impossible to fix mechanical issue. (Didn't have the know-how to fix that.) The class itself wasn't banned because players could trigger a glitch unique to ForceMod3 that allowed them to use any "lightsaber styles" so those that wanted royal guard had to glitch to use a different stand. People using cyan recieved a 3 days ban on first offense with a single verbal warning beforehand.

Mandalorians were fucking OP against Jedi. And, a single one could easily handle 2-3 Jedi if they were not VERY good with forcepowers. But, on the RP side of thing it made sense so I never changed it. Mandalorians are trained to jedi-killer levels. So it was OP in the scope of a game but it was required to keep the lore coherent. Otherwise having a Padawan ending EASILY a good mandalorian player would have been bad.  If you are a padawan and are being attacked by a mandalorian..... RUN. Do not fight, RUN! Get at least a Jedi Knight involved so you have someone with a good knowledge of the force that can beat a flying mandalorian who uses flamethrowers, missles and dual laser pistols. Being attacked by a droideka? (Yes, those were a thing.) Get soldiers in with emps and explosives. Don't bother suicide rush it with your lightsaber unless you can catch it with it's shield down. Fighting a wookie? For Christ sake don't let it get its hands on you or youre dead, it's gonna rip your arms off and beat you senseless with them.

What I learned from managing a roleplay server is that you cannot always balance gameplay. Lore and common sense is usually more important. Balance should be applied with common sense in mind and removing options should be a last resort. Keep in mind winning is not the priority here. The priority is RP.

I might have gone a bit overboard with the explanations but I still hope some of you will appreciate this insight in balancing within a roleplay context.

Edited September 16, 2019 by LanceTheInvader

[Scheveningen]

11 hours ago, Marlon Phoenix said:

Shooting while moving is important if you are a tajara because movement is the only method by which to increase your changes of avoiding enemy fire, by not being where the bullets are going to be, or by having the actual player misclick away from you.

The shooting aspect while moving isn't possible or useful anymore, as shooting while in movement will instantly put all of your shots off target.

Likewise. If someone with a gun is playing into environments of tight chokes with easy areas to be dead-ended into, or rather areas to which they have far less advantages than a person with a melee weapon and a "rush the gun wielder" mentality, is that person with the gun playing the game smart or are they the stupid one in that situation?

Force gloves exemplify the noobkiller playstyle by killing bad players even easier and being able to start reaching into occasionally wounding a good one. Is that something that should stay in the game? I don't really think so.

Edited September 16, 2019 by Scheveningen