New Huxley Gameplay Footage - Looks better than you thought it would.

[Nonentity]

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.

[geldonyetich]

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

...

No! Impossible!

[damijin]

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

[Trippy]

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.

[Falconeer]

Have you ever played battlefield with 4 or 5 friends? Formed a squad,  [Cut!]

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.

[Sky]

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.

[Nija]

Yes, as has been mentioned: Planetside started out good (in beta) and went downhill.

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.

[Sky]

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.

[Sunbury]

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.

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?   

[damijin]

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.

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!)

[stray]

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).

[Nija]

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?   

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?

[Furiously]

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.

[geldonyetich]

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.

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.

[Sky]

(edit @ trippy: of course you could do that in Planetside right now. But I played the hell out of Planetside for over a year.)

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

And no goddamned caves.

[stray]

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.

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.

[Nija]

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.

[Lantyssa]

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.

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.

[Sky]

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.

[Slayerik]

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   I  can't even snipe with the sniper rifle in PS.

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.

[geldonyetich]

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.

[Furiously]

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.

[geldonyetich]

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.

[damijin]

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.

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.

[stray]

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.

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.

[geldonyetich]

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

These are assumptions. They're fair assumptions, but still assumptions. [...]There's no fair way to say that a single person will dominate squads when we know so little [about Huxley].

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.

[5150]

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.

This has really put me off the game tbh

[Sky]

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.

[Nija]

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.

[Sky]

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.

[Sky]

http://www.armedassault.com/

Okay, time for US version, kthx.

[Megrim]

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.

[schild]

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.

[geldonyetich]

Geldon... you are lost. Cone-fire is never a good idea when it comes to first person shooters.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[HaemishM]

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.