254 réponses à ce sujet

[GroverA125]

Brenon Holmes wrote...

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.

If that's the case then Brendon, why don't you consider lowering the armor rating of Banshees? They are the most agile, most powerful enemy in the game, yet have no true disadvantage. Their warp abilities are far superior to the other heavy classes, as they will kill you if you have a single bar of health left on any non-tanking target. Plus their instakill has no conditional sequence (AKA: It can pick you up whenever it wants, instead of like the others, where the other boss enemies must perform an easily avoidable melee attack) so can perform them the instant you're in range. They have the advantage everywhere, and still have more armor to take a barrage of soldiers. The Banshee is also virtually impossible to reliably stun, so you can't make it hold it's head still to get headshots, plus the jumping, it's not as easy as you say it is to headshot.

Why not just decrease the armor of them, give it to the brutes (currently, they are the weakest boss out there) and then up the frequency of banshees by 1? As for giving them headshot immunity, you could just double their shields and armor, and then that would make headshots an increase in effectiveness (headshot damage is 250%, 300% for Kishock, if they have double health, you're doing a bit more damage than usual for hitting a smaller target) and make anyone who can aim be capable of doing better than someone who can't sub-target.

Alternatively, you can just MAKE a varying multiplier for them, of damage multiplier of 1.25-1.5, that makes snipers work well and give the other non-projectile weapons a bonus, while keeping the projectile weapons as strong as they are currently (not that it means very much, only about three are actually useful on high difficulties, hence why they are "gimmicks").

[snfonseka]

SilentRich wrote...

Brenon Holmes wrote...

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

Are you implying some of them do not have heads? Only the atlas doesn't but targeting the pilot deserves a small reward.

LOL!

[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:

[Shampoohorn]

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

Modifié par Shampoohorn, 25 juillet 2012 - 07:32 .

[megabeast37215]

Brenon, thank you for coming back. Really appreciate your participation in the discussion.

[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:

[PRC_Heavy_Z]

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)

Modifié par PRC_Heavy_Z, 25 juillet 2012 - 07:36 .

[BjornDaDwarf]

Brenon Holmes wrote...

 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).

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.  

So bosses gain a weakpoint, but only if you choose to exploit it by gearing yourself out to be a boss killer.  And currently underused items suddenly jump in value.  Win/Win!

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.  

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.

[bob2.0]

Strict31 wrote...

bob2.0 wrote...

There are people in this thread, that when tasked with building a robot for the sole purpose of combat, would put the processor and vital computer parts in the head, instead of the heavily armored torso.

But then where are you gonna put the power source?

And then, where are you gonna put the cooling system to keep the heat from the power source from melting the delicate components of the processor.

And hey...what's stopping you from heavily armoring the head? Skynet managed to do it with the Terminators.

Thank robot-god that they don't build humanoid robots for combat in the really real world.

For a combat robot whose sole purpose is killing, a humanoid design is the last thing you want.
They'll be designed largely the same as tanks.

On topic: It'd be neat to see Atlas accuracy begin to suffer as you continually damage the canopy.
A way to overcome Atlas weaknesses without changing its movement speed is to have it fire more often while on the move. If I was an Atlas pilot, my sole concern would be providing near-constant suppressive fire with the cannon.

Modifié par bob2.0, 25 juillet 2012 - 07:37 .

[scoopapa1]

The Atlas being weak in the exhaust port would be great. It's not that easy to hit because you have to surround the Atlas, which will result in you getting shot in the back yourself unless your team has good control of the immediate area. As such it wouldn't drastically reduce the difficulty of the Atlas but it would reward solid teamwork and tactics.

As mentioned on the previous page, the autoaim makes Brute headshots pretty easy. However, I think the guts would be a great weak point, as they are not that easy to hit and you have to shoot off the armored plate. I imagine these were intended to be a weak point like the atlas exhaust was?  Brutes already go down pretty fast, anyway, though.  Mostly they are problematic when you don't notice them charging from halfway across the map because you are trying to dodge a Ravager or something.

As far as Primes and Banshees, I can see where BW is coming from taking headshots off of them (this was the original infiltrator nerf though!). Taking down Primes in four Valiant clips in GWG back in the day was just a little too strong. If individual headshot damages came into being, I wouldn't expect much more than a 1.2x multiplier to Primes and a 1.5x multiplier to Banshees being reasonable. Obviously any addition of weak points is a nerf; I think the sweet spot you should be aiming for is right where the damage done by an average player will be the same when extra misses due to aiming at a smaller target is taken into account.  This way, the bosses aren't severely nerfed, but players with good aim are rewarded still.

Modifié par scoopapa1, 25 juillet 2012 - 07:41 .

[Grunt_Platform]

Brenon Holmes wrote...
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).

[...]

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).

I love both these effects, and regularly exploit them! I find it pretty hilarious to take aim with my Revenant and concentrate fire on the Atlas's crotch. Almost feel like I should be apologizing to the machine. For the Ravager.. I like to pop their sacs just as a matter of precaution, but I've abused that when using my Talon to disable them.

Those little weak points make these two enemies a bit more fun to fight than Geth Primes.

Modifié par EvanKester, 25 juillet 2012 - 07:34 .

[Dynamik78]

Having headshots for the banshees again would be awesome for now. . .
Make it happen Brenon! ! !

[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.

[squidney2k1]

The only thing I don't understand was the Prime. Why build a head model if it's not going to be useful for anything other than grinning at you while it snipes you from across the map?

Every enemy should have a weak point. EVERY enemy.

[megabeast37215]

Brenon Holmes wrote...

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.

I've attempted to shoot the plates off the Atlases, but I never noticed the damage spike. I really like the exhaust port idea... another way that could be made cool is instead of just making the exhaust port 'weaker' make it weaker to fire. It would really increase the effectiveness of Incindiary ammo/flamer/Incinerate against Cerberus, as opposed to everyone going with AP ammo. It makes sense, overheating a large machine from the inside, melting the pilot at the same time. I don't know how difficult things like that are to change.

You say that the shapes are where the headshot damage bonuses are applied... I must ask... the Primes head is huge, is it made up of one large shape or like a cylinder with a sphere at the end. I think just the eye peice should be a headshot... not the entire big banana shaped head. The whole head is a very easy target, and blowing it off with a Widow/Black Widow is easy.... but hitting just the optic, that would be a challenge that I feel should have a worthwhile payoff... IF the head is made of multiple polygons.

Banshees... yeah... the whole head. They move alot even when casting the warp ball, I feel there should be a payoff for hitting that.

[AbhijitSM]

Brenon Holmes wrote...

 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.

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 ?

[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:

[megabeast37215]

squidney2k1 wrote...

The only thing I don't understand was the Prime. Why build a head model if it's not going to be useful for anything other than grinning at you while it snipes you from across the map?

Every enemy should have a weak point. EVERY enemy.

I kind of agree with this premise... in 95% of games, boss characters have weak points (See: Human Reaper, ME2... and every other game). Also... removing them has really... REALLY made talented snipers suffer IMO. There is no payout for using a sniper rifle currently... Infiltrators are so much more effective with Claymore, Piranha, Harrier, Scorpion, Paladin, Talon, etc.

[BjornDaDwarf]

Brenon Holmes wrote...

BjornDaDwarf wrote...

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:.

Critical hit builds are some of my favorites to run in a lot of RPGs.  I've actually wanted to put all that headshot VI stuff I have to work, and boss weakpoints would definitely get me to dust it off.  

[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:

[Catastrophy]

Brenon Holmes wrote...

...

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).

I heard that but never saw it happen. Then again, I mostly don't look very closely for pieces blown away when shooting at things.

Brenon Holmes wrote...
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...

Then again it's coded to raise its right armoured arm for protection. It's quite efficient. I'd say no multipliers needed here. The Brute can be taken down fast enough. It should maybe make more noise as it tends to sneak up sometimes.

Brenon Holmes wrote...
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.

I'd really like the latter to have a weak spot. It's sometimes just tedious to bring them down. A weak spot would add some challenge. Prime: Optics - Banshee: Mouth. Would that be possible? To resize the headshot zone?

[Dokteur Kill]

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?

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.

*And I understand the reasons for this, since console developers generally want to cram as many fixes as possible into a fix before going through all the hoops needed to get it published by MS/Sony, but that also leads to a fairly slow patching process with lots of internal testing to make sure the large number of changes don't interfere with each other.

Modifié par Dokteur Kill, 25 juillet 2012 - 08:02 .

[PRC_Heavy_Z]

Brenon Holmes wrote...

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:

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. 

[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.