[Suggestion] Redo weapon locking

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by LilianaMonteclaire, Dec 26, 2014.

  1. LilianaMonteclaire

    This came to me during an hour+ long meatgrinder that, at the time of this post, is still going at Aurora Materials on Emerald between NC and TR.

    I was holding down the central box on A point, peeking out so I could fire my Reaper into the enemy horde endlessly, basically unmoving. Scoring lots and lots of headshots and doing my part to help everyone hold the enemy back. Resurrecting if I could.

    I got weapon locked 5 times from incidental damage to friendlies who didn't understand firing lines and proceeded to run in front of me and do the "Shoot me shuffle". Didn't kill them unless they were super low, weapon discipline and all, but the constant cases of players running directly in front of me, standing fully upright, and unloading with their SMG/shotgun before running off was enough to lock me consistantly simply because I don't have the reflexes to stop firing the moment someone comes running in directly ahead of me.

    So, why not have the game consider if your sights were set on an enemy since you were ADS'd and consider if you were firing at that enemy BEFORE hitting an ally. If both check out, you're immune to weapon lock. Incidental friendly fire happens in giant zergs, and it's a pain in the neck to be playing a class that ideally stands behind others, and getting repeatedly weapon locked so you can't revive people.

    Basically, if an enemy was within your aimer within the past 0.3 seconds, you have not stopped ADSing since then, and you were firing before hitting an ally, the game disregards friendly fire pointed towards weapon lock up to a threshold.
  2. \m/SLAYER\m/

    big problem with NC guns - such a low ROF, that teammates trying to sneak between your shots:eek:
    • Up x 10
  3. Canno

  4. LilianaMonteclaire


    50+ people defending Aurora Materials, at least 25 of them in the A point at times. Typically closer to 20 though. And a metric ton of enemies attacking it.

    I don't even want to know how many times I shot my allies in there due to the fact we were basically packed tight enough that light assaults were getting 5+ kills per C4 brick.

    Weapon lock in its current state just makes it incredibly hard to avoid it when large zergs are defending small rooms.

    4 TK's given in that defense, 4 TK's taken. Seems about right.
  5. Saool

    In two year I have so far clocked up exactly 0 weapon locks. Yes, it is very frustrating when blinkered idiots don't look behind them in their eagerness to get the kill, but it just means you have a choice: practice trigger disapline or shoot through them. Clearly you go with the later option in your eagerness to get the kill. Nothing needs to change here but your attitude/trigger disapline.
    • Up x 2
  6. breeje

    no its fine like it is
    i only had a weapon lock once, back in the days i started playing this game
    you get enough warnings
    we all know you have seen the big red text on the top of your screen
    well next time you see them stop shooting teammates
  7. lothbrook

    Personally it should only be when you actually kill a teammate and you get a single warning, the current system is ******** as i've almost gotten locked because i'd hit a teammate with a bullet or 2 every 30 seconds or so in the **** show fights.
  8. LordDethir

    The only time my weapons got locked was when my valk crashed into a friendly armor column . . .
  9. LilianaMonteclaire

    I think some of the people in this thread are missing the point. It accrues from EVERY bullet you land. and it goes away VERY slowly. In a big zerg on zerg fight that's being pressed through a narrow chokepoint, friendly fire is inevitable, and those single bullets clipping allies will add up and weapon lock you.

    http://i.imgur.com/ZA3kzs6.png

    The battle in image form, more or less. Forgive my poor MS paint skills. Small room, lots of players, lots of C4 exploding near the door, and alot of people running ahead of other people. Over an hour, I got 5 weapon locks but only 4 TK's. That's not shooting through your teammates, or reckless shooting. That's allies packed tight into a small room with grenades and C4 and rockets spamming them, and people running around like maniacs.

    You get weapon locked WAY too easily in big zerg battles compressed into tiny areas. It's fine when you're outside.

    Also, applies to hacksaw maxes as well. Nothing's more annoying than running out ahead with your Aegis up, putting it down, depressing the fire button, and getting weaponlocked within a few milliseconds because your entire team just impaled yourself on your hacksaws.
  10. Canno


    Look.. no offence but I've been playing since early access, I've been in bigger battles with deadlier weapons than what's around now.. Including when you needed up to 6 people ON the point to capture it.

    And the only time I ever have gotten weapons lock was screwing around with outfit mates.

    Weapons lock is on you and lack of weapon control, plain and simple.
    • Up x 1
  11. iller

    Never been weapon locked... So I really have to wonder what it is exactly that people are doing to get locked consistently on "accident".
    • Up x 1
  12. Vango

    try driving a mag
  13. Takara

    I've played in a biolab fight for 2+ hours or more and never came close to locking. I've driven a mag and gotten close to weapons lock but never achieved it. If you really got weapons locked 5 times....you seriously need to learn to not camp one spot all day. This usually happens to someone who does nothing but watch a door and shoot the moment there is any kind of movement. Go run around and fight the enemy an die a little. That is the point of the game :p

    The weapons lock system is just fine. Go take a break and come back in 30 min...you will be fine!
  14. iller

    Not qualified, it's enough of a crime that my outfit even lets me be a secondary gunner. But I see your point
  15. LilianaMonteclaire

    "I have not been weapon locked, so the system is fine.". Honestly, this argument doesn't exactly work. It's based on an Ancedotal Fallacy and a bit of Confirmation Bias. Namely, the argument assumes that players are skilled enough and fast enough to avoid incidental friendly fire in zerg situations, and that because it has not happened to you (because either you are skilled enough, or not in the situation where it will happen long enough), it is not broken.

    Not all of us are skilled enough to fire around allies who are running around wildly, actively passing through the firing lines of people who are currently unloading their weapons, or stopping in front of said allies. Not all allies are dumb enough to do this, but inevitably, not every player is skilled enough to not do this. In large zergs, compressed into small rooms, that are being shelled with explosives, the effect is magnified as medics run around, maxes run around, and generally aiming through any sort of scope will result in allies crossing into your line of fire without you being able to see them before they have entered your line of fire. A quick google search suggests that average human reaction time sits around 250-260 milliseconds. a 600 RPM gun fires 10 rounds/second. Or 2.5 rounds per average human reaction time. Which means if an ally runs in front of you from out of your sight, and stops moving, on average, people will hit them with 2-3 bullets. Which adds up to weapon lock. A 0.3s buffer window gives enough time for the average human being to react to a friendly walking in front of them.

    A system that works fine for high level players, but punishes less skilled players who are attempting to play properly with threats and punitive actions is not a system that works properly. What should matter more is the intent, and unlike alot of cases, you can actually check if a player intended to shoot a friendly or an enemy.

    .............right, that got a little number heavy.
  16. Maxor

    Only time I have ever been weapon locked was when I was trying to kill a friendly Galaxy that was team killing people for fun.

    But I agree a smarter system would be better. I would much prefer the old Grief point system from Ps1 but the original version because it was much more strict and would kick and temporarily ban the really bad people.
  17. Saool

    ^ This

    Other people are in similar battles all the time, yet don't know what the game says when you get weapon locked as it have never happened to them. If I can't shoot the enemy without risking shooting an ally, I move somewhere else where I can or shop shooting.
    • Up x 1
  18. Takara

    Actually it's a perfectly legit point to make in this conversation. What they are saying is...IT IS IN FACT POSSIBLE to not get weapon locked. So you have just admitted...you are not as good as some of the other people who play. So your suggestion is not to change the way you play to account for the fact you aren't as good...but instead you ask the game to change FOR YOU!

    When you encounter a problem that is limited by YOUR playstyle...please learn to change the way you play and not ask the rest of the community to change because YOU refuse to adjust for your own lack of hand eye co-ordination.

    Be glad you didn't play PS1...the Grief system in that game was FAR less forgiving than this game. You could end up weapon locked for over an hour or more. But they at least let you use repair guns/medic tools.

    Ultimately it is up to YOU to realize that this game wasn't made for YOU....that all those moving avatars in the game are in fact other people who are here to play the game that was designed for ALL of us to play. And just because you have your gun pointed at the door...doesn't mean they don't have the right to go run through that door. Because the only way you are going to get anywhere as a team is SOMEONE has to try and push the enemy back by running out of that door you are camping. Expect some friendly fire...when the room gets to clogged for you to avoid hitting friendlies...go somewhere else or change tactics. That is what I do...and i never have an issue.
  19. LilianaMonteclaire

    Please refrain from personal attacks. I am not asking the game to change just for me, and am backing up my statements with numbers here. Not everyone is skilled enough and reacts fast enough to avoid hitting friendlies 100% of the time in a situation where they have less time to react than the average human reaction speed. It adds up.

    I am a medic on the point standing behind allies and alternating between resurrecting people and killing enemies. Am I supposed to run forward to where all my allies are dying to explosions and die in them as well? Am I supposed to leave the point the enemy is attempting to push to and leave my allies with one less hand and one less medic to hold it? Personally, though I may be wrong, I think that as a medic, I should probably be behind the allied heavy assaults.

    While changing what you can about your own playstyle is good, you cannot control the entirety of the game by changing your playstyle. If you are playing a max, run up to the enemy, start unloading your hacksaws, and allies die by running past you into your hacksaws the moment you stop running, that is not a problem with the player in the max, that is a problem with the player who ran directly into your gun. And yet you are still punished for it. Likewise, if you fire a lockon rocket, and an allied vehicle intercepts it, you get punished, yet the event was out of your control. The game needs to consider these events when deciding who deserves punitive measures.

    Did the system add up incidental friendly fire from every stray bullet on the way to weapon locking? Also "Be glad it's not worse" is not an argument. Anything and everything can be worse than it is, that does not make all things good by virtue of not being worse than they are.


    Personal attacks again. I know I'm not the only player and did not design the game. Of course they have a right to run through that door and die horribly. Of course they have a right to charge into battle. But why should I be punished for them deciding to do so after I start firing at an enemy charging towards us, even if I stop firing as soon as I notice.

    I don't get what's so hard to accept about this. If you were shooting an enemy, and an ally faceplants into your gun, you're given a moment before the game considers you to be intentionally shooting your ally to stop. You can't control the actions of every player in the zerg, why should you be punished if one of them runs in front of a firing gun?
  20. Takara

    Not a shred of personal attack here. I never said you were a bad player. You simply admitted to being not as good as many of the player base. And because of that you asked for a change in the system of the game. I simply used your own comment to explain why this was a wrong thought. If you took it personal I'm sorry it was never meant to be personal. But again, you explained a problem you had based on how YOU played....then asked for a change in the game. How can anyone possibly suggest the problem may not be the system, but how YOU are playing with out it being directed at you? *shrugs*




    Well everyone plays differently, I'm not demanding you play any other way then the way you want. But if you get weapon locked and are unhappy about it. Perhaps you should take a break or consider changing your tactic.

    BUT for an example, when I play medic, I start out the way you do. I sit back and heal people up...then when things start to get static. I charge forward and drop my shield bubble. It's almost like a combat banner in medieval warfare People see it as a rally, they see it as a safe spot. Half the time I do this I die...the other half I get four or five guys who follow me up and we start a new foot hold a little further forward. I try to heal and res people who died on the way to it.. *Shrugs* I die to try and push the front line forward. If i die...I can always respawn :p that is why it's a game.

    If you are suggesting that these things happen to you on such a constant basis and this is what caused your lock...then I'm going to call this a half lie. I can count on ONE hand the amount of time's my lock on missile hit a friendly. As for the max...well that happens to the best of us. But I've never been locked by it.


    Actually it went up Exponentially The first few shots were only 1 grief point. Then it would go to 6...and higher and higher. I remember once bumping and killing a friendly spit fire turret ( You could place up ot 15 of the Motherfriggers if you had adv engi cert) It gave me 560 grief....you lock when above 1k grief. In fact your vehicles wouldn't even go above 15 KPH so you couldn't road kill people either! *laughs* In that game I actually used to get grief locked now and then because of people running infront of you well firing. And...no one complained. Well we complained but it was just harmless no one really *****ed that the system was flawed. In fact the nice thing about the grief system there was, it promoted team play. If you were weapon locked you could always repair friendly armor/vehicles and heal people . And it would make your grief points go down faster and it got you exp!




    Actually yet again not a shred of personal attack here. Just because I've used the word YOU doesn't mean I'm attacking you. The comment in my post says that YOU are responsible for YOU and when it flashes up the warning of "THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING" then perhaps you need to just calm down a little take a breather and take yourself to a different part of the fight. Never once in my post did I insult your ability. I simply said something you had said earlier. That you felt you weren't as good as some of the people at controlling your ability to stop shooting friendlies by accident. So the solution here is a simple one...you go someplace less crowded. Instead of asking the developers to implement a system that takes into account intent which can not be judged by a computer.

    Edit: In fact...after looking at your profile you have a slightly above average K/D and a respectable SPM on your MAX. So yet again I'm not saying you are bad at the game. But at BR49 you should understand...you won't change the people who jump in front of your guns. But you can change how often you kill them or how much time you spend in a fight where people do that.