Playing ins:source since 2014 (4000 hours). Suggestion for sandstorm (TTK + AREA RESTRICTED + OTHERS)

@slazenger

@slazenger said in Playing ins:source since 2014 (4000 hours). Suggestion for sandstorm (TTK + AREA RESTRICTED + OTHERS):

@jensiii

this will also cut recoil out from the equation.

If you miss your first shot then it won't.

And yes, I'm talking about the rifles killing in 1 shot (like Insurgency2014 and Day of Infamy) because in your other post you thought I meant for all weapons ("pistol, smg, maybe even shotgun").

Which weapon properties are the one that stand out and how are they balanced to make different guns excel in different situations?

The mains is recoil/accuracy, magazine size, select fire, ironsights, weapon penetration through walls, rate of fire, weight and you could say barrel length too.

In Insugency2014, we have the:
M16 excelling at range because of the lower recoil, balanced by it being single fire and poor ironsights
M4 excelling cqb combat by being full auto and lightweight with ammo carrier, balanced by being more expensive and slightly more recoil so it isn't as effective at range.
L1A1 excelling at wall penetration to clear objectives because of bigger caliber, balanced by 20 round mag with high recoil and weight
MP5 excels at cqb and rushing because of the fast rate of fire while being lightweight with short barrel length, balanced by not killing in 1 shot because of lower caliber.

AKM being a general good weapon not excelling at anything specific, balanced by lowish rate of fire and supply cost which means you can use grenades instead
Ak74 excelling at cqb with full auto and being lighter weight with good ironsights, balanced by not being able to penetrate walls

None of these weapons are overpowered and unbalanced, unless you we're to be playing coop with unlimited supply points.

In Sandstorm we can see the overpowered weapon being the g3a3 which has higher damage (higher damage weapons being the guns people naturally choose)

I totally agree with you, weapons like mp7 and uzi are being underused due to lack of AP ammunition ...

@skynet so balancing is then needed there. AP is not needed.

In my opinion, the only weapons not able to keep up with the new model are SMGs without AP ammo in them and pistols. Those bolt action snipers should also oneshot, but thats a given.

Pistols specifically can hit someones body armor 4 times and still not kill them, but I dont think this calls for a pistol buff, but rather there should be more expensive pistols instead of the 10 9mm options you get normally. Theres room here for a big fancy revolver or, my personal favorite, a Five-Seven.

To be honest, I feel weapons should be balanced based on their versatility. Alot of the SMGs could be cheaper if there were better options to replace them, same with rifles. Not saying all the lower-point smgs should be entirely neglected because then you just have a different form of the AP ammo issue from insurgency source, but there needs to be some medium between weapons not being useful and weapons killing in one hit all the time. Perhaps theres other methods to balance the weapons? If you upped the rate of fire on smgs and lowered the recoil to virtually nothing for most, but then also nerfed the range so they had much higher damage falloff, then suddenly its a faster and easier to use alternative to rifles or even shotguns.

I do find myself using weapons with high damage in insurgency sandstorm but there is a valubleness to a weapon like the M16 due to its absurdly high bullet velocity, turning it into a sniper. It may not always kill in one shot but I dont expect it to, just fire more shots, its more of a longer range weapon anyway.

Just another quick suggestion, maybe if suppression or damage effects were higher, the lack of killing power wouldnt be as bad? If you shoot someone with your pistol and it doesnt kill, it should still have a hefty impact on the person, that persons shot on the pistol user shouldnt still be perfect, this would also bennefit the lower calliber lower recoil weapons that dont kill in one or even two hits.
Im actually going to make a seperate thread about this.

last edited by Ziggylata

@Skynet

DYNAMIC BOT SPAWNS? :

I have played a lot of coop as well in Insurgency 2014, but after a while I started using coop as a warm up game before entering PVP to be at the top of my game. I agree that coop could be tweaked - Most of the time I played custom coop servers (BEF was my favourite) because vanilla coop on brutal difficulty felt too easy and one reason for that is when you join a coop there is people only playing coop in the game - They use incendiary and frags + C4 on the poor stupid bots, taking away the gun play from the game and making vanilla servers mostly useless to join because of the low difficulty.

Now if you remove the restricted areas what will happen?
1- Players who play coop 24/7 will enter the spawn of the bots and putting down C4 removing the gun play from the game
2- The same players will use incendiary in choke points close to the bot spawn removing the gun play from the game.
3 - New players and/or players who don't like pvp because they think it is so difficult, prefer games that are easier so they can manage the situation. Restricted areas are probably good for inexperienced players as it makes the gameplay more linear, and should be kept at lower difficulties.

Maybe you are right that the restricted area in coop should be removed as the aspect of flanking and having free movement can be more fun, but it should not be done without thinking about the problems with the points I mentioned.

Possible soulutions:

  • Make bot spawns dynamic: You never know where they will be, thus keeping the game fresh and the cheese -gameplay (abuse of mechanics to make game too easy) to a minimum.
  • Remove most of the supply points on higher difficulty so players are forced to spend less points on explosives and other cheap options against bots ( I mean bots in every PC game are pretty bad because they are very easy to understand/recognize their pattern++) therefore explosives and other secondary items takes away the challenge when playing against bots.
last edited by Pacalis

@jensiii said in Playing ins:source since 2014 (4000 hours). Suggestion for sandstorm (TTK + AREA RESTRICTED + OTHERS):

@skynet so balancing is then needed there. AP is not needed.

@skynet said in Playing ins:source since 2014 (4000 hours). Suggestion for sandstorm (TTK + AREA RESTRICTED + OTHERS):

weapons like mp7 and uzi are being underused

The breacher uses the MP7 half the time in the games I've played. The MP7 should also be inherently chambered for AP rounds because that's the way it is.

2 months ago I created this topic and it had been 2 months since the game received no updates. All problems reported in the topic continue to exist in the game. I honestly did not like the choices made by NWI at all. After all this time playing insurgency source, playing sandstorm seems like I'm playing a shit version of any other random FPS game. This game is nothing I expected.

This game is a walking simulator that punishes who rushes and privileges those who camp.

The game's performance worsened after this patch ...

The choice for big maps was the worst thing NWI did in the game, slowed the game down and made the game totally lose the frenetic style of insurgency:
source.

I'm giving up participating in the development of the game and I'll order my
refund

I'm totally disappointed

yep new update ruined the ads so now if you want to be able to fight but also run around, you have to have no armor and 1 rifle

@skynet said in Playing ins:source since 2014 (4000 hours). Suggestion for sandstorm (TTK + AREA RESTRICTED + OTHERS):

The game's performance worsened after this patch ...

It's better now for me. ADS stutter is gone and I can maintain a constant 90fps where as I had it capped to 60 last patch and it would stutter to 50fps with ever ADS.

What performance issue are you having?

@skynet i thought this update was gonna be good man, but it still feels like the same game.

I thought by the time this game was updated, I would forget about Insurgency 2. But I was wrong. The game stills sluggish and slow paced for my tastes for what I expect for an insurgency game-fast and tense combat of arcade shooters mixed in with the unforgiving brutality of tactical shooters. Combat feels sluggish that I feel like World War 3 and its stiff movement and gunplay is far more smoother than insurgency sandstorm.

I still have to dump half a magazine into someone to make sure they're dead. In Insurgency 2 this was rare to witness.

I feel like I'm playing a gimped Battlefield Hardcore, and I don't like it at all.

I expected so much from NWI for that 2 month wait. And with 1 month left to spare, I'm starting to further lose hope and I'm tempted for the refund. No way in hell they'll drastically improve the game within a month as I learned that with the delay in August.

I'm ashamed man. The game feels really sluggish and the game still suffers from bugs. People thought this update could change everything in this game but now it still feels like a chore to play this game. It still feels like the same with previous patches.

I'm sick and tired of facing inconsistent gunfights where I have to dump a mag into someone and they just 1 tap me dead. It's infuriating when you come from the background of consistent TTK of insurgency 2.

The default NWI servers of insurgency 2 were good, so I'm assuming the game's servers are alright. So I'm guessing the TTK in this game or the weird projectile system has to be the blame because I am not getting the consistency of shots to kill to a target like I do with other shooters like RS2 and Insurgency 2.

This is just pissing me off man.

Cannot relate at all. This is the best patch they've released so far in my opinion.

@skynet

Ive got over 6k hrs in insurgency 2 coop...is that bad?

last edited by Max80

@Ziggylata

@ziggylata said in Playing ins:source since 2014 (4000 hours). Suggestion for sandstorm (TTK + AREA RESTRICTED + OTHERS):

“Why cant I go into restricted areas in coop?”
So the bots can respawn and hopefully not spawn in view??

Agree, if restricted area is reduced coop, they would also need to maybe add dynamic bot spawn that uses player positions as base data to avoid spawns in view or a similar solution of some sort.

@jensiii said in Playing ins:source since 2014 (4000 hours). Suggestion for sandstorm (TTK + AREA RESTRICTED + OTHERS):

Cannot relate at all. This is the best patch they've released so far in my opinion.

While I still notice the changes NWI made, It feels like insurgency now. This patch has improved the game significantly.

@cyoce

@cyoce said in Playing ins:source since 2014 (4000 hours). Suggestion for sandstorm (TTK + AREA RESTRICTED + OTHERS):

if we assume for the sake of argument that literally everyone was running AP ammo (as people in these threads often suggest), it's actually not comparing apples to oranges. If AP ammo is ubiquitous, then AP ammo's damage model is standard damage model for Insurgency. When people ask for Sandstorm to keep Insurgency's damage model, they're not talking about whether you clicked "AP ammo" or not; they're talking about the average TTK for the game. The fact that that damage model was labeled "AP" is irrelevant to gameplay.

Still the Ins2 problem was that the damage models got more flat when all needed AP ammo as meta, so it should be considered a good thing that the damage models have been slightly raised from Ins2 to create a larger impact of which weapon and armour a player choose to equip. I can get easy kills with current TTK in pvp and it is still very low and I believe only bolt-action should maybe be one-shots as mentioned by several people already. I don't even need armour as when you get hit you have often lost the gunfight when facing skilled players in most cases anyway, so the speed is more important to me to avoid getting shot in the first place. Different damage models encourage new players to have a fighting chance as they can alleviate the gameplay by choosing equipment based on a slower playstyle. That is very good imo, as it lowers the skill floor and makes it more fun for new players to play pvp. Even if NWI have to try to stay true to the veterans of Ins2, they will have to set goals that makes the game a selling title, where the sweet spot is regarding TTK is difficult to assess for players and also be relevant feedback, if they only consider their personal preferences and disregard that the game needs popularity/reach a broader audience to stay in the limelight. They simply can't just copy paste the game mechanics from Ins2 to reach this goal, but they [The devs] have communicated thay they will continue to tweak the game even after release to try to find a good balance, so it is early to say anything with certainty about TTK as I would guess the devs are focusing on getting a bug free release with the best optimized performance at this point to address the most pressing issues.

@slazenger said in Playing ins:source since 2014 (4000 hours). Suggestion for sandstorm (TTK + AREA RESTRICTED + OTHERS):

Naturally, people will choose the highest damaging weapon instead of others.
With high lethality low TTK all the guns are viable and can be used effectively.

It is still a quite low TTK compared to most other games=) Also many players would want a less effective weapon to be able to afford frags and other useful equipment, so it is not always choose the weapon with the highest damage output for all players, but personally I would use a high damage output over equipment any day because speed is the game for me with an aggressive playstyle, but we need to be aware that other playstyles exist and deserves an option to create diversity and fun for a large group of different people ey.

@mefirst

This is a very good post which I very much agree on.
When it comes to your measuring contest metaphor it is very reasonable to compare gametype as one type of knowledge and I use it myself to verify my points sometimes. This got nothing to do with trying to get people to stand in awe, just that I have experience in the field I am discussing. If I am in a work situation and we discuss a topic my colleagues knows that I am competent when I speak, but in a forum like this some people have extremely strong opinions within areas they have not explored at all, thus talking over their head in some situations. Its like all those discussions about climate change all over the globe. Some people just throw out opinions without any scientific value sometimes and it leads nowhere, so for me feedback from someone who has played the game is more interesting as it is possible to discuss nuances with reasoning based on actual gameplay.

What about getting rid of heavy armer? I mean they added AP into INS2 to counter heavy armer so now they have god rid of AP heavy is a pain in the arse and un counterable. The Dev's have accidentally made another "bad meta" in my opinion. real yes but the difference between shooting a kid with a glock with no amor and heavy armer is to extreme for game balance in my opinion.

Also I disagree and also kinda agree with what you said that gameplay is too slow. Maps are massive and most of game play is running now, but on the other hand I've played so many push matches than have only lasted 2 minutes whereas in old insurgency they lasted half an hour if both teams were good.

@zucchini said in Playing ins:source since 2014 (4000 hours). Suggestion for sandstorm (TTK + AREA RESTRICTED + OTHERS):

What about getting rid of heavy armer?

That would not be believable for a modern military shooter in my opinion and would break immersion. Going to battle unarmored was WWII.

@jensiii , @Zucchini
You can penetrate the heavy armour with a good spray, and after hitting your enemy center mass if that is where you hit first, you quickly readjust to head and game over for enemy. Pistol is for sneak attack and emergency, not first choice imo, because pistol is not very effective, like it should be, unless you are extremely good at getting those headshots. Why not maximize option variety and players can choose from what they like? It is always possible to counter armour with a nice spread to enemy head, no worries.

Game is slow with high body weight, game is fast with low body weight - The choice depends on the player. In push sometimes light loadout is not viable because you need to use explosives and/or smokes to penetrate campers/stalemate situation, but except for that the player choice is expanded with as many options as possible right, if one certain loadout will be the new meta after some time, devs can simply adjust/balance gameplay further down the road - even post release.

EDIT: I don't think heavy armour will be the new meta, because heavy armour is only useful when enemy see you and starts shooting. Flankers/lurkers will still not need armour at all, as a lot of kills are made by surprise.

Still the reasonably low ttk awards first strike/first shooter with a large advantage.

last edited by Pacalis

@pacalis Having a fun new player experience is obviously beneficial, but it shouldn't sacrifice any of the gameplay for good players, especially considering all the Ins2 veterans switching over. With regard to accessing a higher TTK and slower playstyle, that could easily become a crutch that encourages bad habits, making it harder to actually get good at the game. Compromising gameplay for skilled players in order to make it easier for bad players is a recipe for a game that gets stale quickly.

The weapon you choose has an impact in ins2. It informs your optimal engagement range, how aggressively you can play, how your weapon handles, etc. The viability of armor is not necessarily good for gameplay. It creates inconsistency in gun performance and necessitates a much slower playstyle. I'd be happy if we went down to two armor options (light armor or no armor) or the choice were removed entirely. All armor does is make you slower but tankier, so it doesn't really add flavor to your gameplay.