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Regarding A Common Argument Against Cof Suggestions

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#1 Endimra

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Posted 30 April 2016 - 06:54 AM

This occurred to me several months ago, but I was waiting to mention it in the next CoF suggestion I saw. But, I am an impatient person, and I haven't noticed one since that point, so I'll just make a new thread hoping that it might make a few more people open to the idea.





A common argument I have seen in every thread suggesting some kind of cone of fire mechanic is that it 'removes skill'. People say things like 'just because you cant aim doesn't mean we shouldnt be allowed to' or 'i dont want my shots to be determined purely by RNG'.

These complaints would certainly be relevant if someone was suggesting some kind of permanent, 20-degree cone of fire with no way to mitigate it. I'm sure that suggestion has been made at some point in the interest of giving us TT-level accuracy, but the vast majority I have seen recommend that you have a cone of fire when:


- You are above a certain heat threshold
- You are moving too quickly
- You do not have a lock
- You are some distance outside of your weapon's optimal range, in either direction



My argument is that I think most cone of fire suggestions would actually increase the importance of certain skills. Usually, heat management and proper positioning are emphasized. If a cone of fire can be effectively removed by keeping your heat low, and having good positioning, does it really lower the skill cap, or does it further increase the gulf between the bad and the good?

This isn't to say that any of the suggestions are flawless, of course. The requirement to have a lock on your target to mitigate the cone of fire is less an increase to the skill cap and more a massive buff to ECM. Punishing movement would likely just cause people to camp, remaining as stationary as possible so that when they first see their enemy, they are guaranteed to get a free hit in.

But while I may be missing something obvious, it seems to me that most cone of fire suggestions would make the game that little bit less like 'Call of Duty with Robots' and more like Mechwarrior.



Any thoughts or rebuttals? Apologies if the formatting is terrible, I seldom use the forums.

#2 cazidin

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Posted 30 April 2016 - 07:05 AM

COF is a terrible idea. I've already been here many times and even made a thread discussing in length the short sightedness of convergence. Fix high damage laser alphas and we're done.

#3 pbiggz

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Posted 30 April 2016 - 07:19 AM

This is very simple. If your game is about shooting, and you make shots NOT go where people aimed, people will not play your game. I oppose super pixel perfect pinpoint convergence, but there are people out here who want to go equally extreme in the opposite direction, like super aggressive link fire only or zero convergence or just zero convergence altogether.

Edited by pbiggz, 30 April 2016 - 07:20 AM.


#4 dwwolf

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Posted 30 April 2016 - 07:23 AM

View Postcazidin, on 30 April 2016 - 07:05 AM, said:

COF is a terrible idea. I've already been here many times and even made a thread discussing in length the short sightedness of convergence. Fix high damage laser alphas and we're done.

COF is such a bad idea that the military uses it to simulate real life.
;)


#5 Alan Davion

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Posted 30 April 2016 - 07:25 AM

View Postpbiggz, on 30 April 2016 - 07:19 AM, said:

This is very simple. If your game is about shooting, and you make shots NOT go where people aimed, people will not play your game. I oppose super pixel perfect pinpoint convergence, but there are people out here who want to go equally extreme in the opposite direction, like super aggressive link fire only or zero convergence or just zero convergence altogether.


And yet there have been dozens of games dating back to the early/mid 90s where said games have had cone of fire mechanics, and they have been wildly popular.

Me thinks thou doth protest too much.

#6 dwwolf

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Posted 30 April 2016 - 07:26 AM

View Postpbiggz, on 30 April 2016 - 07:19 AM, said:

This is very simple. If your game is about shooting, and you make shots NOT go where people aimed, people will not play your game. I oppose super pixel perfect pinpoint convergence, but there are people out here who want to go equally extreme in the opposite direction, like super aggressive link fire only or zero convergence or just zero convergence altogether.


BF4 anyone ? Ohhh wait that wasnt popular at all.......... ;)

#7 Alan Davion

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Posted 30 April 2016 - 07:29 AM

View Postdwwolf, on 30 April 2016 - 07:26 AM, said:

BF4 anyone ? Ohhh wait that wasnt popular at all.......... Posted Image


There are always outliers and exceptions to the rule. BF4 is a prime example.

#8 Lostdragon

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Posted 30 April 2016 - 07:31 AM

View Postpbiggz, on 30 April 2016 - 07:19 AM, said:

This is very simple. If your game is about shooting, and you make shots NOT go where people aimed, people will not play your game. I oppose super pixel perfect pinpoint convergence, but there are people out here who want to go equally extreme in the opposite direction, like super aggressive link fire only or zero convergence or just zero convergence altogether.


Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Half Life, Halo. Those are the most popular and lucrative shooters I can think of and all of them have a cone of fire mechanic. You can have a smart cone of fire system that is intuitive and easy to use while also increasing the skill cap necessary to be good at the game.

#9 oldradagast

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Posted 30 April 2016 - 07:34 AM

Nearly EVERY major balance issue in this game can be traced back to the absurd ease with which players can put insane amounts of damage on a single pixel at long ranges:
- Ghost heat, created to reduce boating of such weapons
- Gauss charge-up
- PPC nerfs
- Mech tier being so heavily dependent upon geometry and hardpoint placement
- Quirks

And the list can keep going, and yet the problem STILL exists with a stale meta driven by piling up long-range lasers and getting instant damage all on a single pixel. Anyone who understands the game should realize at this point that the pixel-perfect long-range meta needs to be addressed, and that perfect, instant convergence is the problem. This game would play far better without it, and Battletech's armor and mech sectioning system was created with the assumption that players CAN'T simply alpha all over a single component.

A proper cone of fire would simply scatter the damage a bit around the weighted center point of where you're aiming, Some shots would hit adjacent components at long ranges, or even miss, but up close it wouldn't matter, and if you really think that reducing focused damage is somehow "favoring the unskilled" than you really don't understand the Cone of Fire being proposed or what skill actually is. It currently takes no more skill to put 3 pulse lasers on a target than 1, but the skilled player will hit with his weapons far more often and effectively than the unskilled person. Instant convergence is NOT skill.

Edited by oldradagast, 01 May 2016 - 06:07 AM.


#10 Alistair Winter

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Posted 30 April 2016 - 07:40 AM

For, it's not so much that it's totally unrealistic or that it helps player with lower skill. The problem is that it adds another layer of luck to the game.

One of the things I remember very well from playing CounterStrike a lot in my youth, is that people would always use 'lucker' or 'random' as a slur whenever they got killed. Because there was almost always a degree of luck involved in actually hitting your target. And you got basically do a jumping 360 no scope 30-round volley with an AK-47 and still have a chance of hitting your target by accident. So naturally, people would accuse each other of just being lucky whenever they managed to get a kill. Especially a headshot.

For me, the problem is that neither the killed nor the killer can be confident that any kill was a result of aiming skills rather than luck. At least, not luck in the form of a random number generator. I like having the knowledge that I was actually aiming in exactly the right direction when I get a kill.

#11 pbiggz

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Posted 30 April 2016 - 07:40 AM

All the games you're suggesting have reticle bloom, That isn't the same thing. Also you only ever fire one weapon at a time in those games. COF would have a much different effect in this game, but apparently none of you want to hear about it, so circle jerk all you like.

#12 Gas Guzzler

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Posted 30 April 2016 - 07:45 AM

View Postoldradagast, on 30 April 2016 - 07:34 AM, said:

Nearly EVERY major balance issue in this game can be traced back to the absurd ease with which players can put insane amounts of damage on a single pixel at long ranges:


How does the SRM meta apply to single pixel damage at long ranges?

#13 -Vompo-

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Posted 30 April 2016 - 07:49 AM

Some want cone of fire and some don't. Personally I don't want my shots flying in random directions. I want to hit what I aim at or atleast know where the shots will go if something is added to make the instant pinpoint aiming go away. I'd accept my shots missing if I knew where they would go before I pull the trigger. Something like what the original OFP had.

I'd like to hear a good reason why we should have cof. TTK is quite long already when fighting one on one and one against 4 for example shouldn't take long. Many of the mechs can already survive insane amounts of damage. Some are fragile but some of them should be.

Also I prefer getting killed by a headshot which hit where it was aimed even if it was "lucky headshot" rather than getting killed by one which hit my cockpit because of rng.

Edited by VompoVompatti, 30 April 2016 - 07:53 AM.


#14 Alan Davion

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Posted 30 April 2016 - 07:55 AM

View Postpbiggz, on 30 April 2016 - 07:40 AM, said:

All the games you're suggesting have reticle bloom, That isn't the same thing. Also you only ever fire one weapon at a time in those games. COF would have a much different effect in this game, but apparently none of you want to hear about it, so circle jerk all you like.


And... Guess what... Reticule bloom affects where your shots go... Inside...

Wait for it...

...

A cone shaped area extending out from your guns barrel.

Now... What is that called again?

Oh... Yeah...

A cone of fire.

#15 Levi Porphyrogenitus

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Posted 30 April 2016 - 07:56 AM

It should be perfectly doable to have a pseudo-cof mechanic that is entirely fixed and predictable, sans rng of any kind, especially if it is based on such controllable elements as heat and throttle states.

#16 Alan Davion

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Posted 30 April 2016 - 08:07 AM

View PostLevi Porphyrogenitus, on 30 April 2016 - 07:56 AM, said:

It should be perfectly doable to have a pseudo-cof mechanic that is entirely fixed and predictable, sans rng of any kind, especially if it is based on such controllable elements as heat and throttle states.


It could also be tied into the range mechanics. At or inside optimal range, there is very little if any deviation in your shots.

The further beyond optimal range you try to shoot, the more your shots may or may not deviate. It doesn't even have to be a wild deviation, something like 5%, 5 degrees, 5 pixels, however you want to describe it.

#17 C E Dwyer

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Posted 30 April 2016 - 08:12 AM

View Postpbiggz, on 30 April 2016 - 07:19 AM, said:

This is very simple. If your game is about shooting, and you make shots NOT go where people aimed, people will not play your game. I oppose super pixel perfect pinpoint convergence, but there are people out here who want to go equally extreme in the opposite direction, like super aggressive link fire only or zero convergence or just zero convergence altogether.

Cone of fire very bad idea for all weapons, SRM's LRM's MG's use this system.

P.G.I. won't do convergence, which would be best, for various reasons.

Third party 'experts' have said that it can't be done without messing up HSR though it works very well in World of Tanks and Armoured warfare

#18 Davers

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Posted 30 April 2016 - 08:18 AM

PGI doesn't want CoF so we are not getting CoF. For the sake of all the dead horses, just let it go. There have probably been well over one hundred threads about this. Some carefully thought out suggestions, others psychotic rants. No one is saying anything new here, just both sides butting heads over an issue that was decided when the game was first conceived.

#19 Alan Davion

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Posted 30 April 2016 - 08:20 AM

View PostCathy, on 30 April 2016 - 08:12 AM, said:

Cone of fire very bad idea for all weapons, SRM's LRM's MG's use this system.

P.G.I. won't do convergence, which would be best, for various reasons.

Third party 'experts' have said that it can't be done without messing up HSR though it works very well in World of Tanks and Armoured warfare


Problem is, SRMs are the only moderately useful weapons you list there.

LRMs are hardly ever used anymore, and generally speaking only the LRM5 sees even moderate use, while there are always exceptions, the LRM10/15/20 are garbage for the most part these days.

And Machine Guns? Seriously? Easily the weakest weapon in the game really. Unless you're a Spider, Shadow Cat or a Nova and you're being a sneaky crit-seeker, MGs have no place in the game right now.

View PostDavers, on 30 April 2016 - 08:18 AM, said:

PGI doesn't want CoF so we are not getting CoF. For the sake of all the dead horses, just let it go. There have probably been well over one hundred threads about this. Some carefully thought out suggestions, others psychotic rants. No one is saying anything new here, just both sides butting heads over an issue that was decided when the game was first conceived.


Uh-huh, mind telling us where you got that little bit of clairvoyance?

#20 kapusta11

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Posted 30 April 2016 - 08:26 AM

Games that have CoF mechanic have only 2 hitboxes for targets: head and body, MWO has 8. Weapons that have CoF in those games are either ARs or shotguns. They also have respawns and much shorter TTK.

Edited by kapusta11, 30 April 2016 - 08:28 AM.






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