[Suggestion] Redo weapon locking

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by LilianaMonteclaire, Dec 26, 2014.

  1. ronjahn

    I used to have this happen to me, but only in the largest and laggiest of ZERG fights.

    Then I got more experienced and it simply doesn't happen anymore. Most of the suggestions I would make are already posted above me, but this can certainly be avoided by simply playing more carefully when you get that first FF warning.

    One thing that I think needs changing is the way that vehicle FF is calculated, especially when it comes to bumping into friendlies. I frequently try to play CqC canister harasser mixed in with groups of infantry. I can literally get weapons locked for people bumping into me. I also get weapons locked in these scenarios when the game thinks my harasser is sliding/gliding/twitching/glitching or whatever you want to call that magical sensation of moving while sitting in a stationary vehicle. I also get the warnings for driving near people without ever actually killing anyone.

    Harasser wheels seem to suck enemies under them even when you aren't moving.
  2. Takara


    Yesterday...I had my Sundy AMS parked on a bridge. A friendly harasser turboed and clipped the front of my Sundy and instantly EXPLODED! Well I sat about 10 feet away repairing a max...I got grief for them blowing up! I was all :mad: WTF....then simply started to laugh at the ridiculousness of it.
  3. Saool

    In fact, pretty much no-one is. This is not about saying you should never hit an ally. I hit allies, unintentionally all the time. That's not the problem.

    That ^. That is the problem.

    It is not about skill. It's just... obvious common sense! If you keep hitting people again and again and it is adding up you are not learning from your mistakes. One presumes you are continuing to shoot into congested areas with both friends and foes despite a lot of warning that you are hitting friendlies. If I hit friendlies more than twice in the same situation I need to stop. And move. If you are getting locked, over time, you are not adapting to the situation. I really don't know how to comment on that without sounding insulting. To me it's like running face first into a wall and hurting yourself. Then doing it again and again expecting the result the be different despite it hurting every time. It's just baffling.
  4. LilianaMonteclaire


    It adds up over time is the problem, as I said. It wasn't warning notifications seconds apart, but minutes apart due to individual rounds or two from a ton of people in a small room. Basically an hour straight of shooting, where we only pushed them out once for under 5 minutes. Individual bullets added up, not prolonged cases of hitting allies, as I stopped firing as fast as I could. It's just that so many people running around in such a small area, and Aurora Materials being a HORRIBLY designed meatgrinder where flanking the C shaped structure is impossible. due to no doors and having to run outside the base, around the building, and in the door next to their sunderer, in plain sight of their armor the whole time.

    Individual bullets add up in prolonged massive zergs. I'm talking about an extreme case here and I know it. But it's a case nontheless. Moving away means not defending the point. Moving forward into out front line means standing where C4, turrets, and rockets are shelling constantly, which are already causing people to run and scatter. And when they do so, their allies hit them. Running into the upper or lower building means both not being on point, and not accomplishing much, and trying to flank the C structure means death.

    Incidental bullets delivered by shots made with the best of intentions before someone else walks into your shot should not count towards weapon lock, provided you were firing on an enemy, not simply firing. Intentional or reckless injury of teammates is a completely different case than two stray bullets striking an ally who runs through your line of fire before you react and stop.

    Why is this so disagreeable anyway? I don't get it. It wouldn't make intentional teamkilling any more prevalent or easier to do, and it could easily come with an increase in weaponlock speed once you cross this threshold.

    Now that I think about it. Nobodies said why this wouldn't work. Lots of people saying the problem is with me. Nobody saying anything about why my suggestion is bad or the problems it would cause.

    Edit: Takara, I am mentioning personal attacks not because you are insulting me personally, but because you are aiming for me over the points I make for the purpose of refuting my arguments. I do not feel insulted, I feel that the words I place around my points to describe my personal experiences are taking precedent over the points I am trying to make. Of course I cannot control what the people around me do, and of course occasionally they will walk in front of my weapon. If it happens alot in situations where I am blatantly not aiming for allies, and ceasing to fire as soon as I can after they pass into my firing line, to the point where over a significantly extended period of time, it leads to weapon lock, then there is a systemic problem. Both with players running into friendly fire, and with the system punishing someone who could not have possibly reacted in time.

    I would be fine with weapons locking five times as fast and five times as long if safeguards were put in place to prevent accidental or uncontrollable incidents causing credit towards weapon lock. God knows I'd love to see Harasser drivers who hit boost into a croud of their own teammates to get to the enemy base first die on the spot, but incidental damage happens.
  5. Takara


    I just gave up trying to explain. :confused: As you described I was running into a wall :p
  6. Uncle_Lou

    This comes up fairly often... The system is fine; it really is pretty difficult to get a weapons lock in this game unless you are really careless. Use a little common sense - reposition or stop shooting. If you get final warnings, put down your gun and use your med tool or engie tool only for a while.
  7. Movoza

    The point people are making is that even accidental fire can be a reason for grief. Despite your best intentions, you continue to hurt your own team, however slightly, with a certain regularity. The system is meant to punish those who either grief in quick succession, or who continuously damage their friendlies over longer periods of time. In that way, the system worked perfectly.

    You give numbers as an argument. Commendable, but the fact that you keep firing down range where you have a large chance of lesser players walking in your fire says that you should be very careful when you fire or reposition.
    You say that with constant fire you easily hit these people with about 2-3 bullets. Going full auto increases the bullet spread, further increasing the chance of hitting unintentional targets. Burst fire would be better in this scenario. That reduces every chance of accidental hits and if you hit they might not get the full amount of bullets.

    Lastly, you have to think what your friendly fire does. Regardless of the real situation, some people might think it is time to push, or they need some more information about that. You block a good portion of the door with your fire, and shoot half (or more) of their health away. These people can now easily be shot, as they stand in full sight of the enemy firing lines and grenades too. Any push they might try is now already weakened. This happens consistently over the course of you being there until you get weapon locked.

    Despite some accidental friendly fire, it is so consistent it must damage more that just the shields. That is why the weapon lock starts.
  8. LilianaMonteclaire


    You're running into a wall because so far nobody has bothered refuting the majority of the points I make, instead going for the ancedote that helped lead me to my conclusion., and largely refuting it with ancedotes of their own instead of numbers or sound reasoning. Except Movoza, who honestly raises a good point about friendly fire preventing pushing. Which... honestly, I can't think of a good counterargument to short of "remove friendly fire" which people would likely complain about. Reducing friendly fire damage during that tiny buffer window might work, but then you're not properly encouraging people to not step in front of allies guns when they see a weakened enemy or otherwise free kill.

    You shoot down suggestions by saying how the suggestion would negatively impact the game, not by saying the system works. Appeal to Tradition is a fallacy for a reason.

    Restricting it for lockon launchers fired after lockon that hit friendlies I still stand behind, up to and including removing them from friendly fire by having them explode before hitting an ally. Infantry friendly fire preventing pushing though... yeah... that's hard to argue around. Need to think of a way to penalize people for walking in front of allied fire without stopping pushing, or punishing someone who could not react in time to an ally doing so...

    Actually, the best way might be to counterbalance "weapon lock" points, with "Assist" points, for stuff like healing/repairing/Savior kills. Increase weapon lock speed, but make weapon lock something that you can prevent by being a team player.
  9. uhlan

    No offence OP, but you got weapon locked 5 TIMES!!?!?!

    I've been playing since beta and only been weapon locked ONCE...

    ...and that was on purpose playing as recklessly as possible to see how bad my game-play had to get to have that happen.

    I seriously have no idea how some folks play this game.
    • Up x 1
  10. Uncle_Lou

    Hundreds of people manage to play the game every day without being weapon locked due to friendly fire. You were weapons locked 5 times in a short time frame. How is it logical to assume this is a failure of the weapons lock system? You can quote numbers and excuses all you want, but the system is clearly not at fault here.
  11. Slamz

    There is a fine line between intentionally griefing and being so bad at the game that you are accidentally griefing.

    If you get weapons lock, you have crossed one of those lines.

    "B-but, these idiots keep walking in front of me!"

    Your fault. Watch your lane of fire. Pick a different lane or just stop spamming the fire key from so far back.


    I have never gotten weapons lock in PS2 and that's including the occasional intentional TK (including a Sunderer and, individually, most of the passengers -- they really did deserve it, though). You seriously need to re-evaluate your gameplay if you are accidentally getting weapons locked in this game because that's nature's way of telling you that you suck at this game.

    Perhaps you'd enjoy some nice Words with Friends or Candy Crush Saga instead?
  12. LilianaMonteclaire

    Okay. I've had enough of this.

    People. Everyone. This is not how you shoot down a suggestion. The only one here who's really managed to raise a counterpoint is Movoza with their comment of how friendly fire disrupts pushing and anything that makes it even slightly more common makes the game more campy.

    Nobody else has given a single reason as to why my suggestion is bad, and everyone has stated that "You are at fault.". Which doesn't work as an argument because even though I am not a perfect player, I can still cite statistics and numbers that can prove beyond doubt that in extreme scenarios, even pro players could be weapon locked without their own actions having been in the slightest bit wrong. Lockon rockets hitting friendlies due to allies running into it. Vehicles TKing people in incredibly strange ways. Stuff like that. The bar is set high enough that this doesn't happen, but horiffic luck CAN happen.

    Attacking the person making a post, or trying to reduce their credibility is Ad Hominem at its finest. It doesn't matter if you are not directly stating "You suck, go X yourself", you are attempting to attack the person making the point over the point they are making. This would get you thrown out of any reasonable debate (The US senate/politics is not a reasonable debate, so disregard it if you are using it as a baseline).

    If you do not offer counterpoints to someone's suggestion, then you are not arguing against it. Movoza raised a perfectly valid point. Nobody else here has. And nobody else has used anything besides ancedotes to argue their point. "I have not been hit by a car, therefore being hit by a car is not a danger" Is not a reasonable argument. Neither is "I have not been weapon locked, therefore it is fine" if someone can demonstrate extreme situations where it can happen without being your fault, and others, in this very thread, have mentioned that they have had events that contribute towards weapon lock happen to them without them being in control of the event happening.

    .............................If I seriously need to write out another big "This is how you actually debate things" thread, I'm going to be a sad panda.
  13. Uncle_Lou

    I havent seen anything in this thread that could be constituted as an attack on anyone. Just a lot of posts disagreeing that there is a problem with the grief system. I dont find anything wrong with your suggestion other than it is a solution to a non-existent problem. You want numbers to back it up, figure out what percentage of players are weapon locked at any given time. I would bet the number is in the single digits. If they were to change anything with the grief system - and I dont think they need to - I wouldnt mind seeing some way to forgive accidental team damage.
  14. Cyrek

    I usually go medic, engineer or turn my max into bursters if my TK ratio is too hot;
  15. Crator

    I'd rather they spend time working on stuff they've already said they were going to work on instead of this. I don't think it's really a large issue. I've been locked a few times in the past due mainly to explosions from my mines/grenades being way too frequent or unlucky to hit too many friendlies all at the same time with them in addition to my gun hitting friendlies (typically happens in large/prolonged battles).

    Only thing I'd like to see different is they allow you to still heal/repair stuff when weapons locked....
  16. Takara

    You haven't cited any statistic...you have MADE UP a scenario or two in which this COULD possibly happen.

    That said thousands of people play and these so called "Pro" players have not been here supporting the change, or even complaining about how they got weapon locked using lock ons. Statistics is an actual study of sociological happenings explained with numbers in math. It actually requires you to look at the data PS2 collects on the subject, break it down and divide it up. Ultimately there are many many other things that need attention in this game and I feel it's just a waist of time to try and do anything about a non-existent problem.

    Lastly...I have never in any of my posts attacked you. Attacking you would be saying something like "You are bad and should feel bad." I've never said anything of the like. Infact I told you, after looking at your player stats that you weren't that bad of a player. You have a slightly higher than average SPM. And I trust you will simply take some time to learn how to better temper yourself and learn not to weapon lock. But when you weapon's lock...though the fault doesn't always fall only on your shoulders...it was your bullet that hit the guy. Just take a step back.

    When you post a suggestion on the forums to a bunch of strangers, you can't be surprised that some of them are going to answer you with their honest thoughts, and you have to understand that you may not like them. I've had plenty of my own ideas slapped around...*shrugs* It happens :p
  17. Uncle_Lou

    Here is a statistic: According to planetside.tk, I have a higher % of TKs in the last 1000 kills than the OP but I have never had weapons lock and have been playing since beta. So what does that mean?
  18. Problem Officer

    Anyone ever been looking down their scope when this colorful pair of buns just fills the field of view and matrix clenches to catch your bullet?
    Well it looks like it really wants that bullet so I give it another.
  19. LilianaMonteclaire


    There is a difference between personal attacks made to insult/belittle, and disregarding the argument someone is making in favor of arguing that the person making the argument is unqualified to do so. The constant "get better" argument is a case of the latter, since apparently if I am not at X arbitrary skill level where the system does not affect me, I cannot complain the system does not work as well as it could. To draw that to extremes, it's similar to saying I need a university education to complain about public schools being broken in america. I do not feel insulted or belittled, I feel as if people are arguing that that because I have been weapon locked, I am not in a position to discuss the system by which it happens.

    Takara, as for statistics, I'm using average human reaction time, which is a statistic as it does have variance depending on the group of people you test. Also leaning on the known facts that lockon rockets do go stray, flares make them go stray, vehicle hitboxes get really janky at times and cause things like parked galaxies and valkyries murdering people. Mines/C4 explosions taking out your friends who ran in to stand on them. There are alot of things in this game that are out of players control and if a particularly egregious streak of horrible luck happens, it should not be punished.

    Also, development time is not an issue, alot of these can actually very easily be solved with a few lines of code. Gunfire being the hardest one. Now, I'm no expert on code, but stationary vehicle kills can be blocked by only counting killing friendlies if your vehicle is travelling at a certain speed or higher. Lockon rockets being considered not friendly fire capable after being shot at a target it is locked on to. Again, I am probably grossly oversimplifying it, but it is something that can be coded between projects.