[Suggestion] ''Dormant Overshield'' implant

And how does this help your case? That LA needs to jump off before he's dead but not too soon since he'll basically throw the fight. Also the timing between him starting to move off the ledge and start accelerating down will have the same latency but take more time to pull off. So it requires more forethought and a more selective scenario to work.
In the meantime, once more, as long as the HA activates his shield before he's dead he benefits. And unlike the LA he can activate it the moment the attack starts. Ifhe has even the slightest chance to start looking or fire a single shot in retaliation he can and will have his shield active and benefit. Only a fool would try to time it to just before he dies, but thats exactly what you think an LA has the time to do despite it taking more time and skill, and yet you think you cant activate your shield in time?

Also lets assume you ate constantly killed by LA ambushes because your shield doesnt activate on time... Isnt that kind of the only way an LA stands a chance against an equally skilled HA? and here you are asking for the sole way an LA can one up the HA to be nerfed because your HA wasnt an easymode farmmonster enough...

Activate your shield in time or suffer the consequences. If someone blows you apart before you can activate it, congratulate them with outplaying you rather than asking for an easymode buff to your class.

That the HA is the "easiest" class and overpowered sounds, as you present it, as a purely subjective statement given without any form of quantifiable proof. In fact, infiltrators have higher KDR, and I would say being a bio-lab spawnroom medic/engineer is easier, and that a MAX is more powerful. So that is all classes except the LA, which have a jetpack good for getting around the map and giving the ability to circumvent most types of cover and weaknesses of terrain. I'm quite sure that is "easier" than being an HA.

As I've tried to convey both in writing and illustration, that "as long as the HA activates his shield before he's dead he benefits" is untrue. So let me try to prove this as concisely as I can possibly do.

There are three timepoints of interest.

• Time A: the moment the HA dies on his own client
• Time B: the moment the HA dies on the attacker's client
• Time C: the moment the HA dies on the attacker's client minus the duration for the HA's actions to be received on the attacker's client

Ordering these timepoints, time C is before time B which is yet before time A. So C is first, then comes B, lastly comes A; C -> B -> A.

Then let us ask, when is the HA dead? Is it at time A, at time B, or somewhere in between? From the HA's perspective he died at time A, which is the latest timepoint. Meanwhile the attacker would say the HA died at time B, which is a bit before. Lets be generous then, favour the attacker, and say the HA is dead at time B. Can the HA, at any moment before time B activate his shield and be certain of its effect? No, because in the timespan between time C and B his shield-activation will not be received at the attacker's client. It is only before time C that the HA can activate the shield and benefit from it, which is before he is dead from all perspectives plus some additional time.

In-game, this has the effect of HAs activating their shield prematurely, unnecessarily, and being overall glowing bullet sponges instead of the cold-hearted killing machines they ought to be. Of course, I stand by the same good reasons for "buffing" the HA with such a QoL implant, and could not care less about any perceived adverse effects on the other classes. The kills they would not get are those practically given from exploiting a glitch.

There is 1 thing that helps. Enough that you might not even need an instant overshield implant unless your latency is really bad.

I have no direct proof of this but I notice it every single time I'm ambushed and have taken to adjusting my play accordingly.

Based on my observations it seems the server sends the "weapon fire sound" seperate of damage hit calculations and therefore it either receives a higher priority or it bypasses a server check of some kind.

Whatever the reason I always HEAR the shots before I get a hit indicator on my screen. Its not much of a time difference but it is in advance of the visual hit indicator. What I've taken to doing is reacting to the sound of gunfire not the hit indicator. Change direction, activate Overshield or whatever. It's helped a bit imo.

Anyone else noticed this?

First shot might be a miss, reacting then is better than waiting. If the next shot hits you'd have the scenario you describe but I dunno it can be true by itself. Effects are treated separately from hit detection though, at the very least visual ones. Often when I drive a vehicle I see launcher rockets flying towards where my vehicle was some moments ago, and look like their missing but the hit indicator appears in any case.

You seem to be confused about how the latency system works.

Take this picture:

If the HA activates his shield and this activation reaches the server before the death hitmarker arrives, you survive because the server already says that the shield is active, even though the attacker doesn't know yet.

And again, your picture doesn't prove anything. It's one scenario, and while there is a single scenario where the HA needs to be ambushed outside of his view and from CQC so the attacker can land enough shots in a short enough time to kill the victim before he can react, it's not super likely and this counts for all classes not just the HA.

As for your A, B and C, here's how it really works:
Time A: The time the HA dies on his own client
Time B: The time the HA dies on the attacker client
Time (N)C: The time any action is received by the server, where N is the letter for the action
Time D: The time any action is taken by the HA to prevent dying (shield, shooting the opponent, taking cover)
Time E: The time the HA manages to retaliate and kill the ambusher on his own client.

So A happens. Before B happens, C has to happen. But anything the HA does before (A)C happens can save his life. If he activates his shield and made (D)C happen before (A)C his shield will be active and time B is stalled and perhaps even prevented if the HA makes (E)C happen or manages to find cover in (D)C, or perhaps he even made his ambusher perform a cover (D)C!

So much fun if using abbreviations that are supposed to make it easier to understand can make it harder.

Most of this assumes that latency isn't higher than the TTK.

If it is. Say both players have a combined latency of 200ms and the server is at 150ms. It's very possible with HS and a low TTK weapon to kill an opponent client-side before human response time even enters into the equation. That's also assuming the attacker isn't purposefully trying to manipulate his latency to influence such a situation to begin with.

I get why he wants an instant on overshield. It's not so different than your proposed ADAD changes. To prevent exploiting the current netcode. With inherent drawbacks of some kind I could see making an instant active overshield balanced.

I been thinking about this for a bit this morning. What about this for an idea.

Implant: Augmented Reflex.

Upon taking damage from any source Augmented Reflex triggers Special/Class Ability for Xs (duration based on Class)

While using Augmented Reflex the ability can no longer be triggered or deactivated manually.

Total ability resource reduced by Y or in the case of resist shield and nano armor cloak amount of damage resistance reduced by Y.

X and Y to be determined for balance.

Using an implant like this could make for interesting combos. HA Overshield is the obvious choice, but total damage mitigated would be reduced as well as not having direct control over the ability. Other class combos could be fun. Icarus LA hopping from taking damge or the new leap jets they're implementing. Nano Armor Infiltrator vanishing and taking reduced damage whenever you take damage.

Obviously the numbers would need to be tweaked to make it an option to be considered.

I only see that being actually useful for HAs. For other classes it would just be a liability.

Thats not actually an issue with lag entirely, there is a feature that you see things about 1 second after they happen and its suppose to prevent the game from being a camp fest but all it does is ruin 90% of the game and lead to getting killed by someone who hasn't even turned the corner yet on your screen.

Yeah no one who engages in anything but one-sided shoot-outs or sniping would use that on an Infil.
You get hit in the crossfire, while aiming, or anything of the sort: You cloak, locking your weapons...
Or did you forget, that Cloaking means No weapons will work?

LA, you jump into the enemy... or nearby wall, or off a cliff due to a stray bullet.
More of a problem, than useful.
New jets: Oh look slammed into a wall, or away from the ledge, directly into enemy fire while trying to shoot someone.
Good luck shooting someone while launching into the air at the first bullet.
Also means, you can't scale a wall, unless being shot - Which is easier when jet-packing.

Medic: Oh look useful, unless the shut-off time is long, in which case, one bullet, hide, and medic is drained.
Then re-engaged.

Heavy Shields, the only time you can actually take down the target using it, that can aim, is when they fail to trigger it in time.
And still due to client-side, it still wouldn't trigger till the client noticed it was shot.
Also means, any Ambush against a heavy is rendered null, due to automatics, or the implant is near useless due to the very problem it was meant to "solve".

So... yeah... well done...

Imo nano armor infiltrator would benefit the most. Though interrupting shooting to cloak might be too much. I dunno. Maybe the whole idea just sucks.

Is ambush killing a player legit or exploit?

Standard knife kills have a 0.4s TTK yet I've NEVER had anyone move before the 2nd hit unless they were already reacting to something else. Which leads me to believe any TTK of 0.4s or faster is impossible to counter if it's a surprise attack.

Maybe that's just the way it should be?

the point is they are abilities, not equipment. they are there to be manually activated, why should anyone have automated abilities?

so lets see heavy gets a shield that auto activates (i.e ambush immunity)
light assaults get auto jet which cuts their mobility in general for a temporary avoidance
medics get an auto regen devive activation (so basically a lesser version of heavy shield)
infiltrators automatically cloak on taking fire, so they get stuffed if they are trying to gun someone down
engineers, automatically drop a spitfire or hardlight, so ether obstructed line of sight on the enemy or obstructed movement options.

implants exist to change gameplay not automate it.

both players have a combined latency of 200ms.
that means 100ms ping per player.
one ping=a message to the server and then back to the player.
So if player 1 shoots player 2, a message is send to the server (50ms), then the server latency kicks in (150ms, although I think it works differently and shouldn't be directly added to the latency), then the message is send to player 2 (50ms), for a total of 250ms rather than the 450ms that you hoped to achieve.

This is completely different from my ADAD changes, as there is no "abuse" involved in shooting someone quickly. Also to achieve such fast killingtimes you have to be in CQC and doing headshots. If you can manage that, you deserve to murder them before the shield activates.

Yeah! Because an infiltrator would love to suddenly go invisible and not be able to retaliate whenever he's damaged! And the Medic wants his ability to go off whenever he's damaged rather than when he feels it's necessary. And the Engineer wants to be throwing his ammopack upon damage. And the LA wants to suddenly have a larger COF and random movement whenever he's damaged...

The only one that can have any advantage out of this is the HA, and the HA has more than enough advantages.

It's an option. I can think of enough reasons I would want to use aside from overshield I would use it. Maybe not a lot but I would.

I'm also not a trade kill player in most situations.

If someone is shooting me in the back when I'm engaging someone else I attem attemptot to live more than just "hope" to kill my target before I die. Which is exactly what an auto trigger survival implant would be for. But too each their own I guess.

I didn't see you specify anything that says "it activates whenever you take damage from an unseen target" or "it activates when the damage is into your side/rear" or "activates only when you haven't fired recently".
Also, with the implant equipped you would need to start running the moment your opponent hits you unless you are a HA or Medic. You could have almost killed your opponent, but if he spins around and hits you in time you suddenly are at a disadvantage with inactive shields or whatever.

And regardless of how it acts on other classes: Giving this cheap insta-shield to the HA classes is making an already OP class within the meta even more OP.

Ah. So we finally get to the heart of it. You think HA is OP. I don't.

I think shooting a guy in the back or even just jumping out from a corner and because of lag (I routinely play with 100+ ping on a US server and I'm sure there's lots and lots of players who dont average "50ms") he's just dead. I think that's OP. They call it "peakers advantage" for a reason. Get good enough at using or abusing latency "peakers advantage" and your victims are helpless. God knows I abuse it every chance I get.

Totally disregard. You're right. Circumnavigating lag kills is worthless. Carry on. Nothing to see here.

all the instant shield activation idea is, is an implant to make heavies immune to being outplayed by non-heavies, they are abilities regardless, abilities as in they have to be activated by the player to be used, meaning they are balanced around that fact.

implants change gameplay, this suggestion automates abilities and waters down the skill needed by the heavy to reach a specific result, in this case it's killing someone that ambushed them.

regardless if it's all classes or not that can use it, heavy gets 100% benefit, medics get 100% benefit, light assaults get screwed because they can't use their jets unless they get hit by gunfire, engineers throw an ammo pack and infiltrators get forced into cloak when they were unloading on someone and got hit by any enemy fire.

bad design ideas are still bad design ideas no matter how you dress them up.

Eh. Was trying to solve a problem I really don't want or need to solve. You're right. It's stupid. I don't have enough issue with getting ambushed or blind sided. If anything my idea would just make it harder for me to farm zhitters. Can't have that.

So yeah, it's bad.

Doubt any decent player would ever user it to be honest. Less shield mitigation?...nah why bother; so what if it comes on faster you'll absorb less damage. Can't heal aura friendlies if you need too? Nope.

Though I might consider nano armor cloak with it but probably not. I just can't seem to find a good reason to use NAC...ever.

The guys opposed to it probably need it more than I ever would. So at least there's that. 8P

Read again: Within the meta.
I've advocated before to get the HA back to his 750 health overshield as long as the meta is changed and other classes get common objectives they can accomplish far better than the HA.
However, an implant that makes the HA far more immune to ambushes? That's too cheap. Also it doesn't solve your "issue" with the latency system and in fact makes it more unfair for the other classes. However, the whole point of the latency system is it's magic: it's the only reason the game can support these massive battles. Where other games think a 32 vs 32 battle is massive and the maximum achievable in PS2 that's barely a medium-sized battle.

So you don't understand how the latency system works, ok here is a little explanation.

You just said that because you lag, you win battles, so let's take it to an extreme to illustrate.
Player 1 has a 10 second ping.
Player 2 has a 1 second ping.

Player 2 is sitting in the corner of a room. Player 1 enters on his screen at T=0
Player 1 shoots player 2 at T=1 and gets a kill at T=3
Player 2 is unaware. At T=5 the information that player 1 enters reaches the server. At T=5,5 this information reaches Player 2. Player 2 shoots player 1 at T=6 and kills him at T=7 because he had a better position than player 1 and player 1 didn't dodge anything from player 2 because on his screen player 2 was doing nothing.
At T=6 the server gets the first hit message from player 1, at T=6,5 player 2 is made aware he's being hit while the server also gets the first hitmessage from player 2.
At T=7,5, player 1 is registered as dead by the server. At T=8 the last killing hits from player 1 come in but they are discounted as player 1 has already been registered as dead by the server.

So the biggest disadvantage that player 2 had was his own ping to the server. Player 1's ping didn't matter because it was slower in this case. Player 2 has practically the same time to react to player 1 as he would have if player 1 had a fast ping (of 1 second in this case since we are using inflated numbers for easy understanding).

Now for the reverse!
Player 1 sits in a corner of a room, player 2 enters on his screen at T=0
Player 2 salutes player 1 at T=1, shoots player 1 at T=2 and gets a kill at T=4
Player 1 is unaware. At T=0,5 the server knows that player 2 has entered the room but this message will reach player 1 at T=5,5
At T=2,5 the server gets the first hit messages, at T=4,5 the server registers player 1 as dead. Player 1 is the one who never even saw player 2 enter. When he does see player 2 enter, salute him and attack him, all damage player 1 does will be discounted as player 1 is already registered as dead by the server.
So player 2 could even horse around before killing player 1! This is ofcourse only possible because of the extreme latency, but that horsing around is basically the extra time you gain when getting a one-up on a high-latency player.


The bigger your latency, the bigger your problem and the easier it gets for the lower-latency player to kill you first.

TL: DR
The lower your ping, the better you are off. As long as an action doesn't reach the server it doesn't exist. Having a lower ping means you get the same amount of time to react to your opponent as when you have the same (low) ping.

Whatever you say. Opponent reaction time is round trip. You might dive for cover instantly on your screen and instantly on server time based on low ping. It still takes the full duration of both our combined latency for me to see it on my client.

Or have you never killed a guy standing still then watched his corpse move forward or sideways and spin around. That's lag in your favor.

I'm also not convinced that actions between client-server kill commands arent given some kind of credence. There's enough weird instances of trading going on we would both have to be dead on each others clients before the server recieves a single kill command.

Unless you tell me you data mined the code or worked at DBG...or at least have a decent reference to someone who has done either it's how you think it works. Which could be true. If you have rererences I'd love to check them out.