Should the Head shots kill ?

[ghOst819]

Take how long it takes to Epipen someone back into a mobile state - normally less time than it takes for a sniper to steady his shot - a sniper can kill an Cfficer and barely be resighted before the medic has revived him and has him moving - this is unacceptable. In my humble opinion, the best yard stick for medic revive animation times (the time taken from either the click to the revive action if at all possible) should be twice what it takes for a sniper to sight in and gain minimum deviation after firing a shot. Good snipers will gain the ability to pin a squad in this way (kill the officer, force the squad to try and locate and pin you before reviving, healing and moving on) and medicspam will be somewhat alleviated, as well as making the whole thing a little bit more realistic.

Nice point truism,maybe the problem is that the medic revives to quick after the enemy has just shot him thinking hes eliminated one threat from the problem,but then the medic revives him in less than 10 sec,and full health in less than 30.Maybe the devs could make it so that it takes longer to revive and making the casualty less comabt effective for a longer period of time.

[Axel]

I think a good sniper should know when to engage and when not to. I'm not anti-sniper but if it appeals too much to the general public the kit will be missused alot.

Slower heal/revive would be nice though, I just hope it doesn't get any [unwated] sniping supreme side effects.

[Alex6714]

I really don´t believe that everyone aims for the head all the time if you are prone then you will get hit in the head most of the time for other reasons.
Only time I would aim for the head is with a clear shot where I am not under fire and I have time to line a shot up.



The frustrating problem atm is, no one seems to die. If we forget about realism here, which I think is a mistake, you can´t have realistic behavior properly without a realistic environment, but it just isn´t right to play either.

It takes so many shots to wound someone anyway (2-4 bodyshots) not including hitbox lag and other things that it just gets incredibly stupid that person gets revived 5 times.

Then no one starts to care because well, get shot doesn´t matter, you just get revived anyway so then we get more rambo people and worse "gameplay".


Its just like the 0.8 situation, the deviation made guns in such a way that people had no faer, walked across streets under fire discussing the weather because no one could hit you.

What happened to the actually being afraid of getting shot? That using tactics actually worked because you were rewarded with life?

Now all you have to do is get 1 SL, a roflman and 4 medics and just noobcharge the enemy, reviving as you go because its just about as effective.

Completely flank the enemy, silently creep up? It doesn´t matter, they just magically come to life again and get you.

And I don´t know, but if explosives (HE shells, rockets etc) don´t actually kill you......

With all due respect, I don´t know who most of you play with but I bet the chances are those are the kind of people who would keep squad cooperation to the maximum anyway.

If you really want to bring squads together make it 1 shot kill (just about 2 shots for 5.56) and greatly decrease wounding time, then they will HAVE to be near their medic.


See right now, that 3 mins means you can rambo off somewhere no where near your squad and the medic will still reach you, which just defies all logic about keeping squads together...

[xXRich07Xx]

Well, if you don't want to make headshots = instakill,

Then at least do so with sniper rifles. It is bad enough to pull off a killer shot at 650 meters only to have a medic revive the guy and have them run into cover.

>=(

[Drav]

Like fuzz says, the 0.9 medic changes will solve the medispam issue. I kinda think sniper rifles should kill in the head as they are designed to kill from long range. The argument against headshots is a valid one when you are an infantry squad planning on overrunning an enemy and taking his ground, but when your role is to kill high priority targets from long range, you are a bit inefficient if you cant actually kill them.

[OverwatchX]

For all intents and purposes, head shots should kill outright or at least be untreatable by a medic for a "revive" to the battle (which is the same thing). Fuzz made good points however.

I am looking forward to .9 for those changes. Too bad it isnt possible to make the medic kit one that cant be picked up by other players during a battle. That would be one more thing I would like to see.

[Cassius]

since you asked nicely ParadoX I'll chat about this for abit and my opinion on it, but just keep in mind there will be no immediate hotfix on this issue, as its not percieved as massive as many make it out to be, neither is this poll much affect on the change. If we would poll people about removing squad leader spawning, you would find alot of people totally against the idea, as you would over numerous other issues in the past. Polling the public in this way is not how the dev team makes gameplay decisions.

There is 2 things being discussed here, both tie into each other. One topic is about v0.85 medics and the potential exploitability or arcade like environment that can happen, and the second thing is players fixation and obsessiveness with the FPS "headshot" mentality, this mentality I suspect is why everyone has their backs up over new changes.

Lets make some things clear so we dont have to talk in circles:
- Reviving someone in real life on the battlefield is not realistic. If you have a gunshot wound (critically wounded) you are no longer combat effective, your priority is safe removal off the battlefield, it might take months or years to recover from this wound, or you might die from the many complications like organ damage, internal bleeding, collapsed lung etc etc. The effect a gunshot wound has on a human is extremely brutal and immediate, most go into immediate shock immediately. Yes of course there is rare times where targets are hit multiple times and keep going, but were talking about common occurrences here, which is severe trauma usually followed by shock and sometimes unconciousness. I wont go into any further detail but Ill let you read about it on your own time. The point is, what is NOT up for debate here is whether a gunshot wound to the head or body IN REALITY would be crippling to an individual, as yes in most instances it would, and would be making him completely combat ineffective.

On-site battlefield revives and "healing" are in Project Reality as they are an incredibly powerful tool to help bring squads together, reinforce squad cohesion and reward squads that use superior teamwork and tactics. There is nothing realistic about them, and the dev team has acknowledged this since the start of the project. If Project Reality was about TOTAL realism (which it definitely is not and has no plans to), then getting shot in the foot would mean exactly the same as getting shot in the head - you are KILLED. This would be the most "total" realism way of going about it: join a server, hop in the squad, once you are shot ANYWHERE on your body, you are immediately rendered unconcious/immobile. You cannot respawn until the mission is over. This is seen in other games such as Armed Assault, and we can see how it affects players there. Player behaviour in that game is very different than PR, there is (in most public servers) much less cooperation and teamwork, in part because of not having any methods to reinforce positive player behaviour.

PR is about a compromise between "total" realism and behavioural realism, meaning there is compromises that need to be made in order to get players behaving in a more sensible and realistic manner. Of course no system is perfect for this, and PR is continually changing as its playerbase also changes in mentality. Take a snapshot of PR 2 years ago and I think youll see that the PR playerbase has evolved quite a bit, and because of that we are able to introduce more realism elements and use less arcade like elements. All this is possible because of changes that force a players behavior to change, as the "default" behavior of your average FPS player (if you couldn't tell) is just not suited for approaching a virtual environment in a realistic manner.

Now lets talk about what everyone is mainly complaining about, and that is the "Headshot Syndrome" as I call it. This to me is really solely a "Videogame Topic" and has absolutely nothing to do with actual combat realism. Ever since the early days of PC Gaming the almighty "headshot" has been seen by many as the best and usually ONLY place to aim on a target, its viewed by FPS veterans as the easiest way to take down an enemy - always aim for the head, BOOM HEADSHOT! This is further reinforced through alot of hollywood movies, that always seem to place great emphasis on headshots as well.

This mentality I think is based completely on fantasy and ingrained into players minds so thoroughly that they cant seem to think about it much. IRL aiming at a target, you will always aim for center of mass, and most military train their troops with this from early on. Aiming at a head is only really a valid tactic in tight CQB situations and when there is risk that the target may have some kind of remote detonated explosive device.

So my argument here is simply, if you are always complaining about headshots, why are you even aiming at the head in the first place and focusing on it to that degree? "Because its an easy one shot kill, duh!". And thats exactly my argument AGAINST having one-shot "insta kills" for a headshot. Why should we be forcing players to play in an arcade like fashion, where the only and best strategy when firing at targets is to aim for their melon, even though this goes against most common military practice. Why is the headshot so important for you? And dont say because its realistic, as we JUST established that getting a gunshot wound ANYWHERE (enough to critically wound you) is no different than a headshot, in getting incapacitated (combat ineffective) in reality.

Now as for the medics, theres already a huge discussion on this elsewhere but tbh, I dont see a big deal in the current v0.85 with medics. Yes, it can be spammy and annoying at times when a medic keeps reviving the same guy, but is this really to the advantage of the squad getting revived? Most of the time that squad gets wiped out anyways because they are in the shit and have lost fire superiority. Moving on an enemy squad that is all bleeding out and healing each other is simple for even the most green of players. Medics are mainly a hassle on the smaller, more spammy 1km maps. But these maps will always tend to be alot more spammy, regardless of medics, mainly because you are cramming tons of players in a tiny space with respawn points often <100m from each other.... prety much making it team deathmatch and basically the spammiest tactic wins in most circumstances. I've always considered the 1km maps as "seeder" maps and not as the "main course", but many players thrive on this type of action, however PR is focused on COMBINED ARMS mainly, these seeder maps are not the main focus.

There is a few changes already announced for v0.9 to help reinforce the current medic system proper use:
- Limiting medics, 1 per squad.
- Limiting the frequency of revives. If you are shot within 60 seconds of being revived, you will be KILLED.
- Fixing the bleed out screen, so that it once again blocks your vision and limits your sprint (this is a huge factor and was broken due to newer video card drivers).

. . .


So anyways, you asked why dont the headshot kill, I've given you a somewhat descriptive answer but I want to ask YOU a question: why are headshots so important for you? Why are you noticing whether it was a headshot on the target or just a body shot, does not the only thing that matters is that THE TARGET IS DOWN and you are moving on to the next target? Why does everyone have such a sick fascination with popping peoples heads off?

If the only reason you play PR is to get a headshot off on some guy 200m away, then theres many other games out there that does a much better job, try soldier of fortune 2, you will love it. If you think that tactics = BOOM HEADSHOT, then I think your missing the point of PR entirely...

It would reduce spamminess. Players with important assets can no longer be too cocky, knowing a sniper can kill them for good. Right now they know if they get sniped the medic can just revive them. The consequence is on maps like Muttrah they park themselves on some roof with the HAT and even if they get taken down by sniper fire they see no need to leave their location.
Of course there needs to be a balance between realism and playability, like making tanks which are worlds apart equal, or marines protected by modern bodyarmor as vulnerable as the insurgents, but imo by making headshots revivable that balance is tipped.

[666planer]

I think they should kill to the head, because it only makes sence that they do. Anyways maybye under extreme circumstances that they don't kill in one shot to head, for example: someone was going down a road close to were we live, picked up a hitchhiker.... not to long the hitch hiker turned on them and shot the driver 3 times in the head with a 9mm pistol I don't realy remeber what happend besides that, but I do know the driver survived and recovered the injury. So should it be by chance were you shoot him it causes greater damage or total kill? Such as a shot to the torso: average chance of damage bettween vital(heart) and minor(punctured skin did not cause or pierce anything bad) while Head: great chance of damage: death or nearly dead anyways... all this would also depend on the damage and power of the gun. But how does that look? Its more realistic, I don't see anyother more relaistic unless you mis interpreted it.

[fuzzhead]

One last thing: A headshot is non lethal, but a knife in the left big toe is fatal ?

The knife thing is just a leftover from vbf2 I think. There was no thought around the knifes outright killing someone, we just didnt get around to changing that part of the code yet. Knife kills are rare enough that they dont have a huge impact on gameplay either way, but will look into it for future release.

There are certain assets on the battlefield who rely on their ability to inflict casualties in a way that can't be replaced - most particularly snipers, but also marksmen and Insurgents when they defend fixed points. The problem is not so much that headshots are not revivable alone (althought I think they shouldn't be) it's mostly that medics revive and heal too quickly when compared with other battlefield actions, particularly sniping, but also setting up LMGs, rifle mounted grenades and some other weapons systems. All of these actions happen at a speed which is, to my mind mostly "right" - it's reviving and healing that are off the wall fast. Fast revives give a squad the ability to simply bypass certain battlefield threats that would cripple a squad in real life - like a well sighted sniper - obviously against another squad strength element it's a little different, but the advantage it confers over some support weapons, without real co-ordination (ie supressing fire) is unacceptable.

Take how long it takes to Epipen someone back into a mobile state - normally less time than it takes for a sniper to steady his shot - a sniper can kill an Cfficer and barely be resighted before the medic has revived him and has him moving - this is unacceptable. In my humble opinion, the best yard stick for medic revive animation times (the time taken from either the click to the revive action if at all possible) should be twice what it takes for a sniper to sight in and gain minimum deviation after firing a shot. Good snipers will gain the ability to pin a squad in this way (kill the officer, force the squad to try and locate and pin you before reviving, healing and moving on) and medicspam will be somewhat alleviated, as well as making the whole thing a little bit more realistic.

I agree with you there Truism, the medic as of right now can sometimes be TOO effective at his job and not have to rely on much else. But you got to think of it the other way - if the medic was not that effective, would they even be useful? I strongly believe that if headshot = instakill, and there was a decrease in medpack healing speed, and there was a much longer delay with the epipen, the medics would not even be useful really, as spawning at the rallypoint would simply be faster way to fight.

But spawning at an RP does not require much teamwork and only reinforces a run-shoot-die-repeat mentality, much more so than using a medic system IMO, cause at least with medics you are relying on someone else on your team to help you out.

I think the changes I listed so far will help medics drastically, but a further decrease in medic healing speed as well as delay in epipen revival will only be possible if we make even more drastic changes, which I am all for actually (removing rallypoints, increasing default respawn times to 1 min+, further increasing the mandown time to 5min which means you will most likely not want to give up much less).

You got to remember a big reason medics are so effective right now and can insta-revive and run away with their patient is the fact that the shaders when being revived are not working for a majority of players, this means they got full sprint when being revived, a huge change compared to before when they would be revived and cant see shit and cant run anywhere. Believe me, if there was a way to force newly-revived players to stay prone for 1 minute to re-coup, it would have been implemented already.

Remember the new medic rules:
- Limited Medic, 1 per squad
- Limiting the frequency of revives. If you are shot within 60 seconds of being revived, you will be KILLED.
- Fixing the bleed out screen, so that it once again blocks your vision and limits your sprint (this is a huge factor and was broken due to newer video card drivers).

Maybe the devs could make it so that it takes longer to revive and making the casualty less comabt effective for a longer period of time.

Like I said, good idea but other elements of the game need to be altered in order to not render the medic completely obsolete, but rather having as a critical point of gameplay.

Then at least do so with sniper rifles.

Sorry to say, but PR is not a sniping simulator. It never has and never will be. Snipers will ALWAYS take a backseat to squads and combined arms gameplay. I've said this countless times before but I'll say it again: If it was up to me the Sniper class would only have a spotting scope and ability to call in targets and mark the map, I would not give him a rifle. That being said, the v0.85 snipers are absolutely devastating... dont know why ANYONE is complaining, I rarely snipe, but when I pick up that rifle it seems everything around me dies, medics or no medics. And I'm not even a very good shot. Whether sniper bullets should kill instantly or not is for a different topic, personally I dont care about them and think there is way too much focus on this class when very few players actually use it for its true purpose, but rather use it to pad their KDR.

The frustrating problem atm is, no one seems to die. If we forget about realism here, which I think is a mistake, you can´t have realistic behavior properly without a realistic environment, but it just isn´t right to play either.

It takes so many shots to wound someone anyway (2-4 bodyshots) not including hitbox lag and other things that it just gets incredibly stupid that person gets revived 5 times.

Then no one starts to care because well, get shot doesn´t matter, you just get revived anyway so then we get more rambo people and worse "gameplay".

This is a different topic, you think bullets should be 1 or 2 shot kills everytime, but thats a different topic (which I also disagree with). And I reaaally dont think people who lone wolf rely on medics. Lonewolf players will usually hit the give up button shortly after dying, cause they cant be arsed to wait around for someone that may or may not revive them. This argument doesnt make sense to me and seems to be hyperbole.

What happened to the actually being afraid of getting shot? That using tactics actually worked because you were rewarded with life?

Now all you have to do is get 1 SL, a roflman and 4 medics and just noobcharge the enemy, reviving as you go because its just about as effective.

Like I've already stated, this tactic may be slightly effective on small, CQB orientated maps, but on largescale (REAL) maps, this "tactic" is a joke. Its not a serious argument and is more hyperbole.

If you really want to bring squads together make it 1 shot kill (just about 2 shots for 5.56) and greatly decrease wounding time, then they will HAVE to be near their medic.

So, you think greatly REDUCING the wounded time would actually make medics played in a more realistic manner? hmmm I really dont understand where your coming from, maybe you dont play medic that often but the idea behind increasing the timer is so that medics dont have to be forced to play like that crazy-nutter sprinting across the battlefield dodging bullets to make it to someone before their timer ran out, but rather having their buddies in the squad provide surppresive fire or kill and clear out the enemy, and then have the medic come in afterwards to help the wounded.

See right now, that 3 mins means you can rambo off somewhere no where near your squad and the medic will still reach you, which just defies all logic about keeping squads together...

Now this is pure BS and you know it..... if you have played a signifigant amount of time in PR as a squad leader or medic you will know this to be BS. A lonewolf player will almost immediately press the giveup button, he will not wait for a medic because that means hes relying on someone else. Lone wolf players are usually after that thing called instant gratification, and waiting on someone else who may or may not save you just does not fill that need or "cool" factor. On top of that, alot of times a medic simply cant revive someone because they are stuck or their body is glitched, even though the times not run out yet, so the 3 minute timer hardly means your definitely coming back FOR SURE. And what happens when you wait 2 minutes, but then your squad ended up getting wiped out and the medic never could get to you. Sorry but this argument is just not sitting well what I have seen on countless servers.

However I do agree, that PR needs to head towards a slower paced gameplay where players value their lives more. How we get there I think we have a bit different ideas on it, but I know that PR is heading in that direction with each new release, and heading away from arcade-land gameplay (which alot of players get pissed off about with each new release as well).

[Alex6714]

fuzzhead;955931']

You think greatly deducing the wounded time would actually make medics MORE used?


Now this is pure BS and you know it..... if you have played a signifigant amount of time in PR as a squad leader or medic you will know this to be BS. A lonewolf player will almost immediately press the giveup button, he will not wait for a medic because that means hes relying on someone else. Lone wolf players are usually after that thing called instant gratification, and waiting on someone else who may or may not save you just does not fill that need or "cool" factor. On top of that, alot of times a medic simply cant revive someone because they are stuck or their body is glitched, even though the times not run out yet, so the 3 minute timer hardly means your definitely coming back FOR SURE. And what happens when you wait 2 minutes, but then your squad ended up getting wiped out and the medic never could get to you. Sorry but this argument is just not sitting well what I have seen on countless servers.

To the point in bold, not more used, it is used enough already with the right people, having everyone go medic just for the sake of it being used would be a bit over the top.

Rather, used in a different sense. This connects to the rest aswell. Basically, if a squad is working together, and you want to keep them together, the 3 min timer is just enabling them to spread out much more, run across streets alone, while their squad catches up.

The changes mentioned would help alot, but the thing is they just seem to reinforce the teamwork, which is fine, but it just doesn´t give any sense, to me at least, to fear gunfire like accurate rifles and possibility of death would. You can´t get full fear in game of course, but it can be better.

Thats my point mainly, that fearing getting shot simulating war in a more realistic way is more important that forcing people to use medics as a work around for making people work together, which either they will or wont do anyway. From my experience just because you are more revivable doesn´t make people work together, so doesn´t really accomplish its main objective, except people who are in clans/locked squads/TS anyway who know how to exploit it. These guys will work together anyway. And if you had to stay closer to your medic + better chance of death through less hits to "critically wound" then people would probably want to work more together and it would *feel* more realistic. Probably a better way of solving it, headshots revivable yes, but 1 - 2 hits kill anyway, so no need to aim for the head.

I think it is part of the discussion, because imo its not about uber leet headshots, but rather the possibility that someone will die getting shot, and the ability to put someone down for sure with a well aimed shot when required, in the right situations. I guess I don´t have enough veterancy in the FPS world, but headshots aren´t important for me, unless I have the chance to make a perfect shot without myself in danger (ie, sniper type situations). With deviation how it is you can´t fully control your shots anyway, I think what most want are the fact that they might get lucky and kill the guy, and that that guy won´t pop up under fire because he has the chance of being killed outright.

I hate to mention 0.6, cos then everyone just ignores the post and writes me off as a vanilla whore or something, but in that environment there was more incentive imo to stay down because of getting instashot, it wasn´t great of course, couple it with slight settle time, suppression (main problem of people turning around and shooting back solved with the latter two elements) etc and it would improve the situation, but thats more a different topic.

Finally, there will always be people who won´t play in the intended way, and trying to fix it by dumbing down realism isn´t really the way to go imo, but I guess thats where the difference lies...

[CAS_117]

Why exactly is more people playing medics a good idea? I seem to remember this one game where 75% of the players were running around with L85s tossing medic packs at each other. It was a game I've definitely played... can't put my finger on it though...

[SocketMan]

For me this is not about being able to aim and shoot someone in the head as
you can only do this in rare occasions.This is the combination of the current
medic system which (unfortunately) gives you an almost 100% guarantee that you
won't die when shot.This thread would not be here if the 0.9 changes to the medic system were in effect.

[TheParadoX]

Another 2 arguments in favor of death instead of wounded state:

- A player can just jump down a crane or a hotel buidling, and be revived in a second. Even if this is not headshot related, the non-realism of this action is similar to the non-lethal headshot problem. The player should have most of his bones crushed and his neck broken...

- A known glitch allows any wounded player to switch kits and then being revived. How many times did I intentionnaly TK the SQleader who didn't have his kit in order for him to come back with his SQLeader kit ?
The same goes for ammo / grappling hook ... any kit you just need, in fact. Not only is that highly unrealistic, but it's also harmful to the gameplay because it's making the whole class system useless.

[Leeu]

I'm not gonna go trawling through the forums but, have the DEVs mentioned why the flying **** they made the headshot = not dead change?

12 gauge to the face, not a problem. running out of ammo killing him again and again and again and again and again = problem.

[Safekeeper]

I'm not gonna go trawling through the forums but, have the DEVs mentioned why the flying **** they made the headshot = not dead change?

Yes. Read fuzzhead's post in this very thread.

[Gaven]

Even if you survived a head shot , I bet no epipen would get you back to the fight. And if you think that helmets can save you from direct hit, think again. That only happens in movies.

Not true, range, caliber, angle and many other factors control that. There have been many situations where they have.

[-=TB=-Tobakfromcuba]

i find myself and for sure im not the only one, being more careless of being shot. its like i dont care sticking my head out of this window if i know a medic nearby.

me personally sees a solution in having a random factor a bullet is killing or not killing. like in RL one small inch selects dying apart from living.

[mp5punk]

Yea they should.

[Mary.au]

Well seeing as this is such a hot topic I did a little bit of research that that might lead to a satisfying compromise.

Ok, well is appears that the reason players want headshots to kill opposed to wounding, is so that the medic spam is decreased.

And the reason given to us as to why the headshot kill function was removed was because it encourages players to play the game in an unrealistic fasion.

Now this 'research' lead me to find that the use of an epipen takes 10 seconds to completely administer the epinephrine, so what if the revive time was increased from instantly to around 10 seconds.

The compromise could come in that headshots are not instant kills, however a kill guarantees that if the person is to be revived the medic will be forced to lay stationary next to the wounded player, instead of running up, stabbing and retreating in under a second.

I understand that you loose realism in a headshot not being a kill, however you gain some realism in how a player is revived.

What do you all think?

[Axel]

Good idea, if it can be done.