Literally unplayable

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Stotan, Nov 29, 2020.

  1. Stotan

    What is this crouching meta? Please make it stop.
  2. JustGotSuspended


    What it is: as their opponent start to land a headshot, or is about to fire at their heads, the player crouches, throwing off the aim long enough to (hopefully) kill their opponent.

    Counter: aim better, or if you have trouble following the head, aim for the center, let the crouching do the rest. You also have the option of crouching yourself.
    • Up x 1
  3. RabidIBM

    I don't think he's talking about the sort of crouching you would expect in any FPS. It is currently possible "crouch spam" faster than anyone can push the button, and it doesn't seem to mess up the spammer's aim to do it. The game needs a limit on how frequently players can crouch and uncrouch.

    One of the earlier Battlefield games had a similar issue with a weapon which was a balanced semi-auto rifle, with no built in limit on how fast it could fire because people can only click a mouse as fast as they could pull a trigger...people made macros to make it fire faster than automatic weapons. This is like that, but with left control instead of mouse click.
    • Up x 4
  4. JibbaJabba


    I've seen this.

    Let them do it. They suck and the artificial mechanic is ineffective at saving them.

    Know what is deadly effective? Just a single flicker of duck around 500ms into the engagement. See what JustGot' mentioned above.

    This is right about when a skilled player will have gone from generally aiming at you to squaring up on the head. That duck will save you from a triple/quad dink and buy some time for you to pull ahead in the engagement with headshots of your own.

    A macro cannot substitute for skill.
    • Up x 1
  5. JustGotSuspended



    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  6. zelekk

    Oi boys we found macro user here.
  7. Liewec123

    Oooh it absolutely can, for a test a few months back I made one macro to rule the all,
    When i held this button It spammed crouch 20x per second, it spammed ADAD (with WSWS in there too)
    And the most OP part is due to the speed of the crouching and standing, my screen barely moved,
    (But everyone else sees the full animation) After a few kills I deleted that unholy abomination.

    But I still see plenty of tryhards using stuff like this,
    I might have recorded one the other night, i'll need to check when I get on my pc!
    • Up x 3
  8. MonnyMoony

    ADAD and crouch spam is also known to glitch the hitbox, so even if you can keep up and aim - it doesn't mean your shots will land.

    ADAD and Crouch spam should have the same effect on the weapons cone of fire as running and/or those movements should be given some momentum to prevent the glitching.
    • Up x 2
  9. Towie

    It is clear that gaming hardware is getting very much more sophisticated as time goes on and game producers need to compensate for their potential use (abuse).

    Gaming keyboards and mice now have very sophisticated macro capabilities - an early AHK script for PS2 tried to compensate for the recoil on guns, although such a thing is effectively banned by DBG/RPG/whoever they literally cannot tell that you would be using the equivalent in a macro.

    Game producers in general need to take this into account when designing the game mechanics. It's only a matter of time before someone produces hardware with AHK like capabilities.

    Things like, let's put a dorito on top of a target and have your shot go exactly to the center of the screen and lets introduce guns with devastating HS potential (CQC Snipers - yes sir) and let us not change that mechanic for umpteen years is a god send for anyone creating an auto-shoot capability. They need to change it around and often.


    Game producers need to take all of this into account - but it takes time and effort.
  10. That_One_Kane_Guy

    I can think of several names on Connery I would be less eager to face than some blueberry using such a macro.

    20 times per second is absurd to the point where it almost ends up being counterproductive: not only will your head hitbox still spend a large chunk of time exactly where the bad guy is aiming, but there is now a non-zero chance to award random headshots to any players only going for the body. The ADAD spam has a more significant effect but that requires timing to get the most out of it in which case you're better off doing it manually anyways.

    Skill + Timing + Improvisation >>> The 1 Button Macarena
    • Up x 2
  11. Gutseen

    Mostly bull ****.

    By abusing animation cycling you can literally bug out your hitbox to the point of not registering shots and glitching your movements.

    Plus account ping, packet prioritization and RoF tied to frames per second.

    It's a ****sgow
    • Up x 1
  12. JustGotSuspended


    It's funny, because it's only noobs complaining about this. I maybe saw a dude using a macro like that maybe...once? And maybe a few dudes trying to spam the crouch key like it was going to save them from being obliterated.

    Seriously, people complain so much about this nonsense. Very few people do it, and it's useless to them anyways because it doesn't do anything. It's something that should be timed once, throw of the dude's headshots for a split second, and net you the kill. You can't macro your way into skill, otherwise everyone would do it. Using macros like this will just make you look silly and make killing you even easier
  13. JibbaJabba



    I would need some supporting evidence on this. The handful of people I've seen obviously using some macro (twitching faster than humanly possible) were sill easy to kill. Don't recall if I head or body shotted them but I do recall them being notably dead and getting a V5 and a double duck over their body.
    • Up x 1
  14. That_One_Kane_Guy

    Fascinating rebuttal.

    Were you going to be showing any evidence of this being the case rather than simply another instance of Clientside being Clientside or someone's network connection being crap? Or is this another one of those "everyone knows this" scenarios that conveniently crops up whenever proof is asked for extraordinary claims?

    I'll go out on a limb here and suggest that these are far more likely to be the cause of any hit detection issues you're experiencing than the crouch button.
  15. DarkStarAnubis

    I have seen sometimes (but rarely) people crouching/bobbing with some kind of rhythmic pattern (which makes immediately think to a macro).

    What I have seen more often is people being able to absorb an ungodly amount of damage without dying. Whether that is client side , latency or else I cannot join.

    auto-targeting macros can be spotted quite easily by looking at the stats. Usually when I am triple-HS by someone miles away with an SMG or any other short-range weapon I usually check and eventually report.
    • Up x 1
  16. Scatterblak

    The bobbing is less effective, methinks...

    • Up x 2
  17. AlcyoneSerene

    Came across one blatant crouch-spam macro 'player' on Connery, lost engagements both times as their aim appeared unaffected while my headshots which should have landed didn't register as such.

    Good players don't need this, but worthless ____ shouldn't be able to abuse a macro or other faulty mechanic to such effect. Spamming crouch really fast should incur the same CoF penalty as jumping or running to stop the nonsense.

    This stuff is legal too (unless that changed), as it does not simulate multiple key presses, but just one. I tried asking devs about this with respect to another mechanic but haven't received a conclusive answer and was just left hanging; the point here is, game mechanics should already be designed so that macro use does not provide advantages wherever possible.
  18. Botji

    I feel everyone defending this are missing the main points that are:

    1. It looks like ****.
    2. It can mess with the netcode, game is predicting where you are moving to reduce the impact of latency and usually its fine but sometimes the dude literally sinks under the floor.
    3. It does impact combat because you dont know when or if someone is going to crouch and it looks like they are crouching or if they will crouch and it will look like they teleported.
    4. It kinda works.

    Crouching should be used to get a lower view, smaller target etc not juke the heck out of the netcode to make it look like the servers are on fire and the game is glitching out. Sure its usually not that effective but sometimes it is and that is why people do it... you have to be kinda silly to think a lot of people are doing it for no reason or gain.

    I am fairly sure the reason why we lose speed when jumping a lot is entirely done to stop people from hopping around all the time and make the game not look like a circus. Crouch spamming is the same only in the reverse direction and should honestly also be fixed with a similar fix.

    Perhaps if you crouch you lose -50% of your move speed(after standing up again) and introduce a 1 second delay where you cant crouch again or even lock you into staying crouched for 1 second. It would have little impact on 'normal' use but make the crouch spam kinda pointless or even detrimental just as jumping is.
    • Up x 1
  19. That_One_Kane_Guy

    While I don't disagree, a valid argument this is not.

    The list of things that mess with this game's netcode is not short, and crouching is hardly at the top of it. Improving the connectivity will yield far more productive results than chasing symptoms.

    That's the whole point. We can talk about the speed of the animation all day long, but the intent will remain regardless. Crouching to throw off an opponent's aim is a tactic as old as the online FPS.

    I don't think anyone here is claiming that it doesn't. The disagreement is over whether spamming crouch either manually or via a macro does is as effective (let alone moreso) as doing so deliberately. The video above shows a very good example of why it isn't.

    People are stupid. Expecting something to be effective simply because a lot of people do it is a very slippery slope. It's equally possible to claim that because "everyone" says it's effective, people blindly use it without checking whether it's actually beneficial or not.

    I honestly wouldn't mind if they made changes to crouch speed and spammability, I just don't think it's going to make a big difference to the people complaining about it here. IMO investing that time and effort into tightening up the netcode and improving connections will end up achieving the same effect overall and be far more productive for everyone.
  20. Botji

    For someone that wouldnt mind it being fixed you sure made up some almost half decent reasons for why it shouldnt be fixed.
    You deserve a cookie for the joke in the end though, thats some serious humor comparing adding a line or two of code to limit crouch spamming with improving the netcode as if they were anywhere near each other in scope and amount of work hours!