Make Insurgency Great Again: Part II - Tough Love

Youtube Video

Hello again Sandstorm Community,

I am back with another video with some more feedback. The first video I made was a lot more in depth in terms of things that I want to see changed within the game. In this video I am going to be a little more vague in terms of actual solutions but rather give you my emotion and thoughts concerning the gameplay.

In the video I talk about playerbase, viewerbase and pointing alot of fingers towards the competetive side of the community and it's absence in the game. I would love to go in-depth in all of the problems that I've found and talk about potential solutions but I don't think that is as valuable to the devs right now. I just felt like I needed to ventilate myself for my own community and potentially the developers and anyone interested.

I would love to hear what other people think about what I talk about in the video.

Best regards,
goggenator

@goggenator Once again, some great stuff here! Honestly, there's nothing here I disagree with. Just a few things I wanna talk about.

"The reason being, I think, that you're not really nourishing the game competitively, is because you're changing mechanics to please the less skilled or less hardcore players, by basically lowering the skill ceiling of the game, and I think that punishes you."

Absolutely. You're spot-on. You mention the changes with hipfire (which you know I already disagree with), but there's a lot more as well:

->Something I complained about ages ago was how effective crouching was at reducing recoil. Since then, it's been slightly nerfed, but holding down "Ctrl" still removes 40% of your weapon's recoil, which is insane. I made a video here talking about this.

-> The ADS time being linked to total weight is another change I think was designed to cater to Competitive players while punishing casual ones.

-> Another change I've bitched about for months was the armor nerf. When Sandstorm launched into the first Betas, the newer casual players complained and said the reason they couldn't kill anyone was because armor was too strong, but the real issue was that the hitreg was completely fucked for most players, including myself. When NWI released a patch to help fix the hitreg, they also heavily nerfed armor in the same patch. Yup. They made armor worthless while hitreg was fucked. While the CTA is under an NDA, I will say that I'm like 99% sure that no one complained about armor being too strong in the CTA.

"It feels really good in the beginning, but once you start looking past the atmosphere, once you start looking past the map design, once you start looking past everything else, you start to get good, you start to master the mechanics, and you start to really really shine in the game, there's just nothing left for you to play."

^^ This 100%. When I first starting playing back in the CTA, I logged 88 hours in an 11-day period. That averages to 8 hours a day, which is pretty insane. When Sandstorm launched into the Betas, it took me almost a month, if not longer, to get 88 hours logged onto the game:

Stats.PNG

I just recently surpassed rank 50 about a week ago or something. When I left the CTA, I had hit Rank 50:

1yeet.PNG

I've now owned this game for months, and while my rank was reset in December for the game's launch, I still hadn't hit rank 50 in the Betas or the full game until recently.

One more thing, as well. I noticed that in your hodge-podge mess of words that are on your whiteboard, I see this:

1yeet.PNG

Looks like it says "Pistols eyesight distance".

You might be interested by this post I made in the Beta.

Also, if you were wondering, this was what the M9 sights were in the Beta before any changes. IMO, this is when they actually looked the best:

1yeet.PNG

last edited by MarksmanMax

@MarksmanMax said in Make Insurgency Great Again: Part II - Tough Love:

->Something I complained about ages ago was how effective crouching was at reducing recoil. Since then, it's been slightly nerfed, but holding down "Ctrl" still removes 40% of your weapon's recoil, which is insane. I made a video here talking about this.

I definitely think there should be an improvement in recoil management going into crouch. There is definitely a need to balance this feature slightly.

-> The ADS time being linked to total weight is another change I think was designed to cater to Competitive players while punishing casual ones.

I think this change is not really catering to anyone. I think it just kind of makes the gunplay worse. I've been arguing that the weapons weight should control this. But again, now we are still talking inside the box. I don't think changing levers within the current mechanics should be the go to. I see a need to change to the mechanics themselves.

-> Another change I've bitched about for months was the armor nerf. When Sandstorm launched into the first Betas, the newer casual players complained and said the reason they couldn't kill anyone was because armor was too strong, but the real issue was that the hitreg was completely fucked for most players, including myself. When NWI released a patch to help fix the hitreg, they also heavily nerfed armor in the same patch. Yup. They made armor worthless while hitreg was fucked. While the CTA is under an NDA, I will say that I'm like 99% sure that no one complained about armor being too strong in the CTA.

I have a great in-depth idea of how I think the armor should work in the game. I agree, right now it isn't what it should be. I won't go in-depth into this though. I'll probably make another video if the situation allows for it.

"It feels really good in the beginning, but once you start looking past the atmosphere, once you start looking past the map design, once you start looking past everything else, you start to get good, you start to master the mechanics, and you start to really really shine in the game, there's just nothing left for you to play."

^^ This 100%. When I first starting playing back in the CTA, I logged 88 hours in an 11-day period. That averages to 8 hours a day, which is pretty insane. When Sandstorm launched into the Betas, it took me almost a month, if not longer, to get 88 hours logged onto the game:

Yeah, I had 300 hours and level 100 by the time the game was first announced to be released in Sept 18. I was level 245 on reset and now I'm close to 200 again but like I said in the video. I've barely played the game for the past few months.

One more thing, as well. I noticed that in your hodge-podge mess of words that are on your whiteboard, I see this:

1yeet.PNG

Looks like it says "Pistols eyesight distance".

Yes that is what it says. I wish they would stretch the arms out to make the pistol cover up alot less on the screen. Right now it looks like you're holding the pistol so close to your face the blowback might hurt you. This makes the iron sight huge and the pistol accuracy horrible.

@goggenator said in Make Insurgency Great Again: Part II - Tough Love:

I definitely think there should be an improvement in recoil management going into crouch. There is definitely a need to balance this feature slightly.

Do you mean more recoil when crouched or less? I want more as the recoil reduction is too much IMO.

@goggenator said in Make Insurgency Great Again: Part II - Tough Love:

I think this change is not really catering to anyone. I think it just kind of makes the gunplay worse. I've been arguing that the weapons weight should control this.

...That's true, I guess lol. Doesn't really cater to anyone; it just creates the current Comp meta which is to run with as little weight as possible (so no armor or ammo rig; of course, the damage model is another cause for this). I actually talked about something similar in an older post. My suggestion was to have the ADS time based around weapon classes (so pistols, SMGs, ARs, etc). Your idea technically makes more sense, though lmao.

@goggenator said in Make Insurgency Great Again: Part II - Tough Love:

But again, now we are still talking inside the box. I don't think changing levers within the current mechanics should be the go to. I see a need to change to the mechanics themselves.

I mean, that would be changing the current mechanics, though, as that's completely overhauling how ADS time is calculated.

@goggenator said in Make Insurgency Great Again: Part II - Tough Love:

I have a great in-depth idea of how I think the armor should work in the game. I agree, right now it isn't what it should be. I won't go in-depth into this though. I'll probably make another video if the situation allows for it.

I'd definitely be interested to see said video!

@goggenator said in Make Insurgency Great Again: Part II - Tough Love:

Yeah, I had 300 hours and level 100 by the time the game was first announced to be released in Sept 18. I was level 245 on reset and now I'm close to 200 again but like I said in the video. I've barely played the game for the past few months.

I've only really been getting back into the game because of the recent patches that have added the new guns and Hardcore Checkpoint, which is the only mode I've been playing except for the Frenzy mode on the CTE.

@goggenator said in Make Insurgency Great Again: Part II - Tough Love:

Yes that is what it says. I wish they would stretch the arms out to make the pistol cover up alot less on the screen. Right now it looks like you're holding the pistol so close to your face the blowback might hurt you. This makes the iron sight huge and the pistol accuracy horrible.

That definitely makes more sense than what I was thinking lmao. Ins2014 actually had a bit of a similar issue IMO, which I remedied with the power of Workshop mods.

last edited by MarksmanMax

@MarksmanMax said in Make Insurgency Great Again: Part II - Tough Love:

Do you mean more recoil when crouched or less? I want more as the recoil reduction is too much IMO.

I mean that being crouched should give you a definite advantage in sway and recoil management over standing up because it just makes more sense. I don't necessarily think the way to balance this would be to make the crouch recoil any different. I think a lot of the problems stem from the way recoil in general is being calculated. Right now we have a first bullet recoil and recovery being kind of weird, as shown in my first video. I think changing that would give you a different idea of how standing vs crouch works. It's a matter of how the recoil mechanics work, not how they're being manipulated by the seperate stances. Being crouch/prone should definitely give you a obvious advantage in terms of sway and recoil management in comparison to standing up.

If that makes sense to you.

@goggenator said in Make Insurgency Great Again: Part II - Tough Love:

Being crouch/prone should definitely give you a obvious advantage in terms of sway and recoil management in comparison to standing up.

Well, I often crouched when firing weapons in Ins2014, and it actually turns out that there is less recoil when crouched (only like 15%, though). However, I was crouching a lot just to help remove sway when firing downrange.