Are the new vehicle weapon convergence changes intentional?

On the test server, for all vehicles, all weapon fire now originates from the operator's crosshair, rather than the weapon itself. This means Vanguards, Prowlers, and Lightnings now no longer shoot the wall to their right when they're hugging it a little too close, Magriders can fire from a hull down position, Reavers and other aircraft no longer have to compensate for their gun offset, and the Scythe now fires one big centered rocket instead a pair of off-center ones.

I asked this in another thread, but I figured I'd make a thread about it because I really do want this answered, are these changes intentional?

Probably.

Reaver pilots have complained for a long time about the gun offset, People have called the skyguard worthless for months because they couldn't figure out how to hit infantry with it, Prowler gunners have been frustrated to no end by their gun dispersion, and...

Dual photon pods are going to become even more of a massive pain.

Really?
That would be convenient, I always miss my first shot at infantry with the AP cannon because I (without fail) forget to swing the damn thing to the left. But somehow the idea of weapon models not being the actual weapons makes the game feel cheaper.

I'm torn.

we have bloody nannites.

i'm sure the faction engineers can figure out a gunsight that compensates for offset.

Honestly, I wouldn't miss if they got rid of it completely. Not just vehicles, infantry too.

It's the reason the MCG got so drastically changed and go turned into an ugly cake-mixer. If mechanics like these prevent you from making an awesome weapon concept, I say let it go.

Actually, it seems they've already phased it out from several infantry weapons, like the shotguns and SMGs. they're all seen being held at hip level

Really the only thing they need to add now is a plumbline showing what way the shots will drop and then i can switch to the Supernova FPC and never look back...

Yeah. It's funny, I'm usually more concerned about practical functionality over visuals but there's something disappointingly 'gamey' about this at first mention.

your right we need this now > : D
i look forward to all the designs opened up by not having the bullets come directly from the barrel... o, well...

Oh, thank God, they're finally doing something right.

Yes, it's "gamey". It also solves several major pains in the ***.

TBH I would have preferred they just... gave us better sights and/or weapon positions. I guess they figured this was easier or something? Or are trying to find out, idk. Of all the potential solutions this one I really like the least.

You want things like people poking their head (or even just the tip of it, depending on the view location) over objects and shooting you while ~95% of them is hidden?

No, I'd expect the view location to be at... wait for it... eye level. Only having the eyes and rifle poking up above cover is usually how these things are done.

lol. Go look at someone ADS: this would mean the top half of their head, and their scope/sights, need be visible. As opposed to at least their shoulders and weapon.

Now they just need to do this for MAXes too so the damn converging arm problem is out of the way.

This can be seen in a few shooters, like Battlefield 3 where you can get shot by a guy whose gun is completely hidden behind cover, but it doesn't matter because the bullets originate from the head anyway.
It would be interesting if we had properly calibrated crosshairs for the various vehicle guns so that this would not be necessary, although it would mean that the Magrider is again shooting the ground in front of it whenever there's even a slight bump and Prowlers have trouble when cornering buildings.

This change would be, I won't say major but really welcome, buff to the magrider's main cannon against infantry in an open ground.

It happens in most (all?) of them IME. I was actually kinda impressed they didn't do it that way here, but the auto-convergence was sadly horrible enough to make up for it. I'd much rather manually compensate, and have sights designed to support that. If they'd gone with that in the first place it would have been a pretty unique (as far as I know) and interesting system, where there's more challenge to aiming but because it isn't constantly making adjustments to itself, you can actually learn it rather than it being unpredictable.

Having it regress to making bullets appear centre-screen just feels cheap somehow, and re-introduces irritating problems like being shot by people who are almost totally protected. Especially with no capacity for bullets to penetrate any terrain. I'd much rather have a slightly-easier system that takes a few days to get used to (considering we probably all try to aim like this anyway, but get it screwed up by auto-convergence) and has issues like shooting a wall or rock, than a really easy system that avoids the wall and rock, but results in cheap deaths that didn't look physically possible, from people it's unreasonably hard to return fire at.

EDIT: not to mention, the few designs that are more problematic (magrider, prowler, reaver) could easily be solved by slight alterations to the design. Mags could have their gun like 1ft higher, prowlers slightly left/right of centre (or even shift the view between the guns, which would feel a bit funny whilst driving at first, but I don't think it would be difficult to use) and reavers likewise receiving a higher gun.

Oddly enough the one case you'd expect auto-convergence - the MAXes aiming their weapons in to hit a nearer target - doesn't seem to happen.

You mean that they have actually made the rounds go where the crosshair is? About time!
What is the point in the crosshair if is not showing you where your shooting?
It always drove me crazy that my rounds don't go where the crosshair is..

This. Convergence is something I've gotten useful and it adds some variety to combat. SOE should just move the Reaver gun into its nose and remove the compensation.

Er... not quite. The rounds come from the crosshair, i.e. the player's view, rather than the weapon. It's slightly different from merely sending them to the correct place.

Basically vehicles shoot things with their faces now.

They should of just moved the cross-airs to where the fire comes from instead of making bullets magical come out of cockpits and the middle of a tank tracks.

This is just going to look completely stupid when it goes live.