Focus and leaning need to be reworked.

As of right now both of these actions are only viable when standing completely still, and this being such a fast phase game doesn't make any sense to me.

Leaning, has two stages. One less titled stage when moving and fully tilted stage when not moving.
Now ideally peeking a corner you want to lean to not expose your feet and body to the enemy before your rifle. But there is problem with that.
With the 2 stage leaning, you start peeking a corner or whatever while leaning and soon as you see a target you stop to fire.
Now the problem being, is as soon as you stop you enter into full tilt leaning which throws you off your target. And soon as you start moving again.. as nobody wants to stand still while being shot at.. You go back into the first stage of leaning, which throws your aim off again.
Now some might say, why don't you just keep moving in the same direction so your lean stays at the same angle? Well, the idea of stopping as soon as you see an enemy is that at that point, you're exposing as little of your body to him as possible. If you keep moving he'll see your entire body. And again if you stop you'll go full tilt which is going to throw you off abit, and delay your response. Everytime you make even the slightest movement or change direction of where you're going while leaning your character will change the leaning angle. This to myself is a very infurating feature which i do not like the slightest.

Now focus, works in a way that it stabilizes your gun abit and zooms in your view abit for a more accurate shot when being held.
Focus itself is also tied to stamina, so depending on how much stamina you have the longer you can focus. If you're out of breath you can only focus for a short period untill you regain stamina. Focus being tied to stamina isn't a problem for me that much.
The problem i have with focus, and what i think makes it useless is. Even the slightest movement will cancel focus.
If you're running and press focus while coming to a stop, it will cancel.
If you're holding a corner, using focus and make a small step it will cancel.
So basically the only way you can use focus if you keep completely still. And in a fast phase shooter like this, that makes you into a really easy target.

So what i'm suggesting is.

  1. Remove the 2 stage leaning, just make it a simple 1 stage lean. Same angle everytime, no matter what you do. Also the movement speed while leaning could use a small buff.
  2. Make focus more usable in movement, i'm not saying you should exactly be able to move around completely freely while using it. But atleast tie a certain speed, or distance traveled to canceling it.

Thanks for reading, i do have a few more things i could give feedback for, but i'm going to wait for the game to be fully released to see if those see any changes then before talking about those yet. Let me know what you guys think, what suggestions you have on these subjects. Do you completely hate my ideas, do you support them? Alright have a good one.

@shields I just suggested my idea on a similar post. Also, this isn't really a bug with the game so I'd post this in the Gameplay discussions and not the Technical. This sub forum is mostly for squashing bugs within the game.

My idea was to keep the current system but make the animation a bit less janky, and possibly adding a delay or two so your character doesn't have a heart attack when you constantly tap your forward key while leaning and ADSing.

Honestly, if the game is fast paced as it is, why make it even more fast paced? Let's keep some advantage for advancing carefully. There should be the option between speed and thoroughness, not a best way where you get it all. Imho :).

I totally understand what you mean but tbh it's kind of realistic.
You see, when you walk you are not in the best position to fire (especially when leaning which is an awkward position to be in, try it!)

So when you stop walk lean you actually assume the position and hence the little move to the full lean.
I will be hard pressed if you will find even a SF veteran who can lean walk while ADS in a PERFECT shooting position.

With a little practice (like real soldiers do) you will get used to it.

About the other issue, IRL shooting after physical strain you hold your breath.
There is not much point to hold you breath if you move since you won't see any difference since you are moving.

All you have to do if you adjusted your position is press focus again. not that big of a deal if you ask me
and also kind of realistic.

Source, I was a combat medic.

-EDIT-
Ok so I actually agree with you on the focus thing. sharing my example in a new post below

last edited by Bez

Let's just turn the entire game into Rainbow Six Siege, how about that?

@bez Yeah, then again this is a first person shooter, not a simulation and not real life. I have also served in FDF and i regularly go shooting as a reservist and i understand what you mean but from a gameplay perspective this is just not a really working feature. And from reality standpoint the max angle of the lean may be abit overexaggerated but holding the same angle is nothing of an impossibility whetever you're moving or standing still.
I would be perfectly happy if they reduce the max angle of lean but just remove the 2 stage mechanism.

last edited by Shields

@dootybooty If you bothered to read past the title you would know thats not what i'm trying to achieve here. All i want is some more fluent gameplay mechanics that can be accomplished with this new engine.

@snuffeldjuret I personally think the overall movement speed is abit too fast for my taste, but leaning movement speed compared to that is atrocious which puts only push you at a disadvantage if you decide to push a corner while leaning. There are alot of other factors that combined inflict.. Like the bad hitreg, low dmg, weird recoil, lagg etc..

@shields said in Focus and leaning need to be reworked.:

I would be perfectly happy if they reduce the max angle of lean but just remove the 2 stage mechanism.

I totally agree to that !

@shields I agree that it's a bit too fast paced. i mean if I compare this to the original insurgency
it feels much more (more, not exactly like) counter strike or r6 siege in terms of speed.
allot of people running around like crazy

@shields I would say so myself, would personally enjoy slower movement. Granted how it is though, it is just not a good idea to move+lean around corners. I just don't do it, except for giving it a go out of curiosity. I agree 100% that it is an awkward implementation. Let's say you want to lean+move and be ready to shoot. As soon as you stop you will lean out too far, and if you move back and forth you will pop out to max lean at every turn making you miss your shots.

So while I disagree that leaning has to be buffed while on the move, I think it has to be overhauled to not be so wonky.

I don't want to lean around every corner for two reasons. My impression is that it isn't very realistic (I could be wrong ofc) and more importantly I would not enjoy leaning around every corner. That would just be tedious.

@snuffeldjuret Well yeah like majority of the post is about, the two stage leaning needs to go, its just clunky. Honestly there is nothing "unrealistic" about leaning every corner. That is entirely up to yourself. Checking a corner by leaning compared to just walking straight into has an advantage which is nearly no part of your body will be exposed before you can see them. If you just walk into a corner they will see your legs and a good bit of your torso before you can see the enemy. Obviously there are multiple ways to take a corner so there is no one correct way to do it. It all depends on the situation and if you're alone or with a team.

I don't think there is anything wrong with how leaning is implemented right now. I don't use focus because I never need it.

@shields honestly, from all the training videos of people storming buildings I have seen, I cannot recall once where they heavily lean around every corner. I am all for you providing evidence they actually do, but that would have to be while moving. Not moving, then stop to lean, and then move again. I want to see leaning without interrupting the movement. If it is nothing unrealistic about it, please argue why it is not unrealistic rather than just saying it, preferably providing video evidence :).

People storming buildings as a TEAM don't lean every corner, true. Thats how i've been taught to clear a building as a team as well. But in this video game people don't team up, they don't stack up to a door. People play invidually. And when you're an invidual you have to take every precation of safety because there is only so much you can cover by yourself, whetever if its "tedious" or not your life depends on it. That is when you lean corners, depending if the enemy knows you're there because nobody of right mind is going to "storm" a building alone. Individual tactics are quite different compared to what people use in a team. Teams breaching buildings rely on shock and awe, they only have to get in simultaneously and cover their designated corner. Irrelegardless of what tactics are employed in different armed forces around the world for different situations and scenarios, the leaning mechanic in the game is still very clunky to the point that its unusable, it only puts you at a disadvantage. Which is the point of this post, to fix this mechanism, not argue about what tactic we think is "realistic" or not. If you want "video evidence" go search "solo building clearing" or something like that on youtube.

Here is an example https://youtu.be/fgDQXGye53I

last edited by Shields

So like I edited above I agree with you on the Focus. Here is an example,
I was fast walking (or was it sprinting?) to cover and ADS as I was stopping, I acquired the target before I totally stopped
and pressed focus, however it did not start and there was a substantial delay until focus engaged.

I actually had to re press focus for it to activate if I remember correctly

Besides this issue of delay or triggering animations while another animation is playing (or not)
is not fluid. I am not sure what but there are many issues with that (like switching weapons in different states and so on)

Will try to make a new post about

Anyway +1 for focus, I admit when i am wrong

last edited by Bez

@shields I agree with you with what you say about the players and tactics and all
but personally I don't feel the leaning is broken. I understand this little movement at the end,
from a realistic and technical (maybe?) point of view.

Talking about tactics and solo clearing, the game have imho quite a good stealth mechanic.
Here is a tip if you slow walk you can't be heard. I use it with lean all the time when I go solo in coop or local play
and it works really great (my KD ratio for example doubled itself).
leaning dose not feel broken to me, again just a bit of practice.

Technically maybe they want to add later full body rendering in first person (kind like arma but better you know)
(if you see when you sit in the truck you see your body! also when kicking doors...)
So they need the third person and first person animations to align. there will always be little jitters when you stop moving while leaning, if you want realistic animations.
You know, later people complain the animations are shit.

Coming to think of it, maybe they actually are doing it?
I believe these guys can pull it off.

Can it be better? sure I guess, is it really that bad? no I don't think so.
I rather they focus (pun intended) on other issues.

Would be nice to get some official reply from the developers if they are going to do something about these issues.

Totally agree with your points. For people freaking out about "muh realism": this is Insurgency people, not ArmA or Squad. Insurgency has always been a semi realistic shooter, not a hardcore milsim game, and as such we can sacrifice some amount of realism in favor of gameplay. Leaning is totally awkward to use atm, and I quickly got discouraged from using it after a few hours of trying. It's just not worth it, it pretty much feels like a useless feature as of now. Also focusing just gets you killed most of the time, as you need to stand still for seconds to actually be able take advantage of it.

@shields cool video! It confirms my idea though that when you lean you move slowly. I would personally prefer it if the lean was 100% while moving, but that the movement speed was slow enough so that you won't have people leaning more or less all the time they are at a corner. Right now it is pretty much impossible to do the moves he does in the video, or at least requires too much practice. In other words, I think the movement while leaning should be to adjust your position, not to move any significant distance.