Spammable crouching has to go!

Well, as the one that actually started this thread I have no idea why the so called ADAD spam even came into question as supposedly being the same thing as crouch spamming in the first place. I do NOT equate them in the slightest.

ADAD "spam", or as I refer to it as strafing, has been part of multiplayer FPS games for as long as such have existed. The difference in PS2 between strafing (which I do not have a problem with) and crouch spam is that one comes with explicitly stated cone of fire bloom penalties (i.e. it costs you to move constantly as to avoid enemy fire) and the other comes not only with NO penalty of any sort but actually comes with bonus accuracy on top of it, which contradicts practically all design choices in the game in regards to movement and firing when on the move.

And crouch spamming (basically standing on one spot and mashing the crouch key or even using a macro to do it for you) is probably the most effective way to avoid getting hit against anyone that aims for your head in CQC - not only does it take place instantaneously as far as the server is concerned, it makes the enemy miss completely - not just not being able to score headshots - he misses his shots completely. In a game where TTK is half a second without scoring headshots and half that when scoring such.

It's a BS "mechanic", which as far as I'm concerned is unintentional, and it promotes nothing positive. Thus this thread.

I totally agree with you on the ADAD side of things.

Crouching is also a skill to be learned however. If you go up against a player aiming at your head ducking is good any other player its a disadvantage as you will just give them "free head shots". This ADDS skill as you need to know WHEN to use it.

Here is a simple rule for you from Iridar with annotation by me:

Rule 1 : if you change stances while firing (from standing to ducking), and your Current CoF is bigger than Minimum CoF for your new stance (the second you press the fire button), your Current CoF will stay big until you stop firing.

So if you start to fire, then crouch your CoF will remain the same until you stop firing! If you stop firing.... you loose!

You may find Iridar's guide useful in the future:

http://iridar.net/planetside2/weapons/weapon-mechanics/

He is an exceptional Planetmans and keeps the info up to date with changes!

PS - If you stand on one spot and crouch toggle you are going to get OBLITERATED!

Oh yes, this comment surely has convinced everyone that I'm the immature troll here.

Definitely a higher use of macroing. As soon as the player fires their weapon, a synchronous pattern of crouching is observed.

I can under stand crouching up front and spreading out in crowded areas to a better open up lanes of fire for teammates. Or crouching behind waist high objects essential making use of cover. Tldr.. Force players to stop shooting for a few seconds between crouch and standing. That should solve this dumb nonsense. Also we need inertia for infantry. Adad never should have been a thing.. It breaks the laws of physics. Honestly though. If we didnt have to deal with this speedymcspeederton bulletdodge nonsense and the implants which also buff this nonsense. Things would then be in a much better place. Or atleast different. The consequences of a change like this would basically nerf bullet dodge ninja players of all classes resulting in an increase of deathes for ppl who already exploit it.

Force the full crouch movement, and slightly increase the amount of animation frames. This would stop people tapping (which btw makes the char look like they are crouching for a second, even though it barely dips the person's fov at all), slow down the speed of the crouch (so they don't go from standing to nearly instantly ducked), and would add a very real risk vs. reward to crouching apart from fighting against players that almost never aim for the head anyway.

Some of the people on here seem to miss the problem with ADAD spam. You have to understand the Latency system for that.

When you are playing an online multiplayer game, the game constantly sends data to the server, the server then sends that data to the players themselves. There is a "gap" between the packets though, and if the games only made players move when you receive a packet the game would look incredibly stuttery. To solve this the developers create an algorithm that predicts the movements of a player based on their last input and executes that during the gap between packets. Then when the next packet comes into your PC it'll compare that packet with what it predicted and correct it based on the packet received. This usually happens so fast that the player is unaware this happens until a connection spike occurs and players start to rubberband across your screen.
There is a problem with this method though: Data send rises exponentially with the amount of players online. This is why practically no game rises above 64 player matches. It goes like this:
With 2 players the server receives 2 packets about their location and sends 1 to each player, 2 packets total.
With 3 players the server receives 3 packets about their location and sends 2 to each player, 6 total.
With 4 players the server receives 4 packets about their location and sends 3 to each player, 12 total.
With 64 players the server receives 64 packets about their location and sends 63 to each player, 4032 total.

PS2 does have more than 64 player matches, and it uses the Latency System to do it. As far as I'm aware the system works by simply waiting and gathering data, and sending a single large packet to each player at larger intervals than normal games do. This allows us to play with 100v100v100 matches in a single base without the server frying instantly.
This does mean that there is more time that the algorithm has to predict your movements between those packets. And if someone does a quick ADAD spam, the algorithm will predict the player's movements much farther to the left and right than happens in reality. Then when the correcting packet arrives the mismatch is so great that the player basically teleports to his "real" location, after which your game predicts his movements far too wide again. This way the ADAD spammer can make himself much harder to hit as his hitbox and position seem to teleport constantly. Add in crouch-spamming and it's a complete nightmare.

The solution, as always, is to simply add some more punitive systems when someone abuses it. They quite literally already have some in the game. To prevent bunny-hopping your game will make you slow down and less responsive as long as you spam the jump button. This could easily be attached to any movement or stance change that happens more than X times per second, like ADAD+crouch spamming. Alternatively giving players more momentum between changing directions could also solve this problem. And another alternative is to add COF penalties for this type of behaviour just like too much air-time does.

Crouch spam is all a diversion. ...a scape goat.... nothing more.

The actual mechanical advantage it gives in Interpolation is very negligible with just how much of the hitbox detecting is fully clientside and lag-Compensated in this game. What it is actually cover for is more insidious behaviors such as packet manipulation that confuses the server, and even the eyeballs of veteran players with lag switches, trigger bots, and VPN'ing exploits that are almost as effective as just hacking their hitboxes in a Peer-to-Peer shooter

Devs need to be forced to address the root causes and incentives of the BAD gunplay in this game instead of always being harangued over the SYMPTOMS of it

Let's not forget most of these veterans are also extraterrestrial life forms; with 8 arms, a dozen eyes and 6 brains - a huge advantage - they can play multiple characters at once.


You're a little too paranoid dude. I would rather they fix the netcode and upgrade the servers, I'm sure half of these "cheats" would then disappear.

Not correct.
For the crouching player it's instant and if done super briefly causes no significant change in crosshair placement. However the model will exhibit a partial or full crouch.

However, crouching while already firing will maintain the CoF/Bloom of the standing stance. Same thing happens with ADS. If you ADS while already firing it maintains the hipfire CoF/Bloom.

The server has no control over over this, it's done on the client side.

Using a macro that flutters the crouch key would leave you in a permanent state of standing CoF/Bloom, not a permanent state of crouching CoF/Bloom.

Doing a manual crouch combined with a trigger lift could allow a ducking CoF/Bloom reduction, but you'll have an increase in TTK from the lift. Usually at such a point in an engagement the standing CoF/Bloom will do just fine so not much benefit to the trigger lift.



As for the rest of the post:

Let it be.

Legit players that have gotten good at tight ducking during a 1v1 have practiced and earned the advantage they have.

People that crutch on ducking macros are going to bump into their own self imposed skill ceiling. Basically anyone "cheating" (maybe technically not, but I consider it cheating) is never really going to get good at the game. So screw 'em. Let them be losers.

People just really good at squats.

But yeah crouch spam is ridiculous looking and in practice.

This is actually a legitimate problem I've also been noticing. Though is pales in comparison to survivalist and sidewinder or athlete combined with mouse and keyboard sidestep spam on console. So I don't notice it nearly as much. As with many of the other "maneuver" based issues, It generally favors the vanu a bit more do to their tighter then average hip-fire spread on their guns. But I've light assaults and engineers on NC do it as well. generally though to the other classes of NC and TR its not a viable tactic as hip-fire for most of their guns in insufferable.

I agree - crouch and ADAD spam are so cheesy and could be easily fixed in one of two ways (or ideally both).

1. Add a small amount of momentum to infantry movements, so that it's impossible to instantly change direction, or at the very least impossible to change direction, then immediately switch back.

2. Add a COF penalty comparable to jumping or running if you change direction or crouch/stand up in rapid succession.

One of the best games I have played for infantry movement mechanics was Lost Planet. Jumping, crouching, changing direction, getting hit by a grenade blast (which would actually knock you off your feet) all felt much more realistic. This game pre-dated PS2 by 6 years.

There are so many exploitable game mechanics that make this game frustrating and act as a crutch for those vets who have learnt to exploit them, or employ macros to do so. For some reason the devs seem unwilling or unable to fix or change them.

(HA "I win shield" and no damage flash/harasser roadkill cheese would also go into this category.)

As some have mentioned I wish they would somehow address the implants too but it’s probably too late for that. I know I feel guilty when I hyper speed strafe around people but what can ya do. :/

When I played on Connery there was this Australian ******, InFlames something, crouch spamming at 400 ms, I ran into one of his videos on YouTube, seriously, every Australian should be banned from this game.

There is a discussion from 7 years ago.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/1eaz8y/whats_the_official_stance_on_adad_spam/
Apparently they already introduced it long ago and people were complaining that it felt sluggish and not fun so they reverted it to the instant ADAD Spam that we had for years.
They could easily fix it - there is the sideinder Implant which reduces strafe accelleration, max also has slow accelleration but it seems they want(ed) to have this behaviour.
Probably they could easily have found a solution where ADAD spam is still there and somewhat responsive like making the standard ADAD direction change accelleration speed the one from the sidewinder implant (Your strafe speed is increased by X%, but accelerating and decelerating while strafing takes twice as long). That way it wouldnt feel as instantly as it is now but still be acceptable by many of the community. It is just a matter of fine tuning in my opinion.

Conan exiles tried such a thing too with sprint accelleration and people hated it but in the end it was just a fine tuning thing to make most people happy.

the blame lies at the feet of the game company, they killed briggs with that connection issue fiasco and then after some australians made new charaters on connery they let people transfer off briggs killing the server in the process.

anyone who blames a nationality when they encounter someone from another country with high ping is an idiot.

DBG hurt australian players more then you are getting hurt by australians that can actually play on connery with high ping.