Should the Head shots kill ?

[Truism]

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?

^_^ Suggested it a few pages ago.

[Hotrod525]

Have you tried rubbing their necks with aloe vera?

Anyway I'd like headshot kills to be limited to large weapons (.50 cal and greater) and precision weapons meant to eliminate targets at extreme range (sniper rifles). Because this isn't an option in the poll I thought I would elaborate.

So if i shoot a 7.62mm from G3 in the head that dosent kill, but if i shoot 5.56mm from MEC Sniper it does ????

F*** that, Headshot should kill instantly, there is noway you can survive a 5.56 or any high caliber in the head...

[Saobh]

Reposting Fuzzheads answer to this thread and locking it as this is going in circles (wait for 0.9 to be out to have an other round at this)

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...