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Don't blame the Barrett and Other suggestions...
Soldat Forums - Soldat Talk - 1.3.1 related complaints and/or whining -NO BUGS-
le-mec
December 25, 2005, 6:21 am
You know, one thing I've noticed in Soldat is that the greater majority of the levels are very spacious, with little cover. It makes sense that anyone with the ability to zoom two screens over and pop a head is going to reign in that level. Anyone who's flying around is gonna be as easy to shoot as the Goodyear Blimp.

That said, the only way you're going to deal with snipers realistically lies in the maps you play in. There needs to be more levels that offer close-range combat to even the odds against a sniper. Adding a firing delay to the Barrett is just not realistic. Adding movement bink IS a good idea. And, just so you know, the real Barrett, is a 10-shot SEMI-AUTOMATIC weapon that fires a .50 calibre BMG bullet. That's right. The Barrett in soldat has been so heavily emasculated that the way some of you go on about barrettards has reached the point of sheer ridicule.

I went to an open house at a firing range and actually got to fire some guns under supervision. Let me tell all you Armchair Rambos: Firing guns is REALLY HARD. I left that firing range with a big honkin' bruise on my shoulder from the mule-kick of a pump-action shotgun, a respectable antique Mauser, and several automatic weapons. I've fired handguns from .22 pop-guns to a .357 Dirty Harry. That Dirty Harry was so powerful, it'll leave you trembling after you fire the first shot.

So.... what does all this have to do with weapon balance? Lots! I have some suggestions (and have made my own weapons mod) that you can use in your own weapons mods to make things realistic, while still balanced:

The Barrett -- firing a single .50 Browning Machine Gun round -- that is, a bullet that is half an inch in diameter is an "anti-materials" weapon. It's supposed to take out the engine block of a jeep. the Macmillan Tactical .50 (AKA tac-50, Big Mac) during the war in Afghanistan set the distance record for the longest ever sniper kill at 2,430 metres. It's still the same bullet. Apparently, a "Big Mac" user must fire no more than 20 rounds a day because of the high incidence of detached retinas caused by the recoil and blast of firing such a big bullet.

SO: lots of self-bink for the barrett & lots of movement-induced bink, allow it to shoot often and reload realistically, but really! If you try to go against someone with an automatic in close range while flying and running and jumping, you're not gonna hit a darn thing.
I made a mod that replaced the barrett with a bolt-action Accuracy International Arctic Warfare rifle. Same .50 BMG round, but just a bit more realistic -- not like this dumbed-down Barrett.


Now I've fired 9mm automatic handguns and they don't put out much of a kick at all. Neither does an MP5, for that matter, which is surprisingly controllable. However, I can imagine that being caught in a hailstorm of bullets is gonna bink ya lots.

SO: low-calibre automatic weaponry should bink other people and also give them a chance against a sniper.


Deagles: Look. After I fired the .357 magnum Dirty Harry revolver, which was smaller than a desert eagle, I didn't have the courage to try holding a single desert eagle, let alone TWO. If you get by two deagle bullets, you're gonna be blasted to chum. Make them powerful as hell, but their short range puts you at risk, and they have should have a lot of self-bink.

Shotguns: Leave it alone. It's fine the way it is. After feeling the bruise on my shoulder from firing a shotty, I hate to think what it does to the target.

Steyr Aug: Leave it alone. I like it for being an accurate, but low-powered gun. It adds some nice variety.

Blooper: Leave it alone. You get one shot. Make it count.

LAW: My suggestion is this: you carry 3 rockets. You can fire them at roughly the same speed as the grenade launcher, but it takes a long time to reload it once all three shots are gone. You still have to crouch or lie down on the ground to fire it anyways, so the LAW isn't exactly a primary weapon.

Knife: It's fine the way it is. Only a moron would go against someone with a ranged weapon IRL.

Chainsaw: Sure, make it deadly as heck. You put yourself in grave danger by running close to use it.

Hand grenades: Yeah, keep them nice and powerful. Reward players with good pitching abilities.




A.L.blackhawk
December 25, 2005, 7:05 pm
Law is only a one shot anti-tank rocket and is non-reusable. Its cheap and very light to carry.
3 shots would be fun from it.

Darkwing
December 27, 2005, 1:22 am
Law is a one shot disposable- i would love to see a mortar on soldat.

I think desert eagles should be one shot kill
Spas One shot kill if all parts of it hit,
and the barrett should be a little faster and less damaging.

117
December 27, 2005, 1:42 am
no mortars, no new weapons. Just follow his suggestions and everything will turn out right. Barret is at perfect dmg. Instakill. I doubt that people are more resilient/thicker than engine blocks, and with a bullet that large, the amount of pressure built up would be huge upon impact, so no matter what you hit, it will be shredded. kinda like hollow points

Darkwing
December 27, 2005, 1:44 am
well i think it should be semi auto and instakill-

BUT

Imagine the [CENSORED]ing.........

le-mec
December 27, 2005, 4:14 am
I honestly expected to be flamed like crazy for my post. Thanks guys! Yeah, I suppose you COULD make a LAW effectively a one-shot disposable weapon by making the "reload" time for it, say, 10-minutes long. If you are going to do THAT, then you're going to make, essentially, an "explosive knife" -- something that is incredibly powerful, but once you pickle off that one shot, you'd better hope you can find a good weapon off the scorched, exploded meat that was once the other guy. I would even suggest that one out of 3 kills, the other guy's weapon is obliterated and there's just nothing left to pick up. :D

At least make it so that a "very very close" hit should still count as a kill, and, I think the current LAW delay is not bad. The other thing I would suggest is that the LAW should have a VERY bad "Movement-Induced-Shooting-Inaccuracy" (MISI) penalty any time you try to fire it while moving around. MISI should not instantly go away as soon as you come to a stop, either. It should start out high every time you change stance, switch weapons, jump, land or walk -- kind of like IRL where it takes you a moment to "find your gunsights" after stopping to shoulder your firearm.

That way, you can't just do a dive-roll-down-a-hill-come-up-into-a-crouch+fire and hope to hit your target with amazing accuracy -- you'd really have to plan your kill. People who try to do acrobatics and fire LAWs stand a good chance of blowing themselves to smithereens.

As for the Barrett and semi-auto-firing... There should be an INCREDIBLE amount of self-bink induced if you don't fire it from the prone position. That way, only your first shot would be accurate. The next hastily-fired shot would probably condemn you to eternal suffering because it's not a good idea to shoot at God.

le-mec
December 27, 2005, 4:19 am
HAHA I just had another idea! -- if you try to fire a Barret while not lying down, the recoil hurts you enough to take off 5% of your health due to broken ribs :D

Yup, the Barrett is a true camper's gun, but in CQB levels where a camper can't take everyone out from his perch, it's unlikely you'll see him doing crazy acrobatics against people with autos. He's gonna wind up a piece of leaky meat.

This idea I have for ALL weapons, not just the Barrett -- is that accuracy penalties should be incurred for whenever you violently swing your aiming crosshair in different directions. Just like IRL, you can track a flying or falling object and keep a fair aim if you keep your crosshair on the target and move your mouse in a consistent direction and speed -- but if the target starts changing direction a lot or if the target is very close and is bouncing over your head, then having to swing your crosshair around to draw a bead on him is going to introduce a lot of error into your next shot. If he's far away, then it's not so bad. It should take a little while for you to "find your gunsights" when you stop swinging your aim around and drop into a crouch.

Shortranged weapons like submachineguns, pistols and the shotgun should be affected a lot less by this kind of accuracy penalty, so that way you can use these guns while doing some crazy acrobatics like in action films, and you'd have a definate advantage while in close and dirty.

If you use heavier weaponry, assault rifles or sniper rifles, then you should have to plant your feet firmly on the ground, crouch, and take careful aim to reap the benefits of their more powerful bullets. Personally, I enjoy a game that forces you to switch weapons depending on the task at hand, rather than one that has weapons that can rule in every situation. I like it when I can carry a sniper rifle and a shotgun and switch between the two when someone gets too close. It also really opens up for more interesting gameplay when you realize your opponent has a sniper rifle and you can lead him into some nasty territory where he loses the advantage.

Each weapon can have equal killing ability, but be useful in only a limited number of situations, thereby increasing the amount of strategy and forethought needed to play. If I kept getting trounced by a guy with a shotgun in CQB and I was trying to barrett him, sooner or later, I'd say to myself -- "hey dumdum! you're using the wrong gun for the job!" and try to lure the shotgunner into the open, or maybe choose a different weapon, or maybe I'd try to flush him out with frags. This is what weapon balance should be about.

Leo Da Lunerfox
December 27, 2005, 8:28 am
Wow, I must congradulate you le-mec, you're one of the few people who has enough sense to construct a weapon balance tread that is backed up intelligently.

Your ideas are quite nice, and I believe that it would surely change the way things work in soldat. Alot of people might whine, but then, I think a new style of play might be benefital to lengthen the life of the game.

As for the barret, I think that the scope should definitly be lengthened in order to increase the weapon's effectiveness. At least let them get two shots in before enemies come into range, so that they wouldn't simply shoot once sniping and have the others be spray and prays.

Darkwing
December 27, 2005, 1:57 pm
it would be nice to be able to fire a few rounds without being swamped. my only issue is that- as a barrett user on longer, more open, levels if the enemy rush you, you get ONE shot before having to try and chainsaw or knife them all because of the long shot delay.

Swarmer
December 27, 2005, 3:24 pm
I think these are great ideas. However, I think it would be too drastic of changes for Soldat. HOWEVER, they would be awesome in realisitc mode. I think realistic mode should have seperate weapons properties than normal mode. It would be an entirely different experience. The normal Barrett can be a slow firing, easy-to-carry rifle, while the realistic one is a semi-auto, high-binking, self-damaging, worthless-to-fire-in-air weapon. I think there will not be balance issues if it is in realistic mode. Realistic mode is messed up anyways. Why would Rugers have so much bink? The last time I fired a semi-auto rifle, my gun wasn't pointing at the ceiling after one shot.


Agressor1
December 27, 2005, 5:31 pm
This is all very thought out and nice.


but one thing people...


IT'S A GAME... NOT MENT TO BE LIKE REAL LIFE..


If you take away the crazy acrobatic headshots and backflip-torso-tearing Barretta shots... you take away the stuff that gave Soldat it's unique, fast-action gameplay.

And it's not like the game is in first person, you can see the whole scenery and land infront of you from a side-scroll perspective.. you don't need to aim, that's why it was possible to roll down a hill, jump and crouch-fire at a enemy with a LAW.

I understand some things and think it's a really good idea, but common, you're asking to basically make the game Real Life.

Nobody enjoys the game Real Life, you eat, sleep, dispose of bodily waste, socialize, and eventually die... what a crappy game Real Life is.

Most people come to the internet and to games, because they SUCK at Real Life. Ok, so not everyone sucks at Real Life, but still, this stuff was made to get AWAY from real life.

You can't have a game that's Real Life, because that kills the purpose of a game. It's ment to be Fictional.

Go ahead and balance SOME things out, but don't ruin the game and make it too realistic...Again, nice stuff, great ideas, backed up with well-thought-out plans.

le-mec
December 28, 2005, 12:20 am
Leo Da Lunerfox >> I have been fortunate enough to try out guns IRL and it has greatly changed my perspective on firearms since before that, all I knew of them was what I read in books, comics or saw on television. I have also been making my own computer games for almost 19 years now, and have concentrated greatly on gameplay dynamics. My ideas aren't all that original, mind you, but they come from my experiences playing many other successful games, and I think it's a good idea if we can learn from them and apply what works to other games -- all while keeping an open mind and try to be original too, of course!

At the very least, if I can suggest a changes but make them "logical" ones, after having done a little homework and done my research, it's so much easier to form a convincing argument. In the end, I think it's very necessary not to think of the different weapons in terms of their statistics and different firing patterns and attributes, but rather as very different tools in a toolbox, each suited to a specific (or general) purpose. Some guns(for snipers) suit a slower-paced fighting style, to kill at a distance, while others(like pistols and submachineguns) are for intense, close-in action, while even more (like the chaingun and MiniMe) are for sustained fire-support to keep heads enemy down while your comrades advance to better positions. This way, people would be encouraged to change weapons to adapt to shifting situations on the battlefield, and deal with the different problems that varying terrain might present.

Darkwing >> yes... I can certainly see that a barretter needs to have a higher Rate-Of-Fire(ROF), especially since the Barrett is IRL, a semi-automatic rifle. However, if the Barrett was replaced by an equally powerful (they use the same bullet) bolt-action rifle like the Accuracy International Arctic Warfare .50, then at the very least, we can speed up the time between shots to that of a realistic bolt-action rifle, while not doling out round after round of semi-auto killing mayhem.

Swarmer >> I am in complete agreement with you. Adding many of these changes would most DEFINATELY upset many of Soldat's current fans (See Agressor1's post above), but I don't see why we can't accomodate everyone. I have already made a suggestion (pending moderation) to separate Realistic Mode into several toggles for Recoil, Bink, Self-Bink, etc. etc.

Weapon mods have already provided me with the flexibility to make most of the changes I'd like to see in Soldat already, but at present, I wish there was a better way to distribute weapon mods than what we have at present -- people often have to seek out and download a weapon mod to get the full benefit of it -- unlike how Valve has managed to make almost every mod out there instantly accessible to anyone through their innovative Steam system... Everything available is right there for you to grab, which is kind of nice!

Agressor1 >> Not to worry! I absolutely love watching John Woo's HARD BOILED and I loved the first matrix and some of that high-flying action. I LOVE the MAX PAYNE series! There's some really incredible stuff going on in those games, yet when I think about it, Max Payne has a lot of realism going for it, yet you can take out hundreds of guys armed with the same weapons as you -- and they take just about as much damage as you do too. Somehow, they managed to blend the realism and non-realism together and pull it off in a way that I can believe it possible.

My whole motive for trying to introduce realism into a game is not to make it BORING and REAL and I sure know, as a skinny nerdy guy, that I can only run about 25 meters before my asthma kicks in and I have to take it easy. I've played a lot of paintball and more recently, Airsoft, and MAN, for a guy like me, lugging that kind of stuff around is hard work! It's nice to sit down and play a game where you can run for miles, jump, do backflips, grab onto ledges after a "hail-mary" jumps, have an ingram mac-10 in each hand, spraying in two directions at once. It's LIBERATING to not be bound by the rules of real life!

However, the thing about adding SOME realism into a game -- such as in the firearms is it helps a person become a little more easily immersed into the game. When you feel that your weapons do relatively authentic damage, it's a little easier to believe what you're playing is real (which it definately isn't) and fall into the zone. Y'know?

Agressor1
December 28, 2005, 1:28 am
Ok, I see what you're saying but the thing is, the way the weapons were scripted.... is the weapons are too simply made to make such a widely modded gun selection.

Like i've been messing around with the Weapons.ini and you can't have bink AND self bink.. from what the .ini file shows.. it's either Bink or Self Bink.


if there were more options to modifying the guns.. then it would be great.


like for the Spas-12, there is no option in the weapons.ini to make it so you don't get shot backwards a tiny bit every shot.

Although it is fairly simple to mod the SHOTS and the way the guns SHOOT, you can't made the guns characteristics.

I love how simple it is to mess with the settings on the game though, I mean even the skinning, anybody can make skins for this game.


If this mod does infact get some action, i'd like it to be a seperate part of Soldat seeing as i'm not yet bored or done with the unrealism :P

le-mec
December 28, 2005, 3:12 am
Agressor1 >> Cool beans, man! I agree with you on many points -- It's very hard to tweak the guns the way we want -- the bink/self-bink attribute is a great example. There should definately be a separate attribute for gun recoil. One thing in particular that bugs me to no end is that if I'm flying high above a guy who's got a shotgun, and he fires buckshot at me and it slows down to a _c_r_a_w_l_l_l_l..... and it nicks me, it still does some fair damage! I really think the game engine should apply damage and bink based upon the damage attribute of the weapon multiplied by the speed of the bullet itself. That way, slow-moving bullets don't hurt or bink the other guy much, and low-damage 9mm bullets like those from an MP5 or handgun shouldn't bink you much either, but the sheer accumulated damage and bink from a good MP5-spraying should make it quite devastating. You just gotta make as many bullets connect with your target as possible.

Now I would never want to take away a game that is familiar to the longtime Soldat users who have become accustomed to the weapon balances (and hopefully they can agree on them for some time) and feel comfortable switching to any gun and know how much damage they can inflict and at what range, etc. etc... Thank goodness for separate mods! However, I've just come off of games like Call Of Duty, and Half-Life 2, and I have approximated the damage from my guns to approximate these other games (geared towards reality) and also approximated the rates of fire of each weapon to that of its real-life counterpart (hooray for Google).

I took OUT the barrett, which would probably draw terrible cries of horror from many a faithful Soldat fan, and replaced it with the Accuracy International Arctic Warfare .50, because it fit more closely with the way the barrett is now. On many weapons I turned UP the damage and speed of the bullets, and I replaced the Ruger with the Dragunov SVD -- a 10-shot semi-automatic rifle. Now, when I play the game, if I feel like finding a good position, crouching down and taking careful aim and popping off a guy from a mile away, I'll pick the AW. When things get too intense (usually during my 1 vs 5 Impossible-bot deathmatches), I'll choose the Dragunov because I can put three rounds into an enemy who comes at me too fiercely for me take careful aim with a single critical shot. I modded it so that both sniper rifles have TERRIBLE accuracy on the go -- so when things get close-in and hairy, I have to hope that I can either pop the guy while I'm huddled into a little ball(rare) or pull out my sidearm and duke it out. See? Two sniper rifles -- both very different to suit different playing styles.

I replaced the Minime with an M-60, that requires you to also sit still to aim properly, but it has a great rate-of-fire and tons of killing power. You have to use it in short bursts, just like the real deal. Once you're aware of the limitations of the gun, you know not to go charging into battle with it, you just have to run along the outskirts of the fight, find a good position with lots of business, and go to work. Sometimes some guy will rush in behind you, so you quickly find yourself being swarmed, and eventually you die, but at least there's a heap of dead bodies underneath you to soften your fall. My brother and I would often play with two different weapons, he'd choose the M-60 and I'd use a sniper rifle, and we'd fight against the bots, He'd find himself a good spot bustling with activity, and I'd support him from a distance, popping off guys who got too close behind him, or covering for him so he could reload. Having drastically different weapons in a game is great. I don't like weapon balance. I like weapon IMBALANCE!

Every gun in my mod has a purpose and each gun will only appeal to specific people, rather than everyone, and some levels, some guns are useless, while others are awesome. The sheer variety of weapons keeps things from getting old from level to level since a person no longer has a "favorite gun" any more -- instead, he's got a "favorite gun for EACH level"!

I don't see anything wrong with many people choosing the same weapon in a level -- I DO see something wrong if the same gun is used in EVERY level, though. This is when it's time to look at the weapon tables and see what needs to be fixed.

Leo Da Lunerfox
December 28, 2005, 11:35 am
Bravo, the problem, as Le-Mec points out, is not the weapons in itself, but rather, in the terrain of the map. There is no argument that a barret SHOULD be the reigning gun to snipe enemies in the open, and an mp5 SHOULD be the best at clearing out small rooms and passages. To an extent, Soldat does have these factors, but they are rather small and breeds "Single Weapon Games", where the tactics that one uses for each gun is pretty much the same.

Why bore ourselves with doing the same things over and over? With distinctive weapons, one can find a "Role" in a game, whether he be defensive or offensive. Right now, the concept of defense is completely shattered in Soldat, as the general concept of Soldat CTF is "Rush, Charge, Rush", with no concept of gaining the upper hand over the enemy by defending. This is because the advantage that stems from defending is simply too neglectible to be feastible at all. Therefore, accruacy should be increased when not moving.

Agressor1
December 29, 2005, 5:05 am
Soldat is more of a "LETS TRY TO KILL THAT MOFO AS AWESOME, QUICK, AND ACROBATICALLY POSSIBLE!"

This game seems as if it were never ment to be something so strategic.. if you want strategy... go play Real Time Strategy games, CS:S tournaments, or CoD 2 clan matches.
Soldat is (like I said)
run in, kill whoever, try to make the kill look nicely done.
repeat step 1.

no one really cares to capture the flag or do the objectives, there's 2 reasons anyone tries to get the flag..

1. They just want the highest score and can't get the most kills, so they compensate by getting the flag.
2. They want to change the map quickly.

le-mec
December 29, 2005, 6:06 pm
Why do games with strategy have to be like a quiet game of chess in the park? When I play a game of paintball or airsoft, I have to do crazy dashes from cover to cover and jump over low obstacles and sometimes whip around a doorway and light someone up like a christmas tree with my fully automatic gas-operated Glock 18C.

There's acrobatics and action a plenty in a game like that, but there's also a time limit in all of our games, and the game is nearly ALL strategy. Sometimes the strategy involves taking out the other guys as awesomely quick as possible to shock them, and sometimes it falls into a stalemate until we send some teammates to come in from another side to flank the enemy and flush them out!

Soldat can easily (and I have also played in matches) with a lot of strategy in them. While survival and success always depend on quick reflexes and good aim, running into the middle of a fierce crossfire almost invariably gets you killed. Many times I find myself skirting the main battle to come in from behind some guy, ducking behind bushes and avoiding the use of my jumpjets, and then I throw grenades or use a shotgun or a weapon with a lower rate of fire because it attracts a lot less attention than the million bullets that a minigun puts out.

I've often seen a guy who's too busy worrying about a distant spray of a zillion angry minigun bullets headed his way to pay attention to the nearby shotgun blast coming from the bush behind him, and it's not until I start landing solid hits on him that he realizes I'M the bigger threat. Action and acrobatics come into play when both players are within firing range of each other. Strategy and movement are in play during the entire game, if you want to stay out of the focus of fire and stay on the right side of the barrel of the gun. Even in the heat of battle, I maneuver my soldier so that one enemy soldier is blocking another and they have to shoot through each other. I force them to come through tunnels after me so I can get one of them with a well-placed LAW shell, or I try to find ways to make the terrain work against them. With strategy, I often find ways of making that last 2% health last long enough for me to find the next medkit.

As for CTF, some people make good defenders. Other people make good quarterbacks, and still others act like enforcers to make the other team's job difficult. With CTF, there's so many roles to assume that I don't imagine that there's such thing as a dishonorable style of playing. Some people care only about charging the other team to obliterate them and take the flag -- and if they've got the numbers, the firepower, and the aim to do it, then that's a good strategy. The actions that any team performs IS a strategy, for there are poorly organized strategies, well-thought strategies, overcomplicated strategies... There's an endless myriad of them. Some people absolutely suck at hairy battles but they work wonders as snipers and they provide useful early warning about incoming flag raiders.

Just last night, I had the unpleasant experience of dealing with some irate players who got angry at me because I was sitting very close to the flag with a grenade launcher, a LAW and was methodically blasting them to bits with high explosives when they kept coming in single file from the same angle. They called me a flag camper and wanted to vote-kick me. What they didn't realize was that I was the only defender on my team and if it wasn't for me, there would have been about 5 times that they could have just waltzed in and helped themselves to the flag, some health packs and grenades, and I don't think any of my teammates were voting against me or getting mad at me for my actions.

The enemy team was just mad because I had found that their strategy was lousy, and I had discovered that they just weren't learning -- because they kept rushing into the exact same corpse-filled-crater where I had a good grenade arc. All they had to do was rush me with grenade launchers all at once, or have some soldiers take the long way around instead of running in single file through the same choke-point, and that would have been the end of me.

They became LIVID when I chose to ignore their whining about me "flag camping". They forget that I am under no obligations to follow the orders of the enemy. They got mad at me because I was a thorn in their side and that with me in the game, the game was no longer simple. They were just enjoying playing on a server where their enemies were mostly inexperienced and they just wanted me to roll over and die for them. TOUGH! I was able to kill a great deal of them by using a very simple strategy and they were too stubborn to adapt.

Campers, snipers, grenade spammers and other players with a passive strategy require a different strategy to deal with than other players who go for dogfighting out in the open. I think they add to the variety of the game. It's up to you to find the weakness in their defense and take them out. In a real war, a soldiers use EVERY underhanded way to defeat and demoralize the enemy. They use snipers, they use cover, they use traps and explosives and they sabotage bridges, and destroy supply lines and factories and demoralize the enemy using any means possible! There is no combat without movement, and one must always seek the superior position on the battlefield to tip the odds in his favour. Only when strategy fails does a general have to resort to out-gunning the enemy.