Is BF2/PR an RPG or FPS for aiming?

[Knight]

I know this post topic sounds rediculous but let me explain.

When I play other FPS games I generally hit a target if I'm aiming right. Sometimes they might ad a wavey or shaky scope/iron sights view to simulate that fatigue/breathing etc will impact aim in a way that holding mouse doesn't. i personally don't like that. I like the CS but more Ghost Recon stationary scope style as at least everyone has the same conditions even if it's not totally realistic. But at least if there is a wavey scope/iron sight I know why I miss a shot and get used to/compensate for it so it's acceptable.

Of course, even a realism game can't be totally realistic. I just feel that adding artificial instability to the scope is making even more unrealistic as i'm always aware that i'm fighting the softwares imposition of the illusion of reality.

Now to my point.

When I aim at an enemy in the PR single player (as with in vanilla BF2). There are times when my gun is as stable as it's going to get, i'm not breathing hard, i'm prone and ready to drop the hammer on whatever scumbag bot is in my sights. I shoot and I miss. Sometimes I hit. The problem is that between missing or hitting there is no difference on my end. I'm not talking about aiming at a spec in the distance here. I mean a standing, stationary enemy that you could hit with good stone throw or at least an averge sling shot.
I have tried it on many occasions and it always seems arbitrary whether i'm gonna hit the guy who i'm aiming at center mass or not. I get a strong feeling that the game is not responding to reflect my on target aiming but is instead imposing generic aiming statistics on my actions. Kind of like the programmers of BF2 decided that when under stress and under fire even a trained soldier is less likely to be on target so no matter that I am actually on target with my mouse aim the game decides to force a certain percentage of my on-target shots to miss.
There I am prone, rested and calm both me and my character, aiming with single shot at a guy standing still, right in his solar plexus. He's not that far off and i squeeze off one shot and nothing. I try again a few times and sometimes I hit him and sometimes I don't. There is no rhyme or reason to it, just arbitary statistic imposition i think. Same with the sniper rifle even at as little as 25 meters.

Please don't flame me. I'm not knocking PR SP or PR in general. I'm just saying that RPG games make you think you are controlling something directly sometiems but in realily it's imposing some random statistics to simulate what it thinks would or should happen. That's a turn off in an FPS such as PR. To be allowed a hit when you are on target only if the game feels like granting it.

What are your thoughts?

2nd point. I think I don't like the supressive effect. I don't wanna die so if i see chunks of wall being hacked away by enemy surpressive fire then i'm gonna dive for cover and stay there until there is a lull in the wall of lead headed my way. I don't really want to be forced to see blurry vission to remind me that i'm under fire. In GRAW (a flawed game with some great aspects) the powerful, raw sound of rounds hitting near you and the **** they throw up is certainly enough to make me **** my self and take cover; ie 'be supressed.
The blur-o-vision might be fancy but i think it's patronising.

[Rudd]

Other games have more varied ways of simulating aiming etc, bf2 isn't very good at it. So yes...to an extent its an RPG element, and also a workaround for engine limitations.

And to an extent...I suspect its a gameplay facilitator the DEVs tweak to get realistic teamwork ingame.

[Knight]

I do like PR very much in SP so far and I'm sure that with some practice I'll try the MP mode and enjoy some team work which is rare in online shooters.

However, this issue is really a deal breaker for me. It will be unbearable if i constantly feel that shots that I know I'm making on target are being randomly and arbitrarily cancelled by the software in an attempt to 'show me' how it would be in a real fire fight. As I said, it's patronising and cancells out all the other great points a game may have.

[ballard_44]

This wasn't a SP problem per say...more of a general PR question?

Moved to this forum (not sure if it is the correct one?)

[Truism]

At the moment it's equal parts both. Under 0.8 it was almost completely RPG.

[Spaz]

About PR being a FPS or RPG I would say its a FPS, from what I seen PR doesn't have many RPG elements but a lot of FPS once.

[cyberzomby]

Well Knight be sure you wait for the deviation to settle. That way you almost always get your shot on.

And the supression effects have been added for people who dont think like you. People who use those impacts as a way of guiding themselves to the enemy and take him out while under supressive fire.

[Dunehunter]

The problem is that something that other games can implement, such as weapon sway (like what a lot of games have when you are using a sniper) can not be implemented in PR, hence the work-around of having deviation. There is also the MOA, which is basically the fact that no matter how good a shot you are, at a certain range you are not going to get pin-point accuracy.

[Knight]

Wow, I didn't expect others to think the same way as me so much.

No matter what the justification though, I will never be comfortable with the game having power of whether my on target shots hit or not. As much as I dislike sight sway I'd prefer it to the Matrix messing up my sheeeet.
Well, every game has it's issues doesn't it. At least the Saw is kick *** in PR. The support weapons in my beloved GR were gimped beyond belief, that's who no one ever, ever selected them. Joint Ops and PR are the only games where I can really use a support weapon effectivly for surpression.

About the blur-o-vision. In a recent SP game one round hit the wall near me and i go practically blind for ten secons. There's got to be a better way. Surpressive fire is a beautiful thing when used strategically. In the real world most sneckers don't want to die so there is a powerful motivation to hit the dirt when it's raining lead. In respawn games though people don't fear it so much. Well, if the weapon fire wasn't partially forced to be off target then people who acted blaze when being surpressed should get ventilated. If it happens enough times a pavlovian fear of being shot should set in and there you go. The psychological effect of surpressive fire should work.

[gazzthompson]

.......I will never be comfortable with the game having power of whether my on target shots hit or not......

as long as you do a few things the weapons are very accurate... dont shoot on move, shoot when stationary for a few seconds and pace the time between shots (i leave a second) and you will shoot accurately.

[Tirak]

Actually, the deviation is just a continuation of a popular FPS system. You'll notice on games like Call of Duty, Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six, that the crosshairs will become larger or smaller depending on stance, movement and weapon. In PR, they use the same system, however they do not show you the crosshair, and they do not remove deviation while scoped in. In order to accurately make shots, simply stop moving, and wait a few seconds.

Take a deep breath or two, imagine that you are the soldier and you just finished running a kilometer in full gear and suddenly someone's started shooting at you. You need to collect yourself before being your most accurate. (Yeah, I don't buy it to the extent that it is in PR, but you've gotta justify staring at the enemy with your scope lined up and not shooting for four seconds while he blasts up the ground around you, though it is MUCH better than .8 )

[Duke]

^^ Gazz speaks the truth, the weapons are only as random as you say under certain conditions.

The random element is a gameplay compensation for the effect battlefield conditions/fatigue etc have on the aiming abilities of your average soldier. Because BF2 doesn't support weapon sway, increasing the deviation of the rounds is the only way to accurately simulate these effects in particular situations.

If you are stationary, have left time for the weapon to settle, and are not moving, 99 times out of 100 you'll hit your target out to the max range of your weapon.

Wasn't there an extensive guide written up on this somewhere showing the exact times etc?

Edit: Ninja'd by tirak. Balls.

[masterceo]

i heard that its impossible to have weapon sway in bf2...but i just finished a round on FH2 and noticed that they actually have been succesful in implementing weapon sway while sighted in (even with the sniper rifle) so why we cant get this in PR instead of deviation? also, i remember that back in 0.7 the RPG had a up/down movement when sighed in. why was this removed?

[Tirak]

i heard that its impossible to have weapon sway in bf2...but i just finished a round on FH2 and noticed that they actually have been succesful in implementing weapon sway while sighted in (even with the sniper rifle) so why we cant get this in PR instead of deviation? also, i remember that back in 0.7 the RPG had a up/down movement when sighed in. why was this removed?

The weapon sway on the sniper rifle in FH2 is a fallacy, the bullet comes out of the center of the screen no matter where the crosshair is.

[masterceo]

i didnt know that, thanks for making it clear to me.

[Truism]

It's a misonmer though. It's perfectly possible to create sight animations that make the sights too inaccurate to use when the person is not in a sitution where they'd have sweet devation anyway. There are two problems with it - repeated shots will recenter the sights, and animations have to loop.

Both are far from insurmountable - it would just take a very good animator (ie. Chuc) and some patience to get it right. There might be more important things though.

[Billy_Crook_Foot]

Knight, I agree with you about the effectiveness of the support weapons.

But have you considered the reasons that they are so effective when given the chance to properly deploy with a decent field of fire (and at decent range) ? There is no tactical advantage or "room" for our beloved support weapons if basic assault rifles are instantly accurate at the click of a mouse button. Combine this with a pathetic belly flop and we have pretty **** gameplay.

I would prefer weapon sway based on movement, stance, wounds and fatigue but this is not the engine we have. It's not even that great for close fights because you can't even lean around corners to shoot or even take a quick peek. I think the DEVS have done a great job with the engine they have, that is, an engine more suited to jumping into different types of vehicles.

With respect, the accuracy delay (without a visible sway) is the lesser of two evils much the same way as spawning on flags was removed to stop the continual spawn death. Yeah, it means there is travel required to get to a fight but that is infintely better that being shot on spawn or spawning behind an attacker and shooting them in the back.

Patronising maybe. Better? Without doubt in my mind

[X3DChris]

Your Suppressed for 10 seconds jeez what kind of computer are you running this sounds more like a hardware problem to me then game engine .

[Drav]

Hey Knight, a good post.

In answer to your question, I think it is safe to say that if we could implement weapon sway, we would.

CS has its problems as well, as there is a cone of accuracy that means you sometimes miss when you are aiming spot on.

I agree it can sometimes be frustrating, but it is not the disaster you may expect, for reasons which I shall explain in a bit.

There is little doubt in my mind that the weapon sway solution is the best one for both understanding visually how accurate your soldier will be at any time, and the skill of snapping of an accurate shot from a wobbling rifle. Both of these are something PR does not and cannot represent on the bf2 engine with the fidelity that would be necessary for it to work well. We can have wobbling sights, but the bullets still wont go where the crosshair wobbles to but fire out of the centre of the screen in a cone like we have now, so you still have the problem of the bullets not going where the crosshair points. Not a good solution.

So in short, I hear you. This is something I would dearly love to change, and rest assured if PR ever moves to a new engine, this would be one of the major things on the shopping list.

However, all is not lost. PR is not CS where kills are everything and uberpwners win the day. PR is mainly about using your team to kill the enemy. The rifles are actually pretty accurate when you get used to them, and there is a particular knack to using them, but mainly the way to win is to outmanoever the enemy rather than rely on pure aiming skill, and this is no bad thing.

So ye, the deviation is pretty confusing at first, but after a while, especially on multiplayer, you learn to adapt pretty fast. Try getting on the multiplayer, getting the mic out and seeing how people play.......

If I could give you one tip, when you are ready to fire, stay still. The accuracy is based on wasd movement. If you move even a little bit then you're back at the beginning. However, crouching, standing, going prone etc doesent count, so get in cover, wait a sec then pop up and fire. You should have decent accuracy while a guy running around will have crappy accuracy.

Likewise if you run round a corner and theres a guy lying down aiming t you, run back round the corner! He is set up and you are not, you will almost certainly die....