PC Please in A22 polish the combat a bit.

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OgreSlayeR

Refugee
I posted this in the dev diary, but I thought it deserves more attention, anyway. I hope in A22 they polish the combat and gun play (it doesn't appear much has been done on this front in A21, correct me if I am wrong..). The biggest issue I have is with the combat is how it feels with aiming with the crosshair and aiming down sights especially with misaligned sights.

I also think the melee animations could be much better and it would be nice it had some different animations like 3 a hit combination for holding left click and a more visceral right click power attack.

I would like if it feels like a game like Rust (at least with the guns) eventually and they remove the crosshair to make it more immersive.

 
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Maybe the devs will give combat another pass for adjustments. But you do realize that they are pushing to finish the game now and new animations & combo attacks would take a good bit of reworking.

 
I haven't played Rust in a while and it never had a crosshair back when I played so that's news to me, but point still stands or it can be at least a toggle option.

Obviously improving animations and combat should be part of finishing the game and it would seem weird if it's the last thing they do before going "gold". It's much more important than the water changes for example. 

 
I would also agree that the combat animations aren't a big deal to me compared to having "holes" in the water everywhere.  In any case, animations are *probably* going to get an update before gold, though that's just my assumption.  But I really do think they are fine as they are.  The animations that are more important to me to see updated are those related to 3rd person views (or views of other players) of climbing ladders and even crouching.  And I really don't care about combos.  Not every game has to include combos.  It really isn't needed.

 
My biggest complaints with melee combat.

1) Voxel pathing: Excluding vultures, zombies and animals path using voxels and this means they don't path directly to you, unlike vultures that do. So many times a zombie has side stepped me at the last millisecond, causing me to miss my melee attack and they get a hit on me. (I play on nightmare speed)
Let me add, they are super smart and know EXACTLY how to get to you. Even the chickens in the Dead Rooster make a run for the second floor window from the basement, because they are ridiculously smart.

2) Zombie animations: First things first, I am well aware of the pain resist mechanic that hostile entities have. However, a lot of times I have been hit by a zombie while they are holding their face, or their hip, etc, after I have hit them.

3) Crawling mechanic: Undoubtedly, the most BS mechanic in the entire game. Not only does the crawling trigger way too sensitively, but they also gain insane attack range while crawling. Moe is a main offender here, the triggering is so sensitive that Moe will crawl while in a perfectly open doorway. On top of that, they enter crawling INSTANTLY, there is no animation whatsoever, one millisecond they are standing and the next millisecond they are crawling. They also stay in the crawling animation way too long after they can easily stand again.

4) The hostile attack range: I'd say the most inconsistent thing. Sometimes their attacks that should hit you, don't, and other times attacks that are too far away from you, do hit. The biggest offender here though is the hugging animation attack, which clearly has increased range and they tend to hit from about 2.5m away. A zombie doing the hugging animation can out range sledgehammers. (This is not on a server/MP with latency)

 
Whenever bandits are added, I think it’ll change the meta of combat in ways that are hard to anticipate. I don’t know if aiming ranged weapons or attack animations on melee weapons will be affected, and I’m not saying the AI will be so different as to be unrecognizable. But I have to think combat will play differently than it does now, possibly changing what concerns players have from today's A20 perspective.

Like, off the cuff, maybe bandits don't bob & weave their heads the way most zombies do. Maybe that makes headshots on bandits easier overall, but more bandits wear helmets compared to zombies to compensate. That could in turn change the balance of how important aiming down the sight is. A perk like bullet penetration could be a lot more useful with enemies that take cover instead of always trying to move towards you. And so on. I don’t want to dismiss people’s quality of life concerns. I’m just saying we’ll probably be having different conversations about combat post-bandits.

 
Ramethzer0 said:
I hope bandits don't do that duck and dodge that zombies sometimes do in melee.
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 Imagine hanging out in  a tavern full of adventuring survivor men and making that statement.  <cringe>
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Ramethzer0 said:
I hope bandits don't do that duck and dodge that zombies sometimes do in melee.
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Don't expect much difference between bandit and zombie AI. With the exception of additional abilities like being able to open (unlocked) doors, bandit pathing will likely be close, if not identical, to zombie pathing. And to be clear, zombies are not "dodging" our shots. It's just bad timing with how their pathing works across voxels.

That being said, shouldn't bandits be able to duck and dodge our melee attempts? I would think living, thinking beings would be even more capable at avoiding hits than a mindless zombie. Bandits should be a more difficult enemy to face than zombies.

 
Syphon583 said:
Don't expect much difference between bandit and zombie AI. With the exception of additional abilities like being able to open (unlocked) doors, bandit pathing will likely be close, if not identical, to zombie pathing. And to be clear, zombies are not "dodging" our shots. It's just bad timing with how their pathing works across voxels.

That being said, shouldn't bandits be able to duck and dodge our melee attempts? I would think living, thinking beings would be even more capable at avoiding hits than a mindless zombie. Bandits should be a more difficult enemy to face than zombies.
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They have stated bandits will find cover, so there is at least some difference in bandit AI vs zombie AI.  We'll just have to see how much difference it ends up being.

 
Syphon583 said:
Don't expect much difference between bandit and zombie AI. With the exception of additional abilities like being able to open (unlocked) doors, bandit pathing will likely be close, if not identical, to zombie pathing. And to be clear, zombies are not "dodging" our shots. It's just bad timing with how their pathing works across voxels.

That being said, shouldn't bandits be able to duck and dodge our melee attempts? I would think living, thinking beings would be even more capable at avoiding hits than a mindless zombie. Bandits should be a more difficult enemy to face than zombies.
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I mostly made that as an offhanded comment very early in my morning.  If Bandits dodge, I'd still be a little put off (because we are not capable of the same mechanic) but eventually I'd just accept it.  I really dislike this mechanic in Fallout 4 and 76, and its only because of Feral Ghouls having this ability when any given melee PC has to close distance normally. 

And as for the dodging mechanic, I've had this argument before.  Others have had this to say to me yet most of the experiences I've had plenty of zombies straight up shoot me from the ground MMA style.  It actually happened to me this last thursday.  I had drawn agg on one, with my shotgun out, and my partner ran into the room to spear it from the side and the zombie straight up ducked her shot!  I was on the ground floor of an open roofed ruin while this happened.  I asked everyone in my group if they just saw the same thing I did after the fight was over and the majority did.  So.. as vocal as some have been, I'm not going to deny the proof of my own multiple experiences. 

fragtzack said:
 Imagine hanging out in  a tavern full of adventuring survivor men and making that statement.  <cringe>
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Imagine anyone doing something in a video game compared to real life, and we can compare fictions until you decide how long that lasts until it sounds tedious.

 
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Ramethzer0 said:
So.. as vocal as some have been, I'm not going to deny the proof of my own multiple experiences. 
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I wrote a reply, but .. I'll just ask for _testing_ instead. You've found a spot and a situation where it happens. Recreate that in a test game, and make it happen again a few times. For the fallout ghouls, it sounds like it was constant, a 100% reproducible? Will you get a 100% repro rate with this?

 
Riamus said:
They have stated bandits will find cover, so there is at least some difference in bandit AI vs zombie AI.  We'll just have to see how much difference it ends up being.
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That's an excellent point, and one of the "additional abilities" I referred to, but didn't mention by name. I guess I was mostly referring to their pathfinding AI.

 
Ramethzer0 said:
I hope bandits don't do that duck and dodge that zombies sometimes do in melee.
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you may want to disable the bandits somehow when they will be added to the game because you may get disappointed. sorry :)

after all.... they really dont want to be killed any more then you do :)

 
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unholyjoe said:
you may want to disable the bandits somehow when they will be added to the game because you may get disappointed. sorry :)
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I think he meant this ducking and dodging that is abnormally fast. As far as I know, this is because there is no transition animation.

 
theFlu said:
I wrote a reply, but .. I'll just ask for _testing_ instead. You've found a spot and a situation where it happens. Recreate that in a test game, and make it happen again a few times. For the fallout ghouls, it sounds like it was constant, a 100% reproducible? Will you get a 100% repro rate with this?
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I believe that the Fallout Ghouls are programmed to do that as a one trick pony.  I only use this as a comparison when the zombies in 7 Days, who would rush me, dodge my incoming blow, hit me in the leg, and then stand back up again with (as its been said) no animation cues.  There are rare moments when they've ducked me twice in a row, but this was before I was told there is an environment reason for doing so.

 
unholyjoe said:
you may want to disable the bandits somehow when they will be added to the game because you may get disappointed. sorry :)

after all.... they really dont want to be killed any more then you do :)
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RipClaw said:
I think he meant this ducking and dodging that is abnormally fast. As far as I know, this is because there is no transition animation.
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Yeah, I think that part of the conversation isn't about bobbing the head around or other normal movement to make hitting them difficult but is about zombies that just drop to a crawl instantly then stand back up a split second later and likely drop to a crawl again in the next second and so on.  This is bad enough in a location where it kind of makes sense, like an attic where the ceiling is at an angle but at least that makes some slight sense even though it would be better if there was animation delay while they do it instead of instantaneous.  The worse thing is when they do this when the ceiling is only 2 blocks high (floor, two air blocks, then ceiling just to clarify my meaning) and nothing is on the floor to make them not be able to stand properly.  This happens a lot in doorways and I had this happen the other night in a room that had only 2 block height before the ceiling.  It caused the pack of zombies to start dropping to the ground and standing up repeatedly as they lunged for me, hitting me from too far away for it to make sense and moving at maybe twice the speed of standing, which isn't right to begin with.

 
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