Theory: Take away realism to create realism.

[Blinde]

One of the things that Ro2 has done is get me reading more history of WW2. I'm just reading about Omaha beach at the moment, where a whole lot of American troops landed on a beach and got shot to pieces. The Germans were dropping mortars, machine guns, rifle fire and artillery onto the beach, and the American troops couldn't tell where most of it was coming from, so they couldn't shoot back.

Some people got through that into the Bocage/hedgerows and encountered prepared machinegun emplacements shooting at them where they couldn't tell where it was coming from.

In Voices of Stalingrad, there's a story from a Russian guy who was a cameraman with a group trying to cross the frozen river in his snow suit. The Germans saw them and opened up (though didn't hit) the group he was in split up, and the Germans kept shooting at the cameraman. People pointed out that they could see his black camera and were shooting at that. He covered that with his body and the Germans stopped shooting because they couldn't see him any more. (I have no idea what the engagement range was)

Would be nice if the camouflage actually made you harder to see, neh?

I think the ability to spot where you're under fire from most of the time is part of the problem. If you shoot at someone (even without killcam) you're usually spotted by them or their friends and if you don't move you're in trouble.

Looking at Spartanovka, down the right flank of the Russian defence, there are often Germans hiding in the hills shooting into the Russian defenders. They stick out like dogs bollocks. I have my settings on high, and I can still see half a helmet sticking over the grassy hill at 150m without trying. There's no doubt about what it is.

If there was more irregularity in the terrain to allow prone people to be more hidden, that would probably extend firefights. Stand up, get seen, get shot at. Lie down, stay hidden. The problem there is that lockdown timers and time-limits force the attackers to do things that will make them obvious, so this might swing game balance towards the defenders.

In world of tanks, there is this feature where if you're hiding in a bush, the bush covers you from outside observation, but is semi transparent to you if you're close to the front of the bush. Being able to hide in vegetation without being blind (no pun intended) might also be helpful. Then when you're being shot at, you light up all the bushes in that direction

At the moment, someone close enough to the front of the bush to see out and shoot is pretty obvious.

I guess I'm arguing for people who aren't running around to be less obvious. I think this will encourage people to be more cautious. It is also possible that a lot of these problems would go away on maps with longer engagement ranges.

 

[LugNut]

If you're in range and visible, IRL and in many of the more realistic games, you'll die, simple as that. It might take one shot or a bunch, but that's the deal. The maps in HOS are not big, and with the fighting focused on capzones, you're always under 200m in range and often at @100 or less. It seems like we're shooting at targets farther away than that since we're looking through small windows and the scale is small, but the engagements are close. I've got no problem with zoom, I think it approximates what the view should really look like at these ranges, we just need bigger maps with more cover if you want to be able to maneuver through terrain while being hard to hit. I don't think we should reduce zoom to make it harder to see someone, we should increase the distance. If players can still move about, the battle will be fluid and intense, if they can't it's either a sniper fest or just a suicide rush. I see guys in Spartanovka (arguably the best inf map) just sprinting from the church all the way to the town hall. Is this a valid realistic strategy? Really?

In Arma, if you're spotted and come under fire, you have several choices depending on your circumstances, if you're on your own, you can stay put, try to return fire and eventually die, or you can move (run like hell) to a safer location. If you're in a squad with equal or superior firepower, you can counter attack, or move and try something else. HOS is nothing but straight ahead shootouts, there's no room to flank, and because of the lockdown, no point in holding an area or retreating to regroup, you just have to outshoot the guys in front of you. It's pretty mindless really.

If we were fighting in more cover and longer ranges, you'd feel comfortable in bouncing from cover to cover even under fire, it's a lot harder to miss someone than hit them in that situation. It's the complete opposite now, suppression is minimal, if you don't outshoot the guy opposite you, you're most likely dead.

 

[Fisher]

If we were fighting in more cover and longer ranges, you'd feel comfortable in bouncing from cover to cover even under fire, it's a lot harder to miss someone than hit them in that situation. It's the complete opposite now, suppression is minimal, if you don't outshoot the guy opposite you, you're most likely dead.

Yup, and this makes it less enjoyable for me.

 

[Paas]

That you are in an army doesn't mean you have superior insight in WW2 combat conditions. Nobody ever said that firefights are the objective of combat. As it is, the 1 shot 1 kill gameplay in RO2 resembles more a lasergame with a ww2 theme than a combat simulator. You can act all veteran at the age of 26 but aren't impressing me in stating that the middle eastern wars and your supposed training have anything at all to do with the kinds of combat that were taking place in Stalingrad and all over the Eastern front. That's right FRONT, WW2 was a frontline war. Nothing like these middle eastern occuptions.

The way is seems now is that TW let go of things like weapon sway, recoil and rl ballistics which is why the gameplay is what it is right now. Not appealing for the long term. Your logics suggest that everybody should just stay put and camp it out but that doesn't give you proper simulation in a game where it is about taking objectives. The guns are to easy to aim. Untill they fix that, this game is just that much closer to arcade than to realism whatever tactics may be used.

The point wasn't to impress you. Obviously you're too angry and short sighted for that to work anyways. The point was to inform you of the objective and implementation of small unit tactics. All of our tactics have evolved from the basic principles taught throughout human warfare. These are the same tactics and strategies used in WW2, but simply tailored to out advancements in armament.

You aren't here to debate though. You're here to flame and attack anyone who doesn't agree with you. I can't change a mind that's already made up, so I won't bother.

-Paas

 

[Fisher]

The point wasn't to impress you. Obviously you're too angry and short sighted for that to work anyways. The point was to inform you of the objective and implementation of small unit tactics. All of our tactics have evolved from the basic principles taught throughout human warfare. These are the same tactics and strategies used in WW2, but simply tailored to out advancements in armament.

You aren't here to debate though. You're here to flame and attack anyone who doesn't agree with you. I can't change a mind that's already made up, so I won't bother.

-Paas

You did make it seem as though your comment made everyone else's invalid, but lets not go there.

The point is, average soldiers don't only ever shoot one bullet per target, and with how easy it is to aim in this game, you pretty much can.

 

[RobDollar]

Obligatory angry comment followed by some waffle and then a slightly good point, then an offensive sign-off.

 

[Paas]

You did make it seem as though your comment made everyone else's invalid, but lets not go there.

The point is, average soldiers don't only ever shoot one bullet per target, and with how easy it is to aim in this game, you pretty much can.

My point is, average servicemen don't struggle to hit a target with one round if they have a clear sight picture, a tactical advantage, and a target who is exposing himself.

The only reason you would miss an easy shot (Anything under 300m is a very easy shot; in the game anything under 100m is an easy shot) is because of bad shooting mechanics, or because the enemy is making it difficult for you to apply proper shooting mechanics. Bullets have that effect on people. Rounds flying over someone's head tends to make them lose their cheek weld and attempt to protect themselves.

It's kind of like basketball. Most players in the NBA would shoot over 80% if they were never guarded (warm up jumpers), but the defense (opposing force) is there to prevent easy looks at the basket (friendlies).

-Paas

 

[Fisher]

My point is, average servicemen don't struggle to hit a target with one round if they have a clear sight picture, a tactical advantage, and a target who is exposing himself.

The only reason you would miss an easy shot (Anything under 300m is a very easy shot; in the game anything under 100m is an easy shot) is because of bad shooting mechanics, or because the enemy is making it difficult for you to apply proper shooting mechanics. Bullets have that effect on people. Rounds flying over someone's head tends to make them lose their cheek weld and attempt to protect themselves.

It's kind of like basketball. Most players in the NBA would shoot over 80% if they were never guarded (warm up jumpers), but the defense (opposing force) is there to prevent easy looks at the basket (friendlies).

-Paas

If that was the case, surely there would be allot more dead Taliban? I remember watching a documentary where American troops got into a fire fight at engaging distances of around 400 meters. After an hour and a half firefight, it was estimated only two Taliban where killed.

This is likely because they had trouble seeing their target, which as you said, would make it harder to hit them. This is my problem with the game; you can always see your enemy from great distances in great detail and means that there are no fire fights because there isn't any need for one. This is where my theory comes into play for removing abilities that let you see further and other factors to create a more realistic and varied experience.

 

[Squad Leader]

Read this book.

William Craig's 1973 nonfiction book Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad.

 

[LugNut]

you can always see your enemy from great distances in great detail

Sorry, but I disagree. On FF for example, players that are over 250m are pretty small little sick figures outlines. The game makes it appear they are at great distances, however they are not. At 250m IRL, you can see figures with far more detail than you can in game. In game, 200m looks more like 350m IRL IMO

 

[Murphy]

"Take away realism" sounds so bad, lol. I prefer to call it "abstraction" and I think it's very necessary to create a realistic experience at all, because it's simply impossible to model every factor of real-life.

Great example would be the expanding crosshairs in Rainbow Six. They do everything. They simulate the difficulty of shooting while moving, shooting while injured (or injured and moving), shooting from different stances, recoil, moving your weapon too fast...

All of these things would be hard to accurately model in a game. How would you handle the momentum of a weapon? Mouselag?
How would you handle recoil? Perfect automatic absorption ala Call of Duty (i.e. no recoil, except in the animation of the joyfully jiggling weapon), flawed automatic absorption ala RO2 (which assumes your character handles most of the recoil, but some of the force is left to you, the player), manual absorption ala RO1 (which leads to practically exaggerated recoil)?
What about shooting on the move? Random jerking of the gun? If yes, how much? Can the player actively work against it or at least predict it?

Rainbow Six takes all of these factors but doesn't try to (imperfectly) model them, but instead abstracts them into a simple model of crosshairs that expand when an assumed member of Rainbow couldn't fire accurately, meaning that you, the player, can't shoot accurately then either.

It's abstract, but it's realistic.

I don't think TWI followed this train of thought with RO2. Everything they could think of and could model they modeled perfectly life-like. The weapon's inherent accuracy, bullet drop, adjustable sights, zoom that makes targets appear at a life-like size,... But in the end it turned out that arguably (!) targets are too easy to hit.
Because there are many more factors that come into play here that TWI couldn't or wouldn't model (because they are arguably impossible to model) and thus simply left out.
Because to implement them in the game at all, they would have had to "take away realism", as you put it, of their other factors!

E.g. reduce the zoom when you bring up the sights! So it becomes realistically harder to spot and identify targets in an environment where they don't stick out like sore thumbs and which you don't know like the back of your hand and where you don't know where some MG dude is bound to sit round after round...
Or increase the sway of the weapon or even, god forbid, add a random deviation to where they hit! So it becomes realistically harder to hit targets when you are hungry, exhausted, desperate, scared, cold, aiming at human beings, etc.

All the immediate realism is there in great detail. You can bring up hundreds of youtube videos and see weapons perform just like in RO2. But they missed the bigger picture in favor of the details.

Rainbow Six (admittedly not a simulator but a mere tactical shooter, and admittedly even less realistic because its system is great but not perfectly tweaked) aimed for the bigger picture and abstracted the details completely.
A healthy mixture would be great, but then you'd have to "take away realism" from certain features to achieve greater realism all around and judging by many discussions here I think many people aren't ready to make that leap.

 

[Paas]

"Take away realism" sounds so bad[...]

I disagree. I can clearly see your point though.

-Paas

 

[Josef Nader]

Short answer?

No. Leave it like it is and -force- people to change their tactics.

Long answer?

No, the players are at fault here, not the mechanics. Tactics take time to develop, and at the moment there are quite a few lemmings that insist on running to their deaths by behaving unrealistically. RO1 let you get away with some pretty unrealistic tactics. The new sense of lethality cuts down on the number of times that folks rush my position and there's nothing I can do about it because I haven't spent weeks developing the muscle memory to beat my rifle's attempts to screw me. If you don't play smart, you'll lose against a smart player. It's that simple. You don't need to practice for hours to stand a chance in a firefight, and that's why so many people hate them right now. Anyone can win a direct shoot out. The trick, then, the real strategy becomes learning to avoid direct shootouts. You know, like real soldiers do. Never get into a "fair" fight, because there's a high chance you'll lose. See that building full of riflemen? Don't charge it like an idiot, you'll get dropped. Use smoke, crawl on your belly, use cover and concealment, hit them from unusual angles, and take them out as they pop out of cover to take a shot. Stay out of sight, and see them before they see you.

It's a -much- more realistic depiction of combat than RO1 ever was. That's the problem. A lot of people liked the slower, more handicapped version of combat in RO1. Combat is infinitely more punishing and lethal now, and I love it.

 

[Fisher]

Short answer?

No. Leave it like it is and -force- people to change their tactics.

Long answer?

No, the players are at fault here, not the mechanics. Tactics take time to develop, and at the moment there are quite a few lemmings that insist on running to their deaths by behaving unrealistically. RO1 let you get away with some pretty unrealistic tactics. The new sense of lethality cuts down on the number of times that folks rush my position and there's nothing I can do about it because I haven't spent weeks developing the muscle memory to beat my rifle's attempts to screw me. If you don't play smart, you'll lose against a smart player. It's that simple. You don't need to practice for hours to stand a chance in a firefight, and that's why so many people hate them right now. Anyone can win a direct shoot out. The trick, then, the real strategy becomes learning to avoid direct shootouts. You know, like real soldiers do. Never get into a "fair" fight, because there's a high chance you'll lose. See that building full of riflemen? Don't charge it like an idiot, you'll get dropped. Use smoke, crawl on your belly, use cover and concealment, hit them from unusual angles, and take them out as they pop out of cover to take a shot. Stay out of sight, and see them before they see you.

It's a -much- more realistic depiction of combat than RO1 ever was. That's the problem. A lot of people liked the slower, more handicapped version of combat in RO1. Combat is infinitely more punishing and lethal now, and I love it.

I disagree. With a game filled with RO1 vets, if you say all that has changed is the tactics, surely you're wrong. The problem is that the style of gameplay has been changed, which means that many RO1 fans using the same tactics are beaten by people using run and gun tactics. There were parts of Stalingrad where fire fights were fast paced. However there were many more where fighting had become a long winded stand off.

 

[Josef Nader]

I disagree. With a game filled with RO1 vets, if you say all that has changed is the tactics, surely you're wrong. The problem is that the style of gameplay has been changed, which means that many RO1 fans using the same tactics are beaten by people using run and gun tactics. There were parts of Stalingrad where fire fights were fast paced. However there were many more where fighting had become a long winded stand off.

I'm saying that the RO1 vets are the ones refusing to adapt to the new game. They are stuck in the old ploddy RO1, and refuse to acknowledge that RO2 has made their tactics obsolete.

Plus, it may seem like run-and-gun to someone used to RO1, but I assure you that RO2 is -not- run-and-gun. Most of my kills are against idiot run-and-gunners who try to storm my position head-on, and the only people who give me any real trouble are the ones I can't get an angle on, i.e. the people playing tactically, blinding me with smoke, staying low and behind cover, and hitting me from unexpected angles. The game punishes run-and-gunners heavily. Yes, they -can- get away with it. No, it doesn't reward it, especially if they're up against decent players.

The RO1 players need to change their old tactics to the new system. As soon as they adapt, they'll notice how utterly ineffective run-and-gunning is. Once enough players adapt, the run-and-gunners will get tired of having their bums handed to them and settle down or move on.

 

[Tweek]

The RO1 players need to change their old tactics to the new system. As soon as they adapt, they'll notice how utterly ineffective run-and-gunning is. Once enough players adapt, the run-and-gunners will get tired of having their bums handed to them and settle down or move on.

I don't see that happening at all frankly. I get killed by run-n-gunners FAR more often in RO2 then in RO1. In RO1 RnG wasn't very effective because you couldn't hit anything while moving, the only way you could hit anything was to stop for a few seconds while crouched, or better, brace against something. Getting spotted in the open by someone who was braced almost always meant death. In RO2, you can sprint into a building and blast anything you want with perfect accuracy while moving. Getting caught in the open is death 50% of the time, since you can just ADS while standing and get just as good accuracy as the other guy. I actually had to speed up my gameplay in RO2 to stay competitive. In RO1 I used to take it very slowly, but you'll often get ambushed and outflanked by RnGers in RO2 if you take it slow.

 

[Das Bose]

The RO1 players need to change their old tactics to the new system. As soon as they adapt, they'll notice how utterly ineffective run-and-gunning is. Once enough players adapt, the run-and-gunners will get tired of having their bums handed to them and settle down or move on.

Hehe this!

When I was playing yesterday I set up a good defensive position with my ppsh ( allies were defending ). My best run was after my first death when I killed 28 run and gunners in a row ( they never even saw me ) as they flung themselves at what they thought was my position, over and over again

Then the leader of the rushing group decided to call me a F******* camping mothe****** lamer! He got himself banned.

Running and gunning only works against nubs :IS2:

 

[Zetsumei]

I'm amazed that people still complain about the ability to see on a 1:1 scale what the human eye would, and call it unrealistic. The alternative would be having a much more narrow field of vision all the time, not just when standing still and holding shift, if realistic were your objective.

Seeing things at a 1:1 size is realistic but seeing things with a 180 degree fov at the same size is realistic as well.

When you have the ability to zoom in to a 1:1 size, you cannot use the wide fov you normally have with your eyes. And if you zoom out to a wider fov thats still narrow like 80 you still won't be able to see the guys you can at the 1:1 size making the wide fov option completely useless for finding enemies.

Next to that my eyes always give the same imagery, the transition to zoom is a big immersion breaker for me myself. You can use valid arguments for a zoom button that transitions your view to a 1:1 size. But its not any more realistic in the sense than the classical fps example where an optimum is tried to be found between realistic size and fov.

The advantage of a 1:1 size is that you can engage targets at a realistic range. The disadvantage is that to spot the enemy you need to continuously look at that 1:1 size otherwise the enemy gets you first, so your wide fov is reduced to be utterly useless unless fighting in close combat.

And since the ranges aren't that long in RO to begin with, I would personally prefer no zoom for the sake of game play.

 

[grothesj2]

I don't see that happening at all frankly. I get killed by run-n-gunners FAR more often in RO2 then in RO1. In RO1 RnG wasn't very effective because you couldn't hit anything while moving, the only way you could hit anything was to stop for a few seconds while crouched, or better, brace against something. Getting spotted in the open by someone who was braced almost always meant death. In RO2, you can sprint into a building and blast anything you want with perfect accuracy while moving. Getting caught in the open is death 50% of the time, since you can just ADS while standing and get just as good accuracy as the other guy. I actually had to speed up my gameplay in RO2 to stay competitive. In RO1 I used to take it very slowly, but you'll often get ambushed and outflanked by RnGers in RO2 if you take it slow.

Do you play on kill-cam servers? Try playing on servers without it and see if you notice a difference in the effectiveness of a RnG soldier.

 

[Tweek]

Do you play on kill-cam servers? Try playing on servers without it and see if you notice a difference in the effectiveness of a RnG soldier.

Only a couple of servers the first few days after it was released, not since then. Hardcore mode only, 55 hours so far.