@turyl said in What I think Insurgency Sandstorm gets RIGHT.:
@gm29 I understand. Though It wasn't an arbitrary decision, it was based of off 400 hrs of Insurgency and 190hrs of sandstorm. And based off of how it would effect the rest of the gameplay and pacing. It's quite obvious they were going for fast paced but tactical battles.
You don't understand what arbitrary means in this context.
Arbitrary decisions about what to model and not model means you aren't thinking about what reality looks like and how to translate that into a game. Instead you are just making stuff up as you go without any concern for reality.
Insurgency is not the kind of game where you want to make arbitrary decisions about game design when everything else about the game strives to be a highly accurate model of real gunplay.
Saying you don't want to have to deal with armor blocking shots on the chest area is an arbitrary decision about what you prefer combat to play out like, and has nothing to do with simulating the reality of how combat actually plays out in modern warfare.
It would be like saying you want to get rid of fully automatic infantry rifles because you prefer the combat style of the second world war with bolt action rifles. What you prefer is irrelevant if your goal is to accurately replicate the gunplay of modern infantry weapons.
And having to deal with the reality of armor plates is as real a concern to the performance of various weapon systems as the reality of having to change magazines. To not model the changing of magazines, arbitrarily, because it annoys you to have to do so, is to create a fantasy model of combat that now no longer attempts to reflect the real constrictions of using these weapons in combat.
I absolutely think there is room for armor in Insurgency, but i also think we would have to be very careful of how its implemented as to not ruin the current pacing of the game.
You could say the same thing about any number of realistic restrictions on weapon behavior and performance that already exist in the game.
"I don't like magazine changes. They ruin the 'pacing' of the game".
"I don't like bullets penetrating walls. It screws up the 'balance' of defense".
"I don't like one shot kills, they ruin the 'balance' of the game".
The fundamental flaw of your entire premise is that when you use words like "pacing" or "balance" you are talking about words that only have a relevant place in fantasy game models where you make decisions about what you want combat to be like that have no reflection on what combat would be in reality. Those words don't exist in a realistically modeled weapon system because real life already has it's own balance, as long as you make an effort to properly simulate both the real upsides and downsides of a weapon as it exists in reality.
Even assuming plate armor would change the pacing of the game, you have no reason to complain about that because the current modeling of the game is a fantasy as far as weapon performance goes. The current pacing is wrong if adding proper armor would change the pace of the game. Why do you want to play a fantasy model of modern gunplay when the whole selling point of Insurgency has always been it's attempt to realistically model the effectiveness of characteristics of modern weapons and put you in the shoes of how they would actually be handled and used?
You either want a realistic game or you want a fantasy game. There's no middle ground there. Once you start making arbitrary decisions counter to reality based on your personal preferences then you end up eventually degrading the game down to the lowest common denominator of CoD. You need to adhere to an objective standard of what can this weapon actually do in real life, and how can we model that effectively in a game.
Part of modeling that is the armor the target will face. It's no different than modeling the types of environmental barriers the bullets will face and how those bullets either can or can't deal with obstructions.
I'm mainly bringing up the argument that ''realistic armor performance'' could easily mess with the entire games pacing or even create a situation where it never makes sence NOT to run armor.
This isn't a concern if you model the realistic downsides of wearing armor.
Any game that attempts to model realism has to model both the pluses and minuses because real life combat and military gear/weapons are always a compromise of trade offs.
There's a reason US soldiers don't actually want to wear more armor plating, even though the capability exists to produce it - They are concerned that the loss of speed and agility in combat that comes from wearing more armor would be more likely to get them shot in the first place. Nevermind the hit to overall long term endurance as you have to carry around more overall weight.
There's a reason why, in competition practical shooting, they need different divisions for those who want to wear armor and those who don't - because the armor is a significant enough disadvantage to your ability to clear a stage with maximum speed and accuracy that people would never want to wear the armor if they didn't have to.
This goes back to another suggestion I made in another thread about the need for this game to do a more realistic job of modeling the downsides of carrying a bunch of bulky or heavy gear, or heavy weapons and ammo, into combat. It's not a difficult thing to do, but once you do it you suddenly have a real choice between no armor or different types of armor. However, I don't subscribe to your expectation that players should even be running around without armor in the first place as US soldiers because doctrinally that's not what they would be doing unless they were in really specialized roles, such as maybe a sniper. Although I'm ok with giving players the option, I'm just saying you shouldn't act like it's some great downside to the game if everyone decides they are better off running with armor than not running armor (because that would actually reflect the conclusion reached in reality by real soldiers).
A similar situation already seems to be happening with the weapon damage. It almost never makes sense to NOT run an FAL. In this case the question is how to go about ''fixing'' it. Leave it as is? buff other weps? make the FAL semi only? I dont know which direction the devs want to go, but i doubt they want to increase time to kill.
Your game is improperly modeled, lacking the realistic downsides of a FAL, if you have given players no reason to run an intermediate carbine over a full sized battle rifle.
The solution is always to go back to the reality of why these weapons are NOT preferred for modern combat. There's a good reason NATO, Russia, and China have all moved to a lightweight high velocity carbine cartridge like the 5.56. Russia and China both created their own slightly different version of the 5.56 to replace the larger AK47 cartridge, and almost all NATO countries that use to use the FAL or G3 (7.62x51) eventually moved over to a new weapon chambered in 5.56 like the FAMAS or G36.
There's also a reason that, according to ancedotal evidence, the Germans universally preferred taking captured M1 carbines but never bothered taking captured M1 Garands if the Carbine was available. The M1 carbine was the WW2 equivalent of the M4, as an intermediate carbine cartridge in a lightweight compact platform. The M1 Garand was the equivalent today of the FAL/G3. Although the M1 Garand was superior to the M98, it had little advantage over the M1 Carbine considering that most infantry combat took place under 300m and therefore all that extra power of the Garand was being wasted and making the rifle more difficult to use for little gain.
If you know what those reasons are why full sized rifles aren't preferred in modern combat then you'll be able to incorporate those reasons into the modeling of your game.
I never felt like the the original Insurgency failed to properly model these differences.
Of course, there are also advantages to running a full sized battle rifle cartridge in combat as well, which is why the SCAR-H sees use in the US military amongst special forces. Being able to reliably drop targets in one shot and being able to penetrate barriers is a big deal in some contexts and that's the only real reason you'd ever want to use a 7.62 over a 5.56. Of course the full sized round has more effective range too if you need that, but that's not always an issue for typical engagement distances of infantry combat (which historically has mostly happened under 300m).
But for general issue, carbine cartridges are generally superior for most military contexts and are easier to use effectively. The are good enough for typical engagement distances.They allow for faster reaction time and more certainty of hitting your target when it presents itself for brief moments. You can start to fire without the best aim and then quickly and accurately readjust your aim while continuing to fire with the 5.56. This allows you to get away with taking more marginal shots or making quick adjustments to get the shot you otherwise would have missed. It also allows you to more rapidly engage multiple targets accurately. The full sized rounds generally can't do this because they take too long to recover from a shot and you lose your sight picture after firing. As a result, you actually take longer to get that first shot off because you have to take more time to make sure you're going to hit. The lower magazine capacities of the 7.62x51 and the heavier weight of the ammo (meaning you carry less overall) also means you need to make a greater effort to make sure every shot counts, which slows down your target aquisition and firing speed.