Vision Cones [Feedback]

[Boggle08]

I considered the cones something I would just tolerate until I tried to step into combat with these things PR merged.

The "camera" isn't controlled by the player's cursor, and if we had that implemented, that's the only way I could see something like this being feasible. Gun fights, you could probably manage just fine, but melee is a confusing, frustrating exercise where people dart out of your field of vision and hit you in the back of the head before you can react. You can't strike people in your blind spots, you have to click twice in order to look at them, then hit them. It gets worse the faster they are, and the slower you are, since movement speed now controls how fast you can look at things while staying mobile. Now we really can't anticipate what people will do, and when you're lagging to shit, it just makes it worse. Trying to walk around to dodge/fence with someone WHILE attempting to keep your camera/sight on them is a fight in and of itself, and it is never a good thing to have your players fight the camera, in any game.

If this came bundled with a mouselook, or maybe even a targeting system like a zelda game or something, this would be better. Right now, it just isn't working out.

Edited September 1, 2020 by Boggle08

[Pratepresidenten]

9 hours ago, Boggle08 said:

Gun fights, you could probably manage just fine, but melee is a confusing, frustrating exercise where people dart out of your field of vision and hit you in the back of the head before you can react. You can't strike people in your blind spots, you have to click twice in order to look at them, then hit them. It gets worse the faster they are, and the slower you are, since movement speed now controls how fast you can look at things while staying mobile. Now we really can't anticipate what people will do, and when you're lagging to shit,

This sounds... Pretty on point for melee combat. Slow characters are either naturally tanky or have armor, so of course lighter/faster characters would have an edge in a fight they usually would lose?

9 hours ago, Boggle08 said:

If this came bundled with a mouselook, or maybe even a targeting system like a zelda game or something, this would be better. Right now, it just isn't working out.

Aim intent, but for melee! Might be coo'

[Scheveningen]

Imagine melee combat having to require more initial thought before rushing someone down with a cult sword or stun baton. God bless this change

[Boggle08]

4 hours ago, Pratepresidenten said:

This sounds... Pretty on point for melee combat. Slow characters are either naturally tanky or have armor, so of course lighter/faster characters would have an edge in a fight they usually would lose?

I'm fighting the camera just as much as I am fighting my opponent. I wouldn't mind the vision cones nearly as much if I could actually look at what what I'm doing. I feel like I'm playing 2D Epic Mickey.

People pulling sneaky shit and slipping past my vision's fine if I can actually control where I'm looking independent of movement keys. Maybe have It so I just hit a key and then my dude is facing the cursor and strafing. I've been playing a shit ton of Darkwood lately, and the experience is something like that except with terrible controls and latency.

And before we put out the vision cones, Fast characters were kind of a meta thing in SS13 related combat. Going fast and not getting hit is better than being slow, getting outmaneuvered, and then getting robusted. Hell, even if you have the advantage as a slow cunt, if you can't out range or trap your opponent, they can simply run away and fight you on their terms. Just the nature of things.

[Myazaki]

3 hours ago, Boggle08 said:

People pulling sneaky shit and slipping past my vision's fine if I can actually control where I'm looking independent of movement keys. Maybe have It so I just hit a key and then my dude is facing the cursor and strafing. I've been playing a shit ton of Darkwood lately, and the experience is something like that except with terrible controls and latency.

I suggest you try out the adjusted Face-Direction verb, which will cause movement not to change your facing, but clicking will.

[Myazaki]

17 hours ago, Boggle08 said:

If this came bundled with a mouselook, or maybe even a targeting system like a zelda game or something, this would be better. Right now, it just isn't working out.

Mouselook would have serious problems if implemented with our UI / menu systems. 

Some sort of aim intent option that keeps you faced toward your target could work, though. Worth a test.

[geeves]

I find it useful to have facing-macros for RP purposes, but with this change, they're useful for mechanical reasons as well.

Here's a little snapshot of the macros I use, specifically the facing directions ones:

 

A little crash course on how to make these:

Right click the top bar on the screen (above the ones that says File, Icons, etc.), then navigate to that macros button.

Click on the checkbox that says "Only apply to this game" to toggle it off.

Click on "New Macro" and have this screen appear.

Insert the relevant info, I will make one for clicking on my movement intent as an example.

Click OK on this screen, then repeat as necessary. And hey presto, you're all macro'd up.

 

I find playing with vision cones while using these [direction]face macros to be easy and seamless, my experience with RPing my character looking around already naturally giving me an advantage. It might be worth implementing these macros natively, but I'm not sure if people use Shift WASD for anything else already.

[Carver]

19 hours ago, Scheveningen said:

Imagine melee combat having to require more initial thought before rushing someone down with a cult sword or stun baton. God bless this change

Dark Souls' 'fishing for backstabs' is not the peak of melee combat. It's a massively trash system to base combat around.

[Carver]

Dare I suggest, if vision cones are implemented, that we have a system to lock our vision onto a specific mob? An eye-follow or the like?

It would ease the cancer of combat with this current system and function as a fairly useful RP tool as well.

[Boggle08]

14 hours ago, geeves said:

[snip]

Thanks man, this'll probably remedy my problem, but I really hope we do get the Zelda lock on or "aim intent" down the line as @Myazaki described it. Something accessible and intuitive for new guys or people that don't engage in mechanics/combat enough to commit to making macros.

I think the new sight cones have the potential to add a lot of depth to combat or even new mechanics based around such(i.e. turning away from a flashbang to negate some of its effects), but it also has the potential to become a severe injury upon QoL. Aim intent would be a perfect compliment for the new system.

[Scheveningen]

4 hours ago, Carver said:

Dark Souls' 'fishing for backstabs' is not the peak of melee combat. It's a massively trash system to base combat around.

Haven't really seen this be the case because the worst that happens is that someone with very poor positioning is incapable of fighting back. Not a lot changes since the status quo before was that if you got alpha striked by a lot of frontloaded melee damage, you were dead by the first hit. Today, people with guns can back themselves against a wall and just riddle their opponent with bullets if they try to advance suicidally.

If the devs are going to add the aim assist to melee, then it would be best that you're incapable of sprinting while doing so.

[TrainTN]

2 hours ago, Boggle08 said:

but it also has the potential to become a severe injury upon QoL.

Strongly agreed. As someone who does not play combat roles often, the test-merge has done nothing for my game experience other than make it harder for me to see and interact with other players. I don't understand the supposed appeal in that.

[StationCrab]

@Myazaki I replied to your PR with this as well but figured I'd put it here if anyone else has experienced something similar. When you face away from someone CTRL dragging you as a borg, you vanish as well as the person dragging you.

Edited September 3, 2020 by StationCrab

[Carver]

Really not digging these tests as they go on. This is so clumsy even with macros, I feel like I'm playing finger-spaghetti in combat now. Hasn't really done anything to help RP besides encouraging facing odd angles whilst sitting to see people's emotes - yet that remains nowhere near as painful as combat is now.

[Valkrae]

I've held off on making a post about the Cones until I could get a decent amount of playtime with them, and I have to say that I am simply not a fan of them.

Combat is already a convoluted mess in SS13 as it is, and the Vision Cones make every single shootout, brawl, or scramble that I've been involved in look like a Three Stooges skit. While the idea of sneaking up behind someone is a cool novelty, I don't think it really is worth it, considering the clumsiness that follows with everything else.

Xenobiology is where my main complaints come in.

I used to play Xenobiology rather regularly, as it was rather easy to get into the flow of things. I could easily click behind myself to drag slimes out of containment pens, and drag mass numbers of them in a short few moments. With the Vision Cones, however, it makes it an effort of 'how long am I going to put up with this before I give up and go to Cryo'. What would've been a five second endeavor, now increases to a ten to fifteen second endeavor. These times stack up, and what would normally take around five to ten minutes to complete, now takes upwards of twenty to twenty five.

While minor, I believe that this issue extends to any Department that requires a lot of dragging multiple objects. 

[Scheveningen]

I'm still a fan of vision cones, but I admit I am not a fan of how responsive keystrokes are. It seems there is a delay to face direction for shift-click examining to change direction. These issues seem to be the only problem that make this system harder to use, since I am otherwise accustomed to vision cones from other SS13-alike servers that used them.

[Carver]

Fixing the verb delay won't solve that vision cones turn combat into a stressful macro-fest, compared to the fairly nonchalant and often macro-free combat of before.

[TrainTN]

It has been over two weeks now, and I still do not like them at all. I've played several rounds with them, almost daily, and I constantly wished I was playing without these things. Even when I have tried to take advantage of blindspots, it hasn't worked, because the footsteps indicator is too noticeable for anyone paying a margin of attention to their surroundings. As far as I can tell, the only ways to sneak up on someone are exactly the same as they were before: bumrushing before they can react, approaching in darkness, or waiting until they're distracted by a menu. I stick by all the criticisms I've posted before, my opinion has not changed in the slightest.

The OP says this is supposed to improve gameplay for stealth antagonists, but there's so much more in the game that makes stealth difficult than players' 360 vision. In fact, I'd call that the least of all the problems for antags. Pervasive security cameras everywhere with AI oversight and Security's access to these cameras from any place at any time with portable computers, the suit sensors vitals and location tracking system to locate victims, the ease with which anyone can cry for help on the radio because everyone has one and people don't go down quickly nor quietly, the difficulty with breaking into any department without being blatantly obvious about it in front of a dozen witnesses, and the sheer amount of noise caused by doing anything.

Stealth antagonism isn't about sneaking around like Solid Snake anyway, you can spend the whole round hiding in maintenance shafts if you want to do that (or just play Ninja). As others have said, it's about deception, disguise, lies, manipulation, and creativity.

[ImmortalRedshirt]

Well, yesterday, I came back to play a round, and I have to say, the system has substantially improved since I last saw it in action and it feels at about the same level of quality as other servers that use it(yes, I know full well about one specific server that uses it and no, I haven't played there.) My only issue is that the indicator for someone walking outside of your view looks a little funky, but that's just how I feel.

[Carver]

You should really be able to have vision of a 3x3 radius with you in the center. That alone would solve all of my annoyance with these in combat (without needing a lock-on mechanic), especially since these cones have nothing to accommodate the basic human spatial sense.

[Zundy]

Are we adding the sneak thing so that you can move without footstep markers?

[Lmwevil]

i like it but i don't like it, it's not very uhhhhhhh fun 

it's a cool concept and servers like Lifeweb make it work because in that game they have buttons on the UI to lock the way you're facing and stuff like that, additionally if you lose an eye you lose some of the arc. 

The thing is that that server is *DESIGNED* around that, and there's a lot of gameplay we have currently that doesn't quite click with it. Really I think it could work, but there's a lot that needs to be changed

[OffRoad99]

In a traitor round a traitor Sec Officer snuck behind me and pressed a gun at my back because I was negotiating/convincing a suspect to turn herself in. I never saw it coming.

I liked that.
 

On 21/09/2020 at 22:17, Carver said:

You should really be able to have vision of a 3x3 radius with you in the center. That alone would solve all of my annoyance with these in combat (without needing a lock-on mechanic), especially since these cones have nothing to accommodate the basic human spatial sense.

If we can implement this, maybe with the "Sneak" function that someone else mentioned, then it would be perfect.

Edited September 24, 2020 by OffRoad99

[Carver]

A whole month later, and I don't see the pros of these. They've really killed my drive to play with how much they hamper and clutter up the game's systems, so I'll the step-by-step of why I see them as a problem.

Combat - how I came to need five more macros in every fight:

• Ranged combat is a macro fest of facing direction - the 'improvement' to facedirection to change your facing on a click doesn't help, due to if you're wielding a firearm this means you will shoot, so I'm still forced to rely upon westfaceperm/eastfaceperm/etc. to keep a sightline. Any semblance of smoothness in the combat systems has died with the absolute finger spaghetti now of this direction facing in addition to the previous macro use for pumping or pulling the bolt on a firearm, unwielding/wielding to reload and so forth.
• Melee combat is a clusterfuck that reminds me of Dark Souls, naught but fishing for backstabs as you try to abuse the cones and do a dance even more ridiculous than ever before. This isn't Lifeweb with an intricate system of dodging, parries and a need to approach it with caution - this is SS13 where melee is approached with a careless sprint and little regard for naught but the cones and who clicks faster and better.

Stealth - or the lack thereof:

• People will say this adds new methods like 'silently emagging a cyborg who stands still for an entire minute and never looks around or moves in that minute', or 'silently taking down someone who's AFK'. I've never seen this actually offer any modicum of stealthy advantage that isn't beaten by someone merely being at their keyboard, and even in those rare cases, you could often pull the same 'tricks' without these cones.
• Do these actually help you sneak around? No, not really. The stealthy tools that existed before gain no benefit from them, you're not better at sneaking in maintenance because the Engineer can't see you in his vision cone that's behind the already forward-facing ray of his flashlight. Your grabs are no better by 'surprise' than they are by rushing the person and grabbing them. This system doesn't actually offer anything for stealth that wasn't already offered by some players giving a 'benefit of the doubt' and letting you sneak up on them before. A locker or pitch darkness are still the best methods of ambush, and this hasn't done anything for them.

RP - the hampering clumsiness:

• Being unable to see emotes is a pain. Audible emotes exist, yet default hotkeys like F4 default to non-audible. Most people simply don't bother with the audible function. This doesn't do anything to help roleplay that I can no longer see a third of the bar's emotes, or that I need to awkwardly face my entire body to see people since spacemen lack a functioning neck.
• On the above note, these vision cones have actually made stealth worse in regard to inspecting someone without your mob facing them - previously facedirection would enable you to examine someone without giving it away, with the adjustment to it for combat's sake, this is no longer feasible. It was valuable for the clever antagonist or security examining someone passing by, or for reading the flavour text of whom enters the room without the entire bar turning their whole bodies.

[Lmwevil]

30 minutes ago, Carver said:

A whole month later, and I don't see the pros of these. They've really killed my drive to play with how much they hamper and clutter up the game's systems, so I'll the step-by-step of why I see them as a problem.

Combat - how I came to need five more macros in every fight:

• Ranged combat is a macro fest of facing direction - the 'improvement' to facedirection to change your facing on a click doesn't help, due to if you're wielding a firearm this means you will shoot, so I'm still forced to rely upon westfaceperm/eastfaceperm/etc. to keep a sightline. Any semblance of smoothness in the combat systems has died with the absolute finger spaghetti now of this direction facing in addition to the previous macro use for pumping or pulling the bolt on a firearm, unwielding/wielding to reload and so forth.
• Melee combat is a clusterfuck that reminds me of Dark Souls, naught but fishing for backstabs as you try to abuse the cones and do a dance even more ridiculous than ever before. This isn't Lifeweb with an intricate system of dodging, parries and a need to approach it with caution - this is SS13 where melee is approached with a careless sprint and little regard for naught but the cones and who clicks faster and better.

Stealth - or the lack thereof:

• People will say this adds new methods like 'silently emagging a cyborg who stands still for an entire minute and never looks around or moves in that minute', or 'silently taking down someone who's AFK'. I've never seen this actually offer any modicum of stealthy advantage that isn't beaten by someone merely being at their keyboard, and even in those rare cases, you could often pull the same 'tricks' without these cones.
• Do these actually help you sneak around? No, not really. The stealthy tools that existed before gain no benefit from them, you're not better at sneaking in maintenance because the Engineer can't see you in his vision cone that's behind the already forward-facing ray of his flashlight. Your grabs are no better by 'surprise' than they are by rushing the person and grabbing them. This system doesn't actually offer anything for stealth that wasn't already offered by some players giving a 'benefit of the doubt' and letting you sneak up on them before. A locker or pitch darkness are still the best methods of ambush, and this hasn't done anything for them.

RP - the hampering clumsiness:

• Being unable to see emotes is a pain. Audible emotes exist, yet default hotkeys like F4 default to non-audible. Most people simply don't bother with the audible function. This doesn't do anything to help roleplay that I can no longer see a third of the bar's emotes, or that I need to awkwardly face my entire body to see people since spacemen lack a functioning neck.
• On the above note, these vision cones have actually made stealth worse in regard to inspecting someone without your mob facing them - previously facedirection would enable you to examine someone without giving it away, with the adjustment to it for combat's sake, this is no longer feasible. It was valuable for the clever antagonist or security examining someone passing by, or for reading the flavour text of whom enters the room without the entire bar turning their whole bodies.

Accurately sums up my thoughts, even moreso on the lifeweb combat. 

On LFWB there's shitloads of mechanics and inherent SKILLS that give mechanical advantages to say a Cerberus (their security sorta) vs a Bum (Literal human garbage) thus making it more balanced in a thousand ways. It feels inspired by Lifeweb but without the things that make it so entertaining