Make Insurgency Great (again) - Part I: Gunplay

Youtube Video

Hello Sandstorm Community,

some of you may know me from either twitch or from within the game. I made a review of the game back in October where I praised the game and it's authenticity and unique style of combination between competetive potential and realism.

This thread is the discussion/debate thread regarding my video from my new series "Make Insurgency Great (Again)" and it is Part I: Gunplay.

The intention with this video is to try to help improve the games features and point towards it's strengths and work on it's weaknesses beginning with:


As some of you may know the game had a different hipfire mechanic back in the BETA. This one was less RNG and promoted the use of this style of deadzone utilization. People complained about the game being too fast paced and the developers just hit hipfire with the nerfhammer making it completely ridiculous and based basically entirely on luck. Watch here

I would like to add this consistent hipfire (not really hipfire but whatever) back to the game and instead of changing the pace of the game down with the ability to shoot accurately, if you're skilled, rather slow it down changing the way the weapon characteristics are. Read Weightmechanics & Weapon Characteristics.

Promoting the deadzone hipfire would allow for the use of laser-sights for all weapons and tracer rounds, specifically for the machineguns, but of course also for the rest of the weapons.


I like the fact that this game has sway. It definitely should have sway.

Right now the game has constant sway that is increased or decreased depending on

  • Which stance you're in
  • Fatigue
  • Physical Impacts
  • Suppression

The only listed variable above that I disagree with is the suppression effect. Let me explain.


The current suppression effect was added in the "4.20 patch" back in November and has since then only caused complaints and whine throughout the discord channels that I have been playing in. I feel like it is a simple effect to add but I think it is lacking the competetive balance and also the realistic immersion that I feel my different approach could add.

First let's discuss Suppression: What is Suppression?

My understanding of suppression is that it is basically a way to inflict fear upon your enemy by laying down fire towards his position with the intention to try to prevent him from peeking or fighting back. What does fear mean and how does it manifest itself? Well, when you get scared you instinctively enter what you've all probably heard before: Fight or Flight mode. You either fight back (shoot back) or you run for your life (take cover). If anyone of you has ever been suppressed then I would love to hear your thoughts on the following.

If you have ever been in a life threatening situation where you enter fight mode, in a bar fight, getting mugged, car accident or even a clutchsituation within a video game or in a sport then you know what I'm talking about. Adrenaline pumps into your system, your heartrate goes up, nothing else but what is most important/life threatening is in your focus. You get tunnelvision towards your problem and all you care about is getting that out of the way. You miraculously with perfect accuarcy hit all four headshots, dangles, combination punches or whatever and you come out on top. I would suggest that this fight mode wouldn't make your aim more difficult but instead make it more accurate due to the fact that you either hit the shot, or you die. And your mind doesn't want you to die.

In the current state of the game it is almost impossible to fight back successfully because of the extra sway you're experiencing. Most of these situations where your opponent initially misses you, triggering suppression, often results in them hitting their 2-5 shot before you are even capable to put your crosshair on their figure.

My solution for this would be to entirely scrap the idea of adding sway and instead add a tunnelvisioning effect similar to the picture-in-picture blur you experience when you are scoping with zoom. That along with hearing impairment possibly reducing the radius distance of which you can hear footsteps. Allowing teammates to utilize your suppression in order to flank said enemy. Watch this part

This would also enable the effectiveness of flash hiders and suppressors motivating players to further customize their loadouts.


This is pretty straight forward.

Right now the game is favouring Full-Auto above everything. I do not see a single competetive player utilizing single- or burst fire and the reason for that is pretty obvious. If you watch my video at this timestamp you can see that it is much more difficult to control your single round taps over just full-auto'ing. Even across distances it is preferable to use fully automatic techniques. I do not want you to nerf full-auto but instead change the way the recoil works for the first few rounds to allow for all three techniques being used rather than only one. Watch this part for graph explanation.


So the current weight mechanics in the game are pretty simple and easy to understand. You add more weight to your player, he becomes slower and less effective in his movement.

The Total weight affects:

  • ADS speed
  • Overall momentum
  • Sprint speed

My solution would instead be split up in two: Total Weight and Weapon weight being the factors determining your mobility in different ways. Watch this part.

Total weight

  • Affect your sprint speed
  • Vault speed
  • Momentum while sprinting

And having your...

Weapon Weight

  • Affect ADS speed & Movement speed while ADS
  • "Hipfire" movement speed
  • Sway while standing

Your Total weight would therefore determine at which timing you get into said location and your Weapon Weight would determine how mobile and quick you are while clearing corners offensively. For example if you want to rush B you would want to have a low total weight to sprint faster from your spawn to the objective. And depending on your role for that position you would want to select your weapon accordingly. If you are going to want to clear alot of angles while moving it would be a good idea to pick a Sub-machine Gun to attribute faster "weapon-ready" movement or even a pistol. But if your role would be to hold an angle then a bigger weapon with more punch such as the FAL or G3 would be a better option. THE MOBILITY IN HIPFIRE IS DETERMINED BY THE WEAPON YOU ARE CURRENTLY WIELDING. If you switch to your pistol or your knife when you enter a room, you will move faster than if you were to wield your M240. You will still sprint at the same speed regardless because of total weight controlling your sprint ability. I know it sounds weird to put your M240 on your back but to find balance between realism and gameplay there has to be smaller compromises.

This would also promote the use of armor for clearing corners. Sure, you might not get there as fast but when you are in action clearing rooms your armor doesn't slow you down, the choice of weapon does. Motivating people to pick up armor.


  • Attachments & their usefulness

In the current state of the competetive scene loadouts look fairly similar. There is no point in going too much off-track from the "meta". For a few months we had the Mk14 and FAL Full-Auto meta going on because the weapons were just better in every way. With the re-implementation of hipfire and this new suppression system, along with the weight system changes I feel like this would contribute to the overall motivation to customize your loadouts differently. Using suppressors and flashhiders contribute even more in suppression/flanking situations. The laser-sight and tracers rounds are something worth putting on your weapon again because of the hipfire actually being consistent. Maybe adding different grips to the game would be something. One increasing ADS speed, one vertical recoil and the other reducing sway. There are endless ideas that could be implemented.


  • Tactical walk/Duck Walk

I have thought of a variety of ways to implement this way of utilizing the hipfire deadzone system. One having another keystroke putting you in this mode, the other by just having you in it as soon as you are in what we call "hipfire mode". There is possibly even more ways to introduce this. I don't really know what to say about this on the forum here so I'm just going to have to let you watch the video instead. This part is where I'm talking about this in particular.


Future Ideas

Upcoming videos & threads that I visualize talking about will be concerning the following subjects:

  • Damage Multipliers
  • Armor
  • Weapon Balance
  • Competetive Balance
  • Machine guns
  • Pistols
  • Sniper Rifles
  • Ballistics
  • Animations
  • Map Balance
  • Game Modes
  • Menu Design
  • User Interface
  • Cosmetics & Micro Transactions
  • Marketing Strategies
  • And more...

Not necessarily in this order but my ideas are endless. Let me know if there is anything else worth mentioning that you would like me to take a look at.


  • TL;DR

Watch the video


I would be really happy to answer questions if there is something that is unclear. I hope you watch the video to get the full experience. If there is something you disagree with or something you want to add feel free to discuss anything below. I will keep checking in on the comment section on youtube aswell. I hope that this movement I am starting is going to have an impact of the development and I hope that you find my ideas and visions for this game appropriate.

Thank you for your support!

Goggenator

last edited by goggenator

@goggenator
Thank you for your scientific aproach of the "problems" and your conclusively solutions.
I totally agree too all of the suggested improvements you wrote here and recorded in your Youtube video.

You really took your time to present the critical points to us and hopefully the NWI developers also agree and implement your proposals to one of the upcoming Sandstorm patches.
Nice to have some professionals amongst the player base giving such valuable feedback.
Hopefully you will be heard and the game will be fine-tuned to a perfect FPS.

Best regards,
Lightning Team GSG 9

last edited by GSG_9_LIGHTNING

This pretty much covers all the gripes I have with this game mechanically.

I can’t really say or add much else to it. These changes are more or less what I’d want to see out of this game.

@gsg_9_lightning
@Mr-Rain

Thank you for the support! I'm glad if I could make a difference.

@goggenator Yes! I've found someone who (kind of) shares my opinions about this stuff!

Definitely agree with most of this (if not all, really). A lot of Sandstorm's current mechanics really bug me as they don't fit Insurgency at all.

In case you're curious, I posted a similar (and definitely longer lmao) list of the thing I want to see in Sandstorm here.

last edited by MarksmanMax

@goggenator said in Make Insurgency Great (again) - Part I: Gunplay:

@marksmanmax

Great job Max!

Hey, feel free to check out what I linked. It has a lot of suggestions that were also things you talked about (Weight, ADS, Hipfire; also had something similar to weapon weight affecting ADS speed) plus some other stuff like some general supply-point tweaks, bugs, and damage model issues.

@goggenator Actually, is your issue with suppression actually the sway increase?

I'm running some more tests in light of recent posts, and being suppressed seems to increase weapon recoil by 50-100%. I'm not kidding.

Wow, very informative feedback. Nicely done.

I knew something wasn't right with hipfire.

Lots of great feedback in the video. I agree with a lot of it. I've got a few comments on specific sections though.

@goggenator said in Make Insurgency Great (again) - Part I: Gunplay:

I would like to add this consistent hipfire (not really hipfire but whatever) back to the game and instead of changing the pace of the game down with the ability to shoot accurately, if you're skilled, rather slow it down changing the way the weapon characteristics are.

Yah, part of the issue is figuring out is this really hip fire? The spread and recoil we see right now makes sense for true hipfire like you show in some real world videos (the machine guns should have much lower recoil all around, that's a separate but related issue). But as you showed later on, the 3rd person animations don't show hip firing, they show the weapon shouldered in a low ready. That makes this more of an instinctive shooting / natural point of aim from a shouldered position. That should be a lot more controllable for most weapons.

I would suggest that this fight mode wouldn't make your aim more difficult but instead make it more accurate due to the fact that you either hit the shot, or you die. And your mind doesn't want you to die.

You're right, your mind doesn't want you to die, not really. It just works out that way. The problem is the human fight or flight response didn't evolve for combat with ranged weapons that require fine motor skills. It thinks we'll be arm wrestling a saber toothed tiger, or beating a Neanderthal to death with a club. Elevated heart rate, rapid breathing, narrowed vision, and restriction of blood flow to the extremities all conspire to make shooting more difficult. Combat shooting statistics would certainly look a lot better if soldiers got more accurate with stress, but unfortunately that's not the case.

I love the idea of the tunnel vision effect though. It's realistic, and would be highly effective at visually communicating the state of mind.

My solution would instead be split up in two: Total Weight and Weapon weight being the factors determining your mobility in different ways.

I really like most of this, with one caveat: movement speed should always be effected by total weight. Speaking from experience, the weight of armor and gear is the single biggest factor in how quickly and nibley you can move around the battlefield. Next to that, the weight of the rifle is pretty minor. It's especially true in close quarters, where not only does your gear weight restrict your movement, but bulk becomes an issue too. Snagging on a door frame is a really good way to mess up dynamic movement into a room. I've actually been stuck in a doorway for a few seconds before because I was wearing gear optimized for outdoors combat - oops. And I find that with a heavy gear load, I subconsciously just don't want to move as quickly, or crouch as low, or contort into a weird stance to get behind cover, or hop over the ledge. Fighting with a light gear load is remarkably refreshing.

But ADS speed and sway should absolutely be determined by weapon weight. How quickly you can drive a weapon onto a target and hold it there has very little to do with the weight of your gear, and a whole lot to do with the weight of the weapon and all the stuff you've got hanging off it. In some respects, a bulky gear loadout can almost help reduce sway - if I can tuck my elbows into my vest or rest them on a pouch I can actually hold my rifle a little more steady.

No mention of weapon lethality and caliber, waste of time.
If you want to make the gunplay great make the guns kill in 1 shot to the head chest and stomach with 5.56 and above.

@marksmanmax said in Make Insurgency Great (again) - Part I: Gunplay:

@goggenator Actually, is your issue with suppression actually the sway increase?

I'm running some more tests in light of recent posts, and being suppressed seems to increase weapon recoil by 50-100%. I'm not kidding.

Yes. My issue with suppression is exactly what I describe in the video and the post. Suppression effect adds sway. Just like your tests suggests. It is a mechanic that a majority if not everyone I play with have a problem with.

@slazenger said in Make Insurgency Great (again) - Part I: Gunplay:

No mention of weapon lethality and caliber, waste of time.
If you want to make the gunplay great make the guns kill in 1 shot to the head chest and stomach with 5.56 and above.

Thank you for your honest feedback. The reason I didn't put this in the video is because I could talk for hours if I was to include everything in one video. What you are talking about is a perfect follow-up subject to this series I am going to make. I have alot of ideas and suggestions regarding these issues aswell. So stay tuned and come back when the subject interests you.

@maa_bunny said in Make Insurgency Great (again) - Part I: Gunplay:

Thank you so much for your elaborate feedback and your ideas. Here is my response to you.

Yah, part of the issue is figuring out is this really hip fire?

Exactly. There are just not enough fingers on your hand to account for the amount keys to press if you want to have all these different stances and shooting styles. That is why we have to find a balance sweet spot between what hipfire and shoulder-ready (duckwalk/tactical walk as I describe it). That's why I suggest that the current way the "hipfire" works should be more of a shoulder ready semi-accurate way to shoot being balanced through movement speed based on the weight of the weapon instead of being nerfed to another dimension.

You're right, your mind doesn't want you to die, not really. It just works out that way. The problem is the human fight or flight response didn't evolve for combat with ranged weapons that require fine motor skills. It thinks we'll be arm wrestling a saber toothed tiger, or beating a Neanderthal to death with a club. Elevated heart rate, rapid breathing, narrowed vision, and restriction of blood flow to the extremities all conspire to make shooting more difficult. Combat shooting statistics would certainly look a lot better if soldiers got more accurate with stress, but unfortunately that's not the case.

I would actually instead argue that we are evolved for ranged combat. Our arms are long and we utilize our hands to throw stones, use spears, clubs and other tools in order to distance ourselves from our opponent. The reason we are the apex predator is because of our ability to kill from a distance. Using our fists to fight being our last resort of combat. I would also argue that only a small percentage of people are truly warriors. These individuals enter "fight-mode" immediately and are almost seeking combat where as the majority are more prone to flee, run away or taking cover. I would suggest that the elite forces, warriors and successful clutch athletes among us fit into the category of facing their fears and accepting the fact that they have to fight and upon embracing this state of mind enter what is known as flow-state in order to conduct themselves in peak performance to win or in this case, survive.

Looking at statistics of what the majority of people experience during stress doesn't really make a solid argument in my opinion. Mainly because I believe that there are more factors involved than just fear in those statistics. Physical fatigue, combat fatigue, unit morals among others and not just fear alone. I would rather have the game feature attributes of elite warriors that are leaning towards the "fight-mode" to increase the skillceiling and promote offensive plays. The reason I think so is because this game wants to be a competetive sport. If we were to have a ultra-realistic MMORPGFPS it would be a fantastic idea for your character to have to train or strengthen these attributes in order to perform well during said circumstances.

I really like most of this, with one caveat: movement speed should always be effected by total weight. Speaking from experience, the weight of armor and gear is the single biggest factor in how quickly and nibley you can move around the battlefield. Next to that, the weight of the rifle is pretty minor. It's especially true in close quarters, where not only does your gear weight restrict your movement, but bulk becomes an issue too. Snagging on a door frame is a really good way to mess up dynamic movement into a room. I've actually been stuck in a doorway for a few seconds before because I was wearing gear optimized for outdoors combat - oops. And I find that with a heavy gear load, I subconsciously just don't want to move as quickly, or crouch as low, or contort into a weird stance to get behind cover, or hop over the ledge. Fighting with a light gear load is remarkably refreshing.

But ADS speed and sway should absolutely be determined by weapon weight. How quickly you can drive a weapon onto a target and hold it there has very little to do with the weight of your gear, and a whole lot to do with the weight of the weapon and all the stuff you've got hanging off it. In some respects, a bulky gear loadout can almost help reduce sway - if I can tuck my elbows into my vest or rest them on a pouch I can actually hold my rifle a little more steady.

I agree with this. The only problem is what I mentioned earlier in this response. There is just not enough fingers on your hand to account for the dynamics of real life. We have to find a balance. My idea of making a competetive e-sports potential shooter is to have it work this way. I think it combines alot from previous competetive shooters but also give you the idea and immersiveness of realistic hardcore shooter mechanics.

Best regards,

goggenator

Personally I don't mind hipfire being somewhat inconsistent. As it is now, it slows down the game tempo and makes fast entries harder to pull off. Things like jumping corners are already way too powerful from the perspective of realism and as always, peeker's advantage is significant.

I think suppression already has some sort of hearing impairment implemented?

The stuff on recoil is spot on and helped me to realize why I'm using auto in this game and semi in almost every other game. I also agree with the weight management points.

@tzaeru said in Make Insurgency Great (again) - Part I: Gunplay:

Personally I don't mind hipfire being somewhat inconsistent.

I agree to somewhat inconsistent. Not it's current variant. Counter-Strike has somewhat inconsistent spray aswell but it is consistent within it's useful range.

This game has a fantastic idea with the deadzone implementation. What I saw with the game when I started playing the beta was that there was enormous potential to have skillful "hipfire" being a part of the game. Not saying it should be favoured over ADS for all situations but promote it when the circumstances allow for it. I think it would make for amazing "noscope" situations and "OMG WHAT A SHOT" kind of gameplay which would motivate players to keep watching and playing the game.

Some great points displayed in your video Goggenator.

One of the first things I noticed in the game was that it was easier to control full automatic recoil than single fire. That being said I like the feeling of automatic fire, and we shouldn't nerf it to feel as crummy as single-fire. I agree improving single-fire to meet the accessibility of auto would be the wise path.

Your feedback on suppression is also interesting. One of the hallmarks of this Insurgency is the method of concealment. In a game built around high lethality, soft cover and concealment are the most important aspects. You can determine the location of your enemies based on the sounds of their guns, footsteps, audible voice overs etc. Not paying attention to these mechanics will grant skilled players an immunity to detection. In this game of concealment, he-who-fires-first-wins if the person receiving fire cannot react. With the currently implemented suppression mechanics, even a skilled player cannot hope to return fire in time to win.

In order to simulate stress, the currently implemented suppression mechanic dampens a players application of skill in returning fire. The suggested change to suppression mechanic would similarly simulate stress, but without dampening a players application of his/her skill.

@goggenator With some Workshop mods like "Psymod" or "Somewhat Realistic FOV/Viewmodel", hipfiring in Ins2014 was insanely useful. Sandstorm has its weapons positioned like those mods (although the positions themselves didn't come from those workshop mods; I asked Mikee in-game myself) but the current hipfire recoil is insanity. You're not gonna hit sh*t, especially if you're trying to hipfire any pistol or SMG (although the Uzi kinda works).

There's also a current issue in-game with your turning speed drastically decreasing if you're aimed at the center of your screen while not aiming down sights: https://forums.focus-home.com/topic/35629/mouse-sensitivity-drops-in-the-middle-of-the-freeaim-box

last edited by MarksmanMax

Suggestions sound good and make sense.

Would be interesting to test such a version on the CTE to see how those would translate into gameplay.