Hello Sandstorm Community,
some of you may know me from either twitch or from within the game. I made a review of the game back in October where I praised the game and it's authenticity and unique style of combination between competetive potential and realism.
This thread is the discussion/debate thread regarding my video from my new series "Make Insurgency Great (Again)" and it is Part I: Gunplay.
The intention with this video is to try to help improve the games features and point towards it's strengths and work on it's weaknesses beginning with:
- Hipfire & ADS
- Sway
- Suppression Effect
- Recoil
- Weightmechanics & Weapon Characteristics
- Attachments & their usefulness
- Tactical Walk/Duck Walk (Moving with hipfire)
As some of you may know the game had a different hipfire mechanic back in the BETA. This one was less RNG and promoted the use of this style of deadzone utilization. People complained about the game being too fast paced and the developers just hit hipfire with the nerfhammer making it completely ridiculous and based basically entirely on luck. Watch here
I would like to add this consistent hipfire (not really hipfire but whatever) back to the game and instead of changing the pace of the game down with the ability to shoot accurately, if you're skilled, rather slow it down changing the way the weapon characteristics are. Read Weightmechanics & Weapon Characteristics.
Promoting the deadzone hipfire would allow for the use of laser-sights for all weapons and tracer rounds, specifically for the machineguns, but of course also for the rest of the weapons.
I like the fact that this game has sway. It definitely should have sway.
Right now the game has constant sway that is increased or decreased depending on
- Which stance you're in
- Fatigue
- Physical Impacts
- Suppression
The only listed variable above that I disagree with is the suppression effect. Let me explain.
The current suppression effect was added in the "4.20 patch" back in November and has since then only caused complaints and whine throughout the discord channels that I have been playing in. I feel like it is a simple effect to add but I think it is lacking the competetive balance and also the realistic immersion that I feel my different approach could add.
First let's discuss Suppression: What is Suppression?
My understanding of suppression is that it is basically a way to inflict fear upon your enemy by laying down fire towards his position with the intention to try to prevent him from peeking or fighting back. What does fear mean and how does it manifest itself? Well, when you get scared you instinctively enter what you've all probably heard before: Fight or Flight mode. You either fight back (shoot back) or you run for your life (take cover). If anyone of you has ever been suppressed then I would love to hear your thoughts on the following.
If you have ever been in a life threatening situation where you enter fight mode, in a bar fight, getting mugged, car accident or even a clutchsituation within a video game or in a sport then you know what I'm talking about. Adrenaline pumps into your system, your heartrate goes up, nothing else but what is most important/life threatening is in your focus. You get tunnelvision towards your problem and all you care about is getting that out of the way. You miraculously with perfect accuarcy hit all four headshots, dangles, combination punches or whatever and you come out on top. I would suggest that this fight mode wouldn't make your aim more difficult but instead make it more accurate due to the fact that you either hit the shot, or you die. And your mind doesn't want you to die.
In the current state of the game it is almost impossible to fight back successfully because of the extra sway you're experiencing. Most of these situations where your opponent initially misses you, triggering suppression, often results in them hitting their 2-5 shot before you are even capable to put your crosshair on their figure.
My solution for this would be to entirely scrap the idea of adding sway and instead add a tunnelvisioning effect similar to the picture-in-picture blur you experience when you are scoping with zoom. That along with hearing impairment possibly reducing the radius distance of which you can hear footsteps. Allowing teammates to utilize your suppression in order to flank said enemy. Watch this part
This would also enable the effectiveness of flash hiders and suppressors motivating players to further customize their loadouts.
This is pretty straight forward.
Right now the game is favouring Full-Auto above everything. I do not see a single competetive player utilizing single- or burst fire and the reason for that is pretty obvious. If you watch my video at this timestamp you can see that it is much more difficult to control your single round taps over just full-auto'ing. Even across distances it is preferable to use fully automatic techniques. I do not want you to nerf full-auto but instead change the way the recoil works for the first few rounds to allow for all three techniques being used rather than only one. Watch this part for graph explanation.
So the current weight mechanics in the game are pretty simple and easy to understand. You add more weight to your player, he becomes slower and less effective in his movement.
The Total weight affects:
- ADS speed
- Overall momentum
- Sprint speed
My solution would instead be split up in two: Total Weight and Weapon weight being the factors determining your mobility in different ways. Watch this part.
Total weight
- Affect your sprint speed
- Vault speed
- Momentum while sprinting
And having your...
Weapon Weight
- Affect ADS speed & Movement speed while ADS
- "Hipfire" movement speed
- Sway while standing
Your Total weight would therefore determine at which timing you get into said location and your Weapon Weight would determine how mobile and quick you are while clearing corners offensively. For example if you want to rush B you would want to have a low total weight to sprint faster from your spawn to the objective. And depending on your role for that position you would want to select your weapon accordingly. If you are going to want to clear alot of angles while moving it would be a good idea to pick a Sub-machine Gun to attribute faster "weapon-ready" movement or even a pistol. But if your role would be to hold an angle then a bigger weapon with more punch such as the FAL or G3 would be a better option. THE MOBILITY IN HIPFIRE IS DETERMINED BY THE WEAPON YOU ARE CURRENTLY WIELDING. If you switch to your pistol or your knife when you enter a room, you will move faster than if you were to wield your M240. You will still sprint at the same speed regardless because of total weight controlling your sprint ability. I know it sounds weird to put your M240 on your back but to find balance between realism and gameplay there has to be smaller compromises.
This would also promote the use of armor for clearing corners. Sure, you might not get there as fast but when you are in action clearing rooms your armor doesn't slow you down, the choice of weapon does. Motivating people to pick up armor.
- Attachments & their usefulness
In the current state of the competetive scene loadouts look fairly similar. There is no point in going too much off-track from the "meta". For a few months we had the Mk14 and FAL Full-Auto meta going on because the weapons were just better in every way. With the re-implementation of hipfire and this new suppression system, along with the weight system changes I feel like this would contribute to the overall motivation to customize your loadouts differently. Using suppressors and flashhiders contribute even more in suppression/flanking situations. The laser-sight and tracers rounds are something worth putting on your weapon again because of the hipfire actually being consistent. Maybe adding different grips to the game would be something. One increasing ADS speed, one vertical recoil and the other reducing sway. There are endless ideas that could be implemented.
- Tactical walk/Duck Walk
I have thought of a variety of ways to implement this way of utilizing the hipfire deadzone system. One having another keystroke putting you in this mode, the other by just having you in it as soon as you are in what we call "hipfire mode". There is possibly even more ways to introduce this. I don't really know what to say about this on the forum here so I'm just going to have to let you watch the video instead. This part is where I'm talking about this in particular.
Future Ideas
Upcoming videos & threads that I visualize talking about will be concerning the following subjects:
- Damage Multipliers
- Armor
- Weapon Balance
- Competetive Balance
- Machine guns
- Pistols
- Sniper Rifles
- Ballistics
- Animations
- Map Balance
- Game Modes
- Menu Design
- User Interface
- Cosmetics & Micro Transactions
- Marketing Strategies
- And more...
Not necessarily in this order but my ideas are endless. Let me know if there is anything else worth mentioning that you would like me to take a look at.
- TL;DR
I would be really happy to answer questions if there is something that is unclear. I hope you watch the video to get the full experience. If there is something you disagree with or something you want to add feel free to discuss anything below. I will keep checking in on the comment section on youtube aswell. I hope that this movement I am starting is going to have an impact of the development and I hope that you find my ideas and visions for this game appropriate.
Thank you for your support!
Goggenator