Free look and weapons dexterity suggestion

[lucianpin 80]

Hi,

 

I know that a new input method is currently being developed to improve the mouse move and also to take into account dexterity for weapons.

 

I wand to state my opinion and my suggestion also:

 

As Dean says the head moves instantly but what is in hands (weapons) moves slower. My idea is that always let the camera move freely and instantly because human head movements and eyes are very agile. This will give the best experience for all players, they immediately turn and see what they want. No mouse acceleration or lag. Now, about weapon dexterity, let's do it in this way: the head turns instantly, when the mouse is moved, but the body together with the weapon comes after a little bit slower, meaning that after you reacted to something, you are already looking in the good direction, but the white dot of the weapon comes later (msecs later) based on dexterity. After this, small movements and adjustments of the mouse are tied together with the white dot and processed instantly.

[bauertschi 254]

It seriouly MUST be something in that direction. When you spot someone and turn, you know exactly how far to turn. You don't try to turn and only get 75% of that done because of the weapons weight. Then, when you figured out, "hey, I did not turn far enough, lets turn some more." ... you have to start moving the mouse again? That is a complete deal breaker for me. That destroys any mouse skills completely. Where I could accept something like slower movement is with aiming through the LRS, but if I am not mistaken, the turning speed is already lowered when looking through it. Maybe that should be adapted to all aiming? Turning (almost) as fast as possible, when the gun is in aggressive stance with a graphical indicator that the gun "is not there yet", slowered movement, when aiming - that might be considered a neccessary evil and worked around by "pressing the right mouse button -> turning -> pressing it again", not perfekt, I admit. That way, you could react to hearing something behind you in an acceptable manner.

 

I don't think that moving the aiming dot from the middle of the screen is useful though, you might not have one in real life, but you always know exactly where you are looking. The best thing in my opinion would be a second more visilbe dot for your gun that represents where your gun is aiming. It might even slow down a little when you are "getting back" into alligned aiming. But that might not be easy to implement. Maybe a crosshair that gets bigger like in other shooters to indicate higher spread when continuing shooting in automatic mode? Just abuse something like that for indication unaligned view - gun. The "cheapest" solution I can think of right now would simply changing to color of the aiming dot to an alarming red.

 

EDIT: Moving the center indicator will result in players blue tacking their screens and others being at a severe disadvantage. Not good, I think.

 

Whatever happens, I consider anything that results in different lenghts you have to move your mouse to do a 360 a broken system. Some people configure their mouses to the exact same in all kind of FPSalike games to train their aiming and movement. Messing their skill up and generally evening out the aiming skills of players by making the user input wonky cannot be the goal, at least in my opinion. What would be ok though is a maximum turning speed that is always at a certain high ammount. Some guy posted about that (I think in this forum), tested himself on video (did not load those up) concerning how fast he was able to do a 360 with a mountain backpack filled with stuff to simulate a mountain backpack, a weight lifiting handle, to simulate a gun, and I think he did it in about 1.5 seconds. The fact that our spine can turn and we have legs means that a 180 is CONSIDERABLY faster than half of that time. Btw the guy was one of those (like me), had could only turn very slowly ingame with insane amounts of mouse movements. I think a 360 took him 2.5 or more seconds. I timed it once and turned in 4 seconds. That was before the long awaited patch a few weeks ago and stopped me from playing completely until the patch came.

 

General thoughts on user input:

Yes you cannot do 10 consecutive 360s in real life in 2s, I understand that there is a desire to minimize twitch shooting. But the mouse and keyboard are the input we have.Messing around with the input there is wrong in my opinion. At least when it the speed of turning around is concerned - as I said, a high max turning speed is definitely ok, aiming delay is also ok. But doing the same turn with the mouse resulting in different end results is not ok. I real life your body manages to get the same result (how far you turned) from the same signal (brain instruction = mouse movement here). It might take longer (takes time to align aiming). But the fact that you have a spine and legs means that you can almost instantly turn up to more than 180. I real life the guy turning would never have to conciously use his brain (mouse) again to get the body to finish the turn (where you look after moving the mouse), just because one is wielding a gun. Delay due to max movement speed and gun weight must be shown to the player differently.

 

Since gaming started, devs have had to create user input methods. Until recently (well what is recently) the aim was always to make controlls easier for users. Unreal Tournament is not how DayZ should end up in terms of twitch shooting. But messing up user input to artificially make it harder has never made a game better. It is only frustrating for everyone and punishes the players with skill - not that my skill is that high, but that's a different story.

 

As we only have mouse, keyboard and visible representation, I really think a dual system with raw input (and maybe mouse acceleration for those that like it) and the visible representation of users decision to turn around on the screen is the only way. A high max speed of turning does not impede that, if so desired. A second indicator (how far the character/gun has actually turned) through a visible dot trying to catch up to the middle of the screen can show the ingame speed.

 

Producing different results in how far a char turns with the same mouse input simulates only one thing: A character with a brain that can not manage the task of getting the body to turn to a certain point.

 

Maybe I repeated myself a few times here, but this topic is important to me. There is nothing worse than a game with messed up user input. Might be a deal breaker for me, no matter how great the game is otherwise. If my character's brain cannot make the char turn consistantly to a certain point with the same signal, then maybe the char should not be a survivor. He won't make it far anyways.

Edited April 3, 2014 by bautschi

[lucianpin 80]

Great, that's what I am talking about.

 

About the implementation, I know that it might not be simple. Now, when we press Alt key, the mouse controls head only. I am thinking that when Alt key is not pressed, the mouse should control head accurately and instantly, but also to control in the same time the body turn but with some lag based on weapon. So, no new animation is needed, the body with the gun will come slower. It's just that mouse will be as double input to the game: head instantly (free look) and body a little slower (lag). And as I said before, for small mouse movements or correction such like fixing a target, head and body/gun should be moved instantly. Just for sudden or abrupt mouse movements should mouse input be split to head instantly and gun slower.

 

I am really sure that this is the best solution and the only option for a good experience. I really hope that you dev give us a feedback at least about this particular topic.

 

My apologies if you are already implementing this and if that was your idea first, but I really wanted to get involved right now, when this feature is currently worked on.

Edited April 4, 2014 by lucianpin