A comprehensive opinion of everything I feel is wrong with the beta from a design standpoint

Id like to start by first specifying that this is my opinion. I aspire to balance videogames but this does not mean I am correct, ive always wanted to design game mechanics and make sure everything feels right, being inspired a lot by the game development choices of the halo games from early bungie, focusing more on fun than whatever the e-sport community has been focusing on. Ill start with a popular topic of discussion and work my way into something people dont talk about that I feel can heighten the game a lot.



Time To Kill
Time to kill a big discussion point and people are saying that its not fun when the other person is a bullet sponge and some people want the oneshots back and some people think this should oneshot but not this and armor is a big discussion point as well. I really feel like there is a good inbetween for this kind of thing and no one really talks about how to get there. You dont need everyone to have AP ammo and have everyone oneshot or at most twoshot with any gun to be competitive. You can have the lower TTK of the lower calibers right now and still have that feeling that "I shot first so they were pretty much dead from there." I feel that there shouldnt be many guns that oneshot mostly being bolt-actions. As much as I like how the PKM oneshots right now, im not so sure its the best choice for balance reasons, it has a hefty amount of recoil but im not sure if thats enough. That thing is a monster of a gun and its basically a full auto sniper rifle that youll usually only shoot one shot with. I feel that the TTK issue can be negated by the inclusion of more suppression mechanics but not in the way theyre implemented right now, which leads me into

Suppression and Health/Damage
which I feel can bridge the gap between low and high TTK. I think health should come back much slower, for one, and being damaged should automatically set you to a very high amount of suppression which can even make a garbage 9mm pistol feel effective against heavy armor, even if it takes four or even five shots to kill because the truth is, even with heavy armor on, taking a 9mm bullet isnt going to feel good and in the field im sure being shot at all is going to throw you into a panic. While you might initially read that and think "thats so stupid i dont want rng to decide if i win or not", the other alternatives are "my pistol doesnt work" and "it doesnt matter what gun i use because i oneshot anyway" and really both of those are bad in my opinion. Its not so much RNG either. Suppression can do things like mess with your audio and make it harder to take note of your surroundings, it could make your aim much more unreliable against the shooter and give a good edge to people with a lot more ammo, even boosting the effectiveness of SMGs which are generally completely outclassed by rifles in nearly every way other than a ton of ammo. It would also present a nerf to DMRs like the M14 or SVD unless they land those killing shots because theyd lack the suppression of missing a lot more. I also feel that taking damage (depending on how much) could possibly slow down the person being shot. I think someone in heavy armor might be able to tank a 9mm and keep moving but perhaps taking higher calliber bullets could slow down the person who takes them, boosting the reward of someone who can land their shots even if the shot doesnt immediately kill, you could also make this more specific like being shot in the legs may slow down the person who gets shot. Id even go so far as to say that being shot at all should move your aim around, and while you might again say "thats stupid" or "thats not fair" the alternative is that youd die immediately because they would have AP ammo and low TTK. You could also apply the aiming suppression effects to things like flashbangs to boost their effectiveness and generally make the whole thing stronger and more rewarding to use.

Sound
I think sound isnt being used enough here and can even provide incentive to use light or heavy armor. I feel weight should be tied to footstep noises to really reward someone for taking just a pistol or an smg with no armor or ammo carriers and things like that, this would also directly nerf support as a whole as carrying that LMG makes you pretty loud to move around and basically wont let you push up fast as even an inexperienced player can hear you coming, making the support role more of a SUPPORT role and not an offensive rifleman with a huge magazine and higher damage. I have also heard from many people that theres a lot of issues in PvP where people run around because the footstep noises are so quiet and it becomes incredibly run and gun where that stuff shouldnt matter. Im not sure the validity of these claims but its worth noting. Talking about PvP however...

PvP
I feel the number one problem with the PvP in this game is the forehead bullet dilemma. Ive played two matches of PvP in Sandstorm and probably 3 in Insurgency Source, and its not that im bad at shooters or anything, I do fine on other titles but Insurgencys slow combat and focus on positioning really only heightens the problem of a guy with 3 pixels of his head sticking out of a corner of a window with a oneshot semi-auto sniper whos capable of destroying 5 waves of your team without anyone even able to get a shot off at him. And this has happened to me multiple times. One player getting about 30 or 40 kills in a single around because the other team just cant see him at all. This is going to destroy the games pvp at anything except top-tier levels, its just not fun and its not realistic or fair because only veteran players are going to know where these exploitative spots are. Its generally just a bad time, I feel if the forehead problem can be eliminated, the game will see a significant boost for the PvP scene. I want to see less emphasis on oneshotting a dude with a sniper from a position he couldnt have possibly seen and more on actual gunplay and suppression.

Weapon Balance
Another big dilemma ive seen is that some guns are just better than other guns, im not going to talk about this too long since there are a lot of guns and I cant say ive even used every gun even with my extensive time with sandstorm but I would say that guns at the same prices should be sidegrades. If a gun is GENERALLY better than another gun, one should also be more expensive than the other. I think its quite silly when some guns are more expensive but worse than a gun at a lower cost.

Melee
I think everyone knows how ridiculous the melee in this game is, im not sure how much theyd be willing to look into it but really anything would be better than it is right now, including almost not having it. If I had to give my opinion on a good melee system in a first person shooter, I guess id say Battlefield One does it the most successfully so far, locking you into an animation (provided you actually get the kill) that generally makes the melee effective against one person but ultimately suicide in any two-man engagement.
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And im not saying these are perfect but I would be confident in saying its a lot better than what is in the game currently.


Please, if you liked what I have to say give me a thumbs up or post a reply, id hate for my post to get lost. If you disagree please quote the section you disagree with and talk about why its bad and all of the specifics of that, I want to have a well organized discussion about all of this stuff.
Thanks for reading.

So a few more things popped into mind id like to add my opinion about.

LMGs
Due to the nature of LMGs pretty much being the best guns, there should be moves in place to really nerf them down without touching them at their core. Things like weight, recoil and general usability should be tweaked to prevent them from being the unstoppable all-range monsters they currently are. The PKM has fine recoil right now but it can be negated with a compensator and thats pretty much what it comes down to, it makes your life significantly easier and negates the downsides pretty easy. I also feel the m249 should have similar problems and also not have a compensator. The weight could be increased on these guns as well and you could even throw more nerfs into the reload department just to make them more of a problem. Slower ADS could work as well. Dont get me wrong, I love LMGs and theyre my favorite kind of weapon, I just dont want them to be world destroyers, I dont want them to be easy to use and I dont want them to become Battlefield LMGs where even a 9mm smg does more damage than a big large calliber machine gun.

Attachments in general
I feel the current implementation of attachments isnt very good because unless youve got a lack of points, you can just take the no-negative best attachments, speaking of that, I dont think any attachments should just make your gun better like long barrel or compensator, I think its very unhealthy for the game as they become more nessisary upgrades like AP ammo in Insurgency Source.

@ziggylata said in A comprehensive opinion of everything I feel is wrong with the beta from a design standpoint:

exploitative spots

TACTICS:

I have not much experience with Sandstorm yet, and don't have the time to get experience like when I was younger (priorities), that being said I have played Ins2 for a lot of hours and got many games with a lot of kills (around 50 my record on push, only using guns and a few frags, no c4 or rockets, in all rounds combined), its extremely rare to get 30-40 kills in a round, I have never done that and it should not be possible unless enemy team is new and using c4 close spawn in ins2). The maps of Ins2 were small and I would just point out that there is not many exploitative spots when you get more experience imho. I want to clarify how I see Ins2 pvp as there is many aspects I often see differently and want to share my understanding so it gets less confusing how the game works on higher lvl:
This is all based on Ins2:

  • My loadout: Never armour - Never ever. AP ammo, rarely extra ammo rig, depends on game mode and available point, but in general your speed>loadout. You never need a lot of ammo as you can kill a ton of enemies with 3 mags and then using enemy guns until you die. Most often M4 ,M16, AKM, AK, FAL. Always an automatic if unsure what to bring for current situation, if available, AKS a favourite.

  • Always looking at the timer at the bottom and always knowing when enemy get a new wave, knowing where enemies can be at different times after spawn/respawn, flanking where they think it is safe.

  • Don't shot at every target, but most often. Think about if enemy move through an area and front enemy don't get shot - The other enemies thinks it is clear and moves out behind front enemy, then kill when many enemies exposed.

  • Predicting your enemies. Always trying to put myself in my enemies shoes, what do they think, where do they move, how will they approach, which sounds do they hear and focus on, etc.

  • When dead, always switching perspectives to gain knowledge about enemy positions when respawning or watching the top players on same team to look for smart tactics and gameplay to learn whenever possible.

  • Game is not realistic, very much agree, and I am happy for that as realism in actual gameplay does not create so many fun moments imo. I am referring to game mechanics, not graphics or how to guns act like their real counterpart.

  • Game is not slow, disagree strongly there. Try watch some youtube clips from pro matches or play the game with my kind of loadout and playstyle. Game is very fast when you get experience. Slow players are often free kills as they are in a state of careful tactics which is detrimental (harmful) to their reaction time. Look at a pro match in Starcraft Brood war and notice that pro players have between 300- 600 APM (actions per minute). While a completely different game you get an idea of the speed of reaction times that exists.

  • Locking down choke points at the correct time frames.

  • Reaction time is key, twitch skills - snapping fast to targets, reacting to sound like guns and footsteps, knowing the map so well that you can see all places mentally and knows every place an enemy can be on all maps.

  • Looking for opportunities constantly: frag campers, prefire campers, flank enemy position, touch enemy objective to alert enemy on purpose, then pull around out of obj and kill enemies from weird angles.

  • Always rushing when safe, so first spawning - always or often rush ca mid.

  • Using speed and reaction time to outmaneuver enemies at every opportunity.

  • Often switching spot, constantly trying to think about where enemies will predict that I am killing them from.

Much of this also applies to Sandstorm, but bigger maps will demand more smokes and prefires. Confusing enemies is important.

So to answer the exploitable spots comment, they almost don't exist when you know all map and predict enemy positions. There was one spot on heights in river below firefight charlie where only your head is visible in river, and a few more exists but are rare.

+++ I have to go work, but hope this may be of any use to how I get many kills. There is many more points, but the general idea is that you need speed+extreme reaction time + practice 100s of hours by playing very fast with light loadout and that it is always a mind game to predict and understand what the enemies are thinking/doing at all times=)

Playing bots on brutal is a good way to practice reaction time if it is frustrating at first to practice in pvp. But you have to play fast, practice hip fire a lot, practice shooting multiple successive shots on several enemies.

last edited by Pacalis