f13.net

I know a lot of people here at f13 played Planetside for a least a month. And everyone knows that Huxley is coming, we're just all incredibly cynical and figure that it's Korean and will suck (or will at least be mismanaged and have massive cheating problems), or will be a shitty lagfest, or will be only as entertaining as Planetside and everyone will quit within a month.

Well, I'm not going to put any of those fears to rest, but uh... this latest video looks fucking sweet. (http://media.pc.ign.com/media/738/738456/vids_1.html) Draw your own conclusions.

(edit: go to schild's link instead of mine unless you have some quicktime issues, since his is highres goodness and mine is IGN crap.)

Webzen isn't completely Korean.

Also, IGN sucks.

Looks very UT (hi-res quicktime, Gametrailers) (http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?id=14910&type=mov).

Graphics quality looks sub par, weapons don't look very interesting (on the website, there's only 4), but it still seems fun enough. The action and pacing resemble a traditional FPS deathmatch. In that respect, it looks more fun than Planetside. The gimmicks were cool as well (i.e. heat version and superspeed).

Yea, there's no way those are anywhere near final graphics. I've seen Webzen produce some good looking shit. As for the game, it's been on my list but it'll take more than pretty pictures to convince me to get my computer ready for UT2k7 (Hux uses Unreal 3). And right now UT2k7 is the only thing that'll get me to get a new rig.

schild will attest to the fact that Huxley is a game I've been eagerly anticipating so not everybody here thinks it's going to suck. And I think the graphics look fine. Frankly I would be worried if they were showing off environments as detailed as, say, Quake IV. This is supposed to be an MMORPGFPS, after all, and having super-high-poly graphics and super-high-res textures just means you'll be stuck with 4 on 4 battles at best. Basically it's a tradeoff between"teh shiny" and massive battles. PlanetSide with its crappy graphics picked the "massive" end, being able to support up to 400 players per continent. I'm guessing Huxley is more on the traditional FPS-end with probably 32 on 32 or 64 on 64 style batttles.

Well shit, if it's that small, then why would I want to play this instead? UT2K4 has vehicles and can do 32. BF has vehicles and can do 64. Not sure about Quake Wars or UT2K7.

Secondly, all of those games look better, have more weapons, more gimmicks, more...whatever.

And apparently, Huxley still requires PvE "questing" (as they put it). No doubt it'll have a grind too (being made by Koreans and all). Other shooters have robust, heavily scripted stories -- without grinds.

About the only thing it seems that this game has over them is persistency. But it doesn't sound like that means much, when weighed against everything else.

I would beg to differ that UT2K4 or BF2 looks better than Huxley. And I'm not sure why you are so fixated on weapon counts. Just cause the Web site is only showing 4 doesn't mean the game, which is unfinished and unreleased, is going to have 4. Hell the video schild linked to shows 5 weapons.

Well, it is a shooter, after all. Kind of a standard fixation, I think.

Even putting that aside though, I think the other concerns I raised are valid ones. What exactly does this do better than an FPS? People raised the same question about PlanetSide, and now that I've looked at the feature list with Huxley, I think it demands that question more than PlanetSide ever did. At least PS set itself apart by having large scale battles with persistency. Other shooters couldn't do that.

It seems like everything Huxley does, otoh, is done better with normal FPS's. Story, 64 player or less competitive play, graphics (latency wise or style wise).

What does it do that sets itself apart? Huxley's world is persistent, but it has instanced, small scale competitive death matching. Big deal. Huxley has "quests" (and probably a grind). Fuck that shit. Huxley is made by Koreans -- Fuck that shit too. It's most unique features are at the same time, it's worst ones.

I don't know, it looked pretty good to me.  Having said that, it's going to be really really awful.  Why?  Because I hate those sorts of games!  But it looked good.

I think the battles will be closer to the "less than 64 people in your general area at once" scale, but even WWIIOL had (still has?) a 64 player limit and it's players still love it. If they put in enough persistance and experiences that you can't get in other online FPS games (that PvE AI looked pretty good, and advancement is sure to be key), it doesnt really matter if you can pull off Planetsides huge battle numbers.

Seeing the city shots with the cars and what not gave me a feeling that they've spent a lot of time on the atmosphere of Huxley, and it looks like a very, very, high budget title. I don't really know much about Webzen, but I think it's fair to say that this is the American-bound warship in their fleet, and they've strapped as much money to the front as possible to make sure it crosses those choppy waters in the north pacific.

editted to downtone my optimism over the PvE aspect of the game.

Blech, that about ruined my optimism for Huxley.  A MMOG needs more depth than Unreal Tournament, it should play more like a tactical shooter.  Planetside went severely downhill when they chose to make it less tactical and more twitch, and it looks like Huxley is starting that way.  So, come on in and get owned by 8-year-olds with better reflexes.  Don't be bitter, that guy's going to be your commander soon.   Not to mention that the higher speed play makes Internet latency concerns that much more influential over play.  Webzen apparently knows squat about MMOFPS design.

Maybe some people will like it, but personally I won't pay $15/mo for an shallowly balanced FPS design I can play without a subscription fee.  Now, if it played more like Gears of War I'd be all over it.

To be honest, I don't care what the speed of gameplay is like. The MMOFPS genre was, and still is, on the brink of death. It has made jack shit in comparison to it's RPG cousin, and one would believe that it's operating costs are even higher than it's cash cow relative.

Huxley may save it. Even if it doesn't do it perfectly, Huxley may bring new blood into the genre, and keep it alive long enough for that next MMOFPS to enter development. And maybe, just maybe, somewhere down the road someone will realize that a good tactical MMOFPS with a slow combat pace (to make pc specs and lag less of a factor), and awesome "war"-like features such as territory control and resource management for an army, will make a great game.

Looks like a UT mod to me.

Also, does anyone play stuff at that framerate? There were more than a few serious slowdowns.

That trailer was pathetic. It looked like 4x4 Doom 3. They have lots of claims on their site like:


I'm not holding my breath.

This feature will make it in at least.

Looks fine. But looks won't make it succeed or fail.

As Stray said, standard questions here. We asked them all on PS. Regardless of what it became and when, the results are obvious. Sub-niche experience. Big ass battles are cool, but even in PS they're rare. So what really sets PS apart from superior looking games that don't collect a fee?

Well, not enough for one.

Huxley could have 4 weapons or 100, but it's success will hinge on a lot of things, notably:

• Does it feel superior to an FPS in some easy-to-understand way?
  
• What does it cost to play?
• How much does twitch matter?

The videos don't matter to me though they were cool and all. I'm interested enough to want to play it but not enough to follow it. This is because my entire interest for it is about UI. It's got to make persistence matter or I won't feel it's any different from the already good array of options.

I fell into the Planetside subniche group.. actually, I associate more with the WWIIOL subniche group (just resubbed yesterday!).

Even still, I think Huxley isn't really the best way for that subniche genre to go but... when theres only 3 games that exist in your niche, you take what you can get. Maybe I'm crazy when I think it looks awesome, but I compare it to Planetside and WWIIOL, so my standards are low.

Change it from Huxley to Huxtable.  Nobody knows what the fuck Huxley is, but people loved The Cosby Show.

It's tricky to identify MMOFPS titles though. Some consider Endless Ages and Neocron in that mix as well. Of course, you're still taking what you can get even by bringing the list to a whopping five :) Plus, complicating this is the control systems. Each of these games feels different. In PS, you sorta knew that the game took over after a certain point, using dice for their cone of fire. In a real FPS, that's a lot less obvious or not at all.

I don't get why so many people bag on PS. It's one of the greatest fps games of all time, imo. Only the Battlefield series comes close, and that's moving way too much in the direction of fast-paced combat. I used to fly for a clan in 1942 and I can't even stand to get in a jet in BF2.

I don't know how huge, persistent maps and enormous furballs aren't enough to make a great game. I'd probably be more interested in an updated PS engine than Huxley. Not having to waste hours every weeks just looking for a damned server was worth the sub for me.

Now with Huxley, one of the benefits is that it's supposed to be seamlessly cross-platform. Time to pwn slow-turn thumbtards! ;)
I don't even know you anymore.

The characters and monsters look horrible, and the weapons and vehicles look like Tonka toys. It just doesn't look very attractive to me, despite the engine.

I like operation flashpoint, not being able to join multiplayer games in session and everything, better than PS and BF*. BF* would be a better game with a better engine and people that really gave a damn. Hitting escape changing me to 800x600 16bit wasn't acceptable in the bf1942 beta and it's not any more acceptable however many games and expansions later.

I liked Flashpoint but the multiplayer interface was horrible - waiting ages for the current map to end to then miss out on the free-for-all for the finite slots in the next map was something I hope never to have to put up with ever again /derail

Was it any better on XBox live? (been tempted several times to get it on XBox but only if they got rid of that horrible multiplayer pain described above)

Oh yeah. OpFlash was the king! Ok, maybe that was the greatest single player wargame of all time. I never played it multiplayer.

The best FPS ever was the original Tribes. I'm not sure how you can even begin to call PS one of the best FPS ever. You can't even snipe with the sniper rifle in PS.

I believe sniping is one of the shittiest parts of fps. It sucks the fun out of a game like BF where you have a limited amount of players but 6 of 16 are crouched in some bushes getting a handful of sniper kills a round. Or BF1942 where half the team was camping planes on the airfield and the other half was sniping at them. Sniping is a selfish playstyle that's only fun for the sniper, whereas with most other weapons, you can enjoy a spirited firefight. It's just pretty lame gameplay. So yeah, I wouldn't let the lack of sniping deter me in the slightest. It's like decrying a lack of wandering damage.

Sniping in PS was actually pretty cool.

Useful in very limited situations, and typically used to wear the enemy down and force them into defensive positions rather than actually kill them. A lot of bases that had large hills next to them would be under the constant assault from snipers in all directions. Since a direct sniper shot wouldn't kill you, it usually made the people getting hit find some cover and pull out their med kit to heal themselves. While that's happening they're very vulnerable to infiltrators sneaking around inside the base.

So.. yeah, I liked PS sniper rifle system. However, I thought it was kind of lame that players in PS only had 1 hit box and a sniper (or anyone for that matter) had no incentive to aim at the head instead of chest.

Planetside today is absolute crap compared to the balance in the beta.  Nice big open cones of fire that required you crouch to get anything resembing ranged accuracy and, if you crouched behind cover that half obscured you, half of the enemy fire would hit the cover instead of you.  It was a thinking man's game where hyperactive twitchmonkeys bunny hopping skills served them not at all. 

Soon after release, thanks to giant whining threads by people who refused to learn the cone of fire, Planetside had deevolved to the point where cover was useless and surging around with the run-speed cyberware (Surge) rendered anyone who tried to use cover into mincemeat.  The problem was twofold: 1. The engine couldn't handle people rapidly strafing from side to side, it would misrender them as flying off too far in both directions.  2. Getting hit a few times would open up your cone of fire, so the guy who runs at you spraying and praying would have just as bad of a cone of fire as the guy getting tickled by a few lucky bullets while behind cover.  Shotguns, naturally, became the best weapon.

Another thing that bugs me about beta balanced as compared today is that armor piercing ammo used to have a point.  Most people don't bother carrying it these days because the only target it's really good against is MAX armor, where it about halves killing time, and with Decimator disposable rockets you can kill them in three shots anyway.  The developers further dumbed things down by making anti-vehicular vehicle weapons effective against infantry as well.

Some of those ugly changes have been reverted since then.  Surge is now nerfed to put your weapon away and Reaver rockets aren't tweaked to do great infantry damage anymore.  Network code has been improved a bit so jinking from side to side isn't quite as effective.  Still, it's not nearly as deep and interesting as the beta balance, when Planetside actually had aspirations to act like a massively multiplayer game instead of an expensive and less fully featured version of Tribes with connected maps.

So, seeing Huxley starting out looking like Unreal Tournament is downright depressing.  Massively multiplayer games need to be more intelligent than that.  It's a bad sign when Counterstrike requires more intelligence to play.

Listen to this one, the rest of you are being retarded as hell.

What I want to know about Huxley is, how well will this work:

The amount of weapons or level of twitch is irrelevent as long as the game is fun and they actually get the whole "world" thing right.  I'm looking for something more then lobby + games here.

Sorry to break it to you, Hoax, but that's all spin. 

"excitement and rich gameplay experience of a MMORPG", "knuckle-whitening action" - In the same way one can have an exciting and rich experience with a can of soup.  Fluff words that mean nothing.

"Communicate with eachother in a virtual city" - They have a chat system like any other online game.  I can communicate with other players in a virtual city in Counterstrike.

"intuitive PvP (player vs. player) system" - There's nothing 'intuitive' about what I saw in the video reel that started this thread, but given that it's yet another fluff word, it's meaningless.

"Everything a character does in Huxley world directly affects the success of not only the individual, but also of their race and party" - A claim made by nearly every single MMORPG ever made.  I could say this is true about Planetside or Dark Age of Camelot, for example, but it's fairly meaningless in execution.

Huxley, from that video clip alone, is looking to be little more than a massively multiplayer Unreal Tournament 2004 with Tribes being considerably more intelligent in execution.  Planetside might actually be a deeper, more satisfying game in comparison.  Very sad after seeing other E3 clips of people moving around in squads, because there's no way squad-based combat will work when it's playing that fast.  MMO twitchmonkey arena, here we come.  Freaking clueless Webzen, here's a free clue: twitchmonkeys do not a massively multiplayer world inhabitant make.  They arrive, they spasm, they leave.  A crowd that is looking to genuinely act like it's a virtual world is the one you want, and those folks have better things to do than spasm or be killed by those who spasm better than them.

That's it, I'm getting a video game degree.  I can make better games than 95% of the game developers in existance, it seems.

How many MOBs do I need to grind to get the EXP and plat I need to buy and use a BFG? And I mean the original BFG where I can wipe the entire map thats in my FOV.

I agree with that entire post.

Unfortunately, hyperactive twitchmonkey bunnytards are the target fps demographic.

Holy shit, watching that Huxley gameplay gave me ADD.  I do not like games of SHOOTSHOOTSHOOTDODGETHATGUYQUICKROCKETJUMPNOWDROPTHREEGRENADESKILLKILLKILLARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHH!!!  Even in games with lots of mobility and open space (Tribes) it didn't feel like things were going so fast as to be retarded, you could actually be thinking ahead instead of shooting some crystal meth and wiring the controller directly to your brain for maximum reflexes.

True.  Doubly unfortunate is that it seems whoever is in charge over there does not realize that genetic shoot-em-up FPS are different beasts than MMOFPS and tactical FPS.

A second look at that video shows that strafing is instant.  That means, in any kind of latency, the lag between when your target strafes versus when you actually see it strafe will displace the target considerably further than it should have.  But it's mostly the speed that kills it - you can't have squad-based combat at that speed.  Not even in a single player game.  Imagine trying to play Rainbow Six, SWAT 3/4, or Republic Commando at Unreal Tournament speeds.  That vacant feeling in your forehead is most of your brain not related to hand-eye coordination realizing they'd just get in the way and turning off.

Can't they make more games like the original BF 1942?  It had twitch and was strategic.  

Y'know, I played Huxley last E3. Webzen was giving out this big inflatable rafts, so I still have my big inflatable Webzen raft.

I ran through character creation and made a little scruffy guy. You start off with a series of 'templates' you can pick from (you unlock more later, somehow). You can pick 'more armor/life but slower', 'the medium one', and 'die to a grenade but move really fast'. Standard rocket launcher/machinegun/sniper style weapons.

I did a little single-player tutorial thing, where NPC commanders (with passable voice acting), walked me through what I was supposed to do. Once that's done, you can walk around in a town with vendors and stuff, and walk up to these control consoles and queue for the map. When that's done, you lose control of your guy as the game walks you over into a line with everyone else queued as well. Every so often, a little jeep will drive up, some of the guys get in, and drive off to whatever map they're going to.

So I got in my Jeep, and drove off to the map, where there was a 30ish player team vs. team skirmish going on. Battlefield-style objectives, capture and hold. Weapons feel pretty quake/unreal-style, although the movement is a little more halo-ish, methodical and somewhat floaty.

Pretty fun, to be honest, but it just felt like a shooter with a weird online component to me.

I may have been a tad harsh in prejudging the game prior to actually playing it.

...

No! Impossible!

it's going to be the importance of persistent elements such as resource control, team technology advancement, character advancement, and general need for teamwork that will decide whether or not this game becomes something more than "a shooter with an online component."

Have you ever played battlefield with 4 or 5 friends? Formed a squad, gone on a pub and just owned everyone because no one else there is working together? And then of course as teams get imbalanced your friends start getting randomly moved to the other team, killing the fun you were having working as a squad?

Huxley, or any MMOFPS for that matter has the potential to allow for real squad based combat without the threat of getting team switch, and with the added bonus of enemies who are playing with just as much teamwork as you are. If Huxley shows off that feature and the others that I mentioned, it'll have the immediate "This is why an MMOFPS is better than a normal FPS" feeling. If not, well, it is an MMO, maybe they can fix it in the future :D

You can do that now with PlanetSide.

I told a thousand times and I'll repeat now. I love Planetside and I think it has been great and still is.
My biggest gripe with it, that often frustrates me to the point I wanna kill the developers with bare hands and furious anger is the freckling code that let people kill me while I strafe in and out from cover (not to mention the ridicolous blobbish viral grenade).

I think there's room for a very well done mmo fps, but it has to be GOOD. Or "polished" to use the Magic Word of the Year.
Not sure Huxley will be able to bring in that polish. If it will, I am sold.

Yes, as has been mentioned: Planetside started out good (in beta) and went downhill. Whether the experience, the expansions, the targeting, it's really been a damned shame. Throw in veterans who know every quirk of the engine, and it's not really as fun to play as it was. Same thing goes for most fps, though, so it's not a knock against PS in particular.

At what point in beta? I quit playing PS before the territory system went into effect, so I guess that was phase 2. I made a big post about the FORCED INACCURACY (or bullet spread or whatever you want to call it ) and it was confirmed that it was intentional and wasn't ever going to be fixed, so I quit outright.

You could bind the fire button to CTRL and point the mouse at a certain spot on a tree and hold it steady for 5 seconds then hit CTRL (to make sure you didn't move the mouse) and the bullet wouldn't hit where you were aiming. Total bullshit, fuck that game. If that was it's best point I'm glad I got out when I did.

I don't disagree with what you're saying. I'm saying it got worse after that. It was still a great game at that point, it just wasn't the shooting model of a BF1942.

Isn't the spread just simulating effects of wind, not exactly shaped bullets, not exactly same muzzle velocity when it leaves the barrel, barrel heating, muscles reacting to recoil, or just not holding steady, etc, etc?   Why would anyone ever want a game that did NOT simulate/abtract these effects to some degree?   

I feel the same way on that topic, but people still get pissed off that AWPs are only 99% accurate and not 100 in CS.

Go figure~

(edit @ trippy: of course you could do that in Planetside right now. But I played the hell out of Planetside for over a year. No one says "why is nintendo making another mario game? I could run and jump in the first one." Well, actually some people do, but not me!)

Whoever would say that would be a dumbass. It's not a good comparison. Mario games range from Mario Bros to Mario Kart to Warioware to Luigi's Mansion. Nor do any of the platformers play that much alike (whether they have running and jumping or not).

Apparently you've never fired a gun before. I'm not talking about testing at 300m. I'm talking about, oh, 20m. Just like CS. The maps are so small that windage won't be an issue, and that all guns should perform the same, recoil for burst mode and full auto modes excluded. But that wouldn't be HIPPITY HOP FUN, now would it?

Planetside has fucking lasers and fusion rounds and stuff from the FUTURE. If I can pick up my pellet gun and shoot a 2" spread at 30 ft standing, unsupported (this isn't too impressive, I'm way out of practice), then a SUPER SOLDIER from the fucking future with a LASER GUN should have no problem hitting exactly where he aims, or within a 2" spread on the target, from 30ft or 20m or even 100m.

But that wouldn't be fun, now would it?

You might want to go look at the mass of a pellet, then the mass of a 7.62 round. the muzzle velocity on one is a bit higher too. So the force required to propel a pellet from your crossman, vs the force to propel a bullet is quite different. What does that have to do with my pretty 2" spreads? Well - every force has an equal and opposite force. It's called kickback on a gun. There's about none on a pelletgun. There's a LOT on a .470 nitro express.

Use the big zoom if you want accuracy.

The point was that you crouch and fire bursts to get accuracy.  You had a nice screen indicator that told you what your cone of fire was so you were able to learn how much firing increased the cone for what weapon as well as see the difference between crouching, standing, walking, running, and getting hit.  Holding down the trigger for 5 straight seconds would lead to pretty bad accuracy with most weapons, and unless you're using pretty small caliber weaponry or mechanical compensators I wager that this would be the same experience IRL with high power automatic weaponry.  (Beam weapons?  Not sure - for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and so if you consider the beam weapons as not being just deflective surface resistant flashlights but rather expressing some kind of force, you have to wonder how much force that involves.)

You shouldn't have anything to complain about, eventually the overwhelming complaints of players who were unable to grasp this concept convinced the developers to make what many other players consider a poor decision: scaling back the cone of fire to the point where cover became useless and strafing around at lightning speed with a shotgun overwhelmed somebody waiting in ambush every time.  Congratulations, your whining and that of others have succeeded in convicing game developers that it was a good idea to make a shallow gameplay experience in order to entice the most players.  To this day, I suspect that if they had not embarked down that path they'd have retained a lot more.

Sure, it's set in the future, but this is a game.  If you want a realistic portrayal of warfare after 2000 years of solid technological progress, I can show you a game where you're instantly incinerated from two planets away by tachyon emitting beams controlled by computers that identify and aim at you with pinpoint accuracy in under a nanoseccond.  As for me, I find recoiling paintball rifles a comparitively more fun experience.

That's the ticket. I want a better planetside with better graphics.

And no goddamned caves.

If I had a Desert Eagle, it'd still be easy to hit a human being from 20 yards away. The only difficulty here is not "recoil", but nerves and whether or not he's firing back.

You might want to go look at the mass of a pellet, then the mass of a 7.62 round. the muzzle velocity on one is a bit higher too. So the force required to propel a pellet from your crossman, vs the force to propel a bullet is quite different. What does that have to do with my pretty 2" spreads? Well - every force has an equal and opposite force. It's called kickback on a gun. There's about none on a pelletgun. There's a LOT on a .470 nitro express.

Use the big zoom if you want accuracy.
[/quote]

The last time I shot an AK (I grew up in the Ozarks, I've shot every type of gun made.) I could burst in a 5" spread at 50 yards. The higher velocity of a 7.62 just means single shots will be more accurate - the pellet rounds are more susceptible to wind is the point that i was trying to make. Way less muzzle velocity too, and my pellet gun is pretty trick at 1k ft/s.

Have you ever actually fired one?  I am an excellent shot with a rifle (as in I can hit a tiny, slow-moving target at 250 yards consistantly).  With the desert eagle (the things weigh ~7 lbs fully loaded) I could barely hit a six foot target at 20 yards.  Granted I didn't have much practice with it, but holding it steady without something to brace your arms is difficult at best.  The recoil is actually nice compared to a revolver, though, because of the gas-powered action.

Still if you want "realism", loaded down soldiers should be able to jump less than a foot high at best, you would miss at 20 yards most of the time when under fire, strafing would do very little other than move you from cover to cover, and most of the 'twitch' would be gone.  What you want is reality taken to an abstract, and fun, level.

No, that 'realism' scenario sounds just fine. Obviously, some abstraction needs to be made, but right now the popular implementation is strongly in favor of bunnytards.

I thought the sniper rifle was one of the best things about PS. It took anticipation, skill, and occasionally luck. Nothing like having the reticle almost be closed and be forced to 'let one rip' before the guy got to cover, and watching em collapse. You could change fights, like mentioned above, by pinning down an entire wall.

Realistic or not really isn't the point.  The point was to come up with a game balance that creates a deep, long term satisfying gameplay experience.

So far as game balance is concerned, the original Planetside (in beta) was built to be a game of combined arms strategy.  Sure, your accuracy wasn't that great with assault rifles, but there was some good logic behind this.  If you wanted pinpoint accuracy, you get a Bolt Rifle (the planetside equivalent of a sniper rifle).  Medium assault rifles were spray and pray weapons because that made fighting behind cover useful - you aim at the entire body of the player you're hoping to hit for best results, and if that body happened to be partially obscured behind cover then your bullets hit that instead of the player.  This also increased the value of there being several players around - one person spraying and praying may not achieve much, but two or three squadmates behind cover and firing away will outlast any number of foes blitzing against them until they run out of ammo.  Another valid concern was how much armor piercing and how much normal ammo to take - the armor piercing ammo could be useful against MAX armor units and even vehicles, if enough of it was on hand.

The developers made a number of dumb decisions, largely based off of SOE and their "We listen to players" policies:

• Responding to a great deal of players who, like Nija, who had no idea that the cone of fire added a ton of gameplay depth, they reduced the cone of fire made assault rifle weapons a lot more effective at range.  They also decreased the effect of movement on the cone of fire. This made cover useless at close range, as there's little point in hiding behind cover when the entire cone of fire takes up the portion of the player that isn't obscured, and crouching and firing soon become nearly unheard of.
• Responding to a great deal of players who, like me, found vehicles to be little more than coffins, they changed vehicles and MAX units so that they have light to nearly complete immunity to bullets, including armor piercing.  This had the effect of rendering armor piercing ammo nearly absolutely pointless to take and thus halving the depth of the game.  In retrospect, maybe it was a good thing that a six player squad could gun down a two person magrider with armor piercing bullets - it's a lot more balanced than the two having absolute immunity to the six.
• Responding to players who were confused why their meatcannons and rockets weren't instantly incinerating infantry as you'd expect in real life, the developers changed said anti-vehicular oriented weapons to be extremely effective against infantry as well.  This rendered the anti-infantry arms on vehicles nearly absolutely pointless to use, thus halving the depth of the vehicular side of the game.  In retrospect, they probably should have just upped the rate of fire on the anti-infantry guns if they weren't effective enough.

I would resub to Planetside if the developers rolled back those changes.  That and perhaps add a few more Combat Engineer toys - the Combat Engineers and Medics have been pretty much in stasis since release, which reflected very poorly on the developers capacity to add new things.  Unfortunately, what few players are left will be adapted to the current crappy state of the game, and so rolling back those changes would be about as appreciated as the NGE was for SWG.

Last I checked, this thread was supposed to be about Huxley.  How what I'm talking about here with Planetside has anything to do with that is simply that the video at the top of this thread indicates that Huxley is starting out as a visceral twitch game.  It will fail in large engagements because there'll simply be too much latency for such a game to work.  It'll fail as a squad-based engagement game because single hyperactive players with great reflexes will dominate entire squads.  It'll succeed as a game Nija likes, but I wager he'll soon get bored of it and move on because such a combat model lacks depth to keep players interested in the long term.  However, perhaps that video is revealing a very different gameplay experience from what Huxley will really offer when it is released.

Really BF2142 in titan mode does a very good job of emulating planetside on a good day. Essentially both sides have a base at one end that has shields that get taken down slowly by missles that launch from captureable silos. Once the shield is down, you can board the enemy titan and blow up 4 command consoles and their reactor (while fighting off their defense) and win.

I really enjoy the titan defense and offense part of the game.

I liked BF2142, although the balance in the beta I played is a tad BF2, which means the majority of gameplay revolves around not being seen.  There's a cone of fire, but the rounds are powerful enough that it doesn't particularly matter.  The instant I'm spotted I'm splattered against the terrain.  Unless I'm counting stealth tactics, this renders it a tad too twitch for me to call it the thinking man's game I missed from Planetside.

Still, I might have bought the game if it wasn't for this (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=8433.0).

These are assumptions. They're fair assumptions, but still assumptions. Theres no reason why a fast paced twitch game can't also be a team oriented game. A higher speed twich game could still have medics, engineers, support classes, and all the things needed to make a squad of many stronger than a single person. It could also have "missions" that require coordinated attacks on multiple fronts, or baiting tactics that reward teamwork. There's no fair way to say that a single person will dominate squads when we know so little.

Yes. I've had more experience with standard .357's though, and those would be worse, as you mentioned.

Like you, I'm a pretty decent shot with a rifle too, but I could be confident hitting a 20 yard target with a big handgun as well. Do you hunt or shoot exclusively with rifles? Or how much do you shoot rifles while standing up? I'm not trying to knock you or anything, but it sounds like you're used to a more relaxed stance (maybe I'm reading too much into what you're saying, but you seem to gravitate towards the idea of only bracing your arms).
 
Not to say shooting a big pistol is all fun and games. I'll be honest, it's bad enough where I wouldn't want to use one either, if it came down to it. The whole idea behind them is stupid.

This is true.  Of course, what renders them fair assumptions is having actually witnessed a number of situations that support them.

In Planetside when a lot of players get together, those using surgile (surge implants + agile armor) became gods because the clients simply couldn't update fast enough.  The cause, developer admitted, is simply Internet limitation - you can't have a ton of players and have combat move at that speed without clients falling behind.  (Eventually this was fixed by having use of surge implants put the weapon way.) If Huxley has as fast paced combat as it apparent in that video, I suspect that getting too many players together will cause latency to ruin the gameplay.  It has to do with the exponential growth of data that goes along with player count.  (Something like: [Needed server transmission data to all clients] = [base transmission unit] ^ [number of players].)  In slower and more tactically oriented games, receiving updates a little slower causes less gameplay interruption.

In Counterstrike, debatably a squad-based game, there are situations where single hyperactive players with great reflexes will indeed dominate the entire other side.  While CS is a classic example, I can say that I've seen this happen in all sorts of online FPS - the same principle that lets people get "Godlike" proclamations in Unreal Tournament works in any online game so long as twitch is the main limitation.  Slow movements and cone of fire, while hated by those with better reflexes, is a great equalizer here that moves more focus to strategic play and less to bunny hopping or aiming.

I've played deep FPS (beta Planetside, Deus Ex, System Shock 2, Thief) and I've played shallow FPS (Half-Life, Doom, Unreal/Tournament).  The deep ones keep my interest for longer because there's more than just hand-eye coordination to worry about.  Planetside's decision to go shallow hurt its longevity.  Huxley, if it made that decision, could similarly be effected.

But, given that we know little about Huxley other than this video reel, perhaps indeed there are other aspects I'm unaware of.  Maybe the only players who move so quickly are agile kits that die to a single shot and carry weak guns, for example.  I could even see a cone of fire existing in that video that isn't immediately obvious due to a hidden or yet to be added cone of fire indicator.

This has really put me off the game tbh

I really don't like the shallow twitch fps, either. Not sure that's news. Quake, Doom, UT...they're fun in small doses on a LAN. Stuff like OpFlash, Far Cry (which is a bit shallow), early PS, Battlefield 1942, that's where it's at for me. Not all reflexes and basic (if any) objectives. Deathmatch is maybe the single worst gameplay mode ever conceived.

Same here, opflash is still my #1.

I fell in love with that game during the first demo, which wasn't even in english. I was prone in some bushes as a troop transport was headed my way down some shitty road. When I shot the driver, he slumped over the steering wheel and the truck veered off the road and smacked a tree. Then I unloaded the rest of the clip through the canvas-cover on the back of the truck, killing most of the guys inside before they could spill out the back.

Years later while playing coop with a couple people, someone shot an AI gunner dude up on the side of a chopper, causing him to fall out. Smacking a chopper with a LAW would cause them to go wildly out of control, crashing spectacularly in most cases.

I can't wait for "opflash 2"  - whatever name it ends up having, where they'll have terrain deformation and destroyable buildings.

I remember I was approaching a town in one game of OpFlash. There were two wooded areas seperated by a line of shrubs, I was crawling prone through the shrubs because there were tons of patrols (infantry, choppers, armor) looking for me. It was so tense, but great, a tank rolled right up but turned just before it ran down the shrub I was in. Then getting to the outskirts of town and killing a sentry who had a big machine gun and using that to mow down some more troops...words just don't do that game justice.

http://www.armedassault.com/

Okay, time for US version, kthx.

 :roflcopter:  (http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard311/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=4;t=53529)

I hate posting a one-liner response to someone who has written so much in a single thread, but Geldon... you are lost. Cone-fire is never a good idea when it comes to first person shooters. Having read through dozens of threads in various places about this (Red Orchestra, the Infiltration mod for UT, CS, etc...) when a weapon is fired in real life - it recoils up. Not to the side, not diagonally left or in some random cone. It kicks straight up. Arguing that "cone-fire" somehow automagically balances the gameplay for those that can't think fast enough, aim fast enough and react fast enough in a genre that pretty-much equates itself with individual player skill, is redundant.

Sky, I'm not sure if linking to Armed Assault was a gag despite the ROFLCoptor. But I can tell you, just by seeing the 505 Gamestreet logo that it uh, sucks dick. Or rather, the possibilty of it sucking dick just entered Agetec and Majesco territory.

What it adds is a certain odds-based subgame where you have to make some decisions.  Do you fire now while your cone of fire includes a lot of area not taken up by the enemy, or do you attempt to get closer first?  Do you risk firing while moving with a wider cone of fire, or do you stop and crouch, thereby rendering yourself an easier target but with a smaller cone of fire?  Do you fire a controlled burst or do you go full auto and trust to luck to do more damage?  These kinds of choices add more layers of cerebral, deeper, gameplay than just putting the pixel where you think the shot should go (maybe accounting for bullet speed and arc) and pressing the button.  Your role as the player still matters.  Your aim determines where the center of the cone of fire is (of which there should be a minute chance the bullet will go right in the middle) and your brain weighs the above to determine when the best time to fire is.

So, lost?  Hardly.  However, I'm not going to tell you that you're absolutely lost to not see the above either.  Truth be known, it's just a difference in style.  FPS can be fast twitch-based experiences or slower more tactics-based experierences.  Chances are a lot of games you love are somewhere in the middle, as it's extremely rare to find a game these days that has every single bullet go exactly where your crosshair is.  I'm lambasting that Huxley video because I'm under the belief that trying to do a fast twitch-based game and simultaniously a massively multiplayer squad-based combat is mutually exclusive.  Internet latency can't handle the speed when you've a hundred other players around to get client updates from, and if a balance was like Unreal Tournament you can expect a hyperactive player to be able to wipe out an entire squad as easily as they could everybody else in a deathmatch game.

I've seen many cones of fire, for example Planetsides and Countstrike, that did this.  However, that just screwed up the Cone of Fire because now half of it is invalid as all the vet players knew that you can ignore the bottom side of the cone of fire while going full auto.  Just consider the bottom side of the cone of fire being your avatar overcompensating for recoil and the sides your avatar's aim being off.  Realism concerns, as out of place as they are in an entertainment pursuit, solved.

There's nothing magical about the concept that people who can't aim quite as quickly will find the playfield evened if everybody's fire goes into a cone instead of pinpoint accuracy.

By the time I played it (this year), Planetside's cone fire system SUCKED BALLS. It was awful. There's nothing like taking a sniper shot that is dead on to a moving target and watching the bullet go 12 feet to the right FOR NO REASON. It was retarded. There are ways to do decent cone of fire, and Planetside's was not it. It was the ultimate lazy expression of "Roll dice to see if you hit" and that was just part of what made its engine weak. Without 400-person tank battles, that game would be laughed into obscurity by gamers. But because it's an MMOG with persistance (read: game where personal skill is looked at as a BAD THING), people still love it.

It was a mediocre game at best, with really bad mechanics justified by having large-scale battles.

The gun kicks up -after- the shot. And PS does allow for this, since there's kick back on automatic fire on many of the weapons, especially the TR chain gun. The next shot will be a bit higher unless you adjust your sights.

Cone of fire is a different issue, and its just a game convention to make up for the fact that sitting behind a desk with a mouse wil not generate the factors that lead to 'realistic' innacuracies when actually fireing a gun. In 'real life' you would wobble all over the place if you ran around the corner spraying bullets with a machine gun. PS accounts for this by using cone of fire with a relatively steady 'view'. Other games I've played actually make your toon wobble all over the place with the cross hairs going everywhich way till you slow down, and its not as great a game experience. Cone of Fire randomness is a method to ensure some measure of realism without wrecking the flow of the game's motion around you.

You may hate it, since it seems like such an artifice, but lets not get into the odd territory of what would be more 'realistic'.

Ok, umm, er.... no offense, really, but your attempts at reasoning give me indigestion. I had to go and buy some antacid just to post this.

"Odds-based" is a bad idea. Anything random is a bad idea. More specifically, in an FPS, anything beyond player control, is a very bad idea. I realise that in this case the meaning of the word odds is slightly different, but i'll try and tie both concepts into one post. Basically, the commonly acknowledged concept behind first person shooters is that player skill is transferred directly into the game. It is as close to a pure equivalence as can be managed. Reaction time, hand-eye coordination, lateral thinking, all of these are key staples of an FPS. Consequently, when discussing game mechanics it is very important to consider just how much player input matters in interacting with other players. And while this does infact extend to other genres (how many times have we heard lamentations regarding MMO toons "missing" things at point- blank range with their pigsticker, simply because the game says so?), thankfully, the FPS genre has largely been able to avoid this kind of stupidity.

First of all, your "oh it's entertainment so realism does not figure" dismissal is stupid. When dealing with lazerpewpewpew guns yes, one could make for an argument that we have no real measure of how they would work (and this is why Quake has different game mechanics to Rainbow Six). However, when dealing with, say, an AK47 - we have very good evidence that when fired, rounds exit out of the barrel in a straight line, and not a 90 degree angle. Therefore, it is expected that the behaviour of the weapon ingame, will to some degree mimic that of it's real-life counterpart. And, in tying in with my point about the importance of skill in the first paragraph, my in-game avatar does not "overcompensate". It does not "lack control" and my aim is not "off" because of an algorithm. My aim, unlike a dice-roll, is based squarely on my own individual player skill. If i, as a player, miss a shot, it is because i am not aiming accurately or not controlling the recoil on my weapon correctly.

Adding cone-fire as a way of compensating for player skill is immeasurably stupid, because player skill is the only thing that differentiates players in an FPS. Differentiation between the "best" and everyone else is the whole point of competition. If a player (not specifically you) is not good enough to compete, then seeking to hold everyone else back via artificial constructs is not the right thing to do. This way, the participants can enjoy the advantage of having a learning curve in player skill, rather than relying on blind luck to see them through. As per nija's example with the tree (?): if a player is running towards me and i fire a shot, however, because the game engine says "oh no no, see, on this particular shot your round is going to exit out to the left of the target at a crazy angle" instead of the target, i end up hitting a teammate in the head, killing him. He was at the time carrying a primed grenade, which explodes, killing several other members of my team. Another teammember, armed with a rocket launcher, is so startled by the sudden and explosive carnage, accidentally lets off a shot, hitting a friendly tank in the weak rear armour and destroying it. The debree from the exploding tank shrapnels out, hitting and severely damaging a nearby plane, which crashes into my team's base, directly into the shield generators, exploding and killing all of my other teammates and losing us the game. On the other hand, if my weapon had of behaved properly (i.e. hitting what i'm pointing at), this scenario could have been easily avoided.

Secondly, the issue you bring up with tactical positioning as a consequence of cone-fire, is not entirely relevant, as normal, reasonable recoil is more than enough to ensure tactical gameplay without resorting to random elements. I do not think that it would be unfair to say that for anyone who has played an FPS, especially a more "realistic" one, that the concept of not moving while shooting is an unreasonable one. Yes, braced weapons are more accurate than ones fired on the move. Yes, being set up and in position is better for fragging enemy players than not. However, this has nothing to do with cone-fire. But this has everything to do with a player's ability to evaluate a situation, the level of support his team can provide, and the surrounding terrain. All of which are present in any decent FPS without having to resort to cone-fire as a magical fix for those who can't perform any or all of the aforementioned tasks.

---quote---
"Odds-based" is a bad idea. Anything random is a bad idea.
---end quote---

In a good simulation/game using 'odds' or 'random' is just a coding/modelling technique to avoid taking 10 CPU hours to compute what happens in the next second.

Of course any game/model could have incorrect inputs, or incorrect models (2 dimensional uniform distribution area of uncertainty around a target vs. a normal distrbution for example).  But using random choices in and of itself is not 'bad' or 'wrong' - its almost required to have effects that can not be calculated in any other practical way.

Back in the days when I did professional software simulations to model weapon system effects, we had many many 'random rolls' in a simulation run.  The probabilities were sometimes wild guesses by PHD's, and sometimes the output of a more detailed model, or even from real world tests.  (Of 20 test shots of missle X it failed/went off course  2 times.  Why? probably very specific causes, but in the higher level model that is just turned into a flat 10% sortie failure rate.)

No offense, really, but at face value this statement speaks poorly of the health of your reasoning organs.
If you think that most FPS on the market do not have a cone of fire, I recommend going back and checking again.  Do you attempt to snipe with semi-machine guns in most games?  Why not?  Oh, right, they're "inaccurate".  Sorry, that inaccuracy is a cone of fire, and it adds more to the game than it takes away.  Whether or not you noticed, the FPS consensus amongst developers and the players that play their games seems to be that cones of fire are in.

None of the later sentences in this paragraph have anything to do with why I said realism does not belong as the primary concern for games.  If you're going to write berating sentences about how my writing requires antacid to digest, you can at least provide a good example by writing paragraphs that stay on topic.

Reading these sentences where you try to explain to me aspects of AK47 rounds, exaggerate the cone of fire to being entirely off your screen, and attempt to prove how it's justified for you to lay back with your 5oz optical mouse and shoot with pinpoint accuracy with a virtual 10 lb machine gun, I'm afraid that just reinforces that you haven't thought this through. 

More realism does not always generate fun in games.  If it did, we'd have a simulation where we recouperate in a hospital for 7 months after taking a slug.  As a game developer you decide which aspects of realism make for a better game and add those, ignoring a lot of things most gamers prefer not to have to deal with, like guns backfiring and duds.  Your supporting realism is actually counterintuitive to your suggestion that players should be able to do pinpoint snap shots whever they can get their crosshair pixel over something.  For this reason, using realism to justify game design decisions can only be a mistake.


What I was trying to get at in my previous post is that, in a cone of fire system, you add additional layers of skills to the basic staples of FPS.  The cone of fire does not remove considerations such as hitting foes on particular parts or arcing grenades or using shrapnel constructively rather than destructively.  It takes those considerations and adds further depth to it.  Cones of fire add aspects of movement, weapon selection, use of cover, and others that a simple "what you click is what you get" system can't.  A nightmarish belief that people who have a 5 degree cone of fire (about as big as they get) is going to wipe out your whole team and ruin the game for everybody is nothing short of delusional, and I hope you were just exaggerating.

"Normal, reasonable recoil" is a cone of fire.  Are we really arguing over it being a triangle or a circle on your screen?  To me they're pretty much the same thing, the only difference being that a triangle is a little easier to exploit because you know the bullets are always going upwards from the starting point at the bottom of point-down triangle.  Either way, we've got some randomness involved, with the cone (this time a triangle) increasing as the recoil and movement factors increase.  To me, if you're saying you want "no" cone of fire, you're simply saying that you want every single shot to go pixel perfect where you're aiming when you click that mouse.  That's abnormal, unreasonable lack of recoil, and I've played enough games where a pistol was as good as a sniper rifle to know that's a bad idea.

I do use mostly rifles.  Well did.  It's been a couple of years now.  I can shoot while standing, but really prefer to be able to rest the barrel or stock on something.  I struggle to lift 40 lbs, so a gun without an ultra-light composite stock can cause a lot of wobbling without a brace.  The rifle at least distributes its weight across three points (shoulder, trigger, end of the stock).  A pistol on the other hand acts as a giant weight at the end of a long lever and the hand cannon of pistols that the Desert Eagle is only makes it worse.

The weight isn't as much a problem for a nice strapping young lad, aiming will be easier, but stance only helps so much.

(With a lighter pistol I might bend my arms some and pull it in closer to my body.  With a Desert Eagle, no way.  My gripping arm will be extended.  Anything else is just asking for pain, in one form or another.)

Ok, before we continue, could we please settle what is actually meant when we say "cone of fire". Because while i do so ever enjoy having my arguments slippery-sloped into meaning what they don't mean, it would be even more enjoyable if we could actually first settle on the point of contention.

Cone of fire, i take to mean a cone which expands outwards from the barrel of the weapon (or crosshair), within which any of the shots fired have a chance of hitting. This chance increases as more and more rounds are fired in sucession. Cone of fire does not mean predictable & repeatble upwards recoil which can be counteracted by a practiced player.

Right, not that we are clear on this, let's continue  :-D




Hi. Would you be so kind (if you are going to continue arguing) to actually address my points, rather than ignoring what i've said and continuing to bulldoze on your own merry way with no relevance to argument? Thanks. Because i was talking about the importance of player skill, and not of a "consensus" amongst FPS developers. Could you provide some figures perhaps? Something to back up this claim? Which "most" games are we talking about in which i can't snipe with a submachinegun?


Right, so why did you say that realism concerns are out of place in games? Could you please clarify this. Because they way that you've replied leaves me no option but to think that while you take issue with the "later" sentences, you are conceding my point on the "former" (i'm not sure where one ends and the other begins, but you know, whatever...). Secondly, how the hell is this not relevant?! You provided an explanation; saying that the cone-fire effect is a measure of the game dictating to the player what his character is doing. I said that this was a bad idea, because a the more a game starts compensating for a player's skill, it begins to take away from that player's experience. The ai is playing the game for him. So then when firing said virtual machine-gun, the recoil kicks the weapon up, forcing the player (yes, by using a mouse) to drag down in order to compensate. What's wrong with this? And come on...


Cute analogy, bad strawman. This is an argument commonly used by twelve year olds on Counter-Strike forums to prove why realizm is bad!!1~1 You can do better than this mate.

Moving on:


I'll repost this, because i think you may have missed it the first time...


And finally, as per the last point, i certainly hope we aren't arguing over a definition, re. my first paragraph.

So, you've answered my request to read what I've written with a request to read what you've written?  Well, seeing as we've apparently reached the point where neither of us satisfied with eachother's reading comprehension, I guess we're at a low attention span impasse of sorts.  So be it.  I'm afraid the time when I had the kind of energy I needed to engage in long thread wars over the deluded belief I could change the way other people think is gone.  Thus, at the moment it become clear I was in a debate, we were done.  Sorry, I've honestly no interest in limiting my scope to two opposing points.

Just in case there was some simple misunderstanding, I'll explain how it seems to me we differ in opinion:

I think our definition of cone of fire, that being a cone extending from the barrel that has some random determination of where within the cone the bullets will land, is adequately correlated.  Not identical, perhaps, but close enough.  Where we differ is mostly in opinion about how much of a cone of fire we will tolerate.  Megrim, to be so bold as to forward my interpretation as his opinion, will tolerate "reasonable recoil" but prefers to play FPS in which success or failure is entirely in his own hands.  I don't disagree, exactly, as I find such a balance to be ideal for some kinds of twitch-based FPS, like Unreal Tournament.  When it comes to a games of a more tactical orientation, like Rainbow Six or Planetside, I find pixel perfect accuracy to be detrimental to the enjoyment potential of the game.  The cone of fire deliberately shuts down total accuracy in the name of creating additional decisions.  Cones of fire allow cover to work, as without you can simply aim at the part of the player not behind the crate.  Cones of fire provide the developers a way to provide the players choices about whether they'd rather have more accuracy or some other advanage.  I've said this before and Megrim didn't agree, but I'd rather accept that he's unable to find value in what I'm saying than try to force my perspective on him.

Ok, let's try this again.

Why are our definitions not identical. Which part(s) do you disagree with? Then, subseqently, you tell me that you equate the aspects of an FPS which i have previously listed (hand-eye coordination, lateral thinking, reflexes) including proper recoil, all of which amount to a gradation of personal skill, with "twich-based gameplay, ala UT". The weapons in Unreal Tournament don't even have any recoil!! What the hell...

And then again, you repost this fantatic idea about how random shots "allow for the use of cover". I don't know... i'm speechless... I have played, virtually every single FPS since Wolfenstein, and in each and every single one i, along with hundreds of thousands of other players have managed to make use of cover in firefights, cone-fire or not. Do you realise that the concept of cover, generally speaking, is based on a player's skill in positioning, rather than a flat percentage chance that the other guy shooting at you will miss? Honestly, which part of the following do you not understand:

All the other BS aside, recoil and cone of fire are not the same thing.

With recoil you can reasonably predict where the next few bullets will go. For example, in Counter-Strike, say you're using the AK47. It has a pretty big kick but an experienced player can gauge distance to the target and usual recoil distance to aim somewhere on to torso and have a reasonable expectation of the second or third bullet landing as a headshot. This is because the recoil goes up. There is a random factor as to how far up it goes, and whether it moves to the left or right, but it is in a somewhat predictable distribution.

A cone of fire does not allow you to predict where bullets will go. There's a --cone-- around the reticle where there's an equal chance of each bullet landing, IE no pattern to consecutive shots. One could but top right, next bottom middle, next dead center, etc. No rhyme or reason to the distribution. Cones may have different percentage chances based on how far away from the center is, but the main defining characteristic is that there's no connection between consecutive shots, no way to predict where the next bullet will go based on the previous one.

Both have random elements, but one is randomness in a controlled and potentially exploitable manner where the other one is much more akin to rolling a dice each time you shoot a bullet. I do see the point to both, and I see the point geldon is trying to make. If you place more emphasis on the twitch skills which are required to get the fullest out of a fast paced recoil based game, the barrier to entry is higher. In general MMOGs want to have the lowest barrier to entry possible because the whole monthly fee thing already drives a lot of people away, as well as other factors. You can make the game still have fun, value, and replayability by introducing more higher level strategic goals and I think that's the main thrust of what geldon is saying.

Personally, being relatively good at twitch, cone of fire annoys the hell out of me. Cone of fire for a sniper rifle would drive me BONKERS because the main essence of a sniper is the fact that he can take aim over a long distance and one shot someone. If a game such as those being discussed does use a cone of fire, they should simply not put any sniper classes in to begin with. I know snipers piss people off, it's a pretty universal thing. Death from "above" with no ability to prevent it or fight back, I don't think it has a place in a MMOG.

In many FPS, to make player skill even more significant, there's a focus to aim at the head.  For example, headshots might do triple damage.  In such a scenario, hiding behing partial cover doesn't help, because their opponents weren't aiming at the bottom part of their body anyway.

Hmm, I said partial cover, perhaps that's where the confusion is.  Yes, in both games with or without cone of fire, hiding behind complete cover while you reload works just fine.  What I'm referring to is a situation where you can attack while hiding being a crate or something.  Without a cone of fire, it's a relatively simple matter to aim over the barrel at a sitting duck - it's not like he was trying to shoot the lower part of the body anyway.

That's a good balance if you want everybody to run around, but is lousy for tactical games.  Campers in a game without cones of fire have the element of surprise, but they can't use partial cover.  If you still don't believe it, I invite you to try.
They're not the same, but they are two ways to achieve the same goal.  Recoil jerks your whole display in a certain direction and you have to manually reorient your display on your target after letting up on the trigger.  Cones of fire expand outwards as you hold down the trigger, but never do you need to reorient your display.  If you want to get accurate with a cone of fire, you stop firing long enough for it to shrink to acceptable levels.  The goal might be to make full auto less accurate than snap shots, but they're different implementations.

Booting them up just now to compare them, I noticed that Battlefield 2 and Half Life 2 tend to have a little of both.  The actual recoil is pretty minor and is only minorly influenced by the player, as the aim will recenter itself automatically.  Both games feature a cone of fire that determines how accurate a weapon is - a SMG in HL2 is less accurate than the pistol, for example.  BF2 has a fully functioning CoF that increases with movement and fire and decreases with sitting in postures and firing less.  (Oddly, the CoF indicator disappears when you're zoomed in, but still seems to apply because I know my accuracy isn't pixel perfect there.)

Personally, I find having my whole display jerked around in a tactical game to be more annoying as, realistic or not, it's pretty disruptive to the thinking man's focus.  However, that's just one opinion and it's complicated because some games impementation of recoil jerk around more than others.  HL2's recoil doesn't bother me at all.
I'm in agreement here, actually.  Sniper rifles, being slow firing long ranged weapons, should have a pretty tiny cone of fire.  To the point where they're functionally pixel perfect.  There will be a certain extreme long range where even a sniper rifle's accuracy will fail you, but they should give a clear advantage over non-sniper weaponry.  That this distinction even exists wouldn't be possible without a cone of fire.

Sooo... your entire argument is based on the fact that you can never quite manage to find a big enough box to hide behind, and get very upset when someone shoots you out from behind your "cover"? You do know that grenades and other indirect-fire weapons are not affected by cover at all, right?






















BWUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh man, this is just too good.


Do you, perchance, happen to have difficulty tying your shoelaces in the morning? Is it something you can only manage while sitting down? What about walking and chewing gum?

He said, as though grenades and other indirect fire weapons were what a discussion of cones of fire were about.

Just because cones of fire on direct fire weapons might make indirect weapons more useful does not invalidate the application of a cone of fire.  Quite the contrary, actually, that may be a major reason why a developer would want to add it.

Furthermore, the increased viability of partial cover against direct fire weapons is only one aspect of why cones of fire can be beneficial to more tactically minded FPS.
I yield to your fabulous rational discourse.

Is this how you try to win most your arguments?  If so, I wonder at the consequences of each victory.  This isn't the vault network message boards, you know: adults post here.  If you really want to start a "your mother's so fat" contest, I'd be happy to humor you over there.

Whereby we learn that the statement about indirect fire weapons was in addition to the aforementioned point. But it's ok, i know reading comprehension is obviously far beneath someone so above us lowly FPS twich-monkeys. As would realising that the statement about indirect fire weapons underlines the absurdity of claiming that "cone-fire makes gameplay more tactical by making partial cover "more effective" (and that's without examining the idea that partial cover, by it's very definition is less effective then full cover. Which would be why a cement wall is more effective as cover than a small box. Which then in turn has nothing to do with the artificial construct of making player input random as to validate the use of a small box to the same effective extent as a cement wall, but entirely to do with a player's skill to find the right sort of cover as befitting the situation).

So you see, when i start making fun of your deep, highly developed and very cerebral intelligence, it's because you apparently are incapable of actually reading what anyone else in this thread has posted, and instead insist on repeating your magical mantra about how random dice-rolling in a skill-based game is conductive to "better" gameplay. Despite having been told why it is a bad idea.


So how are those shoelaces working out for you? I hear velcro straps are safer!

MMOFPS need cone-fire because otherwise people who are good would completely own people who suck, and the MMO genre is based around letting people who suck feel adequate so long as they pay their fee.

Thank you!

Oh?
I've acknowledged your point at least a couple times.  I've yet to see where you've acknowledged my point, and so I find the accusations of poor reading comprehension applying more to yourself.  If you did, I think we'd be done by now.

Just because I'm saying that cones of fire belong in "more tactically minded" FPS doesn't mean I think it is "better" in all cases.  It is, as I have said several times, quite appropriate for games where the developer wants a heavier twitch focus. 

Sometimes, however, the developer wants a more cerebral focus and deliberately sacrifices twitch emphasis to make this happen.  That's where the cone of fire comes in.  This was the main point I was trying to make.

Are we at least in agreement that a developer who wants twitch to have less influence over success will consider a cone of fire a means to prevent it from applying in full?  Actually, I guess we are, because you agreed with this:


At the core level, this is what I was saying.  Our difference may be that I can see why such a thing could be conductive to tactical gameplay.  You start with the twitch skill of being able to put your crosshair where it belongs quickly, but you add to that the skill of knowing when your cone of fire is most effective and what you can do to get it that way.  It's a subtle but solid truth:  Being able to use your cone of fire better than the other guy takes another kind of skill; cones of fire are not all dice rolls and being robbed of headshots.

Congratulations, you've managed to get as far as the definition posted for the basis of this argument. Now define "twich" for me, since you seem to be using it an awful lot. Name some games you consider "twich". Also, list some FPS which you consider "tactical", just so we are clear. And as far as comprehension goes:


This is a point which underlines the concept that: in a genre defined by a range of involved player skills, the addition of random elements is directly detrimental to said player skill. Your response, is a hearty derail into how there is a "consensus" amongst game developers in regards to cone-fire, and that most games on the market do infact implement it. When later asked to actually back this up by naming some (heavens forbid "most") games, you completely ignore the question, let alone addressing the point made.

Or, what about this:


To which you respond with a strawman about hitboxes. Totally ignoring the dually emphasised points regarding player skill as part of positioning over random dice rolls.

But wait, there is more! I also initially brought up the notion, outlining how in games which model real-world weapons, there was an expectation for the weapons to behave as per their real-world counterparts, which you readily parry with a swift slash of the old "bah, realism does not belong in games!" manoeuvre. However, when subsequently addressed in the following:


Your response being that "realism is not the primary concern in games". Different wording from the original to be sure, yet the meaning could not have been anything but. Please take note of the strawman about hospitals (this is important later :wink:). But the fun does not stop here. Not only do you fail to see the link between realism (or-semi realism) and why a round exiting an AK47 at a perpendicular 90o angle is a bad idea, you respond with this gem:


Note the strong, defining last sentence. An irrevocably worded, iron-clad treatise on just why realism is abhorrent. Of course, you did base your strong, defining last sentence on a fallicy (yes, that's right, the strawman about hospitals), totally invalidating what you have just written, but even that is ok! I'll even tell you why... this gem blew me away upon re-reading:


vs


Eh? And, in the same paragraph, you hit upon a veritable goldmine:


So going on from the incorrect supposition that we somehow automagically agree on levels of cone-fire present in FPS, you then go on to correlate "reasonable" recoil (by which you must mean the other type of recoil i listed in the agreed definition) with games which are twich, i.e. Unreal Tournament (never mind that we've been talking about realistic, or semi-realistic weapon implementations). Unreal tournament does not have weapons that recoil. You really, really should have used a different (say... valid?) example, no doubt drawn from your vast cerebral knowledge of the genre.

And finally, in relation to your magical mantra bout how random shot rego equates with more tactical gameplay, taking into account "partial" cover:













Oh yea, and your mother? She is so fat, that when she jumped for joy, she got stuck.  Fatty.

A bit of advice from a forum veteran: Longer messages both test the patience of the reader and convey your meaning in a less coherant manner.  This habit of yours to use giant quote blocks of things you've written but I've already read has got to go.  For this reason, I will not respond in kind, as I cannot see you finding the truth if you insist in muddling your thought processes with so many disjointed and often unrealted details.
Congratulations, you've identified the extent of progress that 99.5% of message board arguments make.  It's extremely rare that anyone ever changes their mind over what they read on a message board, so learn to accept it.  Guess what?  All I'm here to do is define my point.  My interest in this discussion is of an educator to his student, not as your opponent at the debate podium.  You're free to disagree, I don't care, in fact I think I encourage free thinking.

"Twitch" games are those which rely heavily on hand-eye coordination for success.  A good FPS example would be the Unreal Tournament Shockgun Arena mode.  However, for me to say that any FPS is "purely" twitch would be false.  I say this because few things are purely anything, if placed under enough scrutany. 

Therefore, I cannot give you any examples in which you can find no twitch and all tactical and conversely no games which are all tactical and no twitch.  I think that a more tactical example than the Shockgun Arena mode would perhaps be Rainbow Six or Swat 3 or Planetside, but they all have varying distinctions between them so becoming fixated on one or the other would just work to confuse one.

The "Cone of Fire" being a concept in which your shots are accurate within the circle but not beyond, is an antithesis to an "absolute" twitch game.  Because you say that you want absolute player skill, I can see why you take issue with Cones of Fire.  All I'm trying to establish, though aggressively chosen not to believe this, is that the application of a cone of fire can take another kind of skill.  Note I did not say "better", I said different.  I'm fond of calling it "more tactically minded", but your assumption that tactical games iare always better than twitch games is not my own. 

Bottom line: Cones of fire are not the game ruiners you've been making them out to be, even though they may be inappropriate for certain kinds of games.

As for the rest of your message, I'm afraid it's best if I ignore it.  While I'm sure it was fun for you to write, too many details simply work to overcomplicate the message of what I was trying to say.  While I may be capable of tying my shoes and talking, even chewing gum and walking, I choose not to divide my attention overmuch lest I become too blinded by ideas to see the truth.

I do want to say this much however. You're in no position to criticize me over strawmen after writing this:
I really hate to point this pint, but look at this.  Wow.  You wrote it, you can't unwrite it: The most ridiculous strawman I've ever seen.  Compared to this, my little suggestion that if realism was automatically fun we'd have simulated recouperation periods was no strawman.  Maybe it never was.  While I can appreciate your flare for exaggeration to some extent, I'm sure most of the other forum denizens found your messages considerable more amusing, lets face facts: exaggerating things runs somewhat counterintuitively with an intent to isolate truth.  Please, don't drink and write.

Real smooth. So instead of actually backing up anything you say when pressed, you instead wave a magic wand of non-applicability and hop along on your merry way. Word of advice from someone who rarely enters discussions on forums: before opening your mouth on a topic, make sure you have a vague semblance as what it is you are talking about, so as to not look like a complete dropkick.

Have you tried reading books lately? I hear they have really long messages contained in them. If your deeply intelligent and highly cerebral brain is having difficulty following, would you like me to simplify it for you? Maybe repost all of the aforementioned points as separate posts? Perhaps then you'll deign to come down from your throne of cerebral palsy, and actually, you know... back up anything you've said? Or is the well developed "i know you are, i said you are, but what am i" routine working really well for you?


Thank you captain obvious. And all i am trying to establish, is that while application of cone-fire can take another kind of skill, this skill is irrelevant and unnecessary in first person shooters, because the application of cone-fire in a first person shooter is directly detrimental to the enjoyment of the game. Are we having fun yet?

Why would backing up what I said now make any difference compared to backing up what I've written 2 or 3 messages ago?  You didn't read it the first time, you won't read it the twentieth time.   I don't think it's necessarily a failure on your part so much as a simple communication problem.  Maybe I'm a poor writer, maybe you're a poor reader, but clearly you're not swayed by what I'm saying.  Seeing how you can't take my word for it, your best bet is to go out and experience it yourself. 

Is this waving a wand and hopping along my merry way?  Yes, but with reason.  I said I no longer have the energy for long arguments with other people on forums, and this is basically what reiterating my point the 3rd or 4th time comes down to.  I may have been playing the teacher to avoid being stuck at the opposite extreme of a debate, but I'm really under no obligation to educate you.  So, have a nice life.

Besides, you seem to devote over half of each of your messages to finding new and almost clever ways to insult me - you're not exactly asking nicely.   I'm not even sure why somebody would want to get into a conversation with somebody who is in the habit of verbally assaulting them to get his way.  You can call that winning if you want, but if that's your strategy you learn nothing and force falsehood on others.  You might want to consider how many times someone surrenders just to get as far away from you as possible.  You're not the bully of the playground anymore, if it's the truth your looking for then abuse isn't the answer.
If you really believe that I don't know what I'm talking about, then it's no wonder you were unable to find the value in what I was writing.  This in itself perpetuates a vicious cycle, as you won't be able to read enough to believe I know what I'm talking about.  Conversely, I believed you had every reason to believe you knew what you were talking about, but I found certain parts of the story missing which I helpfully provided.  It didn't help I had to constantly fight the effort to retaliate.

So, you don't like cones of fire, therefore they are detrimental to your enjoyment of games that include them.  Fine.  Some people do enjoy cones of fire, so cones of fire allow them to enjoy the game more.  The existence of people who do not enjoy cones of fire does not invalidate the opinion of those who do, and vice versa.

Being Captain Obvious isn't such a bad thing, as this one obvious point has kicked off a half dozen or so messages that inevitably could do nothing more than try to explain why we have differing opinions.  I'm not saying I was completely innocent of the resulting wasted energy, but if either of us were expecting our opinions to miraculously change I'm afraid that's not happening.  Perhaps only further life experience will do this as, after all, neither of us are niave enough to believe a stranger we met on a forum.

So anyway, I would prefer Huxley has a cone of fire.  It might, the video didn't make it very clear, but we'll see.  I do think it was perhaps a bit faster than a massively multiplayer can be without having severe latency issues, but that might have been because we were looking at lightly armored recon units.  That instant inertialess strafing the guy in red was doing at the 13 second point was total BS, try hitting somebody like that with 200 ping.  I'd have to use an AOE weapon to do more than lightly tap him by accident.  Fair enough twitch design, but lousy for tactical play.

Winnar!

I think CoF is pretty important. As Geld keeps saying with out CoF the pistol would be the best weapon in the game, you could snipe some one from across the map with it, and in most games the rate of fire with a pistol is very high, almost machine-gun like in some cases. Its a needed mechanic for FPS games or the weapons become unbalanced.

Except in PS there is a pistol (the Beamer) with which you can snipe people from across the map with. And pistols aren't the best weapon in most shooters, even without CoFs/recoil effects, because the damage they do is typically small. There are of course exceptions like the DE in CS but that's why the DE is so deadly in the proper hands.

The problem with PS's CoF system is that they couldn't decide if they wanted to be a run and gun shooter or a tactical shooter like the Rainbow 6 series so they badly mixed elements of both types of games.

Totally agreed.  They started as the tactical shooter and tried to become the run and gun immediately before release and in doing so totally fudged everything up.  I probably started this whole row with Megrim by ripping the dirty sons of bitches who couldn't figure out what a cone in fire is for and in doing so swayed the overly customer friendly developers to making such an assinine decision, but that's all water under the bridge really.  Planetside is hosed.  Next!

Can I summarize this discussion?

According to Megrim, all weapons have perfect accuracy. That is realistic. Any deviation, even a single millimeter over a 100 yard distance, is purely the fault of the shooter.

That is how it works in real life. That's why sniper rifles have 2 inch barrels like a snub nose.

Sounds good to me.

Edit: To be 100% clear, cone of fire makes perfect sense. You can always make the cone as skinny as you want, but in addition it allows you as the developer to model natural innacuracies. Which according to Megrim don't exist or something...

I'm okay with realism aspect of 100% accuracy barring user error (even though wind resistance, the effect of gravity, barrel vibration in the case of automatic fire, and misfires can create a deviation that increases with distance).  I was only really suggesting that may not be the best for some game models.  The inaccuracy on behalf of your virtual shooter avatar makes good sense, but it also need only be a plausable excuse for a better game mechanic than pixel perfect accuracy generate.  I prefer fun games over stale but realistic simulations, and there's nothing wrong with that, but I'll acknowledge that's just an opinion and not everybody's taste is the same.  I'm also looking into my magic eight ball and saying that Planetside would have had better longevity with the deeper game model, not that they really give up the cone of fire entirely so much as broke it trying to appease both camps.

Um I was agreeing with you. Guns are not 100% accurate. Rifles have long barrels for a reason.

Though I misunderstood that at first, I was nonetheless attempting to agree with your agreeing. :-D  I'm just saying that, even if all guns on the planet were incredibly accurate and we were willing to overlook user error, pushing absolute accuracy with the justification of realism doesn't make for a game I'd enjoy anyway.  Some people would, but not I.

In other words, the realism thing is a red herring.  We play games to have fun.  When people start pulling the realism card, whether or not they're aware of it, they're actually saying they're more interested in an accurate simulation than a game.  Ballistic simulations have their uses for some professionals to determine the behavior of a bullet, but the gamer's goal is to have fun.  Call it another a strawman, but if everybody craved realism we'd have a lot better damage trackers in FPS than a health and armor point score.  Of course, if pixel-perfect accuracy is the goal, Megrim's out of luck either way, since (as Margalis points out) barrel length alone is adequate evidence that guns have varying levels of accuracy. 

I think his main complaint were games with gonzo giant cones of fire that make it hard to hit a tree 10 meters away.  That's understandable, cones of fire like anything else can be pushed too far.  However, most games are better balanced and your on-screen cone of fire indicator gives you a good idea how to adapt.  If your cone of fire is too big to hit what you want to hit, you can usually solve that by changing posture, switching to a longer ranged weapon, and/or simply wait until you're closer.  If the cone of fire didn't exist you don't even get these choices: just point and click.

You are right. Perhaps i am being overtly inconsiderate to your delicate needs. However, you must realise, that when engaged in an argument by far the best way of getting one's objections across, is to attack the points presented by the other side. Which is what i've been doing for the past page and a bit. If you consider this bullying, then i must confess to being guilty. Oh, and yes, i did make fun of your mother. And call you velcro-boy. But your mother is an easy target, and you are a little slow, so please forgive me  :wink:

Also, you made the assumption that no-one can be influenced to change their opinion via argument on a forum. The interesting part about this, it that i'm very much interested in seeing how you justify your position as far as cone-fire is concerned, and am perfectly willing to change my mind - if only you'd do something, anything to actually back-up what you say. However, as your only responses seem to be "oh but you don't get it" or "read what i've said", i'm afraid i will have to remain firmly on my side of the fence. Because you haven't actually said anything.

I mean...


This is an absolutely awesome piece of reasoning. I really have to start using this, because it seems to damn effective. Let's see: I believe that you don't know what you are talking about, because there is nothing of value to find in what you have been writing. This in itself perpetuates a vicious cycle, as you aren't able to write enough to make me believe what you are talking about. On the other hand, i was under the impression that while you certainly are firmly convinced in regards to what you believe, i've helpfully pointed out some flaws in your argument.

Amazing how it works in any situation. And yet you accuse me of not reading what you've written...







re: Margalis

Not quite. The real summary would read something like this: geldonyetich posts in an FPS thread, paying out those who do not agree with his supposed "better" style of gameplay, calling then all sorts of interesting names and generally putting down anyone whom he considers to be a crackbrained twich monkey, insulting some forum goers in the process. Megrim, having seen this takes issue with this attitude and calls geldonyetich out on it, by implying that geldonyetich is just one of those people who is really bad at FPS and likes to use various excuses to cover up his lack of skill; using the concept of cone-fire as a proxy for this argument.

And as far as super-accurate weapons go:


Oh i'm lovin' this!

Bored now

Please don't hate, but appreciate!

This is a stupid argument, I dont even understand how you people who accuse fps players of being "reflex whore twitchbunnies" even exist.  How did you get mixed up in this genre?  Aren't there enough stupid auto-attack + hotkey rpg grindfests out there for you?

I'm getting so fucking sick and tired of bad players crying because they are bad.  People who bitch that WoW takes no skill because it is "too fast" are the top of this totem poll of fucking terrible gamers but this silly-ass set of values which would put a game like the original Rainbow6 ahead of Q1, Q2, Tribes or UT because it takes less twitch skill and is therefore more "tactical" is something I have no use nor respect for.

Requiring more skill from gamers shouldn't be a negative thing, stop saying that it is.  There is a point where it becomes a negative, for example if you tried to make Quake2 into a MMOFPS it would be a bad thing.  The top fps players would just be railgunning the fuck out of people and it would be boring.  But tactical gameplay does not entail artificially handicapping everyone.  For example, a Heavy Offensive player, a base-setup guy or Heavy D flag-sitter in Tribes1 didn't need to be a top dog twitchbunny whatever to make a top team.  A light D player esp one using a sniper rifle needed to be a fucking very good twitch player.   I'm all for there being various levels of twitch required to perform different battlefield roles.   Not only do I not see that as a problem but I see it as a positive for gameplay as it will broaden the types of players who might enjoy it.  But please please please fuck off with this whole twitch = bad thing.  Its so stupid.  Why dont we just put auto aim into the fucking games while we're at it?

I haven't been reading this thread since page 2 where it got stupid, but-

Allowing options, so that people can choose the personal difficulty of their gameplay experience (whether it focuses on twitch, stealth, strategic planning, or something else), is no doubt the most important aspect of making an MMOFPS successful.

Armed Assault? If OpFlash is any indication, it's the best fps on the market, just not the US market. Not sure what the 505 stuff is that you're talking about.
There is a difference between old-school fast action fps and more tactical (realistic, if you have to) fps. Just because I don't want people bunnyhopping and shooting on the run in my fps doesn't mean I suck. Skill != bunnyhopping and dolphin diving. Also, just to keep it at your level, Hoax, you're a fucking douchemonkey.

There are plenty of mindless shooters out there for you to rocket jump in. All we 'fucking terrible gamers' want it a more tactical game where bunnyhopping or engine exploits don't trump solid real-world tactics like using cover and shooting from prone.

Not to mention that some of us play from obscure corners of the internet with bad connections. Until a game invents negative ping code, this bad player will stick to 'ezmode autoattack RPGs' thankyouverymuch.

(a consistent 600-800+ ping is really fun when pvp'ing in WOW, even... especially with a rogue kek)


-- Z.

Well Sky to be fair, it was geldon who went monkeyshit at the "twitchtards"; so it's only fair that us twitchtards defend ourselves. It just seems odd to me from having followed various threads here for some time, that everytime the topic of FPS comes up there is almost always an unusually large amount of bile vented in the direction of the crack-brained reflex retards. But there is no real reason for this that i can see apart from the typical generalisations of "bunnyhopping is retarded therefore..." , which leaves us to conclude that you (obviously not You specifically) just can't hack it and cry.

*shrug* I would like to know why it is that there is so much hatred, because while i play CS competitively and know from experience that it is far from twitch, i feel as equally at home playing Q3 as i do playing Infiltration (http://infiltration.sentrystudios.net/), not to mention being pretty damn good at both extremes. So it seems unnatural to me when people do go monkeyshit over such a trivial thing as acknowledging that there is far more to it then dolphin diving (which, truth be told was one of the fastest ways to get killed in BF short of grenading yourself).






Also, plz be adding "twitchtards" to the spellchecker thingy.

For the record, I never used the term "twitchtard" nor really wanted to suggest that those who enjoy twitch gameplay are degenerates.  Twitch gameplay has a viable place as it's own genre of FPS games.  Bunny hopping rocket arena madness can be good fun when its the name of the game.

I just think that Planetside and Huxley would be a lot better off if they didn't try to adapt kinds of gameplay that their massively multiplayer latency plagued, squad-based mechanics won't be able to properly support.  Thus, what you read wasn't me "going monkeyshit at the `twitchtards'", I was saying the Planetside developers were fools to listen to a camp whose concept of an ideal game could not be properly realized due to the technical limitations of the game they were making.

This thought had originated from the instastrafing rocket arena madness that was evident about the 15 second point of the Huxley video in message #2 of this thread.  That's not going to fly for squad-based combat or MMO-level internet latency.  Clearly those Webzen developers are repeating the same mistakes the Planetside developers did, except perhaps they seemed to have made the decision to go heavier twitch emphasis sooner in the development cycle.

I'd like to say that balancing the game to support twitch play earlier in the development cycle would make all the difference, but given we're talking about a massively multiplayer squad based game, I doubt one can balance a heavy twitch emphasis to work.  Unless, perhaps, it's a heavily instanced game that is barely squad-based at all.  In that case, I have to say I lost even more interest.

That's where my bile-ishness comes from, as well. BF1942 was on the side of 'kneel, fire in short bursts, prone is better' and the franchise is moving in the direction of UT/Quake. I've played the UT and the Quake, and it's fun, but I prefer the slower, more thoughtful and strategic stuff. There's already the UT and the Quake, no need to put it in all fps, and if Huxley goes that way, I'm definitely not interested. And as Geldon points out, that fast twitch play really doesn't translate to a large-scale game very well, so it's rather puzzling. Finally, the UT crowd are the ones who most stridently protest the monthly fee, so it's a real boneheaded move to pander to them.

Sky did you ever play Vietcong back when it first came out and actually had active servers? It was pretty tactical and fun. The AK in that game is my favorite fps gun ever.

VC2 has a really crappy engine that pretty much killed it for me, otherwise it seemed like that was a good sequel. Neither are very popular games, because it's downright hard to find the guy prone in the bushes that is taking your head off as soon as you leave the base.

bf1942 is like RIDGE RACER, real environment with real machinery that doesn't work like it really should.

I"m hoping Quake Wars ends up good - I like that they are "making their own game" instead of bf*, which takes a tiny piece of history and makes it into the online game equivalent of Afterburner. I don't really want Falcon 4.0 online, but I don't want Afterburner, either.

In 5 years Quake style games will no longer exist. For a few reasons:

1. They have been done to death.
2. They look incredibly stupid viewed from 3rd person where it becomes 100% clear how silly the physics and movement are.
3. They don't work on consoles.

Quake style games exist because they are easy to make. You don't have to worry about acceleration speeds or how much people can reasonably turn. You can make guys move sideways and backwards at the same speed they move forwards, or run in a straight line while spinning 720 degrees.

All of that looks incredibly awful viewed from 3rd person, and that general control scheme simple doesn't work on a console where things like turning speed are naturally limited by the controller.

The skillset required to play Quake-style games is very narrow and easily filled by 1 decent game every 3 years or so. They are a very basic test of aiming while moving. That's basically it.

I can see how that appeals to people but it will be a niche market.

Just wanted to make a small point here about the differences between Counter-Strike type games and Quake type games. They both have a large twitch component but that's about where the similarities end. Makes me sad to see you lumping them together in one big category of bunny hop retard games. =(

I don't think too many of us are lumping Counterstrike and Quake together.  Counterstrike actually uses cone of fire a lot - it's evident on many of the submachine guns, for example.  Counterstrike is considerably fast paced, though, and that's why it's possible for one hyperactive deathdealer to dominate an entire other side.

Umm...no. There are probably hundreds of 3rd person console games that allow you to make "insta turns" with the controller just by pushing the stick/pad in the direction you want to move. It is true that for games like RE that have discrete turn buttons that your turn speed is limited.

Ha! You missed the good old days in Counter-Strike when people were bunny hopping like mad (Beta 4 was the bestest!).

Edit: fixed typo

In most games when you turn there is at least some decelleration and re-acceleration, it isn't totally instant. Also that control scheme doesn't work well in an FPS because if backwards means turn around and go straight back how do you actually backpedal?

In a third person game moving the character relative to the camera makes sense. In a 1st person game it is a bit odd to press back to turn 180 degrees because the camera is in your head, now you are holding down but still moving in the same direction relative to the camera.

Although along that vein as consoles take over I would expect more 3rd person shooters and fewer FPS.

You said 3rd person in your original example. I agree that what I just said doesn't apply to FPS games.

Nah I was there for that and even partook in some of my own bunny hopping. =D It was always a fringe thing though, it wasn't THE WAY TO PLAY. I just wanted to differentiate between the general style and speed of movement in counter-strike versus Quake or what's in this Huxley vid.

This is why i can't help but to label you Captain Shoelaces. You continue to spount clueless statements like this one and pretend they mean something. The only weapon that has has a random cone in CS is the Glock, and even that is manageable by simply not firing as fast as possible. As far as SMGs go? Ahaha, ok! Dominate with aim alone my ass.



re: Margalis,

Quake has inertial player acceleration during movement. This is why it is possible to build up continuous speed via strafe-jumping.

Quake viewed from the 3rd person looks retarded. Whether or not it has "intertial player acceleration" it sure doesn't have anything resembling real physics, even the most basic distillation. Super Mario 1 has more realistic movement.

Yes we understand you think it looks stupid but we don't care. Those games are all about running around blowing other people up not about wondering why the game let's you spin around freely or why you can run as fast sideways and backwards as you can forward.

lol, so?

Mario can jump high.

Bust out FRAPs and show me a video of pinpoint accuracy with fully automatic fire on an FN P90 in Counterstrike.  I know that CS is heavy on the upward-direction bullet spreads on automatic fire, but what you're seeing is not just recoil but a bit of cone of fire thrown in.  That's why the TMP is more accurate than the P90.  It's why an assault rifle is preferable to a SMG at long range combat.  Until you can prove there's absolutely no cone of fire in CS, Captain Shoelaces is saying put up or shut up about his apparent cluelessness of CS.

Proof of existance of Cone of Fire could be the fact that your sight get smaller when you crouch and larger when you jump (since 1.4 only IIRC), no matter if you are moving, standing of which weapon you are wielding. Apparently there's definitely a cone of fire mechanic in Counterstrike, but still CS is the more pixel precise (on first gun shots at least) shooter out there.. you have to be a surgeon to be good at CS, a combat surgeon.
Counterstrike to me it's the proof that the cone of fire mechanic can be implemented so good to be almost non-existant, or not perceivable, and that's what every good FPS player loves and loved in CS.
Too me CS is not realistic.. definitely not important. But it's one of the few shooters that plays like if it were 100% skill. If you can play it well, if you are good, it's probably the most rewarding shooter ever, and that's even because its very well hidden cones of fire.

Why? I never claimed that weapons in CS were pinpoint accurate. Try re-reading what i wrote :wink: Me not bothering to prove anything has nothing to do with your lack of knowledge as far as CS is concerned, sorry. Nice try though.

Thinking man = noob who sucks at twitch, give auto-hit plz

I don't really care about FPS, but Geldon is so insufferably smug that I can't help flaming.

Yeah, I did notice you tried to go both ways about it.  First you said that the only weapon with a cone of fire was the glock, then you gaffawed at the idea that anyone could p0wn through aiming alone with the SMG.  Then you called me a newb because of a quoted passage where I said Counterstrike uses a cone of fire. 

Or maybe you were more offended at the part where I said "one hyperactive deathdealer" can dominate the other side?  Well, I've seen that happen often enough to know it's true.  I'm not saying said deathdealer lacked skills, I'm was just saying that Counterstrike is balanced in such a way that this can happen moreso than a slower paced FPS where twitch skills aren't so overwhelming.  Listen to Captain Shoelaces, he knows what he's talking about here.

First line: Lies.  Just as often thinking man = guy who's good at twitch but wants to play something more challenging.

Second line: I had forgotten you cared how smug I appear to be to you.  Would an apology help stem your urge to flame?

Wait.
I must have missed some steps then:
Why do you assume that "twitch" is not challenging enough?
Maybe I got it wrong...

You mean sort-of like this:



So which is it then? Oh and you've even seen something happen, so it must be true?! Wow! You haven't perchance, seen... God, have you? The TMP is more accurate than the P90? What are you basing this on; last time i played they were about the same, with the P90 being arguably more controllable at range. Assault rifles are preferred over SMGs at range? Why, because of their firing patterns? Would that on full-auto or in bursts? Because if we are talking about full-auto, you should try the UMP. It's also cheaper than assault-rifles too.

You are doing well, you really are!

Twitch is challenging.  Yes.  It can be tough to learn how to put a tiny crosshair over an unpredictably moving target.  But, to hit something with a tiny bullet that lands unpredictably somewhere within a bigger crosshair can be even more challenging, no?  The involved tactics of maneuvering closer, doing things that shrink or expand the crosshair, and playing the odds are what makes games with cones of fire more tactically interesting than games that totally lack a cone of fire.

But I may have jumped the gun a bit (if you pardon the inadvertent pun).  Twitch versus tactical is not really a matter of better or worse, skilled or unskilled.  Rather, it's a matter of choice, of which skills you want to use.

You got me, it's both.  As you can see in my quote boxes, I believe counterstrike uses both a cone of fire and recoil.  So does BF2 and Half Life 2, for that matter.  Really, it's hard for me to find a game that doesn't do both but just one or the other. 

I've been called out on this a few times:
I'm basically just saying that a game that has jacked up recoil that causes the screen to jump around all hurdy gurdy is a lot less user friendly than a game that has less recoil but a cone of fire.  Once again, it's not a matter of whether or not recoil by itself is good or bad - I was never criticizing recoil.  Instead, it's a matter of how extreme it is - too much recoil, much like too much cone of fire, can be a bad thing.

Since you're fond of quoting, perhaps you could explain these to me:


I must be missing some subtle distinction between there being only one weapon in the game with a cone of fire versus no weapons in CS being accurate.  You do know that a cone of fire exists in the inaccuracy on the core level before the first shot is fired on an inaccurate weapon, right?

As for the specifics of various weapon accuracies in CS, I'm not going to bother because it's not the point.  The point (if you remember) is whether or not cones of fire are a good thing for gaming.  Counterstrike has cones of fire, it seems we agree on that now because you've agreed that some weapons are more accurate than others.  That's all we need to know about Counterstrike.

You'll notice that (as Falconeer points out) the cone of fire can be so mild as to not totally eliminate the importance of a player's aiming skill.   I was never suggesting that players shouldn't have to aim at all in a FPS.  Indeed, for a cone of fire to work, you at least have to aim well enough to put the opponent's body into the cone, and the more body to cone there is the better towards your chance of hitting them.  Does that mean we were agreeing all along?

It seems to me that a 'Cone of Fire' should be a variable dependent on conditions and firearm. Fanning a pistol? Your cone of fire will be equivalent to the State of Texas. Carefully aiming a braced .50cal sniper weapon? The cone should represent gravity, wind and air resistance - as in very small.

You know, that whole 'realism' crap.

Conversely, it is sometimes fun to blow shit up, so to hell with realism.

So. Um. What were we talking about again?

I'm still waiting for the game where I can move the butt of the gun and the barrel seperately for some real aiming. Then I'll show those bunnys.

The solution of course to the whole cone of fire thing is this:
(http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/a/a5/Zapper.jpg)

Of course then you get the guy who holds it 2 inches from the screen.

Ok, I'll see your point. But "more tactically interesting" is different from "more challenging".
I am not necessarily disagreeing, just see those two things as different kind of challenges for different "athletes", with different psycho-physical attributes.

Not sure if this could be a valid example, but while a shooter with large use of the cone of fire could be challenging as a 1500 meters Olympic dash, CounterStrike and twitchest ones (or the less cone-of-fire oriented) are like the 100m sprint. Is that less challenging? I don't think so. Less tactical? Most likely.

Oh, looks like we agree after all. I wasted a post. Sorry :)

It's nonetheless good you pointed out that "more tactically interesting" is different form "more challenging" though, because that may be the reason why I'm rubbing Megrim and a few others the wrong way.  When I say a "thinking man's game" or "a squad-based tactical game" or even "cones of fire add more levels of depth", I'm not saying that these are superior games.  I'm just saying that they emphasize different skills.  They might seem superior to me, but only because that's the type of play I want.

Still bored because still not about the Hux!

Haven't you been paying any attention? We've already established that Huxley is nothing but mindless twich and therefore can not be interesting in any way.

Hey, is Carl Rove helping you write posts?

Mindless twitch is fine. Not my thing, but it's cool. Just don't put it in my tactical shooter, eh?

Mindless twitch in an mmofps makes very, very little sense and the title is going to bomb.

Besides, at closer look at the Huxley footage I'm not convinced it's as twitch-balanced as I initially feared.  The interface is turned off for purposes of recording the trailer, and the video is not high quality enough to see the bullet spread, so it's entirely possible that it could have cones of fire just as big as Planetside.  Maybe bigger. The only really damning thing I can see on the video is instastrafing inertialess movement of some of the units but, as I mentioned a few times before, those might be special scout units that die to a couple light taps anyway.

I do know that if it's as fast paced as it appears in that video, they probably have highly instanced architexture.  In other words, instead of traveling for 5 minutes by vehicle to disembark in a big city and capture an objective that might have enemies nearby, you probably just jump in a jeep-on-rails and are teleported (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=8625.35) to one of several completely sealed off instanced area arenas where battles are going on.  That's not very massively multiplayer, but it is a way they could accomidate such fast paced play at Internet latency levels - by keeping the interacting player count low.  Unfortunately, my interest in a glorified quake lobby is about nil.

Yeah. It didn't look like run & gun at all.

I saw a trailer for Hellgate and I'm now completely uninterested in that game (as opposed to my previous 'tentatively curious'). 1996 called and it wants its gameplay back.

Checking out this trailer (http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?id=14109&type=wmv&pl=game), I have to agree.  Lots of tedious monster slaying, but where is the depth?  Hopefully not in the fully customizable weapons alone.  Hellgate will probably be the best 3D Diablo-alike made, but it doesn't hold much hope as a tactical shooter.

I really get turned off when I see hordes of monsters running directly at the player's avatar without the slightest bit of thought to their own safety, and the player backing up as a reactionary tactic. Like I said, 1996 all over again. *yawn*

That's also why I disliked that part of Far Cry with the trigens, although at least the trigens and mercs would duke it out before they noticed you.

Hellgate just looks bad...at least according to what I've seen. I'd welcome being wrong. Ditto for Huxley.

@Margalis:  That Quake comment is really sad coming from you, dont stoop to same level as the rest of us...

The rest of you, fuck off.  Dont like traditional fps gameplay where you know, aiming might be one of the more important things?  Then just fuck off.  I dont post in the WoW board because endgame raiding and massive grinds make me sick.  Besides I find every reference to Planetside being super tactical and wow so great to be pathetic musings from somebody enamored a long time ago.  That game blows ass, gameplay as an infantry man is NOT fun.  There are tons of other cool things you can do with the vehicles but basic infantry?  Fucking weaksauce.

Yay I can make statements and say "this is fact, bitchasses" just like everyone else in this stupid thread!

Late to the party, but you've brought your own angst.  Two thumbs up.

Hoax: read the damn thread, no one is saying that.

Mindless twitch is fine.  But I still have no clue why I'd bother with MMFPS, with so many good FPS around?

Hey we're back on topic!

That's not the real issue.  If the MMFPS had as good graphics as and as good gameplay as the FPS's then playing the MMFPS would be a no brainer.

Listen up, kid. How about aiming counts but you can't fucking rocket jump and bunnyhop?

And if you'd actually read the pro-Planetside posts, you'd see we all agree with you. The devs changed the fundamentals of the game and none of us play anymore.

Reading is hard.

We just wish you'd stop your bitching. By the way, if i ever meet you in real life, i'll buy you a drink.

OK, topic, etc...

@geldonyetich:  Thank you, where do I pick up my trophy?


I'm sorry I tried to read it but the stupid was hurting my eyes.

Envision this, Tribes1 gameplay but on an even bigger scale.   With maps that feed into eachother and just generally more persistence, one war being fought on multiple fronts with multiple large flying bases etc.  Tribes1 was a great fps.  In fact it required a great deal of twitch skill, and disc jumping at times was a very valid tactic.  So why would I bother to play a MMFPS version?  I do not understand this attitude.  The only way the argument that you seem to be trying to construct makes sense is if I believe that games that require a person to use twitch skillz cannot be called tactical.  Which I dont, at all.

@Sky:  Hey old man, see my reply to tazelbain you've been making that same statement for awhile.

P.S.  No I will not read your thoughts about Planetside, I just dont fucking care.  I believe I was clear when I entered the thread that I didn't read the whole stiff-finger brigade versus Megrim bullshit that gheyed up the last however many pages. 

Though there were times on this thread we may have been confused to have read the contrary, even writing the contrary, I don't believe this was ever truly an argument of "stiff-finger brigade versus Megrim."  Instead, it was an argument about how how to avoid going too far in the extreme of either direction. 

Megrim misinterpreted my Planetside rants as suggesting that there should be a gigantic Cone of Fire in "more tactically minded games", rendering aim pointless.  Then I misinterpreted him as suggesting that all weapons should have zero cone of fire, removing any inaccuracy from the game, making a fully automatic MP5 as accurate as a sniper rifle and rendering cover useless.  This went back and forth a bit until he realized that I wasn't arguing in favor of Cone of Fire so extreme as to eliminate the importance of aim, and I realized he wasn't arguing in favor of no Cone of Fire so much as a cone of fire light enough not to eliminate the importance of aim.

In typical Internet message board fashion, we were in agreement the whole time but were too busy being offended and coming up with inflammatory comments to see that. If we didn't come to an agreement, that too would have been fine.  I can see games with extremely tiny to zero cone of fire and games with larger cones of fire having their place.  The former emphasizes twitch and the later emphasizes strategy, but they're both viable gameplay styles.

Playing a bit of the BF2142 demo today, I have to say that the cone of fire remains alive and well.  BF2142 has it at a pretty good balance.  I actually found it to be a bit excessive in the Support class, I couldn't hit the broadside of a barn unless I was prone.  The assault class had an excellent cone of fire though, accurate at a pretty good range but not more than the Scout, inaccurate enough that a foe laying in wait behind cover has a big benefit over one charging blindly at them.  I could crouch behind a cover in the Titan Core and enemy assault members would have a hard time hitting me.  Yes, Megrim, grenades could flush me out quite effectively... but they were a bit rare on a Demo server.  :evil:

But Huxley's inertialess instant strafing is madness personified.  Wisen up, Webzen.

And it had the dumbass ski jumping also.  My point is, whether your are pixel accurate or not, what do you get for tacking the MM on a FPS.  You could say "why not?" Added complexity, cost, lag, and administration.  And what do you get?  A chain of fortresses to fight over.  At least with WWOII you got the scale model of Europe to tool around on.  In the long run, a world of fortresses isn't better than one fortress that resets every so often.  Victories are hollow, it all becomes the same.

Any game coming along, like Huxley, is going to give a compelling reason to play over Halo 3 or its going to have just as good and be like Guild Wars.

Oh no no no, i totally don't agree. Cone of fire is the devil and should be banned from all FPS on pain of death. However, this thread should serve as a perfect example for Stray (i think it was Stray) as to whether why we should not have a discussion about Starcraft.

As far as the stiff finger brigade vs Megrim, ha! I'll battle the crusty old guys anyday (and win).

Be warned, you may find most of the members of the "stiff finger brigade" to be far better shots than your cone of fire hatin' has been telling you.

Aye, there is the rub. The dilemma is how reward a side for achieving strategic victories without succumbing to "the rich get richer" syndrome. With PlanetSide while there were certain strategic advantages for capturing and holding continents (gate routes, cave access, etc.) those sorts of things were way above the head of the average player so all they cared about was racking up the battle/command experience points. Also capturing a continent is not very "sticky". If your side's attention is elsewhere it doesn't take much for an opposing side to retake a continent you may have just spent hours fighting for.

I guess I won't bother trying to talk to Hoax, who is just being an asshole in this thread and not interested in actually talking about the topic at hand. I will reiterate my point one last time: Just because I don't want mindless bunnyhopping, rocketjumping style gameplay in an fps doesn't mean I'm not a great fucking shot.

But hey, you shine on, crazy diamond. Continue to misread (or not read) what others are saying. It's really making you look intelligent.

Cone of Fire as implemented in Planetside does suck. I think geldon's point is that other games implement it better, but less obviously. Am I correct in thinking that Megrim is asking for pinpoint accuracy from all weapons in any situation, whether jumping, running, in a vehicle, etc? Because that's nucking futz.

My most recent annoying hatred of COF was in far cry, which I reinstalled this weekend wanting to love it. I'm playing on challenging, because hey I'm a decent FPS twitch guy. One step above normal shouldn't be too bad, right? Wrong.

In the first freaking area coming around a hill in a jeep and there's the patrol boat with rocket launcher and two guys with jeeps. First of all, the 'stealth' is sort of worthless in this game, I can be covered in foliage, prone, peeking up over a hill 200 yards away from someone and they can instantly see me and start firing. The patrol boat opens up and never misses, and yet when I try and take them out, well, I can't, because they are more than 50 feet away. They all shoot like they've got radar and heat seeking bullets. I tried several different tacts but all failed because I couldn't snipe the enemies and I get destroyed by rockets from the patrol boat when I stick my head out. Thanks, cone of fire. It was so frustrating I just quit the game right there and I probably won't go back to playing the game at all. The ability to get noticed when you can't even see the enemies along with the inability to actually hit them means no fun gameplay for me.

So far as I can gather, it's either that he wants total pinpoint accuracy from all weapons in any situation, or that he thinks that weapons can be inaccurate without cones of fire (in which case it'd probably be a matter of time until he figures out that they're the same thing).  He seems to be okay with the idea of "recoil", though, which I find just another flavor of the cone of fire where instead of having a bullet land randomly in a cone your entire view jumps randomly in a cone.  I got called on it a couple times, but I think I prefer the cone of fire over the recoil just because it's less obnoxious than having your entire screen jump.  Funny how most the games I play these days seem to do a slight implementation of both - it's like they've got bigger cones of fire but are hiding it by only putting part of that into the cone of fire and the rest into recoil.

It's been awhile since I've played Far Cry, and I recall the foes being accurate, but not more accurate than the player can be.  I wonder if maybe you're playing on a higher difficulty mode where the developers figured they'd make it harder by giving the foes sniper accuracy with all their shots.  The stealth is pretty iffy but it works once one gets used to it.  Remember there's both a visual and an audio component - foes get alarmed when they see even a piece of you sticking out of foliage, and rustling around in foliage makes noise besides, but they don't have eyes in the back of their head.  Observing their patrol routes from afar and moving behind them is often the best method.

It was pretty much the patrol boat that tore me up. I had no way of taking it out because it would stay out in the water and fire rockets that were 100% accurate at me. I tried to swim out, but they gunned me down in the water. Even below the waterline you aren't stealthy.

Yeah, they can see through those clear tropical waters without any difficulty.  I think the patrol boats were there deliberately to force players out of the water, which the devlopers seem to not want to players in for some reason.  The patrol boats usually have an achilles heel though, which becomes evident if you watch their entire travel path through your binocs long enough.  Careful with the angle on your binocs though, as the sun refracting off them may clue the enemy into your position, or so I recall as there were a few times I alerted enemies when watching them from afar with the binocs out that would not have happened if they weren't.

Actually, you can indeed snipe out the guys on the patrol boats, I know because I've done it many times. But I'll certainly agree with you about their preternatural senses and the near-uselessness of stealth in that game. That's one reason I cheated through it (Far Cry having the best godmode I've seen, I've discussed it in other threads), there is also a nice overlay cheat mode where you can watch AI states, it's very interesting imo.

As far as the great accuracy, I'll also have to assume it's because of the higher difficulty level. I forget what I played on, probably one higher than the easy mode. But I was able to time the explosions. Actually, I think I used a jeep-mounted machine gun to snipe those initial patrol boats. Make sure to spray down the gunner first, then the driver is simple.

Trees are definitely your friend in Far Cry, though that doesn't help vs rockets, of course.

Yeah, on the difficulty I was playing on they take 5 body shots to go down, or if you are really really lucky one in the head. With the cone if fire even with the R2 steady aim mode, it's pretty rough and nearly impossible when they are firing rockets at you because you have to constantly dodge them.

So, I went back and played riddick, that was one of the best and most fun FPSes I've ever played.

I made that comment as part of a greater point.

1. Consoles don't support that type of movement/aiming very well.
2. Consoles tend to be more 3rd person perspective. (Partly because of #1)

The control scheme does not translate well to console game pads and it does not translate well to a game viewed from a 3rd person perspective. That was my entire point, not that Quake is a bad game. I used to play UT a lot and loved it to death. My point is just that I don't think games like that will be a long-term force. I see the market moving towards console-friendly control schemes with more realistic side/backwards movement, jumping done differently (maybe not more realistically but differently), caps to turning/aiming rate, and physics and movement that look better when viewed from a 3rd person perspective.

The run and gun precision accuracy movement and aiming of games like Quake/UT is going to become a somewhat niche PC market. That process started a while ago. Compare Halo and Gears of War to Quake/UT.

I played some Far Cry over the long weekend; got up to the part where the trigens appear before having to bust out the cheats hardcore (walk into room, get jumped by trigens, die instantly - not fun). The cone of fire in that game definitely sucks. I find I prefer to use pistols in FPSes for some reason, and the pistol in that game blows nuts in terms of damage, range and accuracy.

My preferred tactic involved sneaky-sneaky up onto a hidden ridge far away from the enemy, marking as many as I could with the binocs, and then sniping the living daylights out of them, using grenades if anyone tried to get close. Wish the sniper rifle got more ammo though.

I used to play AQ2; the sniper rifle there had pixel-perfect pinpoint accuracy as long as it was zoomed, regardless of movement or position. Lots of fun if you were good with it, not so much if you weren't, particularly given the one-shot-kill nature of AQ2. Getting used to that sort of rifle has ruined the modern COF-based sniper rifles in CStrike and other shooters for me.

Anyway, if anything, high accuracy makes tactics a lot more important, in my book. The larger the spray, the more of a chance you have to get through a barrage of suppressing fire being targetted at you. With highly accurate cones, you have to find some way to stop that fire, or you're going to eat it if you step out from behind cover - flanking, flashing, grenading, smoke, distractions, etc.

As for the highly-unrealistic fun-focused deathmatcher FPSes (Q3, UT) - I never really got into them. I fall much more towards the "one shot kills you" school of shooterdom. Not necessarily just headshots either - I like bleeding gut-shots, movement impairment from leg injuries, and so forth.

Do I get formally inducted out of the "stiff finger brigade" if I reveal that I beat FarCry on the default difficulty without cheating?

Of course, it'll take more than that for me to leverage myself free of "captain shoelaces".  Thank goodness for velcro.

THANK YOU.  About time someone else said it.

I just figured saying "Diablo bores me fuckless" was a good enough approximation of that sentiment.

No, it's a statement beyond that. I was more interested in Hellgate because it looked to have better gameplay than the Diablo clickfest. But I guess when you translate Diablo into 3d, you get Doom (1993). As I mentioned, it's the hordes of monsters with backing up through the level as a defense tactic. I instantly thought of something like Hexen or Doom (maybe Serious Sam, I haven't played them because I don't dig that style). Maybe I was being generous with the 1996 statement.

Not to come off as a Hellgate fanboi attempting to stand against a just tide of well needed critique, but I did see a few more things that reflected that there's more to the game than shooting down mindless hordes SmashTV style.   Customizable weapons, spells/skills that do more than just kill things, and foes that actually seem to be able to hurt you at range.  Still, I'll have to reserve judgement until I actually play the thing.  Here's crossing my fingers we'll get a demo before the apocolypse.

I understand about the cool inventory and items and stuff, it's just that if I don't like the core gameplay, it's for naught. It doesn't look like a Gothic, where the story surmounts the gameplay which is pretty meh. I'm also looking forward to a demo of Hellgate.

Saying that Hellgate is like Serious Sam is doing Serious Sam a disservice.  Serious Sam was pretty brainless, but it did have some occasionally brilliant level design.  Hellgate's levels use the same randomly-generated "every time you get to play a slightly different shitty level" thing that Diablo used.  Interesting level design is about half of what makes an FPS sink or swim IMO.  Which is why I never got into Halo.

Necro!

New screenshots up (http://www.fragland.net/news.php?id=15546)

If this game is still massive enough to matter (in terms of number of units on screen, I don't care how many are at the Auction House), then I'm particularly intrigued by the quality. This isn't going to give Gears of War a run for its money, but it continues to look very impressive when compared to the "next gen" engines like VG and EQ2. I attribute that mostly to the style and the textures. Object-wise, outside of the avatar models, the world seems pretty "low res" (if that's the right term for object models).

Interesting that it's "Q2 2007" release, but there's no word on betas or anything. Or maybe I'm not hitting the right site. I can't even find an adequately-updated main page for the game. What up wit dat?!

Low poly.

I don't really care for the art style or the apparent run and jump gameplay. Zerg ftl.

(http://images.fragland.net/screenshots/2857/27.jpg)
Ecch.

I take that as a pun. Graphics are the weakest part of Vanguard and are as "next gen" as my ass.

Those Huxley screenshots looks great, and given that asian games are well known to have smooth and steady framerates, I am definitely excited.

It's amazing what kind of crap some people will get hyped up about just because of persistency.

I'm pretty sure they'll all quit fairly quickly though.

I think Huxley is being developed by an American studio of Webzen's, but it might be being partially developed in both countries. I can't remember nor be bothered to back up a source. You read my baseless "fact", you can't un-read it.

I'm no expert, but the style feels more western than the usual stuff we see coming from the overseas. Huxley seems pure sci-fi as opposed to the usual fantasy/sci-fi crossovers, both in concept and in style of execution.

Well, what's the point of the genre otherwise? The core is persistence: persistent world to achieve persistent rewards with a stream of persistent avatars even if their names are different.

There are better FPS games I'm sure. I just couldn't give a rat's ass about any of them. They're fun diversions to me, best left to people who like them as much as I like me my PSW.

YMMV. And if it does, ask yourself why you bother posting in the MMO forum.

VG is not a next-gen engine -- it's using Unreal Engine 2(.5ish). Huxley is using Unreal Engine 3 just like Gears of War.

Low poly world in MMOFPS = good

Edit: though I'm not sure Huxley actually qualifies as an MMO in my book (not sure how many people can fit in a single battlefield). Still, generally speaking, frame rates in MPFPS = good.

Yes, my mileage does vary. I couldn't let just one feature rule over all others. [EDIT] A game still has to succeed on other fronts. I would be just as unforgiving in the single player or multiplayer space (if that makes you feel better).

And why do I bother?

To point and laugh, of course.

Heh. Of course the game needs to be good on all fronts. But like any genre, you can be excited about individual things until more info comes. Not like I said it's gonna win. Just that it looked cool.

Good point on UE2. I forgot they didn't go with 3 (couldn't given when they started). I just need to mock them for continuing to try and push VG as a "next gen" experience when it was started simply too early for them to adjust to what "next gen" has become. And I agree on the MMOFPS thing too. Is it massive? Or is it more of a public-space chat/community setup with instantiated small-ish team battles (ala Guild Wars)? This is the part I wonder most about. I want another Planetside, one that integrates reasons to play beyond just a perpetual low-end twitch fight. You need more things to do than continually recapping places you've long since memorized, as even PvE Raiding is niche.

Gamespot article with some info (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/huxley/news.html?sid=6167645&tag=nl.e579). I have no idea how much of the info is new, but the things I took away:

• Lots of battlefields that can support up to 200 people at once. That's much more than the 16x16 battles I had read about once. These are specific for PvP battlefields.
• PvE battlefields that seem like raid environments, supporting 64 players at once.
• Squads are 4 players, Platoons are five Squads, Companies are five Platoon

Shoot me if this is common knowledge :)

Okay now I'm even more excited about the game.

Huxley is putting in PvE raiding?

Fuck.

I dunno. Huxley is pretty much the only MMOG atm that I'll preorder the absolute moment a preorder option becomes available.

You can!  Now!   (http://www.ebgames.com/product.asp?product%5Fid=T000466)

My bad, should have been specific. Waiting for the inevitable special/limited editions for the respective systems.