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We arent unskilled Gamers, why insult us with unskilled mechanics.
Wardrop
Member Posts: 462
Rant, sure get over it.
I sat today in the game tabing and circling over and over. Got bored after a little bit and decided to test some aspects of the games mechanics. I sat with my bumper against the side of a enemy vehicle with a front gun and a turrent noob gun shooting both guns into the vehicle. Since the game is lvl based and the game doesnt count the bullet damage like a first person shooter, or any other car combat game, I missed and missed untill it looked like a high stream of misses, still my bumper and front gun were pressed against the side of this car.
Now im sitting here thinking, what in the world would make a developer think that this is anything but absurd. This is suppose to be a car combat game right. Why even have guns if you cant use them the way guns are used. If i point a gun at your chest, point blank and pull the dang trigger, your dead i dont care if you are two lvls lower then the mob or that you have never used a gun ever. Bullet hits chest chest turns to goo.
If bullet is aimed at car it should hit car not just vanish or what ever happens to a missed hit when my guns pressed against your driver side door.
Half the time, you dont even see your target cause you hit tab and your guns tracks the target so why even turn to face it. You can sit there and hit tab and hold down the right mouse button, hit your number Kys and then loot. There is no skill at all, nothing like the old car games like twisted metal or any others. If you put this lvl based dice roll, joke of a system in a pvp situation, how much bragging rights can one have when all there is is to have the bigger gun and hit tab and round and round you go. You cant dodge, except to go out of aim range, but if you are in range then your at the mercy of the dice roll system. What a boner bender.
Sucks when you can put a weight on your keyboard to turn right or left and macro hitting the tab key and constant right mouse button and Pwn all.
No first person view, i dont know why it aint like you gotta see your target.
This title is a insult to car combat games we have grown up with over the years. The fun thing about car combat games besides blowing up the buildings and stuff was the ability to aim and kill someone while driving. It was all real time and dependant on your driving skills. I was fun that way, it was a challenge but you managed to ruin that feel Netdevil. I dont want the damn computer to determine if i hit i wanna aim and hit my self, im not stupid and incompetent. I think i can handle shooting at a enemy car.
Get rid of the insulting mechanics while you can. Put in a realtime hit system. Put a reticle on the end of the mouse while using it in game away from option windows, let my gun track where i point the reticle. Put in a hit detection system and get rid of the lvl based combat. Game should be a First person shooter car combat game not a rpg car combat hybrid. It would piss alot of folks off if you were in a fps game with mechanics like this. Imagine shooting the hell out of someone and not hitting at all cause your lower lvl.
Excuse the additude, im frustrated and very disapointed.
i need a frickin hug, if you have lady jugs.
Keep the man boobs away plz. m/ <^-^> ..|.,
** no spell check cause mmorpg.com doesnt support foxfire**
Comments
There is a choice to be made with today's systems. You can either have a real-time firing system like what you see in GunZ online, or you can have a dice roll system like what you see in AA. I don't like the latency you get in GunZ, nor do I like having to lead my opponent by varying amounts just to hit them. Add in the fact that in AA you are going upwards of 100mph, and I don't see how this game would be playable with that system. It's not like FPS style targetting never occured to AA's developers, but at some point you have to make a choice, and ask yourself what you are willing to give up in order to bring that style system to this game. When it was all said and done, NetDevil didn't think the sacrafices were worth it, and that's just how it is.
This is not directed specifically at you OP, but some of the comments and complaints I read, are pretty hilarious. At the same time you have people screaming about a 6GB download, but who also want MORE content and MORE choices. People complain about the lack of FPS style targetting, but don't even realize what the alternative is. People don't like long missions, but they also don't want too many missions, but they also don't want to run out of missions. People want to run 512MB of ram, but complain about lag. It's wildly ironic really, but that's neither here nor there. This game won't be for everyone, and I'm sorry it wasn't more your taste.
That's an easy way out though. There really is nothing creative about the system they used. We all know the limitations they are under but why didn't they come up with more creative methods within that mechanic to make the game funner?
If I'm 5 feet from some guys bumper and firing - why can't I hit him? Where is the player skill factor from a level 1 to a level 20 character? There really isn't one. I should be growing into my character. Part of immersing a player deals with them feeling like they are in control to some degree. I really don't feel like I'm in control of my character which is why I find it a very boring system. Look at some of the latest MMORPG's coming out. They are building more and more combat actions for the player to use to defeat their opponents. Why? Because its a much more interesting system and a player feels more in control of their character. This game is almost similar to the old auto-attack aspects of the first generation MMORPG's. It's a step back IMO.
I also dislike the fact that every vehicle has a turret. Why not make turrets a luxury that you must work towards instead of making everything super simplified where a player doesn't have to learn any skill to kill? The tension factors are so limited. Give me a front mounted weapon where I have to steer my vehicle in such a way as to keep it on the road pointed at my victim. Now I'm having to learn driving and gunner skills.
And why not let the player begin the game with some money and let them purchase a car or give them a choice of 5 cars to choose from. It's fun to pick and choose. Even let me configure where my weapons go. Maybe all I can afford is one weapon but I may want to rear mount it. Again, more options would be nice. Atleast that to me is a start in helping me feel like it's my efforts that are contributing to my own progression and not some invisible barrier that as soon as I level my firing arc becomes more on target.
The game has little in the way of innovation aside from being a unique theme. It could have been designed so much better.
I agree with the OP, it gets fustrating to see miss after miss after miss against a creature only a few levels above you. But face it, the majority of this game's methods are based more on massive destruction then single kills. It off balances everything if you can take a lvl 3 character and solo a lvl 9 mission by taking out each creature one at a time. So while it is a fustrating for these many misses to happen, it helps push the players to the bigger and better guns!
Anyways who wants to keep the small little machine gun on your car when you can have a large missle launcher.
Just my $0.02
I just edited out a huge chunk of response here. The only thing I can comment on for sure is that the current to-hit system is under review. The dev's have stated that they are not happy with how levels modifyers work in PvP, with regards to hit and miss ratios. You're right, it doesn't make sense to be idling right in front of a vehicle, and yet still miss 70% of your attacks due to a level difference. The dev's have said that this is one area that is currently under review, so maybe in a month or two we'll see higher HP mobs with lower deflection, allowing you to hit much more often, but for the same overall effect. The rest of the comments I originally made, were speculation based on PvP, and the skill involvement there. I have not seen the PvP implementation with my own eyes however, so I thought it best to wait to comment on it.
heh, its a topic i could go on and on about also. i wasn't expecting a pure FPS to-hit system, but maybe something that required at least some skill, aim, or timing. people mention lag being a major problem, but its not, really - currently, you still need to get your opponents within the tac-arc - that is still aiming, in a way, except our client does most of it for us.
i wish they'd do away with the fully rotating turrets - require opponents to be in front of your vehicle to hit. make turret weapons a little more forgiving, but not much. fire attacks on a key press, rather than the constant holding down of the mouse buttons for both attacks.
that'd make a world of difference for me. that, and more realistic driving physics.. but i think at this point, AA is what it is. its way too late in beta for any major changes, as far as i can tell. i've been testing the game for about six months, and i'd say even in that time, it hasn't really changed. its looking way more polished, and i'm impressed with a lot of the details and finishing touches they've added - its looking like a real game now, just about ready for release. however, most of the changes they've made are all but imperceptible, as far as the gameplay goes.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
So yeah, it doesnt take that much skill to shoot stuff with your turret. You need to keep in range though, can be tricky with fast moving vehicles.
But then with the /addition/ of front mounted weapons, yeah you can still shoot your enemies from anywhere, but you do a heck of alot more if you face them, so you are requried to use driving skills.
And then, guess what? Then you get a melee weapon, now you can physicaly RAM your opponent and do damage, that has never been done in a MMO, and it defently adds yet another level of skill and tacticts.
And THEN theres drop weapons! Mines, oilslicks, etc. You can keep your oponents from traling you, but then so can your oponents. Ive seen some AI that would lay mines around the place and it made everything alot more tricky (and fun!)
So really, theres alot that gets going on in combat. It really wouldnt work as a fully twitch-based game. It wouldnt work to rely completly on twitch-based gameplay, imagine if all of these weapons were extreamly sensitive to how they were aimed to hit. I personaly think AA's current system is great.
Yeah.... bumper-to-bumper and missing is unrealistic, but you see that in ANY kind of MMORPG (without the bumpers, of course). This game puts Fun>Everything, including being completly realistic, and doesnt make the game worse off for it.
I found this to be an interesting compromise on their part for dealing with the debate of how much twitch should be in a MMORPG but given the amount of things that can go on at the same time, I suppose it's their way of making it not too complicated.
I was hoping it would be closer to like X-Wing Alliance where you had your turrets, but they did minimal/support type damage while your frontside DPS was off the scale compared to it. Their system really does put a damper on any real implementation of a first person mode which bums me out because I sure as hell wanna see the inside of my car!
There is some skill involved in bringing your front gun into line with the enemy to do some more damage though I agree its ridiculous to miss all the time at point blank(maybe they should make like the 5 degrees in the center always/mostly hit, even if it was for 1 and ramp up HP and damage. I also don't like collision with infantry. At one point I was dragging an npc about 20 seconds before he decided to roll off to the side. I don't care how strong people can get, unless you're like a biomek or with plate-shelled monster, you should be a pancake after being run over by a 3 ton garbage collector.
I also agree with the lack of customizability with your car and weapon systems. Their system is sort of similar to what they did with Jump to Lightspeed, but seems so much more simple. The best part of having a car is tweaking just about any part on it or at least having to think about each individual component you put in there. I don't like to move at a certain speed because my chassis says so without giving me any decent stats. People want to know how fast they'll go.. weight, drive train, rpms, and gears don't mean much if you don't explain how they affect your speed so they can think about their purchase. I also think splitting up the engine from the powerplant would've been nicer but that may be the JTS bias speaking.
I agree with a lot of what others in this thread have said. There's a lot that could have been done with A.A. and they simply didn't do it.
To add to the comment about missing your opponent at point blank range, I also find it absurd that you can "miss" when you ram your target. You'll slam into them, sometimes you even lift them off of the road, and yet you still "miss". That's just crazy.
Even more so when it's a person running around with a machine gun. You ram into the person who's running around on foot, there's a thump sound and there's no damage. Why? Level difference. My car had a melee attachment, but even without one this would be nuts.
My biggest complaint though has to be the tasks. I've mentioned this in game too. They're just like tasks in every other MMO. Go kill 20 Woozits, bring me 10 Wuzit legs, fedex this to Waythefarkoveryonder town.
You put all of this together and ... well, to my point of view anyway ... it's the exact same experience that I get in any other MMO. Again to my point of view, A.A. turns out to be no different from the fantasy games aside from its significantly customized graphical theme.
I wasn't impressed, and it sure won't get $15/mo for me.
A.A. would fit better as a console game as long as they removed the level based damage system. I don't see this being successful as a computer platform subscription based MMO.
Then again, maybe that's just me.