Spammable crouching has to go!

This is slowly becoming a widespread problem. It's an abuse of an obviously unintended "feature" that allows players to basically instantaneously displace their head by half a metre, without ANY drawbacks whatsoever, and not only that but also instantaneously grant them an accuracy buff half the time. It has to go. My thoughts on why:

1. As pointed out - I hardly believe that this is intentional. We have all sorts of penalties to cone of fire bloom for the smallest of things, such as jumping, stumbling upon a stone, falling even 5cm, etc. yet we are able to crouch instantaneously without any such penalty whatsoever. Yes, for the crouching player it does appear that it takes a significant amount of time but as far as the server is concerned crouching takes place the moment the button is pressed and the improved cone of fire buff for crouching is granted immediately.

2. It is abusable. I already met a few players that clearly had a crouch macro and were not afraid to use it. One guy had it on constantly crouching at least 5 times per second, which made aiming for his head virtually impossible. And the closer the distance is, the more the effective displacement is to the point where keeping tracking of one's head would effectively require a literal aimbot.

3. It looks profoundly stupid - no human being, not to mention one clad in armor and full military gear, is able to crouch and stand up that fast, no matter the training. Not even robots can displace such mass without overshooting with such speed unless bolted to the ground. I don't care about the amount of "skill" involved - it is not different to the good old "dolphin diving" from the classic Battlefield 2 where this BS was taken out eventually.

4. I refuse to partake in and be part of the problem, but plenty choose to do so, since why should others take advantage of a broken mechanic and they not when the objective at any time is to win: the fight, the territory, the alert - whatever the means.

How to fix this:

1. Crouching and standing up should take as much time as it, cosmetically, appears to be the case for the one doing it.

2. During the process the aim should bloom, just as it does with almost any other similar activity.

3. It should not be spammable - introduce a small, but relevant delay between repeated attempts to crouch/stand.

All this being said the end effect should not in any way make crouching behind cover, standing up, taking a few shots and going back behind cover as that is perfectly normal gameplay behavior.

aim for the body, enemy crouches, get headshots.
sounds ok to me

This subject has come up many many times - along with ADAD spam - and although most people seem to agree that win or lose shouldn't be determined by finger gymnastics, nothing has changed.

So we still face jack-in-the-box / break-dancing enemies.

It looks profoundly stupid, I'll grant you that.

But something that all factions and all units are capable of doing cannot be OP. Cheesy? Sure. But you can do it just the same as your enemy can. The fact that you choose not to out of some arbitrary sense of dignity hurts no one but yourself.

I agree there should be a crouch delay, but I already thought there was one? On my client, I certainly cannot crouch and stand up more than once per second.

In regards to dodging (ADAD + crouching) I rather enjoy it, as it adds an extra layer of skill and variety to engagements. I've beaten players who I know for a fact have better aim than me in 1v1s because, instead of out-shooting them, I've out-dodged them.
If dodging were removed, I would simply have had my fate sealed every time. So I'm glad for the alternative approaches to combat.
Just like an LA can beat a skilled-shooting HA by being skilled at flanking, a medic can kill the skilled-shooting HA by being more skilled at dodging damage than they are. It adds more depth to the combat than just "whoever points and clicks best wins."

not everyone crouches and if a crouch spammer starts dying to headshots while crouched they stop getting headshotted because you are aiming at chest height when they stop spamming for a bit, so you start dying from their headshots.

that is the real issue, you can only counter crouch spammers one way till they counter the exact opposite way, if it were only about aiming at chest level to get headshots at a crouch spam opponent, there wouldn't be crouch spam.

given how long they took to fix medkit abuse i'm not optimistic about them fixing crouching anytime soon.

as for the mechanic itself there should be a decent transition time between standing<>crouching and on top of that a large COF penalty while in transition.

I don't think it has to be that severe, and definitely not tie a bloom to it. Just treat it like they did bunny hopping. I'd actually tie A and D to jumping and crouching. So you could still juke the opponent in a fight, just not spam everything like we currently see. One engagement in particular stands out in which I came face to face with a guy around a corner. He skillfully crouched and stayed down when he realized I was going for the head and he rightfully won the fight. I wouldn't want to do anything to punish that guy, just the spammers.

To crouch to get cover or to ADAD to peek behind a tree should not be punished, but the constant crouch/ADAD spamming yes and that can be achieved by adding some inertia to the CoF.

When crouching/moving/jumping my stand should be considered "standing/moving" (both in terms of CoF and Bloom) for a short period of time AFTER the action has been performed: we need a some CoF recovery mechanism similar to the one used when firing automatic weapons.

So if I take cover, go ADS and open fire --> good. I have taken advantage of the position and I am firing efficiently.
If instead I ADADADADADADAD all over the place --> bad, my CoF will keep blooming at the highest rate possible. Maybe I will survive more but for sure I won't hit anything.

there is no difference in bloom between standing or moving. bloom is only variable between ADS and hipfire with the exception of SMGs which have equal bloom for both.
but i guess that would be a nice reason to actually use the tanto as that has 0 cof even while sprinting

Is that why people are doing that. I was wondering why. It looks so odd that people would randomly crouch like that on engagements. So far though I've killed every one of them lol. I normally start with the head and then lower my gun for recoil purpose and I get headshots when they crouch. I just thought it was a dumb tactic but I guess there is a reason for it. Only started noticing it barely a week ago.

I wrote CoF and Bloom. in ADS mode moving CoF is double or more than standing CoF.

I don't really understand this in FPS - if finger gymnastics isn't supposed to win you fights, then what does? Number of upgrades you have in nanoweave, damage of the gun, team numbers?

i'm not trying to be edgy, I just seriously don't understand this thought. Maybe I grew up on too many old school shooters.

I would pay to see movement inertia.
Or alternatively crosshair should become as big as a whale's ******* when moving ADADAD or crouching like crazy.

Just because this thing existed in shooters since Castle Wolfenstein on 386 pcs it doesn't mean we have accept this crap in 2018.

Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter had all that.
when ever you moved or turned your CoF would bloom and then recenter when you focussed on something. made for an amazing tactical FPS, but a poor fastpaced skill based fps

It is a legitimate question. Just different viewpoints I would say:

- you may win by reading the minimap, positioning, finding cover, deciding when to engage, choose the right weapon and the associated attachment for the engagement you have in mind and so on. When you open fire you have -more or less- almost won the engagement because you created the ideal conditions for you to engage. That would be "a way" to play.

- you may win by having twitchy fingers, constantly running around, jumping, ADADing, spam-crouching and so on. When you open fire you will do your best to throw the enemy aim off and to land your shots on target, You will win during the engagement even if the conditions aren't ideal. That would be "another way" to play

One way does not exclude the other. If you master both ways then you would be a great player, but most of the people either go for the first way or the second depending on many factors (play-style, attitude, age, ...)

In a game with a more conventional animation queue, that might fly. Our netcode is "as it comes, whenever it comes." Complicated finger gymnastics isn't guaranteed to look like anything near as sensible as the movements you believe you are demonstrating on your own screen when rendered on someone else's screen.

Our predecessor used the same philosophy. Moving too quickly or moving at the wrong part of the network update tick made it possible that, to your opponent, you looked like you skipped through a wall temporarily. To the other person, they lost sight of the enemy and, even if they continued firing, their target's hitbox is no longer in the room or in a known location. To the person whose ghost ignored the wall, they still can see their opponent and may even be unaware that the opponent saw something that should give them pause.

I won't answer the above question because it's far too multi-faceted for me. Instead, I'll shift down.

Though it may be aged as a game, PlanetSide 2 is not modelled after an "old school" shooter and does not even hope to dip its foot into that lofty rose-tinted category. That's the simplest answer.

Exactly, being a god-finger-gymnast (that's what she said hue) doesn't mean you will win. In fact, I'd rate it way below map awareness, given just how much BS flies in your face every second. ADADADADADADAD spam is only effective 1v1, which this game is not built around. Sure, if you have a 1-12 vs 1-12 it may win you some fights, but anytime it gets 1v2 or more it becomes irrelevant.

I never said it was, I said that I personally learned the FPS genre through older style games where ADAD/Crouch was a staple.




End point: the ADADADADADADAD and crouch spam, IMHO, are a non-issue just like the age-old topic on this forum that HA is "too OP" because of their survivability and that other classes can't 1v1 them. Both of these are solved through outplaying the enemy if you can't outshoot them.

Ironically it's the HA that has most to gain from the River Dance, a few missed shots will do nicely.

All much of a muchness though - there's no way they will change it now, we've lived with it for such a long time. The outcry would be deafening. Rather like the outcry if they made ESFs fly - well - like aircraft (shudder the thought of it).

It doesn't make any sense.
People just naturally pick and choose the skilled aspects of the game that they aren't good at and call to have them eliminated.
Dodging is a way of winning engagements, flanking is a way of winning engagements, aiming is a way of winning engagements, watching the map is a way of winning engagements, and using cover is a way of winning engagements. And more. Or any combination of the above.
As far as I'm concerned, all of these are equally valid. Chances are, if you're arbitrarily calling out one or another and claiming that it should be eliminated, what you really need is more practice.

Seems to me like the usual "I don't want to learn how to use X so have it removed as it kills me" sort of thing indeed.

what is ADAD spam?