Gunplay is lame and underwhelming

I've always found deterministic recoil patterns to be pretty stupid. Like Rust does with their AK47. I would prefer the RNG..

How many hours do you have in the game and how many guns have you used? There is a spectrum from SMGs all the way to say the Gauss SAW which has ZERO CoF on the initial shot.

As for the overall point about skill, sorry.

The mechanics here add another layer of skill. Many of us grew up popping hitscan railgun shots while airborne from a Quake jump pad. That takes skill. Planetside requires the same plus a layer on top of it. Putting a dot on the target isn't enough. Now you have to compensate for bullet travel time (adjusted per gun and attachments) use a burst duration that's appropriate to both gun and the range it's being used, and hit the target's head because a body shot will just get you killed.

I think your argument here is that there is RNG in the Cof. Yes there is, but that's not what we are trying to master with skill. There is no RNG in bloom. If you fail to master the latter, the former is going to get you.

If your request for help is punctuated with a statement telling everyone not to give you the answer, you might be shocked to learn that the help you receive is not very...helpful.

More or less. The latest Battlefield game made a big deal about having zero bloom, which they did, but added strong random recoil which ended up in the same place. It's all mechanics designed to keep you from simply holding M1 over the target through one form or another.

MOA

This is incorrect. Firearm technology has improved orders of magnitude over hand cannons and arquebus, but even with the best rifled barrels reducing potential shot deviation to fractions of a milimeter at most, barrels overheating do cause serious problems with accuracy and handling, as well as not ideally handling the weapon in the first place. CoF can be seen as an abstraction of a lot of things that hamper ideal gun us IRL, but are too inconvenient to implement and feel as a player.

It's not a perfect system by any means, but it encourages you to burst and do as much damage with as few shots as possible or have a teammate focus fire, discouraging constant aggression and giving a massive buff to standing still in a game where you otherwise would have no reason not to move. It ties into the game well enough.


It might be a good idea to tighten CoF bloom a little and maybe have a look at the randomness that is horizontal recoil. It feels that a lot of firearms become inaccurate a little too fast.

It does take a level of knowledge and mechanical proficiency, so it's definitely a skill. PS2 has an inverse risk/reward system where you're rewarded a lot for playing easy mode. It's very much a game of "Fight smart, not hard".

Ah yes, how could I forget I need to draw a 7 with my mouse every time I want to fire an AK?

Deterministic recoil patterns indeed are stupid. Those are for plebs with low processing power anyway.

I'm saying that the wide CoF + RNG sucks because there's only one thing you can do about it: burst. And bursting significantly ups your TTK in a game that already has high TTKs.

In my opinion, becoming able to deal with random recoil rather than CoF+RNG takes more skill.

Also: if present day manufacturing processes can reduce theoretical shot groups to fractions of millimeters, why can't Auraxis's future processes reduce them even further? Maybe CoF can be in the mix one way or another, but is it really necessary to increase it like 2^31 pi radians per shot? (obvious exaggeration, but sometimes I really feel like saying that)

The devs should just make an NSX weapon that fills the niche me and some other players are talking about in a balanced way. Like, no CoF but some other drawbacks like super slow aim down sights walking speed or something idk

NSX Tanto is as close as you'll get, no matter if you hipfire or ADS and no matter how you move, starting CoF is zero. It does have above average bloom in return, but it's more accurate than any full-auto gun in the game for the first 5 shots.

This is an interesting topic, as NC has railguns that should be pinpoint accurate. Whatever VS managed to scrounge from aliens would also probably be better.

Actually there is something far better but only Vanu cultists are allowed to use it:
https://planetside.fandom.com/wiki/VE-C_Horizon

the one and the only zero CoF and zero Bloom weapon in PS2...

They do. Those shot groups are for bolt action rifles. In Planetside you can take a bolt action and shoot a shot group of zero.
For mil-spec battle rifles 4 MOA is considered acceptable. There are carbines in this game more precise than that.
Front-line rifles can be as poor as 7 MOA. Worse than some pistols in this game.

Your point? A longer TTK means you need to be in a fight for longer. This means that lucky hits mean less and skill becomes a larger factor. It also means that you need more tactical capabilities such as the ability not to engage too large groups solo.
This is good in a game like PS2, as it prevents a single player from entering from an unexpected position and mowing down the entire room because of the low TTK. As interesting as a UT type MMOFPS would be, it would neither fit PS2's overall more tactical gameplay and it would also not play nice with the latency system.

Fortunately if we look at facts you can easily see this isn't true at all. There are plenty of permutations where dealing with COF+RNG takes way more skill than pure random recoil. The simplest way to verify this is to compare a game with very low random recoil per shot to PS2 or other COF-based games. The method of recoil also matters, like PS2's variations between horizontal and vertical recoil per weapon, and even sub-variations between the amount of times a recoil is allowed to jump left or right, the distance etc.

Neither COF nor random recoil require more skill by default. With COF however you quickly require more knowledge of not just how to aim and burst, but also how distance changes the amount of shots per burst and tally the amount of hits to determine if it is worth the risk of continueing a burst or stopping. That is a far better curve than random recoil.

You can run&gun at accuracies that professional soldiers would dream of while taking fire. On top of that you say you prefer games like UT where you are jumping and firing some of the most unconventional sci-fi weapons conceived. I find that the realism card is often only played in order to try and justify a dislike, only to conveniently ignore all realism that would destroy the things they like.

If you like guns this much you should join the army.

Okay this is a long post so it's gonna get a long reply.

• I'm not necessarily complaining about the high theoretical base TTK. I'm saying that CoF+RNG makes the already high TTK higher than it really needs to be. If low TTK was all it took to invalidate all tactics, then every war would just be a war of attrition and no army would need tactics. But as we all know, low TTKs do NOT, in fact, invalidate tactics. In fact, unforgiving austere situations greatly increase the need for tactics to turn the balance of probabilities in your favor.
• Why not reward the guy that was sneaky, patient, and careful enough to sneak up on a whole room of noobs with some serious alpha damage? It takes significant effort and skill to do that sometimes. This bullet point is totally a question for you.
• I can see that CoF+RNG adds an extra skill into the mix; namely trigger discipline. But is the magnitude of the skill required for trigger discipline necessarily greater than the sum of the magnitudes of the skills that go into managing difficult pure random recoil? I'm saying if we could put a number on trigger discipline and a number on random recoil, I think the number attached to (moderate recoil + trigger discipline) would be lower than simply having (harsh recoil). If you want a frame of reference, try out the R-99 SMG in Apex.
• Tbh, again not trying to make fun of you or anything, but I don't see any facts where you mentioned facts. Just opinion. You're totally welcome to correct me and clarify.
• Random recoil does indeed create a cone like effect though sometimes. Try 3 round bursts in other games. There are definitely random groupings then.
• I never mentioned UT at all. I only mentioned Apex.
• There's a saying I heard once: "You don't rise to an occasion, you fall back to your level of training." That said, professional infantry spend the thousands of hours us keyboard warriors spend gaming, actually doing combat drills. They train to be able to operate in combat. I'm pretty sure they don't suck in combat as much as you think. Why? Well I'm not a soldier, but I play airsoft and I do my drills. I can aim reasonably well while getting shot at. BUT I will admit, I'm not getting shot at with real bullets, so idk if it's the same. Look, I'm not going to pretend to know everything about real soldiers, but all I can say, again, is I'm pretty sure professional top tier infantry doesn't suck at shooting under duress. Prove me wrong if you want, but you better have legit sources, not just opinion.
• excuse me, but I played the realism card with respect to how an actual firearm works. I don't think it was out of place.

TTK is rather high in PS2 considering a 30% accuracy. It makes a 500ms theoretical TTK at least three times longer. In my limited experience theoretical TTK does matter ONLY in "in your face" duels otherwise people are killed by experience, positioning, situational awareness and ultimately by the weapon. Weapon is last IMHO but we always put it first.

yeah its bizarre they mix in 1hk and other very low ttk weapons in a game that's more oriented to offer longer general ttks.

I care less. Mine will be shorter.

To a point, lower TTK favors the better player as longer engagements diminish initial positional advantage. Dragging it out would indeed result in more attrition type gameplay.

Think seriously about what you're asking for though. CoF & Bloom matter with range. If you remove CoF / Bloom then any decent player today that can drop someone at 20m will drop them at 100m just as quickly. The game will become utterly stupid.

I'll field this question. We already have this reward.

Aim for the head and the alpha damage is there. 3-4 bullets does the trick. Few guns below 50m would even need their bloom reset before then. The first noob paradoxically will be the hardest as his head model is reduced with his back to you.

Not to mention the fact that if you land a headshot from behind the head flinches forward and down effectively preventing/making headshots harder for a bit.

the exceptions are 1hk weapons and/or laggy players and pre-firing.

The game is nice as it typically gives a fair chance for everyone to win the engagement and react, thus possibly win the engagement or at least learn from it to improve in the future.

Just a few things that are a bit out of place.

Medium/Long range oriented fully automatics should have a lot less bloom, same for gen 1 battle rifles

Haha I actually auraxed that gun and love it. The only gripe I have about it is its magazine size. And that it starts to suffer at range. Which is pretty much standard, but I can't clear a room with it. And I'm stuck to a certain range with it. I'm primarily using LMGs now on my engineer.

Dude prolly fires the kindred until it slows to a stop

First of all, you are comparing real life to games, in real life the minimum respawn time is 7 days although some play roguelikes and simply have to reroll their character. However in games you can most of the time respawn in minutes and with full gear without logistics required.
Low TTK =/= austere situations. The fact that in most games you get to respawn with full gear actually diminishes the requirement for tactics. You can spend several tries to get one good flank, and that one good flank is then far more powerful than the failed tries it took.

What makes you think you aren't already rewarded? You are acting as if the only justifiable reward for a flank is easy-mode murder of everyone in a room. You get rewarded by getting the first choice and first strike in such engagements.
In PS2 I'm the guy that does the sneaky, patient and careful. Although often you don't need to be as you can just run the chances and brute-force yourself into a flanking position. Then when you do get into a flanking position because TTK's are longer you need something special I call "tactics" to pick your target(s). You can't empty the room unless there's only a few people there so you are going to need some to get the best out of the situation, what are you going to do?
Kill the Medic(s)? Or the Engineers? Or do you pick a firing line that won't be seen and pick off people in the hopes you aren't noticed in the chaos of a fight? Do you pick off one or two players and then back off, hoping to lure some and kill them as they come looking for you? Do you try and C4 the MAX's from behind with the risk of getting killed before you get there?

You are trying to make it seem like COF+RNG only adds one skill to the mix while conveniently ignoring that recoil only forces the player to constantly re-aim for their target.
Trigger discipline with COF+RNG has to be based on something. Its meaningless without knowledge of why you need to use it. Range, the weapon of choice, your opponents weapon of choice (which helps you pick the right range if possible), how fast your COF grows compared to the pixel size of your enemy, keeping an eye on total hits and probable health of your opponent, discrete chance calculation for hits with current COF size and future COF size.
Compare that to "got to keep the reticule on your target" and recoil doesn't seem that big of a deal.
The thing you seem to ignore is that recoil is less about skill and more about mechanics. To give you an example: Try and hit a Harasser with a zero-drop dumbfire rocket. In CQC it's pretty easy since the rocket just moves in a straight line and there's little the Harasser can do to make it harder for you. However you quickly reach a point that it doesn't matter how good you are, the Harasser can simply dodge your aim no matter what you do.
Recoil works similarly. You can increase recoil to ridiculous sizes, but you quickly reach a point where it's not about the skill to compensate for random recoil patterns but simply about the RNG, or the speed with which a player can fire single shots and take aim again.

You don't think that stating how you can have a variety of possible situations are facts?
Situation A: Low recoil versus a high COF based game. Which requires more skill?
Situation B: High recoil versus a low COF based game. Which requires more skill?
Both situations are factual possibilities for COF and recoil based games. Since situation A means the COF based game requires more skill to pull off it invalidates your idea that recoil is always more skillful. On top of that as I just mentioned recoil quickly becomes less about skill.

Your point being? That random recoil can simulate COF a little as well?

You are right, that was Gunner.

Yes they don't suck at combat, but they don't want to die either. Basic tactics is to sit behind cover, because cover is good, and fire shots at your enemy from safe positions. Even in such situations it on average takes hundreds to thousands of bullets to kill a single enemy combattant. You don't run&gun as that reduces your accuracy even more and it means you've given up your positions of safety. Someone else does the firing from a secure and stable firing position while you move up, then you cover them while they move up. Assuming you even move up at all and don't call in mortars or artillery while you keep your enemy pinned behind cover.

My point exactly: You only played it in respect to "actual" firearms and ignored how real-life would make many more demands of the gameplay and force the game to be completely different. In fact Apex Legends would be farther from real-life than PS2 would be in terms of realism when firing.
As for fire-arm realism, even firearms perfectly held in place by machines aren't perfect (because the barrel and bullets aren't perfect) and if you place it in the hands of someone you add another imperfection. This has to be simulated somehow and there are a variety of mechanics and features to do so, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. The road that PS2 went with combining recoil and COF is probably the best idea they had, and has provided some of the best gun gameplay I've seen.