IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
@robotix
Sorry if you're frustrated, man. Believe me I am too.. Nobody seems to have an argument against the concept itself - but they can't seem to make that distinction.
Regardless, i covered /replied to the only argument you gave "It will always be overly complex and frustrating regardless of implementation." (wish you would have gone into detail how exactly)
Just keep reading my post beyond what you quoted.
;-)
The idea of bite cones with varying damage is good - but it doesn't work. So many times I have the marine perfectly centered in my view, bite, and see a 25 or 50 show up.. it just doesn't work. May be due to lag, lagging hit boxes, I don't really know. But it doesn't work properly, I can assure you that. It seems to be more so thrown off by a fast moving marine, one with high lag, or worst case scenario - both lag and fast moving. You'll be lucky to land a 25 on him no matter how perfectly centered you have him in your view.
As further proof this mechanic is broken, I have seen plenty of times where the marine was able to evade my bite, and I straight up missed him - I clicked and saw the teeth close and the entire time, the marine was out of my view. Yet I am awarded with a 25 or 50 bite. This tells me there are laggy hit boxes going on. Until the laggy hitboxes are fixed (can they even be fixed?) the bite cone should do 75 damage all around. Or maybe remove the 25 are, and make 50 do 75 dmg. Something needs to be done.
Lag happens. Sometimes you miss when you should have hit and vice versa. It's nothing innate to the bite cone mechanic, same happens with fade swipes, bullets, gorge spit, every single "hit a person" mechanic in the game. With just a 75 damage cone you're still going to have situations where you totally hit that guy, you swear, and you got no damage, and times where you totally missed the guy but got your 75 anyway. If you're saying that (perceived attack) does not always equal (server results) is grounds to remove a mechanic then pretty much every attack in the game is on the chopping block.
Similarly if mechanics that are poorly explained have to go, well, goodbye every single aspect of the game. Let's look at the pistol: The pistol does 25 damage per shot... wait, that's not quite right. Let's scroll back a bit. The pistol does light damage, which means that versus armour... wait, let's scroll back a bit more. When damage is done, 70% of it is redirected to armour (if any), which is then halved if normal damage or quartered if light. Heavy damage is a straight 1 to 1. A pistol does light damage, with a 25 damage base, which means a pistol does between 12 and 25 damage per shot, depending on the current armour of your opponent. Oh, and this is not reflected by the damage popup and you have no way of seeing the current armour of your target.
Man, if "Does more damage the more accurately you hit" is too confusing then I'm assuming the balance test just has the pistol do 20 damage flat, right?
e: Damn, I forgot about upgrades! Ok, so, when I say 25 base damage I mean...
Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, skulks did a flat 75 damage at the full damage cone. It was so easy to get hits that skulks were dominating (75% alien winrate wasn't uncommon in the beta). So the damage cone was reduced. No more dominating skulks, but now rookies couldn't hit anything and hated it. So UWE switched it to the glancing bite. Now skulks wouldn't be dominating but rookies can still get hits, even if they are 25 or 50.
tl;dr: Glancing bite the culmination of a long series of balance changes. Remove it at your own risk.
The skulk bite cone is pretty much the best casual player mechanic implemented for the game so far. Note I said casual player, not newbie. A casual player is someone who has played enough to know the rules but doesn't have enough time to practice to get really, really good. Casual players of games make up the majority of game players. They're the base of the player pyramid that, without which, a game is doomed to wither and die. This game is very unfriendly to casual players. One of the few casual-friendly mechanics is the skulk bit cone, which allows casual skulks (the life-form casuals spend most of their time playing) the cone width needed to contribute to fights while not giving higher-skilled skulkplayers the marine-destroying power that comes with a cone of that width. If you take it away the game will become less fun for casual players, they will stop playing as much, and the game will become hardcore players only. Which might be what the hardcore players want, but UWE runs on money, money comes from sales, sales come from customers, and the vast, vast majority of potential customers are casual game players.
Incidentally, casual players are not playing in the balance test servers and as such probably aren't contributing data to them, so it's no surprise that they're not getting much "Why the hell can't I suddenly hit jack?" feedback from them.
I followed a very good marine shooter for fun the other day. He was clearly shooting right behind the skulks and yet killing them. Just to be sure I'm clear: he wasn't "touching" them at all half of the time; the impact was clearly trailing off behind the said skulks and still he was killing them. I was a bit amazed and understood more about my frustrations regarding my performance in this game. I guess that kind of thing can happen with skulk bite too thus the impossibility to have partial bite.
Augmenting the 25 dmg range to 50 at least might be a solution. I'm not completely closed to the idea of the glancing hit: it's the acutal system that can't even manage to apply properly it's own rules. So not only does the tutorials sucks, players have next to 0 way of discovering some details unless they are told by other players but on top of that the mechanic can't even afford any kind of "accuracy" for most players.
How some peoples manage to one shot kill me with shotguns and do full damage with aliens all the time is completely beyond me.
You didn't get it. Sometimes I die after I turn around a corner. This time I visualised it.
No, you didn't get it. The person you were spectating was most likely aiming at skulk center mass and seeing his shots connect all the time. On your screen though, with spectator mode, you're not seeing the exact same thing he is seeing. With some lag you might see weird stuff like you described, but it's not actually like that client side.
If you don't believe me, join a game, try shooting behind a skulk every single time and see how often you'll actually hit it. Thesame applies to skulk bites. You will hit what you see on your screen. So if the marine is centered, and you bite, you will hit for 75dmg every time.
With a ping of 50 I lost a 100 pts of dmg as a lerk for a shot of 1 second almost 2 seconds after I turned a corner last game and you tell me what I saw didn't correspond to that kind of experience? I'm amaze at the similarity.
And to answer your last statement yesterday I shot a skulk straight in the face, barely did any damage. Shot another on his body at close range, saw the impact which was on target in full, did only 13 damages. Others where complaining of similar experiences during the game. I bitted a marine while his ass was filling up my scree, did only 25. I call bullshit on the accuracy of this system.
With a ping of 50 I lost a 100 pts of dmg as a lerk for a shot of 1 second almost 2 seconds after I turned a corner last game and you tell me what I saw didn't correspond to that kind of experience? I'm amaze at the similarity.
And to answer your last statement yesterday I shot a skulk straight in the face, barely did any damage. Shot another on his body at close range, saw the impact which was on target in full, did only 13 damages. Others where complaining of similar experiences during the game. I bitted a marine while his ass was filling up my scree, did only 25. I call bullshit on the accuracy of this system.
You're describing two seperate things here.
The first one is lag compensation which causes you to keep sustaining damage even after dodging behind a corner. This sort of thing is possible because the person shooting at you is doing damage on his screen, but it takes a bit of time to relay that information from his pc via the server onto your screen. So it might look like you died behind the corner from your perspective, while actually you died some time before that. The higher the pings, and the worse the server performance, the bigger this delay can get.
This might seem cruel, but it actually allows you to hit whatever you're aiming it without having to lead your target. This is why the second thing you're describing is somewhat unusual. If I hit a skulk point blank with a shotgun, it will take full damage every single time. So I have no idea what is causing you to miss, but it's not normal behaviour in any case.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
First person spectating does not update fast enough to be visually accurate, at 30fps max. So you will definitely see some odd things depending on certain factors.
The idea of bite cones with varying damage is good - but it doesn't work. So many times I have the marine perfectly centered in my view, bite, and see a 25 or 50 show up.. it just doesn't work. May be due to lag, lagging hit boxes, I don't really know. But it doesn't work properly, I can assure you that. It seems to be more so thrown off by a fast moving marine, one with high lag, or worst case scenario - both lag and fast moving. You'll be lucky to land a 25 on him no matter how perfectly centered you have him in your view.
As further proof this mechanic is broken, I have seen plenty of times where the marine was able to evade my bite, and I straight up missed him - I clicked and saw the teeth close and the entire time, the marine was out of my view. Yet I am awarded with a 25 or 50 bite. This tells me there are laggy hit boxes going on. Until the laggy hitboxes are fixed (can they even be fixed?) the bite cone should do 75 damage all around. Or maybe remove the 25 are, and make 50 do 75 dmg. Something needs to be done.
Lag happens. Sometimes you miss when you should have hit and vice versa. It's nothing innate to the bite cone mechanic, same happens with fade swipes, bullets, gorge spit, every single "hit a person" mechanic in the game. With just a 75 damage cone you're still going to have situations where you totally hit that guy, you swear, and you got no damage, and times where you totally missed the guy but got your 75 anyway. If you're saying that (perceived attack) does not always equal (server results) is grounds to remove a mechanic then pretty much every attack in the game is on the chopping block.
Similarly if mechanics that are poorly explained have to go, well, goodbye every single aspect of the game. Let's look at the pistol: The pistol does 25 damage per shot... wait, that's not quite right. Let's scroll back a bit. The pistol does light damage, which means that versus armour... wait, let's scroll back a bit more. When damage is done, 70% of it is redirected to armour (if any), which is then halved if normal damage or quartered if light. Heavy damage is a straight 1 to 1. A pistol does light damage, with a 25 damage base, which means a pistol does between 12 and 25 damage per shot, depending on the current armour of your opponent. Oh, and this is not reflected by the damage popup and you have no way of seeing the current armour of your target.
Man, if "Does more damage the more accurately you hit" is too confusing then I'm assuming the balance test just has the pistol do 20 damage flat, right?
e: Damn, I forgot about upgrades! Ok, so, when I say 25 base damage I mean...
Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, skulks did a flat 75 damage at the full damage cone. It was so easy to get hits that skulks were dominating (75% alien winrate wasn't uncommon in the beta). So the damage cone was reduced. No more dominating skulks, but now rookies couldn't hit anything and hated it. So UWE switched it to the glancing bite. Now skulks wouldn't be dominating but rookies can still get hits, even if they are 25 or 50.
tl;dr: Glancing bite the culmination of a long series of balance changes. Remove it at your own risk.
The skulk bite cone is pretty much the best casual player mechanic implemented for the game so far. Note I said casual player, not newbie. A casual player is someone who has played enough to know the rules but doesn't have enough time to practice to get really, really good. Casual players of games make up the majority of game players. They're the base of the player pyramid that, without which, a game is doomed to wither and die. This game is very unfriendly to casual players. One of the few casual-friendly mechanics is the skulk bit cone, which allows casual skulks (the life-form casuals spend most of their time playing) the cone width needed to contribute to fights while not giving higher-skilled skulkplayers the marine-destroying power that comes with a cone of that width. If you take it away the game will become less fun for casual players, they will stop playing as much, and the game will become hardcore players only. Which might be what the hardcore players want, but UWE runs on money, money comes from sales, sales come from customers, and the vast, vast majority of potential customers are casual game players.
Incidentally, casual players are not playing in the balance test servers and as such probably aren't contributing data to them, so it's no surprise that they're not getting much "Why the hell can't I suddenly hit jack?" feedback from them.
Good points, and I agree with you in essence. I guess I should have reworded my complaint about this topic. My problem is not with the bite cone, its that this game seems to be massively confused by latency, even in small amounts. Two players with 40-60 pings will see strange things happen like I described, then the next encounter, everything seems normal. That inconsistency is what drives me crazy.
Hit detection needs to be client side, and if it already is, the hitboxes need to be tweaked so they sync up with player models.
Comments
Sorry if you're frustrated, man. Believe me I am too.. Nobody seems to have an argument against the concept itself - but they can't seem to make that distinction.
Regardless, i covered /replied to the only argument you gave "It will always be overly complex and frustrating regardless of implementation." (wish you would have gone into detail how exactly)
Just keep reading my post beyond what you quoted.
;-)
Similarly if mechanics that are poorly explained have to go, well, goodbye every single aspect of the game. Let's look at the pistol: The pistol does 25 damage per shot... wait, that's not quite right. Let's scroll back a bit. The pistol does light damage, which means that versus armour... wait, let's scroll back a bit more. When damage is done, 70% of it is redirected to armour (if any), which is then halved if normal damage or quartered if light. Heavy damage is a straight 1 to 1. A pistol does light damage, with a 25 damage base, which means a pistol does between 12 and 25 damage per shot, depending on the current armour of your opponent. Oh, and this is not reflected by the damage popup and you have no way of seeing the current armour of your target.
Man, if "Does more damage the more accurately you hit" is too confusing then I'm assuming the balance test just has the pistol do 20 damage flat, right?
e: Damn, I forgot about upgrades! Ok, so, when I say 25 base damage I mean... The skulk bite cone is pretty much the best casual player mechanic implemented for the game so far. Note I said casual player, not newbie. A casual player is someone who has played enough to know the rules but doesn't have enough time to practice to get really, really good. Casual players of games make up the majority of game players. They're the base of the player pyramid that, without which, a game is doomed to wither and die. This game is very unfriendly to casual players. One of the few casual-friendly mechanics is the skulk bit cone, which allows casual skulks (the life-form casuals spend most of their time playing) the cone width needed to contribute to fights while not giving higher-skilled skulkplayers the marine-destroying power that comes with a cone of that width. If you take it away the game will become less fun for casual players, they will stop playing as much, and the game will become hardcore players only. Which might be what the hardcore players want, but UWE runs on money, money comes from sales, sales come from customers, and the vast, vast majority of potential customers are casual game players.
Incidentally, casual players are not playing in the balance test servers and as such probably aren't contributing data to them, so it's no surprise that they're not getting much "Why the hell can't I suddenly hit jack?" feedback from them.
Augmenting the 25 dmg range to 50 at least might be a solution. I'm not completely closed to the idea of the glancing hit: it's the acutal system that can't even manage to apply properly it's own rules. So not only does the tutorials sucks, players have next to 0 way of discovering some details unless they are told by other players but on top of that the mechanic can't even afford any kind of "accuracy" for most players.
How some peoples manage to one shot kill me with shotguns and do full damage with aliens all the time is completely beyond me.
No, you didn't get it. The person you were spectating was most likely aiming at skulk center mass and seeing his shots connect all the time. On your screen though, with spectator mode, you're not seeing the exact same thing he is seeing. With some lag you might see weird stuff like you described, but it's not actually like that client side.
If you don't believe me, join a game, try shooting behind a skulk every single time and see how often you'll actually hit it. Thesame applies to skulk bites. You will hit what you see on your screen. So if the marine is centered, and you bite, you will hit for 75dmg every time.
And to answer your last statement yesterday I shot a skulk straight in the face, barely did any damage. Shot another on his body at close range, saw the impact which was on target in full, did only 13 damages. Others where complaining of similar experiences during the game. I bitted a marine while his ass was filling up my scree, did only 25. I call bullshit on the accuracy of this system.
You're describing two seperate things here.
The first one is lag compensation which causes you to keep sustaining damage even after dodging behind a corner. This sort of thing is possible because the person shooting at you is doing damage on his screen, but it takes a bit of time to relay that information from his pc via the server onto your screen. So it might look like you died behind the corner from your perspective, while actually you died some time before that. The higher the pings, and the worse the server performance, the bigger this delay can get.
This might seem cruel, but it actually allows you to hit whatever you're aiming it without having to lead your target. This is why the second thing you're describing is somewhat unusual. If I hit a skulk point blank with a shotgun, it will take full damage every single time. So I have no idea what is causing you to miss, but it's not normal behaviour in any case.
Good points, and I agree with you in essence. I guess I should have reworded my complaint about this topic. My problem is not with the bite cone, its that this game seems to be massively confused by latency, even in small amounts. Two players with 40-60 pings will see strange things happen like I described, then the next encounter, everything seems normal. That inconsistency is what drives me crazy.
Hit detection needs to be client side, and if it already is, the hitboxes need to be tweaked so they sync up with player models.