10 réponses à ce sujet

[Blacklash93]

I looked back through the changes to the multiplayer and saw that the Banshee and Geth Prime do not have headshots. The Geth Prime did once but it was taken away and ditto for the shootng the glass of the Atlas.

So... why? To make units focus more on taking them down together? That sounds like increasing tedium and not strategy. People would rain down hell on the boss characters together anyway and even play off each other in attempt to get the kill first because everyone wants the points anyway.

How do you justify this in the setting? A Geth Prime should be no different than another Geth in terms of extra locational damage. A Banshee doesn't have any biotic protection unless they have their shield up or are charged and even then bullets make it through and headshots should be more. The Atlas has a exposed vent that could royally screw up the inside. How can that not do extra damage?

I like the MP, but some of these design decisions just make me facepalm.

Modifié par Blacklash93, 25 juillet 2012 - 02:23 .

[Brenon Holmes]

Why do you think headshots were removed on the big creatures?

Modifié par Brenon Holmes, 25 juillet 2012 - 02:26 .

[Brenon Holmes]

soldo9149 wrote...

So it would take longer for use to kill them.

Sort of... it's because they're (generally) easier to headshot and we had no way of controlling the headshot multilplier ona per-creature basis. And the headshot multiplier is goofy (3.5x or something like that?), intentionally - because it's normally somewhat harder to do (on a normal creature).

That said, I think it's something we're interested in - as headshots are always nice... if it was to be done, it would probably have to be implemented in such a way as to give us control over the multiplier per creature though.

What do you folks think would be a fair multiplier?

Atheosis wrote...

Beacuse you guys don't think things through a lot of the time?

K. Guess we won't talk about this then. Later.

Modifié par Brenon Holmes, 25 juillet 2012 - 02:32 .

[Brenon Holmes]

 Bleh, in bit of a pissy mood earlier... sorry. :happy:

Anywho - yes... *currently* we cannot change headshot multipliers per creature, however this is something we could potentially add with a patch (new feature, sort of deal).

Changing the headshot volume is actually fairly difficult. The creatures are made up of collections of spheres, cubes and sphyls (cylinders with rounded ends)... these are the hitboxes, or things that your bullets actually hit when you shoot at the enemies. Certain primitives are marked up as "head" volumes and that's where the multiplier is applied.

If we were to change the volume size, your bullets wouldn't hit what looks like the geometry of the creature. So your shots on the Banshee's head would pass through the edges, for example (which would probably feel pretty crappy).

We can also play with bullet magnetism values to make the aim assist harder for headshots - but the head zoom snap boxes are already fairly strict and this wouldn't affect PC players equally (since they don't apply in the same ways).

Adding new parts that could be blown off is probably not in the cards either - a lot of mesh changes are fairly intensive and would probably mean re-shipping the creature which has it's own challenges. (Code patches are fairly straightforward... just time intensive - content patches are a fair bit more complicated :happy:).

With respect to the Atlas, we originally did want a weakpoint on the exhaust port on the back - but it got cut towards the end as there wasn't enough time to modify the physics asset (the collection of the aforementioned hit boxes) appropriately. That is something we could look at re-adding... as an aside, what do you guys think of the armour plates? (If you weren't aware, you can blow them off to get a bit of a damage bonus - each shoulder, knee and cod piece).

The issue with the Brute is that his head hangs almost directly over the center of his chest - so with a zoom snap on the sniper rifle you actually almost always hit the head by accident since the larger snap volume for the body applies and pulls your aim almost directly over the head... I think a headshot on him would be nice, but we'd probably want to keep the above in mind...

Ravagers... their "head" is actually their body... plus you already get a bit of bonus damage when you pop the sacks. (I can't recall the exact values off of the top of my head, but I'm fairly certain it's a decent % of max health).

Primes and Banshees are fairly straightforward... I think we'd probably want to look at just adding them back.

[Brenon Holmes]

GroverA125 wrote...

<snip>
If that's the case then Brendon, why don't you consider lowering the armor rating of Banshees?
...
</snip>

I replied again with some more information on what sorts of things I think we could do...

With respect to the Banshee - when she's teleporting I'd agree with you, she's pretty hard to headshot. And on higher difficulties, that's a lot/most of the time. So I think I'd personally be fine with her having a relatively decent multiplier to reward player skill. :happy:

[Brenon Holmes]

Shampoohorn wrote...

The extra damage for knocking off atlas plates is not that noticeable. Is the an additional stagger built into plate busting? If not, that would be a cool feature.

No, I don't believe it is... but that's something we could look at. The only thing I'd be worried with is that Atlas' are already pretty slow. Adding more CC stuff to them might be problematic... but that might be a nice bonus, since the plates aren't really near center mass and you kind of need to go out of your way to hit them... :happy:

[Brenon Holmes]

BjornDaDwarf wrote...

Brenon, not sure about the difficulty in adding this, but would it be possible to give the bosses a "headshot" box that has no inherent multiplier, but gear/mod/consumable/skill evolution headshot multipliers would raise it above 1x.  That seems to solve two issues.  First is that the variety of headshot bonuses are lackluster (imo) when compared to the other options.  For most weapons, mobs can already be killed quickly, and headshots already do massive damage (often exceeding shieldgate).  So the extra damage from the headshot items goes to waste.

Yep, I think that would be relatively straightforward... but I think we'd still want to make a relatively meaningful base multiplier (maybe 1.5x or something along those lines?). The main issue with things as they stood before the head volumes were removed was just the multiplier 3.5x (or +2.5x) was just too much for a base value (you still got your bonuses on top of that).

It looks like with the right build (2 headshot passive evolutions, VI Gear, VI Consumable and Pistol Cranium Mod), you could hit for around 200 percent extra damage.   But you're giving up a lot of other options to maximize that one stat and count on headshots. 

And personally, that sounds like an interesting build to be able to run for :happy:.

As for the current armor plates on Atlases....I always forget to look for them.    I honestly wouldn't even know they are there at all if not for these boards.

Well, maybe the answer there is what was suggested above... then, to make them a bit more interesting to play with.

[Brenon Holmes]

PRC_Heavy_Z wrote...

Brenon Holmes wrote...

Changing the headshot volume is actually fairly difficult. The creatures are made up of collections of spheres, cubes and sphyls (cylinders with rounded ends)... these are the hitboxes, or things that your bullets actually hit when you shoot at the enemies. Certain primitives are marked up as "head" volumes and that's where the multiplier is applied.

I see, so is there any way to do something like this:


(ignore arrows, just an example picture)

We could... but I think that gets confusing rather quickly for the player. The Brute for example has something like that - he takes vastly reduced damage if you hit him in the metal part of his claw, but it's not something that's easily apparent as you play the game... just sometimes it feels like you do less damage.

I think that sort of thing definitely works better for vehicles (like in your picture). Maybe less so for organic things. :happy:

[Brenon Holmes]

AbhijitSM wrote...
Wow...Thanks a lot Brenon . Just a quick question. You said that we gain a dmg bonus when shooting parts of an atlas.  Can you inform us what the % damage bonus is ?

Uh... it changes by difficulty - but I think it was just slightly more than the damage that it took to destroy the plates? Which maybe isn't enough to make it meaningful either... so if you needed to do 2000 damage to destroy the plate, it *might* do something like 3000 damage to the Atlas.

Someone with access to the Coalesced data could probably pull that out for you, I'd need to be at work. :happy:

[Brenon Holmes]

Dokteur Kill wrote...

Brenon: Realistically, though, what is the likelihood that you're given dev resources to add these features before the bean counters figure out that the game no longer makes enough money to warrant continued support?

Honestly? Pretty good if it's something that would make the experience better overall. :happy:

I mean, it would be cool to have some reward for headshotting bosses, especially since sniper rifles currently are kinda underwhelming. But not to be rude, your patching process isn't exactly the fastest*  Right now, I'm just hoping we'll see a fix for those niggling elementary issues that have been around for a long time before the execs pull the plug and shuffle most of the maintenance team off to other tasks.

I won't disagree with you there... patches can take a while to roll out.

Modifié par Brenon Holmes, 25 juillet 2012 - 08:10 .

[Brenon Holmes]

PRC_Heavy_Z wrote...

I don't exactly see how it could be too confusing for the player. It's just a method of defining which area has which material/damage modifier. Where it becomes confusing seem more to do with how crazy the dev wishes to make things.

And the aforementioned method also works with organic models, for example the soldiers in both BF2 and Crysis. I mean it's basically copying the 3d mesh, optimizing it and slapping materials on it in 3ds/maya. But maybe Unreal engine is different. 

Hmm, perhaps I misunderstood. It's possible to do something like what you have in that picture there - it's very similar to how we define our volumes. The things that I think personally make sense are the things that fit with player expectations... so headshots = more damage would be one of those...

If we were to get crazy with it, as you say - that's the part that I was thinking might get confusing for folks. :happy: If you weren't suggesting something like that, then I must have misunderstood.