Yes, the shotgun spread is increased from before. People also complained about the sg being too strong against fades before. This will hurt a player in the mid range doing strong sg damage. Might hurt the lome video moments. Hopefully it's at the right point where you can still have similar moments, but perhaps a little less dominating.
nightsy, believe me the hitboxes are fine. I had the pleasure to play with the old hitboxes against horror show and there are so many spots on the skulk model that no reg... you rly don't want to go back to that, trust me (unless you want to have a game balanced around no regs again)
And the fun part is with the old hotboxes there was no difference for shotguns. Only LMGs got affected hard
You are wrong. If you hit those gaps you'll still get a hit, you can clearly see the blue polygons behind the model when you don't see blue, it's just that there's a bit of model on top, but there are no gaps there. The hitboxes on the left are literally the same as the ones on the right, just scaled up.
If you took that screenshot, you could have tested with the pistol that you do indeed get hits in those "gaps".
In any case, a long time ago sewlek made the bullets have a "width" so it was pretty forgiving, you could hit shots you were missing already with the old hitboxes. Increasing the hitbox sizes only makes it even easier to get hits that you should never get.
That's client misprediction. The server and the client think the model position and animations are in different places and thus your client shows blood and the server tells you that you missed. Precisely because you see blood (which is client-side/predicted) you know that the hitboxes are fine on your side, it's the server thinking it's somewhere else.
Hitboxes aren't a problem here, that's just server and client not being in sync. I'm sure bigger hitboxes mask the problem a bit (and not in all cases), but it's not actually fixed...
Someone would need to debug this to see what's going wrong. But that's UWE's job.
Well, Ironhorse made the video and the result was the enlargement of the hitboxes.
If I understand this correctly, this effect is the result of 'small precision errors in time measurement' with lag compensation and is only reducable with higher tickrate, which the spark engine does not permit, which means that adding tolerance to the hitbox(/tracer) is the only option to make the hitreg not feel like fucking the marine over.
The Spark engine does support higher tickrate, it will just consume more CPU (serverside mostly) and bandwidth (the low sendrate is one thing that's causing many issues like ammo counts going back and forth when firing, etc). Increasing it will help, but won't totally fix the issue.
That's too big of a discrepancy to be simply down to tickrate and it's certainly not a "small precision error". Is the interpolation that different between the client and server that something that obvious and linear in movement gets mispredicted with that amount of ease of reproduction? There's other games running at laughably low tickrates that handle prediction more complex than that just fine. If it's a discrepancy it's certainly not small, it's a bit embarrassing to look at, honestly.
The problem with UWE and how they work is that they will keep on saying that something will take very long to do and therefore never even start doing it, even if the benefits are huge and really apparent. In any case I don't think with their current team they could tackle this properly, this is something that should have been done near release.
Increasing the hitboxes is an easy hack, but it also creates new problems. Tracking down the exact problem and fixing would take proper work.
Yeah, I meant that higher tickrate isn't an option, because the average server can't take it.
Other than that, I agree, that it does look like there is more to it than 'low' tickrate and it could and should be a lot better.
I still have faith that something will be done about this in the future though.
You do not need higher tickrate.
If the server can take it, you can boost the needed rates (send and move) just fine already. Its just, most servers cant take it.
Right now you can boost send to 29 without changing tick. Move than to roughly 36.
And than you see your cpu die. But you didnt edit tick! :D
There were gaps in the old models hitboxes, but they weren't those blue boxes. :)
Comp mod boneshield is only doing a 25 percent reduction, and is not working as intended. I want to give people that information, and let you know we plan on keeping boneshield as close to how it's been for this season until after the playoffs.
Okay time for wild suggestions/ideas on compmod for after the season.
Personally I had the feeling that last season the marine games all felt very similar to each other, independantly of gather or team so I'd rly like to put some variety to marine play. However realising that the approach of drastically changing tech trees is incredibly hard to do and would require alot of balancing work, I was thinking that more variety could be added by giving the players valid options in choice of weapins.
First example I want to bring up is Shotgun vs MG: During the last season I have seen MGs being used less than 10% and shotguns have always been the prefered choice. Appearently the shotgun is stronger than the MG or the cost if the MG doesn't justify it's existance in the round.
So instead of proposing an actual solution in this scenario I'd like to ask the community in why the shotgun is prefered over the MG in your opinion. What can be changed so we can see the MG being used more and maybe see some rounds where Shotgun is being discarded completely?
Second example is my all time classic the Flamethrower: What I have heard quite alot in the past that FT has it's use but people prefer the extra damage output done by an LMG even. And looking that FT is being used in at most 1% of the games in NSL it clearly indicates that FT is not in a good place atm. This actually brings me back to dragons compmod who actually did address that issue by having the FT as secondary weapon. Back then this kind of failed aswell. In my opinion that was because the pistol is still an awesome weapon to finish lifeforms at distance and it is available from the start for free. So why would you pay tres to research a weapon and pay pres to buy a weapon that gets rid of the pistol in your inventory?
However I think this approach was not too far off. What I would propose here actually is changing the FT to how it used to be in dragons compmod when it was a secondary. In addition to that the FT should be available with AA (or maybe it is already... don't know). And then you can equip it as secondary weapon for 0 pres. At last I would propose to make alien RTs flamable targets (like cysts) so then you have a secondary weapon that is worse at killing lifeforms but can burst down RTs quite effectively. This might be a good complementary weapon to the MG then which lacks DPS against buildings.
Oh and in case you rly don't want to change the FT in any way. Please remove it from compmod then. It is bad game design to have a weapon that is inferior to any other weapon in every possible situation of the game. It would be a trap for new players joining the NSL and they should never research it unless somebody here is good enough (looking at you div 1 teams) to actually find a strategically valid use of FT in match where both teams are of equal (or similar) skill
Meph, I think you like having things like the ft useful. I get that, keep bringing up ideas if you want to see if they catch on.
I have an update for comp mod. So the new group is formed, and we are actively discussing potential changes. There seems to be a focus on changing the meta in order to make the game more interesting. For example, if marines have all their tech 6 minutes into the game and armor 2 is always the go to choice, perhaps a shake up is needed. At this time, changes to the meta being discussed are not random, and will be for intended changes.
Update: These are the first changes we are trying to put into beta mod.
1) remove parasite effect from webs 2) jetpack cost reduced to 15 pres/tres 3) medpacks reverted to instant heal 50 hp with current pickup/drop rates 4) change to the new vanilla egg spawning mechanic ("Every hive spawns an egg every 13 secs instead of only one hive at a time. Every hive can spawn up to 2 eggs (was 3).") 5) clog hp reduced to 180 6) Machine Gun cost change to vanilla value of 20. 7) Babbler change: remove damage taken cap and make their hp 11 8) Revert hitboxes 9) Revert bite cones 10) Revert shotgun spread 11) Revert movement changes
Please discuss. I will try to go into more detail at a later time some of the thoughts behind the changes.
btw I would love to hear why the compmod council decided to revert hitboxes (and bitecones) in the first place, I prefer explanation by either herakles or starcatereus.
1) okay you remove parasite from web which is fine, but makes it mostly useless But why remove parasite from that and not from the effect from the one commander ability, which is just ruining so many sneaky plays,, without needing really any scouting by players.
Revert movement changes has to do with movement changes that were made after hitbox changes. So the idea is, if you revert the hitbox, you should revert the movement changes.
Not removing the commander rupture I think is what mortmann is mentioning. It's a good point. In the past, seemed like people didn't think this was hurting the gameplay. This may be looked at. The changes to the gorge are to reduce the pve abilities of the gorge so hopefully the speed of the gameplay feels faster.
I am trying to provide answers for the council. I am doing some assuming so anything I say is my own opinion on why something is being changed. If you want further clarification, I can look into if it's possible. I would say the hitboxes and bite cones are being changed because it's a more competitive feel. People like the game to force you to hit the target and not give you casual leeway. Which makes sense since we are playing a competitive game.
Also, I want to let people know as part of the hitbox changing (if it can be done, and it's decided to keep old hitboxes), there may be default or set skins you can use going forward. I can't say for sure how it's going to go, just letting you know ahead of time the skins you can use may be reduced or may be set for you in comp servers.
1. We removed the parasite from webs because they are free and available right at the start of the game, while rupture cost res and requires biomass to unlock. Is it really a sneaky play if the alien comm knows you're there and ruptures you? Scans do the same thing and you can drop a scan anywhere, doesn't mean they should be removed.
2. Movement changes refer to the different skulk and lerk movement UWE released shortly after they completely screwed game balance with the new hitboxes. These changes are faster skulk sneak speed and higher wall jump acceleration, and faster lerk acceleration and dive speed. Reverting these movement changes will make celerity relevant again.
3. We reverted hitboxes and bite cones to change the meta. The current meta is too rigid with these new hitboxes and bite cones. Currently you HAVE to rush a2 and you HAVE to get shells early because you can expect every skulk to bite you with 80% bite acc, and every marine to hit you with 30% accuracy (usually higher against skulks). It made the game less skill based because the meta revolved around who can stack the most hp, not who can bite/shoot the most accurately, because everyone could do that moderately well, or at least as much is generally needed. In addition to this, the new hitboxes still raised balance issues that were not properly addressed. For example, even with the shotgun spread increase, shotguns are still more powerful now than they were. Lerks still take more damage from longer range than they did before the hitbox change, and increasing the shotgun spread made it easier and more forgiving to get a lot of damage on fades as the pellets cover a wider area. Marine balls were stronger and harder to clear than they ever were. For about half the maps, it became incredibly easy to just 4 push a hive with two shotguns, a rifle, and a catpacked GL and kill that hive no matter how many lifeforms the aliens had. And for the other half of the maps, it became easier to just arc because with the new hitboxes the marines were harder to clear. This change will make the other tech path possibilities (shift/shade start, w3/a1, etc.) more viable rather than forcing both teams to go down the same tech path every game because otherwise they lose every engagement. We expect just this change alone to tip the winrate further into the aliens favor, which is why it's being changed alongside cheaper jps, cheaper mgs, and instant heal meds, as well as nerfed gorge utility and egg spawns in the early game (early game full clears will be more devastating for aliens, don't be dumb with your skulks). Also yes as deck said, this change was basically aim assistance and is a casual non-competitive change that lowers the skill ceiling.
While I agree with the points, and think it might be nice, it will have the impact that it parts compmod even further from vanilla, which might hinder newcomers even more to join competitive play... as well as the fact that maintaining compmod will propably be quite the hassle on the long run..
I see. Well the only negative thing I can see here is increased hitreg complaints again but after hearing your reasoning for that change I will support you with that.
The win rate may significantly be in the aliens favor for a short while after this change, since people will have to re-learn (or in gathers case learn) proper marine play such as checking corners, not backpedaling, positioning, staying close and covering each other during hive pushes, welding, etc. But that would just mean that the community's marine play has atrophied in the wake of the new hitboxes where you don't need to play as smart to win.
UWE's changes around that time didn't affect eggs spawns when you only have one hive. So reverting the recent egg spawn changes won't do anything for early game unless you somehow build a hive before the first death wave. (This knowledge comes from the patch notes. I didn't read the code or test it.)
Also I agree with Handshoe that you should value compmod being similar to vanilla.
1. it may be like scanning but i thought we dont need every ability on both sides... its not about knowing that someone is there but what he is doing, eg building a pg.
2. just make them shootable from the start so if you see them you can destroy them, but you have to give away that your there?
