Forums » Suggestions
I haven't personally had issues with my opponents using auto-fire, but it sounds like others have. The main complaint I've seen is that auto-fire results in superhuman reaction times. So, my proposal is to introduce a short delay between getting the targeting reticule close enough to engage auto-aim and the auto-fire actually triggering the weapon. I'm not sure what exact value should be used, but probably somewhere in the area of 0.2 to 0.4 seconds. Ideally it should be short enough to not feel like a nuisance and to not cripple the player, but long enough that it doesn't outperform a skilled player using manual firing controls.
Yeah, this is definitely worth a try.
.2 seconds max... any longer and you are overcompensating, and handicapping the entire population segment that is evidently keeping the game alive.
Yeah, good idea. +1
.2 seconds max... any longer and you are overcompensating, and handicapping the entire population segment that is evidently keeping the game alive.
Just leave the decision of the exact length of delay to the devs, who know the game inside out and have done more extensive testing.
.2 seconds max... any longer and you are overcompensating, and handicapping the entire population segment that is evidently keeping the game alive.
Just leave the decision of the exact length of delay to the devs, who know the game inside out and have done more extensive testing.
Autofire on rails and gauss are the issue. If you have ever flown against a player who autofired rails, you'd see how accurate they are requiring 0 effort in aiming them. Flares and some other weapons don't have autofire, so shouldn't rails and gauss.
Autofiring any other weapon such as neutrons is hardly effective against anybody decent, and I speak this from experience. Most decent opponents will easily dodge energy fired with AutoAim on, hence the player will be forced to turn it off which also turns autofire off.
Autofiring any other weapon such as neutrons is hardly effective against anybody decent, and I speak this from experience. Most decent opponents will easily dodge energy fired with AutoAim on, hence the player will be forced to turn it off which also turns autofire off.
-1 , autofire helps mobile players !
autofire helps mobile players !
Reread the post. No one is talking about taking autofire away. Just adding a slight delay. This is a reasonable response to an unmitigated, long-term problem.
Reread the post. No one is talking about taking autofire away. Just adding a slight delay. This is a reasonable response to an unmitigated, long-term problem.
This would cut down tension between mobile and pc players. +1
Doing this requires the mobile pilot sustain their target lock, while the minimal time will not overly change those who actually engage their targets. .2 seconds is both as high and as low as I feel it should go, but the underlying premise sounds great. +1
Actually there are times when just by chance people normally will click "fire" at the precisely right time -- so a blanket delay seems a bit unfair.
I'd revise my comments to say that a .1 second delay that occurs in 93/100 autofire initiations seems fair, with the remaining 7/100 chances being instant (as is).
I'd revise my comments to say that a .1 second delay that occurs in 93/100 autofire initiations seems fair, with the remaining 7/100 chances being instant (as is).
+1
This would cut down on a lot of the problems we have. Best idea I have heard in a while.
This would cut down on a lot of the problems we have. Best idea I have heard in a while.
Greenwall, if they are pressing fire they arent using autofire, and your suggestion sounds rather overly complicated anyways >.<
"Doing this requires the mobile pilot sustain their target lock"
I'm not sure if it should require actually sustaining it. The simplistic version I was envisioning would just start a timer as soon as the reticule changed colors and then fire when the timer finished regardless of whether the target was maintained. Adding a requirement to sustain the target lock would reduce wasted shots, but also make it harder to actually get shots fired. It might be something that will need to be experimented with to get the right balance.
"Autofire on rails and gauss are the issue. If you have ever flown against a player who autofired rails, you'd see how accurate they are requiring 0 effort in aiming them. Flares and some other weapons don't have autofire, so shouldn't rails and gauss."
You're trying to treat symptoms. It's better to treat the disease.
"a blanket delay seems a bit unfair"
I agree with the basic idea of random variation, though I'd prefer if it worked both ways. If some shots get to be lucky, some should be unlucky.
"Greenwall, if they are pressing fire they arent using autofire"
Well, yeah. The while point here is to try to make it so that autofire provides comparable performance to the average PC pilot firing manually. That means we have to consider how firing manually actually works. For an unskilled pilot, that means noticing that the reticule has changed colors and pressing the trigger, all of which takes time (from 0.2 to 0.3 seconds for most people). A highly skilled pilot, however, can see how they and their target are moving and anticipate when the shot will become valid, allowing them to start pulling the trigger preemptively. A more average pilot will attempt to do that with varying levels of success. Thus why Greenwall proposed an even shorter delay and a random factor.
Personally, I think using a base of 0.1 seconds is too low, but I don't know how good the average pilot is at anticipating when to press the trigger, so I could be wrong. This is something I'd want to see actual data for before I could make any solid statements. As joylessjoker said, probably best to trust the devs to sort out the exact numbers to use.
For the curious, average visual reaction time for a college-age human seems to be around 0.19 seconds. You can check your own reaction time here. Just now I averaged 0.211 seconds over five tries. Note that the numbers this test generates don't attempt to compensate for the extra latency introduced by whatever computer software and hardware you're working with, but we have to contend with those same factors while reacting to game events, so having them influence results is appropriate. It's usually pretty minor anyway.
I'm not sure if it should require actually sustaining it. The simplistic version I was envisioning would just start a timer as soon as the reticule changed colors and then fire when the timer finished regardless of whether the target was maintained. Adding a requirement to sustain the target lock would reduce wasted shots, but also make it harder to actually get shots fired. It might be something that will need to be experimented with to get the right balance.
"Autofire on rails and gauss are the issue. If you have ever flown against a player who autofired rails, you'd see how accurate they are requiring 0 effort in aiming them. Flares and some other weapons don't have autofire, so shouldn't rails and gauss."
You're trying to treat symptoms. It's better to treat the disease.
"a blanket delay seems a bit unfair"
I agree with the basic idea of random variation, though I'd prefer if it worked both ways. If some shots get to be lucky, some should be unlucky.
"Greenwall, if they are pressing fire they arent using autofire"
Well, yeah. The while point here is to try to make it so that autofire provides comparable performance to the average PC pilot firing manually. That means we have to consider how firing manually actually works. For an unskilled pilot, that means noticing that the reticule has changed colors and pressing the trigger, all of which takes time (from 0.2 to 0.3 seconds for most people). A highly skilled pilot, however, can see how they and their target are moving and anticipate when the shot will become valid, allowing them to start pulling the trigger preemptively. A more average pilot will attempt to do that with varying levels of success. Thus why Greenwall proposed an even shorter delay and a random factor.
Personally, I think using a base of 0.1 seconds is too low, but I don't know how good the average pilot is at anticipating when to press the trigger, so I could be wrong. This is something I'd want to see actual data for before I could make any solid statements. As joylessjoker said, probably best to trust the devs to sort out the exact numbers to use.
For the curious, average visual reaction time for a college-age human seems to be around 0.19 seconds. You can check your own reaction time here. Just now I averaged 0.211 seconds over five tries. Note that the numbers this test generates don't attempt to compensate for the extra latency introduced by whatever computer software and hardware you're working with, but we have to contend with those same factors while reacting to game events, so having them influence results is appropriate. It's usually pretty minor anyway.
-1
start a stop watch, and then try to stop it at a 1 second interval, and see how close you can get, on average, across x number of tries.
autofire with rails and gauss is rather problematic. if they do get a target lock, at close enough range, they will not miss... but... rails and gauss are both rather heavy weapons, and if you are in a light ship, and dodge well, it should be difficult for them to get a weapons lock on you. autofire never enters the equation if done correctly.
I have fought extremely skill players who used rails, on pc, and they are also deadly.
I have rarely played mobile, and I hate it, and i find it next to unplayable, even with autotfire. any change should be extremely conservative.
start a stop watch, and then try to stop it at a 1 second interval, and see how close you can get, on average, across x number of tries.
autofire with rails and gauss is rather problematic. if they do get a target lock, at close enough range, they will not miss... but... rails and gauss are both rather heavy weapons, and if you are in a light ship, and dodge well, it should be difficult for them to get a weapons lock on you. autofire never enters the equation if done correctly.
I have fought extremely skill players who used rails, on pc, and they are also deadly.
I have rarely played mobile, and I hate it, and i find it next to unplayable, even with autotfire. any change should be extremely conservative.
You're trying to treat symptoms. It's better to treat the disease.
I garner from all the +1s here that most of them have not really engaged in PvP on a mobile or a tablet.
Autofire barely dictates the outcome of a match, and is not a disease. As Roda points out, mobile is very difficult to play on. Autofire becomes a necessity in most situations. The game would become unplayable for most newer mobile players who don't have immediate access to a controller, or aren't aware of plugins, if autofire is nerfed.
I garner from all the +1s here that most of them have not really engaged in PvP on a mobile or a tablet.
Autofire barely dictates the outcome of a match, and is not a disease. As Roda points out, mobile is very difficult to play on. Autofire becomes a necessity in most situations. The game would become unplayable for most newer mobile players who don't have immediate access to a controller, or aren't aware of plugins, if autofire is nerfed.
yeah i found that that site too, rin. It would seem that .2 seconds is a good average "base" reaction time.. randomly +/- from there would seem fair I guess.
"The game would become unplayable for most newer mobile players who don't have immediate access to a controller, or aren't aware of plugins, if autofire is nerfed."
We are not proposing that AutoFire be made unusable. We're only proposing a very small delay of around 0.2 seconds, maybe even a bit less. This is specifically intended to be similar to the performance that people have when firing manually. If we can play the game successfully with such a delay, so can mobile players. It will have almost no impact with most weapons, while reducing the advantage that AutoFire provides when using timing-critical weapons like gauss and rails. It accomplishes that without having to implement a bunch of per-weapon rules that would make those weapons difficult for mobile players to use at all. Seems like a good deal to me.
If you really believe a 0.2 second delay would make the game unplayable, you're going to need to explain how.
We are not proposing that AutoFire be made unusable. We're only proposing a very small delay of around 0.2 seconds, maybe even a bit less. This is specifically intended to be similar to the performance that people have when firing manually. If we can play the game successfully with such a delay, so can mobile players. It will have almost no impact with most weapons, while reducing the advantage that AutoFire provides when using timing-critical weapons like gauss and rails. It accomplishes that without having to implement a bunch of per-weapon rules that would make those weapons difficult for mobile players to use at all. Seems like a good deal to me.
If you really believe a 0.2 second delay would make the game unplayable, you're going to need to explain how.
Niko, i played mobile a year before switching to pc, and did engage in pvp from there, and i still agree this seems like a good balance. I eventually switched to a fire "toggle" instead of autofire, but against early and middle-end bots i think a delay wouldnt cause that much of a problem.
So, I'm not against trying this. However, a few notes:
- I would rather make it generic, instead of weapon-specific. I understand that the problem is only believed to present itself on a couple of weapons right now. But, weapons will hopefully continue to be added, other cases will evolve. If the case being made is "most humans require X time to react", then there's reason to add a delay across the board. I'm inclined to try it at 100ms for starters.
- Understand that this is actually a UX issue, not related to platform. Ie, this is about "touch" and not about "mobile". There are a lot of "convertible" Windows notebook devices out there, and Surface Pro type things, and I suspect we may see more of that as time goes on and our sources of newbies continue to expand. You may also see more touchscreen PCs on cellular.. more convergence in general. This is relevant, because I would rather address this in a way that's as "unified" as possible, to minimize disparity down the road.
- I would rather make it generic, instead of weapon-specific. I understand that the problem is only believed to present itself on a couple of weapons right now. But, weapons will hopefully continue to be added, other cases will evolve. If the case being made is "most humans require X time to react", then there's reason to add a delay across the board. I'm inclined to try it at 100ms for starters.
- Understand that this is actually a UX issue, not related to platform. Ie, this is about "touch" and not about "mobile". There are a lot of "convertible" Windows notebook devices out there, and Surface Pro type things, and I suspect we may see more of that as time goes on and our sources of newbies continue to expand. You may also see more touchscreen PCs on cellular.. more convergence in general. This is relevant, because I would rather address this in a way that's as "unified" as possible, to minimize disparity down the road.
bueno!