Higby on Deathscreen killer indication changes

Depends.

If you pinpoint the exact location of the killer, it's better.
The killcam actually requires you to know the map.

The bottom line question is...has any of the previous changes or any propose changes increased subscribers? NO!

This game keeps losing players. So, the changes are not working. If there is a problem, it's not working, stop digging the hole any deeper.

Why fix something that is not broken? A poll or even survey doesn't justify anything. The masses are not always right. For example, hence why America is not a democracy!

Reminds of EQ prior to WoW release. It was losing players and the changes made only hasten the decline. It sure as heck didn't increase the population, even though changes were made to supposedly stop the bleeding.

What about the crossbow....
Its silent so it doesn't give direction HUD damage.

Will not this change make this meaningless? Hmmm higby?

a few things.
1. people get tunnel vision
2. if i get flanked and you are already taking heavy fire from one direction, a player might assume that they were shot form the heavy fire direction. not the direction i flanked from. with the proposed systems, there is no ambiguity, and the information is presented for far longer.
3. showing my dot on the minimap really does nothing to help a new player figure out "DON'T DO THAT! IT WILL GET YOU KILLED!"
it's showing you a line of effect, or a cone. at BEST it will help them figure out that they were shot from behind, and that sniper they were dueling with didn't shoot them through a wall
4. for gods sake, STOP blindly parroting the "always stay moving" mantra. that's really good in arena shooters, but in a combined arms game, sometimes it's best to hunker down and stay put. this is especially true if i managed to find a rally good vantage point, or am running the stalker cloak. it's actually REALLY BAD advice for infiltrators considering that we can become practically invisible while deep cloaking, and our cloaks have very loud activation noises. some green camo, and crouching in a bush at the base of a tree and staying still can actually be MORE EFFECTIVE at remaining undetected than moving to cover to cover. why? the human eye and brain are drawn to moving objects. the real trick is knowing when to do what. forcing me to always move after every kill is a size 13 kick to the crotch for the class as a whole.

so you've never mistakenly assumed a shot's direction?
and you've never gone " where the heck was he?"

again, i understand that a lot of the time this isn't going to change the situation. i'm pretty good at figuring out where my attacker was. but i mess up too.

my problem here is that we are now taking ALL chance out of it, even with the arc. i'm actually OK with the line as long as it's a hard spot only thing. mean yea, i had a dorito of death. i get it. it's the arc removing all chance that i could catch someone asleep at the kill screen. the last thing that high BR's need against infiltrators is MORE tools to use against us.

heck i can't even work with my and only wound targets so they can finish them with coordinated fire to try to spoof the line/arc.

and again, that line doesn't even tell a new player WHAT THEY COULD HAVE DONE TO NOT GET KILLED!
which is SOE's stated goal in the first place.

you guys should turn off the hit indicators for when your alive and not even do this with the update. -1

Honestly, if the line to your killer is for new players to learn give it to the low lvls, 1-19 or so. Level 20-29 give the cone of direction. Lvl 30 and up is the default death screen. If you cant figure out the game and where you are getting killed from in 30 lvls you will never get it.

The game has been gaining players since the October OMFG... hate to burst your bubble.

i'll agree that the game is headed in a better direction than a year ago...

but. i find this to be a HUGE exception to that rule.

i don't like it.
and honestly the death cam is only worth while when it's a run and gun style game play anyway.
and i don't want to play that here.

SASR & Crossbow Snipers are still completely boned by this iteration if they don't have 3 other spots to alternate to as their sniping nests. ... and they'll have to Alternate every 10 seconds as that's literally the Respawn interval when dealing with base defenders.

Stalker & Pistol guys (me) aren't dependent on positioning to begin with and we have 6 other challenges more at the forefront to deal with all at once so this doesn't affect us much. SMG-filtrators aren't even real infiltrators, they're just Light Assaults who are "invisible" to Low Graphics users and stand out like Daft Punk in the middle of Utah vs. Ultra graphics users --- and finally Semi-Auto Snipers.... I don't know, usually their Tracer spam already gave them away nomatter what. So this death-HUD only gives their location away to complete newbies, who won't be a threat to a decent battle-sniper even if they charge right at them after ever respawn. (if the newb's smart, they'll pull a lightning)

OTOH,
kinda feel like Stock bolt (driver) will take a hit here as well tho' just because of its limited RANGE. Especially for newer Infiltrators attempting to learn Bolt Action sniping before investing in a Longshot (or in my regretful case: the FailJack). With the Failjack for instance, just barely within Infantry render range to begin with, and even a Direct LINE pointing right at me isn't going to help most of my enemies postmortem as chances are good, they'll have to get in a Flash and drive for 3 minutes straight through hostile hexes and even more hostile terrain to get up to the cliff I'm headshotting them from . No my biggest personal threat there is always the super-random Lolpodder jag dunces with maxed "Scout Radar". (Hate those guys so much, especially when I find out they have Flares too )


If there's one thing that needs to be done to help Infiltrators in general with this Change, and SOE is actually really gathering real feedback on this..... .....then the ONE SINGLE THING they can do right now, is actually go read the Infiltrator forum for a change, and look at how many people still keep asking for VERTICALITY. IOW: Infiltrators want to actually Climb things and there's always a huge list of workable ideas there they could have been using all this time instead of working on some pocket-Drone that no one who's actually decent at "infiltrating" ever asked for.

Infiltrators won't stop b****ing until they can do everything, without any consideration to the perks of any other class to boot (like replacing the LA entirely.) Why shouldn't medics get the verticality instead? Pretty sure every class could benefit from that.

Man you guys need to chill out. This is just random hive mentality... It is fine, your 1337 gaming skills won't be affected by a minimap. Your K/D or your fun scale won't become unbalanced. Higby already helped ya out so take a breath, drink some water, and chill out because this isnt a big change.

THE POINT IS THAT WE ARE ABUSING THE FACT THAT BAD PEOPLE DO NOT PAY ATTENTION TO THEIR DAMAGE INDICATORS.

THE CRITICISM OF THE KILLSCREEN IS THAT THIS INFORMATION OR INFORMATION COMPARABLE TO IT IS BEING PROVIDED WITHOUT ANY INVOLVEMENT/EFFORT BY THE PLAYER THEMSELVES.


You cannot possibly use the argument that you're giving them information comparable to the information they're already receiving when they're already ignoring this information!

If behind enemy lines, and shooting them in the back of the head, EVEN A 200-250 DEGREE INDICATOR WOULD INDICATE THAT YOU ARE BEHIND THEM - WHEN EXPERIENCE CLEARLY DEMONSTRATES THAT THIS IS SOMETHING THEY WOULD NOT TYPICALLY PICK UP ON OR FIND RELEVANT.

DO NOT INCLUDE ANY FORM OF KILL SCREEN DIRECTIONALITY INDICATOR, PLEASE.

Well the intent is for new players that don't know what to look for and/or can't process that information quick enough.

As someone else had posted, this is comparable to how the killcam in CoD is used. After a while players just skip over it because they don't need it anymore.

If you are concerned that this will be a devastating crutch that players will rely on to get a substantial edge on the battlefield, I think you are gravely mistaken. This will BARELY give any noticeable advantage to any player, this is just a leg up. I'm not afraid of generally better competition, are you?

If I give you spaghetti on a plate or in a bowl you are still getting spaghetti.

LA's already win that "race" by having Jet packs by default. Climbing is very slow and risky. Jetpacks are fast and safe.
Your argument is invalid.

Better competition is better competition. A handicap is not better competition, it's just a contrived mechanism to superficial sameness.

You seem to be under the impression that I don't understand the basic concept that getting mysteriously killed is not fun, this is not the case. The key distinction is that the difference between getting killed and not knowing from where, and having some idea currently comes down to fundamental player skills, and moreover this game already provides feedback in the form of directional damage indicators to allow people to determine this with minimal effort and further develop this skill.

Some level of reasonable concessions should definitely be made in order to accommodate the average, lower skilled players, and we have these in the form of low skill-to-effect weaponry variants, damage indicators, no significant penalties for death, extreme ease of getting into and staying in battle, no penalties for leaving/joining the winning side/using numbers, guaranteed progression, relatively friendly UI, and various other measures.

All of these measures deal with certain aspects of user friendliness, but they only go so far, as having them go TOO far trivializes gameplay, or moves too far towards trivialized gameplay to be beneficial to the game overall.

I believe this to be one of those changes.



And perhaps you didn't notice the caps locked text, but I did specify that many players, including myself, strongly abuse the fact that people do not pay attention to their damage indicators or make any attempt to determine their angle of death. If even 10% of people I killed bothered to try and determine my location after death I would be at an absurd disadvantage, currently I identify the handful of good players at any battle and avoid hitting them, and that's enough to operate quite effectively until I do something stupid or someone just happens to notice me.

why? they got shot in the head, bullet pierced the brain tissue, lights out. No rocket science here.

But why would i want to flank for 10 minutes to get behind the enemy force if i have to leg it for half a minute every time i kill somebody? Where is the ROI in that when i could pull a free shotgun and meatgrind?
I think you don't fight much in the open. If all you do is tower stomping and moving in a blob of allies no wonder you don't give two ***** about the influence on your playstyle.
The natural cover is scarce in this game because polygons and you have to exploit the cover to its fullest, it's not your job to waste time on downtime, it's their job to force the downtime on you. It's enough that when you flank there are no medics with magical pistols around and death is a huge penalty in itself.

Thats exactly right. It wont stop people from getting killed by stuff they haven't seen. In this game I would say that most of my deaths were like that, shot from behind, shot from above, sniped by a tank etc.

I think its part of the game and comes with large battles on large maps with 3 teams instead of two and vehicles thrown into the mix. Its also what makes the game great and different.

For a brand new player, they log in, spawn somewhere and get killed. This new system then shows them what killed them and roughly where they were.

New player thinks great, but the next decision is where to spawn, if they choose the same place, then chances are the same thing or something similar will happen. And even if they spawn somewhere else the same thing or something similar could just as easily happen there because its part of the game.

Seeing roughly where the thing that one hit you was doesnt really take the frustration out of it happening. If it was a liberator, what should they do?

However, for an experienced player a quick camera pan in the direction of the thing that killed you will often be all that is needed for them to be able to pinpoint their killer.

If you read these forums every day then two themes come up repeatedly from the existing player base.

The first is that population imbalance is frustrating. One of the few things that you can do when you are outnumbered is try to get an infiltrator or light assault into a good position to harass the enemy.

The second is that we are craving more complexity/strategy/meta in the game.

This single change flies in the face of both of those things, whilst at the same time doing nothing for these new players that quit because they died.

If those guys are looking for a simple FPS experience then I am not sure that you will do anything to retain them. The very nature of the game that SoE have designed goes against that.

Instead of trying to make the next CoD I think SoE should be looking at something like EvE for inspiration. Its far from perfect but it was launched around the same time as planetside 1 and is still going strong because CCP have the balls to say "this is a complex game and it isnt for everyone".

That attitude allows them to create something that is different and also special and that is why it is still around.

In summary SoE you dont have the next CoD here and never will, you do however have the chance to make something that many players will think is far greater and will happily keep playing and paying because there is nothing else like it.

So, players quit because of random deaths? And SOE introduce death "cam"? That's cool but how about addressing random death issue? Like when you were lolpodded with no ESF mark on minimap or any sound indication except rocket explosions.Or got SMGed from nowhere, because cloak visibility was estimated mostly for daylight, and in poorly lit areas there is NO way to see cloaked infil without point-blank poking him with weak flash-light. Or when you are killed in 0.5 sec with full-auto spray from SMG at 60m range.

Someone in SOE has huge problem understanding what random death is. How exactly knowing general direction bullet came from can help newbie, getting instagibbed just because he isn't used to constant dancing or get confused with dozens kinds of camo (VS spandex with RED parts? sure, just please $¤€ wallet)?

*gormless whimpering 'CoD kid' noob*

Waa!
I was randomly killed by falling debris.
SOE please nerf debris, no more hit detection and damage for debris!
k thanks.

Waa!
I was killed randomly by a stray tank round while running on foot through an armour battle.
SOE please nerf tank rounds vs. infantry!
k thanks.

Waa!
I was being all sneaky but a random Harasser ran over me.
SOE please nerf vehicle vs. infantry hit detection and damage!
k thanks.

Waa!
I was randomly killed by a sniper while standing still typing to a friend and picking my nose before going AFK.
SOE please nerf other players vs. me!
k thanks.

*end*


Where does it end...!?

Fast and safe??? Obviously you've never played light assault because neither of those are even remotely factual.

Changes are going Live in a few hours. Once again our feedbqck counts for nothing. Why do they even bother to have a test server?