Missile target acquisition changes to lock-on launchers reverted?!

WHY?! Man, they were finally useful then you go and do this. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, a hotfix not long ago made lock-on missiles fly in a straight path for a few seconds after firing before acquiring their target. This meant you could lock onto a tank/ESF then aim straight up to angle the missile over terrain. Now the missile just flies straight from the tip of the barrel to it's target regardless of what direction you're facing. Now why on Earth would you remove the only feature that required any amount of thought and actually made the launchers fun to use? Now they're just as boring and crappy as they were before.

Wow, I'm not the only one to have noticed this am I? I thought it was a really good change and I'm sorry to see it go. Was nice while it lasted, I suppose. Still, I'd really like to hear the dev's reasoning on why they would remove this feature, especially given the time and resources they put into coding the missiles to function differently just to revert the changes not even a month later.

Lock on rocket launchers and though/skill don't belong in the same thread, sorry.

Yeah, I used to do this all the time, now when locking on then tracking it behind cover the rocket will just fly straight into the dirt. some tracking.

Now I never said anything about skill. Lock-on's will always be ezmode, but the previous incarnation at least made firing them a little engaging as you could chose the most advantageous angle to fire. Now we're just back to pointing for a few seconds before pulling the trigger, zero thought involved. Boring. Also had the cool factor of watching your missile fly high into the air before dive-bombing straight into it's target below, raining hell from above. Was fun to watch.

Well I'm glad to know I'm not the only one sorry to see this feature go. Maybe the removal was unintentional, but I'm probably being overoptimistic..

I did not notice. I was too busy being pissed off that my Annihilator broke once again. It locked but the rockets just disappear after a meter and no ammo is used. What am I supposed to do with a rocket launcher that does not fire rockets?

They actually change it to be automatic instead. Instead of having to do it manually, it now curve the rocket if there is something between you and target. Stand close to a building and lock on, then out of line of sight with the target and fire. The rocket will curve over or to the side of the building and continue on its way. It doesn't work against air and is kind of unreliable.

Not sure why they changed it anyway. The original added some tactical possibilities an otherwise dull launcher in the Striker.

Dammit, that was a fantastic feature that allowed you to have more freedom on how you could attack something around obstacles. It definitely did add tactical ability, such as top-down attacks.

Oh man, that's god awful. Where's the fun in letting the missile do all the work for you. They dumb this game down more with every patch..

Well that sucks, sorry to hear that. It's a pretty popular weapon so hopefully it wont take too long to get fixed, though somehow a lot of the larger bugs tend to go unaddressed for long lengths of time, so..

Yep for me this bug was gone with GU7, which brought the no-damage bug instead. Now with GU8, the no-damage is traded in for the blank shot again. I seriously can't believe this. Maybe it was just lag because of the crowded servers today. Hopefully....the Annihilator is broken since GU5.

I use the Lancer exclusively now. Therefore im probably the last person who would notice such a change.

This was introduced in one of the last hotfixes you say?

Well, i honestly think they are building gameupdated on older versions which may not have all the latest smaller patches. So when gameupdate strikes there may come back older bugs or like in this case some features may be missing.

But was a terrible gameupdate anyway.

I only recall the ES ones doing that, their flight was different so you could fire even if the target was about to go out of LoS if the lock was made, while the annihilator would just fly into the rock they'd gone behind. With the lock being optional, I ended up dumbfiring mostly anyway.

I can confirm that this wasn't an ESRL only thing, have been using this feature with my Nemesis since it was implemented.

Given the fact that the AV missiles are now programed to move around terrain of their own accord I think it's unlikely that this is simply a missing feature. I hope you're right but it seems deliberate. I'm with you on this being a sub-par update, though. Without the ES weapons for the Harasser and the ES abilities for the MAX's it feels rather incomplete and underwhelming.

I'll probably be doing the same now.

I wondered why my striker was suddenly crap again. Now I know why.

** A thousand SC says it's because the .2 seconds of straight flight also produced the "duds" on the second and fourth reloads...

Made a post to be a bit more clear about this topic: http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/bring-back-gu07-missile-trajectory.122263/

Who knows, that really could be it.

Glad to hear it, I'd like to see more people talking about it. I miss the mechanic already. The figure helps too, I tried to find a video that showed how the missiles functioned in GU07, but couldn't fine one.