Forums » General

VO 1.8.471

Sep 01, 2018 incarnate link
VO 1.8.471 includes:
- Added a slight 200 millisecond delay to auto-fire, to equate it to average human reaction time, and mitigate usage with the Railgun.
- Fixed issue with turret fire delay exploit.
- Buddy invites now persist across logins and invites/accepts/declines work when the other player is not online.
- Fixed issue where your buddy list doesn't update when you accept your first buddy invite.
Sep 01, 2018 We all float link
Awesome job devs!
Sep 01, 2018 Nyscersul link
This autoaim delay is excessive - touchscreen users are already limited to two control points when a pc player or a pad user has at lest four, a good pc setup would use 6 or more, not including joystick axis or large button selections.

/me wanders over to suggestions
Sep 01, 2018 Knauf link
I suggest everyone trying this out before complaining about the delay https://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime/

(With some practice (and some caffeine) I got my reaction time down 207ms . )
Sep 01, 2018 -Wash- link
Measured a Reaction Time of 275.0ms avg of 5 attempts
Sep 01, 2018 Drevent1 link
If anything it should be upped to 250ms
Sep 01, 2018 incarnate link
Considering many mobile players also have to contend with cellular network latency, I think 200ms is fine. It's applied to all autoaim, but mainly just for a few experienced people running mobile devices on wifi+broadband.
Sep 02, 2018 draugath link
I think the biggest argument I've heard is that PC players can fire a stream of energy before even having a firing solution, but the change to autofire makes it harder for mobile players to perform similarly. Obviously, being able to fire something like a rail as soon as it's possible for a hit to land is a little crazy, especially when even PC players still need to contend with normal human reaction times.

While I think the change was definitely made with good intentions, it might be prudent to reevaluate whether it is necessary to be a universal solution, or whether perhaps it could be conditionally applied.
Sep 02, 2018 Phaserlight link
I don't think autofire is as big of a help to rails as some make it out to be, and I'll admit I don't see good logic in further disadvantaging a platform that is already at a huge disadvantage versus PC.

This update fixed a non problem, from my perspective.

Maybe it's a non issue, but it just doesn't feel right.

As mentioned in the Suggestions thread, a more accurate analog would be to start a stopwatch and try stopping it at 1 second.
Sep 02, 2018 Ghost997 link
Fighting in mobile with PC players is already hard , now this delay will make it worse i guess. I think you need to charge those pc guys more money then Mobile ones then.
Sep 02, 2018 Wind Employment link
They already charge PC players more, there is no F2P at all on PC.

But I thought I would add my view after seeing a lot of chatter about it on 100. I will start with that I am a mobile user, and mainly play in VR. I think we can all agree that the auto fire on mobile was a bit unfair, simply due to the fact that if you are using touch screen controls you probably would die to any PC user. With Autofire there was a better chance I am sure, but there was also a lot of chance that by the time you fire the target is not even in the same place anymore unless you are point blank. Problem is add lag to the equation (an unfortunate problem most mobile devices seem to have I am sure) and these instant shots also become invisible shots. I would think adding a delay if ping / packetloss is high would be reasonable.

I am on the fence a bit as to whether it should be limited to rails alone if this was indeed the problem, but I suspect most peoples problems were not with autofire alone, but due to autofire + lag.
Sep 02, 2018 Phaserlight link
Mobile VR is a bit of a different story than a mobile phone.

I strongly disagree that zero delay autofire is unfair on mobile.
Sep 02, 2018 Wind Employment link
I play on my phone too, I'm not glued to my headset :p and while I think it was fine as-is in most situations, it is not like the devs can remove the lag that DOES make it unfair. They can only do what is possible after all.
Sep 02, 2018 greenwall link
Fighting in mobile with PC players is already hard

Not with a controller it isn't.

Note that autofire is not being taken away, it's being brought closer to what a normal human response time is. PC players still do not have auto-fire capability, something that those who contend this recent change is unfair seem to forget. In other words touch players still have their assistive crutch, it's just not available to function at inhumanly fast speeds anymore.
Sep 02, 2018 incarnate link
Auto-fire was intended as a minimum-mitigation solution to try and help people play on touchscreen devices. It was never perfect, just an adaptation of existing game mechanics to a new usage model.

But "mobile" is a vague concept. It doesn't necessarily mean "phones", although that's what people assume. The same touchscreen model was used for the older Windows Store version with, say, a Surface Pro. The challenge becomes, do you then disable and prevent auto-fire if the user has a gamepad? If so, you have to re-train new users for a different play paradigm, which is rather a hassle (for them, and us), just because they paired up a gamepad. Or what if it's a game controller that just kind of sucks, like the Oculus-Go styled "VR puck"? Does that get treated differently from a SteelSeries?

It goes down a long and winding road of asking the question.. at what point is said "mobile" user no longer at a disadvantage? Which weapons are timing-exploitable, and which are not?

I strongly prefer generic solutions. I didn't like "auto-fire" being mobile-only, but it was a best-case solution at the time. I understood where people were coming from on the railgun complaints, even though I agree that 99% of the time it was not the problem that people thought it was (once there's an "idea" of a problem like this, people will keep blaming it and raging out about it).

But, I still want a generic, permanent solution that is not weapon-specific, where I don't have to worry about adding a new type of weapon and then asking "should this have auto-fire? what should the latency delay be?" and other such BS.

I also want to be able to use it everywhere, like on the 9 zillion convertible laptops, that are now the standard, and switch between being a "laptop" and a "tablet". We have to re-configure the user experience on-the-fly.. are they a kb+mouse player now? Or touchscreen? Or some other controller? Ugh.

And, most of all, I don't want a lot of drama about "perceived advantages". I played with the 200ms delay before we shipped this. It's definitely noticeable. But, it's also in the realm of reason for a feature that was mainly added to help new touchscreen users be able to kill bots without having 7 thumbs.

People love to say "Mobile has a disadvantage", but.. everyone has varied advantages. Some people play in Europe or Asia, with a big ping increase. Some people have high-end PCs. Some are playing on keyboards. Some have broadband, some are on cellular with more latency. My Windows 10 laptop GPU is slower than the one in my phone; does that make it "better" or "worse"?

I don't really want to treat individual platforms differently, or "pick" winners and losers, or guess at who has the most "advantage". I would rather unify features as much as I can, and then people can upgrade their hardware and controllers as best they can. I mean, a bluetooth game controller is like $12. Maybe it won't have the precision of a gaming mouse on a big desktop rig.. but it's also a phone, you can only expect so much. And, as people note, once you put said phone into a VR headset, with a game controller, you may actually have an advantage over the big PC people.. in situational-awareness at the very least.

It's a pretty complex and variable issue, and I'd rather handle it generically.