Better UI feedback: morale and cover

[Monger]

Well, I know it’s a little late in the development cycle to overhaul the game mechanics, but still: I think you could smoothen the learning curve a lot with a few changes to the UI, and small camera adjustments.





I think, one of the current biggest causes for frustration is, that you are dying a lot without knowing what to do better. Let me give a couple of suggestions to improve this…

• Expand radius that reduces morale. Often, players are unaware how dangerous the place is they are currently in. In reality, you can be sure that every bullet in a vicinity of 5m or more would be heard and especially „felt“. A more sensitive morale system would give the player a better feeling of their surrounding.
  
• Make morale refill slower and strengthen morale’s impact on aiming. Suppressive fire is actually a great tactical element, but is currently too weak. A sniper that is under fire should never be able to get a clear shot.This allows beginners to protect themselves via suppressive fire, and add to the success of an assault without necessarily killing the enemy themselves.
  
• Reduce morale damages and remove the hit indicators (white circle elements) from friendly fire. Incoming bullets are always scarier than outgoing ones. Don’t punish teams for sticking together.
  
• Add a clear, distinctive indicator when you can activate cover. It is not always obvious what kind of cover works together with the cover system.
  
• When in cover (but no iron sight), move the camera a little(up, right, left…) so you can take a look over the edge of the cover, without making your head vulnerable. There is a reason why the cover system was invented in 3rd Person: it gives the player protection, and time to analyse calmly the situation and then decide. It allows picking the right time to go into iron sight, and encourages to leave iron sight after firing.
  For those who consider this as unrealistic: remember that in reality your field of view is a LOT bigger, and you can move your head freely. It is completely possible to spy around a corner without revealing no more than an a centimetre or two of yourself. This would also make firing from cover without iron sight an interesting option – which currently is a pretty useless feature.

• Remove wall penetration for bullets. Currently, it is impossible to tell which weapon will penetrate which wall. Kills through walls feel completely arbitrary, and don’t happen often enough to be relevant for gameplay. If you want to discourage camping, the changes to the morale system mentioned above will achieve the same.

I think, these changes would make the game less frustrating,without making it any simpler. It would shift the balance a little more towards defensive tactical behaviour, and would allow beginners to better grasp the concept.


tl;dr: a more sensitive morale and improvements to the cover system would make the game better approachable and more tactical.

 

[mungokang]

I can only agree. The game mechanics and teamplay could improve with a better suppression-system. I could also end the discussion about the weapon sway.

Reduce morale damages and remove the hit indicators (white circle elements) from friendly fire. Incoming bullets are always scarier than outgoing ones. Don’t punish teams for sticking together.

Essential for good teamplay.

• Expand radius that reduces morale. Often, players are unaware how dangerous the place is they are currently in. In reality, you can be sure that every bullet in a vicinity of 5m or more would be heard and especially „felt“. A more sensitive morale system would give the player a better feeling of their surrounding.
• Make morale refill slower and strengthen morale’s impact on aiming. Suppressive fire is actually a great tactical element, but is currently too weak. A sniper that is under fire should never be able to get a clear shot.This allows beginners to protect themselves via suppressive fire, and add to the success of an assault without necessarily killing the enemy themselves.

I leveled my machinegun class on the axis side to level 33 and on the soviet side to level 17.
When you try to suppress the enemy, it never works out in your favor.
When i shoot at an enemy he can return fire immediatly and he is never suppressed, so i shoot to kill with the machinegun, i never try to supress the enemy.
In 60 hours of RO2 i had no more than 20 suppressions and those were mostly from tank mgs. I guess the system got nerfed pretty much.

The suppression-system in the early beta looked much better why was it changed at all ?

 

[feldmarschall]

[*]Remove wall penetration for bullets. Currently, it is impossible to tell which weapon will penetrate which wall. Kills through walls feel completely arbitrary, and don

 

[2Lt.Horvath [6th AB]]

You're completely right, this game is lacking some very essential parts of warfare. Namely suppression fire, it's useless.

And don't get me started on everything else like weapons and 'upgrades'...:/

 

[GrimReality]

I REALLY like the points you're making about the morale and suppression system, but I equally disagree about your suggested changes to the cover and bullet penetration system.

Add a clear, distinctive indicator when you can activate cover. It is not always obvious what kind of cover works together with the cover system.

It pops up with a message that says "Press [whatever key] to cover here." How much more clear can that be?

When in cover (but no iron sight), move the camera a little(up, right, left…) so you can take a look over the edge of the cover, without making your head vulnerable. There is a reason why the cover system was invented in 3rd Person: it gives the player protection, and time to analyse calmly the situation and then decide. It allows picking the right time to go into iron sight, and encourages to leave iron sight after firing.

Yeah your field of view in real life is much wider but that doesn't change the fact that you can peak over cover without exposing yourself more than your supposed 2 centimeters...MAYBE peaking out the side, but definitely not over the top. I'm VERY glad they didn't put in a 3rd person view for any situation in this game. Besides, you CAN peek over/around without aiming with your sights, just press in the direction that you're trying to peek. Yes, this still exposes you but it is less than when you have to get your shoulders up to bring your gun to bear.

Remove wall penetration for bullets. Currently, it is impossible to tell which weapon will penetrate which wall.

I'd really like an explanation of what you mean right there because it seems like you may have been trying to say something more logical but it just didn't come out right.

Kills through walls feel completely arbitrary, and don’t happen often enough to be relevant for gameplay. If you want to discourage camping, the changes to the morale system mentioned above will achieve the same.

A significant portion of my kills are from wall penetrating shots, and I know I'm not the only one. I don't think the developers put the wall penetration in at all because of campers, I think they put it in because bullets don't get stopped by a few pieces of wood or brick. I don't know how accurate it is, I'm not a ballistics expert, but I do know it's a hell of a lot more realistic as it is now than not having it at all.

 

[Golf33]

Bullet pen is great and needs to stay in. just make it more obvious when players cover is getting shot through eg better decals, sounds, particle effects. Do a youtube search for "concealment is not cover", there are a couple of good vids there showing a firepower demo. Compare caliber, bullet weight and muzzle velocities to get a feel for what the equivalent weapons in RO2 would be.

Suppression is pretty good as is. Does need supersonic bullet cracks though. Suppression by rounds landing more than a meter or so away is not particularly realistic. If target acquisition to shot took a more realistic time (average 4 sec from first glimpse to aimed shot with reasonable probability of hit on a static target) then suppression would barely be needed at all. If you are already set up to engage that window, you'll get the sniper within a second or so, before he can acquire and aim at you.

 

[Monger]

It pops up with a message that says "Press [whatever key] to cover here." How much more clear can that be?

Maybe it's more an issue of the hit zone for contextual operations, because I remember multiple situations where I was crouching against a wall and unable to cover.
But that's not so important, forget about it.

Yeah your field of view in real life is much wider but that doesn't change the fact that you can peak over cover without exposing yourself more than your supposed 2 centimeters...

Regarding realism: in reality you can always reposition yourself in a way that allows you maximum view with VERY minimal hit zone. It's not like you would just raise your head.

But realism aside: the real question should be whether gameplay would profit from better camera angles, because I see this A LOT that people are jumping outside the window without any clue what lies behind it, because there is no safe and quick way to look outside from cover.
Most more experienced players I know will avoid the cover system altogether, because there is currently no benefit in using it instead of just crouching. So: either strengthen the cover system, or remove it completely. A broken feature really serves nobody, and misleads beginners.

I don't think the developers put the wall penetration in at all because of campers, I think they put it in because bullets don't get stopped by a few pieces of wood or brick.

If this were the reason, it would be a really bad one.

Again, talking about realism first:
We are talking about WW2 weapons here. None of the rifles and pistols would penetrate brick or stone walls, or even piles of wood. This is long before the invention of kevlar vests, so you don't really need piercing capabilities to kill someone.
The whole "spraying bullets through walls" stuff is a hollywood myth.

Then again, talking about gameplay:
Currently, a pistol might penetrate a stone wall of a certain thickness - or maybe not. If I'd show you two walls from the game, I'm pretty sure you would be unable to tell which wall can be penetrated and which not.

If there were a simple rule, like "Wood=penetrable, Stone=unpenetrable", then this would be understandable. But currently the only way to find out is to try and learn every corner on the maps.

From a game design perspective, the only purpose (at least I can think of) of wall penetration is to discourage camping. But with this, you also punish people for covering, and introduce an unpredictable factor into the game play.
As I said: with a proper morale system, the need for bullet penetration would just vanish, and you could remove it completely.

 

[luciferintears]

[QUOTE=Monger;920884